by Shamim Sarif
“Are you all right?” he asked.
“Okay,” she called, her voice shaky. She waited to hear him go, but still he lingered outside the door. He had done the same thing on the voyage back to South Africa. Their honeymoon. Her seasickness had continued without respite for six days, before a kind-mannered doctor, from the same area of Bombay as she, had offered her some tablets. These stemmed the sickness at once, but left her an overwhelming desire to sleep and this sleep she soon learned to dread, for it came to her filled with looming nightmares and wild hallucinations.
She had hardly seen her new husband during that voyage, and it was then that she had first felt the loneliness grasp her; the consciousness that she was sailing away from her mother and her home and her country to live with this unknown man only added to the misery of her sickness. He lacked the instinctive care that might have reassured her, and after he had sat awkwardly with her during the first couple of days, he began to stay away, and his absence was a respite to her. Her joy at seeing land after the interminable ocean was made up mainly of relief—the view itself was obscured by low clouds and the crowds of people milling on the deck in anticipation of disembarking—but it was tinged also with excitement. For despite everything, she was young, and aware of the possibilities that lay before her. It was a new life in a new country—she had felt that she were wiped clean, that her life till now had been a specific, enclosed block, and that now she could start again, a different life in a different place.
He knocked once more. “Are you all right?”
“I’m fine,” she repeated. “Go back, the children are coming.”
She could hear the school bus nearing the shop. She stood shivering over the bowl for another minute or two, and passed a thin hand over her stomach. Straightening up, she felt better, and looked down at the slight swell of her abdomen. She held her hand there for a moment and then went back to the house to wash.
Walking back, she saw her children, just off the bus, their legs rushing them like small tumbleweeds up the porch stairs and into the shop. She knew they would be looking for her, and that they would be disconcerted to be greeted only by their father. A moment later, she heard a crashing of broken glass and she was inside the shop in a moment.
It was only an unlit paraffin lamp that the children had upset in their hurry, and it lay by the door, the glass in splinters.
“Are you okay?” she asked them, but they didn’t hear her, because they were standing, heads down, listening as Omar shouted at them. He asked them if they thought paraffin lamps grew on trees, and did they know how much they cost, and why were they always running everywhere, and didn’t they look where they were going? Miriam listened quietly, as they did, and when it was over, she saw that they were on the verge of tears and she nodded at them to go upstairs, and then went behind the counter for the broom and dustpan and began to clear the broken glass. Omar paced irritably, and watched her.
“Robert can do that,” he told her. She continued sweeping. “What happened?” he asked, his tone short.
She looked up from where she worked, picking out the larger shards with her fingers.
“Out there.” He nodded towards the outhouse. “Are you sick?”
“Yes,” she said.
He paused. “What is it? Something you ate?”
She stood up, holding the full dustpan out in front of her. She didn’t feel like telling him about the baby now. She knew he was irritable with himself for losing his temper with the children, but she was also tired. The day had been long, she had yet to prepare the dinner, and she still felt ill. She dropped the glass into an open wad of newspaper which she folded up and held for a moment in her hand.
“It was nothing,” she said, and she dropped the wrapped glass into the bin. Robert had appeared, and was reaching for the broom. She pointed to where the lamp had fallen so that he could finish sweeping there while Omar stood behind the counter, frowning and restless. He wanted desperately to do or say something that would stop her being so cold towards him but he found he could not move, except to take out his cash books from beneath the counter, and he could not speak, except to ask her when dinner would be ready.
“Soon,” she said, turning away towards the kitchen. “It will be ready soon.”
He nodded, and went into the back room to start balancing his books, turning his head just a moment too late to watch his wife’s slim figure disappear into her kitchen.
Chapter Four
Springs
December 1952
Amina’s grandmother had had her first, and only, glimpse of her granddaughter on a Thursday afternoon, and by the time she had awoken on Friday morning it had become unmistakably clear to her that she had been sent from India to this horrible place by god’s own will, and for one purpose only—to see her granddaughter safely married. Amina’s appearance that day had conveyed to the old lady the worst possible impression. Her worn, practical clothes were not only irretrievably masculine, but they also made it evident that she worked for a living—at what, she wasn’t yet sure, though she would make it her business to find out very soon. As if her clothes were not enough to cause offence, the confidence with which she walked into the house was unbecoming; her general attitude seemed to acknowledge that she was different from other people, but to say that she was somehow still very much at ease with herself. Something was very wrong, and the old lady had wasted little time in upbraiding her son, beginning that same evening at dinner, but his responses were slow and lacked the concern and urgency that she felt were warranted.
“What does she do all day?” the old lady asked, changing tack from the stream of chastisement, which seemed to be useless in producing any effect.
“She works,” said Mr Harjan listlessly, his spoon moving in a steady repetition from his plate to his mouth.
“I know she works,” snapped his mother, irritably. “That much is obvious from her clothes. What kind of girl runs around in trousers all day? Doesn’t she have any shalwaar kameez?”
