Where the Air is Sweet

by Tasneem Jamal

  “No one will hurt you, beta. I am here. Go to sleep.”

  Could the animals be drawn, Raju thinks as his mind begins to descend into unconsciousness, as Jaafar is drawn? As Raju is drawn? Gently. Lovingly. Inexorably. Orare jye … Orare jye … Orare jye … Imagining a pride of lions silently, stealthily crawling towards the mud house, Raju falls deep into sleep.

  Bahdur, Amir and Jaafar stay away from the work site unless Raju tells them they can come, usually to slide down the mud paths the workers have left on the hills. When Raju sets off explosives to break through thick rock, they are instructed to stay directly next to the house.

  The boys spend most of their days next to the family’s house or in the vicinity of the workers’ huts nearby. They do not wander too close to the huts. “This is where the workers live,” Raju told Jaafar and Amir once, pointing at the small round huts, their thatched roofs like unkempt hair, small chulos with blackened wood sitting in front, and admonished them to keep their distance. “We must always,” he said, “respect a man’s home.”

  Twelve miners, three askaris and the men who help with the family’s house—with keeping the fire going, with the washing and the cooking when Rehmat is in Mbarara—live in these eight huts. Raju can see their clothes drying on the lines; he can hear them laughing in the nights.

  Thirty to thirty-five more miners return to their homes nearby each evening. At the end of the workday, Bahdur, Amir and Jaafar stand and wait for them to roll the wheelbarrows to the house, where they are stored at night. The young men have been working in the sun all day, their ebony chests glistening with sweat, their tattered trousers held up by ropes looped through the belt holes, their feet coarse, bare and caked with mud. Raju knows they are exhausted. But when his sons ask them for rides, they smile, lower the wheelbarrows to let them jump in and then begin pushing them around, tipping the wheelbarrows to the side so the boys have to hold on tightly, racing in small circles and then larger ones and then even larger ones, their laughter drowning out the boys’ squeals.

  Whenever it rains, Raju brings three pailfuls of dirt into the house. The boys sit side by side, raindrops pounding on the roof, and dig through the dirt with their hands, looking for black stones. “It is tin,” Raju tells them, though he can see they don’t care. “It is used to build many things.” Digging through dirt looking for stones is a game, a way to compete against one another, to determine who is the best.

  For Bahdur, Amir and Jaafar, life at the mine is a time of freedom, of play. When the day comes to return to Mbarara and to school, they protest, they beg to stay. Jaafar offers the greatest resistance, his hands clinging to the leg of a charpai, the door of the house, until Raju or Mumdu carries him out to the truck. He does this every time he must leave. For years. Even as he grows bigger, stronger, older.

  Mumdu rarely speaks to his father, even though they are together from morning to night. At twenty-one, Mumdu is taller than Raju, but when Raju barks an order at him, Mumdu keeps his head down and follows the command, his mouth tightly shut, his shoulders pulled forward. Baku looks after the books for the mine, keeping records that Raju reviews each month. He does not do the heavy work Mumdu does. He oversees the employees, the output, the deliveries.

  Raju is sitting with Mumdu and Baku. Rehmat and the younger children are in Mbarara. The men are eating dinner on the floor of the house, their enamel plates on the mkeka mat in front of them.

  “We need two or three more men to assist with digging,” says Baku as he scoops up some kichri with his fingers.

  “We have too many already,” says Mumdu, looking up at his brother, his mouth full. “If we hire more men, they will have another excuse to be lazy.”

  “Your brother is more educated than you,” Raju says, his eyes on his plate. “You listen to what he has to tell you.” Raju does not trust Baku’s judgment. Despite his secondary school education, Baku makes poor decisions; he appears to have little instinct for business matters, or any matters. But Raju cannot tolerate Mumdu’s arrogance.

  Baku begins to talk of pains he feels in his shoulders, of the rain that is threatening, of the mischief the twins got into last week. When Raju looks up, Mumdu is staring at his plate, still half full. Baku has stopped talking and is shovelling the rest of his food into his mouth. Raju watches him wiping his plate with the fingers of his right hand until it is clean.

  7

  ONE MONTH AFTER GULSHI IS MARRIED AND moves with her new husband to live with his family in Jinja, Mumdu agrees to meet a girl his parents would like him to consider as a bride. She is the sixteen-year-old daughter of Rehmat’s cousin.

