The Sound of Language

by Amulya Malladi

  “Marriage is the next step,” Kabir said quietly. “I have talked to people … my cousin in Lahore. Everyone is sure that Aamir was killed in prison, Raihana.”

  At the mention of Aamir's name, Raihana's heart started to beat fast.

  “He was writing anti-Taliban pamphlets. They wouldn't let him get out of there alive,” Kabir continued, though Raihana had paled and tears had started falling down her cheeks.

  Layla put an arm around Raihana.

  “Why is Raihana Auntie sad?” Shahrukh asked as he toddled into the kitchen from the living room where he was playing with LEGO blocks.

  “Nothing,” Layla said. “Go and play, Shahrukh, I will come with you.” She patted Raihana gently on the shoulder and followed her son into the living room.

  “You know Aamir is dead,” Kabir said and then seemed unsure of himself. “You do, don't you?”

  Raihana nodded. “Yes, I was told in Pakistan. And I knew for certain after I heard about Ismat and Assia. Aamir made sure I left for Pakistan. He sold the house and his truck and sent me with our neighbor's family. He was going to follow … I should never have left like that, I should have insisted we leave together.”

  “It was good you left,” Kabir said. “Otherwise you would be dead.”

  Raihana wondered if that would have been a bad thing. The urge to survive was strong and the urge to make something of her life; she also resented that she had to do any of this, that she had not died like Aamir and Assia and Ismat and so many others.

  “Rafeeq is a good man,” Kabir said. “A really good man.”

  “He has a wife in Pakistan?” Raihana asked.

  Kabir nodded. “But she doesn't want to come here. She has family there and she is staying with them. Not everyone has the courage to leave the familiar and come to a strange land.”

  “Is this courage or desperation?” Raihana asked him. “When they told me you were in Denmark and that you wanted me to stay with you … I thought that maybe you wanted a maid … I never thanked you for…”

  “You are like my sister,” Kabir said, lifting his hand. “Don't thank Layla or me for this. You are welcome to live with us, but you have to think about the future.”

  “And what is my future? Marriage and children and … what?”

  Kabir looked puzzled. “Your future is what you will make out of it. You will get married and Allah wishing you will have children. Raihana, you think too much. What is it that you want?”

  “I don't know,” she said. “I think once I pass Prøve i Dansk 3,1 will get a job in a beekeeping place. I can get a job, be independent.”

  “And then what?” Kabir asked. “You can't live alone, Raihana.”

  Raihana nodded. That much she understood. No matter how women lived in Denmark and how much she fantasized herself about living alone, she couldn't imagine living alone without someone to watch over her.

  “You can get a job and still be married,” Kabir said. “I know Rafeeq; he would not have a problem with that.”

  It was inevitable, wasn't it, Raihana thought, that she would get married. There really was no other way. Not one she could conceive of. In her fantasies she was one of those women on television reading the news. They probably didn't have to get married or live with someone. They didn't have to cook and clean and take care of the children. They could probably do whatever they wanted.

  Christina had said that it was important to watch the Danish news as it would help the whole class understand Danish better and also improve her knowledge of Danish life, culture, and politics. But the news anchors read the news fast and Raihana had to concentrate very hard to understand the women.

  She could never be like them, she knew that. She would never be that confident, that sure of herself or—could she?

  “Maybe Rafeeq can come for lunch sometime,” Raihana said, biting her lip. Layla had come into the living room, leaving Shahrukh busy with his LEGO blocks in the dining room.

  Kabir and Layla both smiled. “You will not regret this,” Kabir said.

  They were so nice. Kabir could have put pressure on her in a hundred different ways but he hadn't. She knew she had to get married. The women reading news on television were so far removed from her that they could be living on another planet.

  “How about lunch next Saturday?” Layla suggested. “You can make biriyani and samboosa and kheer. We will have to clean the house and the bathroom and … Kabir, let's go ahead and buy that new TV now.”

