by Sara Alexi
Coco whimpers at the tapping, which brings Zaza out of her hiding place, curious. The two dogs huddle around Cyril’s legs. The new, as yet unnamed dog also ventures towards them. Zaza growls, and the nameless dog’s back legs lower. Its head drops and it crawls the remaining short distance to join them with its belly on the floor in total submission.
‘Hello,’ a voice calls through the front door. ‘My name is Saabira. My husband, Aaman, and I have taken the house next door. I just wanted to introduce myself.’
She is so close. The thin plywood door provides only the illusion of a barrier. He listens. Her breathing is slow and controlled. Under the shawl she wears a long piece of material that covers her head and falls nearly to her knees at one side. The other end is loosely thrown over her shoulder. This thin scarf has a golden binding to its edge, stiffer than the silky purple material. What little sun there is causes it to shine, a halo, the brightness reflecting off her dark-peach skin. The glow of her fine features is at odds with the grey sky behind. The clouds shape-shift behind her and become frills and ruffles, only adding to her beauty.
Cyril’s own breath is caught in his throat, and even swallowing does not release it. The ever sensitive Coco gives him a nudge with her wet nose, and his hand curls around her cheek and under her throat, her pulse against his fingertips. Or is it his own tempo? His heart is pounding so strongly he can feel the criss-cross of muscles expanding, stretching beyond their normal confines, threatening to either explode or stop as they contract into a knot.
‘Hello?’ Her voice rings like music, the middle of the word dipping, the end rising to a higher pitch, and the melody takes on colours that melt everything around him. He can feel the present receding, and the magic coming. If only she could come with him.
The sound of wheels squealing against the cobbles turns Saabira’s head away from the door. A blue car grinds to a sudden halt and a woman fusses with a bag and a mobile phone, struggling to free herself as she clambers out. Her arm catches in the seat belt and her long, navy-blue, sagging cardigan flaps open. Leaving the door partly open, the seat belt hanging out, she straightens up and looks Saabira squarely in the face.
‘He in?’ The woman demands.
‘I am sorry. To whom are you referring?’ Saabira straightens her scarf, looping it tidily over her head.
‘Him. Septic Cyril.’ She points at the wardrobe. ‘I’m from Health and Safety. It can’t go on. Him and his animals, people complaining. God, how can you stand so close? Can you not smell him? Mind you, p’raps it smells much the same where you come from.’
‘I beg your pardon?’ Saabira wonders if she has misheard, or misunderstood.
The woman looks quickly at her phone before dropping it in her bag. ‘So, is he in or not?’ She doesn’t bother to look Saabira in the face as she speaks.
Glancing back at the wardrobe door, Saabira thinks she sees movement inside, the glistening of an eye passing the crack in the door. The wind changes direction again.
‘Oh my God, the stink!’ The woman by the blue car pulls the sleeve of her cardigan over the end of her hand and stuffs it against her nose.
‘Make her go away.’ The words whisper through the breeze.
Saabira leans ever so slightly towards the keyhole of the wardrobe door.
‘Make her go away,’ the voice hisses again.
‘Look, I don’t know who you are but I’m Dawn Todman, Health and Safety. I’ve a’ order here as we’ve been given to understand that he has a lot of rabbits, again, and if he has they’ve got to go, again, and we need to limit the number of dogs.’ The woman, still with her sleeve over her nose, steps forward, holding out a bunch of papers towards Saabira.
‘He is out,’ Saabira says, making eye contact and keeping a steady gaze.
‘Oh.’ The woman straightens her cardigan and begins to get back into the car. At the last moment, and with renewed energy, she pushes the bundle of papers at Saabira.
‘Give ’im these. Have ’im read ’em. He’ll have to get rid o’ all them poor animals.’ She thrusts the papers at Saabira, whilst scanning the lane as if planning her exit.
‘No.’ Saabira uses neither strength nor aggression in her voice.
‘What? Did you not understand me?’
‘I understood and I said no.’ She wonders if she can hear a quiet chuckle coming from the crack between the doors.
