“Hai, Allah,” said Mummy. “When the mali-ku-mali comes knocking on the door looking for saris, one of these days, I am going to trade him for cooking pots.”
“We have enough cookware, Mummy,” I said.
“But not enough food.”
“We can eat at the Indian wedding.” I re-folded a silky turquoise and pink sari, stacking it on top of the others.
“Nina, we can’t attend a party we are not invited to,” Deddy interjected.
“But we have the right clothes, the right kind of gold. No one is going to question us or ask if we are guests.”
By dusk, everyone was too hungry to argue with me. We came upon a large tent glowing in the night and heard an Imam reciting Arabic prayers.
Women in Pakistan wore salwar kameez but the daring and wealthy wore saris. Mummy wore every gold item we owned and a brilliant violet sari. Despite the blouse being loose around her forearms, she looked like a movie star. Anisa wore a pink sari with red and white trimming and an opal ring. I was in a buttercream yellow sari that made my eyes shimmer like cups of saffron tea. Deddy and the boys wore mismatched items, but people only ever looked at the women.
“Didi, look,” whispered Faiyaz, pointing to the long tables.
We passed a small mountain of tandoori roti and silver containers holding fragrant kebab curry, lamb stew, and chicken in velvety red butter sauce. A space was reserved for goat biryani. On the sweet table, balls of gulab jamun, orange and glazed, bobbed in sugary water. Globes of ras malai glowed like moons. And fruit, I had never seen so many fruits. Piled on copper platters: bananas, apples, mangoes, and melons. Some fruits were even used purely for decoration. Waiters in white uniform stood behind each station, ready to load thali after thali.
Just as Mummy was tucking the money she had made a big show of having back into her purse, a woman approached us. Her white skin wiggled like naan dough. “Welcome, welcome. Are you from the groom’s side or bride’s?”
“Groom’s,” I said.
“Bride’s,” said Anisa.
“Technically, we are from both. As you well know, we Muslim Shiites are all connected in one way or another.” Mummy spoke in faultless Urdu, spinning an old ring around her finger to display her wealth.
We moved on before the lady could reply. Mummy pulled me close and hissed, “See, Nina. Someone is bound to ask us questions we don’t know the answer to!”
“No one is examining us like we are suspects,” I said. To prove my point, I broke off from Mummy and approached a young Pakistani standing with her friends. “Why, I am fascinated by your tikka!”
The jungle green string of jewels glistened in her glossy black hair. She smiled with the ease of one used to compliments. “It is from Bohri Bazaar.”
I visualized footpaths crowded with people selling wares. I sipped bright pink glasses of faluda, tasting of roses and steamed milk, served from a shop painted with Urdu scriptures. I saw ladies’ sandals on ropes hanging from ceilings, and the nimko shop, selling savoury chevro with spicy peanuts and puffed rice. I touched artificial flowers sold alongside artificial hair pieces.
“It is so charming,” I said wistfully.
“The jade was imported from China.”
“It reminds me of the one Zaheeda wears in Gambler.”
“You saw the movie despite the ban?”
“I did.” I left out that I had not seen the movie in Pakistan, but in Uganda.
“Vah, vah, that is really something … I saw you talking to the bride’s amma.”
“Charming lady,” I replied, trying to place myself alongside the girl’s polite, impeccable Urdu. My years of watching Hindi movies was paying off. Hindi was close enough to Urdu that I was managing. She had no clue I was just a poor Gujarati girl.
“You think so? She’s always getting involved in treasury issues on the ladies’ committee at mosque. My amma says she should mind her business. Money for the poor is money for the poor. Why does it matter if it’s going to help new refugees coming from Africa or to Pakistani beggars?”
“I love your chandelier earrings,” I said, my face burning with embarrassment.
“After all,” she continued, talking over me, “my fiancé is one of the refugees just arrived from Africa. But he doesn’t need help … his family kept their money in international bank accounts. Some people just know how to plan for the future. What did you say about my earrings?”
“That I like them.”
“Shukriya.” She touched her lobe and smiled at me. “My fiancé bought them for me. Imran Sadiq. He is an engineer. Oh, and I am Zarina. Shall I hold a place for you in the dinner line?”