  Raju is sitting on a sofa next to Rehmat when Mumdu first sees the girl. She is standing with a tray in her hands, framed by a narrow doorway. She is tiny: a child with a high forehead and large, heavily lashed eyes. She is wearing a pale green saree and her hair is pulled back into a low bun. Without raising her eyes, she walks towards Mumdu and kneels in front of him. She places the tray on a shaky table next to Mumdu and pours tea into a cup. She is so small, Raju thinks, if Mumdu held her, he would crush her.

  After the wedding, Dilshad moves into the family home and begins to come to the mine with Rehmat and the children. Whenever she is there, she has dizzy spells; she faints. She spends her days lying inside the mud house, a cool cloth on her forehead. Finally, Raju tells Mumdu it would be best if she remained at the house in Mbarara while the family is at the mine. Mumdu lives at the mine during the week, returning to Mbarara and his wife on occasional weekends.

  Less than a year later, Baku is married. The bride has a round face and a round, unappealing body. Khatoun is not pretty like Mumdu’s wife. But she is strong and a help to Rehmat.

  As his family expands, Raju feels larger, as though he is taking up more space on the earth, as though his reach is extending farther and farther outwards.

  Gulshi has given birth. Raju and Rehmat travel to Jinja to see their first grandchild, a girl named Noor. Moments after they enter the house, Raju watches Rehmat take the tiny, sleeping bundle into her arms and then turns to look at his daughter. Gulshi looks plump, her face childlike again. But under her left eye is a small purple mark, the residue of something that a few days ago must have been deeper, darker. He does not ask her about it. He says nothing to Rehmat. Over the days, throughout the visit, no one speaks of it, but Raju knows Gulshi’s husband is beating her. In the nights, he hears them arguing. Even in front of Raju and Rehmat, the young couple spit words across the room, their contempt for each other undiminished by the birth of their child or her parents’ presence. Gulshi speaks in clipped tones to her mother-in-law, who talks always slowly, in halting, circuitous phrases. Once, Raju sees Gulshi roll her eyes while her mother-in-law meanders through a description of an illness she recently suffered.

  Raju takes Gulshi aside. Gently, he tells her a daughter-in-law must know her place in her new home; she must learn to hold her tongue, to follow directions, to obey, to smile even when she is not happy. He reminds her that she is no longer a child, that the fire he admired in her when she was a girl has no place here. “You must always speak respectfully to your husband and to your father-in-law and to your mother-in-law,” he says, smiling, his hand on her arm. She stares at him, her eyes flashing, her lips stretched tight, as though he were the one who has beaten her, as though he has betrayed her, wounded her.

  Over the next few days, for the remainder of his visit, Raju watches Gulshi with her husband and her in-laws. She remains silent, even when provoked, her head lowered, her body slack. Though Raju should be pleased with her improved behaviour, he feels bereft, as though he is in a house of mourning rather than one celebrating a birth.

  Raju is having a dream.

  In the dream, his father is alive. Raju sees him standing on the manicured lawn of a large house in Mbarara. His father is wearing the crisp white trousers and shirt of a traffic policeman. Raju wants to embrace him, to ask him where he has been all these years, all these years that Raju b
elieved he was dead. Finally, thinks Raju as he walks towards him, I am not alone.

  But as Raju gets closer to him, his father begins to shout in English, with the accent of an Englishman. “Get away! You!” He points at Raju. “Get away!”

  Raju stops cold, stunned.

  His father hollers to an African in a starched white suit to come over. Raju stares at the servant who, at his father’s command, comes running towards him with a stick. When he lifts it, Raju holds up his hands to shield himself, shouting, “Bapa!” His father shakes his head and curls his lip contemptuously. He turns away and disappears into the house. The stick lands on Raju’s head and he wakes in his mud house, in the darkness, his head pounding.

  The next morning, Raju is looking at a glowing white cloud. It is blocking the morning sun and he can stare into the sky without shielding his eyes. It is Sunday and the family is resting. Raju is sitting in front of the mud house with Bahdur and Mumdu. The brothers are huddled side by side. Raju is sitting apart from them.

  “I am twelve years, ten months and three days old,” Raju hears Bahdur say. Bahdur explains he will be thirteen only on the day of his birthday. If he says he is thirteen now, it is a lie. The day after his birthday he will be thirteen years and one day old. Time marches on, at its pace, always the same, he explains to Mumdu. “How can we rush time? How can we stop time?”

