by Monica Ali
Mumtaz found her, leaning low over the sacks of rice in the store hut, staked through the heart by a spear. 'She had fallen,' said Mumtaz, 'and the spear was the only thing holding her up. It looked . . . It looked as if she was still falling.'
At the funeral Mumtaz said, 'Your mother was wearing her best sari. I think that's nice, don't you?'
After a mourning period, Abba took another wife. She appeared suddenly out of nowhere and Abba said, 'This is your new mother.' Four weeks later, just as suddenly, she went. She was never mentioned again.
'Your mother was wearing her best sari,' said Mumtaz. 'It's strange. It wasn't a special day, after all.'
She never spoke to Abba after that, not that Nazneen saw. She always kept back the choicest bits of meat for Nazneen and Hasina. She kissed them all the time, even though they were fourteen and twelve. And she talked about Amma, over and over, as if you could change something by talking about it. 'I don't know why those spears were in the store, and wedged like that. So dangerous.' Hasina always ran off when she started, but Nazneen just stayed and listened.
Razia moved to Rosemead block, two floors beneath the tattoo lady. Staying on the estate did not count as going out. Nazneen, on the short journey over from Seasalter House, began to strike up acquaintances. She nodded to the apoplectic man in vest and shorts who flung open his door every time she passed it in the harshly lit corridor. She smiled at the Bengali girls who chattered about boys at top volume on the stairs but fell silent as she passed. Razia introduced her to other Bengali wives on the estate. Sometimes they would call and drink tea with her. She enjoyed the company although most times she did not mention it to Chanu. She did not look at the group of young Bengali men who stood in the bottom of the stairwell, combing their hair and smoking or making loud, sudden hoots so that their voices bounded around the concrete shell of the building and rained down on her like firecrackers. In the summer evenings they stood outside next to the big metal bins and played with the iron shutters that should have kept the bins out of sight. They rattled them up and down or kicked against them, and appeared to find pleasure in these simple activities. Nazneen did not look directly at them but they were respectful as she passed, standing aside and extending salaam.
She enjoyed seeing Razia the most. Razia always had stories to tell. She was a mimic, a big bony clown. And there was no harm in her. She looked funny and she looked at you funny too but really she was kind-hearted. It took Nazneen's mind off Hasina when she went to visit Razia. The last letter she got from Hasina had been nearly six months ago. It was short and it was written in a scrawl, not her usual neat hand.
My sister I have your letter. It mean so much to me know you are well and husband also. Love is grow between you I feel it. And you are good wife. I maybe not good wife but is how I try for always. Only it very hard sometime. Husband is do very well at his work. He have already promotion. He is good man and very patient. Sometime I make him lose patience without I mean to. He comes soon to home and I getting ready for him now. God bless you. Hasina
Nazneen had written three more times, but nothing came back. It's the postal system, Chanu told her, maybe she doesn't get your letters either. It was beginning to eat her. Razia was a good distraction.
'You know the one – with the big puffed-up fringe that goes over to the side like this.' Razia made a dramatic sweeping gesture across her forehead with her big-knuckled hand. 'He hangs around the staircase on your block, even though he's supposed to be at college.' She broke off to cuff Tariq around the back of the head for pulling his sister's hair, then cuffed at Shefali for trying to grab her teacup. The children ran off to console each other.
'His father saw him in a pub with a white girl. He was just walking down the street and there they were in the window, drinking and everything in full view. You'll recognize the boy next time you see him. He has two black eyes.'
'These kids!' said Nazneen.
Razia smiled and looked sideways at her through narrowed eyes. Nazneen felt her neck get warm. The boys were probably her age, maybe a year or two younger.
'Well, Jorina's boy is in trouble. I heard that he drinks alcohol every day, even for breakfast. He can't get out of bed unless he has a drink first, and then he's good for nothing.' Razia shivered her large bony shoulders. 'It makes me fear for my own children.'
'But Jorina goes out to work, and you are at home. Anyway, Tariq and Shefali are so well behaved. And only very small.'
'Yes, but growing so fast. Did you see Tariq's trousers, up around his ankles?'
'Jorina has a daughter as well, I think.'
