BIDESH, A NOVEL

A Thesis

Presented to

The Faculty of Graduate Studies

of

The University of Guelph

by

SHOILEE KHAN

In partial fulfilment of requirements

for the degree of

Master of Fine Arts

August, 2009

© Shoilee Khan, 2009

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would like to express my gratitude to my advisor, Janice Kulyk Keefer, whose gentle guidance and unwavering support made the writing of this novel a truly rewarding experience. Her patience is unmatched and her valuable insight will always be appreciated. I would also like to thank Connie Rooke and Catherine Bush whose efforts in directing the Creative Writing program at the University of Guelph have already had a lasting effect and will continue to be deeply appreciated by future writers.

A sincere thanks to Michael Helm whose valuable writing advice stayed with me long after his fiction workshop concluded. His expert advice is the kind that never goes out of fashion—I know I will continue to rely on what he taught me for years to come. I thank Susan Swan for her feedback during workshops and the time she took to help me explore the shape of my novel. I must also thank Camilla Gibb for her time, effort, and patience while serving as my Mentor during the summer of 2008. Her timely advice helped me realize the true direction of this novel and for that I am very grateful. I also thank Smaro Kamboureli for her time and insight while serving as my second reader. Finally, I thank my fellow classmates for sharing their talent and their positive spirits.

A very special thank you goes out to Professor Colin Hill at the University of Toronto without whose encouragement I would not have considered pursuing graduate studies in literature. His commitment to Canadian literature is truly inspirational and his continued support and academic advice is something I take to heart. I also extend a heartfelt thank you to Professor Jeannine DeLombard whom I looked to as a role model during my years at UofT. Her passion and dedication inspired me to strive harder and her kind advice and support will always be appreciated. I also sincerely thank Professor Guy Allen, director of the Professional Writing program at the University of Toronto Mississauga, for his keen advice and support.

My family and friends I can never thank enough. Their patience and belief in my work have helped me in ways that I cannot repay. In particular I must mention my brother Tanhar for always believing I am smarter than I actually am; Dilwara Parveen Banu and Aditi Mahmud for their love and trust; Anika Bhatti for her patience and support. My parents, Lulu Bilkis Banu and Shahid Khan, above all others, are the reason I was able to complete this work and will continue to pursue what I love.

In conclusion, I recognize that the completion of this work was aided a great deal by the financial assistance provided by the Connie Rooke Scholarship and the University of Guelph Graduate Research Scholarship. For these, I am very grateful.

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Acknowledgements i

Text 1

References 279

11

CHAPTER ONE

In the sun, the jute glistened as if freshly oiled. The barricade, carved by their

father Rahmat, was a new addition to the garden. Raised to protect their mango tree now

heaving with fruit, it was sliced from lengths of bamboo and tied with jute purchased

from Riaj at the Kolshi bazaar for an unreasonable price. The mango tree, its leaves

flipping in the breeze, looked as if it were rising and prostrating itself with every push of

the wind. In its jute-gilded cage of bamboo, the tree looked enormous to Asha, as if its

swooping branches were heaving against the loops and braids their father had spent a

month knotting along the bamboo posts. In the evening, when the light from the hurricane

lamps cast long shadows across the path, Asha thought the barricade a romantic gateway,

its finely crafted arches almost liquid, like ink sketches of the dome of a mosque. In the

midday sun, the bamboo and jute were bright, very solid.

A month ago, when their mother Soniya slammed down her teacup and streaked

down the verandah steps broom in hand, Rahmat had folded his newspaper in half, set it

down on his white and blue wicker chair and followed. From the bedroom window, Asha

had seen the boys skittering over the ledge of the back wall, and dropped her ink bottle

when she saw her father chase after her mother, teacup still steaming in his hand. He

stood in the back courtyard thumbing his chin as Soniya swatted at a tangle of bosti boys

who slid down the trunks, and then down the street, arms full of ripe mangoes. Asha must

have sensed the beginning of something extraordinary, seen it in the gleam of sweat on

her father's upper lip as his wife flung the broom into the air, screaming insults into the

dust. After Soniya had rearranged her shari and tucked the achol into the waistband of her

petticoat, he handed her the teacup, told her it was nice and cool now, easy to sip. Once

1

Soniya settled into her chair on the verandah and dipped back into her embroidery,

Rahmat drifted into the house and changed out of his lungi into a pair of slacks. In a few

moments he was out in the drive fumbling with the door of the Beetle. When Asha

reached the verandah, ink dribbling in long lines down the length of her arm, Soniya was

on her feet watching Rahmat gently pull the door of the Beetle shut.

"Your Abba is a good man, Asha. But he thinks me too severe. Does he know

how much it costs in market for a bushel of mangoes? And how do I make mango achar

with mangoes that have been abused by those boys? I am not a miser, Asha, if those boys

want a mango, I will give them one. But they are not to come leaping into our home to

steal them, those haramjadhas!" Soniya sat down and spread the seam of her achol across

her lap. She clutched at the arms of the chair and glanced over her shoulder. "Men are so

tedious, Asha. They are such trials." Asha scraped at the stripes of ink on her fingers as

the little blue Beetle scuttled its way up the drive, pods of dirt exploding like small

bombs beneath the tires.

Riaj at the Kolshi bazaar thought Rahmat a good man. Everyday for a month,

Rahmat purchased rolls of quality jute from Riaj and loaded them into the trunk of his

Beetle without knocking Riaj around for a better price. When Rahmat poked his head into

the stall, Riaj imagined himself the proprietor of a fixed-price store—like Aarong—

where the customers milled about in quiet contemplation, picked up an item to check its

price, and paid it without question at the counter. For a moment, as Riaj watched Rahmat

wind a length of jute around his finger, he considered how glorious it would be to paint

prices on pieces of board and set them up around the stall. He would paint the numbers in

red. He could siphon a few coins to purchase a small pot of paint from the landlord and

2

he could paint them that very night. The children would help while Madhuri arranged the

finished signs to dry on the roof. Ah, but Madhuri would never allow it. Was he crazy?

Did he think himself some sort of businessman? She would sit in her corner winding jute

into ropes and would probably want to wind the rope around his neck.

"This is quality jute, eh Riaj?" Rahmat patted the jute.

"Always, bhai, always quality. The best in Bangladesh, in fact. I guarantee it."

"Good. Good." Rahmat nodded, dug his fingers into the silken threads. "Yes, this

batch is good, a lovely caramel colour."

"This season's crop was especially good. I can promise you a batch of white

tomorrow. My brother is bringing it in, freshly dried.

"My wife, she embroiders very well. Paints pictures with her thread, she does.

She would appreciate the look of white jute against brown, I am sure." Rahmat placed the

bills into Riaj's hand and nodded. "I will see you tomorrow."

Riaj waved as Rahmat ducked out of the stall into the clamour of the bazaar. He

counted the bills and folded them away into his pocket. Perhaps Madhuri would like

some rui mas tonight. Something new to add to their daily daal and day old rice, yes, she

would like that. Riaj patted the wedge of bills and thought of how pleased Madhuri would

be with him, how she would look up at him from her corner with a small smile and ask

him if he wanted tea now or after dinner. Oh, Madhuri. She would see the fish and would

ask him how much it cost and whether he was crazy. Why did he go and spend so much

on fish they didn't need? Did he know how hard it was to cut a fish that large? How long

it took to clean? He could eat the fish if he was such a rich man, she wouldn't have a bite,

no not her, no one would catch her pretending to be a rich woman, waving her riches in

3

the faces of those less fortunate. Perhaps, Riaj thought, he would wait to buy the fish until

there was a little more saved.

In the mornings, Asha and Laina checked the progress of Rahmat's project from

the rooftop. With each morning, the number of arches multiplied and the barricade grew.

Rahmat was one of the finest architects in Bangladesh, yet this was one of the first

projects he insisted on building from start to finish with his own hands. He woke early

each morning and circled the barricade, hands behind his back, eyes scanning the

hammered posts. Asha, slipping her texts into her bag and pushing her feet into a pair of

tottering heels, would march out on her way to the rickshaw stand to call her father in for

his morning tea and breakfast. She would pause and face the barricade alongside Rahmat,

tell him it was coming along quite well.

"It's very nice, Abba." Asha ran her hands over a post, leaned in to see the careful

carvings Rahmat had begun the evening before. She picked at a row of notches with her

thumbnail and followed the curve of a vine with her forefinger. She imagined she could

feel the warmth her father's hands left behind, the spark of the chisel scraping against the

grain. "Does Ma know what it is?" Rahmat hooked his fingers through a lattice of jute

and smiled.

"I should go in before I'm late for the office. Your mother is probably waiting,

hot parathas ready to jump off the pan. You, go. You don't want to disappoint your

professor." He patted Asha on the head and shuffled slowly back to the house. Asha

thought his movements frail, as if his legs were strips of paper crumpling their way across

the yard.

4

At night, he would return from the office, the trunk of the Beetle tied down with

rope, the inside piled with more bamboo posts and rolls of jute. Inside, Asha would wake

their youngest sister Raisa from her afternoon nap while Laina would set down freshly

washed plates at the table.

"Something has possessed him," Soniya said to her daughters, piling hot rice from

a pot into a bowl. "He no longer sleeps. He won't stop." Handing Laina the rice pot,

Soniya squatted on the floor and motioned for the workwoman to bring the boti. Setting a

small cucumber that Laina had clipped from her garden that morning against the blade,

she sliced it into matchsticks and set the pieces in a small tin bowl. Sprinkling a few

grains of course salt over the cucumbers, she spread crescents of onion and springs of

parsley over the top and set the bowl by Rahmat's plate. "A man will always come in for

his meal, though. And that is a good thing." Soniya wiped her hands on her achol and

motioned for Laina to bring out the fish. Asha nudged Raisa into a chair and poured

water into her father's glass when he finally came to the table, face freshly washed, his

lungi spotted with drops of water. He smiled at the salad and held the bowl in his hand,

beaming.

"I saw turnips at the market today. And beets, I saw beets."

"Oh no—we have plenty of fresh vegetables ready to rot in the kitchen." Soniya

spooned the largest section offish onto Rahmat's plate.

"They were large turnips. As big as my two hands, a good crop, I think."

Asha slid her fingers into her rice and thought how good it would be if her mother were

to welcome her father's gifts with open and willing hands. Could she ever look delighted

5

at the prospect of a new melon, or a turnip? Must she always dampen things with her sour

reminders of cost, of extravagance?

"Turnips, I would like to taste them again." Asha glanced at her mother.

"Finish this shagh. Did you see the pile of kodu shagh in the cooking room?"

Soniya swatted away the thought with her hand and smothered the morsel of fish on her

plate, mashing it into her rice. Asha thought of the vat of kodu shagh Laina had been

sorting and washing that day, her arms buried deep in the fuzzy leaves of the pear shaped

green zucchinis. She thought a turnip, a fat purple turnip, would be easier to wash and

cook, lovelier to eat.

One day when Rahmat was at the office, and Asha was at home studying for her

Literature of the World final, she heard the slam of the verandah door. Capping her pen

and looking out of her window Asha saw her mother tugging the achol of her shari over

her head. Her feet slapped against the backs of her sandals as she hurried straight toward

the barricade. Soniya looked up at the towering structure for a moment, then slowly ran

her hands over the intricate latticework. In another second, she was slapping her way

back to the house, hands wrestling with her achol. That night, Laina climbed into bed

next to Asha and confirmed that Ma had again left two cups of tea on the verandah and

had not yet gone to bed. They listened for the crack of the hammer and the soft wisp of

the jute being wound round the bamboo, tied in careful knots. Just before they drifted off

they could hear the quiet clatter of tea saucers being carried back inside the house.

On the day the barricade was finally complete, Rahmat brought home a

pomegranate from the bazaar. Wrapped in layers of newspaper, he handed the

pomegranate to Soniya as he walked in the door, the sweat from his stroll around the

6

barricade still slick in the creases of his forehead.

"The mangoes are safe now. They are like queens in a palace." He slipped off his

shoes and rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. Soniya cradled the pomegranate in her hands.

You could admire the barricade best at midday from the rooftop, spread your arms

out and turn in slow circles turn, turn, fan-in the view. The heat laid itself across skin in

thick strips up here, warmed wet hair and dried it right to the root, almost blistered the

scalp. From up here, Narinda looked slow and sprawling, you could take in long deep

gulps of it. But once you slipped down the stairs and out the front gate, just walked ten

minutes to the shops or the rickshaw hut, the streets would choke you. Narinda festered in

the old part of Dhaka. It was a pocket neighbourhood where, as children, they had ran

down the paths outside their gate and felt free. They were small and their world seemed

large, the branches of a mango tree sprawled like the legs of a spider above them, filling

the sky from where they stood. The skinny dirt paths wound like trailing threads through

city blocks, and they could run and run with gaggles of neighbourhood children, arms and

legs in a tumble down paths that seemed never-ending. Now, Asha could imagine

bending down and winding the thread round her finger, pulling the path in and letting the

dirt settle into their yard and dust-up the steps of the veranda. The stretches of garden

bordering the open yard could make you believe that the entire neighbourhood, the whole

of Narinda, was just the same—dashes of open space flanked with rose bushes and

chicken coops, everything golden. But Old Dhaka was as crowded and finicky as the rest

of Dhaka, though here the foundations of every building seemed as if they were sunk

twenty feet into the ground, narrow alleyways and streets rising up with lines of

7

merchants who looked as if they had stood behind piles of hot peppers for centuries,

sweat running down muscled backs. Here, the calls of rickshaw-ala's seemed ancient,

their voices echoing through a cacophony of honking horns and wheels spinning through

the sludge of winding streets. The smoky streets here were narrow and lined with white­

washed stone buildings that slumped into busy storefronts and open sewers. If you looked

up at the buildings, you knew that a hundred years ago they had been impressive, even

beautiful.

Looking out, Asha thought Narinda must be a patch of bright yellow in this dizzy

fog of smoke and noise, a smudgy spot of holud rubbed into the landscape with the meat

of her thumb. Ma told them that when the house was first built, Abba had it painted

indigo-blue, wanted it to match the changing shades of the sky. Over the years the paint

had faded to a greyed-out blue that in the midday sun could look as bright as firoza, a

dusty turquoise. Standing on the rooftop leaning against the ledge, Narinda seemed years

away from the gnashing of Dhaka's wide city streets. But it wasn't too far—the

university. Just a 20-minute rickshaw ride on good days, 35 when the roads were too

rutted from the rain. Asha imagined she could see its rooftop, the "Class of 1974" banner

spread across the red gravel, weighed down by two pairs of shoes: the brown loafers of

the top male student, the white, square-heeled sandals of the top female's. Symbols of the

brightest students stepping out into the world, leading their classmates into the future.

Next year, it would be her favourite navy pencil heels weighing down a corner of the

banner, Asha was almost sure.

Asha could sense something pitchy in the hum of the day, felt that something was

blipping its way across the landscape, blurring out the bright things. The season could be

8

turning, folding itself away. Asha watched the sway of Laina's back as she untwisted

rolls of wet clothes and hung them up to dry. Her sister had the long, plump arms of the

women in Professor Chatterjee's atlas of paintings. They were arms made to rest along

the arms of chairs, gold balas weighing down supple wrists. Laina would have been

married long before any of them were even noticed, if she were a chalak woman, more

keen. But she kept her glance in check, wouldn't go before her sisters did. If anyone was

chalak, clever enough to read the subtle signs of their parents—a turn of the mouth, a

quick slant of the eye—it was Asha. Raisa, the youngest at just ten, paid enough attention

to get her way, a carefully planned tantrum so she could wear one of Ma's gold bangles,

or have an extra sweet from the icebox, but she didn't care to pay attention to anything

that did not immediately involve her. Kanta, the oldest and married a year and a half ago,

could not be bothered with the intricacies of chalaki behaviour. If she wanted another cut

offish, she took it. Where Asha would notice a flutter of an auntie's eye toward the dish,

for Kanta there was no question of whether she should or should not—the fish was on her

plate and she would eat it. Munir, the only son, was chalak enough to know he was

cherished. Tucked away in India for medical school, he knew how highly Ma and Abba

thought of him, how much they expected. He knew that they would spend an extra year's

tuition on him if he took longer to finish his degree, would let him lounge undisturbed in

the upstairs room during his summers—his resting period—would do anything really,

because he was the only son and he would have to be there for them. Laina, at 20,

shrugged off the smiles of men and would turn away, didn't know that the curve of her

cheek was like the rounded curve of an apple, always beckoning. Her thick braid swung

back and forth as if keeping time and Asha turned and leaned over the ledge of the roof,

9

arms crossed. Her own wrists were knotty, arms taut. Laina joined Asha at the ledge and

ran her fingers through Asha's wet hair, flipped the strands from one shoulder to the

other, drying them out. Asha stretched out her arms and thought of how good it would be

to spread this afternoon out like a katan shari drying on the riverbank. She could see it

rolling, a stripe of gold and blue, crisp and clean. There were four more weeks left like

this before she would have to bustle back into the University, into her books.

"Asha, dekho." Laina leaned over Asha, both hands on her shoulders. There was a

flicker of movement by the barricade, a fuzzy brown spot by one of the posts.

It was a child.

She crept along the barricade, slapping her hand against the posts, head down.

"It's Katchi." Laina stood, hands locked on her hips.

"It's Katchi's youngest one, Sunny." Asha squinted at the little girl. "She's

filthy."

"It's Katchi's doing, Asha. Sunny's fallen in the outhouse again and her mother,

that shoitan—sent her to us. Again!" Laina rubbed at her temples. "Look at that trail of

slop behind her."

Asha twisted her hair and knotted it into a bun. She followed the sway of Laina's

back down the steps and onto the verandah where Laina gripped the back of the wicker

chair and shook her head.

"I'll tell you this, Asha. Katchi—that woman—" She lifted the back of the chair

and slammed it back down.

10

Sunny had plopped herself down at the gate of the barricade and was pummeling

her fists into the ground. She lifted her head for a moment, as if sniffing the air. Spotting

Asha and Laina, she dragged herself across the yard, hiccupping.

"Laina," Asha stepped off the verandah. "That woman, Katchi—thappur diye—

I'd slap the teeth out of her mouth if I could. Who teaches their child to grovel like a

dog?"

"Sunny! Oh stand up. You silly child! Bolod, na ki?" Laina motioned for Sunny

to stand, then drew back, covering her nose. "Sunny, tomar ma koiT'

"Ma....bazaar gese." Sunny wiped her nose with her palm, her face a grimace of

tears. Her hair was slopped to one side, her white pinafore stuck to her skin in wet

patches of grime. Her arms were blackened up to the elbow in layers of dirt and her tears

left clear trails down her smudged face. Asha gagged at the stench, raising her hand to her

mouth.

"She needs to be washed." Asha reached back and patted her bun, tucking in loose

strands.

"Wait." Laina held up a hand. Crouching down next to Sunny she pushed up the

sleeves of her kameez and turned Sunny's face towards her own. "Sunny. Shuno. " Laina

leaned in close until she was almost nose-to-nose with Sunny, her chin clamped between

her forefinger and thumb. "Does your ma know you fell? Did she see how dirty you

were?"

Slowly, Sunny nodded.

"Did she send you here before going to the bazaar?"

Sunny curved herself into a ball and dug her fingernails into the dirt.

11

"Acha, that's okay—we'll just wash you up." Asha shook her head at Laina and

pulled Sunny up by the wrists.

"Na, Asha. We're taking her back to her mother. I'm not doing this again."

Laina's eyes were pinpoints in the blare of the sun.

"Don't worry—you go. I can wash her up quick."

"Asha. Why do you do this?"

Laina's voice was low, her lips pressed into a straight line, the skin around her

mouth tight and white. Asha, one hand clamped around Sunny's wrist, the other hooked

into the loops of jute on the barricade, focussed on the rise and fall of Laina's chest, on

the heart-shaped necklace Laina had made from wire the week before, glinting from the

hollow in her neck. She would have to let Laina have it out today. For weeks, it had been

curdling inside her and today she would tear the thing to pieces.

"The first time was okay, Asha. That was kindness. Even the second time, even

though we had our doubts, we didn't know for sure. That was charity, maybe. But this

time, it's not right. It's not right for us to let it go on as if it doesn't matter." Laina held

her hand out. "If you don't want to take her back, I can do it."

Asha turned Sunny towards the back of the house.

"Go to the water pump and stay there until I come." Sunny ran, arms skidding the

air like a dragonfly.

"Don't think her mother doesn't know her child is covered in this filth. She does

know, and she knows that you, you ghadha, are going to send the little devil back fresh

and clean, like a piece of laundry—as if you're paid to do it!" Smacking the dust off her

hands she turned back towards the house. She paused and looked over her shoulder,

12

"Olosh, Asha. That's what Katchi is—she works other people to her will. Don't trick

yourself into thinking you're doing something good."

At the back of the house Asha stood Sunny on a concrete slab and peeled off the

grime-caked pinafore. Sunny stood shivering, her arms crossed over her chest, one foot

curled over the other. With each push of the wet gamsa over Sunny's skin, Asha felt

herself breathe a little deeper, felt her insides stretch out and smooth themselves into

something pristine. Muddy water streamed out of the gamsa as Asha wrung it out, pools

forming under her sandals, seeping in-between her toes. Pulling her down into a squat,

Asha poured the bucket of cold water over Sunny's head and clasped her by the neck

when she squealed. The water froze Asha's fingertips and she imagined it trickling its

way into her own scalp, dripping into her brain, clearing everything out.

13

CHAPTER TWO

Tied in a large knot at the end of her orna, Laina kept a notebook and small

pencil. Swinging like a pendulum, the bump of the bundle against her hip as she pounded

out the dough for the last paratha was a quiet reminder of the work she had left to do in

the garden that morning. She had made a quick round of the rooftop plants, but knew

Kanta would arrive hungry with her husband Mubeen, hands outstretched. Plus, she had

seen Nimul skittering around the gate, relentless. The night before he had wrapped a note

around a purple candle and shoved it between the bars on the bedroom window. Asha had

been up and Laina had wished she would just toss it, let her sleep. He had written her

name over and over around the border of the page and asked her to meet him early the

next morning as he had something important to tell her. When she spotted him from the

roof she thought it might be best to put off her work in the garden until later in the

afternoon.

In the kitchen, Ma was stooped over her boti, striking turnips and potatoes against

the blade, yelling for the workwoman, Moni, to get the fish scraped clean—only a

bowlful of fresh water, not the entire water tank, Allah-re-Allah! The paratha crackled in

the pan, its skin rising into a dome. Laina flattened the puff of dough and spun the square

of bread into the heat, stabbing the uncooked corners with the point of her khunti. If she

could poke Nimul, just like this, hot poker right into his shoulder blade, he would think

twice before settling his thoughts on her. Flattening out another pat of dough, Laina

shook her head. This was not good. At first, she only saw Nimul when he came to play

cricket with Munir and the other boys. The boys were good friends though Nimul was

14

years younger—only 16—but when Munir entertained friends, he still made a point of

fetching snack trays himself instead of having his sisters come up to deliver. Though

Munir had gone to India to begin his second year of studies months ago, Nimul still

showed up at their door, cricket bat in hand, eyes wandering.

Her parathas came off the pan golden-brown and crisp, the insides layered and

flaky. Abba would tear off small pieces with one hand, dip a corner into the thick juices

of the vegetable niramish, pleased. If Ma took two instead of one at the table, it was a

good sign. Laina tented a thick cloth over her pile of parathas to keep them warm and

turned her back to the stove, hand cupped over the notebook bundle against her hip. Ma

was squatted low, wrist-deep in a bowl of chunked turnips and potatoes, a quartered

squash resting in the palm of her other hand. Ma had paused to slice into the side of

Moni's head with her gaze, watching Moni slash her knife into the fish and strike it

across its belly, frayed bits of flesh and scale spraying into the air. Then, the slam of the

squash in a crush of orange against the floor and Ma taking Moni's place, slicing the

scales off in thin streams, saving the flesh for eating, never wasting, always neat and

clean.

Laina could always see the anger trace her mother's face like a jagged line across

a map. She wanted to reach out, place a cool hand against the back of Ma's neck. This

was the most supple part of her mother's body, plump and creamy, it looked moist and

yielding. Her mother bore down on the fish, her forearms taut as she drove the knife

against the thick of the flesh, her jaw tight, pulsing. Laina wondered whether her own

face was as transparent. When she looked at Nimul, were her eyes as dark, her jaw as

tight? It would help if she could cast him out of her life with just one glance. He was

15

everywhere, but nowhere long enough for her to confront him, berate him. In some ways,

this was better. It saved her from having to really step into the thick of it all, she could

stay a few steps ahead of him, hoping he would never catch up. But, she felt like a

chicken running circles in the yard. And this! This sudden insistence, what is this? She

preferred him at a distance, a peripheral shadow.

Moni chopped up the rest of the squash and yelled that they had yet to do

anything with the chicken, but she would get to it once the rice and niramish were on,

God forbid Kanta arrive before then, God forbid. Ma looked up for a moment and Laina

didn't think she could cool the heat rising in her mother's face. She didn't try to convince

her that Kanta sitting down to a plateful of hot vegetables the moment she walked

through the door was not that important. The chunks of potato, squash and carrot needed

to soften in the onion and garlic—if they rushed it, the potatoes would be raw and the

spices wouldn't have a chance to seep into the meat of the squash. Abba couldn't eat

chunks of half-cooked veggies even if Kanta would. Laina knew Ma could only think of

how difficult it was for Kanta to be raising her daughter alone, just so alone in Mirpur, no

workwoman on hand to help, nothing at all. This was the third time Kanta had come for

an extended stay at Narinda since she had married two years before. The first time she

came in the middle of the night, unannounced, a month after settling in a small flat in

Mirpur, Yogi barking and nipping at her heels as she skirted round him and slipped

through the open door when Asha left to go to the outhouse. Mubeen Bhai arrived in a

rickshaw the next morning, his face slack, mouth drooped into a frown. Kanta sat on the

couch in the drawing room where she had slept the night before—unnoticed until

morning—hands folded over her knees.

16

"This is the end," she said. "I am never going back. Marriage is not what I

thought it was. He is the devil and I am not going back." Laina had thought her sister

looked composed, almost serene, was amazed that Kanta—of all people—had managed

to sneak her way across cities with just her purse and a satchel full of wedding jewelry. It

was a shock she hadn't been robbed, didn't arrive at their doorstep in tatters. Moni

brought her a tray of tea and toast, while Asha paced the drawing room and threatened to

throttle Mubeen and anyone else in his family if Kanta wanted. What could drive her

sister out of her home, into the streets at night?

"He refuses to hire a workwoman. Not enough money." Kanta waved her hands

before her sisters. "The skin is practically peeling and there isn't enough money? I did

not ask for this. I am not going back."

Two weeks later, Kanta stepped back into the rickshaw with Mubeen, an envelope

of bills fresh from the bank tucked into the front pocket of Mubeen's shirt. Kanta's

laments worked their way into Abba's wallet and he withdrew the money, patting it into

Mubeen's hand, hoped that it would help get them comfortable and settled, that it would

smooth out all the wrinkles, that Kanta would be all right. Kanta's hands were made for

playing the harmonium, for arcing into points in classical dance, for folding demurely on

her knees while Ma curled herself into the kitchen to make sure Kanta was fed. With

Kanta, Ma and Abba were always on the edge of things, ready with two eggs instead of

one. When Mubeen asked for a deed to a patch of property four hours before the

wedding, Abba relented. Sent Pitu Chacha to the bank to retrieve the parting gift while

Ma sat next to Kanta, eyes on the gathering crowd.

17

Laina paused at the kitchen door. Ma tossed the chunks of fish in a bowl of cold

water the muscles in her arms tight, her mouth parted. She should go out to the garden

now, the bellis would be budding soon; the small white flowers of her jasmine plant

would unfurl waves of scent that would knock their heads back in the evenings. If she

wanted to measure the rate of growth from bud to bloom accurately, she should go now.

She brushed her hands on her kameez leaving flour-coated handprints patting up and

down her front. Nimul of course, might still be out by the gate, that misguided boy. And

he was a boy, just a boy. Sixteen and possessed. By what? What made him follow her

each morning, ten paces back, cricket bat in hand? What had she done to draw him in this

way? He was only a boy, he hardly understood what he was doing. She knew how

dangerous the feelings were, how consuming. They drenched you, held you down.

Laina looked at her flour-flaked hands. Raisa was at her singing lesson. Asha had

been up on the roof all night, notebook in hand, pages empty. Kanta would arrive this

afternoon, and still, no one had done the chicken.

Laina knelt, one hand gripping the base of the chicken's neck. Moni held the

chicken down and told her to do it in one swift stroke.

"Don't cut all the way. Leave enough so the head is attached by a bit of flesh."

Laina nodded.

"I've done it before."

She was always surprised at the how warm the body felt. Things would flicker beneath

the sheen of the feathers, tiny movements of muscle and small organs. She struck the

18

knife in two deep strokes, snapped the neck. Blood rainbowed out and Moni released the

chicken. It shuddered twice, flopped, then relaxed.

Moni brought the bird in scalded and plucked. Laina emptied the insides, piling

the organs in the basin. How easy it was to pull it all apart, one purple bit at a time. She

scraped beneath her fingernails, flicking strands of tissue into the bottom of the basin and

poured cold water over the pile of organs. Water streamed in pink lines from the heart,

the liver, the kidney, and she smiled at how they shone, like lumps of strange jewels. This

was what her sisters avoided, the very meat of things, the sweat. They thought she was

naive, always hunkered over in labour, always there when they were not. She cut into the

flesh, cracked the ribs. She quartered the chicken slicing off thick layers of fat, tossing

the gummy white strips into a pail. But what were they avoiding, really? The work? But

this was life, this was the very thing. Asha appeared at her side, smiling, a tube of red

lipstick and a bottle of coconut oil in her hand.

"What?" Laina braced herself against the basin, then yanked the skin off one of

the thighs.

"I want to oil my hair, waiting for you." She set the bottle down and untied her

braid. "How much hair do you think Mubeen Bhai will have lost by now?"

"Chi! Asha!" Laina swatted Asha, pushed her away from the basin. "You're going

to get hair everywhere."

"When they were married, you could tell he was balding. He had a nice face—it's

always such a loss when a bald man has a nice face. Why are you taking off the skin?

Leave it on. But I could tell he'd be bald within a year."

19

"I need to get to the fat—underneath." Laina slivered her knife across the plump

of the thigh skimming strings of fat. "I don't think he's bald, yet. Just thinning."

"Bald men are supposed to have big brains. So much brain that it pushes out all

their hair, no space." Asha swiveled the barrel of her lipstick, the red nib popping in and

out of the plastic tube. She didn't care that this would wear out the swivel and they would

have to dig out smears of colour with the end of a bobby pin. Asha's small collection of

lipsticks was worn, well used, while Laina had one tube of lipstick unopened in the desk

drawer.

"You know, Mubeen looks respectable. Wears good clothes, is always clean."

Asha swiped the lipstick across the back of her hand and held it up in the light. "But, he's

such a shoitan, a conniving little devil." She rubbed at the thick line of colour with her

thumb. "Any man that shamelessly—not an ounce of shame, I'm telling you—slips his

hand into his wife's purse is the devil."

Laina piled the chicken pieces into a pot and set it by the stove. It would take very

little to set Asha off into a stream of curses against their brother-in-law. It was

understandable, really. If you looked at Mubeen Bhai he was just the sort of man you

would want to trust. Tall, unobtrusive, quiet—even gentle. But there was something off-

putting about the way he stood back and watched as Kanta flung herself into one of her

rages. Asha always said it was because he had an iron pole stuck up his backside, but it

was really the jaw, how stiff it was. She was afraid it would crumble to pieces from the

clench of his teeth.

"He's reaching through her purse into Abba's wallet, if you ask me." Laina wrung

out a wet cloth and scrubbed her hands.

20

But it was Kanta who spun the household into a whirlwind, sent Abba and Ma

behind closed doors, heads in their hands. Kanta's rages always ended with her laying her

head against a pillow, silent and still. Until someone told her that Ma and Abba would

help her out, would get them settled, would slip them a little something to get them

going, she remained stretched out on the bed, hand on forehead, eyes closed. It was Kanta

who had her thumb on Ma and Abba's throat, always complaining. Laina twisted the

cloth, her knuckles white. But—the way Mubeen Bhai always took the money, just

nodded and folded the envelope away, as if it were a business deal, as if he were entitled.

"Look who's still waiting outside." Asha laughed, nodding towards the window.

Nimul sat against the post of the gate, cricket bat laid across his lap.

Laina turned to Asha, hand on her hip.

"They both need a thrashing."

Laina did not get to the garden until late afternoon. The sun had already sunk low

behind the trees, their branches now silhouettes. Abba's jute barricade looked like a

frothy web in the afternoon light, the orange bulbs of mango, smiling prisoners. If she

was quick she could make one round and record her entries for today, do the upkeep

tomorrow. In her notebook she kept records of her plants: their growth periods, new

blooms, bug infestations, deaths. She calculated the blooms like clockwork—knew when

the next bud would burst, when the first petal would curl, thin itself out and float to the

ground. Arriving the morning a bloom was due—out in the first strands of sun, wrist-

deep in dirt—it was glorious. The jobas were explosions of vibrant red, petals like

crushed silk. The chamilis, white and spidery, eager. Everything buzzed in brightness, the

21

colours vibrating as if they were on the verge of something. She had read in Nashu

Mama's book of gems that gardeners were cultivators of spirituality. She wondered if this

could be true. She did not pray. She knew the movements, the surahs, but she rarely ever

spread out a prayer mat to set her forehead to the floor. When she watched her father

methodically dip and bow five times a day, she thought the process fluid and systematic,

even beautiful. But if she stood on the prayer mat in the evening to try it out herself, her

body felt wooden, the movements forced and unnatural; they didn't belong to her. She

would quickly roll up the mat feeling as if she had done something wrong. In the garden,

Laina felt as her father must feel with his arms raised in prayer. Every miracle lay in a

sliver of seed nestled in her palm. Here, things happened. Everywhere there was

movement: grubs writhed in stripes of sunlight, sprouts cracked through seeds, colour

burst like spattered paint from the blooms of her jobas, her gendas. Here, her flesh pulsed

into something concrete, as if her blood throbbed with a little more heat and cooked her

into something more real.

She rolled the stems of her genda plant between her fingers, feeling for the

heaviness of moisture in the marigold's thick stem, then knelt to pat the soil. It settled

into the ridges of her fingers, too fine. Some of the flowering plants drooped, their leaves

like sodden rags. She was glad the upkeep would not wait. This was not complex work, it

was intuitive, knowing what to do and when to do it: she was needed here. The garden

felt choked until she tore away the dry vines that crisped their way in and out of the

green. She chopped off the yellowing leaves and filled the apron of her kameez. She

would save these, see if they would do for braiding later in the afternoon. Kanta's baby

Shilpa was almost three, she might learn, might enjoy all this. Laina squatted low to

22

check her seedlings. Shilpa was old enough to have her own pot, stick her fingers into the

soil and plant seeds. She should probably have something easy and fast, like dhaniya for

Shilpa. The coriander sprouts came up within a week and were hardy. The small red pot

would do. It was filled with old soil and bits of stone, but she could clean out all the old

date pits and lime seeds, have it topped with soil, fresh for Shilpa. It was a shiny red pot

that Nashu Mama brought with him from Chittagong. Holding it out to Laina with a

smile, he said he had picked it up from the banks of the Bay of Bengal, that it had bobbed

its way around the world from London, where they used little pots to keep their keys and

pills, but she could use it as an ashtray or even better, to grow a plant. Inside the pot, a

tiny knob of soil seemed suspended in the air. Laina tilted the pot into the light and gaped

at a curl of bright green that had pushed its way up, the clump of soil clamped to its tiny

leaf. One of their seeds, she didn't know which, had sprouted. It could be anything. If she

was in the garden sucking on a mango pit, the pit made its way into one pot or another,

maybe this one. It couldn't be a date tree, the sprout was curled over itself, date sprouts

came up tall and thin, straight as pins. She couldn't tell what shape the leaves would be;

if they were flat and wide, they could be pomegranate seeds. That was very likely. The

sprout was young maybe just a day or two, but Laina couldn't tell how long the seed

might have been there, waiting for the right amount of moisture, humidity—it could have

been weeks, or even just a few days. She hoped it was something, and not just a flyaway

seed sprouting sprigs of grass in her garden.

The weave of the barricade was surprisingly strong. Laina leaned against it,

penciling in her summary notes from today's circuit. If she calculated correctly, the next

flush of blooms from her joba plant were due early next week. The hibiscus blooms

23

didn't last long, just a day or two and then they collapsed. If Munir was here, he would

have the camera and they could catch the blooms at their best, take photos with everyone

posing in the garden. The sun was now skidding along the horizon, the sky frothing with

colour. The garden looked golden at this time of day, the stone wall along the perimeter

ancient in the light. There was a break in the wall, a spot where the brick and stone had

crumbled like a ruin. It opened into the neighbour's yard, faced the back of the house

where Ilyaas stood every morning at seven, biting into the end of a cigarette. His mother

always pulled him in at 7:15, the kitchen windows fogged with the heat of fried eggs and

parathas. At 7:45 Laina was already on her way up the path to hire a rickshaw to the

Women's College and could see Ilyaas sitting on the fence by the crossroads waiting for

his friend to swerve in on a motorcycle and roar him off to Dhaka University.

Last week, she had been in the vegetable garden picking white, bean-shaped grubs

from the roots of the squash plant when Ilyaas sauntered over, cigarette in one hand, a

bulging rice bag in the other. He was in his light blue shirt and grey slacks, had changed

out of his lungi earlier than usual, his hair already combed back and shining. She shook a

clinging grub off her hand and brushed the dirt from her palms. Ilyaas stepped through

the break in the wall, gripping the rice bag between his legs as he sidestepped a

crumbling brick.

"I've brought you pomegranates. Ma said this year's are sweeter than last's,

wanted me to bring some over." He held out the bag and Laina took it in her arms.

"Ma loves pomegranates." Laina held one in her hand smiling. "Come by later

and we'll have mangoes for you. Ma needs some green ones for achar anyway."

He shook his head.

24

"I'm off to Chittagong today." He stooped to scoop up a few pebbles and began

skimming them against the wall. "Mukul's going to Russia in a month so I thought we'd

have an adventure, make some memories before he's off. Good idea, no?" He looked at

Laina with a tired smile. "We're going to take the motorcycle."

Laina dug her hands back into the dirt, feeling for the rubbery flesh of the grubs.

"Russia? Why Russia? Isn't it all ice and snow?"

"He was accepted to a medical program at one of their universities. You can't say

no to that." Ilyaas paused, then knelt into the garden. He pinched a grub and held it up,

watched it wriggle in the sun. "I thought I could try applying abroad after I'm done at

DU. See what's out there, explore." He set the grub on the ground and stood up, hands in

his pockets.

Laina tossed another grub into the pail and dug deep, finger's curling. The heels

of his sandals were cracked, bits of plastic peeling off in chunks. He probably wore them

all the time, didn't notice how flat and impractical they now were.

"I haven't even seen all there is to see here in my own country. Can't imagine

stepping out there, bideshe." Laina tried to focus on the soil, watched for the slow

movement of grubs that had been tossed near the surface.

"Of course, it's so expensive. But I've always thought that you can't put a price

on your dreams. Don't you think?"

Laina looked up. His face looked parched, almost grey.

"If you're going for an adventure, you'd better buy yourself a pair of proper

shoes. Those will not do you any good."

25

As soon as Ilyaas had stepped back through the crack into his yard, she had wiped

her hands on the end of her orna and cracked a pomegranate open with her knife.

Hundreds of ruby teeth shined underneath the course skin and she sat there in the dirt

digging them out with her thumb, crunching, then spitting out the seeds.

If she were a painter she'd set her easel up here every evening and try to capture

the look of it all, the fading light, how dramatic and wise it all seemed. Right now, Ilyaas

was scooting around Chittagong, maybe wetting his feet at Cox's Bazaar. He was smart,

she knew, could get into a good graduate program at DU if he wanted. He didn't really

want to leave for Russia, the unknown. Mukul and his motorcycle were spinning thoughts

into his head, but really, Ilyaas was the type of boy who was responsible, stable, would

want to stay put. Why would he want to leave? But there was something—the way he

always looked out in the mornings, his back to his house, eyes on the slope. Just the way

he stood, one arm holding his stomach, the other flicking the ash from his cigarette. It

was as if he were waiting for something, was on the precipice of something big. Maybe

nothing could reel him in.

Laina flipped her notebook shut and pulled herself to her feet.

Nimul stood in the opening of the wall holding a bottle of Fanta. In his other hand

he held a cricket bat. He was tall—for so long she had only seen him from a distance, a

lanky figure loping up the path behind her, almost a shadow. His shirt hung off him, and

as he slowly bent down, his pant legs flapped in the breeze and Laina could tell how thin

his legs were, like bamboo posts. He set the bottle of Fanta on a loose brick then took a

step back. He unbuttoned the pocket on his shirtfront and slid out a straw. He set the

26

straw next to the Fanta and looked at her. If she could draw a curtain between them, she

would. Better, she would take that cricket bat and knock the vacant gape off his face.

"Munir isn't here, Nimul. Don't you know?"

Slowly, without averting his gaze, Nimul stepped back through the crack. He placed his

hand on his heart and walked backwards across Ilyaas' yard, watching her. He stumbled

just once, but held up his hand to signal he was all right. He swung his long legs over the

posts of the gate and stood there for a moment before turning and loping off down the

path. Maybe she should be gentler with him, give him some time to forget her. He didn't

seem quite right, always alone, always moping. He should be studying, that misguided,

foolish, boy. Nimul had failed the A-levels twice, simply because he had never shown up

for them. Instead of traipsing through the streets, slinking through walls he should be

planted firmly in his chair, eyes on his books. He didn't know better.

Laina brushed her hand along the break in the wall, scraping the pads of her

fingers against the rough rock. The sun was just brimming over the horizon, the sky dark,

the air now cool. For years, Abba had planned to hire bricklayers to block up this gap,

repair the wall. Every time he would bring it up, they would pray he didn't do it. As

children, the gap in the wall was their secret passage, a quick escape when playing Kana

Masi, leaping through the gap to escape the stumbling reach of the blindfolded child, the

"blind fly." It was a shortcut when delivering mangoes or pati shapta pitha, cream-filled

crepes that Ma would fry on the stove before Eid and send to the Hamids', Ilyaas always

eager. After the liberation Abba had stood by the crack in the wall and had Munir take his

picture. During the war, when they would hear the tramp of the Pakistani military

advancing up the path outside their gate, Abba would fold the newspaper, or put down his

27

book or fork or wallet, then slip through the crack, across the yard and into the Hamids'

house. Ilyaas would have the door already propped open, his father would have a bowl of

moori and a glass of water to greet him, the sand-popped rice and cool drink feigning

normalcy. Days after the liberation, when rebels scoured the streets looking for Bengalis

who supported the Pakistani army during the war, Ilyaas' father slipped through the

crack, through their garden and had tea in the back room of their house. She still

remembered the shine of Hamid Uncle's bald head, the few wisps of hair he kept swiping

from one side of his head to the other, the sweat of his hands leaving moist prints on the

tabletop. She imagined Ilyaas watching her father, wondered if Abba's hands shook when

he took the glass of water. She stared at the bottle of Fanta—bright orange even in the

fading light—and scooped it up. She liked Fanta, no use in wasting it, and the straw she

could re-use one day. Laina turned towards the house. The bob of a hurricane lamp

swinging in the verandah told her that someone had spotted a baby-taxi putting up the

lane.

Laina held Shilpa on her lap and angled a mirror toward her. She dotted Ponds

cream onto Shilpa's cheeks and rubbed it into the skin with soft swipes of her thumb. Her

arms were tangled in Shilpa's soft limbs, the creases of her elbows sweaty from the heat

clouding into the room from the kitchen.

"We would have been here earlier," Kanta repeated, staring up at the ceiling. "But

men, they never listen." She lay on the cot, arms resting under her head. She placed her

hand over her tummy and let out a slow burp.

28

Kanta had arrived with Shilpa in one taxi, while Mubeen arrived minutes later in

another taxi, piled with their luggage. After pushing their luggage into the back room

where they would stay for the summer, Laina joined the family at the table where Kanta

sat silent, Ma pushing plates of niramish and chicken toward her. Mubeen sat at the other

end of the table, flaking fish from the bone with his forefinger, staring at his plate. Asha

sat prying open Shilpa's lips, feeding her morsels of rice, her eyes glancing between

Kanta and Mubeen. Laina could feel the tension thicken in the room: it was filled with

the quiet clink of dishes, the occasional smack of lips when Abba would slide a bone

from his teeth. She brushed Shilpa's hair back with her hand, felt the silky warmth of her

head.

"We would have been here earlier," Kanta said finally. "Much earlier. In the

morning even." She watched as Ma spooned a chicken thigh onto her plate. "But men,

they never listen."

"Kanta, you talk too much when it isn't necessary." Mubeen's eyes were still on

his plate, his voice barely above a whisper. Laina saw the veins in his hand bulge as he

tore meat from a chicken leg.

"Bas, has—just eat, you've had a long journey, you are both tired." Abba took a

sip of water and Kanta shook her head, swallowing her mouthful of rice and vegetables in

one gulp. If only Laina could reach out and clamp her hand over Kanta's mouth, stop her

from pushing a burning finger into unhealed sores.

"Abba, Ma—shono—don't I know how to raise my own child? Don't I know

what she needs and when?"

Mubeen slammed his glass on the table, dishes rattling.

29

"Kanta!"

"If I say she needs to be fed, then I mean it. I mean we need to stop the God-damn

taxi and we need to feed her! You didn't listen!" Kanta pushed back her chair and flung a

chunk of chicken to the floor. "You made me feed her while we were still moving—still

moving, Abba! She puked everywhere, didn't keep a single piece of food down."

Mubeen's chair crashed to the floor.

"Get out." He shoved a finger in her face. "Get out!"

"You get out!" Kanta rose. "You get out!"

Asha hoisted Shilpa onto her hip and nudged Laina.

"Look. I told you," she whispered. "He's lost most of his hair." She quieted

Shilpa who had begun to cry and went out onto the verandah, plate in hand.

"Bas—has! No more! Please! Just sit, eat." Ma stood between Kanta and Mubeen,

her hands on their arms. "I don't want to hear this. I don't want to hear it. Just stop. Just

eat." She cried, her breath shaky. Abba had his hand on Mubeen's shoulder, daal

dripping from his fingertips. Mubeen stood heaving, fists clenched at his sides.

Kanta had lost weight. Her cheeks were sunken and shadows had crept up around

her eyes. Laina jiggled Shilpa on her lap and wondered at how quickly Kanta always

managed to lose weight. The baby weight was gone within a year and she looked like

she'd gained a yard in shari material. Kanta massaged her temples and tugged at her hair,

eyes closed. Though she was thin, her limbs looked solid, as if she kept her muscles

clenched, tight against the bone. She crossed one thin ankle over the other and took a

deep breath. This was strange, watching Kanta so still. She was always burning, always at

30

the tip of an explosion, the skin on her cheeks pulled tight, creases carved deep in her

forehead. It was as if the world always knocked up against her the wrong way, drove her

deeper into where she didn't want to be. But she lay quiet now, like a wrung-out rag, her

arms splayed over her stomach. Shilpa had begun to nod off, her legs limp over Laina's

knees, thumb in her mouth.

"They don't listen." Kanta sat up, wound her hair into a bun. "They don't." She

stared at her hands, then looked up at Laina. "If he just listened." She patted the side of

the bed and Laina lay Shilpa down, pulling the kata up under her chin. Kanta lay next to

Shilpa, her arm curled around her head, the achol of her shari pulled up over her mouth.

The fluorescent light buzzed when Laina flicked it off and she hoped she hadn't fizzed

out the tail of a tiktikky napping behind the bulb. Mubeen stood at the door, a book under

his arm.

"You can use the small study lamp if you want to—or I can get you a hurricane

lamp from the verandah."

He nodded and thanked her, told her it would be fine if she just set it by the door.

In the light of the hurricane lamp, the safety pin looked clean. Laina picked bits of

chicken out from between her teeth and sipped from the bottle of Fanta. Asha was

reading poems from the paper, swatting mosquitoes from her face, her voice low and

even. She had poured Raisa a small cup of Fanta and given her the straw before going

back to the verandah, happy to have the cool bottle resting between her thighs. She let

Asha's voice lull her and she closed her eyes. She smiled at the image of Mubeen leaning

31

over Kanta, his hand gently massaging her temples, their shadows lapping across the

floor in long, weepy lines.

32

CHAPTER THREE

Hooking her heel into the spokes of the rickshaw wheel, Asha hoisted herself into

the seat and asked the driver to push the roof back. The rain had stopped and left the air

clogged and Asha wanted to sit up and breathe a little. In the week leading up to her first

day back at Dhaka University, Asha felt as if the inside of her head were shrinking, the

air snapping up the cells, fizzing them out. She hadn't slept the night before, had gotten

up too many times to check her book bag, make sure the notebook was still there, slotted

between her Philosophy and Political Science texts. In the dark it felt thin and slick to her

fingertips, a two-taka notebook purchased from the corner store and filled with her best

poems, a few short stories. The start of the new term was something Asha gripped with

her fist and brought slamming down on her table each morning, a reminder. It was the

start of something incredible, she knew. It felt incredible, like she was on the edge of

something, ready to tip over and billow out. She loved waking up this way, her senses

acute.

