Authors: M.G. Vassanji
They had been, originally, a group of six, of roughly the same age, from roughly the same place. A prominent East African group of emigrés, former students meeting in Boston and New York and Washington, for Thanksgiving and Fourth of July and Christmas, and because of their mobility they were well known to the new groups of immigrants and refugees shakily setting themselves up. They were the Second Original Group, they always pointed out, the first one having come eight years before on extravagant African-American programs, having got married, all of them well settled and gone to ground.
A fate which had already befallen two of the guys in their own group. It was always understood
that the friendships were too close for anything else to come out of them: except for he and “she,” a subject rarely mentioned, and then only among the guys and, for all he knew, the girls. Anyway, Salim and Karim had married two nice and proper girls, from Canada, and had, effectively, disappeared. Which left Nanji and the three girls. There was Shamim, with those classical Indian features, perpetually caught in a soft light, as it were, all curves and not a sharp corner. The small chin, the long eyelashes, and dark black eyes, the beautiful puckered smile. All waiting for Mr. Perfect. And Dilu, with curly hair, a sharp mind, and an equally sharp tongue. Rather attractive, though her dark tones gave a first impression – but only first – that did not do her justice. Also waiting for Mr. Perfect. And Yasmin, with numerous friends and acquaintances from all corners of the world, had not met her idea of perfection either.
On the last day of the visit they had decided to go to the lakeshore and take a ferry to the islands. After morning coffee at the Hilton, Dilu and Shamim decided to walk to Harbourfront and the antique market, leaving Nanji and Yasmin alone to go to the island, find a spot, and await the two sightseers.
It was bliss to be together with her after God knows how long. The day was gorgeous. They crossed to Hanlan’s Point in the company of an army of cyclists. From there they took a round trip on a little train to Centre Island. She couldn’t resist,
just as she couldn’t resist those horse-drawn carriages in New York at Christmas. Could he ever have so much fun alone, or with anyone else?
Then they walked, found a quiet place to sit. Small planes were taking off in the distance, another one droned overhead pulling a sign. Men and women playing soccer, a toddler taking his first steps running after a balloon, a single man with book and picnic basket, french bread and all.
She looked so beautiful – not the beauty of perfection but of life. The ponytail he had known many years ago, in schooldays when he didn’t even talk to her, was gone, of course, the hair was contemporary-short. There were a few freckles on the face. Her eyes when not twinkling were fiery, her mouth was generous and could produce delicious chuckles. She was fairly tall, did not look dwarfed beside him as many Dar girls did. Yet there was this frailty in her. She could be easily broken, as he told himself so many times.…
You chew on a shoot of grass watching her, then you realize it’s not good for you. You cast it aside and immediately pull out another one.… Your heart is full, you swallow, you know she feels your gaze on her and must look up. She does.
“You know the first time you came to New York …” she said.
“Yes?”
“I’ve never gotten over it – insisting on coming up. I thought, Another fresh guy, him I can handle, and then at the door solemnly turning about!”
“Funny, wasn’t it. But I knew what you were thinking. I wanted to prove you wrong.”
“You did. That was thoughtful of you, going out of your way. I could have taken a cab – I do that every day.”
“I couldn’t help it. I can’t help it – feeling concerned.” He paused, a long pause. “I care for you.”
Had alarm bells rung, had he grabbed the opportunity, sensing this was the last moment.
“I know,” she said. “You must have wondered why I never wrote or called you back. I must have sounded rather abrupt when you called that time.”
“You did.”
She actually sighed.
“I’ve gone through a lot these past months. It’s almost been a year. You see, when you called, there was someone else.”
It was done, delivered, as gently as possible. And he was felled.
“Who?”
“He’s an Arab – Egyptian.”
“What does he do? A banker?”
She laughed. “You always thought I was looking for a banker to marry.”
“Or an ambassador.”
“He works at the United Nations. Actually, he’s very gentle – like you.”
“Then what was wrong with me?”
“You don’t know how hard it’s been for me. And for him. You see, I told him about you. And his mother – she’s against it.”
