No New Land

by M G Vassanji

  “Come again,” she said as the men stood up to leave.

  “We will, we will,” they both said.

  “Nurdin Bhai, I hope to see you again,” she said at the door, with a smile.

  “You come home too,” he said, returning her look and feeling very shy at the special attention.

  Nurdin and Romesh walked towards the bus stop, subdued and introspective. Nurdin still couldn’t get over the coincidence of meeting her. After so long, and in just this little corner of the world! Old memories of the shop on Market Street and the two flats above it, flashed into his mind. He turned towards Romesh to tell him something, at which point Romesh suddenly broke the silence.

  “Nur, man, I hope you know. The girl likes you!”

  “She’d better. We played together, you know – ”

  “And you can do the same now.… ”

  “That’s unfair, Rom! That’s unfair! She’s a respectable woman – like a sister.”

  “Sorry, Nur,” said Romesh, taken aback.

  After that day, Nurdin would occasionally make a detour to Kensington Market on his way home to buy something or the other, and he would add a little extra detour to go and see Sushila. A short visit for a cup of tea, a little chat. He found he could talk to her, felt the need to go and do just that, even for a few minutes – such a luxury it was, for so long he had had no one to simply sit down and chat with.

  They talked about the past, her life, her daughter. An overall impression gradually formed of her, getting more detailed every time he saw her.

  She had married quite early, when she was seventeen, to the son of another Dar cobbler. But her husband did not join the family calling and ran a tailoring shop instead. They had a daughter and no other children. No boys. After the country’s independence, like others, they had to choose whether to keep their British status or to renounce it. To escape his family’s taunts, they chose the former, they went to England. A corner store in London. Meanwhile, several miscarriages. An unhappy, unfulfilled husband who refused to adjust to London. They had never worked so hard before, known so much misery, felt so lost. After her husband died, Sushila refused to go back to Dar or to India, both for her own sake and her daughter’s.

  “I was not going to slave for my fat mother-in-law and the fat aunts and grandmother. And I would not choose that life for my daughter either. So by and by we heard about Toronto.”

  And the difference between London and Toronto?

  She smiled. “One day I’ll tell you.”

  Her parents were both alive and in India, having saved enough to retire. The little girl, her sister with whom he used to play, was also in India. Her brother was in Dar.

  He told her about his family’s Montreal trip, about Akber’s daughter, the diamond business in Europe. She was highly amused.

  “Don’t I bring good luck now! Diamonds! If not for me, where would he be now? A bus driver?”

  “You know, we are called chammars, low caste, because we handle leather,” she told him on one occasion.

  He recalled her father, old Narandas, sitting on the floor of his wide-open shop, absorbed, stretching a piece of leather around a dummy foot gripped between the soles of his feet, hammering in the tacks with the little hammer. A short thin man with a scraggly beard, working hard morning to night. Boys would sometimes tease the cobbler, setting fire-crackers outside their store.

  “To us, all Hindus were the same,” Nurdin said. “We called them Banyas – not to my father, of course. He came from the old country, he could tell between the different castes and whatever.”

  “Now if I had been a Patel or a Shah, a lawyer’s or a doctor’s daughter, or one of the downtown wholesalers’, I might have been acceptable then. He wouldn’t have been so harsh on your brother.… ”

  “No, you’re wrong there,” he said definitely.

  “No?”

  “No. It would have made no difference. Religion – din – came first with him, not status. Even Nehru’s Indira would have made no difference to him.”

  She laughed heartily. “You know, Nurdin Bhai, you have such a sense of humour. You should let it out and laugh.”

  “Don’t I laugh?”

  “Yes, but not enough.”

  She was so charming, he thought, and even at this age so attractive. Was it any wonder Akber had recited ghazals for her and sent a love letter, the first one already with a proposal of marriage? What would he himself have done? He remembered he had also liked her, as a child. Sushila, Sushila, come play with us.

  “What are you thinking about, Nurdin Bhai?”

  He grinned sheepishly. “ ‘Sushila, Sushila, come play with us.’ ”

  “You remember a lot, Nurdin Bhai.”

  “Don’t call me ‘Bhai.’ Please.”

  “Mr. Lalani, then?” She smiled mischievously, expectantly, at him, with a tilt of her head.

  “Nurdin.”

  “Nurdin.”

  Didn’t he laugh enough? Her remark to that effect concerned him for some days. What did she mean? Did he look sad? He always thought of himself as a jolly fellow, though not a loud person.

  The fact that she was studying for a high school diploma was also of concern to him. He had never thought, even once, of doing the same. He’d just never thought of it. And here she was – a woman – a humble cobbler’s daughter – on her way to getting one. “Why?” he had once asked her.

  “I don’t know.… I always wanted to finish school, but I was not allowed to. Now I will.”

  “And after that, you’ll go to university?” He attempted to sound facetious.

  “Maybe. Why not? Let’s see. I always dreamed of becoming a lawyer and fighting cases.”

  With her, he found he could talk. He told her many things: about his kids, his wife, his escapades with Romesh, stopping short of the visit to the peep show – but even that, or something like that, she guessed. She seemed to understand him completely, and her responses were in a language, an idiom, a tone of voice that to him were so perfectly empathetic.

