by Anar Ali
Zera sighs in relief at Altaf’s refusal for tea. “Okay, bheta. Your choice. But I’m telling you, you have to eat properly, otherwise you’ll shrink up into nothing.”
“I’m fine, can’t you see?” Altaf smiles as he rubs his belly.
“What you talking? You’re too skinny. Maybe your Farzu has you wrapped around her finger, hanh?” Zera teases. Altaf is getting married next year to his long-time girlfriend, Farzana Visram, who is adamant that he get into shape before the wedding.
“Maybe, Ma, maybe. But she’s a modern woman—what can I do? You know how they are. Men—we’re fools in love and still, it’s always the women who complain! I tell you, I should have had my bride shipped over from Bombay, huh?” He winks, then laughs.
Zera just smiles, but inside she feels the weight of her heart, like a stone, as her mind travels back to India and Fateh. The afternoon sun was strong and most people were inside resting. Zera stood with her foot against the back wall of their house, one hand in her pants pocket, the other gently wiggling her loose tooth. Zera had four older brothers and despite her mother’s protests, she insisted on wearing what they did—pants, shirts, pyjamas, even boys’ underwear. Zera never much liked dresses—the way they billowed up and made her feel as if she might float away. She liked the feel of cloth against her legs—the way pants shaped her body and allowed her to take long confident strides. Zera was eager for her tooth to fall out and be replaced with a permanent tooth, but the wiggling—this ability to create a sensation in her body simply by moving one part if it—felt so good that she wanted to savour it. The tooth persistently hung on, prompting Fateh Khoja, the neighbour’s son, his yellow kite trailing on the ground behind him like a snake in the grass, to tease her. “What you so scared about? Just pull it out, stupid girl.”
All the boys liked Fateh. He was the champion of all kite-flying competitions in Mandvi. He had even won a prize at Ahmedabad’s Uttarayan, the Hindu festival celebrating the awakening of the gods from winter’s deep slumber. Fateh’s kites boasted the best designs, favouring intricate geometric shapes painted in the brightest pinks, yellows, and oranges. Boys often stood on rooftops challenging each other to kite-fights, their lines coated with ground glass. Fateh manoeuvred his kite with such skill that he was able to cut his opponent’s line and bring it falling to the ground in a matter of seconds. Zera didn’t like him one little bit. He was always bothering her whenever he got a chance.
“Go to hell,” Zera said loudly and clearly. “I can do anything I want.”
Fateh yanked his kite forward. “Pull it, I said! Otherwise I’ll do it for you.”
It was as if Fateh had pressed a lever and released a spring in Zera’s body. Her hand shot out and punched him. Fateh cupped his mouth. Zera stepped back. He was older and stronger and her first instinct was to run, but something inside made her stand firm. She clenched her fists and looked directly at him. Yes! She would pummel the idiot another if that’s what was required. Fateh slammed his hands flat against the wall and trapped her between his arms. He leaned his face toward hers.
“Arrey.” He smiled as blood trickled down the side of his mouth. “Who knew you were such a clever girl, hanh?”
Zera looked away. She felt like cut glass as she stood against the wall, the hot sunshine pouring through her.
Fateh winked, and as he walked away, he turned back briefly. “You wait and see, Zera Pirmohamed. I’m going to marry you one day.”
The next day Zera found Fateh on the roof of the building, his yellow kite with its long tail soaring above him. She marched up to him and tugged the kite string, which had been chalked with pink dust, as if she were pulling a bell. When Fateh turned to her, she whirled around and marched a few steps away before lying down on the hot roof, her mouth wide open. Fateh went to her and straddled her like a wishbone. Zera’s eyes followed his kite, which flapped under the sky, as Fateh leaned down, wound his kite string tightly around her tooth and pulled it with one flick of his wrist. A few drops of blood trickled down to the back of her throat. She swallowed. Then tongued the socket, but quickly recoiled. It was too sensitive. She stood up and wiped her mouth with her palm, leaving a smudge of pink chalk across her lips and fingers. She then dusted off her pants. “Thank you,” she said to her future husband as he placed the tooth in her open palm. Zera climbed down the makeshift ladder, and at home she stored her tooth safely inside an empty perfume tin the size of her ring finger.
