by Ami Rao
Zoya, in a light blue cotton nightie with smocking work on the neck (bought from Marks and Spencer on Market Street but made in Pakistan – she had noted this little detail on the label with a satisfied smile), was propped up in bed next to him watching a rerun of Begum Nadiya making chilli cheese burritos. She also, liked survival stories.
‘I worry about Kareem,’ Yusuf said again.
‘Shhh…’ Zoya tapped him impatiently on the shoulder without taking her eyes off the screen. ‘I’m just seeing this. Wait a minute. This is a very important part because she tells you when to put the kidney beans in. You know how my kidney beans never cook properly, little buggers, always too hard. Timing is very important. Timing makes the difference between good burrito and bad burrito.’
She peered at the TV with intense concentration. ‘Aah-hah!’ she said a few minutes later, banging her hand down on the mattress so hard it made Yusuf jump. Not for the first time, he regretted giving in to this latest Zoya-demand of TV-mounted-on-bedroom-wall. ‘Everybody has TV in bedroom,’ Zoya had grumbled. ‘Even Fiza, who does my upper lip threading.’ He didn’t dare ask if Fiza had a Nespresso machine in her kitchen, a far more palatable room to be discussing, Yusuf thought, than bedrooms, even between ladies threading upper lips, for what was present and what was absent from one’s bedroom seemed to Yusuf to be a deeply personal affair. But that irony-laden pronouncement from Zoya had finally settled the matter, for how could Fiza who threaded upper lips for a living have a TV in her bedroom when Zoya, whose upper lip it was that paid for that luxury, didn’t?
And so, it had been arranged for a TV with the wingspan of a Scottish seabird, or so it felt to Yusuf, to be mounted on the thin wall that separated their bedroom from Kareem’s. The deed had been done by a burly, red-headed Mancunian who identified himself on arrival by means of a laminated card he wore on a narrow blue ribbon round his thick neck, which confirmed that he was, indeed, the person authorised to mount their new TV. How, Yusuf marvelled, of all the possible professions in the world, does one come to be the person who mounts TVs in other people’s bedrooms? Chance or choice? For a young, white boy, sweet and sensitive and ripe for adulthood, it seems to Yusuf, a truly depressing profession. Yusuf looked curiously at the man, still a boy really, no older than twenty. He seemed happy enough, very smiley – in fact, Yusuf observed, a little too smiley. At what? he wondered, because the chap could not possibly enjoy this job of going around mounting TVs in people’s bedrooms, but Zoya had smiled back, equally delighted, but with Mr Burly, or with the TV itself or what this would mean in power terms for the future of Zoya-Fiza bedroom discussions, he couldn’t be sure.
In any case, Mr Burly had been offered (on arrival and post-identification) a coffee from the Nespresso machine, something Zoya never did with anyone who was not family or close friend – ‘The pods, you see, are how these people make sure they have you by your nuts, for the rest of your life,’ she had announced knowledgeably on several occasions. But the Nespresso had been offered and accepted, presumably at the risk of her husband’s nuts, and the TV had been mounted – too high, Yusuf thought critically as he lay in bed craning his neck at a painfully awkward angle watching Nadiya Hussein open a can of what seemed like already softened kidney beans and add them to her pot. ‘Now I see how she does it,’ Zoya was saying, slapping the bed. ‘So clever she is, Nadiya. So talented. So pretty, also.’
Satisfied then with the wholesomeness of that assessment, she turned the TV off magnanimously and turned to her husband. ‘Yes, what were you saying?’
‘I worry about Kareem,’ Yusuf said for the third time, plumping his pillow.
‘So? I worry about Ameena, what’s new there?’
‘Zoya, I am very serious.’
‘What do you think I am? Tickle-Me-Elmo-Humorous?’ She shook her head disdainfully. ‘Okay, what is it you are so worried about?’
‘He’s…’
‘Not you?’
‘Zoya, please.’
‘Okay,’ she said in a tone that Yusuf knew meant she was conceding only because she couldn’t be bothered, in that moment, to belabour that particular point, a familiar battle wound they both knew she had the power to open and close at will. This time, for some reason, she had graciously decided to leave it closed. ‘Then what?’
