Authors: Monica Ali
Sister how can I tell what I saw? I do not know how.
I go to hospital ward and I look around for friend Monju. No one there looking like her. I ask nurse and she point in corner. Bed is push right to wall and space left around. When I walk close is bad odour emitting from thing lie on mattress. I must put hand over nose and mouth and stomach make threat on me. I kneel down by bed and put face very close. I see is Monju. I know by right eye alone. Left eye is narrow and stuff come out. Cheek and mouth is melt and ear have gone like dog chew off. I whisper to her but nurse pass by and tell to shout. Hearing is very small now. 'Monju' I shout. 'Monju.' Is all I can think to say. She say God give them the pain I suffering now. Mouth cavity shrinking from which she cannot shout cry or talk loud. I stay for ten fifteen minutes. She must whisper and I must shout. It is her husband who have done this with his brother and sister. Brother and sister hold tight and husband pour acid over head face and body. All over is infection on body and smell make it difficult for people to go near.
She say to me see that dirt mark on ceiling like thumb print. I see it. She say I dont want that the last thing I see. I tell her it going to be all right and last thing she see is grandson but I dont look at her.
I come back to house and sit some time with Syeeda. She right to be happy I feel to stay always beside her. But I must look after children and Baby Daisy poke me in cheek and rub nose on my nose and I give thanks to Allah for this love which come at last.
Nazneen went back to the table and looked at what she had written. Now she could not see what was funny.
Men are writing leaflets and pushing them through the doors.
Her head felt full to bursting. The children and Chanu, her sister, the cleaning, the cooking, the sewing, the worrying. It all took up space and her thoughts circled as busily and broke up as easily as a cloud of flies on a dung heap.
She decided to begin the letter again. This page could be used for a shopping list. She turned it over. Without thinking, she began to write. She scribbled out the words, screwed up the paper and then ripped it into shreds. It was not true. She had not fallen in love. She had not done anything.
She took a fresh sheet and held her pen ready. She thought she heard footsteps outside the front door. Over the television she could not be certain. If the knock came she would have to answer it. The television could be heard from outside. In the morning she had been able to hide when Mrs Islam called. Her words pierced the door and Nazneen crept to the bed and got under the covers. If the sons broke down the door she would pretend to be sleeping. They went away.
Nazneen wrote down some numbers on her clean page. The last payment was one hundred pounds, the one before was eighty-five, there were six at seventy-five and four or five at fifty. How much money did Chanu borrow? How long would it take to pay it back? At one hundred pounds a week Nazneen would be able to save nothing, even if she worked half the night.
Bibi came up and looked at the page. 'Amma, what are you doing?' She kept her voice light and she kept a frown away from her face. She was worried about worrying.
'Nothing,' said Nazneen. 'Housekeeping. Let me feel your throat.' She pressed her fingers along each side of her daughter's throat feeling for swelling, and at the same time soothing.
'I've been better for a week.'
'Yes, you're better.'
She had been off school with tonsillitis. Nazneen took her to see Dr Azad. His chair had grown larger since the last time she went to the surgery. She almost expected him to swing his legs, but he held himself with his usual correctness.
'Say, "Aaah",' he told Bibi, who complied. He gave his diagnosis and from his computer produced a prescription. Bibi was looking at the snowstorms on his desk. There was a line of them along the back in every shade of coloured glass. They were arranged by colour, running from clear glass at the far end to a small black dome over a frozen winter garden. He picked out one and offered it. Bibi held it on the flat of her palm and peered at the little lattice-worked tower inside.
'No, no. You shake it.' Dr Azad explained that he had got it in Paris. They watched the snow swirl around inside the glass and come to a peaceful arrangement at the bottom. 'That's it.' He took it back. 'That is like life,' he told Bibi. 'Remember that is just like life.'
'Why?' said Bibi, surprised into speaking. She swallowed with difficulty.
Dr Azad picked up another snowstorm and shook it. 'If you are strong you withstand the storm. Can you see? The storm comes and everything is blurred. But all that is built on a solid foundation has only to stand fast and wait for the storm to pass. Do you see?'
Bibi nodded, so slowly that she might as well have shaken her head.
'And do you know how to make a solid foundation?'
Again, Bibi gave her slow, negative nod.
'Then would you mind,' said Dr Azad, 'telling me just how to do it?'
As they went out Nazneen saw Tariq in the waiting room. He leaned up against a noticeboard with his hands in his pockets though there were plenty of chairs to choose from. His lids looked heavy and his hair was flat with grease. The bones had been removed from his body. She stopped for a moment and she thought of speaking to him. His head rolled across his shoulder then hung down and Nazneen began to move again because she knew she would not be able to look in his eyes.
