“Do you believe the limit of ninety days he has given for us to evacuate?”
“Brother, I believe this man is the African Hitler. If he kills his own kind so readily, it will be easier for him to kill us Indians. Red Cross has a list of countries to send us to, but I think I will relocate to Kenya.”
“You should come to Pakistan, brother. That is where many of us Muslims are headed. Why stay on a continent that hates us?”
“Pish! My family has been here for too many generations to know anyone outside of Africa. How can I show up to a new country with only a suitcase in hand, no pots, no pans, no money, not even a pillow to lay my head on?”
I was growing restless. I’d wasted so much time — Anisa would be home doing chores already. I pushed my way past the men to the front counter. The man grinned at me, his lips bloody like a lion that had just devoured a zebra leg.
“One pantyhose,” I said softly in English.
“Pan-tee hose? Nah, nah, we don’t have that here,” he replied, waving me away.
“Nylons,” I whispered, losing my footing. “Err, stockings.”
“Oh, staaw-king? Jes, Jes, we have that.” His mustard fingernails pushed three packages across the counter: beige, pink, and ivory. I chose the ivory.
“Britain and America,” continued his customer, pushing me aside, “have accepted Idi Amin as the rightful leader of Uganda. This year he is said to have killed six thousand army officers. He is a butcher. Brother, take only your prayer mat and Qu’ran, and you will be good in Pakistan.”
As I walked home, my stomach made loud noises, rattling like the jars filled with dry beans Mummy used to shake for Faiyaz when he was a baby. Deddy was bringing home fewer groceries because the stores were carrying fewer supplies. Faiyaz was beginning to look like a marionette puppet, his stick limbs dangling from his torso like they were attached by screws. Mummy worried and gave him bigger portions and extra boiled milk. I should have been searching for milk not pantyhose.
In my haste, I bumped shoulders with a man and dropped my purchase. “Sorry.” I bent over to hide the package, with its photo showing long, white, American legs.
“It’s quite all right.” I looked up to see Imran Sadiq. A year older than me, Imran was studying engineering at the university. He had copper skin and waves of black hair that he pushed up with a free hand.
“Nylons?” he asked.
I blushed and Imran grinned. “You don’t need them. Your legs are perfect the way they are.”
“Don’t you have somewhere you should be? Curfew is about to begin,” I replied.
Imran shrugged and started walking beside me. “I should ask you the same. Why are you walking out alone at this time? You could use an escort.”
“Walking beside you will be more trouble than it’s worth. I don’t need the old biddies talking of the young man I was seen out with today.”
“Don’t you mean young dashing man? Eligible, educated, and so forth?”
“Why don’t you join them for chai and speak for yourself? You are doing such a good job now.”
Imran laughed. “Nina, right? Sensible girl, studying to be a nurse, does mostly everything that her parents ask of her. Except for sneaking off to buy nylons during the most dangerous of times.”
“Imran, right?” I posed it as a question though I knew his name very well. Every girl in town did. “Studying engineering, escorting girls home from danger. A regular hero. Noble if not for his arrogance … ”
“Hang on,” Imran interrupted me. “There are soldiers coming this way.”
“So what? They are everywhere. Welcome to Uganda.”
Imran grabbed my arm hard and pulled me in the other direction. “Don’t be a stupid girl. We can’t cross paths with a soldier. We don’t own these streets. We could be killed in a heartbeat. And you’re a woman. Who knows what they’ll do to you?”
Entering the house after Imran dropped me off, I saw Deddy first. His shoulders were rounded, curving toward each other like they wanted to kiss. The hair on his head had begun to form separate roads following the ridges of the comb he used. Mummy was busy on the floor frying mayai vara, kebabs with eggs inside. She looked up, smiling with her crystallized ginger eyes, pretty despite the puffy, grey half-moons framing them. Her black-grey hair coiled in springs from her head. I touched my own curls self-consciously, cursing for having inherited them.