  “No one cares,” Mumdu says, rolling an unlit cigarette over the fingers of his left hand. “No one really cares how old, exactly, anyone is. In the past, you wouldn’t even know when you were born. It doesn’t matter, Bahdur.”

  At this, Bahdur folds his arms and turns away from his brother. Mumdu tucks the cigarette behind his ear, then wraps his arm around his little brother’s neck in a mock stranglehold, and they laugh.

  The twins, chattering and giggling, arrive.

  “Bapa! Bapa! Let us ride on your back! Please!” They climb on top of Raju, grabbing at his shirt. He pushes them away, as though they are puppies. And like puppies they keep climbing back on top of him. He stands up and swings them playfully, one at a time, asking which one is Amir, which one is Jaafar. He hears Bahdur and Mumdu laugh.

  Raju once asked Rehmat to part the twins’ hair differently, one on the right, one on the left, to help him distinguish them. But then he forgot which boy’s was parted on which side. He turned to Bahdur for help. Bahdur furrowed his brow in disapproval and Raju laughed, his big hearty laugh. “What does it matter? You are all my sons,” he said, the tip of his forefinger on his chest. “You are all the sons of Rajabali Ismail.”

  “But we are so different,” Bahdur said softly, his head lowered. “We are all so different.”

  Raju looked down at him. He touched the boy’s head gently with his fingers. He wanted to ease his mind. It seemed in this moment to be carrying too much, more than a child should bear.

  “I know,” he said. “Beta, I know.”

  The next afternoon, Rehmat calls to Bahdur, who is walking away with Amir and Jaafar, “Look after your brothers!”

  The boys were going to play after lunch, as they do each day. But seconds after they walked away from Rehmat and Raju, the tea she was making boiled over, the light brown milky liquid spilling over the sides of the saucepan and onto the ground, darkening the red earth in an ever-expanding puddle. The ill omen made Rehmat stand up, made her shout these words to Bahdur, who had already begun to lead his brothers away. The twins are so small and so mischievous she always fears for their safety, but the spilled tea has sent her into a panic and she is standing, her bare feet sinking into the earth, her hands gripping her hair. Raju is laughing. But his amusement, he can see, is not alleviating her fear.

  Bahdur turns back. He gives his mother a look, a look that calms her, that makes her smile and allows her to return to her work. The reassuring look of an adult who has seen many years of life, not the look of a boy who has seen so few. A look that says, Everything will be all right. Trust me. Trust in me. It is the last look Raju will see on his child’s face.

  That evening, as the sun is beginning to set, Raju is standing with a foreman. They are planning the next day’s schedule. It will be busy. Raju set off a number of explosives late in the afternoon. He looks up and sees Mumdu walking towards them. His head is bowed and he is moving slowly, with enormous effort, as though he is walking through water. Baku walks behind him at a short distance, his face flushed, his hands thrust deep into his pockets.

  “Tell me,” Raju commands, a thickness gripping his throat. Mumdu speaks clearly and nothing is obstructing the sound between them, but the words, all the words save one, that leave his lips fail to reach Raju. The words speak of something unspeakable, of something incomprehensible, and Raju’s mind fights to reject them. The words hang in the air. Attached to nothing. Later, in time, they will come together, make sense. Now there is no sense. There are only words. Only one word.

  Bahdur.

  Raju shakes his head. He feels as though he is no longer real. That he is becoming vapour. That the earth beneath him is shifting, beginning to open up, beginning to reveal the emptiness it conceals.

  He looks up. Darkness surrounds him. The sun has gone from the sky. Baku is crouched beside him, gripping his arm at the elbow. Raju is sitting on the ground. The soft earth near him, the black sky far away. All is still. And he has fallen.

  “I am fine,” he whispers, pulling his arm away, beginning to stand upright. But his hands are shaking. He sees Mumdu, who has walked away, sobbing into his hands, and feels a fire ignite in his chest. “Have some strength!” he shouts. The voice he hears sounds strange, the voice of a stranger. He wants to add, You are a man! But his throat has gone dry and no words reach his lips. His mouth hanging open, the unspoken words stuck inside him, he clenches his fists to stop his hands from shaking.

