A Pair of Jeans and other stories

by Shahraz, Qaisra

  His son dropped him off at the door with the words, “Will collect you in an hour’s time.” Samir nodded and watched him drive away before letting himself into the house. Another hour to kill. He shrugged. It was better here on his own, with the TV and the newspaper keeping him company, than politely waiting around at someone else’s house for dinner.

  He felt hungry; but the dining table in front of him lay dismally bare. On Eid days it was normally stacked with bowls of delicious food: boiled eggs, sewayain, chana chats and a hot tray of Shami kebabs. And these were just the breakfast starters, heralding a busy festive day of eating.

  Last year his entire family had been there. If he closed his eyes he could see his children helping themselves to the food, with him happily beginning the Eidhi money giving ritual. Five pounds notes for the little ones, ten for the older teenagers, and crispy twenty pound notes for his daughters and daughters-in-law.

  In the steamy warm kitchen with the noisy fan purring away at the window, the smell from a pot of pilau rice and trays of roast chicken and kebabs in the oven would set everyone’s mouths watering. Dinner was a prompt affair; always at one o’clock, served by the women of his household, moving elegantly around the room; their rustling ghrarars and lenghas sweeping the floor and the long dupattas hanging at their sides. The boys would be in their shalwar kameez and sherwanis. By two, the whole family would be sitting around the table chatting, relaxed and happy, some still spooning away trifle and gajar halwa.

  The thought of all that food set Samir’s stomach groaning. He could not wait that long. In the kitchen he tipped some cornflakes into a bowl; it was not chana chat or sewayian but would keep him going.

  He twice checked his pocket for the money, mentally counting the number of notes he should have. This was the bit of Eid day that he particularly enjoyed, glimpsing the excited faces of his grandchildren taking the Eidhi from his hand. In the old days a one pound coin delighted his children. After dinner they excitedly ran off to Joy Town to buy gifts of their choice. When Maqbool arrived, Samir was well into his second hard-boiled egg, smiling sheepishly at his son, who mentally chided himself for leaving his father to eat alone at home.

  Samir’s whole family was gathered in his eldest daughter’s house and he was the last to arrive. In the living room, his second daughter-in-law, Mehnaz, stood up out of respect to vacate her seat for him.

  “Stay seated my dear,” he offered, perching himself instead on a chair near the door. The women were busy in the kitchen, sorting out the crockery and the sauces. All had happily adopted the British custom of bringing a dish since their mother had died. His eldest daughter was carrying a tray of roast meat through the hallway to the dining room. Catching her eye, Samir smiled politely.

  His youngest grandson, Rahel, jumped into his lap, startling him and bringing a smile to his face. Samir lifted him up to offer a tight hug. Then holding out a five-pound note he beckoned to his older grandson, a six-year-old, who was stood scowling a few feet away. The child shyly sidled to his grandfather’s side, plucked the note from his hand and ran off.

  “Would you like something to eat before dinner?” His daughter came to enquire, the blender with the mint sauce in her hand.

  Samir shook his head.

  Nodding, she disappeared into the kitchen leaving Samir to smile, watch, listen and respond where appropriate. That is until the seat became too uncomfortable for his bad leg, forcing him to take the one vacated by his eldest grandson near the window. He bleakly stared out through the net curtains, watching passers-by, who probably had no idea that in this Muslim home they were celebrating Eid ul Fitr.

  Eyes filling up, Samir kept his face averted towards the window; there was nothing to celebrate on his first Eid without his beloved wife. Sorrow suffocated; desperation tearing at him. If he could only turn the clock back. How he longed to have this Eid dinner at his own home and with her hosting it; instead of sitting awkwardly here as an interloper.

  An hour later, he dutifully spooned food into his mouth; making no comments apart from the polite “everything is very nice” to the women of his family. He did not pick on the chillis or criticise the curry sauces as he had always done with his wife’s cooking. His sons, of a different generation and attitude, were happily munching away at their roast meats, whilst he stealthily hid a raw bit of chicken leg under a napkin on his plate.

