We needed tea before Nanima could start so I headed to the kitchenette, letting her enjoy the time on her own. Heating hot water in the pot, I added in a handful of fennel, a pinch of sugar, cinnamon, and cloves. I threw in five tea bags and a dash of pepper. I bit the cardamom shells with my eye teeth and pulled out the inner pellets, dropping them in. I watched the water beginning to boil — it looked like a mini ocean and suddenly I missed diving.
The pot, I realized, was the one my grandmother had been using for years — I remembered her saying that she got it as a replacement when hers was stolen in Pakistan. From her almond kheer dessert to her masala tea, everything tasted better in this pot. She must really love her club if she’d brought the pot here.
Inhaling deeply through my nose, the candied scent instantly shot to my brain, reminding me of the time when I was small enough to sit on Nanima’s lap. She would dip roti rolled with sugar and butter into the chai and once in a while give me a small sip straight from the cup. I looked into the churning liquid, bubbling madly, releasing clouds of sweet aroma, and wondered where my bags would go next. Would I stay in Vancouver? Or would I really go to Spain or North Africa?
I was still searching for a place I belonged. A person between countries always is. I was like a road map folded in the wrong place and shoved back into the glove compartment. I had one foot in Vancouver, one in Tokyo, and the rest of my body was reaching for somewhere new.
In the pot, cinnamon sticks floated on the surface like driftwood. I poured the tea through a strainer and into cups. I tasted a sip. There were too many spices in the tea, and it was far too strong. I shrugged. Perhaps Nanima could add more milk and rescue it. I closed my eyes and took another sip. Fennel seed shapes duplicated a thousand times behind my eyelids and the spicy liquid cut its way down my throat.
NARGIS
FOR ME, GRANDMOTHERS ARE born grandmothers. I could never imagine my grandmother as a little girl, running after a ball. When I was three years old, I asked Mama: “Did Naniji have an old face on a young girl’s body when she was young?”
Mama slathered thick coconut oil in my hair just as her mother had done for her. I thought the coconut oil smelled like old people. When Mama bent over to brush my hair out, I inhaled her lavender perfume. Mama laughed and said it was I who looked like a grandmother when I was born, covered in wrinkles, screwing up my face like an old lady playing cards. These times with Mama are my best memories.
Papa died when Mama was pregnant with me. Some people in the village said he had a weak heart. Others said he was engaged in dangerous politics, prompting someone to poison him. They said Mama’s true colours showed when she remarried so quickly after his death. But I could not see Mama wanting to marry my stepfather. After all, he looked like a woman, with his saggy breasts and rotund belly. When he came home everything smelled of raw ginger root mixed with unwashed socks, and he was angry like a lion.
I saw a whole different side to him when Mama began to have his children. He held the babies, calling them names of Indian desserts: laddoo and jalebi. On holidays, he brought home colourfully packaged date cakes. Mama crushed them into soft chunks and the babies sucked them from her fingers. My stepfather wanted nothing to do with me once his own children came, and finally he sent me away to live with my dead Papa’s brother. I was four years old.
The first day I went to live with Uncle and Auntie, I hid my face behind my hands, for I was afraid of Auntie’s lower eyelids, which looked like dried prunes. When I told her this she sent me to the corner of the room. I spent the whole day crumpled there, examining the creases in my knuckles. I clenched my fists and wiggled my middle fingers up and down for hours, imagining they were the trunks of grand elephants, a game Mama used to play with me. My cousins used my legs as roads for their toy cars. I had never before seen British-made toys up close, but I made as though I did not notice them one bit. When the reds and pinks of the sunset filtered through the room, Auntie came back. She scrunched her large body next to my small one, handing me dinner leftovers. She said Mama would never return. I could not remember crying; I simply ate the sparse food on the plate while Auntie explained the way things would work.
I would be in charge of gathering drinking and bathing water. I would do the cooking, cleaning, and washing of clothes, which I was to learn from the hired helpers. My food would be counted for me ahead of time, and I was not to take an ounce more. I was not to dine with the family, but eat afterwards. I should not speak unless spoken to. If I should break these rules or not finish my tasks, there would be punishment in the form of a strap. I could accompany my cousins to school but only up to the third standard.
