Marrying Ameera Page 7

  ‘I could help you choose cloth for your wedding,’ I offered.

  There was a long silence. I could have kicked myself. This wasn’t Australia where Muslim girls were more open. Probably Jamila hadn’t even met her husband yet. Yes, that was it, I decided. She looked embarrassed and I resolved not to bring the subject up again.

  After lunch—vegetable curry, chapattis, and more strong chai—Meena returned home. She gave me her mobile number before she left. ‘Ring me anytime if you want to talk,’ she said, then glanced at Aunty Khushida. I saw the meaningful look that flew between them, but couldn’t decide what it meant.

  Jamila and I walked to the bazaar. Asher and Zeba came too. I followed Jamila’s lead and put my shawl over my head. It was so cold I was glad of its warmth, and glad to be walking. The way Aunty Khushida was feeding me I’d be as big as an elephant by the time I went home. Tariq wouldn’t recognise me. The sudden lurch in my stomach when I thought of him surprised me and my hand found his necklace under my dupatta. When I got home I would start persuading Papa to give me what I wanted most in the world.

  We passed a cement honour roll, the height of a triple-storey building, showing the names of men who had become shaheed, martyred in war. It had been split down the middle.

  Asher saw me staring. ‘The earthquake did that. Look.’ He pointed to the bazaar ahead, its new tin roofs winking in the pale sunlight. ‘Most of the bazaar is made of kacha tin shacks; all the real pukka buildings haven’t been rebuilt yet.’

  All around I could see rubble, half-built houses, tents where buildings should have been, debris that hadn’t been removed. Muzaffarabad had been a beautiful city, but part of the mountain had fallen into the river. The city didn’t look beautiful now.

  ‘My school’s just there,’ Zeba said, and drew me over to show me. It was a tent school and looked forlorn, deserted.

  ‘Not many of the schools have been rebuilt,’ Jamila said. Her tone sounded bitter.

  Before I could ask her about it, Zeba danced in front of me.

  ‘Will you come tomorrow? You could teach English.’

  I laughed, but Jamila said, ‘You could teach a few days a week. I do.’

  ‘Truly?’

  She shrugged. ‘So many of the teachers were killed. And twenty thousand children died. Muzaffarabad was called the City of Death.’

  ‘We were in school when it happened,’ Asher said. ‘At eight minutes to nine. It was Saturday and we were reading. We could hear a noise as loud as a truck driving on the roof except it sounded like it was under the ground.’

  ‘It was scary,’ Zeba said.

  Jamila glanced at Zeba. ‘Zeba didn’t go to school that day.’

  ‘I felt sick,’ Zeba added.

  ‘It saved her life,’ Jamila went on. ‘The schools were so badly constructed, they collapsed as soon as the earthquake hit. Just two minutes it took, cement storeys falling onto the next floor below, like houses made from cards. The children did not have a chance.’ She glanced at Asher. ‘But thanks to God, Asher survived.’

  ‘I was on the top floor as it came down,’ Asher said. ‘Then I crawled out of a window, just before the roof fell. Allah ka shukr hai.’

  Tears welled in my eyes and I thanked God too. Papa had told us about the earthquake when he came back but he hadn’t mentioned details like this. I wondered if Asher had nightmares. How long would it take to recover from a trauma like that?

  ‘Haider helped the militants—they gave out food. Then the army came,’ Asher said. ‘They started digging out the children. They found my friend Saeed. He was still alive.’

  He fell quiet and Zeba added, ‘Now Saeed has only one arm and one leg. He does not play soccer any more.’

  The bazaar was a rabbit warren of tin shacks, with power lines twisted dangerously together overhead. Even though it was cold, the smell of dust and smoke mingled with sweat and curry. Thin white chickens flew up in their cages as we passed. Spices were piled like pyramids of colour in hessian bags. In front of the meat shop I was accosted by children begging. I still didn’t have any rupees.

  ‘How come they know I’m the new one?’ I said. I asked Jamila if I could change some money.

  ‘The banks are shut today, but that man changes small amounts.’ She pointed to a dingy shop.

  Asher came with me. I didn’t mind, for even though I may have looked like I belonged there, I knew I didn’t. Everything was too strange. I spoke English but the money-changer couldn’t understand me.