  By the time the gajar halwa and tea were served, Samir’s mind was made up. He waited; heartbeat accelerating. When there was a lull in the lively conversation he ventured to inform his family, licking his dry lips carefully.

  “I want to tell you something…”

  They turned to stare. His daughter, Roxanna hushed her little girl sitting on her lap with the words, “Abu-ji is speaking, shush!”

  “I want to go back home – to Pakistan.” Samir announced, “To visit my family…stay there for a few months. It’ll be good for me… it’s the right time… with your mother gone…. I need a change of scene and I have plenty of time now!” he explained, smiling. “It would be lovely to visit some places of my old life. Also good to spend some time with my sister and brother and their families.”

  Complete silence greeted his words.

  “A few months! Are you sure about this, father? We’ll miss you!” His eldest daughter had found her tongue.

  “You’ll all be fine without me. Anyway you can phone me every day… you’ve all got busy lives and families, so it won’t be that bad to have me disappear for a few months. I’ll hardly be missed…. This trip will be good for me… I need to go….” He stopped himself from saying, “I need to escape,” voice petering away, giving them a glimpse of the abyss inside him.

  Discomforted and not knowing what was the right thing to say, they prudently ended the discussion. Their father had always made his own decisions – very rarely paying any attention to other people’s opinions. Their mother had battled for years to influence him, and died having never quite succeeded.

  “Where will you stay? Lahore?” His youngest daughter, Rosie, boldly asked.

  “Yes! In our family home of course, with my brother – where else?” he replied sharply, annoyed at his daughter’s question and semi-hostile tone.

  Rosie did not bother answering. Instead she covertly exchanged a pointed look with her sister, which their father neatly intercepted. Samir’s face tightened. “You need to understand Rosie that just as this is your family – I have the same back home…. They care about me and want me to spend time with them.” His tone harsher than he intended.

  The word “back home” had just slipped out of him again. It was a curious use. For a few seconds he was lost in thought. Why did he say that? Was Manchester not his “home?” After all he had spent over forty years of his life in this city? The other place was just his birthplace, his country of origin and reminder of his youth. Surely these facts should make Manchester his home?

  He shrugged these thoughts aside, willing his mood to lighten; he now had a goal: to occupy his mind with tasks, and he loved tasks above all. The big task facing him now was what presents to take for his family and his two college friends in Lahore. He promised himself that this time the three friends would treat themselves to a walk through the tall, elegant Victorian corridors of the Government College of Lahore where he had studied.

  Three days later, Samir had flown out from Manchester airport, taking his “other family” in Lahore by surprise. They gushed with greetings, hurriedly assembling their shocked faces even though inside they were all amok. “What was he doing here, all of sudden? How long was he going to stay? Which other relatives was he visiting and for how long?” These questions battered simultaneously in all their heads.

  Samir’s face fell, quickly averting his eyes, astutely picking up the tell-tale signs from their faces and body language. Two days later, after visiting the local Anarkali Bazaar, taking a leisurely walk down the famous Mall Road, and spending time with his sister’s family in her villa in the Defence area,
he headed for the village where his parents were buried. There he was amicably greeted by his host, a second cousin, who hosted all relatives visiting his parents’ graves.

  After some refreshments, Samir headed for the cemetery on the outskirts of the village. Well maintained, tall tangle wood bushes grew around it, keeping the wolves out. Eyes blurred, Samir gazed down at his parents’ graves. His father had adamantly made it clear that he did not want to be buried in the overcrowded city cemeteries. “I want fresh air, shade of a tree and plenty of space around – and make sure you leave space for your mother. Don’t just throw us in any hole!”

  As obedient sons, they honoured their father’s wish and duly visited the village of their father’s ancestral home and bought a plot of land. Thereafter his sister and brother made annual journeys to the village, to offer a feast and hatham prayers for their parents souls.

