Sweetness in the Belly (24 page)

a beach, a bridge

N
ouria and I had taken a job sewing cowrie shells onto the rims of finished baskets. The tedium of our chores worked to offset some of the uncertainty that surrounded us. We sang songs while we worked, folk songs Gishta had taught me about Harari children lost in the wilderness brought home on the backs of hyenas, about Noah and the animals and about girls who mistakenly marry for love.

My voice faltered as the fence parted one afternoon and Aziz stepped through. The urgency of his expression pulled me upright, shells spilling from my lap onto the ground. He greeted Nouria and Gishta, who remained seated, and affected a smile before addressing me in English.

He wasted no time. He apologized for his absence the Saturday before but said he needed to be elsewhere in his free time, with a different group of people, thus officially putting an end to our berchas. I felt numb.

“Meetings,” he said, when I pressed him for more. “About what is happening.”

“But what is happening?”

“Changes,” he said quietly.

“But can’t I be involved?”

“Not with this group, I’m afraid. We meet outside the city.”

“But I’ve left the city with you before, Aziz,” I pointed out, wondering if this had anything to do with an arsenal of guns lying underneath a man with no eyes.

“This meeting is only for men.”

I was stunned. “But you said you believed men and women to be equal, at least given the chance.
Minti
. Remember?”

“Right now there is no time to give people a chance.”

I looked at him coldly.

“Look, Lilly, not everybody is like Munir and me. Some people are more conservative and prefer to keep those lines between men and women strictly drawn, particularly where politics are concerned. It’s a question of priorities.”

He was choosing this over me. It reminded me somehow of the women on the Moroccan beach. Draped in black. Not feeling the heat, my father suggested, because other things mattered more to them. But I’d shed my black in order to be near him.

“Why, Aziz?” I pleaded.

“Because the needs of the collective have to take precedence over self-interest,” he stated, sounding nothing like himself.

“But what about your exams next month?”

“That will have to wait.”

“You would choose to stay here rather than pursue your education in Cairo?”

“Right now, if it came to that, yes. Yes, I would.”

“But I thought you wanted that advanced medical training so you could help more people. That would benefit the collective.”

“That’s a very Western way of looking at it,” he said.

It was as if a bridge between us had just collapsed. Or rather, he’d just detonated it.

I didn’t have a moment to survey the destruction. As soon as he left, Gishta leaned over and patted my hand.

“It’s for the best,” Nouria said.

I was too upset to reply.

“He has to marry a Harari girl,” Gishta said. “If he were pure Harari, then maybe he would have a choice. Men have less choice about these things than women.”

They obviously knew Aziz and I had some kind of relationship, but my relief that they were not angrier was fleeting. Gishta meant that our parts would never add up to make a Harari whole. I was furious that she had to reduce it all, once again, to marriage when there were much bigger things at work.

“It’s got nothing to do with that!” I shouted, but immediately regretted having snapped at her. If women were truly kept away from politics, then I could hardly blame them. These were their politics. The affairs of the heart.

part seven

london, england

1988

butchering the stems

W
ow” is all I can say.

“You don’t like it?” Amina asks, stretching her neck to take a look at the back of the skirt.

“It’s just, you know, a rather unusual choice.” Tartan, just above the knees, secondhand and smelling of mothballs and patchouli, like the shop.

“It is fashinn gidir!” she says.

That might be. I just wouldn’t have pictured her in it,
can’t
picture her in it even now that she’s got it on.

She jerks the curtain closed, pulls off the skirt and nearly tears the curtain from the rail as she reemerges and stomps past me to slap the skirt down on the counter, where a teenager with a pierced lip gladly takes her money. Thirteen pounds fifty for a moldy skirt.

But it’s an occasion—the first anniversary of Yusuf’s arrival in London. He’s insisted he doesn’t want a big party, just the family and Mr. and Mrs. Jahangir, and though it isn’t our way not to share any celebration as widely as possible, we defer.

We’ve spent the last three nights preparing a feast of special foods, dishes normally reserved for weddings and people’s return from the hajj. There is mulukhiya, a thick, green turgid soup we adopted from the Egyptians during their brief occupation of Harar in the last century; sambusas, small samosas introduced by Indian merchants; misr wat, stewed lentils we borrowed from the Sudanese; spaghetti Bolognese, introduced into our diet by the Italians; ruz bi laiban, rice pudding courtesy of the Arabs by way of the English; and ankhar mahtab, tripe stew, possibly the most unpalatable of all the dishes but the only one of them we can rightfully call our own.

Amina burns incense to mask the dominant smell of fried onions and we sing folk songs while we knock elbows in this impossibly small space. We complain now where we once created such miracles out of brown river water, battered produce and unrefrigerated meat, which we cooked over wood fires, smoke in our eyes and black smudges on our faces, wiping our brows from the staggering heat with the corners of our skirts during droughts when we couldn’t even bathe or wash our clothes.

