Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  'Good girl. Put it back now. No, give me your hand again. I was telling you about my husband. He left me alone. But even before he died – God bears me witness – he was no use at all. I do not know what substance filled his head, but it was not brain. He was Dulal, the son of Alal. Do you understand me? He was like a spoilt child. Without me, he was nothing.'

  She paused a while. She inspected Nazneen's face as she would inspect a mango at market, squeezing it gently with thumb and forefinger.

  'You have too much tension in your face. You should press at the temples, and the tension will disappear. If you don't do this, lines will come.'

  'I already have lines.'

  'Nonsense, you are just a child. You are barely older than my sons.' She sighed and then sucked on her teeth. 'They are no better than the father. God gave them only half a brain each. Worse than that, they do not know it. To know that you are not clever, you must reach some minimum standard of intelligence. Do you see? All they give to their mother is trouble. I thank God for giving me sons, but why such sons as these?' There was a wet look to her eyes and she blinked hard a few times. Nazneen pressed her hand.

  Mrs Islam's voice grew harsher. 'What they lack in brain, they make up in muscle. We must look to the positive. We must make the most of the opportunities God gives. I always find a way to manage. Don't make any mistake about that.'

  'Can I get something for you? A glass of water?'

  'When I am gone, my sons will be all right. See how weak my pulse comes? But I have provided for them. Not too little, and not too much either because why should they squander what I have built? I would rather give it to the mosque. I would rather give it to the school and let those who have brains make use of them.

  'Yes, I do all these things for my community, and I expect no thanks.' She raised her hand as if to ward off gratitude. 'If someone is sick, they come to me. If someone's husband runs off, they come to me. If a child needs a roof, they come to me. If someone has no penny for rice, they come to me. And I give. All the time, giving.' Her head lolled to one side. She had given everything, her last ounce of strength.

  Nazneen looked down at the parched, translucent hand of her elder and her better. She bent her head and kissed it.

  'From the goodness of my heart, I give. And when those who have received don't want to pay what they owe, they run off to foreign countries, and they say, "Why should we pay her? She's just an old woman." And so it is. So it is.'

  Nazneen went into the kitchen and opened the cupboard under the sink. She moved aside the rice pan and the frying pan, the colander and the grater. From behind the plumbing she retrieved a Tupperware box and took out three blue notes and five pale gold ridged coins. She took the twenty pounds to Mrs Islam and put it in the zipped compartment of the portable black pharmacy. Mrs Islam took her bag and struggled to her feet. 'Don't look so sad. When you leave for Bangladesh, I will make a big party for you. All my own expense. Just finish paying the debt, and then leave it all to me.' She walked across the room with a surprisingly light step.

  Razia wanted to buy cloth and Nazneen accompanied her to Wentworth Street. Market stalls lined the road selling leather goods, coats of every kind of synthetic, bright handbags on cheap chains, shoes that looked disposable, Jamaican patties, tinned food at 40 per cent off. They ignored the stalls and stuck to the pavement. Past Regency Textiles and Excelsior Textiles Ltd, cloth draped on wire hangers in windows, Balinese prints, wax-block African prints (with certificate of authenticity), beyond the 'exclusive' luggage of Regal Stores, past the untitled window where cellophane-wrapped blocks of fabric were suspended on end in a pattern of diamonds. They crossed the street and looked inside Narwoz Fashions. Yellow Rose Universal Fashions caught their attention briefly, and Nazneen was pulled into Padma's Children's Paradise (East End) by a keen assistant who offered 'special prices' on all the stock. Nazneen fingered a little baby dress, all plum velour and silver netting.

  'Something you're not telling me?' said Razia, patting her stomach.

  Nazneen let go of the dress. 'Of course not.'

  Razia perused the stock of Galaxy Textiles Ltd: Retail, Wholesale and Export at 70% Clearance Permanent. She found nothing suitable, and they moved on to Starman Fabrics.

  'How is Shefali?'

  'We are waiting for the exam results. If she gets good marks, she has been accepted at Guildhall University.'

