by Anar Ali
Tajdin had been an avid sportsman himself. Always voted best player at everything—traditional volleyball at The Ismaili Triangular Games, Ismaili Ball Hockey League, Ismaili Student Association Bowl-a-rama, Ismaili Youth Camp Soccer League—you name it, he was the champion. No wonder his friends called him Touchdown Taj. (They even had it inscribed on a T-shirt for him. That is how much reverence they had for the boy!) No wonder all the girls followed him like fools, even if Salma had been his girlfriend for so many years. Should have broken it off with that girl! I knew it only. Wish I had said something when I had a chance. What good was she? Hadn’t that hussy gone off with someone new only months after Tajdin’s accident? No shame at all—the youth these days. Can’t wait for anything. Everything has to be fast-fast: fast food, fast money, fast love. That is their problem.
But then a thought occurs to Zera: What has years of waiting done for me? Her hands tremble as she quickly slips the headphones on and firmly pushes down the play button. Nothing happens. She taps the Walkman against the edge of chair. She isn’t sure if the tape she always listens to, Ginan-e-Sharif, is now too old, or if the Walkman is worn out. She ejects the tape and cleans it with the edge of her maxi before she reinserts it. Abida Parveen’s beautiful voice starts to croon in her ear, and for the next hour, Zera’s head bobs back and forth, side to side, as she drifts in and out of sleep.
Zera spends most of the day like this, then wakes to have her lunch—a rolled-up piece of mani sprinkled with sugar and a cup of tea—dozes again, wakes when a nurse pulls open the dividing curtain and comes in to clean Tajdin’s bedpan, dozes and wakes until her Timex sports watch, another gift from her son, buzzes intermittently and she packs her things, kisses her son goodbye, telling him what’s on the menu tomorrow (ghos-jo-saag, rice, and kheer), and then rushes to the front entrance where she waits for Altaf. After this morning’s fiasco, she doesn’t want to keep him waiting again. She stands inside and watches carefully for his approaching car. Twenty minutes later, Altaf arrives at the regular time, 3:15 P.M., and drives her home.
Altaf pulls into Zera’s townhouse complex: a maze of tall slim houses, painted in alternating rows of dark brown with light-brown trim and light brown with dark-brown trim. Children scatter and women push their strollers aside as Altaf winds his way around the narrow inner road to Zera’s house.
“Thank you, bheta,” Zera says, and slips his empty lunch tiffin into her handbag. “Don’t come early tomorrow. You sleep properly, okay?” Zera inches herself out of Altaf’s car, places her handbag on the ground, and then, using the frame of the door for support, pushes herself up and out. She closes the door and watches as Altaf drives away.
Altaf used to help her to the front door, but she made him stop when she saw the neighbours—especially those from the community—staring. They felt sorry for her. She knew it. Poor old lady, living all by herself, when all of them were surrounded by their families—like those old sisters, Dolat and Shahsultan, who had moved in together after their husbands died. This was one of the reasons Tajdin bought in this area. He liked the fact that there were so many Ismaili families close by. This way, he had said to his mother, she would have company when he was at work. Zera had made friends with some of them—even if she really didn’t like any of the women. (And she certainly couldn’t make friends with any of the men.) All day, these women, they just talked nonsense, gossiping about this one and that one. What is the point of discussing the sorrows of other people’s lives? But she tolerated it—for Tajdin’s sake.
After Tajdin fell into the coma, Dolat and Shahsultan came around and enquired about his well-being. “If there’s anything you need, anything at all, please tell us.” Many others called, but soon Zera became exhausted responding to all their queries. She was sure that many were secretly happy that misfortune had fallen on her house, instead of theirs. Eventually, she just ignored the doorbell and stopped answering the phone. Members from the Social Welfare Committee called too, but she said she was fine and didn’t need their help.
As Zera walks toward her house, her keys already in her hand, she spots Dolat, standing in front of her living room window with her grandson in her arms. Zera looks away and continues up the walk, her heavy canvas bag hanging from her fingers, only a few inches above the ground.
Inside her house, Zera twists the blinds closed. She has caught many children in the complex shamelessly peering in. She turns on the TV to channel 4, which displays scrolling news text with a weather and time bar at the bottom. (She still has the satellite dish but does not know how to use it. Besides, having so many channels confuses her.) The living room fills with a soft blue glow and elevator music. She spends the next hour getting things ready for tomorrow’s orders. Zera has the urge to go to the bathroom, but holds it. She would rather get all her work done first, before relaxing. She removes several packages of meat from the large deep-freezer in the dining room, and places them on a tray on the counter to defrost. She organizes the spices that she requires, then reviews the orders and prepares labels for the Safeway bags. Finally, she allows herself to go to the washroom, where she also changes into her nightgown, which has a dark-yellow turmeric stain over one breast.
