Closure (5 page)

She walked past him and sat on another settee; Malik sat on his bed facing Chedi. Apart from the few times Malik asked Katula whether she wanted a drink, the two men were engrossed in conversation. Katula noted that Malik's eyes shone as he listened to Chedi, even though he was only talking about a certain sheikh's views on food, especially meats, from supermarkets. Apparently, for a proper Muslim, not even tomatoes were safe to eat because they were genetically tampered with. Chedi promised to lend Malik the sheikh's CD. Even though she had grown up in a culture where men, in the company of other men, ignored their wives, Katula was uneasy about the way she was not invited into their conversation. They probably did so because she was non-Muslim; maybe Islam did not allow women to join in men's conversation. Katula decided it was best to play dumb; she was on a mission.

The next time Malik invited her over to his house, she was surprised to find him on his own, but she did not ask why. She sat on the sofa; he sat next to her and held her hand as they talked. She was tempted to kiss him. When she stood up to leave, he hugged her and Katula held on. Malik went rigid. She relaxed and let her body melt slowly in his arms to encourage him a little. Malik could have been hugging his mother. When Katula reached up to kiss him on the neck, he tore away.

“In Islam,” he said breathlessly, “a man must guard his neck at all times. It is at the neck you lose your life.”

Katula crept out of Malik's house, shrinking with shame. On the way home, she chastised herself for pushing too hard.
Slow down! Malik falling in love with you and giving you children are just the toppings – focus on the passport.
She had never dated a British man before; maybe that was the way they were.
You know what they say about Africans – oversexed. The British are no doubt restrained
. Katula's stomach chewed itself all the way home.

The following day, Malik came to see her at the hospital. He was waiting outside the gate when she finished her shift. Pleasant surprise broke through her mortification, and her hope rekindled. He seemed worried and invited her to come to his house the following weekend. She overcame her embarrassment and smiled.

Malik wore a towel when she arrived. Katula stared. If she had thought that Malik was good looking before, undressed he was magnificent. This time he had even made an effort to clean the house. He had the air of an expectant lover about him. He told her to make herself a cup of tea while he took a bath. As she had tea, Malik came out of the bathroom grinning.

“You know, the other day a man followed me all the way from Asda,” he said as he dried his hair with a towel. “The man said I have the cutest legs, no?” He turned his legs to her.

Apart from the hairs, Katula wished Malik's legs were hers. “As far as I am concerned, everything on you is close to perfect.”

Malik turned around. His eyes shone. He walked towards her and held her. Then he kissed her on the lips but Katula was not sure that he liked it.

“Do you like my body?” He smiled into her eyes.

“You're stunning.”

“Then I am all yours if you'll marry me.”

The earnestness in his eyes prompted Katula to tell him that she could not marry him because of her visa troubles. But instead of getting suspicious, Malik got angry. “They make my blood boil.”

To protect her, and to help her save on rent, Malik asked Katula to move in with him. However, he said, they could not share a bedroom until they were married. She moved in the following day. To make herself useful, Katula started to clean the house. The nagging fear that things were moving too quickly, that Malik would change his mind, that it was all too good to be true, was dispelled when he said that he wanted to fix the wedding date as soon as possible.

First, he gave her money to return to Uganda to renew her student visa. She returned to Britain a month later, and applied for a Certificate of Approval, the first step in obtaining permission to marry and live in the UK. When it was granted, Malik asked for her shift roster.

The day they got married, Katula was due to work the nightshift. Malik had suddenly informed her that they were getting married because a couple had cancelled at the last minute and the imam had slotted them in.

“But I am working tonight. Should I call in sick?”

“No, you don't have to. We're getting married at midday.”

There was no time to dwell on the fact that Malik evidently expected her to work on their wedding night and must have already notified the registrar in advance.

Also unknown to Katula, Malik had already bought the clothes she would wear for the nikah. “I got them yesterday,” he said, as he handed her an Indian gown, similar to those she had seen in Asian boutiques in Rusholme. Turquoise, it had glittering sequins and beads. It had a scarf that she wore on her head. The gown fitted.

