Where the Air is Sweet

by Tasneem Jamal

  He raises his eyes to her face. “Get lost,” he says, waving his arm dismissively, turning away, his body swaying to one side, then the other.

  “What the hell were you thinking?” Jaafar has returned home and summoned Karim out of his bedroom. Mumtaz is in the kitchen with Shama. She steps into the dining room, Shama following her like a shadow.

  “Why can’t I go for a walk?”

  “Don’t be stupid. Why were you talking to a soldier?”

  “He asked me a question.”

  “And why did you take Shama with you?”

  “She followed me.”

  “Do you know what these soldiers are capable of? You think the noise you hear at night is the sound of firecrackers?”

  “I know what it is.” Karim keeps his eyes directly on his father’s.

  “Do you? Do you know what goes on up that hill? They kill people in ways that animals wouldn’t do.”

  “Jaafar,” Mumtaz says. “Please.”

  “Get out of my sight,” he says to Karim.

  Karim spends the rest of the evening in the bedroom he shares with Shama. When Mumtaz walks into the room that night, Karim is kneeling over Shama, who is lying on her back on the floor, her arms shielding her face. He has pressed his knee into her small chest; he is swatting at her face with the back of his hand. Mumtaz pulls him off. She turns his body around by the shoulders and slaps him. Then she lifts Shama into her arms and walks out the door.

  Later that night, when both children are asleep, Mumtaz walks into their bedroom and lies down beside Karim. She wraps her arms around him, pulls him close and kisses him. He opens his eyes and looks at her. He does not return the embrace, but he does not push her away.

  In the morning, Shama’s nightie is soaked in urine; her bedsheet is wet. Mumtaz says nothing as she removes the sheets and helps Shama undress. She says nothing as she fills the bath for her.

  “Mummy,” Shama says when she is sitting in the water, “the big bad man came in my dream again.”

  “Did he hurt you?”

  Shama shakes her head. “He was holding a stick. When he waved it, everyone moved. Even me. I couldn’t stop. The stick made me move. I didn’t like it.”

  “He’s not real, Shama. You know that. He’s only in your mind. Did you try to think of nice things before you slept? Like I told you?”

  “I thought of pink roses and of you. And I thought of guavas without seeds.” Mumtaz smiles. “And Mummy,” she says, her eyes opening wide, “I was bad. I thought of breaking Karim’s head with a gun.”

  Karim begins attending primary school. He tells Mumtaz he hates going. She tells him he has no choice.

  “Until we leave this place,” she says, “schools are the safest place in Kampala.”

  Two days later, Mumtaz drags Shama, kicking, screaming, flailing to nursery school. She begs Mumtaz not to leave her. She does, in the powerful arms of an Asian teacher. Shama and the teacher are the only Asians in the school. Everyone else is African. Shama has never been to school with African children. But Mumtaz must leave her. She will be safe here, she tells herself, even if she is not happy. Mumtaz walks out quickly. She does not turn around despite Shama’s cries. She climbs into the Peugeot and drives home.

  After a few days, Shama stops crying when Mumtaz drops her at school. One day, Shama isn’t standing outside waiting to be picked up after school. Mumtaz walks into the school. It is empty. She walks to the back door and looks out. Shama is in a garden with jacaranda trees and sisal plants and jasmine. She is running. She is laughing. A smiling girl with hair in cornrows is running behind her, her hands reaching towards Shama, almost touching her.

  34

  EVERY WEEKEND, MUMTAZ TAKES HER CHILDREN to the Apollo Hotel to swim. The children play in the pool; Mumtaz reads books she finds at stalls on the street; they eat lunch on the deck. She lets the children order whatever they want. She does not look at the prices. Shama always orders the same thing, Coca-Cola and chips. Mumtaz does not insist she order a proper lunch. She demands nothing of the children. She refuses them nothing now.

  One night, she stared at Jaafar while he slept. He always sleeps soundly. No matter what is going on in their lives he sleeps soundly. She shook him until he awoke.

  “You go and play, in Nairobi, wherever, with money, so much money. My children need to play.”

  He stared at her for a few moments. And then he sat up. She got out of their bed and went into the children’s room; she climbed into bed with Shama. She had become so enraged her heart felt like a stone, small, hard. She did not want to speak to Jaafar. She was afraid of what she would say or what she would do.