'Aaah,' said Razia. Her eyes lit up. She crossed one ankle over the other, both legs sticking straight out in front of her on the floor. She adjusted the folds of her sari. The folds were never right: too bunched, too loose, too far to the side, too low or too high. Razia would look better in overalls. Overalls would match her big shoes. 'She does have a daughter. You met her. She was here one day when you came. She had her school uniform on – maroon jumper and grey skirt. You remember? But she won't be coming any more. They have sent her back.'
'To be married?'
'Of course, to be married and to live in the village.'
'They took her out of school?'
'She is sixteen. She begged them to let her stay and take her exams . . .' Razia went quiet and knocked her shoes together. 'Anyway,' she said briskly, 'the brother has gone bad, and they wanted to save the daughter. So there it is. Now she can't run off for a love marriage.'
Nazneen put her hand on the radiator. It was off although there were icy patterns on the window. The room was almost square, like her own sitting room, with a door to the hallway and another to the bathroom. Half the space was filled with children's paraphernalia: plastic toys, colonies of dismembered dolls, a small and rusting bike, a high chair folded against the wall, two neat piles of children's clothes, an array of footballs in various states of deflation, a child-size wooden table covered in crayon scribbles. A single bed stood against one wall, and the other furniture crowded together beneath the window, so that the arms of the chairs and sofa touched one another. Tariq slept in the single bed, and Shefali still slept with her parents. There was space to grow. 'Three point five people to one room. That's a council statistic,' Chanu told Nazneen. 'All crammed together. They can't stop having children, or they bring over all their relatives and pack them in like little fish in a tin. It's a Tower Hamlets official statistic: three point five Bangladeshis to one room.'
'The heating's broken. My husband called the council but no one has come.' Razia shrugged and pointed to a two-bar electric heater in the corner. That's it, for now.'
'My sister made a love marriage.' Nazneen looked at the lacy frost on the glass.
'Wait,' said Razia. She got to her feet. 'Let me check on the children. I want to hear everything. So when I come back, you can start at the beginning.'
Nazneen told her everything. About Hasina and her heart-shaped face, her pomegranate-pink lips and liquid eyes. How everyone stared at her, women and men and children, even when Hasina was only six years old. And how the older women began to say, even before she turned eleven, that such beauty could have no earthly purpose but trouble. Amma would cry, and say it was no fault of hers. Abba looked grim, and said that was certainly true, which made her cry harder. And, all in all, it was a fact that being beautiful brought hardship, though nobody would think it, and it was sheer good luck that the marriage turned out all right. 'Her husband has a First Class job with the railway company.'
'Any children?'
Nazneen hesitated. Perhaps there was a baby. That was why Hasina was too busy to write. She might have sent another letter saying she was expecting, and the letter got lost and then she didn't have time to write again. 'Perhaps. Yes, that's possible,' she said, and wanted to add something more but did not.
Razia was not really listening. She sighed. 'It's so romantic.' She stiffened her back, then pretended to rummage in the sleeve of her car
digan and blow her nose. 'But when I was a young girl,' she said, making her voice hard and pumping out the words like darts from a blowpipe, 'we didn't have any of this nonsense. I only left our family compound with my mother and we rode in a palanquin. Four bearers carried us to the house of my mother's father. And it was a journey of six hours. If one of them had dared lift the curtain and catch a glimpse, that man . . .' Razia made a strangled screech and slashed a finger across her throat.
Nazneen laughed. 'But poor Mrs Islam. We shouldn't make fun.'
'Poor Mrs Islam, nothing,' said Razia, dabbing her eyes. 'So romantic' She got up because her daughter was calling from the bedroom. 'But Shefali will make a love marriage over my dead body.'
Regular prayer, regular housework, regular visits with Razia. She told her mind to be still. She told her heart, do not beat with fear, do not beat with desire. Sometimes she managed it, when she stopped thinking of her sister. If she wanted something, she asked her husband. But she deferred to him. Like this:
'The bed is so soft. Does it make your back ache?'
'No.'
'It is not too soft for you?'
'No.'
'Good.'
'I am making a sketch.'
'Let me see. What is it?'
