Brick Lane

by Monica Ali

  Out of the estate and onto Commercial Road, past the clothes wholesalers, up Adler Street and left onto the brief green respite of Altab Ali Park where the neat, pale-faced block of flats had picture windows and a gated entrance, from which the City boys could stroll to work. Nazneen ran down the slope and caught the green man at the crossing on Whitechapel.

  A row of police vans covered the mouth of Brick Lane. Behind them a legion of policemen stood with arms folded and feet turned out. A length of tangerine-and-white-striped tape stuck the sides of the street together.

  'Let me through,' said Nazneen.

  'The street is closed, madam. Go back.' The policeman sounded friendly but decisive. He seemed to think the conversation was finished.

  'I have to go to Shalimar Cafe and find my daughter.'

  The policeman looked ahead, as if she had not spoken. Nazneen glanced down the line at the black-suited men, all of them braced against an invisible force. What was happening in Brick Lane? Could they have closed it just for the Bengal Tigers to march? Wasn't this the last place on Karim's route? But it was dark, it was late. By now the marches would be over.

  'Why I can't go through?' said Nazneen. She put her face right up to the policeman's face. Do you see me now? Do you hear me?

  'Disturbances,' said the policeman. She felt the warmth of his breath and drew her head back.

  'My daughter is there.'

  The policeman shook his head. 'Madam, she isn't. We cleared everyone out who wanted to come out. There's only the waiters and restaurant owners left. They didn't want to come away. Unless your daughter is participating in the disturbance, she has taken herself back home. I suggest you do the same thing.'

  Without seeming to move, the policeman filled her space so that she was forced to step back.

  But Shahana would not be at home. And if a policeman came to get her, and the other runaway, what would she think? What would she do?

  Nazneen looked beyond the cordon into the neck of Brick Lane. It revealed nothing. The electrical shops were shuttered, the stonemason's dark, the sandwich-shop window showed empty trays and a naked glass counter, and only the steps and the awning of the Capital City Hotel were lit up.

  Inside her, the thoughts ebbed and flowed. Shahana had cleared out long ago. She was at the station, buying a ticket to Paignton. Shahana was still at the Shalimar, trapped by looters or her own fear, cowering in the toilets with Nishi. If she was at the station, it was too late. But if she was on Brick Lane . . .

  Panic hit Nazneen like an asthma attack. For a few moments she felt she would expire then and there, into the policeman's folded arms.

  A white couple came up to the cordon and asked something. They looked disappointed. They wanted curry. More people were arriving, expecting curry and lager. Nazneen's policeman spoke to a woman with a wattled neck and a strident voice.

  'Can I suggest that you consult a restaurant guide, madam.'

  Nazneen slipped around the back of him. She hoisted her sari and hurdled over the orange and white tape. Someone thumped her on the back. She turned her head, but there was no one behind her. It was only her heart playing tricks. She stuck close to the walls and shadows, crossed a side street with its little vein of houses and entered the main artery of Brick Lane.

  Across the way, formed in a semi-circle, was a row of perspex shields, and behind the shields an arc of police with bulging jackets. A group of lads stood on the pavement and in the road, hoods pulled up, scarves around their faces, as though they had entered a manly purdah. It was quiet.

  Nazneen passed behind the boys. They paid her no attention. In lighted windows, waiters pressed their foreheads to the glass. Restaurant owners stood by, nerves flickering across important faces. All the mixed-blood vitality of the street had been drained. Something coursed down the artery, like a bubble in the bloodstream.

  A police car was parked at a crazy angle in the road, the front doors wide open and the interior abandoned. The car rocked. A door swung shut. It rocked again. Nazneen looked at the boys pushing it. They worked quickly and quietly, as though this was a task they had been assigned to do and they wanted to make a good job of it. The car went over and suddenly a noise licked around Brick Lane like a flame, crackling from every corner.

  'Bengal Tigers, zindabad!' went the cry. Long live the Bengal Tigers.