But the holidays with Kanta had dulled her, had kneaded her brain into a mound

of sticky atta, the dough stretched too thin by probing fingers. Whenever she had tried to

sit down with a fresh page, she sunk into a trance where for whole afternoons she

stuttered out two or three lines, a few empty descriptions of the sun slanting across her

page, or the sound of Laina frying okra in the kitchen. Kanta hovered long enough to feed

Asha bits of her life, how difficult it was to live alone with a man, they were so

demanding, so devious. Did Asha know how much like-shaitan men were? Always trying

to squeeze the best out of their women, always pushing them into corners until they

turned over their purses? Of course, Mubeen was only trying to make a life for himself,

33

only trying to do what he could to build something respectable for them all. Abba and Ma

could understand that, could spare something more. Why was it always so difficult? Why

were people, in the end, so selfish? Kanta would sit on the bed and unbraid her hair,

smack the bottom of the coconut oil bottle and hold it out to Asha. Turning the bottle in a

fragment of sun, Asha felt her fingertips warm, thought if she could melt into the bottle

and liquefy she could drown out Kanta's voice.

It had been so long since she had been out like this. Such a long time to be away

from the world, a month. Damp air from city streets on her cheeks again, smoke and

gasoline thick in her throat, a burn in her eyes, Asha felt ready. From the second she

kicked off the kata in the morning, everything looked sharper —tables, books, the rims of

bowls, her mother's voice. And now, out here, even the voice of the rickshaw-a/«

sounded crisp and clear: throaty call cutting through the excess like a knife through

streams of chicken fat. The trill of dozens of rickshaw bells, the rise and fall of the

driver's back, shirt already clammed with sweat, the spin of hundreds of rickshaw wheels

through pools of muddied water—everything seemed as if it were on the point of a needle

waiting for her to puncture through. Ma had placed three parathas on her plate this

morning, had fried two eggs and slid them from the pan onto her plate before sitting

down next to Laina, tea cup in hand. Laina sat spooning halva onto her own plate, shook

her head at the eggs, too heavy. Her hair was braided and pinned, textbooks in a neat pile

by her elbow. Abba had left moments before, patting each of them on the head before

taking Raisa to school on his way to the office. Tearing a corner of her paratha and

smushing it into the dome of the yolk, Asha relished the silence. Kanta had left with

Mubeen and Shilpa in the baby-taxi the night before, her belly large, a box of sweets

34

already open in her lap. Ma had stood at the window twisting the bangles on her wrists,

her mouth settled into a soft frown. Kanta's month-long stay had worn its way into Ma's

wits and amidst a series of small explosions, Kanta finally bundled up her suitcase and

made plans to go back home with her husband. Asha rubbed her finger along a crease in

her shari. Kanta would re-start her life, and when Abba's cheque ran out, she would

stumble back for re-fills, like a putt-putting baby-taxi. It wasn't entirely her fault. Kanta

was a bolod—she blundered through life like an old cow, wasn't capable of anything

better, especially with a husband like Mubeen. The devil pestered her out of her skin and

in the end, what choice did she have? Who else would she go to?

The rickshaw slowed as it turned into the campus, the buzz of the city slowly

dying down. Asha reached into her blouse and slipped out a few bills. They were damp

from her sweat and she wiped them on the achol of her shari before placing them into the

rickshaw ala's hand.

Ma's fried eggs popped in Asha's belly like miniature exploding suns. Everything

suddenly felt sticky, even her feet felt slick against the soles of her sandals. She had dyed

her old white sandals a deep red with the juice of a beet, to match the new burgundy

jamdani shari Ma had given her the week before. Asha had been out on the verandah

draining eggs to make egg dolls for Raisa while Laina stood at the other end of the

verandah slamming fat grey caterpillars with the end of her broom and brushing them

into a paper bag as they plopped from the ceiling to the floor in fuzzy curls. Raisa sat, her

legs swinging through the iron bars, her hands covering her ears. Inside, Ma had thrown

another pot onto the floor sending bundles of garlic rolling across the cement. A spoon,

then a tin plate, and then a basket raining rice as it skid on its side under the table.

35

"I bet it's another melon." Asha winked at Laina. Pulling a pin out of her hair,

Asha dipped the end into a saucer of ink drained from her pen and arced it across the egg

into an eyebrow. Making the eyebrows match was always the hard part, but after that it

was the nose that always decided what kind of egg doll would emerge. It only took two

dints of her hairpin onto the shell, but the tiny dibs of ink decided the fate of the doll. The

egg-face would emerge into a heroine or a beggar, a sorcerer or village dancer, into

anyone, into someone. The egg face looked alert in her hand, the curved nostrils made the

lashes flare wide, the eyes more alive. A quick curve of ink into a half-smiling mouth and

the egg-doll was ready for a body. There was a loud slam from inside the house, then

Abba's quick rough voice, then Ma's strained voice. Raisa yelped, pulling in her knees.

Laina set down her bag of caterpillars and clasped her hands over her belly as if to keep

herself still. Asha tucked a fold of fabric into the hole at the bottom of the egg and

imagined she was stuffing a mouth. A few minutes passed before they heard the soft click

of the bedroom door close and the swish of Ma's broom sweeping across the floor.

"Raisa, I've made you a school-girl." Asha handed Raisa her new egg doll. "She

has a blue and white uniform like yours, see?" Pulling herself up by the bars of the

verandah and pressing her face into the breeze Asha squinted at the fogged horizon. The

sun was low in the sky, a flickering disc of burnt orange, like a thumbful of mango pulp

warming over the stove.

"Ma, I have a new doll." Raisa held up the doll as Ma dragged a large crate of

garlic onto the verandah. "She's a singer. She sings so beautifully, she doesn't need

stupid school."

36

"Bodmeish. " Asha swatted the back of Raisa's head. Ma pulled a paper parcel

from under her arm and handed it to Asha before unwinding a paring knife from a knot in

her achol. She lowered herself onto the bethe stool with a groan and picked up a bundle

of garlic, loosening the skin with her thumb.

"Tell me," she said, jabbing the blade into the base of the bundle, "what am I to

do with 16 pounds of garlic?" With a crack, Ma tore the husk from the garlic and flung it

to the ground. "A waste. Sixteen pounds! Who told him to do me any favours?" The knife

cracked and tore, cracked and tore, and within minutes, the floor of the verandah was

covered in garlic skins, buried under a bed of soft, white curls. Asha sat on the floor, the

skins crinkling beneath her. Cloves of peeled garlic plinked into a pot. "Think they know

everything! Who is it that runs this household? Don't I? Don't I know what we need and

don't need?" She ran her thumbnail over each clove, scraping off the paper-thin layers of

skin and flicking them with her forefinger into the air. "Men are meddlers when they

don't need to be. He doesn't give me a penny when I need it, when I ask for it, but he can

buy 16 pounds of garlic!"

Asha ripped the parcel open to cut into her mother's anger, hoping to shift her

focus. She brushed her hand over a folded jamdani shari, one she had seen in the summer

during their visit to Nashu Mama in Chittagong. The fabric was still crisp, the netting of

the cotton like the wisp of a breeze in her hand. She looked up at Ma, amazed.

"You girls make sure you never have to hold out a hand to your husbands. Go to

school for a hundred years if you have to." Glancing at Asha, she tossed another garlic

clove into the pot and dug her hand into the crate. "Your Abba and Nashu Mama bought

it that day, you remember? I thought I would save it for you. For this new school year."

37

"Asha, ki shundor!" Laina knelt down and smiled, flipping the par to admire the

stitching along the hem.

Asha broke into a smile and breathed the fabric in. She lay the achol across

Laina's shoulder and took a step back to admire the red dotting. With her hair pinned up

and her bookbag slung over her shoulder, she would look almost like a Professor herself,

purposeful and dignified.

"Ma, onek shundor. I'll wear it on my first day, InshaAllah. "

"Your Abba read somewhere that garlic was good for the brain. With that budhi

knocking around in his head, he went and got a crateful."

They sat on the verandah the rest of the afternoon, feet buried in piles of garlic

skin, Asha with her new shari spread across her lap. Raisa cradled her egg-doll, and Laina

scooped dead caterpillars into a folded newspaper, shook them into the paper bag. The

sun had sunk low now, the buildings black silhouettes against an electrified orange sky.

By the end of the afternoon, the pot was full of shining crescents of garlic. Ma knotted

the knife into a corner of her achol and squatting low on the floor, swept the garlic husks

into a corner.

Asha stood outside of Professor Chatterjee's office and checked her watch. The

curtains were drawn in his office, she knew. His corner lamp, the one with the green glass

hood, it would be on. His glasses would be folded on the desk, a book open on his lap,

one hand circled around a teacup. He would turn a page, then clear his throat and tip

some of his tea into the saucer, blow on it, and sip. He would smack his tongue against

the roof of his mouth, wipe droplets of tea with his fingers from his lips, lick his ring

38

finger and settle back in his chair, flip the page. Asha unclasped her book bag and pulled

out her notebook. She pressed her hand against the door, curled it into a fist. She

imagined knocking. He would rub at his temple with his forefinger, look up, say, "Ash­

en ", or "Khola!" and she would walk in. He might offer her some tea, turning to pull out

his thermos, tell her it was a thermos from Sweden, the best kind, kept the tea steaming

hot all day. She could accept his tea, she might. He would ask her to sit down, motion at

the old velvet armchair. She could sit, teacup in hand, talk a little about the summer, and

then, just before leaving—halfway out the door, in fact—she could turn back and hand

him the notebook. He would see that it wasn't such a big event, she did it as a quiet

summer activity, she did it all the time, writing poems, stories. In fact, this was all a

favour for him really.

Or, she could graciously refuse the tea, the armchair, tell him it was alright, that

she was just here to hand him the notebook, tell him she was glad she had made the

deadline, hoped for the best. She could be honest.

He would be reading Tagore of course, would be mouthing the words. She would

knock at him mid-word, knock him right out of his trance.

The submissions for the The Citizen were due at eight-o'clock and Asha had not

forgotten Professor Chatterjee's hand on her arm four months ago. The memory had

sucked the sun from her short summer break and any time spent at her desk trying to

write felt futile and wasted. She remembered standing in the same spot four months ago,

confused and annoyed.

After submitting her last exam, she had stood at the juice cart waiting for Farida.

The bottle of Fanta was cold against her forehead, the air sharp with rain. She thought she

39

could stand there forever, just breathing. The exam had gone well. She could go home

today and truly enjoy the evening, eat moori and chana choor up on the roof—she could

already taste the crusted salt on the popped rice, the savoury bits of fried chickpeas—or

she could try again at singing, if Laina would let her. When the rain burst out with the sun

still shining, Asha popped the cap of her Fanta and drank deep. She made a slow walk

towards the courtyard where the Student League had used last year's fundraising money

to purchase tables with plastic umbrellas. The tables were already brimming with

students fresh out of exams, ankles and elbows on tabletops, arms around shoulders. Asha

ducked under an umbrella, her back to the group. She had been standing in the spray of

the rain for a few minutes when she felt a hand pull on the strap of her bookbag.

Mala, a round-faced girl with a sharp nose and chin, had her hand hooked through

the strap of Asha's bookbag. She pulled Asha into the group, asked her to sit down. Her

other arm was resting on Udhoy's shoulder, a bottle of Coke swinging between her

forefinger and thumb. Asha knew Mala would have something sweet and cutting to say—

she could see it in her lips, thick with lipstick and cunning. Perhaps Udhoy liked her the

better for it. Her lipstick was a matte burgundy, too deep for her skin tone, but layered to

pout out her bottom lip. She could whip off enough for her own lips with the tip of her

fingernail, if she wanted, smear out Mala's bottom lip with her thumb.

Mala stretched out her leg and pointed to her foot.

"Do you like them? Baba sent them over from Italy." Mala clicked her tongue and

winked at Udhoy. "Didn't you tell me a girl isn't beautiful unless she has beautiful feet?"

Mala's feet were wet from the rain, the straps of her sandals tight across the toes. The

skin ballooned on either side of the skinny strap and Asha imagined pricking Mala's foot

40

with the end of a pin and watching it deflate like a balloon. Udhoy slipped the Coke

bottle from Mala's fingers and tipped it into his mouth, eyes closed.

"Asha, I wanted to ask you earlier," Mala leaned in close. "I wanted to ask you in

private, actually." She crossed one leg over the other and placed her hand on Asha's

wrist. "We were wondering, all of us."

Udhoy placed the bottle of Coke on the table and pulled out a rolled up copy of

The Citizen from his back pocket.

"We've grown to really like your stories Asha. Poems, too." Mala spread the

paper out on the table. "Which is why I'm surprised you didn't say anything about your

resignation."

"Oh?"

Mala tilted her head to one side and squeezed Asha's hand. "Every week, Udhoy

and I, we like to see what you've written. Last week, it was—what was it?—Adhar'er

Bondini—just like the song in that Uttam Kumar film, the one the ghost sings? Just

beautiful."

"Adhar'er Bondhu, actually. It was a play on the original song. 'A Friend of

Darkness' instead of'A Captive of Darkness.'"

"Tai? I don't quite recall." She reached back for the Coke and sipped, eyes on

Asha. "I was just surprised, that's all, we both were. We open today's paper, and your

section, it's gone. We flipped through it twice to make sure."

Asha gripped her book bag, pressed it against her stomach. Mala's fingers felt like

cold pincers.

41

"I tried to stop you after class today, but you went right out. I thought you might

be upset, you've been writing for the paper for so long and all. Professor Chatterjee

looked as if he had dipped his face in ash, so sullen."

Asha felt a crab crawling up her throat, could feel the clip of its claws pricking

through her skin. She hadn't looked at today's paper, she had seen nothing except the

exam in front of her, her pen box, vials of ink. She didn't even remember looking at

Professor Chatterjee. There must have been a blip during the printing, and here was Mala

trying to pinch something out of nothing. Asha stood.

"Mala, have you seen Farida? It's already late and I was supposed to meet her."

Mala drummed her fingers on the tabletop and smiled.

"I don't know. Everyone's been so focussed on the paper today, we've forgotten

everything."

Asha pressed her lips together and checked the clasps of her bag to make sure

they were latched.

"It's raining. Do you want the paper to cover your head with? You don't want to

catch something, and we don't need it anymore." Mala slid the paper across the table.

Asha leaned over and pushed it back, shook her head. She imagined grabbing the Coke

off the table and whacking it against the side of Mala's head. Clutching her Fanta to her

chest, Asha ducked out from under the umbrella and hurried across the courtyard. She

would have to get a copy of the paper from the stand outside the library, have a look at it

herself. She had handed in her assignment on time, so it must have simply been a

mistake, but what a shame. She had spent a good chunk of time on the story, it was a

good story, that one.

42

Looking up for a moment, Asha spotted Farida shooting out of the school, a

newspaper tented over her head. Farida waved wildly with one hand beckoning Asha

back towards the building. She disappeared into the shadow of the overhang, then in

through the doors. Asha pulled up the apron of her kameez and broke into a run.

Asha sat in Professor Chatterjee's office wiping the rain from her face with the

achol of her shari, a sopping copy of The Citizen in a puddle on his desk. Through the

blur, Professor Chatterjee stood and walked around his desk, put his hand on her arm.

"Asha, it is not that you don't have potential. You do."

"Ji, Sir."

"And I am not saying you cannot submit to The Citizen. We welcome all

submissions. But submission does not necessitate publication."

"Ji, Sir."

"You have written some nice stories, Asha. They are nice, but I want to push you

to do better. You have fallen into a comfortable place where anything you write is

accepted."

"Ji, Sir."

"I will not encourage mediocre work from you.

"Sir."

"Boh, Asha."

"I am no longer a Literary Contributor? With Aloka and Sajid?"

"You should observe Aloka and Sajid. I have been watching the progress of their

work over the past few months and they produce challenging new works each and every

43

week. Like our great writers, they do not falter, or fall back on favourite themes. They

never do what is easy. They press on."

Asha held her teacup on her lap and focussed on the circle of warmth it radiated

through her thigh. If she held it long enough, would it dry the rest of her out?

Outside the office, Farida wrapped her arm around Asha's waist and led her down

the stairs. It wasn't right, she was saying. It wasn't right for him to do that all of a

sudden. What did he know about literature anyway? He probably hadn't even read the

story, he was too senile to grasp the depth of anything she had written. He had only got

this position because the war wiped out all the good Professors and they had no choice,

did Asha know that? He didn't even have a wife, probably. If he did, how did she stand

such a critical, dry, old man? She would probably leave him. In fact, Farida was sure she

was packing her bags this very minute.

"He has no manners." Asha blurted. "That's all." She stood at the railing and

spread the paper open again. The rain had soaked through the newsprint, the black lines

on the page now translucent. The want ad smiled up at her, taunting:

WANTED LITERARY CONTRIBUTOR

APPLY TO PROFESSOR M.CHATTERJEE RM 201 DU,

BUILDING B.

44

"Shoitan 'er gora. " Asha crumpled up the page and tossed it down the steps.

Asha stretched out her hand then curled it back into a fist. She should knock. She

stood there scraping her knuckles against the wood. She heard the click of the light from

inside.

Kneeling, Asha slipped the notebook under the door.

She checked her watch. Eight-o'clock.

Farida had her hand on Asha's wrist, was telling her that the Professor for

Sociology that year was new and single, had a face like Uttam Kumar. Unfortunately

though, Mala Rahman walked around as if she were Suchitra Sen. A slap across the face

would do her good. Professor Uddin was too kind to put the shameless girl in her place,

but someone should before she causes a scandal. Farida nudged Asha.

"Look at her now. Wearing a georgette shari in this weather. She just wants to

show the world her skin. It might be fine if she wasn't ten pounds overweight. She's

gotten to be like an elephant, look at her thunder around."

Asha folded her arms over the railing on the verandah and rested her chin. She spooned

some chatputti into her mouth and let the chickpeas sit on her tongue softening and

seeping flavour. The fabric of her shari felt like cardboard against her skin. She was an

awkward egg doll playing dress up in the wrong clothes.

"Why are you so down? You don't have to worry Asha." Farida pinched Asha's

forearm. "The paper does not come out until the end of the week and you've put so much

work into your submission, I don't think Professor Chatterjee will turn it down."

45

"I don't think he cares how hard I've worked, Farida. He only cares if it is good."

"Well it is good. So stop worrying like a widow." Farida bit into the corner of her

paratha and stared out at the courtyard. "Allah-re-Allah!" Farida dropped herparatha

and smacked her palm against her forehead.

"What?" Asha turned.

In the courtyard below, Mala had her arms draped over the shoulders of a tall,

young man dressed in a patchy leather jacket. He held a cigarette to her lips.

"Be-sharam!" Farida leaned over the banister, squinting.

"I wonder what happened to Udhoy." Asha laughed.

Asha sat in Professor Chatterjee's office, a cup of tea in her hand. She picked at

the wayward threading on the arm of her chair and studied the items on his desk. As

always, papers were sorted into five neat piles across the front of the desk, each pile

weighed down by a teacup and saucer. Dim light from the green lamp threw an eerie

glow across a deer-shaped pen stand, the deer's tail suddenly a tiny white flame. Though

everything was neat and in its place the yellowed light seemed at once to throw

everything into a warm and liquid glow while sucking the space dry, the objects suddenly

brittle. Dust lay like ashes over the desk, skidded into the corners of curling pages.

Professor Chatterjee was hunched over a thick exam booklet, slowly turning the pages.

After a few moments, he closed the booklet and pressed his hand over the cover as if to

flatten it.

46

"More tea?" He pulled his thermos from the drawer and unscrewed the cap,

pouring half a cup for himself when Asha shook her head. He stood with the saucer and

cup in hand and walked to the back window.

"I'm going to part the curtains—do you mind the light?"

"No, sir." Asha took a long sip of tea, letting the sweetness linger on her tongue.

As he parted the curtains with one hand, the teacup and saucer tottered in the palm of the

other. He stood looking out into the centre of campus. The light from outside was white

and bright, it cut through the dark of the room like a knife. Asha set her teacup on the

corner of the desk, and folded her hands over her knee.

She waited.

For a long time Professor Chatterjee just stood and Asha began to wonder

whether she had been dismissed.

"Years ago, this University was like a light. They called us the Oxford of the

East—do you know that?"

Professor Chatterjee pushed up the window with one hand, the teacup sliding

across the saucer.

"There was a portable recording device," Professor Chatterjee pointed to the

ceiling. "Very small, nothing spectacular, but it was enough to record history right there,

just past the monuments, in the back field." He turned and leaned against the window,

pointing outside.

He was only a Tutor back then, hardly had dreams of being a Professor at all. But

Atmal Haq, a Professor of Engineering—brilliant, astutely brilliant, had hid the camera

in a tin box up on the roof, no doubt a very smart act, very brave too, no? Brilliant.

47

The teacup wobbled.

If Asha turned in her seat, just a bit to her right, put her hand on the desk—on that

volume of Tagore, yes, just like that, she would sit exactly as he had sat only five years

ago, across from the previous Bengali Literature professor, Munir Chowdhury. That

volume of Tagore, Golpo Guccho, was the very same—yes, the very same—volume

Professor Chowdhury had held in his hands when he had sent him, a young and

frightened Tutor, running up the back stairs to the roof. If Asha turns a bit—hand still on

Tagore—and half faces the door, she would have the very same line of sight he had as

they listened for the tramp of the Pakistani military. If she turns back quickly and faces

the window—snaps back all of a sudden—she would have a direct line of sight to the

back fields of campus, which would be empty save for a few cows dawdling about.

Professor Chatterjee set his teacup and saucer down. He slid the Tagore off the

desk and placed it under his arm. This was how Professor Chowdhury had stood, the

Tagore held loosely in his fingers, as if he were going to sit down and have himself a nice

read in that chair.

"Afterwards, I found it lying under his desk. I took it with me when I fled to

India." He stretched over the desk and handed Asha the book. "From the rooftop we saw

the firing squad. I wanted to close my eyes, but I didn't."

Asha took the book and held it in her lap.

"The best way to get rid of a nation is to wipe out the intellectuals. They began

and ended the war that way, by targeting the brains of Bengal." He inspected the tea in

his cup, then poured it out the window. He served himself another hot cup from the

48

thermos and tipped the tea from the cup into the saucer and blew on it. He sipped from

the edge of the saucer and clicked his tongue. "This is the absolute best thermos."

Asha nodded and began to wonder whether she ought to be here at all. He had

stopped her after class almost roughly, asked to see her in his office at 4 o'clock. For

sure, Asha thought it would be better if she just hired a rickshaw and went home, gave it

up altogether, pushed Professor Chatterjee and his peculiar visions of literary perfection

out the window, into the river. He had nodded her into the room, head still down, finger

skidding across the pages of an exam booklet. Her notebook was not on his desk and she

instinctively scanned the floor. She imagined him stepping over it on his way out,

missing it—ignoring it?

"Have you read it?" Professor Chatterjee rested his chin in his hand and raised his

eyebrows. Asha flipped open the book, shaking her head. She had heard of it. She liked

his poems, had almost all his collections at home. "We will be studying his other works

in class of course, but you must read more, absorb more. Have you thought of what you

are going to do next?"

"I plan to go home. By rickshaw, Sir."

"That is good. Good. But I mean after you have completed your degree here. You

will have mastered Bengali Literature, what do you intend to do next?" Have you thought

of pursuing further studies?"

In her drawer at home, Asha had cut out a photograph of Nasreen Akhtar, a News

Reader on television. In the photograph, Nasreen wore a navy shari with a deep red

border, the achol pulled crisply over her shoulder forming a sharp V at the neck. Her hair

was puffed at the front and twisted into a neat khopa at the nape of her neck, blooms of

49

jasmine curling out of the base of the bun. Nasreen had a pair of black, plastic-framed

glasses in her hand and was looking at a sheet of paper on the desk, her mouth in a little

frown. When Asha imagined herself at the front of a college class, she looked exactly like

Nasreen, frown and all.

"No, I don't think so, Sir."

"You received the highest grade on last term's exam. If you wanted, you could try

for a PhD. In fact, I think it would be a wise choice for you. I will write you a

recommendation if you choose to apply—and you should apply Asha." Professor

Chatterjee leaned back, his arms resting on the bulge of his belly. "And, as for your

creative work—I think you have improved. It's very good. Keep reading." He gestured to

the Tagore.

The book felt hot in Asha's hands, she looked down and thought she saw the

imprints of her fingers damp on the red cover. When she looked up, she felt heat crawl up

her throat, tingle at the back of her neck. Professor Chatterjee was leaning on one hand,

his eyes intent on Asha. "You should apply."

"Thank you, Sir. I will think about it."

"Yes, think about it. It's always good to think things through. You read that

Tagore, you think things through. But I must impress upon you how strongly I feel that

you should apply. I would even go so far as to say that it is a duty. You have a sharp

mind—I am not saying it is the sharpest, it is not—but it is a good, sound mind that is

ready to be stimulated at the highest degree. You should do it." Professor Chatterjee

clapped his hands together. "You should do it."

50

The rickshaw-ala's peach T-shirt billowed in the breeze inflating like a piece of

Raisa's cherished chewing gum. Asha did not think she was smart enough to try for a

PhD. Of course she had always wanted to score near the top—but she had never aimed

for the very top. She left that for the girls who came to class with their hair plaited in two

braids instead of one, eyes always scanning. They were chalak these girls. They sought

out the sharper minds at the beginning of the year and thatched together friendships, gave

you small smiles. Their eyes—always small and black—drove holes into your forehead,

gazes intense. They wanted to know whether you were someone they should worry about,

whether your friendship would goad them to the top. Competition was their motivation.

And the boys. They slanted their eyes to catch your grade. If you scored high, they would

laugh it off but would crumple inside and spend hours filling vials of ink for the next

exam, obsessed with visions of scoring higher—highest—the next time.

How would that be? To be one of the students who shuffled through the halls,

heads down, books and papers pressed to their hips? She could stuff herself into the

library and be one of them. She would be a PhD student, she would have something to

say.

The rain came in one sudden downpour and flattened the shirt against the

rickshaw-ala's back. She could see the movement of his muscles as he pedaled towards

home.

51

CHAPTER FOUR

Laina's hands shook. She tried to still them, gripped the pencil more firmly

between her fingers but the sweat from her palms kept the pencil slipping.

"Padma, Buriganga, Meghna, Kushiyara..." She recited the rivers like a prayer

and focussed on the rhythms of their syllables, tried to lull the rocking in her stomach.

Drawing the lines in her maps always calmed her, the stroke of lead against thick paper

felt crisp and precise. Lines that struck worlds onto paper, entire mountain ranges,

oceans, plains she could trace with her fingers across a page. And how beautiful—colours

shaded in, tiny symbols, everything exact. She was trying to finish off the rivers of

Bangladesh: over seven hundred lines like miniscule hairs curling over the page, and for

days the process had absorbed her completely. Everything was exactly to scale and her

measurements matched those of the satellite image Professor Kapoor kept under the

plastic sheet on his desk—she had checked after class yesterday, and he had confirmed,

that yes, everything was looking fine.

But today she felt as if she were chasing imaginary lines in circles around the

page, the borders wobbly, the entire exercise pointless. They had pushed the windows

open without asking, assumed the room needed air when really all it did was let in clouds

of humidity and noise from the streets. It blurred into the background with time, became

methodic: High pitched beeps from the baby-taxis, the trill of rickshaw bells and the

singsong voices of market sellers—it all became a rhythm. But the gasoline, the

pungency of the gasoline—it spun her brain into a mess, set everything pounding from

52

the inside of her head. If she could just dive headfirst into a vat of cold water, ice in her

ears, in her brain, everything still.

Professor Kapoor stood at the front, drawing lines across a map of Bangladesh.

He used green chalk to shade in areas with the most fertile land, giant patches out in the

country, away from the grainy epicenter of Dhaka. Red lines showed the areas through

which the Pakistani military marched, cutting through the thick of the earth, soil clamped

to the bottom of their boots.

"If the war taught us one thing," Professor Kapoor dropped the chalk into his coat

pocket and pressed his fingers together. "It has taught us that this land is valuable."

Rainbow fingerprints dusted the flap of his pocket. "This earth—" He stamped his foot

against the tile. "This earth is old, the roots run deep. It is fertile, it yields and yields and

yields. Rubber! Rice! Tea! Jute!" He turned and tapped the map on the board, his finger

leaving blank voids in the shaded chalk. He patted his pocket and waved a folder in the

air. "Your maps go in here when they are done. I imagine I will see great work from each

of you." Professor Kapoor moved quickly down the aisles, placing papers on the corner

of each desk. "I am handing back your city-map assignments now. First class honours go

to Laina Ahmed, you may look at her work as an example of what I expect."

Laina blinked. How insignificant the rivers were, down there writhing on her

page. If she could just shut the window, breathe for a second and refocus, get this done.

Since the start of term, she had done well. Funneled her energy into her academics, every

spare hour squeezed dry in study. Ma had grown more attentive, had Raisa practice her

singing on the verandah each evening instead of having her burst through her scales in

the drawing room. When she and Asha sat at their desks, the doors were closed softly, the

53

dogs fed early to keep them quiet and calm, the TV shut off and neighbours sent home

despite the new natok, or even the evening news. When the electricity went out, Asha

would swivel out of her chair and jump onto the bed, relieved. But in Ma would slip,

place a hurricane lamp between their desks, tell them it was alright, they didn't need to

stop, "keep going," she would say. "Keep your hands busy with study and you'll never

have to hold them out for money, for food."

Since the end of their break, Laina didn't mind being pulled away from

everything else. She kept her garden going, it was her solace, but her maps kept her mind

on the page before her, her eyes on the curve of a valley instead of the path to Ilyaas'

house. Laina loved knowing how the weight of the earth changed when you went farther

inland, how it rose when you went further out. This country was low, the soil rich from

rainfall, heavy and fertile. She ran her finger along the perimeter of her map. Northeast,

the earth rose into hills, in Sylhet. At the opposite end, in the southeast, the plains spun

themselves into swooping hills through Chittagong, this was where the tourists flocked.

Dhaka was too much for them, too much of everything: people, cars, rickshaws,

pollution. It was too sweaty, too clogged with the heat of people trying to live.

Chittagong was where people went to breathe, to see how beautiful this country could be.

This was where Ilyaas stayed, after a week roaring through the city with Mukul, he

stayed. It had been over a month since he left and she had spent each morning looking for

a swirl of smoke from the Hamids' backyard before deciding that Ilyaas must have quit

smoking and gotten a job. This was why she didn't see him anymore, why she never

passed him at the crossroads, why he didn't come by with pomegranates or dates, or lime

54

leaves in a paper box. Finally his mother, Ayesha Auntie, had come for tea yesterday

evening, a letter folded over a box of sweets.

"Apa, you must know," she whispered, hands on her heart. "You must know how

angry I was. One week turned to a month—this isn't proper. I expected him home, you

understand." She held the teacup with both hands and sipped, dotted her lips with the

edge of her achol. Laina placed a plate of biscuits on the table and handed Auntie a pakha

to fan herself in the warm evening air. She smiled and placed the pakha on her lap,

opened the box of sweets.

"Laina, shona, go ahead. Take some mishti inside for your sisters. Enjoy." Auntie

turned and slung one hand over the railing of the verandah. "Apa, your trees are still

heavy with mangoes, MashaAllah."

"Yes, they've been quite good this year."

Laina knew she had been quietly dismissed and she slipped from the verandah

back into the house with a plateful of syrup-soaked sweets. Before she could place the

plate on the table, Asha grabbed her by the arm and pulled her into the front room.

"Be quiet. Look. I'm making paper dolls for Raisa." Asha climbed onto the bed

and leaned against the headboard, her arm resting on the windowsill. Scraps of paper

were crumpled all over the bed, a bowl of rice lay tipped over on a pillow, white kernels

smushed into the kata. Asha picked a kernel of rice and spread it across the edge of a

paper triangle. She pressed the triangle to the body of a flimsy paper doll and smiled.

"This is a mess." Laina sat on the edge of the bed and brushed the rice back into

the bowl.

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"It's always important to know what's going on," Asha whispered to the doll. "I

don't believe in secrets." She tossed the doll at Laina and grabbed a kalo-jam, her

favourite deep-fried sweet and bit into it, syrup running down her chin. She pressed a

finger to her lips pointing at the window. The curtains were drawn, but the window had

not been shut. They heard the clink of teacups and the creaking of the bethe chairs as Ma

and Auntie shifted their weight.

"His father is afraid he's run away with a girl—threatened to lash him the moment

he steps into the house burdened, no job." Auntie's voice shook. Laina felt her throat

shrink. Asha leaned forward and peered through a sliver in the curtains. "His father is too

hot-headed. He thinks Ilyaas is like him, silly and unfocussed, wrapped up in the whims

of a girl. I know my son, Apa."

"Of course." They heard the edge in Ma's voice, the guarded sympathy.

"He wants to think about life. I was worried, wondered why can't he think here at

home?"

They heard the muted splash of more tea being poured into a cup and the crinkle

of paper.

"But Apa, I bring good news. I bring mishti and good news."

"She talks too much." Asha reached for a laddoo, bit into the sweet gram-flour

ball, orange crumbs sticking to front of her kameez.

"He has received a Russian scholarship. Full tuition. Full board. His father asks

why he didn't try for America—I say it doesn't matter. He will be off doing something,

this chance doesn't come twice, Apa."

"MashaAllah. This is very good news."

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"She could have said that first thing—saved us all this trouble." Asha offered

Laina half her laddoo.

"His father still thinks this is about a girl, that Ilyaas will come pounding through

the door, a foolish girl in tow. He can never enjoy good news when it comes, that man."

Laina folded the paper doll into a skinny rectangle, pressed the creases firmly

against her thigh. If there was anything more worth listening to Asha would tell her at

night, curl her cold hand through her arm and whisper into her ear just as Laina was

falling asleep.

Ilyaas' father was far too suspicious of his own son. He was a man—of everyone

he should be the first to understand. Men needed changes in atmosphere and stretches of

empty land; they needed time. She pulled her pencil along the Bay of Bengal, pushed the

base of the lead against the page shading in the coastline. This was where he could be this

very second, staring out into the Bay, waiting. For what? Would destiny wash up from

the waters and strike him in the face, a cold blast of common sense? Did he even wonder

at what he had left behind, realize that a month was more than enough time for him to

find what he was looking for, to find his way back? Laina pinched her nose. Splotches of

red winked into her vision, gasoline sparking in her brain. And now, off again to Russia

without a thought. Foolish, foolish. This was too much.

She felt a hand shake her shoulder.

"Let me see." Nishu leaned forward and grabbed the city-map assignment from

her desk. "Let me see what Professor liked so much."

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Nishu licked her thumb and flipped through the assignment. Laina had always

thought Nishu looked like a pregnant chicken: her eyes were set too close together and

her nose, long and narrow, drooped off her face. Even now, she sucked in her cheeks and

pursed her lips as if she had something enormous lodged inside her that she couldn't get

out. Nishu pitched the assignment across Laina's desk.

"Do you have an arrangement with Professor Kapoor? Some sort of special

relationship? You give, he gives back."

Laina knew the way Nishu worked. She could drive a girl into the ground with her

words, true or not. The room was still. The other girls focussed on their maps, but Laina

felt their eyes burning into the side of her head, Nishu's words already setting their minds

spinning. But everyone knew Nishu. They knew if anyone rose above her, she hammered

them back down with her tongue. Laina shook her head. She should slap the nose right

off her face, send her sprawling to the ground, stamp her out. But she was dizzy and the

room spun, faces bleary like smeared paint. She turned and drove the tip of her pencil

into the centre of Dhaka, wished someone would close the window.

Laina saw Nimul from the rickshaw before she reached the crossroads.

It had started to rain the moment she left class, the sky cracking open like an egg.

She sat in the rickshaw tumbling through the rushing streets, glad to have the rain

spraying in her face, in her nostrils. She found herself tearing long strips of thin plastic

from the edge of the seat. First class honours and that dirty magi had soiled the memory

forever. She was surprised at the sudden flurry of curses whipping in her head. It was

Asha that had a tongue that could burn, said things that turned you inside out. If it were

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Asha in that classroom, she would have thrashed Nishu with a few choice words. Laina

tossed a strip of plastic into the wind. Yes, Asha had a tongue. But it flapped behind

closed doors. She wasn't all that different. She took what people gave her.

Laina had stopped acknowledging Nimul, ignored the bottles of Fanta he left

everyday by the gate. She could sense him in the mornings like a bad omen, a crow

hovering over her shoulder. Until now, he had been an annoyance, something to joke at

and wonder about. In the passing months a silence had seeped into things. Everyday the

closer he crept, the further she drew back. Asha told her that this was the type of

obsessive love poets drowned themselves in—then they wrote epics; she should bask in

it, not shy into shadows, always in retreat. But it was not the obsession she disliked. It

was the desperation. The rickshaw-ala paused at the crossroads.

"Please, drop me at the gate." She pointed down the path, urged the rickshaw-ala

to continue. Nimul paced from one fencepost to the other, cricket bat balanced over his

shoulders, shirt soaked through with rain. The rickshaw-a/a hopped off his cycle and

pushed the rickshaw by its handlebars into the rain. Laina braced herself against the seat,

kept her eyes on the spinning front wheel. The entire path was a thick slat of rutted mud,

water rising. She had heard of traffic accidents involving upturned rickshaws before, the

inhabitants completely smothered by the weight of the rickshaw resting on their

shoulders. She could break a limb, trapped under there. And with the water rising, she

could drown face first in a muggy puddle. If she was under for too long, the mud stains

would stick and her shari would be ruined. The rickshaw-a/a pushed his weight into the

handlebars and the rickshaw surged forward. Laina slammed against the side of the seat,

the rickshaw tilting.

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"No—no." The rickshaw-ala turned to face her. "It won't happen." He gripped the

seat of the cycle and shook his head. "If I go further it's going to tip over, I have to drop

you here." Steadying the rickshaw, he held out his hand.

The rain had let up but at every step she stopped to yank her foot out of the mud.

She knew Nimul was behind her using his cricket bat as a cane, lunging through the

sludge. The third time she slipped, she fell flat on her back. She lay there, the mud cold

against her body, the ground sucking her down. The country was a bowl, really. It was

like plunging a bowl into a vat of water; everything poured in. And when more drove

down from the sky, the earth collapsed beneath it all and sent the whole country

swimming. She twisted the sandals off her feet and dug in her heels, tried to pull herself

up. Her shari was stuck to the back of her legs with thick welts of mud. She didn't want

to struggle. She lay back, felt the mud creep around her ears, cold. The sky looked

tauntingly blue.

It was five years ago, but she still remembered how cold the water felt; even with

the sun thrashing the land, scorching everything dry, the marsh was cold. She knew her

parents should have kept them at home, away from all this. After a month of listening

through windows for the tramp of soldiers, Abba and Ma decided that Dhaka was not a

place for young women to wait and they packed their three eldest daughters up, sent them

into Madaripur with their uncle, Rasma Chacha. They hadn't realized that their daughters

would spend the next eight weeks ducking from one village to another, that the military

was thickest out in the country. Rasma Chacha and the other men slept with crop cutters

at their sides and while guns went off in Dhaka, ditches there were already rumpled with

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bodies, girls bathed for hours in ponds, washing out the scent of foreign men. Their last

escape into the thick of the marshes had been sudden. They had left their small parcels of

daal and rice scattered on the floor, the thump of military boots electricity in their ears.

When they slogged through the marshes, Laina kept her eyes on Asha's bobbing head,

sludgy waters lapping at their necks, licking their earlobes. A saucer full of gasoline lit a

cooking fire in a pit behind an empty house where they boiled water and pooled what

remained of their dry food into cousin Dipa's cooking pot, watching the vapours curl into

the night. Even facing the flame, Laina felt her chest caving in from the cold, her whole

body shaking. The scent of gasoline made everything spin; Asha's face warped into

swirls, sparks from the fire turned to giant red wasps that swatted at her eyes.

Laina opened her eyes and looked into shards of sun spattering off Nimul's head.

He was hunched over her, cricket bat across his knees. He had rolled up the bottom of his

slacks and she could see the fine hairs on his shins shimmer in the sun. This was the

closest he had ever been to her—she could hear him breathe. She sat up quickly yanking

at her achol, tugging it over her shoulder. He stood and took two steps back, watched her.

"Please go away." She stood, her legs shaky, and walked passed him.

When she reached the gate, she looked back and saw that he was hunched over the same

spot streaking through the mud with his fingers.

Moni was on the verandah tossing pieces of string into the air and watching her

cat Kajol swat at them, when Laina reached home.

"Allah-re-Allah— "

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Until that moment, Laina had not considered what she must look like dripping up the

steps of the house. She had left her sandals sinking in the mud and the cement steps were

cold against her feet. Looking into Moni's gaping face she realized how cold the rest of

her body felt, how dirty.

"Oh Moni, don't worry, I'm fine—"

But Moni was already on her feet, screaming. For Ma, for Asha, for everyone—she was

shaking, her hands flapping around her face. Ma appeared in the doorway and she

dropped her patch of embroidery, hand reaching for Laina.

"Ma?" Laina let Moni pull her inside the house. Moni slammed the door shut and

circled round Laina, crying. Ma stood before her, wiping the mud off her cheeks with the

achol of her shark

"Laina, what happened?" She whispered. "Who did this?"

"Ma—" Laina shook her head. "Nothing happened, I—"

She felt a hand on her arm and turned to face Asha.

"Did somebody rob you? Did somebody—Laina—"

"Stop it. Stop it." She held her hand up and backed away. "I just fell—that's it."

They stared for a moment. Moni handed Laina a gamsa and they watched as she wiped

her face, her arms, and wadded the chequered cloth into a ball.

"You know what the road gets like when it rains. The rickshaw couldn't get down

here so I walked. I slipped a few times." She knelt to wipe her feet.

"You're going to catch a cold! Hurry and change—get up, get up." Ma took the

gamsa and opened the door to the verandah. Wringing out the water, she called over her

shoulder. "Soak the shari in a pail of water outside—don't let the mud stains set."

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The phone rang early the next morning, while Laina stood on the verandah airing

out her shari along the railing. She had scraped the mud off and turned the yard into a

slurry, scrubbing for a full hour before Ma came out to scold her, told her that her skin

would peel off in strips if she spent all her time thrashing about in water. Today was

Jummah, and Abba sat on the verandah combing his hair before heading to the mosque

for Friday prayers. The shari was not a favourite, it was only an old cotton one she had

found at the bottom of the armoire. But it was lovely, a soft yellow with a leaf print. She

could still see the mud crawling in long, faint lines across the material. Abba put down

his comb after three rings and eased himself off the chair, hand on his belly. He winced

from the effort and Laina patted him on the shoulder, told him to sit down. Raisa was

usually the first to answer the phone but today she had gone with Asha to sing at the

Shishu Flower Festival dressed in her red frock and ready at six in the morning,

harmonium in tow. Munir usually called in the evenings when everyone was already

home. Afternoon calls were rare, unless he was sick—

"Hello?"

"Laina?"

"Hello? Munir?"

"Thank you." The voice was low, a whisper.

"Who is this?"

"A beautiful gift. Thank you." He coughed.

"What gift?" Laina paused. "Who is this?"

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"Sandals. Your beautiful, beautiful sandals." He was laughing, or crying, she

didn't know which. She pressed the phone to her ear and listened to his breathing,

wobbly, as if he were underwater. "Beautiful."

"Nimul?" He could be holding her sandals in his hands, imagining the shape and

size of her feet, the curve of her toes.

"Thank you."

"What do you want Nimul?"

"I want to marry you."

"Nimul." Laina stopped. Her voice was soft, gentle. As if she were whispering a

lullaby. If she just sharpened an edge into her voice she could cut him off instead of lull

him into this false worship, this devotion.

"Nimul." She repeated, harder. "Don't call here again."

She clicked the phone back into its cradle and wiped the plastic casing with her

hand.

Up on the roof, Laina sat with the pomegranate plant in her lap. A spiral of blue

smoke wafted up through the air, wound itself through the branches of the lime tree. She

could see his silhouette, guessed his hand was in his pocket, wrapped around a box of 555

cigarettes. He smoked 555's just because he'd seen the brand in an old poster ad outside

the cinema, thought they must be good if Uttam Kumar liked them so much. He had

come by with photographs this morning, had sat in the drawing room passing them

around with Hamid Uncle and Abba. Asha had taken the tea tray from Raisa and handed

it to her, pushed her through the curtains into the room. She hadn't decided if he looked

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guilty or not. He didn't look at her at all, took his tea and toast from the tray with a nod. It

was Abba who invited her to look at the photographs, said that she could see firsthand

how the land chucked itself into spiraling hills out there, how the earth changed. Ilyaas

had looked up then, offered to let them keep the photographs for a while, look through

them for as long as they wanted, or needed to. He would only keep a few to show off in

Russia, show them what warm air did for the earth.

The little red pot was almost too small, she would have to repot soon, the plant

had grown thick and bushy, the bright green foliage like a head of hair. In just a few

months, bright buds had blushed out of the leaves, and she couldn't help but hope for

fruit. It would take at least two or three years before the young plant would give her the

gem-filled fruit, hard as cricket balls. But still, every orange flower was a nub of hope. It

had been an entire week since anyone had found a bottle of Fanta by the gate. Asha

brushed her fingers between the bars of the window every night and whispered that the

rock left only dust on her fingers. Asha thought these were things she could smile at

through lines of poetry, but she didn't understand the guilt Laina held in her gut like a

knotted vine. It made her nauseous. For a week she didn't have to hurry up the path to the

crossroads, afraid that Nimul would catch up. But when she looked over her shoulder, she

wondered if he would come loping up the path anyway, mouth gaping.

65

CHAPTER FIVE

Asha didn't think it would be wise to be blatant about her new outlook on life. It

didn't happen all at once. It was a slow burning of small things and in the end she knew it

was right to follow the heat of it, to never hold back. Even in the dark she could see that

Laina breathed heavy, chin up, nostrils flared. Laina always took her full dose of sleep,

only woke when it was time, never a second before. Looking at her face you wouldn't

think she was the type to care so much about things being precise—she had a moon

face—wide and full of light, always dreaming. Yet, she woke every morning at six,

traipsed through the garden, had her face washed, hair plaited and breakfast eaten by

seven. And those mind-numbing maps—her geometry set must be worn from all the

measurements, the calculations, the double-checking. Asha turned and pulled a map from

the pile Laina had placed on the corner of the desk. It was a perfect page of gridlines and

symbols, everything in its place. This was it—it was all flawlessly controlled, everything

planned and accounted for, this was what Laina loved, having the world measured out in

pieces before her, nothing could escape. She had wired her brain into these maps so she

wouldn't have to step out and stretch, really feel things. Laina thought her something of

an imbecile, she knew, she didn't have to look twice to know the look on Laina's face

whenever Sunny came hobbling up the walk, dirty knees and elbows. Katchi was an

olosh, always made others do what she should do for herself, she knew that—she wasn't

dumb, a bolod. She scrubbed that girl because it was the right thing to do, she would do

what was good, what was right, it was her own heart that mattered, God would judge her

for that. Really, out of all of them it was Laina who spoke the least. It was she who never

did what she truly wanted. She shut up her heart and thought it was noble.

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Asha lifted the hurricane lamp onto the desk and refilled the ink in her pen. She

had dozens of blank pages in the drawer and a deadline the next day. The Citizen had

been good work for her over the past four months. Professor Chatterjee insisted on giving

her new reading material each week, piling the books on a corner of his desk for her to

pick up every Thursday afternoon. When she stopped by he always had his thermos of tea

out and an envelope full of application information for DU's PhD in Bengali Literature.

Each week it was something new: a page outlining various methods of literary theory, a

booklet on the greatest Bengali poets, a paper on recurring themes of domesticity in

Tagore's fiction. She tied them with garden string and piled them into the bottom of the

armoire. At night, after everyone had gone to sleep, she sat on the floor in front of the

open armoire and sifted through the pages. Every time she shook the papers from their

thin envelopes she felt she was unearthing some great secret. If she made a show of what

she was thinking, everyone would cloud her mind with their thoughts. Abba would smile

quietly to himself, pleased. When Nashu Mama came to visit each month he would spend

the hour talking about her job prospects instead of whispering over tea about available

bachelors. Ma would pile her plate with four parathas, maybe five eggs—satiated with

the thought that Asha could earn her own keep, fold her own dollar notes into her own

pocket. Laina would sit back and smile, tell her how much she loved reading the books

she brought home, that it was a fine idea, why not. She pulled out a sheet of paper and

tapped her pen against the side of the desk. Professor Chatterjee had suggested she start

writing critical reviews and articles, short pieces that would make students think about

what they were reading instead of wallowing through stories half awake. Of course, they

shouldn't swallow poems and stories whole either, they weren't chunks of entertainment

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they could digest in an hour. With his eyes on Asha, Professor Chatterjee had folded his

hands over his belly and sat back in his chair, nodding. So for three months Asha had

written weekly critical articles focusing mostly on the short stories of Tagore, explicating

themes, drawing connections—doing what she thought readers could do on their own,

without her guiding hand. Farida assured her that the section was still faithfully read, that

there was nothing to worry about, it was quite a success, really. A month ago she had sat

with Farida in the library her daal poori flaking onto her lap when Professor Chatterjee

strolled onto the balcony buttoning the cuffs of his sleeves. She had just bit into the poori,

wanted to savour the deep-fried patty of mashed lentils and hot peppers and was almost

annoyed when she saw him approach her, glasses hooked into the front pocket of his

shirt. He told her that she was to start submitting a poem or short story—her choice—in

lieu of the usual critical piece every week until he gave her further direction. He had a

meeting that afternoon with the board and would not be available for their usual weekly

appointment, so he had brought her new reading material himself.

