Theft

by N. S. Köenings

  Enough. If Bibi hadn’t been so threatened by the steps, she might have killed me, this I know. It’s Shama I must thank for waking up and calming Bibi down, collecting all the shattered things and taking me to bed. What passed between us I won’t say. Only that if I almost died because of Bibi, I did not because of Shama. She started bringing food because the bibi wouldn’t let me up the stairs even to eat. She brought me Maasai ladies, too. Shama owed her uncle something, after all. At first she came because she felt ashamed of Bibi, and because of Akberali, and because she was so sorry. Especially when I could hear the films up there, and wanted more than anything to drag myself upstairs. And I did wonder all the time how that little boy was doing. But it’s not easy to sustain things, even feelings of injustice, even indignation. And not long after that of course Jussa got fat just like his bibi and started walking on his own. So Shama, step by step, forgot. She had enough things to be sad for. And I forgot a little, too, what else can keep the days right? One afternoon, I said to Shama, Shama, you think the films are where the real things smash and blubber. She’d brought okra and a little piece of liver, a kindness I remember. But I have things to tell you, too. I’ve seen two thousand films, at least. You think it taught me nothing? By then I had another plan for making someone better.

  Speaking of the films, I can hear all the sounds of Baazigar up there, a song I think I like, but it’s hard to tell when you can’t see the story on the screen. Bibi understands exactly what they’re saying, but that’s no use to me these days. I listen to the film and hear the girls and children talking, too, and arguing. But Shama, unless she’s speaking very softly, which I’ve not known her to do, still hasn’t said a word.

  Last night, I thought, she’s coming any moment now, just now. She’s not interested in Baazigar or poverty and illness, she’s thinking of Ayeesha and waiting for this actor-baby Khaled to take exciting wing. She wants Mother Two. But then I heard the anthem play, which closes the night’s programs. I remembered how the nation’s flag flaps and ripples in the wind, and then the colored bars. Now, I thought, she’ll come. I tried to turn in bed, I thought, I’ll face the wall to hurt her, but my big feet were heavy, got entangled in themselves. Shama sometimes does come very late, apologizing, having reheated the tea. But then I heard their now-it’s-time-for-sleep sounds, Shama’s baby-husband splashing fitful water, Shama, with her easy steps, locking up the storeroom, Tasleem and Kamila sighing, laughing like two women who are tired of everything there is, and also all the boys, the quietest at night, dissolving in the dark. I thought, Shama’s coming now, she’s waited until everyone’s asleep. That bibi sleeps so lightly it’s good to wait till you are sure. But look, it’s morning now, and I can hear the sweepers in the street and all the Indian House crows, shrieking. With Akberali on a night like that I’d say, I’ve slept like a dog with fleas on. I have thought of her all night, and of Ayeesha and of Khaled, and of that second loving mother, whose future is now clear.

  When Shama did come, my room was barely lightening. She was standing in the doorway. Not quite clearly Shama in the dark, but who else would it be? Upstairs, Tasleem and Kamila were only crawling out of bed and thinking about prayers, Shama’s husband sleeping still, and Bibi just pretending but surely thinking up already all the sweet things she would eat. The boys hadn’t started speaking. They’re shuffling in their room, I thought, looking for the hair oil. Shama didn’t walk right in, as she often does. In one hand she had a plate, and a cup of water in the other, and no doubt they were for me. But she waited on the threshold. “Osman?” Shama said, and there was something very sad in how she said it, which I noticed then especially because it isn’t often Shama says my name. I thought at first that I would punish her a little. It was dark, but I think she could tell. The same look I’d give to the police at the Jazeera Jazz Club or Fairuz’s tembo bar. My mouth closed. Eyes small.

  “Osman?” Shama says again. She wants to come in. I want her near, too, but really, there’s still some pride in me. I should grasp the feet of everyone I see and cry there like a monkey on a string? What is it? I ask her. Something you forgot? She does come in at last and sets the platter down. Her breath smells—like black salt and something old. She looks at me and sniffs, pauses, then lists a little on her hip. With the shifting of her weight, I can see she’s changed from sorry-careful Shama to Shama-who-can-charm. My punishment won’t work. She hunkers down beside me. “Don’t be mean, Osman, please, don’t be mean. I’ve brought you samosas.”