Soon Zera and Fateh became inseparable; many people even referred to them as one person. Fateh–Zera spent countless days pretending to be Kutchi pirates plundering the treasures of royal sea vessels, pretending sword fights between the Mughal army and the Ghurkhas, or building elaborate sandcastles.
Once, Zera arrived on the beach to find Fateh wearing a peacock-blue paper crown made from one of his kites. Behind him—a mound of sand covered by a shirt. “What is that?” she asked, smiling. He snapped off the shirt like a magician to reveal a lopsided replica of the Taj Mahal, complete with a garden made of jasmine petals and a seawater pond. “Not bad,” Zera said as she leaned in for a closer look. “But I could build a better one.”
“Highly unlikely,” Fateh countered, and before she could say anything, he presented her with a bright pink paper crown.
Zera tried not to shake when he placed it on her head.
“I now pronounce you princess of my castle.”
“But the one that Emperor Shah Jehan built for Mumtaz Mahal is made of white marble and filled with gems,” Zera teased, and turned to run, certain Fateh would chase her.
Instead, he just wagged his finger at her and laughed. “Silly girl, you’ll eat your words when I build a Taj filled with more rubies and diamonds than any emperor could afford for his wife.”
No one objected to Zera and Fateh’s friendship and over the years, their affection for each other continued to grow deeper. Their families were long-time friends and welcomed the idea. In fact, when Fateh’s father sent him, at the age of eighteen, like so many other young Kutchi and Gujerati boys before, to build fortunes in Zanzibar and help the family escape their impoverished lives, it was taken for granted that Fateh would, in good time, send for Zera. She was fifteen and would soon be of marriageable age. For the first year, Fateh sent regular correspondence, but then the letters—delivered by young men returning not only with tales of their grand lives on the dark continent but also to fetch their new wives—came to a full stop. Zera’s family enquired about Fateh’s whereabouts and asked for the wedding date to be fixed, but Fateh’s father was vague and said he too hadn’t heard anything for quite some time.
Zera did not give up hope and refused to entertain the many marriage proposals she received—threatening to kill herself if her father forced her. Instead, she spent hours at the harbour, staring out at the vastness of the Arabian Sea. She stood on her tiptoes and imagined seeing, out over the undulating waves, the tip of Arabia, the coast of Africa, the edge of Zanzibar. Each time a steamer appeared in the distance, she would jump up. “He’s come! Finally, he’s come.” Sailors soon became accustomed to seeing her when they arrived at Mandvi port. Word about Zera’s antics spread for miles and she received fewer and fewer marriage proposals. “Hai-Ram! Have you heard about that one? Gone completely mad. Poor thing! Lost her chance now. Already twenty-two.”
One proposal trickled in later that year, and to her parents’ delight, Zera accepted. The bridegroom was a forty-seven-year-old widower who had returned from Zanzibar after his wife died in childbirth; he was in search of a new wife to take care of him and his new child. Each night, on the steamer to Africa, Zera resisted her husband’s advances—secretly shoving a finger down her throat to feign seasickness. Her husband left her alone, told her he was in no hurry. As the steamer sailed closer to Zanzibar, Zera lay awake at night next to her new husband and made more and more intricate plans about the perfect life she would lead with her real husband.
The steamer arrived in Stone Town the same day Pri
ncess Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England. As passengers disembarked, fezzed officers from the King’s African Rifles handed them tins of Cadbury’s chocolate decorated with the royal insignia. When Zera went to Fateh’s shop, he told her that he was very glad to see her, but he only laughed when she told him her plans. “Eh-ma! But I am already married with children. I am sorry for your trouble—I did not mean any harm. But what we had was only child’s play, no?”
Zera was so stunned that she could not will her body to move or form thoughts into words; it was as if she were trapped in the terror of a dream where she was trying to run away from a monster but her feet were cemented to the ground and her screams were silent. Zera stood in front of Fateh like a statue, waiting for him to take her in his arms and wake her.
