by Monica Ali
Nazneen was sitting at the table. She often sat now and it seemed that the less time she spent doing things, the less there was to do. Sometimes she would sit down with a thought in her mind – the fridge needs cleaning, for instance – and find that half an hour, an hour or more had passed and it was still as if that thought had just come into her head.
'Of course, I don't mind the Classical Music Committee,' conceded Chanu. 'But I will argue – and I have taken a short course in debating – that the Bauls are also part of our classical heritage, although of course it is folk music that they sing. I would even consider offering my own humble voice as an instrument.' Here he began to tune up:
'The mirror of the sky
Reflects my soul.
O Baul of the road, O Baul, my heart, What keeps you tied To the corner of a room?
'As the storm rampages
In your crumbling hut, The water rises to your bed.
Your tattered quilt Floats on the flood Your shelter is down.
'O Baul of the road, O Baul, my heart, What keeps you tied To the corner of a room?'
During the rendition, Chanu had closed his eyes. The girls got to their feet, stealthy as cats, but they did not go. Something in the song kept them. When he had finished, Chanu's eyes remained closed, prolonging his dream. Still they did not go. Nazneen thought, we are all tied to our corners of the room. This thought stayed at her breast like a sucking baby for the rest of the day.
August 2001
Betty have picture in newspaper for HIV Innocents. This has cause of grief for Lovely. Same page also have picture of Shafin Ahmed. Do you know? Is top celebrity of Rock Band name Miles. Lovely say Betty think she getting too famous now. She confide me also Betty husband have never stop her from get the modelling job but beauty standard in Chittagong not so high as rest country and Betty have never got any job whatsoever.
She say 'What can I do? All best Charity is taken.'
She walk around toss the head make you think many camera point on her. Then she get idea. 'I must start own Charity.' She suck on fingers and think for while. She say 'As a mother I think would be best to start children Charity.'
Betty is not yet mother. Lovely tell me she will start Charity for stopping the child worker. Which ones you will stop I asking to her. Oh she say all of them. The maid next door? I asking her this. She look surprise. But really she like daughter to them. The boys on roof who is now mend gutters sweep leaves? She look bit cross. That different she say. Which are the ones? The boy who come round sell butter? Lovely say are you washing that floor or not?
Something have bother Lovely too much. Instead lie down look magazine she walking around and around. Zaid say just keep her out of my kitchen. But she wander around everywhere. One day I helping her with dressing and she look in mirror and big big sighs come. 'I wish I wasnt beautiful. I wish I didnt have all this beauty and nothing to be done with it. I wish I was plain like you.'
Driver blowing horn and she go out take children for visit. When she gone I wander round house like her. Then go in guest room pull sheet down. Instead go out again I get inside the bed. This is such bed! Sheets all white cotton smooth and crispy. White lace on pillows. Many many pillows. Mattress hold me like lover. Few seconds I feel sleep will come but when close the eyes so many things I remember so long kept from mind.
I get up go in master bedroom. Sit at her table and present the face in mirror. It look like a stranger face to me. I take brush. Brush the hair. Take cream. Cream the cheek. Take kohl. Dark the eyes. Take earring. Dress the ear. Then I feel is someone watching. Zaid have creep up but he stay quiet this time. He look at me and I know this look.
Sister what shall I say? It as the poet did write.
My heart is not to my hearts liking.
I wish I knew
How to unite the two.
Some days she was so tired that she went back to bed, and the days were short and the nights were long. 'She is convalescing,' said Chanu on those days. Other days she was filled with a kind of brittle strength and spilled caustic words on her children and husband. 'She mustn't overdo it,' said Chanu on these days.
'I'm going to run away,' moaned Shahana. 'If he tries to get me on an aeroplane, I'll bite his hand and run.'
'Better wear your training shoes, then,' said Nazneen. And to Bibi, slack-jawed and watching, she said, 'Your grandmother was also a saint.'