‘Listen luv, I have authority here. I’m from Health and Safety. He needs to get rid of them animals and these papers make it so he has to. You don’t want to live next to that stink. Do you?’ The woman sighs out her words as if it is all too much effort. ‘So you give them to him, right?’ She pushes the papers at Saabira again, but without her previous conviction.
This is not Saabira’s country, and she is unsure whether she should take the papers or not. Her instinct is to defy this woman who has insulted her and is now making demands as if she were a Dalit.
‘You are police?’ Saabira asks.
‘No, I work for the government. Health.’ Dawn says this word slowly, and a bit too loud. ‘And. Safety. Do you understand?’ She lowers her chin, staring, head to one side.
‘I do not believe you have authority over me, so I give no one papers.’ This time she clearly hears first a gasp and then a very small chuckle from the wardrobe porch behind her.
‘Oh, for God’s sake.’ The woman raises and drops her arms, the papers flapping against her knees as her hands come to rest. ‘It there a letterbox in that thing?’
Saabria steps to one side so the woman can see that there is no place to leave her paperwork.
‘Anyway, if he’s out then what’re you doing standing there?’ One of the woman’s hands rests on her hip, and the other scrapes back through her lank blonde hair to show dark roots and a white scalp. She wears no jewellery.
This time it feels it might be safer not to answer at all: Saabira is not sure she can remain polite. The woman seems tired with the whole business and she returns to her car, and backs it hesitantly down the cobbled street, narrowly missing a car parked at the bottom.
‘Thank you.’
The voice behind her makes Saabira jump. The wardrobe doors are open an inch and a nose and one eye are visible.
‘Hello.’ She smiles the word.
Chapter 7
She called herself Saabira, and her voice was so soft he almost felt he could open the door to her. But then Coco, Zaza and Sabi – yes, Sabi, that’s a good name for the new dog – would get out. The dog catchers might come. Sabi’s paw is still not healed and Zaza is still thin, and they would not be able to run fast enough to get away. Sweet, trusting Coco would not even run. Better to keep the door closed.
‘Hello,’ Cyril replies cautiously.
‘What is your name?’ She sounds out every consonant as she talks, but somehow her voice still flows softly.
‘Cyril.’
‘Cyril. I am Saabira. Did you hear what the woman said who was here?’
‘Never useful, never a plate of food, or a bag of wood.’ He sounds out every syllable himself, just as she did, but his voice is not gentle. Every consonant is spat out. He is sick of people interfering in his life under the pretence of doing good or being helpful.
The bulge under Saabira’s shawl moves and a breathy whine follows.
‘Cyril, I am sorry, but it is her feeding time. I must go now but perhaps we can talk some other time.’ She turns to leave but then stops and adds, ‘It is very nice to meet you.’
With a flash of her purple shawl beyond the gap she is gone. Cyril closes the doors up tight.
‘Welcome home, my husband,’ Saabira greets Aaman. After her brief talk with her neighbour and Jay’s feed, the afternoon seemed long. She cooked, and discovered the hot and cold spots in the stove, but there was little else to do. She swept the floor twice, and kept both the fire and the stove stoked. She considered moving the table and chairs to one side of the room to make space on the floor for rugs and cushions so it would feel
more like home. But the stone flags were too cold to sit on and, besides, it was perhaps better to use the table so Jay would grow up with it as if it were normal. So, leaving the furniture be, she went upstairs to make the bed, adding all the blankets she could find, and finally she cleaned the windows inside and out – but it seemed it was the clouds that were dirty and not the glass, and there was no more light to be let in. Late in the afternoon, Jay became fractious and she spent an hour rocking and cooing to no avail. It was only when Saabira found some glass beads in a jar in one of the kitchen cupboards and rolled them across the floor that her precious daughter managed to put aside her bad mood; she began to laugh and squeal until her good humour was fully restored, and exhaustion set in just in time for Aaman’s return.
‘How are my two princesses?’ Aaman first kisses the baby who is now asleep in her mother’s arms and then he kisses Saabira, gazing into her eyes. It is the same gaze he had for her when they first met, the same gaze she remembers when he returned from his life -changing adventures and the guilt sweeps over her again and she looks away.
