Where the Air is Sweet (5 page)

He closes his eyes.

“What can I do? Can I cook something that—”

“Not now.”

She is silent.

“I need help,” he says, turning to face the window. “My
brother has become a drunk. The idiot couldn’t even talk tonight. His mouth was like rubber. I don’t know how to fix him. Tell me, my wife, how do I fix him?” He looks at her, at the large, blank eyes staring back at him. He runs his hand through his hair. “You are helpless. You are no better than a child.”

She does not move. She does not speak.

“I had diarrhea in December,” he says. “Then, even, you did not ask after my health. I grew so weak and you said nothing.”

She lowers her eyes.

“And last week, on Friday, there was no
chaas
when I came home to eat.”

She looks at her feet while he cites incident after incident, a litany of failures reaching back to the first months of their marriage. The words are a hammer with which Raju pounds Rehmat again and again.

Later, Raju lies on his bed in the dark, gripped with righteous anger. Rehmat is weak. He must make her strong. He must force her to be better than she is. He falls asleep to the sound of her washing dishes outside.

For three days, Raju does not speak to Rehmat, nor does he look at her. When she speaks to him, he acts as though he cannot hear her, as though he cannot see her, as though she is nothing.

The next evening, when he returns from work, Ruth informs him that Rehmat has taken the children to Hussein Mawji’s house. She took a bag of clothes with her.

Raju had not expected this. He had not expected Rehmat to leave. He realizes he was unfair, that Rehmat is a good wife.
And yet he wants her to be something else, something more, even while he knows it is impossible. He lights a cigarette and begins walking to Hussein’s house. He does not want to face him. He does not want to bear the shame of a man who cannot control his wife. But he has no choice. He must keep his family together.

He must take care of everything.

If something were to happen to him, even for a short period, an illness, an injury, his family would starve. He is close to finalizing a deal to sell off his share of the hardware-and-grocery
duka
to pay off the debts Ghulam accrued, but even with the deal, he will not be solvent. And he will need to find something for his younger brother to do. He cannot leave him without work, unable to feed his wife and children. He must also continue to send money to his mother in Malia. She is a widow and he is her eldest son.

As a child he knew that if he kept himself tidy and helped his mother clean the home, his father was less likely to be angry and less likely to express his anger through clenched fists and long berating lectures. He knew that if his teacher gave his parents a glowing account of how clever their child was, they were more likely to smile at each other. He knew that if he could keep his little brother from misbehaving, with kicks to the behind, curses whispered in his ear and promises of sweets, there would be peace in the house.

As he grew older and helped his father and uncle in their shop, he learned to fix his father’s errors in the ledgers before his uncle saw them, thereby avoiding a prolonged argument and threats to end the partnership. He was a truthful boy, but he would tell his mother that his father had to work late in the
shop even when he knew that he was playing cards. He would tell his parents that his little brother had stayed in school when in fact Raju had to drag him back kicking and screaming after he had run away.

When his father died, he did not cry, though he was only fourteen, and instead took on without complaint his role as man of his household. The eldest son of the eldest son, he felt an invisible weight descend on him. At the age of nineteen, he accepted, without question and sight unseen, the first girl his mother asked him to marry.

The good boy became a good man.

As Raju’s family grows, the weight on his shoulders increases. Though he feels himself become stronger and better able to bear the responsibility, a fear takes hold of him. A terror that any misstep, either his or another’s, will leave his
khandan
in pieces, disintegrating into something he dare not imagine.

When he reaches Hussein’s house, Raju drops his cigarette and knocks on the front door. It opens suddenly, quickly. Hussein stands, unsmiling, his white singlet covered with dark, wet patches.

“I am not happy with you,” Hussein says.

Raju feels blood rush to his face.

“You send your wife for a visit and you yourself don’t appear until we have finished our dinner?” Hussein begins to laugh as he pulls Raju into the house, his hand in the crook of the younger man’s elbow. “Thank you,” he says, leaning towards Raju. “Every day, my wife complains how empty the house is now that the boys are working with me.”

Raju looks at Rehmat. She is standing next to Hussein’s wife, Sherbanu, her eyes lowered.

“Next time,” says Hussein, “you must come earlier and eat with us.”

