by Monica Ali
'Hungry?' said Nazneen.
Bibi nodded. She came and leaned up against the sink and shivered. Nazneen reached for the biscuit tin but Bibi pointed to the Tupperware. She ate with Nazneen's spoon, but only managed a mouthful. They spent this time together and they did not waste it by talking. They watched each other and Nazneen pretended to look out of the window while Bibi, who was too short to see out, pretended to look at the cracked tiles behind the taps.
Razia pressed her palms into the small of her back. 'You know what they say in the village – a woman is elderly at twenty — well, you are looking at an old, old woman now.'
Her hair was thick with grey. She wore glasses with wide black rims that shortened her nose but amplified the deep lines around her eyes. Since gaining her British passport she had acquired a sweatshirt with a large Union Jack printed on the front, and in a favourite combination paired it with brown elastic– waisted trousers. The trousers had a thick seam down the front, designed to look like a sharp crease. She held out her hands to Nazneen. 'See the joints. Arthritis.' She returned the hands to press against the ache. 'And my back is killing. Sewing all day and all day. Children take the money, I get the arthritis.'
'Everyone gets a little creak in their bones,' said Nazneen. She circled her shoulders to show she was not exempt. 'You are not so old.'
'Eh-hrerm,' said Razia, pretending to clear her throat. 'Eh-eh-hrerm.' She waggled her head and rolled her lips up and around. 'Azraeel is at the door. How can you deny it? This woman is old. This is an old woman.'
Nazneen laughed. 'My husband, you are always right.'
Razia laughed her metallic laugh. No matter how often she heard it, the sudden clang always startled Nazneen. She looked round now to see if the door was closed. The girls were in their bedroom attending to homework, and she did not want them to hear Razia poking fun at their father.
'A serious thing, though, the business with the machine work. Ruins the hands, the back, the eyes.' Razia shrugged. The Union Jack rippled. 'I don't care. What else is this body for? I'm just using it up now for my children. Only thing I care about is they don't have to do this same thing as me. Making a nice home as well. New chairs, new sofa, no more second-hand toothbrush for my kids. This is what I'm working for.'
'Tariq is enjoying his J77'
'It's OK-Ma,' said Razia, in English. 'Everything, all the time "OK-Ma". Boy thinks I'm called "OK-Ma".'
'How long must he study?'
'Another two, three years. What do I know? Ask your husband how long the boy must study. Depends how long is the wall and how big is the certificate.'
Nazneen giggled. She wondered briefly, through her giggles, if she should really allow Razia to be so free about her husband. And then the giggles got up her nose and she snorted and kicked her legs and fell sideways on the sofa against her friend.
'Yes,' said Razia. 'If the certificates don't fill the wall, his backside is going to be whipped.'
'Enough,' said Nazneen, wiping her eyes. She got herself straight.
'I just hope he fills it up damn quick because all of it is costing arms and legs. However much money I give, he always needs more. "Can I have twenty pounds for textbooks, Ma?" I just gave twenty pounds only the day before. I told him, in the village – one textbook between five children. "OK-Ma. Can I have twenty pounds?"'
'They need the books for studying. What can you do?'
'Not just books. This thing and that thing for computer. Disk and drive and pad and all sorts.' Razia crossed an ankle over her knee and held on to the lumpy shoe. She was quiet, and for a moment Nazneen stopped seeing her friend and looked at the crumpled woman with the arthritic hands and the uncared-for face.
'He is a good boy,' said Nazneen.
'Oh, yes. Good boy. Loves his OK-Ma. But sometimes I worry that he studies too hard. So quiet. Always in his room. I tell him to go out and see friends. And he tells me OK-Ma and goes back in his room.'
'Shefali has her exams soon?'
Razia leaned back hard and dug around in her trouser pockets. She pulled out a packet of Silk Cut and a disposable lighter. It was a new thing, and final confirmation to Chanu that Razia was of irredeemably low stock. Nazneen began to think of air freshener and whether Chanu would be back before her friend left. Razia lit up and light grey trails from her nose mingled with the fibrous grey of her hair.
'Yes. Then she wants a Year Off.' She spoke the words as if they were two turds dangling from the end of a stick.