‘He’s too… too…’
‘Too religious?’ she exclaimed, her excitement starting to mount. ‘Haan? Haan? Too Pakistani? Not white enough for you?’
‘You know, Zoya, we live in this country now, it’s important to assimilate.’
‘Yes. Assimilate. Absorb. Dissolve! Like Ameena. Irreverent girl! No God, no country, no nothing. Painting things and living with Jews! That girl has no roots.’
‘Their roots are here, in the West. They are Western children, British children. And that Jewish David seems like a decent fellow…’
‘Decent? How do you know he is decent? He is orphan and Jewish. In his condition, it is very difficult to be decent. How can anyone be decent, when you have nobody who gives you love?’
Yusuf dismissed the insight with a wave of his hand.
‘Anyway, Ameena is there now,’ he intoned, ‘Kareem is here. In this country. It would do him good to recognise that instead of roaming around all the time with those elements.’
‘Elements? What is this, periodic chart?’
‘Tch, tch. You know what I mean. Those boys he hangs around with all the time outside the mosque. I don’t like them. They have radical thoughts.’
‘Well, I think it is good he has ties to his God and his homeland. There is no need to become white man because we live in white country.’
‘Zoya, you are the one who wanted to come here.’
‘And you are the one who didn’t,’ she finished triumphantly.
He closed his eyes. ‘There is no point having any discussion with you.’
‘Then go to sleep,’ she said, turning off the light switch above her head. ‘Tomorrow, I will make chilli cheese burrito. Food of Mexico. In our kitchen in Manchester. Recipe from Nadiya. That is called assimilation.’
Next door, in Kareem’s room, they heard a low, dull thud. Then it was quiet.
But a few minutes later, Zoya said, ‘Are you awake?’
‘I am now,’ Yusuf replied wryly.
But she let that pass without the temptation of biting back. Instead she said, ‘If we have any trouble, Yusuf, it will be from Ameena. You mark my words.’
Next to her, Yusuf felt a tiny quiver in his heart, for Zoya’s words, intended to comfort him, had only served to deepen his worries. A reminder of how little we know the people we think we know. How unqualified we are to make assumptions on their behalf. How we don’t get to choose our children, just like they get scarce choice in the matter as well. And how wrong we can be to think we know how our children will act, to think we know which one of them will cause trouble. And when. And how.
2.22
He came, like trouble often does, unexpectedly and in the dark.
Ameena answered the door and returned to the dining table with an odd, blank look.
‘It’s your brother,’ she announced.
Abraham was tall, like really tall, Ameena thought, well over six feet, with long hair and a full beard and small, strikingly green eyes. He was built as well, strong and muscular and big – just plain big – in exactly the kind of way that David wasn’t. In fact, never in a million years would you think the two men were related – save for the dimples, but where David had what Ameena liked to call an ‘aspiring dimple’ on his left cheek, Abe had a pronounced set on both sides, deep and defined, that made him look, when he smiled, like a little boy.
He came holding a small canvas travel bag and nothing else, which he explained very shortly thereafter by reporting that he would be staying ‘only a few days, if it’s okay by you of course’ – and he looked at Ameena when
he said that and Ameena was grateful for it, but noted that none of the three of them chose to elaborate on what ‘only a few’ meant, specifically speaking.
‘I thought I’d stop by,’ he said, when he was seated on the living room sofa and offered a glass of wine, which he declined in favour of water; David sitting across him on the armchair, Ameena hovering around nervously, unsure of whether she should stay or she should go, what politeness demanded in a situation such as this. ‘I thought I’d stop by on my way to Israel.’
Ameena sat down.
‘Abe,’ said David, ‘if you’re coming from Australia, New York isn’t on the way to Israel.’
‘Yes, yes, I know, but I wanted to go… home first… you know, to Rhode Island, to the… the house.’
‘The house doesn’t exist any more. It’s a drugstore now. The garden out the front, when you turn off the main road, is the parking lot.’