  ‘Your Australian is faster than our English,’ Asher said. ‘And you use different words. Speak slower.’

  I did, but I felt I was treating the poor man like a zombie. I reverted to Urdu, but I didn’t feel as confident discussing money in Urdu. What if I misunderstood? But Asher said the amount I received for twenty dollars was fair.

  ‘Do you know where to buy phone cards?’ I asked him.

  He took me to a small booth facing onto the lane. It sold everything that a deli would: drinks, ice-creams, fruit, and a prepaid Paktel phone card. It cost me six hundred rupees. Now I’d be able to send a message to Tariq.

  This time when a beggar asked, I could give a few rupees.

  ‘Do not give too much,’ Asher advised, ‘or they will tell their friends and you will be swamped.’ He grinned at me. ‘We learned that word “swamped” in English class. Our teacher said that if we use it, we will sound like natives of England.’

  Asher was right about the beggars for by the time Jamila and Zeba found us there were more than before, like ants crawling out of a disturbed nest. ‘Baksheesh, baksheesh,’ they cried and moaned. The way they drew out the word it sounded like a cat being tortured.

  ‘Baksheesh, gift for Christmas,’ one small boy said in broken Urdu, his hand outstretched.

  Then I remembered that it was 25 December—with all the travelling I’d lost track of the date. Most of the bazaar was closed today, but for Qaid-e-Azam’s birthday, not for Christmas. How did that boy know I’d understand the word ‘Christmas’?

  ‘Ignore them,’ Jamila said. ‘They are just Christian kids. Their parents sweep the streets and clean toilets. If you touch them you will become ill.’

  I thought about how different Christmas was at home, the shops gearing up for it months ahead, everyone getting presents, the parties, the lights in the streets. Here there was nothing. A picture of Mum came into my mind, sad at her parents’ house because I wasn’t there. I bent down to the boy and pulled out a ten-rupee note. How much was that? Just fifty cents?

  ‘Too much,’ Jamila snapped, but I’d already done it. I would give no Christmas gifts this year, but maybe I could give this boy a happier day.

  13

  Aunty Khushida was busy in the kitchen when we returned. I showed her the shalwar qameez Jamila had bought for me. I had offered to pay but Jamila had insisted. ‘The money came from your father, do not fuss.’ I wondered why they didn’t give me Papa’s money to spend for myself. Perhaps it was something to do with good hospitality.

  Aunty liked the fabric. ‘Smart, but warm. Accha, that is good. And a chaddar to match?’

  I took out the shawl. It wasn’t the dearest pashmina, but good enough for wearing out. Jamila had taken me to the family carpet and shawl shop to buy it. Inside the shop, we’d been able to relax and let our shawls drop to our shoulders. Uncle Rasheed was there, entertaining some men and haggling over prices. Papa had told me that buying a rug could take days in Pakistan. Haider was given the job of serving us and he didn’t look enthralled. He hardly said a word to me at first and was short with Jamila. I’d seen through to a room behind the shop where boys were seated at a loom. ‘So you make carpets here too?’ I asked Jamila. ‘Do the boys do it after school?’

  Jamila glanced at Haider and he shut the door to the back room, then began pulling shawls off shelves for me to see. ‘Our shawls are made from pashmina combed from the Changra mountain goat,’ he told me, suddenly finding his voice. ‘The Gujjars herd them. It is
like silk, dekho, see.’ He spoke in Urdu. ‘The Moghuls used this in their carpets.’ He showed me another shawl. ‘This one is made from shahtoosh. It is the king of wool and comes from the hair of the antelope from Tibet. From here.’ He pointed to his chest and grinned at me. It didn’t seem like a cousinly smile and I looked away. He shoved the shawl under my nose. ‘You could hatch a pigeon egg in this.’ Jamila had said it was too expensive and directed me to the pashmina ones.

  Now my aunt nodded her approval and turned back to the bench.

  ‘Can I help?’ I tried to look unmoveable as I packed my new outfit back into its brown paper bag.

  Aunty sighed. ‘Very well. You can chop the onions.’

  I stripped off the skins and started chopping on the wooden bench. Aunty Khushida was soon breathing over my shoulder. ‘Finer than that, child. The curry will stick in their throats.’