"Fill this out," he said, handing her a fat, brown envelope. It was made of thicker

paper, the seams reinforced and sewn. "Give it to me next week and I will look it over for

you."

Asha ran her pen in spirals over the blank page. The crickets were screaming

outside, the air already too hot for their small throats. She had opened the package while

riding home in the rickshaw and felt her hands grow slick with sweat when she pulled out

an official application for the PhD program. She still remembered how surprised she was

at how ordinary it all looked, just lines on a page, spaces for her name, her grades, a

series of typewritten sheets. This was what it looked like—black letters on white pages.

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She could imagine herself at the end of it all, a bespectacled Professor in a classroom,

reading from an open book. She was sure she knew what it felt like, the words on her

tongue like chunks of soft potato, warm and whole. It would be like slipping your feet

into a pair of old shoes. She would fill it out and hand it in—just as Professor Chatterjee

said—and there, just like that, she would step into a dream. It wasn't so serious, she

knew, but the papers stuck to her fingers, sending tingles through her palms. At that

moment she felt full, like she had a mouthful of warm, white rice. By then, she had

already met Jamal. Still, it all seemed so promising.

She had seen Jamal for the first time from the library balcony, leaning in to light

Mala a cigarette. Farida sat next to Asha, tearing her laddoo into crumbling bits of orange

mush, cursing at Mala.

"Completely shameless! Why is she out there with the boys? What for? For

trouble, that's what." Her lips were shiny from the laddoo, her plump cheeks flushed.

Jamal shook himself out of his leather jacket and leaned against a tree laughing. Mala

coughed and sputtered, swatting at the smoke streaming out of her nose. The rest of the

boys were gathered around Udhoy, watching him strum his guitar. Jamal joined the

group, perched himself on a giant cement planter. Mala—still coughing—hoisted herself

up beside him. Jamal slapped Udhoy on the shoulder and drummed out a beat smacking

the truck of the tree. They clapped and laughed, beating their knees with their fists, the

whole group like a knot slowly untying itself, loose and free.

"She shoots from man to man like a cricket ball, oshobbho!" Farida licked the

sugar off her fingers and turned to Asha. "And the boys she picks! Always the one with

the most to hide!"

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"What does he have to hide?" Asha nodded towards Jamal, picking at a loose

thread.

"Oh! Jamal! He thinks he's a high-fashion rock star, thinks he's really

something."

She remembered biting into a biscuit and looking over at him, noticing how thick and

dark his hair was—as if someone had smudged a thick pat of black paint over his skull.

He wore teddy pants, bell-bottomed slacks that fit tight at the waist and were smuggled in

and out of the bedrooms of young men all over the country. They were the pants of

irresponsible men with little sense and too much spending money, minds in the movies

instead of on their exam papers.

It was past two in the morning and the page was covered in scrawls and drawings,

nothing of value. What if she didn't submit anything at all? She was sure Professor

Chatterjee would shuffle through the aisles of the library until he found her, ask her if she

were ill, tell her she could hand in a draft that afternoon if she wanted, he would wait. It

was ridiculous really. She was expected to write something new every week, her brain

was always pulsing, always yielding. She didn't mind the hard work, the hours spent

trying to get others to pay attention. In the end it was hers, she would benefit. But the

tunnels in her brain must be collapsing, everything drying up and floating away. She was

like the earth, tilled until she was barren. She could write a poem about that.

What she really wanted to do was shake Laina awake and pull her outside, up to

the roof, tell her 'look, look—I'm going to jump, I'm going to do it—' And maybe for

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the first time she would see—everyone would see—that she was as firm as one of those

garden stakes driven right to the centre of the earth: she knew exactly what she wanted.

She hadn't sneaked to the cinema with Farida for a long time. They usually went

right after they turned in their final exams and could breathe, really enjoy the film. But

last year they had both used one of their final lunch and study periods (when they should

have been memorizing Wordsworth's / Wandered Lonely as a Cloud) and slipped to the

theatre on Raipur Road. They spent the afternoon sucking on misri—sugar rocks she

always thought looked like dusty diamonds—and watched Uttam Kumar on the giant

screen. Farida scored so low on her exam that year, that when the results were printed,

her mother slept for a full week and when she woke, refused to eat any fish for a month.

So last month, when Asha suggested they take the rickshaw to go see Golapi Ekhon

Train 'e, Farida choked on her nimki and went into a coughing fit, spraying the crisps of

fried dough across her opened books. Asha had sat alone on a bench outside the theatre,

pastry bag resting on her lap, waiting.

The cream roll was thick and rich, the pastry flaky. It was the kind that filled your

whole mouth. Jamal snapped a swirl of jelabi in half and offered it to her. He had gone to

the best sweet store he knew to find the perfect jelabi—twisting spirals that came out of

the syrup shiny and crisp—and she should have them while they were still hot. She

handed him a cream roll and bit into the bright orange twist. She crunched through the

thin shell, warm syrup coating her tongue. On the screen, the actress brushed out the curls

in her hair.

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When she tested Jamal's name against Ma and Abba, they pretended not to hear.

Asha looked down at her page and slowly ripped it into thin strips. This thing, it was not

the flourish she had thought it would be—it was a hard little nub lodged in the deepest

part of her gut. She took Raisa by rickshaw to a singing teacher and brought home photos

of the three of them—Jamal, Asha, Raisa—standing in front of a studio backdrop. She

had let it slip from her book bag and onto the desk, and Laina said nothing, pretended she

hadn't seen it at all.

She would have nothing to submit, she was positive. Opening the drawer, she

reached under a stack of Citizens and pulled out a book of Tagore poetry. It was a linen-

covered book, the title in gold. The day she submitted her application to Professor

Chatterjee, he spilled two cups of tea before settling down long enough to lodge the

packet into his filing cabinet. She had left his office and headed straight for home, wanted

to sit back in the rickshaw and breathe it all in. On her way out of the building Jamal

stopped her, handed her a daisy and a book.

"To the future Professor," he laughed.

Remembering this, Asha sat with the book on her lap, certain she would do the right

thing.

The blue certificate had scalloped edges, pretty. It was small for such an

important document, fit into her hand like a greeting card. The paper, thick and textured,

felt solid between her fingers, the edges sharp against the meat of her thumb. Rounded,

cramped script smiled her name at the bottom, the sepia ink soft against the rigid black

lettering that spelled her name out in English. Jamal's signature was swift, the letters

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flinging their tails out, swatting the English text. Asha liked the way the sepia ink looked

against the blue of the background, like translucent branches scraping against stippled

sky. This is the certificate she could keep with her, paste into her journal, a srithi. The

other documents, Kanta said, would probably be burned before the night expired.

The documents she had signed in the small room by the bay now lay on her

father's desk, the white florescent light of the lamp bleak against the fragile pages.

Jamal's dark finger had pressed against the white of the page, pointed to the trembling

black line where she was to sign her name. His other hand cupped her elbow, the sweat of

his palm new against her skin, the nub of her elbow a bird in his hand. Moments before,

she sat studying the smallness of her hands, noticed she couldn't clench them into fists, a

nervous burn prickled her palms into paralysis. She had licked her lips, felt the flecks of

dry skin and wished for a finger-full of Vaseline. Jamal leaned close to the Mawlana, his

jaw a right-angled silhouette against the Mawlana's white tunic. He raised his hand

against the Mawlana's soft, worried glances at Asha. Yes, Jamal knew how deep and

abiding the risk was for Asha, no, it would not be the end of her, it would be the

beginning of something. And in time, everyone else would see what a good choice they'd

made.

Asha listened like the Mawlana, let Jamal's words tug her gently into submission.

It felt strange, this uncertainty. In the courtyard of her college the week before, the idea

felt solid, a decision she could return to in her mind in the days ahead, warm and

consistent, exhilarating. She had noticed Jamal's voice first. At the main gates she stood

hip to hip with Farida the rain flicking their faces. Their arms circled around each other's

waists, their georgette sharis clinging wet against the curves of their backs. Asha turned

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her face to the sky and told Farida that if you just decided to enjoy the rain, you could.

She told Farida to feel it, to listen to the rain. The two of them stood, their eyes closed,

rain running in streams down their cheeks. Farida shook off the moment first, how silly it

was, what if someone saw them. She tapped the face of her wristwatch and jiggled the

chrome casing, the rain must have ruined it and it came all the way from America, how

terrible. The flowery patterns of their sharis, translucent, stuck to their bodies like sweat,

revealing their honeyed skin. Farida worried what unwelcome eyes might see. Asha felt

the mud suck her sandals deep, and she laughed saying she understood the stories the rain

whispered when it trickled down the curl of her ear. There was the jingle of change and

the startle of laughter and Asha turned to see. Loose collars, tight teddy pants and that

swagger boys spent every day perfecting. Eyes and nudges, half smiles that drew blushes

and coy laughter from girls. Asha saw Jamal, tall with the light blue shirt, the strong jaw,

but it was his voice that mattered to her first. He flung his hand out at her and laughed

long and loud.

Pagli kobi! Crazy poet!

Deep and smooth, rising with a bubble of a laugh on the bi!

Amarjonneh ektah kobitah lekho bon! Write me a poem, sister!

His musical lilt turned jibe to joke, to invitation.

Farida passed her change to Asha and grabbed her by the arm nodding towards

the rickshaw hut on the corner. His words burned against Asha's ears. Six months later

they sat in the college courtyard shaded by date palms, biting into flaky cream filled

pastries Jamal had brought her in a box tied with yellow ribbon. They thought of what

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they should do now that parental concern over their prem, their love, had quickly reached

boiling desperation. A warm breeze carried with it the fragrance of Dolon Chapa,

blooming soft and white in the courtyard garden. She told Jamal how her father took the

boti from the kitchen, stood in the heat of the afternoon sun in their garden and cut the

long leafy branches of their Dolon Chapa plant and left them scattered in the yard. He

found Laina that evening, crying into the soft dirt, the branches gathered in her arms. He

had laid a hand on her shoulder and told her he was only trying to make things right, and

that he was sorry her plant had died. Jamal had sat back in his chair and fingered the

buttons on his shirt, stroked his chin with his thumb. The lower half of his face was a

dark shadow, follicles thick beneath the skin. Didn't Asha think it would do them all

some good if they just ran off, shook them all off their backs? Imagine the looks on their

faces, the surprise, what a thought. Asha nodded and watched a group of girls tie balloons

to the legs of a table. Spread with sweets the tabletop was a whirl of colour. She felt

bold enough to get up and pop that big green balloon, and the yellow one too, the sound

would be enormous, swallowing up their petty laughter so she could think. One of the

girls, soft and supple in a chocolate coloured shari stood behind the table and wrestled

with a knotted ribbon tied to a red balloon. She looked up when a young man in fitted

cream coloured slacks and a black open-collared shirt approached the table holding out a

few crisp bills. He pointed to giant webs of jelabi sitting on a silver tray and laughed at

the mess of ribbon the girl had tangled herself in. Setting down his money he gently

untangled the girl and whispering something in her ear, tied the balloon to her wrist. The

girl smiled and piled jelabi into a paper sac, the balloon bobbing in the air as she handed

him his sweets. She was already his or he was already hers.

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It happened slowly, exchanges of smiles, then words, then quiet lunches in shady

corners. Then someone at home gradually became more aware. Noticed the frequent

outings of their child, the time spent editing reflections in mirrors, and small things like

folded notes and pressed flowers and eyes that dreamed. Then with the quick scan of an

intimate note and the interrogation of a brother, a sister, or a friend, the thing became

known, it morphed into something solid to scream at and infiltrated households sending

them into states of emergency. This girl is from here or here and isn't right, the boy

hasn't done this or this and isn't appropriate, good enough. But more, this frantic hand

wringing came from a place that already knew this prem had taken their daughter, their

son, and tied them up. That balloon tied to her small wrist could mean something, a

bright, bobbing signal, a blot in the blue sky. Her wrist so thin and fragile the bright thing

could carry her off and away. Or so big and bulbous, such a lovely thing to destroy. Jamal

had been sending out rhetorical signals for a while now, slipping in blasphemous ideas to

gage Asha's reaction.

Every night, with the rest of the house heavy with sleep, Asha would slip into the

kitchen and light a hurricane lamp. Kneeling in the circle of light, Asha would fill a tin

bowl with water and select a candle from the bundle the workwoman kept wrapped in

layers of newspaper in a small drawer by the window. The candles, a yellowed white, felt

like thin bones in her hands; they clicked together as she rolled them back and forth

across her fingers, their waxy skins shining in the amber light. They slowly softened

under the warmth of her hands; tapered ends drooped in soft melting arcs, wicks curled

into loops. Asha tucked one candle into the waistband of her shalwar, and scooping up

the bowl of water and lamp, she would swoop out of the kitchen. Out the door and into

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the thickening heat of the verandah, Asha would go, fluttering her way up the wrought

iron staircase to the rooftop. There, she would unwrap her orna from her shoulders and

spread it out over the crumbling gravel, setting down her lamp and bowl. With metallic

stones pressing their patterns into her skin, Asha would borrow a flame from the lamp

and sit through the night tipping her candle over the bowl of water. The wax would warm

and bubble into a crystal bead, plummet into the pool of water below and bloom into lacy

flowers, small wax discs, that Asha would scoop up and plunge through a needle,

stringing them onto a thread. At the end of the night, with the sun seeping her dye into the

clouds, Asha would loop her thread of waxy blossoms around the branches of Laina's

rooftop plants, a garland of melting flowers that Laina would spend each morning

scraping off leaves with a knife. With morning, came Laina up the steps, knife in hand,

hair plaited, shari swept into neat pleats, the same exchange:

"Shara raafl Up all night? You haven't slept yet?"

"Mala banachchi. Making necklaces. The sunlight makes them glow, see?"

"It also makes them melt, Asha!"

"But right now, they're pretty."

The wax would drip and solidify into translucent pools and Asha would smile and glide

back down the steps to her bed where she would hold onto the image of glowing garlands

lit up from a rising sun.

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CHAPTER SIX

It was not sensible to make the flowers out here on the verandah, but the screens

Abba had put up that morning shielded Laina from bursts of rain. Besides, she liked the

sharp scent of wet grass rolling in from the field beyond the road. She sat on the floor of

the verandah, thighs rustling in paper garlands, mashing warm rice against the side of a

tin bowl with her fingers. Spreading the sticky rice glue along the edge of a paper petal,

Laina basked in the damp breeze. She used to grow dizzy and faint from the sickly sweet

scent of the grass, but today she welcomed the familiar throb at her temples, wanted to

focus on that pain; it was like a rock lodged into the side of her head. Abba had put up the

screens after returning from Fajr, morning prayer at the mosque now a habit. The thrust

of the knife against the thin metal mesh scraped its way into Laina's sleep and she

watched him from the doorway, slicing the mesh into rectangles, fitting them over the

verandah railings. He had not spoken to Asha since she had come home past midnight

two weeks ago, long papers folded into her book bag, creases cutting through the middle

of the pages like a road. Nashu Mama had come with the news, his hands rolling and

unrolling a newspaper, Ma and Abba sitting on the divan, their hands folded on their

knees like obedient students.

Laina had known that Asha was capable of this, of sinking their household into a

muddy silence. Asha thought herself chalak, truly sharp, so clever. Tugging the thin wire

tight around the base of the flower Laina entwined it around the garland that lay

streaming down the length of the veranda like a snake. But if Asha was anything at all,

she was naive, too willing. She was selfish. What was it that made Asha so willful, so

rash? She was weighed down by what she thought was love, could barely lift her head to

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see how foolish and misguided her feelings were. They would pass, those feelings. She

didn't know it yet—Laina clipped the end of the wire with her scissors—everything

would dry up; one quick clap of the hand on her chest and her heart would puff out of her

like dust. Twirls of wire in her mouth, Laina walked to the front end of the verandah and

pinned up the garland, swooping it across the netting. She had given herself away at far

too easy a price. She was a fool. How could she enter the house triumphant, her steps

quick and smooth?

Abba had gone into the city and placed a deposit on the grand dining hall at

Shapla Banquet and Restaurant the day after Asha came home. Laina had wanted to place

her cold palm against the back of Asha's neck, feel the heat in her throat. Did Asha know,

sitting on the edge of their bed, hands unfolding the court papers on her lap that she had

cracked Abba open, spilled everything out? When Nashu Mama murmured, head down,

that Asha and Jamal had signed marriage papers at the courthouse, that the news had

already spread, that the deed was done, Abba had rubbed at his chest with his hand and

gulped several times, as if a fish bone had lodged itself into the back of his throat. His

shoulders shook and for a moment Laina almost believed something had caught itself in

his throat, that he needed a glass of water to ease it down. But he was crying into his

hands, Ma dabbing at her own eyes with the end of her achol. Was it worth it, Laina

wondered, was it worth hurting everyone so you could fill yourself up with someone

else? She had wanted to ask Asha this, had wanted to dump it all out before her, felt like

crashing a pot of boiling rice on the kitchen floor every time she thought of Asha slipping

out of the house and past the barricade, sandals swinging from her hands.

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Abba had taken two weeks off from work and purchased the netting from Kolshi

bazaar, told Laina that the paper flowers she liked to make would look lovely as

decorations on the verandah, that since they would last longer than the fresh flowers,

would she mind having them up a few days before the wedding, that a biye bari should be

flocked in flowers, in colour. Abba had ordered fresh gendas, heavy ropes of deep orange

marigolds to drape from the windows the day of the holud. He drove to the Kolshi bazaar

every morning at 8 o'clock and brought home sample rolls of stringed flowers, showed

them to Ma, asked her if they would be alright, were they bright enough, large enough,

were they hardy enough to withstand the weather if it happened to rain? Ma shook her

head and was gentle with her remarks, placed the garlands in bowls of water, told Abba

that any flowers would do, that he didn't have to worry himself sick over it all. But Abba

had drenched himself in this wedding. He had already told Moni that he would bring

fresh haldi from the bazaar the morning of the holud, but until then she should mix

practice batches of the yellow paste and test it on her forearm, see if it brightened the

skin, note what mixture worked best, to check with Ma, get her approval. He brought

Laina a stack of coloured paper, placed a roll of string on her desk. He had Raisa draw

sketches for wall and floor designs on the back of her notebooks, told her he would bring

pots of paint the week of the wedding and she would paint the backdrop, that it was

important she chose a nice design because it was where Asha would sit, where all the

photos would be taken. He would have his daughter married in a flourish of colours and

smells, everything would be attended to. Ma, sorting tiny black specks from a lapful of

raw rice would pile the miniscule black stones into a tin bowl and whispered that

daughters kneaded their fathers like dough, that they softened a man beyond what he

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could handle. Abba moved about the house with slow and heavy steps, passed Asha

without a word, hands always folded across his stomach like he was holding something

in.

The rain was falling softly now, a soft hiss in Laina's ear. She pressed a paper lily

against the netting, crushed the petals against the wire. Abba had piled a tangle of lights

on the verandah, planned to hang them from rods and attach them to the netting, the

entire house a buzz of lights. From high up it would be like someone had scratched out a

square of the land, left behind a bright white spot in the darkness. You could stand

anywhere for thirty miles and see the house beckoning. The light would draw mosquitoes

in, and the neighbours would come too. Laina imagined the guests, in green and yellow

and orange curving their way through the gate like caterpillars, bellies aching for sweets.

The Hamids would be there, promised they would bring a platter of the best jelabi for the

occasion. Ayesha Auntie told Ma three times that Ilyaas would still be in Russia, that he

had work hours that kept him awake three days at a time, life bideshe was difficult for a

young man, living alone, it was a real struggle. He had sent his good wishes to them in

his last letter though, along with photographs of his school, his classmates, his tiny flat in

St. Petersburg. Laina traced the outline of the Hamids' heavy pomegranate tree through

the netting, imagined slicing through the trunk with her fingernail, cutting the tree in half.

His first month away he had joined Mukul and traveled through the region taking

photographs of terrain that seemed to go on forever, plains that folded over into mountain

and sky. He directed them to Abba, with notes written in soft pencil on thin strips of

paper. Ayesha Auntie delivered them to Abba who, sifting through them in the evening

would tell Laina to pay close attention, that it would help her understand the geography

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of the world, how the earth changed beneath your feet depending on where you went. He

handed Laina the photographs in a thin brown envelope and told her she should compile

all her maps and these photographs into an album, think about how she could use

practical knowledge of the world and apply them to her maps, transfer what she saw in

the photographs into something applicable.

"He is using his time wisely—doesn't want to just pass through the world sitting

back and viewing things. He's really immersing himself into the process of

understanding—very, very good."

Laina collected the photographs and kept them bundled in the envelope at the

bottom of the armoire where Ma kept old cotton sharis layered with naphthalene balls.

The photographs and geographical notes came regularly at the end of each month for

about four months. Then they stopped. For three months Ayesha Auntie gave only quick

verbal updates on Ilyaas to Ma, said he was studying for examinations, that the language

classes were difficult, that he hardly had time to eat let alone write letters. The letters

came sporadically and when they did, Ayesha Auntie came to visit, showed Ma photos

over tea and cake rusks, crumbs dotting the glossy images. Laina would weave in and out

of the room, now with a tray of buttered toast, then a pitcher of water, a glass of mango

juice, a towel to wipe tea droplets from the table. She saw Ilyaas posing with Mukul by a

canal, his hand raised in a wave. Ilyaas biting into a slice of cake—chocolate with white

icing—at a restaurant. Ilyaas kneeling with a group of students crowded round an orange

cat. A woman with thick, pale arms holding the orange cat.

"It's hard," Ayesha Auntie would say before leaving, tucking the photos into her

purse. "It's very hard for a young man to live alone in the world."

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To Abba, she would apologize.

"He is so busy with his studies, he hardly has time to travel and send the scenery

photographs you like so much."

The morning Asha left the house, Laina had lain beside her in bed and rested her hand on

the curve of Asha's back, watched it rise and fall with each breath. Asha had only

crouched into bed an hour before and was completely still. It was dark but Laina slipped

from the bed into her sandals and pulled the box of photographs from the armoire. She

climbed to the roof where the morning had just begun to tear into the horizon.

She arranged the photographs of Chittagong and Russia in straight lines down the

graveled rooftop counting each photo as she bent down to align it one-inch from the

photo next to it. If she spread them all out this way she felt she could get an accurate

sense of just how much space they took up inside her. These photographs were of nothing

really—she thought they were integral to her understanding the earth, the complexities of

soil. But she had used them to see how Ilyaas thought of her—how often, how much.

They made a thick bundle the height of a hand, but spread out this way they only made

two straight lines down the length of the roof and looked gravely unimportant. They had

weighed down everything else in the box, kept things flat against the bottom.

There were fifteen in all and Laina thought herself a little corrupt to have kept

them. She unwound the garden string from the packet and spread the photographs out

around her, fanning them into arcs. It was vanity she knew, and until now she had only

held the bundle in her hand from time to time, measured its weight in her palm. Their

faces, some smiling, most with blank expressions and straight-lined mouths looked liquid

in the emerging light, the colours and shades soft, almost melting. Ma, sometimes Nashu

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mama or even Kanta, would add to the collection, hand her a photograph of an eligible

young man, good family, educated background—was she interested? She would look at

the photograph under the lamplight, slant it so the soft light would hit it at a forgiving

angle, try to imagine what it would be like to look at that face every day for years and

years. See a softness in the eyes, a gentleness in the smile, a spark of something that

could well up inside of her be relied on. Almost always, she said no.

Ayesha Auntie had kept the photo of the thick-armed woman holding the orange

cat. If Laina had that photograph she would lay it out among the rest and it would be

easier to pick up the photographs of the Chittagong coastline or a rocky Russian plain and

fling them over the edge of the roof, let them flutter down into the muddy yard, trampled

by the chickens. Instead, Laina leaned against the ledge and watched the light crack its

way into the sky and sighed when she spotted Asha, tripping across the yard, heels

swinging from her wrist by their straps.

Ma and Abba had told Asha four times that Jamal was not from a family they

would ever tie themselves up with, they were shadowy people, unstable. Jamal was not

the type of boy they could count on to take care of their daughter—they could tell from

the way he walked, loose legs and arms that were too long, always reaching for things he

couldn't have. He was the type that wandered, could never settle down long enough to

focus, commit. The boy would graduate in a month and had no job prospects—wanted to

open up his own psychological therapy clinic with no experience, no money. Dreams

were good, practicality was essential. The fourth time Asha nudged, Abba put down his

teacup and stood, his voice strained. Under no circumstances—none whatsoever—would

they ever agree to wed her to a man like him, a family like that. He left his tea to grow

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tepid and spent the rest of the evening in the bedroom with the door closed. After this,

Asha was silent, refused to eat or even speak with Ma and Abba, went in and out of the

house wordless and stubborn. Laina knew that Asha had wound herself into a knot that

nothing would undo. When Asha returned that night, Laina tried to measure the look on

her face. How much of it was fear? Triumph?

Since Asha had married Jamal, the proposals came one after another, Ma passing

photos to Laina, almost urgent. Asha's transgression caused Laina's pile of photographs

to grow and as the wedding day approached, Laina found herself comparing two

photographs, one of a man who had traveled to the Middle East for work and another

who lived in Canada and would come back to Bangladesh to find himself a bride. Asha,

looking over her shoulder at the photographs one evening, had pointed to the Middle

East, before nudging Laina, laughing for the first time in weeks.

"Curly hair is better than a moustache."

Laina had stopped tricking herself into seeing smoke rising from the Hamids'

yard. Even now, the fog that curled its way across the yard was so much like smoke that

she left the garland hanging lopsided and went inside.

*

Her fingers sticky with sweets, Laina retied the knot of flowers round Asha's

wrist, and dotted a napkin to her mouth to wipe the shine from her upper lip. The drawing

room was heaving with people; sharis and sweat clashing in the humid air. Fingers full of

sweets were pressed to Asha's lips, haldi paste smeared on her cheeks and forehead with

85'

whispered wishes for a glowing complexion and a successful wedding day. Asha was

heavy with flowers. Laina had plaited Asha's hair with gendas and strung a crown from

the small white bellis and chamilis, earrings from the peach roses, and bracelets with the

fattest genda blooms. The room was hot and sweat had welled itself into the creases of

Laina's elbows, the sleeves of her blouse sticking to her skin. Laina felt her throat swell

from the thick scent of strong perfumes, her head felt so full of smells and noise she

imagined the next click of Munir's camera shattering her head into giant chunks of white

skull that would totter on the ground, dry and empty. She rose from her cushion and

beckoned for Raisa and Farida to take her place. Munir kneeled before them taking

pictures, motioning for relatives to take their turn feeding Asha.

Laina had kept Ayesha Auntie and Hamid Uncle in view all evening, spotted them

with their wrapped tray of jelabis congratulating Ma and Abba at the door. Ayesha

Auntie had worn a taffeta-silk shari and had her old black purse tucked up under her arm.

Laina knew that inside the purse lay a soft maroon pouch with photos of Ilyaas. Ayesha

Aunite carried the pouch with her everywhere and always folded it open on the table to

show Ma when Ilyaas sent new photographs, flicking open the brass button, photos

tucked into satin lined pockets. By now, she would have slipped in the photograph of the

pale-armed girl with the orange cat—despite the shock and shame of Ilyaas marrying

abroad without their knowledge, despite that, she would keep the girl close.

*

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The wedding was tomorrow and the paper flowers had already been soaked by the

rain. Laina stood in the grey of the morning fingering the paper lilies, scraping off wads

of wet paper from the netting. Abba had kept the lights on throughout the night and in the

mist of the morning, droplets of water ran down the glass bulbs, everything blurred and

dizzy. She had brought out her box of photographs and shuffled through the bundle of

suitors looking for Nimul's picture. Last night, after the guests had left, Munir had sat out

on the verandah twirling his cricket bat while Laina piled empty teacups and saucers onto

a tray. He had been back for only a week and the years of study in India had worn the

youth out of him, his skin flaccid around the eyes, his hair already thinning. He had been

quiet throughout the evening, taking pictures, eating his meal out on the verandah while

the guests thronged inside. Munir rested the cricket bat across his knees and lit a

cigarette, flicking the ash onto the floor. Laina smacked the back of his head and placed a

saucer in his hand.

"Don't make more of a mess." She placed the tray of teacups on the floor next to

Munir and leaned her head against his knee.

"You remember my friend Nimul?" Munir coughed, his voice low.

She stiffened. Ash fluttered from the end of the cigarette, settling into a fine line

on the floor.

"He's in the hospital. Has been drinking himself unconscious for weeks."

"What?"

"Yes." Munir tapped the cigarette on the edge of the saucer. "Bottles everywhere

in his room. His twisted himself into an old kata and wakes up only to drink, can hardly

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lift his head. If he does, it's to pour some more down his throat. He's washing himself

away."

The night had gone by without sleep, Laina's throat perpetually dry. She sat in the

blur of white lights, a light spray of rain coating her cheeks. She should have had his

picture here, among the others. She felt thin, as if her skin and bones were paper. The

photographs were stuck together, the humidity and the rain bonding the corners. She

reached out and peeled two photographs from the top of the pile and set them on her

knee.

*

On the morning that Azad's mother and sisters sat waiting in the drawing room,

Asha ushered Laina from her reverie in the garden and placed a tray in her arms.

"They've come to see you." Asha paused and squinted at Laina before taking a step

back and shaking her head. "Wait. Wash the dirt off your hands, and check under your

nails. And go put on a different shalwar kameez, maybe the yellow silk Phupi gave you.

And fix your hair, the wind has made you into a mad woman." Licking the palm of her

hand, Asha slicked back the puff in Laina's hair leading her by the arm into their room.

Laina watched Asha pull out a soft, lemon yellow silk shalwar kameez, smoothing it out

across the bed. Turning to look at her reflection in the long, wood-framed mirror hanging

from the door of their mother's armoire, Laina felt like one of her flowers. Pruned and

weeded, snipped and shaped, she was budding with promise and should charm the ladies

in the next room with the quality of her foliage, the strength of her stems, the flush of

colour in her petals. Laina twisted a strand of hair around her finger and watching Asha

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lay out a set of bangles and a compact of pressed powder, she slipped out of the room and

into the kitchen where she washed her hands, brushed a few strands of grass from the

front of her kameez and rearranged the cups of tea and biscuits in the tray. Asha appeared

just as she stepped out of the kitchen, tray in hands.

"Laina! You haven't changed!"

"Oh, Asha. I look fine."

Tray in hand, Laina parted the curtains to the drawing room with her foot. Laina still

remembered the way Maiya's face screwed up as she leaned over the coffee table and

rubbed at Laina's cheek with her thumb. Maiya had turned to her sister Misha and

nodded: Laina's complexion was not the result of make-up, it was the real thing. That

night Laina rubbed coconut oil into her heels and listened to Asha whisper details of the

visit to her friend Farida.

"I think they liked you Laina. Just before they left they asked Ma whether she could

spare a photograph of you. It's usually the hands and teeth that sour the deal. They never

come back after seeing how small and fat a girl's fingers are—like Farida's."

Laina screwed the cap back onto the bottle of oil and laughed. She was mortified

when she had set down the tray of tea, looked down, and noticed the dirt lining her feet

for the first time. She then toyed with the delight that perhaps they would notice, get up,

and leave. At the very least, she hoped they would not come back. Her dirty feet were

unintentional, she always tossed off her sponge sandals when she was in the garden, liked

to feel the pebbles and dirt settle into the grooves of her skin. Ilyaas had spotted her

running her feet through a stream of mud one morning and told her it was a scene worth

painting, worth coupling a few lines of poetry over, worth the lecture he would receive

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from his Professor for being late. Laina had hid her smile and told him he watched too

many afternoon dramas. Asha's bit of news regarding the request for a photograph

confused Laina before she decided to be upset about it.

"Jano Asha, I'm not a vegetable from the market."

Asha looked at Laina in surprise and then smiled.

"Oh Laina, why shouldn't you be happy that they liked you? You're just

embarrassed. Don't be difficult."

Laina did not think she was embarrassed. She wondered which photograph her

mother would select, and whether it was taken at a flattering angle. She had dozens of

photographs in her armoire that her mother did not know about and could not give: Secret

trips with her friends to the photography studio where they dressed up in each other's

sharis and jewelry, paid forty taka for a set of five pictures. As she tucked the kata around

her waist that night Laina knew she was not embarrassed.

She was afraid that despite her outward objections, she felt flattered.

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CHAPTER SEVEN

Asha placed the book of Tagore poetry on Professor Chatterjee's desk and

declined a cup of tea. Jamal was holding a rickshaw downstairs and she would have to

make this visit quick, had just come by to say thank you and goodbye. Professor

Chatterjee set his thermos down mid-pour and pushed back his chair.

"Well then, goodbye." He folded his hands and nodded. "But this was not a loan."

He handed the book back and sat down, stirring his half-cup with a small, pink enamel

spoon. He cleared his throat and tore open a packet of sweet biscuits and shook the thick

crumbly discs onto his desk. The biscuits cracked into chunks and he dipped a jagged

piece into his tea, the softened half folding over then plopping onto the desktop before it

could reach his mouth. Asha held the book and thought of what she could say to make

Professor Chatterjee see things the right way. She had withdrawn her application to DU

and she knew he took it as a personal insult, he saw it as failure: both hers and his.

"Was there anything else?" He tapped the pink spoon on the rim of his teacup and

raised his eyebrows. So this would be her punishment. He had closed his door on her.

Would he believe that he had led her to it? That months of cultivating her brain had made

her realize how little she expected of herself, how unlikely it was that she would ever go

beyond what others expected. She had done what they thought she never could—or

would—do. Jamal was unexpected, he was a streak of lipstick across her mirror, made

her lean in, look closer. Once she had let him into her life, she could never rub him out.

"No, Sir." She tucked the book into her book bag and paused at the door. He

would see in time how valuable her new life would be. It wasn't a desiccated path to

mental starvation. She had never felt so alive.

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Abba stood in the shop, his hand resting on a red and gold katan shari, Jamal

fingering the paar. Jamal traced the gold stitching that curled along the hemline and

gestured to the shopkeeper to pull out a few more from the shelf behind the counter. Asha

hooked her arm through Laina's and stood leaning against rolls of remnant fabric piled

into a pyramid at the back of the store. Abba had called them into the drawing room after

breakfast, had smiled at Laina, told her they would all go to New Market today to pick

out a necklace and a shari. He recalled how much Laina had admired the lace drop

necklace he and Ma had given Asha for her wedding and if she liked, she could have the

same for her own wedding—or anything else of her choosing.

Asha had not expected the dull ache in her chest to go on throbbing through the

night, every night. Abba's silence had stilted her movements, she could not thrive on

Jamal's energy alone. She would leave only three weeks after Laina's wedding and

already she had begun to feel the sting of regret—had she waited a few more months,

perhaps he would have softened on his own, given his consent. But, no. When she would

wake in the mornings with these worries, Jamal would flap away her concerns tossing his

washcloth at the window. Didn't she see? She had done what only a woman in love could

do—she had shown them all. Shown them what? The light cast stripes on Jamal's bare

back and in this mood Asha could only see how thick his flesh seemed to be, he was too

much for her. But Jamal was full of affection and would bury his face in her neck and

swing her from the bed in his arms, squeeze her until she couldn't breathe. And feeling

his flesh on hers, the heat of movement beneath his skin she felt she was right and good

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in all that she had done, that Abba would, in time, see what a good man Jamal was. Until

they left for Germany, they would stay in the front room of the house and Jamal would

worm his way into their home, slowly Abba would soften.

"He has good taste Laina, Abba will see."

Jamal beckoned for them to take a look at the sharis he had selected. Laina stood next to

Abba and brushed her fingers across the deep red katan. The shopkeeper unfolded the

shari and spread the achol across the counter. The gold threading glimmered and Asha

breathed in the cloudy odour of new clothing kept folded too long. Abba patted Laina on

the arm.

"Asha, you choose one too."

*

When Asha awoke the morning of the wedding and found Laina's bed empty but

still warm, she pulled the kata off the bed and wound it around her shoulders, making her

way to the roof in her cotton blouse and petticoat. There, she found Laina drawing circles

into her dirt-caked hand, the pomegranate plant uprooted and on its side before her. Asha

wrapped Laina with the kata and they huddled together in the chill, listening to the

rooster crack the morning open with his crow. Asha let the minutes linger and gently

squeezed Laina's shoulder.

"Come, you should get ready. Your wedding clothes will be here soon. You want

to look nice for when they arrive."

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Asha watched as Laina swept the dirt into her cupped palm and brushed it back

into the pot. Laina should know that this had been a good proposal. She was lucky—very

lucky—without even asking for it, she had found a man who already lived abroad and

would whisk her on a plane to Canada where she could start things, do things. For the

past week Laina had avoided her, brushing past her in the kitchen without a word, even

leaving the garden midway through her rounds if Asha appeared. She acted as if she had

been tricked into marrying the man, as if she hadn't wanted any of this at all. Laina

would not admit it, but she did like Azad's photograph, she was intrigued, Asha knew it.

She would be a Canada-bride, would settle into the arms of a man who already knew

what it took. He had left Bangladesh for bidesh, had struck his shovel into the earth of a

foreign country. This could only mean good things. Laina would have a good life with a

good man in a pristine country full of new things. She felt Laina's hand on her shoulder,

shifted as she stretched her toes out into the breeze. Of course, Laina was scared. She had

always been easy to disturb, couldn't bear things the way Ma did, the way she did. And

really, to look at her smooth, plump arms, the liquid curve of her cheeks, it wasn't a

surprise that Laina was so easily watered down.

The sun was high in the sky now, the rooftop doused in its clear morning light.

Asha felt that in time, it would all smooth itself out and Laina would fade into her new

life. Her feelings for Azad would solidify and multiply and grow and she, like every other

married woman, would be fine.

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~<>~

Soniya stepped up onto the stage for a photograph and was afraid to touch her daughter, she looked so fragile wrapped in frothy sheathes of red and gold. They had powdered her

face white. Her complexion was already like cream, the skin smooth, cheeks rosy. Did she know how lovely she was without any of this? Oh, but she was a bride today and they had powdered her face like a pastry. It was how it was always done; too much, they hid

the sweetness inside.

Rahmat moved through the glitter of the hall swallowing the smiles of his guests. When the server spooned the polau onto his plate, Rahmat was glad he had ordered the rose-water rice with large raisins instead of the oil soaked biryani. With a spoonful of the

buttery rice in his mouth, he was sure the biryani would have weighed down his tongue, the oils clogging his taste buds. There would be no place for subtle flavours to co-mingle,

the roasted chicken would be bland in a mouthful of glistening biryani. It would have been too much.

That's what they had said at Asha's wedding. That it was too much—the lamb, the chicken, the goat, the fish. People had filled their mouths but couldn't remember what

they had eaten. But Rahmat wanted their plates piled high and heavy. He wanted to weigh them down in their seats, stomachs taut with food. It was a wedding after all.

Rahmat watched Asha swivel her way through crowds of guests, smiling. Rahmat wanted to pull her from Jamal's side, sit her down. She would go far with this man, but her home

was here. Rahmat tapped his heart. Did she know this? Did she know what she left behind? Jamal would have to be a good man. He was sending his daughter away with

him, how could he be anything other than a good man? She was like the tip of a rosebud, budding with such promise, so easy to snip.

Soniya and Rahmat wanted to reach in and pull her out of the car, bring her back home with them. How could they send her away with him, her face in her hands? How long

could they stay this way, away from her? Why hadn't they known how fragile she would be, how weak? They couldn't send her off this way, shaking with sobs.

It was too much.

~<>~

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CHAPTER EIGHT

Laina pressed her hand over the pleats of her silk shari. The silk swept over the

gentle curves of her hips and shimmered when she turned in the early morning sun. The

pleats spread like a fan from her waist, sweeping around her hips and over her shoulder.

Pressing her fingers against her collarbone, she fingered the gold chain around her neck

and brushed wisps of hair from her face into her braided bun. Red-rimmed eyes stared

back at her from the dust-lined glass. She turned away and leaned out the open window.

Closing her eyes she breathed in the warm, wet, breeze that wafted over her face. A light

rain fell, carrying with it the musky odour of manure and tepid pond water. She listened.

The screams of children fighting over a football in the yard, a high pitched bark by the

outhouse, Moni's cat Kajol scraping her claws in the kitchen, the creak and slam of the

front door—she let it all in and threaded it through her memory. She wanted to cup the

smells and tip them down her throat, feel them coat her insides warm and thick. She

rubbed at the goose bumps on her arms. Her father's blue Beetle crept up the winding dirt

path, a cloud of dust trailing behind. The chickens flapped in their pens squawking at the

exhaust fumes. The driver, Mumtaz, honked three times, stepped out of the car and

waved. He slipped a black plastic comb from his front shirt pocket, and combed back his

shining black hair. Raisa, dressed in a pink cotton shalwar kameez, raced out the front

door.

"Laina?" Abba pushed open the bedroom door. "Tomar suitcase koi?"

Laina turned from the window. Her blue silk flapped in the breeze, her body a

dark silhouette against the florescent glow of the overcast sky. She pointed to the foot of

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the bed where a blue suitcase stood, its gold-rimmed corners reflecting their figures in

warped miniatures. He touched her cheek, brushing the soft skin gently with his thumb.

He smiled and patted her arm.

"Asho, let's go." She studied his face, memorizing the slope of his nose, the angle

of his chin, the faint stubble on his upper lip. She let her eyes drop to his white collar, his

thin black tie, the freshly pressed lapels of his charcoal suit. "If you need anything, you

tell me. Don't wait, acha? " He smiled, tilted his head toward the door. "Jai. " She

nodded. He paused, then shuffled out of the room, dragging the suitcase behind him.

***

Piled into the Beetle, Laina felt the warmth of her Ma's hand resting on her knee.

Ma scanned the roads through the window as they bumped through the rickshaw-packed

streets. Laina sat clasping Raisa's bottle of Fanta in her hands. Cold droplets of

condensation ran down the bottle and trickled over her fingers. She sipped the ice cold

orange drink, licking the fizzy sweetness from her lips. She remembered Asha ordering

her a Fanta as they settled into their booth at the ice cream shop at the west end of Dhaka

five months ago. Across from them sat Azad and his brother Bipun, carefully tearing

open the lids from their paper containers of ice cream. Azad had offered his salaam to

her, paired with an uncertain smile. She had returned his greeting and stared at the sticky

circles of dried ice cream and soda on the tabletop. Their Fantas arrived, green and

yellow straws bobbing in the orange fizz. Asha sipped her Fanta, chattering with Bipun

about her move to Germany with her husband the following month. Azad scooped up

curls of vanilla ice cream and told her about Canada. Told her they had a nice flat in the

city, in a place called Calgary. She could drink the water straight from a lake named

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Louise, it was so cool and clear. In a few months she would see snow, fluffs of ice

swirling from cloudy skies. Yes, it was cold in winter, much colder than winters in

Bangladesh. Trees turned to ice, their branches glass sculptures scraping the sky. She

should pack warm things, sweaters and such. Make sure she kept her plane tickets with

her, tucked them in her purse, kept her purse at her side. Her flight was in a few months,

but if she wanted, if she didn't mind, she could come along with him the week after the

wedding. It might be quick, but they could do it, catch a Canadian summer. So then, did

she want to leave with him instead? Did she want to leave? Nal It was all right, it would

give her more time to pack, more time to get everything ready, more time to say goodbye.

Baby-taxis swerved in and out of rough lanes, horns screeching. Dust swirled in

the streets, rickshaw drivers trilled their bells nosing their bicycles into small spaces.

Small children scampered through the streets offering up dust-caked hands through open

car windows. Laina watched Raisa breathe circles of fog onto the window and listened

for her suitcase tottering about in the trunk. Through Raisa's foggy mosaic the streets

whirred by in a rush of colour and clamour.

*

Her father held her to his chest, his hand clasping her head under his chin.

Travelers milled about the Departure gate at Dhaka International Airport; a bustle of

chattering families with cranky children in constant, chaotic orbit. Her own family, a blur

of cousins, aunts, uncles, small nieces and nephews circled round her, dabbing eyes with

crumpled tissues. Laina turned to Ma, drew in her warm body and breathed in the scent of

coconut oil and talcum powder from her soft skin. Within the din of echoing airport

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announcements and the clamour of a thousand voices Laina breathed. The acrid scent of

smoke and motor oil, the dust kicked from the heels of airport officials, the pungent scent

of coconut oil in her mother's hair, the musky perfume of her father's Meccan atr, she

breathed it all in and swallowed it in gulps. She felt it drip down her trachea and billow

into her lungs. She could feel it line her stomach in molecules of vital memory.

*

Inside her purse, tucked away in a small zippered pocket, lay Azad's picture. Asha had

slipped her the photograph six months ago in the amber glow of the flickering hurricane

lamp in their room. She had held it lightly between her fingers and looked at it for a long

time. On the back, a blue-inked stamp read "Sears Photography." She had imagined him

walking into the photo studio, combing his long locks of hair to the side. He would have

asked the blonde woman behind the counter to take his picture and mail him the proofs in

time for his trip back home to Bangladesh. He was going to find a bride and bring her

here, where they would make their new home. The woman behind the counter would

have flashed him a bright smile and would gesture for him to take a seat on the stool in

front of a sweeping blue backdrop. He would have sat down, adjusted his clean, pressed,

brown blazer and rested his hands on his knees. She would have stood behind the camera

and he would have looked right into the winking black lens, right at her. He would smile

openly and the lady would press the button and the camera would go click. In the warm

glow of the hurricane lamp, Laina had thought how strange and different his picture was

from other pictures of potential husbands, photos of young, Bangladeshi men looking

away from the camera, solemn, serious expressions on their faces. Clutching her purse to

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her chest, a blanket tucked around her legs, Laina stared out the window at a spot of sun

on the silver wing of the plane.

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PART II

101

~<>~

On this evening the sky bled white from behind the barricade, the bamboo posts streaking in warped lines into the clouds above. The rain had stopped just moments before and the ground was soft. The sky throbbed neon white and the light fell across the lattice of the

barricade like sheets of ice. In the slate of evening, the jute looked as if it were covered in snow.

Rahmat tested the ground with the toe of his sandal before stepping off the verandah and onto the path. It could be snow. Even in this wet heat, the sky could melt out streams of

thick snow that would rain down on them like ash. Their hands would be sooty from clapping the dust out of the jute, fingernails like gritty coins.

Raisa's voice trickled through the still air, her voice thin. Sa re ga ma... They could hear her through the open door, her voice warming as she tested the scales,

the pump and hum of the harmonium drizzling through the cool air outside. It was a low wail but it grew thicker, fuller as her throat warmed. As the sun set and the sky rippled purple, then blue, they sat on the verandah and listened to the rise and fall of Raisa's

scales, the barricade a silhouette against the changing sky.

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CHAPTER NINE

1979

With the roar of the plane in her ears, Asha suddenly felt she had traveled too

light. When she saw the strip of green whip by the window, the plane gearing into a high-

pitched whine, she regretted leaving behind her navy pencil heels and the two extra katas.

She knew Germany would be cold, why had she refused to bring them? And the skillet

with a heavy iron handle, she had even left that. She knew good iron skillets were hard to

find bideshe, she should have packed it when Laina handed it to her and told her it was

the best one in the kitchen, that naan came off it fluffy and golden, just like in a

restaurant.

"Don't pack the world," Jamal had kept saying. "We go light, we go easy." He

said this so many times that Asha began to think it would be wrong to pack even her

petticoats. But Ma bought matching blouses and petticoats for all of Asha's sharis and

had piled them into the suitcase herself, buckled it all up like it was already settled.

In one burst, the plane screamed into high speed and Jamal laid a hand on her

arm, pressed his finger to the window. She could see the imprint it left behind, a cloudy

smudge that blocked her vision like a cataract. She needed more things. She should have

brought more. What did she have that she could hold in her hands once she got there? She

pressed her head into the back of the seat and folded her hands over the buckle of the seat

belt. As the plane lifted off the ground and skidded into the sky she knew that had she

brought more, the luggage would have weighed down the plane. The tail would drag

along the runway, sparks flying.

*

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Asha saw the glowing bakery sign from the window of the taxi. She had not

known how cold it would be and sat shivering in her seat unable to take her eyes from the

passing road. Everything felt so thin: her clothes, the soles of her shoes, even her skin.

Jamal wanted to point out all the buildings he recognized from pictures his friends had

sent him, kept tugging at her sleeve pointing to one building then another, then shaking

his head and smiling over and over.

"I told you," he said. "I told you."

Asha touched the window, thought she could melt the glass with her fingers, reach out

and grab a handful of this new air. It looked like ash, the soft flakes weaving through the

sky, she wanted to roll the window down, see what it would feel like, a clump landing in

her hand.