Anisa was taking out a stack of dirty dishes to wash in the gutter behind our house. Mook-Mook was folding clothes — once-white shirts that had dried to crisp yellow shells. I sat next to Faiyaz on the blanket laid out for us to eat dinner on. Mummy had already placed Faiyaz’s plate of hot mayai vara on the cloth. Mummy handed me my plate of kebabs.
I tapped Faiyaz’s chalky knees. He popped a kebab into his mouth, and was reaching for another.
“Do you want to play picnic?” I whispered.
“You want to play with me?” He looked at me disbelievingly as he tipped hot milk to his lips and slurped. Yolk particles rained down from his lips onto his shorts. Licking his index finger, he meticulously popped each crumb back into his mouth.
“It will be like when went to Entebbe Beach!”
He jumped up and ran, stopping just before the door. “Mummy said I am not allowed outside after dark because of the curfew.”
In the African heat, our front door remained wide open until bedtime. As I laid out a small cloth, carrot-coloured powder settled on the kebabs. The air smelled of burning rubber and roasted peanuts. Dogs yelped and cars honked. My stomach rumbled again. I put all the food on one plate and redistributed it so Faiyaz and I had equal portions.
Not noticing his smaller portion, he clapped excitedly, startling a mosquito hovering above his arm. “Picnic! Picnic!” he sang.
Most of the doors in the compound were now shut. The other members of our family were inside, grateful I was occupying Faiyaz. We played games as we chewed, trying to make the food last longer. Soon Faiyaz fell asleep on my lap, a jumbled mess of twigs. I roused him gently and put him in the bed he shared with Mook-Mook.
Anisa was asleep in our bed. The moon shone in through the bars on the windows, making patterns of shadow and light on her face. I wrapped a small kebab saved from the picnic in a cloth kerchief. Outside, stray dogs emitted barks that sounded hollow from hunger.
When I woke, the room was washed in ripe yellow sunshine, the shade of sliced pineapple. Anisa had already risen to do morning chores. I shoved the kebab into my mouth, quickly swallowing the taste of ginger, garam masala, and garlic, and washed myself using the water Mummy had left in the basin.
I decided to leave early. Though meals at the training hospital were small, they arrived around the clock. Quickly, I arranged my hair into a high bun and applied pink to my cheeks. I was not sure how I felt about the face I had inherited. I had a wide forehead and pointy chin, but my eyes were not so bad. Shiny gold coins with bronze highlights layered on the iris. The nylons I had bought from the ration store made my legs look waxy and untouchable. If Imran Sadiq saw them, surely he would see that they looked better in the pantyhose.
Deddy waited in the open compound, the Morris Minor chugging and spewing black smoke. I climbed into the back, drawing the curtains, and placed my purse over the split mattress, so the springs would not poke out and rip my nylons. I needn’t have bothered — fine holes had already started forming where I had pinned the hose to my underwear.
Deddy did not turn to me when he spoke. “Nina, Mr. Sadiq came to see me this morning. It appears that you have caught Imran Sadiq’s eye. They want to set up a date to discuss a possible match. What do you make of Imran Sadiq?”
I sat up sharply, squaring my shoulders. Imran was from a very wealthy family. What would he say when he saw the shack I lived in? Would Mummy and Deddy even be able to afford a wedding?
“You must be hungry,” he sai
d gruffly, not waiting for my answer. Deddy reached into his pocket and handed me some money to buy street vendor kasori. I could already taste the fire-roasted corn on my tongue.
Hot with guilt, I took the money then adjusted my starched cap. Deddy inspected me using the mirror, saying nothing about my hair and make-up. The car tilted like a rocking horse. Dust powdered the windows. I pulled the curtain aside an inch and stared outside. A long line of men in hunter green berets and boots marched and hopped in the early morning sun, like the grasshoppers on Jinga Road.
Deddy gripped the steering wheel, exposing the elephant-skin peaks of his knuckles. He removed his glasses, leaving streaks of car grease under his eyes. I was going to tell him about the black marks but then I reconsidered, thinking he would look more threatening should we pass a checkpoint.
“Your mummy thinks it is dangerous for you to continue training as a nurse.”
