Where the Air is Sweet

by Tasneem Jamal

  Raju is quiet. He looks closely at the Crow’s eyes and the shape of her nose. “He looks like you.”

  She stares at him as if he has slapped her. “He is an abomination,” she says, gathering a handful of white cotton saree in her hand and standing up. “This is why he was born unable to speak or hear.” She turns to leave.

  As she reaches the bottom of the stairs leading up to her flat, Raju calls after her. “The boy’s name? Ma! What is he called?”

  She turns back and looks at Raju with an expression he has not yet seen on her face. It might be sadness, but because of the distance between them, he is not sure. Then she lets out a sigh and says, almost in resignation, “Prem.”

  Two other children live in the flat with the Crow, both of them boys and both of them older than Prem. Raju sees them leave for school in the mornings before he opens the duka and return in the afternoons. They wear clean and pressed khaki school uniforms but their hair, though oiled, is often disheveled. The younger boy is barefoot but the older one wears shoes. They are much too large, the heels dragging on the ground when he walks, the shoes sometimes slipping off when he runs. On Saturdays and in the late afternoons, Raju sees the boys playing on the street in front of his duka, tossing pebbles back and forth or rolling old bicycle tires around. They say hello to Raju each time they pass his duka. But they do not stop to speak, nor does their father, who nods at Raju when he returns from work, a leather case tucked under his arm. Raju never sees the mother of the children. When he asks the Crow about her, she shakes her head and closes her eyes. Raju does not ask her again.

  Prem’s hair is matted and his face continually has a coat of grime on it. Raju sees that he sometimes has bruises on his cheeks and around his eyes. He is darker-skinned than the other boys, darker even than the Crow, who is herself not fair. But his skin is sallow and the whites of his eyes have a yellowish tinge to them. Raju does not see him go to school or play outside. The only time he sees him is when he comes to fetch the tiffins. Every day he wears the same dirty khaki shorts and singlet. The once-white singlet has become a dull yellow and has dark brown stains along the hem. A large tear runs through it, from just below the child’s neck to the middle of his belly, exposing his brown, hollow chest.

  When Raju is finished with the tiffins, he stacks them and hands them to Prem. Then without a word he turns away. It seems to be the least painful way for the child to deal with the encounter.

  But one evening, after he hands the boy the tiffins, Raju grabs hold of his free hand, pries open his small fist and places a sticky red sweet on his palm. He did not plan to do this. In the moment, he felt an impulse he could not resist. The boy stares at it for almost a minute, peering closely, as if he is examining an insect. Then he clenches his fist again, sweet inside, and runs off, the tiffins rattling against his leg.

  Every Friday evening, for months, Raju pries open Prem’s hand and places a sweet inside it. He cannot explain why he is forcing a sweet onto a child. He knows only that if he did not do it, he could not bear to be in the boy’s presence.

  It is Friday and Raju is sitting on his stool, leaning against the counter of his duka. Mosquitoes buzz around his ears, sweat glues his shirt to his back and he is rubbing the palm of his hand into his forehead until he feels a burning sensation on his skin. The money he has collected in his till does not add up to the sales he has recorded in his ledger and he cannot figure out why. As he sits there, growing increasingly angry with himself for his inability to sort out the discrepancy, he hears the sound of tiffins rattling beside him. He looks over to see Prem, empty tiffins in his left hand, his right hand clenched in a fist at his side. The boy has returned with the empty tiffins. Or he never left.

  “What?” Raju snaps. The boy is grimy, intrusive. Prem shifts his weight from one foot to the other. Raju turns back to his books. Some minutes pass. The boy does not leave. “Go away!” Raju says through his teeth. Prem does not move. Raju barely defeats an urge to strike him. He runs his hands through his hair and looks at Prem again. He is standing exactly as he was earlier, as though Raju has not ordered him to leave, as though Raju is not enraged at his presence. When Raju turns back to his book, his eye catches the jar of sweets at the far end of the counter. He forgot to give him a sweet. He turns back to Prem and begins to laugh. He laughs so loudly and heartily that Prem steps backwards, away from him. But, still, he does not leave.

