“My mother needs me,” she says, standing up. “Inside. She needs me.” She walks into the house, her legs weakening, without looking at him, and shuts the door behind her. While Khadija stares at her, her hands over her mouth, Mumtaz supports herself against the door.
“So arrogant,” she says. “A marriage proposal without speaking to my parents?”
“He wanted to ask you first, Taju. Isn’t that nice?”
Mumtaz hears the sound of an engine starting, wheels on gravel and then silence. “Ma, he is a stranger. His people are strangers. To do this, propose like this, it disrespects Abu,” she says. “He thinks because his father is rich, my father is nothing.”
Khadija knits her brow.
“Have you heard of such a thing?” Mumtaz asks. “It’s—” She stops speaking. Khadija looks at her expectantly. Mumtaz wrings her hands and walks quickly to the kitchen. She doesn’t know what it is.
One week later, Jaafar returns.
When Mumtaz comes out to the verandah, he suggests they go for a walk in a nearby tea estate owned by an Ismaili man. Mumtaz knows what goes on during these walks. Malek told her this was where she regularly met her boyfriend and where they shared passionate kisses, hidden among a sea of green tea leaves. Jaafar grins when Mumtaz agrees.
When they get into his car, she looks over at him. He is wearing a perfectly pressed blue raw-silk shirt atop well-tailored black trousers. She cannot imagine how they will stay clean in a tea estate. He’s so strange, she thinks. So strange and so silly. She is wearing a dress she sewed herself. She runs her hands along her lap to smooth out the wrinkled linen.
He parks his car and they walk into the estate, following the narrow, neat paths that run throughout it. Mumtaz has never walked through a tea estate. She looks down at the leaves. Each one is a different shade of green. The new, young ones, some of them still rolled up, are bright green, their leaves almost transparent. The older ones are darker and thicker, some glowing and healthy, some beginning to dry out. Many of the leaves have brown spots on them, and some of their edges are uneven. From the road, the tea estates are a rolling sea of uniform green. At times, Mumtaz has been struck by their lush beauty, particularly when the clouds are dark and varied and threatening, leaving her with a sensation that the earth is overwhelmingly fertile. But most of the time, Mumtaz hardly notices them; the endless green impresses her no more than the endless blue of the sky. But up close, the tea leaves fascinate her, draw her in. Up close, she can see how hard it is for them to live. She gently brushes her hand against some leaves and smiles. She is enjoying the walk.
He asks after her parents. She asks after his. They walk in silence.
A breeze blows and she wraps her arms around herself. “Are you cold?” he asks. He is not carrying a coat or a sweater. She shakes her head. He looks relieved. She smiles.
Once they have walked deep into the estate, so far they can no longer see the road, she reaches into a sisal bag she is wearing over her shoulder. Khadija insisted she take some pakoras wrapped in newspaper to share with Jaafar. Mumtaz agreed, but refused to pack the jar of green chili sauce Khadija had made. She pulls out the package, unwraps the pakoras and holds them out to him. “I’m sorry,” she says. “I didn’t bring chutney.”
He smiles, his eyes on the pakoras. When he reaches out to pick one up, his sleeve falls back and reveals his wrist. She hadn’t expected it to be so thin.
He takes an enormous bite and begins to chew rapidly, like someone who hasn’t eaten in days. Mumtaz stares. Some of the pakora breaks off and falls to the ground. A spot of grease glows in the space under his lower lip. As he swallows she watches his large Adam’s apple move up and down. There is a small, fresh cut underneath his chin, where his face curves into his neck. If he lifts his head, Mumtaz thinks, the cut will open and bleed. He takes another large bite. Some more pakora dribbles onto his collar. He is chewing and smiling at her at the same time. “These are excellent,” he says, his mouth full. “You cooked them?”
She feels something akin to a pain in her chest. Her heart feels large inside her, as though it is swelling up. She takes a deep breath to dull the sensation. But she cannot dull it. For a moment she contemplates running away to escape it. But she does not want to move away from him.
After Jaafar swallows the last of his pakora, Mumtaz steps towards him. He kisses her. It is her first kiss. It tastes like cigarettes and chickpea flour and it makes her laugh.