  The next evening, Jaafar announced he was taking the family to the Phoenix restaurant for dinner. And the following Saturday, Jaafar took them to the Apollo Hotel to swim. They have planned a holiday to Mombasa. In a few weeks, Jaafar has promised them, they will go.

  Raju can hear Mumtaz and Jaafar arguing. He steps out of his flat.

  “Anything could have happened!” Mumtaz says.

  “But it didn’t. Nothing happened,” Jaafar says.

  “This is nothing to you?”

  “That’s not what I said. Come on, Mumtaz.”

  “What happened?” Raju asks. “What are you talking about?”

  “Mumtaz and the children were at the Apollo Hotel today, swimming,” Jaafar says.

  “And Idi Amin Dada showed up with his soldiers,” Mumtaz says. “Kalashnikovs, killers, a madman. And my children.”

  Raju looks at Mumtaz, then Jaafar.

  “He went swimming,” Jaafar says. “That’s all. Idi Amin went swimming.”

  “That’s all,” says Mumtaz, throwing her hands up in the air and turning away from both men.

  “But everything is fine. Everyone is safe,” Jaafar tells Raju. He turns to Mumtaz. “I know it’s crazy. I know it was horrible. I should have been there. I wish I had been there, but I wasn’t. It happened. It’s done now. And no one was hurt.”

  “I can’t do anything,” Mumtaz says. “I can’t take my children anywhere. He is everywhere.” She walks down the hall and into her bedroom, shutting the door behind her.

  “I wish I had been there,” Jaafar says.

  “She is a strong woman. She handled it,” Raju says.

  “I know she’s strong. But this has only made things worse. I don’t know how long she’ll tolerate living here.”

  “How long will you tolerate it?”

  Jaafar stares at him. “I don’t know, Bapa.”

  Shama is in a swimming pool. There is a black puddle in the pool. The puddle is growing, moving closer to her. At any moment it will envelop her. She is screaming. Mumtaz cannot reach her. Her bare feet are encased in hot cement. She tries to call to Shama, but her throat makes no sound. Tatatatatatata. Now she is in Shama’s room, sleeping beside her. Guns are firing outside. Their sounds enter through the window, through the locked glass, through the linen drapes, through her daughter’s cotton nightie, through her soft, slightly damp skin. In her bedroom, in her darkness, Shama’s body cannot contain what passes through the useless barrier of her skin. Mumtaz wants to cover her daughter’s body with her own, but she is paralyzed. She cannot lift her limbs, even her fingers. Shama screams. Mumtaz sits up in her bed. Tatatatatatata. Guns are firing outside. Shama screams again.

  “Stop it!” It is Jaafar’s voice. Mumtaz is no longer sleeping. She is awake in a nightmare.

  When she reaches the children’s bedroom, Jaafar is standing over Shama. She is kicking him in his midsection with her bare feet. She is screaming. He is trying to grab hold of her legs.

  “Shama! Stop!” he shouts. She does not. Jaafar struggles until he has her legs in his hands. He holds them together at the ankles with his left hand and with his right hand, as big as Shama’s small face, he slaps her cheek.

  Mumtaz rushes forward, pulls Jaafar away by the arm, shoves him backwards and sits on the bed, taking Shama into her arms. She looks at Jaafar standing by
the door. “Go,” she says, firmly, as though talking to a dog.

  He walks out, leaving the door open behind him.

  “Daddy was angry, too angry,” she tells Shama.

  “Then why did you let him come in here?” Karim asks.

  She looks at him. He is sitting up in his bed. In the darkness she can see only his outline, his form.

  “There is madness, evil here,” Mumtaz tells Jaafar after she walks back into their bedroom. “It’s everywhere, inside everything, around everything.” She begins slapping the walls, the wardrobe doors, the dresser. “Everywhere, it’s everywhere. Do you think we can keep it out? Out of this house? Out of our children? Out of our minds?” Her hands are gripping her hair, pulling at it. “What were you thinking, bringing us here? What was I thinking?”

  She walks towards him. He is sitting on the bed, his back hunched over, his head hanging on his neck. He looks as if he will break. She lifts her arm to strike him, but he catches her wrist in mid-air. They struggle for a moment until she pulls free of him. She leaves their bedroom and spends the rest of the night lying awake beside her sleeping children.

