Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  And it was right to go with her husband. Chanu was the one who needed her. Children must have a father. There was no choice but to go.

  'You think you're doing what's best for your children,' said Razia, still with her eyes closed. 'But you can never go back and do it a different way and see if that would have been better.'

  'How long has he been in there?'

  'Two days.' Razia opened her eyes. 'Look at all this space,' she said, as if she had just noticed the furniture had gone. 'It was his idea – the bars, the locking in. He said, "Even if I am calling you all the names under the sun, don't let me out until it is finished, OK-Ma?" And I promised him. Son, your OK-Ma will not let you out.'

  Hasina stood by the pond and shook her hair down over her shoulders. 'Come on,' she called to Nazneen. 'Let's jump.' She didn't wait. She never waited. She ran and jumped, disappeared and resurfaced. Her hair streamed behind her, catching little gems of water and sunlight.

  Three more days and she could go and find Hasina. She pressed the tips of her fingers together and brought them to her lips. Nazneen tried to conjure an image of her sister that did not belong to yesterday. She tried to see her as a woman with all the scars of her life. All she could see was a girl with pomegranate-pink lips, a face that made your breath catch, and a flick of her shoulders that said she would not wait.

  'Ma! Ma!' Tariq sounded like someone who had made an exciting discovery and wished to share it.

  Razia, who was scratching her thigh, stayed her hand.

  'Come and talk to me, Ma. It's boring in here.'

  'What is it?' said Razia, unwilling to be drawn.

  'Just come near to me. I don't want to shout.'

  'I can hear you very well. No need for shouting.'

  Tariq was quiet.

  She would not say goodbye to Karim. He was busy with the march. If she was lucky he would not come again. When he did come it would be too late. She imagined him knocking at the flat, then pounding the door, finally breaking it with his shoulder. He raged and he wept. Nazneen gave Razia a rueful little smile.

  'Hey, Ma, listen. I'm feeling a lot better. Really a lot better.'

  'Good,' said Razia.

  'It's all down to you, Ma. I think we've done it now. I think we've cracked it.'

  'Good,' said Razia.

  'Honestly, honestly, honestly, I could walk out of here now and never touch the stuff again.'

  'Good,' said Razia.

  'Ma? Why don't you just open up the door for a minute and we'll have a nice cup of tea, you and me.'

  'No,' said Razia.

  'It's all right. I'll go back in my room afterwards. I don't want to take any risks.'

  'I promised you,' said Razia.

  'Yeah, Ma. Look, you've done really well. I couldn't have done it without you. Now just open the door.'

  Razia drew her legs up so her knees touched her face. She wrapped her arms around them.

  Would he find solace, thought Nazneen, with someone else? She pictured Karim falling into a girl's arms and burying his face inside her bosom. Who would it be? She tried to give the girl a face. Perhaps it would be the girl from the meeting, the one who knew everything about the thirty-five thousand children who would never have justice done in their names. She was the kind of girl that Karim ought to be with.

  Behind the door, Tariq whistled softly as if he had just woken to a bright and beautiful dawn.

  Karim kissed his new girl.

  Tariq whistled louder.

  Karim began to unwind the sari.

  Nazneen jumped up and turned to face the window. Karim wrapped the sari around the girl's shoulders and draped it over her head. That was better.

  The whistling dropped any pretence of a tune. It became demented.

  A thousand thoughts crushed into Nazneen's skull. Dhaka would be a disaster. Shahana would never forgive her. Chanu would be finished. It was not even going home. She had never been there. Hasina was in Dhaka but the city of her letters was an ugly place, full of dangers. And there was Karim. If she could leave him so easily, if it was as easy as that, then why did she ever begin it?

  'Open the door, you bitch!'

  Razia held on to her legs.

  'Ma! Ma! I'm dying.'

  The panic in Tariq's voice made Nazneen's heart thump.

  'Aah, aah, it's these cramps. Let me out and rub my leg. It's killing me.'

  By the light of day, and by the dark of night, your Lord has not forsaken you, nor does He abhor you.

  The life to come holds a richer prize for you than this present life. You shall be gratified with what your Lord will give you.