Fateh led her to the door and sent her home.
Zera returned, in a daze, to her new husband’s house, where he rushed to her and handed her the baby. “What’s a good boy’s name?” he asked. He said he hadn’t had the heart to name the child after his wife died. Zera named him Tajdin and made him hers. All the years they were married, Zera refused to open herself to her new husband and he never pressured her to consummate their marriage.
Now an alarm goes off. Three o’clock. “Oh-ho, let me rush,” Zera says to Altaf.
Altaf removes his shoes and enters the kitchen, walking to the row of blue recycling bins, which are filled with the tiffins. “Haya, I’ll be in the bus.”
Zera hurries to the bathroom to get dressed. She quickly combs her short thin hair, dips a finger into a large tub of pink hair gel before applying it to her hairline to fix it in place. She used to use Yardley’s, but Tajdin said it made her smell like a man; he suggested that she try his Dep. He also suggested she wear maxis like so many other women her age, instead of her pantsuits. Zera fishes out a long gold chain from a small dish on top of the toilet tank, and slips it around her neck, tucking the excess into her maxi. She then reaches for her ivory cable-knit sweater, which hangs on a white plastic hook behind the door. A crumpled-up tissue falls out of a sleeve. The sweater used to fit her properly but over the years it has stretched, and now hangs well past her ample hips. Zera struggles with the buttons and finally, when she’s done, she turns a bottle of Avon perfume (one of the many gifts Tajdin bought her for Mother’s Day after they learned about the holiday in Canada) upside down against her fingertip, then daubs it at the base of her neck and behind her ears. She shoves her small gold-coloured change purse into her bra, wraps her tasbih around her wrist, and walks to the back door, where she slips her feet into dull-white running shoes with Velcro straps for laces. The sole of her right shoe has partially separated at the heel and sometimes gapes open like the mouth of a scared child.
Zera steps out into the cool August morning. The stars look blue against the dark sky and the silence at this time of the day makes her feel as if she’s placed her ear to a seashell—all she can hear is a hollow echo. She locks the patio door and walks carefully along the gravel path through the unkempt backyard; the lawn is patched with brown grass and the branches on the shrubs are folded over, touching the ground, as if in exhaustion. Altaf has offered to help with the garden, but Zera refused. How much could she expect one person to do? Zera pushes open the back gate to the alley where Altaf has parked the minibus.
—
THE CAFETERIA BEGINS to fill with the regulars as Zera squeezes the teabag over her cup and then places it in the empty Rubbermaid container. She puts two Maria cookies on the table, then snaps the lids of all three containers closed before tucking them into her handbag. Zera turns to see the morning-shift nurses from Tajdin’s floor in the cafeteria lineup. One smiles and waves. Zera nods hello, then looks outside, leaning over her cup to take a bite of her tea-soaked cookie; she watches a lone car obediently stop when the traffic light turns from green to yellow to red. From the very beginning, Zera has never liked many of the nurses. They do not attend to Tajdin in a prompt manner; instead, they spend their time in idle chit-chat at the nurses’ station—discussing, Zera is sure, how to get one of the doctors to marry them. (But what doctor would marry those lazy hoonts?)
Zera was about to report them to the hospital administration, when she received a letter asking her to see the hospital’s attorney. The doctors had conducted new tests and they wanted her to know that they would fully support the family’s decision to remove life support. This way, the attorney had said, she would also be able to access Tajdin’s bank accounts. When Zera didn’t answer, he asked her if she’d like a translator—they had several Indian doctors on staff and he didn’t mind checking to see if one was on duty. Zera pressed her hands against the armrests of her chair, pushed herself up, and walked out of his office.
That week, she started collecting samples from Tajdin: nail clippings, tufts of hair (head and chest, especially over the heart), and stool samples. She stored them in a set of colour-coded Rubbermaid containers. Altaf confirmed, through a friend at the hospital’s medical laboratory, that there was nothing at all to worry about. Tajdin was alive. Zera continues to collect samples regularly—each month on Chandraat, after mukhi-sahib has performed the chanta ceremony, gently spraying Tajdin’s face with holy water to forgive his sins and bid him a speedy recovery.
