Brick Lane (13 page)

She was half annoyed and half relieved to hear knocking, and Razia calling out, 'Sister, it's just me. I've brought medicine for you.'

Razia was wearing a woollen hat that came down over her ears and sat in a line with her eyebrows. Over her salwaar kameez she had a baggy jumper with some kind of animal (a deer? a goat?) knitted into the front. Her shoes were big as trucks and battered by untold collisions. She kept the hat on, and Nazneen was constantly on the brink of pointing this out.

'Dissolve the packets in water and take it twice a day. It will sort out your problem. No more burning.'

'I'll do it,' said Nazneen. 'I've got something to show you.'

The letter was longer this time. It gave an address. Hasina talked about her landlord, Mr Chowdhury, about the job he was going to get for her in a garment factory, and about the ice cream parlour at the end of the road. She sounded excited, especially about the pistachio flavour and the little plastic spoons. It seemed she had not the least idea about the danger she was in (and she
was
in danger, a girl, a beautiful young girl, alone in Dhaka) but Nazneen hoped that Mr Chowdhury would look out for her. Mr Chowdhury would be responsible. A man with property will be respectable, Chanu said, she will be under his protection.

'I'm glad for you,' said Razia. 'And your husband is glad too, I expect.'

'He didn't want to do anything, and now he doesn't have to.'

'Men like to be proved right. We must go out of our way to show them how right they are. My husband is just the same.'

'When he read the letter, he said, "What did I tell you? Sometimes we must sit and wait."'

'Did he push his lips out and waggle his head like this?' Razia made a fat bunch of her mouth, and made her eyes wide.

Nazneen was not finished. 'He cannot accept one single thing in his life but this: that my sister should be left to her fate. Everything else may be altered, but not that.'

Razia leaned back on the sofa. She made the sofa look small, and she knocked one of the plastic headrests to the floor. 'What can we say against fate?'

'I am not saying anything against it.' Nazneen thought briefly of telling the story of How You Were Left To Your Fate. It was too long to go into now. 'I am just. . .' What? Angry with Chanu. But about what, exactly?

'You are just concerned for your sister. It's natural. And in your condition, things become more of a worry. You have to take care, and don't overdo things. Did you know that Nazma had her third on Saturday and he was two months early? I don't know if it's true, but Sorupa says that it was because her husband wouldn't leave her alone, and that made the baby come before it was ready.'

'Ish,' said Nazneen, narrowing her eyes at the thought. She rubbed her stomach, and pressed on it firmly to feel around the curve of the baby's head, or his bottom. She put her feet up on a footstool. There were three footstools now, and an extra chair. (This one had things growing on it, strands of grey, mouldy stuff, but Chanu said it was valuable, and when he had fixed it he was going to sell it again.) It was getting difficult for her to navigate the furniture now. They were both growing, Nazneen and the furniture.

'Anyway, it was a quick labour. Not like her first. That was thirty-six hours. Mine was twenty-eight.'

'When I was born, Amma thought it was indigestion. She said that some women make a big fuss.'

'Hah,' said Razia. She picked up one of Chanu's books from under her feet and put it on the coffee table.

'It's a natural thing, which happens to all women.'

'Hah,' said Razia. 'I'll come with you to the hospital. Next time I come, I'll help you pack a bag for the big day.'

'Amma didn't make a single sound when I was born.'

'Mmmm,' said Razia. She looked around the room, as if she had just stepped into it for the first time. Nazneen looked around too. A piece of wallpaper was curling back just by the window and the thin grey curtains looked like large, used bandages. It was afternoon but the light had crept away and the greyness of the curtains seemed to hang over everything.

'Did you know about Amina?'

Nazneen did not know.

'She's asking for a divorce. I heard it from Nazma, who heard it from Sorupa. Hanufa told her about it, and she got it straight from the horse's mouth.'

'I saw her with a split lip. And one time she had her arm in a sling. He must have gone too far this time.'

'Not only that,' said Razia. She looked at Nazneen from under her curly eyelashes and Nazneen knew she was savouring the moment. 'He has another wife that he forgot to mention for the past eleven years.'

'May God save us from such wicked men.'
And from ourselves too, that we should enjoy such stories.

'Anyway, your husband has not made you a co-wife. You have something to be grateful for.' Razia smiled. There was nothing feminine about her face, and with her hair tucked into her hat she could have been a labourer or a fisherman, but when she smiled her face lost its sly, sideways look and her nose seemed smaller. When she was smiling she was almost handsome. 'Any news of the promotion?'

'My husband says they are racist, particularly Mr Dalloway. He thinks he will get the promotion, but it will take him longer than any white man. He says that if he painted his skin pink and white then there would be no problem.' Chanu had begun, she had noticed, to talk less of promotion and more of racism. He had warned her about making friends with 'them', as though that were a possibility.
All the time they are polite. They smile. They say 'please' this and 'thank you' that. Make no mistake about it, they shake your hand with the right, and with the left they stab you in the back.

'Well,' said Razia, 'this could be true.'

Nazneen turned the words over. This
could
be true. She waited for more. Razia was unpicking a thread from her jumper.

Nazneen said, 'My husband says it is discrimination.'

'Ask him this, then. Is it better than our own country, or is it worse? If it is worse, then why is he here? If it is better, why does he complain?'

These were questions she had neither asked nor thought of asking. She was in this country because that was what had happened to her. Anyone else, therefore, was here for the same reason.

'I don't know if he complains,' she found herself saying. 'He just likes to talk about things. He says that racism is built into the "system". I don't know what "system" he means exactly.'

'My son's teacher, she's a good one. She helps him a lot, and he likes her. My husband has a work colleague, he gives us things. Clothes that his children have grown out of. A machine for drying hair. A radio and stepladders. All sorts of things. There are good ones, and bad ones. Just like us. And some of them you can be friendly with. Some aren't so friendly. But they leave us alone, and we leave them alone. That's enough for me.'

'But the ones at my husband's work – they could be the bad ones.'

'Something else: if you don't have a job here, they give you money. Did you know that? You can have somewhere to live, without any rent. Your children can go to school. And on top of that, they give you money. What would happen at home? Can you eat without working? Can you have a roof above your head?' Razia took off her hat.

Nazneen squeaked.

'I cut it,' said Razia. 'I was fed up with it, all that brushing and brushing.' She ran her hand over her hair and pulled a piece around her face. It didn't even reach her mouth. She read what Nazneen was thinking. 'He didn't say anything yet. He just looked at it like this.' She let her mouth hang open and crossed her eyes. Her laugh was like a saucepan dropped on a tiled floor; the burst of it made you jump.

'He wasn't angry?' Razia's husband appeared to Nazneen to be perpetually angry. She had seen him at their flat several times, and once or twice in the courtyard. He worked in a factory that made plastic dolls. Such a big man, making little dolls. There were legs in the kitchen cupboards, heads on the windowsills, torsos down the back of the sofa. Either he brought home only parts or Tariq and Shefali were keen on dismemberment. She had never heard him speak except behind a closed door, to Razia, so she could not make out the words. Although he was silent, he had a. thunder in his brows and his mouth had a murderous set. So different from her own husband. Even when Chanu was ranting he seemed more bewildered by the world than enraged.

'Let him be angry,' said Razia, as if it were none of her business. 'Will it bring my hair back? I have to go now. Don't forget the medicine. I have to go, because I am going to college. I am going to learn English.'