by Jacob Ross
I had only gone a short distance when she asked, “Why did you touch that key?”
“Just one of those things we drivers do, madam.”
“Just one of those things we drivers do,” she mimicked, and then said, “I was born in Gujarkhan and have dreamt of one day visiting the house of my birth.”
I detected great pain in her voice.
A traffic policeman, who was standing in the middle of the road directing traffic, flagged me to stop. I tried to sneak past him but he blew his whistle a few times. I stopped and snatched a look at the woman. She didn’t look like the madams of Islamabad anymore but almost like a mother who was searching for a lost child.
“Majee,” I said thinking of my own dead mother, “you can go to Gujarkhan right now. It’s not far; I can take you.”
She smiled a sad smile and said, “I’m Indian; not allowed. And besides everyone in India warned me not to go to Pakistan; it’s not safe, especially for Sikhs.”
“This is Pakistan. No one is safe and Allah decides,” I said, hoping she would want to go to Gujarkhan.
I prayed inside my head, Ya rabbah, oh God, make this my lucky day. I’ve never had one of these returning Sikhs. Especially someone as rich as this one. Oh Lord let this day be my eid.
She went silent for a while and then her eyes lit up. “I have dreamt a thousand dreams, to see where I was born.”
As I turned onto the Islamabad Highway, going south towards Gujarkhan, she asked, “Are you married? Do you have children?”
I glanced at her in the mirror, trying to work out what she would most likely want to hear. She looked the motherly type. She could have grandchildren, and then she might feel sorry for me if she thought I should be married but had not managed to save enough money.
“Well, is it that difficult a question to answer?”
“No, madam…”
She turned towards me. “Either call me Majee or auntiejee, but not madam.” Before I could answer, she added, “Majee.”
“Jee, Majee.” I stroked the dashboard next to the steering wheel, pointed to the black ribbons I had tied to the side mirrors and said, “This is my wife and my mother.”
She laughed and then sat silently with her hand up to her mouth. Every now and again, when she saw a child or an animal, she would let out a deep sigh.
When we crossed Mandra, just as we went past a village, she asked me to stop. She pointed her thin finger at a house where a woman was rolling dung in her hands and then putting it on the side of the wall of a house.
“People here still dry dung and use it for fuel to cook with,” I said.
“The little girl near the tandoor, the oven. When I was young, I used to light our tandoor just like her. See those twigs sticking out from the top of the tandoor, just above the flames? I can hear them crackling, even from here and I can smell the wood burning just like that little girl. I would stand close to my tandoor, especially at night and watch the flames going up and the twigs falling down and the sparks flying about. Maybe they are still the same last sparks I saw, when they told us to leave.”
How could those be the same sparks? I thought and said, “Maybe, Majee, maybe.” Then I asked her, “Why did you come to Pakistan?”
“I am a poet. I came to recite.”
A poet, I thought. At least she is not like all the ones I know. Broke.
She started humming to the tune of Saif-al-Maluk. She stopped, let out a strange little laugh and said, without taking her eyes off the little girl by the tandoor, “It was the middle of the day in that year; 1947. I had lit our tandoor and then went to hang the washing on the walls. Mother had made the flour into dough and I went and sat next to her and helped her make paeras from the dough. Mine were always either too small or too big, but Mother never once told me off. She would just pick them up, smile and roll them again into the right size. My father was out somewhere, doing whatever he did, always turning up just as the rotis came out of the tandoor.
“A few other women, four neighbours, came with their dough. They always did. Ours was a big tandoor. Mother placed our flour, all neatly rolled into perfect balls, on a silver tray and put it on my head, then she went to greet the women. I followed her and we all went to the tandoor. She began chatting with the women about how bad the times were getting. All the Sikhs in Choha Khalsa were dead, they said. Sukho was in flames. No one knows who is alive and who is dead. All the Sikhs from Domeli had left. Ours was a big tandoor.” She looked at me and asked, “Did I tell you that already?”
I nodded.
“Mother had built our tandoor with her own hands. It was big enough for lots of rotis to cook in. She usually let the other women make theirs first, but today, for some reason, she started on ours. She had just put four or five rotis into the tandoor when our door smashed open and soldiers with guns burst in. There were so many of them. The women screamed. I ran behind mother.
“ ‘You are leaving for India, right now,’ they said.
“Mother held my hand tightly. Her hand was hot and she was trembling.
“Before anyone could say anything, the soldiers pushed us out of our house. Mother kept looking back at the tandoor saying, ‘My roti will burn. My roti will burn.’ But the soldiers just pushed us out of the house. Outside, there were more soldiers and so many terrified people. I called out to father, but how could he hear me, amongst all those others who were calling out names?
“We walked to the railway station; mother never let go of my hand. I kept calling out for father all the way. Even as they made us get onto a train, I kept calling him. I had been on a train before, but this was not like any other. It was so full of people; some bleeding, others crying. I remember the eyes! The eyes – they were all bloodshot. As the train pulled away, I heard a raging river of screams, screams I have never stopped hearing.
“Mother never talked much after that and when she did, she would say, ‘My roti will burn.’ ”
“And what happened to your father?” I asked.