When I tried to remember Mama, I saw a heart-shaped face that gave her the appearance of a girl even in womanhood. I remembered she had the same colour eyes as I did, golden like the colour of sap that trickles from trees. If I buried my nose deep into a jar of coconut oil, I could remember the texture of her fingers, buttery soft, working intricately to braid my hair, bobby pins clenched firmly in her teeth. Auntie used the same tin of imported British talcum powder as Mama. One time I got caught running my finger across the violet paper on the tin and Auntie called me a shameless concubine and beat me with a cooking spoon. I thought her lower lids were so black and shrivelled they looked like sugary dates ready to be eaten, which no amount of powder could hide. This time I said nothing. Now the door leading to her room was padlocked, and I could only go in there to clean if one of the cousins supervised me.
Uncle was doing poorly in his business. Now that I was thirteen he saw me as an extra mouth to feed. Uncle hated Africa. He wished our ancestors had remained in India. Perhaps he feared the Serengeti would roll over his shop, and lions would come forth from the jungles and devour his merchandise.
When Uncle was dismal about his business, Auntie discussed marriage options for me. She pointed out I was uneducated, so they must take the first offer. Uncle waved his hands above his head, thanking Allah the almighty and merciful we were Muslim; he did not have to worry about a dowry to pay someone to take me off his hands. He said he had done the job of raising me for his brother, Sallallahu alaihi wasallam. His dead brother was a good-for-nothing Red anyhow, one who wore fedoras and British suits at that. I had no idea what Red meant, and I wondered if it had something to do with the illness Papa died from. There would be a place in heaven reserved for Uncle’s brother and his maid-servant daughter now after all, thanks to Uncle’s generosity. “Inshallah,” said Uncle, shaking his head ferociously at the sky, “Inshallah.”
I lay awake imagining the man who would marry me. Perhaps he would save me on horseback, like in my cousin’s Indian comic books. Never mind I had never seen a horse. I had seen monkeys before, however. Maybe we would ride into town escorted by a troop of monkeys, holding out a bouquet of balloons to me.
My cousins were more interested in the tailor master these days than in their comics. They wanted colourful choli blouses made for their saris, sewn with hooks so tiny you had to squint to clip them together. The cousins now had shapely bodies, and liked to stare at themselves in wood-framed mirrors, turning to this angle and that. I changed my fantasy accordingly. My suitor would be a successful businessman who would bring me gold crowns encrusted with rubies, and packages of beautiful saris imported from India wrapped in delicate brown paper, tied with strings. The choli blouses would be covered with a line of silver clips, each hook as thin as the eye of a needle.
“For you, the most beautiful girl in house,” he would say. My suitor would buy up Uncle’s shop, and send him back to India. Or maybe Uncle would stay on as an employee, and then the cousins would see me around town in golden saris. “She was the fairest of us all,” they would say wistfully.
After the ninth night of fantasizing about my suitor, Uncle announced a family would be arriving to view me. The cousins giggled; they said he would run when he saw me, for I was a skinny broomstick with straggly hair. I worke
d in the kitchen all day, making samosas stuffed with finely minced meat; chai with cardamom; kheer sprinkled with pistachios and almonds. I knew my way around the kitchen, but Auntie added more salt to the samosas so the filling sucked the liquid from your mouth. She added more sugar to the kheer, making it so crystal mountains appeared on top of the pudding.
Right before he arrived, she added extra milk to the chai and the house smelled of burnt milk. “Do you not know putting in extra ingredients will make it look like you come from a good family?” she scolded, slapping my wrist.
I wore one of the cousins’ old saris. There were buttons you snapped shut, big as the nails on my finger. There was dark stain on the inner slip, hidden when my sari was wrapped around me. Soon, the guests arrived. The suitor’s mother looked like a mango, round and juicy; the father looked sleepy. Then I saw him, my suitor. He had his mother’s lips, plump like ripe fruit, and thick glasses that magnified his father’s expressionless eyes. He was ten years older than me.
