Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  Nazneen wanted to ask Razia if she was getting the Hanufa treatment.

  'Shall we go into Yellow Rose? Or Galaxy Textiles?'

  Razia shrugged.

  'Let's try this shop,' said Nazneen, and pulled her arm.

  They went inside and ran their hands over lengths of cherry-red silk, mauve and turquoise cottons, and peacock-blue satin. Razia said, 'Maybe we should leave it for today.' And sounded so much like a person who could never be tempted by anything again that the sales assistant did not even attempt to delay them.

  Although it was early it was beginning to get dark and as they walked the lights went on in windows and pulled them up to the panes without them even willing it. They looked at trays of gold rings, rack upon rack winking lewdly under the spotlights. At Best Buy Trading Ltd they were arrested by three mannequins all draped in hot pink crepe de chine. The mannequins were posed like dancers, their arms bent in ways that suggested movement, gayness, maybe even abandon. But their faces remained detached, giving no clue to the ecstasy below. For the actions of their bodies, there was no accountability.

  Nazneen longed for Razia to speak, to roll her eyes and begin puff puff-ing to turn herself into Nazma. She did an excellent imitation of Nazma. After every few words she inserted a puff puff, and though Nazma did not in fact puff, this lent an essence of Nazma to the speech: the bumptiousness of the woman and, somehow, the roundness. Sorupa she also had to perfection. The way she pressed her lips flat against her teeth in self-righteousness, and the way she nibbled them and looked away when Nazma slapped her down.

  Nazneen wanted Razia to slip into these other voices, to become the old Razia once again. She studied her friend. Nothing lit up her eyes today. Not anger, not fear, not pain. How long had it been since mischief starred in those deep gold flecks?

  She remembered another day when they had come shopping together for fabric and how bursting with secrets she had been. She blurted out everything about Mrs Islam, and it had felt good and Razia said she would help, but now Razia was devoured by her own troubles and Nazneen could not say, but what about this help you said you would give to me? Everything she had suspected about Tariq, it was all true but what could be said about it now? Should they wring their hands and cry every time they met and poke around every little bit of pain?

  Then there was Karim.

  A few times she had imagined conversations with Razia. She played them out, reading both the parts, trying a new phrase here and there. He will never give me up. Razia tucking her feet under her bottom and leaning over to squeeze all the juice out of the story. It consumes us. It's not something we can control. Razia shaking her bony shoulders; the intensity – even at this remove – enough to make her shiver. The most astonishing thing of all. . . She never knew what she would say then, but the phrase kept coming to her. With narrowed eyes and her sideways look, Razia attempted to tease it from her. The most astonishing thing of all. . .

  They did not speak of him. It was not possible.

  With all those secrets between them, how easy it was to talk. Talk flowed like the Meghna: the fast-flowing gush of new gossip; the hiss and splash of their various moans and complaints; disturbances around the rocks of the more serious stuff, always family; a widening and a narrowing, running deep and coming shallow; even in silent stretches the currents between them never stopped and the whole vast outpouring tumbled endlessly into the sea of their friendship. And now the river had met a dam, built out of truth and knowledge and need. These things had stopped up their mouths.

  They paused outside a new shop.

  'Fusion Fashions,' said Razia, reading out the name.

  Inside, a white girl stood in front of a mirror turning this way and that in a black kameez top with white embroidered flowers and a sprinkling of pearls stitched near the throat. The trousers were not the usual baggy salwaar style but narrow-hipped and slightly flared at the bottom. The girl picked up a stack of green glass bangles from a shelf and attempted to get one over her hand.

  'She'll never get it on like that,' said Nazneen.

  A similar outfit was displayed in the window, only this version was red with black embroidery and black beads. Razia looked at the price tag. She shook her head and sighed as if the evils of the world had been revealed to her.

  'Look how much these English are paying for their kameez. And at the same time they are looking down onto me. They are even happy to spit on their own flag, as long as I am inside it. What is wrong with them? What is wrong?'