‘A drugstore? Fuck me dead. Oh sorry,’ he said, looking at Ameena, ‘’scuse my French.’
Then he laughed. ‘That’s kinda funny isn’t it. A drugstore when ain’t no drugs could save her.’ He looked intently at David through those smoky green eyes, the colour of the ocean on a stormy night. ‘And the path…?’
‘The path to the beach is still there.’
His huge body heaved suddenly as if he had let release some kind of tightness in his chest and Ameena wondered why the continued existence of some path would cause such a reaction when the house itself – ostensibly a far more meaningful thing – had been razed to the ground.
‘Gosh,’ Ameena said because no one else was speaking, ‘I feel like I should break out the cake and the champagne or something. How long has it been since you two have seen each other?’
‘Seven years,’ David said promptly. ‘How did you even find out where I lived?’
‘I googled you, brother.’
‘You googled me?’
‘Yeah. It’s not hard to find someone in New York, you know. Small city. Tiny. The same people walking the same streets, forming the same bad habits. Pretending as if everything in the universe emanates from here. Provincial, if you ask me.’
Ameena looked down. David felt his face go very warm. ‘Why are you going to Israel?’
‘It would have made Dad happy.’
‘You’re going to Israel because it would have made Dad happy?’
‘Yeah. I mean, I’m going to pay my respects you know, to the homeland, like you, all of you’ – he waved his hand in the air somewhere in the region of Ameena’s face – ‘go to Palestine, don’t you, on pilgrimage?’
‘Mecca,’ Ameena said quietly.
‘Meck-huh?’
David stood up, and when Ameena glanced at him, she could see the lines appear around his mouth, the lines that barely concealed the beginnings of anger and who knew what other emotion, but she remained seated where she was and, with a small shake of her head, said calmly, ‘Mecca. Muslims go to Mecca on pilgrimage. Not Palestine.’
‘Oh yeah, sorry.’
‘But there does exist,’ she continued, ‘since you brought it up, the third holiest site in Islam, on Temple Mount, in the heart of Jerusalem.’
‘Right,’ said David, still standing up, ‘how about you and I carry on our brotherly conversation while Ameena goes to bed. She’s got an early start tomorrow.’
‘Oh,’ said Abe, ‘but I’m enjoying this so much. So, Ameena – am I saying your name right? Where you from, beyond the fancy English accent and stuff?’
‘From England.’
‘Haha, no, I mean, where are you really from?’
‘I’m really from Manchester. Which is really in England.’
He shrugged. ‘Okay,’ he said agreeably. And then, ‘You work on a Sunday?’
‘Pardon?’ Ameena asked.
‘It’s Saturday night. He said you had an early start. What are you, a nurse or something?’
‘She’s a writer. And an artist,’ David said tersely before she could answer.
Abraham whistled, but his eyes, Ameena noticed, were not warm. ‘Good stuff! Come to think of it, I’ve been sitting here admiring all this art on your walls. Of course, I didn’t know it was yours. Does it mean something? Is it symbolic?’
‘Hey Abe, I think Ameena can tell you the meaning of her art another time. Shall we?’
‘No, no, I’d like to…’ Ameena said pleasantly. ‘So, I think my work is more about conveying a personal perspective rather than making some sort of specific statement – it’s idiosyncratic in that sense. I would like my art to slow the viewer down, make them stop and think. In a way, the hope is to delay the moment of understanding.’
‘Personal perspective, like how?’
He stood up, the full length of him, and walked towards a small painting blazing with bright purples and shades of green and what looked like a river of rocks snaking through the centre and disappearing off the edge, almost into the frame.
He looked at it, then he turned to look at her. ‘What’s the moment of understanding in this one?’ There was something in his eyes then, a kind of expectant light that Ameena couldn’t place, only she knew it unnerved her.
With a small, polite smile, she said, ‘Well, it’s what you make of it really as the beholder, but in my head, I was picturing the dry-stone walls of the North Yorkshire Moors. It is spectacular terrain, especially in the summer, covered in heather – you never know where the moors end, they seem to roll on and on and then they meet the sky.’
