When She Was Queen (27 page)

“You do embellish,” she says with a smile.

“I don’t embellish,” I defend myself. “I know the stories, and I know the characters—surely I can fill in?”

“You were always good at adding mirchi masala,” she insists, bringing in the past, knitting it, I imagine, intently into that sweater.

We go back a long way together, she knows things about me I’ve forgotten.

The earliest I imagine us together is in those sunny days of Tom Jones’s “Green, Green Grass of Home,” and of “Guantanamera,” and the heyday of the Beatles. Yes, those were our days. I had in my keeping for some reason the key to a storage room in our mosque, and on those bright musical Sunday mornings, the air fragrant with the aromas of sizzling spices in buttery ghee, we would meet on the quiet in the compound of that mosque and go to that room, which contained heaps of rolled-up carpets on which we would sit and share passionately of our intimacies, holding on tremblingly to our virginities. How terribly sweet were those days, how thrilling and anxious our pubescence, how the future
loomed before us in its vastness, its abundance—all those possibilities! We gave up—or let’s say we lost—an idyllic, naive existence as a people in a small city, in a small country, far from the bustling anxiety and screech and snarl of modernity. That loss was inevitable, obviously; but perhaps not the violence with which it happened—I don’t mean of the physical sort, though there was some of that too, but the sudden and total upheaval in our ways and the scenery around us, the lack of gradualness. But, as we sit here musing on an evening, Farida and I—the kids out of the house, one grown up and gone for good, the other out somewhere with friends—we know we’ve not done badly at all, that our upheaval pales beside those of Somalia and Ethiopia, South Africa and Bosnia. Who would complain? And this place we arrived at, three decades ago now, also went through its upheaval because of so many like us who had come to settle here. But it changed, this city of ours, from a scrubbed, antiseptic piece of concrete—so it seemed to us—into the exciting and exotic metropolis that it now is.

In those early days some twenty-five of us would meet in a small room on the lower level of Flemingdon Park Mall; that room was our mosque, and the locals had not seen anything like it. Come rain or shine, hail or snow, it would open for prayers, and the chorus of singing or chanting or the single voice raised in announcement or leading a prayer, echoed through the corridor, wafted up the open staircase to the floor above. Fortunately for everyone, it was evening, when few shoppers were around, or early in the morning, when
there was not a soul in the building except a watchman. I remember being followed closely by a police car at four in the morning once, on my way to prayers. I was on foot and alone, and I would look behind me nervously, unsure what I should expect or do. It was January and biting cold. Finally the car stopped and the cop inside asked me to get in and requested my identification. I gave him my passport, informed him where I was going. “I’ll take you there,” he said. He was rather young. It turned out I was not the only one so favoured by his attention. We gave him the name “Bill.” Many times he would watch us from the parking lot of the mall or from the doughnut store as we emerged shortly after five. How does he recall those encounters, I wonder? And what was his real name? Ashiq, our son, was one and Mira was yet to be born. Farida and I had married soon after graduating from university, and when Ashiq came we applied to go to Canada.

The university campus in Dar back then was beautiful, I don’t know what it’s like now. It was located away from the city, on a hill, in luscious surroundings with large ample spaces, and its quiet walking lanes amidst the tropical gardens and shrubbery had been ideal for us to stroll through in the evenings and hold hands and murmur endearments and make plans for ourselves. Outside of these moments alone there was little privacy in our lives; rooms were shared and friends whom we’d known most of our lives, as neighbours and community members, were all around. Weekends we went home. She tells me I was quite the comedian and yarn-spinner then, among our group, and as a major in history quite the
reader and intellectual. Sometimes during our walks at night we found a quiet spot behind a tree, ostensibly to sit together in a moment of emotion before we parted but actually for a cuddle and a little lifting of the dress and so on. University had not provided us with a private haven for our mischief, like the one we’d had before in that storage room in the mosque; not that she minded, we were older and she was more conscious of herself. The need for closer intimacy was mine, but I knew if we had a place to ourselves she would relent, if only partially. That was the understanding and trust in our love.

One Sunday night, as we emerged from the dining hall and paused and wondered which direction to turn to for our stroll, she informed me her roommate had stayed home, would return tomorrow. Just that, and the look. We headed, in an ostensibly casual manner, for her room. Once the door closed behind us we fell on each other with a passion. How much I had longed for this moment, there was for the first time a bed with us! And how we strained to preserve what we had, our innocence, not to cross the line. And how much we wanted to do just that, break through those bounds into a new state which we were sure would leave us intact. Past those first stages of squeezing and holding, the weighty awkwardness of inexperienced bodies, the touching of intimacies and putting-just-the-tip-there, I could hardly contain myself, I was in and we were one. Can there be any greater pleasure than that first time in frightened, frantic, and ecstatic love? We lost our virginities and did “it” just that one time but I walked around a proud stud, with my woman beside me.

I see her sitting across from me now and I want to go and touch her; but if I do I am afraid I will lose my train of thought. This worries her, my notepad on my lap; and it worries me, too. Can I control what thoughts, what revelations and stories, what part of myself I put down here? Can we bear the pain of this scrutiny, this veiled and treacherous truth?