  Chanu was out, driving ignorant types and collecting parking fines. He had taken to keeping the penalty notices in an envelope addressed to the local council. On each of the slips he had written: gone away to address unknown, return to issuer. The girls were sitting on the sofa and Bibi had the remote control on her lap. Every time she touched it Shahana kicked her on the ankle.

  'Amma, Shahana keeps kicking me.'

  'Shahana, don't kick your sister.'

  'She keeps trying to change the channel.'

  'I haven't done anything.'

  'Just wait until you're in Bangladesh,' said Shahana. 'You'll be married off in no time.'

  Bibi said, 'But. . . but. . .'

  'And your husband will keep you locked up in a little smelly room and make you weave carpets all day long.'

  Bibi jumped up. 'What about you? You're older than me. You will have a husband before me.'

  Shahana hugged her knees. 'That's what you think.'

  Nazneen switched the television off. 'But you would like to see where your mother grew up?'

  The girls wriggled a bit and did not answer.

  'You would like to see Mumtaz auntie?'

  'Tell us a story about Mumtaz auntie,' said Bibi. She sat cross-legged now on the sofa to show that she was ready.

  'Only the one about the good jinni.' Shahana pursed her sweet pink lips. 'All the other stories are boring.'

  So Nazneen told about the good jinni.

  Mumtaz had inherited the jinni from her father who kept it in an empty medicine bottle with a lead stopper. On her father's death, the jinni agreed to become Mumtaz's jinni only on the condition that it was released from the bottle and allowed to live freely. Mumtaz covered the bottle with cheesecloth and smashed it with a hammer, crying 'Oh, jinni, I give you freedom and you will give me wisdom.'

  At first it had seemed that the jinni had not kept its end of the bargain. Mumtaz called it and it did not answer. She went out and wandered among the banana trees, having learned as a child that jinn were partial to bananas. Still, it did not answer. She searched among the sugar cane, the elephant grass and the chilli plants. She stood beneath the plane trees and called. She looked in the cow pen, the well and underneath the lily pads in the pond. The jinni had tricked her.

  After checking inside her bedroll and among her jewellery boxes and shaking out her hair in case it had become caught in her tresses, she resigned herself to the loss. Perhaps, she thought, the jinni has given me wisdom after all: never trust a jinni.

  Barsa came and the rains that year fell hard enough to split a grain of rice in two. Sarat turned the land to gold and the snowy cranes flew in from the north to stand on withered legs in the deep green paddy. One cantankerous old fellow took to walking around the village pond like a retired schoolteacher with his arms folded behind his back, keeping a beady eye on the children, little brown fish who splashed and screeched, and whom he would dearly love to discipline. Hemanto brought jasmine, lotus, water lilies and hyacinth, krishnachura, kadam and magnolia and everywhere the smell of drying rice stalks. That year one of the cows gave birth to three calves and it was taken as an auspicious sign and many marriages were hurried through even before their proper season.

  It was Basanto before the jinni made itself known to Mumtaz. Cleaning a large and particularly bloody hilsha fish she was thinking about a problem that one of the village women had set before her. The woman had three sons and five daughters and could scarcely feed so many mouths. Yet her husband stil
l wanted to sleep with her and make more mouths, more empty bellies. What should she do? How could she deny her husband? And how could she magic more food from her cooking pot? Mumtaz gripped the fish guts and pulled. A spurt of blood landed on her sari. 'What should I tell her?' she said aloud.

  The jinni replied, 'Tell her that she should gather together all her children, the oldest to the youngest, and stand them in a line before her husband. She should say to him, "First you must choose which one will die. Kill the child and I will give you another. We cannot keep any more children alive, so you must choose the ones to die. For every child you kill, I will replace him."'

  Mumtaz was pleased with the answer and she decided at once to tell the woman exactly what the jinni had said. But she was cross with the jinni and berated it, saying, 'Why did you go away from me?'

  'But I did not go away,' said the jinni. 'It is only now you have decided to listen to me.'

