Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (2 page)

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Authors: Samina Ali

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel
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“How many other visitors does he have?” Amme asked.
“Only three people. He says he’ll seat us in the bedroom until they leave, but we have to be quick. It’s late already and getting time for his prayers.”
“Let’s go then,” she said, turning to me.
I breathed in as I stepped out of the car. The kids laughed and ran away.
“Come on, come on. Quickly,” Abu Uncle said, waving to me. Amme was already racing through the alley, her head down. A black ghost against the white walls. I followed my uncle. We passed several open doors and windows, and from behind the curtains, I saw half faces, eyes, watching us pass. I was thankful for the chador and how invisible I became inside it.
Behind us, Ahmed began yelling at the kids, while ahead, the alley curved, then led to the same monotony on the other side of the bend. Rows of concrete. The rain continued to fall. Hardly a breeze back here and only the stink of sharp urine and dull spices. The hem of my veil flapped against my ankles. Our sandals skidded on the wet cobblestones and echoed. Water pooled between rocks. One eye, half lips, stones. The rough heels of Abu Uncle’s sandaled feet. That was all I saw. I quickly lost my breath, then my foot caught and I slipped. I fell forward and a hot cramp pierced through my stomach. Abu Uncle grabbed my arm. His thumbnail jabbed into my flesh and I shrugged him away.
“Sorry,” I said through the chador. I pressed my palm against my abdomen to soothe it, thankful that neither he nor Amme could see me doing this.
“Careful,” he said.
I nodded, and we rushed forward again. I didn’t understand this rush. I felt simultaneously inside my body, dashing through this narrowing canyon, and outside it, looking at the three of us, our heads down, our faces serious, as we prayed that this
alim
could make the demon
go away. Something about India, its collapse of walls between the spiritual and the material, the mundane and the profane, made anything seem possible. Even devils. Especially devils. Why else would I have done such things in Minneapolis—at the last minute, right before the wedding—when I had never been tempted to do them before? Secretly exposing forbidden skin. Being with an American man. Deliberately giving him what I’d always been warned didn’t belong to me, but to my future husband. On the wedding night, when Sameer discovered what I’d done, certainly he would throw me out. The wedding had to be stopped before that could happen.
I ran forward and grabbed Amme’s small hand. She gave me a startled look, but didn’t let go. Together, we trailed behind Abu Uncle.
When we arrived at a blue door, my uncle knocked lightly and a woman immediately opened it. She wore a faded sari, its torn edge wrapped around her head as a scarf, the end tight between her teeth. Her lashes were straight and pointy, her hands wrinkled, blue veins branching through bony fingers. She led us inside. We entered an inner courtyard and I saw how large the homes were. They ran narrow and deep. The courtyard was also cobblestone, and a water well stood at its center, an empty bucket on its stone rim. Two mourning doves perched on the bucket and they tilted their heads to see us. On the opposite side of the doorway, the main house, designed like most old houses, with three walls only, the fourth side opening to this inner courtyard.
In the living room, a bearded old man sat on a
takat
, a wooden bed, his unblinking eyes staring off into the distance. On the floor around him sat three veiled women. They wore the old-style burkhas with mesh face coverings cast back to reveal their features, and not the more fashionable Iranian chadors that Amme and I did, so I guessed they were poor. One held a crying baby in her arms. The women turned our way, revealing kohl-lined eyes, their cheeks smudged black, and I knew they too had been crying. I stared back at them as I followed the old lady into a separate room. Inside, a simple bed and a wardrobe. A clock on the wall read a quarter to five, but the pendulum was not moving. Arbitrary time.
“I am Noor. When they have gone, I will call you in,” the old woman said, standing by the door.
“Thank you,” Abu Uncle and Amme said together.
“Would you like something to drink? Something cold or some hot tea?”
Abu Uncle asked for water, Amme for chai, and I declined, feeling it had been a strange offer to begin with. This wasn’t, after all, a social visit.
 