'A plan for the house I will build in Dhaka. What do you think of it?'
'What shall I say? I am only a girl from the village and I know nothing of big houses.'
'Do you think it is too grand?'
'I don't know anything about houses, or beds.'
'What about the bed? Is it too soft for you?'
'It does not matter.'
'Tell me if it makes your back hurt.'
'It does not matter.'
'Can't you tell me anything?'
'I don't mind. I can sleep on the floor.'
'Now you are being ridiculous.'
'I'll get a bedroll. That is what we village girls are used to. Of course, when our child is born, he will sleep on the floor with his mother.'
'What? Are you . . . ?'
'——
'You are?'
'Yes.'
'Why didn't you say?'
'I am saying.'
'It's definite?'
'I went to see Dr Azad. Mrs Islam took me.'
'Hah. Hah. Good. Hah.'
'I will put the bedroll in the sitting room. There isn't space for it in the bedroom.'
'Nonsense. What are you talking about, bedroll? I'll get a new mattress. I'll fill it with bricks if you like.'
'Well. I don't need anything. If you want to get it, I don't mind.'
'It's settled then. What about a pond here – I'll just draw it in. And a guest bungalow in the grounds.' He licked the end of his pencil and drew. 'Now I have to get the promotion, they can't keep delaying. I will tell them, I will tell Mr Dalloway, "Look here, I am about to have a son. I am going to be a father. Give me a proper job, fit for a real man, a father." And if he does not do it, I will tell him to go to hell.'
One week later the letter arrived. It lifted up her heart and then pounded it on a rock. She did not try to calm herself.
CHAPTER THREE
She handed him his lunch, left-over curry between two slices of white bread, and he put it in his briefcase. He zipped his anorak and pulled up the hood. The hood was deep with a white furry trim. From the side his face was invisible. Front on he looked like a Kachuga turtle. She watched him from the window, green shell, black legs, scuttling across the estate. The tattoo lady was still in her nightdress. From the stump of her cigarette she lit a fresh one, keeping the sacred flame alight. She was fat like a baby. Her arms were ringed with flesh and her hands seemed tiny. This woman was poor and fat. To Nazneen it was unfathomable. In Bangladesh it was no more possible to be both poor and fat than to be rich and starving. Nazneen waved. Then she put on her cardigan, took her keys and left the flat.
She walked slowly along the corridor looking at the front doors. They were all the same. Peeling red paint showing splinters of pale wood, a rectangular panel of glass with wire meshing suspended inside, gold-rimmed keyholes, stern black knockers. She walked faster. A door flew open and a head bobbed out in front of her. It was bald and red with unknown rage. She nodded but today he did not acknowledge her. Nazneen passed with her eyes averted to the wall. Someone had drawn a pair of buttocks in thick black pen, and next to them a pair of breasts with elongated nipples. Behind her a door slammed. She reached the stairwell and cantered down. The overhead light was fierce; she could feel its faint heat even as the concrete cold crept into her toes. The stairs gave off a tang of urine. She bunched the skirts of her sari with one hand and took the steps two at a time until she missed a ledge and came down on her ankle against an unforgiving ridge. She caught the stair rail and did not fall but clung to the side for a moment, then continued down, stamping as if the pain was just a cramp to be marched out.
Outside, small patches of mist bearded the lampposts and a gang of pigeons turned weary circles on the grass like prisoners in an exercise yard. A woman hurried past with a small child in her arms. The child screamed and kicked its legs against the kidnapper. The woman produced a plastic rattle with which to gag her victim. Nazneen pulled the end of her sari over her hair. At the main road she looked both ways, and then went left. Two men were dragging furniture out of a junk shop to display on the pavement. One of them went inside and came out again with a wheelchair. He tied a chain around it and padlocked it to an armchair as if arranging a three-legged furniture race. Nazneen changed her mind and turned around. She walked until she reached the big crossroads and waited at the kerb while the traffic roared from one direction and then the next. Twice she stepped into the road and drew back again. To get to the other side of the street without being hit by a car was like walking out in the monsoon and hoping to dodge the raindrops. A space opened up before her. God is great, said Nazneen under her breath. She ran.
