Payback

by Rosemary Hayes

  It took a while to get used to the new house, too. It seemed exotic with its heating system and the gleaming new bathroom and toilet. It was such a luxury to stand for ages under a shower with an endless supply of hot water, to put clothes into a washing machine and not have to help Ammi wash everything by hand.

  Baba took us on the Underground one day. Poor Ammi sat rigidly in her seat wearing the same expression of terror she’d had on the aeroplane.

  ‘Where are we going?’ she whispered to me, over and over.

  ‘Down to the middle of the earth,’ said Imran, who had come with us.

  Ammi’s hand flew to her mouth.

  I laughed. ‘He’s teasing you, Ammi,’ I said, but her terrified look didn’t clear until we came out into the daylight again.

  As Asma and I began to get more used to our surroundings, the boys’ constant boasting became more and more irritating.

  ‘They think they know it all,’ I said to Asma. ‘I wish they’d stop showing off.’

  She squeezed my hand. ‘Don’t worry, little sister. We’ll show them. We’ll soon speak English much better than they do.’

  Ammi let us watch much more television than she had back in our village.

  Khalil said it was because she couldn’t understand what the people were saying – and I think he was right. One day Asma and I watched a rather rude play. We could follow the sense of it and both of us were shocked, but we didn’t switch it off because Ammi was sitting with us, smiling and nodding. She hadn’t a clue what the actors were saying, but she loved the beautiful dresses!

  September came, and it was time to start school. I had one more year in primary school and then I would join Asma at the all-girls secondary school.

  I didn’t sleep a wink the night before the start of term, and in the morning I felt so sick that I couldn’t eat any breakfast.

  Three of my cousins came to fetch me; they all went to the same school.

  ‘Cheer up, Halima,’ said one of them. ‘It’s OK. You’ll be fine.’

  ‘We were all nervous at first,’ said another.

  I was grateful for their kindness, but they’d been living in England for years. They already spoke good English when they started school. I felt the tears welling up.

  ‘I won’t be able to follow what the teachers are saying,’ I blurted out.

  ‘Yes you will,’ said the first cousin. ‘The teachers are used to people not speaking good English. There are lots of kids like you who’ve just come from Pakistan and lots of the teachers speak several languages. Don’t worry.’

  The walk to school took only a few minutes, but I wanted it to last for ever. I didn’t want to arrive, to be flung into this new and frightening life. I stared down at the pavement and concentrated on the little sparkling bits in the paving slabs that glistened from the recent rain. And although the streets were familiar to me by then, it was as if I was seeing them for the first time with their muddle of houses and the litter blown by the wind into the tiny front gardens.

  And then we were there, walking through the gates into the yard where all the pupils were gathered together, mostly in small groups, talking and shouting or playing. I kept close by my cousins, trying to make myself invisible, and I thought longingly of the little dusty primary school back in my village.

  Even with my cousins to help me, I found the first week very confusing. It was a big school with over thirty of us in each class – girls and boys – and they were noisy and disrespectful to the teachers. They should bring the village elders over here to sort them out, I thought.

  To begin with, I stuck with my cousins, but I could see they were getting fed up with me. I didn’t blame them. They had their own friends and they didn’t want to be lumbered with me all the time.

  My cousins and I were always dressed in our traditional salwaar kameez with a hijab covering our hair, but some of the other Pakistani girls wore Western clothes and wore no head covering at all.

  ‘Why aren’t you covered?’ I asked one of them.

  She shrugged. ‘My family don’t believe in all that,’ she said. “We don’t go to the mosque or anything.’

  I was shocked. ‘But you are a Muslim?’

  ‘Sort of,’ she said. ‘But all that stuff’s so boring.’

  I had never heard my religion being spoken of in that way. I was horrified and wondered whether God would strike her down immediately, but nothing happened and I watched her skip off without a care in the world.

