Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  'Sometimes things don't turn out so badly. Sometimes the bad things that you think are coming don't come at all. You just have to wait and see.'

  If he knew now, he would work on her.

  He could not sway her.

  She would not take the risk.

  'I'll make things right. Be patient. Don't make yourselves upset.'

  He would go and the girls would stay with her.

  It was possible that he would be the one to change his mind: put the tickets away and start unpacking.

  It was his one last dream. He would not rip it up.

  'Shall I tell you that story? Which one did you want?'

  If he stayed they would unpack together, man and wife, and the long night through lie on the bed and stare at the ceiling and for ever after that avoid each other's eye and the reflection of what was in them, what was true: that for both of them the time had gone and it was too late now, too late.

  Nazneen got up. 'I don't feel like a story either,' she said.

  As she went past the desk, Shahana kicked her on the shin. 'Wait and bloody see,' she cried. 'How long have you waited? What have you seen? What about if this little memsahib is sick of it? What are you going to do about that?' Nazneen moved out of reach. Shahana kicked the chair. She kicked the desk. Then she turned round and kicked her sister.

  Chanu was in the bedroom. He wrote on a label and stuck it on the wardrobe door.

  'Very good of the doctor to deal with all this. The wardrobe – I thought we should sell it, rather than ship it. Do you agree?'

  'Oh, sell it,' said Nazneen. 'Definitely. Get rid of it.'

  Chanu looked at her.

  'How overjoyed your sister will be to see you! Imagine it. Such joy!'

  'Yes,' said Nazneen. It was inadequate. 'I have imagined it many times. Over many years.'

  He opened the wardrobe and the doors hid him.

  After a while, his voice came again. 'All my certificates here.' He closed the doors. He made a jolly face. 'Shall we sell those too?'

  'Take them with you. Take one or two at least.'

  He inspected her closely. His eyebrows tangled together. In his hand he had one of his framed certificates. 'Can't get mangoes from the amra tree,' he said. Then he sat down on the bed and held his knees.

  She went close to him. Maybe an hour wasn't long enough.

  'Haah,' he said, winded. 'Pheeooo-oo.'

  Last night, when they went to sleep, he had wrapped his arm around her, moulded his body around her back, shaped himself to her. When she woke, he was still there.

  'I haven't been what you could call a perfect-type husband,' he told his knees. 'Nor a perfect-type father.'

  He had shrunk. Not just his cheeks and his belly, but all of him. His voice, his words, his temper, his projects, his plans. He had shrunk. And now he was just too small to send out all alone.

  'But I haven't been a bad husband. Would you say? Not bad.' Chanu looked up at her and squinted as if her face was too bright to behold directly. 'Some of our women, they never go out. Her.' He motioned upstairs with his head. 'She never goes out. You never see her out, do you? Many aren't allowed to work. You know how it is. Village attitudes. The woman gets some money, she starts feeling she is as good as the man and she can do as she likes.' He smiled and his little eyes nearly disappeared. 'That's how they think. They are not modern. Not like me.'

  'It was lucky for me' – her heart swelled as she spoke – 'that my father chose an educated man.'

  Chanu grew a little. 'All this talk. We should be doing. Let's go into the sitting room and see what else needs to be done.'

  Nazneen rolled up the rugs. Chanu stood and watched. After a while he lifted his shirt and peered at his belly. He turned to present his profile to Nazneen. 'What do you think? Very streamline, eh?'

  His stomach no longer looked like a nine-month pregnancy. Now it was closer to six. He patted it affectionately. 'Will power,' he said. 'And ulcer,' he conceded.

  'Hup,' he declared and sucked the belly in. He viewed it again, now with some uncertainty. 'Gone too damn far. Does this look like respectable type? Does it look like Soap Factory Manager, or like rickshaw wallah?'

  'It's big enough,' said Nazneen. She wondered if she would keep the rugs or throw them away.

  'I might go for samosas. Pack a few for the aeroplane. And I have to see Dr Azad about administrative matters, before he leaves the surgery.' Chanu let go of his shirt. It didn't occur to him to tuck it back into his trousers. At the remains of the showcase, he paused. 'But what were you doing trying to lift the computer onto a glass cabinet?'

