No New Land (13 page)

Not long after, that summer, Nanji’s girlfriend, as the Lalanis called her in spite of his objections, finally came to Toronto for a visit, with two other friends, and Nanji’s life also took a new turn.

Days before, because Nanji had announced to the Lalanis, the whole of Sixty-nine Rosecliffe seemed abuzz with the news of their arrival. Nanji’s prestige rose – three girls coming to see him from America, there must be something to him. He didn’t show anything of course, not externally, but you could see there was something beneath that calm surface, straining under the excitement, the pressure of a large happiness.

Before they arrived, he had gone looking for supplies: pillows, sleeping bags, blankets, cups, plates – what it takes to convert two rooms into a home. The word passed at Sixty-nine, and feeling the curious, amused, kindly eyes on him in the corridors as he passed with whatever else it was he needed, he would blush.

He wouldn’t have to worry about food, there were enough volunteers for the good cause: he just had to give a few hours’ notice. Zera went to help him clean his quarters. Nurdin went along to give the final word, but actually to see the apartment. The Lalanis had never been invited before, and they could see why. There was a bed, a
TV
, which Fatima and Hanif quickly discovered wasn’t working, an armchair. And books. An attempt had been made to shelve them, but they had long since overrun the solitary shelf and were pouring out of it, in a trail
that bypassed the two heaps on either side of the armchair and ended in another heap at the bed. There was no rug on the floor and there were posters on the wall, with sayings and pictures of people they didn’t recognize.

Nurdin went and sat down on the green padded armchair. A handsome, comfortable thing, wearing the dull gloss of long use. He sank into it and leaned back. “So, you sit in this chair, and the three girls on your lap.” Even Fatima and Hanif couldn’t help laughing.

“I assure you I can do better, I just haven’t got around to it.”

“
When
will you get around to it then?”

“Nurdin,” implored Zera, “go with him and find something, please. Unwanted furniture – Ramju has a table – and look for a rug. Ask the superintendent. Look at the For Sale signs. Go now.”

And magically, in two days, two hours before the girls came, a pleasant apartment was there to greet them. Some of it had been repainted. Even the windowpanes had been cleaned. Nanji had taken the opportunity to get a new bed, buy bright things for the walls, furnish the kitchen. Everything else was on loan, indefinitely.

And when they came, what happy faces, what life they brought with them, what exuberance! It was, apparently, a long-awaited reunion, not only for Nanji but also for the girls, who had come from different cities. The squeals of joy they gave on seeing him, the hugging in the open. Nurdin had been
with Nanji when the girls arrived, in a taxi, and had witnessed somewhat embarrassedly their easy manner. How you wish you were young again, oh how you’d like to start afresh. Nanji was puffed up like a peacock. And why not. Three girls had come just to be with him in his apartment. They wined and dined – of the wine Nurdin was certain though he did not tell Zera. They went out, they came late and stayed up practically all night consuming samosas and kebabs, chatting and laughing, shouting and squealing. Three days and nights of living free, and then they left on Sunday afternoon. And on that depressing Sunday Nanji came to them, broken.

Before Yasmin left, she had given the message she had come to give: she was marrying. What do you tell a young man whose heart is broken – there will be others? There is no pleasure without pain? “But you said there was nothing,” Zera had said. “Nothing definite, but she always gave hope.… ” “If there was nothing, she wouldn’t come here to tell him, would she,” explained Nurdin to Zera, a little too wisely.

Nanji was loath to return to his apartment, to those rooms now empty, echoing already in such a short time, with memories, and sat up late with the Lalanis. They wanted to retire, but they waited patiently, plying him with hot tea to soothe his pain. Finally he went.

He continued to come, almost every day for a couple of weeks, to talk, be comforted, to be told that she was not worth having, she who had done this to
him. “I will find you a nice girl,” Zera told him. She did show him a few, but he simply shook his head, smiling to show he appreciated the gesture.

Then he stopped coming, embarrassed at having clung to them, having revealed so much to them, such tender spots, and they understood. Once or twice they had had fun at his expense; he had not been amused, they quickly realized. Fatima and Hanif, going their own way with baseball and hockey and their own friends, also had less time for him. Nanji’s worth in their eyes had dipped a little, but they still held him in awe to an extent he was not aware of and were relieved he disappeared so they could think of him as his old self.

For Nurdin Lalani a new life had begun with his job at the Ontario Addiction Centre. With it he had accepted a station in life – not one he believed he deserved, a son of a prominent elder and businessman, but one which would have to do. At least he could say, in mosque and at Sixty-nine, that he had a job downtown. He didn’t have to say precisely what job. “Say manager,” Zera told him. “You do manage supply rooms.”

Romesh’s companionship made the work more tolerable, sometimes even enjoyable, although he had had to get used to the man. Romesh had a way of edging into his confidence, assuming a familiarity,
that had startled him at first. That, and his different idiom and accent.

One day they were having their lunch together. Nurdin noticed something on Romesh’s plate and asked, “Is that a hot dog?”

How could he not have known. Surely that was Satan speaking through him. Romesh cut it in two, neatly, and gave him half. “Like hot dog, but better. Try it.”

He ate a piece and it was good. Even before he had finished swallowing it, as it was going down his gullet, everything inside him was echoing the aftertaste, crying, “Foreign, foreign.” Yet it did nothing to him.

