Brick Lane (76 page)

Then there was Karim.

A few times she had imagined conversations with Razia. She played them out, reading both the parts, trying a new phrase here and there.
He will never give me up.
Razia tucking her feet under her bottom and leaning over to squeeze all the juice out of the story.
It consumes us. It's not something we can control.
Razia shaking her bony shoulders; the intensity – even at this remove – enough to make her shiver.
The most astonishing thing of all. . .
She never knew what she would say then, but the phrase kept coming to her. With narrowed eyes and her sideways look, Razia attempted to tease it from her.
The most astonishing thing of all. . .

They did not speak of him. It was not possible.

With all those secrets between them, how easy it was to talk. Talk flowed like the Meghna: the fast-flowing gush of new gossip; the hiss and splash of their various moans and complaints; disturbances around the rocks of the more serious stuff, always family; a widening and a narrowing, running deep and coming shallow; even in silent stretches the currents between them never stopped and the whole vast outpouring tumbled endlessly into the sea of their friendship. And now the river had met a dam, built out of truth and knowledge and need. These things had stopped up their mouths.

They paused outside a new shop.

'Fusion Fashions,' said Razia, reading out the name.

Inside, a white girl stood in front of a mirror turning this way and that in a black kameez top with white embroidered flowers and a sprinkling of pearls stitched near the throat. The trousers were not the usual baggy salwaar style but narrow-hipped and slightly flared at the bottom. The girl picked up a stack of green glass bangles from a shelf and attempted to get one over her hand.

'She'll never get it on like that,' said Nazneen.

A similar outfit was displayed in the window, only this version was red with black embroidery and black beads. Razia looked at the price tag. She shook her head and sighed as if the evils of the world had been revealed to her.

'Look how much these English are paying for their kameez. And at the same time they are looking down onto me. They are even happy to spit on their own flag, as long as I am inside it. What is wrong with them? What is wrong?'

Chanu was out, driving ignorant types and collecting parking fines. He had taken to keeping the penalty notices in an envelope addressed to the local council. On each of the slips he had written: gone away to address unknown, return to issuer. The girls were sitting on the sofa and Bibi had the remote control on her lap. Every time she touched it Shahana kicked her on the ankle.

'Amma, Shahana keeps kicking me.'

'Shahana, don't kick your sister.'

'She keeps trying to change the channel.'

'I haven't done anything.'

'Just wait until you're in Bangladesh,' said Shahana. 'You'll be married off in no time.'

Bibi said, 'But. . . but. . .'

'And your husband will keep you locked up in a little smelly room and make you weave carpets all day long.'

Bibi jumped up. 'What about you? You're older than me. You will have a husband before me.'

Shahana hugged her knees. 'That's what you think.'

Nazneen switched the television off. 'But you would like to see where your mother grew up?'

The girls wriggled a bit and did not answer.

'You would like to see Mumtaz auntie?'

'Tell us a story about Mumtaz auntie,' said Bibi. She sat cross-legged now on the sofa to show that she was ready.

'Only the one about the good jinni.' Shahana pursed her sweet pink lips. 'All the other stories are boring.'

So Nazneen told about the good jinni.

Mumtaz had inherited the jinni from her father who kept it in an empty medicine bottle with a lead stopper. On her father's death, the jinni agreed to become Mumtaz's jinni only on the condition that it was released from the bottle and allowed to live freely. Mumtaz covered the bottle with cheesecloth and smashed it with a hammer, crying 'Oh, jinni, I give you freedom and you will give me wisdom.'

At first it had seemed that the jinni had not kept its end of the bargain. Mumtaz called it and it did not answer. She went out and wandered among the banana trees, having learned as a child that jinn were partial to bananas. Still, it did not answer. She searched among the sugar cane, the elephant grass and the chilli plants. She stood beneath the plane trees and called. She looked in the cow pen, the well and underneath the lily pads in the pond. The jinni had tricked her.

After checking inside her bedroll and among her jewellery boxes and shaking out her hair in case it had become caught in her tresses, she resigned herself to the loss. Perhaps, she thought, the jinni has given me wisdom after all: never trust a jinni.

Barsa came and the rains that year fell hard enough to split a grain of rice in two. Sarat turned the land to gold and the snowy cranes flew in from the north to stand on withered legs in the deep green paddy. One cantankerous old fellow took to walking around the village pond like a retired schoolteacher with his arms folded behind his back, keeping a beady eye on the children, little brown fish who splashed and screeched, and whom he would dearly love to discipline. Hemanto brought jasmine, lotus, water lilies and hyacinth, krishnachura, kadam and magnolia and everywhere the smell of drying rice stalks. That year one of the cows gave birth to three calves and it was taken as an auspicious sign and many marriages were hurried through even before their proper season.

It was Basanto before the jinni made itself known to Mumtaz. Cleaning a large and particularly bloody hilsha fish she was thinking about a problem that one of the village women had set before her. The woman had three sons and five daughters and could scarcely feed so many mouths. Yet her husband still wanted to sleep with her and make more mouths, more empty bellies. What should she do? How could she deny her husband? And how could she magic more food from her cooking pot? Mumtaz gripped the fish guts and pulled. A spurt of blood landed on her sari. 'What should I tell her?' she said aloud.

The jinni replied, 'Tell her that she should gather together all her children, the oldest to the youngest, and stand them in a line before her husband. She should say to him, "First you must choose which one will die. Kill the child and I will give you another. We cannot keep any more children alive, so you must choose the ones to die. For every child you kill, I will replace him."'

Mumtaz was pleased with the answer and she decided at once to tell the woman exactly what the jinni had said. But she was cross with the jinni and berated it, saying, 'Why did you go away from me?'

'But I did not go away,' said the jinni. 'It is only now you have decided to listen to me.'

From that day, Mumtaz was able to call the jinni whenever she chose, and people came to consult her on many important matters. Although she claimed to converse with the jinni casually, just as a daughter chats to her mother while she is mixing cow dung and straw or lighting a fire, for these special sessions Mumtaz sat in a purified room and burned candles and incense. She dressed in white and put a white veil across her mouth and nose. And to draw the jinni to her she muttered some special charms, spoken at the speed of a butterfly's wing and impossible to decipher.

Nazneen begged to be told the charms but Mumtaz said only that first she must get her own jinni.

'Will I be elected to the council?'

'What should I name my child?'

'An enemy has sworn to put the evil eye on me. How can I protect myself ?'

Mumtaz spoke her mantras and swayed around in her little white tent. When she gave the answer she suddenly lay down on her side and it was understood and accepted by all that having channelled a spirit through her body, she should now be allowed to rest.

Everyone, that is, apart from Amma. 'A fraud, nothing but a fraud.' She sucked on her big teeth and wiped the corners of her mouth with her sari.

The girls were getting ready for bed. Nazneen went to the bathroom with them and sat on the edge of the bath.

Shahana pulled Chanu's daaton from the toothbrush mug. 'In Bangladesh, you'll have to brush your teeth with a twig. They don't have toothbrushes.'

Chanu had been delighted to find the neem twig in Alam's High Class Grocery. He chewed the end until it splayed, rubbed it vigorously around his mouth and declared it to be excellent for massaging the gums.