Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (20 page)

Read Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel Online

Authors: Samina Ali

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel
13.84Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
Zeba asked the couple inside, and though I had thought she would lead them into the inner part of the house and seat them on the
takat
the family used during the day, she instead seated them in the
divan
, the room for guests. My mother-in-law and uncle had known each other since childhood, so I understood these formalities centered around me. The two were no longer old friends but new in-laws.
Nafiza served chai, then sat on the floor by the door, out of my sight, though I could feel her eagerly listening. Cockroaches, that was what servants were, moving about the walls of things, living off the muck of our lives. It was not in her capacity to understand she was doing me in.
Ameera Auntie leaned forward to peek into the main room, at Zeba and Ibrahim’s
takat,
then shot me that coy smile I had seen her use with Dad at the
walima
dinner. I noticed her lips were tinted a blushing pink. “Where is your husband?” she asked me. “I haven’t seen him since the wedding. He looked so handsome in his
shamlah,
I was surprised at myself for not having noticed before.” She cleared her throat. “Noticed him, I mean.”
Taqi Mamu was impatiently drumming his fingers against his cup, already staring out the window. He wanted to go.
Such matters were for the women of the house
, that was what he had said long ago when, in protest to this marriage, I had locked myself in their bedroom. Would I buckle again?
I said, “He tutors every day.”
Her frail hand went to her breast. “Tutors! Does he know I teach? One day I’ll have to talk to him about his tutoring. Students nowadays can be so difficult. There is this strange … dullness about them.”
“Why should they study?” Taqi Mamu grumbled, not taking his eyes from the window. “What will it get them? Hindus get all the jobs,
all the seats at colleges. Even a harijan is more valuable than a Muslim. This country is trying to erase us.”
Ameera Auntie gently tapped his arm. “Remember why we have come,” she whispered.
Zeba set her chai on the table and said, “Taqi Bhai, you look exactly like your father, but you could he no more different. What would he say if he could hear you speaking like that?”
Taqi Mamu turned to her, and his nostrils flared even more. “My father made a great mistake by not taking his family to Pakistan. We would have been much better off there. Look at us now. Elections are coming up, do you think it matters which party is elected? No one will bother about us. We’re invisible.” He mumbled something to his wife and rose, straightening his button-down shirt as he walked out. Through the window, I could see him standing by the front gates, his back to us as he smoked again.
“Ruling parties rule for themselves,” Zeba said to Ameera Auntie. “They don’t bother about the public, they just swindle as much money as possible in the five years of office—at least, that is what my husband says. Corruption and
rish’wat
,” bribes. She smoothed her
duppatta
and stared up at the only thing that adorned this room, a round plaque with Allah Mohammed scrawled across the center. God, the only thing she was really sure of outside these walls.
Ameera Auntie set down her tea, then motioned for Nafiza to come fetch the empty cups. Nafiza didn’t move. My aunt said, “You must forgive my husband. He’s just returned from NagarJuna Sagar. He becomes like this every time he goes.”
Taqi Mamu stuck his head through the window and spoke more forcefully than I had ever heard. “For eight years I have been fighting. It’s my father’s land, my land.
Ar’re,
they go and build this immense dam there, it’s like a corner of the sky has fallen into the Krishna River. And all these tourists picnicking on what rightfully belongs to me, and you know what they offer? Two
lakh
. Two
lakh
for five hundred acres of that land! The house we own in Vijayanagar is worth
twice that. This plot next to your house, which is weeds, not a rich jungle, is worth more. They take me for a fool!”
“I’m telling him to take it,” Ameera Auntie said. Then she turned to him and spoke as slowly as I imagined she would before a classroom, her hand tapping the chair’s arm. “The money is not what matters. What matters is that they have acknowledged that it belongs to you. That is what is important.”
Taqi Mama grimaced before he ducked out the window again. “I’m walking home,” he said over his shoulder as he unlocked the gates. “The largest masonry dam in the world,” he called out, mocking whoever had told him, then went on to talk to himself in that way Amme did. “
Ar’re,
that’s not a dam. It’s Partition. That is what Partition looks like.” His words grew fainter as he moved farther away from the house, the diminishing grumbling like Sameer’s motorbike pulling away.
“Have you been there?” Ameera Auntie asked me. “They have cottages for honeymooners. It might help Sameer to relax.”
So there it was, the opening to why she had come, like the head of a king cobra my uncle used to see in that very jungle, poking up from between tangled roots.
Zeba shook her head. “My daughter returning to her ancestral land as a tourist! Her grandfather wouldn’t even approve.”
“But she is a tourist here, in Hyderabad. She has not come here to live.”
Zeba raised her chin in that way she had when Sameer threw down his prayer cap. She said, “Maybe she will stay this time, now that she has a home.”
 