At the wedding, Katula did not know any of the guests, not even her witness. Chedi, Malik's friend, did not turn up; Katula had expected him to be their witness. Malik's mother was not at the wedding either; she could not make it at such short notice. Afterwards, they went to a Lebanese restaurant for lunch. When they returned home, Malik offered to drop her off at work. As she stepped out of the car at the hospital, he leaned over and kissed her on the lips. “See you tomorrow, wifie.”

Malik did not come to pick her up in the morning. Somehow, she had expected him to, even though he had not promised. When she arrived home he was in his bedroom but the door was locked. His greeting from behind the door was curt. When he stepped out of his room, his expression said, “Don't you dare come near me!” He rushed about the house as if worried that Katula would pounce on him. He ate in his bedroom and left money for the house on the kitchen table.

That first week after the wedding, silence spread throughout the house like ivy. Katula cried. This had nothing to do with British reserve, or with Islam; this was rejection.

She spent the early months of their marriage in her bedroom. She did not watch TV. She did not go into any other room other than the kitchen and bathroom. She did a lot of overtime. Two years lay ahead of her before she could change her visa to permanent residence, then another year to get her citizenship. She would do it. In the meantime, she continued to refurbish and cook. After cooking she would call out, “Food is ready,” at Malik's door. Then she would leave the kitchen so that he could come and get his food.

One day Katula came home from work and found Malik waiting in the corridor. He told her that they were eating out because it was their six months' anniversary. She went along with the plans suspiciously. When they came back home from the restaurant, Malik told her about mahr. He said it was a dowry normally in gold, given to a bride in Islam. He gave her a satchel. Inside were a three-colour herringbone gold necklace with gold earrings, an engagement ring, a wedding ring and a gold watch with a matching bracelet. He had also bought himself a similar wedding band and a watch like hers, only his were larger.

“They are twenty-one carats; I bought them at a His & Hers promotion.”

Katula blinked, then sighed. When she accepted the dowry, Malik held her tight for a long time. Then he buried his head in her shoulder and his body started to shake.

“I am not a bad person, Kat,” he wept. “I am not.”

“I know.”

“I'll look after you, Kat. You trust me, don't you?”

“Of course I do.”

He let go of her suddenly, walked to his bedroom and locked the door. Katula went to her bedroom and she too cried. She knew. Of course she now knew. But she could not think of a way to say,
I understand
, or,
Let's talk about it
.

She wasn't trapped, Malik was. And if sometimes she felt she was, at least the door to her cell was open; she could walk out of the marriage. He could not walk out of himself.

One day, out of the blue, Malik told Katula that they should start sending money to her mother, that he knew how hard life was in the Third World. She knew Malik had never sent money to his dad in Tobago. In fact, his face clamped shut whenever Katula asked about his dad.

“My father is a brute. He thinks that to be a man everyone must be like him,” he once said.

When Katula rang home and told her mother about Malik's generosity, she said, “God has remembered us.” The last time Katula rang, her mother had begged, “If doctors over there have failed, come home and see a traditional healer. Sometimes, it is something small that hinders conception, Katula. You can't risk losing him: he is such a good man.”

“Malik is British, mother; they don't leave their wives just because they are barren.”

“Listen child, a man is a man; sooner or later he'll want a child.”

To get rid of her mother's nagging, Katula said that she would discuss it with Malik and she would let her know.

On pay days, Malik transferred half his salary into Katula's account for their upkeep. Katula wanted to contribute but he said, “In Islam, a man must meet all his wife's needs. Your earnings are your own.” Sometimes, however, Katula was overcome by irrational fury, especially when Malik gave her money and said, “Why don't you go and buy yourself some shoes or handbags? Women love shopping.” In such moments she wanted to scream,
Stop apologising!

Sometimes Malik's strict adherence to the five prayers a day seemed slavish to her, as if he was begging God to change him. She would clench her fists to stop herself from screaming, “How could God create you the way you are and then say,
Hmm
, if you pray hard to me and I feel like it I can change you?” Instead she would glower, avoid him and bang her bedroom door. At such times, silence came to the house for days, but Malik would coax her out of her dark moods with generosity. She knew that a lot of women in Uganda would consider her extremely lucky.

