by Monica Ali
'Just one thing,' said Nazneen. 'My husband would like you to come to us again, for a meal.'
Dr Azad took out a black armband from a drawer and motioned for Nazneen to roll up her sleeve. She watched his face, trying to read his answer. She saw that his nose turned up at the end: a sign of weakness in a man, according to Amma. The doctor did not appear weak. His hair was like a shiny helmet, cut short and straight across the fringe and printed with a circle of light from the bulb overhead. The flesh around his eyes looked puffed and grey, and the eyes themselves were neither penetrating nor commanding. But his mouth was firm and his position erect. He held himself like a man who knew his place in the world, and knew that the world knew it too.
'Blood pressure is perfect. Good, good.' He put the armband and the little tube with the pump back in the drawer. 'Yes,' he said. 'I accept, with pleasure. We have a conversation to pursue, your husband and I. We were most rudely interrupted by my patients. And I have some books to return. There's one I'm still reading. I have it in my bag. Do you think I may be allowed to keep it a while longer?'
Nazneen did not know about conversations interrupted and books lent. Her back was hurting. Even lying flat on the new hard mattress was no relief. She needed to urinate, and now when she urinated it burned. The rest of the time it itched. But what could be said of this to Dr Azad? Everything is fine, she had told him. She could have mentioned the back, but what else can a pregnant woman expect if not back pain?
'Yes, your husband has been to see me once or twice.' He paused. 'No, let's say three or four times. I have tasted your excellent kebabs. I have signed his petition. I have been lent books. And I have engaged in literary debate. All these are fine things, but everything in its proper place. I shall, let's say, pay a home visit.'
A petition? What petition is this? Nazneen had not seen any petition. She returned to Mrs Islam, who was slumped in her chair with her head lolling back so that, but for the fact that her eyes were open, she appeared to be sound asleep. Perhaps she sleeps with her eyes open, thought Nazneen. That's how she misses nothing and knows everything. It must have been Razia though, who told her about Chanu and Hasina and our troubles. She smiled a little at the thought of Razia, curling up her long legs and dishing gossip sideways out of her man-size mouth.
She was on her knees and her hands were flat against the mat. Midday prayer. Everything must be kept clear now. All the complaints, all the anxieties and lists that made up her life must be set aside. She could be grateful. She could flush her body and mind with gratitude. There should be no room for other thoughts. Although she could think about God. And the words of the prayer. Glory be to my Lord, the Most High. God is greater than everything else. And remember the baby too, because God would not want her to forget that. Hasina, also. Because she was grateful for her safety, for the letter safely delivered. The baby she could not forget because he was scrambling around her belly, looking for footholds just beneath her ribs. She could not get her forehead down to the mat. It simply was not possible. There was a special dispensation for pregnant women. If she chose to, Nazneen could do namaz from her chair. She had tried it once and it made her feel lazy. But it was nice that the imams had thought of it. Such was the kindness and compassion of Islam towards women. Mind you, if any imam had ever been pregnant, would they not have made it compulsory to sit? That way, no one could feel it was simply down to laziness. How did I come to be so foolish, thought Nazneen. What is wrong with my mind that it goes around talking of pregnant imams? It does not seem to belong to me sometimes; it takes off and thumbs its nose like a practical joker.
She was half annoyed and half relieved to hear knocking, and Razia calling out, 'Sister, it's just me. I've brought medicine for you.'
Razia was wearing a woollen hat that came down over her ears and sat in a line with her eyebrows. Over her salwaar kameez she had a baggy jumper with some kind of animal (a deer? a goat?) knitted into the front. Her shoes were big as trucks and battered by untold collisions. She kept the hat on, and Nazneen was constantly on the brink of pointing this out.
'Dissolve the packets in water and take it twice a day. It will sort out your problem. No more burning.'
'I'll do it,' said Nazneen. 'I've got something to show you.'