Then they had taken the ferry back. The two others had not arrived. It had all been conveniently arranged, this assassination at a quiet spot. How could you blame her though, we do what we have to do. He was completely recovered, to look at, when finally the two other girls came. Did he only imagine those sidelong glances searching for visible wounds?
To lose such good friends. Dilu and Shamim – when would he see them again, would it ever be the same again? When they left in a cab, all shouting, “1984!” and yelling at the driver, “Don’t worry, we’ll pay the fine, go, go!” the only place he could go to fill the emptiness inside him was the Lalanis’.
He was grateful to the Lalanis, even for the dreadful copies of herself that Zera introduced him to. He realized perhaps he had come too close, and kept much to himself after that. Until today, when the kids needed his company at the fireworks. They walked back to the car with the feeling somehow that the excitement was yet to come. He took them to a falafel place on Bloor Street. The kids loved it; he rose once more in their esteem. The parents saw no big deal to it. It was all bhajia and chappati, cooked differently, that’s all.
Ever since that first act of serious incontinence – tasting a bit of pork sausage and then proceeding to consume a sizeable chunk of it – Nurdin’s sins, it seemed to him, had multiplied. Thinking back on a statement Nanji had made, he could find some explanation for his predicaments and even a little comfort for his inner turmoils. Nanji, he said to himself, had hit the nail right on the head! Well, they didn’t give out degrees for nothing. You’ve got to have something up here. You are
already
changed when you think about eating pork. Think about
that
. There must be something in the Canadian air that changes
us, as the old people say. The old people who are shunted between sons and daughters and old peoples’ homes – who would have thought that possible only a few years ago. It’s all in the air: the divorces, crimes you could never have imagined before, children despising their parents. An image of his own arrogant Fatima came to his mind and he pushed it back.
There was this nice young couple at number Seventy-one: respectable, pious. They had met in mosque doing voluntary service, married, and were expecting their first child. What could be more gratifying to watch and reflect upon: the couple strolling back from mosque, parents of a new generation. Then baby was born, but it had blue eyes. It took some doing by the young man’s family before he would believe what his own eyes told him, and the wife confessed to the truth. The couple were divorced now, and the girl was living with the father of the baby. What is more, it had all been accepted as the way the world is. What was once unthinkable became acceptable. Roshan, Zera’s sister, continued to be battered at home. Already in the last few months twice she had come with puffed-up face to spend the night. Nurdin was all for calling the police: “Let them lock up the pig” (yes, pig, he had said). But the women said no, hush-hush, don’t wash your dirty linen in public. Well, hadn’t they heard, that is precisely what you do, there are laundromats here. This is Canada, he told Roshan, giving back her own. She had returned home the following day,
after being nursed by Zera, as for the next round at boxing. Wait till her son grows older, two or three years from now, he’ll beat the shit out of his father.…
He looked at Zera. No carnal sin from
that
quarter, he thought, eyeing the ample hips move under her favourite sack dress as she dusted the table. She was in the greatest of spirits because, after long entreaties, several years of pleading, the Master, Missionary himself, had decided to come and settle in Canada. The arrival was several months away, the dusting and vacuuming today was only to make the place look like it should for the Master. Nurdin was pleading earache and resting on his favourite chair. And looking at Zera.
Even though she had grown fat, there
was
still an attraction about her. There was that friendliness, the soft-heartedness, and the sense of humour. Those breasts were still ripe mangoes and the large hips were yet firm. But she did not let him come close. Blocking his attentions, in bed, turning against his desires that mountain of a haunch, behind which he felt rather helpless and small. Do you want me to come from behind? If you want to. With this Kilimanjaro facing me? Go to sleep.
