by Monica Ali
'Yes,' said Razia. 'And no. There's still business to attend to. With her sons, this time.'
'Import-export?' said Nazneen.
Razia shook her head. Nazneen waited. Her friend looked away. 'What, then?' asked Nazneen.
'I'm not one hundred per cent sure.'
'What do you think?'
'I don't want to gossip.'
This was news. 'About what?'
'I don't know. I'd heard something before, but I didn't believe it. I talked to her the other week, and I think I believe it now. But I don't want to say anything.'
Why had she, then? 'All right,' said Nazneen. 'It's better left unsaid.'
They caught the bus on the Mile End Road. The conductor was an African. 'Look how fit he is,' whispered Chanu. 'So big. So strong. You see . . .' He paused a while. Nazneen shrank in her seat. The baby looked around without comment. 'They were bred for it. Slavery.' He hissed the word, and the couple in the seats in front turned round. 'That's their ancestry,' said Chanu, abandoning the whisper. The bus began to move, and the noise of the engine stopped him from addressing all the passengers. 'Only the strong survived that. Only the strong ones were wanted; they fetched the highest price. Commerce and natural selection working hand in hand.'
Nazneen did not know what he was talking about. 'If you say so, husband.' She had begun to answer him like this. She meant to say something else by it: sometimes that she disagreed, sometimes that she didn't understand or that he was talking rubbish, sometimes that he was mad. But he heard it only as, 'If you say so.'
Chanu settled down in his seat. His elbow dug into her side but he did not notice. 'Aah,' he said, 'it's the day.' A puzzled look came over his face. 'What shall I say when he opens the door?'
It was Nazneen's turn to be puzzled. Even her husband should be able to manage that. 'Salaam Ale-Koum?' she ventured. She giggled and the baby pursed his lips.
Chanu looked like a man who had been startled from sleep. 'Ha? Oh, ha! Yes, salaam and all that. What shall I say?' He chewed his lip.
Nazneen shrugged inwardly. She checked in her bag that she had everything she needed for the evening: wipes, nappies, rattle, muslin cloth, banana, spoon, blankets, Raqib's pyjamas. She would change him at Dr Azad's house and let him sleep on her shoulder on the way home.
She stood the baby up on her knee so he could look out of the window with her. It was dark, and cosy with lamp-posts. The people were tucked into big coats, and steamed as they walked. Headlights and red rear lights turned the road into a crawling carnival. The bus bumped along. The shops were lit up still. Leather shops, dress shops, sari shops, shops that sold fish and chips and samosas and pizzas and a little bit of everything from around the world. Newsagents, hardware shops, grocers, shops that sold alcohol, shops whose windows were stacked with stools and slippers and cassette tapes and seemed to sell nothing but were always full of men in panjabi-pyjama, smoking and stroking their beards. Between the lights were black patches where the windows were boarded or the For Sale signs were hung. A woman in a massive orange coat, zipped up to her white eyeballs, was darting in and out of traffic. She bunched her sari in one hand and held the other hand to her chest. The car horns worked together, goading her to run.
'I just don't know,' said Chanu. 'I think I will tell him straight off that I have brought a box of kalojam.'
'If you say so, husband,' said Nazneen. She had given up her domestic guerrilla actions. They annoyed only her. Besides which, the flat was becoming so cluttered, and the baby took up so much time, that it was as much as she could manage to keep her head above water. She had no time to mess about.
'It will be good. I'm looking forward to it.' He smiled uncertainly, as if he were practising a smile for the first time. He had on his green anorak. The one with the snorkel hood. His trousers were shiny at the knee, and the sole of one shoe (she noticed on the way to the bus stop) was coming unstitched. When they were first married he was, if not handsome, at least smart. He preened himself before he went to work. He kept two pens and one pencil in his breast pocket. He polished his shoes. He polished his briefcase. Those were the days when he talked of 'when'. When the promotion would come.
'I could say that we were just passing.'