“The samosas need more salt,” said my suitor’s mother.
Auntie frowned at me. “She will learn.”
I was afraid my suitor would not be able to see my eyes if I kept them downcast as I had been told to do. The cousins said my yellow eyes looked like pots of cooking ghee, but I knew they were envious of them. On my nose, which was all the suitor’s family could see, I wore the gold starred nose-pin my mother had given me when she sent me away. Auntie had said my suitor’s family would bring a large platter of fruits or sweets out of respect. It was hard for me not to feel disappointed they came empty handed.
I heard my suitor cough. I stole a glace peripherally through my orange pecharri and the whole world became a shade of saffron. My suitor’s mother was nodding through the mandarin haze. Her eyebrows lifted like the tops of Mount Kilimanjaro.
“Hasnain is eager to begin a family, though I do not think having children is a thing to be rushed, nah? I must be frank: is a girl this young and thin capable of starting a family?”
“She is definitely old enough; every month she has a visitor.” Auntie sounded annoyed.
The suitor’s mother nodded. Her painted face became animated with understanding. “I see.” The men looked away, feeling ashamed. The cousins snickered in the doorway.
I wondered if I should refill the teas, or sit mutely like a doll. The group left before I made a social error. The snacks were all but untouched. The one dish I made without Auntie’s intervention, ghantiya, sat in a high stack. Auntie grabbed the spicy deep-fried strips of gram flour dough for the cousins. Everyone vanished from the room, leaving me to do my work.
I looked down at my suitor’s chai. I could not bring myself to say his real name aloud. A thin skin had formed on the surface. I drank down the remainder of the chai as fast as I could, trying to imagine his personality. Shuddering, I spat out the mouthful, taking my inability to drink the charred milk peel as a sign of our incompatibility.
My suitor’s family arrived the following week for the wedding. The cousins sparkled in their new saris, glinting like the new set of knives Uncle had just purchased for the kitchen. Now that I was leaving, they could finally buy nice things for the home.
Auntie had given me one of her own wedding saris. “Every girl needs a wedding trousseau no matter if it is second-hand. Without my help you would be going to your new marital home without a stitch on your back.” The bottom rim was aged yellow. The choli puckered where I did not have breasts to fill out the pockets. I wore my grandmother’s gold star in my nose — the only thing that was my own. It shimmered when the light hit it. The cousins tittered with laughter when they saw me. Yet I could not erase my smirk. I was younger than the cousins, but the first to get married, the first to become a woman.
My suitor studied his fingernails, which had crescents of black grease trapped underneath. This time around, his mother had brought several packages. She opened them to display. One was a velvet box. Inside was a gold jewellery set with a tikka decoration piece for the hair. Another box held a heavy ornate sari. Auntie and Uncle nodded, looking very impressed. I saw the cousins were eying the goods and elbowing one another. Suddenly I felt very important, and let them fuss over fixing my sari so it fell just the right way.
The ceremony was performed quickly. Trays of confetti were circled over my head, prayers were muttered, and candy was fed to me. Auntie cried theatrically and hugged me like I was her daughter. My eyes filled with tears and the cousins were instantly by my side, wiping my cheeks with tissue. The mawlana, the leader from our mosque, said prayers in Arabic, making the suitor my husband. Because the group was so small, the men and women celebrated together. Auntie embraced me one last time, signalling that my “crying ceremony” had been sufficiently performed. My mother-in-law squeezed me hard against her breasts. The skin showing above her choli was creased, crimson, and plump. “You can call me Ma now,” she declared. Auntie and Uncle clucked their approval at this comment.
“As you know, Nargis’s mother abandoned her in our care when she was a young girl. Allah knows I have done the best I can all these years.” Auntie clutched a cousin for support. Now that my wedding was coming to an end, the cousins had resumed their usual look of disinterest on matters concerning me.
“Have no fear. I am her Ma from this day forth.” Ma thumped her chest hard as we walked out the door.
