No New Land

by M G Vassanji

  Crossing this first obstacle gave their spirits a boost. Standing clumped together, though breathing easier, they looked down on the lobby as they went up the escalator. Tall ladies in furs, men in tweeds and leathers, fawning attendants. It could have been a scene from a movie or from a magazine ad. Yet from afar it looked easier to feel part of it, and they felt a glowing sense of privilege. The time was not far behind them when they could not even have imagined being in such a place, so close to those people. Upstairs, following instructions, they pushed through a heavy padded door into another brilliantly lit room. At the door was a small table where they had to check in.

  “Obviously no riffraff here,” said Roshan approvingly.

  Their names were duly ticked in the guest register, and they were admitted to the party. A tall handsome man in a blue suit and bow tie, somewhere in his forties, started towards them, all smiles and goodwill. It was John McCormack himself. “Welcome, welcome folks. Come and meet your fellow Canadians.” He insisted on pronouncing each of their names correctly, at which they were touched.

  There were two long tables at right angles covered with red cloth. A hundred or so people must have been present, of all races it seemed, from every corner of the world, milling around, forming tentative groups, talking of the new experience. The thrill of it all, like the first day at school. “So I told her, ‘What do you need a fridge for, woman? Just leave the food outside the window, it’s cold enough’ ” “Imagine a squirrel eating donuts!” “Man, where I come from, only millionaires could afford donuts!” “To London and back, so fast? What did you take – the Concorde? ‘Ha! Gray Coach,’ I said!”

  Suddenly some carts came trundling along, pushed by the gilded attendants, plates were unloaded on a table. Food rolled in next and was unloaded: trays of salad, hors d’oeuvres, cold cuts.

  A small circle formed around the table, a group of shy, hesitant guests. But this was the barest beginning, even as they watched, the circle became denser and denser. Roshan soon disappeared and the remaining three of them stood shy and uncertain, not knowing what to do, waiting for the rush to end, gnawed at by hunger and anxious for food. A tall elderly black man, whose height was an obvious asset in such situations, passed by, plate loaded. “Dig in,” he grinned. But the crowd there had already dug in, three deep, jostling and cussing, every man and woman for themselves, coming out mauled and with a plate only partly full.

  “The Third World, man,” said the black man, with a wink. He had found himself a seat nearby, and spoke with a full mouth as he took in the scene, mightily amused. Watching him eat with such relish only accentuated their hunger, and they felt rather irritated and without hope of ever eating that night.

  And then from somewhere came Roshan, sailing towards them, grinning with her big teeth, saying through purple-painted lips which hardly moved, so no one else could hear: “The other table, quick, the other table at the end, before they all rush there!” As Nurdin stood staring at those purple lips struggling to decipher their message, his wife urgently pulled him by the sleeve, and soon there was food before them.

  “Pile up, pile up!” ordered Roshan. “There won’t be another chance.” Sure enough, turning around with heaped plates in their hands, they barely escaped the onslaught.

  When the tables were cleared and moved away, civility returned to the hall, as before, with subdued, controlled intercourse. The whole dining interlude that preceded now seemed like a crazy dream.

  A red carpet was rolled out and a fashion show was announced, its theme “The Complete Canadian Male or Female.” The guests voiced hearty approval at the change of pace and gathered around to watch. Winterwear from fur (“the ultimate in elegance”) to artificial fur (“affordable elegance, or to have your cake and eat it too”), leather (“warm and cool in the fast lane”) and wool (“elegance and reserve”) were shown. Underwear (“Let’s face it, ladies, we all like to feel good inside”) from silk (“for the precious you”) to cotton (“for the sensible”) to blend (“for the practical”).

  “Shameless bitches,” Nurdin heard a voice say through clenched teeth as the models traipsed in on high heels, wearing roguishly girlish smiles on their faces, to show the latest in inner comfort. You cannot look too hard, you cannot look away, he thought uncomfortably to himself. One or two audible jolly masculine approvals are voiced, for which diversion you are thankful. He thought he had heard Zera express the intense disapproval, and perhaps Roshan also said something similar. Then, “After this brief session,” a bazaar was announced, where some of the previously exhibited ware was put on sale. Simultaneously a cash bar was opened and a dance began. At this point they decided to leave.