 
MY UNCLE WHISPERED assurances to Amme and she nodded in response. Although her eyes looked worried, she wasn’t crying. Ten years ago, she had locked herself in her room and mourned. A month later, she emerged, skinnier, her hands shaky, her eyelids dark, but she hadn’t wept since. She no longer had reason to. For her, life was over. Now she sat hunched, nodding to Abu Uncle’s words, and glanced at me every now and then—only to turn away when I met her gaze. Although we had come to various
alims
before, each time, in fact, when we returned from the U.S., those visits had been more ritual than sincere. This time, with my nightmares and steady menstrual bleeding, the visit was in earnest, and Amme understood this.
I watched the door, waiting for Noor to return and wishing I could see what was happening outside. I worried about the baby, hardly the length of my forearm, because I thought it must be ill. Sometimes, when a child became sick, villagers and poor mothers came to these mystics rather than seeking conventional doctors.
Alims
offered hope, so people sought them out. Faith healers, exorcists, practitioners of black magic, miracle workers, whatever we needed, the
alim
became, all you had to do was ask—and put forth some money. We all bought our dreams in different ways.
The old woman entered the room with a small bamboo tray. On it was a short glass of water and a white cup of steaming chai.
“You don’t want anything?” she asked me.
“Nothing,” I said, walking to the open door and peeking out from
behind the curtain. The three women still sat in a semicircle around the old
alim
. One now held up the baby, her arms stretched and her elbows wrinkled, so the child hung crying under the man’s nose. The
alim
stopped rocking, closed his eyes, and began sniffing the boy. The other two women wiped their faces, their sloped backs still shaking with sobs. The child’s mother rested her head against one raised arm. Exhausted, I was sure, for this was the second time she had to give her baby life. Yet what real mother would let her baby die? Even Amme said she would rather kill herself than see me injured. Now that I was sick, she begged Allah to place in her own body what was inside mine. This was her way of blessing me.
The
alim
suddenly opened his eyes and looked my way. His one blue eye took me in while the other continued to stare at the child. I pulled the curtain shut and hurried back into the bedroom.
“Why do you look so scared?” Abu Uncle asked, smiling. He sat erect, palms on his thighs, and his stomach bulged, pushing against the shirt buttons.
I went to the
takat
and sat next to Amme. She had her face uncovered as she sipped her tea, and I saw again the straight nose and thin lips that were considered beautiful here, features I did not have. I resembled Dad, round in face, eyes, nose, and full lips. But, as he always said, as a man he carried his features well. I, on the other hand, would always be ugly.
“I think the
alim
saw me,” I said.
Noor laughed. “The
alim
sees everyone. You don’t need to be standing by the door for that.” The servant stood with one hand on her hip, waiting to take away the empty dishes. She was thin and small, and her sari-
pallow
had fallen back some to expose gray hair. Below her blue nylon sari, she was wearing a white petticoat rather than a matching blue one, so the white background glared, making it hard to see the designs on the sari itself.
“He has blue eyes,” I said.
“He’s blind.”
“Blind?”
“When he was a child, he was hit by a bus. He flew some twenty feet, they say, and landed on his head. It split open. Then he died for fifteen minutes.” She paused, nodding emphatically. “When he came back to this world, he was blind. But he began to see in other ways, and, one day, he began to heal.”
My mother and uncle were visibly impressed with the story, and Abu Uncle raised his hands and together they whispered,
“Alhum-du-illah
,” Allah be praised. Then my uncle elbowed Amme and raised his brows, silently saying, Now aren’t you glad I brought you to see him? Amme simply turned to Noor and said the
alim
had an enviable kismet, for she, too, would like to come back to life and begin healing.
I snorted. After all, when a person stops breathing for that long, if he returns it’s with brain damage, not miraculous powers.
The old woman grinned. “You have come from far away?” she asked Amme. “Your daughter has an accent.”
“America,” Amme said.
“It’s good she can speak Urdu at all. Most children who go there forget everything. Today, everyone wants to be modern.”
“Not my daughter,” Amme said. “We’ve taught her well.”
“What’s wrong with the baby?” I asked, interrupting them.
The servant looked at me strangely, her hand still on her hip. The empty tray was held flat against her leg. “The baby’s sick,” she finally said.
“They should take him to a doctor.”
“They have already tried. Is your daughter a skeptic?” she asked Amme.
Amme smiled as she sipped her tea. Abu Uncle handed the empty glass back to Noor. She took it, two of her fingers inside the rim.
“She’s just a child,” Amme said. “What does she know?”
The old servant nodded but continued to scrutinize me. I became nervous and began to watch Amme drink her tea. Her lipstick had faded and vertical lines were etched on her lips. She was growing prematurely old and I blamed Dad for this. When she had finished, she handed the cup and saucer to the woman. The cup had a crescent
moon on its rim from her lipstick. Noor placed these empty dishes back on her tray and walked to the door. Before she went out, she turned to me.
“A child in your position shouldn’t doubt people who can help you,” she said. “You may have come from America, but we backward people also know some things.” She stood by the door, as though waiting for my mother or uncle to reprimand her. When neither did, she went on. “My name is Noor, which means light, you understand? I may not be able to see beyond what is visible, like my blind husband can, but I know many things. One thing I know, child, is that you doubt those people you can trust. And those who will betray you are your best friends. You see with only your eyes, child, so you see nothing. You are the blind one—as blind as your name tells us. Layla. Darkness. Learn to see with all of yourself, and from the eyes of those around you and those who came before you. Until then, you will always be misguided.” She raised her chin and left.
“You’re a good one,” I said to Amme. “Why didn’t you say anything to her?”
“What could I say?”
“I thought she was the servant,” I said, shaking my head. “Why is she wearing such a shabby sari?”
“Why should she dress up to walk around the house?”
“Just forget it,” Abu Uncle hushed us. “Both of you are just nervous. The
alim
will take care of everything, I promise.” He set his hand on Amme’s arm, softly reassuring her again, “The wedding will go on, Apa,” Sister. “There is nothing to fear. What you have been praying for all these years is about to come true. Allah will reward you.”
He looked at me, tilting his head, asking me to comfort her, too. I began pacing. The room was not longer than ten feet, with white cement walls, no windows, and the dead face of that damn clock reflecting my shadow, so I felt trapped, like a black fly buzzing away inside a clear jar, not knowing that everything it sees is actually outside the glass.
Noor’s words had been incisive, as though she had intuited the real
nature of my bleeding and the truth behind those nightmares. I had carried something across the ocean with me this time and kept it hidden from everyone—even from those to whom my condition would have mattered the most. I wondered now if I should come clean. But, in the end, I decided she was wrong. For I didn’t think I could trust such people as
alims
. Indeed, I felt no one, Indian or American, healer or doctor, family or friend, could help me. All their responses seemed predictable. Amme would surely become desperate and unreasonable, locking herself inside a room again and, this time, not come out. My cousin and closest friend, Henna, would retreat even further, making me into a stranger. And Nate would say that now of all times I should be given the space to make my own decisions—as though I hadn’t done so already.
And
alims
would use their sorcery—burning locks of my hair to check the smell, placing a lemon on top of my head to see which way it fell, advising me to sleep with unboiled eggs. Don’t show hair, don’t wear makeup, don’t expose skin. I wasn’t American, after all, so why act like them, why deprive the spirit of morals in such a cruel way? This only attracted demons—and America was full of them. A few prayers, a bath with a gold bangle inside the tub, and my body and spirit would be purified. Then the
alim
would unfold his brown palm. the lines deeply engraved and dusty, and ask for his fee.

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