“Have you lost your mind? We have no money to pay for human smuggling!”
“Relax,” Mummy pressed Deddy’s shoulder. “Jaffer Sahib is a family friend. He knows very well our situation. Jaffer Sahib, if I may interrupt, what about Canada?” Mummy ignored our confused stares. “Is this not a good place for us to go?”
“Canada is the white people’s land, and as such, it is full of temptation and evil,” said Jaffer Sahib. “After much thought I realize that India is a much better place to raise your family. And seeing that indeed I am a friend, I do not need to take money as payment.”
“I have lived long enough to know people don’t take a stale slice of air as payment.” Deddy led Jaffer Sahib by his elbow to the door.
“Va, va,” said Jaffer Sahib, prying loose. “Are those clocks and a radio?” He gawked at our trusty Beolit, ready to be turned on later for the Urdu news programing. “And your radio has FM!” FM stations played readings of the Qu’ran every hour. “Acha, acha — very nice!”
Mummy shrugged. In Uganda, she used to listen to Indian songs while she cooked. Now while the rest of us tuned in to hear stories of the world, Mummy secluded herself to pray.
“And the clocks — are they a British make?”
“Yes, Jaffer Sahib, but … ”
“I might be willing to take the clocks and radio as payment for taking you to India on camels. Dheko, if you are not interested … ”
Deddy came alive. “We are not sneaking to India on camels! Now, Jaffer Sahib, the time has come for our evening salaat … ”
Reluctantly, Jaffer Sahib reached for the door.
“Wait, rhuko!” Mummy juggled our clocks and radio in her arms, looking like a street peddler from Uganda.
“Take them, Jaffer Sahib. We are going to India.”
“Now, you wait here, Nargis, you are not thinking straight,” Deddy said angrily.
“We are leaving Pakistan and that decision is final.”
Jaffer Sahib collected the items, ignoring Deddy’s stare. “You have made a life-altering decision, sister. I will collect you all tomorrow.”
Deddy said nothing. The house was quiet without the radio blasting out the evening prayers, and we were unable to concentrate on Allah as well as we should. Mummy started packing.
“Can camels carry suitcases? Aren’t we packing too many things?” I asked as we worked.
“I don’t know, Nina.” Mummy sounded exhausted. “Our job right now is packing, not asking so many questions.”
But the next day Jaffer Sahib did not come. When Mook-Mook begged to buy some chai from the street vendor because Mummy had packed all our cookware, Mummy forbade him to leave. The sky turned inky black, and we all thought fearfully of night in the desert. At the crack of dawn the next day, Mummy woke me. I had spent the night dreaming of camels. Did they bump along the sand quickly, or move languidly through the desert, like humped slugs?
“Nina,” she whispered. “You have to go to the clinic today.”
“Yes, Mummy,” I yawned, trying to come out of the sand dunes and back into our living room. Mummy held out my freshly pressed uniform and held the lantern so I could dress.
At the end of day, I wondered wearily if I would waste my entire youth working the same shift as the sun.
At home, Mummy greeted me with a handful of forms. “Jaffer Sahib said these are from the Red Cross, for helping refugees go to Canada.”
“Did you give up more of our things for these?” I asked, alarmed.
“Just jewellery I don’t wear anymore. Hardly worth a thing … ”
“This is crazy! Why didn’t you say something before? When did you see Jaffer Sahib? And why would you talk to him without one of us with you? It’s doubtful these papers are even real!” It was hard for me to reel in my anger, particularly after a long, tedious shift. “Do you even want to go to Canada?” Panicking, I thought of more questions in my head. Did snow feel like cotton balls or ice cubes? Did people wear jackets in the house because of the cold? Surely we could not purchase spices and saris in Canada. How would we ever manage?
“Canada is a fine country, Nina.”
“You don’t even speak English.”
“My life is as good as over. It’s you children I worry about.”
“Mummy, you’ve been swindled.”
