Stealing Nasreen
Page 5
Over the years, their disdain for her sexual orientation turned into worry, then an uncomfortable tolerance. Connie was the first girlfriend they managed to welcome wholeheartedly into their home, a gesture of acceptance Nasreen had never expected from them.
The train is ten minutes late and when she arrives at Clarkson her father’s silver Passat is already parked in the “kiss and ride” laneway. When she was a kid, he had always been tardy, leaving her waiting in school and recreation centre parking lots after swimming or dance lessons, always the last parent to drive up. But these days, he is almost always early.
“Hi Dad, were you waiting long?” She leans over to kiss him on the cheek. There is more grey in his thick hair than when she last saw him.
“Nasreen, hello. I’ve been here about twenty minutes or so. But that’s alright, I’ve been listening to the radio. I guess the train is running late today.”
“As usual.”
“Where are your bags? Not staying over?”
“Nah, I should get back this evening, I have to meet some friends,” she says, fibbing, avoiding his eyes. “Thanks for coming to get me.”
“Arré, what is this thanks? You are my daughter, of course I would come and get you. But are you thinking about getting a car sometime soon? You earn well now, don’t you? Wouldn’t you like one? I can surf around on the net and do some research for you if you –”
“No, Dad, not now. Maybe I will one day, but I don’t really need one in the city. I don’t have parking anyway. Where are we going for lunch? Home or out?” Nasreen hopes they will go out. Neutral territory.
“I made some rice and a salad. I thought we could have that with the mutton curry I got from Mrs. Khairullah. You should order from her, you know. She makes good food and I know you don’t get much time to cook. I could get some for you and then you could pick it up when you come over next,” he says, checking his mirror before pulling out of the parking lot.
“Well I have been cooking more, I think I’ll be all right.” Another small lie spontaneously pops out of her mouth. She did cook more often when she was with Connie. She finds it hard to feel motivated to cook for herself now. “Besides, Mrs. Khairullah uses too much oil in her cooking.”
“She’s cut down on the oil lately. All of us have been urging her to change. All us Indian men have coronary problems, you know. We all have to be careful,” he says, solemnly. He turns onto the familiar tree-lined street. Nasreen notices the houses have remained more or less the same. On one side are sprawling bungalows and on the other are simple two-storey family homes.
“Yes, I guess you all have to take care of your hearts.” They drive up the black-tarred slope of the three-bedroom family home that now houses just one. Nasreen looks at her mother’s roses still in bloom and the ivy grown thick around the side of the house. Bashir gets out and pulls open the garage door, cursing the broken automatic opener that he is always talking about getting fixed.
“Have to get that fixed,” Bashir says, landing heavily on the seat and once again buckling up for the final three metres into the garage.
Inside, Nasreen breathes in familiar smells. The air holds memories of thousands of meals cooked here, hints of cumin mixed expertly with tumeric, coriander, and chili. People say that Indian cooking has a way of coating the walls and seeping into the foundation, rendering an Indian home unsellable by even the best real estate agent. But Nasreen loves the heavy aromas of home. Just beneath the spices is another familiar scent, subtle now, but still present: Fleur de Jardin, her mother’s perfume. She sniffs the air hungrily, taking in her mother’s faint presence. Nasreen scans the foyer and then the living room as she has done each time she has visited her father since her mother died two years ago, feeling both irritated and glad that nothing has changed. All the furniture, knickknacks and carpets were her mother’s choices and purchases and remain where she would have placed them, unaltered, unmoved since her death. Meanwhile, her father occupies the residence almost like a tenant, his landlady away on some kind of extended vacation.
“The food should be ready in maybe fifteen minutes.” Her father twists a knob and the burner under the mutton turns red. He disappears into the den and Nasreen peeks under pot lids appraising the warming food. She opens the fridge, looking for something to drink, just like she used to when she was a teenager, standing in the door far too long, letting the cold escape. Between thoughts of apple vs. orange, she hears a whisper of her mother’s voice nagging her to stop wasting electricity and so she quickly chooses the orange juice, shuts the door and pours out two glasses.