  'Ma, I've been sick in the bin. The bucket is full and it stinks. Let me out to empty it.'

  Nazneen clung to her lifeline. What would be would be. It was not of her making.

  'Are you there? Can you hear me?' Tariq talked fast, the words running into each other like raindrops down a windowpane. 'I think we're rushing it. It's not good. It's not right. It means I might have a relapse. I just need a little fix now. Let me out for an hour. I'll be back in an hour and I'll be a lot stronger then. Just let me out. Come on, Ma, let me out.'

  It was not of her making. It was not of her making.

  'One five-pound wrap,' screamed Tariq. 'That's all I need. You bitch.'

  For a few moments all was quiet. Then Tariq began to cry.

  She stood in the kitchen with Razia and sipped a cup of tea. The walls were tiled, blue and green squares right up to the ceiling. A narrow tabletop, painted white, squeezed in between the fridge and the door. Razia called it a 'breakfast bar' and lined up cereal packets like ceremonial soldiers along the back. When her husband was alive, when the flat was filled with junk, every spare pound (and many that were not spare at all) went back home to buy another brick for the new mosque. After he died, Razia spent her money on her children, and on her flat. She never talked about going home. 'Tell me this,' she said with her oblique smile. 'If everything back home is so damn wonderful, what are all these crazy people doing queuing up for visa?' And she would get out her new British passport and bend it between thumb and forefinger.

  Nazneen perched on a stool at the breakfast bar. The seat was moulded plastic, two parted indentations to fit the buttocks. She wondered how much it would cost to put little tiles all over her kitchen.

  'So,' said Razia. 'You are leaving your old friend.'

  'Dr Azad lent some money, and Chanu had some saved up.'

  'Have you told the boy?'

  Nazneen gazed at Razia and mouthed the word 'no'. She looked down at her tea. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes and escaped down the bridge of her nose.

  'Come on. Tell me. Take my mind off- other things.'

  So Nazneen began the conversation she had already rehearsed by herself, and still she played both parts. Razia, who had not learned her lines, stayed quiet.

  'He lifts me up inside. It's the difference between . . .' She cast around. 'I don't know. It's like you're watching the television in black and white and someone comes along and switches on the colours.'

  Razia said, 'Mmm.'

  'And then they pull you right inside the screen, so you're not watching any more, you're part of it.'

  'Mmm,' said Razia again.

  Nazneen thought about what she had said. She was pleased. It was not an easy thing to describe.

  'Is called in love, no?' said Razia.

  Nazneen sighed. 'It is too difficult. It is ridiculous.'

  'But you want this?'

  'Everything goes against it. Family, duty, everything.'

  Razia rolled her big bony shoulders. She was tired. Even her shoulders were too heavy for her today. 'In love,' she said. 'It is the English style.'

  Nazneen lost a sandal and slid off the stool to retrieve it. She felt her friend looking at her but she would not return the look. How irritating Razia could be sometimes! Who was it who made herself so English, anyway? With her British passport and track-suit and Union Jack sweatshirt. Who w
as the one almost getting like the Queen herself? She would not ask for Razia's opinion now. She would do as she pleased.

  A knock came at the front door.

  'It will be the doctor,' said Razia, 'come to give Tariq his medicine.'

  Razia let the doctor in. He had come with a helper, deployed just outside the bedroom door to discourage any idea of escape. Razia went to and fro, emptying slops, throwing away food that looked untouched and replacing it with fresh.

  Nazneen sat on the stool in the kitchen and watched a pigeon walk the window ledge. The pigeon stood on the brink, ducked its head, and walked back along the ledge.

  Dr Azad entered the kitchen. 'Ah, good, good,' he said. He found a glass and filled it with water.

  She should show her gratitude, for the money. 'How is the boy?' she said.

  'There is a lot of pain for him,' said the doctor. 'A lot, a lot of pain.'

  'Will he get better?'

  'Maybe. If that's what he decides.'

  He drank the water down quickly and refilled the glass. Then he pulled something out of his suit pocket. 'I brought this for Tariq. I'll go and give it to him now.' But the doctor did not move. He shook up the snowstorm and watched the tiny blizzard whip around miniature castle turrets. He tapped the blue glass dome. 'It's calming, don't you think?' Another shake. 'Watching everything settle back down.'