The letter was longer this time. It gave an address. Hasina talked about her landlord, Mr Chowdhury, about the job he was going to get for her in a garment factory, and about the ice cream parlour at the end of the road. She sounded excited, especially about the pistachio flavour and the little plastic spoons. It seemed she had not the least idea about the danger she was in (and she was in danger, a girl, a beautiful young girl, alone in Dhaka) but Nazneen hoped that Mr Chowdhury would look out for her. Mr Chowdhury would be responsible. A man with property will be respectable, Chanu said, she will be under his protection.
'I'm glad for you,' said Razia. 'And your husband is glad too, I expect.'
'He didn't want to do anything, and now he doesn't have to.'
'Men like to be proved right. We must go out of our way to show them how right they are. My husband is just the same.'
'When he read the letter, he said, "What did I tell you? Sometimes we must sit and wait."'
'Did he push his lips out and waggle his head like this?' Razia made a fat bunch of her mouth, and made her eyes wide.
Nazneen was not finished. 'He cannot accept one single thing in his life but this: that my sister should be left to her fate. Everything else may be altered, but not that.'
Razia leaned back on the sofa. She made the sofa look small, and she knocked one of the plastic headrests to the floor. 'What can we say against fate?'
'I am not saying anything against it.' Nazneen thought briefly of telling the story of How You Were Left To Your Fate. It was too long to go into now. 'I am just. . .' What? Angry with Chanu. But about what, exactly?
'You are just concerned for your sister. It's natural. And in your condition, things become more of a worry. You have to take care, and don't overdo things. Did you know that Nazma had her third on Saturday and he was two months early? I don't know if it's true, but Sorupa says that it was because her husband wouldn't leave her alone, and that made the baby come before it was ready.'
'Ish,' said Nazneen, narrowing her eyes at the thought. She rubbed her stomach, and pressed on it firmly to feel around the curve of the baby's head, or his bottom. She put her feet up on a footstool. There were three footstools now, and an extra chair. (This one had things growing on it, strands of grey, mouldy stuff, but Chanu said it was valuable, and when he had fixed it he was going to sell it again.) It was getting difficult for her to navigate the furniture now. They were both growing, Nazneen and the furniture.
'Anyway, it was a quick labour. Not like her first. That was thirty-six hours. Mine was twenty-eight.'
'When I was born, Amma thought it was indigestion. She said that some women make a big fuss.'
'Hah,' said Razia. She picked up one of Chanu's books from under her feet and put it on the coffee table.
'It's a natural thing, which happens to all women.'
'Hah,' said Razia. 'I'll come with you to the hospital. Next time I come, I'll help you pack a bag for the big day.'
'Amma didn't make a single sound when I was born.'
'Mmmm,' said Razia. She looked around the room, as if she had just stepped into it for the first time. Nazneen looked around too. A piece of wallpaper was curling back just by the window and the thin grey curtains looked like large, used bandages. It was afternoon but the light had crept away and the greyness of the curtains seemed to hang over everything.
'Did you know about Amina?'
Nazneen did not know.
'She's asking for a divorce. I heard it from Nazma, who heard it from Sorupa. Hanufa told her about it, and she got it straight from the horse's mouth.'
'I saw her with a split lip. And one time she had her arm in a sling. He must have gone too far this time.'
'Not only that,' said Razia. She
looked at Nazneen from under her curly eyelashes and Nazneen knew she was savouring the moment. 'He has another wife that he forgot to mention for the past eleven years.'
'May God save us from such wicked men.' And from ourselves too, that we should enjoy such stories.
'Anyway, your husband has not made you a co-wife. You have something to be grateful for.' Razia smiled. There was nothing feminine about her face, and with her hair tucked into her hat she could have been a labourer or a fisherman, but when she smiled her face lost its sly, sideways look and her nose seemed smaller. When she was smiling she was almost handsome. 'Any news of the promotion?'
'My husband says they are racist, particularly Mr Dalloway. He thinks he will get the promotion, but it will take him longer than any white man. He says that if he painted his skin pink and white then there would be no problem.' Chanu had begun, she had noticed, to talk less of promotion and more of racism. He had warned her about making friends with 'them', as though that were a possibility. All the time they are polite. They smile. They say 'please' this and 'thank you' that. Make no mistake about it, they shake your hand with the right, and with the left they stab you in the back.