'What is it?' asked Nazneen. 'Year Off?'
'Before going to university. She wants to spend one year doing nothing.'
But Year Off had an official ring to it and Nazneen knew that she had not yet understood. 'What sort of nothing?'
Razia put her cigarette on the orange-legged, glass-topped table and held out flat palms. 'See this left hand – nothing on it. See this right hand – nothing on it. Now, tell me how is one nothing different from one other nothing?'
'Oh,' said Nazneen. 'The cigarette.' It had rolled from the table and was burning on the green and purple rug.
'Shit. Your rug is spoiled.'
'I don't know,' said Nazneen. 'If a rug is already green and purple, it is very hard to say it is spoiled.'
The girls were brushing their teeth when Chanu got home. He staggered down the hallway and dropped a large cardboard box at his feet. He wriggled out of the straps of a canvas bag that was slung across his shoulders and swung it down. It dislodged another large chunk of plaster from the wall. The dust settled on Chanu's hair.
He slapped his hands together a few times, the way a man might if he has finished his tasks and is waiting for praise. 'Here,' he said, still trying to catch his breath. 'Don't I always do as you ask? I got it.' He beamed at Nazneen. The girls stuck their heads out from the bathroom. 'Come on,' he called to them. 'See what I have got for your mother.'
The girls came out in their nightdresses and stood close to Nazneen. They smelled of toothpaste and soap powder and the unvarnished scent of small, clean bodies. Nazneen could think of no excuse to grab them now and kiss their shining heads.
'You know, when I married your mother I thought I was getting a simple girl from the village and she would give me no trouble.' He was playing the fool for them. Rolling his eyes and puffing his cheeks. 'But she is the boss woman now. Anything she says, your father goes running off and does it. Look. Look inside the box.'
The girls moved forward together. Bibi began pulling at the brown tape. Shahana pushed her aside and took charge. Suddenly both girls were ripping at the cardboard, plunging arms inside and squealing.
'Ah, wait. Let your mother see.'
Nazneen came close and squatted beside the box. Inside there was a sewing machine and a tangle of wire.
'Birthday present,' said Chanu.
It was not her birthday.
'Early birthday present.'
'It is what I wanted.'
They never celebrated their own birthdays, only the girls'.
'Let's try it,' said Bibi.
Chanu bent down and unzipped the large canvas bag. It contained a computer.
'Is it your birthday present?' asked Bibi.
'That's it.' He was delighted. 'That's what it is.'
They put the computer on the dining table and the sewing machine next to it. Thread was found and pieces of cloth. Nazneen broke one needle, Chanu fitted another and she sewed a dish towel to a cloth that she used to wipe the floor. 'It is lucky for your mother,' Chanu told the girls, 'that I am an educated man.'
Shahana sewed a hem on a pillowcase. Bibi had a turn but could not manage the foot tread and the needle at the same time. She held the cloth steady while Shahana took another turn. Then Chanu found the setting for zigzag stitches and made patterns on a pair of old underpants. Nazneen wiped the pale green casing although the only marks on it were tiny worn-in scratches that could not be removed. The machine had become a little warm from its exertions and she felt it should rest.
'The c
omputer,' cried Bibi.
'Let me do it,' said Chanu as the girls pressed up to the screen. There was much plugging and replugging and poking of buttons before the screen began to burr and turn slowly from black to grey to blue. All the time Chanu kept up an informative commentary. You see. This is what is called. This wire goes in the. Must never touch any. I'll show you how the. Shahana twisted her arms up in the loose fabric of her nightdress. She wanted to tell her father to take off his coat. Nazneen stopped her with a pleading look. These gay moods came rarely enough.
Bibi listened intently to her father as if she would be tested later. The unfinished sentences were quizzes and she might be called upon to supply the missing words.
Chanu sat down and began to type. He examined the keyboard closely before each stroke, putting his face right down by the letters as though something valuable had slipped between the cracks. Minutes later he had completed a sentence. The girls pushed up to take a look. It was long past bedtime.
Bibi read it out. ' "Dear Sir, I am writing to inform you.'"
'It all comes back so quickly,' said Chanu, in English. His cheeks were red with pleasure.
