by Farah Cook
After school Naima and I went down to the beach with Oliver and his friend. He always stares at me. I look away. My heart flutters inside my chest like some crazy bird. I don’t look at him. Well, I do, but when he isn’t looking. It’s silly really. I don’t even have a crush on him. Besides, Mum would kill me if she found out I was hanging out with Naima. We didn’t stay for long. It was freezing. Naima gets bored quickly and likes to try new things all the time. She challenged us all to skinny dip. The water was ice cold. I dipped my toes and the cold rattled my skinny bones. I was not going into the water. No way! No one dared except for Naima. She’s so cool. I wish I was more like her. Brave, careless.
I didn’t go home after the beach. I wanted to be with Naima. We were in her room and I was admiring the dolls she never plays with. She has so many different ones from all over the world. She said she was too old to play with them now. Her dad doesn’t understand she doesn’t want them. Naima thinks it’s stupid he still brings her one every time he comes home from his travels. It makes her feel like a little girl. She told me several times, ‘Have them. Take them all.’
I looked at all the beautiful dolls. I thought of Mum in that moment and how she’d react on seeing me in Naima’s house. Her face would shrink like a crinkly piece of paper. She doesn’t want me coming here. Not since the fall out. I told Naima I couldn’t take them because Mum would know I’ve been with her.
Naima rolled her eyes and pressed her cute little chin against her chest. She does that a lot, and when she does her high pony tail swishes, side to side. She said that Mum is such a control freak and laughed. Naima wanted to know if I was scared of her. I’m not! I’m not scared of my own mother I told her repeatedly. I don’t think she believed me because she suggested I stay for dinner. Naima’s mum was going to order pizza. She asked me if I wanted some. I totally wanted to stay and have pizza with Naima and her parents. But I also knew I’d get into trouble if I stayed longer.
Mrs Singh was going to a party or whatever. The little brat would need babysitting again. But I really didn’t care. Let Mum look after her. Why should I help out getting her dressed, tidying up the mess she leaves behind? I do not want to care for her. Sometimes I think Mum likes the little brat more than she like me.
I looked at Naima and nodded.
I just knew that we were going to have an exciting time.
Chapter 4
AMIRA
Tuesday, 24 September 2019
When I was little, I used to dream about my father. The twinkle in his light brown eyes, and the way he held me in his arms when I was born. A gratified image of a proud looking man. The only picture we have of my father was framed in cheap glass, collecting grease and dust over the years it had been hanging on the living room wall. Some time ago, I took a copy, framed it in a wood-carved frame made in India and put it on the bookshelf in my bedroom. I hung up the original on the string in Mum’s bedroom. She looked at it and asked who the man in the picture was. Repeatedly, I told her: it’s your late husband Nadeem. She brushed me off the way she does when switching into speaking Urdu and said in a small scold, ‘Areee, don’t be silly. That’s not your father. It’s that handsome Hollywood actor, Daniel Day-Lewis.’ It didn’t upset me, her words. But lately she is delivering more misery than joy.
Mum keeps forgetting. No matter how much I try for her to remember the past, it slips away in the whim of a moment. I used to talk to her much more in the hope she would remember the life we had. Nothing. Her face puts on a frown. Her words a cocktail mix between English and Urdu, where every sentence ends with, silly ladki. That’s what she thinks of me. Amira, the silly girl.
In the picture my father leans against a tree wearing a wide-collared shirt, bell bottom trousers and platform shoes. Tall and handsome, his black moustache stretches over milky-tea skin, covered in little spots. Behind him, there’s an orchard yard with fallen apples smudging the grassy ground, and others rotten in the nearby water creek.
I don’t dream of my father anymore. Instead I dream of strange and vivid things. But last night as my body drifted in and out of slumber and I thrashed around, I caught a glimpse of him somewhere between sleep and wakefulness. He was smiling and waving at me from the window of our house while I stood on the other side of the garden fence. I wanted to go to him but I didn’t. I was terrified of the ghostly girl beside him, who looked just like me.
