Where the Air is Sweet (26 page)

The following day, a van arrives to take Raju, Jaafar, Mumtaz, Karim and Shama to the airport. There are no door handles inside the vehicle. “It’s a prisoners’ transport vehicle,” Jaafar explains to Karim when he asks why. Karim stares at Jaafar, but he does not offer him any further explanation.

Two security officials escort the five of them directly onto the Air Canada jet. While the other passengers stare, they settle into their seats. “Don’t you feel like film stars?” Jaafar asks in Gujarati. No one smiles or responds. When they are in their seats, the customs agent who accompanied them onto the plane hands Raju and Jaafar their passports.

Raju opens his and sees a big red
X
and the letters
PI
: Prohibited Immigrant.

25

S
HAMA FEELS HEAVY IN MUMTAZ’S ARMS. IT IS
January 24, 1973, and Mumtaz is walking through Dorval Airport in Montreal. Jaafar and Raju are walking ahead of her, Karim beside them. They have cleared customs and are on their way to their connecting flight to Toronto. She is walking quickly to keep up with Jaafar. She wants to slow down; she wants to stop. Before she saw London it existed in newspapers, in storybooks, in dreams. It is where the Queen lives, where the high commissioner was unceremoniously dispatched by Idi Amin, where London Bridge is always falling down. But Montreal, Toronto, Kitchener? She shakes her head; nothing is penetrating it. What could penetrate it? She knows nothing about where she is, about where she is going. She wants to stop to honour this moment, this moment when she is passing from what she knows to what she does not. But she can’t stop. She can’t slow down. The flight is leaving in minutes.

It is dark when Baku leads them to his car, a Peugeot. He embraced each of them tightly at the airport in Toronto, a rough grey coat on his plump body, a knitted hat on his head.

“The drive to Kitchener will take about one hour,” he says when they are all sitting in the car. “You will feel warm in only a few minutes. I’ve turned on the heating.”

Jaafar looks strange to Mumtaz, sitting in the right seat of the car without a steering wheel in front of him. He looks like he has been stripped of his manhood, and forced to forever face his castration. Raju stares out the window. He is in the back seat; he refused to sit in the front. Karim is beside him, his head resting on Mumtaz’s shoulder. Shama is on her lap. The children are quiet, staring blankly in front of them, their bodies slumped with exhaustion.

Baku talks rapidly, switching from subject to subject without waiting for a comment, a response. He tells them about his job at a garage that specializes in foreign-made cars.

“After one week, they gave me this car to use, the same bloody model I had back home.” It’s a good job, he explains, but it has taken getting used to, working on cars in such cold. He does not say it is hard getting used to working on cars. He does not remind them that he did not work on cars in Mbarara; he supervised workers.

When Baku and his family first arrived in Montreal, they spent a few days in army barracks. It was comfortable, he tells them. They were given curries to eat. They were tasty and plentiful. “You know how the boys eat.” Everyone was asked to visit a shop right inside the barracks, a huge shop full of coats and hats and scarves. They selected what they wanted, for free. And they were given pocket money.

“Then, they began to interview everyone. They asked me where I wanted to live. What do I know of Canada? I said any small city would be fine.”

When their train arrived in Kitchener, two immigration officers met Baku, Khatoun and the children. They told Baku that a couple was willing to take them in until they found their own footing. The couple, called Robert and Elizabeth, showed them around Kitchener, where they could buy groceries, how to ride the bus. In return, they asked only to be taught how to cook Indian food.

They laugh. Baku continues to laugh after the others have stopped.

“In two days I found my job and in one month we moved to our home.” It is an apartment, a flat, he explains, with three bedrooms. It is not as big as their houses in Mbarara were, but it is comfortable. Hot and cold water runs from the taps, all the time, anytime they need it. They have a big refrigerator and an electric stove.

“On Friday, we will all go to
jamat khana.
It is in a church.” He laughs while Mumtaz tries to picture it. She cannot. She has never been inside a church. “Ismailis praying in a Christian church. Something,
na
?” Baku is shaking his head. “Canada is something. We were holding
khane
in people’s houses. But more and more Ismailis came and we couldn’t fit. Who has a big house here? The church is nice. Strange. But Jesus is a prophet. And God is God.” He stops, catches his breath. “God is great.”