What an anxious month we passed when she missed her period that time, following our misdemeanour. Initially, though, when she told me the news and what it implied—a child—I find it hard to believe how laughably naive I was—I felt like an even bigger man, confirmed: I had planted one, as the vulgar saying went. Only later, as we continued our stroll that evening, did it dawn on me what she was fretting about by my side. If she was truly pregnant, we would become the laughingstock among our friends; we would be branded among some sections of the community as shameless sinners. Couldn’t we have
waited?
—what was the hurry?—the whole world waited (our elders’ pained admonishments). We would be known and talked about forever. Our wedding would be a hurried, pushed-through, tainted affair, instead of a full-scale glorious celebration. But first, she said, allowing a glimmer of hope into our predicament, her condition had to be confirmed by a doctor—there was a tiny chance that this was a false alarm and we were safe after all. But what doctor to trust? An Indian was out of the question, the story would be out and spreading within a day. An African doctor could botch the test, or worse. A European—white—seemed the best choice, for competence and discretion. But a white doctor was
inconveniently far and probably very expensive. We laugh when we recall that quandary now, what silliness that panicky circumstance led us into. What colonial and racist attitudes we had. I made up a story for my friends who were studying science that our servant at home wanted a pregnancy test done for his sister, and wouldn’t it be a good idea to do it ourselves. With chemicals stolen from one of the labs and test tubes and kitchen supplies, a messy and smelly test was performed by me and others on a gas stove at a friend’s house; the solution that would reveal my fate, and that of my beloved, had to be kept standing steady for five days, and I left it in a tea cup on my friend’s kitchen window with strong reminders to his mother not to empty it into the sink. Which is precisely what a servant ended up doing a couple of days later. Time was running out and I was beginning to appear both guilty and silly with my vague and inconsistent talk of my servant’s sister’s crisis and the urgency of a test. Finally I took assistance from an African intern, who had the test done at the public hospital, confirmed a negative result, and told Farida to relax and await her next period. My next “deed”—as we called it—with my girl was on our wedding night, with all the huzzahs preceding it, after the wedding reception. Ashiq was born not long after.

That name, Ashiq, has a certain old-worldness to it; it comes from poetry, and it means “lover”—both in the mystical and the worldly sense. A moth that burns itself in the flame of a candle is an ashiq who dies for its love. A few years after we arrived in Canada, his name was predictably corrupted to Ash, which he altered in
spelling to Ashe, after the famous black tennis star, who eventually died of AIDS.

One day we received a call from one of Ashe’s teachers, a Mr. Turner; a rather nice fellow, soft-spoken. I would like to discuss your son with you, how he’s doing and so on. Perhaps he’s started slipping up in class, what with the teenage years upon him, we worried, though we were also confident the matter couldn’t be serious; we knew our son, our first-born who’d shared that first winter with us in this country, and that dingy apartment on Dufferin where we spent a couple of months before we knew better and moved out. When we sat down before Mr. Turner, he began by saying very positive things about Ashe, which put us at ease. Then he went on to explain to us about the importance of freedoms and human rights, and we listened and wholeheartedly agreed, though not without a trace of irritation; we were educated, perhaps as much as he, we too had been teachers, though briefly, in the country we came from. Observing our impatience, he began to speak of sexual preferences and slowly the point of the interview began to dawn on me; it required the full brunt of the revelation before Farida realized what was being said: Your son is gay. She looked at me as if to say, Something’s wrong with my hearing today, or, Is this man crazy?

We’ve taken it well. We’ve read books and had discussions with doctors and teachers. It is nothing wrong, it’s not perversion. We are convinced. But I must confess to the initial shock, the disappointment. A lifetime’s expectations, is what it comes down to; a man sees himself in his son. And a man has hopes for grandchildren, a continuation
of the genes. To come upon a deviation from the norm in one’s own line, that’s the rub. My son will not be a father, a husband; will not have a woman beside him and all that involves: man and woman. Instead, man and man, and whatever they are up to. I cannot erase from my mind all those scenes from long ago when as boys we would make jokes about homosexuality, about those “uncles,” the strange, silent and pathetic elderly men with a certain reputation. After the initial shock, Farida took to the idea much more readily. He was always sensitive, she said, and gays are sensitive, they are artists, aren’t they? W. H. Auden, and Benjamin Britten, and…. And our own Mr. Gregory, the English teacher, he was also a poet, I added. Thus we are comforted. Ashiq was our jewel, is still our jewel. He did not become an artist, some sort of unemployed poet, and that’s perhaps as well. He is a geologist in Alberta.

Ashe was extremely moved when he found out we knew, that we had accepted what he was. But you are our son, we told him, and will always be that. Our disappointment, our expectations, we have swallowed, he knows that; and every time he comes to see us, I can tell he still is moved. And every time we meet, we embrace. I am proud of my son, that we had a son. Only, it seems that one day he just rode away into the sunset, into another mode of existence. That’s life. One day a friend of Ashe called to invite us to a birthday party in his honour and we went, not knowing what to expect, even what to wear. We went after mosque and so I was in my suit, which was out of place, but Farida in a bright blue sari stood out like a peacock and people simply gaped at her. They were a
nice bunch, who met us, all young and mostly men, but it was like being among a group of aliens. And, as I said to my son, “But you guys dress alike and look alike,” to which he answered, “Maybe among the younger guys, but there are others … I could introduce you to some older guys if you’re interested!” It was too soon for that kind of humour. At the party we met Ashe’s “partner,” Shelly, the guy who had called to invite us.

Now she’s got up with a smile and a glance at me, which is a signal that perhaps I should follow, in a while, and I’m left with this, my preoccupation that’s beginning to stand between us, though slightly, and the thought of that other preoccupation, the peccadillo I’ve got myself into, a yearning for someone else that I can’t control though I have no desire even to consider letting this one go, this partner of so many years and experiences. And as that other looms at the back of my mind, I wonder about this one: does she guess, does she know? Am I living on borrowed time, is this dual existence so far a gift from her?