Bashir returns, a pile of photos and some sheets of paper in his hand. He sets the photos to the side and passes her the papers.
“See? This is our itinerary. I did it nicely all colour-coded. Did I tell you I bought a new colour printer?” Nasreen shakes her head.
“The dates are in purple and the cities are in blue. I listed some other things on this page, places I thought we could go after visiting everyone. They are in green. I want to show you around a little. See here, I want to go to Surat for a few days.” She looks blankly at him. He raises his slightly greying eyebrows in moderate alarm. “You remember, this is where we are from. Your great grandmother was born there before they all moved to Bombay.” She nods, looking further down his extensive list. “Maybe your Nani will want to come with us. She still keeps in touch with some of the family there and I think your Mamaji even owns a little house there.” Nasreen tries to remember her mother’s brother. She hasn’t seen him since her last visit to India.
“You mean Mamaji Murtuza?”
“Yes, yes,” he says impatiently. “After that, we can go to see some of my family who has settled in Ahmedabad. I think it will be good. You’ll find it interesting.”
“But Dad, all this family visiting? You know that bores me to death.”
“Don’t you want to meet the family?” She detects the slight rise at the end of his sentence. Family. He says the word like he would say God, Humanity, Trudeau. “OK, well take these as suggestions only then. You think about where you want to go too and then we can come up with a plan,” he says, placating her.
“I really just want a holiday. I need a holiday. We can go to some of those places, but I’m going to want to do more than just hang out with people I don’t know, who I am supposed to visit just because they are family. I’d like some time at a beach. I hear Goa is really great.” She looks up at him to see his crestfallen expression. He had been excited just a moment ago. “Anyway Dad, we still have a couple of months to plan this trip.”
They eat lunch and make conversation about her work, the new computer programs he bought recently, and people they both know who have recently married, had children, or died. He gets up to clear the table and passes her some photos.
“I have been meaning to give you those pictures,” he stirs the leftover mutton, taps the spoon against the side of the pot. “I didn’t know if you wanted them. They are from the last time you and Connie visited. By the way, do you see her at all anymore?” He stretches to reach a high cupboard and takes out a plastic container. Nasreen passes him the two dirty plates, then the cutlery. She studies her distorted image in a serving spoon’s shiny surface.
“No, not really. Well, I saw her last night while I was out with Mona, but we didn’t really talk to each other.” She hears the fridge door open, then close.
“Mona, how is she? Is she doing well?” She nods at him and he continues, “You know, I don’t really understand. Maybe it is not for me to know everything, but you never told me what happened. I thought that you and Connie were serious about each other,” his face is strained, and she thinks that he is likely trying to choose his words carefully. “Although I like her very much – she is a nice girl – it’s just that I wasn’t really sure if this kind of thing could be permanent, and –”
“It could have been permanent,” Nasre
en blurts out, her voice louder than she wants it to sound. “I thought that it would be. Anyway, the reason we broke up is pretty much the same as why any heterosexual couple breaks up.” She feels her face flushing, “we didn’t break up because we were two women.”
“OK, OK, that’s not what I meant. I just didn’t know if she would be, you know, committed to you, like in a marriage.” He slides his hands into the big lobster-paw oven mitts he and her mother bought a few summers ago in Halifax. He lifts the mutton pot off the stove.
“Well it turned out she wasn’t committed,” she feels her voice squeaking, her throat drying up. Nasreen picks up a photo from the top of the stack. She and Connie stand together, not smiling, their eyes red from her father’s flash. It had not been a good time for them. They argued a lot back then and she remembers they’d had a huge fight on the way over to her father’s house that day. Connie threatened to abandon Nasreen at the Port Credit stop while the other GO train passengers looked on, curious, interested in the entertainment they were providing. In the end, they both calmed down, Connie stayed on the train and Nasreen was relieved. She wouldn’t have known how to explain Connie’s absence to her father. That was just a few weeks before they broke up. Nasreen recalls that on the way back home, they argued again, that time about how Connie was never at home. Connie defended herself with excuses about work deadlines that Nasreen believed, more or less.