They are quiet.

“The children are finding it hard to get used to school, meet new friends,” says Baku. “And it is cold. But, still, I think maybe God has lifted us up and brought us to something
better.” He is sitting tall in his seat. He used to slouch. He used to crumple into chairs.

The children are asleep and Mumtaz is reading an electric billboard and silently mouthing the words,
Schneiders Famous for Quality,
when she hears Jaafar tell Baku that he is planning to return to Uganda. He does not turn to the back seat and look at Mumtaz as he explains that he would like to leave within the month. Baku nods while Jaafar explains that he intends to make money with Amir for a short time, and then come and settle in Canada. When he stops speaking, Mumtaz laughs. Jaafar is angry, his head facing the road in front of him, the muscles in his jaw bulging. Raju is staring at her. But even though she covers her mouth with her hand, she cannot stop laughing.

Khatoun greets them at the door wearing a long
kanga
dress that hangs on her. Mumtaz barely recognizes her. She is thin. Even her hair is thin. Her face is drawn and, without her excess weight, she looks old. Mumtaz smiles and leans towards her for a kiss. She smells like fried onions and sweat.

For the next weeks, Raju spends his days sitting in a chair near the front window of the apartment. He watches snow fall. He stares at clouds, at houses in the distance. Everything appears a dull grey to him. Uninviting. Cold. Impenetrable. He cannot grow accustomed to the sudden shift in climate. His bones ache. His fingers have become stiff. In the first days in their new home, he asked Khatoun to turn the heating up. “It costs money, Bapa,” she said, her voice almost breathless with exhaustion, as though she had been forced to speak for too long, as though she
had been asked to work too much. “Put on a sweater. And move away from the window.”

It is evening. The adults are eating dinner at the dining table; the children are sitting on a bedsheet spread on the kitchen floor, their plates in front of them. Raju asks Khatoun for more chapatis. “The plate is empty,” he says.

She looks at him and laughs. “You have always complained about my chapatis, and now you want more?” Baku, his mouth full of food, laughs as well. But he says nothing. And Khatoun does not move from her chair. Raju sees Jaafar look at Mumtaz.

“I’ll make more, Bapa,” Mumtaz says, standing up, her chair almost toppling over. “Give me only one minute.”

Mumtaz is staring at the floor when Jaafar promises her he will be back in eight weeks. It is linoleum, smooth and ugly. Her arms are crossed. She is sitting on a bed in the room they are sharing with their children. The apartment is crowded. Raju is crammed into a small bedroom with Baku’s two sons. Baku and Khatoun have the largest bedroom, which is closest to the apartment’s only bathroom. The girls, Yasmin and Meena, sleep in the sitting room, where Karim and Shama are now watching television, snuggling between two of their cousins on the sofa.

“You have nothing to say?”

She looks at him. “What’s the point? You’ve made your decision.”

“What decision? I have no choice. I didn’t get the money from Mubinga. I have to get it. What do you want me to do?”

“Baku
bhai
is managing. He has a job. His family is together.”

“That money in Mbarara is mine. I want what’s owed me.”

“How much money is it? After you split it with Baku
bhai
and give Bapa his share, is it worth it?”

“It’s a matter of principle, Mumtaz.” He is standing up, looking down at her.

Her neck feels stiff from staring up at him. “Okay,” she says, lowering her head so that she is looking at the buttons on his shirt. She hadn’t noticed until this moment that it is wrinkled. “Go.”

26

K
ARIM COMES HOME WITH A NOTE FOR MUMTAZ.
His teacher wants to speak with her. It has been six weeks since they arrived in Canada and two weeks since Jaafar returned to Kampala. Karim is enrolled in grade one at Howard Robertson Public School in southeast Kitchener.

While Karim sits at a desk, writing on a sheet of paper, his teacher asks Mumtaz about the last school he attended. How many students were in his class? How many teachers were in the school? Did Karim learn music? What kind of music? Did the school have a yard? A playground? What are Karim’s favourite toys? Favourite games? Miss Heimpel is young, with long, straight brown hair parted in the middle. Her eyes are green and small. She is slender but her wrists and ankles are sturdy, thick. Mumtaz feels nervous and unsure answering her questions. None of Karim’s teachers ever asked questions about him. Teachers don’t ask; teachers tell. She doesn’t know what to make of this pretty young woman with the unfortunately big bones.

