Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  Having descended from her high-wire, Nazneen spent the next few days stamping along on the ground, and the ground – to her surprise – appeared to be solid. The girls and Chanu took their turn at tiptoeing. 'Now, what did we agree?' Chanu would say to the girls and they would nod their heads very slightly as though Nazneen must not see.

  'We should all go to the meeting,' said Chanu. 'It will be fun.' She said that she would go if he liked, and he touched her cheek and said, 'That's it. Now that's better, isn't it?' and generally fussed around until she was forced to smile just to make him go away.

  On the day before the meeting was scheduled Chanu sat cross-legged in his lungi and vest on the floor, reading the newspaper.

  'Shahana! Bibi! Come quick.'

  The girls came and each tried to stand behind the other.

  'Which do you think is the happiest nation on earth?' A smile puffed out his cheeks.

  Shahana shrugged and Bibi put a finger in her mouth.

  'Can you guess?' In his delight, he rocked a little so that his stomach slapped on his thighs. 'Come on, take a guess.'

  'Happiest?' said Bibi, finding difficulty understanding the word.

  'Bangladesh,' said Shahana, in a monotone.

  'You are right. It says here that Bangladesh ranks Number One in the World Happiest Survey. India is fifth, and USA is forty-sixth.'

  'God,' said Shahana.

  Chanu ignored her. 'Research led by professors at the London School of Economics into links between personal spending power and perceived quality of life has found out that Bangladeshis are the happiest people in the world. And LSE is a very respectable establishment, comparable to Dhaka University or Open University.' He handed the newspaper to Shahana so she could verify the facts. 'You see, when we go there, what will you lose? Burgers and chips and' – he waved at her legs – 'tight jeans. And what will you gain? Happiness.'

  'God,' repeated Shahana. Bibi stood on one leg and grimaced in concentration.

  'Where do you think this country comes in the league table? Go on, have a look. Thirty-second. So, you see how big the difference is.' He began to hum an old film song and examine the corns on his left foot. The girls slid away leaving the newspaper on the floor.

  'Maybe needs a bit slicing off here,' said Chanu after a while. He bent as far over as his belly would allow and poked around his toes.

  'I don't believe it,' said Nazneen. She was sitting at the table, not working or tidying but just sitting.

  'Well,' said Chanu, 'I will do it myself.'

  'No. I don't believe this survey. What kind of professors are these?'

  Chanu's eyebrows shot up high, leaving his small eyes vulnerable, unprotected, like two snails out of their shells. He reached for the newspaper. 'Here – have a look. I am not making it up.'

  'It may be written down,' said Nazneen. 'But I do not believe it.'

  'Why?' It was scarcely possible for one face to contain such a quantity of astonishment.

  Nazneen did not know how to answer. She was unsure why she had spoken. She did not know if she believed the newspaper report or not. Finally, she said, 'My sister – she is not happy.'

  'But Hasina is very happy,' insisted Chanu.

  'No, she is not. Has not been . . .' said Nazneen. And she started to tell him the things she had hidden from him over the years, and at first she stumbled around as if it were lies she were telling and not the truth, and then the words began to flow and he was stiller than she had ever seen him, a slackness in his face, and she told him about her sister and left nothing out, beginning with Mr Chowdhury, the landlord, the one who (Chanu had said) was respectable-type. When she spoke of the rape she named it in the village way, Hasina was robbed of her nakphool, her nose ring; and the selling of her body she did not name, saying only my sister had to stay alive and she saw that Chanu understood.

  When she had finished, she folded her hands in her lap and sat up very straight, defying with her neatness the chaos and disorder of the world. Chanu waggled his head and looked around the room.

  'I will make a plan,' he said. 'Something must be done.'

  * * *

  On the morning after the Bengal Tigers' meeting, Nazneen made the short journey across the estate to visit Hanufa.

  Hanufa presented her with a stack of old margarine and ice cream tubs. 'Dal, kebabs and niramish. I made too much.'

  'But I'm fine now,' said Nazneen.

  'Take it,' said Hanufa. 'I made too much.' She fetched a stool and suggested that Nazneen put her feet up. It was not worth the bother of protesting. Nazneen did as she was told.