I cover the table with a cloth Amina bought at a bargain shop—reindeer and holly, discounted in July—and arrange her fancy bowls and plates with the gold trim so that people can serve themselves. Amina lays down another plate.

“We have enough,” I say.

“Better one too many than one too few,” she says, twirling round in her new skirt. I can still smell the mothballs.

Our honored guest arrives at six, ready to break the mirqana he has achieved with the Oromo brothers down the hall with a can of lager. He admires his wife’s outfit. “Very chic,” he says, eyes glimmering as he stares at her knees.

“Masha’Allah,” I mutter and look away. It’s been a year since Yusuf arrived, but it is only now that he is returning to his wife.

Mrs. Jahangir brings the children. Sitta and Ahmed have bright red tongues and lips, though Mrs. J swears she did not ruin their appetites with sweets. Mr. Jahangir follows, huffing dramatically with the weight of his generosity—a gift for Yusuf, a heavy chess set made of brass, accompanied by an apology for the way their last game ended.

Now that everyone has arrived and removed their shoes, Amina presses Play on the tape deck. Yusuf beams as the voice of his favorite singer fills the room.

“Where did you find this?” he asks her.

“He lives in Norway now. I sent him a letter.”

Imagine. Someone who was so famous in Ethiopia that he had a band of bodyguards, an army of servants, a harem of women throwing themselves at his feet is now a man who lives alone in a small subsidized flat on the outskirts of Oslo, eating pickled herring on dry toast for supper, receiving a letter and penning a reply in his own hand.

Amina is about to fetch the letter to prove it when there is a knock at the door.

“We’re not expecting anyone else, are we?” I ask.

She brushes by me, swings the door open, and there stands Robin, two massive bunches of flowers wrapped in purple paper in his arms.

I could kill her—wait, I take that back—I could damn well near throttle her.

Robin places one bouquet in her arms and offers the other over her shoulder to me. He brings the perfect flowers: pink and yellow roses for Amina, white lilies for me. I stare at their orange stamens. Family, Amina, remember?

He’s also brought a jar for Amina, peach chutney he claims he made himself, following a recipe of his mother’s. And where do you find the small tart peaches that make a perfect peach chutney, Mrs. Jahangir wonders, holding the jar up to the light, and “Forgive me, this is Dr. Gupta,” Amina introduces him, “Lilly’s friend.”

“Robin, please,” he says as he shakes Mr. and Mrs. Jahangir’s hands.

Yusuf offers him a lager, Amina says, “Come, come and eat, we have a feast,” and the whole time I am standing there, flowers in my arms, feeling decidedly unlike celebrating.

I put the flowers down on the kitchen counter, return to the sitting room and proceed to pile food high on two plates for Ahmed and Sitta. Tariq is clutching the table leg with one hand, wavering on his unsteady feet while he reaches up for a piece of injera. Ahmed and Sitta take their plates and hold them at eye level in both hands, carrying them into the other room to watch television.

“Is something wrong?” Robin asks, suddenly at my side.

“Nothing,” I reply.

“You didn’t expect me, did you,” he says.

“Amina did neglect to tell me.”

“I hope it’s not an imposition,” he says.

“No, look, we’ve masses of food.” I leave him, busy myself in the kitchen.

“Lilies for his Lilly,” Amina croons as I stare into the sink, butchering the flower stems with a bread knife.

“He doesn’t belong here, Amina.”

She pouts. “Oh, why do you say this? It is a celebration, Lilly.”

I stab the stems into a pint glass.

It’s all a very happy scene unfolding in the sitting room. Mr. Jahangir is asking, “Your people, are they related to the pharmaceutical Guptas in Bombay? And which college at Cambridge? Do you play chess?”

Robin is bouncing Tariq on his knee, and the boy is in ecstasy. “Bow, wow, wow, wee,” he sings, throwing his injera to the floor.

“Oh, pah pah,” Yusuf says, “don’t be seduced by his mild demeanor, Dr. Gupta. Mr. Jahangir is a shark in a sea of minnows when he sits in front of the chessboard,” though what he means is that Mr. Jahangir is an utter cheat. I doubt a brass set or an apology could ever persuade Yusuf to sit down to play with him again.

Mr. J beams, thrilled to be likened to a predator.

Amina decides to ignore me and join the party. I decide to ignore the party and join the children.

“You look very beautiful,” Robin says, grasping my arm as I attempt to breeze by, and I hate the fact that he has seen me in my diri, the nightdress Amina also wears after dusk in her less tartan moments.

“Just going to check on the children.”

I switch the channel despite Sitta’s objections, turn up the volume, not caring if the news is unsuitable. The bed exhales as I sit down between them.

Ahmed burps. “Excuse me,” he says.