‘Please do not look away, Saabira. You must not keep condemning yourself. I chose to go,’ he answers her.
‘You went to please me, because I suggested it.’ Saabira clasps her hands and bites her lips as she repeats her time-worn mantra, looking out into the darkening road.
‘But, my moon and stars, we have been through this all before. That time has passed. Let us live in the now. Please forgive yourself.’ He kisses her again and his stomach rumbles so loudly that they pull away from each other laughing. Saabira passes Jay over so she can finish making the roti. She made the dough half an hour ago and it has risen but as she still cannot find a chakla in the otherwise well-equipped kitchen she has made do with a flat, circular marble plate with the word cheese printed in a semicircle around the edge. Also, the only rolling pin is very fat. Pulling off a piece of the dough, rolling it in the palm of her hand, she is transported to hotter climates and everything is familiar and easy, and she looks over to Aaman and smiles. She has kneaded the dough well and the rotis puff into balloons as they cook. They sit to eat together.
‘You’ve had no problem with the stove, then?’ Aaman asks as he scoops up the curry with his roti.
‘Tomorrow I will practise with a couple of dishes. If I make too much I thought it would be a nice gesture to give it to the man next door. I believe he has no one to cook for him.’
‘The one with a wardrobe for a porch?’ Amman pours water into her glass and then fills his own.
‘Ah, it is a wardrobe is it? Yes, him. I think he is alone.’
‘I think it is his house that smells so badly.’ Aaman’s mouth distorts as if to accentuate how unpleasant the smell is.
‘Sometimes I am glad I am spared that problem!’ Saabira laughs. Most of the time she forgets that has no sense of smell. Her mother told her when she was very small that smells are similar to tastes, but experienced though the nose. She can imagine how things smell if she looks at them – flowers sweet like sugar, stale dung from the animals like burnt oil, mint just like it tastes – and she does not feel she is missing anything. Occasionally it feels like a blessing. Bad smells sound awful and she has no desire to experience them, and from people’s reactions it is clear that Cyril’s house smells very bad indeed.
‘I think it would be a very fine gesture to make the time to feed our new neighbour,’ Aaman says, a piece of roti curled around a curried potato, poised in front of his lips. Their eyes meet and she knows they are both thinking about the same thing.
Back in the village outside Sialkot, when the old man next door, Hanfi, lost his wife, he retreated inside his house and did not come out. On the occasions that the villagers saw him he kept away from them. He had nothing to say now and he became a recluse. As the days turned into months he grew thin, and with no sisters or aunts to cook for him and his daughters and daughters-in-law away in the cities his adobe stove remained cold. Even when Saabira, Aaman’s mother and other women of the village left food for him he did not eat it. Not for a long time. But she persisted, taking a dish every day, collecting the food from the day before, until finally one day the dish was empty. Not long after that, Hanfi was sitting at their table. Now he is part of the family.
Aaman’s look changes, as if he is proud of her, and Saabira feels her cheeks flush.
‘It would be a good way to get to know him,’ Saabira says.
‘What about the people on the other side, have you met them yet?’
‘No, I don’t think they are there. They didn’t leave before or after you this morning and I have not seen anyone return. How are your cousin Tariq and your colleagues at work?’
‘Ah yes, they are very nice people! I feel very lucky to have been chosen for this!’
‘It is not luck, Aaman – you are family and a very good programmer and you work very hard.’
‘Even so…’ He smiles. But Saabira catches a sadness in his voice, and she guesses from the look on his face that he is thinking of the last time he was so far from home.
Chapter 8
After they have eaten, Aaman picks up Jay, who is awake now, and rocks her in his arms, making gentle noises to soothe her.
‘Is she wet?’ Aaman feels and shakes his head. ‘When I was knocking on Cyril’s door a woman came up the street in her car. Cyril didn’t open the door, and he wanted her to go away. She said something about too many dogs and rabbits. She said that they were a problem. She was most brisk and tried to order me as if I was her servant.’