Imran? I stayed calm. “Oh that is quite all right.”
“Join us. We are part of the wedding party.” She put a hand on me, as smooth and white as a glass of lassi. When Imran sat next to her on their wedding day, he would inhale her scent of jasmine and roses. Would I be at their wedding, too, sneaking around in the hopes of getting a free meal?
“Is he here?” I forced myself to ask, mouth dry.
“Who? Imran?” Zarina said.
I nodded, trying to keep my face neutral.
“No, no. He is busy looking at a bungalow for us. You know how men are. Any excuse to get out of attending a wedding. Except his own, I should hope!” Zarina’s friends laughed at her joke.
“Teek hai. I will join you,” I said to Zarina. Suddenly I felt lightheaded, and I wasn’t sure it was from hunger alone. “Just let me tell my companions where I am going and I’ll be back.”
Mummy shook her head as I approached. “You’re going to disgrace us, you silly chokri.”
“It’s fine, Mummy. I’d be surprised if these girls didn’t invite me to ladies’ luncheon.”
“What do you think I am worried about, dearest beta?”
I was among the first to get my thali loaded. When the waiter cut into the goat and exposed a myriad of stuffed meats, I demanded a piece of each layer. The girls with me were not interested in eating their food. It was the latest fad now to be thin-thin and have white-white skin. I was not as dark as an old coconut, but I had spent too much time in the African sun; my skin was the shade of dhana jeera curry powder. I knew I should eat little like them, but I was too hungry. My right hand cupped itself into a scoop around the rice, and I cleared my plate so fast my stomach ached.
When we went home, I felt everyone would regret the wedding. We walked in a silence as chilly as the Pakistani night air. Deddy would surely tell the Pakistani folktale of the greedy monkey who discovered wheat hidden under the rocks, but lost what he had in his grip in his eagerness to gather more. But Deddy said nothing, only picked his teeth. Mook-Mook was carrying a sleepy Faiyaz on his back, and Anisa and Mummy were chewing on tobacco paan, handed out on a silver platter as a last treat for parting guests. Mummy’s lips were stained with crimson paan juice. Finally she spoke. “What a good idea, Nina.”
And so we continued going to the big Indian weddings, praying in the night Allah-Allah while we ate all the food we wanted, free of charge. We went to weddings in neighbourhoods where as the houses got bigger, so did the houses of God, and it became clear the rich always had better access to the almighty. But then we got shifted from the terrace and moved to a new town called Musafir-Khana, where we stayed at a guest house especially for Muslim refugees. Beside the mattresses in the one big room, we placed our trusty British clocks. On the radio, we listened to etiquette lectures on how to be a good Muslim, lessons that poor people like us could take comfort in.
It almost felt like home when we unpacked our suitcases. We refolded the saris and Deddy hung the African drums on the wall. Mummy set the sufarya on the Primus chulo hot plate and made potato curry in the outdoor kitchen. We licked our fingers just the way we did at the wedding feasts.
Next door to us lived a lady with a thousand cats who rode her Ve
spa scooter through the city. Her cats came scratching at our door for milk at night. Did they actually believe a family as hungry as ours had anything to give? Along with the tick tock of the British clocks and the night call of the crickets, at midnight it sounded like a mini orchestra performed at our guest house: scratch, scratch, scratch. In the morning, the cats marched back to the cat lady’s apartment.
“Hey girl!” she shouted in European-accented English, a scarf wrapped around her neck instead of over her hair. “Have you gotten it yet?”
“It? What’s it?”
“Is your head itchy?”
“No … what in the world are you talking about?”
“You’ll know soon enough, darling. But don’t you dare come blaming my cats.”
Two days later I got lice. Mummy picked them out deftly with her fingers and a comb. When I shut the door to the guest house, I found the cat lady smiling at me. She wore a new scarf, a purple and pink checkered one.
“I have it.”
“I figured. Don’t worry. The local mosque is shifting you to a new place. No one stays here long. Khuda Hafiz, my dear. Isn’t that what all of you Pakistanis say when you bid farewell? Hopefully it won’t follow you there. Ciao!”
