Can You Hear the Nightbird Call? (8 page)

“Don’t worry, Bibi-ji,” Lalloo had said, handing her her purse and pushing her out the door. “I will take care of it. You go.”

Bibi-ji had climbed into the car wondering what was going on.

“What’s wrong? Where are we going?” she had asked the unusually silent Pa-ji, who was driving as fast as he could without breaking the speed limit.

“Wait and see,” he replied mysteriously.

Driving past their own home to a large, newly built white house at the end of the road, they stopped at the ornate wrought-iron gates. With a flourish, Pa-ji opened the passenger door and offered Bibi-ji his hand to step out of the car. With an even greater flourish, he gave her a small box wrapped in gift paper. Inside it was a key.

“Happy birthday, my Bebby,” he said. “This is our new home.”

Bibi-ji was struck dumb.

“What do you think?” Pa-ji asked. He caught her hand and pulled her towards the wrought-iron gates. “I’ve named it the Taj Mahal,” he said, pointing at a brass plate, inscribed with flowing letters, on the faux-marble gateposts.

“For me? A Taj Mahal?” She was simultaneously thrilled by the size and grandeur of the gift and alarmed at the thought that they must be mortgaged up to their eyeballs for this extravagance. She had never outgrown her childhood hatred of poverty and her suspicion of moneylenders, and the banks, as far as she was concerned, were only suited and booted versions of Ramchand, the dhothi-clad moneylender of Panjaur.

Pa-ji chuckled and pinched her cheek as if she were a little girl. “Why not? If that Shah Jahan could build a palace for his Mumtaz Begum to lie dead in, why can’t I build one for my queen to live in?”

Bibi-ji slowly traced the name and number on the brass plate.

“I tried to get those idiots at the municipal office to let me number it 1922, your birth year. But they refused. If this was India, I could have named the entire street Sharanjeet Kaur Avenue if I wanted to!” Pa-ji reached out to open the gates and pulled her after him. “These gates will always remain open,” he declared. “For all those who need a place to stay.”

“And who is to pay for this?” Bibi-ji demanded as they walked up the long driveway—lined with pine trees and
bordered by a garden in which, she noted, her favourite roses had already been planted—to the front door.

“We have the restaurant, the apartment—and now the other house. We will rent that out, just like we did with our apartment. Everything you wanted is coming true, enh, my Bebby?”

She had squeezed his hand and nodded. Yes, everything she had wanted in her life she had found, except for her sister and her family.

The door of The Delhi Junction swung open, letting in a draft of cool spring air and, with it, Hafeez Ali, one of the Saturday regulars, dressed impeccably as always in a beautifully cut achkan, his hair brushed back from his high, bony forehead. Bibi-ji snapped out of her thoughts and slid off her stool to welcome him as he touched a hand to his forehead and offered her the traditional Muslim gesture of greeting:
“ Salaam-alai-kum,
Bibi-ji!”

She smiled warmly at him.
“Salaam,
Hafeez Bhai, how are you today? How is your beautiful wife? And the children? I heard that your son won a prize in mathematics at school—clever like his father, eh?”

Hafeez laughed and shook his head. “I don’t know about that, Bibi-ji. I am not much good with numbers, you know. It is my wife who is the financial manager at home. Like you, it seems. You women are taking over the world!”

“Yes, and a good thing too!” Bibi-ji remarked. She enjoyed listening to the elegant Urdu that the Pakistani man spoke, more formal than Hindi and richer than the village Punjabi she knew, though occasionally she could not
understand some of his words. “And what can I do for you today? The usual? Two tandoori chicken and five naan?”

“Yes, the usual.” Hafeez nodded. “And I will be ordering some food to eat here. Alibhai will be joining me. And our families too.”

