Outside People and Other Stories

by Mariam Pirbhai

  Umara had always longed for a second child—a little sister for Kashif. She wondered what it would be like to raise a girl here. Would she turn out like Nasreen-bibi’s bachiyan, their mother’s little clones? Would she turn out like Abena, the daughter of her Sudanese neighbour Mrs. Osman, who had dyed her hair blonde and wore clothes so tight it was a wonder she could breathe? Or would she turn out like her younger co-worker Lailah in jeans and hijab, whom Umara likened to apple chutney, a strange adaptation of a familiar staple. After all, it was Lailah who raised the subject of Kashif’s father as casually as a weather update, when Umara had done everything in her power to avoid the subject—to protect her family’s izzat.

  ***

  Lailah was running a little late. Umara didn’t think too much of it till she heard her younger co-worker’s voice soaring above the clank and drone of the machinery: “Robbing us of a few minutes pay—that you have no trouble doing! But overtime for extra long shifts—that’s too much to ask for,” she spewed. “Don’t think for a second that you’re so untouchable! We all know that there are at least a dozen health violations you don’t report, and we know that you convince newcomers to work under the table for whatever kickbacks you get in return. Do you think if the media got wind of a factory filled with minority women being exploited by one of their own, the great Ginetti family wouldn’t hesitate to throw you under the bus? So go ahead and dock my pay, Indira, or better yet, go ahead and fire me! It will be a pleasure to tell the Ministry of Labour all about your little operation here.”

  The conveyor belts, oven fans, buzzers, and clanking robotic arms continued to fill the room with their mechanical noises, even though everyone had stopped what they were doing and looked on with bated breath. Much to everyone’s surprise, Indira-sahiba didn’t lash back but merely fixed a steely gaze on Lailah as she walked toward her station next to Umara.

  “Arré! Who gave you all permission to stop working?” Indira-sahiba eventually barked before skulking away into a stuffy storeroom she had turned into a makeshift office.

  Everyone busied themselves again, making a show of being engrossed in the mundanity of their tasks. Umara was no exception, her hands at the ready to pick up anything that looked burned or misshapen. If the biscuit didn’t have a perfect “S” shape or looked more brown than golden, it had to be discarded.

  Lailah took her place by Umara’s side, pausing to adjust the pins at the back of her hijab, and then threw herself into the same task. She didn’t say anything until after the lunch break, resuming her characteristic chatter about the big university where she was studying subjects that made little sense to Umara.

  “To tell you the truth, Aunty-ji, I don’t feel safe waiting for the bus after my evening classes anymore,” she said, referring to the escalation of sexual assaults against female students.

  Umara nodded, relieved that the tension of the morning had abated. She was about to pick up the bin of rejected biscuits, now full to the brim, when Lailah poked her gently in the arm and, with lowered voice, said: “Umara Aunty, can you stay behind a little before catching your bus? There is something important I have to tell you.”

  Umara assumed this had to do with the big blowout with Indira-sahiba, and she didn’t want to get in the middle of it. She had her job to protect. Especially now, when every penny counted.

  “Aunty-ji,” Lailah prodded again.

  Umara softened at the way Lailah called her Aunty-ji. It had a ring of warmth that was so unlike the way Indira-sahiba, who was no more than a year or two younger than Umara, derisively called her “Aunty” to emphasize the increasing slowness with which she went about her tasks.

  “Acha—jaldi batao,” she replied anxiously, looking around to make sure Indira-sahiba or her lackeys were not in earshot.

  “Aunty-ji, you know how Indira was mad because I was late this morning.”

  Umara shook her head from side to side in the kind of mild disapproval she felt it was incumbent on her to express, as Lailah’s elder.

  “Well, I lost it because she said I should stop waking up in strangers’ beds. Can you believe it? That woman has no shame! I tried to tell her it was because I had to drop off a paper to a professor all the way downtown before coming to work, and she had the nerve to tell me that my ambitions are not her concern. … Anyway that’s not the point. The point is while I was there … at the downtown campus, I mean … I saw something. Or, rather, someone…”

  Umara turned back to her task in annoyance. What had all this to do with her?

  “It was him, Aunty-ji. Apka mian…”

  Umara stiffened. How did Lailah know what her husband looked like? Then she recalled the time Haroon had to pick her up because the buses weren’t operational during one of those terrible snowstorms, and she had insisted that he give Lailah a ride also.

  “Aunty,” Lailah gently touched Umara’s arm with her rubber-gloved hand. “I also saw him with someone. Gori ke sath…” Lailah leaned in and whispered as softly as she could, “Baby ke sath.”

  Umara turned back to the assembly line and grabbed a handful of biscuits, including some perfectly good ones.

  “I’m so sorry, Aunty-ji.” Lailah touched the top of Umara’s clenched fist. “I didn’t know he had left you.”

  Left you … Lailah uttered the words so effortlessly—words she, herself, had been unwilling or unable to say out loud for the last six months. She couldn’t even permit herself to say that Haroon had stopped coming home, telling herself that he had simply stopped coming home for dinner.