  13

  It was Saturday night. A sleek white Mercedes was parked right in the driveway of Sixty-nine Rosecliffe Park, close to a lamp and already stuck with a violation ticket. What’s a mere fine to a Mercedes owner? And what is a Mercedes for if not to flaunt, under a light here in the front driveway, instead of back in the visitors’ area in the company of rusted junks raised up on stones. The prominent licence plate, at the back: JAMAL.

  The driveway looked rather mysterious and exotic in the night, its relief of trees, shrubs, and hedges, and the lamps, glowing spheres suspended on relatively short poles, forming areas of alternate darkness and soft light.

  As the Lalanis were not in yet, the only place Jamal could be was at the open house on the eighteenth floor. There Nanji found him, patiently but loudly explaining a fine point of the Canadian immigration laws.

  The residents of Sixty-nine – those who had been invited – had never forgiven Jamal his wedding reception, where they had been thrown together with people they could not relate to, all the accommodation – including the speech and jokes – being made for those others (the “Canadians”) and not for them. They had been made to feel inferior. A new Jamal was expected and had duly come back. No more did he tolerate the old familiarity, the tea-shop mode of greeting: Eh, Jamal, what do you say, wife-kids, urine-water, everything okay, isn’t it? What should I do about such and such? To which Jamal, always intimidatingly well dressed, would yield the coolest response. Hi there, Abdul. Meet my spouse. Why don’t you come to our office? We’ll have a chat and discuss your problem. And the petitioner – with the first available excuse (Oh, there’s my wife, nice seeing you) – would escape.

  Jamal disliked being treated as one of them, to be identified with the ragamuffin he’d been as a boy, “The Persian” with whom they had played marbles on the sidewalks and cricket in the backyards. For a brief period he had acquired status, in Dar, then he’d lost it. Now, again, after hard work he had
status, and they’d better recognize it, these Shamsis from Dar. There was a proper distance between a lawyer and a client. Professional conduct demanded it. He maintained this distance by putting between himself and them a secretary, a saucy “Canadian,” who recognized no relationship bar that of lawyer and client. And if they did manage to get past her, they would be confronted with the primly perfect English accent of Jamal’s wife Nancy, calling herself Nasim. They knew as well, these Abduls, that if they came to his office, he would charge them by the hour.

  “Ah, Nanji – just the person. We were driving by and thought we’d look you up.”

  Before they could get up, Nanji quickly ordered tea and samosas, which came almost instantly. He consumed them sitting on the floor next to a group playing cards.

  The Jamals, on the couch, had resisted so far, though the smells must have tantalized. Now they joined in. “Eh, chacha, what about me?” said Jamal.

  “But we thought,” began the chacha, throwing a quick glance at Nancy-Nasim – “Oh, sorry, then – ”

  “Since when have I stopped eating samosas?”

  Later the three of them walked out, towards the elevator.

  “Nanji, you should have come to our Canada Day party. We missed you.”

  “The Lalanis – ”

  “Ah, the Lalanis.”

  “Well, the kids, then. They asked me to go with them.”

  “Later I’ll tell you about our friend, Nurdin. I say, why don’t you come back with us now, you could spend the night.”

  “Yes, do,” said Nasim.

  He had already stayed overnight at their fashionable apartment downtown. But Nanji decided, never again. He would not be adopted, nor give them the opportunity to indulge in pitying him, when it was they who needed him, probably had nothing to do tonight, had missed out on some invitation or another.

  “No, thanks,” Nanji said. Then, “Why don’t you come sit at my place, you’ve not seen it for a while.”

  “From what I have heard …” said Nasim Jamal playfully.

  “It’s different now.”

  When they walked in to Nanji’s apartment, they were impressed. Jamal gave his characteristic whoop. “Wow, man! This is it. Now you are beginning to live. Come out of your shell, Nanji, and you and I will hit this town hard – ”

  “All this in honour of the girls! Nanji, you’ve surpassed yourself,” said Nasim.

  Nanji was never sure how to respond to her. He would have to get used to her. He wondered how much she simply tolerated him for her husband’s sake. Jamal had chosen wisely, having taken good measure of his weaknesses. She was the counter-weight, the anchor to his wild fancies. And probably the reason why he would succeed. But in what?

  “Nanji, you should have brought them home.”

  “Well, you know how these girls are. Hardly time to pause.”

  “So, you had a good time.” Jamal grinned at him enviously. He grinned back.

  “And at what stage have you reached in your long – I should say your epic – romance?” Jamal went on.

  He could never resist a little jibe, to stay on top, even though he didn’t expect this answer.

  “Finished.”

  “Finished?”

  “Dead.”

  Nanji composed himself, bringing out a bottle of wine and glasses.

  “But you look good – doesn’t he, dear?”

  “I should say so.”

  Jamal briefly held his glance, looking for signs of any damage he might have done.

