Brick Lane (5 page)

Even we have nothing I happy. We have love. Love is happiness. Sometime I feel to run and jump like goat. This is how we do on way to school. But not much room for running here and I sixteen year old and married woman.

Everything good between us now. I do not let my tongue make trouble for it as my husband say. Just because man is kind to wife it do not mean she can say what she like. If women understanding this no one will beat. Malek have First Class job. I pray for son. I pray Maleks mother forgive the 'crime' of our marriage. It will come. Time comes she love me like daughter. If I wrong she is not true mother for mother love every part of son. Now I part of him. If Amma alive you think she forgive this thing Abba cannot? Sometime I think yes she do that. Many time I think no and then I angry and also too sad.

Sister I think of you every day and send love. I send respect to husband. Now you have address you will write and tell all thing about London. It make me tremble you so far away. You remember those story we hear as children begin like this. 'Once there was prince who lived in far off land seven seas and thirteen rivers away.' That is how I think of you. But as princess.

We see each other before long time pass and we as little girls again.

Someone was knocking on the front door of the flat. Nazneen opened it a crack, with the chain on, then closed it while she slid the chain off and opened it wide.

'No one is saying it to his face,' Mrs Islam was telling Razia Iqbal, 'but everyone is saying it behind his back. I don't like that kind of gossip.'

Nazneen exchanged salaams with her visitors and went to make tea.

Mrs Islam folded handkerchiefs, leaning over from the sofa to the low table and tucking them up the bobbled sleeves of her cardigan.

'Spreading rumours is our national pastime,' said Razia. 'That's not to say it is a good thing. Most of the time there's not a shred of truth in it.' She gave a sideways look at Nazneen, who was setting down the tea things. 'What is it they are saying this time? If I hear it from someone else I can set them straight about everything.'

'Well,' said Mrs Islam slowly. She settled back against the brown upholstery. Her sleeves bulged and bagged. She had carpet slippers on over black socks. Nazneen looked through the glass at the centre of the table and watched Mrs Islam's feet twitch with an excitement that her face did not betray. 'You have to bear in mind she had no children. This is after twelve years of marriage.'

'Yes, that is so,' said Razia. 'It is the worst thing, for any woman.'

'And at sixteen floors up, if you decide to jump, then there's the end to it.' Mrs Islam extracted a handkerchief and wiped away a little sweat from her hairline. Just looking at her made Nazneen feel unbearably hot.

'There's no chance of ending up a vegetable, if you jump from that high,' agreed Razia. She accepted a cup from Nazneen and held it in her man-size hands. She wore black lace-up shoes, wide and thick-soled. It was the sari that looked strange on her. 'But of course it was an accident. Why say otherwise?'

'A terrible accident,' said Mrs Islam. 'But everyone is whispering behind the husband's back.'

Nazneen sipped her tea. It was ten past five and all she had done was chop two onions. She had not heard about the accident. Chanu had mentioned nothing. She wanted to know who this woman was who died so terribly. She formed some questions in her mind, phrased and rephrased them.

'It is a shame,' said Razia. She smiled at Nazneen. Nazneen thought Razia did not look as though she really thought so. When she smiled she looked deeply amused although her mouth turned up only slightly to indicate pity rather than laughter. She had a long nose and narrow eyes that always looked at you from an angle, never straight on, so that she seemed perpetually to be evaluating if not mocking you.

Mrs Islam made a noise signalling that it was, indeed, a shame. She took a fresh handkerchief and blew her nose. After a decent interval she said, 'Did you hear about Jorina?'

'I hear this and that,' said Razia, as if no news about Jorina could possibly interest her.

'And what do you say to it?'

'That depends,' said Razia, looking down her nose at her tea, 'on what particular thing you mean.'

'I don't tell anything that isn't known already. You can hardly keep it a secret when you begin going out to work.'