11
SIX DAYS AFTER MUMTAZ AND JAAFAR SHARED their first kiss, she sits with her father, Qurban, on the sofa of the family’s sitting room. Khadija is across from them in an armchair.
“He is a Khoja,” Qurban says.
“Are we that different?” Khadija asks. “We are all Ismailis. And for how many years have we been living among Khojas?” She laughs. “Taju can learn to be a Khoja. She already speaks Gujarati like one of them.”
Qurban is quiet. Mumtaz is staring at her hands, which are resting on her lap.
“Do you want to marry this boy?” he asks.
Mumtaz nods and feels her cheeks become warm.
Qurban takes her face in his hands. His palms are cool against her skin. “Keep your head, always,” he says. “Even if your heart goes off to stupid places.”
Mumtaz looks at Qurban. His mouth is a straight line and his eyes are fixed on hers. Gently, she takes hold of her father’s hands, removes them from her face and forces a smile.
Raju is watching Mumtaz. She is sitting next to her mother, wearing a blue salwaar kameez. Her dupatta is draped over her shoulders, her hair is tied in a bun, her eyes lowered. When the men speak, Mumtaz keeps her eyes downcast. But Raju catches her stealing glances at him, her father, Jaafar. It makes him smile.
Raju, Rehmat, Jaafar, Mumtaz and her parents are sitting together, formalizing the marriage. It is the first time Raju has seen Mumtaz since he first spotted her at Malek’s house.
He is excited, energized. “Dhamdum,” he says, slapping his hands together. Great pomp.
Mumtaz looks at him.
“We must have a wedding with dhamdum.” He looks directly at her. “Barabar che ne?” he asks.
She nods, her eyes on his, her lips parting to reveal a wide smile. She lowers her eyes again. It is not in her nature to keep her head down, to keep her mouth closed. He can see this. It charms him. Surprisingly, although she is a woman and not a child, not a man, it charms him.
“Taju, I have been calculating.” Khadija has walked into the kitchen. Mumtaz, who is sitting on the floor preparing to cut apart a jackfruit, looks up at her. “Here,” Khadija says, pointing to her temple. “In my head.”
Mumtaz turns back to the jackfruit. She rubs some vegetable oil on her hands, coating them completely. Then she picks up a long, sharp knife and coats it with the oil as well, rubbing her hand over the blade, careful to avoid the edge. She positions the knife atop the fruit.
“Your future father-in-law wants to feed seven hundred and fifty people. For this many, do you know how much rice we will need?”
“Tell me, Ma,” Mumtaz says as she slices straight through the middle of the jackfruit, watching the two halves fall apart. She has always found it exceedingly easy to carry out a task, even a complex one, while her stepmother speaks. It occurs to her now as she cuts apart the multi-layered, sticky jackfruit, the task makes the conversation easier to bear.
“Eighty pounds.”
Mumtaz puts the knife on the floor and picks up one half of the fruit. She reaches into the husk and takes hold of the flesh.
“And we will need the meat of two cows,” Khadija continues, holding her hand flat on her chest.
Mumtaz begins to pull the plump petals of the fruit out, one at a time, setting them on a plate beside her.
“And one thousand ladoos and fourteen hundred samosas and forty pounds of chickpeas—”
“Ma.” Mumtaz silences her. “We don’t need anything. We aren’t cooking this food. And we aren’t paying for it.”
“The girl’s family should pay for the wedding.”
“We are paying for most of the wedding. This is an extra reception. His youngest son is getting married. It’s his privilege to do something extravagant for it.”
“But so much,” Khadija says, shaking her head. “It’s too much.”
“Too much for what? For whom?” Mumtaz’s voice is thick. “For me?”
“Why would you say such a thing?”
Mumtaz continues placing fruit on the plate in silence. When she is finished, she stands up and puts the plate on the counter. She does not look at Khadija. “I need to clean this mess before the boys come home. They’ll make the entire house sticky if they get hold of the skin of the faanas.”
George Bitature is a well-mannered man, a gentle man. He looks at Mumtaz when he speaks. He listens when she answers. She feels at ease talking to him, although he is a man. George is Jaafar’s childhood friend. It is a few weeks before her wedding. Mumtaz is having lunch with George and Jaafar at the Agip Motel restaurant in Mbarara. George is Munyankole but when he arrived at the table, he addressed Jaafar as bana—pal, buddy—a term Mumtaz has heard only Asian men use among themselves, among equals.