As she reached to slip the envelopes into the letter box, she looked up. Near the school gate, a lollipop lady was walking to the middle of the road. She stopped, planted the lollipop on the road, blew her whistle and held her hand out. The cars stopped. Parents with little ones crossed the road. Katula looked beyond them at the barren park covered in snow.

This time, when he gets back home, she promised herself, I'm going to say,
How do you propose we're going to have children?
Or maybe I'll be direct and say,
When do we go for artificial insemination?
Kdto, they call it IVF in Britain.

She let the envelopes fall through the mouth of the post box and turned to walk back to the house she shared with a husband who played at marriage the way children play at having tea.

TARIQ MEHMOOD
THE HOUSE

I was waiting for a fare close to the Marriot Hotel in Islamabad, watching a couple of bored policemen sitting under the shade of a tree, twiddling with the barrels of their guns, when a bellboy from the hotel, followed by a tall thin woman, came towards me. The woman stopped, looked around at something and then followed the boy who was already by my car.

“Your lucky day, sir,” the boy said to me.

I handed him a fifty rupee note. He brushed it away saying, “It's a big booking. Hundred.”

“She's a Pakistani madam,” I said, pushing the note back towards him.

“Foreigner,” he said quickly, snatching the note whilst insisting with the index finger of his other hand that I give him more money. I swore at him under my breath and handed him another fifty. He turned to the woman and opened the back door.

“Yes, madam.” I said in Urdu, “Where would you like to go?”

She took a deep breath and replied in Pothohari. “There is so much I would like to see, but can't.”

I touched the key, my lucky charm, which dangled off the rear view mirror and looked at her face in the mirror. She had long grey hair, with streaks of silver that fell over her shoulders. The way she held her head was just like the madams of Islamabad. By the way she talked and looked she could have been someone from my village, but the black kameez jacket, her top, with its embroidery of gold running down her front and the edges of the arms meant she was not short of money.

I cursed the bellboy inside my head,
You son of a donkey. I waited for over two hours for a fare and you dump me with this one.

“Where can I take you?” I asked in Urdu.

“Do you not speak Pothohari?” she asked, looking for something in her handbag.

“Yes. Yes, madamjee,” I said in Urdu with a taxi-driver laugh. “It just doesn't feel right talking in that language with a madam, especially someone from round here.”

“I'm Indian,” she said. “Talk to me in Pothohari.”

Thank you, Allah, I thought inside my head.

“As you would wish, madam,” I said in Pothohari. “I can take you anywhere. And get you whatever it is you desire,” I added quickly.

She flicked her eyebrows disapprovingly and repeated, “There is so much I would like to see but I can't.”

Oh yes, I thought, I know what your type wants.

I was just getting ready for the long game that would eventually mean me getting her what someone like her was really after but was finding difficult to say, when she took a cigarette from her bag and lit it.

“Do you mind if I smoke in your car?” she asked, blowing smoke out of the window.

“This car is at your service, madam,” I said, thinking over what sort of a boy she was likely to be after.

“Do you smoke?” she asked, offering me a cigarette.

“Which taxi driver doesn't?” I looked at her pack. It was one of the expensive foreign ones.

“Keep it,” she said. “I have more.”

I took it from her. As I did this, she said, “Drive.”

“Where to, madam?”

“Just drive.”

I put the cigarettes in the glove compartment, touched the dangling key and started the car. As I drove past the policemen, they looked at me and then chuckled to themselves, nodding towards the woman in the back of my car.

I turned left on the road and decided that she was the sort who would like to go to Taxila. Indians loved that and they were good tippers. If I was lucky she might want to go to the ancient ruins of Katas. Then I thought, maybe she is a Sikh. She would no doubt want to see Panja Sahib in Hasan Abdal.

I had only gone a short distance when she asked, “Why did you touch that key?”

“Just one of those things we drivers do, madam.”

“Just one of those things we drivers do,” she mimicked, and then said, “I was born in Gujarkhan and have dreamt of one day visiting the house of my birth.”

I detected great pain in her voice.

A traffic policeman, who was standing in the middle of the road directing traffic, flagged me to stop. I tried to sneak past him but he blew his whistle a few times. I stopped and snatched a look at the woman. She didn't look like the madams of Islamabad anymore but almost like a mother who was searching for a lost child.