  Early the next morning, Mumtaz is sitting at the dining table. Jaafar walks out of their bedroom. The children are sleeping. He sits down next to her.

  “We can’t stay in Kampala,” she says without looking at him. “I know.”

  “Then what will we do?”

  “I’ll arrange for you and the children and Bapa to move to Nairobi. I will travel back and forth. Between Nairobi and Kampala.”

  She shakes her head, exasperated.

  “I’ll be home every weekend.”

  “This is a plan? This is a life?”

  “It’s the best I can do.” He spits the words at her with such force her head jerks back. “Right now.” His voice is softer. He rubs the back of his neck with his hand. “Right now, it’s the best I can do.”

  She is looking at his profile. “What about Canada?”

  “Things can’t stay like this much longer,” he says without turning to face her. “Someone will kill him. Obote will come back. It will improve. It has to improve.” He looks at her. “This is not forever. You know Nairobi. Your family is there. It’s your birthplace.”

  “You think Obote can fix this?”

  He turns away.

  They sit in silence.

  “You’ve agreed to come this far,” he says hoarsely. “Don’t give up yet.” He looks at her. He is slouching, leaning forward, so that he is looking up at her. “Please.”

  She closes her eyes. “For now. I’ll try Nairobi for now.”

  Five days later, Mumtaz, Karim, Shama and Raju move to Nairobi. Jaafar will spend the weekdays in Kampala and return home to his family on the weekends. Amir will remain in Kampala full-time.

  35

  IN NAIROBI, MUMTAZ CREATES WHAT LOOKS LIKE A normal life. Jaafar has found them a house in Hirani Estates, a housing complex of connected homes located in the suburb of Parklands. It is a modest two-storey home, with three small bedrooms. Everyone who lives in this complex is Ismaili. Everyone who lives near them, around them, is Asian.

  Raju has a bedroom beside Shama and Karim’s, which is beside Mumtaz and Jaafar’s. He is gone all day, playing cards at the Aga Khan Sports Club. In the evenings, he takes Karim and Shama to Shaan Cinema to see Hindi films. Once a week, Mumtaz joins them. Long after the films are over, Shama is lost inside them. Mumtaz hears her singing film songs. She hears her recite dialogue. She watches Shama transform into the characters in the films. For days the child stays in character. Sometimes, Mumtaz is forced to gently take hold of Shama’s shoulders, to shake her, to remind her who she is.

  Shama and Karim attend Aga Khan Primary School. They walk to school. It is safe. The army is not outside. Karim appears to adjust. His teacher approves of his work, though he tells Mumtaz the boy has a tendency to become quickly frustrated with himself. Shama’s teacher informs Mumtaz that Shama is a poor student. When Mumtaz explains that Shama has been forced to move a great deal, that in fact she is a clever girl, the teacher looks at her blankly, a frozen smile on her face, as though Mumtaz is speaking a foreign language. Later, when they are at home, Shama tells Mumtaz that she becomes confused. Sometimes when she is sitting at her desk, she forgets she is at her desk, she forgets she is at school.

  “When the teacher calls my name, I don’t hear her, and she shouts. She thinks I’m bad. But I’m not bad.”

  Mumtaz kisses Shama’s forehead. “You’re not bad. You’re perfect. Your teacher is a fool.”

  “Then why is nobody my friend? They are all each other’s friends.”

  “They were born here,” Mumtaz says. “We are new. Give it time.”

  “Dhuaan dhuaan, tha vo samaan; yahan vahan jaane kehaan.”

  Mumtaz is walking to her bedroom. She stops and lets the words floating out of Shama’s room sink into her skin. Those seasons were misty; we were here, we were there, we didn’t know where.

  She walks to her door, which is ajar, and looks in. Shama turns to her. She does not stop singing. She lifts her finger up to Mumtaz, admonishing her:

  “Dekho abhi khona nahin; kabhi juda hona nahin.”

  Mumtaz does not know if Shama understands the Hindi words she is singing or if she is mimicking the actor in the film by her gesture. She walks into the bedroom, puts her arms around Shama, accepts her words, whether the child knows what she is telling her or not: Look, don’t you ever become lost; don’t you ever become separated from me.