  Samir perched himself on the low wall circling the plot with his parents’ graves. The tranquillity around him had him thinking about his own burial place. Of course it would be Manchester’s Southern Cemetery. He could not imagine his children traipsing back to Pakistan to visit his grave in a land that was foreign to them. He now understood why his father was insistent on keeping a place for his wife. Remembering his Sabiya, he bowed his head. The loneliness crushed. He ached to have her back. Two years ago they were both here, sitting at the same spot.

  He watched a herd of milk buffaloes being shepherded back to the village. Feeling a tiny bite, he looked down at a line of ants running down the brickwork. Laden with small scraps of leaves, the ants were zigzagging around his feet. He moved his foot away and glanced over his shoulders at the brick making quarry and kiln, spotting a group of peasant men pushing trolleys stacked with bricks. Two women were carrying small baskets loaded with baked bricks on their heads. Feeling sorry for them and the hard work that the women had to do in order to feed their families, Samir was reminded of the second mission that had brought him to this village – his wife’s charitable work. He had to visit the widow.

  He turned to look back at the graves, taking his fill, etching the picture in his head. Was this going to be his final farewell? Standing over his mother’s grave, soft sobs shook his large body. It was a strange world. To be buried continents away from one’s own parents. Why was he crying? For his parents who had died decades ago or for his beloved Sabiya?

  “Life is a cycle!” He mused. He was in his seventies but still demurred from being called “old.” God only knew where the rest of his ancestors were buried – most probably in India, before the partition. People were born and slid through the cycle of life and then disappeared, with some leaving no trace.

  “Samir, stop thinking like this – it’s morbid!”

  He raised his hands to say a final fervent prayer over his parents’ mounds.

  His host family had gone to a lot of trouble in their offer of hospitality. The women had begun scurrying around the courtyard the moment he arrived. A hen had been snatched from the chicken coop in the far end of the courtyard and quickly dispatched to the cooking pot. The rice for the lamb biryani had been soaked. The pink custard powder was energetically whisked in a bowl. Not content with the home cooking for their special “velati” guest from “London,” the host had enlisted the help of the village cook. A fabulous chef, it was widely said that people always licked their fingers after eating his tasty chicken shorba.

  The women had happily obliged. Mina, the daughter-in-law was seven months pregnant, expecting her first child, and hated squatting on the floor whilst cooking on a pedestal stove. As well as that, she had to maintain her modesty; it was quite challenging, keeping herself well draped in front of the male guest. Her pregnancy was causing her a lot of embarrassment. She was “huge,” everyone kept telling her.

  With a last lingering glance at his parents’ graves, Samir followed the path to the village central square with its old majestic looking Minar tree where his driver was waiting. His brother had kindly loaned both their driver and the car for his use whilst he used his motorcycle. Ahead of him he saw a young man pulling a suitcase and dragging something else.

  Bemused, Samir stared wide-eyed, temporarily transported to another time and place. He still kept his bedroll canvas bag in his garage in England, never having had the heart to throw it away. It was a memento, a part of his life. Too many memories were caught up with it. The frayed brown leather suitcase, stuffed with all his important documents, including his British nationality, was still kept under his bed.

  There are special moments etched on peoples’ minds; for Samir it was the one of him dragging a big bedroll and a large suitcase from Victoria coach station through the streets of London: deeply mortifying to this day. Why his arm and fingers did not fall off still amazed him. Tired, hungry and harassed, he and his friend stumbled thankfully into a Victorian house with a Bed and Breakfast sign; two Pakistani migrants from up north wanting to try their fortunes down south in London.

  It was actually his friend’s breezy confidence, smart use of English, cocky winsome smile and flirtatious winks that had successfully got them a room late at night, winning over the elegant old lady with her purple rinse. The purple hair colour of many older women in those early days fascinated him. Why did they like such a strange colour?