“Majee,” I said thinking of my own dead mother, “you can go to Gujarkhan right now. It's not far; I can take you.”

She smiled a sad smile and said, “I'm Indian; not allowed. And besides everyone in India warned me not to go to Pakistan; it's not safe, especially for Sikhs.”

“This is Pakistan. No one is safe and Allah decides,” I said, hoping she would want to go to Gujarkhan.

I prayed inside my head,
Ya rabbah, oh God, make this my lucky day. I've never had one of these returning Sikhs. Especially someone as rich as this one. Oh Lord let this day be my eid.

She went silent for a while and then her eyes lit up. “I have dreamt a thousand dreams, to see where I was born.”

As I turned onto the Islamabad Highway, going south towards Gujarkhan, she asked, “Are you married? Do you have children?”

I glanced at her in the mirror, trying to work out what she would most likely want to hear. She looked the motherly type. She could have grandchildren, and then she might feel sorry for me if she thought I should be married but had not managed to save enough money.

“Well, is it that difficult a question to answer?”

“No, madam…”

She turned towards me. “Either call me Majee or auntiejee, but not madam.” Before I could answer, she added, “Majee.”

“Jee, Majee.” I stroked the dashboard next to the steering wheel, pointed to the black ribbons I had tied to the side mirrors and said, “This is my wife and my mother.”

She laughed and then sat silently with her hand up to her mouth. Every now and again, when she saw a child or an animal, she would let out a deep sigh.

When we crossed Mandra, just as we went past a village, she asked me to stop. She pointed her thin finger at a house where a woman was rolling dung in her hands and then putting it on the side of the wall of a house.

“People here still dry dung and use it for fuel to cook with,” I said.

“The little girl near the tandoor, the oven. When I was young, I used to light our tandoor just like her. See those twigs sticking out from the top of the tandoor, just above the flames? I can hear them crackling, even from here and I can smell the wood burning just like that little girl. I would stand close to my tandoor, especially at night and watch the flames going up and the twigs falling down and the sparks flying about. Maybe they are still the same last sparks I saw, when they told us to leave.”

How could those be the same sparks? I thought and said, “Maybe, Majee, maybe.” Then I asked her, “Why did you come to Pakistan?”

“I am a poet. I came to recite.”

A poet, I thought. At least she is not like all the ones I know. Broke.

She started humming to the tune of Saif-al-Maluk. She stopped, let out a strange little laugh and said, without taking her eyes off the little girl by the tandoor, “It was the middle of the day in that year; 1947. I had lit our tandoor and then went to hang the washing on the walls. Mother had made the flour into dough and I went and sat next to her and helped her make paeras from the dough. Mine were always either too small or too big, but Mother never once told me off. She would just pick them up, smile and roll them again into the right size. My father was out somewhere, doing whatever he did, always turning up just as the rotis came out of the tandoor.

“A few other women, four neighbours, came with their dough. They always did. Ours was a big tandoor. Mother placed our flour, all neatly rolled into perfect balls, on a silver tray and put it on my head, then she went to greet the women. I followed her and we all went to the tandoor. She began chatting with the women about how bad the times were getting. All the Sikhs in Choha Khalsa were dead, they said. Sukho was in flames. No one knows who is alive and who is dead. All the Sikhs from Domeli had left. Ours was a big tandoor.” She looked at me and asked, “Did I tell you that already?”

I nodded.

“Mother had built our tandoor with her own hands. It was big enough for lots of rotis to cook in. She usually let the other women make theirs first, but today, for some reason, she started on ours. She had just put four or five rotis into the tandoor when our door smashed open and soldiers with guns burst in. There were so many of them. The women screamed. I ran behind mother.

“ ‘You are leaving for India, right now,' they said.

“Mother held my hand tightly. Her hand was hot and she was trembling.

“Before anyone could say anything, the soldiers pushed us out of our house. Mother kept looking back at the tandoor saying, ‘My roti will burn. My roti will burn.' But the soldiers just pushed us out of the house. Outside, there were more soldiers and so many terrified people. I called out to father, but how could he hear me, amongst all those others who were calling out names?