"We should go everywhere, see everything while we can. Nasreen and Akhtar

will take us. There is everything here."

"Everything except haldi." Asha patted her bag. She could feel Nasreen's parcel

like an inflated pillow in her bag. The entire flight she had been afraid to rest her feet on

her bag, worried that the parcel would burst and she would unzip it in Germany in a cloud

of orange.

Asha wiped the window with her sleeve and pointed to the bakery as they passed

its brightly lit windows, the tables burdened with people. Jamal leaned to look through

her window.

"Let's go!" He hoisted Asha's handbag onto her lap.

He knocked on the plastic pane and motioned for the driver to stop.

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"Jamal?" Asha stared as Jamal shouldered open the door.

"Come on, come on—" Jamal handed bills to the driver who took them and

coughed in great heaving breaths. He counted and nodded, then hoisted himself out from

behind the wheel with a throaty grunt and opened the trunk. He unloaded their four

suitcases onto the sidewalk, then nuzzled his chin into his coat and waved.

"Viel Gluck!" He spat a wad of phlegm into the snow before waving one more

time and settling into his seat.

"What are you doing?" The red lights of the taxi swirled into the night and Asha

stood staring up'at Jamal.

"The bakery! We can have a look."

"But—where is our building? It's cold—and all our luggage!"

Jamal pointed uphill then patted Asha on the arm. He flipped open his wallet and tugged

out a photograph folded in four.

"Look."

Akhtar stood in front of the bakery, his arms folded in front of him. It was a photograph

taken in the summer and Akhtar wore a pair of linen shorts, the dark hairs on his legs

thick—and visible. The street stretched up behind him and there was a little 'X' drawn in

pen over a smudgy grey area in the top left corner of the picture.

"That's our building. This is that bakery." Jamal flicked the picture with his

thumb and folded it back into his wallet. "We can walk from here, not far at all. Maybe

ten minutes."

"But why not just take the taxi?"

Jamal laughed and wagged his finger in the air.

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"This is much more romantic. It is artistic. We need to feel this new road beneath

our feet."

"The luggage?" Asha crossed her arms.

"It looks full inside—I'll get us a pastry and you watch this luggage. Then we'll

go." Jamal reached into his pocket and pulled out a few coins. "A little struggle makes us

stronger in the end." He laughed, tugging at her braid as if it were all okay.

Asha swatted away his hand and lugged their luggage under the lamplight. She

looked through the window at the people hunched over plates of towering cake slices and

saw the reflection of the street in the glass. Everything glittered on the wet window, the

flakes like hundreds of tiny lights spinning in the sky.

From the moment she saw them standing under the eaves of their building, hands

shading their eyes from the fast falling snow, she knew Nasreen and Akhtar were the type

to worry. Nasreen whacked the snow off Asha's shoulders and rushed her in through the

doors yelling for Akhtar to get the luggage. As Akhtar and Jamal maneuvered the

luggage up through the winding staircase, Nasreen bustled Asha up ahead of them to the

third floor. Though Asha knew Nasreen was in her early thirties, she was surprised to see

how much older she seemed. It wasn't that she looked older—her skin was bright, her

hair was thick and black—it was the way she moved. She was heavyset, her elbows like

giant rolls of dough. But, everything she did from jiggling the key out of the lock, to

taking Asha's sweater and spreading it across the coils of the heater seemed so urgent and

deliberate. She whirled about the kitchen—a tiny square of space in the corner of the

room—and in what seemed like one great movement warmed rice on the stovetop,

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heaved spoonfuls in giant chunks into a bowl and set the bowl on the tabletop. When

Asha rose to offer her help, Nasreen pushed her out of the kitchen and back onto the sofa,

wrapped her in a blanket and told her to help herself to some water from the pitcher on

the side table. It was as if every act was absolutely and completely necessary—things

might come spinning to an end if they weren't done with such burning determination.

Nasreen's mouth was settled into a tired frown, but Asha liked the way she stood there

spooning fish from a pan into a plate, so sure of everything. Nasreen told Asha that the

winters weren't as horrible as everyone probably told her they were—yes, it was cold, but

Bangladesh was tropical, anything outside the country would seem a bit chillier. But that

sweater would never do. Asha would have to look around for a warm jacket, better shoes.

Maybe boots. She was not in Bangladesh anymore, Nasreen kept saying, a simple sweater

was like wearing nothing at all, Asha's lungs would crumple inside her from the cold. It

had happened to Akhtar when they first arrived. He spent his entire first week in bed, his

head thick with the cold, couldn't even lift his arm. Nasreen made a decisive chop

through the air with her thick hand and finally turned to look at Asha.

"Don't worry," she said, "everything will be fine."

A few moments later Jamal and Akhtar came tramping into the apartment and

Nasreen ushered them all to the table to eat.

"Look—our keys." Jamal jingled a pair of keys and unwound one from the ring.

He tossed it to Asha, cheered when she caught it. It was thick and heavy, felt like a coin

in her hand.

"We'll eat, have tea, and then you can see your new apartment." Nasreen poured

water into their glasses and Asha felt a twist in her chest. Nasreen had cooked everything

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she thought they would want, items they would have found at home: thick slices of fried

eggplant, rui mas—oils already welled up around the fatty fish, steaming white rice, and

a large bowl of niramish, the chunks of vegetables soft, almost melting from being

overcooked. Asha longed for a plate of rice with plain daal and an egg fried with chilli

peppers and onions. She wanted the solid taste of it in her mouth, something whole. The

table seemed to glow with oil and she imagined everything sliding down her throat in a

sludge.

Jamal had spent the plane trip talking about Akhtar, what a good friend he was for

watching out for him. He had sent Jamal letters every month, notifying him of changing

immigration policies, how wide and open Germany was to Bengali immigrants, how they

were needed here, would be welcomed. The universities were teeming with new Bengali

students and Jamal could be one of them, if he wanted. Germany was a good place to

build new lives. Akhtar was an artist, had finished his studies at the Bangladesh College

of Arts and Crafts and when talk of Germany filled the ears of those eager to stretch their

limbs into new lands, to be one of the special ones to go bideshe. He kept his eye on the

artistic movements flourishing through the streets of Germany. The small room was

covered floor to ceiling with Akhtar's canvases—paintings in vibrant greens, reds,

yellows. They pulsed heat into the room, made it seem wet and tropical.

"There's no colour here," he explained. "Everything is clean and dry, the cold

greys the country out and the summer is so short you forget it was ever there." He set

down his glass and spooned the oily jhol from the platter offish onto his plate. "It makes

the perfect canvas, seeps the colour in."

1<08

At the door of their new apartment, Akthar warned them it would be difficult, the

first few weeks, months, years even. He handed Jamal applications to the Goethe

Institute, information packets on graduate studies at various universities. Asha stepped

into the room and felt herself dry out from the inside. Their luggage looked so small

resting against the far wall by the window. The glass was streaked, would need a good

deal of hot water and a tough rag. The kitchen would need scraping to get to the tile

underneath, the stove—Asha shuddered. If Ma and Abba knew, they would have thrashed

Jamal with a broom. The apartment was far from being ready for the both of them.

Nasreen led Asha to the bedroom where she had laid out a roll of carpet and some

bedding.

"You can keep the carpet—it just sits in the closet anyway. The bedding I'll keep

once you get a proper bed of your own. I'll show you a second hand store on Lange

Strasse where they sell everything you'll need to get settled."

Asha thanked Nasreen as she ducked through the doorway into the hall, promised

to come down and knock if she needed anything. Akhtar stood by the doorway, still

talking to Jamal, hand on his arm.

"But if you like to work, there is no better place in the world to learn how to work.

The Germans, of all people, know what Arbeit really means." Akhtar slapped Jamal on

the back. "When I am not studying art, I am working—12-14 hours a day at the back of a

restaurant—so I can pay for our lives. That's what I tell myself in the mornings—that I

am paying for our lives. And then I go."

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Jamal shut the door behind the couple. He rolled the papers Akhtar had handed

him into a cone and whacked them against the wall.

"Well, what do you think?"

Asha stood under the flickering bulb in the main room and hugged herself. No,

Ma and Abba would not have approved, would have dragged her back to Dhaka by the

braid, warned Jamal not to hover. She ran her heel over the grime that crusted the floor

and felt like shooting right through the roof. Tomorrow, she would scrape it all clean.

What Asha liked best was walking up the street on Friday afternoons to buy

herself a bun from the Jung & Schmitt Muffin Shop on the corner. By now, the ladies

inside were used to her and smiled when she slipped out a folded piece of paper and

sounded out the words to say thank-you.

"Danke s 'hon. "

"Bitte!"

The lady handed her a plate with the bun still steaming, the raisins plump on the

glossy dome. Her hair was soft brown, looped into a braid at the nape of her neck. Asha

wanted to reach out and press her finger against her white skin, see if it felt as soft as it

looked. If she punctured the woman's wrist with her nail, how bright the blood would

look against skin like that. Sitting at the same rickety table by the window, Asha ripped

her bun into small pieces and picked out the raisins and piled them on the edge of her

plate, saving them for the end.

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The lady with the looped braid brought Asha her tea and placed two sachets of

sugar and a tumbler of cream on the table. The lady swayed back behind the counter,

smiled her pink lips at a man in a light grey sweater, curly hair. Asha kept a small pencil

and folds of paper by her plate, ready to note down words she heard repeated—"Nein

danke," "Wie geht's"—so she could ask Nasreen what they meant later. If she heard the

words a number of times, she could figure it out for herself just by watching: when the

lady offered the man a bag for his pastry, he shook his head and waved her away, said

"Nein danke" and bit into his pastry, flakes of icing snowing down on the counter. Asha

wrote this down in large letters, spelling it out just as she heard it, so she could repeat it,

practice it:

NINE DUNK-AH

She dipped a piece of her bun into the tea and watched the tea creep up through

the bready tunnels. She loved the soppy feel of it on her tongue. On Friday's she always

finished her cooking early, put lids on the pots and had everything clean before four-

o'clock. She spent the afternoon writing letters home, sorted through the few books she

had managed to cart along with her from Dhaka. It had been four months since they had

first arrived and she had fallen into a routine that felt sustainable. For the past month,

since the weather had warmed, she had been meeting with Nasreen at the Konditorei. She

liked to arrive a half-hour early and claim the seat by the window. The sun came in

through this side of the shop late in the afternoon and it flushed out her cheeks, made her

feel warm and settled. The sun here seemed so clear, like pouring out a pitcher of

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shorbot, clear streams of sugar and lime water straight from the sky. On warmer days she

craved the tang of shorbot, wanted to sit out on the verandah while Laina hemmed a new

dress for Shilpa. By now, Laina had landed in Canada, was settled with Azad, forming

new ties like her. She knew Laina ached for home more than she did. Laina had never

dreamed dreams like these. Dhaka was where she belonged. But, she would have to grow

up like the rest of them, do what she didn't expect.

Nasreen arrived in her light purple jacket and a soft pink shari, ordered a tea and

slice of strawberry cake before she spotted Asha. Setting her black leather folio on the

table she slipped into her seat smiling. Asha knew Nasreen was from Jessore in Khulna

because of her precise, grammatically perfect Bengali. Her Bengali was the kind you read

in books. It was measured and smooth, every word gilded.

"Unless there is a dawat or other special function, I don't get to wear my nice

sharis. I forgot how beautiful they make me feel."

Nasreen usually arrived in slacks and a sweater. Two years in Germany had

weaned her off her shalwar kameez and sharis, made her realize the practicality of pant

legs when climbing stairs or dashing for a bus. She had told this to Asha during their first

week together and Asha still thought it was silly. She and every woman she knew had

managed their way through the streets of Dhaka in sharis and shalwars, hopped onto

rickshaws, clamoured their way through bazaars—she would keep her sharis, she didn't

have to be modern to get from one end of the city to the other.

"I have good news." Nasreen sliced into the cake with the side of her fork. "I have

secured a job in a university lab in Gottingen." She beamed at Asha, icing on her bottom

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lip. "I received the call this morning and I woke Akhtar, told him, 'look, your wife is a

scientist.'"

Asha had learned during her first week in Germany that Nasreen had left a job as

a researcher at Dhaka University to participate in a DAAD exchange program offered by

the German government. Nasreen had learned German through the Goethe Institute and

met Akthar who had already established himself as an up and coming auslander artist. He

had been chosen to speak at the Foreigner's Club monthly get-together and when Nasreen

saw him flipping through his papers behind the podium, glasses sliding down the bridge

of his nose, she felt sure that she wanted to meet him, wanted to know what it was that

made him look so comfortable, look like he belonged.

"He had this way of swallowing between sentences, it made him look like he was

sure of everything—from the lecture he had prepared to the tie he had chosen to wear—

everything looked like it was precisely in place. I was eight months into my program, I

was frustrated that I couldn't even talk to the doctor about the strange bump on my ankle

in a language we could both understand. 1 was this close, this close to going back to

Dhaka, back to what I knew." Nasreen had leaned over Asha's kitchen counter pinching a

hair between her forefinger and thumb. "He sat next to me during the social part of the

evening and when I introduced myself he said, 'so, you're a scientist.' And just like that I

thought, this is a man I should keep my eye on."

Asha congratulated Nasreen, watched her fork chunks of cake into her mouth.

Gottingen was two hours away so for six months she and Akthar would live apart, visit

one another on weekends. She was willing to make this sacrifice—and he was too. It

would be difficult yes, but they had been waiting for this. It finally felt legitimate. She

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would finish her MSc and be off to the University in Gottingen by the end of the summer.

Nasreen's cheeks were puffy and flushed, her forehead sparkling with sweat.

Walking home that evening, Asha knew her afternoons with Nasreen piddling

over lists of words would have to be replaced with something new. When she watched

Nasreen walk down the street, her black folio tucked under her arm, Asha saw in her

movements the same fervour that had bewildered her the first night they met. Was this

the way she looked when she walked through campus at DU, the muscles in her legs

tensed in long, lean lines? How long would it take for her to walk through the streets

without her knees dimpling, her calves slack? Asha loved how wide the streets were here,

everything seemed smooth and quiet, pristine. Looking at the curve of the open street she

imagined the flicker of muscle in Jamal's shin, the bone pulsing as he walked up and

down these streets breathing everything in.

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CHAPTER TEN

1979

Laina turns numb. Voices and faces become a filmy haze, curling her body into a

cocoon. When the nose of the airplane lifted off the ground, Laina focused on minute

things: her seat number, the cuticles of her nails, the paper bag in the pocket of the seat in

front of her. If she let her mind stray she knew the colours and smells of home would

come rushing back and she would cave in. Passengers and airline attendants noted her

puffy, red-rimmed eyes. One of them whispered that she must have lost a loved one. But

her carefully pleated shari and the gold balas on her wrists confirmed that she must be a

new bride.

On this flight to London, Laina found herself feeling hollow. She curled her hands

into fists and pressed her cheek against the window. Who was this man she flew towards?

Before, it had been easy to tear herself from the here and now and stitch herself into new

fabrics. She could make-believe herself into anyone's arms and believe that it could be all

right, that she could do it—that she would do it. Laina could stretch herself into new

lives, try them out in her mind: She could be a wife to a young man in Chittagong

working his way up through the Justice system; he would one day be a judge and she

would enjoy a home spacious and wide like Nashu Mama—if she cared for such things,

which of course, she did not; she could be a bride of the Middle East, wait while her

husband drew fortunes from the sand and settled them in a comfortable life abroad; she

could let herself fall in love, like Asha, and live an exciting life of passion and devotion.

These were her senseless dreams, exercises in adolescent fancy. They were like dressing

up in her mother's sharis. Twirling around in front of the mirror to see what she looked

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like, she could try out new ways of seeing herself. But now bulleting through the night

sky, the voices from home, with all their wishes and warnings were still hot in her ears.

Leaning against the window, Laina could see the tiny lights on the wings of the plane

twinkle against the black sky like winking eyes.

*

Manisha and her husband Prabash had been entrusted to guide Laina along, make

sure she checked in at the right gates, picked her luggage up at the right time. Azad had

introduced the bustling couple to Laina the week after their wedding, told her they were

good people and would make sure she didn't get lost—at least until they reached London.

Throughout the flight to London, Manisha Apa had counted the new gold bangles on her

fat, wrinkling arms, checking every hour to make sure all sixteen were still there.

Purchased fresh in Dubai, Manisha ran her finger across her gleaming curtain of gold and

told Laina that they were the best purchase she had made so far. All the Bengali ladies in

London would be impressed, for sure, she told Laina, everyone knew that quality gold,

expensive gold came from Dubai. When the plane from Dhaka had landed in Dubai for a

stopover, Manisha had nudged Laina who leaned still and heavy against the window, to

tell her they had landed in a sea of gold.

"One for each year of my marriage," Manisha had said, pointing at the glittering

set under the glass case. Golden Sand Jewelers was one of dozens of jewelery stores in

the Airport's shopping runway. Prabash had tapped his watch warning Manisha that if she

took too long, they would all miss their flight to London and Laina would never join her

own husband in Canada. Manisha, excited, pulled Laina so close, Laina could smell the

musk of sweat clinging to Manisha's blouse and feel Manisha's sticky skin against her

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own. Tapping the glass, Manisha motioned for the man behind the counter to show her

the set. Prabash had shaken his head and slipped out his wallet before Manisha had even

tried them on. Laina flicked her thumb across her balas, the pointed ridges of the two

heavy bangles cut into the meat of her thumb and she looked down to see if she had

drawn blood by mistake. The balas, thick gold bangles like cuffs around her wrist, were

the only piece of jewelry Laina still wore from her wedding set. The gold was thin and

filmy and if you looked carefully, you could spot small holes between the peaks and

valleys of the patchy design. Still, Laina wore her balas, thought they were solid enough

to anchor her to her new position in life. The man behind the counter laughed as Manisha

shook her wrists, the bangles clinking together across her plump arms.

"It is not our anniversary, but I told Prabash that once we land in Dubai he must

buy me a new gold set. I haven't had a new gold item in months and when we land in

London, all my friends will want to see what I've brought back from my travels. One

earring and necklace set really isn't enough, it's the bangles that make you stand out."

Prabash motioned for the jeweler to wrap the bangles, sliding a pat of bills across the

counter. Manisha held the velvet bag to her chest and inhaled.

"It's perfume, the smell of a new gold set."

Before boarding the plane to London from Dubai, Manisha stood before the

beeping security barriers twisting off each of her sixteen bangles. Dropping them into the

metal tray where they clattered and swirled into spirals, she smiled at the official and

shook her head, "too many bangles, I know! My husband is much too fond of me."

Before shuffling through the sensors Manisha grabbed Laina's wrists and eased off her

balas. She measured the weight of each in the palm of her hand.

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"Very light, but still pretty." She set them on the tray and led Laina through the

sensor with one hand. Laina reddened as she reached for her balas, shaking off Manisha's

grasp.

When Laina stepped into the cinder-block chill of Heathrow, she felt scraped, like

someone had reached inside her and shaved off sheaths of pulsing cells. Before her,

airport shops glared neon white, dizzy squares packed with trinkets and people. The

airport thrived on movement; trolleys and children gliding by, people slipping from one

world to another just by walking through a set of numbered tunnels. If she stood here by

the gate long enough, she could let this new air breathe right through her. She clasped her

purse with both hands and looked at the lines around the joints of her fingers. They

seemed deeper, more pronounced. She saw her mother's hands, could see Ma's small

square fingernails imprinted on her own hand like a mirage.

Laina fiddled with the edge of her achol and tried to shut out Manisha's voice. She

would rather sit here and absorb the new pitches and tones of this bidesh, let the dry air

chafe against the inside of her throat. She was tired of being dragged from gate to gate,

her arm a leash in Manisha's hands. In her purse, lay the folded instruction sheet that told

her she was to spend the night at Manisha and Prabash's house in a place called Tower

Hamlets. They would drive her back to the airport in the morning to catch her flight to

Calgary. Laina had sat on the plane reading and re-reading the step-by-step plan for her

journey. She had run her finger under Tower Hamlets mouthing the words, rounding

them out with her tongue. Laina shifted from one foot to the other, watching as Manisha

made her way across the waiting lounge, the heavily embroidered achol of her shari

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swishing across her back. Laina slipped her feet out of the brown leather loafers her

father had purchased for her the week of her departure, and placed her bare skin on the

cool linoleum. Her feet had swelled to a puffy pink, and they looked like the long, fat

turnips Abba would bring home in the winter, a surprise addition to their dinner. The

floor felt like glass beneath her toes, smooth. If she stamped her feet right then, she knew

she would hear the floor crack, a crisp and clean break bolting from beneath her heel like

lightning across the entire length of the airport. Laina looked up to see Manisha gesturing

aggressively at her while speaking to an airline attendant who held his hand up and shook

his head at Manisha. He wore the crisp navy blue British Airways uniform—a blazer with

a loud red, white, and blue necktie that Laina thought looked like the handkerchief

Chacha kept hidden in the folds of his lungi. As Laina slipped her way between milling

travellers, she heard Manisha's sharp exchange with the attendant and was surprised to

see that he too, was Bengali.

"She's coming with us, no need for you to ask. It's already been arranged!"

"Apa, please, I must ask her myself before I release her luggage to you."

Laina stopped mid-step and felt heat pound against her ears. In his hands the Attendant

held her bright blue, gold rimmed suitcase. The latches at the top of the suitcase were

swinging loose from their screws, her clothing spilling from the crack. The Attendant

held the suitcase gingerly by the handle and used his other hand to hold the case closed.

"Ah, see, here she is. She's coming with us." Manisha patted Laina's arm.

"Accha. " The Attendant nodded at Laina who stared down at her suitcase. "Will

you be staying at a hotel tonight? Your flight departs tomorrow morning at 7 AM. British

Airways has arranged rooms and a shuttle service to escort you, if you so wish."

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Laina held her hand out, reaching for the suitcase.

"Okay, see? She will come home with us. Such a silly question! What will she do

all alone in a hotel!"

Laina carefully set her suitcase on the ground and tucked the clothing back inside.

She snapped the latches down, pressing her hand into the metal until it left an imprint on

her palm. The vinyl had already begun to peel from the corners, the golden rim had come

a little loose. When her wedding clothes had arrived in this suitcase, Laina had sighed

sadly. It was not the deep red leather luggage set she had imagined she would receive on

her wedding day. A trip across oceans and continents warranted a good luggage set, she

thought. Not expensive or luxurious, just good. Still, her little suitcase looked regal in its

blue and gold and she decided she would look at it with new eyes. Now, as she knelt on

the ground and snapped a gold corner back into place, she could only look at the suitcase

with a blank expression, her mouth set in a straight line.

"O-ho! Laina! I could tell the moment I saw this suitcase that it was one of those

cases. Not at all good quality. My maid-servant got married to a rickshaw driver and she

got the same type, except hers was red. I couldn't believe it when I saw you carrying that

into the airport!" Manisha twisted a bangle on her wrist and nudged the case with her

knee.

"Please, have you decided?" The Attendant turned away from Manisha and looked at

Laina.

"Come, come Laina. We have already told him you are coming with us." Manisha

clasped Laina's arm and narrowed her eyes at the Attendant.

"Apa, really. I mean no harm, I am only doing my job."

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"Doing your job!" Manisha swatted her hand at the Attendant and grabs Laina by

both shoulders, pushing her through the crowd. The Attendant followed, scribbling into a

small pad of paper. Laina looked over her shoulder tracing the blue uniform through the

crush of people. Stepping around trolleys, he wound his way through a maze of luggage,

still scribbling.

"I am writing you a voucher. If you choose to go to the hotel you just tell the ladies at

the counter." Manisha tugged Laina along, nosing her way to the luggage carrels.

"Don't pay any attention to the imbecile, Laina. He is slow—probably a village boy.

Just too stupid to understand when we tell him no!"

"They will give you a ticket for the shuttle, which will take you to the hotel."

"I am going to have Prabash make a formal complaint! I tell that airline monkey no,

he wants to know more! No means no! Simple!"

Laina reaches out to the Attendant who hands her a small slip of pink paper.

Spotting Prabash by the carrels, Manisha hurries to his side, yanking Laina along.

"You must trade this voucher for two meal vouchers at the hotel!" The Attendant

stops and cups his hand around his mouth. "Myself, as well as any other British Airways

representatives will be happy to help you with your luggage, your transport, or answer

any questions you may have! Thank you for choosing British Airways—"

"Bodmeish! Oh Prabash! That haramjadha!" Manisha points at the Attendant who

tips his hat and leaves.

Setting down her suitcase, Laina unfolds the pink slip.

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Regent Hotel Room and Meal Voucher for:

LM'IVUX Akwitd, Ticket YAO.^OOOA-

On the following dates: February 12. to Febmary 13

Courtesy of Brit ish Airways.

Manisha wiped sweat from the crook of her arm with the achol of her shari, shouted at

Prabash to pile the suitcases the right way. The pink slip was suddenly enormous, almost

wild in Laina's hand.

*

It was a robot, this giant metal machine. The stairs were teeth jawing their way up

through the airport and chomping their way down. Standing at the top Laina could picture

her hand caught between the teeth, the stairs winding her through their colossal

machinery. She would be lost in its clockwork, spinning through the gears, or worse, she

could be squeezed flat like a wad of mango pulp.

Already Laina could feel the chill of this new country, the dry quality of the air.

When she had stepped from the plane it had felt like the air rattled right through her,

organs swinging on strings. An old woman with pink nails put her hand on Laina's arm,

told her the escalator was safe, she could take a step and be off in a moment. Laina

looked at the pale shine of skin around the woman's eyes, it was like pooled wax stuck to

a swathe of soft cloth.

"Come, just take a step with me."

They glided down together, the woman patting Laina's hand.

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Even his smell was dry, like chipped wood left to sweat in the sun. She lay her

head against the headrest and sat with her hand over her mouth. He spoke softly, pointed

to the lake as it passed, told her they could kneel by the water and drink it, cup it into

their hands just like that. It was that clean. Laina wished for a second that they would

stop and drink from it now, she needed a mouthful of water so cold that it could crack

right through her. His watch glinted in the sun and she thought of reaching out and

wiping the glass face with her thumb. She imagined the glass melting under her skin. She

would twirl the dials with her thumbnail, the tiny golden sticks like the legs of

grasshoppers snapping round and round. He asked her for a third time if she felt all right,

if her journey had gone well, whether she had had any problems. She had yet to plant her

feet on this new ground, but she could already tell how dry it would be from the spotless

grey of the streets. The city was dozing in mid-afternoon, it seemed the roads could curve

for hours without a breath.

"It is a quiet neighbourhood. Very peaceful. You'll find it much more restful than

Dhaka." He nodded to himself, cleared his throat.

Twice she flicked the tip of her finger into her ear, sure that a pocket of air still sat

trapped inside.

He had set the table as if they were in a restaurant, shiny white plates wearing

napkins like hats. Tall glasses of milk stood by their plates, the glass frosted from the

cold. He pulled out a chair and she sat, stomach already folding itself into squares from

the sharp smell of meat. Azad forked a thick cut of meat onto Laina's plate, urged her to

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help herself to a spoonful of mashed potatoes. This was not like the aloo bhotta she made

at home—there were no onions or chill peppers. When she put a spot of it on the tip of

her tongue and asked whether he had used mustard oil, he laughed, told her these were

mashed potatoes, they mixed the potatoes here with milk and butter.

Laina pressed her finger into the meat. He had cooked the meat in great chunks,

thicker than her thumb. She swallowed what felt like a lump of dust and pressed her

fingers to her throat.. She wanted rice hot from the pot, plain daal—something warm and

soft against her tongue. How could she eat these great chunks of meat after hours of

being hurtled through the sky?

"It's steak!" He smiled.

Laina rubbed her temples, breathing through her nose.

At the Regent Hotel they had a restaurant on the first floor with waiters dressed in

black coats. When she had slipped the pink voucher to the woman behind the counter, the

woman ripped two blue tickets from a roll and told her that the specials were braised

lamb with artichokes or lemon-dill salmon with cream sauce. The woman had smiled and

nodded her toward the restaurant, said she would enjoy the meal. She wasn't hungry, but

thought she should use the ticket, especially after she had angered Manisha Apa by

refusing to leave with her and Prabash in the black taxi. She had been surprised at how

even her voice was, how firm. Why should she stay with a couple she hardly knew when

there was a place for her here, so close-by? It was kind of them, yes. But the voucher told

her she could do something entirely unexpected.

She had decided she would have salmon for dinner, but didn't expect the fish to

arrive at her table looking so uncooked. It was a neatly cut portion of pink flesh with a

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sprig of something green nestled into a spoonful of white sauce. She spooned a forkful of

the flaky filet into her mouth and sat at the table for half-an-hour, sipping a glass of

water. The fish tasted bland, the flesh watered out. It should have sizzled in a pan, rubbed

with paprika and turmeric. Then it would taste right, it wouldn't smell like it had just slid

out of the ocean and onto her plate.

She should sit with him and eat what he had prepared. But the stench of meat was

heavy in her brain. She could set her head down on the table now, feel the cool plate

against her cheek.

"I'm feeling so sick. I'm just going to lie down."

She rose from the table and padded to the bedroom. Before she closed the door she

watched Azad drive his knife into the meat, cutting a small square that he stabbed

through with his fork. He chewed and chewed, then drained his glass of milk.

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<>

When Soniya looked through her armoire she found the shawls folded at the very top, stiff with starch and still wrapped in tissue paper. If she wore them everyday, she would soften them out over her shoulders and they would drape nicely over Asha and Laina's

chests. The wool would thatch in her scent and if they lifted the shawls from the box and breathed them in, she would be with them.

Swarms, the silky threads wound themselves into swarms, rainbow hurricanes at her elbows and feet. The needle sunk in and out of the wool, a silver dart looping thread into petals and stems, curlicues of flowers winding their way over the wool. The shawls were

meadows, flowers blanketing cold knees, shaky chests.

< >

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CHAPTER ELEVEN

1983

Asha had to walk past Jung & Schmitt every week to get to her tram stop on

Birminghamstrasse. It was November and the wind was dry, it rasped up the legs of her

shalwar and she wished she'd put on her grey sweater, the one that buttoned up under her

chin. It would have kept her warmer, and when she'd knitted the sleeves she'd made

latches on the ends so she could roll them up in four even folds and button the sleeve at

her elbow. When she stood behind the counter of the laundry's showroom she could undo

the top three buttons at her neck and fold it down like a collar, and if she was called to the

back to feed the newest batches through the machines, or iron out the fancy dresses, she

could roll up her sleeves and they wouldn't slump down at her wrists. She'd worn her

brown sweater thinking she always wore the grey one, that she should try to change her

outfits a bit more, wear the brown one. She could tell it pleased Aaline when she came to

work in a new outfit, or even if she put a new clip in her hair. But the brown sweater was

more of a spring sweater, and she'd knitted it out of crochet wool so while most of it

stretched out over her ballooning stomach, some hung off her body and billowed when

she walked, made her look like an elephant playing dress up. She'd have to hang it up on

the coat rack the moment she walked in—it would be too much of a disturbance, sleeves

rolling down, hem getting caught on the machines, yes, she'd just have to hang it up.

She had reached her eighth month and because her monthly tram pass allowed her

free rides on Saturdays and Sundays, she replaced her afternoons at the Konditorei with a

ride to the second last stop on the tramline. It would have been nice to get off at the last

stop, but it had a name that was very hard to pronounce. She had developed her own

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system where she wouldn't get off at a stop, or step into a store, or buy a new brand of

bread until she learned how to say their names and could whip the words out without

wincing. Jamal told her she was being too smart about it, that she could just learn these

words when she wanted, why did she need this drama? But this was discipline, not

drama. If she took her tram ride on a Monday, it would be the start of the week and she

would wake ready to plunge into the city. She would ride straight to the last stop and

learn that word, learn how it was said and repeat it over and over until she could say it to

the Building Manager's wife, Greta, down at the bottom of the stairs by the mailboxes.

Greta would smile and sometimes clap, always nodding, her blonde curls sweaty against

her forehead. This meant it was fine, sounded just like a native or just good enough. This

was how she found the job at the laundry shop.

*

Greta made roast beef rolls in her kitchen and sold them to a grocery store on the

corner, earning 15% of every purchase made. Asha had seen Greta's beef rolls at

Tengelmann's during her second week in Germany on the day Jamal got his first job.

Akthar had banged on their door before dawn, yelling for Jamal to peel himself from the

bed and meet him at the restaurant in ten minutes. One of the cooks had burned his hand

on the open grill the week before, but had to finally leave after his bandage caught fire

and a customer found singed cotton in his braised potatoes. Asha had twisted herself from

Jamal's arms, astounded at the bellow of Akthar's voice:

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"Arbeit! Arbeit! Arbeit!" He laughed when Asha opened the door, eyes wide.

"Tell him ten minutes—or someone else will get the spot. What a child! He should

already be up, scampering through the streets while it's dark looking for a job!"

"If I was scampering like a rat in the streets, I wouldn't be here ready to take hold

of this brilliant opportunity, bhai!" Jamal appeared behind Asha, holding up his lungi

with one hand, scratching his head with the other.

"Hurry up—ten minutes. Get this child ready, bhabi!" Akhtar nodded at Asha

before clattering back down the stairs in his sandals, the tail of his shirt flying behind

him.

Since the day they had arrived, Asha kept an ironed pair of pants and the blue

striped shirt that Laina had bought as a parting gift, together on a hanger in the closet.

She kept the belt Abba had ordered from the tailor the day after they received their papers

for Germany, wrapped around the neck of the hanger and had covered the entire

ensemble in a bed sheet so the cooking smells wouldn't seep into the fabric and the

pants—a deep charcoal grey—would not collect dust. She brought this out and had

finished arranging the items on the bed when Jamal shuffled out of the bathroom, water

dripping from his chin.

"What is this?" Jamal snapped his fingers and tugged on Asha's ponytail.

"For work—hurry and put them on. I'll wrap some paratha and bhaji for you to

eat on your way."

"This?" Jamal shook his head, laughing. It was one of his dry, crackling laughs. It

always ended with him coughing for minutes and spitting into the garbage, chest heaving.

When she had met him, she had liked the smell of smoke on his clothes. There was

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something simultaneously chemical and earthy about the stench, it excited her, made her

feel new and unstoppable. She still thought he looked just like Uttam Kumar when he sat

in the big chair by the window in the evenings, cigarette rolling between his fingers, the

light showing the red flecks in his hair. But when his laughter turned to these hideous

coughs she felt like snapping his cigarettes and stuffing them up through his nose—if he

wanted those cigarettes so bad, he could breathe them in that way. How long did he think

he could live this way?

"Asha, this isn't a job where what I wear will matter. I could go in my lungi and

they wouldn't care, as long as I clean the shit beneath their sinks, they will be happy."

"What are you saying these things for?" Asha straightened herself up from

smoothing out a crease in a pant leg and turned to face Jamal who had pulled out a pair of

linen slacks and a sweater. "This is a job!"

Jamal buttoned up his shirt and pulled the sweater over his head, an unlit cigarette

soaking between his lips.

"I am going to this job because I need to, not because it is what I have always

wanted." He pointed at the bed. "Those clothes are for when I want to impress someone,

those are for a real job." His lips spread into a smile and he lit the cigarette.

Asha turned and went to the kitchen where she folded a cold paratha around two

spoons of aloo bhaji. She wrapped the bundle into a paper towel ignoring the yellow

stains that soaked through from the potatoes. She handed Jamal the breakfast and he

pulled her toward him, nudging her cheek with his knuckle.

"Come, come. Don't be so mad."

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"Jaraal." Asha loosened herself from his grip, brushing away his hand. "Why

can't you be happy? This is a job."

"I am more than happy. I am infinitely happy—you don't know how happy. This

is our beginning—just the beginning. Not the end. At the end, I will wear the suit of a

prince, I will impress everyone." He kissed her on the forehead and squeezed her close so

she could smell the smoke thick in the knots of his sweater.

Asha met Greta on her first afternoon in Germany when she went downstairs to

experiment with the key to her mailbox. She knew it was too soon for a letter but she

wanted to see if her key would work and if it did, she wanted to know what the box felt

like from the inside. When Nasreen had shown her the metal mailboxes she had thought

of Minju, their postman. He was very thin but had the build of a farm labourer, the

muscles in his calves carved like blocks of wood. He seemed to think it was part of his

duty to open the mail before he delivered it, and to read it aloud before climbing the steps

of the verandah and knocking on their door. They always opened it to find him wiping

sweat off his dark brow, letters and small parcels opened in his hands.

"A letter for Rahmat Ahmad—it is the usual, payment for the refrigerator is due—

do you happen to have any cold water in the fridge? It is a good quality fridge I am sure.

A letter for Soniya Bibi—your daughter Kanta is wanting another visit, I suspect she is

due for another child. Another letter for Rahmat Ahmad—this is from your son, Munir,

he says the weather is fine in India, he is overwhelmed with studies but will be going

sightseeing in a week, be sure to tell him to take a picture by the Taj Mahal, it is world

famous, I am sure you know."

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When Laina had cut him off at the gate the day after he read the contents of a

letter from Ilyaas, she took the letters from him and told him the next time he delivered

he should simply slip them under the door without a word—or even better, he should

deliver them unopened as intended! He had laughed for a full minute, grabbing the posts

of the gate to steady himself.

"Why, I took this job because I love reading. If I were to leave everything as is—

there would be no point! I would be better off in my father's tea fields in Sylhet!"

Asha had stood before the metal boxes and matched her door number to the

number on one of the panes. When she had been standing there for almost ten minutes,

her key jammed in the lock, Greta had tramped through the doors of the building, her

arms loaded with paper bags that toppled with groceries. Asha left the key in the box and

took a bag while Greta opened the door to her apartment and motioned for Asha to come

in.

"Komme! Komme!"

For the next half hour Greta spoke to Asha in German, while Asha answered back in half-

English, half-Bengali sentences, frightened at how quickly Greta moved from one end of

the kitchen to the other, unloading trays of fresh meat and shoving vegetables and bottles

of juice into the fridge. Greta's voice was soft, but the sounds from her mouth were

guttural, came from deep in the throat, from the back of her tongue. She was middle-

aged, wore a pink sweater and woolen skirt, her hair, blonde and shiny, pulled back into a

ponytail. When she had finished putting away her groceries she pulled out a plate of

bread from under a thick cloth on the counter and sat across from Asha at the table. She

had a bowl on the table brimming with cuts of cheese and she sliced a thick chunk of

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bread and pushed it on a plate toward Asha, motioning for her to take some cheese. They

sat and ate together and for a while only communicated through enthusiastic smiles. Asha

liked the way Greta sliced the bread by holding it under a checkered cloth, fingers firm.

The beds of her nails turned pink from the pressure and they looked like the insides of the

pearly shells Laina saved from their trip to Sea Beach in Chittagong. The bread was soft,

fresh. She bit right into the memory of Abba hauling a paper sac full of glistening rolls

from the bakeries in the city into their house, his face spread into a smile. On the days he

brought treats he would be anxious to make sure everyone was at the table, that everyone

got a fair share of the goods. Greta pointed to the bowl.

"Der Kdse probieren ? "

"Paneer? " Asha took a slice between her fingers and bit into it. It was sharp,

salty. Had the soft texture of paneer but she couldn't be sure. It was something they ate

only a few times each year at home, tiny cubes divided among every sibling.

"Kdse." Greta repeated.

Asha pointed to the bread.

"Brot. " Greta clapped then jumped from her seat in a flurry of German words, her

face flushed. She pulled a Styrofoam tray from the bottom shelf of her fridge and whirled

around to face Asha. She pointed to all the ingredients laid out across her counter and

then pointed to the tray.

"Rinderbraten-Brotchen. Meine. " She patted her chest.

Asha took the tray and ran her thumb across the label. It was a plain white label with

words handwritten in black marker across the belly of a cow:

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(jt-eTta Pro5S&t: £?i'rider^tat&n-BtotcL/l&n

"Greta?" Asha pointed from the tray to Greta. Greta nodded, still smiling.

The window from their bedroom looked out onto an alley and Asha wished it

would look out to the side street where Jamal and Akhtar would catch the tram. Jamal

had been eager to find a job the first week they arrived, Akhtar always circling addresses

in the newspapers and handing Jamal scraps of paper with names and numbers to call.

When he slept, Asha watched the rise and fall of his chest, drove her fingers through the

hairs on his chest, felt them spring up between her fingers like frayed electrical wires.

She was afraid she didn't have what it was that would light him up, send him in shocks

down the streets of Frankfurt fervent for his dreams.

She had learned from Nasreen that Greta was Albert the building Manager's wife.

Albert managed four other buildings in the area and liked to collect rolls of printed

wallpaper from the refuse bins of German summer homes. The owners had renovations

each year and Albert was always the first to pilfer through the bins and bring home the

best rolls, vibrant flower prints and bold swirls and stripes. He would give selected rolls

to tenants for free if they used it to beautify their own apartments. He kept the best ones

for himself, piled in the shoe closet by the door. Asha made a point of checking the mail

at 10:30 every morning—when she knew Greta would be airing out the apartment from

her morning baking. She would check the mailbox (still empty) and would nuzzle her

way into a conversation with Greta, who, at the end of the week would give Asha a

prized roll of wallpaper in an effort to clear out the shoe closet. In this way, by the end of

her second week in Germany Asha had not only wallpapered the bathroom and kitchen

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with purple daisies and a lemon and lime print, she had learned basic words and phrases

so she could nudge her way through Frankfurt and test the streets on her own. The

morning Jamal followed Akthar to his first job, Asha decided she would try her hand at a

grocery store. Jamal would not be home until late this evening and she should have milk

and some biscuits for their evening tea. She did not want to ask Nasreen or any of the

other ladies to come along. She knew she would end up trailing behind them like a

puppy, letting them take the lead. This was for her benefit. Pocketing some change Jamal

kept in a tin at the back of the fridge, she wrote the word "Hilfe" on the back of her

hand—she wanted to know the word for help if she needed it—and crossed the street to

the grocery store Greta went to every week.

Walking along the aisles Asha counted the coins in her pocket, wondered whether

the few Deutsche Marks she had would be enough for even a small packet of biscuits, let

alone a jug of milk. For their first week, Nasreen and Akhtar took them both to a small

grocery shop by tram and guided them through the aisles. In Dhaka, shops like these were

frequented by men who thought themselves too tidy to haggle their way through the raw

bazaars of Bangladesh.

"Look at us in a bideshi market, Asha!" Jamal had held up an apple and laughed.

"Look at us buying apples!"

Now, Asha wanted to walk slowly up and down the aisles, just look at things. She

wanted to write home about it, make a list of all the chocolates she could send to Ma,

there were hundreds of soft ones in tiny boxes with clear lids. Ma could suck on these and

they wouldn't hurt her teeth, they were the good kind. She could hide them in a tin in her

armoire, hand them out when she wanted, but keep most of them for herself. She would

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have to tell Laina to do the same, look for chocolates for Ma. In the last aisle, Asha stood

and took several deep breaths. The shelves were piled with bread. Each tray was lined in

waxy paper and labeled with a name in thick black marker. She wondered if Abba had

stood in a place like this somewhere in Dhaka, just breathing. Because it had only been

two weeks, everything new was still attractive, Asha didn't crave the flaky parathas or

plain flatbreads yet, she wanted the rolls, the strange twisty bread, the crusty loaves.

Could she send bread through the mail to Abba?

Since Tengelmann's, Asha had gotten into the habit of waking before Jamal to

pack two lunches each morning. By the time Jamal was strapping his watch onto his

wrist, Asha had put on her black shoes, the ones with thin lacing on the side—these were

the best for walking—and would ink the word Hilfe onto the back of her hand. She would

walk out with Jamal to the tram stop arm linked through his. After he boarded, patting his

pocket to check for his keys and wallet she would walk slowly up the street and stop at

each storefront window to look inside. She liked to look in while the stores were still

closed, the displays unlit and bare. It made her feel as if she knew the bare bones of each

store, like catching a glimpse of someone in just their petticoat and blouse, you felt you

finally saw something real. She padded her way down a new street each day and once the

stores opened, she entered each one and sought out the man or woman behind the counter

to ask if they needed Hilfe. Once, a nice lady in a soft pink frock spent twenty minutes

showing Asha dresses in colours she thought would bring out the flecks of light brown in

her eyes before she understood that Asha was not asking for help, but offering it. She

shook her head sadly and showed Asha a deep green sweater with pearl buttons before

making her way to a lady rifling through racks of woolen slacks. Asha found the job at

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the laundry shop on a Friday morning while looking at a sign in the window. That

morning she had pulled a crumpled newspaper from the garbage bin in the kitchen and

stood at the counter reading through the job ads Akthar had circled with a red pen. She

wrote down the words she found repeated most often on the back of a yellow recipe card

Greta had given her and carried it with her on her morning walk. The sign in the window

was written in red block letters and propped up against a display of white tablecloths.

Asha compared the recipe card to the sign and mouthed the words, widening her lips and

loosening her jaw muscles the way Greta and shown her, flour-dusted thumbs on her

cheeks. A woman arrived with keys jingling on a rope around her wide waist, hair in

loose brown curls.

"Arbeit erhaltlich? " Asha pointed to the sign.

The woman looked up at Asha, surprised. She unlocked the door and pulled it

open shoving her waist between the frame and the door. Then, she invited Asha in.

*

On Asha's weekend tram rides she'd just sit and look out the window, watch the

city pass by. The trams were bright and colourful, pulled like toys on a string that zig

zagged through the city. She would get off work at 4 o'clock on Saturdays and would

catch the 4:15 tram all the way to Fechenheim Post where she would get off and catch the

6 o'clock train back to Birminghamstrasse. Today, she had hung her brown sweater up on

the coat rack and Aaline had told her how lovely it was, had ran her hands under the hem,

thumbs exploring the knotting. She had patted Asha's stomach, murmured how this baby

was putting a good worker out of service. Marta, who came in every Monday and

Thursday to drop off and pick up her party dresses, laughed and told Aaline that a baby

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would put Asha to work, not out of it. Marta was a tall, thin woman of at least sixty years

and was, Asha thought, the most beautiful and refined of all of Aaline's customers. She

wore her long, blonde hair in a twist up the back of her head and clamped it with a

bejeweled clip that always matched her shoes. Marta dressed impeccably, but it was her

shoes that Asha loved—every colour and style imaginable, heels even in winter with ice

sculpting the streets. Asha promised herself a pair of red heels once her ankles shrunk

back to their normal size; the baby had made her into an elephant. When Marta dropped

off her items Asha enjoyed working in the back. She liked ironing out the dresses,

memorizing the cuts and darts, the silk and lace appliques, so she could replicate them for

the baby. She had already knitted seven sweaters for the baby, but wanted to think

beyond the winter right into summer. She imagined taking the baby with her on walks to

the German summer homes, where she and the other Bangali ladies posed in gardens and

took photos to send back home. She wanted a green silk dress in time for Eid for the

baby, had been looking through her sharis, deciding which one would be worth the

sacrifice.

Sitting on the tram, nibbling from a tiny packet of nuts Jamal had brought home

for her, Asha decided that Jamal would see how bright things were once the baby arrived.

Akhtar had quit the restaurant and accepted a position in an art gallery further downtown

leaving Jamal finicky and temperamental. He had to work, he knew this—what was it

that went through his mind to make him so resentful? Akhtar had pushed himself through

school and worked 12-14 hour days at the restaurant while studying during his breaks for

two years—two years!—before he finally received a position that was truly worthy of

him, his intellect. When Asha found the bottles of beer in a large paper sac at the back of

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the fridge, she drained them in the toilet and called Nasreen and Akhtar up for dinner. For

weeks, Nasreen and Akthar dined with Asha and Jamal and even after Nasreen left for

her job in Gottingen, Asha would ask Akhtar to come up, to join them for their evening

meal. When she had told Jamal news of the baby, he had lifted her from the bed and

stood her in front of the mirror loosening the tie on her petticoat. He pulled the waist

down and revealed her belly, brushing his thumb against the firm skin.

She knew he wanted to leave.

Two weeks after baby Niya arrived, the ladies threw Asha a small party at

Nasreen's, made her a platter full of bhottas she couldn't eat while she was pregnant

because the smell made her want to vomit. But as soon as Niya was born, she had craved

the mashed concoctions: shrimp, daal, eggplant, beans, dried fish—the bean bhotta was

her favourite, a grainy lump of pistachio green she shoveled into her mouth with thick

grains of rice, savoury and warm. The women sat around the table sampling the bhottas

while the men heated themselves into a frenzy over politics. The ladies were still eager to

hear from Asha. Even after two years, she was still the newest in Germany out of all of

them, their closest connection to home. The conversation spiraled around tid bits of

home, small details like what she had eaten just before she left and didn't she find the

taste of fish here so bland? They complained for a full half hour about how difficult it

was to find good fish in Frankfurt, how it tasted foreign on their tongues as if someone

had played a trick on them. They complimented her shari, told her there was only one

Indian clothing shop opened by a Mr. Niruddin Mujahid and it didn't have what they

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needed—yards of plain cotton for blouses, petticoats, and shalwar kameez for the

summer. It had only been open for a few months and the shipments from India and

Bangladesh were slow in coming, the business only trickling.