  “This is the kind of thing we have to steer our kids from,” Zera said, elaborating on her previous remark.

  “Precisely, sister,” said Roshan. “We have something to give too to this country. Morals, I say.” She stabbed a finger at the air, to emphasize.

  “The bikini girls are dancing now,” Abdul remarked, looking away a little too reluctantly, as Nurdin noted.

  “With clothes on?”

  “Yes.”

  “How shameless can they get. With the same men who were ogling at them.”

  At the door sat the woman who had let them in, cashbox in front of her.

  “Ten dollars, please,” she said to Roshan, who was leading the way.

  “What ten dollars?” replied Roshan scornfully. Her ire had really been roused.

  “Madam, you ate food here and were entertained – ”

  “What food? We had to run for crumbs like chickens – you call that food?”

  “I am sorry but – ”

  “I am sorry. And you show a procession of naked women – ”

  “That was a fashion show, not a procession of naked women.”

  “In knickers, with our husbands watching, showing thighs up to here.” She demonstrated, running a finger over her dress. “That is not naked? You want to show more, you shameless woman?”

  At that point Mr. McCormack came genially by.

  “I am not a shameless woman and those were not naked women,” said the cashier at the top of her voice, taking strength from this intrusion.

  “Excuse me ladies – and gentlemen. Is there a misunderstanding?” said Mr. McCormack, drawing them together around him.

  “I think there has been, sir,” said a firm voice. Its owner joined the scene. “My name is Jamal. How are you, sir.” He shook hands with Mr. McCormack.

  “Ah, Jamal.” said Nurdin. The name was familiar, as was the face. One of the educated younger generation.

  Jamal had fiery black eyes and a droopy black moustache. He was big, fair skinned, and dark haired. In an immaculate striped suit and red tie, he looked impressive.

  “I am a lawyer. These are all” – he put his arms around as many of them as he could – “my … potential … clients.”

  “Jamal,” Roshan turned on him, speaking in Gujarati, “are you going to let these thieves chisel us out of ten dollars each?”

  Jamal acknowledged the gesture of confidence but kept to English.

  “They can’t charge you a penny, go home, go home.” He went to join the friend he had abandoned in order to come to their rescue.

  Mr. McCormack had meanwhile been talking with the woman at the table. He came up once more and raised his arms to draw them closer around him again. “There has been a misunderstanding. There is no charge. The lady was following a prior arrangement which had been changed.… ”

  So that was how they met Jamal. In Dar they had known him, but vaguely by face and mostly by reputation. In Toronto they would come to know him well.

  5

  Sixty-nine Rosecliffe Park. The name still sounds romantic, exotic, out of a storybook or a film. Sometimes it’s hard to believe you are here, at this address, sitting inside, thinking these thoughts, surrounded by luxury: the carpeting, the sofas, the telephone, the fridge, the television – yes, luxuries by Dar standards – things you could no
t have owned in a lifetime. The CN Tower blinks unfailingly in the distance; the parkway is incredibly beautiful at night: dotted lines of glowing lights curving in the darkness of the valley. And when it’s snowing there in the night, softly, silently, whitely, you wonder if it’s not a childish Christmas card you are dreaming. But then you step out in the common corridor with its all too real down-to-earth sights, sounds, and smells, and you wonder: This, Sixty-nine Rosecliffe? And you realize that you’ve not yet left Dar far behind.

  “Twenty floors.” Nurdin once did a small calculation for his wife. “Twelve homes in each – you have two hundred and forty families – that’s three good-sized blocks of any street in Dar.” Except that the variety found here at Sixty-nine would not be found in any street in Dar. Here a dozen races mingle, conversant in at least as many tongues.

  For many of life’s amenities, there are enough local enterprises busy all day in this upright village to service all kinds of needs. This means that not everybody leaves the building to earn a living, or buy a service, and during the day life and excitement do not vanish from the corridors of Sixty-nine. From which fact Nurdin, unemployed for many months, could draw some comfort.