  Hanufa filled her in on the news. Nazma's eldest had been made manager at the Bengal Lancer, Jorina was trying to get her daughter and her son-in-law back to the UK but Immigration was making trouble, Sorupa had a summer cold that refused to budge. 'And everyone is talking about this mela.' Nazneen closed her eyes for a moment and slipped back into the meeting.

  It had been a bit like a mela itself. The hall was festooned with children in best clothes and babies in arms. People milled around the hall and out of the doorway, or sampled the bhajis and samosas on sale at thirty pence a piece from a trolley in the left-hand aisle. At the far corner a man in a grimy apron sold sweet lassis and cartons of mango juice. Shahana waved discreetly at a group of young boys who wore complicated trainers and conspiratorial looks. Bibi found a schoolfriend and the two sat together swinging their legs under their seats. Chanu had greased the clumps of his hair together with coconut oil, sharpened three pencils and found a reporter-style notebook which he fitted, with some difficulty, into the breast pocket of his shirt.

  'So many people here,' said Chanu. 'How can you run a meeting with all these people?'

  'I'm going to buy a lassi,' said Shahana.

  'The milk will be sour,' warned Nazneen. 'He has no ice or anything.'

  'I'm just going to have a look,' said Shahana, slipping away.

  Chanu extracted his notebook. 'When I was a council man we used to say that a meeting with more than four people was just a talking shop.'

  Nazneen thought about it now. It was more than that, surely. It was her husband who was the talker.

  Someone in the row behind had begun to grumble about Karim. 'He seems to have forgotten his mother tongue.'

  'So far it's only waffle anyway,' Chanu whispered back.

  There was the usual business with procedure. The Secretary bouncing on his toes and trying to keep order. More elections. The black man had a title now: Multicultural Liaison Officer. The battle of wills between Karim and the Questioner.

  'What's this mela supposed to be celebrating?' said the Questioner. 'Are our children doing well in school? Have they come, suddenly, from the bottom of the education tables to the top? Has the drugs problem – that we like to keep our dirty secret – has it vanished? What's changed? Our brothers in Palestine and India and around the world, are they no longer being persecuted?'

  Chanu stood up then. Every head in the room turned towards him. Chanu made some spectacular excavations of his voice box, throwing out all manner of irritating sounds. 'I myself would like to add that Bangladeshis are the most deprived ethnic group in the whole of the UK. This is the immigrant tragedy. As a student of philosophy though

  Nazneen lost the rest of it. She did not care what he was saying. She did not care if people were looking. Sitting next to her husband, in front of her lover, she gave way to a feeling of satisfaction that had been slowly growing. It began at the edges and worked its way in so that eventually it found its way to her heart and warmed it. She gave herself a little hug and smothered a smile on her shoulder. She considered how much of her life, how much time, how much energy, she had spent trying not to care, trying to accept. Do you see me now, she said to Amma, do you see how I accept it all? At once the warm feeling had begun to subside.

  Hanufa said, 'It's at the women's drop-in place on Berners Street.'

  'What is?' said Nazneen.

  'The massage course. Do yo
u want to come?'

  'Maybe another time,' said Nazneen, forcing herself to get up. 'I've got so much work to do.'

  On her way back Nazneen recognized four Bangla lads who had turned up halfway through the meeting. They had driven a car, silver, flashy-looking, into the courtyard. The doors were open and the music hammered out. They leaned against the bonnet, waiting for a challenge. There had nearly been a fight when they walked into the meeting. Some of the other lads wanted them thrown out. They don't own this place. What they doing here? Karim had calmed it down, sorted everything out, as usual.

  She gave the car and the lads a wide berth and went up to the flat. Razia was waiting outside the door. She wore her Union Jack top and her face was wet. Her sweatshirt was damp and her trousers stuck to her legs.

  Nazneen went to her. 'What is it?' she asked, but she knew.

  Razia held her arms. Dark eyes, flecked with gold and laced with fear, grey hair taking flight, lips cracked at the centre, long nose, nostrils flared. She held Nazneen's arms and said, 'He's sold the furniture.'