  Kabir nodded. “Yes, yes, we'll make sure everything is ready.”

  The television was old. Kabir had bought it used three years ago, when they first came to Denmark, and it was now time to get a new one.

  Raihana wanted to be excited about having Rafeeq over for lunch. By inviting him for lunch she had all but said yes to marrying him. There was no going back.

  That night as she lay in bed she tried to remember Rafeeq's face but couldn't.

  For Raihana the fear that came with going into uncharted territory, of going to language school and to Gunnar's house, had abated.

  Her Danish was slowly getting better but it was still a struggle. There were times in class when Raihana felt like dozing off while Christina droned on and on about the tenses. There were times she didn't want to learn Danish anymore.

  Afghans were going back home, they said on the Afghan news websites. Refugee camps in Pakistan were emptying slowly as thousands of Afghans went back home to war rubble and post-Taliban horror.

  “I wouldn't go back,” Layla always said. “I miss home, I miss my life there but I don't miss the fear, the futureless living. Here I don't worry about Shahrukh when he goes to kindergarten. He is safe, he will always be safe.”

  And Denmark was safe. Safe, white, and foreign. Raihana had been here ten months now and she was forgetting her life in Kabul, like it happened to someone else, like it never happened. But the terror of her life in Afghanistan crept up on her from time to time and found its way into her mind, scaring her once again, even in safe Denmark.

  Raihana and Layla decided that Gunnar should see a twenty-year-old movie, Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak, which meant from the day of doom to the day of doom. Since he had said he would like to watch a Hindi movie, Layla and Raihana had debated about what would be the best first Hindi movie for him to watch.

  Qayamat Se Qayamat Tak was the superstar Aamir Khan's first movie and one of the biggest hits of its time.

  The story was about two feuding Rajput families from Rajasthan and how the daughter from one family and a son from another fell in love and were killed in the end. It was a tragic story but one of Raihana's favorites. She hoped Gunnar would enjoy it.

  Raihana had learned a lot about the Danish man in the past few months. They communicated adequately in Danish and when they worked with the bees they did so in harmony. Raihana put the tools exactly where Gunnar would find them and he did the same for her. There was an intimacy in working together like this and now whenever Raihana heard the buzzing of a bee she thought of Gunnar.

  He didn't drink during the day anymore, at least not during the days she was there. And he didn't hide inside the house while she pretended to work in the garage. He came out and they went to the backyard together. Taking care of forty colonies of bees was not easy and since Raihana suspected that Gunnar did no work on the days she didn't come, there was all the more to do when she was there.

  Raihana was eagerly waiting for the first honey harvest. Also, at the end of June the language school would close for summer vacation until late August. The students could continue their praktiks if they wished and Raihana decided to do so.

  She had read about the harvest in the black book Gunnar's wife had written. She read the book now with less joy than before the scene with Maria. Every time she looked at it now she was reminded of being accused of stealing and of Maria yelling at her and the Danish man. But the notebook was still her best source of bee information and she continued to read it.

  According to Gunnar's wife, d
uring harvesttime, the frames would be so laden with honey that they would be very heavy to lift. The frames would be removed from the hives, loaded up into a small wheelbarrow, and taken to the honey extractor.

  The frames would be put inside the extractor machine and honey would slowly start pouring out of the machine. This honey would be stored in buckets and stirred often for a few days before being poured into jars, ready to eat.

  Gunnar had told Raihana they didn't really sell that much honey, not commercially. Most of their sales were from the back door to neighbors and friends. They gave a lot of it away to relatives as well, but during a really good honey season they would set up a sign outside their house indicating there was honey for sale.

  Since she had started working for Gunnar, Raihana paid more attention to the honey available in the supermarket. Usually Layla and Raihana and most Afghans shopped at Netto because it was the cheapest supermarket, but Netto had a limited selection of honey. If they wanted to buy different types, Layla and Raihana went to Kvickly, which was more expensive but offered a wide variety of honey. There was the soft-flowing acacia honey that Shahrukh ate in great quantities with and without bread. There was the creamy Danish honey. There was heather honey, which had a very strong flavor and which Raihana liked best.