Zera returns to the kitchen and warms up a side plate of kuku paka in the microwave, and when she’s done eating, she washes her plate and teacup with antibacterial dish liquid, then places them upside down on a tea towel next to the sink. She sets her series of alarm clocks, checking each one twice before she takes four pills (the blue one for digestion, the white one to stop the urge to urinate at night, two orange ones for her arthritis), then settles into her bed. She recites her du’a, removes her dentures, and finally lies down to sleep. It is five-thirty in the afternoon.
—
IN THE MORNING, Zera ensures that she is ready earlier than usual. But Altaf, thankfully, does not arrive before the appointed time of 3 A.M. She locks the patio door and walks down the gravel path to the back gate. As she approaches the minibus, Altaf swings open the double doors. “Hey, Ma, why are you limping so much? Anji-arthritis-ai?” Altaf steps down and offers Zera his arm.
She hands him her canvas bag instead. “Na-rey-na, not my arthritis, bheta. Something in my shoe.” Zera steadies herself against the door frame and lifts herself into the minibus. Altaf jumps in, and after she has lowered herself into her usual seat on the first row, he kneels down and reaches for her foot.
Zera presses back into her seat. “What are you doing? Paying your respects to an old woman, hanh?” She laughs, her face flushing pink.
“Let me take a look.”
“Arrey, why you fussing? It’s nothing.” Zera clucks her tongue. “Forget it now. Let’s go, let’s go. If we leave your crazy bhoodhas waiting outside for too long, they’ll have your head.”
Altaf shakes his head. “It’ll only take a second.” He cups her ankle and carefully slips off her running shoe as if it were a glass slipper.
Zera curls her toes like a little girl and looks away.
“Ah-ha!” Altaf peels off a pebble stuck on Zera’s support hose, and pinches it between two fingers. “Here’s the culprit.”
“Give it,” Zera says, and when he places it on her palm, she tries to smile as she clenches her hand into a tight fist.
Altaf gets behind the wheel, pushes a tape of ginans into its socket, and shifts the bus into drive.
A group of seniors has already gathered at the first designated pick-up point—a roundabout at the entrance to the townhouse complex. The minibus slowly fills up. Zera avoids making eye contact with any of them—especially Dolat and Shahsultan.
“How’s it, bheta?” Dolat says as she climbs to the top step, Shahsultan behind her, and hands Altaf a cassette. “Top Hits 1997. My son made it for me. What a good boy I have, hanh? Even has the latest, Pardes. Too good, I’m telling you, too good. You have seen it?”
Altaf shakes his head. “I haven’t been able to get a copy. Shaz’s sold out too quickly.”
“Don’t y
ou worry, I’ll get you one.”
Zera unravels the tasbih from around her wrist, shuts her eyes, and starts her morning salwat.
“No, it’s fine, Ma. I’ll just wait,” Altaf protests.
“No, no! You must see it only. What is the use in waiting, bheta? I’ll tell my son first thing.”
Altaf turns his palms up. “Okay, I give up. But this time, I’m going to pay for it.”
Zera’s eyes pop open. Why are these people talking so loudly this early in the morning? I can’t even concentrate on my prayers.
“We’ll see, we’ll see.” Dolat cups Altaf’s chin in her palm. “How can I take money from you, hanh? Look how much good seva you are doing for all of us.”
I know exactly what she is trying to imply, Zera thinks. As if I’m a nindi-gigli, that I don’t understand. Always putting her nose in other people’s business. Thinks she knows everything about everybody’s life! What the hell does she know about my life? As if I don’t pay Altaf for helping me make my deliveries.
From the lower step, Shahsultan pushes at her sister’s backside. “Haya, get in, Dolly.”
Dolat shakes her head. “I’m going, bana. Can’t even say a proper hello these days or what?” She swats her sister’s hand away and walks down the aisle, waving to the other passengers before she lowers herself into her regular seat, behind Zera. Shahsultan climbs in and settles in next to her sister. Good thing, Altaf had once quipped to Zera, that Shahsultan is so skinny; otherwise how would those two ever manage to sit together?
“Why not play Top Hits, Altaf?” Shahsultan asks, coughing into a handkerchief.
A few others from the back pipe in. “Yes, yes.”
Altaf obliges. He ejects the ginan tape and replaces it with the Hindi film songs.
“Louder, sey!” one of the men at the back yells.
Altaf turns up the volume.