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  After her husband was killed by the seventeen frozen cows, Razia had cleared out the flat. Nazneen watched her shift the pyres of wood, the half-empty paint tins, the massacred dolls, even the stacks of cheap tinned food. Anything she could pick up, she removed. Nazneen felt that Razia would like to pick up the children too, bag and bin them. The children dodged out of her way. Nazneen, home from the hospital, could not clear anything, and eventually Razia had come round and taken away the baby things.

  At that time, Razia's flat had lost the feel of a settler camp, a temporary pitch in hostile terrain where all resources had to be grabbed and held, and over the years she made the place a home. She saved and bought new carpets, for the sitting room the first year, the hallway the next, and so on. She hung mirrors on the walls and looked at herself sidelong and said that mirrors made a room seem larger. Twelve months ago, after several years of saving, she had bought a new three-piece suite with gold-tasselled fringes that set off the deep green cushions and tickled the backs of your ankles.

  'What did I do?' said Razia. The room was almost bare. A single bed was pushed against one wall. This was Razia's bed. On the floor, at a right angle, was the mattress where Shefali slept. Tariq was favoured with the bedroom. Shefali sat, as if marooned, on a solitary high-backed wooden chair.

  'Did you know about it?' she said to her daughter, and Nazneen knew this was not the first time of asking but the tenth or the twentieth.

  Nazneen leaned against the windowsill. Her bones felt heavy, as if her body was sleeping. She would have liked to lie down. 'And the television?'

  Razia moaned. She pulled at the sweatshirt where it was sticking to her chest. 'He took it last month to be mended, and the video as well. All gone.'

  'Where is he now?'

  They both looked at Shefali, who became indignant. 'I am not hiding him.' She had inherited Razia's long nose, and she cocked her head back now and looked down it.

  Razia lit a Silk Cut and sucked it hard. 'I should have whipped him first and asked questions later. Now he has run away.'

  'Don't worry,' said Shefali. 'He'll come back. He'll be back when he needs more money. He knows you'll give it.'

  Razia ran at her daughter but pulled herself up short and turned away. Ash fell from the end of her cigarette and she ground it into the carpet with her heel.

  'Your precious son,' said Shefali.

  'What did I do?' said Razia.

  Nazneen forced herself to get up. She went to Razia and held her friend. They stood together for a long time and then Nazneen released her grip slowly, bit by bit, as if Razia might fall literally to pieces.

  The story came out. Shefali filled in what Razia could not bring herself to name. It had been going on for nearly two years. Razia cursed her eyes for not seeing. There was a showdown with Tariq and he confessed everything, one moment bent with shame, defiant the next. He had been selling a little bit here and there, just a little bit of selling, enough to pay for his own. He made it sound good. He was supporting himself. Her own son, selling drugs. And she was happy that he had started going out.

  But then something happened. Boys came from another estate. They said, you can't sell here, we're taking over. They wanted taxes on what he'd already sold. Taxing him, as if they were the Government. Tariq didn't want any trouble. 'After all of this, now he says he doesn't want trouble. So he took the television, and the furniture.'

  Razia rubbed her hands, turned them over and over, as if trying to wash something away. 'I don't know what to do now. I don't know what to do.'

  Nazneen went with her to the doctor's surgery. On the way she said, 'About Karim . . .'

  Razia kept quiet.

  'It's true,' said Nazneen. 'It's what you think.'

  Razia looked away. They walked past a car with the windows down. Three young Bengali boys listening to some vicious music, heads rocking back and forth.

  'They're too young to drive,' said Razia. 'Why are they always sitting in cars? Why don't they just go home?'

  'You are the only friend I have.'

  Razia looked at her. 'You don't have to tell me. Just because I am in trouble, you don't have to make trouble for yourself as well.'

  They walked together in silence.

  Dr Azad had a way of making chairs look uncomfortable. He sat with a rigid back, in a manner that suggested an equation between physical and moral rectitude. As a result, even his padded leather swivel chair appeared to be specifically designed to mortify the flesh. He turned now and wrote something in the file on his desk, then he turned back to face them.

  'Does he want to come off?' He had expressed no surprise. He seemed to be expecting it.

  'Want?' said Razia. 'How should he know what he wants? How can he know anything now?'