It was the same every morning. When she opened her eyes beneath the large black wardrobe she had the sensation – a relief in her bones – that the day had finally arrived. Then she strained to remember what the day was, its significance, and she realized that it was a day like any other. This particular morning, without moving from the bed, she ran her hand along the smooth lacquer of the wardrobe door. There was barely a scratch on it. She had hated it for fifteen years but this had made no impression.
Chanu stirred and put an arm across her belly. She regarded his malnourished limb, the two bright pimples above the elbow. She put her hand inside his and in his sleep he gripped it.
Again, the feeling came to her that this would be the day. She closed her eyes and enjoyed the warmth that spread across her stomach.
Chanu snored. Two long hard grunts like the death of an engine.
She got rid of his arm and turned on her side with her knees drawn up and her fists between her knees. It was no longer the day and the tension inside her chest, which had been there for weeks, returned. She had taken a deep, deep breath because she had to shout – something urgent, some matter of life or death – but the breath and the shout got stuck. They would never come out. That was how it felt.
It was because of the leaflet war.
It was because of Mrs Islam.
It was because she had not told Razia yet.
It was because of Hasina.
It was because of the Home Fund, which was not growing quickly enough.
It was because of the girls, who did not want to go home.
She sat up now and looked at the clock.
'It's because of me,' said Karim.
'What?'
He held a finger to his lips. His hair, the tuft at the front, moved playfully though there was no breeze in the room. 'It's because of me,' he whispered.
She closed her eyes and he was still there. His fingers brushed her cheeks. To get rid of him she had to get out of bed and begin this day.
The leafleteers had changed tactics and begun leaflet-ing in the night. By day, the estate was quiet. So when Chanu finished brushing his teeth, came out of the bathroom and picked up a Bengal Tigers leaflet, his anger was the loudest thing in all the three hundred and thirteen flats.
'What peasant,' he roared, 'what peasant has written this?'
He waved the paper in the air and directed his glare in every corner.
Bibi, with very small incremental movements of her head, checked behind her. Shahana ate her cornflakes. She fiddled with the dial on the radio.
'Turn it off,' yelled Chanu. His dimpled chin vibrated in the aftershock.
He began to read.
'A reminder to give thanks to Allah for our brothers who gave up their lives shaheed to defend the brothers.'
Chanu wobbled with indignation. 'Brothers! These peasants claim to be my brothers. They cannot compose even one proper sentence. Shahana, do you know what shaheed means? It means martyr. Do you know what that means?' He continued without waiting for her reply.
'We give thanks for Farook Zaman who died in the Duba Yurt operations in Chechnya, February 2000. He lived most of his life an unbeliever until he repented and devoted himself to jihad. He was killed by a bullet to his heart. After three months his body was returned by the Russians. By an eyewitness account, his body was smelling of musk and it was the most beautiful of all the shaheed bodies he had seen in Chechnya. "Verily, Allah has purchased of the believers their lives and their properties; for the price that theirs shall be Paradise."'
Chanu flapped his mouth; only spittle emerged from the corners, no more words. His hair, insulted to the roots, was tumultuous. His eyebrows wild with consternation. After a while, he turned the leaflet over and read the other side.
'Insh' Allah our brother Farook has reached Paradise. He leaves a wife and a baby daughter.
'Insh' Allah may his story give us courage to use our lives for the cause of Allah. We are taking up collections for those who are left behind.'
Chanu was disabled with anger. Shahana had finished her breakfast and was hovering dangerously close to the television.
Eventually, words came. 'Smelling of musk. After three months! What is all this mumbo-jumbos? Are they mad? Poking these mad letters through white people's doors. Do they want to set flame to the whole place? Do they want us all to die shaheed?'
Nazneen tried to signal to Shahana.
Don't turn it on.
'Shall we send money at once? They must have more guns. Quick, get some money to send.' He began patting his lungi as though it could contain some coins.
Nazneen felt the back of her neck grow warm, as if the sun had just come on it. When Karim came last time he read from a magazine about the orphan children in refugee camps in Gaza. He was moved and Nazneen watched as the cycle of emotion started turning. It was possible – this she knew – to be deeply touched by one's own grief on another's behalf. That he was moved, moved him. As he explained the situation his eyes became watery. She had gone to the kitchen and looked beneath the sink for her Tupperware box. She wanted to do something for the orphans. And she wanted to do something for him. When she gave him the money, he spoke in her own language and though it took him a long while and he suffered through his stammer, he told her it was a beautiful thing to do. But if Chanu found out, what would he think? What would he say?
