No New Land (17 page)

Jamal was quickly becoming a big success as a lawyer. His cases were getting to be known. And there were hordes of people seeking immigration advice, people trying to bring families into Canada. Many of his clients were businessmen who could afford to pay thousands of dollars. People who were not his type, he reminded Nanji. “Wait,” he said to his friend, reiterating an old promise, “wait until
I’ve made my millions. Then I’ll do something great.” But then it could be too late, thought Nanji to himself, and immediately censured himself for becoming a grapeless fox.

Nasim-Nancy was getting restless. In her home, she would simply have fallen asleep on the rug.

“We should come more often now,” she began, with a look at her husband.

He took the cue, they stood up to leave.

“You were going to tell me about Nurdin,” said Nanji, standing up.

“Ah, yes. Listen to this. Our friend was seen at a peep show.”

“You must be kidding. Are you sure? Where?”

“Yonge Street, where else? My client works there – and knows him.”

“Nice clients you have.”

“At least they work. Well, what do you have to say to that?”

“I don’t know. Once he asked me if eating pork could change one’s character.”

“So our Mr. Lalani is being tempted by this devil of a world. You think we should warn him and save his soul?”

They were at the door. There was that look in Jamal’s eyes, sizing you up, and a shadow of a smile on his wide mouth.

“N-no. He’s his own man.”

His own man. And the kids and Zera? But Nurdin deserved a chance to find his own way, Nanji figured. Even if he risked hurting himself.

Nurdin Lalani had once been enthusiastic about his new home – the setting up, the new possibilities, the children’s future. Even the hardships gave a romantic aspect to the whole endeavour. But no more, he thought. He found it difficult to set his heart on his home. It seemed drawn out
there
– out the balcony, across the valley, and towards the city.…

Gone were the days of fullness of heart, the sense of wholeness at having children. Time was when it was children that brought a man rushing home. From work. From travels. But this country had taken his children away, and he felt distanced, rejected by them. Especially the girl.

There were times when, he was sure, she despised him. For what he was, unsophisticated, uneducated, a peon. For the crime of being her father when he wasn’t anything like what she had in mind. She was ashamed of this little Paki-shitty-stan of Don Mills, as she called it. She didn’t belong here, she would pull herself out of this condition: everything about her attitude suggested that. She would rise to where they had neither the courage nor the ability to reach. Where had she picked up this abrasiveness, this shrillness, this hatred of her origins? “I will be president of
IBM
,” she would announce, more to taunt, he believed, than anything else. “But you want to do pharmacy,” he once ventured. “Okay, president of Dupont Chemicals,” she retorted. “The president of Dupont is probably someone already called Dupont,” said Nanji, who was at the table.

One day, when she was younger, Nurdin had gone to her school to pick up her grades. A single
B
had bothered him, though he could have lived with it. But she would have sulked all day, so he went to talk to her teacher. “It’s all right,” she said. “It’s a course that doesn’t matter.” “Even then,” he said. She changed it. Then, as he was leaving, she called, “Bye, doctor.” There was no one else there, he stopped in his tracks and turned around. She saw the look on his face and said, “What’s the matter, aren’t you a doctor?” “No,” he replied. “Well, Fatima always talks about her doctor father.” That was one of the few wringers their little Fatima had put them through.

He was grateful to Nanji for having made that remark, defusing the situation. She was in awe of
Nanji. How much so, Nanji himself wasn’t aware of, being under the impression that her wearing dresses now and more fashionable clothes meant she no longer thought much of him. But that remark of his had cut her to the quick.

Always in a hurry, she had skipped a year in high school and had applied to several universities. Soon she would be off, and glad to be away. She would never miss her father. She would mellow surely, but not before she had gone through a few more years of life … quite a few more. Nurdin always found it unfair that although she would laugh at her mother, she still liked her. Because her mother had been a student and a teacher. That was one more thing against him, he had brought her mother to
this
.

Then there was Hanif, a little monkey until recently, who had caused no end of embarrassments. His voice had started to change, and he had shot up as tall as his sister and was still growing. She would need him. He was the stronger of the two and not only physically. Hanif was a good boy. He had respect and he was quietly spoken. But he didn’t really need anybody. He liked to talk to Nanji, though, whom he called Eeyore. He would seek out Nanji and get him talking. And then afterwards, feeling his sister’s envy, he would talk about what Eeyore had said.

They were waiting for the Master, Missionary, whose departure from Dar was imminent. He was waiting for tickets and passports and foreign exchange, all to be acquired illegally for him by Nurdin’s own younger brother, Shamshu. One brother making millions in the diamond business, the other making his – so Nurdin had heard – in the black market. Always he, Nurdin, the middle one, neither here nor there.

He was sitting in his armchair, looking out; Zera was on the phone making one of numerous arrangements for Missionary; in the distance, in front of him, the CN Tower blinked constantly in the darkness. At times like these, all to himself, he would on occasion think of the old days … of his stern old father who had terrified him so much … of his brothers and sisters and the family … of his schooldays … of his buddy, Charles, and the days and nights they spent in the forest together on their way to sell Bata shoes. Charles was the only person he’d come really close to, in his life there, to whom he opened his heart. And he a black man. Those times in the forest, on the road, were what he treasured most out of his memories. They were moments he could truly call all his own.