“Yes,” offered Mrs Harjan, timidly. “They are upstairs. But she never wears them.”
The old lady listened to the reply, but gave no indication of having done so to Amina’s mother. She continued to look at her son, who continued to eat, an impassive look on his worn face.
“Where is she? Why isn’t she at home? Where is she sleeping at night?”
Mr Harjan sighed. “She works in Pretoria. It is too far for her to travel everyday. So she has a room there.”
Amina’s grandmother put a dramatic hand to her chest as though to quiet the shock.
“Is she living with a good family at least?” she asked. Mr Harjan glanced at his wife for the first time that evening, and she nodded, very slightly, and then turned crimson when the old lady turned to her suddenly, trying to catch what was occurring between them.
“Yes,” lied Mr Harjan, looking down at his plate again. “She’s with a good family,” and he thought briefly of the single room built behind her café that Amina occupied most nights. He had only seen it once, and her enthusiasm had been so infectious, and her reasons so logical that it had not occurred to him to forbid her from leaving his house without being married until he had heard the disapproval of others in his community.
Several “friends” had arrived in Springs, in a kind of organised demonstration, to tell them that it would be an unheard of scandal, even by Amina’s standards, if their daughter should think of starting a business with a Coloured man. Amina’s father had missed most of these friendly visits from his community by pretending to be hard at work in his gas station, despite the fact that only four or five customers ever stopped there during a day. It was not his custom or his pleasure to listen to gossip or instructions from people who were strangers to him, even if they did share the same skin colour, or religion, or traditions.
And by this time, Amina was already used to living away from home, and he did not have the strength, or the will, or even the wish, deep down, to fight her. He thoug
ht of her business—it was doing well, she said—and of Jacob Williams, a good man, whom he liked.
He became aware again of his mother’s voice, harping at him on his left side and he looked at her, watched her round mouth working hard, producing sounds that he did not even hear. He wondered how his father, a mild, quiet man, who had died at the age of fifty-three of a liver disease, had coped with the continual sound of her voice, complaining and gossiping day after day. He tried to remember the sound of his mother’s laughter, tried to remember when he had ever heard her laugh, but he could not.
This girl, her only granddaughter was obviously running wild in this wild country, the old lady told him, with occasional pointed looks at Amina’s mother, and it was his responsibility to do something. He nodded wearily and hoped that she would not remember to ask again what it was that his daughter did for a living. That her granddaughter worked was bad enough, but the fact that she was running her own business with a Coloured man, and that her other odd jobs were mostly manual, would be too much for the old lady to cope with.
“We have to begin now,” she said decisively. “She must get married.”
The idea of her only granddaughter’s marriage had of course been at the back of her mind since the day of Amina’s birth and had often taken more detailed shape in the form of her daydreams, in which she herself had played the starring role, accepting the congratulations, good wishes and general adulation of all her friends and family at the marvellous match she had managed to make for her granddaughter, while overcoming the handicap of her daughter-in-law’s scandalous family history. Over the years, such dreams had provided her with an undemanding way to use up the long, hot afternoons at home in Bombay. But now the marriage had become an absolute necessity, a deliverance from evil, and it must occur soon if the girl was ever to be brought back to a decent way of living. It was clear that she had totally gone to seed since leaving India. Besides, twenty-two or twenty-three was more than long enough for a girl to be single. It was over-long in fact, but Amina still looked young, and could pass, she decided, for being nearer to twenty.
“She must get married,” she repeated. The two pallid faces of her son and daughter-in-law looked up at her. “She must. And soon.”
Mrs Harjan murmured something about how it might be a good thing; perhaps Amina needed to settle down. She was tired of her mother-in-law’s voice, and was beginning to feel eroded by the constant wash of arguments lapping inside her head.
“I’m glad you see sense,” nodded the old lady, to Mrs Harjan. “You see,” she said, turning back to her son. “We women understand these things. You should leave such matters to us.”
“I have. I have left my daughter’s affairs to her.” It was his first strong sentence, and it spilt from him almost involuntarily, under the weight of a headache that seemed to him to be caused by the thumping echoes of all his mother’s words trapped inside his brain.
The old lady seemed not to notice the irony that he had pointed out.
“That’s different,” she said, as though the difference were so obvious she need never explain it.
It was not in her son to ask her how it was different, or to stand up to his mother for any more than the two seconds it had taken him to utter that sentence, so he merely watched and listened as his mother outlined her plan for Amina. The boy she had in mind was the son of the Ali family. The father had been her husband’s friend back in India, before they had emigrated to South Africa fifteen years ago.
“They are in Pretoria, and the mother came to see me last week. We will have them to dinner,” stated the old lady.
The idea of people coming for dinner seemed to throw both her son and daughter-in-law off balance. Mrs Harjan had no idea how to cope with people for dinner—it had been so long since they had invited anyone. What to cook, what to wear, what to talk about? Mr Harjan was simply unhappy at the thought of strange people in his house, especially people who were coming expressly to weigh himself and his wife up as prospective in-laws, and his daughter as a prospective wife. This last thought jolted him into speech.