Nobody said anything. The air hummed with the sound of distant water pipes, filling or disgorging. Bibi's jaw clicked as she worked it from side to side. Nazneen looked at her elder daughter. For the first time she saw that Shahana had Hasina's mouth, the same impossibly pink lips, full at the top and straight and wide along the bottom. But Shahana's lips were so often pinched together that it was not easy to notice. The girl reached across the television screen and pressed the button.
'How many heads on your shoulder?' Chanu screamed it, but then he was telling her to get out of the way and he stood close to the television and the leaflet fell unnoticed from his hand.
There were pictures of hooded young men, scarves wrapped Intifada-style around their faces, hurling stones, furious with the cars that they set alight. Between the scarves and the hoods it was possible to catch glimpses of brown skin. There were pictures of police too, but they were hiding behind sheets of clear plastic, sometimes shuffling forward and sometimes shuffling back. Nazneen wondered why they did not simply take their lathis and charge. They would not have to beat all. Just a few would set the example.
'You see,' said Chanu. 'You see.' He appeared satisfied.
The riot was in a place called Oldham. The pictures changed to daylight and the camera swept across tedious deserted streets, enlivened now and then by the presence of the blackened carcass of a car. In Oldham the roads were pocked with holes and the houses packed together, tight as teeth.
There was no reason to wear it but she wore her red and gold silk sari. All morning, the little gold leaves distracted her from work. They demanded to be looked at. She moved her legs beneath the table to make them dance in her lap. She pulled the free end of the sari over her face and moved her neck from side to side like a jatra girl. The next instant she was seized by panic and clawed the silk away as if it were strangling her. She could not breathe. The table trapped her legs. The sari, which seconds ago had felt light as air, became heavy chains. Gasping, she struggled from the chair and went to the kitchen. She drank water straight from the tap. It hurt her chest and the last mouthful made her cough.
When the coughing subsided she went to the bedroom and climbed on the bed. If she stood at the back, next to the pillows, she could see herself in the dressing-table mirror. Suddenly, she was gripped by the idea that if she changed her clothes her entire life would change as well. If she wore a skirt and a jacket and a pair of high heels then what else would she do but walk around the glass palaces on Bishopsgate, and talk into a slim phone and eat lunch out of a paper bag? If she wore trousers and underwear, like the girl with the big camera on Brick Lane, then she would roam the streets fearless and proud. And if she had a tiny tiny skirt with knickers to match and a tight bright top, then she would – how could she not? – skate through life with a sparkling smile and a handsome man who took her hand and made her spin, spin, spin.
For a glorious moment it was clear that clothes, not fate, made her life. And if the moment had lasted she would have ripped the sari off and torn it to shreds. When it had passed she got down and sat on the end of the bed with her knees against the drawer of the dresser. She picked up her brush, pulled two pins from her hair so that it fell around her waist and brushed it so hard that it hurt.
In the afternoon she needed more thread. She walked around the back of the estate, past the cycle racks which no one was foolhardy enough to use, past the car park, the Nissans and Datsuns lightly frying in the noon sun, each with a yellow crook lock braced against the steering wheel, past the stunned clumps of rosemary and lavender that the council had put in a raised bed and left, defenceless against the onslaught of dogs and takeaway wrappers and small children. She crossed the rasp of land that had once sprouted a playground, a swing and a slide and a roundabout. Now the tarmac was rotten and split, it seemed, by the blades of grass which sucked huge strength from this black grot but wilted on the lawns. Only the roundabout remained. It was fenced around with two layers of grey metal barriers, blocking its chance of escape.
To come to the street she had to pass the hall, the low brick shed with the metal shutters, set in a concrete valley at the edge of Dogwood. Skateboarders used the smooth planes, for exercise and for spraying their messages to the world. As she descended the steps into the low basin, Nazneen saw that the graffiti on the shed walls had kaleidoscoped to a dense pattern of silver and green and peacock blue, wounded here and there with vermilion, the colour of mehindi on a bride's feet. She took the last step and adjusted the end of her sari across her shoulder.
The Secretary jumped out in front of her. His skullcap was on his head this time, a whitish lacy thing that looked as though it had much handling. He beamed at her and showed his small teeth. 'Get on the train of repentance, sister, before it leaves your station. Have you come for the meeting?'
Before she had time to react he ushered her inside. When she paused, he shooed her down the aisle as if she were a baby goat. She let her hand trail over the backs of the folding metal chairs, all the time thinking she would turn around and push past him. Instead, she sat down in the front row where he pointed. One seat away from her was the Questioner. He was busy with a bundle of papers which he shuffled and straightened, shuffled and straightened. Across the aisle, Nazneen saw the musician. Next to him were two small black tents. She recognized the voices. The girls who attended the last meeting, who wore hijab, had upgraded to burkhas.