“I never did see him again.”
She didn’t say anything else all the way to Gujarkhan. When we got there, I parked my car behind the courts. She remembered the banyan tree and she led the way as if she had never left. We walked around some narrow streets for a while.
She would suddenly stop and say, “My house was here,” and then shake her head, walk this way and that and then stop again and say the same thing.
After a little while of doing this she said, “It’s been too long.”
We headed back to my car. She walked slowly now, lost in thought.
Just as we got into the bazaar she said, “When I was young, there was a Christian called Khaled, who used to sell little sweets on a raeree, a little wooden cart which had a broken wheel.”
“Maybe someone remembers him,” I said.
She shook her head, “After all this time!”
I looked around till I saw an old shopkeeper. He was a big fat man who was looking at us whilst picking up fistfuls of daal from a sack close to him and letting it fall through his fingers. I went up to him and asked, “Uncle, do you remember a Christian who sold sweets around here, before the partition?”
He looked at me for a while, then looked the woman up and down and said, “The Christian is still here, still selling things on a raeree.” He then told his son – a round little spitting image of himself – “Take them to Khaled Masih.”
We followed the boy through the bazaar up towards the GT road. After a short while he stopped and pointed, “That’s Khalid Masih,” and disappeared into the bazaar
As soon as she saw Khalid Masih, she cried, “Ya rabbah, oh God.”
Khalid Masih was a small, dark man, with a deeply wrinkled face. On his raeree he had combs, socks, locks, mirrors and other small things.
She walked up to him ever so slowly. When she got close, she asked, “Are you Khalid Masih?”
He looked up at her and nodded.
“Do you remember Karamjit Singh, son of Harjit
Singh Kataria?”
Khalid Masih’s small eyes became even smaller. A sad smile flashed across his toothless mouth. “Kamli Kaur. You? Here?”
She hugged him and cried, “Babajee, you are still alive and still have your raeree!”
“I died a long time ago, daughter,” he replied.
Pulling away from him she examined the raeree. “At least this one doesn’t have a broken wheel.”
He shook his head.
“Do you remember my house?”
He nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.
“We have searched everywhere for my house. Nothing looks like what I remember. Is my house still here?”
He nodded.
He left the raeree and we followed him. He had taken only a few steps when she asked, “What about your raeree?”
He turned around and pointed at the bazaar and smiled. Everyone was looking at us.
For an old man he walked fast. We went through countless narrow streets, until we came to a big house. “That is where you were born.” He turned to leave.
“Come with me,” she said to the old man.
He stepped away from us. “I am still an untouchable. They will think I have contaminated you.”
She watched Khalid Masih until he went out of sight and then said to me, “This is not my house; maybe he is mistaken.”
“We’ve come all this way. Let’s knock.”
“Maybe if they find out I am a Sikh…”
I interrupted her, “I’m with you and the Almighty is my witness, I will let nothing happen to you.”
She knocked on the door.
After a little while, a woman’s voice from inside the house called, “Who?”
“I’ve come from India and I am looking for the house where I was born,” Kamli Kaur replied hesitantly.
There was a little pause and then the door opened. A young woman with a child on her hip stood in front of us. Kamli Kaur’s face turned white. She pointed to the veranda. It was an old wooden one, with carved curving arches. It was painted blue. With tears streaming down her eyes Kamli Kaur pointed inside saying, “My name is Kamli Kaur. This is the house where I was born. And the veranda is still blue.”
Beckoning us in, the young woman said, “It is still your house, Majee, and the veranda has always been blue.”
As we stepped inside, the young woman handed her baby to Kamli Kaur and ran towards a tandoor, saying, “My roti is burning.”
Whilst the young woman retrieved her rotis, Kamli Kaur walked around the veranda, holding the child close to her. I stood where I was.
A few moments later a frail old woman, much older then Kamli Kaur came out. “Kamli!” she cried.
I went outside, stood by the door and lit a cigarette. A short while later, a door close to me opened and a young man asked me to come inside. He pointed to a tray of food on a small table and said, “Eat, Ustad,” and walked back into the house.
On the way back to Islamabad, Kamli Kaur sat in the front passenger seat. She looked much younger now.
“What’s your name?” she asked, lighting a cigarette.
“Iqbal. Raja Iqbal.” I replied. “We are refugees from India.”
“Do you know where from?” Then she added quickly, “How could you, you were not born then.”
“No Majee, I wasn’t born then,” I said, “But my mother, may the Almighty grant her a place in heaven, never stopped talking about her house. She said we had a great big peepal tree in the middle of our yard. We had the biggest well in the whole area, which never went dry and from which everyone filled their pitchers. It was close to the Pir-I-Dastgir shrine.”
Kamli Kaur threw her cigarette out of the window, touched my lucky key and went silent for the rest of the journey.
It was late at night and there was not much traffic so we made good time.
I pulled up outside the Marriot and said, “Majee, I want no fare from you. I will never forget this journey.”