Nazneen saw that Razia looked up sharply. Razia did not know the things that Mrs Islam knew. Mrs Islam knew everything about everybody. She had been in London for nearly thirty years and if you were a Bangladeshi here, what could you keep secret from her? Mrs Islam was the first person who called on Nazneen, in those first few days when her head was still spinning and the days were all dreams and real life came to her only at night, when she slept. Mrs Islam was deemed by Chanu to be 'respectable'. Not many people were 'respectable' enough to call or be called upon. 'You see,' said Chanu when he explained this for the first time, 'most of our people here are Sylhetis. They all stick together because they come from the same district. They know each other from the villages, and they come to Tower Hamlets and they think they are back in the village. Most of them have jumped ship. That's how they come. They have menial jobs on the ship, doing donkey work, or they stow away like little rats in the hold.' He cleared his throat and spoke to the back of the room so that Nazneen turned her head to see who it was he was addressing. 'And when they jump ship and scuttle over here, then in a sense they are home again. And you see, to a white person, we are all the same: dirty little monkeys all in the same monkey clan. But these people are peasants. Uneducated. Illiterate. Close-minded. Without ambition.' He sat back and stroked his belly. 'I don't look down on them, but what can you do? If a man has only ever driven a rickshaw and never in his life held a book in his hand, then what can you expect from him?'

Nazneen wondered about Mrs Islam. If she knew everybody's business then she must mix with everybody, peasant or not. And still she was respectable.

'Going out to work?' Razia said to Mrs Islam. 'What has happened to Jorina's husband?'

'Nothing has happened to Jorina's husband,' said Mrs Islam. Nazneen admired the way the words left her mouth, like bullets. It was too late now to ask about the woman who fell from the sixteenth floor.

'Her husband is still working,' said Razia, as if she were the provider of the information.

'The husband is working but still she cannot fill her stomach. In Bangladesh one salary can feed twelve, but Jorina cannot fill her stomach.'

'Where is she going? To the garment factory?'

'Mixing with all sorts: Turkish, English, Jewish. All sorts. I am not old-fashioned,' said Mrs Islam. 'I don't wear burkha. I keep purdah in my mind, which is the most important thing. Plus I have cardigans and anoraks and a scarf for my head. But if you mix with all these people, even if they are good people, you have to give up your culture to accept theirs. That's how it is.'

'Poor Jorina,' said Razia. 'Can you imagine?' she said to Nazneen, who could not.

They talked on and Nazneen made more tea and answered some queries about herself and about her husband, and wondered all the while about supper and the impossibility of mentioning anything to her guests, who must be made welcome.

'Dr Azad knows Mr Dalloway,' Chanu had explained to her. 'He has influence. If he puts in a word for me, the promotion will be automatic. That's how it works. Make sure you fry the spices properly, and cut the meat into big pieces. I don't want small pieces of meat this evening.'

Nazneen asked after Razia's children, a boy and a girl, five and three, who were playing at an auntie's house. She made enquiries about Mrs Islam's arthritic hip, and Mrs Islam made some noises to indicate that indeed the hip was troubling her a great deal but it was nothing she could mention, being in fact a stoic. And then, just when her anxiety about supper was beginning to make her chest hurt, her guests stood up to leave and Nazneen rushed to open the door, feeling rude as she stood by it, waiting for them to go.

CHAPTER TWO

Dr Azad was a small, precise man who, contrary to the Bengali custom, spoke at a level only one quarter of a decibel above a whisper. Anyone who wished to hear what he was saying was obliged to lean in towards him, so that all evening Chanu gave the appearance of hanging on his every word.

'Come,' said Dr Azad, when Nazneen was hovering behind the table ready to serve. 'Come and sit down with us.'

'My wife is very shy.' Chanu smiled and motioned with his head for her to be seated.

'This week I saw two of our young men in a very sorry state,' said the doctor. 'I told them straight, this is your choice: stop drinking alcohol now, or by Eid your liver will be finished. Ten years ago this would be unthinkable. Two in one week! But now our children are copying what they see here, going to the pub, to nightclubs. Or drinking at home in their bedrooms where their parents think they are perfectly safe. The problem is our community is not properly educated about these things.' Dr Azad drank a glass of water down in one long draught and poured himself another. 'I always drink two glasses before starting the meal.' He drank the second glass. 'Good. Now I will not overeat.'