“Are these from a designer collection?” Miriam asked breathlessly.
I picked up the jade sari, embroidered in a pattern of barbed sisal bushes. It had the pungent scent of the fibrous plants it was modelled after. I touched a second sari, as vibrant as the jacaranda blue powder sold during the Diwali festival. Soft, bright feathers were hand-stitched to imitate the flight of the great blue turaco bird.
“These two were part of the Jewels of the Kenyan Highlands collection,” I forced myself to say, lost in another time. “And this one,” I pointed to a sari that was the exact shade of an iridescent lavender seashell, “was from the Memories of Mombasa Beach collection. There was a sandy beach sari that would have looked so becoming on your skin tone, Miriam. Too bad it was destroyed in the fire.”
“Will you tell me the story, Mama?”
***
IN 1934, I RETURNED from my failed journey, where I tried to outrun my husband, the store merchant. My house was a boxed shack, but the big numbers painted out front informed everyone we were important enough to have an address near the bottom of Mengo Hill. I stared at the walls, painted in a drippy coat of greyish blue. There were no family photos that told you a happy family lived there. I ran my hand down the store merchant’s shirts, ordered from the colour of uncooked chicken flesh to cashew, feeling numbness not disgust. The mud floor had been swept with the handmade broom, and the dishes had been washed using the outside hose. It was as if I had never left.
Anger seeped out through the store merchant’s teeth like tea being strained from leaves.
“My children do not belong to you. You had absolutely no right to flee with them!” He stroked his goose pimply skin where feathers ought to have grown. “Bid goodbye to Nargis.”
He grabbed the smaller children, placing sweets in their mouths to soothe their protests. The padlock clicked as he locked me in from the outside. I found Nargis lying on the children’s bed with the mosquito net done up around her, like a deserted bride upon her decorated bridal bed.
The first few days he took his own children with him, locking me at home with Nargis. He arrived home at nightfall, no rations or well water with him. Nargis and I survived on stale dried goods like the fried chevro snack mix I had made before my failed journey. Then came the day my first husband’s brother and his wife came for my daughter. Her eyes pleaded with me to save her. The door was no longer padlocked after she left.
To me my children came as a set, like a crisp box of chess pieces the old Gujarati merchants played with in front of their shop stands in the hot, Kampala heat. I had to devise a plan to get Nargis back and complete myself again. In India, while Amma’s sisters were classically trained in dance, Amma had learned the art of sewing, and she had passed the trade down to me. Though my journey using rail had failed, it had succeeded in inspiring an entire sari collection. When the store merchant put on his lungi to retire for the night, I removed the British bronze penny he kept in his trousers for luck, and showed George V all the new saris I had sewn. A grasshopper stared at me from the window ledge, and then jumped away. The store merchant walked into the room, and gave me a teeth rattling slap.
“You stupid gandi. One of my British trade partners gave me that for good luck! Do you not know it is a bad omen to touch a merchant’s penny? This means one of the other retailers in Old Kampala Town will be more profitable than I this year!”
It was that night I thought of the Hindu tailor master who worked in Old Kampala Town. Mr. Khanna was famous among Muslims and Hindu alike for creating gorgeous designs. He was even rumoured to have outfitted the British prime minister’s wife and his five daughters in “authentic gowns from the Orient” on their African tour. The old Hindu tailor hated petty gossip. He only wanted his clients to speak back to him with their measurements. There was no way that Mr. Khanna would know of my past.
At first glance, the old shop, nestled on a cobwebby corner, did not seem anything special. An Arab shack selling dried chili peppers hugged it on one side, and a windowless store selling ceramic pots touched it on the other. Mr. Khanna’s shop did well by word of mouth alone, and unless you knew it was there, you would walk by it time and time again. The display window was murky and slanted, the mud floor looked like it had never been swept, and bolts of fabric obstructed the entranceway. But any woman who appreciated Indian fashion would commute to Old Kampala Town to peek through the dingy windows at the sari collection of the month. There, designer saris were spread out like brilliant butterfly wings, tacked up with pins.
I was the only customer to come to Mr. Khanna’s Fashion and Sari Shoppe at midday. Inside, the famed Vinay Khanna stood behind the counter, bespectacled and short, with a ring of hair wrapped around his head, the exact colour of raita yogurt. It was the one Indian store where no one dared haggle — for they would forever be banished from his hole-in-the-wall shop. Mr. Khanna had a string of thread hanging out his mouth which flew up like a snake attacking as he yelled: “Closed!”
“I want to show you saris I have sewn … ”
“I do not take apprentices. My own sons were not good enough to be tailor masters, what makes you think you would be?”
“I only need to sort my belongings before I head out.” I dumped saris from my kitenge cloth bag onto the counter.
“Now I have lost my patience. You are forever banned from the … ” The collection spread across the glass like a parrot batting its wings in fear. Blues, greens, reds, and oranges were as inviting to the eye as a platter of perfectly juicy papaya and guava. The bejewelled pieces glinted even in the near lightless shop.