  From that day, Mumtaz was able to call the jinni whenever she chose, and people came to consult her on many important matters. Although she claimed to converse with the jinni casually, just as a daughter chats to her mother while she is mixing cow dung and straw or lighting a fire, for these special sessions Mumtaz sat in a purified room and burned candles and incense. She dressed in white and put a white veil across her mouth and nose. And to draw the jinni to her she muttered some special charms, spoken at the speed of a butterfly's wing and impossible to decipher.

  Nazneen begged to be told the charms but Mumtaz said only that first she must get her own jinni.

  'Will I be elected to the council?'

  'What should I name my child?'

  'An enemy has sworn to put the evil eye on me. How can I protect myself ?'

  Mumtaz spoke her mantras and swayed around in her little white tent. When she gave the answer she suddenly lay down on her side and it was understood and accepted by all that having channelled a spirit through her body, she should now be allowed to rest.

  Everyone, that is, apart from Amma. 'A fraud, nothing but a fraud.' She sucked on her big teeth and wiped the corners of her mouth with her sari.

  The girls were getting ready for bed. Nazneen went to the bathroom with them and sat on the edge of the bath.

  Shahana pulled Chanu's daaton from the toothbrush mug. 'In Bangladesh, you'll have to brush your teeth with a twig. They don't have toothbrushes.'

  Chanu had been delighted to find the neem twig in Alam's High Class Grocery. He chewed the end until it splayed, rubbed it vigorously around his mouth and declared it to be excellent for massaging the gums.

  'You know, Bibi, they don't have toilet paper either. You'll have to pour water on your bottom to clean it.'

  Bibi looked distressed. 'What about you? You'll have to do it too.'

  Shahana put on her inscrutable face.

  Then she attacked her sister with the daaton, trying to force it into her mouth.

  Nazneen separated the girls and shooed them into the bedroom. She stood in the middle of their room like a referee while they got into bed. She was still thinking about jinn.

  There was another story, which she had never told the children.

  Nazneen was maybe eight or nine years old, just tall enough to look down the well without standing on tiptoe. This was the year that Amma became possessed by an evil jinni. The jinni prevented Amma from washing and made her smell like a goat. It arranged her hair in knots and tangles and mockingly inserted sprigs of jasmine behind her ears. For days at a time she did not speak. Worst of all, at the jinni's bidding, Amma began attacking her own husband, stabbing wildly at his eyes with bamboo sticks that she spent hours on end whittling to a fine point. Sometimes, when the jinni let his guard down or was perhaps sleeping, Amma was returned to her usual state. She took a bar of Sunlight down to the pond, swam and washed. She began cooking again and resumed the endless litany of complaints against the servants. And she took up her usual commentary on life.

  'What can I do? I have been put on this earth to suffer.'

  Abba said, 'And she suffers so well.'

  'The jinni may come upon me again,' said Amma. 'Whenever he wishes, he uses up my body, my strength, my soul.'

  And Abba rolled his eyes. 'Let us hope he does not wait too long.'

  But when the jinni returned he was ever more mischievous and before long Abba was compelled to call in the fakir.

  Exorcisms were a spectator sport in the village. A crowd gathered and it was a bigger and more excitable crowd than formed even for Manzur Boyati, the most highly esteemed of storytellers. The fakir was an impressive sight. He was tall and straight as sugar cane and his beard was at least twenty inches long, twisted into two halves like a woman's braids. Immediately they arrived, his assistants commandeered the kerosene stove and set about boiling up potions which, in Nazneen's view, should have frightened the jinni away by their smell alone. The fakir examined Amma from a distance. Amma lay on her bedroll, spasms running obligingly through her arms and legs. The fakir seemed satisfied.

  'Who is willing to help this cursed woman?' demanded the fakir. His eyes were cloudy as old marbles and yet he seemed to focus on each person in the room, individually and all at once.

  'I will be the volunteer,' cried a servant boy from Nazneen's house, and scrambled to the front. The crowd relaxed and there was much scratching of noses and backsides.