  As reluctant as Layla had been about Raihana's praktik, she had also become a big fan of honey.

  “Will you be making acacia honey too?” Layla asked as they browsed the honey shelf at Kvickly one afternoon.

  “No,” Raihana said. “We don't make acacia honey in Denmark. It is mostly made in America and France.”

  Layla looked at Raihana in admiration. “You know so much about honey.”

  Raihana grinned. “Well, I'm showing off a little for you.”

  Layla laughed. “You don't have to show off; I'm already very impressed. So how about we try this chile honey?”

  Raihana examined the label on the bottle. “It's from New Mexico. I wonder how they make it,” she said.

  “You should ask the Danish man,” Layla suggested and put the chile honey in their shopping basket.

  Layla thought that if the Danish man was to watch a Hindi movie, then he should also eat Afghan food. So she helped Raihana make samboosas with mint chutney. Her help was, however, limited to peeling potatoes and grinding spices.

  Then Layla watched while Raihana made kheer with cream, milk, almonds, rice, and sugar. Kabir always tried to buy silver foil when he went to Hamburg, and since it was quite difficult to replace, Layla and Raihana used it very sparingly. But for this occasion, Raihana put a thin layer of the shiny foil on top of the kheer and it looked like something out of a cookbook.

  Now that it was obvious that Raihana's safety was no issue, it annoyed Layla that she had to go clean a supermarket while Raihana was going to watch a Hindi movie with her boss.

  But Layla couldn't really complain about Raihana's praktik because it seemed to make her so happy. When Raihana first came to their house she had been a ghost, hiding in her room, stiffening at sharp sounds, and not talking much to either Layla or Kabir. She played with Shahrukh and took care of him when Layla wasn't at home. Those first three months she just lay there most of the time. She helped with the household chores but she did it quietly and rarely spoke until spoken to.

  Once Raihana began language classes she became more talkative, less of a ghost. Now Raihana even had a marriage proposal in hand. It would be a pity if Rafeeq didn't let her work for the Danish man, but if he didn't, Raihana would just have to accept that. A wife didn't argue with her husband, not about important things such as these.

  To his surprise, Gunnar liked the movie. He liked the splashes of color, the singing and dancing and the love story. The Danish subtitles probably did not convey the entire message because Raihana was crying at the end and he couldn't dredge up much emotion, but nevertheless, he liked the film.

  The story was a lot like Romeo and Juliet. A young couple in love caught between their feuding parents, finally dying tragically for their love. The girl was pretty but Gunnar wasn't sure what to make of the actor who played the boy. He was a little fellow and didn't look much more than eighteen. Raihana said he was a big film star in India. He seemed like a good enough actor, Gunnar thought, but what did he know and it didn't really matter; he had enjoyed the movie and he had enjoyed the food Raihana had brought.

  “The family I live with and I think this be a good movie for you,” Raihana told him when he said the movie had been fun.

  “Is the family you live with okay with you working here?” Gunnar asked.

  “Jeg kan ikke forstår,” she replied and Gunnar smiled. She rarely admitted that she didn't understand what he said in Danish.

  “Do they like it that you work here?” he repeated.

  Raihana paused for a moment, thinking about how she could phrase what she wanted to say in Danish. “Layla is little jealous, maybe. Kabir think it is not right, but he does not say no to me come here.”

  Her tenses were still mixed up. Christina always said that the hardest thing to learn about Danish was how to use the verbs.

  “Why does Kabir think it is not right?” Gunnar asked as he picked up another of the pastries stuffed with potatoes.

  “He is Afghan man,” she said as if that explained it all.

  “And the other Afghans, what do they say?”

  “Not nice things.”

  Gunnar thought it was interesting that the Afghans thought just like so many Danes about their praktik setup.

  “It is sad,” she said. “I want to learn new thing and they say bad things.”