  On the sixth floor, well along the corridor and away from the bustle of the elevators, runs the major local industry. Here one Gulshan Bai prepares full meals for two, to take out. Back in the days when servants cooked over huge coal and wood fires, more than thirty customers took away tiffin daily from Gulshan Bai’s Dar residence. Tiffin was carried in a metal contraption, four cylindrical boxes fitting one on top of the other, the last one with a lid, all run at the sides by two rods which met at the handle. Now the tiffin boxes are simply the plastic ice cream and yoghurt containers. And Gulshan Bai minds the stoves herself, sweaty and red faced, perhaps not as cheerful as she used to be, and the flesh on her arms is a little tougher, but still ripples away as she rolls the chappatis every day.

  The times are gone also when chappatis came thin and soft as hankies, and could be folded as such; when every time the last piece of the last chappati disappeared into your mouth, a fresh one from the stoves appeared on your plate. Now on the fourteenth floor, Sheru Mama dispenses chappatis at four for a dollar, cheaper wholesale. Sheru Mama makes hundreds of chappatis every day and babysits two toddlers at the same time, while husband Ramju helps with the dishes and puts the required dollop of margarine over every chappati. Her customers tend to be single men who will eat a chappati with a pickle, or butter and jam, or curry canned in the U.S.

  The building has a peculiar incident as part of its lore. It happened before the Lalanis’ time. Several men had complained of waking up some mornings with a heart heavy with nostalgic yearnings and a clear memory of a Dar backyard strewn with grains and busy with the frantic clucking of hens. Why the persistence of that memory, so sharp and clear, over many others? This became clear when a local tabloid arrived one morning with the sensational headline: VOODOO IN DON MILLS! Apparently a gang of boys had come upon a site covered with blood and feathers in Rosecliffe Park, behind one of the apartment buildings. And then one realized, or was patiently made to realize by those more experienced in the ways of Rosecliffe, that the mystery of the nostalgic dream had a simple solution: halal meat – meat from a correctly slaughtered animal, neck slit open with a sharp knife, blood allowed to gush out, appropriate verses recited by the slaughterer with his head covered. So the clucking hens were real Ontario hens, and those who could have sworn they’d heard a cluck or two in the elevators were probably right.

  You can buy halal meat now, from Ram Deen, an Asian man from the Caribbean. You knock on the door decorated with two suras from the Quran in Arabic calligraphy and one in English in luminous green and gold lettering, and an I LOVE ALLAH sign; a head covered with Muslim modesty pops out with a wooden “Yes?” to which you tell your halal needs. It searches the corridor suspiciously and looks you up and down. It is usually Ram Deen’s young daughter, doing a mental calculation to check if you are a “brother.” If you are deemed not, she tells you her father is not in. If you are passed, the door closes, and a few minutes later out comes Ram Deen himself, a short thick man with a pointed greying beard, in a clean white smock, with your package neatly wrapped and a smile of appreciation. There is a practice at Sixty-nine to smile behind his back, but with restraint, for the last thing you want to do is to be caught laughing at a butcher, and a holy one at that.

  If you are suddenly out of toilet supplies, you can run down to the first floor and buy them at almost all hours from an apartment there. There are places to order snacks or go and eat them. There is an open house on the eighteenth floor every Saturday night, where over a spectacular view of the valley, with its orange-lighted highway, you can play cards, chew the fat with compatriots, or tease the women, and consume tea and samosas, which you have to buy there. There are babysitters on every floor, and housesitters; accounting or legal advice, a nurse, a genuine practitioner of folk medicine who will pray or knead your pains away.

  In the mornings outside the elevators, the mothers of Sixty-nine stand hovering round their broods, eyes shining with pride, adding finishing touches to their morning’s work, a flourish here, a button there. And they all go down at about the same time. At five to nine a gang of mothers, a few unemployed fathers, and some grandparents accompany the horde of children to the nearby elementary school, yelling, scolding, cuddling. They march to that part of the street where another grandfather does service in an orange jacket, wielding a stop sign, controlling traffic rather proudly as if fulfilling a childhood dream, and the kids cross the road and race through the school gates.