  'Such a clever girl.' Nazneen examined a roll of raw silk, the colour of marigolds. She thought it would look well on Shefali. 'And Tariq?'

  Razia was bending over a cotton print, fine wavy lines of pink on a lemon background. 'Tariq is getting out more and more. Some weeks I hardly see him.' She laughed and tucked her hair behind her ears. The cut of her hair had grown blunter and blunter over the years, as if the scissors had become worn out with use. 'Now I have to start complaining that he is never at home. This is our role as mothers. Whatever the child does, we must complain.'

  The shop assistant, a girl of around twenty with a heavily powdered face and patches of mauve above the eyes, regarded Razia with suspicion. Razia was dressed in stretchy brown trousers that accidentally finished before her socks began, and a collarless man's shirt. The assistant hastily checked over her own clothes, smoothing down her outfit as if it might become infected with a nasty anti-fashion virus.

  Nazneen gave the girl a stare which the girl unblink-ingly returned.

  'Where does he go?' said Nazneen. She had thought and thought of telling her suspicion to Razia. But how could she say such a thing to her friend? And what evidence did she have?

  She had no evidence but she had a certainty that would have been overwhelming were it not for the fact that only a grain of doubt was needed to tip the scales. Karim talked about drugs on the estate. He knew a great deal about it.

  'See those kids down there.' He stood at the window but Nazneen would not go and stand with him. She did not want to stand in view with him. 'Those kids, they're all users.'

  She did not understand.

  'They're users, addicts. They're all scaggies.'

  'What it is? Users?'

  'They're all on heroin. All of that lot.'

  'Drugs.'

  'This estate is full of it. You got no idea.' He came away from the window. He passed close to her but they did not touch. They touched only in the bedroom. 'Some of them, right, twelve years old. Know how it got this way? Ten years ago, this place was clean, yeah? There was just Tippex, or gas – you know, lighter fuel. A bit of weed. Ganja. All right. Nothing bad. But then, what happened, this area started going up. And the City started coming out towards Brick Lane. You got grant money coming in, regeneration money. Property prices going up, new people moving in, businesses and that. And we started to do well, man.'

  He sat down at her sewing machine. 'That's the problem. That is the start of it. No coincidence. S'like what happened in America when the blacks got organized. Black Panthers, all that. You've got to keep them down, keep them quiet.'

  His phone was on the table. He spun it around. Nazneen traced the cords of his forearms in her mind.

  'The FBI – the Government – they got together with the Mafia, and flooded the blacks with drugs, set them up with all the guns and stuff, so they can just get high and shoot each other. Long as it stays in the ghettoes, man, they're not bothered.'

  Nazneen wondered if her English had failed her, misled her. She said, 'The Government gave the drugs?'

  'Know what I'm saying?' said Karim. 'You got to ask the questions.'

  For a while he looked inside his magazine. He rubbed his beard, cupped his chin in his hand and tested the bristles.

  'Not like they couldn't stop it, if they wanted to. Everyone knows the dealers.' He gave a short, bitter laugh. 'It's not hard. The dealers are the ones the kids look up to. With the flash cars and all the gold. But, know what I'm thinking? I'm thinking—' He shook his head as if it could not be true. 'I'm thinking as long as they're on the scag, they stay away from religion.
And the Government – it's more scared of Islam than heroin.'

  'Where does Tariq go?' Razia shrugged. She pulled on her long nose. 'Who can say? Certainly not him.'

  'Looking for something special?' The assistant's face powder was several shades too pale. It made her neck look unwashed.

  'For my daughter.' Razia removed her glasses and pressed her eyes. Nazneen saw that the seat of her trousers hung low and unfilled, her bosom had strayed down towards her stomach, and her arms strained against her shirt. It was as if she had been tipped in such a way that her flesh had run into all the wrong places.

  'What about this one?' said Nazneen.

  Razia studied the orange silk. 'I'm not sure.' She turned to the girl. 'We will look around.'

  'Right,' said the girl, as if she had thought as much.

  'These young ones,' Razia hissed in Nazneen's ear, 'they don't know about respect.'

  'That's what Ka—'

  'What?'