“We walked to the railway station; mother never let go of my hand. I kept calling out for father all the way. Even as they made us get onto a train, I kept calling him. I had been on a train before, but this was not like any other. It was so full of people; some bleeding, others crying. I remember the eyes! The eyes – they were all bloodshot. As the train pulled away, I heard a raging river of screams, screams I have never stopped hearing.

“Mother never talked much after that and when she did, she would say, ‘My roti will burn.' ”

“And what happened to your father?” I asked.

“I never did see him again.”

She didn't say anything else all the way to Gujarkhan. When we got there, I parked my car behind the courts. She remembered the banyan tree and she led the way as if she had never left. We walked around some narrow streets for a while.

She would suddenly stop and say, “My house was here,” and then shake her head, walk this way and that and then stop again and say the same thing.

After a little while of doing this she said, “It's been too long.”

We headed back to my car. She walked slowly now, lost in thought.

Just as we got into the bazaar she said, “When I was young, there was a Christian called Khaled, who used to sell little sweets on a raeree, a little wooden cart which had a broken wheel.”

“Maybe someone remembers him,” I said.

She shook her head, “After all this time!”

I looked around till I saw an old shopkeeper. He was a big fat man who was looking at us whilst picking up fistfuls of daal from a sack close to him and letting it fall through his fingers. I went up to him and asked, “Uncle, do you remember a Christian who sold sweets around here, before the partition?”

He looked at me for a while, then looked the woman up and down and said, “The Christian is still here, still selling things on a raeree.” He then told his son – a round little spitting image of himself – “Take them to Khaled Masih.”

We followed the boy through the bazaar up towards the GT road. After a short while he stopped and pointed, “That's Khalid Masih,” and disappeared into the bazaar

As soon as she saw Khalid Masih, she cried, “Ya rabbah, oh God.”

Khalid Masih was a small, dark man, with a deeply wrinkled face. On his raeree he had combs, socks, locks, mirrors and other small things.

She walked up to him ever so slowly. When she got close, she asked, “Are you Khalid Masih?”

He looked up at her and nodded.

“Do you remember Karamjit Singh, son of Harjit Singh Kataria?”

Khalid Masih's small eyes became even smaller. A sad smile flashed across his toothless mouth. “Kamli Kaur. You? Here?”

She hugged him and cried, “Babajee, you are still alive and still have your raeree!”

“I died a long time ago, daughter,” he replied.

Pulling away from him she examined the raeree. “At least this one doesn't have a broken wheel.”

He shook his head.

“Do you remember my house?”

He nodded, wiping his eyes with the back of his hand.

“We have searched everywhere for my house. Nothing looks like what I remember. Is my house still here?”

He nodded.

He left the raeree and we followed him. He had taken only a few steps when she asked, “What about your raeree?”

He turned around and pointed at the bazaar and smiled. Everyone was looking at us.

For an old man he walked fast. We went through countless narrow streets, until we came to a big house. “That is where you were born.” He turned to leave.

“Come with me,” she said to the old man.

He stepped away from us. “I am still an untouchable. They will think I have contaminated you.”

She watched Khalid Masih until he went out of sight and then said to me, “This is not my house; maybe he is mistaken.”

“We've come all this way. Let's knock.”

“Maybe if they find out I am a Sikh…”

I interrupted her, “I'm with you and the Almighty is my witness, I will let nothing happen to you.”

She knocked on the door.

After a little while, a woman's voice from inside the house called, “Who?”

“I've come from India and I am looking for the house where I was born,” Kamli Kaur replied hesitantly.

There was a little pause and then the door opened. A young woman with a child on her hip stood in front of us. Kamli Kaur's face turned white. She pointed to the veranda. It was an old wooden one, with carved curving arches. It was painted blue. With tears streaming down her eyes Kamli Kaur pointed inside saying, “My name is Kamli Kaur. This is the house where I was born. And the veranda is still blue.”

Beckoning us in, the young woman said, “It is still your house, Majee, and the veranda has always been blue.”

As we stepped inside, the young woman handed her baby to Kamli Kaur and ran towards a tandoor, saying, “My roti is burning.”