Zera removes her Walkman from her handbag and as she slips on the headphones, she can see Dolat’s and Shahsultan’s reflections in the window, shaking their heads and snapping their fingers. Always just want to enjoy themselves, these people. If not here, then on their regular seniors’ trips organized by Council—picnics at Bowness Park, card games at Kerby Centre, music parties with bands flown in all the way from Vancouver. What a waste of time and money! Zera hangs her head and tries to concentrate on her prayers—at least, she tells herself, until they arrive at the jamatkhana, where all of them will get off and she will finally have some peace.
Zera is staring out at the rows and rows of unlit houses, which look like shadows that have been erected to standing, when her Walkman suddenly stops. She fumbles with the buttons in the dark. The radio comes on and before she can stop it, the announcer’s voice booms into her ear. She reaches up to remove the headphones, but instead her hands stay cupped on her ears, as if in namaz, and she is forced to listen to the story: Diana, Princess of Wales, died early this morning of injuries sustained in a high-speed car crash that also killed her companion and Harrods heir, Dodi Fayed, the French government said. The thirty-six-year-old princess died at four this morning, Paris time. Zera is not sure why, but she mouths the word no, over and over again to herself. A royalty expert joins the radio announcer. The monarchy, she says, was not yet ready for a modern princess—an unconventional woman who refused to be boxed into her role. Zera clasps her hands on her lap and swallows. The expert then begins to recount memorable images from the princess’s short life. Diana arriving at St. Paul’s Cathedral in her fairy-tale wedding dress, yards of silk trailing behind her; the People’s Princess cradling a baby with AIDS; the daring princess, frolicking in London town with her then sister-in-law, the Duchess of York; the mother of the future king running barefoot in a race at her son’s school; the Queen of Hearts, a few steps behind her husband’s mistress at his polo match; and then the beautiful princess, alone, in front of the greatest monument of love, the Taj Mahal.
Out of nowhere, Zera now feels the pain of the pebble in her clenched fist, biting into her skin. She uncurls her fingers and releases the pebble, the size of a child’s tooth. It rolls down the front of her legs and hits the floor with a soft ting. It’s only when she rubs a finger over the groove left on her palm that she begins to feel something unwind inside of her, like the machinery of a clock, and then suddenly she starts to weep openly in the community minibus—not only for a death that came too soon for a young princess but also for all those who will soon wake from their deep slumber this morning, and learn, at long last, about her story.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
My trusted first readers: Karim Ladak, who has the ability to see beauty in everything and without whom this book, among so much else, would have been impossible; and Marguerite Pigeon, who constantly inspires me and who helped shape this book with her astute feedback.
My family, who supported and believed in me, and who eagerly fished for details—not only in their memories but also through a ready network of people across the country. (The phone companies thank you, too.) The expert fishers include my parents, my sister Shemin, and my brothers-in-law Karim (especially for the story “A Christmas Baby”), Arshil, and Imtiaz.
A special thank you to my parents, Nurali and Rozina Mohamedali, who despite their worrying hearts supported me in every way they could.
My sister Tazmina, who is always there for me. Thanks also to her and Karim for regularly providing me with a seat on Makhani Airlines.
My sister Naseem (the Guli to my Budlou), with whom my love for storytelling first began.
My nieces and nephews, who share their worlds with me: Salina, Nadeem, Shahina, Shahir, Alykhan. Hana also because her birth, in many ways, led to the birth of this book.
My friends, near and far, for all their support, especially Kapil Khatter, Rashmi Varma, Vanita Varma, Nep Sidhu, Vanz Chapman, Stany Bergeron, and Kavita Talreja. A special thank you to Elizabeth Bachinsky, Rajinderpal S. Pal, and Marika Deliyannides, who also provided valuable feedback on some stories. Sylvia Eastman for her exacting copy edits on several stories.
At Penguin Canada, David Davidar for his resolute confidence, Barbara Berson for her keen editorial insight, and Tracy Bordian for her flexibility and skill during production.
At UBC’s Creative Writing School, Maureen Medved, George McWhirter, and Andreas Schroeder for their guidance in completing the initial draft of the manuscript.
The many people who helped me start this journey, including Aritha van Herk and Rosemary Nixon, and especially Shyam Selvadurai, who encouraged me to “take the plunge” and, when I finally emerged, graciously introduced me to literary agent Nicole Winstanley, about whom not enough can be said.
filling Station and Event magazines, where I was first published. Your support has been invaluable. The Journey Prize Stories and Toronto Life for boosting my confidence early on.
Three books in particular: Mahmood Mamdani’s From Citizen to Refugee, M.G. Vassanji’s Gunny Sack, and Ngugi wa Thiong’o’s Petals of Blood.
Also, Karima Bapoo-Mohamed for her help with historical details that shaped the story “Open House.”
The Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for their generous support.
Although this book is a work of fiction, I often used historical facts to frame a story. If there are any inaccuracies, they are my own.