The lamp by my bedside table casts a pool of light on my tea which has turned cold. I am too tired to get up and make myself another. Lately, I’ve been sleeping in. Mum has been to check on me for the fifth time possibly in the last ten minutes. She said she is bringing me a refill but she keeps forgetting it. What she didn’t forget was to bring me breakfast in bed. A bowl of dried fruit, which means she either found the jar I’ve been keeping from her or she went out and bought some more. I have little or no patience with her lately.
I never suspected matters getting worse, not even when she started wandering around the house late at night, opening and closing the doors, checking on me as I lay half asleep. I would see her shadow and pull the duvet over my head when she’d ask for random things. ‘Mimi, get up!’ I hate it when she calls me that. It reminds me of the good girl she wanted me to grow up to be.
‘She took my bracelets,’ Mum was shouting. ‘We must go to her house and get them back. Hurry now and get up.’
I have to accept Mum’s behaviours about her jewellery. She says it’s a woman’s security in times of financial crisis. She insisted I have two of her gold bracelets, the pearl maang tikka, and the gold necklace with matching earrings. She wore them when she married. I don’t think I will ever wear any of it. Maybe the large nose ring to make up for the fact that she never allowed me to have my nose pierced. ‘Ami, who took them? No one was here.’ Forced to get up, I looked for her gold bracelets. ‘See, they are right here, in your bedside drawer where you left them.’ She ignored me and delved into her own little world in the way she does. I imagined where she was in her mind, imagined a sad memory or perhaps a fabrication like the story about the missing girl she talks about. Mum keeps secrets. Sometimes I wonder what it is from her past that she isn’t telling me.
When picking up Shafi, Haroon would bring it to my attention again and again. He told me Mum seemed unwell and suggested she see another specialist for check-ups, and even recommended a new one. I told him it wasn’t necessary. I didn’t want him to think she was deteriorating. It was then he looked at me unbelievingly. I should have known not to lie.
I couldn’t bring myself to tell Haroon I took Mum to see the specialist he had recommended in the beginning. I had taken along my own research on dementia. The specialist asked me kindly to put the papers away when suggesting treatments that were effective. I felt stupid when he said I should consider seeing a therapist. ‘Being a carer is stressful. I’ve seen many suffer more than the patients.’ He thought I was incapable of caring for my own mother.
‘There’s a memory loss clinic next to the hospital,’ said Haroon. ‘With a new ward. No one would need to know she’s been there. Why don’t you take her next time? Dementia causes depression, high blood pressure, strokes and heart attacks, and you wouldn’t—’
‘Thanks, but I think I am capable of making decisions on my own.’ I felt pressured. After missing several appointments, in the end I swallowed my fear and decided to have Mum assessed. Nothing has changed. She still forgets things and it’s getting worse with each day that passes by.
‘Sorry, I didn’t mean to interfere—’ Haroon squinted, trying to remember more about it. ‘Make sure she has a hobby. Something that keeps her busy.’ I told him how she enjoys to read the newspaper and follows a story about a young girl who went missing. Mum gets obsessed with things easily. It’s her way of being in control of the pieces of her life she is forgetting.
I shrugged, didn’t raise my eyes to look at Haroon when he asked how I was doing. He gave me the name of a site recommended by a friend of his family and said I s
hould speak to someone, join an online chat forum for carers. I am glad I did or else I wouldn’t have connected with Meena.
Meena looks after her father. She quite often confesses she doesn’t always know how to react when he pushes her around, telling her what to do in his demanding voice. She also makes all of his appointments with doctors, clinics, specialist. Cleaning, shopping, cooking. It’s exhausting. I share her frustrations. I don’t think it’s any easier caring after one’s father. Although, I wish I had known mine.
Laying here in my bed, I close my eyes and imagine my father in a way that is similar to how I used to dream of him. He is strolling next to a teenage version of me, pushing a buggy down the street where we live and wearing clothes to the time and era as in the framed picture on my bookshelf. Long hair flows around juvenile features. Well proportioned with broad shoulders, he carries an air of self-esteem like he knows exactly who he is. He’s tall, and wears a moustache under his nose, the ends curled upwards, tips shaped into round loops. Dark sideburns shape his smooth face, on it a gentle expression. Warm and protective, his arm is curled around my shoulder, and I stop to stare at him with amazement. Honey-sweet inhales and exhales from brown arched lips, I smell his breath. But that’s not what’s startling. It’s the familiarity of his face underlined with distinct features.