  Maybe that was why our curries were never as good as Mrs Yusuf’s, I thought. Aunty went back to shaping chapatti dough into rounds with her palms and flapping them back and forth in the air.

  ‘So how is your mother? Such a sweet girl.’ She sounded dismissive.

  I thought of Mum at the mosque, sitting by herself. She was so out of the loop in the community at home, and I was beginning to feel like that here.

  ‘She’s fine.’ I remembered the frightened look on her face as Papa pulled me away to join the boarding queue and corrected myself. ‘She’s well.’

  ‘She was happy about you coming to us?’

  The chapatti bashing had ceased and I looked up to find Aunty holding a piece of dough in midair. She was also watching me intently. I tried not to show how unnerved I felt: her eyes were pinning me to the wall.

  ‘Yes. She wished she could come too,’ I said. I hoped Papa hadn’t told them why he’d sent me here. But if he had, that could account for Jamila’s coolness towards me and all these questions.

  Aunty Khushida seemed satisfied. ‘Accha. Can you speak Urdu?’

  ‘Of course. Papa taught me. I don’t catch the meaning of jokes though, or understand deep discussions.’

  Aunty nodded and pressed out another piece of dough with her fingers. Then she glanced at the onions I’d finished. ‘So you do not cook Pakistani food at home?’

  ‘We do, but I’m sure it’s not as tasty as yours will be tonight.’

  She smiled at me, the nicest one she’d given so far though it still seemed forced. ‘We had better get you started quick-smart. Here, take this dough and slap it from side to side like this.’

  I’d seen Raniya’s mother and Mrs Yusuf making chapattis but Mum had never mastered the skill. She said you had to be born with a lump of chapatti dough in your hands.

  ‘Not like that, like this.’ Aunty showed me again. ‘It is in the wrist. Relax your wrist.’

  For the next half-hour I was harangued in the nicest way about my lack of culinary skills. Aunty didn’t say it but I could tell she was thinking that even a child could do this, why couldn’t I? With a prickling behind my eyes I realised I was probably the only seventeen-year-old girl in Pakistan who couldn’t make the staple food.

  ‘At home we buy naan from the local tandoor restaurant,’ I said.

  ‘We cannot do that here. What an expense.’

  It was strange to talk about naan as an expense when she was putting real saffron in the rice. The pinch she used would have cost Mum ten dollars.

  I tried again. ‘I can cook Australian food. I can treat you to that anytime you want.’

  Aunty looked unconvinced, and on second thoughts, after looking around the kitchen, so was I. The oven was used for storage. This was definitely a curry kitchen.

  ‘I can make cakes,’ I added lamely, my eye on the cereal boxes in the oven.

  ‘We can buy them at the local bakery.’ Then Aunty smiled. ‘Come on, child, see if you can cook this chapatti. Place it on the tava like this—use the tea towel to press it here, and here. It must not burn. Haider does not like his bread burnt.’

  Haider could go to hell for all I cared, but I did my best with Aunty Khushida hovering close by. Encouragement was not her forte.

  Just then Jamila came in carrying folded tea towels. ‘What is she doing?’ she said quickly in Urdu. Whether she meant to or not, she effectively cut me out of their conversation.

  ‘What does it look like?’ Aunty Khushida gave her a sharp look.

  Jamila came closer to inspect my work. ‘We can’t serve this one. Abu will think Zeba did it.’

  ‘Even Zeba has to learn,’ Aunty reminded her.

  Jamila stared at me as if I had a disability. Her gaze gave me a sinking feeling in my stomach and I wondered why my cooking skills mattered so much. I was only a visitor who had offered to help.

  I heard the gate open and realised the men had arrived home. Jamila prepared a tray of food for the men’s room. She picked out the best chapattis that Aunty had made, with a glance at me that could have scorched them, and added covered bowls of chicken curry, orange-coloured saffron rice, raita and a little dish of mango chutney.

  ‘The chicken curry is because it is the birthday of Qaid-e-Azam,’ Aunty said. ‘Remember he is the founder of Pakistan?’

  I nodded, thinking about who else’s birthday it was and what Mum would be doing today.