Nazneen began to wonder about the money. Where did he get the money? She decided not to think about it.
Shahana walked away and Nazneen followed her into the girls' room. She was sitting at her desk. Chanu had built them a desk each from a length of kitchen work surface he found in a skip. He had put shelves over their beds to hold schoolbooks but no amount of nails or glue or swearing could keep them on the walls and finally the girls, a little wiser and a little more bruised, had refused to sleep beneath them. The wood sat on the floor under the desks and the books were piled on top.
Nazneen stood behind her daughter and stroked her hair.
'We are not allowed to speak English in this house,' said Shahana, transgressing at top volume.
There was always this tension between them. They could never get over their disappointments. If Shahana had been a boy, would it be different? Bibi he barely noticed. He talked to her, but how surprised he would be if answers started coming back.
'And we are always keeping to the rule?' said Nazneen.
'But it's his stupid rule in the first place!'
'I know,' said Nazneen.
When Chanu went out the girls frequently switched languages. Nazneen let it pass. Perhaps even encouraged it.
Years ago, before even Raqib was born, Razia had attempted to transfer the fruits of her Community Education classes to Nazneen. But they were delicate items, easily bruised. 'I need a help with filling form.' She had practised it about one hundred times a day. So far, she had found no use for it.
Over the last decade and a half she had gleaned vocabulary here and there. The television, the brief exchanges at the few non-Bengali shops she entered, the dentist, the doctor, teachers at the girls' schools. But it was the girls who taught her. Without lessons, textbooks or Razia's 'key phrases'. Their method was simple: they demanded to be understood.
Nazneen went back to Bengali. 'When I was first married, I wanted to go to college to learn English. But your father said there was no need.'
Shahana flicked her mother's hand away from her hair. When she sighed and her chest rose up against the white brushed cotton of her nightdress, Nazneen saw that breasts were beginning to come.
'And he was right. I know enough.' Her hand hovered above her daughter's shoulder. 'But when I was younger I was always worrying about everything.'
Shahana turned round. Her eyes, mouth, nose pinched up. 'So what? What are you talking about? What do I care? I hate him. I hate him.' She jumped up and clenched her arms and teeth. And she kicked her mother's shins with her little soft feet.
Two weeks was enough to learn all the features. She mastered basting stitch, hemming, button-holing and gathering. Razia came to supervise and set homework. Nazneen put in zips, flew through seams. She stay-stitched the flabby end of Chanu's vest and understitched the collar on a doll's dress. No more broken needles. No more snarled-up tea towels. Every spare piece of cloth in the house had been stitched together and taken apart and married to another. To practise on a long length she took down the curtains and sewed them into tubes. They lay across the dining table like deflated sails. Spools of coloured thread sat on Chanu's books, bright flags signalling the way to knowledge. Nazneen bent to her task while Chanu read and tapped the keyboard, sang and muttered, remembered his dislike of chairs and got to the ground, remembered his stiff knees and got up, hummed and read, tapped and talked.
Today he had gone to buy food. Shahana, leaving for school, requested Birds Eye burgers. Chanu was planning fish head curry, dried hilsha if there was no fresh. Nazneen, with cloth reserves depleted, was unpicking the lace edge of an underskirt and thinking she would get a finer needle when a knock came at the door.
Mrs Islam was propped up in the communal hallway, Ralgex Heat Spray in hand. Nazneen carried the cavernous black bag for her and put an arm beneath Mrs Islam's elbow as they walked inside. Mrs Islam had surprisingly sharp elbows. Nazneen cleared the sofa and the visitor lay down. She tugged her sari at the hip, applied the Ralgex and moaned. She sprayed her stomach, inserted the tin into the sleeve of her cardigan and sprayed again. Then she sprayed a handkerchief and placed it over her face. It was understood that these exertions must be made in silence and a proper recuperative period be allowed. Nazneen stood by.
Although she appeared in no way older than when Nazneen was a young bride, Mrs Islam had declared herself to be in her dotage. The black bag, which had itself aged severely, was a pharmaceutical cornucopia – as if, late in life, the bag had found its true calling. It carried a stockpile of tablets, lozenges, powders and bottles. There were jars of ointment and packets of mysterious granules. And there were canisters of medicinal spices and a few loose sheaves of herbs. But all these were merely held in reserve, for emergency procedures perhaps. Whenever Nazneen was ordered to delve for a medication it was invariably Benylin Chesty Coughs.