  Umara pictured the scene Lailah conjured up on the bus ride home. Strangely, neither “the gori” nor “the baby” shocked her as much as the image of him spending time with this new family. What gave him the liberty to discover this country without her? Grey highways and strip malls bearing Indian grocers and Western Unions, or nondescript apartment towers, like the ones they were passing now—that was the Canada she knew. The factories viewed on her daily route, from Finch West to Woodbine—this was her orbit. And what gave this other woman the right to parade around with some alien version of her own husband? Apart from that one special trip to the CN Tower, a dinner in Chinatown for a few of their birthdays, and now her visits to the Princess Margaret Hospital, Toronto was as alien as “those woods” Doctor Eleniak referred to.

  The opprobrious glares at her wedding came back to her like an eerie prophecy. There was so much temptation here. All these girls wearing so little—in sun or snow—with their spiky heels, and their figures bursting through the kind of outfits Mrs. Osman’s daughter had started wearing. She imagined him talking to them in his taxi, especially late at night when they were drunk and felt less threatened by a brown man holding their life in his hands.

  Umara didn’t know what else to do but go on, as Indira-sahiba had done earlier that morning. How else was she to save face?

  Months had passed since Lailah’s revelation, but she held on to the information like a state secret, convinced that what she didn’t reveal, no one could ever know. Convinced that the baby wasn’t his and he’d eventually come home. Then Nasreen-bibi and Zia-bhai started to keep their distance. By the time she was diagnosed with mouth cancer, she had not received so much as a phone call, and she was finally forced to face the facts. It was just the two of them now: mother and son. She consoled herself by arguing it had always been that way. Nothing she or Kashif did had brought him much joy. Even Kashif’s birth had been a non-event, of sorts. He had simply looked at his son, mumbled something about carrying out the manat he had made at the mosque for a healthy child, and that was that. As soon as they got home, life returned to the routine of his extended absences. And her attention, at least, was consumed almost entirely by the child.

  ***

  Umara vaguely registered a black-and-white image of villagers gathered around large mounds of freshly harvested wheat. One of the villagers, a tall man in a lunghi, looked down
at the scene as he talked to the woman from the grand marble-floored house. The villager had just saved the woman and her husband, the owners of the city factory mill, from a near-fatal car crash. The man in the lunghi explained it was harvest time and everyone in the village would be given an equal share of the annual yield.

  “Even the ones who don’t work as much?” the factory owner asked cynically.

  “Even them. No one goes hungry,” he replied.

  “Then no one is poor here?” his wife asked incredulously.

  “Poor? I don’t understand,” he replied. Umara dozed off again, with the woman’s derisive laughter ringing in her ears.

  “Ammi, mein bahar ja raha hun,” Kashif said, gently tapping his mother’s shoulder and pointing to the door to indicate he was on his way out.

  Umara awoke with another start. She wondered why her husband was wearing that navy blue sweater—the one she had bought for Kashif last Christmas—when he had never approved of the gesture, saying it would confuse the child.

  “Ammi, I’m going out!” Kashif repeated, picking up his cell phone from the coffee table.

  “Nahin jao!” Umara shrieked, touching the side of her face to stave off the pain.

  “Fikur nahin, ammi,” Kashif consoled patiently. “I’ll be back in time to take you to your appointment. Why don’t you try and get dressed? It will make you feel better.”

  Dressed, Umara repeated to herself, realizing it was her son, not his father, standing over her and blocking the morning light. Why was Kashif always so insistent she get dressed? In fact, he seemed to be taking far too much interest in her appearance lately, asking why she didn’t wear shalwar kameez anymore and commenting on the other women in the building who looked so smart in their traditional clothes.

  Umara couldn’t disagree. She loved the colourful head coverings and long embroidered gowns worn by Mrs. Osman and her Eritrean friend Mrs. Yusuf. They were so different from anything she had seen back home. Though, truth be told, she felt that Kashif was thinking more about Nasreen-bibi’s daughters who seemed unrecognizable these days, having forsaken baseball hats and hoodies for long-sleeved dresses and hijabs.

  Umara heard the door close behind her son. The sudden emptiness of the apartment drew her attention to the bird’s chatter, and the bread crumbs on Kashif’s plate motivated her to heed the bird’s call. A loose stack of colourful brochures fell to the floor when she picked up the plate. A few of them were from the Cancer Society of Ontario, which the doctor’s receptionist had plied her with on their last visit. She had said something about newly implemented on-line chat groups, but Umara didn’t know the first thing about computers much less what to say to perfect strangers.

  Umara was about to throw the papers away when she noticed another set of glossy pamphlets from the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ontario. Immediately suspecting Nasreen-bibi as the likely source of such literature she was about to toss them aside, but the image of an impressive, modern building with mirrored glass caught her attention. The “new Islamic community centre” boasted the usual kinds of things, including schedules for Quranic classes, community events, and volunteer activities, but also unexpected things such as sports facilities and fitness studios for women, and even family counselling services.

  She set the pamphlets down, a bit unnerved by the striking contrast between this elaborate complex and the dingy office building, with its musty carpets and cramped quarters, that had served as their masjid and community centre when they were new arrivals.