There was no point explaining to her I was not Pakistani. “Wait! Are you Italian? Is your scarf European?”
“Darling, you should know the first rule in befriending a lady. Never ask so many questions.”
I was not sure if I would see her again. But I now knew two things. One, I wanted to be like this woman one day — elegant and sophisticated, like Zarina from the party. Any man in the world would fall in love with this European woman. And two, I wanted to ride on a scooter in Pakistan.
Back into the suitcase went the clocks. We carefully wrapped the radio in newspaper and left the mattress to infect the next group of refugees. The local mosque sent us to a place called Malir, on the outskirts of Karachi. We got two rooms with doors instead of curtains, though the bathroom and kitchen were still outside.
No one in the family could find a job except me. I gave shots to the patients coming through the ladies’ section at the medical clinic. In Pakistan people got injections for everything: stomach aches, flus, and headaches. Once I began working, I no longer had trouble falling asleep, so tired was I from walking the great distance to and from work. Deddy refused to let me take the bus because men were known for harassing female commuters, whether they wore hijab or not.
At night, the clocks went tick tock, tick tock, keeping the pulse of the Maasai warriors’ feet dancing inside my head. I fell into a deep rhythmic sleep, enjoying the predictable sound, dreaming of the African plains. I saw the black outlines of our family walking against the mango sunset; trees shaped like cobwebs covering the sky. Mummy was carrying a whole sack of potatoes across the Serengeti, but there was a hole in the burlap sack. We left a long trail of golden nuggets behind us. A vulture followed closely. I could see its goose-pimply neck, the base lined with white down feathers. The vulture looked at me, opened its beak and screamed. My eyes flew open in a panic.
It was Mummy, screaming in Urdu. “I see you thieves! You show your besharam faces to me right now! Chor! Chor!”
I caught her running out the front door with a wooden spoon in her hand. “Have you lost your mind?” I rubbed my sleepy eyes. “Who are you shouting at?”
“Wake up Mook-Mook! Send him after the thieves!”
“What thieves? All our gold and saris are in the rooms.”
“They took our cooking pots and hot plate!” Mummy collapsed on the living room floor. “How stupid is it that we left all of our wares outside in the kitchen!”
“This is a Muslim Indian neighbourhood. None of our own people would steal from us.”
“Local boys, Nina! I saw them with my own two eyes.” She put her hands on her face. “Don’t wake Mook-Mook. I’m surprised the racket didn’t wake the entire house. I’ll just sell saris to the mali-ku-mali.”
“What will I wear on my wedding day?” Suddenly I felt angry. Surely Imran Sadiq had seen our shack after we took off to Pakistan. Mummy and Deddy would never be able to set me up for any kind of future at all.
“Nina, I have to cook food in something. What do you propose I do?”
“What about Jaffer Sahib?” I said meekly. A family friend, Jaffer Sahib had been advising us to immigrate to India. “Can’t we talk to him before we sell our saris?”
“Talking to him won’t change the fact that we need to eat tonight.”
“The month of mourning is coming soon, anyhow,” I said. “Sell the saris.”
“Okay, Nina,” she said, as if I had made the decision and not her. “Now go back to sleep, beta. You need rest for your clinic tomorrow.”
When I woke up the next morning, I heard the knock-knock-knock from the mali-ku-mali making his rounds through the neighbourhood. “Making trades! Making trades! I have new pots! New pans! Sell me your old saris!”
Mummy rushed to open the door.
“I have many pots, Madam — shiny ones, new ones. What have you for me today?”
Mummy held out my yellow sari — it sparkled like a goldsmith’s shop — and Anisa’s pink, red, and white sari, the one that had always reminded me of the little candies the paan-wallah put in children’s paans. “I need pots and a cooking plate.”
The mali-ku-mali gave Mummy a coy, well-practiced look. “These are of exquisite quality, Madam. But cooking plates are high in demand.”
Mummy held out many more saris, but the mali-ku-mali wasn’t interested in the simpler, every day saris with fine holes along the hemlines. He eyed the leopard rug on the floor.