I
make my way to the community association office in the morning. The street is deserted, the light strained. Amina is having a sleep-in, I imagine. Or a love-in, given the way Yusuf was staring at her legs last night. I managed to avoid the entire party between eating with the children, washing up and putting Tariq to bed. I managed to avoid having to talk to Robin the whole evening and said only the curtest good-bye.

Amina arrives about half ten, when I’m already halfway through opening the week’s mail.

“Have you had buna?” she asks, dropping her purse into a chair.

“Not yet.”

She picks up the kettle, about to carry it out to the sink in the hall.

“Real buna?” I ask. “I hate that Nescafé you drink now.”

“You are such a habasha,” she scoffs. An Ethiopian.

“I’ll make it,” I mutter, shoving back my chair.

I spill green beans out of a paper bag into my palm. Turn on the Bunsen burner, heat up the tin plate and throw on the beans. I shake the plate with my left hand and rest it over the flame, staring at the marks we have made on the Michelin map on the wall.

“I’m sorry you missed the party, Lilly,” she says, flipping through the rest of the unopened mail.

“I’m sorry, I just wasn’t up to it.”

“But it was such a nice party.”

“For you, maybe,” I say, still staring at the map.

“You resent me because I have Yusuf, isn’t that right?” she says, more statement than question.

She’s half right. I do resent her, but more for trying to put Robin in Aziz’s place than for the fact that she has Yusuf. For taking such liberties: failing to respect or recognize the space Aziz occupies. Now that she has Yusuf, she can no longer remember how it feels.

“Do you not think it breaks my heart every day to wonder if my sister is still alive, or whether my brothers are being tortured to death in prison?” she demands. “Do you think it has been easy trying to raise three children and deal with a husband who has been traumatized and is afraid of the dark and afraid of other men and sometimes he is even afraid of his own children because he has this nightmare constantly swirling in his head? You know, ever since he has been in England he has not wanted me to touch him because when he was in prison they put matches to his skin. Imagine someone you love looking at you like they fear you will hurt them.”

“At least you have a family.”

She inhales angrily. “You know, Lilly? You have to stop behaving like an orphaned child.”

“Oh shit!” I shriek. Smoldering, blackened beans spill from the tin plate onto the carpet and within seconds they are melting the acrylic at my feet. “Shit, shit, shit!” I stomp up and down.

Amina wordlessly tips the watering can over.

I
avoid the cafeteria, standing outside during my breaks, watching stray sheets of newspaper take flight, clustered beside other addicts wheeling their drips and exposing their backsides to the wind. “Give us a fag,” says one, “I’ll catch my death,” a minute later.

One of my patients complains that I reek of smoke—this from a woman constantly soaked in her own urine. I have no patience anymore. I’ve even noticed it with the children. Their squabbling has been getting on my nerves.

“Where are you picking up this kind of language?” I shouted at Ahmed the other day when he called his sister a bloody bastard.

His bottom lip began to quiver.

“Tell me! At school?” I persisted.

He shook his head. “From you,” he mumbled.

“What?”

“From when you yelled at the cab driver.”

Because he’d said he had no change. Because I needed the change to buy milk. Because the only thing I was looking forward to was a cup of tea.

I
t’s only a matter of days before I run into Robin. I can’t avoid him forever. He looks up when I enter the cafeteria and waves. He offers me Tabasco sauce before peppering his beef stroganoff. He’s hating his job today. It’s all “shitty bureaucracy” and “shitty petty tyranny” and “shitty miserly shortsightedness” on days when Robin hates his job.

“Look, I honestly didn’t realize Amina hadn’t told you I was coming,” he says, grinding down the gears into awkwardness. “But it was a lovely party. I wish you hadn’t disappeared.”

“I just didn’t think it was appropriate that you were there.”

“I was invited,” he says, stunned.

“It’s not that simple.”

“Could you at least
try
and tell me what’s the matter?” he pleads. “I’m confused. You said you liked me too.”

I’m overcome with a green wave. I hold up my palm. “I can’t.”

“Can’t what?”

“Just can’t,” I say, fleeing to the loo.

I stare into the warped tin mirror. The whites of my eyes are yellow, my hair is yellow, my teeth are yellow from smoking. Everything about me is sickly and dull. I look as though I’ve just emerged from a compost heap.

I take off my shoes and socks, run the tap, wash my hands, face and neck, rinse my nostrils and mouth, bathe my forearms, the top of my head, my feet and ankles. I lay down my gown as a prayer rug. I don’t usually pray at the hospital; my colleagues complain about the mess, all the water on the floor, and they say that they feel too self-conscious, too respectful to use the toilet when I’m bent over on the floor, there are only two cubicles after all. It makes no difference if I tell them that when I pray, I am not of this time and place; I would not notice it even if they were throwing up in the toilet or snorting cocaine off the stainless steel shelf above the sink.

Perhaps they won’t notice me here, huddled in one of the cubicles, feet up on the seat, sniveling pathetically, using my gown as a handkerchief.