Mr. Khanna picked up the ocean blue sari, holding it up under a scant beam of sun. Blue, turquoise, and pewter were sewn in a circular pattern to create the effect of a whirling pool of water. “Stunning,” he said despite himself. The room was silent except for the dull hum of people suffering under the heavy sun outside. Mr. Khanna fixed his gaze on me.
“Are you trying to buy me out? I am old but not stupid! No matter how quality your work is, I have a steady following of customers … ”
“I have no income with which to open up a shop.”
“Oh, so you are proposing you will work out of your home? Never trust the well-mannered ones, is that not how the Gujarati saying goes? Quite the cunning business woman you are, cutting out the cost of renting, and … ”
“No, Mr. Khanna, I am hoping to partner with you.”
“Partner up with a woman half my age?”
“Uncle, you can place my designs under your name.”
“My designs are good enough on their own, thank you very much.”
I threw my hands up in the air. “I need money to get back my daughter from my first marriage and support my new children.”
“How can you keep track of all these children? Have you heard the British tale about the old woman with so many children she had to live out of her boot?” He chuckled.
I was not about to confess I had not. “I have had a terrible go at it, Mr. Khanna. My first husband died of heart disease … ”
“Spare yourself. I am not a big sucker for sad tales.” He peered at me through the small oval lenses that made up his spectacles.
“You would have the opportunity to be a mentor. Can you imagine the designs we will create together?”
“Hai Ram,” Mr. Khanna sighed, setting his spectacles on the glass display. “I do not have time for drama, you hear?”
Mr. Khanna arranged to pick up my designs when my husband was at work. He came late in the afternoon, shrivelled like a peanut shell from his travels and parched enough to drink three glasses of water. He grunted his criticisms, nodded his meagre compliments, then stole away into the sun again.
The new collections did better than well. Mr. Khanna was already a notable local character with a devout following of fashion seekers. But soon word spread to India and even London about his new sari desig
ns. Indian actresses refused the gowns costume makers made them on the sets of talkies, demanding Vinay Khanna originals instead. People heard that Mr. Khanna was in collaboration with a junior partner, resulting in fresh, vibrant designs. And yet, it was not until the great fire that my identity was revealed, for I was stupid enough to return to the shop at midday. People spotted Mr. Khanna’s son offering me money to keep away from the family forever. But I am rushing ahead.
One muggy afternoon, while my children were at the Muslim school nursery, I decided to pick up Georgette fabric. At the shop Mr. Khanna shared well-kept secrets with me, such as the seventy-five different ways of draping the sari, how to wrap a sari using the nivi style in under a minute, or how to liven up Gujarati village saris by adding a brooch. He even revealed the biggest challenge facing sari designers: keeping track of whether it was the long-sleeved or short-sleeved sari choli blouses that were currently in vogue. Mr. Khanna confessed he used the rains to set the style. During heavy monsoons, he said women were as playful as the animals on the Serengeti. They wanted to show their arms. They were flirtatious. During an extensive dry season, he said women were more repenting. They wanted to go to the temples and mosques to plead with God for more water. Long-sleeves were the best to introduce then.
The dusty bell clanking like a tin can, I tripped on the fabric rolls propped against the door to prevent unwanted midday customers. Straightening myself, I noticed a striking bolt of peacock lace. I jumped back to see a man almost twice the height of Mr. Khanna rise from behind the glass display table.
“You must be Sukaina. I am Vikram, Mr. Khanna’s youngest son.”
“Where is Mr. Khanna?” Ignoring his outstretched hand, I focused instead on Mr. Khanna’s Vishnu idol. I had never seen a Hindu man with a Muslim beard. I would soon learn Vikram did not follow the rules of our society.
“Baba is not well. I left my older brother in charge of the plantation, and came down to help. I hear business is bustling since you came along.”
“It was already successful … ”
“You have taken it from successful to world famous! Baba has made it certain I keep your identity a secret. Do not worry. I make a discreet delivery boy. No one will think anything of my visits … ” Vikram laughed.
I blushed, nearly knocking over a mannequin dress form.
“Were you always a seamstress?”
“Pardon me?” Mr. Khanna and I had a built a relationship entirely devoid of small talk.
“Baba,” Vikram said, passing me the leaf green and purple meshed fabric, “wanted us to become tailor masters. But I am all thumbs with a needle and thread. Art, now that is my true calling.”
“But are you not a plantation owner?” No Indians I knew, Muslim or otherwise, would announce art as their true calling. Indians might paint murals on the walls of Kampala shops, or embroider religious monuments onto pieces of cloth, but only the British called such acts of creativity “art.”
I glanced at his sketch, crafted with pencil crayons left to illustrate sari pattern ideas for customers. Perfectly blended circles of indigo, purple, magenta, and baby blue were smudged into the black sky, making it so the flat paper appeared three-dimensional. Much like the mad man who flew around the world in eight days, Vikram had managed to duplicate the night sky on scrap paper. The moon hung like a glass of Ugandan pombe. The way the stars glowed, you could map the light years they measured in distance from one another. Of course at the time I knew nothing about star mapping, but soon, I would become very knowledgeable on the subject. I would have loved nothing more than to sleep under such an illustration every single night and I found myself accidentally divulging this very thought aloud.
