Brick Lane (2 page)

'Beautifully written and refreshingly different'
Company

'Absolutely modern in its sharply observed representation of a complex and fragmented society, this is a novel replete with old-fashioned virtues . . . Ali's use of language is as versatile as her imagination. She can do lyrical description. She can do narrative of compelling tension and brevity. She can be sardonic about her characters' posturing and tender about their griefs. Her dialogue is vigorous and idiosyncratic, and she rises with bravura to high points in the narrative.
Brick Lane
may be Ali's first novel, but it is written with a wisdom and skill that few authors attain in a lifetime'
Sunday Times

'Brick Lane
is deeply rewarding . . . a popular success fueled by a critical one . . . One feels the enabling weight of the 19th century, of a history of novels about people cut off from their origins, adrift in Europe's great cities . . . Monica Ali has an inborn generosity that cannot be learned'
New York Times Book Review

BRICK LANE

MONICA ALI

This eBook is copyright material and must not be copied, reproduced, transferred, distributed, leased, licensed or publicly performed or used in any way except as specifically permitted in writing by the publishers, as allowed under the terms and conditions under which it was purchased or as strictly permitted by applicable copyright law. Any unauthorised distribution or use of this text may be a direct infringement of the author's and publisher's rights and those responsible may be liable in law accordingly.

ISBN 9781407040868

Version 1.0

www.randomhouse.co.uk

BRICK LANE
A BLACK SWAN BOOK :

ISBN: 9781407040868

Version 1.0

Originally published in Great Britain by Doubleday,
a division of Transworld Publishers

PRINTING HISTORY
Doubleday edition published 2003
Black Swan edition published 2004
14
Copyright © Monica Ali 2003

Lines from the 'Song of Students' are quoted from
Bangladesh: Reflections on the Water
by James J. Novak, translated by Mizanur Rahman [Indiana University Press, 1993). Extracts from Baul songs are taken from
The Mirror of the Sky: Songs of the Bauls of Bengal,
translated by Deben Bhattacharya (Hohm Press, 1999). Lines from 'The Golden Boat' are quoted from
Rabindranath Tagore: Selected Poems,
translated by William Radice (Penguin, 1985) Copyright © William Radice, 1985. Extracts from
The Koran
are translated by N. J. Dawood (Penguin Classics, 1956, fifth revised edition 1990) Copyright © N. J. Dawood, 1956, 1959, 1966, 1968, 1974, 1990. 'Shout': Words and Music by O'Kelly Isley, Ronald Isley and Rudolph Isley © Copyright 1959 and 1962 EMI Longitude Music, USA. EMI Music Publishing (WP) Limited, 127 Charing Cross Road, London WC2. Used by permission of Music Sales Ltd. All Rights Reserved. International Copyright Secured. The publishers have made every effort to contact the copyright owners of all the extracts reproduced in this book. In the few cases where they have been unsuccessful they invite copyright holders to contact them direct.

The right of Monica Ali to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

Condition of Sale

This electronic book is sold subject to the condition that it shall not by way of trade or otherwise, be lent, resold, hired out, or otherwise circulated without the publisher's prior consent in any form other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition including this condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser

Set in 11/12pt Melior by
Falcon Oast Graphic Art Ltd.

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a division of The Random House Group Ltd.

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For Abba, with love

'Sternly, remorselessly, fate guides each of us; only at the beginning, when we're absorbed in details, in all sorts of nonsense, in ourselves, are we unaware of its harsh hand.'
Ivan Turgenev

'A man's character is his fate.'
Heraclitus

CHAPTER ONE

M
YMENSINGH
D
ISTRICT
, E
AST
P
AKISTAN
, 1967

An hour and forty-five minutes before Nazneen's life began – began as it would proceed for quite some time, that is to say uncertainly – her mother Rupban felt an iron fist squeeze her belly. Rupban squatted on a low three–legged stool outside the kitchen hut. She was plucking a chicken because Hamid's cousins had arrived from Jessore and there would be a feast. 'Cheepy-cheepy, you are old and stringy,' she said, calling the bird by name as she always did, 'but I would like to eat you, indigestion or no indigestion. And tomorrow I will have only boiled rice, no parathas.'

She pulled some more feathers and watched them float around her toes. 'Aaah,' she said. 'Aaaah. Aaaah.' Things occurred to her. For seven months she had been ripening, like a mango on a tree. Only seven months. She put those things that had occurred to her aside. For a while, an hour and a half, though she did not know it, until the men came in from the fields trailing dust and slapping their stomachs, Rupban clutched Cheepy-cheepy's limp and bony neck and said only
coming, coming
to all enquiries about the bird. The shadows of the children playing marbles and thumping each other grew long and spiky. The scent of fried cumin and cardamom drifted over the compound. The goats bleated high and thin. Rupban screamed white heat, red blood.

Hamid ran from the latrine, although his business was unfinished. He ran across the vegetable plot, past the towers of rice stalk taller than the tallest building, over the dirt track that bounded the village, back to the compound and grabbed a club to kill the man who was killing his wife. He knew it was her. Who else could break glass with one screech? Rupban was in the sleeping quarters. The bed was unrolled, though she was still standing. With one hand she held Mumtaz's shoulder, with the other a half-plucked chicken.

Mumtaz waved Hamid away. 'Go. Get Banesa. Are you waiting for a rickshaw? Go on, use your legs.'

Banesa picked up Nazneen by an ankle and blew disparagingly through her gums over the tiny blue body. 'She will not take even one breath. Some people, who think too much about how to save a few takas, do not call a midwife.' She shook her hairless, wrinkled head. Banesa claimed to be one hundred and twenty years old, and had made this claim consistently for the past decade or so. Since no one in the village remembered her birth, and since Banesa was more desiccated than an old coconut, no one cared to dispute it. She claimed, too, one thousand babies of which only three were cripples, two were mutants (a hermaphrodite and a humpback), one a stillbirth and another a monkey-lizard-hybrid-sin-against-God-that-was-buried-alive-in-the-faraway-forest-and-the-mother-sent -hence-to-who-cares-where. Nazneen, though dead, could not be counted among these failures, having been born shortly before Banesa creaked inside the hut.

'See your daughter,' Banesa said to Rupban. 'Perfect everywhere. All she lacked was someone to ease her path to this world.' She looked at Cheepy-cheepy lying next to the bereaved mother and hollowed her cheeks; a hungry look widened her eyes slightly although they were practically buried in crinkles. It was many months since she had tasted meat, now that two young girls (she should have strangled them at birth) had set up in competition.

'Let me wash and dress her for the burial,' said Banesa. 'Of course I offer my service free. Maybe just that chicken there for my trouble. I see it is old and stringy.'

'Let me hold her,' said Nazneen's aunt, Mumtaz, who was crying.

'I thought it was indigestion,' said Rupban, also beginning to cry.

Mumtaz took hold of Nazneen, who was still dangling by the ankle, and felt the small, slick torso slide through her fingers to plop with a yowl onto the bloodstained mattress. A yowl! A cry! Rupban scooped her up and named her before she could die nameless again.

Banesa made little explosions with her lips. She used the corner of her yellowing sari to wipe some spittle from her chin. 'This is called a death rattle,' she explained. The three women put their faces close to the child. Nazneen flailed her arms and yelled, as if she could see this terrifying sight. She began to lose the blueness and turned slowly to brown and purple. 'God has called her back to earth,' said Banesa, with a look of disgust.

Mumtaz, who was beginning to doubt Banesa's original diagnosis, said, 'Well, didn't He just send her to us a few minutes ago? Do you think He changes His mind every second?'