  'Too many boxes on the floor. Just tidying up.'

  Chanu twinkled at her. 'My wife, tidying up! And making more trouble for herself. Never mind, it doesn't matter. But next time there's a big job to be done – leave it to me.'

  He went to attend to samosas, administration and other matters pertaining.

  Nazneen finished with the rugs. She took stock of the sitting room. She did a circuit. The boxes of Chanu's papers were labelled Ship. The coffee table had been tagged Auction. On the back of the sofa was another label: Charitable Foundation.

  Only the sewing machine remained to be packed. She sat in front of it for a while. The letter was still beneath the machine. She left it and moved to the window.

  A rudimentary stage had been erected out of wooden pallets in the courtyard. Around the stage a handful of youths talked into mobile phones. A steady stream of young men filed into the courtyard from both sides of the estate. They too gathered around the stage. Everyone checked what was happening. Nothing was happening. Everyone checked again. One or two ran on the spot and jumped up and down. A boy with a red and green scarf knotted around his forehead carried what looked like a bundled-up old sheet. He put it on the ground and spread it out. It was a Bengal Tigers banner, hand-painted.

  'Amma,' said Bibi from the doorway.

  'Bibi,' said Nazneen, without turning. 'Bibi?' She looked round.

  Bibi chewed on the end of her plait.

  'Are you hungry? Do you want lunch?'

  'No.'

  'What is it?'

  'Nothing. I was just coming to see you.'

  Nazneen held out her arm. 'Come.'

  'It's OK,' said Bibi, backing out. 'I've seen you.'

  People were pouring into the courtyard now. They came thick and fast. It was as if a couple of blocks of flats had been tipped on their side and all the people came helter-skelter out into the street and landed up in the middle of Dogwood. There were women among the crowd, and girls. A white banner with black and gold letters proclaimed Bethnal Green Islamic Girls' Group.

  Nazneen saw Sorupa, Jorina, Nazma and Hanufa. Hanufa was back in favour. She looked for Karim.

  The boys outnumbered the girls and the women, but they were all outnumbered by the older men. They came with their green and brown herringbone overcoats buttoned over baggy trousers. They walked in knots of three or four, and ignored those they walked with and shouted across to others. White beards tinged with nicotine, skullcaps and missing teeth. Dark polished faces and watchful eyes. A few wore lungis; others carried walking sticks. They came with plastic Iceland bags and moved along like hospital patients. Nazneen wondered if Karim's father was among them.

  There was another group: white people. They were the smallest of the clans but they were the most active. They buzzed around the older men, giving out cardboard signs mounted on wooden poles. The white people wore trousers with pockets all over them. They had pockets at the thigh, the knee, down on their shins. All their clothes had little tabs and toggles, zips and flaps and fasteners. It was as if they had dressed themselves in tents and to settle for the night they would simply insert a few poles and lie down. They moved among the crowd and began to hand out something (badges? stickers? sweets?) to the lads. Finding themselves rebuffed, they retrenched a generation or two. The Bangladeshi patriarchs dangled their placards along with the Iceland bags. A white girl with tiny silver-framed g
lasses held up her placard and jabbed it in the air. She wedged it between her knees and began a little mime. Clasped her hands together. Pointed to the sky. Palms out to the patriarchs. Rub and a pat on the cardboard sign. HOLD. UP. YOUR. PLACARDS.

  The patriarchs 'listened' politely. Then they discussed it among themselves.

  Nazneen examined the faces near the stage. Karim would be there. He would stand up on the stage and speak. It was his big day.

  It was her big day as well.

  Somewhere, down there, he was preparing his speech. Adding the finishing touches.

  She had not yet made a start on hers.

  A chant was setting up among the demonstrators. Nazneen could not make out the words. She opened the window. The white people moved among the patriarchs. They were the chanters, these two groups. The bespectacled girl and her friends made pistons of their arms: go, go, go. The patriarchs stowed their Iceland bags on top of their feet, turned up their collars and buttoned their coats beneath their chins. They chanted along with their new friends.

  'What fresh hell is this?'

  She had not noticed Chanu come in.