“But Deddy, graduation is so soon! If I quit now what use is all the hard work … ”
“Figure out what you must this week regarding your future as a nurse.”
As we pulled up in front of Mulago Hospital, I cast my weight forward, ready to squeeze Deddy’s shoulder and say goodbye. The edges of my lips quivered and my throat tightened up, but when I opened my mouth, nothing came out. Deddy stared blankly at the trimmed green shrubbery lining the hospital entrance. The car engine vibrated loudly, causing his hand to tremble on the shift stick. Jumping out of the car I ran down the pathway to the hospital, pink uniform blurred against white concrete walls.
I made my way to the delivery ward. I was the one who cut the bluish white tube of skin that hung from the newborn like a grub worm. It was my job to dunk the babies into their first basins of water, and record their meagre measurements upon entering the world.
The head nurse intercepted me at the front desk. She shook her head slowly, not speaking. Her face looked like it had been brushed with cooking oil. She gritted her teeth and finally exhaled one word: “Raids.”
She bolted, grabbing my hand. It felt surprisingly cool and gentle. We ran down the corridor. For one second I was surprised a Ugandan woman would want to help me, but before the raids we had been friends, sharing street food and swapping magazines.
The booming voices of soldiers filled the hospital. They stopped to flirt in Swahili with Ugandan nurses. I pictured the woman I had helped through labour last week, vomiting avocado-coloured bile. An acidy kebob taste filled my mouth. We raced past the boxed lives of our patients. Some were sleeping; others were looking listlessly into space. I did not trust one of them.
The nurses continued answering the soldiers entering the delivery ward. “There are no Asians here. Nina hakika. We are sure!”
The head nurse opened a closet door in a vacant recovery room and shoved me in. I fell back hard. Even though there was no way the janitor uniform hanging in the closet would conceal my body, I draped myself underneath it. The air smelled of iron, like the raw liver sold at the open meat markets. I stuffed the janitor’s sleeve in my mouth, biting down hard on a button, and felt my nylons tear. Now Imran Sadiq would never see how modern I looked. How Western.
The inch under the door frame glowed; a light had been clicked on.
“Are there Asians working at this hospital?” Bedpans crashed to the floor.
“Sina Nafasi. I don’t have time for this nonsense! Women come here to give birth!”
“Answer the question! If you are lying we will cut out your tongue.”
“I could be your sister. Shame on all of you! This is the maternity ward. Go home to your wives and families.”
“Don’t be smart with us, woman. Just give us the information we ask for.”
I pinched my eyes shut and focused on the pattern behind my eyelids. I zoomed in on the yellow dots, the way I did when I first inspected one of Mummy’s Gujarati comic books and realized a hundred, tiny specks made up one colour. The yellow dots behind my eyes turned into lines, like the scratches that flickered over the screen at the drive-in. In a murky red colour, I saw the actor Shashi Kapoor dancing around the sensational Raakhee, as she leaned in to smell a pink flower. I started breathing heavily and gasped for oxygen.
“Please leave. This is a hospital, not the Nile Mansions Hotel,” the nurse said dryly.
“You really should watch what you accuse us of, pretty nurse.”
“Pretty? She looks oily, like we can fry plantains on her face,” another soldier said, laughing. “She is nervous. She is hiding something.”
“Nurse!” came a new voice. “A woman claiming to be giving birth to one of Idi Amin’s children is going into labour! The baby is breech … ”
“This greasy-faced whore is lying! She is asking her entire staff to lie along with her. We should turn this hospital inside out and expose all the no-good Asians that still work here.”
“Do you want to take that risk, soldier? Our president has fathered many children. Do you want to endanger his child? I can write down your name and rank and notify the bureau myself.”
The angry soldier wasn’t ready to give up. “We don’t need Asian doctors and nurses to work at Mulago Hospital! Fucking colonizers! Native Ugandans will do just fine. We should keep on searching. I can make this oily nurse break. Like this.” Fingers snapped in the air repeatedly, making a machete-hacking-coconut sound.
“You will not speak out of turn, soldier, do you hear me? I can also make you break. Like this.” A glass of water was sent shattering to the floor. “Risks will not be taken with the president’s future children. Now march ahead, soldiers!”