From behind she recognized another voice, and half turned. The black man was standing at the centre of a group. He wore a grey felt cap and baggy white robe. 'I tried Pentecostal, Baptist, Churcha Englan', Cat'olic, Seventh Day, Churcha Christ, Healin' Churcha Christ, Jehovah Witness, Evangelical, Angelical, and the Miracle Church of our Saviour.' He sucked his teeth and shook his head. 'All loose'n' lax like anything. Loose
and
lax.'
The hall was beginning to fill. Dozens of voices peppered the air with Bengali and English. In spite of everything, Nazneen began to catch their excitement.
She imagined Karim walking in and seeing her there, right beneath him, by the stage. She thought of him standing with his arms folded and his legs wide, and everything he said (though only she would know it) would be for her benefit. In the gloom of the hall, with its bare bulbs and eczema-ridden walls, she became dizzy with relief that she had worn her red and gold sari.
* * *
The doors were closed and the Questioner and the Secretary on stage. Karim had not come.
'We can't wait any longer,' said the Questioner, assuming a tone of command.
The Secretary stood on tiptoes. 'I open the meetings,' he squeaked. 'I open the meetings.'
'Open this one then.'
The Secretary consulted his clipboard. His pen slipped from his hand and slid down the sleeve of his kurta. There was snickering in the row behind Nazneen.
'While you are fiddling with your stationery, Oldham is burning. Let's take a vote – all those in favour of opening the meeting . . .'
'Stop, stop.' The Secretary waved his arms about and the pen flew out of its mooring and landed somewhere in the audience. 'No votes to be taken before the meeting is open.'
Nazneen put her hand over her mouth to hide a smile. She wiped it away.
Just then the room grew lighter as the door opened and Karim strode to the front of the hall. He wore a white shirt with the sleeves rolled neatly up to the elbows. His jeans were new and dark and the belt superfluous. In one seamless movement he mounted the stage and turned round.
'OK,' he said, 'let's get started.' He pulled a piece of paper from the back pocket of his jeans. It was printed in green and red. 'First item' – he gave it to the Secretary, who pretended to study it – 'first item is this leaflet about Chechnya. Who wrote it? Who authorized it? Who distributed it?'
He made a show of looking around the hall, being careful not to look at the Questioner.
'I shall ask the Secretary. Is this a Bengal Tigers leaflet?'
The Secretary assented, and he held it out as an exhibit for the audience.
'And was it authorized by the Publications Committee?'
The Secretary held the leaflet very close to his face, as if searching for some secret stamp or watermark of authority.
'And was it passed for distribution by the Publications Committee?'
At this the Questioner, who had been pressing his knuckles together, could no longer contain himself. 'Committee? This ain't no time for committee. This is time for jihad.' His nose swelled with enthusiasm and his eyes were slits of intensity.
'Don't teach me, brother, about jihad. I'm talking about discipline.'
'Discipline,' spat the Questioner. 'By committee? Only you is the committee and the committee is you.'
Karim fingered his telephone which he had strapped on his belt. He looked down from the stage and saw Nazneen for the first time. He folded his arms and pulsated his right leg.
'Don't push me, brother.'
'If you're still standing, I ain't pushing.'
For long seconds they engaged in a combat of killer looks and deadly self–belief.
'Shall I put it to the vote?' asked the Secretary, stepping in between them. He showed his little milky teeth. 'Erm, what is the motion?'
'No motion, no vote,' said Karim. 'Anyone who wants to form their own group can get out now. And take their leaflets with them.'
The Questioner glided to the very edge of the stage. The tips of his trainers stuck over the end. He wanted to get close to his crowd. He wanted to walk on air. 'All around the world we are being destroyed. Let's not fight about leaflets.'
He sidled a little further forward and Nazneen could see the deep tread of his undersoles. There was a general rearrangement of backsides on seats. 'I will show you something.' He reached inside his jacket and took out his bundle of papers. After some shuffling he held up a photograph, the size of one of Chanu's writing tablets. It curled at the edges and it glazed over where the light hit it, but Nazneen could see that it showed a child.
'This is Nassar, aged one year. Weight, nine pounds and four ounces. Ideal weight, twenty-two pounds. The photograph was taken in Basra, December 1996.' He stooped and handed the photograph to Nazneen. 'Pass it around.'