  'It's a massacre out there. Three hundred and five people have stood on my toes. "Mind out," I said. "Man with corns coming through. Man with chilblains." Nobody listened.'

  He came to the window.

  'What are they saying?' asked Nazneen. 'Something about Gurkhas? Or burkhas?'

  'Workers. That is the cry which they have taken up. "Workers! United!" It's a myth, of course. Those white people are from the Workers United Front. When I was passing through, they were attempting to get a longer chant going. "Workers. United. Will never be defeated." They gave it up for a bad job.'

  Chanu eased his shoes off. He lifted a foot, rested it on his knee and began to massage it through the sock.

  He cleared his throat. 'Ahem. Hem. What they are doing, you see, is co-opting these immigrants into their grand political schemata in which all oppressed minorities combine in the overthrow of the state and live happily ever after in a communal paradise. This theory fails to take account of culture clash, bourgeois immigrant aspirations, the hatred of the Hindu for the Muslim, the Bangladeshi for the Pakistani, and so on and so forth. In all reality, it is doomed to failure.'

  He switched feet.

  'See those people down there, chanting? All aged about – what? – forty-five to sixty-five. Workers united? They are not even workers! Ninety-nine per cent, they are unemployed.'

  'What about the other march?'

  'Lion Hearts? I didn't see anything. Maybe they cancelled.'

  Nazneen remembered Mrs Islam's words. Not more than ten will come.

  Karim mounted the stage. He held a megaphone to his lips.

  Chanu closed the window. 'What is going to happen to our people here?' He took her hand and led her away. Karim's voice was indistinct, a radio playing out of tune in the background.

  'The young ones,' said Chanu, 'they'll be the ones to decide. Do you know how many immigrant populations have been here before us? In the eighteenth century the French Protestants fled here, escaping Catholic persecution. They were silk weavers. They made good. One hundred years later, the Jews came. They thrived. At the same time, the Chinese came as merchants. The Chinese are doing very well.' Chanu still had hold of her hand. 'Which way is it going to go?'

  'Shefali is going to university. Sorupa's nephew is going to Oxford.'

  'And Tariq? What is he doing?'

  Nazneen reclaimed her hand.

  Chanu motioned with his head towards the window. 'What are they doing out there? What are they marching for?'

  'Because the others, who have a wrong idea about our religion, are going to march against Islam.'

  'Islam,' said Chanu, turning the word over carefully. 'It could be about Islam. But I don't think so. I don't think it is.' He entered his own private world of theory and refutation, striving and puzzlement.

  Then he plumped up his cheeks and his hopes. 'But when we're back home, we won't need to think about these things. Back home we'll really know what's what.'

  When the courtyard had cleared, Chanu went out again. He was going to a shop called Liberty's to buy soap. His briefcase had been transformed into a sample carrier. Already it was full of bars of Lux, Fairy, Dove, Palmolive, Imperial Leather, Pears, Neutrogena, Zest, Cuticura and Camay Classic. 'First rule of management,' said Chanu. 'Know the competition.' At Liberty's he would stock up on the Refined-End Soap Market. He had plans for the factory. When they came to fruition, he would move the family to a bungalow in Gulshan, with a guest cottage at the bottom of the garden. To start with, they could have a couple of rooms above the office. 'Second rule of management,' said Chanu. 'Think big, act small. Then the rewards will come.'

  Nazneen went to the bedroom and lay down on the bare mattress. She slept a dreamless sleep. When she woke it was dark outside. She checked the time. Six o'clock. A vision rose before her. Chanu sitting on an aeroplane, trying to peer out of the window. No matter how he struggled he could not reach the window. He was too small. Just a baby-sized Chanu, and his legs did not reach the end of the seat. Nazneen lifted him up and put him on her knee. She looked out of the window and saw the runway lights. But they were not on the runway! The lights were lamp-posts and houses, office blocks and tower blocks, and they were pulling down and away, shrinking, sinking, into the black.

  'Amma.' Bibi stood against the wall with her hands behind her back.

  'Yes, Bibi. Were you waiting for me? You could have woken me.'

  Bibi slid down the wall and straightened up, slid down again.