"And you know he is overpricing everything—it really is unreasonable. Do you

remember the price of that jamdani shari bhabi? I could have it sent from Bangladesh for

a quarter of what he asked."

When they climbed the stairs home that night, Asha could hear Jamal breathing

heavily behind her, the sound like air whistling through rusty holes. Jamal took Niya and

stretched himself across the couch. He pried her tiny hand from the wrap of the woolen

blanket and gently brushed his finger along her hairline. Asha rearranged the food in the

fridge so she could push in her tray of bhottas, then stood to watch Jamal. When Jamal

was a steady rhythm in her life, quiet and even, she wished Abba could see what she saw.

He could never bring himself to trust Jamal, said his energy was too erratic, his head in

too many places at once, his body too weak to hurtle through life like all men must. If

Abba knew how good Jamal could be, he would understood why she had jumped. She

joined Jamal, pressed the tip of her finger into Niya's dimple, rested her head along

Jamal's arm.

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CHAPTER TWELVE

During her first few weeks in Calgary, Laina barely knew how she woke and

walked from one room to another or managed to make tea without falling straight through

the floors of the building, crashing through drawing rooms and kitchens, the cups and

plates spinning through the air. She thought herself the husk of a gourd, rolling lopsided

across the floor. The weeks were filled with wailing, raw cries that would set Azad

pacing up and down the drawing room, fingers in his hair. Flipping through grocery store

flyers he told her not to make herself sick, that she should get up and eat something, that

in time it would all pass. He would knock on the bathroom door and tell her she would

cry herself thin, she needed to come out and calm down. Then, sinking into the bed with a

sigh, he told her that the neighbours would think he was abusing her. She would sit on the

toilet, the seat cold against her thighs and think of how much easier it would be to squat

low, that these toilets were not made for people like her, guts always packed with stones.

It was in the humidity of the bathroom that Laina thought of how much she wanted to be

sweating out the sultry heat of Dhaka, how the crisp and cutting winds of Calgary were

flaking her into something raw and immovable. In the privacy of tiled floors and running

water, she would cry.

At the end of September, the Bangladeshi Association planned to hold an Eid

Party at the Foothills Community Centre. Mrs. Chowdhury had called twice to confirm

that Laina would bring roshogollas, perfectly round syrup-soaked balls of heavy milk

curd that Laina was eager to make. She wanted to fill the house with the same heavy

scent of syrup that wafted through the streets of Dhaka in the days leading up to Eid,

sweet shops frying orange swirls of jelabi in open-air fryers, globes of kalojam bobbing

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up in the oil, insides shining spongy red. This was nothing to complain about, the smell

would not be offensive to the delicate noses of the neighbours Azad always worried

about, they would not complain. This would be a thick, sweet perfume—they might even

open their doors, curious. They never did complain. It was Azad who told her that the

food was stinking up the apartment, the smell relentlessly pungent, weaving through their

curtains and clothes in thick layers. She had cooked beef the first week, had softened the

chunks of meat in a pot over the stove, mixing in yogurt and jeera, the cumin seeds

popping in the heat, the onions smiling slivers shining at the bottom of the pot. She had

put the lid on the pot, wanted to let the meat seep so the jhol would thicken. She set the

bowl of rice on the table, pleased that she had already spooned out the niramish and set

Azad's pitcher of water and plate on the table. She had timed her cooking so it would be

complete before he arrived home from work, but would still be warm by the time he slid

into his chair and picked up his fork. Azad kept a fork—a steel fork with a blue plastic

handle—and ate everything, even his rice and daal, with it. It was awkward scraping daal

from your plate with the edge of a fork, the lentils spilled through the spaces. But she

tried it when he told her it was the way things were done, that you didn't sit at the table

with fish oils drying on your fingers. Fingertips were kept clean here, leftover daal

pooling on the plate. It didn't work out for her—the fork. It was impossible to enjoy a

chunk offish when you had to prod the meat off the bone with a knife and fork, the fish

was unyielding, the whole process slowed, everything on her plate resistant. She needed

to slide off morsels of the oily flesh with her fingers, feel it glide off the bone as if she

were slipping a bead off a string. With her fingers everything was orderly and precise; the

rice was mounded with chunks of vegetable and swept into the daal, then into her mouth.

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The meat came loose with a flick of her forefinger, the bone scraped clean. This way, the

flavours were full and the food went down easily. Azad smiled at this when she

explained, flicked his hand as if it had never really mattered.

Azad sat down that first week, spooned beef onto his plate and took three helpings

of her niramish. She, of course, did not yet know what his favourite dishes were, but

figured that five years away from the tables of home meant he would appreciate the solid

flavours of simple dishes. She found herself studying his fingers—the beds of his nails

were wide and flat, translucent like the scales of a fish. This was one of the first things

she had decided she liked about Azad—how foreign his fingers seemed. Abba's

fingernails were square, small, just like her cousins and Uncles. She had always felt she

could pinch one of their fingers by the end and stretch it out. Azad's fingers looked as if

they were made to circle round the berth of a tall glass brimming with the sparkling water

he brought home in glass bottles and kept lined up on one side of the refrigerator. She

kept her own fingernails long, filed them in perfect moon-shaped curves. Her fingers

were long and lovely and the nails were strong, like the tusks of an elephant, Ma said.

She loved the feeling of sweeping a new coat of deep red polish over them each week,

her hands suddenly alive in the mirror, seductive. She had rested her hand across the plate

wiping the jhol from each of her nails with her thumb when Azad stood and walked to the

stove, lifted the lid from the pot of beef.

"It's a strong smell." He reached up and flicked a switch at the top of the stove.

There was a loud hum and the hood over the stove vibrated. "This is the switch to the

fan—just turn it on while you're cooking and the smells will go away."

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So for the rest of the week she cooked under the mechanical whir of the fan

waving her hand underneath the metal grill to feel the suction. There must be something

in the quality of the air in this city that had worn away the skin inside Azad's nose. She

didn't know whether the heavy aroma of the yogurt and meat had been too much for him,

or if it was simply a matter of time and practice before he remembered that this was what

good food smelled like. The following week, Laina took fish out of the freezer and spent

the morning thawing it out in a bowl of cool water in the sink, scaling it and hacking it

into chunks, removing the pod of eggs that lay inside the fish's belly. Everything seemed

to have a translucent coating over it, the flesh of the fish dry and stringy, the eggs

blackened into a solid mass. She preferred puti maas, the slim fish she could hold in the

palm of her hand, its scales like thick silver thread, brocade in her hand. Azad had come

home from work late one evening, frozen trout in a heavy plastic bag. She had slid the

fish into the freezer, frowned at its eye, vacant and cloudy. Now, she placed pieces of the

trout, slathered in a paste of paprika, haldi, and chili powder into the frying pan and

focussed on the slow browning of the skin. It was too familiar, the cackle of the oil as it

foamed up at the edges of the pan, the feel of the handle pressed deep into her palm. She

was tipping her own pan over the stovetop, frying her own fish. This small square in this

frigid, grey city oceans away from the charcoal grit of Narinda's kitchen was her home.

Here, of all places, she was building her shongshar, in the heat of this kitchen she was

folding into her new life.

Maybe because she had cooked herself into it all day, the stench of the fried fish

did not bother her as much. Of course, of all things, the smell of fish if seeped too long

was the most sour, the aroma too thick and assaulting. This was probably why Azad

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walked into the apartment that evening, very angry. He shook off his coat and swung it

onto its hanger, face crumpled.

"The smell—it's in everything. It's all the way down the hall." He pointed at the

door. "Didn't you use the fan?"

The fan. Like making herself tea each morning, flicking on the fan had become

routine. Its obnoxious roar was as much a part of the kitchen as the sizzle of oil or the

shriek of the kettle. But Azad had forgotten—the smells from fried fish thickened in slow

layers, attached itself in stubborn particles to clothes, to skin. This fan was made to waft

away the excesses of fried chicken or potatoes, it was no match for this. From the look on

his face it was as if she had seeped the apartment in a vat full of cow dung—when had

the smell of fried fish soured itself in Azad's nostrils? How long did it take for that to

happen? This smell, it was raw and sultry, full of heat. It should burn him into memories,

bring him to the table in raptures. She set the platter of the fish on the table, wished Abba

and Ma into the seats across from her, their eyes eager and admiring. She sat spooning

rice onto her plate as Azad stood at the apartment door spraying air freshener into the

hall.

On Tuesdays and Thursdays when Azad had a longer lunch hour, he would call

Laina up at 11 o'clock and give her the intersection of a restaurant, ask her to join him

there for lunch. Laina would write the street names down on a light blue notepad Azad

kept by the phone and would take the pot of rice off the stove so she could get ready in

time to catch the bus. The first time Azad had called she had spent a full hour curling her

hair and plaiting her shari, checking to see that the hem didn't ride up too high when she

put on her heels. By the time she made it to the corner of Brunswick and James Street,

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Azad's lunch hour was half over and they left after ordering just salads and spring water.

Since then she had timed herself and allotted 25 minutes to get ready for these afternoon

outings, eager to get out of the apartment and walk along the streets. It was during these

walks that she could look through the store windows, study the items they kept on their

shelves and note what she would send back to Ma, Abba and Raisa when she had a

chance. She liked the restaurants Azad picked, quiet and clean, the tables set with glass

dishes and crystal glasses, napkins folded into fans. But even at midday, the restaurants

were dark inside, the chandeliers glimmering from dim amber bulbs that threw

everything into flickering shadow. Azad told her this was part of the atmosphere, that

thousands of dollars in research went into figuring out how to make eating spaces more

attractive to patrons. Researchers found that by turning down the lights in restaurants

people felt more intimate, that their moods improved by three notches on a scale and that

when people felt intimate it meant that they were comfortable and more willing to spend

money. He smiled when he said this, offered her a bun from a basket. Biting into a twisty

roll of bread she thought that although this may be true, she didn't see the point if a

person couldn't tell the difference between different types of food on a plate. What joy

was there in eating at a restaurant if you had to squint the entire time, give yourself a

headache from trying to sort out the vegetables from the meat? When it grew too cold for

Laina to walk to the bus top in just a sweater and loafers, Azad bought a navy winter coat

with a fur-lined hood for Laina, set the long box on the coffee table one evening after

coming home from work an hour late. He brought home surprise gifts every so often: a

velvet housecoat with matching slippers, a hairbrush set with silver gilding on the

handles, a watch with a red leather strap—always something she didn't expect, or know

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quite what to do with until he explained, gently but surely, while she brushed her teeth in

the bathroom and he sat outstretched on the living room couch, his hand on the opened

box. The housecoat and slippers she could wear in the mornings, right when she woke up

so she wouldn't feel cold in the chilly weather. She appreciated this, wished he had

picked a more soothing colour—deep burgundy was flattering on her skin, but it had too

much anger knitted through it, felt too warm when she put it on in the mornings as if her

mood had made it too hot and clammy to keep against her skin. The hairbrush set she

thought was decorative—the fine tooth comb was made of a marbled plastic that

resembled glass and the pad of the brush was made of fine, very soft fibers that were

useless when she needed to detangle her curls. She set about using them when he told her

they were finishing brushes. She could do her hair and use them to smooth out the extra

bits, the comb could tuck in the curls that came loose and the brush was there to give her

hair an extra shine after she had brushed it with her regular brush each evening. She kept

the set in its cushioned case on the dresser and admired the careful detail, thinking that

she would have chosen a nice wood handled brush, the kind she had seen at the drug store

on the corner—something sturdy that wouldn't snap in her hands while raking through

her hair. The watch she wore faithfully, rubbing the red, leather strap with her forefinger

to keep the scratches off, but wishing he had chosen one with a stretch-metal band—she

had seen one through the window of the jewelers on 5th Street on her way home from

lunch one day, had thought it looked modern, the brushed two-tone metal classy. The

winter coat was a practical purchase, she needed a warm coat for what Azad told her

would be a winter where the houses and trees were coated in ice. She thought of her own

garden, imagined the petals and leaves crumpled from the cold and shuddered. Looking

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at herself in the mirror, she wondered why he hadn't taken her with him to the store to

pick something herself. This was a coat she would wear everyday for months, even years,

and it was a dull green and brown, the buttons large and brassy. The wool weaving and

double-breasted style was fashionable, Azad told her, all the ladies in the store assured

him that it was something they wouldn't mind wearing themselves.

By November, Laina began calculating the number of times she and Azad had

gone to social functions together. It had been three months since she had arrived, and she

had met other Bengali families at a Bangladeshi Association summer BBQ that Azad

took her to at the last minute, when she saw the newsletter lying on top of the coffee table

with the rest of his mail. Since the BBQ, she had received invitations to dawats, get-

togethers at the homes of other Bengali couples, and though she had been eager to go,

Azad told her he would rather not—that Bengalis had a tendency to lose themselves in

mindless gossip, that they never knew when to draw the line. If you walked into a room

full of Bengalis, you could feel the eyes of every person in the room cutting you up like

knives before you even opened your mouth. They were there, not to eat and enjoy good

company—no—they were there solely to decide whether they were better than the person

standing next to them and most times they would hack themselves a notch up at the top

whether they deserved it or not. No, Bengalis were not good company and he would

rather not attend.

But she could attend if she wanted to—he didn't mind. He would drop her off and

pick her up. So, Laina, tired of turning down invitations, would attend weekend dinners

on her own, make up excuses to explain why Azad could not attend, could never attend,

would never attend. Once home, she would unlatch her earrings and twist off her bangles,

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watching Azad in the mirror sifting through newspapers on their bed. This was not how

things were supposed to go. What kind of man was this, so happily removed from

everything she knew? When had their people become so repulsive, their gatherings an

impediment? Was this new land so bright and wonderful, the company of Canadians so

fulfilling?

So when Azad called her from work one evening, told her they had been invited

to dinner by his cousin Rana and his wife, and that she should be ready by seven, she was

surprised. Knowing Azad would not appreciate questions that prodded into his sticky

relationship with family, she stood ready in the lobby of the apartment in a peacock blue

shari, her hair swept up into a silver clip that Asha had sent her from Germany. This

would be the first time that she was to meet any of Azad's relations outside of

Bangladesh—their first time seeing her, Azad's bride—so she had taken the velvet box of

gold jewelry out from under the dresser and put on the gold balas and necklace that Ma

and Abba had given her for the wedding. She wore the ring and earrings that Azad's

mother had cupped into her hand the night after the wedding. She carefully applied a

chocolate coloured lipstick she had purchased from the drug store and admired her profile

in the mirror. When she sunk into the car, Azad glanced at her and told her it was a casual

dinner, that it would just be Rana and his wife.

"But it's too late to change now." He sighed and pulled out onto the street. Laina

looked out the window, a cold drizzle dripped down the pane and the lights of the passing

cars looked as if they were melting dizzily into the dark.

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Laina sat, her hands folded in her lap. The pipes in her throat felt as if they had

shrunk three sizes, just thin wires scraping against the inside of her neck, her voice mute.

The cut of chicken on her plate looked pale, an uneatable lump of flesh seeping in a pool

of lemon juice and mint leaves. Alison—Rana's wife—was smoothing a wrinkle on the

front of her skirt, sipping wine from a glass. She had been kind to Laina, had told her she

looked lovely, that her shari was gorgeous, that she'd always wanted to try one on herself

but couldn't imagine being able to keep it on properly, so elegant. Rana had looked at

Laina once or twice, asked her in English if she was enjoying Canada and had spent the

rest of the evening hand clasped around the back of Alison's neck, laughing loudly with

Azad. Rana had come to Canada on a scholarship for Engineering when he was 17, and

after four years of university decided he would find a job and stay in the country, told

Azad that life in Canada was more to his taste than whatever lay waiting for him at home.

Since then, he had never made his way back to Bangladesh but sent letters once a year to

his parents in Dhaka, told them he was doing well and would visit once his job allowed

him some free time. He had met Alison, a nurse at a local high school, while at a party for

alumni at the University of Calgary and they had a civil ceremony a year later and lived

together in a house on the west side. When Rana sent pictures of himself with Alison

standing under the Eiffel Tower on their honeymoon back to Bangladesh, his father

returned the packet of photographs via the next post and had not opened any other letters

from his son since then.

"If his parents were more understanding, he would have taken Alison back to

Bangladesh to meet them by now," Azad had said the morning of the dinner,

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straightening his tie in the mirror. Laina piled the bed sheets and pillowcases on the floor,

stretching a fresh sheet across the mattress.

"I think—" Laina bent and tucked in a corner of the sheet. "Rana should have

considered how shocked his parents would be—news like this. All of a sudden. Didn't

even invite them to the wedding."

Azad nodded into the mirror and slapped cologne onto his wrists. "That is true,

too."

Had Ilyaas thought that his mother would look at a picture of his Russian wife and

simply understand? How easy was it for Ilyaas to shed off his skin, and glide into the

arms of a foreign woman? Did men simply sink their feet into new lands and forget their

pasts? During these three months Laina had grown accustomed to Azad's foreign habits.

For everything, he had a reason. He would explain it to her if she didn't understand. He

left his washcloth on the edge of the bathtub after his showers, let it drip onto the tiles

where squirts of shampoo and foaming soap had splashed and dried. Abba had kept a

gamsa, a long checkered cloth, hanging from the neck of the faucet and used it to wipe

his neck and face in the mornings. When Laina had first found the sopping wet washcloth

on the tub she wondered why Azad didn't use the net-like cotton of a gamsa—it had a

chafing quality and cleansed the skin better yet was thin enough so it would dry easily by

just hanging in the bathroom the rest of the day. Azad shook his hand at her, told her that

his face-cloths were made so they wouldn't irritate skin, they were soft and worked just

fine. They were also thick and collected moisture sitting in a humid tub, smelled rank by

the end of the day and needed to be washed daily—but this was not something that Azad

worried too much about. It was a good washcloth and he didn't need a gamsa. When the

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paper was delivered through the slot in their door, Azad separated the grocery flyers from

the main pages and left them in disarrayed piles around the couch. Laina sighed heavily,

shuffling them into straight piles by the coffee table. He told her it made sense to leave

them the way he did because he knew she would look through them anyway. He washed

the dishes by filling one sink with soapy water and rinsing them off in the other sink

(when he wasn't home she re-washed the dishes, it wasn't right to rinse dishes in water

already clogged with soggy food). But Azad insisted that this was the way it was done

here, that every household in Canada washed their dishes this way, one sink for

scrubbing, one sink for rinsing and that the rinse water was wiped off anyway, that

nothing dirty remained on the dishes so she didn't have to worry.

Of all his habits, it was the way Azad moved his hands when explaining things he

thought she didn't understand that annoyed her most. He thought he had a firm grasp on

everything and when he sat back and opened his mouth, his hands would open too, as if

he had weights resting in each palm and was testing them. When his hands would start

bobbing, Laina knew she should prepare herself for an explanation of how things worked,

the way things were supposed to be. It was as if the five years he had spent in Canada had

made him a certified expert on everything and that she, as the newcomer, a fresh bride

from Bangladesh, was to be his willing protege, a modern woman in the making. So

when Azad insisted that though Rana should have been more tactful when revealing the

news of his marriage to Alison, his parents had overreacted—their hearts turned cold—it

was as if he had done something unforgivable—Laina said nothing, just plumped the

pillows back up and shook her head.

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But hadn't he done the unforgiveable? Watching Rana cut carefully into his steak,

she thought of what it would be like to split the man open and have a look inside. If she

could just take her fork and gouge out what was left of the real man, scrape it off on the

side of his plate for him to see how little he had left, how pitiful, what a husk. He was

like the mannequins she saw in the store windows, dressed up with all the right things but

hollow and chalky inside.

When Rana ordered a bottle of wine for the table and offered Laina some, she

shook her head and slid her glass away from her plate. She felt the inside of her stomach

flip when Azad accepted the wine and sipped from it twice, biting his lip. Truly—truly!

What was this? She wanted to ask him right then, wanted to take the glass from his hand

and set it down on the table and ask him to explain this. How would he explain this—

drinking alcohol—she never dreamed! This was not something good men did. Good,

responsible men did not sip alcohol from tall glasses and pretend that it was nothing at

all. As if he was drinking soda!

Alison tried to include her in the conversation, asking whether the food was all

right, if she wanted a drink, maybe just some water. She edged her chair closer to Laina

when Azad and Rana had sunk into a conversation surrounding the rise in unemployment

in Alberta, and asked whether she liked it here in Calgary.

"It is very nice." Laina spun her bala round her wrist. "Very beautiful."

"Yes—has Azad taken you to see Lake Louise? The water glows at this time of

year—just before winter really hits." Alison smiled, her pink lips gleaming. "Oh! This

will be your first winter! You've never seen snow, have you?"

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"On television, back home." Laina smiled. She wanted Alison to understand that

she was interested and curious, that she had many things to say. But when she tried to say

what she felt in English, the words floated in this vast black space inside her head while

her thoughts stayed lodged inside her throat. Laina pointed to the bracelet swinging from

Alison's wrist. It was a thin gold-link bracelet embedded with twinkling black stones.

"Very pretty, your bracelet."

"Oh, thank you!" Alison stretched out her arm and the bracelet glimmered from

the curve of her wrist. "A wedding gift from my mother." Laina admired the slope of

Alison's wrist—her bones were gentle, the lines long and solid, beautiful. Alison dabbed

the side of her mouth with the corner of the napkin and set her fork face down on her

plate. Of all the men this woman could have had, why had she picked Rana—a small,

balding man with a false ego? And did he think he deserved this woman? No doubt he

liked to flaunt her around, was showing her off to Azad this very minute, saying look—

look at my white, Canadian wife and look—look at your wife, shuffling her way through

the restaurant in her shari, how amusing, how embarrassing.

By the following week, walking uphill into the wind was like walking into a plate

of glass, the cold cracking over her face in a thousand tiny cuts. Azad had purchased her

a cream blouse and plaid knitted slacks from Eatons, told her the weather would get cold

and her shari's would be too thin against the wind. He brought the box to her with an

eager smile, told her they could exchange the outfit if it wasn't the right size. Lifting the

blouse from layers of tissue, Laina thought of the airhostess who had poured her juice on

the plane and asked if she wanted a wet cloth across her forehead to help her feel better.

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She had a long, sloping neck and looked lovely. But when Laina buttoned up the blouse

and tied the bow at the collar she looked in the mirror and shook her head. The slacks felt

scratchy against her legs, the thick thread chafing against the inside of her thighs leaving

red patches against the cream of her skin. The pleats on the pants made her stomach look

big and the blouse clung to the curves of her breasts. She felt slouchy, not pretty at all.

But she knew Azad waited at the restaurant and was hoping to see her like this, in pant-

shirt like the other ladies who slipped into chairs across from their husbands, heads tilted

for a kiss, always smiling.

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.<>

A bloated belly swathed in the fragrance of pink lilies bowing outside a bedroom window. Everyone inside, on watch, ears pressed up against the belly, listening for the rumble and fizz of his liver unfurling. Bare feet against cement floors brush the quiet of

the house into corners. Death is heavy breathing and tongues scraping against dry palates. Water droplets crease into fleshy lips. Anything pulsing red and wet is life.

Telegrams slice through the air and whine into living rooms, quiet bombs.

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CHAPTER THIRTEEN

1982

In any immigrant quarter, wherever newcomers thronged together in clumps of

cement buildings arms and legs dangling through the doors of neighbours, there was

always a woman like Nusrat. In Asha's building, the apartments were filled with

Bengalis—arms pushed open doors and rested on countertops far too often, ears curved

into points like antennae. Nusrat liked to know things. And like all women of her kind,

she liked to know things first.

They must have heard Asha's screams ricochet through the floors of their

building. Maybe it wasn't a scream so much as it was a series of shrieks that stopped the

women at their stoves, flour dusting their elbows. They paused, cocked their heads and

when the shrieks streaked through the thick air in their kitchens, they ran. It would be

evening. The men, outstretched on their couches with newspapers in hand would have sat

upright and watched their wives rush out the front door in a flurry of colour and cooking

smells. Men, always delayed in their reactions, would swing their legs to the ground, feet

finding sandals. They would follow, retying the knots on their lungis. Maybe they all

followed the screams up through the stairwells, wandering through the echoes until they

found the right door. More likely, they opened their doors and listened again, then

pointed up. Pointed, and someone, probably Nasreen or one of the young women who

knew her well- but really it could have been anyone—someone shouted, hand cupped

around their mouth, "Asha V basha 'r theke!" and they ran. They might have run in one

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giant throng, all the Bengalis in the building, rush-tumbling up those cement steps, no

time for the elevator if there was one yes, they might have done that, arriving in a

heaving group at Asha's door, banging and yelling.

But more likely, Asha's cries vibrated through the walls first, then through the

floors to the apartments below. Nusrat, setting a bowl of hot white rice on the table while

shooting her husband dirty looks for sitting on the ironed slip-covers, would have heard

the screams first. Nusrat would have heard first not only because her apartment was right

next to Asha's but because she had an ear for tragedy. Tucking the achol of her shari into

her waist she would yell for her husband Ditu to get up, that something was wrong at

Asha and Jamal's, get up, get up, oh Allah, help us.

Through her walls Nusrat could hear the faintest rumblings of marital spats—a

slammed door, pots and pans flung to the tiled kitchen floor, soft, consistent sobs. Nusrat

had her ear pressed to every door in the building, her radar for the secrets of life always

on alert. She would go to fetch the mail five times a day, walking slowly up and down the

halls of the building. She would start at the top, her floor, drift past Asha's door where

she would hear the grind of a blender or the whir of the fan over the stove. On the third

floor, she would stoop to rearrange the pleats in her shari, and listen to Babli screeching

at the children to have their baths. By Nisha's door, the whine of a hairdryer muffled the

high-pitched voices of Indian songstresses blaring from what Nusrat knew was a new

second-hand television purchased from Gunter at the Gas Depot. It had to be Gunter, and

not Friede. Gunter sounds more local, more Gas Depot-like. It would have been Gunter,

he was always selling his brother-in-law's stuff in change for rent. Friede sounds all right,

but it doesn't sound German enough, doesn't sound Gunter enough. Nusrat, on the

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second floor, would tiptoe through the stench of cigarettes and old brandy, the smells

cooking with the sweet, thick aroma of boiling milk and sugar settling in a cloud outside

Pintu the long faced-bachelor's door. From Nadira's door Nusrat heard the small voices

of children reciting short surahs from the Qur'an in unified screams. At Lamia's door

Nusrat heard the creak of the oscillating fan and the faint snore of Lamia's husband who

worked the night shift at the electronics factory on Lange Street. Down the steps to the

first floor Nusrat would hurry past the landlord's door where the sickly scent of sausage

sizzling would thicken the air in the hall and coat the walls with slick layers of oil. At the

mail slots, Nusrat would push her key into the slot marked 402 and the lid would flop

down with a clang. She'd reach inside the little metal box and depending on which trip

she was on and what time of day it was, she might find an empty box and wind her way

back to the top floor or, she might find a box filled with leaflets, some in German, some

in Bengali. Or, she found a box filled with bills and sometimes, sometimes, a letter

postmarked in purple, from Bangladesh. Usually the letter would be from her brother,

asking whether Ditu, her husband, had enough money saved to pay him back for the loan

he head given them when they had made their way to Germany. Other times the letter

was from her mother, a few short lines updating her on the state of her illness and asking

whether there were any children yet. The best letters came from her sister, full of

questions about what Germany was like, tid bits of gossip about school, girls in her class

who had spread lice on purpose to the prettier girls in school, letters filled with the petty

details of their lives.

In a small red notebook labeled "Recipes", tucked in the bottom drawer of her

kitchen, Nusrat kept a record of the building's events. Weekly, she would flip through the

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notebook choosing choice bits of news to send in her letters back home. She would copy

out the same letter three times, slip them into three different envelopes and post one to

her mother in Chittagong, one to her brother in Madaripur and one to her sister's hostel in

Dhaka.

Nusrat did not have a particular interest in Asha. Her ear was on alert for news

about anyone, everyone. But Asha's door was always the first and last Nusrat paused at

on her daily rounds and her notebook naturally became transcribed with the details of

Asha's life. Things like this:

Asha monehoi khub dere-te ghumai te-geseh. Jamal to bashai ashlo doshtar dikeh Shokaleh, Asha'r alab pai nai Beekaleh, Asha Rabridranath Takhore'r gaan charloh. Gaan gule khubi shundor kintu eh bhodrohlok ki bolte chai ta ami shobshomei buji na

Asha went to sleep late. Jamal didn't come home until ten. Morning, didn't hear Asha. Afternoon, Asha put on a record of Rabindranath Tagore's songs. These songs, they're really beautiful, but I don't always understand what the man's trying to say.

Sometimes it gets more tantalyzing:

Shokalei Asha'r gola khub joreh shunteh paisi. Jamal amar shamnei dorja theke ber hoi gelo, or muk ta khub kalo chiloh. Ami ar darei thaklam na. Shojah, teen talai choleh gelam. Asha'r bashai rana bara'r dhoom porseh Beekaleh vacuum'er alab pailam Charttha dikeh Asha phoneh kotha boltesiloh—monehoi Bangladeshe line paiseh, Gola shor onek joreh chilo. Thik ki bolse ta ami shunte pai nai Jamal'er gola shunteh paitese. Jhogra jhati cholteseh. Kintu, ora hashteseh na kanteseh buzteh partesi na.

In the morning, I heard Asha's voice, really loud. Jamal popped out of the door right in front of me, his face dark. I didn't stand there, went straight down to the third floor. A cloud of cooking has descended on Asha's place. Afternoon, I heard the sound of the vacuum

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Around four I heard Asha talking on the phone. I think she connected to Bangladesh, her voice was really loud. Exactly what she was saying, I couldn't quite make out. I can hear Jamal's voice. There's fighting going on. I can't tell whether these are the sounds of laughter or crying.

It must have been Nusrat then, Nusrat heard the screams first. She heard them and

she set the bowl of rice down and her hand flew to her heart. She stopped for a moment,

wringing the end of her achol in her hands and when Asha's wailing shrieks pitched

through the walls again, she ran. What could have happened? Had their daily spats turned

into something deadly? What would she do if they had? Was Asha hurt? Should she call

the police? Could the others hear her screams?

Most likely though, Nusrat ran to Asha's door and pushed it open with a bang

before a thought ever bubbled in her brain. When she pushed open the door, she found

Asha kneeling on the kitchen floor, butcher knife on her lap tucked under the swell of her

belly. She beat her fists against Jamal who knelt in front of her. She pulled at his shirt and

shook her head, wailing and wailing. He held her head to his chest and shook his head,

saying life, like all things, had to fade.

That night, Nusrat wrote in her notebook:

Asha'r chitkar'e, amar buker modeh chillik diya utlo Khub dhukher kotha: Bangladesh-eh Asha'r baba mara geseh. Onar peteh cancer hoiseloh.

Something snapped in my chest when Asha screamed Very sad news: Asha's father had a very bad liver. Died just a while ago in Dhaka. Maybe it was cancer.

Nusrat, aware of Asha's culinary skills, often asked her over for tea. Always,

Asha would arrive and a cooking pot would be on the stove, a few spices already

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simmering in a pool of oil. The conversation would have been cunning, Nusrat chalak,

Asha soft-hearted. Would Asha mind just stirring the pot a little, while tea was prepared?

It didn't look right did it? Did she put in too much jeera? Not enough? Would Asha mind

just showing her how it was done? She could watch Asha from here, while setting the

biscuits on a plate, spooning sugar into her tea. So Asha would cook Nusrat's meals

while Nusrat rested her ankles on an empty chair. Asha quietly acquiesced to Nusrat's

cooking demands knowing that in a few short weeks Nusrat would be flying back through

the frigid air of Germany to the smoldering, smoke-filled skylines of Dhaka where

Nusrat's husband had scoured a small flat for them to start their lives again. Asha knew

that Nusrat's brother lay in wait, his wallet hungry for its missing change. Asha had

probably heard from Babli or from Nadira, or it might have been Nisha. Nisha had a

cousin in Bangladesh who married Nusrat's brother-in-law, Ditu's brother, so she would

know. Yes, it was Nisha. Asha, sitting in Nisha's living room on Tuesday of the week

before, sipping tea and nibbling on pastries Asha had made that morning. They shared

scraps of stories they received through letters and fizzled phone calls to and from

Bangladesh. Asha would share news about her sister's move to Canada and Nisha would

say, nonchalantly, did you hear about Nusrat? She's moving too. And Asha would put her

teacup down and listen.

It might have actually been Nusrat herself who told Asha. Told her that Germany

was not everything it could have been, should have been. It was not the gateway to the

roads of riches she had imagined. She was tired of poking about in this old apartment,

tired of watching Ditu skulk about the streets poking his head through factory doors only

to come home with handfuls of petty change. Asha sprinkling haldi and paprika into a

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frying pan sizzling with onions and oil, would have listened, nodded her head and agreed.

They could start again in Bangladesh, it would all work out in the end.

On one of these tea invitations Nusrat sat at the table rummaging through a box

filled with bottles of nail polish. Asha rummaged through the cupboards looking for dried

chili flakes for the beef stew. She opened drawers one by one sifting through spoons and

spice bottles until she came to the bottom drawer. Tucked between a bottle of

peppercorns and a box of bay leaves Asha found the notebook. She must have caught the

block lettering on the front spelling out "Recipes" and pulled it out by its spine. If the

notebook lay flat at the bottom of the drawer then Asha definitely read the title and then

flipped open the notebook. If it was tucked between bottles and boxes, shoved in

lengthwise to save space, or to ensure it remained hidden, then fumbling through the

bottles and boxes, Asha must have caught the title and wondered why she was doing all

the cooking when there was a book of recipes right here in this drawer, right here. It's

also likely that Asha didn't see the title at all. She perhaps, only saw red, saw a notebook,

saw worn, ruffled pages, thought let's take a look, or didn't think it at all. Crouching in

the corner of the kitchen Asha flipped through the pages scanning Nusrat's quick, blunt

strokes. At the top of each page Asha read the curls and loops that spelled her name. To

be accurate, for Asha, it was simply her name. She would not have seen curls and loops,

or paid attention to the curve of the strokes that made up her name. The black strokes

read "Asha" and after reading a few pages Asha flipped the notebook closed and slid it

back into the drawer.

Nusrat asked Asha to help her pack a week before her departure. While Jamal and

Ditu unscrewed the bolts on the bed, Nusrat carefully wrapped her jewelry in squares of

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tissue and laid the pillowy packets inside an empty Nivea Creme container. Asha swept

the kitchen clean, emptying the drawers and cupboards into cardboard boxes. The

notebook was quietly slipped into the folds of her petticoat, hidden by the sweep of her

shari's achol.

Nusrat's daily rounds had been cut down in the chaos of taping, tying, and

buckling her life into four suitcases and five cardboard boxes. The moment Nusrat

realized that despite the dreams she had imagined for Ditu and herself in Germany,

despite her insistence that things could get better, would get better, that Germany was the

bridge they needed into a better life, the moment she realized that she would soon face

the furrowed brows of her waiting brother, the narrowed eyes of her mother, the

expectant smile of her sister, Nusrat stopped her daily rounds. It might have been the

other way around too. It might have been Ditu who insisted on staying, promised that if

given a few more months, things would patch up and get better, money would slowly

come in. And Nusrat, tired of waiting, might have pointed homeward, longing to relieve

her ache for home, for things familiar. It usually is the men who want to wait it out, want

the innumerable chances to prove their worth. The women usually pay in time, tears, and

unnoticed effort yielding chance after chance and then patience eventually runs out. But

knowing Nusrat, she probably watched Ditu's face at dinner as he rolled clumps of rice

into balls and flicked them into his mouth. She would have watched his face as he

mumbled between sips of water, things weren't good, the jobs weren't as good as he

thought they would be, he didn't feel like learning such a new and funny sounding

language, maybe things were looking up in Dhaka, in fact he'd just received news from a

friend who said unemployment was down for the first time in five years. And Nusrat

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might have nodded, allowed her husband a soft place to rest his new hopes, gently

mentioned that she wouldn't mind going back if it ever happened, that things were really

tough here, true, true. But that might have been Asha, a few months on, Niya toddling

back and forth from Jamal's arms to her own. That might have been Asha's story slipping

into this one, they're sometimes almost the same. But knowing Nusrat, knowing her, she

probably straddled the middle line. Dancing from one side to the other. Here, we should

try a little longer. Here, we should face up to the facts and just go on home. It usually is

the women who flit from fear to fear dancing the dance of indecision, right? Whatever the

case, Nusrat stopped her daily rounds. Her notebook was a log, a daily record she kept to

mull over and imagine. With Dhaka looming ahead, in time, she envisioned new doors,

new stories. It's possible she noticed the missing notebook as soon as Asha left that

evening. She might have thought, assumed that Asha packed it away for her in the box

labeled "Kitchen Things." And maybe for a moment she thought, oh no, what if Asha

read it, oh how embarrassing. But it's unlikely that there was ever even a box labeled

"Kitchen Things" at all.

A few weeks after Nusrat settled into her Dhaka flat, she received in the mail, a

small parcel. The envelope was postmarked in red, from Germany, Nusrat's name and

address written in small round letters. From the envelope slid the red notebook. In the

few short weeks Nusrat had settled in Dhaka, she had already started a new notebook and

filled its pages with the sights and sounds of her daily route past the doors of her

neighbours. Nusrat, holding her old notebook in her hands must have felt a shock run

through her body. She probably felt a mixture of anger and satisfaction. Asha did take her

notebook. She did, and now she's sent it back in an attempt to nurse her guilt! Or Nusrat

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herself might have felt a deep and abiding sense of guilt, but not likely. Nusrat opened the

notebook and flipped through the pages, her heart palpitating like mice on the run. She

flipped, her fingers scraping through carefully cut out rectangles. Page after page

revealed carefully cut out sections of text, rectangular spaces, holes she poked her fingers

through just to make sure they were there. Nusrat probably didn't know whether to keep

the notebook or not.

Asha kept the paper slips she'd cut out of Nusrat's notebook in an envelope

folded in four, wedged between the plastic containers that held her jewelry. She had read

through the mundane details Nusrat had transcribed and felt they were hers to keep or

throw away. She kept them. She kept the fat little envelope among letters and newspaper

clippings of her long ago poems. It wouldn't be long before she too would have to pack

her things into boxes, head back home.

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CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Laina knew she would have to get out once he told her there could be no children

for at least seven years. She had been stirring a pot full of beef and cabbage, had just

tested the salt and was satisfied, when he told her from the drawing room that she would

have to wait. Though the salt was fine, the jhol was not spicy enough and she shook dried

chilies into the pot, her stomach dropping to her knees. She was a slow-burning fire, she

knew. She would take things in and they would sit awhile before she realized they were

burning holes through the layers in her belly. Then the anger would knit its way through

her brow and she could not speak, her tongue knotted into the injustice, the blazing

trespass, what shahosh, what nerve.

The telegram came at four o'clock that same afternoon, while she lay in the

bedroom counting the bumps in the ceiling. She had made it to 42 when she decided to

stop, thought she should get up and maybe vacuum the carpet, it was a burgundy carpet

and dust lay across it like moss if she missed even a day. She did not mind a deep

burgundy carpet, but thought a nut-coloured carpet like the one at Deena's would work

better in this apartment. Deena already had a baby, said it was too much to maintain, a

baby and a nut-coloured carpet. There was already mashed up carrot in one corner and

when she had bleached it, it had turned into a bruise, like someone had punched that spot

on the carpet too many times, the fibres bright white and hardened. It was a new carpet

and Deena was upset, was trying to decide if she should cover up that spot with a table or

chair, or maybe just have the installer cut out that square and replace it with a new patch.

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Deena's baby was just four months and in just a few more would be crawling, might hit

his head on a table or chair, they had to keep things spacious and clear, give the baby

ample room to play without getting hurt. Though if you thought about it, Deena would

have to worry less and could rest a little more if the room was emptier and she didn't

have to constantly get up and catch the baby before he fell or whacked his head up

against the top of a table or chair. For vanity's sake, she could get a table, maybe a low

one, to cover up the spot, but maybe for now she would just get a knotted rug from

Goodwill and roll it out over the spot. A rug would work out fine, she was surprised she

hadn't thought of it earlier. She would call Deena tomorrow. They could go to Goodwill

together and pick one out. She had seen a few last week that looked just fine, though

Azad said there was no reason for them to buy second hand goods if they could afford

first hand goods from Sears. Still, it was easier to walk to Goodwill with her pocket

change instead of asking Azad to slip her an advance on her weekly allowance. Like all

men, he was slow to pull out his wallet and hand her twenty dollars to spend the way she

wished—there was always a sense that she was pushing needles into his backside, as if it

hurt to let her spend money that wasn't hers. But it was hers. Instead of a wallet, they

should have a money pot on the coffee table that she could reach into when she wanted

without worry. Just stuff her hands into a pot full of money, bills curling up to her

elbows. But did she know how much it cost to keep them going? How much a sack of

rice cost? Did she notice the water bill spilling over and beyond what he could handle?

And the heat? Was it so difficult to put on a sweater instead of relying so much on the

knob of the thermostat?

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But she had turned up the heat that winter. Had done it on purpose to prepare him.

He needed to understand that babies didn't flush out of wombs to writhe in cold rooms;

the house had to be warm. She came home from the doctor, the blood test results on a

sheet of blue paper in her hand. She left it on the coffee table where Azad found it later

that night, after she had gone to bed. When she got home she went into the kitchen to

bake a chocolate cake. She had copied the recipe from a magazine at the Doctor's office

while waiting for her appointment. The picture in the magazine showed a thick, rectangle

of cake topped with chocolate flakes. Sitting in the dry air of the doctor's office, the shine

of the chocolate icing in the photo made her run her tongue along the roof of her mouth

as if it were covered with a slat of icing, so thick she couldn't breathe. She hadn't ever

been fond of chocolate, thought it had a dull, overly sweet taste that left her tongue heavy

with the taste of old milk. But she wanted that slice in the photograph. There on that

glossy page was a chunk of chocolate she could already taste, a solid mound enrobing her

tongue, engulfing her teeth like a flood and filling her cheeks like balloons—if someone

pressed their hands against her face, a fountain of chocolate would stream out of her

mouth and form a lake on the stiff grey carpet under her feet. She was dizzy with desire

and when the doctor laid his hand on her arm and smiled, told her there was something

small growing inside her, the tip of a bud warming red, she felt her stomach stretch out

like a wad of gum—the lemon flavoured kind that Raisa chewed and stretched out of her

mouth like a string of snot—it stretched out into a giant lemon-flavoured bubble, the skin

so thin you could look through the wavy mass of stickiness and see the tiny nub push its

way up and out from between her kidneys. She folded the blue paper and held it in her

hands while she shopped for perfect squares of baking chocolate at A&P and imagined

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filling the bubble in a gleaming pool of chocolate as it grew ever red, and pulsed on and

on through the waves.

The chocolate cake sat rising in the yellow light of the oven and Laina lay on the

living room floor taking deep breaths. The one-hour timer had only reached minute 35

but already, the apartment was delirious from the smell of chocolate. Every breath sent

pangs shooting through her brain, the scent of chocolate too precise, slicing up through

her nostrils, so sharp. She rubbed her temples and wondered how long she could lay there

before her skull imploded from the pressure, the thick, cloudy aroma spraying out of the

cracks in her scalp as the cake rose and rose, filling the oven, then the apartment, then her

mouth and the spaces around her eyes, squashing her face flat against the carpet.

When Azad came home that night, she knew he found the apartment freezing. The

door to the balcony was wide open, and on the floor there was a chocolate cake steaming

in its pan. He had brought the cake inside and set it on the coffee table, sorted through his

mail with one hand while picking chunks off the top of the cake with the other. She found

crumbs on the floor the next morning and had to pick them out of the carpet with her

fingernail. He unfolded the sheet of blue paper and scanned it. Chocolate crumbs stuck to

his moustache, he stood. He looked around the drawing room and shook his head,

coughed. He wanted to go into the bedroom, ask her what had happened at the doctor's,

what did he say—but when he looked into the room, she lay in bed, the cover pulled up

over her nose. Then Azad sat down, the blue paper spread out over his knee, and flicked

on the television.

She had wanted to change the carpet. This burgundy carpeting had been here

since the day she arrived. It had probably been there for years and years, collected the

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sweat of a dozen families that came before her. A baby didn't roll out from the fluids of

his mother to sop up the dust of strangers. It had become an obsession, the carpet. She

snipped samples from the corners and kept them in jars of vinegar on the windowsill.

Days later, she would place the jars by Azad's dinner plate, the liquid clogged with

sodden bits of dust and particle.

"Look," she would say, spooning hot rice onto his plate. "Look at what we walk

on, everyday. Dirt, cramming up between our toes." Azad shook his head and waved her

away, told her that she was obsessed, that her focus on carpets was truly silly, that babies

rolled around on floors in Bangladesh all the time and they grew up healthy, nothing out

of place.

"Strong!" He said, flexed his arm.

He was an expert on everything. She slammed the spoon back into the rice bowl. As if

this filth, this grime beneath their feet didn't matter. The dirt settling into the folds of

their baby's thighs, that didn't matter. The dust, swirling up into the baby's air pipes,

clogging up the tiny pockets in his lungs, nothing! He didn't know. It was the surface of

the earth, the rock eroding into silt from years of abrasion from the wind. Like this, a

carpet, an old carpet bore years and years of friction from unknown feet—the fibers were

matted from the pressure of lives they didn't own. The floors in Bangladesh were swept

everyday, the day's dust swept straight off the balcony and into the streets below.

She had wanted nut-coloured carpeting, she was certain of that. Everyone told her

this was a bad idea—that nut-coloured carpeting, though it looked fashionable and

luxurious, though it really opened up a room and gave it space, it would get dirty so

easily, would get ruined faster, would be a waste of money. But really, it wouldn't gather

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dirt more quickly than any other colour, it would simply show the dirt it did collect more

plainly. This was not something she needed to worry about, she had decided long before

that once the baby came, the apartment did not need to change. They did not need to put

away the decorative glass figurines she bought at Mikasa and placed on the coffee table.

The paper flowers she had made and arranged in a vase would remain where they were,

the lace tablecloth, the glass bowl of pinecones, the brass boat Munir had brought her

from India—all these would remain where they were and she would have led the baby by

his hand through it all. He would have sweated himself into the new carpet—she couldn't

decide on the type of carpet, a Saxony pile or frieze texture—either one would have been

ideal. The Saxony pile would have felt like velvet under their feet, because the fibres

were packed so closely together they would have folded round the knees of the baby,

cupping him in. But the twisting fibres of the frieze, they would have nicked flakes of

skin off his body, kept them curled into the fiber of the carpet. She was not afraid of him

ruining things, of him soiling the carpet. She would have wanted to have him where she

could keep him: Flushing up between her fingers and into the curve of her palm as she

brushed up crumbs.

Laina watched the carpet switch shades as she swept the vacuum in long lines

over the matted plush, the suction of the roaring machine a soothing force in her hands.

She knew now what a blessing it was to have a carpet that hid stains, that disguised them

as shades and shadows under flickering light. She had been impatient with her desire for

a new carpet, wanted to bring this new world in with a giant heave of her arms: strip the

floors bare of this burgundy plush and spread out the soft pile of nut-coloured fibers in

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one great movement. The vacuum still running, she kneeled down on the carpet and

leaned close. The nylon looping hid it well, the spot almost invisible. She had curled into

cramps in this corner and the little nub in her belly had wet itself out between her legs,

drenching into the carpet. She ran her hand over the spot, was surprised at how soft it still

was. The fibers were long, almost new. She had washed the last of the stain out of the

criss-cross pattern of her underwear, had folded it and placed it in the far back corner of

her drawer where it collected its own colony of dust, and was left untouched, always.

She ran the vacuum past the spot and decided she would leave it as is, let the carpet keep

what it wanted.

She had vacuumed the room twice, was crouching low to go over the corner

behind the door and had gone over the space four times before she felt Azad's hand on

her shoulder, heard his voice calling her over the bellow of the vacuum. With every

sweep of the vacuum she had cursed his voice, told herself the man was not normal.

Seven years. She flicked the vacuum off with her foot. He handed her a brown card with

her name typed across the top:

If you want to see your father come now <stop> Very sick <stop>

Munir <stop>

*

The week she had left Dhaka, Abba had been sweating with worry, moon-shaped

shadows deepening under his eyes. He had sat next to Laina in the drawing room and

pressed the phone to her ear as she spread a sheet of paper over her knee and pressed a

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pen into its crease. Azad's voice scratched through the receiver, his tone unreadable. Now

she would have recognized it as a tone of worried concern, of his doubt that she would

make it across oceans to him. Abba paced circles into the woolen rug while Ma wound

and unwound her khopa twisting her long black hair in and out of her fingers. Through

static and perspiration, Laina nodded into this new voice, let its earnest tones guide her

hand.

"You understand, right? Bhul koro na. Don't make a mistake and miss your flight.

Keep your ticket and passport safe."

When she handed the phone back to Abba, he sat on the edge of his chair and had Azad

repeat the instructions to him before hanging up and turning to Laina, his hand on her

wrist. He held it for a moment before letting go, sat on the verandah with his hands

folded over his belly.