  Tentatively, I began to make a few friends – Pakistani girls at first, but then, gradually, some English girls too. The teachers mixed us up a lot, so I’d often find myself working on something with an English girl, and that forced me to speak English.

  It was surprising how quickly both Asma and I adjusted and how quickly our English improved. We had no choice; all the lessons were in English and we were conscious, all the time, of Baba’s determination that we should do well.

  ‘How was school?’ he would ask every evening. ‘What did you learn?’

  Sometimes I would answer him in English. I thought he would be pleased, but he got angry.

  ‘Disrespectful girl!’ he said in Pushtu. ‘Speak so that your mother can understand you!’

  ‘I thought you wanted us all to learn English,’ I muttered.

  ‘Don’t you dare answer back,’ he said, scowling at me.

  I looked across at Asma, but she pretended not be listening.

  ‘Why does he get so cross when we speak English at home?’ I asked her, when we were alone.

  Asma looked at her nails. ‘He doesn’t speak English too well, Halima. I don’t think he wants us to show him up.’

  I stared at her. ‘But he keeps going on about us getting a good education. He could learn better English if we spoke at home. We could teach him.’

  But even as I said that, I knew how stupid it sounded. Asma laughed.

  ‘Us teach him, Halima? What about his pride?’

  Little by little, we all settled into our new routines and in no time it was nearly the end of my first term. Everything to do with Christmas fascinated me. So many advertisements on the TV, so many decorations in the shops, and everyone spending money buying presents.

  I knew a bit about Christmas from watching television in Pakistan, but nothing had prepared me for the endless talk about it, the constant pressure to buy presents, to spend more and more money.

  Some of my non-Muslim friends bought me little presents. I felt a bit embarrassed about it, so I asked Ammi for money to buy them something in return.

  She was shocked. ‘We don’t celebrate Christmas, Halima. What are you thinking of?’

  I looked at her and scowled. ‘Surely I should give them something if they give me something?’

  Ammi looked uncomfortable. ‘You must explain about being Muslim,’ she mumbled.

  ‘They know I’m a Muslim,’ I said crossly. ‘But everyone celebrates Christmas here. I don’t want to be different.’

  In the end it wasn’t difficult. Most of my non-Muslim friends understood and weren’t bothered.

  ‘We just give presents at Christmas to people we like,’ said one friend. ‘It’s no big deal.’

  I felt happy. I was accepted. Other girls liked me.

  And so the new year began and I started to feel more and more a part of my surroundings. Although the primary school didn’t have many facilities for playing sport, I had a natural talent for gymnastics, despite being short and stocky.

  ‘Look at Halima!’ shouted my cousins, as I did handstands and cartwheels or scrambled up the climbing bars. ‘She’s like a little monkey!’

  I was a fast runner, too. Chasing after Imran in the village had been good training. I would race round the playground at break time, easily outstripping my classmates as we played noisy games which usually ended in breathless giggles. And my English was getting better and better.

  But while Asma and I had settled well at our schools and our English was improving all the time, po
or Ammi made no progress. She spent all her time with her relations and only went to shops where they understood Pushtu or Urdu.

  By the following September, when I moved to the secondary school to be with Asma, I was already growing away from Ammi. She knew it, too, and sometimes she looked longingly at me, searching for a glimpse of that little girl who had once been so dependent on her. Now she depended on me to translate English words for her when she couldn’t understand.

  But we still did our embroidery together. Here, at least, she could still teach me something, and I always tried to spend some time each day working on it with her. We would chat happily together, remembering the cousins and aunties back in the village who were always laughing and gossiping as they sewed, sitting in someone’s house or outside under a shady tree.

  ‘Do you remember that special dupatta I made for your cousin’s wedding?’ said Ammi, her head bent and her small, delicate fingers sewing tiny stitches to make an intricate pattern on a bodice.

  I was embroidering the sleeves which would be sewn into the bodice, and I took my eyes off my own work and sat back and stretched. ‘Of course I remember,’ I said. ‘It was so beautiful. That deep red chiffon – and all those sequins and beads!’