When the girls were back at school, Karim came in the afternoon. His beard was thick. 'My husband will be back soon,' she told him. When he had gone, she lay for hours on the soiled sheets, smelling him. When you have fallen low, she told herself, what hurts is pretending you are high. She rolled herself up in the sheets and when the girls came back from school that was how they found her.
Chanu bought her an ivory comb. He bought a length of lilac silk with silver threads in the border pattern. She told him to take it back. He found a romantic Bengali novel and read to her in bed, and kept his interjections to a bare minimum of three or four per page. She told him to go back to his own books. One evening, he scanned the newspaper and discovered that there was ice skating on the other channel. 'Your mother is a fan,' he explained to Shahana. 'When she was younger, she thought of taking it up herself.' The girls knew he was joking, but they didn't dare to laugh. They made room on the sofa, and patted the cushion where she should sit. Nazneen looked at the couple on the television screen, the false smiles, the made-up faces, the demented illusion of freedom chasing around their enclosure. Turn it off, she said.
Mrs Islam came, billowing Ralgex Heat Spray and self-pity. 'Take it,' said Nazneen, stuffing ten-pound notes into her hand. 'Take everything. The righteous get their rewards.' But she shrank a little under the hard black eyes.
She began to spend time at the window, as she had in those first few months in London, when it was still possible to look out across the dead grass and concrete and see nothing but jade-green fields, unable to imagine that the years would rub them away. Now she saw only the flats, piles of people loaded one on top of the other, a vast dump of people rotting away under a mean strip of sky, too small to reflect all those souls. She lowered the net curtain and watched the groups of boys who drove endlessly around the estate, even on the parts where cars were not supposed to go. There were faces she did not recognize. They got out of their cars and approached other cars. They formed in fours and fives and got back in their cars. They carried an air of violence with them, like a sort of breeding, good or bad, without ever displaying it. Sometimes she saw Tariq. He walked with his head down, and he did not get in the cars.
Razia came round and sat with her. 'He says I should be grateful. He didn't take my bride's gold.'
'Did he go to the doctor yet?'
Razia clamped her legs together and stiffened her back. She spoke in a whisper. 'If the boy does not want to give up the drugs, that is his choice.' It was a poor imitation. She lit up a cigarette and two smoke ropes hung from her nostrils. 'The doctor has the English disease,' she said. 'If I have to lock him in his room then that is what I will do.'
She smoked intensively, barely releasing the cigarette from her lip between drags. 'I saw the boy – the middleman. He was coming down the stairwell.'
A familiar heat began to kindle at the back of Nazneen's neck. It crept up around to her cheeks and flushed down her spine. 'Yes,' she said, 'he was here.' And she tingled with shame, a kind of pins-and-needles of the soul, roused again after a crooked sleep.
Feeling returned to her slowly, like blood beginning to circulate. Anxiety, which had been unable to bite through the blanket of her depression, began to maul and chew. An eternity in hell, she told herself. That is already done. She drew no comfort. Is there not a life to get through first? She thought she had been sharp with the children, and fussed over them until even Bibi pulled away. Chanu's corns had flourished. She sliced and scraped. His toenails had begun to curl over the ends of his toes. She clipped them. Chanu said, 'She is feeling better,' and presented his nasal
hair for grooming.
She realized that the little bit of money she had put aside to send to Hasina had been used up for the payments to Mrs Islam. She returned to her sewing and worked until her eyes swam. Chanu had said he would make a plan for Hasina, but had never mentioned her again. Hasina had gone the way of all his plans. Nazneen bent to her work, all her concentration for that moment pulled into a buttonhole.
Chanu slammed through the door as if he would take it off its hinges. This man, who would not sit if he could lie, would not stand if he could lean, moved faster than Nazneen had ever before witnessed.
'Quick. Be quick!' he shouts. 'Put on the television.'
He rages around the room looking for the remote control, passing the television several times. Eventually, he switches it on by pressing the button below the screen. 'Oh God,' he says. 'The world has gone mad.'
Nazneen glances over at the screen. The television shows a tall building against a blue sky. She looks at her husband.