  'If he wants to come off the drugs I can help him.' Dr Azad looked down at his feet. He made a small adjustment so that the ends of his shoes lined up precisely.

  'I have come to you for help,' said Razia. 'And the other thing is, nobody can know about it.'

  'You have my assurance – they will not hear it from me.'

  Razia jumped up. She paced the office as though she had been locked inside it for days and was looking for an escape route. 'But they know already. Everybody is talking. I can feel it.'

  'Take a seat, Mrs Iqbal. Do take a seat.'

  Nazneen thought, he is tidying up. She makes the room look messy.

  Razia stayed on her feet. The sweat had dried on her clothes leaving faint white salty lines around the sleeves. 'What do they say about me?' she asked Nazneen.

  'Let them talk if they have the time,' said Nazneen. She could imagine what Nazma would say. Sorupa, of course, would say whatever Nazma said.

  Razia hooted, a strange sound that came down her nose. 'Oh yes, I don't need anyone. I live like the English.'

  'I'll make an appointment for him. He can come on his own, or with you.' Dr Azad pressed his palms flat against the sides of his thighs. Every inch of him was tidy.

  'Will you cure him, doctor?' Razia approached and touched his feet. The doctor regarded the tips of his shoes, concerned perhaps about fingerprints.

  Nazneen was surprised to see her friend bow. Plenty of children came home from school every day and touched their father's feet. Chanu said it was Hindu mumbo-jumbos. 'Muslims bow to no one. Remember that, Shahana. It's only this peasant type – mostly they are illiterate – that mixes up all this Hindu mumbo-jumbos.' But Razia was just not the bowing type.

  'He has to want to be cured,' said the doctor.

  'Want?' cried Razia. 'What is all this "want"? What if he wants to take drugs until the day of his death? What if he wants to kill himself with these drugs?'

  'Go and talk to him. You are wasting time here.'

  Razia rolled her head around to release a crick in her neck. She looked at the doctor but there was nothing more to say.

  Preparations for the mela wer
e under way. Shahana and Bibi collaborated on a giant mosaic made out of numerous dissected cereal boxes. It was to be a backdrop for the crafts stand. Bibi used a pair of blunt-ended scissors, the same shape as the tip of her tongue which came out every time she did some cutting. Shahana worked with the glue and her artistic temperament, sighing and blowing and even screaming sometimes when the design threatened to go wrong. They didn't know what would go on the stand. 'That does not fall within our remit,' said Shahana, sounding like her father.

  'Craft things,' said Bibi, to be obliging.

  Chanu fiddled with the radio-cassette player. He managed to trap his finger. 'Ish,' he said. 'That's the one I use for the windscreen wipers. Let us hope it does not rain.'

  He was on the Classical Music Committee. He listened to Ustad Alauddin Khan and Ustad Ayet Ali Khan, waggling his head and playing his stomach like a duggi.

  Shahana put her fingers in her ears and screwed up her face.

  'How did you come to be such a little memsahib?' said Chanu.

  'I didn't ask to be born here,' she said. They both spoke quickly and quietly, and glanced at Nazneen, afraid she would catch them bickering.

  Chanu switched off the music. 'You see, what I would really like is the Poetry Committee. What do those young boys know about it? Perhaps they will get hold of a few books, but they won't have the background. Poetry is something different. You have to drink it with your mother's milk.' He embarked on a round of throat clearing.

  'Clouds rumbling in the sky; teeming rain.

  I sit on the river-bank, sad and alone.

  The sheaves lie gathered, harvest has ended, The river is swollen and fierce in its flow. As we cut the paddy it started to rain.

  One small paddy-field, no one but me – Flood-waters twisting and swirling everywhere. Trees on the far bank smear shadows like ink On a village painted in deep morning grey. On this side a paddy-field, no one but me.'

  Chanu exhaled and took a deep breath, as if he could smell the wet paddy where he sat with his turrets of books. 'The simple life, you see. That's what we have lost.' He grew brisk. 'And will gain again. After we have the Dhaka house sorted out, we will build a place in the village. Nothing like your mansions that these Sylhetis are building, just a little simple house. Something rustic.'