  Samir shuddered, tasting the raw fear he had felt then as they desperately sought a place for the night. “What if we don’t find a room, where will we go and what will we do?” He had silently agonised, panicking at the darkness falling around them. It was his friend’s optimism and high spirits that had saved him from making a fool of himself. There was a moment he was ready to squat on the pavement and shed bitter tears, bewailing his stupidity in leaving a warm room and a cosy bed in Blackburn.

  Sharing a double bed with his friend capped the humiliation of that day further. His friend had joked at their sleeping quarters and went soundly to sleep. Samir had sidled to the edge of the bed, shivering in the thin, coarse blanket making his face itch, afraid to pull it over himself and of waking his friend. In the end, he had got up and pulled out his own five inch thick Pakistani quilt from the bed roll.

  His love affair with the English capital was both doomed and short-lived – it was not for him – too anonymous. He knew no-one and felt shy and uncomfortable wherever he went – stumbling and stammering over the carefully chosen English words and phrases he had mastered to buy bus tickets, packets of Benson and Hedges or order something to eat. Intimidated by the huge buildings and mad evening traffic, he smiled when he saw brown faces, mainly of Sikhs and Indians. He did not come across many Pakistanis.

  After taking some souvenir photographs with an expensive camera he had brought from Pakistan, posing in his smart suit in front of one of the Trafalgar Square lions and outside the Queen’s Buckingham Palace gates with the guards, Samir had happily fled. He wished his friend well with his love of London. Years later, when he came across him he laughed aloud. His friend had become a true Londoner, down to the cockney accent.

  For Samir, London was simply too much, making his life a misery and stripping away his self-esteem. Lacking his friend’s confidence, easy going manner and ability to make new friends, Samir missed the cosy comfort of a small town like Blackburn. After two weeks he had escaped, happily dragging his bed roll and his brown leather suitcase with him.

  He went to another friend, who welcomed him with open arms, letting him join two other tenants in his two-bedroom terraced house. Apart from the kitchen all three rooms were used. Even the front room had a single bed hogging the area near the window and the open coal fire. That was the owner’s room. The kitchen, with its big coal fire warming the room, was the hub of their communal life, where they took turns cooking meals, smoking and chatting, lounging on hard wooden chairs around a small kitchen wooden table. Three of them had young families in Pakistan.

  Samir stayed put, intent on earning money to support his family back home by doing overtime and long shifts. Keema lobia became his fa
vourite dish. He became a good cook, very proud of his culinary skills. His first chapatti painstakingly rolled with a long empty sterilised milk bottle was a good try. His three fellow home mates praised him heartily, rewarding him with the teasing words, “Your cooking is better than our wives back home!”

  His landlord found him a job in the cotton textile mill, after he was pressured to turn down a job in a special nursing home in Darwen.

  “You will be working with mentally ill people, are you mad? You’ll become mad yourself!” His fellow tenants had cruelly scoffed, frightening him into scurrying into the reception room and leaving a hurried note to say no to the job before he had even started.

  In the Darwen textile mill, the huge dark machines intimidated him; but he quickly mastered the skill of working with and around them. It was dull and demeaning work. With his good education behind him, he often heard himself dryly echoing “If Abba sees me doing this, he’ll have a fit!” His father had forked out a lot of money for the fees for a top college and expected him to do a “clean” respectable office job, not working in some “grotty” mill as his youngest son once termed it years later.

  The pay packet however, had kept him smiling. The thrill of counting the bank notes through the little top corner, and feeling the angles of the six and three penny bits through the brown paper, and the occasional half-crowns– small sums but mighty big pleasures they provided then.

  In those frugal days, they felt duty bound to keep each other in check; the talk then was always about “going back home.” They were not here to waste money on luxuries or on themselves. Exceptions were only made for gifts for their children. Samir had not only his wife and one daughter to support, but also his father to appease, who had never forgiven him for leaving home and doing menial jobs in mills in “Velat.”