He nodded. ‘And that one?’
‘Ah, that’s Rhode Island,’ she said, flushing. ‘Your brother took me. It’s meant to be an abstraction of the lighthouse and a fishing boat on the bay, just inverted, a kind of mirror image, like you’re looking down from the sky at the reflection in the water…’
‘Oh…?’ he said, staring at the painting, a thoughtful look on his face.
‘Sorry,’ she said apologetically, ‘it might not seem that way to you at all. I mean, it’s seascape that’s much more intimately familiar to you than I could ever…’
‘That’s weird. To me the boat doesn’t look like a boat at all, it looks like a plane… slicing through the sky… straight towards the tall building… see…’
‘You little bastard!’ David said, his voice shaking with rage.
Ameena took a sharp intake of breath.
Abe laughed, and his dimples deepened delightfully.
‘Oh, for fuck’s sakes guys, don’t look so outraged, I’m only messing with ya!’
But in two strides, David was by his side, grabbing his arm and steering him forcefully into the spare room.
‘Hey! Hey! What are you doing? Let go of me, I’m a grown man now. Fucking hell David, come on!’
The door to the spare room slammed shut.
Ameena put a hand to her head. She felt weary now, like a soldier who has just had his first sighting of the enemy troops and realised with a sinking heart that no matter how brave he or his man should hope to be, or how fearless, that they wouldn’t stand a chance in the face of that particular enemy, that they were no match for their scale, their strength, their brutality, or their power.
She got up shakily and started to clear away the dinner that they had abandoned midway. It made her sick, the sight of the half-eaten fish on the pretty olive earthenware platter in the middle of the table, its centre bone splayed open, naked and hideous. She threw the lot in the bin, the leftover fish, the vegetables, the untouched loaf of bread that she had proudly baked herself that evening. Wasting food was something she never did, a passing down of her mother’s habit, but then long-lost brothers were something that never returned unannounced either. ‘Never say never, hey?’ she said aloud to herself and then laughed – a thin, hollow, crazy-woman laugh.
When David came into the bedroom later – was it minutes, hours? – she was lying
in bed, watching a rerun of a popular sitcom on TV. ‘Hey,’ she said, and she smiled because she was genuinely happy to see him.
‘I’ve asked him to leave,’ David said, his voice still ringing with anger, and Ameena realised in a moment of surprise that she’d never seen David angry before, not like this.
‘No, no, don’t do that. It’s okay, he was joking. He said so.’
‘It wasn’t funny.’
‘No,’ she agreed, ‘it wasn’t. But he’s your brother, and he only wants to stay a few nights and well, where else will he go at this hour?’
‘Ameena, that’s not your problem. I’ve already asked him to leave. I have no problem asking him to leave. This is your home. He has no right to insult you in your home. Hell, he has no right to insult you anywhere. But especially not in your home.’
Ameena took a deep breath. Then she nodded and smiled at an indistinct spot on the wall. ‘No, it’s fine,’ she said quickly before she had an opportunity to change her mind, ‘he can stay.’
‘Are you sure?’ David ventured cautiously.
‘Yes,’ she said with finality, ‘I’m sure.’
He sat down next to her then and held her, so her face was buried, if only for a few delicious seconds, in his warmth. ‘Thank you,’ he said lightly, but in his voice, she heard something that sounded distinctly like respect. ‘And know that I’ll make it up to you.’
She freed herself of him and winked. ‘I have very expensive taste, you know…’ she said.
At that, he smiled but she noticed how the smile did not reach his eyes. ‘Uh-oh,’ he said mechanically, and then he was up and at the door. ‘I’ll go let him know, the spoilt brat, I’ll let him know he’s only staying because you let him. Be right back.’
But he wasn’t right back and then Ameena switched the TV off and put out the lights and pretended that none of the words she heard from the other room, words like Muslim and Arab and terrorist, ringing clear and loud through the thin walls, had been exchanged at all, that she had imagined them, like one sometimes does when one is afraid of something that hasn’t even happened.