“Perhaps you will, in a castle atop Mengo Hill. You are right, I am a plantation owner. However I am guided by my love of astronomy and art.”
“You would have time for such hobbies. Your slave workers do your dirty work for you.” I should have been paying mind to the fact I was a woman, but I could not be expected to hold my tongue all the time.
“By golly, woman, you and your pineapple yellow eyes hold back nothing! I do pay the workers the highest wages I can afford. I am a communist, after all.”
“No plantation owner can dare call himself a communist.”
“What if I said that I took the money I earned to educate the children of the workers?”
“You are still not a communist.”
“You see, this is precisely why this world bores me so. We are so limited by our petty fights for social equality that … ”
“Petty fights for social equality? My, my, only a rich plantation owner would call the fight for social equality petty!” I felt my face growing hot with passion as I recalled Emma Goldman.
“Look, lovely lady, I am all for social equality, and I despise my social standing in life. But all social rankings are so petty when you think of how large the universe is as a whole. If only kings and useless government officials would look up in the sky and see that we are all comprised of fragments of stardust, maybe they would stop thinking of humans as being exponentially different and start thinking of us as belonging to one humanity. Human beings are like trees in a forest; we all need one another to breathe and function. But for some reason, the human race believes individuals belong to an amalgamation of different races. Underneath our exterior there is no Indian, no African. We all need water and sun alike. Yet revenge after revenge irks our simple human minds generation after generation. You did this to my people, so I will do this to yours. We set other parts of the forest on fire and think it will not affect the rest of the trees … ”
“‘An eye for an eye will only make the whole world blind.’”
“Mohandas Gandhi. Madam, you have gone to a fine school.”
I lost footing for a second. “I, like many of the women of this country, have had no access to formal education. My first husband educated me … ”
“Ah yes, Baba mentioned a snippet about you remarrying … ”
“In my second marriage I was forced to marry a brute of a man,” I said without thinking. “Your philosophical outlook sounds grandiose, but it prevents you from dealing with the social issues that face our world.”
“Put aside the pettiness of this world, and imagine how big the earth is relative to the universe. If the universe was as a sisal plantation field, then the earth is not big enough to be a needle on that field. If others would see the universe the way I do, perhaps there would be less hate.”
“How do you see it?”
“I see every star as being a sun, some of which burnt out over two hundred years ago, yet we still see them. I recognize, out of millions of planets, earth had the right fluke conditions to foster life, and things just started burrowing out of the soil and living. How can I fight for a world full of people stupid enough to kill themselves over their religions? They actually believe if there was a God he would care whether they prayed in one direction of the earth, or waved incense sticks in another.”
“Perhaps that is precisely why they believe. Because life on earth is so magical. They need something majestic to give it credit to.”
“They? So you do not believe?”
I look down at the ground.
Vikram stared at me. “Believe in this. Five years ago, in 1929, it was discovered that the universe is expanding. We do not know where it begins or ends. We are in the Milky Way galaxy, but there are infinite galaxies with infinite solar systems in our universe.”
“With bigger suns than ours?”
“Of course. Hundreds of times bigger.”
“That cannot be … ”
“Do you still wish to put your faith in fiction now? God, the egotist, expecting people to worship him. Earthlings, the egoists, thinking this god is recording their every move. Is this god responsible for creating only earth, or are there other gods responsible for the other planets?”
“Saturn has about ten discovered moons,” he said excitedly.
“Ten moons!?”
“Glorious, is it not?”
It was decided Vikram would come to collect designs from my house, entering through the back door after fictitiously inspecting the weeds. On the eighth week, I presented him with a new design inspired by our now daily conversations.
“It is called Many Moons of Saturn,” I said breathlessly. A black velvet sari dress layered in aquamarine, pink, and purple bobbinet tulle sparkled with golden moons, stitched throughout the fabric galaxy.
“So, the woman herself is Saturn?”
“I suppose she is.”
“It is gorgeous and only meant to be worn by you.”
A fire lit underneath my cheeks.
“I could take care of you, you know,” Vikram said, absentmindedly tucking in the stool behind me.
“Mr. Khanna would never approve of you marrying a woman twice married with children.”
“I have long ago stopped caring what Baba thinks. He might even be pleased. You are his partner, after all. Perhaps then you will take your claim to fame as rightfully deserved.”
“There is no way the store merchant would let you raise his children. I might be able to get Nargis back, but how could I keep the others?”
“Sukaina, according to the store merchant you got off easy the first time around. We would have to take all the children and face the storm together.”
“I am surprised you have been able to focus your attention long enough on this planet to think out my life,” I said with a touch of venom.
“Do not turn on me.”
“You have your pick of eligible women. Why would you want to marry me?” Picking up a thimble, I examined the creases tugging at my eyes, like dried up river beds.
“No woman has your eyes, two heavy yellow moons — or your passion for discussion. But you must tell me your decision. It is time to dry, brush, and bale fibers at the plantation. My brother cannot oversee this task alone.”
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