In the weeks after her engagement, Laina watched her parents from quiet corners,

caught scraps of whispered conversations as she fried bread on Friday mornings before

Jummah prayers, read worry in the lines between Abba's brows, in the line of sweat on

Ma's face as she rolled out dough. She had felt Ma's hand on her forehead while she

slept, heard Abba ask her uncle over and over whether Bangladeshi men living abroad,

living bideshe, could really be trusted. Her uncle told Abba over and over that Laina

could have a good life in Canada, that this was a man who studied abroad and would

provide for her, that living bideshe was the best choice in today's economic climate. The

best of men here were struggling to find jobs. Handfuls of degrees and the men of this

country were sinking into the streets, unhappy wives waiting at home.

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Narinda was awash in whispers, and Laina knew that this was how weddings

worked their way into happy lives: they wound their way around necks soft and

caressing, then plunged into hearts. Laina remembered when Nashu Mama arrived at

Narinda for his monthly visit in September. She had sensed a cautious edge in his voice.

He addressed Ma and whispered that he had good news for her, for Laina's father, for

everyone. As Laina served her uncle tea in the drawing room, he smiled up at her and

told her the colour of the tea was like almonds dipped in milk, perfect. When Nashu

Mama left that evening there was no doubt in Laina's mind that he had brought news of a

proposal into their home. Laina found herself drifting, tying herself into simultaneous

knots of dread and possibility. When her father called her into the drawing room the next

evening the air in the house felt rough in Laina's lungs, the perfume floating in from the

garden too sharp, too fecund. While breaking his tea rusks into tiny pieces, her father

doled out bits of reality, presented her with a man who lived in a place called Canada and

no doubt had a wonderful job in a country like that.

"Your uncle says he is a nice boy. Good education."

Laina had nodded and swept away the empty teacups and saucers, asking her father if he

needed anything. He smiled and patted her arm telling her he would head to bed for the

night, tomorrow would be a busy day. When Laina slipped into bed that night, she

clasped her hands over her ears to drown out the voices from the next room. Laina heard

her own voice whisper a soft "na " before she felt sleep slip into her body and sweep her

thoughts away.

Laina folded her instruction sheet and placed it on her new blue suitcase, a gift

from Azad on her wedding day. She had already packed the wedding gift from her

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parents, her deep red banarasi shari, in layers of white cotton, running her hands over the

gilded embroidery, wishing she had worn it instead of the wedding shari her in-laws had

folded into the suitcase and brought to her the morning of the akt. On her wedding day

Laina woke up coughing; a pounding ache in her chest throbbed with every breath inward

and when she peeled the kata off her body it clung to her legs moist with sweat. She sat

up and braced herself against the post of the bed and swung her legs over the side where

her toes touched the floor, the coolness of the morning still lingering in the cement. She

had wrapped herself in her favourite yellow orna and paced her way up the veranda steps

to her to the roof, where she knelt by her tamarind plant and smiled at its small leaves.

She looked out over the city and thought the grounds of this house, her house, must look

like a splotch of yellow, like a mustard seed had been smashed in the smoky grey and

dull green of Dhaka's streets. The chicken coop looked small and ramshackle from this

angle but Laina knew how carefully Abba thatched together the cubbies filling them with

bits of rag and wool from the rucksack Ma had left by her sewing basket every night. The

side garden was an explosion of white: bellis, jewis, and chamilis unfurling their tender

white petals into watery sunshine, their perfumes thickening the air in dizzy fragrance.

The papery petals of the shefalis that had bloomed the evening before lay thick on the

ground, dusting the yard in white. Laina thought she should go down and collect them,

string them into garlands, inhale the fragrance straight from their skins.

She was still standing, chipping at the blue paint on the ledge with her fingernail

when Abba joined her, arms folded. They stood there just staring out at the waking city,

watching the sky blush its way into blue. She had made a pile of the paint chips and

brushed them off the ledge into the wind. She turned to him.

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"Abba, kisu lagbe?"

He lifted his glasses and rubbed at his eyes with his thumb.

"Na, na. I just came here to see you." He smiled at her, head tilted. "There will be

gardens in Canada too, I am sure." He knelt and inspected the leaves of her pomegranate

plant. "Ma—" He rubbed at his chest with his knuckles. "When you feel yourself breaking

inside, so sad that you think you can't take it—" He shook his head, cleared his throat.

"Sit on your prayer mat, ma. There, everything is bearable." He stood and rested his

hand on her cheek, smiled. "You remember that, and everything will turn out okay."

She watched him go, slow steps through the blue door and down into the shadow

of the stairs. The leaves on her pomegranate plant had begun to curl and yellow. She sunk

to the concrete and dug her fingers into the soil of the plant, crushed pebbles of dirt

between her forefinger and thumb, rubbing the soil into the ridges of her skin.

*

The day she arrived back in Calgary, she called Azad into the bathroom and told

him to watch as she popped the pink pills into the toilet and flushed. By now, she had

grown used to his moods, worked herself into a rhythm against them. No children for

seven years! As if the pain were his alone. She had wanted to carry a baby into Abba's

arms. She should have let him hold a wriggling baby, all sweaty with caked powder, it

would have done some good. The tender clutches of a baby could soothe even the

sharpest of pains in his belly. She was sure of this until she watched his breath curdle out

of his chest. Nothing mattered when your soul was slowly spun out of your body like a

jagged ribbon.

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She couldn't let herself touch the soil of her houseplants, the moist clumps of dirt

too much like the mound she had left Abba under, alone. Even the dirt under her

fingernails made her breath scrape against her throat, her tongue like a rock. Azad had

been gentle, watered the plants on days she couldn't take the watering can out from under

the kitchen sink without slumping onto the floor, Abba too near.

But, she reached into the grass one day, feeling for a ring she had dropped.

Instinctively, she dug her fingers deep into the dirt and let her hand rest in the cool earth,

the moist soil packed against her palm. She felt her throat back up, and thought that

someone somewhere had just slid a chocolate cake out of their oven and set it on the table

by an open window. The stench was unbearable, her stomach turning twice before she

pulled her hand out of the soil and looked at the crumbs of black lining the crevices in her

hand.

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When she dreamed of her daughters and where they lived, it was always a long, thin road through mustard fields. If she walked the road, she did so barefoot, her shari billowing

behind her like a flag. When she stopped at the end of the road, the dirt was caked to the bottom of her feet and she could not scrape it off with her fingernails. She sat with one foot propped up over her knee, slicing off her skin in thick curls, the soles of her feet

dripping rubies.

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CHAPTER FIFTEEN

DHAKA

1990

This was the third time Jamal had bought a bird for Niya. He always chose the

brightest ones—fat little magpies with streaks of red across their cheeks, yellow on their

tails. He would slip the bird in before Niya woke in the morning and hang the cage out in

the front verandah to "let it watch the world go by." He always burst through the door to

the flat holding the cage up high, put a finger to his lips to quiet Asha. Ma, stretched out

on the bed, one foot crossed firmly over the other, would put her sewing down swatting at

the silky threads in a mass by her elbow. Leaning forward she would see Jamal carry the

bird through the front bedroom and would throw her needle across the bed in a fit of

grumbles. Where did Jamal get the money to spend on these tropical pets? Where would

he get the money to feed it? Birds didn't live on air, they needed food—did Jamal think

of that? Thread flying like a tail, Ma would plunge her needle in and draw it out the other

side in violent jerks, jaw set. By then Jamal would already be on the verandah tying the

cage to a hook screwed into the ceiling, sticking his finger between the bars whistling at a

puff of feathers too scared to move. When Niya woke, eyes still crusted with sleep, he

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would set her on his knee and let her chatter to it all morning before asking her if it would

be all right to set it free.

The winter Niya turned two, they arrived back in Dhaka and settled into Narinda.

The morning of her birthday, a month after they had bid farewell to Germany, Jamal

brought home a Myna bird and hung the cage in the front verandah, just outside the room

where Asha and Niya slept. Asha could see Jamal through a crack in the curtains, his

thick hair still unbrushed, the pits of his undershirt yellowed with sweat. She had not

known how it would feel to step back through the gates of Narinda, Abba gone. She had

folded herself into Ma's chest and sobbed, Niya circling them like a tiny buzzard, unsure

of when she could leap in, take her share of things. It wasn't until the next morning that

Asha saw the barricade. The posts had tilted on one side, the earth thinned from too many

rainfalls. The entire right side had flopped down and embedded itself in the mud. Ma

joined her on the verandah told her that Kanta's husband had promised to put it back up

the last time he came to take Kanta back home, but he had arrived while it was still

raining and left with Kanta and the children before the rain had stopped. Asha could see

the outline of Jamal's arm through the window, saw the line of muscle flex as he reached

up to offer a biscuit to the bird. The Myna stood at the far edge of the cage, feathers slick

against his bones, neck lowered, his shoulders pointed.

The entire trip home, Jamal had been scathingly optimistic. Referring to Germany

as an already distant memory, he pointed forward—almost knocked the plastic cup of

Coke off the airplane tray—told her Bangladesh was a place they could sink their feet

into, they wouldn't have to tiptoe through the streets like strangers. Asha was silent. She

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wasn't a stranger in Frankfurt, the language had wound its way around her tongue. While

he still struggled to say Danke, she could probably write poems in German. She had sat,

wishing she could burn him with her words, snap his head back and see his eyes shoot up

in surprise. She let him speak. He was eager and childlike, his eyes clear. His energy was

at a peak, and she wanted to see him like this, inspired and ready. He told her that the

novelty of Germany would have worn off anyway, that a foreign land would always

remain foreign. She could never feel at home in a place where she had to learn to walk

and talk in a new way. Here—Jamal pointed to the floor—here, they could feel their way

back into their bodies, move around in their own limbs, breathe. Their country was great,

their country was brilliant, their country could do so much—but these people, they had

their heads buried in thoughts of bidesh, their eyes scoured the horizons for bidesh, they

were drunk on bidesh! They would bury themselves in the hills of opportunity.

Bangladesh was all he needed, couldn't she see? Asha turned and looked out at the

clouds; they were thick like mattresses.

When Asha woke again, Niya was stamping her way across the verandah, Ma

feeding her halwa wrapped in bits of paratha. Jamal sat by the birdcage and smiled when

he saw Asha at the door, winding her hair into a khopa. Raisa had not gotten home from

the pastry shop with the cake, but Asha thought it would be best to get things ready

before she arrived. Raisa was almost sixteen and had begun singing on the radio. She had

won eight prizes in the last year and wanted to be a playback singer. This, Asha thought,

had driven a vein of drama through her sister's body, made her pull everything out of

proportion, everyday life became an angst-filled natok with no ending. Ma shook her

head.

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"Your Abba did not want her dipping her feet into that sort of thing. She should

focus on her studies, but the little shoitan only knows how to sing." Ma extended a tired

hand to Niya who chomped down on the halwa and ran back to Jamal arms raised. "But

she should study." Ma's face was tired, her cheeks already drooping. "All you girls had

good brains." Asha could sense the edge in her voice, the skirt of her eye towards Jamal.

Jamal swooped Niya up and she pressed her face up to the cage, jabbering.

Asha knew that in Ma's eyes—even in Abba's eyes—she truly was married.

Jamal was her husband, their son-in-law. Her error was a blot they rubbed their thumbs

against, blended into the background with their acceptance of him into the family. They

were carefully warm. Abba had circled his arm around Jamal the day they left, wished

him all the best, then pulled Asha back moments before they boarded. Abba had held her

by the shoulders, told her that if this bhodro lok, this gentleman showed her a side of his

character which she did not like, she was to come back home on the next plane, back to

him. But waving one last time from the gate, she had stood and looked at the thinness of

Abba's arm, a bent hanger in the air and knew she could never go back to him. Jamal was

a promise. This life would be everything she wanted, Abba would see. She would return

to him with good, he would see.

Jamal had wormed his way into the family, his charm worked like gentle

prodding: they couldn't help but like him. Even now, he was cheerfully obedient to Ma.

He knew how important it was to sidle up next to Ma, agree with her even at his own

expense. Jamal had told Asha it would take some time before they had enough to set off

on their own again. Germany had dried him out and he needed time to think things

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through, to get things right. Asha had told Ma they wouldn't stay long, had brushed off

Ma's insistence that this was her father's home and she could return without a word, no

need for this.

"Ma, I am married and grown. I will not be a burden on you—I will come for a

short time, we will make things easy for you when we are there, and then I will start my

life again."

In the last few nights before they left Frankfurt, Asha tried to convince herself

that it was for Ma's sake she would go—Ma was practically alone. She would crack the

window open once Jamal had fallen asleep, close her eyes and breathe in the cold air. It

made her feel like things were still possible, that everything was just beginning. She

reminded herself that Kanta came when it suited her and Raisa was either singing or at

school. And Munir, he worked long hours at the clinic and showed no signs of

marrying—there was no daughter-in-law to smooth out the sheets on the bed, straighten

the cushions, or dust the drawing room. Asha would set things right, make things easy.

Laina's letters convinced Asha that this was fate. All along this was what she had

been waiting for, a chance to sacrifice and give of herself. Laina's handwriting had

changed. Her writing had always been neat; her sentences perfectly aligned, every word a

perfect rectangle of tiny curled letters. Now Laina's pages arrived in the mail filled with

airy strokes, the curve of the letters wobbly or unfinished as if she were writing with

frozen fingers. Asha had knitted a woolen sleeper set for Laina's baby, didn't know

whether she should save it for the next baby, or send it to her anyway. Let her know that

he mattered, that she thought of him. When news had reached Laina that Asha would be

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going back to Bangladesh, Laina wrote her a short letter, told her that Ma had needed

someone since Abba died. Now, she didn't have to worry. Asha would be there.

Raisa had invited more people than Asha expected to Niya's birthday party, but it

didn't seem to matter. Until now, the house had felt too airy, the rooms too empty. She

had two vats of polau and chicken to cook and Ma was already in the kitchen making

kebabs. She felt the house filling up, the smells drawing in warmth and chatter. When Ma

had insisted they have roast chicken and salad on the menu, Asha knew that she too, was

looking forward to it all, that it wasn't going to be a big nuisance, that it wouldn't worry

its way into Ma's brain and sour the evening.

Raisa and Jamal had brought home balloons and painted a backdrop in wobbly

letters:

HAPPY BIRTHDAY NIYA

2 YRS

Munir had painted trees and rabbits in the corners of the banner, made a border of green

grass and several suns and moons. Asha had sewn a soft pink frock for Niya, copied the

design from a picture Laina had sent of Lisha on her first birthday. It had a frill on the

collar and buttons going from under the arm down to the hem. Laina had sent her a

packet of pink pearl buttons and white lace, along with two bows for Niya's hair. She had

laid the dress out in the morning, and Niya asked over and over whether it was for her.

Only once did Asha regret the decision to have the party at all.

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Nashu Mama had visited the week before, laid out pages on the drawing room

table pointed out numbers that Asha knew kept Ma awake, hand at her chest.

"I shouldn't have to worry like this." She told Asha, folding the pages and

handing them back to Nashu Mama. "I shouldn't have to worry."

Asha knew cake and a special dinner with just the family would have sufficed.

She told Jamal that the expense would be too much, that Niya would barely understand

what was happening, she didn't need such a big affair. They should really be saving

more, in a month they had less than what they started with—and Ma, having to do so

much work—it just wasn't right.

Jamal's voice was low and even, his jaw tight.

"I wouldn't spend this money on anything else." He slammed the bed with his

hand. "How much do you really know about finances? If you cared so much you would

have left Germany with me long ago. Don't pretend to know about things."

When Jamal throttled her with his words, she drew back. She didn't need to say a

thing—how would it benefit her? He thought he had a firm grip on things, on her, but

how far could he go without her? How far would he travel without her at his side? Like

all men, he was wanton without a woman, without her. She would let him think what he

wanted. What he thought didn't change how helpless he was, how lost.

They had just cut the cake and fed Niya her first bite, when the electricity went

out. Moni set a hurricane lamp in the main room and Asha, handing Niya to Jamal, went

out to the verandah to look for another. The evening had brought everyone they had

missed together, all the ladies bustling in their sharis, heavy with gold, the men thumping

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Jamal on the back, asking if he was back for long. Asha had watched Jamal with hot eyes,

felt like melting the smile off his face, such a coward. With plates on their knees, the men

sat in the drawing room eager to hear about Germany—did all the people have blonde

hair, did it snow all year, could Jamal speak German? Jamal sat, chicken bone in hand,

lips shiny with oil, laughing off their questions like their time there hadn't mattered at all.

The ladies chucked Niya's chin, told Asha that Germany made her daughter forsha, her

skin so fair, like the skimmings off boiling milk. Ma had always kept a hurricane lamp

out on the verandah for Abba, worried that the path to the house would be too dark on the

nights he worked late. Asha stood with her hands on the railing, staring into the dark.

This was what it was like if you were blind, you could wave your hand in front of your

face for hours and never see a thing. With an electrical hum, the lights buzzed back on

and the yard crept into view.

In the amber spill of light, the barricade looked ancient, the jute weavings like

antique gold. Asha felt her chest crack, she was paper-thin, only needed a breeze to

crumble through her. She twisted the knob on the hurricane lamp and carried it down the

path. Why hadn't anyone fixed it? It would take just an afternoon to push the posts back

up, to mix cement and set them back where they belonged. Munir could have spared a

day from the clinic, Mubeen Bhai could have stayed an extra day with Kanta, they could

have done it together, pushed it back up before it sunk deeper into the mud. How could

they leave it this way? How long had it been this way? Asha knelt and ran her fingers

over the weavings. Some of the knots had frayed from the wind, some had torn in storms,

under shoes.

Jamal could have fixed it.

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Jamal could have pushed these posts back up. He was taller than both Munir and

Mubeen. He was stronger. He had the time.

The ground was soft from yesterday's rain and Asha could feel the mud soak

through to her knees. She could gather the shari up, tuck it back between her legs like the

men did their lungis when they were in the fields. She could do that and lift these posts

on her own. She could do it, why hadn't she done it before? They didn't have the time,

they were busy, they were tired, but she could have done it. How many sweaters had she

made? She could have bought clean jute, knotted it herself, weaved it into something

beautiful. Asha grabbed a post and pulled. She fell back from the force and felt the mud

slick between her legs. Again, she pulled. Thin strips of bamboo curled beneath her nails

and she pulled again and again. She squatted low and pushed at the post with her palms,

rolling it up from its rut. Her hands slipped and the post rolled back into the rut and

settled. Asha sat back and cried.

When she felt Niya's small hands on her wrists, Asha was afraid: She didn't know

how long she had sat by the barricade rocking with Niya in her arms. The lights were

blazing in the main room and she heard the rumble of the men's laughter. She held Niya

at arms length and shook her head at the spatter of mud across her dress, at her lopsided

ponytail.

"Kedo na, kedo na. " Niya whimpered, pressing her hands on Asha's cheeks.

Hoisting Niya to her hip, Asha walked slowly to the back of the house where she peeled

off Niya's dress and pumped out a bucket full of water. In the dark, she scrubbed Niya

clean with her hand.

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With the guests gone, Jamal sat on the verandah smoking a cigarette. Niya stood

on the chair next to him her fingers curled around the bars of the cage.

"Ghumaw!" She shrieked, ordering the bird to go to sleep.

Jamal stamped out the cigarette and stood next to Niya, his hand on the base of the cage.

Niya's eyes grew wide as Jamal unlatched the door and pulled it open. He scooped Niya

into his arms and told her to wave.

"Bye bird. Bolo. Say, 'bye bird.'"

The Myna scuttled to the far side of the cage, head cocked.

The morning Jamal's mother died, Asha ironed and set out Niya's school uniform

as usual. Jamal had left just minutes after he had answered the phone, mumbling only that

she had passed during the night, that he would be back soon. The night before, Asha had

finished arranging the last of the tiny glass figurines in the display cabinet. Most of their

glass items had been broken during the move, and they had washed the same plates over

and over during the day, deciding to wait until they were settled before they bought

anything new. Last night she had placed a tiny replica of the Eiffel Tower in the glass

display case and had gone to bed feeling like she had turned in her last exam. When the

call came this morning she was annoyed, then ashamed. But really, how else could she

feel? She knew Jamal would use this as an excuse to disturb things. They had lived the

last two years out of crates, Jamal always on the precipice of a great opportunity. Ma had

had paid the fees for Niya's tutoring and purchased the uniforms for her schooling. Asha

was ready to beat their lives into a rhythm, sink into the earth—as Jamal had said—and

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now, this. Ma scolded her, told her it wasn't right to be inconvenienced by a death. She

should keep going, help Jamal along.

When Jamal clattered through the door a birdcage in hand, Asha was in the

doorway of the bedroom yanking Niya's hair into a ponytail. He had brought home a

kingfisher with yellow and peacock green markings.

"Niya! Asholl" He hollered for Niya to follow him to the verandah where he hung

the cage up and lifted Niya onto the chair. He held Niya to his chest and sobbed.

Before he left for Madaripur that night, Jamal unlatched the door to the bird cage.

The kingfisher flapped around the cage twice before making its way out and through the

bars of the verandah. Asha had put Niya to bed, told Jamal that it would be best if he

went to the funeral on his own. Niya had just gotten settled into school and couldn't

afford to be away for so long. He left without a word, a small suitcase tucked under his

arm. Asha could tell he had paid extra for the birdcage. It had silver detailing on the door

latches and the base. The hook to hang the bird was curved into the shape of a claw.

*

The third time Jamal bought Niya a bird, Asha was whisking dust from one end of

the main room to the other. When she saw Jamal stride across the floor in his sandals,

bird cage in hand, she felt something pop inside her brain. It sent blood rushing to the

backs of her eyes and she saw Jamal through a veil of liquid red, his movements slow and

deliberate. The scratchy rumble of his voice as he waved Ma down, Acha acha—don't

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you worry, Ma—sounded like electricity being sucked out of the wires on a rainy day,

and she saw herself lunge after him into the verandah, the dried coconut fronds of her

broom splitting against the base of the cage. For years they had lived off of Ma, slipping

coins from her purse like it was normal. How could he bring home birds, these fluttering

animals with an empty wallet thinning out his back pocket? How could he? Everything,

everything could be beautiful, she heard herself say. It could be beautiful. Jamal stood

holding her away from him, both hands gripping her shoulders. Asha heaved herself

against him, coconut fronds cracking in the air.

*

Jamal received his tourist VISA to the United States on the same day that Niya

bought a pair of red patent leather shoes from the street seller with the broken cart. The

old man pushed his three-wheeled cart through their lanes every day at four, his throaty

call echoing through the walls of the flat sending Niya to the windows, her face pressed

between the bars. Asha had given Niya fifteen takas to purchase a roll of cotton from the

knick-knack store on the corner, but Niya had come home with red shoes tucked into a

flimsy cardboard box instead. Niya had been asking for a pair of red shoes ever since she

had seen The Wizard of Oz on television. But every cent was precious. Every coin that

was pressed into her hand she kept tight in her palm until it was needed. These things, all

these things, Niya had to learn. When Asha saw the shine of the red shoes peeking up

from layers of tissue, she shoved the box into Niya's chest and dragged her by the ear

onto the verandah.

"Why—don't—you—listen?!" She yanked Niya by the hair to the floor and

smacked the back of her neck with the handle of a wooden spoon. Niya screamed and

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leapt to the other side of the verandah, clinging to the bars. She kicked at Asha, potted

plants tumbling onto their sides, soil spraying across the floor and sprinkling between the

bars. Her screams split something inside Asha's chest and she threw the wooden spoon

splintering it on Niya's shoulder. She bore down on Niya with an open hand, smacking

wherever she saw skin, Niya pummeling Asha's stomach with her fists. Asha yanked

Niya's face up by the ear and slapped it. Niya curled into herself sobbing, her skin

already striped with rising welts.

With his pockets empty, Jamal had been skirting around the application offices of

Dhaka educating himself on the best way to enter America. He came home that evening

waving a sheet of paper in the air, a letter that told him he could go as soon as he was

ready, see the sights.

*

Asha thought of this while watching the television screen, Niya pressed to her

side. There was an earthquake in Los Angeles and the toppled buildings on the screen

pushed images of Jamal flat under a bookcase into her mind. It had been two years since

Jamal had boarded a plane and flown to California. Yesterday, over the phone, he had

told Asha that it wasn't possible for him to sponsor them, he would have to find another

way to get them over. But, he had an apartment, a job, and they should come now. What

else would they do? Asha recalled Jamal's tourist VISA, saw it tucked into a wide leather

diary he kept in the inside pocket of his brown coat. The diary closed with a brass button

in the shape of a daisy and Asha wondered whether he had purchased it for the trip or if it

had arrived with his papers from America, a welcome gift.

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~<>~

When she looked back at the house, it was with shaky eyes. It might have rained the day she left, the blue paint dripping off the eaves in streams. Soniya buried the key under the

mango tree, sat inside the barricade for hours watching the rain soak through the jute. The mangoes were just green nubs. They tottered in the wind and looked pathetic.

Narinda had sunk into a cesspool, but when Soniya looked back she focussed on the barricade, turned it to stone in her memory.

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PART III

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CHAPTER SIXTEEN

From the apartment in Calgary to Toronto was just too much. Laina had patted

Lisha down to sleep at four in the morning, rubbing warm oil in small circles round the

belly button, trying to circulate the gas that rumbled through the baby's stomach. Azad,

waking to pray, brought it up again.

"Now now, but soon," he said, splashing water on his face in the bathroom. He

rubbed a towel over his mouth and cheeks. "Don't get hyper now—I'm just saying this

now, nothing is definite." When the baby's cries calmed to hiccups, Laina pressed her

hand over Lisha's abdomen, shushing in her ear until she whimpered to sleep. The colic

had Lisha crying for hours every night, her face a blotch of red and her round compact

body like a hot water bottle in Laina's arms. She unfolded the blue wool blanket Asha

had knitted as a gift, and smoothed it over the baby's chest. She shut the door, imagined

shutting it in Azad's face, his blue towel caught in the frame, the click of the knob a

surprise. She pulled on her winter coat and flipped up the hood, sliding open the door to

the balcony. She blinked and opened her eyes wide, the air swatting against her eyeballs

like a frozen whip. She pulled down her hood and imagined icicles driving their points

deep into her ear and puncturing her drum. Hot air would hiss out in a stream of scalding

vapour, the lining of her brain crinkling like old paint, everything unhappy screaming out

in a mist of molecules she could waft away with a wave of her hand. This, they said was

what it was about, marriage and children and life and everything that she had wanted. She

could feel herself fade into the dream, moving voiceless with wooden limbs.

When Asha dreamed, she dreamed in great gulping breaths, the world was

electricity shocking itself into her heart, pumping her towards the sky. But her own

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dreams were soft and yielding—a home, a family, children—perfectly simple pursuits,

lines on a map she wanted to follow. But she had never dreamed herself here, never asked

to leave and step into this. Already she had begun tallying up the wrongs: the wine in

Azad's glass, the glance at the door when she arrived at a dawat alone, the rise of his

chest when he snored, the wash cloth that sat wadded in a corner of the tub, the hole in

her boot, the stroller that broke on the bus, the pain in her breast, the hum of the fridge,

the plink of his phlegm in the sink every morning, the sweat-clogged blanket between her

legs, the very thought that this was the very dream, all of it stretched out before her like

this, a giant hole she flung herself into everyday, bobbing up in the mornings, hair

trailing.

The prayer mat was a new one. Abba had bought it just before she left Dhaka,

rolling it up and placing it on top of her suitcase the day she left. She had pulled out a box

of cotton batting that Ma had put in and replaced it with the prayer mat after Raisa told

her that she wouldn't need to tie a string around her waist and tuck strips of cotton batting

into the front and back during her periods—the pads bideshe were not as expensive as

they were here and besides, how would she dry the strips without her husband seeing

them? The prayer rug was deep green, plush, knotted with designs of white leaves and

flowers around the edge. Abba had always spread a plain shital pati on the floor to pray

on, the strips of cane cool beneath his feet. She was sure that on any other day she would

have preferred the plain pati to kneel on, would want to feel the crunch of the cane under

her knees, sticky with sweat against her forehead. But today, she sank into the plush of

the rug and drew circles into the silky fiber with her finger. Every few seconds she wiped

the designs away with her hand.

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Azad began his prayers the day after they cut Lisha from her belly, tearing her out

of layers of skin and muscle, holding her up like a dripping melon in the fluorescent light.

Her eyes felt as if they had stones glued to the lids and when she opened them she saw

Azad first, forehead pressed to the floor, sunlight falling in shards across his back. She

turned and a nurse with dark hair tucked the edge of the blanket around her waist and

handed her a white bundle. She had masses of black hair flecked with strands of gold.

"He said he wanted to pray." The nurse nodded at Azad and folded her hands in

front of her. "I told him I would get him a towel so he wouldn't have to do it on the

floor—but he couldn't wait. He's a very happy father." She smiled and patted Laina's

arm, gently cradling Lisha back into the new-born bassinet.

On the windowsill, Laina kept papers of needles stacked between the potted

plants. When she glanced from the kitchen into the drawing room, the windows looked

cluttered, the pots of geraniums and aloe Vera teetered from the ledge, threatened to

topple the rest of her pots—the coriander, the jasmine, the date plant—onto the carpet

every time a gust of wind rattled the windows. But the warm weather would come soon,

and then she could take them all outside and plant them in the black soil that came in fat

plastic pillows. They had moved to this house on Waymore Rd in the North West part of

Calgary after Deena and her husband told them a cousin of theirs was leaving their house

up for rent until they returned from Toronto. It was a large house just off the banks of the

Bow River and at first Laina had been uncertain about all the wide-open space, how far it

seemed from the noise and heat of people. But Azad didn't mind the frozen river or its

rocky banks and would sit on the picnic bench in the mornings, a cup of hot milk in his

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hands. She could see him from the living-room window, curled like a puffed caterpillar

over his knees, his breath rolling out of his mouth like steam from a kettle. She would try

to admire him in the mornings, would sit in her red velvet robe by the window with her

jewellery box on her lap, study the rings he had purchased for her from Birks for their

anniversharies. She would slide them onto her fingers and decide which to wear for the

next little while, choose between three gold rings with speckles of winking diamonds.

She liked the purple amethyst best, a single stone that looked like a pool of murky water

in the morning light. Admiring its glow on her ring finger, she slipped a new needle from

a folded packet on the sill and unrolled a wad of sheer yellow material she had placed

under the chair the night before. She began to sew. She had already sewn the neck—this

was the most difficult part of a dress to make. Most people left it until the end, postponed

it because they knew it took a slow and careful hand. They thought they could just thrash

it all together with a slap of material and thread, stabbing the needle in and out of a

misshapen lining cut at random, instead of a lining measured to fit the exact curve of the

neck so it would lay flat against the chest. They were careless and the material bunched

all along the bowl of the neck, the entire dress ruined by an impatient hand eager to get

the dress on the girl. The neck, before all things, should be sewn first. You folded the

cloth over twice and cut out the curve of the neck, made sure the front was cut deeper

than the back depending on the type of dress you were making and whom the dress was

for. If it were something an older girl would wear, and if it was an everyday sort of dress,

you made the neck big enough so it would swoop over her head and she could put it on

herself without bothering anyone else about it. If it was for a little girl, a party dress, then

you cut it shallow enough to look sweet against such a small neck and put buttons down

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the back so the mother could slip it over the girl and button her up, tip top. If the dress

were a baby dress, you cut a small neck and put a slit down the back with a hook at the

top so the mother could feed the baby's arms through the sleeves and wrap the dress

around her like a frothy blanket, hook it up quick before the baby could fuss too much.

Sewing the lining was difficult, your finger had to press the material down flat—but you

couldn't pull at it to make the pieces fit—you just had to press and sew, tuck the extra

bits in as you went along. If you pulled the neck where it wasn't supposed to go, it would

end up a lumpy mess.

This dress was a party dress for Lisha's first birthday and Laina had already

finished the neck and added ruffles with strips of the dotted chiffon. Today, she would

sew the sleeves. She wanted them to be long with no lining, ruffles and ribbons round the

wrist. Since Lisha's birth, Laina had sat in this chair and sewn a dress a week, emptied

the closet of her sharis and hung the dresses on the hangers, put them in order according

to size and season. She had calculated that if Lisha soiled the outfits at least twice a day,

she would need at least 14 dresses a week. This was if she made it to the Laundromat

every Saturday afternoon. If she washed more frequently, soaked the dresses in a bucket

of soapy water in the bathtub every night, then she could make do with just a few dresses,

not too many at all. But she knew how tired she would be, how sleep would hit her in the

head like a hammer and she would never get the washing done and Lisha would have to

spend the day in sour-smelling dresses yellowed with milk. So in the few precious hours

before Lisha woke each morning, Laina sat in the chair by the window and worked on

tiny dresses, stitching pearls and bows to the collars and sleeves, adding ruffles round the

hem.

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Laina kept the closet door open at night so when Lisha woke screaming, she could

see the dresses dangling from the rod in the closet while still lying in bed. It was Azad

who leapt from the bed the moment Lisha hiccupped, scooped her into the warmth of his

robe and paced the bedroom floor rocking her back to sleep. It was the worst when she

woke hungry, her face like a smashed tomato, shrieks like pincers tearing them from the

deepest sleep. But in those first few months Azad must have only dipped halfway into

sleep each night, rising with a start the second Lisha woke, mouth puckered. In the very

beginning, Laina would rise with him, rush to the side of Lisha's crib and press her to her

breast before Azad could untangle himself from the sheets. She would leave him, one leg

slung over the side of the bed, eyes blinking. In the living room, she would tuck the

curtains into the windowpane and sit in the light slitting in from the street, Lisha cupped

to her breast.

It should have worked this way, a warm and easy flow from her body into Lisha.

But none of this had come easy for her, not from the moment she had laid the little strip

in a cup of her urine and watched it blush pink, did any of it go the way she thought it

would. If she let herself really think about it she could trace it back all the way to the

night of her wedding when there was no one to do her bridal khopa. She had always been

the one to curl and twist the bride's hair into elaborate wedding buns, had sent both Asha

and Kanta into the arms of their husbands with hair spun into impressive khopas. But

when her turn came, neither Asha nor Kanta knew a thing about doing wedding buns and

Asha had to sneak her out to the beauty parlour by rickshaw the morning of her wedding.

It was a smooth and sticky mess that she spent the wedding night combing out, tearing a

comb through long swirls of hardened hair, the plastic teeth of the comb crusted with

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dried hairspray and knots of torn hair. Azad had watched her for a few minutes then

asked her to let him help. She stood in front of the mirror and unrolled another curl,

watched his reflection in the mirror as he rolled up the sleeves of his shirt. She sat on a

corner of the bed and folded her hands over the bedpost. The points of his fingers dotted

along her scalp, pinching for bobby pins. She braced herself against the sting and let him

twist out the pins. When he would pause she knew he had found another pin and would

press one hand against the back of her head while pulling the pin out with the other,

twirling the end with his fingers. She would press herself against the bedpost and wait for

the burning sting, turn her head away from his hand. At the end of the night there was a

pyramid of pins on the edge of the bed and her head felt magnetic. Even then, when she

finally lay down for the night, it wasn't the sting of the pins she felt, it was the rigid

warmth of his hand against her head.

In the living room she could struggle alone with Lisha, could lodge her knee

under the coffee table and brace herself against the pain of Lisha drawing milk. She tried

to focus on the slippery warmth of Lisha's tiny mouth. But the pull tore the inside of her

breast in two, every breath Lisha took was like dragging the points of nails through her

veins. The doctor patted her on the shoulder, had said that like anything else it took a

little practice, that she should keep trying before resorting to formula, that a baby thrived

on the milk of its mother and it would only be a little while before it all became a steady

rhythm in her life. When the blisters on her nipples cracked into scabs and bled through a

silk nightie leaving circular imprints on the front of the shirt, she sat with Lisha crying

over her knees while Azad shuffled into the kitchen and warmed the formula, tested it on

his wrist twice before pressing the bottle to Lisha's mouth. Her cries softened to hiccups

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and she trembled into the warmth of the milk. For the next few days she alternated

between breasts, folding extra bits of material into squares that she pressed to her nipples.

When it was time to feed Lisha she removed the wad of material from the breast that was

less tender, and tossed it into a bucket in the bathtub. By the end of the week, the bucket

would be full of squares of blood-soaked fabric that she would soak for a day before

spending a full morning scrubbing and drying them along the shower curtain rod.

Always, she would bundle Lisha into the living room, knee under the coffee table,

bracing for the snap of Lisha's mouth on her nipple like the clamp of a lobster claw on an

unwelcome hand.

But it never turned out right. Nipples cracked and raw, she went to the doctor with

a pile of squares dotted with dried blood and placed them on the examination table. She

left with a list of formula brands she should switch to indefinitely. When she got home,

she found Lisha bundled down in bed, bottles drying in the sink. Azad had known and

had already fed her, put her to sleep. Clumps of snow melting off the treads of her boots,

she sat on the edge of the bathtub and spun the tap, hot water crashing into the bucket.

The bloodied squares spun in fast circles, the water forcing them down then spinning

them up again to the surface. She poured a cupful of detergent into the bucket and

scrubbed the squares against each other, the water foaming pink. Crumbles of the

powdered detergent caked her hands and she plunged her arms into the bucket, now

overflowing, squares flowing out and swirling along the floor of the tub and wadding

themselves into the open drain. She peeled two squares from the bottom of the tub and

scraped them against her hand, wanted the blood to lift off the material and imprint itself

onto the slick of her palm. She could swipe it away easily then, all these stains just shiny

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patches she could clap away with her palms. Azad had called her twice from the

bedroom, wanted to know why she was taking so long, had the doctor given her anything

to ease the pain, a cream or lotion maybe, did she have a prescription? Was there an

infection? Did she need him to go pick something up from the pharmacy? When he

appeared at the door, she picked up the bucket and flung it at him.

"Shut up! You just shut up!" She stood heaving, elbows crusted in detergent.

His jaw tensed and he turned, flung the newspaper in his hand to the floor. The roll of

paper deflated in the pool of water and she stood looking at it, fists clenched. She could

tear him up bit by bit, just tear him into tiny pieces and fling him out the window, flecks

of paper in the wind. What kind of shongshar was this? What kind of household, what

kind of life? Floating from one thing to the next like a paper bird, barely flapping. She

wanted it back in her hands, wanted to hold the bird in her hands, feel its pulse under her

palm, everything flickering under a shine of feathers.

She let Azad have the nighttime feedings. Now, when Lisha cried, Laina would

turn to face the closet and count the dresses while Azad leapt from room to room

warming milk and jostling Lisha back to sleep in one arm. This was when, lying in bed,

she could think of how she would warm the baby back into her arms during the day.

*

The day Azad came home early from work, plastic milk crate full of books, files

and a lamp, Laina thought she should locate Toronto on the map of Canada, measure out

where they would be going. She thought of the letter she would write Ma, imagined the

look on her face as she unfolded it, read her messy script:

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Dear Ma,

I am moving to a new city. I like the city I am in now, but my husband is restless.

He means well, wants to provide for me andLisha. The new city has all the jobs

and so we must go. Ma, you always told us to keep our hands busy in study so we

would never have to hold them out to our husbands. I am not holding my hand out

to him Ma, I am letting him take my hand in his so he can lead me to where he

wants to be. I will send you pictures ofLisha, she is growing up quickly.

Laina.

If she did write a letter, it would have to be smooth and airless like this one. The photos

would be of her smiling, and there would be details of what she had cooked that week,

the weather, and something sweet that Lisha had done. These would coax Ma back into

the warmth, the image of cracked eggs against a wall, fading.

At first, she thought that Azad would not want to go to Raisa's wedding, that he

would want to stay home as he always did, reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee.

She half expected that she would return after three weeks and find him just as she left

him, wrapped in a robe on the couch, the bottoms of his pajamas worn through with

holes. But he had purchased two tickets, told her he had been saving up his holidays and

that he hadn't been back in a while, should pay a visit to his parents in Madaripur, they

would be pleased. He had helped her pick out a bracelet from the jewelry store,

encouraged her to buy the one with diamonds instead of emeralds; he didn't mind that it

was more expensive.

The day before Raisa's wedding Laina emptied a bowl of eggs, threw them one

by one at the wall, screaming. Ma waved her hands at Laina, hopped from foot to foot

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trying to grasp an arm, but Laina felt the warmth of each egg in her hand and imagined

she held Azad's skull in her palm, shrieked at the pieces of shell sliding down the wall in

globs of yolk. Raisa slid into the tiny kitchen, her hands heavy with mendhi and yelled

for Munir. Laina crouched on the floor head in her hands, strings of yolk dribbling

through her hair.

"Ma, I don't want to go back. I don't want to go back."

When Laina turned and saw Ma's mouth half-open in surprise, she realized what a

mistake she'd made, how much more painful it was to see Ma suddenly afraid.

Azad had spent the first week of their holiday visiting his family and had come

back to Ma's flat his face slack. He wanted to know if Laina had any time to visit with

him—it looked bad if she didn't come to at least a few invitations. They were starting to

wonder, his family, whether or not she cared at all. She had visited his parents already,

had seen his sisters—that was enough. She sliced her hand through the air. She was here

to visit her own family, to see her sister get married, to spend time with Munir and learn

about his new clinic, to play with Kanta's children, to explore Ma's new flat and dote on

her—not on his pride.

But it looks bad.

She felt a bone in her chest snap like a piece of chalk, and she shrieked at him, threw a

glass on the floor as he waved her off and left the flat. Ma had followed her into the

kitchen, where Laina found the bowl of eggs Moni was to boil for the biryani.

Once she'd returned to Canada she called Asha, told her the wedding had gone

well and that Raisa was radiant and happy—how could she not be, her husband was quiet

and rich, a winning combination. She would send Asha the photographs, she could see

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Ma's new flat and how tall Munir had gotten—though he had begun to lose his hair like

Abba, he was still handsome. Before they hung up, Asha told her it would only be a year,

maybe two before she got her green card and could travel, that Jamal had already gotten a

lawyer to sort through all the paperwork and that things were coming along nicely,

everything was set. Setting the phone into its cradle, Laina wondered whether she could

be as optimistic as Asha, just forge ahead with a tired smile and believe things were all

right.

Laina found the map of Canada in the closet, tucked into one of the pockets in the

shoe-smock hanging over the door. She unfolded the map and spread it across the coffee

table, clicking her tongue at Lisha who sat next to her holding a mug full of pencil

crayons. Laina had unrolled reams of computer paper for Lisha, sprinkled crayons and

markers across the pages and sat her in the middle of it all. She could spend entire

afternoons this way, working her way across yards of paper, fists full of colour. Laina

liked to think Lisha was mapping her way across the living room, stretching herself

through the thick lines of colour, the paper crumpling into star-shaped creases beneath

her knees. She had introduced Lisha to colours after Mrs. Scamp, the pre-school teacher,

ushered Laina from the coatroom to the drawing table one afternoon, red lips pursed in

concern.

"I thought you should see this. It had me a little worried." Mrs. Scamp patted

Lisha on the shoulder and sat her down in the Furry Fun corner to play with giant stuffed

animals, then glided back to where Laina stood, her hands clasped tight over the puff of

Lisha's jacket. "I was wondering if there was any particular stress going on at home."

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Mrs. Scamp pulled out a tiny chair for Laina and before sitting down herself, brushed out

the creases in her skirt. She sat across from Laina, her hands folded over a large blue

folder. Laina admired Mrs. Scamp's gleaming red nails, picked at her own nails—painted

burgundy—and thought she should redo them with the frosted pink she had seen at the

drugstore. They were going to stop over on their way home anyway, she had promised

Lisha a pack of bubblegum. The bottle of nail polish would be just two dollars and she

hadn't bought a new one in over two months, had been painting and re-painting her nails

the same burgundy every week. Mrs. Scamp was the sort of woman Laina thought Asha

would admire. She was fashionable and easy with words, her smile was a crease in a

bowl of cream. From her shiny heels (that Laina later learned were called patent leather),

to her loose brown curls—dark and syrupy like the stream of molasses she had poured

from the carton into the cake batter that morning—Mrs. Scamp was glowingly pristine.

There was never a loose thread—they were tucked out of view—and the buttons on the

cuffs of her suit jackets were always snapped shut, the ruffles of her blouse spread out

over the lapels, the tiny gold cross always flickering from the hollow in her throat. There

was a tremor in her voice, like a warning peeling out from the edges of her words.

"Lisha's drawings— I'm afraid I don't understand them." Mrs. Scamp slid a blue

folder across the desk and pressed her lips together, the air whistling through her nose.

Laina opened the folder and stared at the pile of drawings. They were done on plain white

paper that had been folded over multiple times, the creases still distinct. Thick streaks of

black crayon were smeared over the pages in a series of complicated grid lines, in curves

that swooped into loops, and large X's that dotted the pages at random. Laina pressed her

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finger over the black lines and could imagine Lisha bearing down, elbows denting the

page. Mrs. Scamp reached over and spread the drawings across the desk.

"I don't know what to make of them, but I want to help her. I do." Mrs. Scamp lay

a hand on Laina's arm, red nails gleaming against the wool thatching of her winter coat.

Scattered across the desk like this, the drawings were dizzying. The black lines twisted

into haphazard shapes and looked threatening under the tips of Mrs. Scamp's fingers, as

if she were pricking electrical wires with her fingernails, the lines wavering off the page,

live wires ready to shock. Laina knew the way Lisha would have drawn these pictures,

crayon clamped in her fist like a chicken drumstick, pads of her fingers white. She

gripped everything that way, tight in her fist, squashed the stems of dandelions against

her palms, crumbled brownies into the creases of her fingers—she held onto things.

Laina suddenly felt the weight of Mrs. Scamp's hand on her arm, as if it were a side of

meat trapping her hands in a bowl of cold water at the bottom of the sink. Laina slid out

from under Mrs. Scamp's grasp and shuffled the drawings back into the folder. Mrs.

Scamp scratched at her throat, then rubbed at the red lines that appeared like train tracks

on her skin. She had a soft smile that Laina wanted to sift away, swiftly, easily like

shaking the dents out of a bowl of flour. This woman with shiny shoes thought Lisha was

unhappy, thought that scrawling black lines on drawing paper meant that there must be

something lodged inside Lisha that needed to be coaxed out. She would hold a honey-

coated spoon at Lisha's lips, melt out some secret so she could tell Laina there was

something very wrong, that Lisha needed someone more, someone else to toddle happily

through life.

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"Please don't worry. I will talk to her." Laina pressed the folder into her purse and

nodded. "I don't know what she is drawing, but she knows. I will talk to her."

Lisha sat in the lap of a large elephant twirling a Barbie in the air. As Laina

kneeled and fed Lisha's arms through the sleeves of the jacket, she felt how soft and

pliable her small limbs still were; they looked much sturdier than they actually were.

Usually Lisha would wait at the door with the other children, already zipped into her

jacket, hood up and scarf tied. Who helped the children put on their coats? Who pulled

Lisha's arms through her sleeves as gently as she did? Who zipped her up? Anyone else

could snap Lisha's arms if they weren't careful, if they thought they could just bend and

twist her arms in through the sleeves because Lisha looked more limber than she actually

was. Laina held Lisha's mittened hand in her own and nodded goodbye. Mrs. Scamp

stood by her desk, hands folded over the belt of her skirt, smiling softly.

She hadn't shown Azad the drawings, hadn't told him that Mrs. Scamp was

dreaming up problems at home for Lisha. He would try to explain things to her, would

glance at the drawings and decide how things were, waft his hand around in the air

without knowing anything at all. She had sneacked the drawings into the bathroom the

day she brought them home, had sat on the toilet and turned the drawings in the buzzing

light. They looked unfriendly. It was as if the lines were there to thrust her back, tell her

'no'. She had put them away and sat by Lisha's bed patting her to sleep, worry pricking

its way up through her skin.

On Saturday morning, Laina stood over the kitchen sink snapping the ends off

beans, tossing them into a bowl to rinse and fry with cauliflower for their lunch that

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afternoon. They had only a bit of bhaji left from earlier in the week, and she knew Azad

had grown tired of the okra, wanted something new. He had left her to finish the bowl

last night, saying he wasn't hungry. Of course he was hungry, he wouldn't say outright

that he didn't want the okra, that he had had it two days in a row and wasn't in the

mood—would only push the bowl away and eat his rice plain, pick at the fish and pretend

it was perfectly all right when what he needed was a bhaji to eat along with it. More than

anything else she hated this smiling attitude. It was false. He meant to guilt her. He

wanted to weigh her down with his smiles, wanted her to swallow every one. You are a

bad wife, he was saying with a push of his thumb, a bad wife for not cooking something

fresh. Look—look at this plate of white rice, so dry, too dry—you could have made some

niramish—that would have been enough, those softened chunks of squash and potato

would have been fine, would have made this forkful of rice—so dry—easier to swallow.

How deadening it felt to come home after a day at the office and sit down to a table of re­

heated food. And he would eat in silence, the disapproval deep in his pores.

Laina tossed the beans and cauliflower into the pan and shut the lid over the

sizzle. She pulled the blue folder out from under the sink where she had kept it hidden

with the potatoes and spread the drawings on the counter. This morning, while she was

separating the good beans from the bad and chopping off the browned chunks of

cauliflower she could not use, she thought of Mrs. Scamp's face. It looked as if it were

drenched, skin sponging light. Laina could see her in the morning rubbing a bar of soap

in circles round her cheeks, eyes closed, lashes wet. This played like a commercial over

and over in Laina's head, Mrs. Scamp leaning over the sink every morning, soap suds

massaged into plump cheeks, water running off her chin in streams and thousands of skin

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cells swirling round the sink. After a few weeks she could take a razor blade and scrape

the inside of her drain. All the dead cells, crystallized in layers would flake out in chunks,

the bottom of her sink sloppy with dunes of silt. With a face like that she couldn't look at

Lisha's drawings. Those black lines would mottle her up in seconds.