Mrs Islam waved weakly towards the bag and Nazneen leaped forward and undid the de–stoned clasp. She handed over the bottle and Mrs Islam drank deeply beneath her handkerchief. During the past ten years, Nazneen could not recall a single occasion on which she had heard Mrs Islam coughing. Benylin Chesty Coughs was very effective. Sometimes, in an afternoon visit, she would drink an entire bottle and fall asleep for an hour or so. Chanu would creep around and speak in exaggerated whispers to Nazneen. 'Isn't it an honour? See how relaxed she is here. I knew her husband.'
The Ralgex Heat Spray she carried around. The smell, mixed with the mints she kept under her tongue and the sweet syrup cough preparation, produced about her an aura of the sickbed. But her eyes were hard and bright and her voice came like darts.
'Gold mine,' she said, removing the handkerchief from her face and casting a glance in the direction of the sewing machine.
'I have been practising,' said Nazneen. She sat in the cow–dung–coloured armchair and held up a gather-stitched duster as evidence.
'When I was a girl we learned to stitch by hand. We did not have things so easy.'
Nazneen, who had a bit of cramp in her right hand and was toying with the idea of borrowing the Ralgex, could only agree. 'Yes. It is very fast. Good machine.'
Mrs Islam wiggled her carpet slippers. 'Are you going to start sending the girls? Your husband said you would send them but they have not been seen.'
'Oh,' said Nazneen. 'Yes.'
Through a fug of Ralgex Heat Spray, applied to the collarbone, Mrs Islam said, 'I am a sick woman now. Very, very sick. Anyone can say anything to me. They know how weak I have become. You tell me "yes, they will go" but you do not send them. But to sick old women it is possible to say anything.'
She was talking about the madrassa, the new mosque school. It had been established with a generous endowment from Mrs Islam. Shahana and Bibi were supposed to go after ordinary school had finished for the day but Chanu forbade it. He raged. 'Do they call
it education? Rocking around like little parrots on a perch, reciting words they do not understand.' He would teach them. The Qur'an but also Hindu philosophy, Buddhist thought, Christian parables. 'Don't forget,' he told Nazneen, 'Bengal was Hindu long before it was Muslim, and before that Buddhist, and that was after the first Hindu period. We are only Muslims because of the Moguls. Don't forget.' And to Mrs Islam, he said, 'Yes, my wife will send them. I remember your husband. He was the most respectable-type man. One time we thought of doing some business. Jute industry. Import-export sort of affair.'
Nazneen opened her mouth to protest but Mrs Islam cut her off. 'You do as you please. I tell my sons – Mrs Ahmed always does as she pleases, I don't interfere. I tried to look after her son, loved that child like my own but she slapped me down and I don't interfere.' She took a swig of Benylin and a little red ooze appeared down the side of her chin. 'Only I can tell you this. A sick woman still has ears. If you think I have gone deaf, let me tell you my ears are good. I hear what goes on.' In her excitement she had half sat up but she remembered now her invalid status and rested with her forearms across her forehead. The bottle and the spray can framed her face.
'I will speak to my husband,' said Nazneen. She looked for a way out. 'How is your hip? Is it giving much trouble?'
Mrs Islam hitched down the side of her sari to expose a large, perfectly smooth brown hip. She grunted as if to say, satisfied now? 'My sons tell me to go for a hip replacement, but I say no. Do not waste a good new hip. I do not want to be buried with a new hip. God does not love a wasteful woman. Save the good hips for those who can use them. Give the money to the mosque and give me only a little for the Heat Spray. That's all I ask.' She paused a while and then said it again, more gently. 'That's all I ask.' Then she tried once more, attempting softness, the suggestion of fading, a hint that now – even now – she might be slipping from life. 'That's all I ask.'
Nazneen sat on the edge of her chair, within reach of the black bag.
'Open the bag for me, child,' said Mrs Islam, her voice still feeble.