Raqib twisted round and made a lunge for his father's nose. Chanu surrendered. He allowed his nose to be pinched and his hair to be pulled. The baby wore a blue jacket with so many layers beneath that his arms were lifted, as if the air was thick enough for them to rest on. He showed his teeth, all four ivory chippings, and grunted. Nazneen slowly absorbed the information. Just passing. After all of Chanu's efforts they were not even invited. Why did her father marry her off to this man?
He just wanted to be rid of me, she thought. He wanted me to go far away, so that I would not be any trouble to him. He did not care who took me off his hands. If I had known what this marriage would be, what this man would be . . .!
What? What, then? I would have run away, like Hasina? I would have eloped with the sweeper? Hah. I would have wept on my wedding day. I did! I did weep. What good did it do?
She held Raqib in her lap and rocked him back and forth, although he was not sleepy. A sharp, hot smell came from behind as a new passenger sat down with a meal wrapped in paper. The light inside the bus was furred up. It buzzed and crackled and leaked a yellow pollution. Even Raqib's face looked sickly in this light. The bell rang twice, quickly and smartly, and it sounded impatient to get on. The bus ground along and the seats vibrated grimly, as if a tornado had passed just barely out of range.
It was her place to sit and wait. Even if the tornado was heading directly towards her. For her, there was nothing else to be done. Nothing else that God wanted her to do. Sometimes she wanted to get up and run. Most of the time she did not want to run, but neither did she want to sit still. How difficult it was, this business of sitting still. But there was nothing really to complain of. There was Chanu, who was kind and never beat her. There was Raqib. And there was this shapeless, nameless thing that crawled across her shoulders and nested in her hair and poisoned her lungs, that made her both restless and listless. What do you want with me? she asked it. What do you want? it hissed back. She asked it to leave her alone but it would not. She pretended not to hear, but it got louder. She made bargains with it. No more eating in the middle of the night. No more dreaming of ice, and blades, and spangles. No more missed prayers. No more gossip. No more disrespect to my husband. She offered all these things for it to leave her. It listened quietly, and then burrowed deeper into her internal organs.
Perhaps, she came to think, everyone has one. The trick was to ignore it. Turn your back on it. Like Amma. 'I don't want anything from this life,' she said. 'I ask for nothing. I expect nothing.' Hasina jumped up and down at that. 'If you ask for nothing, you might get nothing!' But she had proved her mother's point. 'How can I be disappointed?' It made sense to Nazneen. Only one thing was not clear. The cause of Amma's suffering.
'We will suffer in silence.' Amma's sister paid a long visit in the summer of Nazneen's tenth year. The air was hot and wet, as if it had absorbed the sweat of countless bodies. It dripped also with scandal. Mustafa, the cowman, had become possessed. This little man, with his matchstick arms and legs, a walking splinter, had kidnapped a girl from a neighbouring village and taken her into the jungle for three days and nights.
'In silence,' said Amma. Her sister spat thoughtfully and inspected the proceeds. The two women sat inside away from the sun. Nazneen stood in the doorway in a lozenge of light.
What were they suffering? Nazneen wanted to ask. Her father was not the richest man in the village, but he was the second richest.
That is all that is left to us in this life,' said Auntie. She had clung to Amma when she arrived and the two of them wept so long and so hard that Nazneen feared that someone had died. Nazneen preferred Mumtaz, Abba's sister, who was not one for crying and who made herself scarce during these long visits.
'We are just women. What can we d
o?'
'They know it. That's why they act as they do.'
'God has made the world this way.'
'I told him I will not go back.'
'That's what you said.'
'If he carries on this way, that's it.'
'You said it last time as well.'
'What else can I do?'
The conversation went on, circling round and round, and Nazneen listened, breathing quietly and hoping that if they forgot about her they might reveal the source of their woes. It was something to do with being a woman, of that much she was sure. When she was a woman she would find out. She looked forward to that day. She longed to be enriched by this hardship, to cast off her childish baggy pants and long shirt and begin to wear this suffering that was as rich and layered and deeply coloured as the saris which enfolded Amma's troubled bones.
Hasina tugged her away and they raided the store for tamarind sauce and henna. They stuck their fingers in the tamarind and sucked it off, like sweet and sour toffee. They drew circles and stars on their palms with the henna, and then smudged them doing handstands in the dust. Hasina plaited Nazneen's hair and Nazneen made two thick braids of Hasina's hair and wound them on top of her head. Hasina looked like a princess. Her face was flawless, symmetrical, mythical. She hardly belonged to this world. A lotus on a dung heap. She was not made to suffer.
