by Shamim Sarif
“It’s good to see people doing well,” said Rehmat.
“Yes,” said Miriam. Omar looked at her with a frown, but she hardly noticed, for she was watching Amina at work on the other side of the room. It had been some time since Miriam had seen her, and Amina looked different somehow, older perhaps, and more serious than she had remembered.
A waitress appeared at their table and left them with a set of menus.
“Her family had a big scandal here years ago,” said Omar.
“Who?”
“Amina Harjan.”
“What do you mean?” Rehmat looked irritable at Omar’s vague tone.
“Have you ever seen one of our girls with such curly hair?” he asked.
Rehmat looked hard at him from over the top of her menu.
“Are you saying she’s part black?” she asked, under her breath.
Omar shrugged. “So they say. From her mother’s side.”
He leaned forward in his seat and looked up at the wall above the front door. His sister and Miriam twisted to follow his look, and they saw a faded picture, carefully mounted and framed, of a young woman dressed in a shalwaar kameez. The setting of the photograph suggested that she was in India, and beside her stood a little girl with cropped curly hair, solemn and sad, barely looking into the camera lens at all. The woman—the child’s mother, Miriam presumed—had no such compunction, and stared at those who passed by her photograph with an air that was almost defiant. She was very beautiful, and her figure was slender, but she did not stand up straight; she leaned on a chair back with one hand, the other hand held protectively around the little girl.
“Who is that?” asked Miriam.
“Amina Harjan’s grandmother. Begum, her name was. And the child is Amina’s mother. Look at her. Doesn’t she look half . . . ? Don’t you remember the story?”
“No,” said Rehmat, studying her menu.
“She messed around. With the Africans. And she got caught out.” He shrugged.
Rehmat snapped the menu shut irritably. “And now, god knows how many years later, this is supposed to matter?”
Miriam found herself stifling a smile.
“After all,” Rehmat continued. “I suppose most white people in the world—maybe even some of James’ family—will sit there like you, all self-righteous, and tell me that my children—your nephews and nieces—are half Indian.”
“It’s not the same thing.”
“It’s exactly the same thing.”
“You don’t have any children . . .”
“But I will,” she declared, emphasising each word. “But I will. And in this place, in this horrible country, they will never be accepted as people, only as a mixture of colours.” She sighed and watched Amina as she walked about the back of the café, talking to the cooks and tasting something that had just come out of the oven.
“How can she live in this country? How can you stay in this place?” she asked her brother, accusingly.
“I was born here,” he said simply. “Africa is my home.”
“I feel at home here,” said Amina Harjan, quietly and with certainty, as though the truth of the words were somehow self-evident. She was standing now by Omar’s table and talking to Rehmat. She had looked over and nodded at them from afar, and her curly head had done a double take at the sight of Rehmat sitting there, poised and confident and well-dressed, such an anomaly in this community of Indians. Before long she had quietly steered their waitress to another table and had come over herself to take their order.
“Why? How can you stand it?” Rehmat was asking her.
“Stand what? I love it—I love the country, the space. I don’t know, I just feel at home here. It’s not like India.”
“Yes it is,” replied Rehmat, shaking her head. “It is exactly like a mini India. Our people come here but live the same way—keep their women inside, keep their children inside. And god help anyone who tries to fight it.”
“God helps me to fight it,” smiled Amina. “I don’t stay inside. And I think you probably fought it too.”
Rehmat smiled, but her eyes were sad as she looked at Amina. “I did. I fought it so hard that I had to leave.”
Miriam watched them both and then looked at Omar. He was looking at his sister as though she were a stranger. Abruptly, he stood up and walked over to the counter. Amina turned to follow his movement, and when she saw him talking to Jacob, she turned her attention to Miriam fully for the first time.
“Hello,” she said.
“Hello.”
“Do you still like koeksisters?”
“You remembered,” Miriam answered. “Yes, I do.”
“And have you had any since that were better?” Amina asked.
Miriam smiled. “No. Never.”
“Good, I’ll send some in a few minutes, they’re just frying now.”
“You don’t have to . . .” But Amina had passed over Miriam’s polite protests, and was already talking about something else.
In a few moments, Jacob was by her side.
“Amina, this gentleman is looking for someone to build him a vegetable garden. You want it? Or do you know someone who could do it?”
The women looked around to see Omar standing awkwardly at the counter, where Jacob had left him. Slowly, he walked back to the table.
“You need a job done,” Amina said to him, more as a statement of fact than an enquiry.
“Yes.”
“What is it?”
“I want a vegetable garden at the back of my house. Behind the shop,” he said, putting his hands in his pockets. “Do you know someone?”
“I can do it.”
The response seemed to unsettle Omar. “It’s heavy work,” he said. “Hard work. The ground needs clearing; there are deep roots everywhere. And I want a big space. I want to grow enough to sell, not just to eat.”
“Okay,” Amina said.
“I need a big area cleared and made ready for planting,” he repeated.
Amina smiled, a disarming, charming smile that showed her white, even teeth. “Listen—you are the one paying for the work. If you want me to do it, I can do it.”