She looked devastated. I fixed my mouth ready to tell her more about how she’d been tricked. She had never worked outside the home, not like me. She had no idea what the real world was like. But then I saw her shoulders were trembling. She was Mummy, helpless in her ability to take care of her children.
I shifted gears, ready to say anything in that moment to make her feel better. “I tell you what. When we move to Canada we will buy a television set. I have heard they are as cheap as a glass of chai from the street stall.”
Mummy pretended to unpack.
“And a car.” I placed my hands on her shoulders and looked into her eyes, yellow as two yolks, the same as mine. “Did you know ghaadi are as cheap as ten dinners from the kebab vendor?”
She grinned. “I know absolutely everything. People from Canada wear fur coats, and their homes are like castles!”
***
ANISA HAD WORKED OUT a deal with God. She was trading “prayer on our Salvation Army couch” for “the safe delivery of our family from Pakistan.” As a bonus, she offered God a pilgrimage to Mecca if Mook-Mook, Faiyaz, Mummy, and Deddy should arrive soon.
I had nothing against praying, per se. I was Muslim, but I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to pray to any god I thought could help us. The Hindu gods with their sapphire arms looked just as important as the cherubs on church windows. Why not improve my odds at getting a message across?
Earth to Allah, are you listening? It’s me, Nina. I want to marry someone like John Travolta, but the Gujarati Shiite Muslim version. Will Arabic surahs work in a church? I don’t know much about Hail Marys and Full of Graces. It’s time for me to have a husband of my very own and I can’t wait for the entire family to arrive to start my life. Who knows how long that will take? Also, please can I have a television?
At work, the nurses paraded me around on our lunch breaks, quizzing me on curry recipes and remarking on my accent. One time, I brought in bindi stickers from Pakistan, placing a gem between each of the nurse’s eyes. They giggled, asking me to snap photographs. But then someone said, “No, Nina must be in the picture!” They placed their arms around me “just so,” waiting anxiously for the click. Then they let go of me quickly, as though alarms would sound if they touched me for too long. Other times, I joined them in the lunchroom to watch shows like Laverne and Shirley, laughing along at the actors’ funny faces and silly antics.
At home I was ordinary, mundane Nina again. Not special Nina with the yellow-gold Indian jewellery or mehndi. One night, while cooking dinner, I suggested we buy a television set. I was fine with being treated like an imported fruit at work, but I didn’t want to be the uncivilized villager who didn’t follow all the popular shows. Nina, we are not talking about bars of soap, we are talking about daytime soaps on television. I don’t know how she gets through life speaking that Hin-doo language.
Anisa looked at me with eyes that would burn a hole through a cooking pot. “Our family members are refugees in Pakistan. They are waiting for us to sponsor them, and you want to purchase a new television set? Oh Allah,” she cried to the sky in Gujarati. “What will I do with this chokri?”
I shrugged my shoulders and kept stirring the bhinda nu shaak, adding in lemon juice so the okra would not stick. Who would have thought Chinese markets would have such good deals on okra?
Anisa turned to me, lit with a new injustice. “Why do you care what dhoryas think of you? Aren’t you proud to be Indian?” As if being Indian meant I could not enjoy Western programs. Even the new nurse from Vietnam watched Soul Train.
In the shadows, Anisa had the same worried expression she had as a child.
“You wear your hair in a chotli just as you did as a young girl,” I said. “Before you go scolding me for wasting money on this iron, see how beautiful you will look with straight hair.” Vancouver girls did not use greasy coconut oil. They straightened their hair so it looked clean and dry — like a freshly pressed shirt.
“I like my hair the way it is,” Anisa said, pulling her slippery braid from my hands.
“They are showing Hindi films downtown,” I tried again. “Shall we go? The nurses have even gone! Can you believe that?”
“Yes,” she said through tight, thin lips. She had grown tired of telling me the nurses did not consider me a real friend. She set down her cup and plucked imaginary threads from the bald couch. “Perhaps we’ll go when our family arrives.”