  Raju is standing on a hill north of Nairobi. It is Saturday afternoon and the family has been out for a drive. They stopped the car to stretch their legs. Karim and Shama are standing with Jaafar, who is negotiating with two Masai men selling carved wooden toys. Raju turns from them and towards the vista stretched out before him, lakes scattered like lost, glistening coins amid the open savannah. And in the distance, the jagged peaks of mountains. If he reached his hand out, he could scoop up the coins. He lifts his arm and sweeps his hand across the view, bringing it back to his face, empty, and then lets his arm fall by his side.

  “I used to look at it when I was a child, when we travelled to Eldoret,” says Mumtaz, walking up beside him. He does not turn to look at her. “The Great Rift Valley. It’s magnificent. I can see that now. But I thought nothing of it then. I thought magnificence was normal.”

  They are quiet.

  “How did such a wonder come to be?” she asks.

  “The earth broke,” Raju says, looking towards the Rwenzori Mountains, towards Uganda.

  “You’re right. It did. But the earth survived. And now it has a beautiful crack. It has a magnificent crack.”

  36

  RAJU IS STANDING OUTSIDE PARKLANDS JAMAT khana. He is waiting for Mumtaz and the children to emerge. He is smoking a cigarette and looking towards the lights of the building, towards the sounds of children laughing. In the darkness he hears Mumdu’s voice.

  “Ya Ali madad, Bapa.”

  Raju turns to the voice and sees him. He is the same, for the most part. His hair has thinned on the top; it has begun to turn grey. His stomach is fuller, his jowls more plump. But it is Mumdu, his son.

  For years after Mumdu left, Raju imagined this moment. He imagined that he would be enraged to see his lost son, or pleased. Now that the moment is here, Raju’s emotions are muted. His mind is quiet.

  “You are living in Nairobi?” Raju asks.

  Mumdu shakes his head. “I live in Dar es Salaam.”

  Raju clears his throat. “But you are here?”

  “I have come to see you.”

  Raju inhales from his cigarette.

  “It was impossible—” Mumdu stops. “It was very difficult to come to Mbarara when Ma was ill. I wanted to come. I tried to come.”

  “Your mother was ill for a long time.”

  “In the end, the last days, Baku sent me word.”

  Raju drops his cigarette to the ground and steps on it. A flood of thoughts and imag
es enters his mind, and with it pain like fire in his chest. So many years Mumdu stayed away. He didn’t write. He didn’t call. He let his mother grieve him. Raju lets the thoughts pass through his mind. He feels the fire move through his chest and up his throat. He clears his throat again; it is burning. He looks at Mumdu and feels his heart pound powerfully. The sensation is not painful, but it is not entirely pleasant.

  “Come,” he says. “Eat with us.”

  “The girl looks like Jaafar,” Mumdu says, when they are sitting at the dining table, the meal finished. The children are in their bedroom, not yet asleep. Raju can hear their footfalls through the ceiling. “Is she as naughty?”

  Mumtaz laughs. “You don’t have children, Mumdubhai?”

  Mumdu shakes his head. “My wife has not been well for many years. She is very ill now.”

  “Who is looking after Dilshad when you are here?” Raju asks.

  “We have a housegirl.”

  “Many Asians left Dar es Salaam in the past few years,” Raju says, looking at Mumtaz.

  Mumdu nods. “All of Africa is fed up with Asians, it appears.”

  “Why didn’t you leave?” Raju asks. “Baku is making a good life in Canada.”

  Mumdu shrugs, smiles weakly. “I am content.” He looks at Raju and then quickly lowers his eyes. “But, maybe, one day.”

  “Will you stay with us for a while?” Mumtaz asks. “Jaafar will be here on Friday. He will want to see you.”

  “I’m staying with my salla in Hurlingham. My flight home is tomorrow. I can’t leave Dilshad for long. She doesn’t have much time left in this life. Please give Jaafar my best. I’ll see him another time.” He smiles at Mumtaz. “I see he’s doing well. I knew Jaafar would do well.”

  “You have Ma’s smile,” Mumtaz says, her face flushing. She begins to cry. Quietly. Raju can see her eyes welling; he can see her pressing her lips together. She leaves the room. He hears her blow her nose.

  Mumdu looks down at his hands, resting on the table. “It would be nice to go to Mbarara and see Ma’s grave. And Bahdur’s.”