 
AMEERA AUNTIE ASKED me to walk her to the car, and when she noticed Nafiza tagging along, she stopped her in the courtyard and said, “There is no reason for you to come, Nafiza. You and I have already had our private talk.”
“
Memsa’ab,
” Nafiza said, startled, and even in the shade of the trees, I could see her small face growing darker. “You no taking child away in car?”
Ameera Auntie blinked at her, lashes short and pointy. “Go back to the house, Nafiza. Do the work you were sent here to do, nothing more.”
“Yes,
memsa’ab,
” my nanny said in her most formal tone. But as soon as Ameera Auntie turned for the gates, she grabbed my elbow and whispered, “I no tell she about you, Layla-bebe, only about the boy. I no betray you.”
Ameera Auntie shooed her away and led me out to the street, closing the gates behind us. She leaned up against her car, arms crossed over her slender chest. Sick as she was, she was one of the only women I had ever seen driving here. She said, “Before I came, I did not know in what condition I would find you. I wondered if you had been the one to send Nafiza, asking through her to return home. Now, my heart is relieved. You seem happy here … in spite of all.”
Happy, the one word could not contain how I felt. For so long, I had been unwanted in Amme’s home, a
shai’tan
needing to be exorcised. Now, finally, I was a daughter, seen and touched, being urged to stay. My presence already missed. Why would I go back to being the ill-fated daughter?
“My in-laws don’t call me Bahu,” I said, Daughter-in-Law. “They say Beti,” Daughter. “Feroz calls me Bhabhi. And I am, of course, Sameer’s
bevi
. In this home, I have a place, I belong.”
“A
bevi,
” she repeated as she reached in through the open window for her sunglasses. She put them on, wide and thick and red, her face made more slim. “I am glad you know there is more than just
one
duty in being a wife. It is good to see you are no longer behaving as a child, Layla. You will better understand the decision we have made, see how it will benefit you. After Nafiza came to me, your
mamu
and I went to your Abu Uncle’s and Asma Kala’s. The four of us agree you have done right to stay on with Sameer—though we do regret you did not tell Zeba the truth. Still, we’ve decided not to tell your
amme
either, she already
has so many … sorrows. And she may not fully understand, being married to a man like your father.” Her gaze faltered and she cleared her throat, and I thought I saw a rush of blood rise up in her again, the memory of him at the
walima
dinner, his light eyes on her.
She began fingering her sari’s pleats. “Remember what I told you at your
mun-jay
ceremony, Layla. You’ve got to help him out, and while he’s learning, you’ve got to be patient. These young Indian boys, no matter how strong they look outside, inside they are scared. This is not America, where girls and boys interact and date, do everything before marriage then grow bored of each other by the time they are married. Here, we marry two young people and expect them to suddenly have emotions for one another. What no one tells you is that it takes time. I do not have to lecture you in biology, Layla, as though you were an innocent student of mine, but let me say that even for men, sometimes, it is a matter of feeling. Beta, he has probably not been with anyone else. To him, you are an American woman. He probably thinks he must be like … like Rambo! Do you see why he would feel nervous, even fear? Tell me,” she said, leaning toward me, my face and torso caught in her lenses, looking so small. “Has he made no move toward you at all?”
He had made moves, and they weren’t inexperienced, nor jittery and nervous. Indeed, if we hadn’t had intercourse these past couple of nights, it was merely because he was too relaxed after I’d put him into my mouth—but how to explain that to my aunt, the trick I had learned to slowly uncoil my husband, luring him to me day by day. Just as a bride could slowly be possessed over the five wedding days, I was taking possession of my bridegroom in increments.
She looked toward the front gates to make sure no one was there before she whispered, “When you go to Madras, get him drunk. Don’t laugh, Layla, this is a serious matter for men. Your Abu Uncle said that when he first got married, he couldn’t go near your aunt for two months! Two months! Finally, she had a servant bring some
tadhi.
” She grinned, not caring to hide behind her
pallow,
and it was the first time I had seen her entire face flush in enjoyment. She almost looked
healthy. “He never left her alone after that. A taste of us, that’s all they need.”
Yes, a taste, but not of blood.
She patted my shoulder and got into the car, starting it up. I backed away to give her the space to turn the fat thing around, when she crooked her finger and invited me to come near. I leaned in through her window, noticing the thick smell of vinyl.
“The blind
alim
told your uncle the leg injury is up by the hip, is this true?”
I nodded. “The leg is … weaker than the other,” I said, somehow feeling Sameer’s shame myself.
She bit her lower lip. “Beta,” she said, taking on the manner she did when she used to tutor me in Urdu. It meant there was only one way to correctly read what was before us. “If nothing changes in Madras, then we all agree he should be taken to a doctor. Your Abu Uncle thinks … well, you see, the injury is so close to his … you know what I am saying. Maybe it has made him … useless to women.” She slapped her palms together, rotating them around in the gesture the eunuch
hijras
made.
 