'This is the start of the madness,' says Chanu. He holds on to his stomach as if he is afraid that someone may snatch it away.
Nazneen moves closer. A thick bundle of black smoke is hanging outside the tower. It looks too heavy to hang there. An aeroplane comes in slow motion from the corner of the screen. It appears to be flying at the level of the buildings. Nazneen thinks she had better get on with her work.
'Oh God,' shouts Chanu.
Nazneen sits down on the sofa, her hand on the shiny patch where Chanu's hair oil has mixed with the fabric. The scene plays over. Chanu squats on his haunches with his stomach between his knees and his arms wrapped around both. The television has enslaved him. He rocks around in a state of fearful excitement.
The aeroplane comes again. The television shows it again and again.
Nazneen leans forward, straining to comprehend. She works herself to the edge of the sofa. The words and phrases repeat and she begins to grasp them. Chanu covers his face with his hands and looks through his fingers. Nazneen realizes she has leaned so far forward she is doubled up. She straightens herself. She thinks she has understood but she also thinks she must be mistaken.
The scene switches. 'The Pentagon,' says Chanu. 'Do you know what it is? It's the Pentagon.'
The plane comes again and again. Nazneen and Chanu fall under its spell.
Now they see smoke: a pillar of smoke, collapsing. Nazneen and Chanu rise. They stay on their feet as they watch it a second, a third time. The image is at once mesmerizing and impenetrable; the more it plays the more obscure it becomes until Nazneen feels she must shake herself out of a trance. Chanu limbers up his shoulders, holds out his arms and circles them. He blows hard. He says nothing.
When a knock comes at the door Chanu seems not to hear it. Nazneen lets Nazma in and asks her to sit down.
'I'm not staying,' says Nazma, and stands in the middle of the room. 'My husband's cousin's brother-in-law went to New York.' After a silence she says, 'But now he is in Boston.'
Nazma is defined by roundness. It is not only her head that is ball-shaped. She is made up of a series of balls, some larger than others, none of them small. Even her arms are circular, like the arms that Bibi draws on her snowmen.
Nazneen looks over her neighbour's shoulder, at the screen.
'Anyway,' says Nazma, as if Nazneen has been detaining her. 'Anyway, I came to ask if you would mind the children tomorrow after school.'
Nazneen agrees. On her way out, Nazma runs her hand over the sewing machine. 'Still getting plenty of work?'
The glint in her eye makes Nazneen's stomach somersault.
The children come home and they all watch together. It is hard to keep looking at the television and it is impossible to look away. Shahana starts to ask questions but Chanu flaps his arm to keep her quiet. He has taken up his squatting position once again, part reverence, part subjugation. The girls sit on either side of Nazneen and they too become enthralled.
The room grows dark and nobody has moved. 'You will see what happens now,' says Chanu. Shahana kicks off her shoes and settles back in the sofa. Bibi winds a strand of hair around her finger and inserts another strand into her mouth. It feels to Nazneen as though they have survived something together, as a family. She goes into the kitchen to heat up some dal and boil a kettle for the rice. She turns the light on and has to shield her eyes for a moment. When she returns to the sitting room there is something new to see. A small figure leaning out of a window; high up, maybe a hundred floors in the air, he reaches out and he cannot be saved. Another figure jumps and at that moment it seems to Nazneen that hope and despair are nothing against the world and what it holds and what it holds for you.
That night she dreams of Gouripur. She stands at the edge of the village and looks out over the light-slaked fields, at the dark spots moving in the distance: men, doing what little they can.
A pinch of New York dust blew across the ocean and settled on the Dogwood Estate. Sorupa's daughter was the first, but not the only one. Walking in the street, on her way to college, she had her hijab pulled off. Razia wore her Union Jack sweatshirt and it was spat on. 'Now you see what will happen,' said Chanu. 'Backlash.' He entangled himself with newspapers and began to mutter and mumble. He no longer spoke to his audience.
Nazneen went to buy ghee and chapatti flour. Four men leaned over the counter, studying a paper so closely that when they looked up she almost expected their eyeballs to be smudged with newsprint.