“You are a politician?” Mumtaz asks.
“No, no,” he says, laughing. “I am a servant. A civil servant.”
“What makes a politician different from a civil servant?” she asks.
“A love of power.”
“You don’t love power?” Mumtaz asks.
George shakes his head. “I joined the Uhuru movement as a boy. I was a member of the Uganda Peoples Congress from its earliest days. But I knew then that I had no desire in me to lead people.”
“Not necessarily a love of power,” Jaafar says. “Perhaps it is a desire to offer something better. To show people they can have a better life. Do you think Obote wants only power?”
“No,” George says. “He wants Ugandans to govern themselves. He wants them to be empowered. If he didn’t, I wouldn’t support him. But the desire for power is always present in politicians. And desire is difficult to satiate. It’s what makes politicians dangerous.”
“Why be around them then?” Mumtaz asks.
“To keep them in check.”
“You, who have no desire for power,” says Jaafar.
They laugh.
Late that afternoon, Jaafar is driving Mumtaz home to Fort Portal.
“How did you come to have a friendship with George?” she asks.
“When I was a small boy, I was trying to learn to ride Baku’s old bicycle. Amir learned quickly but he wouldn’t help me. So, I struggled alone on the road. And after a little while, I saw this boy watching me. I asked him to hold the back of the bicycle.”
“I never saw African children in Eastleigh,” Mumtaz says. “I saw only servants. Africans lived in the countryside, I think. It never even occurred to me to wonder where they lived or how they lived.”
“George helped, but he laughed when I fell,” Jaafar says, ignoring Mumtaz’s comment. “I was angry. I asked him if he could do better. He shook his head and said no. He wasn’t even ashamed.” Jaafar laughs. Mumtaz smiles. “He was nothing like Amir.”
“You learned to ride together?” she asks.
He nods. “When we became experts, I would pedal and George would sit on the handlebars, and we would speed through town. Sometimes, a shopkeeper would yell out, ‘The kario should be giving you a ride.’“
“In Gujarati, I hope,” Mumtaz says, laughing.
“He went to the Anglican mission school. I went to the Indian primary school. His family lived in the countryside, in the African area. But we met in town after school, every day until George started attending Mbarara High School. Then we spent time together when he was home for school holidays.”
“He seems intelligent.”
“He is very educated. But he has never treated me like Amir does. Like he doesn’t have the time to explain things to me. Even after he finished his degree he didn’t change towards me. He continued to ask my opinion. He continued to take my advice. When he came to town, we drank waragi, discussed politics. When I go to Kampala, I call George before I call Amir. Each time George is in Mbarara, he meets me, either at the nightclub at Kakeyka football stadium or at the Agip Motel. In the past few months, he has been bringing friends from the government to Kakeyka. They enjoy themselves.”
“They are in friendly territory,” Mumtaz says. “Mbarara is UPC country.” She looks at him, smiling.
He turns to Mumtaz. “I asked George to hold my bicycle that day because he was a kario. It was his job to serve me.”
She is stunned.
He turns back to the road. “That’s why I called him over. I didn’t ask him. I told him. I commanded him.” He laughs.
She is confused. For a moment she is angry. But she sees that his face is flushed, his eyes unusually wide. She cannot think what to say, what to do. For the rest of the drive, they are quiet.
When they reach her house, she turns to Jaafar. He is staring straight ahead, both hands on the steering wheel, though the engine is off. “You became his friend,” she says quietly. He does not look at her. “You learned to be his friend.” He nods but says nothing.
It is Saturday night. Mumtaz, Jaafar and George are at an outdoor nightclub next to the Kakeyka stadium. George has gone to get beer for himself and Jaafar. Mumtaz turned down the offer of a drink. She is standing awkwardly, her left hand grasping her right elbow behind her. Mumtaz and Jaafar are the only Asians in a sea of black Africans. She asked him to bring her here, where, he explained, he used to spend his Saturday nights before he met her.
“What do you do here?” she asks.
He turns to face her.
“I mean, what is the attraction of this place?”
“The beer is cheap.”