A horn blared like an ancient muezzin, ululating painfully, stretching his vocal cords to the limit. She stopped and the car swerved. Another car skidded to a halt in front of her and the driver got out and began to shout. She ran again and turned into a side street, then off again to the right onto Brick Lane. She had been here a few times with Charm, later in the day when the restaurants smelled of fresh boiled rice and old fried fat and the waiters with their tight black trousers stood in doorways holding out menus and smiles. But now the waiters were at home asleep, or awake being waited on themselves by wives who only served and were not served in return except with board and lodging and the provision of children whom they also, naturally, waited upon. And the streets were stacked with rubbish, entire kingdoms of rubbish piled high as fortresses with only the border skirmishes of plastic bottles and grease-stained cardboard to separate them. A man looked up at some scaffolding with an intent, almost ardent, expression as if his love might be at the top, cowering on the high planks or the dark slate roof. A pair of schoolchildren, pale as rice and loud as peacocks, cut over the road and hurtled down a side street, galloping with joy or else with terror. Otherwise, Brick Lane was deserted. Nazneen stopped by some film posters pasted in waves over a metal siding. The hero and heroine peered at each other with epic hunger. The scarlet of her lips matched the bandanna tied around his forehead. A sprinkling of sweat highlighted the contour of his biceps. The kohl around her eyes made them smoke with passion. Some invisible force was keeping them (only inches) apart. The type at the foot of the poster said: The world could not stop their love.
Nazneen walked. She walked to the end of Brick Lane and turned right. Four blocks down she crossed the road (she waited next to a woman and stepped out with her, like a calf with its mother) and took a side street. She turned down the first right, and then went left. From there she took every second right and every second left until she realized she was leaving herself a trail. Then she turned off at random, began to run, limped for a while to save her ankle, and thought she had come in a circle. The buildings seemed familiar. She
sensed rather than saw, because she had taken care not to notice. But now she slowed down and looked around her. She looked up at a building as she passed. It was constructed almost entirely of glass, with a few thin rivets of steel holding it together. The entrance was like a glass fan, rotating slowly, sucking people in, wafting others out. Inside, on a raised dais, a woman behind a glass desk crossed and uncrossed her thin legs. She wedged a telephone receiver between her ear and shoulder and chewed on a fingernail. Nazneen craned her head back and saw that the glass above became dark as a night pond. The building was without end. Above, somewhere, it crushed the clouds. The next building and the one opposite were white stone palaces. There were steps up to the entrances and colonnades across the front. Men in dark suits trotted briskly up and down the steps, in pairs or in threes. They barked to each other and nodded sombrely. Sometimes one clapped a hand on his companion's shoulder and Nazneen saw that this was not for reassurance, but for emphasis. Every person who brushed past her on the pavement, every back she saw, was on a private, urgent mission to execute a precise and demanding plan: to get a promotion today, to be exactly on time for an appointment, to buy a newspaper with the right coins so that the exchange was swift and seamless, to walk without wasting a second and to reach the roadside just as the lights turned red. Nazneen, hobbling and halting, began to be aware of herself. Without a coat, without a suit, without a white face, without a destination. A leafshake of fear – or was it excitement? – passed through her legs.
But they were not aware of her. In the next instant she knew it. They could not see her any more than she could see God. They knew that she existed (just as she knew that He existed) but unless she did something, waved a gun, halted the traffic, they would not see her. She enjoyed this thought. She began to scrutinize. She stared at the long, thin faces, the pointy chins. The women had strange hair. It puffed up around their heads, pumped up like a snake's hood. They pressed their lips together and narrowed their eyes as though they were angry at something they had heard, or at the wind for messing their hair. A woman in a long red coat stopped and took a notebook from her bag. She consulted the pages. The coat was the colour of a bride's sari. It was long and heavy with gold buttons that matched the chain on her bag. Her shiny black shoes had big gold buckles. Her clothes were rich. Solid. They were armour, and her ringed fingers weapons. Nazneen pulled at her cardigan. She was cold. Her fingertips burned with cold. The woman looked up and saw Nazneen staring. She smiled, like she was smiling at someone who had tried and totally failed to grasp the situation.
