Authors: Monica Ali
Nazneen wrote down some numbers on her clean page. The last payment was one hundred pounds, the one before was eighty-five, there were six at seventy-five and four or five at fifty. How much money did Chanu borrow? How long would it take to pay it back? At one hundred pounds a week Nazneen would be able to save nothing, even if she worked half the night.
Bibi came up and looked at the page. 'Amma, what are you doing?' She kept her voice light and she kept a frown away from her face. She was worried about worrying.
'Nothing,' said Nazneen. 'Housekeeping. Let me feel your throat.' She pressed her fingers along each side of her daughter's throat feeling for swelling, and at the same time soothing.
'I've been better for a week.'
'Yes, you're better.'
She had been off school with tonsillitis. Nazneen took her to see Dr Azad. His chair had grown larger since the last time she went to the surgery. She almost expected him to swing his legs, but he held himself with his usual correctness.
'Say, "Aaah",' he told Bibi, who complied. He gave his diagnosis and from his computer produced a prescription. Bibi was looking at the snowstorms on his desk. There was a line of them along the back in every shade of coloured glass. They were arranged by colour, running from clear glass at the far end to a small black dome over a frozen winter garden. He picked out one and offered it. Bibi held it on the flat of her palm and peered at the little lattice-worked tower inside.
'No, no. You shake it.' Dr Azad explained that he had got it in Paris. They watched the snow swirl around inside the glass and come to a peaceful arrangement at the bottom. 'That's it.' He took it back. 'That is like life,' he told Bibi. 'Remember that is just like life.'
'Why?' said Bibi, surprised into speaking. She swallowed with difficulty.
Dr Azad picked up another snowstorm and shook it. 'If you are strong you withstand the storm. Can you see? The storm comes and everything is blurred. But all that is built on a solid foundation has only to stand fast and wait for the storm to pass. Do you see?'
Bibi nodded, so slowly that she might as well have shaken her head.
'And do you know how to make a solid foundation?'
Again, Bibi gave her slow, negative nod.
'Then would you mind,' said Dr Azad, 'telling me just how to do it?'
As they went out Nazneen saw Tariq in the waiting room. He leaned up against a noticeboard with his hands in his pockets though there were plenty of chairs to choose from. His lids looked heavy and his hair was flat with grease. The bones had been removed from his body. She stopped for a moment and she thought of speaking to him. His head rolled across his shoulder then hung down and Nazneen began to move again because she knew she would not be able to look in his eyes.
It was the same every morning. When she opened her eyes beneath the large black wardrobe she had the sensation – a relief in her bones – that the day had finally arrived. Then she strained to remember what the day was, its significance, and she realized that it was a day like any other. This particular morning, without moving from the bed, she ran her hand along the smooth lacquer of the wardrobe door. There was barely a scratch on it. She had hated it for fifteen years but this had made no impression.
Chanu stirred and put an arm across her belly. She regarded his malnourished limb, the two bright pimples above the elbow. She put her hand inside his and in his sleep he gripped it.
Again, the feeling came to her that this would be the day. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth that spread across her stomach.
Chanu snored. Two long hard grunts like the death of an engine.
She got rid of his arm and turned on her side with her knees drawn up and her fists between her knees. It was no longer the day and the tension inside her chest, which had been there for weeks, returned. She had taken a deep, deep breath because she had to shout – something urgent, some matter of life or death – but the breath and the shout got stuck. They would never come out. That was how it felt.
It was because of the leaflet war.
It was because of Mrs Islam.
It was because she had not told Razia yet.
It was because of Hasina.
It was because of the Home Fund, which was not growing quickly enough.
It was because of the girls, who did not want to go home.
She sat up now and looked at the clock.
'It's because of me,' said Karim.
'What?'
He held a finger to his lips. His hair, the tuft at the front, moved playfully though there was no breeze in the room. 'It's because of me,' he whispered.
She closed her eyes and he was still there. His fingers brushed her cheeks. To get rid of him she had to get out of bed and begin this day.
The leafleteers had changed tactics and begun leaflet-ing in the night. By day, the estate was quiet. So when Chanu finished brushing his teeth, came out of the bathroom and picked up a Bengal Tigers leaflet, his anger was the loudest thing in all the three hundred and thirteen flats.
'What peasant,' he roared, 'what peasant has written this?'
He waved the paper in the air and directed his glare in every corner.
Bibi, with very small incremental movements of her head, checked behind her. Shahana ate her cornflakes. She fiddled with the dial on the radio.
'Turn it off,' yelled Chanu. His dimpled chin vibrated in the aftershock.
He began to read.
'A reminder to give thanks to Allah for our brothers who gave up their lives shaheed to defend the brothers.'
Chanu wobbled with indignation. 'Brothers! These peasants claim to be my brothers. They cannot compose even one proper sentence. Shahana, do you know what shaheed means? It means martyr. Do you know what that means?' He continued without waiting for her reply.
'We give thanks for Farook Zaman who died in the Duba Yurt operations in Chechnya, February 2000. He lived most of his life an unbeliever until he repented and devoted himself to jihad. He was killed by a bullet to his heart. After three months his body was returned by the Russians. By an eyewitness account, his body was smelling of musk and it was the most beautiful of all the shaheed bodies he had seen in Chechnya. "Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be Paradise."'
Chanu flapped his mouth; only spittle emerged from the corners, no more words. His hair, insulted to the roots, was tumultuous. His eyebrows wild with consternation. After a while, he turned the leaflet over and read the other side.
'Insh' Allah our brother Farook has reached Paradise. He leaves a wife and a baby daughter.
'Insh' Allah may his story give us courage to use our lives for the cause of Allah. We are taking up collections for those who are left behind.'
Chanu was disabled with anger. Shahana had finished her breakfast and was hovering dangerously close to the television.
Eventually, words came. 'Smelling of musk. After three months! What is all this mumbo-jumbos? Are they mad? Poking these mad letters through white people's doors. Do they want to set flame to the whole place? Do they want us all to die shaheed?'
Nazneen tried to signal to Shahana.
Don't turn it on.
'Shall we send money at once? They must have more guns. Quick, get some money to send.' He began patting his lungi as though it could contain some coins.
Nazneen felt the back of her neck grow warm, as if the sun had just come on it. When Karim came last time he read from a magazine about the orphan children in refugee camps in Gaza. He was moved and Nazneen watched as the cycle of emotion started turning. It was possible – this she knew – to be deeply touched by one's own grief on another's behalf. That he was moved, moved him. As he explained the situation his eyes became watery. She had gone to the kitchen and looked beneath the sink for her Tupperware box. She wanted to do something for the orphans. And she wanted to do something for him. When she gave him the money, he spoke in her own language and though it took him a long while and he suffered through his stammer, he told her it was a beautiful thing to do. But if Chanu found out, what would he think? What would he say?