That afternoon, when the rest of the village was drugged by the sun and stretched out on chokis, bedrolls or the ground to sleep it off, Nazneen was not tired. She walked round the pond and stepped over the silvered back of a snake, which slid into the water and became itself a glittering ripple. She climbed a little way up an amra tree and wedged herself into a forked branch to look out across the flat fields. The closer ones were lavish green, dense and deep, but the far fields filled with golden jute flowers were slick as mirrors. The sun polished them until they shone. She wondered if, when she married, she would have to go as far away as those fields. She thought she would not like to go that far. Then she got down and walked a little way along the track that led to the school that took students from the three nearest villages. Her sandals made clouds of dust and a haze of mosquitoes blacked the air over a gully. The shirt stuck to her back and her face was wet, as if she walked in an invisible shower. Only the mosquitoes moved. The birds slept. Even a mighty dragonfly that had tumbled onto the track lay stunned in the heat, wings aglow.
'Psssh!'
Nazneen turned round. She turned back again.
'Psssh!'
There was a dead man tied to a tree. His wrists were lashed to a branch and his feet dangled a few inches above the ground. His head fell forward, as if his neck were snapped. 'Come closer,' he croaked. Nazneen heard herself swallow. She felt the saliva trickle down the back of her throat. The man wore a tattered white loincloth. His legs were hinged with joints that were much too large. His ribs looked like a chicken carcass. It was Mustafa the cowman, and he was not quite dead.
She stepped closer to the tree. Silence. She walked forward again. Still nothing. Only when she was close enough to smell him did he speak again. He raised his head this time. His eyes stood out of his face and the corners of his lips were caked with something white. 'Untie me. Good girl.' He spoke as if he had enjoyed their game but it was time for the prank to end. Nazneen put her hand against the tree trunk. She could not see any way to climb the tree to reach his wrists. She did not know if she would climb it anyway. Mustafa was being punished. 'Roll a rock over here then. Or a log, that will be lighter. Put it beneath my feet.' His voice cracked and broke, but he sounded angry with her now. His head dangled again, and she heard him rasp out his breaths. She walked round the tree and sat down on a stump. From the back, Mustafa looked like a wooden puppet with some broken strings. She wondered if he would die as she watched and whether she would know when he died. She did not want him to die but it did not seem possible to intervene in such a momentous event. It occurred to her that people might be angry if she freed this man who was being punished, but that was not what stayed her hand. Matters of life and death were simply beyond her scope.
After a while, when her backside was numb from sitting and she was beginning to get thirsty, she thought of something she could do for him. She would go and fetch some water. Mustafa appeared to have fallen asleep. She shook him by the ankle and he moaned. 'I'm going for water,' she said. 'I can bring you some coconut ice as well,' she added.
She set off at a run and decided that if Mustafa was still alive when she got back, she would find a way to climb the tree and let him down. If he is still alive, she reasoned, then he has survived anyway and I won't be spoiling anything. She would let Hasina in on the secret if she could find her, but she would not tell Amma. If Abba was there she would not look at him in case he read something in her face. He might have ordered the punishment. She did not want to be punished as well.
Three men passed her on the track, carrying lathis. One was the brother of the man from the next village whose daughter had been kidnapped. They laughed and joked as they went by and swung their big sticks cheerfully, as if they were off to play cricket. When Nazneen turned round she saw them gather by Mustafa's tree, three small blank figures in the distance doing a slow dance with one spinning partner.
They had come to a small front garden paved with multicoloured flagstones in random shapes and sizes, as if a huge vase had been dropped from a great height and the shattered fragments had landed directly in front of the house. Beneath the window a plaster goose in a red spotted bonnet peered into the darkness. Just to the side of the door a three-foot-high policeman bowed his jolly legs, and faked a smile. Other figures crouched in the gloom, outsize animals and stunted humans. The house itself gave nothing away. The lights were lit and the curtains were drawn.