'It's very serious,' said the eldest, and the rest looked grave.
Nazneen thought, my husband should come here and discuss with these men. He is too alone with his thoughts.
The old man ran his fingertips along the newspaper as if he were reading by touch. 'The strike is planned for later next month.'
There was a general sucking of teeth.
'What can we shopkeepers do?'
'We are at their mercy.'
'Yes, if they don't collect the rubbish the whole of Brick Lane is going to stink like an elephant's arse.'
But Chanu thought nothing of striking binmen. He worked long hours and he spent the rest of his time watching the news or reading in the newspapers of the air strikes planned against Afghanistan. 'It's time to go,' he told no one in particular and hitched up his stomach, girding himself for action. 'Any day, any moment, life can end. There's been enough planning.'
One day he began counting money. He held a pile of notes and sat blinking at it for a long time. 'Wife, my wife,' he said, 'a wife does not keep anything from her husband.'
Nazneen stroked his head briefly. Two hairs came away in her hand. She went to the kitchen, to the cupboard under the sink and opened the Tupperware box.
'We just need a little bit more,' said Chanu. 'Enough will be enough, and we will not need any more than that.'
He called the girls and Shahana revived her deep interest in the carpet. Bibi clenched her fists in concentration.
'From time to time, I have tried to teach you a little bit of something here and there.' Shahana groaned. Chanu let it pass. 'Maybe you don't remember any of these things. It doesn't matter. Let it go.' His face, Nazneen saw, was unusually calm. 'But I will teach you something now that you will not be able to forget, even if you try.' He paused for a moment, and Nazneen thought he would clear his throat. But his throat was already clear. 'There was a painter from Mymensingh. His name was Zainul Abedin. His work was shown all over the world and received many high accolades. Now this man did not paint vases full of flowers or high society portraits. His subject was the common people of Bangladesh. He showed life as it was. And he showed death. Just as it was.'
Shahana lifted her head. She was wearing her new jeans. Chanu had stopped objecting to the tightness of her old jeans. The new ones were baggier than a pair of rice sacks, and she had cut the ends off and worked on them so that they frayed in exactly the right way.
Chanu went on. 'This artist, Abedin – he painted the famine which came to our country in 1942 and '43. These famous p
aintings hang now in a museum in Dhaka. I will take you to see them. In the famine, there was life and there was death. The people of Bangladesh died and the crows and the vultures lived. Abedin shows it all: the child who is too weak to walk or even to crawl, and the fat, black crows – how patiently they wait by the child for their next feast.
'This is how it was. Three million people died because of starvation. Can you imagine that? You cannot. Can you imagine something else? While the crows and vultures stripped our bones, the British, our rulers, exported grain from the country. This is something that you cannot imagine, but now that you know it, you will never forget.'
Chanu breathed deeply but his face remained still. 'That's it,' he said. 'It will be time to go very soon.'
Every day Chanu counted the money. His cheeks grew thin. 'Are you driving that needle at all hours for love? Is there no money to be made in this damn place?'
Nazneen bowed her head. 'Here. There is a little more here.'
He looked at it. It was not much. 'I'll speak to him.'
'No!'
Chanu fanned the silence with his look. The silence gave off its fumes, and Nazneen's breath came short.
'Who?' said Chanu. 'Who is it that you do not wish me to speak to?'
'No one. I'll speak to . . . No one. There's no one you shouldn't speak to.'
'I'll talk to him, then.'
'I'll do it.'
'Do what?'
'Talk to him.'
'Who?'
'Why are you doing this?'
Chanu shrugged. 'Me? What am I doing?' He rubbed a finger on his chin. For a long time he looked somewhere, inside rather than outside himself. 'Ask for at least fifty per cent more. Explain that it will only be for a short time. Tell him that your husband has told you to ask, and tell him that it is lucky for you that your husband is an educated man.'
One evening he said, 'Children can adjust to anything. The place is immaterial. They will make their own place within the place.'
