Brick Lane (93 page)

Nazneen tried to speak but her breath fought against it.

'What are you doing here?'

'Shahana.' It was all she could manage.

'Go home. You shouldn't be here.'

'Shahana. I think she's here.'

Karim held her by the shoulders. There was thunder in his face. He looked as if he wanted to shake her. Then he softened. 'All right. Tell me.'

She told him as quickly as she could. Karim peered both ways and signalled for her to step out and follow him.

'What is happening?' she asked, as they walked past a shattered shopfront. She remembered his words.
Insh' Allah, we all stand together.

'Jamal Zaman got out of hospital today. You know, that lad they call Nonny.'

She trotted to keep up. 'So what is this?' But she knew already, had seen it at the last meeting.

'It's revenge. And revenge for the revenge.' He turned round. 'Man, what it is, it's a mess! It's not even
about
anything any more. It's just about what it is. Put anything in front of them now and they'll fight it. A police car, a shop window, anything.'

'And the march?'

He shrugged. 'We marched. So what, really?'

'The Lion Hearts, did they come?'

'About twenty or thirty. They weren't anything.'

The pavement was blocked by a hillock of clothing, loot half desired and hastily abandoned. They ran in the road.

'They weren't anything?'

'Not here. Not yet. People only take a job on for themselves when their leaders aren't doing it for them. Do you understand?'

They reached the Shalimar. The lights were off. Each table, laid for dinner, had a little pot of plastic flowers next to the triple tin dishes of chutney, chopped onion and raita. Nazneen looked at Karim.

'Go home,' he said.

She put her face up to the glass and cupped her hands to the sides.

'She'll be back by morning.'

She looked across from the toilet doors at the back of the room to the counter stacked with kebabs, tandoori chicken, bhazis, puris, trays of rice and vegetables, milky sweets, sugar-shined ladoos, the faintly sparkling jelabees.

'I'll take you up to the corner. You'll be all right from there.'

Then she saw them. Three waiters with their backs and arms pressed to the wall, and behind them two smaller figures, holding hands.

She pounded on the glass and yelled. 'Shahana. Shahana. It's me. I'm here. Amma's come.'

Chanu knew what she was going to say. That was why he could not stop talking. He talked over the television. Nazneen stared at the screen. The picture was just in red and black; even the Questioner's face was shades of red and black. His words were lost once more. Chanu sat on the arm of the sofa, swaying slightly as if he might fly off in either direction at any moment. He talked with his hands, his arms, his eyes, eyebrows, cheeks and nose as well as his lips. All were in constant motion. His legs swung now and then to show just how animated he had become, how full of life, and possibility, and promise. 'Just a reminder,' he said, waving lavishly at the screen. 'Just a reminder of what we leave behind. Of course, Shahana was a bundle of nerves and she is very highly strung and it's not surprising that she decided, as it were, to show her heels, but look where it got her and where we are going . . .'

Shahana was taking a bath and Bibi was sitting on the side of the bath, keeping an eye on her sister.

Nazneen looked at her husband. He smiled at her as he talked, but he would not halt the words.

'A colleague from Kempton Kars is coming to collect us. At first when I met him I considered him what you could call an ignorant type, and actually he is, more or less, ignorant type but he is a good-hearted man. As they say in English,
salt of the earth.
Do you know what it is?'

'It's very close to the time . . .'

His face bubbled and dimpled. 'I know, I know, how exciting it is! Shall we check the tickets and the passports for the last time? We'll check them again at the airport, I expect, and then they will put stamps all over them and . . .'

'I should have said this before.' Nazneen looked at her hands.

Chanu stood up. He dusted down his trousers, his best blue polyester-cotton mix that came with the pale blue and beige toned-in belt. He walked over to the television. His steps were light and quick; more hop and skip than walk. 'Let's turn it off. Essentially, watching that is looking backwards. Let us look forwards from now on. When we move to the bungalow, your sister will come to live with us. Would you like that?' He replaced the label on the television screen:
Auction.
He crossed the room again. Now he was practically dancing. 'Of course you would. Think of it! Reunited with Hasina, the girls with their aunt, holidays in Cox's Bazaar, maybe the girls would like a little trip to the Sundarbans. They could see a real Bengal Tiger. Ha! Ha, ha. Nazneen? Ha!'

She stood up and went to him and they were very close, there in the channel between the sofa and the armchair. She lifted her hand and placed it on his cheek. He pushed his face against her palm and kissed it with great and very grave tenderness. His neck began to wilt and inch by inch his head drooped lower. She held his face, hard, as if staunching a wound, and put her other arm around him.

'You see,' he said, and he mumbled it inside her palm. 'All these years I dreamed of going home a Big Man. Only now, when it's nearly finished for me, I realized what is important. As long as I have my family with me, my wife, my daughters, I am as strong as any man alive.'

He rested his forehead on her shoulder. A sigh shook his body. She pulled him in a little closer.

'What is all this Big Man?' She whispered in his ear. Sadness crushed her chest. It pressed everything out of her and filled the hollows of her bones. 'What is all this Strong Man? Do you think that is why I love you? Is that what there is in you, to be loved?'

His tears scarred her hand.

'You're coming with me, then? You'll come?'

'No,' she breathed. She lifted his head and looked into his face. It was dented and swollen, almost out of recognition. 'I can't go with you,' she said.

'I can't stay,' said Chanu, and they clung to each other inside a sadness that went beyond words and tears, beyond that place, those causes and consequences, and became a part of their breath, their marrow, to travel with them from now to wherever they went.

She could not sleep. She got up in the night and went to the kitchen. Inside a box marked 'Dr Azad' was all the food they had not eaten up. Nazneen searched for the chopping board. She found her frying pan, a saucepan, knives, spices, onions and red lentils. She washed the lentils, fished out the stones, covered them with water and set the pan to boil. The ladle had vanished, but she retrieved a large spoon and skimmed off the froth and poured it into the sink. She chopped onion, garlic and ginger, dropped a portion into the lentils and put the rest in the frying pan with some oil. A teaspoon of cumin, a pinch of turmeric and some chilli went into the pot. When the onion started to turn, she split eight cardamoms with her teeth to release the little black seeds and threw them into the frying pan. She sprinkled on a few cloves, three bay leaves and some coriander seeds. The spices began to catch and gave off their round and intricate smell. It was a scent that made all others flat; it existed in spheres, the others in thin circles. Nazneen leaned over the frying pan. The coriander seeds began to jump. She lowered the heat. She pushed aside a box to make more space on the work surface, and there was the photograph.

Chanu with his stringy calves sticking out from oversized red shorts which dangled beneath an outsize belly. The girls tucked up in his armpits. Shahana in her dark green kameez and Bibi in pink, their expressions somewhere between Dutiful Daughter and Hostage.

Nazneen rested the picture against the tiles. She looked at the clock. She looked out of the window.

Chanu had called his daughters. 'There has been a change of plan.' He rubbed his face with his palms, getting the blood to flow again. 'I have suggested, and your mother has agreed, that the three of you come later.' He weighed his stomach and slapped it around a little. He cleared his throat and this time the obstruction seemed genuine; it brought tears to his eyes. 'I'll go on ahead now, clear – ahem – the path.'