  Ammi’s hands were still for a moment and there was a dreamy look in her eyes. I knew she was thinking of the village.

  ‘Will you make dupattas for us, Ammi? For me and Asma, when we get married?’

  She focused on me again, and smiled. ‘Of course, Halima. When the time comes.’

  She took my piece of work from me and inspected it critically before she handed it back.

  ‘You already sew beautifully,’ she said softly. ‘By the time your wedding comes, you will be better than me. You will be able to make your own dupatta.’

  CHAPTER SIX

  Starting at secondary school wasn’t half as bad as starting primary school. Lots of my friends and relations came with me, I already knew some of Asma’s friends, and my English was good. I felt much happier and more confident.

  And on the very first day, I met Kate.

  Kate. How can I describe her? Wild, clever, Irish and as fair as I was dark. Always questioning everything, her green eyes darting this way and that and her loud raucous laugh breaking into every conversation.

  When I first met her, I was shocked at her frankness. But I felt challenged by it, too.

  ‘You never stop banging on about your precious village in Pakistan, Halima, so why did you come here?’

  ‘I had no choice,’ I retorted. ‘My father brought us over.’

  ‘What for? So you could get a free education?’

  I bridled. ‘Well yes, I suppose so. Schools are better here.’

  ‘OK, so you work hard, you get your good English education, then what will you do? Get married and go back to your village?’

  ‘No. I want to go to college. And then… I don’t know, I haven’t really thought about it.’

  ‘You should learn to think, Halima. That’s what you’re at school for.’ Then she laughed and I joined in. It was impossible to take offence.

  But her constant challenges got to me. Now that my English was better, I started to read English newspapers, to try and understand what was going on in the world and how people thought in England.

  Baba caught me reading one at home. He tore it out of my hands.

  ‘What are you doing with that rubbish?’ he shouted.

  ‘It’s not rubbish,’ I muttered.

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I said, it is not rubbish,’ I shouted.

  He held the front page under my nose. ‘Look!’ he screamed. ‘Look at this woman on the front page. It is immodest! Is that what you want to become?’

  ‘Baba,’ I said, laughing in spite of my anger. ‘She’s wearing a low-cut top, that’s all. And she’s a politician, for goodness sake. An MP! You know – a well-educated woman – the sort of woman you want me to be!’

  He scrunched up the paper and hurled it on the floor, then marched out of the room slamming the door behind him.

  I bent down, picked up the paper and smoothed down the front page, shaking my head in frustration. Perhaps I would become a politician. That would show him!

  If Baba thought this incident would put me off reading the English papers, he was wrong, but after that, if I brought any home with me I made sure he never found them. And they gave me ammunition to use in my arguments with Kate. We argued about everything, but particularly about Islam.

  ‘You don’t understand our ways,’ I said to her once, exasperated at some joke she’d made at my expense.

  ‘Then take me back home and introduce me to your family,’ she said. ‘How can I understand where you’re coming from if you don’t let me meet your family?’

  So I took her up on it. I invited her over for a meal after school.

  Ammi was nervous.

  ‘She won’t speak my language, Halima. And she won’t like our food.’

  ‘She’s my best friend, Ammi, and she wants to meet you all,’ I said. ‘Don’t worry, she’ll love you and she’ll eat whatever you give her.’

  But it wasn’t a great success. Although I’d often had Muslim girlfriends back to the house and my cousins were in and out all the time, this was different. Kate was the first non-Muslim I’d invited round.

  ‘Your mum and your sister are great,’ said Kate, afterwards. ‘But those brothers of yours.’ She rolled her eyes. ‘What a couple of arrogant louts.’

  I was furious with her and for several days I sulked and refused to talk to her. Secretly, though, I was glad that Baba hadn’t been there when she’d come. If she thought Khalil and Imran arrogant, she’d have found Baba impossible.