  “It is sad,” Gunnar agreed.

  He had never thought about the courage it must have taken for Raihana to work in a house alone with a strange man. He knew enough about Eastern cultures to know that they were very conservative. Anna would have been proud of Raihana. She would have helped her. Regardless of what Maria remembered Anna to be, he knew that Anna would never turn away a helpless woman who wanted to learn something new.

  “Do you like working with the bees?” Gunnar asked then.

  “A lot,” Raihana said. “I never work this way with bees before.”

  “I know,” Gunnar said.

  “I didn't lie to Christina, she think I work a lot with bees,” Raihana said.

  “You know a lot about beekeeping now,” Gunnar said.

  “Yes,” Raihana said.

  It was the longest conversation they'd ever had.

  As Raihana bicycled home she felt intensely proud of herself. She'd had a conversation in Danish. A real conversation, not something in the language school designed to improve language skills.

  But as she got closer to home she realized that she had asked him nothing. He had asked all the questions. She promised herself that next time she would ask him questions. What would she ask? What did she want to know?

  She wanted to know more about his wife. The woman named Anna who had written in that black leather notebook and had taught her about bees and Danish. Yes, she thought, she would ask about his wife. But would it be rude to ask him about his dead wife?

  She rehearsed her questions in Danish.

  How did she die?

  How old was she?

  What did she do?

  Would she have said yes to me working with your bees?

  But even as she repeated the questions in broken Danish in her mind and imagined his answers, she knew when the time came she would be too shy to ask him about his wife. Just as she would be tongue-tied if he asked her about Aamir.

  THIRTEEN

  ENTRY FROM ANNA'S DIARY

  A Year of Keeping Bees

  12 JULY 1980

  Only the queen bee produces queen substances, which are pheromones. I heard from a friend who visited the United States last year, and went to a county fair there, that some beekeepers tie caged queen bees under their chins to attract males into a “bee beard.” Gunnar and I wondered if they get stung and how badly.

  Th
e queen substance is a powerful love potion. It is the love potion's allure that makes worker bees flock to their queen and tend to her every need. Young queens produce great amounts of queen substance but as the queen ages, the power of her pheromones fades. The decrease in the production may spark a revolt by the worker bees who replace the old queen with a younger one.

  He was taller than Aamir. He had a very short and well-kept beard. He was darker than Aamir. He smelled of cigarettes.

  She had been Aamir's first wife. She wouldn't be Rafeeq's, though it didn't really matter. His wife was in Pakistan, his children were there, but his life and he himself were here, in Denmark. Many Muslims had wives in their home countries that Danish authorities didn't know about and so getting married again in Denmark was not considered to be polygamy.

  Layla had planned the menu and Raihana had cooked. Shahrukh had been told to behave himself and Layla crossed her fingers that he would take a nap right after lunch so the adults could sit and talk.

  This marriage proposal was very different from her first one. When she and Aamir married, Aamir's uncle had come to Raihana's father with the marriage proposal and her father and his uncle had bargained about money. Aamir had given a small sum of money to marry Raihana; her father had quibbled, but not much.

  But now they had no elders talking about the marriage, it was just them. It somehow seemed wrong to Raihana, and somehow it also felt liberating, like she could make the decisions of her life.

  Rafeeq had a stern voice, and even when he laughed it was a little harsh. Raihana knew she was looking for flaws on purpose. If this were Afghanistan, no one would ask her anything and she would have to do what she was asked. But now she had a choice. She could say no.

  “Mors is a small island,” Rafeeq told her while they were eating lunch. “Not too many Afghans. There are some Iranian families but that is about it. And there are some families from Somalia, I think, but I don't know them.”

  Conversation didn't flow easily at the table. Raihana wanted to ask Rafeeq questions, but she felt shy and stayed silent. Layla, like Raihana, was quiet, shoving a piece of chicken in Shahrukh's mouth and holding his glass to him when he wanted to drink water.