Authors: Monica Ali
When the courtyard had cleared, Chanu went out again. He was going to a shop called Liberty's to buy soap. His briefcase had been transformed into a sample carrier. Already it was full of bars of Lux, Fairy, Dove, Palmolive, Imperial Leather, Pears, Neutrogena, Zest, Cuticura and Camay Classic. 'First rule of management,' said Chanu. 'Know the competition.' At Liberty's he would stock up on the Refined-End Soap Market. He had plans for the factory. When they came to fruition, he would move the family to a bungalow in Gulshan, with a guest cottage at the bottom of the garden. To start with, they could have a couple of rooms above the office. 'Second rule of management,' said Chanu. 'Think big, act small. Then the rewards will come.'
Nazneen went to the bedroom and lay down on the bare mattress. She slept a dreamless sleep. When she woke it was dark outside. She checked the time. Six o'clock. A vision rose before her. Chanu sitting on an aeroplane, trying to peer out of the window. No matter how he struggled he could not reach the window. He was too small. Just a baby-sized Chanu, and his legs did not reach the end of the seat. Nazneen lifted him up and put him on her knee. She looked out of the window and saw the runway lights. But they were not on the runway! The lights were lamp-posts and houses, office blocks and tower blocks, and they were pulling down and away, shrinking, sinking, into the black.
'Amma.' Bibi stood against the wall with her hands behind her back.
'Yes, Bibi. Were you waiting for me? You could have woken me.'
Bibi slid down the wall and straightened up, slid down again.
'Let's go to the kitchen. We'll get something to eat.'
'Amma.'
'Go and tell your sister. You can give me a hand, both of you.'
Bibi slipped right down the wall and sat on her bottom.
Nazneen went to her and felt her forehead. 'Are you ill? Shall I get the doctor?'
'She's gone,' said Bibi. She began to cry. 'She's run away.'
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Bibi was sworn to secrecy. Between big sobs she explained this to her mother, and then she told her the rest. Shahana had gone to meet Nishi at the Shalimar Cafe. They were going to have a kebab and a banana lassi and possibly a jelabee and then they would catch the train to a place called Paignton. In Paignton, Nishi said, there were no Bangladeshis and they could do as they pleased. Nishi's sister, who was sixteen years old, had gone for a 'holiday' in Sylhet and returned six months later with a husband and a swelling belly. Nishi, strong on forward-planning skills, was taking evasive action: she was going on a holiday of her own and she would return when she was twenty-five. At that ancient age the danger of marriage was over.
'Which Shalimar Cafe?' said Nazneen.
'The one on Cannon Street,' said Bibi. 'I think it's the Brick Lane one.'
'You're sure? Brick Lane.'
Bibi nodded. Then shook her head. 'No. I don't think so. Cannon Street.'
'Think, Bibi! Think!'
'Cannon Street.' She said it with the air of a game show contestant, hovering in suspense, waiting to be affirmed.
'Wait here,' said Nazneen. 'Don't go anywhere. Whatever you do, don't move.'
Nazneen ran. Down Bethnal Green Road. Turned at Vallance Road. Jogged down New Road. Stitch in her side on Cannon Street.
The door of the Shalimar Cafe had a sprung hinge. It swung back and hit her on the shoulder. The solitary customer lifted his head. His jumper was unravelling at many different places; it straggled like a pubescent beard. He went back to his chapattis.
'Has a girl been in here?' Nazneen held her side where it was splitting. 'Twelve years old. Blue kameez. Yellow here and here. Two girls together.'
The man behind the counter was peeling carrots. He dropped the peelings into a steel basin and the carrots into a plastic tub of water.
'How old the other girl?'
'Thirteen,' said Nazneen. 'But she looks older, more like fourteen, fifteen.'
The man put his carrot down. He removed a little something from his nostril. The seconds came and went and infuriated Nazneen.
The man wiped his finger on his apron. 'What she wearing?'
'I don't know.' She looked over the tables and under them. What was she looking for? Would they leave a trail behind them? 'Look,' she said. 'Have you seen them or not?'
'Today?' said the man. 'No. No customers today. Only this one.' He pointed with a carrot.
The George Estate was covered in scaffolding. Dense green netting ran between the poles. It looked like the entire building had been hunted down and taken captive, the people with it. Nazneen crossed over Cable Street and passed under the railway bridge. The Falstaff pub was boarded up, the forecourt choked with weeds and grass, and a bathtub filled with traffic cones, rubble and mossy cushions. She had to walk, to let her breath come back to her. A shopkeeper came out on the pavement and emptied a bucket of foul-smelling water into the gutter. Nazneen turned her head. Through an open door, down a flight of concrete stairs, she glimpsed a row of sewing machines beneath a low yellow ceiling. A woman stood up to stretch and touched the ceiling with her palms. Nazneen pressed on, past the Sylhet Cash and Carry, the International Cheap Calls Centre, the open jaws of a butcher's shop, the corner building run to ruin and bearing the faded legend of a time gone by, Schultz Famous Salt Beef.
She turned into the Berner Estate. Here, every type of cheap hope for cheap housing lived side by side in a monument to false economy. The low rises crouched like wounded monsters along concrete banks. In the gullies, beach-hut fabrications clung anxiously to the hard terrain, weathered and beaten by unknown storms. A desolate building, gouged-out eyes in place of windows, announced the Tenants' Association: Hall for Hire. Nazneen looked up to the balconies. A woman in a dark blue burkha hung a prayer mat over the railing, and withdrew. A small child trundled a red plastic truck along a balcony and back, over and over again. At the end, near the sick orange light of a lamppost, two black children sat behind bars, watching their new world. Where had they come from? What had they escaped? Nazneen had learned to recognize the face of a refugee child: that traumatized stillness, the need they had, to learn to play again.
Out of the estate and onto Commercial Road, past the clothes wholesalers, up Adler Street and left onto the brief green respite of Altab Ali Park where the neat, pale-faced block of flats had picture windows and a gated entrance, from which the City boys could stroll to work. Nazneen ran down the slope and caught the green man at the crossing on Whitechapel.
A row of police vans covered the mouth of Brick Lane. Behind them a legion of policemen stood with arms folded and feet turned out. A length of tangerine-and-white-striped tape stuck the sides of the street together.
'Let me through,' said Nazneen.
'The street is closed, madam. Go back.' The policeman sounded friendly but decisive. He seemed to think the conversation was finished.
'I have to go to Shalimar Cafe and find my daughter.'
The policeman looked ahead, as if she had not spoken. Nazneen glanced down the line at the black-suited men, all of them braced against an invisible force. What was happening in Brick Lane? Could they have closed it just for the Bengal Tigers to march? Wasn't this the last place on Karim's route? But it was dark, it was late. By now the marches would be over.
'Why I can't go through?' said Nazneen. She put her face right up to the policeman's face.
Do you see me now? Do you hear me?
'Disturbances,' said the policeman. She felt the warmth of his breath and drew her head back.
'My daughter is there.'
The policeman shook his head. 'Madam, she isn't. We cleared everyone out who wanted to come out. There's only the waiters and restaurant owners left. They didn't want to come away. Unless your daughter is participating in the disturbance, she has taken herself back home. I suggest you do the same thing.'
Without seeming to move, the policeman filled her space so that she was forced to step back.
But Shahana would not be at home. And if a policeman came to get her, and the other runaway, what would she think? What would she do?