  As the boys whooped, Nazneen began to run again. A tall dark shape smashed the windows of the police car with a stick. Another hurled something through the hole. It whizzed through the air and exploded with a dull thud. From behind the black municipal bins, out of doorways, round corners and up from car bonnets, more and more people appeared, ejected by this simple purgative. Nazneen ran past the car. A figure dressed in white was crumpled on the ground by the rear wheel. She turned round. The figure rose and fell again, toppled by a large and heavy head. It was the Multicultural Liaison Officer, and he was praying. Nazneen sprinted towards the car. She got hold of the man's flappy white sleeve and pulled it.

  'Please,' she said. 'Get up.'

  He turned his face towards her and the whites of his eyes showed clearer than his robe in the dark. 'Ah, sister, how many rakahs for the isha prayer?'

  'Are you mad? Get up. Run.'

  'What? I is praying to Allah to save all these boys. Can't get up now.'

  'Allah,' said Nazneen, heaving at the neck of his robe, 'does not want your prayer now. He wants you to save yourself.' The cotton ripped and she let go.

  'Damn,' said the Multicultural Liaison Officer. He got on his knees. 'Shit. You made me swear.'

  Nazneen pulled his arm. 'You can make du'a later. Run. Now. Run.'

  A siren wail smacked the sky and showered their heads. They ran down the road. Nazneen's feet hit the pavement so hard she felt it in her teeth. At the corner of Hanbury Street she stopped and looked over her shoulder. The police car belched a little black smoke and burst into a ball of fire.

  ' Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death—'

  The Shalimar was three blocks up. Nazneen said, 'Let's go. Come on.'

  The Multicultural Liaison Officer raised his arms. 'I will fear no evil: for thou art with me.'

  'I can't wait for you.'

  'Thy rod and thy staff comfort me.' He turned to Nazneen. 'In these circumstances, better safe than sorry.' He lifted his face to heaven.

  She left him and walked close to the shops, brushing the walls with her arm. Ahead, eight or ten boys gathered behind a bin. The large black tank stood at shoulder height. Two lads darted out to the side and made an overarm bowling motion. They hurled themselves behind the bin and all the lads crouched down. Nazneen stopped moving. A lighted window at her back. She wished she had picked a better place to be, during this sinister game of hide-and-seek. There were no white people here at all. These boys were fighting themselves. A dizziness came over her and she leaned against the glass. How long, she thought, how long it has taken me to get this far.

  Missiles rained across the road. Empty bottles, full cans, a brick, a chair, a winged stick. A bottle smashed at Nazneen's feet. She decided to run again. But which way? Towards the Shalimar and the source of the missiles? Or back up the road to take shelter? She turned round and back and round and suddenly she was not sure which way the cafe was. She recognized nothing. Silhouettes across the way, substantial as shadows but solid enough to smash through windows. Crouching shapes and whirling arms, the pale streak of trainers on the black ground that had gone soft beneath her feet. The buildings curved away from her, shrinking from the violent pavement. The light came in crackling twists of red that stabbed at the dark and did not lift it, as though a devil had danced through with his blazing torch. Nazneen tried to focus on a window and take refuge in the clean white light, but when she looked the light burned her eyes. In the middle of the road, a coiled snake of tyres flamed with acrid fury and shed skins, thick, black, choking, to the wind. Shop alarms rang, clang, clang, clang, more frightened than warning. Back up the road, an am
bulance crawled stubbornly along, its twirling blue eye sending out a terrible, keening lament.

  Nazneen got her legs to move. She walked with her arms in front of her, as if she did not trust her eyes. Gradually, she came back to herself. She had the sensation that she had fainted, and now the world was forming again. The light steadied itself. She recognized shapes for what they were and sensed the bodies that filled the dark, people-shaped outlines. A fire engine slashed across the tarmac. She passed the burning tyres and for a while her eyes became useless again. When she stepped out of that smoky infestation, she saw a figure standing alone in the middle of the road. His face was covered by a megaphone, but even then, even in the twisted light, he had a spare look about him. There was not an inch of waste. His jacket hung from his shoulders as from a coat hanger, no unnecessary flesh covering the bones.

  'Brothers,' he said, and his voice was familiar. 'Brothers, why are you fighting yourselves, Musalman against Musalman?'