Omar rubbed his forehead. “When could you start?”
“Whenever you want. How much are you paying?”
Omar hesitated. “Twenty shillings. There shouldn’t be more than two days work there.” Rehmat gasped at the poor offer and stared at her brother. “Omar!” she said.
“What?” he asked, defensively. “If I had a kaffir doing the work I would pay him less.” Miriam blushed crimson, and Rehmat shook her head.
“Two days of my time, or an African’s time, is worth five pounds,” Amina replied. “And it will be ready in two days. And I’ll be able to give you some cuttings from my own yard.”
Everyone waited in silence. “Four,” Omar said finally.
Amina looked at him and smiled. “Okay, four. I’ll see you on Tuesday?”
“I always come to Pretoria on Tuesdays. Can you get to the shop before I leave?”
Amina stopped a waitress and relieved her of the plate of hot koeksisters that she was carrying. She deposited the plate in the centre of the table, but towards Miriam.
“What time do you leave?” she asked Omar.
“Seven, seven-thirty,” he said.
“Good. I’ll be there between six-thirty and seven,” she said.
“Do you know where it is?” he asked.
“Delhof? More or less. Don’t worry, I’ll find it. It was a pleasure meeting you,” she said to Rehmat. “Are you here for a while?”
“Just ten days, then we go to Nairobi. My husband is lecturing there.”
“Too bad,” said Amina. “I hope you like South Africa a little better by the time you leave.”
“I like the country fine,” said Rehmat dryly. “It’s the people that bother me.”
Amina nodded thoughtfully, and Miriam noticed her eyes flicker upward and rest for a moment on the photograph of her grandmother.
>
“You are not the first one to feel that way,” she told Rehmat, looking back at her again. “I’ll let you have your tea. And I’ll see you on Tuesday,” she said to Omar, and although she spoke these last, deferent words to her husband, Miriam noticed with a sense of nervousness that Amina was looking at her.
Chapter Eight
“That girl is late,” Omar stated gruffly, walking away from the window with his jacket in his hand. “I told her six-thirty. Where is she?”
Miriam did not look up from the table, where she was simultaneously preparing the children’s lunch and trying to coax Alisha into finishing her porridge. She was tired—the baby had been up three times during the night—and the children seemed to be bursting with energy this morning.
“You told her six-thirty or seven,” she replied.
“It’s quarter to seven now. I have to go to Pretoria today.”
“I know,” she said, a little too quickly and curtly, and she knew at once that he was angry at her tone. Her head throbbed as she lowered it again, and went on with her preparations.
Miriam spread a thin layer of fig jam onto two warm chapatis, wrapped them in greaseproof paper and placed them into two small brown paper bags. Her husband still watched from the window, and stood up straighter when he heard the rumble of a truck coming up the track. The children welcomed the diversion from their breakfast and ran to look outside, while their father went through to the shop.
“Come here,” Miriam told the children. While Sam obeyed, albeit reluctantly, Alisha remained rooted to the spot, watching fascinated from the window as Amina Harjan stepped out of the truck and came walking up the stoep stairs. Miriam continued to fuss around the children, but as she did so she listened to hear what was going on just outside, and when she raised her eyes to glance through the door that led to the shop, she smiled to see Amina shaking Omar’s hand, as though she were a farmer or someone here on business. Her husband, she noticed, looked surprised. She listened as Omar explained the area that needed to be worked on, and then they came into the kitchen, to go through to the back where the vegetable garden was going to be.
Miriam did not look up at either of them, but felt very conscious of her own movements and the sound of her voice speaking to her children. She combed their hair and tried to hasten them outside.
“Hello,” said Amina, and Miriam looked up and nodded.
Amina greeted the children as well, pausing to touch their heads affectionately, and then she followed Omar through the back door and they were lost to sight as he hurried ahead to finish giving his instructions.
“Mummy, why is she wearing trousers?” asked Alisha.
“She works outside. She dresses for her work.”
“I want to wear trousers to work when I grow up,” the little girl announced.
“It depends what work you do,” Miriam said, fighting against the headache that thumped in her temples. “If you study hard and become a nurse or a secretary, you must wear a skirt.”
Robert put his head through the door.
“The bus is coming, madam.”
Miriam hurried the children through the front door, and together they walked down the track to meet the bus as it made its slow passage up the dust road.
“Mummy?” said Sam, looking up at her, wide-eyed.
“Yes?”
“When will Salma come with us to school?”
Miriam smiled. “Not for a long time. Maybe five years.”
“Five years,” repeated Alisha, appalled. “I’ll be . . .” She stopped to count, and Miriam looked down at her face, intent and serious. “I’ll be ten, Mummy.”
“I know,” replied Miriam. “You’ll be a big girl. Go on now, get to school.”
They ran forward to the bus, which wheezed to a stop before the house, and Alisha turned and shouted to her mother:
“But I’m a big girl now, Mummy.”
Miriam laughed. “Yes, I know,” she said, but her reply was lost in the noise of the doors closing and the ancient gears being engaged. She waved at her children as they were carried away from her, and waited until the last edges of dust raised by the bus were beginning to settle. Only then did she turn and go back to the shop.