  Raju stops laughing, leans forward and raises his palm towards him, as if to ask What? Prem blinks quickly. Raju waits. Slowly, Prem raises his right hand towards Raju. He unclenches his fingers as though it aches to do so, as though the bones are not designed to stretch in this manner. Raju reaches into the jar and lifts out a sweet. He holds it up in front of Prem. “This?” he asks. Prem nods. Raju places the red sweet on the boy’s open hand.

  Prem looks at the sweet and then at Raju and, for the first time since Raju has met him, he smiles. His face cracks at the effort. The skin around his eyes and at the sides of his mouth breaks into deep wrinkles, like an old man’s. Crooked lines open up in the dirt on his cheeks so that his skin looks like the earth does when the rains refuse to come. But his small black eyes become bright and his teeth, the two front ones too large for his mouth, shine. As he watches him, Raju feels the way he did the morning after his father died. When the light of the sun, untouched by the calamity that had just struck, shattered the darkness of the suddenly empty house and assured Raju that he could breathe again.

  Prem begins to linger near Raju. After he collects the empty tiffins, he sits on the curb in front of Raju’s duka, tracing in the dirt on the road with his forefinger. One afternoon, Raju calls him over and holds a piece of muslin in front of him. Then he turns to the back of the duka, which is lined with shelves, and lifts cakes of soap, canisters of oil and boxes of matches from one of the shelves, places them on the counter and wipes the wood shelving with the muslin. He hands the muslin to Prem. Immediately the boy steps into the duka and wipes the shelf. Raju runs his finger across the shelf, shows it, clean, to Prem and nods. Without being asked, Prem returns each item to the shelf, exactly where it was before Raju removed it.

  Every afternoon, when he brings the lunch tiffins, Prem stands and waits until Raju pulls out the muslin and hands it to him. Then, he gets to work.

  A week later, as Raju is counting money, Prem appears in front of the shop with a fuggio, a broom made out of long, dried blades of grass, in his hand. He smiles at Raju and then begins sweeping the ground in front of the duka. Thereafter, each time he comes downstairs, Prem sweeps. Three times a day. Even if the area is completely clean. The only time he doesn’t is if Raju has a customer standing in front of him. He waits quietly until the customer has left to begin sweeping.

  One afternoon while Prem is sweeping, one of Raju’s suppliers arrives. Prem stands back and watches as Raju checks the order and negotiates payment. Once the supplier leaves, Prem helps Raju stock the duka.

  Raju decides to pay him for the work that he is doing, a ten-cent coin each Saturday afternoon. The first time Raju gives the boy a coin, Prem passes it from one hand to the other, back and forth, and then he presses it against his cheek and holds it there with his palm, a smile on his face. Bemused, Raju smiles back.

  When business is slow, Raju sits with Prem on the curb and traces stick people into the dirt: long-limbed figures with giant heads and small rounded hats. Prem, the tip of his tongue peeking through his pursed lips, his brow knitted in concentration, carefully draws smaller versions of the stick people beside Raju’s. As they sit back and examine the work, they laugh at the child’s flawed but determined imitations of the elder’s creations. One day, after weeks of practice, Prem’s drawings are almost exactly the same as Raju’s. When Raju looks closer, he sees that the circles Prem has drawn are more precise than his own, his people more symmetrical. As Prem leans forward to wipe the figures so they can begin again, Raju pats him on the back with the flat of his large hand. He pats him firmly but th
e boy’s back does not collapse under the weight.

  For one year, Prem works for Raju and offers him the only companionship he will have in his time in Kampala. Then, one day, it comes abruptly to an end.

  Early on Saturday morning, the boys who live with Prem are playing in front of Raju’s duka. They are laughing loudly and tossing a small canvas satchel back and forth, shouting, “Chor! Chor!” Normally, Raju would not take the time to glance at them, but because they are shouting “Thief! Thief!” he and the other shopkeepers look up. When it becomes apparent the boys are only playing and no thief is on the loose, Raju pays no more attention to them.

  A howl fills the air. It is a sound Raju has never heard and a sound he can compare to nothing. Later, he will describe it to himself alternately as the sound of rage and the sound of pain.