When we arrived to my new marital home, the night was so black it was as if God himself had shoved the earth into a dark cloth bag and done up the drawstring tightly. Large bushes engulfed the house, making it look like a small meal inside the belly of the jungle. Although we had only travelled about thirty kilometres southwards to reach Kamachumu from Bukoba, this was the closest to the jungle I had ever been. Would jackals come to our house like stray dogs did in the night, to eat leftover scraps?
All of the native bush houses we passed had been circular, made of sticks and brush, covered in thatched roofs with sharp hedges meaning to guard them from attacks and wild animals. A kitchen fire blazed inside the cylinder houses, making them glow like candles against the indigo sky. I suddenly felt homesick for Auntie’s house, remembering the delicate latticework on the rooftop patio.
“There is nothing nearby,” Ma confirmed. She did not bother to light a lantern so I could look around. “It is a long walk to the market, but the distance will make you strong.” She squeezed my skewer-thin arms for emphasis.
She opened one of my bags. “You will have no need for bridal saris and jewellery now. There will be no one coming here to see you. They are impractical to do housework in. I will keep them for you.” She piled the presents into a pyramid along with the tin of coconut oil and talcum powder given as parting gifts from Auntie.
“Son, has your wife asked if you would like anything to eat?”
From out of the shadows, my husband shook his head no.
“Hai Allah. Have you any idea how to tend after a husband?” Ma put her hands to her bosom as if she had suffered a great tragedy. “Go and remove your husband’s shoes now!” Her underarms jiggled like red jalebi when you poked them in a pot of frying oil.
I followed my husband to our room and removed his shoes while he sat on our marital cot. At Auntie’s house, I slept on a thin mattress I rolled open on the kitchen floor. Though my wedding sari slipped to the floor like decaying petals from a rose, he did not look up. We fell asleep with our backs facing each other; two embryos stuck in the same diseased womb.
Ma splashed cold water on me. “Aré, oot — get up! Lazy girl, you did not even wake to make your husband breakfast!”
Looking beside me, I registered my husband was gone. I quickly changed into the same frayed frock I wore at Auntie’s house, wincing at its drabness. Auntie’s last words to me were that it was very important that a new bride dress up in her heaviest bridal saris even if no one would see her. Dressing in fineries would demonstrate she had a new important role
to fill; she was now a prized daughter-in-law.
Ma dragged me to the pantry. “I will explain this to you once, and one time only. You will wake up before us and make the family’s breakfast. You will make lunch and dinner. You will wash the clothes, clean the house, and feed the chickens. If we are eating chicken, you will kill the chicken. You will heat and gather the bathwater, boiling the drinking water as necessary. You will only go to sleep once all of our needs have been met. You are used to doing such chores, yes?”
I stared at the rouge painted circles on Ma’s cheeks and thought of the clowns and jesters dancing in the royal courts in my cousins’ comic books.
“Are you even listening to me?” Ma slapped my arms.
I nodded dumbly, noticing Ma was wearing one of the packaged wedding saris she had given me the night before.
“Did I bring home a voiceless bride? Never mind, just do as I say.” She turned on her heel and the embroidered sash of the sari waved like a flag behind her.
When Ma left, I walked straight into a tall Ugandan servant standing in the pantry. He had white teeth that matched his starched shirt. A ragged cloth was thrown over his shoulder.
“I am Baakir,” he said in Swahili.
“Nargis.”
He looked at me suspiciously and wandered into a fenced yard with piles of bricks stacked in one corner and some chickens squabbling in another. “What do you want me to do?” he asked.
“What does Ma have you do?”
“Everything, as the other servant was let go a week before you arrived.” He looked down at me with narrowed eyes. “I suppose we will be sharing the housework now.”
“Of course,” I said far too eagerly. “But please, you tell me what to do.” I looked around, hoping Ma had not heard me speaking to a domestic helper this way.
“I do not want to be responsible for making mistakes.” He showed me his inner wrist, blistered by a burn. “You tell me what to do.”
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