  She says she fell asleep. She had been planning to come down, she had. She had the plate prepared for me. But after the film’s end, she’d lain just briefly on the bed—“just for a single moment, yah, I thought, I’ll just close my eyes”—and found herself asleep. “I fell asleep because I was doing so much thinking,” Shama says. “I was thinking about everything.” Everything? What everything? I say. Everything like you forgot to bring me food, and downstairs there’s an old man who wants to see you tall, and everything like what, exactly? Everything like Osman will have to come up by himself if he wants something to eat. But Osman’s not allowed, that’s right, oh, I’ll just dream a little first? Mention of my exile isn’t wise, I see. Shama-who-can-charm is fragile. All right, I say, while I counted up the ceiling beams you were thinking up a storm?

  Shama holds the cup above a metal bowl and helps me wash my hands. “Are you hungry now, or what?” she says. And next I have samosas on my lap and though they’re cold they’re not so bad. Green mango and red pepper. Shama isn’t staying long. She hasn’t ever come this early and it will be time to make the tea for Tasleem and Kamila, who, in skirts and blouses now, are ready for the world of courier post and airfare. “I was thinking about Khaled’s actress mama,” Shama says, turning herself a little to the side to let me eat in peace. “I was thinking of Ayeesha.” Well, that’s enough for me, and I’m too smart to ask her what exactly. She wants to hear what happened next. She’s even crossed her legs as though she’d like to stay, though it’s not the right time yet. What, I say. The film was not enough? And when Shama turns to me again, she’s smiling so much like her uncle it’s difficult for me not to reach out for her hands. No problem, I go on. I’ll tell you if you like. Shama looks as though she’s won a raffle. She says, “The film was not so good, all right? Nothing much to miss. So give me just a little, make it quick.”

  I tell her: Khaled’s mama was a little star, or what. I pause so Shama will desire my next move. Or what. Okay. But the boy was, are you ready now, the very blazing sun. I check. Shama’s eyes are not quite open, which means she’s listening hard, or trying to, to make up for last night, from which, though I am piling on the story, I have not yet recovered. “Go on, go on,” she whispers. “Sun.” And so. Almost right away, Khaled took to all the shiny things his mama liked, and even, later, more. He liked to lie down on her gowns and jiggle there, holding his own feet and digging with his back into the glitter and the silk. They were, Ayeesha thought, very much alike. This boy knows beauty when he sees it, she would think, and see how sure he is about what hands and feet can do. A performer, this one was, just like his own mama. But this Khaled boy was born that way, with no teacher man intruding and no bus fare in his hands. Oh yes, at just eleven months, fat boy-hips awriggle, Khaled pumped his fingers to the beat of “Ya Habibi” and made charming, timely cries. Just a bit of blubber, really, just a pishi of a boy, but already he could dance. When she came home from work behind the camera, Khaled, one year old, would tumble from his sleeping papa’s bed onto his tired mama’s lap. Good night, oumi, he’d say. Then the boy would whisper, When I get big I’ll be an actor too. “A healthy one,” says Shama, thinking that she might get into form. It’s not an interruption, so I tell her, Oh, yah, healthy like a bull.

  But let’s talk about his mama. Occasionally, Ayeesha thought she loved her little boy more than any of her fancy gowns, more, perhaps, than she even loved herself. Looking down at his round face, her very heart would hurt. She’d squeeze hi
m hard and murmur prayers on his head. She’d make certain in the future that her son would be a star, she’d think, and then she’d pray some more, and next she’d go to work, where she’d forget about the husband and the little growing boy. Forget, oh yes, completely.

  Perhaps Shama thinks an early morning visit, cold samosas and a glass of drinking water, are enough to stuff a crack. Despite her sorriness that she has wounded me and must make up for it somehow, and regardless of her hurry and that upstairs the bibi must by now be so awake, her eyes are popping from her head, Shama now speaks up: “Forget? What’s this, now, she forgot? Mama makes a son, and next thing she forgets? About this, you are certain?” I’m surprised at Shama’s tone. If she wanted everyone upstairs to wonder where she was, she’s told them now with her loud voice. Yes, she forgot, Shama, she wasn’t thinking about children when she let the babu in. Formalities, that’s all. You get a man, and he gets his. Just once, too, remember, what’s the likelihood of that? She forgot, I am insisting, though I see now this forgetting thing is a sore topic at the moment. Shama, too, forgot. Or not?