'Well,' said Razia, 'this could be true.'
Nazneen turned the words over. This could be true. She waited for more. Razia was unpicking a thread from her jumper.
Nazneen said, 'My husband says it is discrimination.'
'Ask him this, then. Is it better than our own country, or is it worse? If it is worse, then why is he here? If it is better, why does he complain?'
These were questions she had neither asked nor thought of asking. She was in this country because that was what had happened to her. Anyone else, therefore, was here for the same reason.
'I don't know if he complains,' she found herself saying. 'He just likes to talk about things. He says that racism is built into the "system". I don't know what "system" he means exactly.'
'My son's teacher, she's a good one. She helps him a lot, and he likes her. My husband has a work colleague, he gives us things. Clothes that his children have grown out of. A machine for drying hair. A radio and stepladders. All sorts of things. There are good ones, and bad ones. Just like us. And some of them you can be friendly with. Some aren't so friendly. But they leave us alone, and we leave them alone. That's enough for me.'
'But the ones at my husband's work – they could be the bad ones.'
'Something else: if you don't have a job here, they give you money. Did you know that? You can have somewhere to live, without any rent. Your children can go to school. And on top of that, they give you money. What would happen at home? Can you eat without working? Can you have a roof above your head?' Razia took off her hat.
Nazneen squeaked.
'I cut it,' said Razia. 'I was fed up with it, all that brushing and brushing.' She ran her hand over her hair and pulled a piece around her face. It didn't even reach her mouth. She read what Nazneen was thinking. 'He didn't say anything yet. He just looked at it like this.' She let her mouth hang open and crossed her eyes. Her laugh was like a saucepan dropped on a tiled floor; the burst of it made you jump.
'He wasn't angry?' Razia's husband appeared to Nazneen to be perpetually angry. She had seen him at their flat several times, and once or twice in the courtyard. He worked in a factory that made plastic dolls. Such a big man, making little dolls. There were legs in the kitchen cupboards, heads on the windowsills, torsos down the back of the sofa. Either he brought home only parts or Tariq and Shefali were keen on dismemberment. She had never heard him speak except behind a closed door, to Razia, so she could not make out the words. Although he was silent, he had a. thunder in his brows and his mouth had a murderous set. So different from her own husband. Even when Chanu was ranting he seemed more bewildered by the world than enraged.
'Let him be angry,' said Razia, as if it were none of her business. 'Will it bring my hair back? I have to go now. Don't forget the medicine. I have to go, because I am going to college. I am going to learn English.'
Nazneen struggled to her feet. She reminded Razia to take her hat. She suddenly had a picture of Hasina with short hair, striding about in a pair of men's trousers and smoking a cigarette with bright, painted lips.
'Do you know why I'm going to learn English?' said Razia as she was leaving. 'So that when my children start telling dirty jokes behind my back, I'll be able to whip their backsides.'
Chanu, cross-legged on the bed. Bald knees pointing blindly at the walls. Stomach growing goitre-like over his privates. Hands tucked beneath the belly folds, exploring, weighing. Thin dark arms, a cluster of pimples over the right elbow. Shoulders that are slender, correctly held, almost graceful. Above, a round, plump face. On another man, such a face would look content.
Chanu was thinking. His mouth twitched. It slid over to the left. Back over to the right, high this time, pushing up the cheek, twisting the nostril, closing the eye. For a second, the lips relaxed, and then parted, stretched, rejected a word. The eyes took over. They narrowed in concentration, parted in surprise, squinted in evaluation. They made the eyebrows work, and they gathered the marching lines at the temples to do their part. If Chanu was awake, he was thinking, and his thoughts were written on his face. He is like a child, thought Nazneen, who has learned to read but must mouth the words.
'You see . . .' He chewed for a while, as if tasting his thoughts. He cleared his throat, brought his hands out from under his stomach. 'You see, Azad was implying a deception on my part, a fraud. Yes, he definitely inferred that a malpractice had taken place. That is not on. It simply isn't on.'