  'Let's go to the kitchen. We'll get something to eat.'

  'Amma.'

  'Go and tell your sister. You can give me a hand, both of you.'

  Bibi slipped right down the wall and sat on her bottom.

  Nazneen went to her and felt her forehead. 'Are you ill? Shall I get the doctor?'

  'She's gone,' said Bibi. She began to cry. 'She's run away.'

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  Bibi was sworn to secrecy. Between big sobs she explained this to her mother, and then she told her the rest. Shahana had gone to meet Nishi at the Shalimar Cafe. They were going to have a kebab and a banana lassi and possibly a jelabee and then they would catch the train to a place called Paignton. In Paignton, Nishi said, there were no Bangladeshis and they could do as they pleased. Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a 'holiday' in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over.

  'Which Shalimar Cafe?' said Nazneen.

  'The one on Cannon Street,' said Bibi. 'I think it's the Brick Lane one.'

  'You're sure? Brick Lane.'

  Bibi nodded. Then shook her head. 'No. I don't think so. Cannon Street.'

  'Think, Bibi! Think!'

  'Cannon Street.' She said it with the air of a game show contestant, hovering in suspense, waiting to be affirmed.

  'Wait here,' said Nazneen. 'Don't go anywhere. Whatever you do, don't move.'

  Nazneen ran. Down Bethnal Green Road. Turned at Vallance Road. Jogged down New Road. Stitch in her side on Cannon Street.

  The door of the Shalimar Cafe had a sprung hinge. It swung back and hit her on the shoulder. The solitary customer lifted his head. His jumper was unravelling at many different places; it straggled like a pubescent beard. He went back to his chapattis.

  'Has a girl been in here?' Nazneen held her side where it was splitting. 'Twelve years old. Blue kameez. Yellow here and here. Two girls together.'

  The man behind the counter was peeling carrots. He dropped the peelings into a steel basin and the carrots into a plastic tub of water.

  'How old the other girl?'

  'Thirteen,' said Nazneen. 'But she looks older, more like fourteen, fifteen.'

  Th
e man put his carrot down. He removed a little something from his nostril. The seconds came and went and infuriated Nazneen.

  The man wiped his finger on his apron. 'What she wearing?'

  'I don't know.' She looked over the tables and under them. What was she looking for? Would they leave a trail behind them? 'Look,' she said. 'Have you seen them or not?'

  'Today?' said the man. 'No. No customers today. Only this one.' He pointed with a carrot.

  The George Estate was covered in scaffolding. Dense green netting ran between the poles. It looked like the entire building had been hunted down and taken captive, the people with it. Nazneen crossed over Cable Street and passed under the railway bridge. The Falstaff pub was boarded up, the forecourt choked with weeds and grass, and a bathtub filled with traffic cones, rubble and mossy cushions. She had to walk, to let her breath come back to her. A shopkeeper came out on the pavement and emptied a bucket of foul-smelling water into the gutter. Nazneen turned her head. Through an open door, down a flight of concrete stairs, she glimpsed a row of sewing machines beneath a low yellow ceiling. A woman stood up to stretch and touched the ceiling with her palms. Nazneen pressed on, past the Sylhet Cash and Carry, the International Cheap Calls Centre, the open jaws of a butcher's shop, the corner building run to ruin and bearing the faded legend of a time gone by, Schultz Famous Salt Beef.

  She turned into the Berner Estate. Here, every type of cheap hope for cheap housing lived side by side in a monument to false economy. The low rises crouched like wounded monsters along concrete banks. In the gullies, beach-hut fabrications clung anxiously to the hard terrain, weathered and beaten by unknown storms. A desolate building, gouged-out eyes in place of windows, announced the Tenants' Association: Hall for Hire. Nazneen looked up to the balconies. A woman in a dark blue burkha hung a prayer mat over the railing, and withdrew. A small child trundled a red plastic truck along a balcony and back, over and over again. At the end, near the sick orange light of a lamppost, two black children sat behind bars, watching their new world. Where had they come from? What had they escaped? Nazneen had learned to recognize the face of a refugee child: that traumatized stillness, the need they had, to learn to play again.