  Another winged stick flew through the air and clattered on the pavement next to Nazneen. She bent down to look at it. It was a placard and it read: STOP THE WAR.

  'Is this what happens when Islam goes on the march?' said the Questioner.

  Nazneen hurried on. The megaphone competed with the screech of car brakes, car doors slamming, the clanging of shop alarms, a high-pitched whistle blown by a hooded youth as he raced past on a bicycle.

  'The police are laughing at you, my friends. They are waiting for you to finish each other off.'

  A boy ran into the road, beckoning with two hands wide, come on, come on. Within seconds, five others jumped on him and he fell to the ground. Another three piled on top. And then came the waiters, black-trousered, white-shirted, brandishing skewers and carving knives and chests pumped with outrage. You bloody bastards, they screamed. What the hell you shitting on our doorsteps for? Go to Oxford Street! Go to Piccadilly Circus! Go to hell!

  The heap of boys scrambled up and disappeared into the bowels of Brick Lane. 'Right now, let me tell you, the world is watching.' The Questioner turned slowly round with his megaphone, speaking his next words to the whole three hundred and sixty degrees. 'Right now, you should know, George Bush is laughing at you.'

  Out of the dark, a woman with a microphone ran up to him. He lowered the megaphone. A white man shouldered a camera and swung it in his direction. The woman spoke to the Questioner and the Questioner replied but Nazneen could no longer hear him.

  Ahead of her now were a blazing car arid two dozen heels turned up in flight. She began to hope that Shahana was on the train, or in Paignton, anywhere else but here. She tried to run with the crowd but she could not keep up. The next instant, something caught her around the chest and she lashed out at the air.

  'Get in here,' said Karim. He dragged her into a doorway.

  Nazneen tried to speak but her breath fought against it.

  'What are you doing here?'

  'Shahana.' It was all she could manage.

  'Go home. You shouldn't be here.'

  'Shahana. I think she's here.'

  Karim held her by the shoulders. There was thunder in his face. He looked as if he wanted to shake her. Then he softened. 'All right. Tell me.'

  She told him as quickly as she could. Karim peered both ways and signalled for her to step out and follow him.

  'What is happening?' she asked, as they walked past a shattered shopfront. She remembered his words. Insh' Allah, we all stand together.

  'Jamal Zaman got out of hospital today. You know, that lad they call Nonny.'

  She trotted to keep up. 'So what is this?' But she knew already, had seen it at the last meeting.

  'It's revenge. And revenge for the revenge.' He turned round. 'Man, what it is, it's a mess! It's not even about anything any more. It's just about what it is. Put anything in front of them now and they'll fight it. A police car, a shop window, anything.'

  'And the march?'

  He shrugged. 'We marched. So what, really?'

  'The Lion Hearts, did they come?'

  'About twenty or thirty. They weren't anything.'

  The pavement was blocked by a hillock of clothing, loot half desired and hastily abandoned. They ran in the road.

  'They weren't anything?'

  'Not here. Not yet. People only take a job on for themselves when their leaders aren't doing it for them. Do you understand?'

  They reached the Shalimar. The lights were off. Each table, laid for dinner, had a little pot of plastic flowers next to the triple tin dishes of chutney, chopped onion and raita. Nazneen looked at Karim.

  'Go home,' he said.

  She put her face up to the glass and cupped her hands to the sides.

  'She'll be back by morning.'

  She looked across from the toilet doors at the back of the room to the counter stacked with kebabs, tandoori chicken, bhazis, puris, trays of rice and vegetables, milky sweets, sugar-shined ladoos, the faintly sparkling jelabees.

  'I'll take you up to the corner. You'll be all right from there.'

  Then she saw them. Three waiters with their backs and arms pressed to the wall, and behind them two smaller figures, holding hands.

  She pounded on the glass and yelled. 'Shahana. Shahana. It's me. I'm here. Amma's come.'