Mummy looked at the rug. “Take it, bhaiya. It is yours.”
“Nahi, nahi,” he said smartly in Urdu, sensing it was not valuable if Mummy was so eager to get rid of it. “I will take the saris. That is all. Bas. I will give you one cooking pan and a pot.”
“What about the chula? I need to cook on something!”
“Dheko Madam, if you take only one pot I will see what I can do.”
“Teek hai. I will hold this sari until you come back.” Mummy snatched back my golden sari, closing the door nearly on the mali-ku-mali’s toes.
“I will be back at nine o’clock this evening,” the mali-ku-mali said through the shut door.
Mummy sighed, not bothering to answer. She looked at me instead. “Jaffer Sahib has offered a sightseeing tour around Malir on his scooter. I am giving you permission, provided Mook-Mook escorts you, of course.”
Had Mummy just said “scooter”? “Don’t you and Deddy wish to see the neighbourhood?”
Mummy brushed her hands along her long frock, washed so many times it was thinning and shear in places, giving the dress peekaboo windows. “I don’t see this place as becoming our home, do you?”
When Jaffer Sahib came to our door, Mook-Mook, Faiyaz, Anisa, and I were lined up in order of tallest to shortest, as if about to have our picture taken. Jaffer Sahib explained he could only take two of us at a time. When it was my turn, I sat sideways in my chocolate brown sari on his scooter. Passing by a cricket field, the boys stretched in their white outfits, yelling, “Let’s play kir-keet!”
The streets of Malir were no different than most of Karachi. Rainbow-coloured buses and horse-drawn carts clogged them. Grey factories chugged smoke. We passed through a roundabout fringed with tented vendors; hand-loomed carpets made from camel hair flapped like skinned butcher’s meat in the wind. Vehicles whipped around, hugging the curb. I smelled the barbecued and spiced mutton through the gasoline and smog. Mosques stood tall, their ivory and gold-domed hats pointed against the sky. We finally returned to our neighbourhood where the apartments were stacked upon one another, looking as flimsy as a house of cards.
“Jaffer Sahib, would you like to come in for chai?” Mummy had already saved this morning�
��s boiled milk for Jaffer Sahib. The rest of us had agreed in advance to pretend we didn’t want any.
A smile stretched his face out like an accordion. Inside, Jaffer Sahib folded his legs onto one another as we all did. Mummy brought him hot chai. Instantly, the room filled with the rich sent of fennel and spice. I closed my eyes and inhaled, taking in the notes of cinnamon and cooked milk.
“How are you enjoying our Pakistan?” Jaffer Sahib poured liquid into the saucer and sipped.
“It is different than we expected, but we are enjoying it.” No doubt Mummy was thinking of the two rotting potatoes in our cupboard, her only ingredient for tonight’s dinner.
“How can you like the constant policing of religion? When all you muhajir arrived into town, you spilled like milk from the trains and rode the railway rooftops as if you were human luggage. Surely you did not expect this great nation to be watchful of every move you made. I know you are a Godly people, but do you need everyone in your face checking to see if you are?”
“Now look here, Jaffer Sahib … ” Deddy said.
“Wait, my brother. Have you heard what India is like? There, azaan is called down the streets from our mosques. But they stand next to the temples and even churches. You will get to see films again, and they won’t be censored. Your girls will get to wear their beautiful saris, without being worried if their head is covered!” Jaffer Sahib squeezed Deddy’s arm. “And bhaiya, you, sir, will get to work again. Mechanics are needed in India. Your youngest daughter will not have to support the entire family.”
“Jaffer Sahib, you have crossed the line … ”
“I can take you all to India.”
The room inhaled its breath sharply.
“On camels,” he pushed on in his rapid Urdu. “I have smuggled many before you. We will travel up Pakistan, pass through the Kashmiri border, then enter India. It is a treacherous journey, travelling through desert. Not for the faint of heart. But I know the area like the back of my hand.” Jaffer Sahib made zigzag drawings of routes on his thick palm.
Chocolate Cherry Chai Page 4