“I thought she was committed. She said she was. I couldn’t believe that she would cheat and lie and then leave me.” Tears drip down her face. She looks up at Bashir, “I never thought she would leave me. I was prepared to work it out, even after she told me she was cheating. The truth is she left me, packed up everything in a couple of hours and moved out the next day. You know, I told everyone that I threw her out. I just couldn’t believe she’d ever leave, Dad.” Bashir puts his arms around his daughter, holds her tightly, not sure what to say, but pretty sure that he should not let her go just yet. He mumbles into her ear, “I know, I know. It will be OK.”
And does he know? Does he have any real understanding of what his lesbian daughter is going through? How does he cross the vast expanse of his middle-aged Indian experience to join with hers? Bashir holds his daughter as he did when she was a small child. When she fell off her bicycle after he took off the training wheels. Or when she wasn’t invited to a classmate’s birthday party when she was ten. He could ease those pains with a few caresses and kind words. Those were easy wounds to heal.
He feels her heart beating against his chest and thinks about his own fractured core. He does know. He knows what it means to be left. He knows what it means when a promise of a life together is broken. When marriage vows are torn to shreds by the lying, lecherous powers of disease. He knows betrayal. As his daughter cries hot tears on his neck, he rubs her back with his lobster oven-mitted hands while shouldering his own grief. “There, there, don’t cry now,” is all that he manages to say.
Chapter 4
SHAFFIQ WAKES EARLY TO Salma fishing through their closet, the clink-clink of the wire hangers knocking each other. Half-asleep, his brain groggily works to identify the sounds. He opens one sticky eye and sees Salma pull out a blue ridah still wrapped in Blue Dove Dry Cleaner’s thin plastic. Salma takes liberties to have many of their clothes cleaned while her supervisor is away and now half the closet is filled with the soft plastic-sheathed clothing. He watches as she holds the full-length garment out in front of her, studying it at arms-length. She rips the plastic away and it swishes softly to the floor.
“Why are you taking that out?” Shaffiq mumbles in his just-awake voice.
“Oh, you are up. Sorry to wake you. It’s still early. Go back to sleep.”
“It’s OK. It’s Saturday right? I don’t have to work today. Why are you taking out your ridah?”
“Asima Aunty asked me to go for prayers with her this week. I thought I’d go this time.” Asima has become a little more religious and conservative each of the thirty years she has lived in Canada. Salma and Shaffiq have often made fun of her, joking about how she is more Indian than their family in Bombay. It is as though she has crystallized her memory of life in the ’70s and tried to recreate it in the present. She is always urging Salma to go to the mosque with her, to “keep up the old ways.”
Shaffiq stretches and yawns. “Is it a special occasion or something? No. Eid isn’t for another couple of months.”
“I thought I’d go and maybe meet some of the other women. I need to make some friends, Shaffiq.”
“But at the masjid? What do you have in common with those ridah ladies? I thought you hated wearing that thing.”
“Well, we’ll see. I’m going to keep an open mind. Maybe it is good for the girls if they go, too. And this ridah isn’t so bad. Just like a long dress, no?”
“A long hooded shroud that covers over your pretty hair and everything else.” He leers at her from the bed.
“Well, then you should be glad that I’m wearing it. This way I only share my beauty with you,” she says, smiling down at him. “Isn’t that what you men want? Hmm?”
“I have an idea. Why don’t you take all your clothes off, put on that “long dress” and then come to bed with me?” His sacrilegious eyes flash mischief.
“Arré?” she says, rubbing a small stain near the ridah’s hem, “and mess up this ridah before going to mosque? I can only sneak so many free dry cleanings, Shaffiq,” she says, walking out of the bedroom. Shaffiq sighs, checks the clock, and decides to go back to sleep.