When Romesh returned with a second helping, he had finished his half. Romesh nodded approvingly. “That was sausage.”

“Beef, I hope.”

“No.”

He pretended shock, and Romesh comforted him. “See, you’re the same. Nothing’s happened to you. Forget pork, man, I was not supposed to eat
meat
. Even egg. I’m supposed to think you’re dirty. You think
they
are dirty. Who is right? Superstitions, all.”

The pig, they said, was the most beastly of beasts. It ate garbage and faeces, even its babies, it copulated freely, was incestuous. Wallowed in muck. Eat pig and become a beast. Slowly the bestial traits – cruelty and promiscuity, in one word, godlessness – overcame you. And you became, morally, like
them
. The Canadians.

There were those, claiming to be scientific, who said it’s the diseases the pig carries and the quality of meat, which has long-term effects, which are the reason for the prohibition: the Book has all knowledge for all time. And there was Nanji – who himself drank wine, Nurdin knew, and probably ate pork – who said it’s the discipline that’s important, you’ve been forbidden to do it for whatever reason, and that’s that.

In any case, he, Nurdin, had eaten
it
– he could not make himself name “it” yet – and perhaps that is where the real rot began, inside him.

It was amusing to Nanji, Nurdin’s concern about the effects of pork-eating. It was so obvious he’d tasted pork and was groping for an argument to absolve himself. Zera of course had supplied the standard line, pseudoscience: “Eat pig and become a pig.” But Nurdin had sought an answer from him, Nanji the educated, and Nanji had told the simple truth: eating pork was forbidden by the faith, by God, reasons did not matter. Nurdin had opened his mouth, almost retorted, Have you had pork? But had shut it again, why? Perhaps afraid, he, Nanji, would have asked him the same thing. Then Nurdin asked, “But can it change you, from inside, you know, your character?” He’d been kind and said simply, “No.”

Of course, it depends on what you mean by “change you.” Molecules are the same whether they
are in beef or pork, or even in yourself. If pork has chemicals that alter your mental state, you could find those chemicals elsewhere too. So why pork? No. It is
you
who have changed when you attempt, even think about, eating pork the first time. And once you’ve had it, the first time, tasted that taste so distinct you cannot cheat yourself, you are no longer the same man: something has turned inside you, with a definite click. Unless you go into an orgy of remorse and repentance – and who does, these days? – and perhaps even then you cannot regain what you’ve lost.

So, Nurdin has changed.

They had come to watch the Canada Day fireworks. Parked the car half a mile away and trudged along with the crowd, to the lakeshore, all at Fatima’s insistence. This was the thing to do, act like Canadians, for chrissakes! All this playing cards and chatting and discussing silly topics while glugging tea by the gallon and eating samosas – is not Canadian. Not realizing that most of the Canadians she knew and met were like her, with parents not too different from hers. So, while others of their building celebrated at the eighteenth floor open house, watching fireworks from a distance and perhaps getting a better view of them – and, yes, with tea and samosas, and gossip, and men teasing the women – the Lalanis with Nanji had come to where the action was. Had eaten those fat, luscious french fries and assiduously avoided – Nanji couldn’t help catching Nurdin’s eye – the hot dogs for sale on the sidewalks.

He could remember other fireworks, on Fourths of July, in New York. The two of them, he and “she,”
with a blanket to sit on, a picnic basket with beer, with books to read, waiting patiently for the fireworks. So “with it.” Even then he’d not been too impressed with such displays. He always saw them beforehand, in his mind, exploding into brilliant colours, and not only that, the sparks forming precise patterns and shapes suspended in the atmosphere before fading away. Flags – the Stars and Stripes, the Maple Leaf – rockets, whatever. Instead, they turned out so ordinary. You oohed and aahed at something slightly less mediocre than the previous. But it wasn’t the fireworks he had gone for, he had gone for her. To be with her, his composite “she,” the nemesis, Yasmin.

Across the lake now on the island was another crowd, no less – or more – enthusiastic than they were. The lights were sparser there, as was the crowd, and a large blackness hung behind them. Nanji stared hard at the points of light in the blackness until his eyes watered. Something, not inside, had turned for him, also with a definite click. A phase of life had ended, or would soon end – the warning had been given.

The girls’ visit had been fun. Yasmin, characteristically, had come with piles of tourist literature, the itinerary planned. More or less. Of course she overdid it, would get tired – the first one to do so – and suggest, having made up her mind in any case: “How about calling it quits here.” That love of life and that weakness. You adored her for that, felt tenderness for her, and she needed that. The day trip to Montreal had failed to materialize simply because
the previous night had been too short. And because, so far, there had been too much eating and drinking, a jog through the park was suggested with a sorrowful slap at a belly not quite yet flabby. There followed for Nanji one of his most embarrassing moments, walking through the corridor and then going down in the crowded elevator, a giraffe in bright new shorts in the company of three loud girls in designer track suits. In the pathway he’d looked up to see – just in case – and his fears were confirmed: there were spectators on the balconies.

A large get-together had always been planned for 1984 – a significant reunion in a significant year, that might yet come but looked difficult to pull off. This small one was her accomplishment –
their
accomplishment, to give due credit to the other two girls. A kindness, as he later realized, to him.