 
THE FOLLOWING AFTERNOON, Zeba and I knelt side by side in the
ashur-khana,
each of us on a small velvet prayer rug, the incense smoke burning my eyes and making them water. I had to hold one shut as I tried to read the Qur’an. She was letting me recite alone, interfering only when I mixed up a letter—
kaf
for
ghaf, ra for zha
, just one strike here, one dot there made all the difference in the meaning of the word. She was a much more patient teacher than Ameera Auntie had ever been.
I was still making my way through the
surah,
chapter, on Joseph.
And when they took Joseph with them, they decided to cast him into a dark pit. We addressed him saying, “You shall tell them of all this when they will not know you.”
At nightfall they returned weeping to their father. They said: “We went racing and left Joseph with our goods. The wolf devoured him” …
And a caravan passed by, who sent their waterman to the pit. And when he had let down his pail, he cried: “Rejoice! A boy!”
They took Joseph and concealed him among their goods. But Allah knew what they did. They sold him for a trifling price, for a few pieces of silver. They cared nothing for him.
The Egyptian who brought him home said to his wife: “Use him kindly. He may prove useful to us, or we may adopt him as our son.”
Zeba placed a hand over mine to stop me from going further. She read aloud the Urdu translation, then said, “What will it take to keep you here, in my home?”
She was staring up at the facing wall, three religious plaques one on top of the other. In the creases along her broad cheekbones, the glassy shine of tears. She seemed more in silent prayer with Allah than in conversation with me, and I could see from the stillness of her heavy chest, breath abated, that for her, to be granted what she was asking would be a miracle.
I said, “Growing up, it was always so confusing to be in both places. I would go to school there and all the kids would point and say, ‘Hey look, the Indian girl is back.’ Then I’d suddenly be dropped into school here, and the girls would say, ‘The American is back.’ I never fit in. I could never make friends—I was different from everyone, and I would be leaving again in six months. Who wanted a friend like that? I told Amme to let me stay here, in one place. I told her that if she needed to return to the U.S., I could go live with Henna. Mummy,” I said, surprising myself, though she did not even blink, our relationship, to her, no matter what I called her, remaining the same. “America seems very far away right now. I would be happy to go on living here.”

Other books

The Tracker by Mary Burton
Six Sagas of Adventure by Ben Waggoner (trans)
Spy to the Rescue by Jonathan Bernstein
Garden of Desire: 1 by Devlin, Delilah
Pox by Michael Willrich
Ship of Ghosts by James D. Hornfischer