The sun, shot high in a rich blue sky, is free from traces of clouds. Trees are alive, air lush with a million things tingling all around. There’s a sweet smell of strawberries, moist grass and wet earth. There are colourful flowers and buzzing bees. Petals rise from the ground and sway in the wind as if they were kites. Children are laughing and screaming in the playground across the street. Cars with rolled down windows spill out loud beats of music as they drive by. An elderly couple walking their dog are watching everyone and everything. And mums, normal-looking mums in summer dresses and sandals, chatter amongst themselves along the pavement. They nod when they see us coming. He stops pushing the buggy and tells the child nesting inside the cocoon not to suck on its thumb. A short pudgy woman with wide hips wrapped in a pink apron and plastic slippers says, you all right, Nad? My father nods, his gait a notch faster as we pass by.
My father smiles calling me ‘meri beti’, my daughter. He died when I was young, and whatever memories I had of him are gone. I wish I had known him and that he was alive. It is odd that I think of him on mornings like this with such love and longing. I can hear Mum calling out for me. The images in my mind dissolve. I don’t want to get up. I want to dream a little longer.
Chapter 5
AFRAH
Monday, 9 October 1967
I’m wearing a green sari, laughing at a joke someone is telling on the television. My gold bracelets – three on each wrist – clink while I eat pickled mangoes and wait, the main meal still sizzling hot on the plates. The front door creaks open. I hear rain sweeping into the hallway, splashing the floor. Five o’clock and he saunters through, impeccably dressed as usual. Compact and sturdy, his tall figure underlines the slightly wide belly protruding beneath his tight shirt, a sign of good homemade food.
He likes to walk twenty minutes to and from the school where he teaches. He takes off the silk tie knotted around his collar, puts his velvet coat on the rack, and asks what’s for supper. Bushy eyebrows knitted tight, there’s a trace of tension that I suspect is down to hunger. Before I can reply, the phone rings. I don’t want him to answer it. Straightening his back, he picks up the receiver. Now, it will take another twenty minutes.
I scrape the food off the plates, place it back onto the pan and switch the stove back on. I’ve been meaning to tell him to buy a microwave or gas hob. Maybe when he gets that pay rise next year. He’s mentioned before that I shouldn’t be sewing clothes for other people. He wants me to do an English language course. But I don’t mind sewing. I make my own clothes from the fabrics I brought with me. Silk, chiffon and cotton. Mother had said Scotland is a cold country: ‘You’ll need to wear cardigans in summer.’ I didn’t believe her, but she was right, as mothers often are. She packed wool and linen into my suitcase. The season for wearing chiffon and cotton will soon come.
We don’t sit and eat at the dining table. Instead, we have our supper in front of the television and huddled over the coffee table, metal plates perching on its edges, brushing our knees. I bring in a plate of samosas filled with mincemeat and peas, and tell him I made another batch and stored in the freezer, ready to snap and eat some other rainy day. But he’s not bothered and talks instead about the extra hours he does on the weekends, tutoring children with learning difficulties.
We also eat the hot cumin lamb skewers with coriander chutney that I made the night before. Delicious, he says, popping another one into his mouth. With a napkin, I wipe away the sauce from his moustache. He touches my wrist and the bracelets slide down my arm. He asks if the sari I’m wearing is new, says that the parrot green colour looks good on me. ‘No,’ I say, smoothing the pleats. ‘It was a gift from my mother when I got married.’
Before leaving Lahore, I was teaching orphan girls in the Madrasa and didn’t have the time to doll myself up. Now I make it my duty not to look a mess when he comes home from work. I keep the house tidy, but it’s not my husband I worry who’ll complain. He’s not one of those men with high expectations of his domestic wife – presuming all I should be doing is his cooking, cleaning and ironing, and that when he comes home food should be ready to be served.