'A substantial property,' said Chanu. He spoke in a whisper. 'This area is very respectable. None of your Sylhetis here. If you see a brown face, you can guarantee it's not from Sylhet.'
Nazneen held Raqib on her hip. She wondered if Chanu would ring the doorbell, or whether they would just leave again and get on the bus.
'We won't stay for very long,' said Chanu. 'We'll say a few words and then go.' He pressed the doorbell and it played a startling tune. 'Of course, if they ask us to stay for dinner, I don't mind.'
The door swung out. A woman in a short purple skirt leaned against the doorpost. Her thighs tested the fabric, and beneath the hemline was a pair of dimpled knees. Her arms folded beneath her breasts. A cigarette burned between purple lacquered nails. She had a fat nose and eyes that were looking for a fight. Her hair was cropped close like a man's, and it was streaked with some kind of rust-coloured paint.
'Yes?' she said, in English.
'I think we have the wrong house,' Chanu muttered to Nazneen.
'Who you looking for?' said the woman, in Bengali this time.
'I beg your pardon. We were looking for Dr Azad. Would you be able to point out his house?'
'I can point it out all right,' said the woman. 'I'm standing right in it.'
CHAPTER FIVE
She showed them into the sitting room, where a pair of snarling tigers guarded a gas fire. Nazneen sank inside a large gold sofa. Chanu placed his box of kalojam on a gilded, claw-footed table and stood with his arms behind his back, as if afraid he might break something. Raqib clapped his fat hands to summon the servants who were surely lurking in the kitchen.
Mrs Azad stubbed out her cigarette in an ivory dish. She adjusted her underwear with a thumb, and a wiggle of her opulent backside. 'One minute,' she said, and strode to the hallway. 'Azad!' she screeched. 'You've got visitors.'
Nazneen exchanged a glance with her husband. He raised his eyebrows and smiled. She smothered a giggle on Raqib's cheek.
Mrs Azad climbed inside an armchair. She tucked her feet up and her skirt rode up her large brown thighs. Chanu swayed a little. Nazneen eyed the curtains: miles of velvet swagged with gold braid, enough material to wrap up a tower block. Chanu cleared his th
roat. Mrs Azad sighed. She tucked her fingers in her armpits and squeezed her breasts. The baby wriggled and Nazneen put him down on the thick cream carpet, where he coughed up some of his supper. Nazneen put her foot over the spot.
Gradually, Nazneen became aware that Chanu was staring at something over her shoulder. When she turned her head she saw that Dr Azad was standing in the doorway. The two men appeared to be frozen. The doctor was neat as a tailor's dummy. He held his arms smartly to his sides. White cuffs peeped out of his dark suit. His collar and tie held up his precise chin and his hair was brushed to an ebony sheen. He looked as if he had seen a ghost. Nazneen looked at Chanu. He made a poor ghost, in his broken-down shoes and oversized green anorak.
'For the love of God!' said Mrs Azad. 'Get your friends some drinks. I'm the one who's been on my feet all day.' She pushed her breasts higher up her chest. 'I'll have a beer.'
That stirred them. 'We were just passing,' Chanu explained, in a rush, as if he had just remembered his line.
Dr Azad rubbed his hands. 'I'm delighted to welcome you. I'm, ah, afraid we have already had our meal, otherwise
'You'll stay for dinner,' his wife cut in. She challenged Nazneen with her battle-hard eyes. 'We've not eaten yet.'
Dr Azad rocked on his toes. 'Not eaten as such. We've had some snacks and so forth.'
They ate dinner on trays balanced on their laps. An unidentified meat in tepid gravy, with boiled potatoes. It was like eating cardboard soaked in water. Mrs Azad switched on the television and turned the volume up high. She scowled at Chanu and her husband when they talked and held up her hand when she wished to silence them altogether. She drank a second glass of beer and belched with quiet satisfaction. Her husband had brought orange juice at first, and she jumped up in her chair as if she would strike him. Dr Azad drank two glasses of water in his exact manner. He used his knife and fork like surgical instruments. Nazneen chased the soggy mess around her plate and clenched her stomach to try to stop it growling.