  “Hmph,” she says. “If I’d known this was about forgetting, I’d have come down a little later.” I love my Shama, yes, but my love has little blades. That’s what films are for, I say. Forgetting. Shama’s mouth shuts tight and pulls down at her cheeks so much her chin shrinks back into her forward-swooping neck. She’s trying not to speak. Sit tight, I say. Let’s think about the babu. Look, I say, Ayeesha did forget, sometimes, but things were not all bad. At home, Khaled’s papa loved them both. He’d call the halva seller in the road and buy fat lumps for Khaled, and save some for his wife. He wasn’t up to par in many ways, but he loved his own Ayeesha, and he never once forgot his little baby son. Shama looks a little brighter with this news, someone who’s unable to forget his tiny dear boy. But there’s a rascal in me, and I cut the nice thing short. Alas, I say, since all things come to tearful ends, Khaled’s papa died. Shama blinks, surprised, but for the moment quiet. Oh yes, I say. Poor Ayeesha, widowed.

  Just think! Baby Khaled looks all right, mama’s making films, baba buying sweets, and everyone feels good. Then, imagine, papa tires of age and sickness and—successful man—expires on his first try! And, worse, this husband’s even older family—sisters with hands full, brothers too respectable for words, and children from an early bride who would not greet the upstart—didn’t care for starlets. They let Ayeesha keep the house, but otherwise (no visits, no tears, and no love) they left Ayeesha cold. Life’s not fair to women.

  Shama hasn’t interrupted. I see she’s shocked about the ancient husband’s death. She thinks I’m being cruel. Upstairs the boys are racing in the bedroom. Thumping at the floor. Shama’s husband’s racking his old throat and spitting in the toilet. It’s time for her to go.

  When Shama comes back after lunch, she’s got a loaded tray. Octopus and stew, some okra on the side, and a lovely plate of rice. Bananas. A feast, I say. And she’s got other things to give me. “I know what she did,” she says. Who? After our early morning awkward gloom-and-charm, Shama looks transformed. She’s looking happy with herself. Her step is lighter than it ever is, as though having left me by myself when she was supposed at least to feed me had released a catch in her. She’s fairly floating in the room, sets the heavy tray with food down by the bed as though it weighed no more than a seed. She turns to that secret spectator of hers, who must be hungry, too. “This Ayeesha girl, of course. I know exactly what she did.”

  I don’t know what to say. I look at her as though I’d never seen her once before, not even on the street. She’s so glad, she’s almost leering. “Oh, yah, Osman! And I know who she met.” What does she mean by it, exactly, telling me what my plump-toed, graceful girl did once her husband died?

  “Old man, you’re going to listen, aren’t you? Let Shama tell a story? I told you I was thinking.” The look on Shama’s face is one I’ve never seen on her, but I have seen it elsewhere, and I know what it is. It’s the look a lover has when he’s about to say that there’s been someone else for months now, those very months you felt the keenest and the best. It’s kind, of course. It has that but-no-one’s-quite-like-you glow, and a nervous, ardent force. The look of someone who has won a prize you thought belonged to you. “Eat up, Osman. I made the okra soft for you, that’s right.” She is going to sit down, but for the first time I have ever seen her do it Shama clears the floor first, plucking at my papers and my bottles, moving them aside, and she smoothes her trousers down before she sits, so she will look a lady. Again, she says, “For no one else but you.” Something in the air tells me it’s my turn to be quiet, though I have second sisters swarming in my throat. Another something in my stomach has turned upon itself and slowly starts to chew.