Jaafar has not given money to Baku to defray the cost of
his wife and children living with him. But he has left some cash with Mumtaz. Khatoun pushes a noisy breath out of her nose when Mumtaz buys biscuits for her children, when she buys a pink toque for Shama, a school bag for Karim. Khatoun tells Mumtaz that Shama is spoiled and rude, that Karim eats too many sweets and watches too much television, that she should limit the time they have in the bath. When Khatoun speaks, Mumtaz presses her mouth shut and finds something to focus on, the beige paint of the walls, the almond-coloured refrigerator, her chipped nail polish.

Jaafar does not return in eight weeks. After three months, the money he has left her runs out. Mumtaz is forced to stand at the Zehrs grocery checkout, watching Khatoun, her lips pursed and her nostrils flared, pull Canadian dollar bills from her wallet while shaking her head.

One afternoon, Mumtaz is awoken by the sound of Khatoun’s voice. She sits up. Shama is asleep beside her. The walls in the apartment are thin. She can hear her sister-in-law as clearly as if she were standing beside her.

“You think you are such a big man, a great man. You are nothing.”

Mumtaz slips off the bed and opens the door, stepping onto the cool floor in the hallway.

“Look at you. What do you have to be so proud about? Idi Amin is bad? What about you? You destroyed your own son. Drove him away. Do you even ask about him? Do you even know what happened to him?”

Mumtaz sees Raju sitting at the dining table, his face like shattered glass. Khatoun is standing in front of him, her back to Mumtaz.

“Do you ever think of the pain you caused Ma? You killed her. Do you know that? Your cruelty killed her.”

“Bhabi!”

Khatoun turns. Her lips thin and curled, her jowls hanging loosely. She looks like a deflated balloon. Its joy spent. Wrinkled. Ugly.

“That’s enough,” Mumtaz says. “You’ve said enough.”

“This is my house. If you don’t like what I say, then get out.” She brushes past Mumtaz and walks towards her bedroom.

Mumtaz sits down next to Raju. He does not look at her. He continues to stare into the space Khatoun occupied. “What of Mumdu?” Raju asks. “What happened to him?”

“I don’t know. Jaafar spoke to him once, years ago, before Karim was born. I think he is still in Dar es Salaam.”

Raju looks at her. “He is my son. My child. Who wishes ill for his child? Who?”

Mumtaz shakes her head. “No one.”

The next day, Mumtaz walks to Karim’s school and waits for him. When he emerges, she tells him to play on the swings while she talks to his teacher.

“About me?” he says, looking alarmed. She does not usually pick him up. He walks the ten minutes home alone every day.

Mumtaz smiles and shakes her head. “About me.”

“Miss Heimpel,” she says, slowly, hesitantly, standing in the doorway of the empty classroom. “Do you know how to find a job? How can I find a job?” She has mixed up the order of the words. She sounds as if she is pleading, begging.

“Karen,” the woman says, walking towards her through a row of desks. “My name is Karen.” She takes Mumtaz by the elbow and leads her to her desk at the back of the room. She opens a drawer and pulls out a telephone book. After flipping through the pages, she writes an address down on a piece of paper and instructs her to go to this address tomorrow, to tell them she wants to work. “It’s called Manpower. But don’t let that stop you from going.” She laughs.

Karen’s handwriting is beautiful, each letter distinct and perfectly formed. Mumtaz writes quickly, her letters melting into one another.

“What can you do?” Karen asks. “What kind of work have you done?”

“I’ve never worked,” Mumtaz says. “I can’t do anything.” She does not tell her about her job at Barclays, where she could not count money properly.

“Do you mind factory work?”

“I’ll do any work,” Mumtaz says quickly. “I can clean. I can cook. I can sew.” She smiles. “I am very good at stitching.”

“Well, that’s something,” Karen says.

27

M
UMTAZ IS WORKING AS A SEWING MACHINE
operator at the Arrow Shirt Factory in downtown Kitchener. From 11:00 each night until 7:00 the next morning she stitches pockets onto men’s dress shirts. With help from Karen, she has found an apartment in a four-storey building across the street from Karim’s school. By the time Mumtaz tells Baku, she has already signed the lease and paid the first and last month’s rent.