  Jamila took the tray to the mejalis and Asher carried the plates and cutlery. He was old enough to eat with his father and Haider. Maybe if I wasn’t there, the family would have eaten together. By the look on Jamila’s face, this was one more job she had to do because of me.

  We women sat around a tablecloth on the floor in the lounge. ‘I like eating this way,’ Zeba said.

  The treat for me at dinner was to meet Dadi jan, my grandmother. She must have been asleep all afternoon for she shuffled out of her room with Jamila’s help and sank onto the couch. She looked too old to still be alive, so wrinkled and tiny like a bird, with black-rimmed glasses. Everyone said I looked like her but I couldn’t see any resemblance. She looked eighty; not like my other grandmother who still taught pottery and had exhibitions.

  Jamila put a small tray on her lap holding a bowl of curry and rice and a spoon, then said in an undertone to me, ‘Not everything she says makes sense so if you do not understand just nod.’

  When Dadi jan was settled she beckoned me over. I went to kneel in front of her and touched her feet the way Papa had shown me; she laid her hand on my head in blessing. ‘You are Ameera,’ she said, as if she was telling me something new. ‘It is a beautiful name—it means “leader”.’

  Papa had said it meant princess but I supposed that was the same. I smiled at her.

  ‘You have grown into your name very well,’ she said after scrutinising my face. I wondered what she meant; I didn’t have any leadership qualities. No one at school did anything because I did it first. But Dadi jan was nodding at something she hadn’t said. ‘Ah, beti, you have such a look of my family. How is your father?’ She spoke in Urdu and mostly I understood her.

  ‘He is well, Dadi jan.’ I spoke in Urdu too. ‘The carpet business is good. He is…’ I stopped; I couldn’t say what Papa had been like the last year. ‘He’s fine.’ It seemed I was destined to make lame, untrue statements whenever anyone asked about my life in Australia.

  Dadi jan’s birdlike eyes watched me for a moment and I thought Jamila’s judgement of our grandmother’s mental capabilities was wrong. She looked very alert to me despite those clumsy-looking glasses. She even seemed like someone I might be able to confide in. Then her next words killed that hope.

  ‘So you have come all the way from Australia to live with us now. We are blessed indeed. I have never been so happy, not since before your father left. Now he has sent a part of himself to me. He is a good son.’

  I glanced at Jamila, who was putting plates and cutlery on the tablecloth. She raised her eyebrows at me as if to say, ‘I told you.’

  Aunty Khushida said, ‘Now, Mother, do not bore Ameera.’

  Dadi jan looked
annoyed; I saw the flash in her eyes before she quickly disguised it. I smiled, showing I wasn’t bored. Then Zeba brought over a picture.

  ‘Dadi jan, look. I have made you a drawing.’

  ‘Hahn ji, child, it is very pretty.’ She spoke lucidly to Zeba; she could tell it was a picture of me. ‘Hassan should have come with you, Ameera. Such an important time and he has left it all to Rasheed.’

  She dug her spoon into her curry while I wondered what she meant. I guessed this was one of Jamila’s nodding moments and I smiled again.

  ‘And your mother? She is well?’ Dadi jan asked.

  ‘Yes. She works as an English teacher. She teaches people who come from other countries.’ I was annoyed I couldn’t remember the word for ‘migrants’.

  ‘And Riaz? Is he behaving himself?’

  I paused. It sounded as though my grandmother knew everything about our family.

  ‘He is fine, but he doesn’t go to Friday prayers much.’ That was a safer response than the truth; that he didn’t go at all and drank in nightclubs instead.

  She leaned forward. ‘Are you happy here, child?’

  I hesitated slightly, then nodded. ‘I am happy to be here for a holiday, Dadi jan.’

  She stared at me while she chewed. ‘Are you now?’ she finally said.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘You must come and talk to me one afternoon. I get lonely sitting by myself when Zeba is at school.’

  Jamila said, ‘Ameera may help me at Zeba’s school, Dadi jan.’

  ‘Very well, come when you can, Inshallah.’ My grandmother leaned across her tray and took my face in her hands. It felt as if she was searching more than my features. ‘Talk to me one day.’ Her voice was low and I had to strain to hear her over Zeba’s chattering to Aunty behind me.