With a wave of her hand, Bibi-ji signalled a waiter to take Hafeez to the table that he and his friend Alibhai usually occupied. It was across the room from the table beside the window closest to the cash counter, which was reserved, on Saturdays, for the Indian regulars—Dr. Majumdar, a tall, suave Bengali with a sardonic face; portly, balding Menon, who spoke English with a heavy Malayali accent; the Gujarati doctor Harish Shah, also rotund and balding; and the new arrival from South India who had shortened his complicated name, which Bibi-ji could never remember, to the more manageable Balu Bhat.

In the early years of the restaurant’s life, the Indians and the Pakistanis had sat hunched around the same table, fuelling their conversations with samosas and endless cups of boiling sugary chai tinged with ginger and cardamom, discussing their lives, their families, cricket matches, their work and, most of all, the politics of their country of origin. A taut rope tied them all to “home,” whether India or Pakistan. They saw their distant homes as if through a telescope, every small wound or scar or flare back there exaggerated, exciting their imaginations and their emotions, bringing tears to their eyes. They were like obsessed stargazers, whose distance from the thing they observed made it all the brighter, all the more important.

When China invaded India in 1962, not long after the two nations had declared undying friendship, and then India’s prime minister, Jawaharlal Nehru, died a year later, The Delhi Junction’s regulars were unanimous in their belief that the Chinese invasion had killed him.

“The Chinese
betrayal!”
round-faced Shah had declared, thumping a fist on the table.

“It broke Nehru’s heart!” Menon had agreed. And for a few months they all refused to patronize Mrs. Wu’s vegetable shop. And when Nehru’s daughter Indira Gandhi became prime minister of India in 1967, Bibi-ji marked the day by distributing free sweets to everyone who came to The Delhi Junction, for by now she had decided that her loyalties lay with India, not Pakistan. She was proud of—no, she identified with—this young woman who was almost the same age as her, for having taken on a job of such magnitude. Although she was now only a visitor to that country, Bibi-ji knew that India was no easy nation to manage, that it was not like Canada, so quiet and nice and well behaved, so good about following rules.

Pa-ji contributed to the celebrations by acquiring a framed portrait of the young prime minister. He hung it on the wall of The Delhi Junction, adding a new star to the firmament of heroes and heroines, political and popular. Indira Gandhi, eyebrows sharply angled over heavy-lidded eyes, stared arrogantly out of her frame, and every time she passed the portrait Bibi-ji gave her an affectionate smile.

In 1965, when war broke out between India and Pakistan, the battle came to The Delhi Junction as well. The seating
maps altered, and Hafeez and Alibhai moved defensively over to a separate table across the room from the Indian group. The linoleum floor between them turned into the Line of Control—an unseen barrier of barbed wire stretching across it, hot lights blazing warnings as soldiers stood guard with guns cocked. Anger, hurt and loss simmered on both sides. As the war across the world went on and casualties mounted on both sides, conversation between the two factions in The Junction ceased altogether, and when Pa-ji began to vocally support the Indian side, Hafeez and Alibhai stopped coming to the café. But when the war ended a few months later, they reappeared as if nothing had occurred. A good meal, with familiar spices in a foreign country, meant more than the enmities generated by distant homelands.

An elderly customer with a bright yellow turban entered the café. It was one of Pa-ji’s friends from his logging days.

“
Sat-Sri Akal,
Bibi-ji!” he said. “I hear that you have a grand new house?”

“Yes, a Taj Mahal, no less.” She felt flattered and absurdly spoiled.

“So what are you going to do with your old one? If you are selling, let me know. I am looking for investment property in this area.”

“No, we are planning to rent it out for now,” Bibi-ji said. “Do you know anyone in need of a place? We are looking for a decent family.”

“Decent family for what, Mrs. Singh?” Majumdar came through the door, followed by his friend Menon. He was
the only one of her customers who did not call her Bibi-ji. She could set her clock by him, for he always showed up on Saturday mornings at eleven o’clock sharp.

“Your table is waiting for you,” Bibi-ji smiled and nodded at the two men. “And we are looking for a decent family to rent our house.”