  “From India, dear Osman,” says Shama, “Cairo is a long, long journey to the West.” She pauses now, as though uncertain that that rising voice is hers. I close my eyes and open them again. I’m listening. I would like her to be brave. “Journeys to the West, we think, no, don’t deny it, hold extraordinary promise, am I right?” She’s like a child, looking for a nod. And so I nod. She winks. While my stomach twists and turns, I am, I have to say, entranced by Shama’s lips. She has me. “Now listen,” Shama says, taking a big breath, “in Abu Dhabi, U.A.E., I swear Salalah, Aden, and, yes, even, even Cairo, you’ll see five thousand Indian boys, and girls and women, too, drowning in their work to save and make a life and see what they can see. It’s true, now, isn’t it?” She tucks a strand of hair behind her ear and then examines her own finger as if the whiteness would rub off. Looking up, she says, “Or not?” Oh yes, I say, for sure.

  I see now Shama thinks I really have traveled to Cairo and that the sailor tales were not quite made up on the spot. It’s not my place to fix Shama’s geography, or question her logistics. Shama’s trying out this role, and for now I see she likes it. “It’s like that Amit from the pawnshop, no? Went off to Dubai and came back draped in gold and whatnot. Compact Discs and Bread Machines in every pocket of his pants.” I can’t think what to say. I’m watching Shama’s glass stone shimmer in the light and am forgetting to eat okra. “Amit, you know. Clever. Tall. Black sunglasses. Pretends he’s limping all the time.” As it happens, I know Amit well, and when I could still manage we would sometimes meet behind his father’s shop. But that’s nothing for my Shama’s newly daring mind. In fact, let’s get past Amit if we can. Go on, go on, I say. “Well, like I said,” says Shama, mouth so nice around that like I said I feel a wind rise in my chest. “Like I said, there’s all these Indians there. So it won’t surprise you, will it, that Ayeesha found a girl they called Sayida. No. No wonder in the least.

  “You know, Osman, it was hard to be a mama. This Ayeesha was an actress! She was to stop now, suddenly? Change her life and everything, sell dumplings in the street so she could be at home? No way. But now her sugar man was dead, and a dead man can’t be counted on to watch a little son while an actress goes to work, or what, or can he? And her neighbors didn’t love her, either, don’t you see? Too good-looking and successful, this Ayeesha, plus what kind of respect did she really give the babu, going out and coming late without an explanation? Do you know what she did? I know. You wanted two mamas for this boy, Osman, am I correct in this? Two mothers for the mother-love, or so. Well, here is Mother Two. Ayeesha found the boy an ayah. Past her twenties, if you know what I am saying, hardworking and clever. But she had been uncared for: losing teeth already, and lots of stories on her back, far from her own family and lost, and, oh, thinner than a switch. This is our Sayida, now, remember. In a moment she’ll be happy.”

  I’m shocked. Our Sayida, Shama says! She’s planned the second mother and has made a sister for herself without any sign from me. Okay. Not what I had planned, but still. And what about poor Khaled, whose whole life I have imagined? That wind in me has shifted something, and I would like, if possible, to set my feet upon the floor. I pull the blankets off and try. For such a shortened woman, it s
eems to me that Shama has sat up quite tall. That glinting stone is higher than it should be. Is her head protruding less, her neck a little longer?

  “I’ll tell you where this Sayida started, yah. Not born just in Cairo, if you please. But elsewhere, far away. Sayida, like your friend Nitin at the paper shop, grew up in Bombay.” At this point I could prick her. Shama’s odd new height aside (and perhaps I see her taller only since I myself am now unused to sitting brightly up), I could say, India, what? Have you even been? And Shama, attached or so she says to truthfulness sometimes, could not reply that yes she has and won’t I please be quiet. But I’ll let that be, for now. I’m a little curious. What’s she going to do? Who’s this upstart sister? But Shama, smarter than can be, has also seen it coming. “Well, no, Osman, I haven’t been to India. But my own mother did, and you know how people talk.” Oh, talk, I do. Oh yes. For a moment I can sense the gory mass of my own feet on the cold floor, damp and soft like pillows. Shama looks precisely at me now. Her small eyes are in focus. I’m going to close my own. “Let’s put two and two together,” Shama says. “Or shall we?” She taps me on the leg, and I can nearly feel it. “ I know very well. Yes. I know exactly how it was.”