  Chanu knew what she was going to say. That was why he could not stop talking. He talked over the television. Nazneen stared at the screen. The picture was just in red and black; even the Questioner's face was shades of red and black. His words were lost once more. Chanu sat on the arm of the sofa, swaying slightly as if he might fly off in either direction at any moment. He talked with his hands, his arms, his eyes, eyebrows, cheeks and nose as well as his lips. All were in constant motion. His legs swung now and then to show just how animated he had become, how full of life, and possibility, and promise. 'Just a reminder,' he said, waving lavishly at the screen. 'Just a reminder of what we leave behind. Of course, Shahana was a bundle of nerves and she is very highly strung and it's not surprising that she decided, as it were, to show her heels, but look where it got her and where we are going . . .'

  Shahana was taking a bath and Bibi was sitting on the side of the bath, keeping an eye on her sister.

  Nazneen looked at her husband. He smiled at her as he talked, but he would not halt the words.

  'A colleague from Kempton Kars is coming to collect us. At first when I met him I considered him what you could call an ignorant type, and actually he is, more or less, ignorant type but he is a good-hearted man. As they say in English, salt of the earth. Do you know what it is?'

  'It's very close to the time . . .'

  His face bubbled and dimpled. 'I know, I know, how exciting it is! Shall we check the tickets and the passports for the last time? We'll check them again at the airport, I expect, and then they will put stamps all over them and . . .'

  'I should have said this before.' Nazneen looked at her hands.

  Chanu stood up. He dusted down his trousers, his best blue polyester-cotton mix that came with the pale blue and beige toned-in belt. He walked over to the television. His steps were light and quick; more hop and skip than walk. 'Let's turn it off. Essentially, watching that is looking backwards. Let us look forwards from now on. When we move to the bungalow, your sister will come to live with us. Would you like that?' He replaced the label on the television screen: Auction. He crossed the room again. Now he was practically dancing. 'Of course you would. Think of it! Reunited with Hasina, the girls with their aunt, holidays in Cox's Bazaar, maybe the girls would like a little trip to the Sundarbans. They could see a real Bengal Tiger. Ha! Ha, ha. Nazneen? Ha!'

  She stood up and went to him and they were very close, there in the channel between the sofa and the armchair. She lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. He pushed his face against her palm and kissed it with great and very grave tenderness. His neck began to wilt and inch by inch his head drooped lower. She held his face, hard, as if staunching a wound, and put her other arm around him.

 
; 'You see,' he said, and he mumbled it inside her palm. 'All these years I dreamed of going home a Big Man. Only now, when it's nearly finished for me, I realized what is important. As long as I have my family with me, my wife, my daughters, I am as strong as any man alive.'

  He rested his forehead on her shoulder. A sigh shook his body. She pulled him in a little closer.

  'What is all this Big Man?' She whispered in his ear. Sadness crushed her chest. It pressed everything out of her and filled the hollows of her bones. 'What is all this Strong Man? Do you think that is why I love you? Is that what there is in you, to be loved?'

  His tears scarred her hand.

  'You're coming with me, then? You'll come?'

  'No,' she breathed. She lifted his head and looked into his face. It was dented and swollen, almost out of recognition. 'I can't go with you,' she said.

  'I can't stay,' said Chanu, and they clung to each other inside a sadness that went beyond words and tears, beyond that place, those causes and consequences, and became a part of their breath, their marrow, to travel with them from now to wherever they went.

  She could not sleep. She got up in the night and went to the kitchen. Inside a box marked 'Dr Azad' was all the food they had not eaten up. Nazneen searched for the chopping board. She found her frying pan, a saucepan, knives, spices, onions and red lentils. She washed the lentils, fished out the stones, covered them with water and set the pan to boil. The ladle had vanished, but she retrieved a large spoon and skimmed off the froth and poured it into the sink. She chopped onion, garlic and ginger, dropped a portion into the lentils and put the rest in the frying pan with some oil. A teaspoon of cumin, a pinch of turmeric and some chilli went into the pot. When the onion started to turn, she split eight cardamoms with her teeth to release the little black seeds and threw them into the frying pan. She sprinkled on a few cloves, three bay leaves and some coriander seeds. The spices began to catch and gave off their round and intricate smell. It was a scent that made all others flat; it existed in spheres, the others in thin circles. Nazneen leaned over the frying pan. The coriander seeds began to jump. She lowered the heat. She pushed aside a box to make more space on the work surface, and there was the photograph.