“What about you? Are you moving somewhere? Please don’t say you are! What will we do without you and The Junction?” Majumdar, elegant and sardonic, threw up his arms in mock horror.

Bibi-ji laughed. “No, no, we aren’t going anywhere! We have a new house, that’s all. So if any of you gentlemen know of someone in search of a place to rent …”

“Wasn’t Balu looking for something? Didn’t he say that his family is arriving soon?” Menon asked. He looked at Bibi-ji. “You know our friend, the one who recently arrived from India?”

“The fellow with the name as long as the Fraser River?” Bibi-ji asked. “The one who shakes his head like this, like this, when he talks?” She waggled her head in imitation of Balu Bhat. “Of course I know him, and here he is—in person!”

A short, pleasant-looking man with large, dark eyes entered the café. He called a greeting to his friends, caught Bibi-ji’s eye and smiled at her.

“We were just talking about you, Bhat-ji,” she said. “Your friends tell me that you are looking for a place to rent?”

Balu wobbled his head to indicate either a yes or a no, Bibi-ji could not tell. “Yes I am, Bibi-ji,” he said.

“I have a place, if you are interested.”

“Ask her the rent first, Balu,” Majumdar interjected.

“Rent is very reasonable and the house comes fully furnished,” Bibi-ji said. She studied Balu, wondering whether he would be able to pay even the low amount that she and Pa-ji had settled on. He worked only part-time at a local community college, and she knew that teachers did not make big salaries. “We don’t want money, only a good tenant who will take care of our property and pay us on time.”

“You don’t want money, Bibi-ji?” Menon laughed. He shared with Balu a tendency to rotate his head when he spoke, in that same indeterminate movement, which led Bibi-ji to believe that he too was a South Indian, a breed as foreign to her as the goras, or Mrs. Wu, or Majid the barber. “Then how about free chai and samosas today?” Menon grinned, his moustache moving upwards and touching the tips of his flaring nostrils.

“Why not?” Bibi-ji said, surprising herself by her sudden generosity. Later, when she went over the conversation, she would add this impulsive act to the list of Good Deeds that were earning her a golden star from the Ooper-Wallah, or the Upper-Wallah, as Pa-ji preferred to call him. The One Up There, God, Allah, Krishna, whoever, would be pleased with her. “Now about our house, Bhat-ji. Are you interested?”

“I would like to see it first,” Balu said. “I am definitely looking for a place, but my wife, Leela, can be a little fussy, you know. She and the children are arriving in a month, so I don’t have much time to look around. Not that she wants a palace, nothing like that, but still it
should be a comfortable size. At a reasonable rent, of course. But before I say anything, what I mean is—”

“I understand,” Bibi-ji interrupted. “I will call Pa-ji, and you can go and see the house after you have had your chai and samosas.”

By the time Balu was done with tea, Pa-ji had arrived at the café to help with the rush of customers. So it was Bibi-ji who took Balu to see the home in which he would live for the next several years. After some haggling over the rent, which Bibi-ji reduced just a bit more (yet another brownie point from God), Balu signed the lease for the two-bedroom house with the oversized couches and bright floral curtains. He would move in the following Saturday, a few weeks before Leela and their children, Preethi and Arjun, arrived.

For years after, Bibi-ji would thank her stars that she had followed her more generous instincts. She would look back to the moment when she had offered the house to Balu Bhat, and she would find herself grateful to The One Up There. But that was before events in distant India poisoned her life, before bitter anger wiped out the gratitude and her friends became her enemies.

“Your wife will be happy with your choice, I hope, Bhat-ji,” she said as she handed Balu the keys. She wondered what kind of woman Leela Bhat was. Pretty? Gentle? Bossy and opinionated, like Dr. Majumdar’s wife, whom she had only met twice and disliked thoroughly?

“Yes, I hope so too,” Balu replied. He smiled and held up his hand with fingers crossed. “I very much hope so.”