He’s perfectly happy eating beans on toast, and said I shouldn’t spend hours preparing traditional meals for the two of us. Fish and chips would do just fine. Growing up in Scotland, I suppose that’s what he’s used to. I, on the other hand, crave the street food from Old Anarkali. I want to eat bun kebabs and parathas filled with coriander and spices while seeking shade from the scorching sun.
It was after coming home early from the Madrasa one day that Father asked me not to go next door that afternoon. I was to go straight into to my room and stay there and wait for Mother. I didn’t ask why, lowered my head and went in without looking back. The sweet aroma of Kashmiri chai and jalebi trailed behind me. I could hear voices, low whispers from the sitting room. The clinking sound of teaspoons against saucers.
Moments before Mother came in, I heard her calling the servant – telling him to run down to the sweet shop and pick up a box of mithai. She told me to get changed and come down to the second sitting room, which is bigger than the first sitting room, and used only for rare occasions to cater for important guests. My heart started to pound. I knew this meant that a boy was interested in seeing me. He was the second. Last year the first had been a librarian who saw me come in one day to borrow books. My parents had rejected him. Not only was he not Kashmiri, but also from a lower caste. I never went back there to borrow books again.
I changed into my finest white cotton shalwar kameez, re-braided my hair tightly, the plait flowing down to my hips, and lined kohl onto my lids, making sure it didn’t smudge. I stood outside, sweat coating my forehead as I listened to Mother say, ‘She also sews very well. She made the kurta her father wears.’
There was a long silence. Then a female voice asked, ‘Can she cook all the traditional meals?’
Without hesitation Mother replied, ‘Of course,’ and lined up my favourite dishes. Korma, saag aloo, tandoori chicken.
I had to stop myself from laughing. I was seventeen and had just learned how to perfect rotis – no more squares or triangles. Small round flatbreads straight from the tandoor. The list of dishes I still had to learn to cook suddenly seemed long. I entered the room: three unfamiliar people were perched on the other side of the coffee table, their eyes casting looks of approval. One pair of eyes lingered longer – hazel brown, on fair skin, along with a thick moustache and jet-black hair. A sharp nose on a youthful face with noticeable masculine features that was now turning red. He wore a green shirt and brown wide leg trousers. When I crossed the room to take a seat next to my parents he cleared his throat. I was aware of
his gaze, his curiosity, as he was of mine, sealed behind the shy girl I was in that moment.
A long awkward silence hung in the air, and I must have only been in there what seemed like a short while, inhaling the soft tinge of his spicy aftershave, before Mother had asked me to return to my room. I did what I was told, trusting my parents, never questioning their decision. Not even when they informed me I was to spend the rest of my life with this Pakistani man in Scotland. Nadeem Malik.
It was only days before the wedding invitation went out. The Mehndi ceremony was big, crowded with relatives and giggling unmarried girls admiring the pattern tinting my hands. I had signed the marriage certificate in what used to be my parent’s bedroom, as they had slept in separate bedrooms for some time. I had long nails and plump lips coloured in bright red, and my body was tangled into an embroidered maroon lehenga. My hair was pinned up high in a tight bun circled with flowers. A gold-plated pendant necklace with red stones decorated my neck, and matching earrings hung heavy in my earlobes. Kashmiri women don’t get their noses pierced so I agreed to wear a fake nose ring. My wrists wore six gold bracelets that clinked as I repeatedly wiped at the humidity that polished my face. The bracelets were a present from my parents. I had cried on departing their home, knowing that my life was about to change forever. I was no longer Afrah Bhatt, but Afrah Malik.
After dinner, I get to the dishes. Like a true teacher making sure his student does her homework, I hear him pull out papers from the drawer in the living room. He calls for me, and I stop, my hands covered in sudsy foam. Water dribbles from the tap. He says the application for the English language course is on the dining table, adding: ‘Don’t forget to fill it out first thing in the morning, Afrah Bibi.’ His footsteps move across the hallway and up the stairs. The bathroom door creaks open and shuts. I hear the heavy clunk of the lock twisting. I’m surprised he calls me Bibi, another word for wife, and I do like the way it sits on his tongue with a sweet accent. It makes me feel like a respected woman, a woman with integrity.