Sighing, I bid her goodnight and went to our shared bedroom. I slid open a sticky dresser drawer and put on the big movie star glasses I had bought in Pakistan. I grabbed a printed pacherri scarf, meant to be worn with an Indian suit, and wrapped it around my head like a Hindi film actress. I looked up toward the ceiling, as close to a sky as I could get for now.
Allah, please prevent my brother Mook-Mook from joining forces with Anisa and becoming the No-Fun Police. I won’t get to go to any parties, and then how will I meet my Indian John Travolta? If I wait for an arranged marriage, I’ll die an old maid.
But when Mook-Mook arrived it was clear he was no longer a baby under the spell of his older sisters. He came to Vancouver a full-grown man, emancipated from the parents and little brother he had left behind in Pakistan. Given Mook-Mook’s new sideburns, I recognized his face only because he looked so painfully embarrassed at the Indian canteen we held out at the airport. He asked for his first burger and fries, but we explained airport food was far too expensive to eat. We sat at the cafeteria, eating roti and lukewarm potato curry while Canadians buzzed around us, sipping costly soda pops.
When we arrived home, Mook-Mook made a face. Here hung religious pictures of Mecca, rolled up prayer mats, tired plants, and our thrift store couch. Despite Anisa’s ban of the contemporary, Mook-Mook unrolled his cherished poster of Elvis, pinning it straight to the wall.
“Where is the television set? I thought Canada would be so modern and up to date. This place is more depressing than Pakistan was!” Mook-Mook slapped the couch for emphasis. Dust particles flipped in the sunbeam. “And for god’s sake, will you stop calling me Mook-Mook? My name is Mustafa. In fact, call me Moose. That sounds more Canadian.”
Anisa and I looked at each other and laughed. Mook-Mook had rightfully earned his nickname from childhood, when he would steal our gold bracelets and try to throw them in the toilet pit. Anisa and I would chase him yelling: “Mook! Mook!” meaning, “Let go! Let go!”
“You will always be Mook-Mook to us,” I said in Gujarati. Anisa nodded in agreement.
Mook-Mook ran his fingers through his long hair and adjusted his collar. “God, living with you two chokris is gonna be such a downer.”
The excitement of seeing Mook-Mook had Anisa agreeing to coffee, but the café closed at eight. In Uganda, we ventured out to India Street at ten or eleven at night. Anisa said it was best we saved money, anyhow. But Mook-Mook was tired of being frugal. Like a pickpocket in a night market crowd of Pakistanis, he lifted Anisa’s collection of coins. Combining them with the household’s “just in case” money, he purchased our first television set. The very next afternoon, I was watching television while the sizzling iron flattened my curls and Hindi songs blasted through the radio.
Anisa came in with bags of groceries that left indentations on her forearms. “Is something burning?” Flinging her long braid over her shoulder, she sniffed my cooked hair and assessed the cardboard box on the floor. “Are you two building a bomb?”
“Let me show you the new television set!” Mook-Mook fiddled with the channels. A man kissed a woman in an advert for breath mints.
“Chi! Chi!” cried out Anisa. “By God, this country has no morals. I don’t have time for this. After all, I have become the maidservant while you two party your days away. It’s not as if we needed that money, right Mook-Mook?”
Mook-Mook looked down guiltily at his white platform boots.
“Oh-fo, Mook-Mook. Anisa can’t tell old jora from new shoes, unless I tell her … ”
“Chup, Didi. Or I’ll spill about your new, glincy disco top.”
“Glittery,” I corrected him.
“Oh, whatever, yaar.”
At first, Anisa watched the television only to complain: about how we were paying for commercials and how shameful it was that Canada needed such a thing as anti-marijuana advertisements. But then she found soaps. I came home to find her reading Time magazine; on the cover, a woman with big black hair in a low-cut red dress draped herself across a couch. The headline read: “Soap Operas: Sex and Suffering in the Afternoon.” We giggled, not believing the word “sex” was printed right there in plain sight. Did Canadians leave anything for the privacy of bedrooms? Anisa began taking soap opera digests from doctor’s offices until she realized people left them at laundromats for free.