Raju nods, his eyes on Rehmat. She has not yet looked at him.

Raju and Rehmat walk home in silence, Gulshi asleep in Raju’s arms, the boys walking ahead of their parents. Raju does not acknowledge what has passed. There is no need. His anger is finished. He is pleased Rehmat had the good sense to keep their quarrel private. He promises himself he will not be so cruel to her in the future.

He cannot keep his promise.

The next time Raju begins to rage, Rehmat does not leave the house. Instead, she goes about her day, her eyes lowered, her shoulders drawn inward, while Raju complains and belittles and ignores until his anger is spent, until he is himself again.

This becomes their dance. This becomes their life.

5

R
AJU IS HAVING TEA WITH “HUSSEIN. THEY ARE
sitting at the long ebony table in Hussein’s dining room. Seven-year-old Bahdur is on the floor playing with a toy car Hussein has given him. The car is made of wood and Bahdur is moving it back and forth with his hand.

“This Europe war is growing big,” Hussein says, and takes a sip of his milky tea. Raju is silent. When Hussein begins a thought with a statement like this, Raju has learned, it will be a few moments before he makes his point. “The price of tin has gone up dramatically. And it is going to go even higher.”

Raju looks down at Bahdur, who has pushed his car under a chair. When Hussein doesn’t continue, Raju speaks. “What are you thinking?”

“I’m thinking there is a great deal of tin to be mined in this part of Uganda.”

Raju looks up at him and smiles. “You’re going to open another mine?”

“No.”

After some moments of silence, Raju begins to laugh. “My trucks are busy.”

“And Ghulam?”

Raju inhales and holds his breath. “My brother,” he says, exhaling slowly, “has become a proper drunkard.”

Hussein is silent, his eyes fixed on Raju.

“Bapa, look!” Bahdur has let his car go and it is zooming along the floor towards the wall.

“You have six children now,” Hussein says. “You are a blessed man. Why resist more blessings?”

As Bahdur scrambles to retrieve his car, Raju looks at Hussein and holds his hands up, as though in surrender. Nodding, he smiles. He turns his hands inward so that he is looking at his open palms. “It’s time to take these fair, fair hands,” he says, adopting the metaphor of an unmarried girl, one whose hands have not yet been decorated with henna, one whose life has not yet been lived, “and stain them red.”

As Raju walks home with Bahdur, he cannot stop smiling. He looks over at his son, who is walking briskly to keep up, his toy car in his hand, his eyes on the road in front of him. Whenever Raju looks at his younger children he does not feel weighed down, the way he feels when he looks at his two eldest sons, Mumdu and Baku. When he is with the younger children, Raju feels like a child again, full of energy and mischief. Today the energy inside him is overwhelming him, making him feel like running. He puts his arm around Bahdur’s small shoulders and kisses his cheek, the way he never holds his older boys, the way he never kisses his older boys. He lifts Bahdur onto his shoulders and begins to sing, songs his mother used to sing to him, songs he did not know he remembered.

Later, when they are home, sitting down to dinner with the family, Bahdur stands up and sings these songs with a memory that astonishes Raju and entertains the entire family.

It is raining. Raju is pulling at a broken umbrella, trying to fix it. Mumdu is crouching on the kitchen floor tying the laces of his shoes. At fifteen, Mumdu is helping his father run the transport business full-time while Baku attends secondary school in Kampala. Raju hears claps of thunder and looks out the window. The sky is dark, the rain falling in punishing sheets.

He glances up and sees Maliza, the family’s servant, walk in the front door. She is wearing a dress that reaches past her knees but hangs a good three inches above her bare feet. The dress is sleeveless and covered in a pattern. The blotches in the pattern could be leaves. Raju is not sure. He has never noticed the pattern on her dress before. He has never noticed her dress before. Today, the girl is soaked. Her dress is plastered to her skin so that he can make out the contours of her body underneath: the curve of her hips pushing outwards from her waist; her softly rounded thighs; the dark circles on her small breasts. Her hair is cut short and water drips from her temples, her jaw, her chin. Her eyes, which curve up slightly at the sides, like a cat’s, are lined with thick, wet eyelashes. Raju looks at Mumdu, who is staring at Maliza, his hands gripping his shoelaces, his cheeks flushed.