Zera was married to God, the idea of God. Not that she was otherworldly or excessively devotional. Her obsession was to discuss God and religion, and she liked nothing better than to sit at the feet of her teacher, Missionary, and to hear him discourse on God, the Prophet, the sages. A little like listening to
expert commentary on sports. If there was any devotion, it was to the Master. There had been in the past, on one or two occasions, innuendoes at this unhealthy worship of Missionary by his female followers. Nurdin knew his wife, not to say Missionary, and was never bothered. And, after all – thinking back on those innuendoes – who could know the innermost secrets of the heart, even if they were your wife’s … or husband’s … or your own.…
They had not been physically really close for years. Not had sex – what a nice legitimate way of putting it. He had resigned himself to this celibacy. There was so much to do, to worry about. And now this late reawakening, a blossoming in middle age of a youthful obsession. Will it pass? He shuddered, felt the almost physical impact from the steely eyes he knew were staring at him from the picture on the wall – should I let it pass?
Romesh had observed it. Romesh with the roving eye had observed his roving eye, and his shyness with women.
“That big wife of yours not letting you have it?”
It rather shocked Nurdin at first, this open remark about his wife. “She is very pious, very religious, you know.”
Romesh had a simple solution, an idea Nurdin was not quite ignorant about, especially in his youth. So he tried just taking her one night, but she had given such a scream, a yelp, that Fatima and Hanif came running, Fatima lumbering in the lead. Zera did not help him with explanations, she let him
go to sleep with the knowledge that the kids already guessed what had happened.
To be young in this land free of inhibitions. What did he care of morality, can you change the way the world is going? He regretted his innocent youth somewhat. Once, when he was a boy, the picture of a beauty-contest winner had been printed in the newspaper, a white girl in a swimsuit, and they had all looked at it gravely in his home, at dinner, his father first. The picture had gone round the table. Then Nurdin had secretly cut it out and hid it among the pages of his exercise book. Later someone had removed it, he didn’t know who, presumably to protect him from his father’s wrath. In place of the picture of Angela (that was the girl’s name), there was the traditional peacock feather. That was the extent to which he had let his desire run away, more or less, barring moments in the bathroom. He wished sometimes he had gone fornicating with the boys in the alleys and byways, in the huts with Arab and African prostitutes. Or in the quarters where Indian women ran the same trade more furtively and at higher price. He had even accompanied his friends on such expeditions. All, or most, respectable men now. Like Jamal, who had done everything in his youth. Now he was respectable and rich. Then there was that Nanji. Difficult to make out what Nanji was. A Sufi, you would think, an ascetic. But he had spent three days – and, worse, nights – with three women, drinking and doing God knows what. Zera had not really approved, of course, in spite of her
enthusiasm in fixing up Nanji’s apartment, though she had blamed not Nanji but the three girls. Pretty girls, all. Pretty and free.
Nurdin’s lusty eye, he had discovered, hovered not only on the ample but forbidden body of his wife – which God would surely excuse – but on practically all women, it seemed. Like a boy at puberty he had become aware of Woman, the female of the species, and he found her diverse and beautiful. And what was offered to an eye starved for such visions was simply breathtaking. It was like sending to the hungry of the world not just rations of wheat but whole banquets. Bra-less women with lively breasts under blouses and T-shirts that simply sucked your eyeballs out. Buttocks breaking out of shorts. And when you saw these twin delights nuzzling a bicycle seat, doing a gentle rhythmic dance of their own in the dazzling heat and among the trees and flowers and the smells of nature in the park – why, you had to be sure you were dressed right. And Zera marching along ahead. “Hurry up, Nurdin, stop loitering like a boy.” Boy, indeed. His head would be pounding, his body aching with desire.
Later, after witnessing such a vision, he would be overcome by bouts of guilt. The picture on the wall fixing him with its eyes, reminding him of that hymn, “Lust and anger, those two you shall avoid.” Anger was not his problem, that was his father’s. Let
him
pay for it. Nurdin’s problem was lust. Don’t covet another man’s woman. Well, what if yours doesn’t give? The punishment for backbiting was to
be hung by your tongue, and for listening to backbite, to be hung by your ears. And for fornicating? A gruesome image of himself hanging by his balls intruded into his mind. He stifled a giggle. He didn’t remember who had listed those punishments, probably one of his father’s cronies during their interminable sessions. Hell will have scorpions as large as camels. And the sinful will cry in anguish, mercy, mercy.