At least Anisa stopped glorifying Pakistan. The only thing I missed was going to the theatre to watch Pakistani films, so Mook-Mook, Anisa, and I decided to make our first visit to the Vancouver theatre. We smuggled in a thermos of chai that tasted like cinnamon and metal. I longed for Mummy’s cardamom tea.
On the screen, stars like Helen Khan, Mumtaz, Hema Malini, and Rekha performed mesmerizing dance numbers in perfect bouffant wigs with bangs. They wore thick, cat-eye makeup and Western clothing, their blouses cut daringly high, exposing their midriffs. They knew how to disco dance and how to get men to propose overnight. They ate men like Imran Sadiq for breakfast. I took note of how their sari blouses were cut. Never mind I had to argue with the tailor master, an old Gujarati man who sewed in his basement, to take the top up: “just a tad higher please, Uncle.” I wore long chandelier earrings, turquoise neck chokers, and feathered hair clips, just as the dazzling actresses did.
I decided I wanted to be a stage performer. On good days I saw a wide forehead tapering off into a teacup chin, eyes the colour of melted butter. Girls walked around with pointy-pointy breasts, easily copied by wearing cone-shaped brasseries. There were my curls to deal with, but by the time I fastened a hair piece in, applied glamorous makeup, and donned a sparkly sari, I almost looked like Helen Khan. And Helen Khan was a lot more beautiful than that Farah Fawcett everyone raved about.
I auditioned at the Indian community centre. Having lived in Pakistan meant I spoke better Urdu than even the Hindu girls. When I landed the lead role, the same girls asked what a Muslim girl could know about the Hindu religion. “My mother used to buy Hindi comics, and I know all the stories about Ram and Sita!”
The play director laughed. “Nina will make a great Sita,” he said. “Now, let’s smoke a peace pipe.”
I learned garba, a dance involving sticks. The girls warmed to me, copying my mannerisms and make-up. By opening night, I was a minor celebrity. The local Indian newspaper came to click a picture of me. I felt Anisa would surely disapprove of my new performing career, but she and Mook-Mook sat front and centre, clapping the loudest.
After the curtains
closed for the evening, I was invited to a party to celebrate the successful production. It was rumoured that many Gujarati Shiite Muslim youngsters from East Africa would attend. Getting home as quickly as I could, I changed into a Pakistani salwar kameez with chiffon sleeves the colour of peach sherbet and Western-style cigarette pants. I glued on thick, false eyelashes. I wasn’t the same Nurse Nina as I was in Uganda, wishing I could afford the fake hair the ration man sold. Now I looked as chic as the cat lady from Pakistan, I thought, fingering the crystal costume jewellery around my neck. No one would ever think I had lived in a shack, or that my mother had sold saris for cooking pots.
The party was a mishmash of both the West and the East. Bowls of store-bought potato crisps sat next to homemade samosas. The dress code was the same: equal parts sideburns and bell-bottoms and salwar kameez. A record player spun the Bee Gees’ “Jive Talkin’.”
A tall, dark man with longish hair approached me. “I saw you dance on stage. Why don’t we disco?”
“Oh, I only know how to dance to Hindi songs.”
“I prefer reggae. ‘No Woman, No Cry’ is a great song.”
“I don’t know it.”
He waved to a friend. “Hey! Change the record, man. Bob Marley is what the lady wants to hear!”
“No, I don’t,” I mumbled to no one in particular. The music came on. The shaggy carpet cleared fast.
“Just follow my lead.” He bobbed his head like a bird coming out of a cuckoo clock. I did a hula dance.
“Good music, right?” he said, winking at me.
I didn’t know why Gujarati boys came to Canada and tried so hard to speak English. Didn’t he know his words in English sound garbled and confused? He didn’t sound anything like the Canadian boys who stood outside my work, smoking and spitting swear words at one another without caution. I found nothing about the Canadian boys attractive — not their hair chopped crudely around their faces with blunt scissors or the tight jeans encasing their skinny, bird legs — but when the Canadian boys talked, the words suited their pink mouths.
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