Brick Lane (77 page)

'You know, Bibi, they don't have toilet paper either. You'll have to pour water on your bottom to clean it.'

Bibi looked distressed. 'What about you? You'll have to do it too.'

Shahana put on her inscrutable face.

Then she attacked her sister with the daaton, trying to force it into her mouth.

Nazneen separated the girls and shooed them into the bedroom. She stood in the middle of their room like a referee while they got into bed. She was still thinking about jinn.

There was another story, which she had never told the children.

Nazneen was maybe eight or nine years old, just tall enough to look down the well without standing on tiptoe. This was the year that Amma became possessed by an evil jinni. The jinni prevented Amma from washing and made her smell like a goat. It arranged her hair in knots and tangles and mockingly inserted sprigs of jasmine behind her ears. For days at a time she did not speak. Worst of all, at the jinni's bidding, Amma began attacking her own husband, stabbing wildly at his eyes with bamboo sticks that she spent hours on end whittling to a fine point. Sometimes, when the jinni let his guard down or was perhaps sleeping, Amma was returned to her usual state. She took a bar of Sunlight down to the pond, swam and washed. She began cooking again and resumed the endless litany of complaints against the servants. And she took up her usual commentary on life.

'What can I do? I have been put on this earth to suffer.'

Abba said, 'And she suffers so well.'

'The jinni may come upon me again,' said Amma. 'Whenever he wishes, he uses up my body, my strength, my soul.'

And Abba rolled his eyes. 'Let us hope he does not wait too long.'

But when the jinni returned he was ever more mischievous and before long Abba was compelled to call in the fakir.

Exorcisms were a spectator sport in the village. A crowd gathered and it was a bigger and more excitable crowd than formed even for Manzur Boyati, the most highly esteemed of storytellers. The fakir was an impressive sight. He was tall and straight as sugar cane and his beard was at least twenty inches long, twisted into two halves like a woman's braids. Immediately they arrived, his assistants commandeered the kerosene stove and set about boiling up potions which, in Nazneen's view, should have frightened the jinni away by their smell alone. The fakir examined Amma from a distance. Amma lay on her bedroll, spasms running obligingly through her arms and legs. The fakir seemed satisfied.

'Who is willing to help this cursed woman?' demanded the fakir. His eyes were cloudy as old marbles and yet he seemed to focus on each person in the room, individually and all at once.

'I will be the volunteer,' cried a servant boy from Nazneen's house, and scrambled to the front. The crowd relaxed and there was much scratching of noses and backsides.

The servant was a moody young boy who kept a half-starved mongoose tied to a palm tree and amused himself by goading it to bite his hand. The mongoose, though essentially a pacifist, would sometimes be persuaded to play this game and was rewarded with a swift kick that lifted it several feet in the air.

'Sit,' barked the fakir and pushed down on the boy's head.

The boy curled his upper lip but sat down on the ground with his legs crossed. The assistants daubed his head and shoulders with their emetic pastes. Then the exorcism began. As a warm-up exercise the fakir and his two helpers walked in circles around the servant boy, half singing and half speaking verses, words which locked into each other as tightly as bones in a hand, moving around, flexing and curling but never breaking the chain.

Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Node chode, hater kache

Faster and faster went the chanters, faster and faster flew the words. The white cloths tied around the fakir's waist and arms streamed behind him, making visible his huge energy with which he would fight the evil jinni.

Ke Katha koyre, dekha deyna
Who talks, not showing up
Who talks, not showing up
Moves about, near at hand

The servant boy disappeared in a vortex of wheeling limbs.

I search for him
In the sky and the earth
Myself, I do not know
I search for him
In the sky and the earth
Myself, I do not know
Who am I?
Who is he?
Who am I?
Who is he?

Abruptly the singing stopped. The assistants anished and the fakir threw his arms wide and bellowed.

'Oh, evil jinni, leave that woman's body! By the command of Allah, leave her. Sky! Water! Air! Fire!' He paused for a moment and added 'Earth!' for good measure. 'Torment her no longer.'

He let his arms fall by his side. His belly heaved, moved around in strange shapes, as though a baby had shifted inside him.

All heads looked towards Amma who now lay quietly on her mat with her face turned down.

At once the servant boy, who had volunteered his body as the jinni's next receptacle, began to grimace and leer. He let slip an obscenity and pressed his jaw and the top of his head. The fakir turned to him.

'Why did you abuse that poor woman?' the fakir said, addressing himself to the jinni.

The servant boy jumped to his feet. He bared his teeth like a frightened monkey and scratched the air. 'She came out in the bushes,' he said in a strangled voice. 'She walked under the tamarind tree and stepped on my shadow.'

The fakir rushed at the boy and wrestled him into a headlock. He was a big man, and the boy bent as easily as a dog's tail in his grip.

'Be gone from this place,' roared the fakir, and his glassy old eyes were terrifying. 'If I see you around here again, I will destroy you.'

'No need to get nasty,' squeaked the boy, whose head was turning an impressive shade of purple.

'Out! Out! Out!' shouted the holy witch doctor. He released his victim, who fell unceremoniously to the floor.

The fakir adjusted the ends of his beard and yawned. The jinni saw his chance, and the boy sprang at his opponent, grabbed the two braids hanging from the fakir's chin and wound each deftly around his fist.

'Come on then, you swine. You defiler of goats.' He swung the fakir along by his beard, causing him to stumble and come to his knees. 'Come on then, you shit-eating lover of corpses.'

The fakir was suffering. His eyes were ready to pop and his brow shed water.

The crowd was impressed by the strength of the jinni. It promised to be a good show. Nobody even thought of talking, though many people nudged each other to ensure all aspects of the spectacle were being fully appreciated.

'He's faking,' cried the fakir. 'Somebody stop him.' He got to his feet.

'You will never be rid of me,' shrieked the boy. 'She stepped on my shadow under the tamarind tree and disturbed my rest.' He again whirled the fakir round by his beard and, as an innovation, flapped his tongue at the same time.

Nobody moved to intervene. The assistants squatted by the kerosene stove, smoking beedis and working strictly within their job descriptions.

'Are you going to let him kill me?' screamed the fakir.

'Don't blame the boy,' called someone from the audience. 'You put the jinni on him.'

'He's faking,' the fakir protested. 'Can't you see he's faking?'

For a little while longer the servant boy tortured the holy man, until a delegation from the crowd separated them and sat on top of him. The boy began to shake his arms and legs and roll his head to and fro.

The fakir sought access to the boy, in an attempt to exorcise some of his own rather vengeful demons. This prompted much debate.