  Nazneen assented.

  'You know, actually my wife gave me this particular one.' The corners of his mouth turned down and his eyebrows lifted into his peculiar smile, and met his thick black fringe. 'Back in the early days, we used to give each other gifts, only little things like this because money was scarce. We lived on rice and dal, rice and dal. But my wife told you that. We lived on a cup of rice, a bowl of dal and the love we did not measure.' The doctor drank his second glass of water. He checked his cuffs and ensured they were perfectly aligned, peeping virginally from his jacket sleeves. Nazneen thought, he will not continue. He would like to swallow his words with the water. But the doctor had gone too far to stop now. 'We thought that the love would never run out. It was like a magic rice sack that you could keep scooping into and never get to the bottom.' He let the snowstorm tip between his fingers and dangle upside down. 'It was a "love" marriage, you see.' The puffy grey skin around his eyes seemed to grow, as if he had shed tears on the inside. 'What I did not know – I was a young man – is that there are two kinds of love. The kind that starts off big and slowly wears away, that seems you can never use it up and then one day is finished. And the kind that you don't notice at first, but which adds a little bit to itself every day, like an oyster makes a pearl, grain by grain, a jewel from the sand.' He put the snowstorm back in his pocket. He rinsed his glass and stood it upside down on the draining board. Then he wiped his hands and inspected his fingernails. 'Yes, well, I will see the patient, and then I have a lunch to attend. Good, ah, good.'

  He clicked his heels together as if in salute and made to leave. At the door, he turned. 'All the little irritations,' he said. 'Who would think they could add up to anything?'

  Nazneen dreamed of Gouripur. She sat cross-legged on a choki and Amma sat behind her and plaited her hair. Hands that smelled of garlic and ginger tugged at her hair and lifted her scalp till it pinched.

  'When you were born, I put you to my breast and you did not feed.'

  She loved to hear the story. But a part of her was guilty. From the day she was born she had caused trouble.

  'How many days, Amma?'

  'Many, many days.' Amma tied a ribbon at the end of one plait. 'You looked like a chick fallen out of the nest.'

  'Then what happened?'

  Amma sucked on her teeth. 'Everyone came to look and advise. Take the child to a hospital, they said, or she will be dead by morning.' She began on the second plait, dividing the hair in three, yanking so hard that Nazneen put her head back. Amma pushed her head straight again. 'What could I do? I am only a woman and everyone was against me. But I told them, "No, I will leave the child alone. If she is meant to die, then it is already done. If she is meant to live, then the doctors will only mess it up." When they saw that I was firm, they went away.'

  Amma worked on the plait. The pinches on Nazneen's skull stung like ant bites.

  'And so I was left to my Fate,' said Nazneen. This was the part she liked. It sounded so important.

  'And so you were left to your Fate,' said Amma. 'And that is why you are here with me now.'

  'What shall I do now, Amma? Amma?' Nazneen turned round. There was no one there. A black dog loped across the courtyard. She decided to go and look for her mother and began to uncross her legs. As soon as she moved, the smooth wood of the choki turned to glue and stuck to her thighs. She tried to free herself but sticky tendrils lashed around her legs. In her struggle she overbalanced and ended on her back. Thick fronds whipped around her stomach and arms, warm and wet as mucus and tough as vines. She tried to move her arms but they were locked against her sides. She bucked her body but the more she struggled the more the fronds lashed at her until they covered her chest, her neck, her face. She tried to cry out but her mouth was filled with sticky fibres that bore into her throat and down and down.

  Nazneen woke up and felt the wet on the pillowcase. Was it possible to cry in your sleep?

  She went through to the sitting room and sat at the sewing machine. She rested her head on the cool plastic.

  'What shall I do now, Amma?' she said out loud.

  Amma walked through the door wearing her best sari. Her Dhaka sari, in green and gold. 'You modern girls. You'll do what you like.' She had kohl around her eyes and her thick gold necklace that weighed as much as a baby. 'But you should remember one thing at least.'