There was one scene that came vividly to his mind, often, when he sat in his armchair, watched the CN Tower, and let his mind wander. It took place one midafternoon. He and Charles had cooked some maizemeal and beans under an ancient tree, and, while eating, quiet and absorbed, something had made them both look up. They saw an eerie sight
that shattered their peace, that sent a shiver up Nurdin’s spine. They were being watched. Some fifty yards away stood a group of people, black people in rags, in loose formation. Looking strange in the distance, waiting and watching, silent and intimidating … until suddenly the details of the men, women, and children registered horribly, in Nurdin’s mind. Thin, emaciated, the women with sagging breasts and exhausted looks; the children with flies buzzing around their noses, eyelids, and sores; old, pathetic grey-haired men shorn of all dignity – all patiently waiting. From time to time someone would go to take a drink from a muddy puddle. The area was suffering a drought, he recalled. Nauseated, feeling the hungry eyes on every morsel of food he tried to raise to his mouth or swallow, he could not finish the meal. And finally, when he and Charles walked up to the dump to throw the leftovers, they were surrounded by a swarm of children begging for the remains. To this day he could not recall what he had done. Perhaps he’d let his plate be snatched away by the nearest and fastest pair of hands. It was a memory that tugged at his heart.

In Toronto’s Dar immigrant gatherings it was considered positively uncouth to recall with any seriousness that previous life. Not quite realizing this, he had on one or two occasions attempted to point out a minute detail, something precious that brought out the nuance of a life once lived, only to be scorned by the grinning mouth of his sister-in-law, This-Is-Canada Roshan. Of course, the Shamsis of Dar had recreated their community life in Toronto:
the mosques, the neighbourhoods, the clubs, and the associations. They even had the Girl Guides, with the same troop leaders as in Dar. But no Boy Scouts: some things were different. That was the whole crux of the matter now. Their Dar, however close they tried to make it to the original, was not quite the same. Rushing to mosque after work in your Chevy, through ice and slush, for a ceremony organized in a school gym, dumping your coats on a four-foot mound of other coats and throwing your shoes and boots among the several hundred other pairs – and then afterwards scrambling to retrieve them – was not the same as strolling to your own domed, clock-towered mosque fresh after a bath.

More than this – more than appearances – the sparkle was missing. That intangible that lights up the atmosphere – the spirit, perhaps – was missing, as everyone, even Roshan This-Is-Canada acknowledged. All this said was that they, themselves, waiting for their master, Missionary, to come and reinforce their faiths, were also not quite the same.

And he, how much had he changed? Had he changed enough … and for what purpose? Out (the balcony and across the valley his thoughts flew, to her.

He had gone early this time to Sushila so he could be there a little longer. As he turned onto her street and approached the market, he saw her take a momentary
glance down from the first-floor window and then withdraw. He walked up the ancient wooden stairs at the side of the two-storey building. They made an incredible racket. The door upstairs was unlatched, as he expected, and he walked in. She had gone back into the bedroom and he sat down in the living room to wait. Moments later she appeared at the doorway between the two rooms, in the midst of draping a sari around her. There was a safety pin between her lips. The sari was green and white, the blouse a dark green, opaque. Holding the folds in place at her waist with one hand, she raised the other to take the pin. Already, a little wet patch in the armpit. From this sideways pose she looked angular, the neck taut, the bun of hair small and hard at the back. Strands of white above the ear. Not a word yet exchanged between them. He had helped himself to the tea from the waiting pot.

An exclamation,
tch
, then the folds loosened, the pin went back between the lips, the freed hand arrived too late to prevent the sari from unwinding by the loose end. The slip, opaque, of the same material as the blouse.

The sari enhances the hips, really gives shape to a woman, he thought, watching her closely.

The process was repeated, and when she had wound the sari round the waist and hips, she said, “Nurdin, I think you’ll have to come and help me with this pin.”

His teacup did a nervous tattoo on the saucer and he firmly pressed them together.

“It’s okay. I got it.” She looked up brightly, coming into the living room finally, walking gracefully, the sari in place. “It’s not easy to put on, you know. You men have it easy.”

“But it’s worth the trouble. It looks good.”

There was a freedom in her, a wholeness, a self-sufficiency. Drudgery had not destroyed her charm, and here she was, almost intact. From such a woman you can learn much. With someone like her you could do anything, not be afraid to go anywhere. He realized the illegitimacy of the thought, the hidden desire it contained.

“What are you thinking?”

“I am thinking how different you are from other women.”

“When you’re a widow you learn to cope.”

“Don’t you get lonely … when your daughter is away?”

“Yes. I tried to gas myself once … with my daughter. In London.”

“What happened then?”

“I woke up. Found her looking out of the window at the snow falling. Christmas Eve. For some, God comes down on that night bearing gifts. For others, there’s nothing in the world. I’ve learned to live with myself, but I enjoy company, as you can see.”

He was silent. It was as if he had taken a deep dive underwater and come up a little dazed. He wondered how much more there was to her.

“You asked the wrong question,” she said, at length. “Tell you what. Let’s go downstairs. I want
to do some shopping. I’ve invited some people for dinner.”