Zera quickly finishes her biscuits, stands and slowly weaves between the cafeteria tables, choosing a route that avoids the nurses, and heads toward the elevators.
Every few months Tajdin shares a room with a new patient. The current one: a man who has had several strokes that have left one side of his body paralyzed. The man, like many previous patients, doesn’t receive many visitors and is eager to share his story with anyone he can. Each time, Zera would just shake her head, wave her hand at them, and say, “No speak the English,” before she pulled the dividing curtain, which also, thankfully, shut out the persistent prairie sun that spilled in through the room’s two small windows, even during the coldest winter days.
Zera squeezes Tajdin’s cheek as she would a tomato for ripeness. “Ya Ali Madat, bheta. How’s it? Everything okay?” Zera admires her son—such a good-looking boy. Lost some weight over the years because of those useless nurses, but his face is still nice and round. And nothing can take away his fair-fair skin. Zera proudly remembers neighbours joking with her, “Sure he wasn’t switched at birth?” Tajdin was easily mistaken for a European or at least an Arab—especially with his light grey eyes—eyes that sometimes, still, out of nowhere, pop open as if he is waking from a bad dream or waking because he has suddenly remembered something that he has to tell his mother. The first few times, Zera ecstatically pressed the call button over and over again, but when the nurse finally arrived she said it was important not to get overly excited. The nurse went on to explain that it was a natural reflex, like going to the bathroom, and it didn’t mean anything. “Your son,” she said, “is still in a sleep state and isn’t aware of his surroundings.” Now, when Tajdin opens his eyes, Zera runs her palm over them to close them. No point in the boy straining his eye muscles.
Zera adjusts the respirator tube around Tajdin’s chin and nose, then reaches behind him for a light switch. The wall lamp flickers briefly before expiring. Ah! Zera checks the side table to see if there are any light bulbs stored in the drawer, and when she finds none, she cracks open the door to the washroom behind her and turns the timer for the light to its maximum, thirty minutes. She drags a chair closer to his bed and removes the Calgary Herald from her canvas bag. There is a thick stack of flyers in the centrefold, but a few are also hidden between the sections. She separates the paper and, as she flips through, without meaning to, she starts to read out the various headlines: SCIENTISTS WARN OF SEVERE CLIMATE CHANGE…WOMAN DIES NEAR RESERVE…ISRAEL IMPOSES STRICT CLOSURES IN THE WEST BANK AND GAZA STRIP…14 DIE IN SUICIDE BOMBING…REFORM REPLACES BLOC AS OFFICIAL OPPOSITION…POLICY OF “CONTAINMENT” OF SADDAM HUSSEIN SLOWLY ERODING…SCHOOL BUS COLLISION NEAR AIRDRIE: 17 DEAD. Zera catches herself and stops: she had forgotten that she
no longer reads the newspaper. Zera does not want to fill Tajdin’s ears with the constant disappointment of the world. She clears her throat and starts to read the advertisements to him, making sure she enunciates each word clearly. MARK’S WORK WEARHOUSE: BACK TO SCHOOL EXTRAVAGANZA!…STOCK UP AND SAVE AT DOLLAR-MART…THE BRICK: BUY NOW AND DON’T PAY UNTIL 1998…The timer for the light switch wheezes softly like a distant snore, and then the light goes out.
Zera folds the newspaper and, before tucking it into her handbag, roots through to retrieve her Walkman. Tajdin had given her his old Walkman after he bought a newer model. She used to carry it on evening digestion walks around their townhouse complex. Tajdin had also encouraged her to use it when he invited his friends around to watch Hockey Night in Canada, Monday Night Football, The PGA Tour, and other sporting events on the satellite TV he had purchased. Zera would sit in her bedroom with her headphones on (in case Tajdin came in to see how she was doing), but she would not play her ginan tapes. She preferred listening to the boys’ voices filling the house with laughter and screams of glee when one of their favourite teams scored.