He wakes later to Shireen’s expectant six-year-old eyes upon him.
“What are you doing?”
“Watching you sleep. When are you going to get up? It’s lunchtime already. I’ve been up since seven waiting to play with you. Mummy said me and Memsahib could come in now.”
“Really, she did?” She nods seriously, clutching her doll in front of her. Memsahib’s glassy eyes stare back at him vacantly. “What game are we going to play? Have you planned it all out, or shall I go back to sleep for a while so you have a chance to organize yourself first?” He pulls the covers up in mock going-back-to-sleep.
“No, no, Daddy!” She says lunging on top of him, “I do have it all organized. First I thought we would play going to tea with Memsahib and then we could take her out for a walk in her stroller.” She waves the limp rag doll in front of him, “See, she says that you should get up right now so we can have tea.”
“OK, Memsahib. Give me a few minutes to brush my teeth first. I’m sure we would not want to submit Shireen to my terrible sleepy breath, or shall we forgo the tooth brushing for now,” he breathes into the doll’s face and Shireen backs away theatrically.
“Fine, first go brush your teeth and then meet me in the tea shop.” She points in the direction of the living room, “it’s that way.”
“This way?” He points to the bathroom, his brow knitting in confusion.
“No, that way!” Her finger jabs the air.
“Oh, this way?” He asks, pointing out the window.
“No, Daddy! Thaaat way,” she shrieks.
“OK, OK. See you later then,” he laughs, his hands up in surrender.
As Shaffiq heads to the bathroom, he thinks about how Shireen’s doll got her name. Shireen has been an assertive, almost bossy child from the start and he and Salma would call her the “memsahib” when they were alternately amused with or irritated by her demands. “The memsahib is not behaving,” Salma would mutter. Or Shaffiq would say, “I can’t seem to get the memsahib to eat today.” Curiously, Shireen passed the name on to her favourite doll.
Saleema, three years older, is a different sort of girl altogether. While Shireen usually has her doll in her arms, Saleema is often found with a book in hand. Halfway through the journey to Canada, she read through all the primary readers Salma had packed for her. In order to help her occupy herself through the remaining ten ho
urs on the plane, Shaffiq had to convince her that reading books twice is more fun than reading them just once and to his relief, she believed him. Now, a bright nine-year-old, she reads even faster than before. On the way to the bathroom, Shaffiq looks into the girls’ room and sees Saleema there, engrossed in Harry Potter’s latest adventures.
Shaffiq emerges from the bathroom and sits down to his morning cup of dolly-tea. He arranges his bony legs cross-ways on the carpet in front of Shireen’s tea set and declares loudly, “such nice hot tea! Slurp, slurp, ah, so nice!”
“Daddy, no, not yet,” squeals Shireen, “You are so silly! I haven’t even poured it out yet!” She carefully tips the plastic pot over his miniature cup, then adds pretend milk and sugar. “There. Now be careful, it’s hot. Make sure you foo it first.” Shaffiq smiles obediently and looks up to see Salma watching the make-believe from the kitchen. She smiles at him then points to her own mug and raises a questioning eyebrow. He nods to her gratefully.
“Gulp, gulp, gulp, oh yes, that’s much better. That first cup was very weak, almost like air! This one is the real thing.” Shireen nods, pleased as a grandmother. “Now that I’ve had a cup of your tea, maybe now I will try some from Mumma’s pot?” Shireen frowns slightly, but then waves her hand, conferring permission. He reaches up as Salma passes down a mug to him. “Ah, this one is nice too, but I think if there were to be a competition, Shireen’s just might win.” Shireen giggles and hugs him, almost spilling the hot liquid all over his striped pajamas. Saleema walks into the living room and her little sister seizes the window of opportunity, “Saleeeema, come on now, have your tea. You haven’t had one cup even and I made this special pot,” she carries the cup over to her sister.