Nazneen handed him pyjamas. She slung his trousers on a hanger, without folding them properly, and put them in the wardrobe. He did not notice the dirty socks, the crumpled trousers. Her rebellions passed undetected. She was irritated by his lack of interest; she was pleased by her subtlety.
Chanu looked at his pyjamas as if there were something surprising or unfamiliar about the flowered material. 'But, you see, the point of the inserted clause was not deviousness but clarification. Naturally, I would be in charge of running the mobile library. Who else would do it? It was my idea, my petition, my baby, so to speak. No one could be better suited than I to bring the great world of literature to this humble estate.
'Of course, there wouldn't be much to start off with in the way of Bengali books. But I could go to Dhaka. To Calcutta, to scour the bookstalls around the university. On a sort of literary mission, I suppose.' He made a satisfied noise, as though he had just finished a meal. Then his face became animated once more. He raised a finger and his voice. 'But Azad said, not in so many words, that I had done something underhand. I told him, "Look, Azad (7 was there! Don't you remember? I was there, and you always call him Dr), I asked you to sign my petition and you signed. You agreed with the idea of a mobile library for the estate. I believe you used the word 'splendid'. Are you now telling me that if I am in charge it will turn from splendid to sordid? (No, you didn't. You didn't say that.) And I hardly need to point out to you that amending the wording of the petition was an act of correction, not corruption." And he kept quiet.' Chanu put on his pyjama top. He smiled. 'I think that says a lot.'
'When will you get it, the library?'
'Ah, it's a funding issue of course. The cost of a van, the books, petrol. All these things. Anyway, I haven't yet finished collecting signatures.'
'How many signatures do you have?'
Chanu made some reckonings, leaning his head this way and that. 'Altogether, I'd say seven or eight. But I am aiming for more. Do you think Azad will put out that copy in his surgery?'
'I don't know,' said Nazneen. 'Maybe.' She looked at the man in the yellow-flowered pyjama top, with his bald knees splayed on the pink bedspread. She looked up at the massive black shiny wardrobe and the gold zigzag design that you could pick off with a fingernail. She looked at the brown carpet, at the patch worn through to the webbed plastic that held it together. She looked at the ceiling light that lit up
the dust on the shade and bent shadows across the walls. She looked at her stomach that hid her feet and forced her to lean back to counter its weight. She looked and she saw that she was trapped inside this body, inside this room, inside this flat, inside this concrete slab of entombed humanity. They had nothing to do with her. For a couple of beats, she closed her eyes and smelled the jasmine that grew close to the well, heard the chickens scratching in the hot earth, felt the sunlight that warmed her cheeks and made dancing patterns on her eyelids.
'Maybe, maybe not,' said Chanu. 'Perhaps I should not get him involved. God knows what he will accuse me of next. A bald man does not walk under the bell-fruit tree twice.' He laughed. 'Although I am not bald quite yet.' He struggled into his pyjama bottoms without leaving the bed, then rolled onto his stomach and picked up a book from the floor. 'This is a very good book. Sense and Sensibility.' He said it in English. 'It's difficult to translate. Let me think about it.'
'Razia is going to college to study English.'
'Ah, good.'
'Perhaps I could go with her.'
'Well. Perhaps.' He didn't look up from his book.
'I can go then?'
'You know, I should be reading about politics. Nineteenth-century elections. But they make it so dry. You can learn a lot from novels as well. All sorts of things you can pick up, about society, politics, land reform, social division. And it's not so dry.'
'Will it be all right for me to go?'
'Where?' He rolled onto his back to look at her. His belly showed.
'To the college. With Razia.'
'What for?'
'For the English lessons.'
'You're going to be a mother.'
Nazneen picked up a glass from the windowsill. Yes, she was going to be a mother.
'Will that not keep you busy enough? And you can't take a baby to college. Babies have to be fed; they have to have their bottoms cleaned. It's not so simple as that. Just to go to college, like that.'