  Of course, we made up eventually. She always made me laugh and she was so honest. She always said exactly what she thought, which often got her into trouble.

  ‘Why are you all so scared of your dad?’ she asked once.

  ‘I suppose we treat men differently,’ I said lamely. ‘They are seen as more important.’

  ‘Why, for God’s sake?’

  Perhaps it was then that I really started thinking about my place in the family. Kate forced me to question the values I’d always had. Most of my Pakistani girlfriends avoided her because she made them feel uncomfortable, but she intrigued me. Her outrageous comments made me question everything and defend everything.

  ‘What’s with all the visiting the mosque and going to the prayer room at school, Halima?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Well, you’re always scuttling off to do your prayers, and you go to the girls’ part of the mosque and your mum goes to the women’s groups there. Do you believe all that stuff?’

  ‘Of course. Of course I do. How can you ask me that?’

  Kate shrugged. ‘There’s no “of course”,’ she said. ‘You believe because all your family and your aunties and uncles believe. It’s what you’ve always done.’

  I was horrified. ‘Don’t you believe in any god?’

  Kate grinned. ‘No. Never have.’

  I found this upsetting. I had always been taught that to lead a good life it was essential to follow the teachings of the Prophet and to be a good Muslim. I knew other people had different faiths, but Kate had none – and yet she was great: warm, generous, kind and really funny. Would she be damned in the hereafter?

  It was something that really worried me and I talked it over with Asma.

  ‘You can’t expect everyone to think like us, Halima.’

  ‘I know that. But Kate’s special.’

  Asma looked up sharply. ‘Be careful, Halima, don’t get too involved with her.’

  ‘Why not. Why shouldn’t I?’

  Asma picked at some loose cotton threads on her top. ‘Think of the future, little sister.’

  ‘What do you mean?’ I said sulkily, although I knew what was coming.

  ‘You know that Baba will arrange a marriage for me – and for you, too, when your turn come
s. Don’t be too influenced by girls like Kate. Being too independent could get you into trouble. Be careful.’

  I didn’t answer. Nothing was going to stop me being friendly with Kate, so I kept quiet.

  We progressed up the school, Kate and I. I had many other friends, Muslim and non-Muslim, and I was happy there. At first I struggled a bit with the language but it wasn’t long before I was fluent in English. I was learning so much – not just school work but about the world, about different points of view. And I was reading. Not just newspapers but loads of books.

  Kate read all the time, too. Sometimes she would toss a book at me.

  ‘Here, read this, Halima. This’ll open your eyes!’

  Sometimes we would talk about books. Usually our views were totally at odds and we would disagree about everything but somehow that didn’t matter. It was stimulating and it made me think, sharpened my wits, distilled my views.

  Kate wasn’t the only person I disagreed with. Even within the Muslim community at school there were disagreements. Some girls came from much more liberal families than mine. Some never even went near the mosque. As I became more confident, I would challenge these girls about their way of life. Not that it got me anywhere; they usually shrugged and turned away.

  One day our English teacher, Miss Brunner, asked me to stay behind after her lesson.

  ‘I’m setting up a debating society, Halima, and I’d really like you to join it. You speak well and you can put over your views. Why don’t you come along? I think you’d enjoy it.’

  So I began going along after school. It was here that I learnt to defend my own point of view, but it was also where I really began to listen to others.

  ‘My head’s bursting,’ I said to Kate one day. ‘So many different sides. So many different opinions. How can we ever agree about anything?’

  ‘Ha!’ said Kate. ‘So you admit you might be wrong about some things.’

  ‘No! Not about important things.’

  But it was true that I was less sure. I was questioning everything.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Kate

  Halima thinks I’m so sure of myself, so confident. But it’s not true. I’ve learnt to keep myself apart and not form attachments. That way, you don’t get hurt. I had a tough protective shell around me when I first met her and she’s the first person who’s cracked it.