She held my hand tightly in her trembling hands and left the car. As I withdrew my hand I noticed there was a key in it, and there was a small pile of one thousand rupee notes on the passenger seat. I picked up the money and drove off, the key in my hand. I stopped a short distance from the hotel, put the light on inside and stared at the key.
A chill ran down my back. I held it next to my lucky key.
They were exactly the same.
CHANTAL OAKES
THE WEIGHT OF FOUR TIGERS
Neon Banks had been working on the piece of performance art for so long, he had begun to wonder if it was actually possible that some sort of butter might be made from tigers. How pungent would that substance be, how feline? Would it be too rich for the human palate?
George Mbewe, on the other hand, one of the cleaners at Chatsworth Villa, with its museum, park and zoo, where the performance was to take place, felt lucky to have the job as it was so much easier than the succession of short-term contracts involving hard manual work he had been employed in before.
He now cleaned beautiful wooden floors and hand-woven carpets and rugs in what seemed to him the epitome of peace and quiet. Neither guests nor staff raised their voices as he cleaned the gilt door handles and light switches. He made sure the grand front step was always spotless in case the owners ever visited, and all around him it was as hushed as a shrine.
As he cleaned he listened to his small radio tucked in his shirt pocket, switched on low. He didn’t like the feeling of dislocation when he plugged headphones into his ears, and he didn’t want to be taken unawares. He listened to talk programmes mostly; today there was to be a live radio broadcast from his place of work. He would listen from his small side room, grateful to whoever the artist was for the extra shifts.
From the west wing windows of the grand house – modestly labelled a villa – beyond the corridor and the small storeroom where he kept his cleaning materials, he could see the radio station van topped with a large aerial. And there was Harry Cook, the radio presenter, getting out of his mobile changing room, ready to start his broadcast.
Harry Cook always sounded very jolly on the radio and looked jolly too, even though he wore a suit and didn’t sport a beard as George had always imagined.
Five minutes later, at 11 o’clock precisely, Harry Cook told his listeners, “Good morning to you all.” George replied, “And good morning to you,” half expecting to hear his voice relayed back to him through his radio. He listened to Harry Cook most work days, and now here he was on the other side of the corridor wall.
“We are delighted to bring you this live broadcast from Chatsworth Villa with its Zoo and Country Park. The sun is shining,” Harry Cook told his listeners, “but today, I am inside, standing by a purpose-built glass room, manufactured in Germany and constructed on-site in the Great Hall of this palatial house, for a groundbreaking performance featuring the famous American scientist, Charles Draper, and four of the park’s tigers. Here in the room are assembled a large group of interested individuals, many of whom have travelled a great distance to be here. I’m with Neon Banks, who instigated this piece of performance art, and the curator of Chatsworth’s Museum, Susan Jones. Good morning to you both.”
George only half-listened to the artist talking about re-examining the connections between words, African peoples and global culture. It was time for a sit-down. He had been working hard all morning, mainly keeping the caterers from dropping food on the 17th century rugs.
In his storeroom, resting on a small 200-year-old wooden chair with a beautifully embroidered pad, George waited for the kettle to boil. Harry Cook was still talking to Neon Banks about being a black artist living in the UK and Banks was interrupting to protest that he was actually born in England, but the kettle drowned out the rest of his words.
Harry Cook began speaking to the curator, Susan Jones. She was always very nice to George and so he paused to hear what she had to say.
“The timing was perfect. The breeding programme at the Zoo was very success
ful and as Neon wanted to work with tigers it was a fantastic opportunity for us to collaborate with this up-and-coming artist. It has taken us many weeks to rearrange the Great Hall collection for his work, but we are happy to be part of a groundbreaking project of international stature.”
At seven that morning, George had been inside the Great Hall to sort out the chairs. Three of the huge white statues of naked men were now painted brown. The effect had been unsettling because they looked real in the shadowy early morning light.
As if to explain this, Susan Jones continued: “…Even though my specialised research area is in classical art history it was Neon who informed me that the statues, so faithfully reproduced from the Greek and Roman period by the Victorian and Edwardian artists, were, in fact, originally painted in bright colours. Since both the Greek and the Roman forces throughout the world were what we would today call multicultural, having raised large armies in northern Africa, for instance, the artist is being factual, but the effect is very interesting. We invite visitors to come and see them when the gallery reopens to the general public.”
For some reason, this information annoyed George. He sipped at his tea distractedly and scalded his lips. He put down the cup and took out his mobile phone to play Tetris.
When Harry Cook told the listeners that Devon Derbyshire, his co-presenter, was with some protesters at the perimeter fence, George lost his concentration and then a life in the game.
For a moment his mind flashed back to the mob that had scaled his compound wall, and driven his family into exile – after he had pleaded for their lives – over several days of looting and general mayhem.
He checked outside the storeroom but all was quiet. He put away his phone and drank his tea, now it had cooled. He didn’t want to think about the past.
“Morning, Harry,” Devon said. “I am here with a group of protesters at the gates of this lovely estate. They have come here to make their feelings known about the performance taking place inside. Oliver French is with me now. He has travelled all the way from Sheffield to be here. Sir, can you tell us why you are protesting today?”