  You had to admit, Nanji thought, he was not without compassion. Why do I like him so, this crude, insolent guy, presumptuous … even at his most polished you cannot but see the jagged roughness. If there is anyone worth watching, any life worth following, it’s surely his. Even in his conformity, his assumed respectability, he is taking a risk, walking the dangerous path – and he knows it! He knows the risk.

  “You look good, Nanji.”

  “It had to end. It just wasn’t right – like taking the wrong road and afraid to get off.”

  “Now you’re off. I’m glad. We have things to do together.”

  Jamal sipped his wine, sat back, and took out a cigarette, saying “May I?” to his wife, who nodded indulgently. “You’re something, Nanji – keeping wine in this building where God lurks in every corridor. And they know it, these friends of yours. If it were me” – he sipped – “I would be condemned by the Grand Sheriff of Mecca.”

  They grinned at each other.

  “I’ve been to Dar – personal,” Jamal said quietly.

  “You’ve been to Dar! You were not afraid?”

  “Shitless, at first. But I had to go one more time.”

  “So how is your father?”

  “Mellow – but will not come to Canada. Sister’s married, has a shop. So much for my family.”

  “And how was Dar?”

  “Finished. But let me tell you who I saw. In Dar I saw” – he took a deep puff of his cigarette and tapped the ashes into an ashtray with flourish while Nanji reminded himself of his friend’s dramatic career – “none other than our former resident – ”

  “Esmail.”

  “Esmail. And guess what he’s doing?”

  “Painting.”

  “He is in an artists’ colony just outside Dar, one of its main attractions.”

  “Wow. So he found a place for himself.”

  “And how. Students – American students, nice pretty girls – go and study this art. They write about it. Next month representatives of the colony are going to an exhibition and conference in New York – East African retrospective or something. And Esmail will be there. He is painting nothing but masks now. He showed me.”

  “So how can Dar be finished when it can do that?”

  “Dar didn’t do it – Canada did.”

  “By breaking his legs, you mean.”

  “I didn’t quite mean that, but there’s that too.”

  “I was there.”

  Esmail the baker, kneeling on the tracks, crying hoarsely, Save me! Save me! his meat pies strewn over the platform. Perhaps he will be the great success. We’ll buy UNESCO cards with his paintings on them. While those immigrant Toronto poets and artists having periodic jubilees in the streets rot, out of context, their roots out in the cold – irrelevant to the world, any world, marginal.…

  “And listen,” Jamal was saying, “I’ve brought the most exquisite zebra skin with me – not easy, you know, there are new laws. You must come and see.… ”

  Jamal was quickly becoming a big success as a lawyer. His cases were getting to be known. And there were hordes of people seeking immigration advice, people trying to bring families into Canada. Many of his clients were businessmen who could afford to pay thousands of dollars. People who were not his type, he reminded Nanji. “Wait,” he said to his friend, reiterating an old promise, “wait until I’ve made my millions. Then I’ll do something great.” But then it could be too late, thought Nanji to himself, and immediately censured himself for becoming a grapeless fox.

  Nasim-Nancy was getting restless. In her home, she would simply have fallen asleep on the rug.

  “We should come more often now,” she began, with a look at her husband.

  He took the cue, they stood up to leave.

  “You were going to tell me about Nurdin,” said Nanji, standing up.

  “Ah, yes. Listen to this. Our friend was seen at a peep show.”

  “You must be kidding. Are you sure? Where?”

  “Yonge Street, where else? My client works there – and knows him.”

  “Nice clients you have.”

  “At least they work. Well, what do you have to say to that?”

  “I don’t know. Once he asked me if eating pork could change one’s character.”

  “So our Mr. Lalani is being tempted by this devil of a world. You think we should warn him and save his soul?”

  They were at the door. There was that look in Jamal’s eyes, sizing you up, and a shadow
of a smile on his wide mouth.

  “N-no. He’s his own man.”

  His own man. And the kids and Zera? But Nurdin deserved a chance to find his own way, Nanji figured. Even if he risked hurting himself.

  14

  Nurdin Lalani had once been enthusiastic about his new home – the setting up, the new possibilities, the children’s future. Even the hardships gave a romantic aspect to the whole endeavour. But no more, he thought. He found it difficult to set his heart on his home. It seemed drawn out there – out the balcony, across the valley, and towards the city.…

  Gone were the days of fullness of heart, the sense of wholeness at having children. Time was when it was children that brought a man rushing home. From work. From travels. But this country had taken his children away, and he felt distanced, rejected by them. Especially the girl.

  There were times when, he was sure, she despised him. For what he was, unsophisticated, uneducated, a peon. For the crime of being her father when he wasn’t anything like what she had in mind. She was ashamed of this little Paki-shitty-stan of Don Mills, as she called it. She didn’t belong here, she would pull herself out of this condition: everything about her attitude suggested that. She would rise to where they had neither the courage nor the ability to reach. Where had she picked up this abrasiveness, this shrillness, this hatred of her origins? “I will be president of IBM,” she would announce, more to taunt, he believed, than anything else. “But you want to do pharmacy,” he once ventured. “Okay, president of Dupont Chemicals,” she retorted. “The president of Dupont is probably someone already called Dupont,” said Nanji, who was at the table.