‘A problem, the dogs and the rabbits?’ Aaman replies. ‘Shall I make some tea?’
Saabira takes the baby and pulls her scarf over her. ‘If rabbits and dogs are a problem can you imagine what they would say if we had our buffalo here?’ Saabira says, head bent, watching the looks of bliss on her baby’s face. Jay’s features are small but she looks so much like Aaman.
How comforting it would be to go out to tend to the buffalo right now, shovelling the mess into a bucket, heaping the straw and filling the water pan in the blazing sun, the animals snorting their sweet stench, their tails whipping at flies. If she could open the back door to something so familiar, part of her old routine, it would feel very grounding. The heat would be a blessing. She shivers.
Why would the woman in the blue car want to rid her neighbour of his animals? Clearly there must be a horrible smell coming from his house, but smells are not from animals, her mother has told her so often, but are a result of not cleaning. Because of this, she knows, she has always been overly fastidious. With no sense of smell it is her only option.
‘May be he just doesn’t clean his house well enough.’
‘Who?’ Aaman looks sleepy.
‘Cyril.’
She will definitely cook enough to feed Cyril as well tomorrow. Cooking for just her and Aaman is very strange anyway, her big pans all exchanged for little ones. Back home Aaman’s mother will be the cook again, preparing the food for her husband, their aging parents, an unmarried auntie, two cousins and Hanfi, living all on his own next door.
‘I am so tired.’ Aaman rubs his stomach and Saabira puts Jay, who is now fast asleep, down on the corner of the sofa, surrounding her with cushions for comfort and safety. ‘I have found it is very difficult to see her there whilst I cook.’ She takes the dirty dishes to the sink.
No sooner has she said this than Aaman, despite his fatigue, is up off his chair and moving the sofa around. The wheels twist in the rug so he lifts one end, moving it around carefully so as not to wake his daughter. Its back is now towards the front door and Saabira will be able to see Jay when she is cooking or washing up.
After the dishes are done, in silent mutual agreement they make their way up the stairs, and, by the time Jay is settled, Aaman is asleep. For a few minutes Saabira sits and listens to her family’s breathing and she promises herself for a thousandth time that she and Aaman will never be separated again.
The next morning Aa
man is banking up the stove as Saabira comes down from what was a very deep and peaceful sleep. The house is surprisingly warm. Through the small window at the front of the house large grey clouds are visible, moving swiftly, banked high in big puffs that change shape as she watches. It is very dramatic, exciting. A brief gap allows the sharp sun to light the grey stone wall opposite and paint the leaves of the tree a brilliant emerald. But all the heat is that which is radiating from the Aga.
‘Good morning, my love.’ Aaman leaves the stove and attends her, placing kisses on her cheeks. He looks into her eyes and she can see all his love glowing strongly for her there. The promises in their depths tell her that he will do everything and anything to make her happy. It thrills her.
But this does not dilute the guilt that is still there, creating a barrier between them. Because the truth is her demands of him could have killed him. He might never have come back. How could she have ever suggested he make such a journey, such a sacrifice?
Saabira briefly glances out at the theatrical sky. It is such an opportunity to be here, this job of Aaman’s, the chance Jay has to grow up and be schooled here, but she wonders if coming to England so soon after Aaman returned to Pakistan was such a good idea. It is so far from home.
Aaman has his coat on and is ready to leave for his second day but he pauses and, taking a box of matches from the kitchen table, lights the open fire which roars brightly and flickers colours onto the padded sofa. The flames break her introversion.
‘I hope you have a good day.’ Saabira crosses the room to take his scarf from the hook by the back door and returns to Aaman to put it around his neck.
‘I hope we both do.’ He strokes her cheek. ‘My dream is that we find our lives here so fulfilling that we do not miss home. Then Jay will grow up speaking English with no accent and she will be highly educated.’ Aaman releases his arms from around her. ‘The world will be at her feet. The choices she will have we cannot imagine!’ He smooths her hair, and runs his hands over her shoulders and down her arms until he is holding her hands.