  That's what Karim says. He says that the young ones would do anything. If they lit a cigarette in the street and they saw an elder coming, they did not bother to hide it. They walked with their girlfriends. They even kissed, in the street, in front of an elder. There was no reason not to say it. 'The man who brings the sewing for me, he says the same thing.'

  'The middleman? The boy who comes?'

  Nazneen pulled out a roll of cherry-red cotton jersey. She took a keen interest in it. 'Oh, yes. Everyone says it.' She was aware of Razia watching her.

  'He has been keeping you busy.'

  Nazneen pulled the material. The stretchiness of the fabric was of great importance to her. Razia was making small talk, and Nazneen listened with only half an ear. 'Huh? Oh, plenty of work.'

  Eventually, she had to look up. Razia, expectant. Her lashes, enlarged by the spectacles, seemed like thick spider's legs. In the depths of her irises, gold lights played at an infinitesimal remove. It should have been possible to tell her anything.

  'Well, which one do you like?' It should have been possible for her to ask anything. But Razia decided not to ask. Instead, they discussed material. They spoke of weight and colour, texture and sturdiness, loveliness and ease of care. They pulled out roll after roll and failed to return the stock to its rightful position and the assistant clacked around them on her heels.

  All the while Nazneen counted her secrets. How had it happened? It was as if she had woken one day to find that she had become a collector, guardian of a great archive of secrets, without the faintest knowledge of how she had got started or how her collection had grown. Perhaps, she considered, they just breed with each other. And then she imagined her secrets growing like a column of ants, appearing at first like a few negligible specks and turning so quickly into an unstoppable force.

  She scratched her leg and her arms. Razia caught the itch and scratched also. Nazneen felt overrun with secrets. She wanted to tell everything to Razia – about Karim, what she suspected about Tariq, the truth about Hasina, the saga of Mrs Islam's money.

  When the assistant was at a safe distance, checking her make-up in a strip of mirror behind the counter, Nazneen said, 'We borrowed money from Mrs Islam.'

  Razia made an unfamiliar sound: she squeaked. In all the years she had known her, Nazneen had never heard her friend squeak.

  'What for? Why?'

  'To buy the sewing machine. You can't do anything without capital,' said Nazneen, quoting her husband. 'And we bought the computer.'

  'Certificates from here to here,' said Razia, stretching out her arms, 'but the man is a bloody fool.'

  'The thing is, however much we pay back, she always wants more.'

  'Of course she wants more. That is how it works.'

  'Yes,' agreed Nazneen, 'but how much more?'

  'She is a witch.'

  'I don't know. Whenever someone needs something, they go to her. She gives. She gave us the money when we needed it. And she is old. Her hip . . .' She trailed off, but felt that she had not said enough. 'Her hands are bad too.'

  Razia snorted and tossed her head. 'Hands are bad! The only thing that's bad is her heart. Look at my hands. For the past two months I have worked only on leather. Let me see her hands! Perhaps they would benefit from a little honest work.' She drew her mouth tight and made it lipless. 'When I was a young girl, I had the most beautiful hands in all the country, East and West.' She had Mrs Islam's new 'deathbed' voice exactly. 'People came from far and wide to get a glimpse.' She looked at Nazneen sidelong and a tremor of laughter crept into her voice. 'If they caught a sight,' the words rose on a crescendo, 'my father chopped off their heads.'

  Nazneen laughed loudly. The assistant looked uncomfortable, as though laughter were something new and unsettling. She picked up a piece of paper, a price list or inventory, and walked around with a pencil to show that she certainly had things to be getting on with.

  'But how much do you owe?' Razia grew serious again.

  'Around a thousand, I think.'

  'And how much did you borrow?'

  'Around the same. I'm not sure.'

  'And how much have you paid already?'

  'I don't know. It's difficult to keep a track, but it seems like we should nearly be finishing instead of just starting.'

  'Listen, you will never be rid of this debt. Whatever you pay, she will say you owe interest and fees and this and that. I know of one case where they have been paying for six, seven years.'

  'We have some money saved for going back to Dhaka. I don't know how much. Chanu has it in the bank.'