“Amina will never come,” he said.
His mother stared as though he had suggested that the world might stop turning.
“It is not up to Amina,” she explained with impatience. “She is your daughter, and my granddaughter. It is her duty to be where we tell her. She will come,” she added, and sat back with a satisfied air, her plump hands folded on her lap. Mrs Harjan rose to clear the dishes. Her maid, rosemary, gathered them from her in unenthusiastic silence and began to wash them at the sink.
Mr Harjan did not argue the point regarding his daughter any further. He knew she would not attend a dinner in order to be introduced to a suitable boy. He also knew that she did not seem to be in a hurry to get married, and if he was completely honest with himself, this suited him very well. He was a man of routine, who disliked noise and disruption, and people outside his immediate family. That was one of the main reasons he had moved to Springs, rather than staying in Pretoria. Here there was no extended family, no helpful community of friends and neighbours always ready to drop in at the slightest excuse. There were other Indian families, but they were widely scattered, and they did not live on top of each other. He disliked anyone with whom he was uncomfortable, and he was comfortable with no one except his wife. Amina’s marriage to anyone, however suitable, would mean an endless stream of visits from his son-in-law and his family. They would probably have several children, too, who would run riot through his house. No, he disliked the idea of his daughter’s marriage much more than he disliked his community’s disapproval, and Amina in her turn had long been grateful for her father’s introverted habits and hatred of change, for it gave her an easier route to a freedom she would otherwise never have had.
Amina was surprised to get a telephone call at the café from her mother a few weeks later, and had immediately assumed that some emergency was at hand. The black telephone stood on a table in her parent’s house like a squat little god, whose workings they could not begin to comprehend, and which they disturbed only on rare occasions. Amina listened carefully to her mother as she asked her to come to the house for dinner the following Sunday night.
“What is happening on Sunday?” she asked, puzzled. There was a silence at the other end.
“Mum?”
“Nothing is happening, Amina,” her mother said. Amina held the receiver a small distance away from her ear, because her mother had a habit of shouting into it. Mrs Harjan had never had a telephone in India, and could not overcome her certainty that the very words that she uttered had to make a long physical journey all the way down the wires to reach her daughter.
“Are you sure?” Amina asked, because even with her voice raised, Mrs Harjan did not speak with much conviction.
“Your grandmother wants to see you. You haven’t spent much time with her, you know,” she added reproachfully. Amina sighed. She had little desire to see her grandmother at all, but she felt guilty.
“Okay, I’ll be there. Maybe I’ll come a bit early and help you,” she added.
“Good,” yelled her mother, relieved. There was a pause. “We are having some people, you know. It is your grandmother’s idea.”
“Okay. What shall I bring?”
“Nothing, nothing, you bring me too much already,” Mrs Harjan called. “Your father is already wondering where all the chapati flour is coming from.”
Amina smiled into the receiver. “So I’ll see you on Sunday?”
“Yes. Amina?”
“Mum?”
There was a silence, and then a crackle on the line. “Nothing,” said Mrs Harjan finally. “See you on Sunday.”
Amina arrived for dinner half an hour late, which was not how the evening was supposed to have started. Her grandmother had spent the week nurturing a vision of her granddaughter carefully and demurely dressed in a shalwaar kameez, perhaps in a nice pastel shade of lavender or pink, helping her mother in the kitchen before comi
ng out to receive their guests and meet their son. This vision had trickled down in a diluted form to Amina’s mother, so that Mrs Harjan had spent two hours on Saturday afternoon with the old lady, picking out suitable outfits for Amina to wear at dinner. Amina’s father had arrived back from work and had watched the two women in placid silence for a few moments before going back downstairs to read his newspaper, leaving them with a look that clearly expressed his belief that they had both gone mad.
The guests were already sipping at cold drinks in the living room when Amina finally arrived. Her grandmother was too angry with the girl to even look up when they heard the rumbling of the truck wheels and the slam of the door outside. They heard a snatch of a jazz tune being hummed in the hallway, and Mrs Harjan smiled faintly at her guests and hurried outside.
Amina greeted her with a smile and an apology for being late. She was dressed in her work clothes, and her hair looked more tangled and curly than usual. She followed the line of her mother’s gaze and touched her head.
“I got caught in that rainstorm this afternoon,” she said guiltily.
Mrs Harjan said nothing, but her eyes widened in panic.
“I just need to have a quick bath, Mum,” Amina said. “I’m sorry I’m late,” she added, but there was no response—her mother seemed to be struck mute with distress.
“You’d better go back,” Amina nodded towards the living room, where she could hear her grandmother’s voice giving an opinion about something. Mrs Harjan sighed quietly and turned away.
When Amina emerged from the bathroom, she was surprised to see her mother standing silently on the landing.
“Mum! You scared me,” Amina said. She walked past her mother and into her own room, without even noticing the pale pink outfit that Mrs Harjan held up in her hands.