“Yes, sir!” Feet stamped out of the room heavily.
A week later, the doors to our house in the compound stood propped open. Inside, the beds were made, the cooking tins stacked. Our dog, Georgie, and the stray pack he had joined, stumbled upon the fresh meat we had left behind for them. The dogs silently tore into their good fortune while we boarded a plane to Pakistan.
“Didi, will you still meet with Imran Sadiq?” Faiyaz whispered to me when we were in the sky.
“I don’t know where he is going to end up, younger brother.” We had left Kampala so quickly I had no chance of sending him a message. He would see my abandoned shack soon enough. Maybe then he would be embarrassed he’d been interested in a girl from such a poor background.
“If you don’t marry him, how will you have a girl and a boy like you always wanted?”
“I was just being silly. You can’t decide on such things in advance.”
“Perhaps there are bridegrooms waiting to meet you in Pakistan!”
I studied my fingers, void of a wedding band. Deddy and Mummy had far more pressing concerns than cooking up vats of wedding curry. I opened my mouth to say this, but when I saw Faiyaz’s look of concern, I faltered. “I am sure there will be many men to choose from. Far more handsome and ten times richer than Imran Sadiq. And you will have to interview them all to see if they are worthy enough for your older sister.”
His face showed the promise of a good mood. Encouraged, I cocked my head and grinned at him. “But then, maybe all of the men will look like wild monkeys and I won’t want to marry them at all!” I stuck out my tongue at him and crossed my eyes.
I reached for the magazine in the vinyl pocket. I slid my finger along a glossy picture featuring a woman with a red flower pinned in her flowing black hair. Her husband and two children, a girl and a boy, danced behind her in Hawaiian clothes. How smooth her skin looked. How perfect her life. She was the type of woman that celebrated every anniversary with her husband at a fancy restaurant, and hosted beautiful parties for her children, complete with coloured balloons and iced cakes.
I could learn a thing or two about making my skin look that flawless. The caption beneath her shiny legs read: Wherever I go in the world, my powder comes with me. I carefully tore out the ad and folded it into my make-up bag. I knew exactly
which beauty product I would buy first in Pakistan. Because a girl with enough sense to make herself look this beautiful would always be in charge of her life, and never the other way around.
***
TICK TOCK WENT THE clocks we unpacked from our suitcase. First, I pulled out the round clock finished in wood. Next, a British clock so noisy I had to put it under a pillow. Finally, our sophisticated Beolit radio. One suitcase per family member, they had said. No more. And so we arrived in Pakistan and away from the clutches of that horrible Idi Amin with everything we owned all jumbled together, like a big pot of spicy khichri — the photo album, our giant leopard rug wrapped tightly around the saris, the African rocking cradle, and all the other Ugandan knickknacks which no one besides Mummy found endearing. Everything we had chosen seemed worthless — except for our gold. The gold, at least, we could sell in a pinch.
We were marched off to a relative’s house in Karachi. Later, no one would remember if it was a second cousin or a distant uncle. All we knew was the terrace was ours for the taking and we had a few nights at our disposal. Mummy and Deddy had spider webs of lines under their eyes. Anisa, Mook-Mook, and I did not act like young people. Faiyaz was a child and thankfully acted like one, finding leaves to make into rafts, floating them in water puddles on the terrace tiles. We placed our clay mohrs on our prayer mats. How quickly we had finished our unpacking, how soon we had made the outdoor living space our home.
Mummy had made us bring along only our very best saris. Saris with gold leaves, purple orchids, and pink roses. Saris made of such heavy, rich fabric they looked like the queen’s curtains. Anisa and I draped ourselves in them, oohing and ahhing until Mummy got mad at us.
“You silly girls, have you no shame? This isn’t Africa. You can’t gallivant around without any sharam! Someone will see you!”
Wrapping shawls around our shoulders, we squinted through the white peekaboo lattice doors into the dark house. When we were not moving, the tiles were cold beneath our feet.
Chocolate Cherry Chai Page 3