  One envies these children, these darlings of their mothers, objects of immigrant sacrifice and labour, who speak better-sounding if not better English: one envies them their memories when they are grown-up. Take this girl in hijab, standing in the elevator, head covered, ankles covered, a beautiful angular face, long body, who could have come straight from northern Pakistan. But when she opens her mouth, out flows impeccable Toronto English, indistinguishable from that of any other kid’s, discussing what? – last night’s hockey game. In her arms, covered with a decorated green cloth, is a heavy book also apparently in hijab. She’s on her way to Quran class, on the fourteenth floor. What will she remember when she is twenty, thirty, what will she write?

  Five o’clock at Sixty-nine. In the lobby, traffic is at peak because schoolchildren are still coming in and office workers from the Don Mills area are beginning to join the elevator queues. The three elevators have been taking a beating since three. They bring, every time they open their doors, fresh waves of food smells to assail the nostrils of the waiting crowd.

  There are those, usually immigrants, who find the smells simply embarrassing. There are those who have grown old here, who walk helplessly by, chins up, wondering what it was they did to deserve the brunt of such an invasion. Some residents come home to Sixty-nine to the reassuring clutches of the friendly vapours, and then go up and have a good meal. And finally there are the visitors, couples who come to take their toddlers from the friendly, homely curry-smelling environment of the babysitters’ to their civilized odour-free homes, now tormented by the smells themselves, wondering what they would not give for a good warm traditional meal.

  The cookers at Sixty-nine are on, full blast. Saucepans are bubbling, chappatis nest warmly under cloth covers, rice lies dormant and waiting. Whatever one thinks of the smells, it must be conceded that the inhabitants of Sixty-nine eat well. Chappatis and rice, vegetable, potato, and meat curries cooked the Goan, Madrasi, Hyderabadi, Gujarati, and Punjabi ways, channa the Caribbean way, fou-fou the West African way. Enough to make a connoisseur out of a resident, but a connoisseur of smells only because each group clings jealously to its own cuisine. And the experienced can tell, sniffing the air in the lobby, what Gulshan Bai’s tiffin is today, for the sixth floor is a popular stop at this hour. So it is not unusual to find coming down in an elevator a well-dressed young couple looking
stiffly in front, holding baby, baby’s diaper bag, and the local version of a bundle that a Gujarati peasant might carry: a plastic bag around several plastic containers. Gulshan Bai’s tiffin travels far.

  In the evenings, neighbourhood boys gather to play street hockey or soccer around cars and over roundabouts and between pedestrians; cars pass at their own risk, boys play at theirs.

  Out of this world Nurdin would wander in search of a job and return dejected, plunged into deeper despair. Sometimes he took daily jobs, invariably menial, loading and unloading with fellow Dar immigrants, and would come home and lie and say “filing,” until that became a joke. Everyone knew what “filing” meant. Sometimes he simply refused to go out to these humiliations, watching game shows and talk shows at home, and joining the “A-T” crowd of idle men who met for chitchat and tea downstairs in the lobby in emulation of Dar’s famous A-T Shop. On his idle days, in the afternoons he would clean up at home, sweeping away evidence of any degeneracy, giving the television time enough to cool. You could be sure that Fatima on one pretext or another, or when you were not looking, would detect any telltale residual warmth on its body. And when she did – did the girl show contempt already at this age?

  Zera began to have trouble with jobs, which did not help matters. The job she had taken early on was as receptionist to a Chinese doctor. A perfect job, walking distance away, in the mall. She could do shopping during lunchtime. And after school the kids could play outside the office under her watchful eyes. But then, after a few months, she had been dismissed. “Your English,” the doctor had said vaguely. A “Canadian” was duly installed. “I brought so many patients,” she said. Which she had, and in revenge she soon sent word around that the doctor was unreliable.

  Later she taught Gujarati, part time, at the Heritage Languages Program in a school, and money was scarce. Then a factory job came along, where her sister Roshan worked. But at this job, where she quality-checked sweatshirts and folded them for packing, there was a lot of dust and she had trouble breathing. She had dropped a hint after dinner once that making chappatis would not be such a bad idea. Fatima protested. Not only was the smell of concern, but also the dignity of the family. Nurdin suggested that there was not much difference in status between the two jobs. An argument ensued. A friendly argument, one of the first – and friendliest. Fatima, who went to school and spoke English with an accent neither of her parents could even move their mouths to imitate, now had a mind of her own. The chappati idea was dropped.