  Prem is running across the road, towards the boys, his fingers clutching at his hair, his mouth wide, his throat emitting the sickening sound. When he reaches the smaller of the two boys, the one with the satchel in his hand, he tackles him to the ground. Seconds later, the bigger boy is on top of Prem, yanking him by the hair on the back of his head and beginning to punch his face. Continuing to hold a fistful of Prem’s hair in his hand, the boy lifts him to his feet. Before Raju can reach them, the second, smaller boy has stood up and is sinking his knee into Prem’s midsection. Raju slaps the bigger boy across the side of his face. He immediately releases Prem. The two boys, panting, look at Raju and appear to absorb his full height. They turn and run, presumably towards their flat, but Raju does not look to see where they have gone. He is trying to help Prem stand up. But Prem will not let him. He pulls away from Raju, stumbles backwards and begins to pound his fists into his own bloodied face and head. Raju grabs his wrists and holds them at his sides, against his small hips, but Prem responds with a swift knee into Raju’s groin. Stunned by the pain, Raju falls doubled over onto the ground. Unrestrained now, Prem continues to beat himself, hitting his head and scratching at his cheeks with his fingernails. Raju, lying on the ground, his body made momentarily immobile by pain, is watching him.

  Prem’s father arrives, shirt untucked, feet bare, and runs towards Prem, grabs him by the shoulders and shakes him. “You animal!” he screams. He shoves the child to the ground, where he lands flat on his back. “You cursed creature!” Spit is falling out the sides of the man’s mouth. His face is flushed. He kicks Prem repeatedly in the side of his chest until he curls into a small ball, his arms shielding his face, his knees pulled up to his belly. Raju is moving towards them; he is screaming.

  In a moment, Raju’s voice is the only sound on the street. In the next moment, there is no sound. The silence presses down on Raju’s head, on his shoulders and he drops to his knees in front of Prem. He is lying on the ground on his side, unmoving, one arm lying limply over his face, only his jaw visible. His father is standing behind Raju. Raju can hear him breathing, heavily, like a dog. A handful of people, who were drawn by the commotion, stand around them. Prem’s father brushes past Raju, roughly lifts Prem up and throws him over his shoulder as though he is a sack of rice. Then he walks up the stairs to his flat.

  The next day, Prem does not come to fetch the tiffins. The Crow does not come to deliver them either. Instead, a young African woman arrives in their place. Days go by and still Prem does not come; the Crow does not come. The woman, the family’s servant, nods politely to Raju each time she arrives, but she keeps her eyes lowered and, once she has the tiffins in her hands, runs up the stairs. Once, Raju grabs her elbow, stops her, asks her where Prem is. “Prem wapi? Wapi mtoto?” It is basic, simple Swahili, but she shakes her head and shrugs her shoulders. She doesn’t know where Prem is or she doesn’t understand the question. Raju is relieved. He chooses to believe that Prem was sent away, perhaps to live with his mother’s relatives. No one tells him otherwise and he does not ask. He will never see Prem again.

  At the end of the month, just before Raju is due to pay her, the Crow places a necklace of ten-cent coins on the counter of Raju’s duka. He stares at it: a string threaded through the holes of each coin and knotted tightly together to form a circle.

  “What is this?” he asks.

  “It’s the money we owe you. The money Prem stole.”

  Raju feels his body become heavy. Quietly, barely finding the energy to speak, he explains why Prem had the money.

  “It doesn’t matter,” she says, when he is finished. “It’s best he is gone. He was unmanageable. It was like living with a wild animal. You saw him. How he was with his brothers, with you. An animal.” She begins crying. “I did the best I could. What else can I have done?” She wipes her tears with the cherho of her saree. “I’m just an old woman.”

  Raju sits in silence.

  “What was in that satchel his brothers had? This money?” he asks, finally, pointing at the copper coins lying in a pile on the counter.

  She nods.

  “It was his,” Raju says, his teeth clenched, his words a whisper. “He earned it. How did you expect him to act?” But the Crow isn’t listening. She is already walking towards the stairs.