Omar was waiting inside, impatient. He gestured up to the ceiling.
“The child hasn’t stopped crying. Where have you been?”
“Putting the children on the bus,” she said, going to the stairs.
“I’m going now,” he called after her.
His voice was angry, almost petulant, as though he were willing her to give him some attention also, to repeat the routine she had just followed with the children. She stopped on the stairs and considered, listening to the baby crying. Then she turned and came back into the shop, where she stood at the door and watched her husband get into the car and drive away. He waved as he left, a short unsmiling gesture, and she raised her hand in response, automatically and without much feeling. Then she went upstairs to see to the baby, pausing only to look out from the back window, and to instruct Robert to take a mug of tea and some bread to the young lady who was working outside.
Miriam waited. She moved up and down behind the shop counter, her hands passing in quick movements over the polished wood, neatening a display here, straightening a tin there. Her eyes flickered at irregular intervals to the clock above the door, and between these glances, she walked up and down, and fiddled with things, making a game of seeing how long she could wait before looking again. The time dripped by, until the awaited chime of midday caught her between glances.
She looked up once more at the clock, to confirm the news she had heard. Then she removed her apron, folded it, and laid it carefully on the counter. She smoothed back her hair and listened to her steps echo beneath her as she walked into the cold-tiled kitchen. At the stove, she lifted the lid on a large pot of potato curry, and stirred at the mixture. A few threads of steam snaked up, bringing with them a delicious scent, and she smiled. Onto one of the large, heavy plates she spooned a generous portion—the size she would normally give her husband—and taking up two rotlis from that morning’s stack, she went out of the back door.
Amina was nowhere to be seen. Miriam peered hard through the sun, over toward the place where she had been working—a large square of earth was already turned over and hoed, standing out in that landscape as a place that was being carefully tamed.
She looked about her, puzzled, and then realised that she had not been able to see the girl because she was lying down. Under the grudging shade of the only tree nearby, Amina was lying on the grass, sleeping. Her legs were stretched out, her ankles crossed; the fine stripes of her cotton shirt lay in soft folds over her body. The top two buttons of her shirt were open, showing the long line of her tanned throat and neck. Her hat was pulled down over her eyes and nose, leaving only the delicate bow of her mouth exposed, slightly open, and set in a half-smile.
Miriam halted and watched her for a moment—counted in her head the measured rise and fall of Amina’s breaths. She tried to decide whether or not to wake the girl, and glanced up at the branches above them, intently, so that the deep green of the leaves and the brilliant cornflower blue of the sky became welded into a dizzying glare of colour.
When she finally turned her face away, her eyes swarmed with red images, the sun lurking behind her irises still, so that she looked before her without seeing anything. When the hot blindness left her, she began to see that Amina was now awake, and that she was sitting on the grass cross-legged, her hat pushed back upon her curly hair, and she was smiling at Miriam, a smile that was polite from the mouth, but laughingly amused from her eyes.
“I brought you some food,” Miriam said, holding out the plate. The girl jumped up, losing her hat in the movement and, wiping her hands on her trousers, she came to where Miriam was standing. She took the proffered plate and thanked her.
“This is a lot of food,” she said.
“Working outside can make a person hungry,” replied Miri
am.
“Oh, I won’t have any trouble eating it all,” said Amina. She smiled. “It smells delicious. I wish I could cook so well.”
“Cooking is nothing,” said Miriam, avoiding the compliment. “All women can do it.”
“I can’t, believe me.”
“But you run a café.”
She waved a hand. “All Jacob’s recipes.”
“Then you should learn.”
“So my mother tells me.”
“Your mother is right,” said Miriam firmly. “What will you do when you get married?”
Amina shrugged and smiled, and held Miriam’s gaze for a moment.
“I don’t know. I’ll have to find a man who can cook,” she said, and Miriam felt again the laughing eyes, and felt the colour burning in her face, suddenly and unexpectedly.
“I’ll bring you a cold drink,” she said, and started back to the shop.
Amina called after her that a cold drink would be nice, and then sat down against the tree and began to eat.
It took a few minutes for Miriam to return with the drink, and Amina had almost finished her meal when an opened bottle of soda was handed to her from above.
“Thank you,” she said, making a polite gesture, as though toasting Miriam before she put the bottle to her lips and drank a long draught. She had to catch her breath when she stopped, and she looked up at Miriam, standing above her.
“Have you eaten?”
“Not yet.”
“Why don’t you join me?”
Self-conscious, Miriam wondered what she could possibly talk about to someone like Amina, if they were to sit down and eat together.
“You don’t like me do you?” Amina said, looking down.
“No, I like you very much . . .” said Miriam, startled.
“Do you?”
“Yes. It’s just that . . . I feel you must find me boring. You run a business and do so many things, and I am just a housewife and mother.”
Amina shook her head. “There’s no such thing as ‘just a housewife’. It’s hard work. And anyway, don’t you have feelings and thoughts and ideas and wishes just like everyone else?”