Authors: Monica Ali
He little man of wire. Did I tell? You can fold up and fit in pocket. But he do not look like weak man.
I ask him again which side he is support for politics? He tap the head and say 'My side.' Then he tell me. He support whoever give pay. So far is Awami League Bangladesh National Party and Jamaat-e-Islami. All is think they hire muscle but this muscle have brain attaching also.
He have save up much money and then he plan what to do. He have many idea. One idea is food stall for office worker. Good standard. Other is restaurant for family dining. He is also look into possibility of train for kung fu actor. Another idea is set up as fixer for sending people to foreign country for working there. Only expense is needed a mobile phone. Do you know how many taka for going to foreign country? One hundred and fifty thousand taka. And that is not for good country. For going to Singapore much more is need.
One time he think to go himself to the overseas. But he say – what do you get when you come back? Spend three four year never see one chink sunlight all work work work and come back with fridge and television and when electricity die every evening time then you take hammer and smash whole bloody things into piece. He know one woman sell her plot land for send her son to Singapore. Three years he work construction site and when he come back he do not have enough to buy back land. He know another woman who see job advertising in newspaper and go to Malaysia. She sew clothes from eight in morning to ten in evening seven days out of seven. This she do for five year. When she come home husband have spend all money she sending and all she have is debt.
If you go say Zaid you got to know what you coming back for. While you away who going to build anything here? I tell him about you husband and how he have big job and everything. He say 'How long he been Londoni?'
I think it more than twenty year.
Zaid for first time I see look impressed. He slice the air a little. 'Then its worth it. After twenty years he can come home build his own town where everything work like it meant to.'
August
I go again to College Hospital. Lovely say Oh be a sweet girl and take the darlings with you. I tell her bit how Monju look and dont say anything how she smell. Lovely cover the ear and say sometime you feel like stop the Charity work because nothing is ever enough.
No money now for Monju drugs. Praise Allah most time she go unconscious.
Late late Syeeda came on back veranda watch rains. We hardly speak two word. Side by side we smell the earth. When she leave she say 'Right. Thats it.' Like we discuss all things under moon and decide every move for life.
The next day Chanu did not go to work. He stayed at home and in the way. Nazneen began, bit by bit, to restore order to the flat. The girls attacked each chore that she set them with unusual vigour. Chanu directed operations and philosophized about the nature of housework. It was a little like God, without end or beginning. It simply
was.
'Are you not nervous any more, Amma?' asked Bibi, chewing on a fingernail.
'Nervous?' said Nazneen.
'Nervous exhaustion,' Chanu pronounced. 'She had a condition known as nervous exhaustion.'
'Why?' said Shahana.
Chanu, very briefly, looked unsure. Then he rallied. 'Nerves. Women's thing,' he said. 'You'll know about it when you get older.'
'But not any more?' Bibi insisted. 'She doesn't have it any more?'
'Not any more,' said Nazneen. She looked at her daughter's wide, flat cheeks, her heavy forehead. Her soft brown eyes filled with anxiety. It was an open face, neither plain nor pretty but pleasing in its willingness to please. How like her mother she looked. Nazneen flushed, first with pride and then with worry. 'Don't be anxious. Don't even think about it.'
'I won't,' said Bibi promptly, and looked worried when Nazneen laughed.
They worked together as a kind of unrehearsed circus team, with too many leaders and frequent missteps. Shahana complained that Bibi had pulled everything out of a kitchen cupboard. 'But I'm cleaning it,' said Bibi. 'But I just put everything in there,' moaned Shahana. Chanu chuckled and slapped his stomach. 'You think your mother has an easy job? How many times do I tell you to help your mother? It's not easy. Not easy at all.' He ate slices of bread spread with ghur and saw no necessity for a plate. Nazneen swept around him.
'Razia came to see you,' he told her. 'Do you remember? I think you spoke one or two words to her, though you would not speak to me.' He smiled to show her there was no accusation involved.
She did not remember.
'Yes, she came,' he continued. 'Not a respectable type, you could not call her that. But she is genuine in her affection.'
Nazneen went on with her cleaning. In these activities, the scraping and scouring and sweeping and washing, within their sweet-dull void she found the kind of refuge she had – the night before – sought and lost in the Qur'an. Razia looked in on her and Nazma came with Sorupa and fed her with choice morsels of gossip that passed through her undigested. A day slipped by in this way and at night she slept a dreamless sleep.
As she cleaned the bathroom the next day, Nazneen thought of Hasina. Fate, it seemed, had turned Hasina's life around and around, tossed and twisted it like a baby rat, naked and blind, in the jaws of a dog. And yet Hasina did not see it. She examined the bite marks on her body, and for each one she held herself accountable.
This is where I savaged myself, here and here and here.
She dusted off the sewing machine and settled down to work. Chanu, who seemed to have slipped out of the work habit, fussed around.
'She must not overdo it,' he said. Whenever he wanted to emphasize her fragility, he put her at this linguistic remove.
'She will not overdo it,' muttered Nazneen. I've already overdone it, she thought to herself.
'She is still under doctor's orders.'
Whatever I have done is done.
This thought came to her, as fresh and stunning as the greatest of scientific breakthroughs, or ecstatic revelations.
'She is supposed to be taking bed rest.'
Now I have earned myself a place in hell for all eternity. That much is settled. At least it is settled.
'Her husband also recommends it.'
A degree or two hotter, a year or two more or less. What does it matter?
'She really ought to listen to him.'
Good. That's it, then. That is it.
'She doesn't seem to be listening.'
'Oh, she is,' said Nazneen, 'she's listening. But she is not obeying.'
Chanu smiled expectantly, waiting for the joke to be explained. The smile lingered a while around his lips, while his eyes scanned her face and then the room, looking for clues, for changes. 'All right then,' he said, after a while. 'I have some reading to do. Shahana! Bibi! Quick. Who is going to turn the pages for me?'
It was an August afternoon, warm and sunless. The estate seemed muffled by the thick grey sky, dense as a blanket. Nazneen looked out and up and watched as an aeroplane smeared the grey with white and disappeared behind a coagulation of buildings. She had come to London on an aeroplane, but she could not remember the journey. All she remembered now was being given breakfast, a bowl of cornflakes which had broken some sort of threshold and released a serving of tears. She had borne everything but this strange breakfast. Chanu, she remembered, seemed to understand. He took the bowl and hid it somewhere and promised her this and promised her that and made so many promises that she had to beg him to stop.
That was a long time ago, when she took such things too seriously. She looked over at the old flat in Seasalter House and saw that the window was filled with potted plants. She should have bought plants and tended and loved them. All those years ago she should have bought seeds. She should have sewn new covers for the sofa and the armchairs. She should have thrown away the wardrobe, or at least painted it. She should have plastered the wall and painted that too. She should have put Chanu's certificates on the wall. But she had left everything undone.
For so many years, all the permanent fixtures of her life had felt so temporary. There was no reason to change anything, no time to grow anything. And now, somehow, it felt too late.
She looked across at the brickwork, flaking beneath the windowsill, black within the cracks like dirt caught beneath fingernails. She had spent nearly half her life here and she wondered if she would die here as well.