  In the passage of time, of years, Raju will forget the details of Prem’s face, whether his jaw was square or rounded, whether his nose was small or large, his eyebrows thick or thin, but he will always remember, as though he heard it only a moment before, the heart-stopping sound Prem made when he fought to regain what was his, and the look in the child’s eyes as he beat his own already battered, tortured body, unable, any longer, to bear his pain.

  3

  ANARROW BEAM OF SUNLIGHT IS REACHING into the room through a small crack in the door. Raju sits on a charpai bed, watching the dust particles dancing in its light. Grace is standing in the corner of the room, undressing. He can see her in the periphery of his vision.

  Hussein brought this woman to Raju, for Raju. “You have been in Africa for two and a half years. This is a long time to be without a woman,” Hussein said when he first suggested companionship for Raju. “Especially for a young man.”

  When Raju resisted, Hussein pressed him. “Many of us have sought comfort in our loneliness. This is normal. You do not need to feel ashamed. These women, they are not on the level of our women. They are solely for our needs. Nothing more.”

  When Grace arrived to meet Raju here, in Hussein’s one-room servant’s shack, she was wearing a long wrap that was tied in a knot just below her collarbone. Her hair was cut short. No jewellery adorned her ears, her nose, her neck.

  She stands before him, naked now. Her breasts are small and firm, her waist narrow. Her hips and thighs are full. Raju blinks and turns to the wall. She steps towards him and sits down on the end of the bed. When he stands and begins to unbutton his trousers, she lies on her back, her body extending the length of the bed.

  Whenever Raju and his wife would have sex, it was quick, perfunctory. She would lie back, still and silent, using her saree to conceal as much of herself as she could. Each time he would press into her he would feel her body stiffen, as though she were steeling herself against something brutal.

  He climbs over Grace, inhaling the smell of the earth. Another scent washes over him. Slightly sweet but not flowery. It is the scent of something new, something he has never known. Her legs wrap around his torso. He feels the muscles in her thighs grip him, pull him towards her, deeper into her.

  After she is dressed and standing before him again, he asks her to say her name. He knows what it is—Hussein told him—but he wants to hear her voice and he doesn’t know what else to ask her. Raju does not trust her silence. It is incongruous with the power of her body.

  Her voice is low. She pauses on the r, her tongue vibrating. She swallows it, the word, her name.

  She walks to the door and opens it. Light pours into the room. Raju closes his eyes. When he opens them, she is gone.

  The next time they meet, when he is on top of her, she caresses his body with her hands. He did not know he wanted her to do this, that he ached f
or her to do this, until she did it.

  Raju meets Grace in this shack sporadically, sometimes twice in one week, sometimes not for two weeks. The frequency of the meetings is determined by the schedule of Hussein’s household.

  Raju is watching Grace dress. “Your sister works for Mzee?” he asks. “She is his family’s ayah? Yes?”

  She expertly ties the knot of her wrap and nods.

  Hussein has explained to Raju that sister has a broad meaning among Africans. It rarely means the women in question share parents. More often a sister is someone from the same village or even an acquaintance.

  “Is Mzee your brother?” Grace asks. Raju is startled. He has never known a woman to be bold enough to ask a question like this of a man, and he has never known an African to speak without being asked. But the question is simple and, under the circumstances, fair.

  “He is from my village,” Raju says. “He is my cousin.” He nods. “Yes. My brother.”

  She is looking at him, directly at his eyes.

  “I earned money working in his duka in Kampala for one year and then he sold it. For two years, I have been here, in Mbarara. I own a shop with a Munyankole.”

  “You work beside a Munyankole?” she asks.

  “I run the shop alone. He finds suppliers. He has taught me to speak Runyankole.”

  “What do you sell?”

  Her direct questions amuse Raju. “Hardware and groceries,” he says.

  “You live with Mzee?”

  Raju shakes his head. “I live above my duka in a flat.”

  “Alone?” she asks.

  “My wife will come one day. Soon.”

  “Then your children will be born here,” she says, her expression, her tone, unaffected by the mention of Raju’s wife. “Your children will not be of your land. They will be of this land.”

  “Do women enjoy this?” Raju asks, gesturing towards the bed. He is standing at the open door of the shack, smoking.