George arrives with two bottles of Bell beer. Jaafar turns to him. Mumtaz feels the weight of a body push against her. She turns to see an African. He smells of alcohol. He nods, smiles, blows cigarette smoke upwards. But he does not apologize. She feels her body stiffen. She has never felt the touch of an African man before. She looks at Jaafar. He appears oblivious to any offence having occurred.
A tall, sinewy woman with closely cropped hair approaches Jaafar and George. She addresses them in a language Mumtaz cannot understand. “This is my fiancée,” Jaafar says in English, his hand reaching weakly towards Mumtaz. He does not explain to Mumtaz who the woman is. She smiles broadly, revealing gleaming white teeth. As she turns to walk away, Mumtaz sees a look pass between the woman and Jaafar, a look pregnant with meaning, with knowing.
Later, on the drive home, Mumtaz turns to Jaafar. “I suppose it was foolish, but it never occurred to me you had African friends who are women.”
He laughs.
“Was she your girlfriend?”
He is quiet.
Did she serve you? Did you command her? she thinks but does not say.
“I knew it was a bad idea to take you,” he says. “But you insisted.”
“I wanted to go because you went. Because I imagine there is more to life than the inside of a kitchen.”
“So much more,” he says quickly. “I promise I’ll show it to you.” He smiles. “You are imagining too much. It was simply a place to have a beer with friends and look at pretty girls. Where else can we do this? At jamat khana? But now I don’t need to go anymore. Soon I will have a beautiful wife.”
She smiles. But her face feels tight.
“After we are married, we’ll go to restaurants in Kampala. I’ll teach you tennis. The Mbarara Country Club allows non-whites now. I’m a member.” He takes her hand. “Okay?”
She nods as the image of the shorn beauty floats through her mind like a phantom.
Raju is standing on a lawn. It is late afternoon and the sky is cloudless and the colour of the sea. For the past two decades, his stomach has been growing larger and fuller. Now, it protrudes so much that it makes his
back arch slightly, like a pregnant woman’s. Despite the extra weight, he feels light. Of the three mortgages he held with Diamond Jubilee Investment Trust, on his two houses and the garage, only one remains to be paid off and he expects to do so within the year. The garage is thriving. His hand is free to spend. Even his brother, Ghulam, is settled, living in Kabale, where his two grown sons run a successful duka. After Raju’s mother died of typhoid ten years ago, Ghulam cleaned up his behaviour, drinking less, staying at the shop later. “You are no longer anyone’s child,” Raju told him as he read him the telegram announcing their mother’s death. “Your only choice is to be a man.”
With Jaafar’s wedding today, Amir remains Raju’s only unmarried child. But Amir cannot bring him shame. He is a physician. Even though he chooses to live apart from his family, he brings them honour. There is nothing wrong if he lives without a wife for a few more years. Raju has done his duty as a father. He smiles as he looks around. Besides the entire jamat of Mbarara, the guests include the second son of the Mugabe of Ankole, the district commissioner, the commanding officer of the Simba Battalion and Mbarara’s pandits, priests and pastors. Everyone Raju knows is here. Except Mumdu. Raju expected Rehmat to ask about contacting their eldest son, about including him in the first wedding in the family since he left them. He expected an argument, anger, relief, perhaps forgiveness. But she did not ask about Mumdu. And he could not.
Children, children of Raju’s children and children he does not recognize are running through the small groups of adults that have formed, chasing one another, laughing, bumping into people, knocking over drinks. Their mischief, the disorder they are introducing does not bother Raju today. As he watches them he feels the way he feels when he listens to raindrops falling on a corrugated-iron roof: confident that in spite of their clamour they cannot penetrate. He takes a sip of his sherbet. Pieces of chopped pistachios, almonds and tapioca slip into his mouth along with the sweet, creamy liquid. As he chews he turns. In the distance he sees his wife. Rehmat is sitting on a chair beside Sherbanu, but she is looking directly at her husband. He begins laughing. She is shaking her head. “The evil eye of envy will befall you and yours,” he can hear her saying, though her lips are not moving, though she is yards away. “Don’t be so proud.” But Raju is proud. He has earned this. He walks towards her. He is smiling when he reaches her. He pats his belly. Rehmat laughs. Her laugh, like her voice, is deep, sonorous. Her laugh is not infectious. It is calming.
Where the Air is Sweet Page 8