Maliza scrubs the floors each morning and helps Rehmat wash the clothes. She is a Muganda but she speaks fluent Runyankole and Swahili as well as Luganda. She is young, maybe sixteen or seventeen. Maliza is a clever girl. Raju never has to
repeat an instruction. In the two years she has worked for Raju and Rehmat, she has learned a smattering of Gujarati words and phrases with an accent so perfect that each time she says a Gujarati word, Raju jerks his head to look up, unable to reconcile the voice with the skin, the hair, the features. Rehmat is fond of Maliza and has learned enough Swahili to communicate with her, to make a request, to ask after her parents. Once, Raju heard Rehmat address Maliza as
beta,
“child,” “dear child,” as she addresses her own children. She quickly corrected herself and apologized to Maliza.

Maliza approaches Raju and Mumdu. She is hugging herself, so that her breasts are concealed by her arms. She glances quickly at Raju and then reaches for a tea towel and hurries out of the kitchen and down to the courtyard. Raju sees her buttocks moving up, moving down, as she walks, the smell of wet earth filling the room. He sees Mumdu’s eyes follow her.

“Let’s get to the office,” Raju says loudly, firmly. “It is late.”

A week later, Raju returns home in the middle of the afternoon to change his clothes. He spent the day on a haul and he is soaked with perspiration. He sees Rehmat sleeping with the one-year-old twins Amir and Jaafar. He walks down the stairs to the courtyard. Shirts are drying on the line. He will ask Maliza to iron one.

When Raju steps into the sunlight, he hears a sound coming from the walled-off bath area. He steps closer and peers in. Maliza is there with Mumdu. She is pressed against him, the fingers of one hand caressing his lips, her breasts flat on his chest; he is holding her waist, gripping the fabric of her dress in his hands. They turn their heads and see Raju watching
them. The three of them stand frozen, as though they have been petrified in these positions.

After a few moments, Raju speaks. “Mumdu, go to the office.”

Mumdu quickly walks away.

Raju looks at Maliza, whose eyes are lowered. “Leave and don’t return to this house. Tomorrow, collect your pay from my office. If you ever see my wife, you will tell her you have asked to stop working for us. You will tell her your mother is ill.” He is speaking calmly, without a hint of anger in his voice.

“I’ll make arrangements to find her work,” Raju says once he reaches the office.

Mumdu does not look at his father.

“I was a young man once,” Raju says. “I know these girls are tempting.”

Mumdu does not look at him. He says nothing, does nothing to indicate he is sorry. That he misbehaved. That he was wrong.

“She is not your possession,” Raju says in a clipped voice.

“I know,” Mumdu says. He looks at his father. Then he lowers his eyes. “Was she your possession?” Mumdu says the words so quietly it is a few moments before Raju comprehends them.

He steps angrily towards Mumdu, then stops. “I have never touched her. And you will never touch a girl whom we pay to work for us.”

“She no longer works for us,” Mumdu says quickly. He has raised his eyes. They are wide, hopeful. He has feelings for this girl.

Raju is taken aback, his anger quickly dissipated. “She is an African. What are you thinking?”

Mumdu sits down in a chair, slumping.

“There are many Asian girls here. When I was young, when I first came, it was different. When a young man had needs, it was different. We didn’t have choices.”

6

F
IVE YEARS LATER, IN 1945, WHEN PEACE IS
declared in Europe, Raju is living with Rehmat and their six children in a one-room mud house at the base of a tin mine. The mine is in a village, forty miles from Mbarara, called Bikanuka.

Following Hussein’s prompting, Raju worked hard to improve his English. Then he spent two years earning a licence to prospect and two years prospecting. In the meantime, he kept the transport business going. These would be the busiest, most exhausting years of his life. But he would never again feel the hope he felt in these years, the thrill of searching for something that no one has yet seen. Every day, he scoured the earth, the rich red earth below him, the earth he had placed his life in, his trust in. And finally, mercifully, magically, it yielded. Early in 1944, Raju opened the mine, the sale of his transport company financing its creation. The mine was situated at the top of a hill. At the base of the hill, with Mumdu’s help, Raju built the mud house.