  'What's that?' Nazneen closed her eyes. Now that Amma had come, she wanted her to go away again.

  There was no reply.

  Nazneen opened her eyes.

  'That's better,' said Amma, and she smiled with her hand over her mouth. 'Your son. You seem to have forgotten him.'

  'No. Not forgotten.'

  'All those things you said to yourself, I heard every one of them.'

  'What things?'

  'Oh! Oh!' cried Amma, so loudly that Nazneen feared the girls would wake. 'She has forgotten. This woman, who calls herself a mother, has forgotten.'

  'Where are you going?' said Nazneen suddenly. 'Why are you dressed up?'

  Amma tilted her head. 'I don't think that is really any of your business. Now let me remind you of a few things. When your son, your true blessing from God, was lying in that hospital I heard every word you said.'

  'You already told me that,' said Nazneen, and marvelled at the casual way she spoke to her dead mother.

  'Don't think I wasn't watching you,' Amma snapped. A little ooze of red ran out of the corner of her mouth. Still a secret pan chewer, thought Nazneen. 'You thought it was you who had the power. You thought you would keep him alive. You decided you would be the one to choose.' She began to spit the words out and drops of red flew with them. 'When you stood between your son and his Fate, you robbed him of any chance.' Amma walked towards her. She held her hands over her chest. The red spurted from between them. 'Now say this to yourself, and say it out loud, "I killed my son. I killed my son."'

  'No!' screamed Nazneen.

  'Say it. Say it.'

  'No. No. No!'

  Chanu's face hovered over her, loose with gravity and tense with worry. 'Just a dream,' he said. 'Wake up and tell it to me. When you chase it with words it will run away.'

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  DHANMONDI, DHAKA

  October 2001

  Sister I do not know which way to go. Now I have unquiet mind. It do not leave alone but must give question at all and every time. Morning time children play in hallway. Little Jimmy push car inch and inch along tiles to door. Inch and inch he push it back. Then he begin again. Baby Daisy roll ball down two stair. Pick it up and roll. I dusting all glass frame photo hang on wall. These photo Lovely lean on t
ree Lovely lie on couch Lovely blow kiss Lovely look shock fingers spreading out. Children whole body mind both inside the game. I wish was same for me wipe the glass. How long I stay here? Big house it good house. But one room house feel big if belong in fact to you.

  Amma always say we are women what can we do? If she here now I know what she say I know it too well. But I am not like her. Waiting around. Suffering around. She wrong. So many ways. At the end only she act. She who think all path is closed for her. She take the only one forbidden.

  Forgive me sister I must tell you now this secret so long held inside me.

  You remember in our house the store hut how it build with tin roof and bamboo wall squash shape like two big arm hug it tight? But how you forget? It there Mumtaz auntie find her. I see so clear the day. Sky is red and purple hang down on us. We wait for rain so late that year. I have new shoe black leather shine bright as buckle. I in love for those shoe. Amma say they for best but I cannot keep my foot from out those shoe. I walk around look down all the times. Every few step I bend down and put the dust off. Then I start game with the chickens and I forget the shoe. I try to make the chickens fly but they too hot and fat and lazy. Like better the cooking pot to stretch the wing. I make some special insults for them and then I see how brown and scratchy the shoe have come. I sit down and spit the leather. Then I see her. Amma have Dhaka sari on. I want to run to her and call Hai, Amma where it is you going? But I worry for the shoe. If she see them I getting red stripes on back the leg.

  I follow her but I keep from sight. She walk very quick and she not looking around only in front the nose. We go past Mumtaz auntie ghar. I remember I scrape the side of shoe on wall. I want clay to stick on side. I think to make the toe look less bad. Amma go past kitchen. No one is there. She go into store room. One two moment I stand outside. Then I go in stand behind the kalshis they stack tall up near to ceiling. You remember those kalshis how beautiful each one paint with flower?

  I am bandit stand there rob her secret.

  She take spear and test on the finger. She take another and put it back. And third one she take before is happy. When she move the rice sacks she grunt a bit but she never look round. Another sack I think is chickpea but inside the light is weak and I never go again to look.