Brick Lane (74 page)

For a while she pinned her hopes on Chanu. That day when he wandered in and Karim was using the computer, she thought,
he knows it all.
But he said nothing to her. Everyone else knew. Nazma – that glint in her eye when she ran her hand over the sewing machine. 'Still getting plenty?' she had said. Razia showed no surprise at all when let in on the 'secret'. How early had she guessed it? Who had not noticed the comings and goings?

Let my husband find out, Nazneen prayed. Let him kill me, she added.

Chanu was not so obliging. Can't you see what is going on under your nose, she demanded silently of him every day.

In the mornings she said her prayers and did housework and began her sewing and there was nothing inside her that demanded more. By lunchtime when she looked for Karim out of the window, her stomach began to surge with excitement and dread and on the days when he did not come she had to leave the flat and walk around the streets for fear that she would wear out the remaining threads of carpet.

'Why do you like me?' she asked one day, hoping that the words came naturally, as if she had just thought of them.

He was in a playful mood.
'Keno tumake amar bhalo lage?'
Who says that I like you? His fingers touched the hollow of her throat.

'I do,' she said in a firm way.

'I see.' He kissed a trail from her throat to her armpit.

'I am not beautiful. I am not a young girl.'

'Not young and not beautiful? Then I must be crazy.'

'And you are young.'

'What about beautiful?'

She was determined to be serious. 'But you do not answer me.'

Karim rolled onto his back. As he moved his hands up behind his head Nazneen watched the muscles in his arms tense and relax. His skin was golden, like honey. It looked like you could lick it off.

'Well, basically you've got two types. Make your choice. There's your westernized girl, wears what she likes, all the make-up going on, short skirts and that soon as she's out of her father's sight. She's into going out, getting good jobs, having a laugh. Then there's your religious girl, wears the scarf or even the burkha. You'd think, right, they'd be good wife material. But they ain't. Because all they want to do is
argue.
And they always think they know best because they've been off to all these summer camps for Muslim sisters.'

'What about me?'

He propped himself up on one elbow. She smelled his sweat and it stirred her. 'Ah, you. You are the real thing.'

'Real thing?'

'You can arrange for a girl from the village. Bring her over here.' He was still setting out his options. 'But then there's all the settling-in hassle. And you never know
what
you're going to get.'

'I am the real thing?' A conversation overheard in the early days of her marriage came to her mind. She stood in her nightdress in the hallway while Chanu was on the telephone.
An unspoilt girl. From the village. All things considered, I am satisfied.

Karim was getting out of bed. He had his back to her.

'My husband is taking us to Dhaka,' she said.

She watched the curve of his spine to see if he had noticed: the emphasis in her voice had got out of control.

He straightened up but he did not turn.

She curled herself into a ball. The shush of air in her nostrils, the minute clicks of her skull, the wheeze of her chest, gurgles from her gut, blood thumping dully in her ears.

At last, he spoke. 'When I went to Bradford, I went to see a girl. Selected for me. I turned her down. For you.'

'What can I do?' Her face was hot and wet.

'What do you want to do?'

She had wanted to go. But now she did not know. The children would suffer; Chanu would face fresh agonies of disappointment; and she was not the girl from the village any more. She was not the real thing.

Karim picked her up like a child and held her. 'Don't be scared. Let your husband go. It's gonna be the best thing. Then you get a divorce because he's left you. Don't be scared. I'll sort it.'

* * *

October arrived and with it Chanu's chilblains, colds and coughs for the girls, and condensation. Nazneen began her winter ritual of wiping the windows with a towel every morning. It helped with the damp. Two workmen blundered along to fix the toilet.

'How long's it been broken, darlin'?'

She told them.

'That's the council for you, darlin'.'

They poked around a bit and then cleared off.

'Got yourself a problem there, sweetheart. Shouldn't'a left it so long.'

The suitcase stood on its little smart wheels at the bottom of the wardrobe, on top of Chanu's certificates. Nazneen tested the handle. It was heavy.

She gave up trying to persuade Chanu to eat and then she gave up cooking. The girls had burgers or baked beans or whatever they wanted. Once, when she got up in the night and pulled open the door of an empty fridge, she started making cauliflower curry, and as the spices hit the hot fat and burst their seams she thought she would waken everybody and they would eat together like a normal family. But it was two o'clock in the morning and she ate alone, standing up against the sink, watching the moon and wondering if she would ever eat a meal with her sister again.

The next day, the leaflet appeared through the letterbox.

MARCH AGAINST THE MULLAHS

Karim picked it up. He turned it over. 'Yes!' he said. 'We've got a date.' He folded his arms and stood with his legs wide. 'Let them come. We'll be ready.'

When Chanu got home he picked up the leaflet and studied it for some time. Then he put it down, went into the bedroom and closed the door.

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

The only thing on which everyone could agree was that the boy had been stabbed. Everything else was as hotly disputed as the price of brinjals on market day. Some said the fight was between two gangs, with as many as ten boys involved. Others said twenty or thirty or fifty while their opponents maintained it was only two, the stabber and the stabbed. It was said that the gangs had a long history of rivalry, dating back to their schooldays when they had all bunked off to attend noon-time raves in darkened warehouses, getting changed in the toilet, taking nips of whisky and drags of cigarettes and listening to Joi Bangla, Michael Jackson, James Brown, Amiruddin and Abdul Gani, making up new dances and hostilities, inventing their lives in a way that no one – especially not their parents – had imagined for them. Between these two gangs there was always tension, and the only surprise was that someone had not been stabbed sooner.

But this was all lies. The boys involved were members of the same gang, and they had fallen out over a girl. More lies. The issue was drugs. Or it was money. Indeed, it was drugs money. This, for a certain fact, was what led the boy to end up in hospital with a wound this deep in his thigh.

Some people were ignorant as donkeys! For the wound was to the chest and he was not expected to live, although only Allah would decide and it was not up to anyone to be expecting or not expecting, but it was difficult not to expect this kind of thing to happen because what else were gangs for but trouble?

Of course some people had only mustard plants growing between their ears and they would believe anything. As a matter of fact, and as the song said, in spite of their eyes they were blind. There were no gangs at all. The white press had made them up to give Bangladeshis a bad name. The
Tower Hamlets Bugle
was the worst offender (but all white newspapers were culprits); if you read that rubbish you'd think that our boys were getting as bad as the blacks. No, there weren't any gangs. Just boys who grew up together and hung around together.