Brick Lane (67 page)

'Well,' said Chanu, 'I will do it myself.'

'No. I don't believe this survey. What kind of professors are these?'

Chanu's eyebrows shot up high, leaving his small eyes vulnerable, unprotected, like two snails out of their shells. He reached for the newspaper. 'Here – have a look. I am not making it up.'

'It may be written down,' said Nazneen. 'But I do not believe it.'

'Why?' It was scarcely possible for one face to contain such a quantity of astonishment.

Nazneen did not know how to answer. She was unsure why she had spoken. She did not know if she believed the newspaper report or not. Finally, she said, 'My sister – she is not happy.'

'But Hasina is very happy,' insisted Chanu.

'No, she is not. Has not been . . .' said Nazneen. And she started to tell him the things she had hidden from him over the years, and at first she stumbled around as if it were lies she were telling and not the truth, and then the words began to flow and he was stiller than she had ever seen him, a slackness in his face, and she told him about her sister and left nothing out, beginning with Mr Chowdhury, the landlord, the one who (Chanu had said) was respectable-type. When she spoke of the rape she named it in the village way, Hasina was robbed of her nakphool, her nose ring; and the selling of her body she did not name, saying only my sister had to stay alive and she saw that Chanu understood.

When she had finished, she folded her hands in her lap and sat up very straight, defying with her neatness the chaos and disorder of the world. Chanu waggled his head and looked around the room.

'I will make a plan,' he said. 'Something must be done.'

* * *

On the morning after the Bengal Tigers' meeting, Nazneen made the short journey across the estate to visit Hanufa.

Hanufa presented her with a stack of old margarine and ice cream tubs. 'Dal, kebabs and niramish. I made too much.'

'But I'm fine now,' said Nazneen.

'Take it,' said Hanufa. 'I made too much.' She fetched a stool and suggested that Nazneen put her feet up. It was not worth the bother of protesting. Nazneen did as she was told.

Hanufa filled her in on the news. Nazma's eldest had been made manager at the Bengal Lancer, Jorina was trying to get her daughter and her son-in-law back to the UK but Immigration was making trouble, Sorupa had a summer cold that refused to budge. 'And everyone is talking about this mela.' Nazneen closed her eyes for a moment and slipped back into the meeting.

It had been a bit like a mela itself. The hall was festooned with children in best clothes and babies in arms. People milled around the hall and out of the doorway, or sampled the bhajis and samosas on sale at thirty pence a piece from a trolley in the left-hand aisle. At the far corner a man in a grimy apron sold sweet lassis and cartons of mango juice. Shahana waved discreetly at a group of young boys who wore complicated trainers and conspiratorial looks. Bibi found a schoolfriend and the two sat together swinging their legs under their seats. Chanu had greased the clumps of his hair together with coconut oil, sharpened three pencils and found a reporter-style notebook which he fitted, with some difficulty, into the breast pocket of his shirt.

'So many people here,' said Chanu. 'How can you run a meeting with all these people?'

'I'm going to buy a lassi,' said Shahana.

'The milk will be sour,' warned Nazneen. 'He has no ice or anything.'

'I'm just going to have a look,' said Shahana, slipping away.

Chanu extracted his notebook. 'When I was a council man we used to say that a meeting with more than four people was just a talking shop.'

Nazneen thought about it now. It was more than that, surely. It was her husband who was the talker.

Someone in the row behind had begun to grumble about Karim. 'He seems to have forgotten his mother tongue.'

'So far it's only waffle anyway,' Chanu whispered back.

There was the usual business with procedure. The Secretary bouncing on his toes and trying to keep order. More elections. The black man had a title now: Multicultural Liaison Officer. The battle of wills between Karim and the Questioner.

'What's this mela supposed to be celebrating?' said the Questioner. 'Are our children doing well in school? Have they come, suddenly, from the bottom of the education tables to the top? Has the drugs problem – that we like to keep our dirty secret – has it vanished? What's changed? Our brothers in Palestine and India and around the world, are they no longer being persecuted?'

Chanu stood up then. Every head in the room turned towards him. Chanu made some spectacular excavations of his voice box, throwing out all manner of irritating sounds. 'I myself would like to add that Bangladeshis are the most deprived ethnic group in the whole of the UK. This is the immigrant tragedy. As a student of philosophy though

Nazneen lost the rest of it. She did not care what he was saying. She did not care if people were looking. Sitting next to her husband, in front of her lover, she gave way to a feeling of satisfaction that had been slowly growing. It began at the edges and worked its way in so that eventually it found its way to her heart and warmed it. She gave herself a little hug and smothered a smile on her shoulder. She considered how much of her life, how much time, how much energy, she had spent trying not to care, trying to
accept.
Do you see me now, she said to Amma, do you see how I accept it all? At once the warm feeling had begun to subside.

Hanufa said, 'It's at the women's drop-in place on Berners Street.'

'What is?' said Nazneen.

'The massage course. Do you want to come?'

'Maybe another time,' said Nazneen, forcing herself to get up. 'I've got so much work to do.'

On her way back Nazneen recognized four Bangla lads who had turned up halfway through the meeting. They had driven a car, silver, flashy-looking, into the courtyard. The doors were open and the music hammered out. They leaned against the bonnet, waiting for a challenge. There had nearly been a fight when they walked into the meeting. Some of the other lads wanted them thrown out.
They don't own this place. What they doing here?
Karim had calmed it down, sorted everything out, as usual.

She gave the car and the lads a wide berth and went up to the flat. Razia was waiting outside the door. She wore her Union Jack top and her face was wet. Her sweatshirt was damp and her trousers stuck to her legs.

Nazneen went to her. 'What is it?' she asked, but she knew.

Razia held her arms. Dark eyes, flecked with gold and laced with fear, grey hair taking flight, lips cracked at the centre, long nose, nostrils flared. She held Nazneen's arms and said, 'He's sold the furniture.'

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

After her husband was killed by the seventeen frozen cows, Razia had cleared out the flat. Nazneen watched her shift the pyres of wood, the half-empty paint tins, the massacred dolls, even the stacks of cheap tinned food. Anything she could pick up, she removed. Nazneen felt that Razia would like to pick up the children too, bag and bin them. The children dodged out of her way. Nazneen, home from the hospital, could not clear anything, and eventually Razia had come round and taken away the baby things.

At that time, Razia's flat had lost the feel of a settler camp, a temporary pitch in hostile terrain where all resources had to be grabbed and held, and over the years she made the place a home. She saved and bought new carpets, for the sitting room the first year, the hallway the next, and so on. She hung mirrors on the walls and looked at herself sidelong and said that mirrors made a room seem larger. Twelve months ago, after several years of saving, she had bought a new three-piece suite with gold-tasselled fringes that set off the deep green cushions and tickled the backs of your ankles.

'What did I do?' said Razia. The room was almost bare. A single bed was pushed against one wall. This was Razia's bed. On the floor, at a right angle, was the mattress where Shefali slept. Tariq was favoured with the bedroom. Shefali sat, as if marooned, on a solitary high-backed wooden chair.

'Did you know about it?' she said to her daughter, and Nazneen knew this was not the first time of asking but the tenth or the twentieth.

Nazneen leaned against the windowsill. Her bones felt heavy, as if her body was sleeping. She would have liked to lie down. 'And the television?'