  The servant was a moody young boy who kept a half-starved mongoose tied to a palm tree and amused himself by goading it to bite his hand. The mongoose, though essentially a pacifist, would sometimes be persuaded to play this game and was rewarded with a swift kick that lifted it several feet in the air.

  'Sit,' barked the fakir and pushed down on the boy's head.

  The boy curled his upper lip but sat down on the ground with his legs crossed. The assistants daubed his head and shoulders with their emetic pastes. Then the exorcism began. As a warm-up exercise the fakir and his two helpers walked in circles around the servant boy, half singing and half speaking verses, words which locked into each other as tightly as bones in a hand, moving around, flexing and curling but never breaking the chain.

  Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna

  Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna

  Node chode, hater kache

  Faster and faster went the chanters, faster and faster flew the words. The white cloths tied around the fakir's waist and arms streamed behind him, making visible his huge energy with which he would fight the evil jinni.

  Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna

  Who talks, not showing up

  Who talks, not showing up

  Moves about, near at hand

  The servant boy disappeared in a vortex of wheeling limbs.

  I search for him

  In the sky and the earth

  Myself, I do not know

  I search for him

  In the sky and the earth

  Myself, I do not know

  Who am I?

  Who is he?

  Who am I?

  Who is he?

  Abruptly the singing stopped. The assistants anished and the fakir threw his arms wide and bellowed.

  'Oh, evil jinni, leave that woman's body! By the command of Allah, leave her. Sky! Water! Air! Fire!' He paused for a moment and added 'Earth!' for good measure. 'Torment her no longer.'

  He let his arms fall by his side. His belly heaved, moved around in strange shapes, as though a baby had shifted inside him.

  All heads looked towards Amma who now lay quietly on her mat with her face turned down.

  At once the servant boy, who had volunteered his body as the jinni's next receptacle, began to grimace and leer. He let slip an obscenity and pressed his jaw and the top of his head. The fakir turned to him.

  'Why did you abuse that poor woman?' the fakir said, addressing himself to the jinni.

  The servant boy jumped to his feet. He bared his teeth like a frightened monkey and scratched the air. 'She came out in the bushes,' he said in a strangled voice. 'She walked under the tamarind
tree and stepped on my shadow.'

  The fakir rushed at the boy and wrestled him into a headlock. He was a big man, and the boy bent as easily as a dog's tail in his grip.

  'Be gone from this place,' roared the fakir, and his glassy old eyes were terrifying. 'If I see you around here again, I will destroy you.'

  'No need to get nasty,' squeaked the boy, whose head was turning an impressive shade of purple.

  'Out! Out! Out!' shouted the holy witch doctor. He released his victim, who fell unceremoniously to the floor.

  The fakir adjusted the ends of his beard and yawned. The jinni saw his chance, and the boy sprang at his opponent, grabbed the two braids hanging from the fakir's chin and wound each deftly around his fist.

  'Come on then, you swine. You defiler of goats.' He swung the fakir along by his beard, causing him to stumble and come to his knees. 'Come on then, you shit-eating lover of corpses.'

  The fakir was suffering. His eyes were ready to pop and his brow shed water.

  The crowd was impressed by the strength of the jinni. It promised to be a good show. Nobody even thought of talking, though many people nudged each other to ensure all aspects of the spectacle were being fully appreciated.

  'He's faking,' cried the fakir. 'Somebody stop him.' He got to his feet.

  'You will never be rid of me,' shrieked the boy. 'She stepped on my shadow under the tamarind tree and disturbed my rest.' He again whirled the fakir round by his beard and, as an innovation, flapped his tongue at the same time.

  Nobody moved to intervene. The assistants squatted by the kerosene stove, smoking beedis and working strictly within their job descriptions.

  'Are you going to let him kill me?' screamed the fakir.

  'Don't blame the boy,' called someone from the audience. 'You put the jinni on him.'

  'He's faking,' the fakir protested. 'Can't you see he's faking?'