  Raju drives his son’s body to Mbarara in his open-back truck. When he reaches the town, he asks Hussein’s son Pyarali to drive to the mine and bring the family home.

  Late that night he stands in the front room of the Mbarara house alone, Bahdur laid out in front of him. The boy’s gangly limbs are hidden under a white sheet. Only his face is visible. There is a purple protrusion on his forehead, above his swollen left eye. His nose is twisted unnaturally. His small, round face is pale. He has been washed already, ritually cleansed. Raju is not permitted to touch the lash—the corpse; but his hand reaches instinctively for his child’s cheek. When his fingers reach it, he quickly pulls them away. It is as though he touched concrete. “Where is my boy?” he asks, looking around the empty room. In the distance he hears wailing. He walks out.

  The next morning, Raju shovels earth onto his son’s body mechanically. He focuses on the plank of wood separating him from Bahdur’s body, wrapped tightly in a khafan, until it disappears under the dark earth.

  That night, Rehmat sits on the edge of the bed, her face ashen and her eyes vacant. Raju is sitting beside her. He does not recall when he came and sat beside her, or if she came to sit beside him. Somehow they are here together. It is after midnight and the house is silent.

  They lie side by side for hours in darkness. A rooster crows. It crows again and again. Others join it. Soon a faint light, like a reluctant but dutiful bride, quietly enters the room. Raju looks at his wife. She is so still he wonders if she, too, has died and become stone. Why doesn’t she scream? Why doesn’t she wail? She turns to him. Their eyes meet for a moment. No words pass between them and then they look away, each at the same time, and stare at the emptiness.

  Jaafar tells Raju what happened. Again and again he tells him, repeating the words until his frantic, high-pitched voice is out of breath. “Amir ran from Bahdurbhai and then from me. I chased him. I reached him. I grabbed hold of his shirt. Bahdurbhai screamed at us to stop. I heard him. But I couldn’t stop. I couldn’t let go of Amir. We ran. And then the explosion went off and the rock was falling. It was falling. I put my hands over me. Bahdurbhai pushed me and Amir. He pushed us. Nothing fell on us. Nothing t
ouched us. Like magic, Bapa, like magic. It all fell on him.”

  Raju says nothing. He can say nothing.

  When the forty-day mourning period ends, Mumdu announces that Dilshad is expecting a baby. Raju, who was looking at a tree in front of the house as Mumdu spoke, turns to look at him. His heart feels light and he moves to stand up, but before he is fully upright, Mumdu tells him that he and his wife are moving to Kampala, where he intends to work at a coffee mill, where he intends to start a new life, his own life. The weight of the words pushes Raju down into his chair. He turns back to the tree, stares at a jackfruit as big as a newborn baby and asks Mumdu about his work at the mine.

  “I am your worst employee, Bapa. You won’t miss me.”

  “Don’t tell me what I will and won’t miss!” Raju snaps, turning to look at Mumdu. “You are my son. You belong there with me.” He turns to look at the jackfruit. The fruit grows so large the branches of the tree cannot bear its weight and so it can grow to ripeness only by clinging to the trunk. Raju told Mumdu this when Mumdu was a boy, a small boy. When Mumdu asked his father why jackfruit doesn’t hang far out on the branches, like the fruit of other trees.

  Mumdu releases an unintelligible sound from his throat. The sound fills Raju’s mouth with the taste of bile.

  “Go, then,” Raju says quietly, his lips barely moving, his eyes fixed on the jackfruit. “Get out.”

  PART TWO

  The Good Years

  1966–1971

  8

  I SMALL AND SONS.

  The words are embossed on a brass plate that is mounted high above the front door, smaller but higher than the main sign: RAJABALI AUTO REPAIRS. Raju is standing on McAllister Road in Mbarara, looking at the plate. Over the years, the brass has dulled. But the words are legible. The plate was his idea. He mounted it himself sixteen years earlier when he opened the garage. The garage was small then, covering only one plot and housing two bays. Now, Rajabali Auto Repairs runs half the street, spanning four plots and accommodating seven bays, a spare parts shop and a showroom for new automobiles. From the first day Raju set up shop here, business has been brisk. To meet demand, he twice built extensions: once in 1958, when the plots next to the original garage came up for lease; and again in 1962, to mark Uhuru, Uganda’s independence.