Laina circled the kitchen tearing bits of tape and rolling them onto the back of the

drawings, pressing them to the walls and the door of the refrigerator. They were drawings

that Mrs. Scamp could not handle, did not understand. They were a wall between Lisha

and her teacher and Mrs. Scamp could not resist the urge to push the wall up against

Laina, point to the drawings and say, Took, you don't know what they are at all. You

don't know what's knotting up the inside of your daughter's head!' With the niramish

cooking under the lid, Lisha sat at the table across from Azad and listened as he slurped

cereal and read an article about the benefits of consuming raw garlic at dinnertime.

"Lisha, come see. Look at all your drawings." Lisha sat wrapped in a blanket on

the couch watching cartoons, her tiny head peeking out from the top of the comforter.

Azad looked up from his article and glanced around the kitchen.

"Wow!" He smiled widely at Lisha as she rolled off the couch and into the

kitchen, the comforter trailing behind her. Laina watched to see the change in her face,

wanted to catch the moment like a snapshot. Azad swiveled around in his chair and stared

for a moment at a drawing, tapped it with his forefinger. "Very good! What is it?" Laina

shook her head, Azad had to hold back—he would overwhelm her.

"My maps!" Lisha clapped her hands together and hopped around the kitchen.

"You found my maps!" She turned and smiled, scratched at a smear of cherry jelly on her

cheek.

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She was drawing maps. The angry black lines softened into the ridges of

mountains, complicated roadways, destinations. Laina smiled. Lisha was drawing maps.

Like Laina had drawn maps. How long it had been since she'd taken out her own folder

of school assignments, looked at her own careful lines.

*

In the house by Bow River, the sidewalks had just begun to imprint themselves

onto the bottom of Laina's shoes and she had woven herself into a web of friends and

neighbours. She could see herself cross-hatched into the grey of this city, a preliminary

sketch, lines stretching into the blank. From the chair by the window, looking out at a wet

morning with mountains creasing through the grey, Laina tapped her way along the map

from one knee to the other. Toronto was just a knee-length away.

Azad had given her a small copper pencil sharpener in the shape of a globe last

month. He had come home late after work, and she could hear him from the bedroom

rustling through the kitchen with his mail, checking the stovetop for his dinner. She had

already put Lisha to bed and was sitting in front of the vanity counting quarters for

tomorrow's trip to the library puppet show. She had just dropped the last quarter into her

change purse and thought she should get up to warm the rice, to sit a while with him

while he ate. When he came into the bedroom, jacket over his arm, he placed the globe

on the corner of the vanity, a smile lilting across his face.

"Look at that—a tiny, miniature globe—it has everything though. All the

countries."

It was in those moments that Laina thought she was one of the lucky ones. In the

dark she would look at his hands half-open on the sheets and slide her fingers against his

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palm. Even in the dark she could see how dark he had become, how much lighter her skin

was against his. She could study him best when he was asleep, it wasn't as difficult to

reason with herself when he lay there, his face slack against the pillow. With him asleep

she could turn to look over at him and see him toting phones door to door for the phone

company, see his hand scrolling across the white page on the clipboard, writing numbers,

ticking boxes. In the dark she could suit him up in his blazer and grey pants, see him tally

up his sales in the office, calculate how many more sales he would have to make the

following day. The moment she imagined him folding the saran wrap from his sandwich

into a square, slipping it into his lunch bag and rolling it up to take home to her, it all

came easily to her, how good he was to her, how good he could be.

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CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Los Angeles soared into hills and drooped into valleys, lined in houses the colour

of shells. Asha gulped down the blue sky and struck her heels against the hot pavement.

She could feel the concrete through the soles of her shoes. Once she got home she would

have to sew another lining to the inside of each shoe, cushion her heels against the

pebbles that pressed through the canvas soles and left her heels pickled at the end of the

day. This pair would last her another month and then she'd have to get new ones. She

knew if she bought a good pair, leather with deep treads, it would be at least ten years

before she would have to ever buy herself another pair. These canvas ones were from the

discount store; the grouchy owner, an old Chinese man with yellow whiskers kicked at

the crate when she and Niya were rooting through a box of hair clips, choosing the

prettiest to send in a parcel to Bangladesh. He flicked his hand at the shoes and coughed.

"New shoes. Only one-nine-nine." Niya untangled a pair from the crate and held

them up—red with white stripes and bright white laces—then she smiled and tilted her

head. They were like the ones at the mall, even had the thick soles, could she have them?

When Niya hovered at stores, Asha always jolted her away with a sharp word, told her

they would find the same thing at Ross for half the price, that she had to learn not to

spend money like it was water, spilling it out every time something caught her eye. The

words always swatted Niya back, made her stand still. If they were shopping at Ross,

Niya would never beg, would only hold whatever it was she wanted to her chest—a

purse, a book, suede sandals with flowers embroidered on the side—until it was time to

check out. If she and Asha had made the trip to Ross on their own, used tokens on the bus

to come on a weekday, Niya would put the item back—would stuff the purse to the

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bottom of the pile, slip the book to the back of the shelf, hide the suede sandals in the

lingerie department, burying them under piles of ladies' underwear. If Jamal were with

them, had driven them there on the weekend after shopping for groceries, Niya would

beg. She would push the suede shoes into his arms and he would laugh it off, circle her

into his arms and nuzzle her face to his chest. She'd cling to the shoes, straps hanging

from her pinky finger and he'd tell her he'd seen shoes better than these a thousand times.

You didn't buy shoes from Ross. You didn't buy pants or shirts or anything with an

ounce of quality from Ross—you went to Macy's. Macy's had rows and rows of shoes,

proper shoes. This was low-quality garbage, how could she want it? When she was a little

older she argued back. She would lead Jamal to the perfume case and show him a bottle

of Cool Water on sale for $30.00, the same size they'd seen at Macy's for $54.00. It was

the same thing, the very same. She'd push the bottle into his hands and pout—she'd

wanted the perfume for so long and here it was at Ross on sale, like magic. How could

they not get it? How unfair would that be? If Jamal relented, he would do it in a rush,

thrusting the box of perfume to the lady at the cash, waving away Niya's hops and smiles,

telling her it was not worth what they were paying, that he'd seen thousands of quality

perfumes in other places for better prices. What was this? A silly bottle of blue water, it

wasn't real perfume. When Jamal spent his money on Niya, Asha wanted to tell him he

was doing a good thing, that this was what fathers did. They slipped bills out of their

pockets and bought things like good walking shoes and jackets for rainy weather.

The red canvas shoes had thick soles, but Asha could tell they would scuff and

wear themselves through to her heels in one summer. It wasn't worth the $1.99 to give in

to Niya's whims. She knew her daughter—Niya would wear them for a summer and

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when the school year began she would slide her way through the Back-to-School flyers

and wish for something else. The red canvas shoes would sit in the back of the closet and

even if she didn't get a new pair for the school year, she wouldn't wear them. She'd

switch back to the black and white sneakers from Payless saying the red sneakers didn't

look right on her, that they were too clunky for her feet or that they made her toes itch.

Dust would settle into the crevices of the canvas and it would be a waste. But really, what

were these dollars for?

Now, waiting outside Niya's sixth grade classroom, Asha scuffed the red canvas

shoes along the pavement, pacing. She had found them in Niya's closet the first week of

school and had worn them everywhere for the past six months, sewing layers of old

cotton together to fill in the insides so they would fit. She was surprised—these felt like

very good shoes, the rubber on the soles was thick and the treads were deep enough to

grip the pavement when she had to hurl herself downhill with groceries. Niya was right,

they were heavy, weighed her feet down to the ground and made her ankles feel brittle—

every step felt dangerous at first—as if they were tricking her into thinking she was safe

only to crack her feet off her legs at the first quick misstep. But these shoes, hanging

heavy off her ankles, made her feet clap loud against the pavement; the shock of each

step vibrated up through her heels along the backs of her legs—her muscles, the very

veins, it seemed, still pulsed with the impact at the end of the day. They were recording

every step she took, notching it into her tissue, a permanent record. The night before

Niya's first day in junior high, Asha had to put the shoes in the kitchen sink to shake out

the sand that was still crusted along the laces. She had knocked them against the side of

the sink, the sand sticking to wet patches around the drain, yelling at Niya to take a look

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at the mess she had left for her the night before her first day of school—why hadn't she

cleaned them out the moment they got home? Why hadn't she cleaned out the sand and

placed them over the heaters so they could dry overnight? Now, Asha would have to do it

herself. She would have to scrape out the sand and because Niya had stepped into the

water when she had asked her not to—because she had done that, the insides were wet

and they would have to sit and dry by the heaters and they wouldn't be dry enough for

her to wear tomorrow. They had bought her a new pencil case and a pair of jeans with

flower-shaped patches for the new school year and while driving home, Jamal tapped his

fingernail on the closed window and said they should go to the beach. He knew the next

day was a school day—the first day of junior high for Niya—but still, he pulled into the

gas station easing his credit card out of his back pocket. She had leaned across the seat

and spun down the window, yelled at him over the crank of the gas nozzle. Why couldn't

he get gas tomorrow on his way to work? Why now, when they needed to get home so

she could warm dinner and pack Niya a lunch for tomorrow? She had hoped that he was

only joking about the beach—the sun was already low in the sky and the air would be

cold by the water and none of them had brought a sweater and she didn't need Niya

catching a cold the first week of school—she'd have to stay home and even if he didn't

care, she did, she cared if Niya missed important lessons and fell behind, Niya had to

focus, had to take school seriously, why couldn't he see that?

Santa Monica beach was empty just before sunset, the low light sunk into the sand

like syrup, footprints just shadows. Jamal hugged Niya close to his side and they walked

along the shore, Niya pausing to pry shells from wet sand. The Pier in the distance was a

peeled scab, the lights spinning wet against the sky, bleary and throbbing. Asha leaned

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against the car and placed her thumb over the spin of the Ferris wheel, imagined smearing

it into the background, rubbing her thumb into the sore. Jamal had brought them to the

Pier the first week they arrived, told them both they had to see everything before their

eyes grew used to the blue of the sky, used to everything—it wouldn't look the same if

they waited too long. Then, just like the taste of air on their tongues, they wouldn't notice

it at all. It would just be another part of the city they would count on for later. Asha didn't

think this was true. Four years later and every clap of her sole against the pavement

echoed like it was new. The other sounds had fuzzed into the background, but her walks

smacked themselves into a rhythm, made her love the grit, the shine. And it was the shine

of the city, the way that even the pavement blared, that made her want to keep walking.

When she and Niya first stepped out from the airport and into the street she had looked

up and seen the date palms that lined the curve of the road. She thought of how she would

write home to Ma, tell her that there were date palms here too—but that these were palms

that cut into the sky with their leaves, the points puncturing the blue. Everything was

sharp and the cutting lines of the city made her feel ready.

The broiling whirr of lights on the Pier had spun Niya into silence. They had gone

at night, Jamal strolling between them, one arm crushing Niya to his side, the other on

Asha's shoulder. Niya had been quiet that first week, her usual chatter slowed into careful

gazing as she relearned the curves of Jamal's face, got used to having the warmth of his

hand along the back of her neck. When Jamal handed Asha the camera, told her to look

through the tiny window and snap a shot of them with the Ferris wheel in the

background, she wanted to make sure she pressed down on the button at the right time.

There were strings of lights everywhere and as Jamal stood with his arms locked over

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Niya's shoulders, Asha waited to snap the picture until the lights swinging from the roof

of the cotton candy booth flashed red. They flashed four beats for each colour before

switching and while Jamal paid for a stick of cotton candy, a fluffy pink flame in Niya's

hand, Asha decided that the picture would be best at the fourth beat of red, just as the

lights turned to purple. Under the flash of green, Jamal's face looked foreign, as if he had

taken long strides away from them into an electrified future, his teeth too bright in a too-

wide smile. Under yellow he looked gaunt, his eyes gummy and pink, his smile suddenly

sallow, just barely hanging on. But between red and purple, Asha could snap a picture she

liked. Jamal's face, his thick black brows like ink smears across his forehead, Niya in her

too-small white dress, strings of pink floss already webbed over her fingertips, and the

fizzy pop of lights from the Ferris wheel in the background. In the beat from red to purple

everything buzzed—snap!—and they were saturated into the photograph, their faces

blurred in the lights as if someone had smeared the scene into a wet painting.

Asha liked the way everything looked that night. She always looked back through

cataracts, the image cloudy. Their skin rippled and there was no sound, but she saw the

three of them stepping into the crowd, a whir of colour swallowing them from behind.

She could zoom in and see the hairs on Jamal's arm, soft wisps brushing against the back

of her neck where beads of sweat clung to the tips, slid down the shafts of hair and into

his pores. She saw how ready they were, how close. It was the beginning of everything

again, Jamal's arm circling them in.

Jamal stood in the water, his jeans rolled up under his knees. The end of his

cigarette pulsed like a red eye in the low light and Asha clicked an imaginary camera in

the air, framing Jamal at the centre with Niya crouching in the far right corner, cupping

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broken shells and smooth pebbles in her hand. He had that stance that made Asha want to

knock him loose, send him sprawling into the ocean face first. Salt water up his nose and

in his eyes, it would be a nice clean burn. It was the meat of his calves that made him

look like he could do anything; they were thick and the muscle looked like it was

solidified, soldered into the sand. He stood there smoking in the sunset and Asha thought

it could be okay, still.

Niya was late. Kids were already sprawled in clumps around the basketball courts,

boys launching themselves against the fence while girls watched, their wrists bound in

gimp bracelets. There was always a loud girl who screamed and jumped from one foot to

the other when one of the boys crashed to the pavement. She was always the girl with too

much—hair in ringlets already inked to her forehead in curls of sweat, fat rolling up over

the waist of too-tight jeans, charm necklaces swinging from her neck and flashing in the

sun—and a chest that was too much for a foolish girl. She was the one who egged the

boys on, shrieked the loudest, got too excited, too fast. The other girls joined in—stole a

boy's Laker's cap or managed to wrestle a new Chicago Bulls jersey from a gym bag,

tossed the object from girl to girl until it landed in the hands of the loud girl. The loud girl

would revel in the joy of a boy chasing her round the court, his heavy breathing matching

her own.

Niya had grown within the last year. She wasn't the size of a loud girl, thank

God, but she had the rounded hips. They had changed the way she walked within the last

year. Now she curved down the block and didn't even know it. Her sandals slapped

against the pavement in the same way, her mass of curls were still done up in plastic

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clips, but the dirty eyes, they were everywhere. At the beginning of the school year Asha

pulled out the hand-drawn map of Los Angeles that Laina had mailed to her in a plastic

tube when they first arrived in California and started marking down the streets where she

had spotted dirty eyes. The map was hatched with tiny blue X's and if she ever sent Niya

out to buy a few green chilies or a sachet of paprika, she would check the map first, then

instruct Niya to go to the Philippino grocers on the west corner instead of walking up to

the video store plaza two blocks from their apartment—she had seen they way the boys

outside the video store grazed their eyes on girls, she could see the heat beneath their

skin. She told Niya that the chillies were better at the Philipino grocers, or that the

paprika she had gotten from another store was old and had lost its potency, she had to use

twice as much and she didn't have money to waste, not now. She gave Niya a dollar to

buy herself a trinket from the discount store, knew it was on the same street and that Niya

would not opt to dash to the grocery store closer to their apartment if she could get

herself a new mood ring or bottle of black nail polish by walking an extra two blocks to

the one Asha had circled in pink highlighter on the map. Asha would pace from the

kitchen to the bedroom window watching for Niya's ready step, would sigh with relief

when she'd spot her, plastic bag swinging from her wrist, a new ring on her finger.

There was a tall white man who stood by the lamppost everyday after the school

bell rang, his arms crossed over his chest. He arrived early and stood against the

lamppost, a container of orange slices in his hands. Asha knew the man must cut the

orange slices himself, she could tell from the way he held the container with both hands,

finger pressing the lid shut to stop the juices from running out. As soon as his son, a very

thin boy with soft wisps of blond hair, tumbled out of the school the man would take the

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boy's backpack and sling it over his own shoulder and hand the boy the container of

oranges. The man would wait for the boy to suck on two orange slices, wiping his neck

with the back of his sleeve, before resting his hand on the boy's shoulder and leading him

down the walkway to the crosswalk. The man's son was always late getting out of school

because he always took the longest to get dressed after gym class. This man—he told

Asha his name was Duncan or Mike, she could not remember which—always asked Asha

how she was doing and whether she was enjoying her life here in California. She always

told him she was doing fine, thank you and that California was a very nice place. He

would smile, rub his chin. It was Niya who noticed how pink their lips were. She would

look at a slice of raw beef and say it looked like the boy's lips, a rich red. Or sitting at

home and chewing on betel leaves she'd rub her lips together and stick out her tongue—

look, red lips, red tongue, like them. When she picked up a chicken liver from the bowl

of water in the sink and pressed it to her mouth, told Asha look—she had lips like theirs,

Asha threw the liver back into the bowl and scrubbed Niya's lips with a toothbrush

dipped in powdered detergent. She made her rinse and spit into the sink, then scrubbed

again. By the fourth rinse and spit, Niya's lips were raw and pulsed red. Niya winked at

Asha through the mirror and smeared a fingerfull of Vaseline across her lips, smiling.

Niya told her that the lips of this man and his son were especially pink, they were raw

and shiny like the insides of animals.

Usually Niya would be out with the first cluster of kids and they would walk

home with a wave, the man's son still sucking on an orange slice, his father kneeling to

tie his shoes. But today, she was over fifteen minutes late and the man stood by the

lamppost telling Asha that the weather was only going to get warmer in the days to

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come—was it warm where she came from? He slid one hand into his pocket and held the

orange container in the other, strolled to Asha's side.

"So, you're Indian?"

"No, I am from Bangladesh. Very hot." Asha smiled, looked up at the man. The

top of her head didn't reach his shoulder. White men were always so tall. Jamal might

reach the bottom of his earlobe, but Mike—or Duncan—was tall like the lamppost, made

everyone else look small.

"I've always liked Indian women."

Niya was right. The man's lips were very pink. So deep, they were almost purple,

as if they had been bruised then laquered with a layer of polish.

"I've always liked the long hair—like yours—but in a long braid down the back.

And the things they wear—what do you call it, the long kind of sweeping dress." The

man waved the container of oranges across his body, from shoulder to hip.

"A shari."

"Yes. I like that. Do you wear sharis? I don't think I've ever seen you wear one."

"I do. But not everyday." The boy must have got his lips from his father—white

women did not have plump lips, not like this. Since Niya's obsession with lips began,

Asha began to notice lips too. She noticed that most white people either had pink lips, or

else they didn't have lips at all. That's why white women always wore bright lipsticks,

tried to smear lips onto their faces because they had just a thin sliver of skin that wasn't a

lip at all. Asha's own lips were dusty pink—she noticed that her top lip was darker than

her bottom lip and that if she rubbed Vaseline over them like Niya did, they deepened to

a purple that looked like lipstick. She hadn't done that today.

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"Would you marry someone like me?" The man looked down at his container of

oranges, tapping the lid with his forefinger. This tall, white man must live alone with his

son, was one of those men who had gotten a divorce from a woman who liked to work in

navy blue skirts at the office and spent too much time driving downtown making money

instead of making sandwiches at home for their sons. Asha could see this woman

dropping her son off at the babysitters in the morning, rushing in a shiny black car to pick

him up in the evenings and calling this man at home to tell him to order pizza or burgers

for dinner—she would be too tired once she got home. She probably had throbbing white

legs that thundered down halls in thick, high-heeled shoes. Of course she would be too

tired—what did this man do? He was too tall and his angles were too soft, the hairs on his

arms too fair. His wife was too much for him. Men wanted women with soft limbs that

wrapped around them, always yielding. Her own legs were too stout, they were the kind

that walked up and down hills, pendulums to swinging groceries.

When Niya finally pushed her way out the doors, Asha didn't think it would be a

good idea to suggest a six-block detour to the seafood market. Niya strode quickly across

the pavement, her face blank. Asha nodded away the tall white man and put her arm

across the back of Niya's neck, pulling her close. When Niya's face was this pale and

smooth, it could either blister or crumple, Asha didn't know which. Out of the two, it was

more likely that Niya would blister, hot angry words sizzling off her tongue, spewing out

of her small mouth like steam. The top of her head was hot, Asha could feel the hairs

bristle against her cheek as if charged with an electrical current. She would wait. They

would walk and Niya would thump out her anger with each step, everything cracking out.

Niya blistered with Jamal whenever it rained. If Jamal was still in bed, Asha would stand

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over the bed and watch him sleep, wonder what it was that made other fathers wake up

and drive their children to school. She opened the curtains and strung them up, let the

light fall across his face. On days when she felt like pulling a sheet over his face she

pushed out the netting in the window and slid it open, let the rain spray into the room.

She did this on hot days too, when there was no rain but there were flies. She shut the

bedroom door and imagined them swarming up into his nose, little black bodies plugged

inside his nostrils. If they woke up to the drum of rain against the window, Asha knew

Niya would pull on her jeans and shoes and stand at the door with her backpack, her face

blank. Rain made her remember how much Jamal didn't do. Whenever Laina called, her

voice heavy with tears, Asha wanted to press the phone to Jamal's chest, have Laina

listen to the sound of a useless man. Azad took care of everything, doted on his child and

was romantic in a way that Bengali men usually weren't. Laina was too soft. If she were

married to Jamal, she would have withered long ago. Out of the four of them, she and

Kanta were the strongest, they stood firm. Raisa didn't need to stand firm, she had a good

husband and like Laina, was lucky, truly blessed.

If Jamal woke to go to work and was not on a self-imposed holiday, Niya peeled

the skin off his face with her eyes. He didn't care that she had to walk seventeen blocks

to school every day. Did he hear that? Seventeen. And she would stomp through the rain,

carrying her umbrella like a weapon. Asha would follow, scared that Niya would

somehow impale the sky.

Asha didn't mind Niya's rage. It softened Jamal, made him wary. It was when she

crumpled like this, her face like thin paper that Asha was afraid. She knew she prodded

Niya too much with her concerns, always in a heat to get things done. Yesterday, with the

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rice boiling over on the stove she had screamed at Niya to vacuum the living room and

dust out the pillows on the couch. Niya bent over the mini vacuum and whirred around

the room in quick circles, her elbows dimpled with deep crescents from the force of her

thrust. Asha had yelled at her to get in behind the plants, where the dust piled in soft

dunes. Niya needed to know things like this—what kind of girl doesn't know where the

dust collects? Or how to get at it? She would not let her daughter grow up into a woman

who skipped corners and cleaned just for show. Niya did everything in large thunderous

movements; blasting into corners and punching out pillows. She cleaned the living room

in what seemed like two great beats and still, Asha found herself yelling for Niya, always

yanking her close. When they stopped at the crosswalk she pressed her hand into the

small of Niya's back, told her to straighten up. She always walked hunched over and

would have a hump on her back before she was twenty.

"My teacher sent me to the nurse's office today." Niya tapped at the yellow

WALK button.

"The nurse? Why?" Asha pressed her hand against Niya's forehead. "Do you feel

sick?"

Niya pulled away.

"A boy in my class told the teacher that I smelled."

"Smelled?"

"He says it everyday. He tells everybody that 1 smell."

"What kind of boy goes around smelling girls?"

"The teacher got tired of it and told me to go see the nurse."

"The teacher said you smelled?"

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"The nurse told me she couldn't smell anything but she gave me a kit to show my

teacher."

Asha leaned in close and sniffed.

"You don't smell. Your teacher said you smell?"

"No. He just got tired of everything. He said he didn't know what was wrong but

that maybe it would be better for everyone if I just saw the nurse."

Niya swiveled out of her backpack and pulled out a clear zippered case.

"The nurse told me I didn't smell. She sniffed me three times."

Asha took the case and wondered what kind of kit they had in schools to get rid of

smells. Inside there was a small package of pink tissues, two disposable pads, one stick of

deodorant, a tiny box of floss, a bottle of lotion and a booklet of coupons for things they

could buy at Rite-Aid. Asha pulled Niya in close and sniffed again.

"White people have thin noses. That's why the insides of their noses are pink.

The skin is too thin and they go around sniffing things they don't know about, smelling

things that aren't there."

"He said sorry, after."

"Stay away from those boys."

Asha stopped at the end of the block and adjusted her shoe. Today, while

stamping out a fold inside the red canvas shoes, she thought she would stop at the

seafood market and pick up shrimp on their walk home from school. They had had

nothing but beef for the past two weeks; Jamal was always dipping his finger into the pot,

hot for meat; he brought home nothing but great chunks of red meat that Asha cut and

portioned into packages and stacked in the freezer. If Asha didn't cook the beef—maybe

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she cooked the chicken one night instead of the beef—Jamal took a package of beef out

of the freezer on his own, rolled up the sleeves of his hotel uniform and began slicing

garlic, told Asha that cooking was an art and that it took a special hand to coax out the

deep flavours of the meat, that good meals had good meat and that chicken might be fine

for a pink tongue that didn't know the difference between a good meal and a so-so meal,

but that when he sat down to eat, he wanted the thick flavour of meat on his tongue. Asha

would rather Jamal didn't cook—not because he couldn't, his cookery was quality—but

because of the mess he left behind. He would stand behind the kitchen counter and Asha

would sit on the couch and try to ignore it, but the kitchen looked wet and alive; onion

skins and spilled paprika soaked in melting ice chips from half-frozen beef, the meat

thawing in a pool of now-deep orange water. Jamal would lay his hand across the side of

beef, blood seeping out from under the pads of his fingers and he would hack it into bite-

sized chunks, meat cleaver spraying droplets of pink water across the cabinets.

When Jamal cooked, he filled his plate first and smashed the chunks of meat into

the rice with a rub of his thumb. Pulling Niya by the chin with one hand he'd push a ball

of rice into her mouth and tell her to taste what real beef was, sit down, enjoy. If she let

him, he would push a chunk of meat into her mouth too and she would feel the flick of

his thumb against the bottom of her teeth, a dull click inside her mouth and then he would

lean into his plate, indulge. Jamal's meat made their tongues lie heavy and soft, the juices

filled the pores of their mouths, their saliva hot.

Today, Asha wanted to get shrimp. Jamal had stayed home from the hotel again,

had sat in his rocking chair smoking through a pack of cigarettes watching television. The

first time he did this he said he was just taking a short holiday and stayed home for two

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weeks in his undershirt and lungi, tapping a cigarette against the ashtray, the soles of his

feet grey from the flying ash that settled in the carpet. He only stepped out of the

bedroom to use the bathroom or to sit at the table to eat but spent the rest of the time

either stretched out in bed with the newspapers, or in his rocking chair talking loudly to

the television. He stepped out of the house once at the end of the first week. It was a

quarter to twelve and he shuffled out in his sponge sandals and slacks and returned a half-

hour later grunting back into bed. During this two-week holiday Jamal kept dollar bills

under the ashtray and would call Niya into the bedroom, pointing with his chin at the

crumpled bills. He kept a thin spiral notebook under the rocking chair and scanned it

before sending Niya out to rent natoks from the Bengali grocers. He kept track of all the

Bengali dramas they'd seen—the good ones they would rent and re-watch, the serials that

were a disappointment were returned to the grocers with a long handwritten note from

Jamal wrapped around the tape with an elastic band. The grocer had gotten used to the

notes, would patiently read them aloud while Jamal stood and listened, tape in hand.

First, Jamal listed the various bonds of trust the storeowner had broken by renting out a

drama that lacked the basic ingredients of a quality natok. Next, Jamal listed the tenets of

good Bengali entertainment:

(1) good story

(2) good acting

(3) elements of artistic depth

He finished the letter with detailed explanations of how the natok in question violated

each of the tenets and was ultimately, a waste of money. If the natok was truly bad Jamal

waited until the shopkeeper offered a free rental before spinning through the racks for a

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new one. Asha preferred the good natoks, but did not mind the bad ones. Nights spent in

the bedroom watching natoks -Jamal on his rocking chair and Niya leaning against her

on the bed—reminded her of how crowded they were squashed together on the floor of

the back bedroom in Narinda watching nightly natoks with the neighbours. They had the

only television in Narinda and it drew neighbours up the walk in the evenings, Abba

nodding them in. Waving pakhas to cool themselves from the evening heat, they gathered

in the back room where Ma had already settled into a chair by the bed. If Kanta were

visiting she piled onto the bed with her children, pulled the kata up around her waist and

had Mubeen perched by the bedpost rubbing his temples. Laina would slide down to the

floor, her soft arms cool against Asha's shoulders, Raisa and Munir leaning against their

legs. The neighbours would creak onto bethe stools or stretch out onto the floor waving

their pakhas, the room thickening with heat. Abba would sit next to Ma in his chair, his

hands folded across his belly. The black screen would zig zag into picture and for an hour

they would indulge in the lives of the nayka and nayok, the ceiling fan circling warm air.

The air in the bedroom felt crisp in Asha's nostrils, she always imagined Jamal's

smoke singing her nose hairs to stubble, her nostrils sooty caves. He smoked with the

door closed. Jamal didn't drink if Niya was in the room, kept the bottles in rows under

the bed and waited until the natok was over and Niya was in her own room sleeping

before uncapping a bottle and pressing it to his lips. His lips were always wet, like a fish.

She couldn't look at him without imagining his lips shaped into a wobbly O, the skin

purple and pulsing. During the day, the bedroom was his smoky tank and she could shut

him inside, leave him rocking. In the evenings, he would call for them and she would

urge Niya to go, to be patient. He was her father and she could sit with him awhile, watch

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the news until it was time to slide a natok into the VCR. Then they could fizz into the

screen, cry with the characters, walk down familiar streets. In the beginning he hid the

bottles from Asha, thought she didn't notice his sour breath or the bottle caps piled

behind the television. But as he eased further into himself everyday, he didn't mind

whether Niya saw his bottles. On the days she screamed, the rainy days, he waved her

away nodding, half-drunk. Niya still didn't understand that his grunts, his half-opened

eyes and wheezy laughs were not oddities of her father's personality. She didn't yet

understand that he drank himself into a muzzy existence, fumbled through her screams

with a smile because he was drunk.

The fold was just under her toes and she knew if she left the house without

smoothing it out, it would be an irritating nudge the entire fourteen blocks to Niya's

school. She knew she should sit down with the shoes and sew in new soles—she had

already set the scraps of cotton out to do it, but then she noticed the way the rubber sole

had unglued itself from the canvas and thought it would be better to re-glue that and test

the shoe before stitching anything new. So she had sat on the floor of the kitchen with a

tube of Bond-Fast and squeezed the rubber sole back onto the canvas and pressed her foot

against the cupboard to make it seal. She waited and counted out coins from her purse,

thought that if this sealed well and if she just folded a wad of material and wedged it

under her toes she wouldn't feel the crease in the sole and she could take Niya to the

market and get the shrimp after all. Jamal came out of the bedroom and leaned against the

wall, one hand bunching his lungi at his waist. Stamping her shoe against the cupboard

twice, she felt the sole stick and poured the coins back into the coin purse, the clink of

dimes a soft hiss in the satin-lined pouch. If he wanted beef tonight, she would let him

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cook it himself. She would have the shrimp. She could already feel their rubbery flesh in

her mouth, would cook it the way Laina did—browned in a gravy of garlic and onions, a

handful of hot peppers to make her tongue throb. She didn't know how long this holiday

would last, she imagined it stretching out for weeks, Jamal dipping into savings to pay

the rent, his hotel uniform yellowed at the sleeves.

"Are you going to get Niya?"

He was shameless, but he could come out of it anytime. She could still see the

meat of his chest through the thin white t-shirt, could imagine the thick muscle wall under

her fist. She wanted to thump it out of him, make him rise in the mornings and beat on.

He woke Asha with his whispers every night, sometimes sunk into sobs while still asleep.

She held onto his hands then, guided him back to morning and waited for the muscle in

his jaw to unclench.

In the mornings when he didn't wake up, Asha would compose letters to Ma in

her head and write them once she got home. At first it was difficult, but slowly she

remembered how easy and freeing it was to wind fictive worlds into real ones, to

manipulate a rhythm and make others believe:

Dear Ma,

Outside the window there is a large parrot that sits on the branch of a fichus tree, his

rainbow wings draped over the branches like a cape. He reminds me of the Tia birds we

would see at Nana's house, the streaks of blue and green, the long yellow beak. This

parrot circles the neighbourhood each morning, a twig of gardenia in his mouth. I think

he must be a trained parrot, probably belongs to the woman at the end of the street. She

lives alone and is a scientist.

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If you were here Ma, you would love going on walks with me. I've promised Laina

winding paths of flowers when she visits with Lisha later this summer. The girls have

been writing letters to one another and Niya tells me she's promised Lisha days and days

of shopping. I think I'll take them downtown to the textile district. I'd like to sew a few

shalwar kameezfor Lisha. There's a store with yards and yards of silk fabric spun by silk

worms in a factory. If you came, you would want to see it, just reams and reams of silk

from the tails of worms.

It shouldn 't be too long before I have my green card. Jamal has hired a new

lawyer. He is almost certain that this time it will work out.

Asha.

Sometimes the letters made her believe that things were truly getting better and that her

world was full of the bright things she wrote about. She could even walk into the

bedroom and pull on Jamal's arm, tell him that he had to eat breakfast before he left for

work, as if he did it everyday. But then, looking at the gummy pink of his eyes she could

only imagine grabbing him by the back of his head and plunging his face into a vat full of

brine, the cloudy water burning through the layers of his eye balls right down into his

brain.

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CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

The women practiced their Arabic on the balcony above the altar. It overlooked

what used to be the nave of the church but now served as the men's section of the

mosque, pews replaced with thick green carpeting angled to face North East, toward

Mecca. Lisha had her head pressed against the brass banister and every few seconds

looked down at the clipboard on her lap to sketch a shape or take notes. Laina could hear

her whispering to herself, tapping the point of her pencil against the page. They had been

visiting mosques all over the city, Lisha toting her camera and clipboard in an army-

green messenger bag with frayed straps. She kept a sheet of notebook paper listing the

names and numbers of Imams and mosque administrators stuffed in the pocket of her

cargo pants and crossed the names off as she visited each mosque and photographed

everything. Laina liked to go with her, was always glad when Lisha came home with a

new mosque on her list, spread the tattered page across the kitchen table like a map and

penciled in another date and meeting. When she had told them she would be taking her

last semester of high school off to do something called Independent Study, Azad had sat

her down at the dining table with a calculator and a pad of graph paper and asked her to

tell him how she planned to succeed if she dropped Calculus, Finite Mathematics and

Chemistry and spent the next six months at home. Lisha had already sat with Laina the

week before, showed her a binder full of photographs of mosques from around the

world—glossy pictures that looked wet, the skies like swirled blue paint. She had sat in

Lisha's bedroom flipping through the photographs, Lisha swatting her hand when she

pressed her fingers into the pictures wanting to sink right into them, expecting the shine

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to feel cool against her skin. Each photograph had a matching placard filled with Lisha's

tiny handwriting, little round letters that noted the size and design of each mosque, the

types of stone used for the foundations and the domes, the tiles used for fountains or

decoration—she had noted everything she could about these mosques and wanted to do

the same for all the mosques here, in Canada. She had already flipped through the tourist

guide to find the big ones and had typed a long list of every mosque and Islamic

Community Centre she could find listed in city directories or had heard about through

friends.

"Basically, I want to know why mosques here suck so much." Lisha leaned

against the wall picking at the red polish on her toenails.

"You want to know whatT

"Look at that." She leaned forward and pointed to a photograph of the blue and

white mosque in Malaysia. The photograph was crumpled soft, the gloss worn into cracks

that sprouted paper fibres. Laina had bought the photo for a quarter at the Eid Bazaar a

few years ago and had been impressed with the way the minarets, the tips painted blue,

soared up through the greenery and punctured the sky. The dome was cross-hatched in

blue and white and Laina imagined someone climbing up and weaving the pattern in

glossy ribbon knowing how the light would hit the dome and make it shine. "Now, look

at this." Lisha sifted through a mish-mash pile of lined paper and file folders tugging at a

stack of photographs held together with a rubber band. She flicked a photograph across

the bed and shuffled through the others shaking her head. It was a photograph of the

plaza on Collegeway taken on a drizzly night. The A&P sign glowed red like the digits

on an alarm clock and if you looked closely you could make out the bright whirr of

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colourful clothing through the grainy window of the Crescent Community Centre. It must

have been taken during taraweeh prayers in Ramadan—the nightly prayers were always

crowded and the Centre would be so full they would have to prop the door open with the

orange chair and spread out carpets on the sidewalk. The men would spill out of the doors

and bow into the night. It was raining in this picture, but the door was still wedged open

with a block or a box and the rain-soaked breeze rushed in through the lines of people,

billowing up through shalwars, swathing sweaty necks. You could almost see the heat

through the yellow window, could imagine lines of sweat dripping down backs, women

fanning themselves with flyers folded in half. The tea tables were set up just inside the

entryway—the legs wobbly in the picture—and held the tall silver canisters that kept the

tea hot for the ladies until after prayers were over and most people had gone home. Laina

smiled at the thought of drinking hot tea from a Styrofoam cup, her fingertips tingling

from the heat. That tea was always the perfect boil of milk, Tetley tealeaves and sugar.

She preferred honey instead of sugar, but while sitting with the other ladies under the

hum of ceiling fans, the tea from the mosque didn't have that sharp pang of sugar. It was

perfect, a liquid blanket on her tongue. It was too bad the photo was blurry, you couldn't

make out the name of the Centre because of the shake of the camera.

"Why does it have to look so soggy?" Lisha leaned over her shoulder and

inspected the photo, pouting. "If you're gonna make a mosque, make it right." She fell

back into her bed, her hair splaying out across her pillow like streaks of dark sunshine.

Lisha called the Crescent Centre a convenience store mosque, her face would sour when

they would stop in to pray, she didn't think it was enough. Alternating carpet remnants—

burgundy and blue—overlapped throughout the small space, the corners held down with

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strips of duct tape. The walls were painted and re-painted in the same bleak grey and

when people taped flyers up and tore them down again, strips of paint stuck to the tape on

the flyers like little white flags, brown patches raining across the walls like pockmarks.

Lisha always stomped into the prayer area, pointed at the patches and scowled before

clasping her hands across her chest in prayer, her wrists and elbows tense as if she were

holding herself back.

"It's not the right experience," she'd say, leaning back on her hands and pointing

at the walls with her chin. "We're praying, Mom. We're praying to God. This place

makes me feel like stabbing myself in the jugular." Yes, she was right. Everything was

shaky. The bookshelf was tilted, all the books slid to one side of the shelf and trapped old

flyers in corners. And these flyers—they were everywhere. Always printed on bright

yellow or green paper because Mrs. Akhtar owned the print shop and sold yellow and

green for half the price of any other colour (white was too boring to advertise a

fundraising dinner or International Food Fair). These flyers screamed from the walls,

made everything dizzy. Of course Lisha was right, this wasn't a mosque so much as it

was a place where people gathered to do everything. She was always dreaming of

something better—preferred the wide, tiled halls of Islamic Foundation in Scarborough,

or the glittering fountain in the basement of Toronto's Tariq Mosque. She didn't know

that Centers like these were prayer pockets—tiny pieces of real estate leased quickly by

men who suddenly thought it would be nice to do something good for their faith, give

people a little space to pray and meet. Lisha didn't think the fundraising was worth it,

hated going to the dinners held in school gymnasiums, tables covered in plastic

tablecloths she said didn't look professional. But really, should they be spending money

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on fancy tablecloths and catering when the Centre didn't even have enough money to fix

the leak in the ceiling or the plugged toilet in the third stall of the women's bathroom?

Besides, last time the Centre had used gold and silver tablecloths from the Dollar Store

and it all looked very pretty. Some of the ladies had even wrapped mugs in green

cellophane and filled them with artificial orchids for centerpieces. But Lisha didn't like it.

It made things look desperate. Every fundraising dinner was the same: the Imam yelled at

a vacant eyed audience too caught up in their own chatter to listen and by the end of the

night his voice would be hoarse from all the begging. The rich Arabs and Pakistani

businessmen—the ones with the hefty donations that mattered—were always slow to

reach into their wallets, made the evening drag out, thought they would wait for the night

to climax before rising from their chairs, cheques gripped in tight fists, suddenly

overcome with spiritual devotion—here's $10, 000. But by that time, the food was cold

in the chafing dishes and no one wanted any of the hardened pita halves. This was

unfortunate—Lisha would purse her lips—because people came to fundraising dinners

for two reasons: first, for that tense feeling in their chests, the one that told them they

were contributing, they were making a difference, that their fifteen-dollar ticket morphed

them into good people, the kind that God loved and would send squealing to heaven the

second they died. Second, they came for the food.

Lisha always had that look on her face, her bottom lip would tense up and she'd

scowl without even knowing it. Did she know how sour it made her look? She was so

comfortable in her bitterness, so sure of what she thought, of everything she said. She

was so much like Azad. Azad was always telling her that if she didn't stop screwing up

her eyebrows that way, she'd have deep lines in her forehead by the time she was twenty.

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But it was as if she couldn't help it, she was hungry for too much. Fundraising dinners

were not weddings—Lisha wanted a wedding when all anyone was trying to do was

collect money to make things better. She said the money used to buy office and store

space to make dilapidating prayer hells—yes, hells—should be pooled to make bigger,

better mosques, beautiful buildings she could walk into and pray in without worrying

about whether or not the ceiling was made of asbestos. Asbestos was dangerous, Lisha

told her. It disintegrated your lungs and made you breathe out pieces of your own flesh—

hundreds of people had died crouched in bathrooms, coughing up blood. When Lisha

explained things, Laina saw Azad's movements in her face and hands. She had the same

grating lilt in her voice, a rhythm of false confidence that made Laina want to smack the

back of her head and witness that look of surprise, the widened eyes, mouth open, no

sound.

Laina wished Lisha would stop carrying that bag, or at least wash it—the corners

were scuffed so badly there were holes, and Lisha patched the holes with squares of

remnant fabric she'd find in the basement, plunging her needle in and out at random, the

stitches a crazy hatch-work of brightly coloured thread that did not match. Lisha told her

this was the way she liked it, that she wasn't a clone and would never buy one of those

ridiculous tote bags from GAP that all the girls in her high school carried around—they

weren't even thick enough to carry all her books for school and did she know that GAP

used child labour? That their stupid sweatshirts and identical jeans were sewn by children

in giant sweatshops, that these workers were not even paid minimum wage and that they

worked 14 hour days with no bathroom breaks?

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"They sit on buckets mom, buckets. Because God forbid they need to take a five-

minute break to go to the bathroom! No. They have to sit there sewing crap for obese

North Americans and they sit on buckets so they can pee and sew at the same time.'"

Lisha sat with her legs crossed over the messenger bag, her mini tape-recorder pressed to

her ear. She was listening to the interview she had with the mosque's caretaker that

morning, mouthing the words and filling the page with swirls and arrows, sometimes a

word. Every few seconds she would stand and look over the banister, stare at a far wall,

then sit down shaking her head, as if she couldn't believe what she had seen.

The mosque looked different of course, after all these years. It looked fresh—the

walls were re-painted a bright white last summer, they looked as if they could go on

forever, the arches stretching up into the sky. When they were down in the men's section,

the caretaker knocked on the windows with his knuckle and smiled. They were new,

installed just last week by a brother who had been in the window business for thirty years

and promised that this glass was the best kind for a city mosque, double-plated, it was

thick enough to withstand attacks by vandals, but was so crystal clear that on sunny days

the glass sparkled like a rippling lake—these windows were embedded jewels. When the

caretaker had shown Lisha the cans of leftover paint in the storage room and Lisha had

taken a picture, he smiled and offered to show diagrams of the windows he had drawn up

years and years before this brother ever showed up with his glass-cutter and window

donation.

Though he didn't recognize them, he was the same skinny man with a mop and

bucket Laina had met the first day they brought Lisha to register in Sunday classes, Azad

eager to get Lisha started, involved. He always said it with a wave of his hand, involved,

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like it was something he was offering her, a valuable gift. But Laina was the one who had

called the mosque on Thursday, had dialed the number for a third time, her fingers sticky

with prunes. On the back of a recipe for butter cream icing, she'd written the address for

the mosque and noted that their classes for women took place on the second floor, began

at 10:30 AM. On Wednesdays and Saturdays Azad packed Lisha into the backseat of the

car and drove her to a plaza on Dundas, where on the second floor of a video store a

woman named Hafsa taught children Arabic. The woman had large arms with puffy

elbows that ballooned out of the sleeves of her shalwar kameeze, and when she leaned

over Lisha's shoulders to listen to her recite the first four letters, alif, ba, ta, tha, Laina

wondered how this large bustling woman with sweaty temples could teach her daughter

Arabic while she could not. The woman had a way of folding back the page of the worn

reader, made it look definitive, this is the next page you will learn, the fat pads of her

fingers leaving long sweat streaks on the seams of the book that Laina later would try to

wipe off with paper towel at home. Sister Hafsa guided Lisha's tiny finger along rows of

faded Arabic nodding as Lisha pronounced each letter, snapping her fingers if she stalled

or said the wrong sound. At home, Laina flipped through the paperback readers, turning

the pages with the very tips of her fingers, afraid the corners would still be wet from

Sister Hafsa's soppy fingers, shuddering at the thought of the woman's sweat on her own

skin. Sister Hafsa taught twelve other students and limped around the room with a

wooden cane, easing back on a metal folding chair every few minutes to rub her knees.

The other parents dropped their children off downstairs and came back two hours later to

pick them up. They'd honk their horns and Sister Hafsa would tap on the window with

the end of her cane and all the students would look up, eager. She'd smile a greasy smile

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and point the hook of her cane at the student with waiting parents and nodding, would

send little Sarah, or Adham or Abdur Rahman tumbling into shoes and down the steps in

a thunder. Azad told Laina she didn't have to wait in the room for Lisha, that she would

be fine for two hours and that if she didn't learn to let go now, the girl would never learn

to do things on her own. But she wasn't there to hover over Lisha, she was there to see

what it was that Azad saw in this woman, Hafsa. He told her that when he inquired about

an Arabic teacher while buying 26 chicken legs at the halal meat store on Rathburn, the

butcher had told him that his sister had arrived from Pakistan two months ago and was

teaching Arabic from her home above the video store. Sister Hafsa's husband worked at

the back of the butcher shop bagging bloody bits of fat and bone and shelving them in the

freezer until they could unload it into the dumpster on garbage day. He had been the one

to write a phone number and address on a scrap of blood-spotted paper and hand it to

Azad who pinned it to the calendar and told Laina that it would be a good start for Lisha.

He arranged everything. He buckled Lisha in and then snapped her seatbelt open with

soft words, told her she was going to a weekend school and would learn to read Arabic

with other children. Lisha shook her head and said she didn't want to do Arabic, that she

wanted to go to the donut shop and why didn't Azad take her to the donut shop and she

hated Arabic and didn't want to learn. Azad told her that her cousin Niya could already

read—didn't she want to read like Niya? Laina let Azad take Lisha by the hand and walk

her up the stairs, was glad when she wrapped herself around Azad's leg the second Sister

Hafsa opened the door into her living room, her face shiny with sweat. This was the

woman Azad had decided would teach their daughter the language of the Qur'an. She

was an entire head taller than Azad and twice as wide, the back flap of her shalwar

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kameez rose up in a hump and flapped behind her like a fin as she led them into her

teaching room.

"My teaching room is here." She stamped her cane on the floor. The living room

had been emptied of all furniture except a long wooden bench and the metal folding

chair. Someone had spread white sheets over the floor and placed small potted plants in

the corners. Children squatted in front of the bench and pushed their fingers along the

pages of their books, murmuring verses.

"Look at all those kids reading Lisha, looks like fun!" Azad unhooked Lisha's

fingers from the backs of his knees and turned her round to face Sister Hafsa. She leaned

down and smiled, pushed her thumb into Lisha's cheek.

"Come, come. Don't be scared. You be happy!"

Azad nodded and slid his hands into his pockets.

"This reminds me of back home—na? The hujjur would pace up and down

between rows and rows of boys and we'd scream our verses till our throats were dry."

Lisha crouched down on the floor and curled into a ball, pushing her head between her

knees. She clasped her hands over her head and sobbed. "She's sensitive, very

emotional." Azad swung his hands at his sides then clapped them together, tilting his

head toward the door. "She'll be fine."

When Sister Hafsa creaked into the chair and nodded, tapping her cane against the

side of her chair, Laina shook her head and pulled Lisha to her feet. She would stay with

Lisha and find out just how much this woman could do.