The child lay on her back in a short white dress with red sleeves. Nazneen put her fingers over the baby's wasted legs. She knew that the baby had never walked, never crawled. She looked at the shrunken face and the large dark eyes that demanded much of her. Only the hair belonged on a baby, fine and wispy and softly curled.
The Questioner held up another photograph. 'Some more Iraqi children. Mashgal, Adras and Misal. All under one year. This was taken in 1998.'
Nazneen relinquished Nassar and she held Mashgal, Adras and Misal. The photograph was black and white. Three babies on a blanket, and between them they had nothing but their small bones and a thin covering of skin. They all reached for something that had moved beyond them, and the urgency in their eyes told Nazneen that they did not know that they should give up hope.
'Since the sanctions against Iraq began, over half a million Iraqi children have died as a direct result. This is a conservative estimate.'
The Questioner riffled through his sheaf of papers. He squatted for a moment and pulled out a few sheets. 'This is Noor. Six years old. This is what you can see of Noor after an American AGM-130 missile hit the Al Jumhuriya neighbourhood of Basra on 25 January 1999.'
It appeared at first to be a black and white shot. From the grey half-tones of ash and rubble, a girl's face in profile, a beautiful stone carving. It took time to decipher a shoulder and a sleeve sunk in the dust. The girl's hair was scraped back and a scratch of little pebbles pinned it flat against the debris. It was a beautiful picture, not of life ended but a study in life-lessness. It was only when she noticed the hands at the corner, a father's hands that would cradle the small head, that Nazneen realized the shot was in colour and understood what it meant.
'She was only a Muslim girl. One more, one less, who cares? We should keep quiet about these things,' said the Questioner. 'We should print nothing and do nothing. If a few Muslim children die, who cares? If it's a few hundred, a few thousand, half a million, a million, who cares? We should not write about our brothers in Iraq, or in Chechnya or anywhere else, because we do not care about them. To us, they ain't nothing.'
The hall, which had been mute, found its voice. Chairs scraped as people got to their feet, the walls echoed in two languages, the tiled floor rang out. Everyone talked at once and no one would stand for any more.
Nazneen watched Karim. He was pulling on the back of his neck, as if attempting to remove his head. Though the photographs had brought her close to tears, she found herself wondering what he would do.
The Questioner pulled back from the edge of the stage. He stood in the centre because now the stage was his. Holding up his hands for calm, he waited until the noise had subsided. 'Listen, I am only the Treasurer. I'm not allowed to talk. Some people say, "Throw him out. He's too radical for us."'
At this there was a little upsurge of dissent.
Karim spoke up. 'No one's talking about throwing out. We came together to get radical, man. But what are you going to do about all these things? I say, let's get our own neighbourhood straight first.'
This raised a little popular support among the audience, signalled by way of a couple of hoots and one raised fist that Nazneen discerned from the corner of her eye.
'Bingo and beer?' said the Questioner. 'Will we be killed by bingo and beer? Or half-naked women?'
This occasioned some laughter. The Questioner moved to capitalize on his advantage. He tossed down a final photograph to Nazneen. His small, heavy-lidded eyes appeared almost triangular. 'This is what the sanctions do. This is the price that the sick and the old and the children are paying with their lives.'
With the end of her sari, Nazneen wiped away the tears that finally came.
But the crowd was becoming restless. The photograph was passed round very quickly and returned to the edge of the stage.
'Why do you think they call themselves Lion Hearts?' Karim had moved to the left of the stage. He leaned against the wall. 'Do you know what it means?'
The Questioner had not sensed the change of mood in the hall. 'I'm going to read you something now.' He fished around inside his jacket. Though it was warm he had not removed it. It served, evidently, as a travelling office. The lining, Nazneen noticed, was of the same material as the gusset of Chanu's underpants. It was patched with a network of pockets.
He quoted now.
'There is one crime against humanity in this last decade of the millennium that exceeds all others in magnitude, cruelty, and portent. It is the US-forced sanctions against the twenty million people of Iraq.'
'But what can we do?' called someone from behind Nazneen. 'How are we going to fight the Americans?'
Karim's wall looked comfortable. He tested his jaw-line with his fingertips. With a shiver, Nazneen remembered the mole.
'Let's fight the ones on our doorsteps first.' This was shouted from the back.
'We know what Lion Hearts means.'
The girls in burkha stood as one creature and spoke as one voice. 'We get called names. We want to make them stop.'
'Let me finish, let me finish,' said the Questioner.
'If the UN participates in such genocidal sanctions backed by the threat of military violence
–
and if the people of the world fail to prevent such conduct – the violence, terror and human misery of the new millennium will exceed anything we have known.
This is what the former US Attorney General says. It is the new millennium now.'