  “Bhookh laga hai, chota parinda? Bhookh laga hai!” Umara called out to the lonely sparrow hopping from ledge to floor, and floor to ledge. She used the better part of her strength to slide open the patio door, just enough to extend her arm outside and unclench her fist, releasing the broken crusts.

  ***

  Umara stared idly at the Canadian Cancer Society poster mounted on the waiting room wall, hoping the distraction would drown out the television buzzing overhead. She liked the soft colours, and the yellow daffodils with the white centres reminded her of the pretty gardens they passed on their bus ride through some of Toronto’s residential streets. Below the picture of flowers was a photograph of smiling people wearing matching T-shirts and holding up banners with the slogans, “proud supporter” and “celebrating survivors.” The faces held little appeal so she turned her attention back to Kashif, who was on the phone with someone again.

  “Have the police made any arrests yet?” His voice travelled through the sparsely decorated waiting room.

  Umara noticed one of the patients, an elderly man reading a novel, shift uncomfortably in his chair at the mention of “police,” while a middle-aged woman stopped playing with her cell phone and scowled.

  Umara fiddled with her dupatta self-consciously, wondering why she had chosen today, when she already felt so conspicuous, to take out one of her old shalwar kameez suits, instead of wearing pants and an oversized sweater or kurta, as she usually did.

  “They’re not looking to make an arrest? I can’t believe Ishaq-bhai would be okay with that. I mean, who’s to say what this guy might do next? It could be a lot worse than a rock through a window.”

  The mention of this mysterious Ishaq-bhai again made Umara determined to ask where Kashif was spending so much of his time. She knew so little about his friends and acquaintances. And what was all this talk about maulanas? Was Nasreen-bibi putting ideas into Kashif’s head in the effort to make some statement about what a bad mother he had? Then the thought crossed her mind that maybe she was overlooking the obvious. Maybe this was about his father. Was he in touch with him? Did this Ishaq-bhai have some connection to Haroon? Why did Kashif mention the police? Was Haroon in some kind of trouble? How dare he get their son involved? Hadn’t he done enough damage to this family!

  “But if it happened to any other community, it would be a hate crime, wouldn’t it!” Kashif said heatedly.

  Umara wanted to snatch the phone out of her son’s hand, desperate to disentangle herself from the suspicions taking root.

  “Mein ab sab-kuch samajti hun. Apka Abba ke pas jaraha hai!” she said brusquely, as soon as Kashif hung up.

  Kashif looked at his mother incredulously, wondering what on earth she was talking about. He hadn’t seen or heard from his father in almost a year. He was about to explain everything when the receptionist called out: “Ms. Siddiqui? Umara Siddiqui?”

  Kashif helped his mother to her feet.

  “Come this way, please,” the receptionist motioned.

  Kashif started to walk with his mother, but she waved him down: “Bhaithiye!” she ordered harshly. “I go! Myself!”

  Kashif obediently released his mother and resumed his seat.

  One of the patients had turned up the volume on the television. A reporter standing outside the building housing the mosque where Kashif had spent the better part of the morning appeared on screen. It wasn’t even one of the newer buildings that were unmistakably foreign, insofar as they were modelled in the architectural style of a traditional mosque with a dome and minaret. It was just some old office building that had been turned into a place of worship, like the countless Evangelical churches that kept popping up in strip malls and commercial centres—or the kind his parents used to attend when he was a boy.

  The patient yawned and was about to change the channel.

  “Please leave it!” Kashif intervened.

  …Many volunteers, young and old, have worked tirelessly this morning, painting over the words “Go home” and “No more refugees!” sprayed in red on the mosque’s walls. The shards of glass from the broken windows have been cleared away, but it may be harder to calm the shattered nerves of a community still reeling from the effects of what appears to be just the latest in a string of attacks.

  The camera panned across the scene, zooming into the image of windows bandaged up with sheets of plastic and wooden boards. A
s the camera zoomed back out, a few of the volunteers were caught on camera.

  The elderly man peered over his novel to examine Kashif. “You?” he asked, pointing to one of the young males behind the reporter.

  Kashif nodded self-consciously, and the man set aside his book to watch the news.

  “We are standing here with Mr. Ishaq Khan, the Director of the Islamic Cultural Centre of Ontario, who has been working with the police since the last such incident: Mr. Khan, how do you think the Muslim community might respond to being targeted again in this manner?”

  “Understandably, not just the Muslim community but also our friends and neighbours from the wider community are quite shaken by this attack. But as Muslims, we are taught to love our neighbours and to work alongside them. In that spirit I would like to say we forgive whoever did this.”

  “Does that mean you don’t wish to press charges in the event of an arrest?”

  “We wish for dialogue. We invite whoever did this to let us answer some of the questions and concerns that led them to write that letter and burn the Quran.”

  “Mr. Khan, is there any other message you would like to send the public today?”

  “Only that we extend our deepest gratitude to the entire community for their solidarity and support, especially our young volunteers who came out to help us…”

  Umara looked back at her son as she was being chaperoned away. He appeared to be engrossed in the news again.