At home Laina stood outside the bathroom door and inspected the readers while

Lisha sat on the toilet swinging her legs. She had been going to Sister Hafsa's classes for

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three weeks and since then Lisha had become constipated, sitting on the toilet for an hour

at a time, only to hop off shrugging her shoulders. Laina cut out bananas and crackers

from Lisha's diet and mashed prunes with ice cream to loosen up her insides and make

everything run smooth again. She still sat in with Lisha during her Arabic lessons and

watched Sister Hafsa limp her way up and down the length of the living room, eyes half

closed. Standing outside the bathroom door, Laina mouthed the sounds of the letters and

wondered why Ma and Abba hadn't insisted that she and Asha learn their Arabic. Before

she had left Bangladesh, Abba had told her to take the little blue Qur'an with her—it

would be a good thing to have in a new country. She had brushed the dust off the spine

and left it on the shelf in the drawing room, told Abba that it was the copy that Raisa and

Munir had learned to read from and he and Ma would want to have it, for the memories at

least. Laying the book on the humidifier, she decided she would learn too. She sat on the

edge of the tub and tore a prune in half, pushed the mashed bit into Lisha's mouth and

pressed the mug of warm milk to her lips. A bead of milk dripped from the top of Lisha's

lip and pooled in the corner of her mouth. Lisha swallowed in breathless gulps and

whimpered, kicking her legs.

"Try for a little longer. The milk will warm your belly and make it rumble."

When the hujjur would come to read through verses with Raisa, he would sit with

her in the drawing room dipping toast biscuits into his tea. He would close his eyes and

tap his ruler against the wooden armrest, while Raisa rocked back and forth, tumbling

through sounds she said swelled up her tongue. When she got stuck, they would hear the

slap of the ruler against his hand and Raisa would apologize, tell him she would practice

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if she had time, but her voice lessons took up most of her day and she couldn't sacrifice

them, not for anything. The hujjur would shake his head, slowly, eyes still closed. He

would take another sip of tea before tapping his ruler against the armrest, nodding as if

falling asleep, but actually urging Raisa to begin again. His name was Taufiq and he

taught all the children in the neighbourhood their Arabic, promised parents that in two

short years their children would start and finish the entire Qur'an, zip through the

religious portion of their upbringing so quickly, the parents would blink and it would be

over. Taufiq was a widower at just thirty-two and Asha whispered that his wife had spent

forty-two weeks in bed and only died after Taufiq promised he would never wed another

woman again, that he would seek her in heaven and no one else. He hadn't wanted to

make this promise, he was a man after all, but he made it and sought refuge in fasting

because it deadened the loins.

Ma had long, black hair that reached her waist and she took great care in oiling it

every afternoon after her bath. She sat on the verandah and combed it out with her

fingers, flipping the locks from one shoulder to the other, the sun warming the top of her

head. The bottle of coconut oil sat in the heat and she massaged handfuls into her hair

starting at the scalp, working her way down the length of it, rotating her hands palm to

palm in slow, even circles.

It was Asha who noticed the slow awakening in Taufiq. There was a window in

the drawing room that looked out onto the verandah. If you sat anywhere else in the

room, you would only see the beam that held up the roof of the verandah, and maybe the

arm of a chair. If you sat at the very far edge of the couch, and leaned over the arm, you

could see the chair and whoever was sitting in it, you could even make out the table,

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guess what kind of biscuit the person might be having. Asha asked Ma if she wanted to

oil her hair inside the bedroom—they could turn on the ceiling fan and she could lie

across the bed and nap. It would be like when they were children and Ma would lean

across the bed turning their hair, fanning it dry. She would turn Ma's hair for her, would

make sure it dried while she slept. But Ma liked to take her tea on the verandah, liked to

sit in the sun and look out at the garden.

Asha wanted to nail a rope above the window and hang curtains, but didn't. Every

third Friday, before walking to Jummah prayers at the mosque, Abba would pace the

verandah patting his shirt-front pocket. In the last six months, the building next door had

turned into a boarding house, men in sweat-soaked undershirts shuffled in and out of the

flats, hands gripped round the necks of liquor bottles, eyes always melting through

windows. Ma drew the curtains the moment night bled into the sky and tried to convince

Laina not to spend as much time outside in the garden, especially in the evenings when

the building would unhinge itself and convulse with stony-eyed men and shrieking

women, wet hair loose round their shoulders, sharis swept up in single pleats, fleshy

backs exposed. While Raisa read through her Arabic in the drawing room with Taufiq,

Asha and Laina sat in the bedroom watching shadows rise and dive behind half drawn

curtains in the flat next door. They had heard about Natasha from the Hamids, had even

seen her steal through the crack in the wall to jump the fence into the yard next door. The

Hamids had grown tired of watching where she went, had told her mother that they would

no longer employ her in their home if she was always slipping out to smile at bad boys

with bad intentions. How could she work if her head was wrapped up in the lopsided

smiles of drunken men?

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About ten minutes before jummah a man would step up onto the verandah and ask

for a charitable donation for a good cause, an organization that Rahmat, the father of five

healthy children (four daughters!) would kindly support, no hesitation. Abba, slipping out

a small white envelope from his shirt pocket would shake hands with the man, pull him in

by the wrist, then the elbow. They smiled and smiled, almost cheek to cheek in close

embrace. The man left with the envelope wadded in his fist like a wet kerchief, the

money inside thick enough to last another month. He would come back on the third

Friday of the following month, would have Abba pacing with just a flick of his eyes

toward the boarding house and a friendly inquiry into the health and well-being of his

daughters, now all grown up.

Abba sat next to Ma and pressed his face into his hands, told her that this

neighbourhood was sinking into rotten soil. He was glad Asha was married and that

Laina would soon be settled. He didn't know how much longer he could stay in Narinda,

donating to gundas, neighbourhood thugs with whom he kept on good terms so their

home would not be gutted at night, their chickens stolen or their pigeons killed. When

Aysha Auntie stopped by, wringing her hands, he told her he didn't know where Natasha

had gone, but that they would watch for her and send her back if they saw her.

"Oh, I don't want her back." Aysha Auntie sighed. "She's much too difficult to

handle. I just want to give her a good slap across the face for being such a foolish girl."

She walked hollow-eyed, gauzy shari trailing, they imagined, hands always closed into

fists.

It was only a few minutes before sunrise the night Laina sat on the rooftop, her

hand rising and falling with Asha's chest. Asha's hair splayed out over her lap and Laina

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counted out the rhythm of her breaths, whispering the numbers aloud. When they heard

the clang of the metal gate open and close they both rose to look out over the ledge.

Natasha straddled the fence, her petticoat bunched up around her waist. Barefoot and

wobbly, she swung herself sideways over the fence and landed on Abba's okra plant,

crushing the yellow bell-shaped flower under her knees. One end of her shari was still

tucked into the back of her petticoat, the rest of it was rolled up under her arm. She

hugged the bundle to her chest and coughed, knees sinking into the soil. The okra plant

drifted in the early morning breeze, leaves quivering. She pressed the leaves between her

fingers for a few seconds then gripped the stem in her fist, rising. She pulled the plant up

and wailed when she saw the roots dangling.

Ma stayed on the verandah even once the weather chilled. The day had drawn

itself inward and night stretched long into the horizon, the air sharp enough to dry out

bare skin. The bottle of coconut oil warmed next to the hurricane lamp and Ma watched

Abba tie new knots into the joints of the barricade, hammering loose posts into the rain-

heavy soil. Laina stood in the doorway wiping the leaves of the lily plant with a wet

cloth, each swipe revealing a thick, heavy shine. Asha had moved the plant across the

length of the verandah and placed it in front of the window, muttered curses under her

breath when Taufiq settled into his spot on the couch, Raisa already hunched over her

verses. But Laina wanted to push the plant back, wanted there to be a clear view from the

drawing room to where Ma sat, plaiting her hair, the braid curving over her shoulder like

a rippled bone. She knew Abba would come up the steps of the verandah and pour a coin-

drop of oil into his palms. He would press his hands to Ma's head and keep them there,

warming her scalp.

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Azad stood holding Lisha's hand, explaining to the caretaker that he wanted to

register his daughter and if he knew whether four was too young for the Arabic classes

the mosque offered. Laina remembered how odd it looked for a man so well dressed to be

mopping the floors, his shoes squishing in pools of sudsy water. Creases were ironed into

his navy slacks and the silver buttons on his bright white office shirt matched his oval

cufflinks. The caretaker had smiled and reached into his pocket pulling out a handful of

lollipops.

"Show me your hands!" Lisha threw up her hands her eyes wide and he cupped

the lollipops into her palm, nodding to Azad. "The classrooms are all in the basement

and the juniors are in Room IB. You can fill out the registration papers in the office and

then drop her off in the classroom. My name is Adnan." He pointed to his chest and

pushed his mop down the hall, the tinted blue water leaving a wet trail over the greyed

out tile.

Laina had read out the name and address of the mosque to Azad as he drove along

the QEW, looking for the right exit. When they pulled up in front of the church she

thought Azad had made a mistake. The building looked as if it had been cut straight from

the earth, the red brick like the clay on the banks of the Padma River, the white stone

detailing stark. The building seemed to soar up into the sky and Laina, reading the sign

posted on the wall beside the door, was surprised: Jami Mosque.

The Arabic classes were lead by Alya, a gravelly-voiced Pakistani woman who

had four children of her own. Her children sat in a line by the bookshelves and pushed

their small fingers along the pages of their Qur'ans, reciting verses in a quick cadence,

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their words fluid. Azad had dropped Lisha off into a classroom overflowing with

children, pushing Laina away with a shake of his head.

"You go to your class. She has to learn."

Azad wanted Lisha to learn to be alone. He wanted her to walk solitary through life, like

him. He did not have to worry, it was in her blood. Lisha liked to be alone. Even at three

or four, she would mimic the drawings from her books weaving her small hands through

her curls, "let down, let down, let down your golden hair" spinning in slow circles until

she grew dizzy and had to lie down, face pressed into the carpet. She fell asleep on the

floor every night this way, forefinger in her mouth, knees curled to her chest. Azad would

pull her finger out and carry her to bed, snapping together the loose buttons on her

sleeper before sliding her under the blanket. When Azad would wake Lisha at sunrise to

go the bathroom, Lisha's bottom would already be wet, the sleeper scrunched up over her

bottom, buttons loose. So every morning after praying Fajr, Laina would tear the sheets

from Lisha's bed and plunge them into a bucket of water and powdered soap, smacking

the wads of material against the bottom of the tub, scrubbing it all clean, elbows taut.

This became a routine, Lisha hopping barefoot in a corner of the bathroom, Laina

smacking sheets against the ceramic. Even at four, Lisha wore the kind of pajamas that

had feet attached, fuzzy sleepers that made her look small and soft, like a plush toy.

When Laina went to Zellers and bought her a pair of yellow pajama pants and a pink t-

shirt, thinking something new would coax Lisha out of the sleeper, Lisha pulled the ends

of the pants over her feet and waddled like a wooden doll through the house, pants tented

over her toes. At first Laina thought it was a simple matter of comfort, the floors were too

hard for Lisha's feet, the tiles too cold, the carpet too scratchy—but even on hot days

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with the sprinkler running, when the children from the complex would slide through the

mud barefoot, hair splotched like wet paint against their foreheads, Lisha would sit on the

stoop in her sandals, knees to her chest, hands over her feet.

When they had moved here, Laina felt the house was too big for such a small child, too

many stairs and doors. How easy it would be for Lisha, just three, to cram herself into a

corner, get stuck in her room with the door closed. But Lisha was tall for her age, had

long swooping thigh bones that made her stand tall and look older than she was, tall

enough to reach the knob on the door and open it herself.

Laina thought of how good it would be for Abba and Ma to see something like

this, a mosque built inside a church. They had never been to the mosque in Calgary, Azad

had said it was brimming with Bengalis on Jummah, Friday prayers turning into gossip

sessions where people masked themselves in religion, parading in front of admiring eyes.

Laina had only wanted to see what a bideshi mosque looked like—did it have the domes,

the minarets? She wondered how far Azad could push himself away. Where would he be

after this much avoidance, so much derision? Laina was satisfied that Jami Mosque was

the only mosque in the city. Everyone poured into its belly, a potluck of every kind of

Muslim—not enough Bengalis to drive Azad away.

When Laina repeated the sound of each letter, she felt the roughness of her tongue

against the back of her teeth, the sounds foreign. Sister Hafsa was wrong, these sounds

were not like urdu, blunt like the heel of your hand against a drum. Every letter had its

own curve, or an edge—each sound precise. Alya's voice had a ragged edge, it cut

through the thickness of Laina's tongue, whittled it into a point.

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"People want to rush. They thrash through these first sounds and then waddle

their way through verses, everything wrong. Each letter has its own thickness—you rush

and pronounce it too light, maybe flick your tongue against the tip of your teeth instead

of pressing it flat against the top of your mouth and it's done—the entire meaning is

changed."

At home, Laina pressed the tip of a pencil into the second page of the Arabic

reader and mouthed the shape of each sound. Lisha slid across the carpet like a snail, and

hung off the edge of the couch, her legs in a trail behind her.

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~<>~

When the dog laid his head down on the floor, tongue hissing in the heat Ma yelled for Moni to bring the water dish. Up on the shelf above the stove they kept the dog's dinner; marrow and crunchy bits of flesh, rice. Ma made sure the dog got his meal, set it down on

the floor her mouth slouching. She knew how hungry he was when he pressed his nose into the mash, growling low. She stood in the doorway of the kitchen gripping her thigh, told Moni that the dog should always get his meal. When the dog sat by her chair on the verandah and whimpered when she sighed, eyes cocked, Ma told them that the dog could

feel the flicker and throb of her heart, he understood.

They said they couldn't find Rahmat's bones when they cracked through the earth into his grave. Did bones last longer than twenty years? They thought they would fine long,

white bones in the dust, the tip of the shovel clanging musically. They found dust. Some of them whispered that people stole body parts, dug their hands into fresh graves and

pulled out kidneys for loved ones who lay sick in bed.

They buried her in his grave because she wanted to be with him. When her grandchildren asked her what she wanted most, she always said she wanted him.

<>~

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CHAPTER 20

Asha carries on. Her arm curves in quick little arcs as she scoops dog shit from

daycare concrete. The Manager, Emerald, is inside setting the kids down for another nap

and will scan the yard from the balcony before the parents arrive for pick up at 5:30.

Squatting in the afternoon heat, Asha does not mind the trickle of sweat down the back of

her neck. The heat in Los Angeles has stretched into its boiling plateau, and the hairs at

the nape of Asha's neck curl into the folds of her skin like strands of ink. Asha lets

herself squat and scoop, girds herself to the task. She will not let her heels sink to the

pavement where she can feel dust and small stones embed themselves. She is away from

this, views it as another task, like mopping up vomit, or cleaning the wads of hair from

the bathtub drain. The drudgeries of everyday life are her due. She swallows the entire

task, her tongue lead against the roof of her mouth. She avoids her daughter's eyes at the

end of the day, focuses on the thin layer of dust on the dashboard, tells her daughter it's

important to keep things clean. Niya is always angry, swatting her keys at her mother,

throwing her textbooks into the back seat, swearing in Bengali. Why do you let her do this

to you ? Why don't you stand up for yourself? You 're a teacher, not a dog's ass wipe!

Asha folds her hands over her belly, watches her daughter's knee pump up and down, the

muscles in her thighs stiffening, then relaxing at each stop light. At home, the lights in

the apartment will be blaring, everything depleted under the static rush of fluorescence.

Niya will be erratic, slamming the light switches with her fist, flinging open bathroom

doors for evidence. The air is full of him, he has spent the week at home, is still breathing

behind the bedroom door. The pots are heavy things Asha hauls up onto the stovetop, the

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handles thick and solid in her hands. She feels their weight cement her to the linoleum

floor, she is a rock today, her daughter a cyclone. Niya is pounding the wall with her

palm, pointing at the toilet. Ma, he can't wipe it? He can't wipe it? Niya is at the

bedroom door, pushing her way in with a shoulder. On another day, Asha would pound

the pots onto the stove, spit out burning words. Today she chops potatoes, the movements

of her knife measured and controlled. She watches Niya drag a shadow out the door and

to the bathroom. He is dismissive and yielding, wants his daughter to stop screaming. He

kneels, wipes the toilet seat clean with his sleeve. He hangs onto the doorknob as Niya

throws a soap dish at him, a bottle of cologne. She is still sobbing, flinging Q-tips and

miniature bottles of shampoo as he shuffles back to the bedroom. A toothbrush hits him

on the back of his head and he turns laughing, supported by the doorframe. Why so

angry? Anger turns your hair white! Niya has unraveled, is pricking cotton swabs from

the carpet, and Asha knows that Niya will look up at her in a moment, in pity or distaste.

Asha knows her daughter reads her, or tries to. If Niya saw her at the daycare on the last

Friday of the month, she would see Asha folding up the bills Emerald hands her, watch

her slip them into her small Snoopy purse. Her mouth would be set in a straight line, the

corners curving up just a little. Niya would see her look of, 'here it is, here is my money,

and here it is going inside my purse.' Tonight, after everything settles, Asha knows Niya

will slip out of a fogged up bathroom wrapped in a warm towel and pause to watch her

squatting low on her haunches bobbing back and forth across the tiny kitchen square,

pink dustpan in hand. Lips pursed, the pink of her tongue peeking out from the corner of

her mouth—it's her sweeping-everything-into-the-dustpan look. When Asha glares at her

husband, she knows her eyes are black discs; void and simmering. He unbuttons his

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collar smiling at Niya, now you have to clean that all up! Look where your temper takes

you! Down, down, down. His mouth is full of spit, he is almost gargling the words. Years

ago, in the weeks after they first arrived in Los Angeles, Asha would tilt her head and

look at her husband in almost the same way. He would be in the same place, just outside

the bedroom door, unbuttoning his collar calling out to Niya in that rasping voice. Niya,

still shy after being apart for so long, would sidle up to him, a puzzle piece or paintbrush

in hand. When she looked at Asha then, she would see her mother behind the kitchen

counter tossing chunks of beef and garlic into a stewing pot, her eyes dark but flickering,

light switches going on and off behind them. Then, it was a gaze. It said, 'oh look he is

home there are things to discuss, oh what's he saying now, he's saying things that I

understand and connect with.' Today, Niya knows she missed something, she thinks she

sees it now—the slant of her mother's eyes are sharp like a knife. The look really says, T

wish you would shut up, shut up, stop screaming, shut up, you man, you man.' The look

must have been soft once, her upturned face seeing something in that strong jaw, her eyes

watching his words wind promises around her neck.

Asha scoops empty beer bottles into plastic bags after Niya has gone to bed and

Jamal has sunk into sleep. Piling the bags into cardboard boxes by the door, she tries to

focus on the clink of the bottles and the crackle of the plastic. The uneven rhythm of

Jamal's breathing is a steady background beat. Asha works against it. She ignores the

trickle of liquid on her fingers and breathes through her mouth. She can't let the sour

smell of beer curdle into her, can't let any of this seep inside. She does this every night

and while she slides bottles into a Ralph's bag, she is always surprised at how familiar

the stench is by the end of the night, just like anything else. This makes the task easier,

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more natural. She can breathe again, pile Jamal's dirty slacks and undershirts into the

laundry basket, begin dusting. Ashtrays are emptied into the garbage pail, garbage bags

tied up, the empty can re-lined with another grocery bag. She can haul the carpet cleaner

into the bedroom and run it over the rumpled rugs, tossing magazines and cigarette butts

into the bulging garbage bags. She thinks of Raisa pumping the harmonium, her husband

nodding by her side—how many times did Raisa do this, clean the grime of a man? And

Laina? How happy she should be with a husband who leaves the house each morning and

comes back each evening, paycheck in hand.

Asha stays away from Jamal without knowing it, skirts around the bed, dusts the

blinds with her back to him. In the end, the room is slick and clean, save the bed with

Jamal, a dark curl twisted in sheets. Asha wants to smooth the sheets beneath him, pull

them tight, creaseless, like a sheet of ice. She thinks she can pull the comforter over him,

pull it right up to his chin like a tomb of soft snow. When she leans across the bed over

Jamal, she stops. His lips are full and wet, the corners crusted with stubble and spit. She

can't make herself stroke his jaw, or see his face in the bloated rolls of dark, patchy skin.

She pulls away. Before shutting the door she thinks they should have pulled her from the

sky and nailed her to the ground when they had the chance.

*

This Tim Hortons, on the corner of Eglinton was Laina's favourite. It was well-lit,

more spacious than the new one on Collegeway where the seats smelled like gasoline.

She liked sitting here, watching her daughter take things in. Everything moved more

slowly for Lisha, it seemed. Lisha could stare at a couple at a table behind them,

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completely entranced, and take five minutes removing her mittens and tucking them into

her coat. She should button those pockets, the mittens could fall out just shoved in like

that. It wouldn't be good to say this now, Lisha was in a mood, her jaw muscles tight.

Laina would let Lisha simmer for a while, feed her bits of her day. Laina rubbed her

knuckles in slow circles, kneading the warmth into her arthritic joints. She knew that

daughters could not help looking at their mothers as if they were warnings. She could

imagine Lisha looking at her fingers and seeing sausages cooked hard and brown. Lisha

rubbed Laina's fingers at night, licked the pads of her fingers in lotion and swept them

lightly over the knuckles, blowing on the arthritic joints, telling her she worked too hard,

that cutting corners wasn't a sin. Laina liked hearing this and always agreed.

It was graduation day and Azad had ordered flowers. He paced the front hall in

his suit and tie while Laina stood at the stove spooning chicken korma into a bowl. It had

turned out well, the korma. She had asked Azad to bring home 2% yogurt instead of the

non-fat kind he usually bought, wanted to make sure the jhol was thick and creamy the

way Lisha liked. She had already called Azad to the table twice, but he couldn't pull

himself from the door, was sure the flower-man would be here any second. The night

before, he had sat at the computer for two hours, clicking his way through the Internet,

trying to figure out how to order a bouquet. When she told him they could pick up a

bouquet from Loblaws on their way to the ceremony, he had shook his head and waved

her out the bedroom door. Loblaws bouquets were fine for dawats, but this was Lisha's

graduation, he wanted something nice. What was nice? He said it with his hands,

pressing his forefinger to his thumb as if saying "A-okay." She wanted to argue, tell him

that she walked through the flower section at Loblaws every week breathing in the grand

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perfume of hundreds of flowers, fresh and alive; they were beautiful and affordable and

that would be enough. But Azad waved at her again, told her, no, no, graduation bouquets

were different, he wanted one of those. He pointed at a picture of a girl in a blue

graduate's gown holding a large bouquet of roses. He would have found the same

bouquet for less at Loblaws, or at Mississauga Greenhouses for $12.99 instead of $54.60

plus shipping, handling and delivery. It was silly spending this much money. Of course

she wanted Lisha to be surprised and happy. And yes, it was a special occasion, but was

there a problem with spending less?

But Azad was excited and it would be better to let him do as he pleased rather

than have him slump into a bad mood. She already had a spat with Lisha the day before

and when Lisha left for the University to pick up her gown early this morning, she had

whispered her salam under her breath and shut the door without looking back. The knob

had clicked softly as if sighing and Laina thought she would cook korma for lunch, have

it ready for when they returned from the graduation. It was a silly fight, one she hadn't

expected.

Yesterday, Azad came home with a cardboard box full of cream cheese. He set

the box on the floor with a smile and threw the receipt on the kitchen table with a

flourish, as if he'd just accomplished something truly exceptional.

"On sale! Can you believe it? A dollar ninety-nine each. Now you won't need

cream cheese for at least ten years."

The box was piled with bricks of cream cheese, almost overflowing. She had

asked Azad to bring home a bag of onions, she was down to the last one and it was rotten,

the bulb soft. She needed the onions, had called twice to make sure he would bring them.

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He had muttered that the bags were expensive and that they should wait until there was a

sale at No Frills. Still, she pressed him to bring a bag, there was little she could cook

without browning onions first at the bottom of the pan. A bag of onions cost $4.99 and if

he couldn't spare that for a bag of onions, she knew he would be the first to complain

about the food. What made her want to fling her spoon across the kitchen was the fact

that he never complained directly, he would eat what was set before him with a shrug, as

if he were doing her a favour. Lisha called him a food-martyr and left the table with a

slam of her fork whenever he said he didn't care what he ate, that he was a simple man.

And now, he'd brought home a box full of cream cheese. There must have been at least

twenty bricks and at a dollar ninety-nine per brick it was almost forty dollars. And still,

no onions. She'd even warmed the oil in the pan thinking she could slice and toss the

slivers in as soon as he got home. When she slammed the pot against the element, the

metal coils clanging Azad snapped the closet door shut, the smile draining from his face.

She scraped the wooden spoon through the pool of oil and stamped her foot at him.

"I asked for onions! Who needs a boxful of cream cheese? Why would you do

that? Not an onion in the house and you bring home a box of cream cheese!"

"What. You don't want it?"

"I need onions!"

When he left, receipt and box of cream cheese in hand, the door slammed behind

him and Lisha came shuffling down the steps shaking her head.

"Mum, why do you have to always make a big deal out of everything?" She said

it jokingly, wrapping her arms around Laina's shoulders and kissing the back of her neck.

"I need cream cheese to make cheese cakes anyway."

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"I keep my mouth shut all the time, Lisha. That man is always counting coins and

when I ask him to bring a bag of onions he has to wait for a sale."

"Aw, he was bringing the cream cheese for you—you always need it for

custards—he just saw the sale and thought it would be brilliant, a box full of cream

cheese."

But she wasn't in the mood for Lisha's bright side. She shook off Lisha's arms

and flicked off the stove. She had kept her mouth shut far too often and here was Lisha

trying to make her understand.

*

The engine will cough its way into heat, it isn't used to the cold. It came too

quickly, swept into California a month early and woke everyone with the drumming of

rain on windows still warm from yesterday's sun. Niya is sitting on the floor of the

parking garage, shaking her head at Asha. The day is cracking through the ironed bars of

the garage door, the light like sputtered charcoal. She listens to the clanking of the engine

and wraps her arms around her belly to hold down a scream. Asha looks down at Niya

and knows she won't stay another second. Niya packed one bag a day and set it by the

door so that each night the trail of luggage grew and Asha would know that she meant it.

She copied out the phone numbers on a piece of paper, circled Lisha's number in red pen.

Niya had already phoned Lisha up and told her that this is it, cried into the receiver for an

hour, her voice low. Laina's voice is full of concern on the phone, but Asha hangs up,

doesn't want to hear everything unravel, it's best to keep it inside, compact.

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Asha is pacing, arms crossed over the bib of her housecoat, eyes sparking in the

dark. Niya watches, wants to spin that ramshackle braid into something tight she can

grasp.

"I'm not leaving you, Ma."

"You think you know what you're doing Niya, but I've been here longer than

you." Asha stamps the cement. "You go out into this rain yanking your luggage up and

down the stairs of that apartment and you'll get pneumonia. Who's going to sit by you

then?"

"Ma, I can't stay here for one more day. Not one more." Niya sobs, grabbing at

her hair.

"One more day is not the end of the world."

"One more day is just like forever, Ma!" Niya slams her fist against the concrete

post and shakes her head. "I'm not staying. I'm not waiting around for nothing to

happen."

"You need to stick your hot head out into that rain and think things through with a

cool mind. You always jump into things your brain boiling! You should wait."

"For what? You've been waiting all your life. What are you waiting for? Do you

think he's going to wake up today? Do you think he's going to come down in a clean pair

of pants and a shirt and go out into the world like everybody else? Do you think he's

going to do that? Is that what you're waiting for?" Niya coughed, struggled for breath.

"What are you doing, Ma? Just come with me."

Asha looks at her daughter crying on the ground and feels herself crumple inside.

Go. She can't knead her own patience into Niya, it would harden the girl's heart, make

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her immovable. If she could pick Jamal up and put him into one of those facilities, she

would. People turned out of those everyday, cured. She could hold her hand over his

mouth and leave it there, count the seconds until he coughs into consciousness, she would

urge him awake. She could put things in his food that would make him sleep deep, place

her hand under his nose and feel for the soft slow release, free herself. She could do all

this but she could not leave him. He would reach for her hand at night and she would not

be there—what if it was to reach for help, to get up, to start again? She would not be

there and when she pictured him slowly melting into the carpet, alone, she thought no—

she would stay. She had chosen him; she had chosen this.

She wants Niya to run. She'll let her go.

*

Laina is elbow deep in soil, the backyard teeming with seedlings. She repeats the verses

from Surah Ya-Sin outloud, watches Azad pluck a male kodu flower and kiss it to the

face of a female, the stem bulging with the nub of a Sicilian zuchinni.

And a sign for them is the dead land.

We give it life, and We bring forth from it grains

so that they may eat.

Azad rubs the pollen in with his thumb and grazes his fingers over the stems of other

blooms, feeling for the swell at the base of the flower.

And We have produced in it gardens of date palms and grapes

And We caused springs of water to gush forth in it

So that they may eat of its fruits.

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He finds another pregnant bloom and plucks a male, burrows its face into the centre of

the flower, flecks of pollen dusting the white petals.

It was not their hands that made this;

Will they then, not give thanks?

Azad brushes the pollen from his fingers and crouches next to Laina. He tosses the flower

into the apron of Laina's kameez, rises laughing.

*

Jamal is awake today and says he will pick up the mail. When he returns from the

mail slots on the first floor he hands Asha a large brown envelope.

"I know what it is. I got one just like it when my application was approved." He

sits down at the table and nods, clasps his hands behind his head.

Asha picks up the phone and telephones Laina. She slips the documents out of the

envelope and wonders why the green card is not actually green.

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CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

The sky blushed pink as the plane curved toward Dhaka, the sun a flickering red

disc on the horizon. It was a strange sun; a red eye against smoky cloud it followed the

plane as it dove deep into Dhaka's skyline, the nose already snuffed with the city's soot.

Dhaka was washed in grey, everything dripping. The coconut and date palms tossed their

heads in the wind beckoning, and Asha leaned close and looked out, couldn't remember

the country heaving buildings this way, every space choked with rising flats. As the city

tilted toward her, Asha imagined thousands of the whitewashed buildings slanting right

off the crust of the country, spilling into the Bay and leaving only an expanse of lush

green. Closer and closer, the city rose and she thought she could trace her way through

the thatched streets with her finger, find her way from the courtyards of Dhaka University

to the patchy red roof of the rickshaw hut, up the dusted roads all the way to Narinda, the

paths thin and spindly. Closer, and the house with a blue roof looked like their own, the

white squares hanging from the clothesline were their petticoats, hems snapping at the

air, the blouses breathing. Deeper, and the trees lined her window like tiny soldiers and

then there was green, muddy green, and the plane sunk into the city, the nose driving into

the acrid heat. Asha pressed her finger over the rising sun, a mottled thumbprint glowing.

She had dreamt of the house in Narinda many times, always waking in a cloud,

hands twisted round her ponytail. She slept in Niya's bed with the door half-open and

would lull herself back to sleep by counting the rhythm of Jamal's snore through the

door. Every time she woke there was a space of four seconds where she heard nothing,

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and then she would sink back into her pillow, Jamal's rumble like the soft ticking of

Niya's wall clock. This was why when Munir called early one morning to say the house

was no longer worth keeping, it took her four seconds to untangle herself and listen. It

was all right renting it out while Ma was still alive, it brought a steady income and kept a

piece of Abba for her to think back on, but now it was time to sell. It was time to carve

something permanent into the earth, he was tired of clinging to dismantled memories. He

spoke for twenty minutes, described his plans for a new house in Bonani, a

neighbourhood with wide streets so clean, some had said it was like living in Singapore,

everything bright and new. When she was silent, he faltered and she imagined him

standing with the phone cord wrapped around his wrist, unsure. But he went on. Ma had

left the house to the five of them knowing that it would have to be sold. She didn't want

them to go on living life with a dilapidating house shadowing their movements, it would

only weigh them down. It made sense to sell it now, before the neighbourhood got any

worse and there were no buyers at all. It was the only thing left to do.

When she called Laina to discuss things her voice was heavy, the line weighed

with silence. They sighed often, agreed. Asha imagined Ma taking a rickshaw to the

lawyer's office, settling herself in a chair across from a man in spectacles, counting her

children off on her fingers like chores she had to complete. If she knew they were going

to sell the house after her death, what must her hands have looked like spread across the

papers on the desk, her name curling in ink at the bottom? Did she sit there and wonder

when her fingers, once long and tapered like petals, grew so stiff and swollen at the

knuckles, the nails so deeply grooved? With the slippery legal paper under her palm did

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she grieve at the thickness of her skin, how often she had to crouch at the pump behind

the house scrubbing their school uniforms or bend over the blade of a boti slicing squash

in the soot of the kitchen? How much smoother and softer would her hands have been if

they never had to wring washing water out of sharis and stretch them out along the

clothing line, or if they never had to cramp over the basket in her lap, picking pebbles out

of raw kernels of rice? But if she knew they would sell the house after her death, she

must also have looked at her hands and imagined them curved round a tea-cup, Abba

dipping toast biscuits in his tea out on the verandah. She must have felt the cool

dampness of their hair sliding between her fingers as she turned the strands in the sun,

drying them out across pillows when the three of them were small enough to sleep in a

row across her bed, Raisa just a bulge in her belly. If she knew they would sell the house

and it grieved her, she would have sat back in the chair and folded her hands over her

knees, wishing they all could have kept things going, drove their fingers through the

strings of jute and held on.

If the house in Narinda had to be sold, Asha and Laina wanted to see it before it

went. They booked a night flight, Lisha telling them it would be the best thing to do. Not

for practical reasons of course, but because arriving at night meant they could look out

the window of the plane and see the lights of Dhaka city burning like open sores.

"That's what it's like Mum. The plane dips down and at first it's just a spot of

light, like a firecracker. But as you get closer it's like the city's broiling in patches of

carnival lights. When we were flying into LA and you were sleeping it was like someone

had ripped scabs off the surface of the earth and left pulsing wounds. Beautiful." And

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with a click, she had booked Laina and Asha a connecting flight that would take off at 7

PM from Dubai and land in Dhaka just past midnight. She and Niya had booked separate

tickets, were planning to stop in London and stay for a week, maybe two, before joining

them in Dhaka, fresh from world travels.

"Maybe we'll take the ferry to Ireland—or we could take the Eurostar to Paris, if

you want to see Paris. Maybe Vienna—or do you want to go to Germany?" They sat knee

to knee on the bed, travel brochures splaying out from under them like sprouting hair.

Their calves looked meaty under the folds of their dresses and Laina imagined them

stretching from land mass to land mass, their legs like tree trunks rooting to the earth.

Their flight was delayed for five hours in Dubai and did not take off until after

midnight. The lights of Dubai were ropes of twinkling gold that snaked through the city

in dizzying strands. Laina kept her eyes from the window and clamped the thin paper bag

between her legs, wondered whether it would be enough. Her stomach tipped with the

plane and she focussed on the red velvet pouch on Asha's lap, on the gold bangles and

necklace cushioned inside. It was a belated wedding gift for Raisa—Asha had sent money

by wire for the occasion years ago—but during the flight delay they had shuffled up and

down the aisles of gold stores eyeing sparkling glass cases. They both had naked wrists

and salesmen pushed rolls of bangles across the glass tops, nodding them in. Laina had

tucked her gold bangles away into her canyon, didn't want to bother twisting them off

every time they went through security, officer wands beeping at her wrists. Asha wore

only a pair of gold flower studs, said bangles made her wrists feel heavy and she could

never wear necklaces, always wanted to rip them off her neck while she slept, everything

sweaty. Really, the money had been enough. Raisa had used it to buy herself a gold-

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threaded banarasi shari, the gilded designs breathtaking. Laina had sent pictures of Raisa

modeling the shari, gold bangles rippling up and down her arms like curtains—gifts from

her in-laws—but still, Asha had selected a set of two bangles in a thick Egyptian-like

design and a necklace that reminded Laina of the loops and flowers on the necklace Abba

had given her for her own wedding. On the ride home he had slid it out of the pouch and

held it in his hand, told her the pink stones should have been diamonds.

"When you go to Canada, you can replace them. Put in diamonds, instead."

As the plane lifted its nose off the ground Laina imagined the stretch of muscle in

Asha's arm and the smile dimpled into Raisa's face.

Azad gave Lisha his old Nikon before they left for LA, told her it still took great

pictures and there was nothing like the old film cameras, they were artistic. He had stood

in the airport suddenly looking frail and thin, hands in his pocket. When they walked

through the security gates he lifted his arm in half a wave and Laina could imagine the

soft lines around his eyes, his lips pressed in worry. He had bought her three packages of

Gravol and packed them into the handbag after reading the directions on the back of the

box out loud to her, telling her she had to take a pill at least thirty minutes before take­

off. He set the alarm on Lisha's watch to go off at five-minute intervals until the

appointed time and explained that they could buy water at the kiosks after they passed

through security—did they have change? Did they have snacks? It wasn't good to take

pills on an empty stomach, they fizzed through the layers of your stomach and gave you

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ulcers. Laina had looked back as they rose on the escalator. She waved to a shrinking

Azad, smiling at his hand still in the air.

Before she left, Laina had planted the kodu seedlings in new soil, left the back

garden fresh and wet reminding Azad to water all the plants. They had had a week of

sultry hot weather, the seedlings growing ten inches in just a few days and she didn't

want everything withering while she and Lisha were gone. Standing on the back stoop the

hose dripping from her hand, she thought first of the flowers, then of Abbas vegetables—

the okra, the squash, the beans and the pear-shaped Sicilian zucchinis tottering from a

netted trellis Abba knotted with string, joking that he should just have barricaded

everything with jute and bamboo, it made things easier to grow. The garden in Narinda

had thrived even after she had left. She had expected the rooftop plants to falter, but Abba

had brought them down into the yard and they were tended to, the stems carefully

snipped to let the plants branch out with new leaves. In the days leading up to Abba's

death she had sat in his room lulled by the fragrant bob of pink lilies outside his window

thinking that everything looked dusty. The doorframes, the bed posts, the metal bars on

the windows, even Abba's face looked soft and grey. When she thought of his hands

pressed over the railing of the verandah, a cup of tea pressed against his stomach she

couldn't bring herself to picture the house sinking. Munir told her the entire lane was

half-dust in the ground, the Hamids' house a roosting glen for flocks of obnoxious

pigeon. Their own house was like a watermark, fading.

They sobbed like children, arms and legs intertwined. Kanta sat on the edge of the

bed and cried too, didn't know what else she could do. Munir had picked them up at the

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airport and brought them back to the flat in Shamoli, a bustling Dhaka neighbourhood

fresh with new buildings. Asha had stood before the metal gate and frowned at the grey

of the cement, the barred verandahs. Ma must have ached for green sitting up on that

verandah, wishing for a swift breeze. It was a fine building, sturdy, but if there was a

wind it only came with the rain and Ma would have spent her days indoors, the door

closed to shut out the spray. But Raisa and her husband must have been good to Ma,

Munir must have been gentle and doting. Asha needed to believe this. Munir, busy with

his medical clinic and shaking his head at marriage would have been devoted to her, his

attention undivided. Ma's letters always spoke of Raisa's husband Najmul. He was quiet

and unassuming, always brought the radio into her bedroom and set it by her pillow so

she could listen when Raisa sang on evening shows. Asha nodded to herself, Ma had

been happy. Asha recognized the gate from the pictures Laina had sent after returning

from Raisa's wedding—Ma had wanted fizzy nubs of light twisted round the arches.

Abba had hired men for both Laina and her own wedding, had the banquet hall dripping

with strings of lights, the building a beacon to wedding revelers. Ma had wanted the

same.

But Abba, he would have grown restless within a week at this flat. Nothing about

the building made Asha want to imagine him cramped inside, pacing. He paced the house

in Narinda, went in circles round the yard after tea, his hands clasped behind his back.

Asha looked up the street. He might have paced the streets here too, they were not as

busy as she had imagined. The rickshaw hut was farther up the road and the street was

still wide, Abba would not have minded the change for too long. But if Abba had been

alive during the move, he would have drawn up plans for a new house, had the

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contractors slicing the earth with their machines. He would not have purchased this city

flat and kept Ma here until her spirit expired.

Asha found all her letters under Ma's cotton stuffed mattress. Laina had spent the

afternoon cleaning out the mattress and armoire, shaking her head, breathless. Ma kept

everything. Patches of embroidery samples, bits of paper with miniscule writing,

remnants of carbon paper she would press up against the tiles in people's bathrooms

when visiting, a keen eye trapping unusual designs. Laina pulled out handfuls of silken

thread and patted them into piles on the floor, lengths of thread Ma thought she would

use in a shawl once the swelling round her knuckles went down and she could stretch her

fingers out again. There was a metal case with Abba's glasses inside, his skinny black

office tie lay rolled up inside his shoes; they were squashed flat under the top and bottom

edges of the mattress along with the photographs and letters Asha and Laina had sent

through the years, small bundles, the corners worn and bent. Laina sat cross-legged on

the floor her cheeks shiny with sweat and tried to read the curled loop of Ma's writing

from torn bits of paper. Asha could picture Ma filling out these slips of defiance; silent

rebellion while leaning back in bed, one ankle over the other:

/ will not wear a pink shari. What do they take me for, a young woman?

Mothers crack their bones in labour for their children. These same children dare to twist their faces at me, always angry.

What have I done to deserve this?

Out of the two, I choose the Palash over the Shimul. Its petals are more vibrant, the kind of flower you 'd want to weave through your hair. I wish 1 hadn 't lost my cloth flower. He bought it for ten taka and gave it to me in a felt box. I have worn it in my hair, faithful always, ever since. I was beautiful when he married me.

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Asha watched Laina roll up the scraps and sprinkle them over the pile. It was almost too

much. Ma slept on these fragments, kept her history pressed under the weight of limbs,

the lumps of Abba's shoes at her feet comforting.

Raisa pushed two boxes of pastries onto Laina's lap and heaved herself into the

back of the car. Laina was surprised at the creases of fat on Raisa's elbow, her arms like

slabs of dough. Aside from Kanta, they had all gained weight, bellies bulging like

melons. But Raisa—she was truly exceptional. Her elfin face had rounded out into

creamy rolls of chin and her breathing came heavy, hand always at her chest. Asha said it

was because her husband fed her well, but really Raisa needed to lose the weight, she

woke up choking at night, the fat flattening her lungs. It was crowded sitting thigh to

thigh with Raisa and Asha. She had wanted the window seat so she could crack the

window and get swirls of fresh air, but Munir insisted on treating them to the new air

conditioning system and kept the windows shut. He hobbled the car between rickshaws

and baby-taxis, shouting shit! every time a car nudged into his lane, then rolling down the

window so he could flick his thumb at the driver. Kanta sat in the front seat her arms

crossed over her chest, the muscles lean and long. She had left the children with Mubeen

and hurried out of the flat twisting her hair into a khopa. She surprised them by wanting

to come along with them to Narinda, the key to the house hanging from a string round her

neck.

Laina plucked a flat stone wedged beneath an arching root and tossed it into the

plastic bag tied around Asha's wrist. This was where the barricade once stood. The roots

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of the mango trees arched out of the ground like the fingers of an old man drumming the

earth. The trees were sprawling, leaves hung like washrags from branches that still

heaved fruit, clusters of fuzzy green mangoes too young to pluck. Munir guessed the trees

must have been young for Abba to have built a barricade that towered over the tree-tops,

kept the neighbourhood out.

"They weren't that young. They were bearing fruit by the time Abba built it, great

luscious mangoes the size of my palm." Asha squatted low and ran her finger along one

of the roots, crescents of dirt collecting under her fingernail. Laina circled the trees

slowly, slid her feet out of her sandals and stepped carefully onto the earth.

"Are you okay?" Raisa stood with the pastry box open in her arms, her fingers

dusted with sugar. "Be careful! There might be nails or glass—or anything."

It was light, almost dust. Laina wondered at the texture of the earth, so much like

sand. Where had all the years of rain gone? The earth should stick to her heels in clumps,

wet clay. But it was fine and dry, dusted her feet and drew out the lines in her skin,

shadows of rivers. Laina dropped to her knees with a groan, and searched the ground for

stumps from the bamboo posts, fingered the roots of the mango tree feeling for a braid of

jute baked into the earth. It was dust and nothing else, everything had sunk deep or

washed away in great rushes of flood water that bloated the earth. Still, they collected

rocks, tiny fibres, and thread in the plastic bag, wanted to take something solid back

home with them.

"Do you want to see the house?" Munir lit a cigarette and flicked the ash. "Do

you want pictures? I have my camera in the car." He shrugged at them and tilted his head

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toward the house. "I need pictures anyway to show buyers. The tenants are gone. They

left a mess—I'll need to have it cleaned up a little before I put in any ads."

Their home had been converted to a shop, plastic buckets swinging from the

rafters, rolls of yellowed cotton prints piled on the verandah. Kanta drove the key into the

latch on the door and pushed it open with a nudge of her shoulder. The four of them

traipsed through the empty house, surprised at how their voices echoed, the rooms so

much larger than they remembered. The tenants had left crates of old chip packets and

Coke bottles piled up against the walls, the floors rippled from leaks trailing out of

broken bottles. In the kitchen, Laina rested her hands against the coolness of the cement

sinks, thought of how chicken legs at home came chopped and clean from the halal meat

shop on Dundas. Yet, she still emptied the clouded bags into bowls of water and scraped

at the fat with the edge of her knife, was sure that the men could not have cleaned it as

thoroughly as she. Kanta led them to the roof and unlocked the door at the top of the

stairs, told them they were lucky it hadn't rained. The roof had sunk over the years and

during the rainy season, it pooled water like a cracked bowl, sending streams down into

the house, splotching off the tops of people's heads.

"The tenants complained, wanted me to fix it. But really, there was no point. It's

an old building, I knew I would have to sell it soon so I let it go on dripping." Munir

shook his head and raised his hand at his sisters. "Sentiment is powerful, but it isn't

practical. Fixing the roof would be like re-building the entire house. I'd have to start from

the bottom up. Water damage makes everything flaky. There would be no money left for

the house in Bonani, it would have been a truly ridiculous move."

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Narinda was the neighbourhood good people skirted on their way through Dhaka.

The streets throttled you, made you weak. Laina wanted to look out over the ledge and

see patches of wet green, threads of sooty smoke across a blue sky. But she couldn't look

farther than their yard, down at Raisa who stood with the pastry parcel in hand, waving

up at them. There were run down baby-taxis sinking in the side garden, motors and

stripped seats hunkered into the soil. The stone wall that separated their property from the

Hamids' had been knocked down long ago, crumbles of debris scattered where she'd

once kept her potted flowers, tended Abba's okra. From high up, it looked like everything

had mish-mashed its way into the quiet, and then slowly, the house went down.

Munir set the camera up on an empty crate and set the timer for ten seconds. They

stood on the verandah in the spot where Ma and Abba's bethe chairs had been and

smiled, waiting. The red light pulsed thee times before the camera clicked, the flash

blanking their vision. Raisa pulled everyone down onto the steps and opened the boxes of

pastries, told them to sweeten their tongues; they should rest after all this climbing, this

exploring. They sat sprawled across the steps like teenagers, passing napkin-wrapped

pastries back and forth until they had all settled on the one they liked best. Kanta packed

three into her handbag and then bit into a flaky jelly-filled roll, licking the flakes off her

bottom lip. The camera clicked a second time just as Raisa leaned back laughing, pointed

at Munir. He wiped a puff of cream from his moustache and told them the timer must

have been set for two clicks, twenty seconds apart.

*

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Laina and Asha kept copies of both photos. It was an early morning flight and

when Asha slid the window shade up, the light was too bright, made them blink in

surprise. Still, they squinted at the photos, pressed their thumbs into the faces and

skimmed the lines of the house with the tip of their thumbs. Across the aisle, Lisha and

Niya slept, their complexions two shades darker than when they had first left, their arms

slumped over their laps, books turned over. Munir had shown all of them the plans for the

new house just before they left, spread the thick white paper over the dining table and

pointed at the sketch of red clay roof tiles with the tip of his pencil. They were the type of

roof tiles that absorbed heat, the same kind used on the rooftops of exotic resorts. He had

asked the architect to design it according to a picture in a travel magazine he kept in the

waiting room at the medical clinic. With the walls painted a fresh white, the contrast

would make the house a local landmark. He had smiled at Niya and put his arm around

Lisha, tapped the drawing with the end of the pencil, the eraser leaving soft pink dents in

the windows, the door, the beams of the verandah.

"This is yours. This belongs to both of you, too."

Munir made copies of the plans and placed them in brown envelopes, told Laina

and Asha he would keep them both updated on the progress. They had packed the

envelopes into their handbags, knew the papers were important but didn't know what

they would do with them once they reached home. They could study the designs, admire

the detailing in the gates, the bricked in garden. They would call one another and

sometimes the conversation would drift and they'd ask about the progress, might sigh if

they received news that the contractors had hit a pipeline and the project would be

delayed. They'd fret over Munir's stress, would wonder at how he was handling

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everything at once. But eventually, they would find the drawer or closet shelf where they

kept their old passports and birth certificates, records of vaccinations and report cards and

would place the envelope there. It would sit with the rest of their important documents

and then they'd go on.

As the plane lifted into the sky, they watched the country shrink; gazed into the

retreating green.

END

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REFERENCES

Munro, Alice. The Progress of Love. New York: Vintage Books, 1985.

Ondaatje, Michael. Running in the Family. Toronto: McClelland & Stewart Ltd., 1982.

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