  'Keep it,' said Razia quickly. 'Don't let her get her twisted fingers on that money. I'll think of something. Leave it to me.'

  She decided on a length of ivory silk and a turquoise voile to make the scarf. 'I'll make it at work. It will be a surprise for her. I know she's going to pass the exams.'

  The assistant wrapped the fabrics in tissue paper, her little pink tongue poking out between her lips, as she made sure to align the edges. She named her price.

  Razia opened her purse and looked inside, holding it practically at eye level. Then she began removing pieces of paper, receipts, photographs, tickets and coins. When the purse was empty she conceded, 'There's only two pounds here.'

  The assistant stood with her hands on her narrow hips. Then she put them on the package and looked at Razia. She had seen her sort before.

  'Can you make a discount?' said Razia.

  The girl did not smile. She drew the package closer to her.

  'I don't know,' Razia told Nazneen. 'I can't remember anything these days. I thought I had forty pounds in here. Must have left it somewhere.'

  Nazneen reached inside her bag. 'I'll give you the money. I have some here. I was going to send it to Hasina.'

  But Razia would not take the money and they walked together to Sonali Bank at the bottom of Brick Lane, and on past the newsagents with the window stacked with amulets and herbal remedies, the Sangeeta Centre stocked with paper flowers, garland kits and Gloy glue. 'Do you know,' said Nazneen, 'Dr Azad told my husband, so many of our young men are getting hooked on drugs.'

  'Truly I am grateful to God.' Razia looked straight ahead. 'He has kept this curse away from our home.'

  'To pay for the drugs, they must steal. Dr Azad says that sometimes they steal even from . . .' she hesitated – 'their own parents.'

  Razia looked at her now, with an expression that Nazneen could not read. 'As I just told you, I am grateful to God.'

  They walked on past the Bangla Superstore declaring 'Dates from Madinah', the waiters who fished for customers from the restaurant doorways, and the grocer where all year round the window sign bore the sweet lie, 'New season Lengra'.

  The curtains were closed though it was not quite yet dark. The walls by the window held oblongs of rich light, neat cut-outs pasted onto the wallpaper. From the television came feathery rays both bright and weak. The tall floor lamp against the back wall cast light up and down and into the television, where it made a picture of itself.
Chanu's reading lamp was positioned on top of the trolley. Its yellow beam formed a circle which took in Chanu's book, his belly, his knees and some part of his papers. Nazneen cleared and wiped the table, working in the last warm melts of sun which soaked through the thin grey curtains. The girls, in their nightdresses, drew their feet up on the sofa, caught in the misty glow of television. And Chanu sat beneath the yellow light, his face filled with shadows.

  'Do you know that the British cut the fingers off Bengali weavers?' It was unclear whom he was addressing. Shahana stared hard at the television screen. Bibi looked from the screen to her father and then her mother and then back at the screen.

  'Oh, I went to buy cloth with Razia today.' Nazneen could not stop thinking about Razia's empty purse.

  'It was the British, of course, who destroyed our textile industry.'

  'Yes,' said Nazneen. 'How did they do that?'

  Chanu expelled whatever it was that was sticking in his windpipe. He coughed as well to be on the safe side, and then he began. 'You see, it was largely a matter of tariffs. Export and import duties. Silk and cotton goods had seventy or eighty per cent tax slapped on them, and we were not allowed to retaliate.'

  Nazneen had drifted. She straightened the dining chairs and shivered at some remembered pleasure.

  'The Dhaka looms were sacrificed,' said Chanu, 'so that the mills of Manchester could be born.'

  Nazneen came round to her duties. 'They were closed down by the British?'

  'In effect,' said Chanu, waggling his head. 'Not closed down exactly.' He put his book aside and placed his hands beneath his vest where they grew busy. 'It's like being in a race, where one man runs without hindrance, and you must run with your arms tied behind your back, a blindfold on, hot coals beneath you and, and . . .' He thought for a while and his cheeks moved this way and that. 'And your legs cut off,' he finished, and indicated with a chopping motion to the knee the exact location of the severance.