CHAPTER 12
Nadira’s Wedding
1.
At the gates of the house, the beggars sat. They were so thin. Repeatedly, they raised one forearm to their faces, their mouths only half filled with teeth, their lips opening and shutting, saying something to the street. But there was nobody in the street. There was nobody but more beggars, clustering outside the gates of the Dhanmondi houses. We children had been forbidden, for many months now, to play in the streets, or to walk through them, even with our ayahs or each other. It was rumoured that children had been stolen away for ransom demands, that ordinary people had been set upon and robbed by the starving, that people had been crushed to death in riots in Gulistan. There was no food in Bangladesh, and we were going to a wedding feast. Some people blamed Sheikh Mujib, the president of the country. Others blamed farmers, for hoarding food in anticipation of profits to come. I can remember the famine in Bangladesh, and the look of the people dying on the streets. I can remember it remotely, through the pane of glass in the rear of the red Vauxhall. That is how I viewed it.
As the gates of Nana’s house were opened, the beggars on the pavements struggled to rise. Some of them were strong enough to do so; others made an effort; some more simply lay there, their hands outstretched, splayed open waiting for alms, just as they had been for many days. Some of those last were unmoving. I looked at what might be out there. But the gates were opened, and quickly closed again behind the red Vauxhall. Inside, the engagement day was about to begin.
2.
As my mother got out of the car, her sisters came, all at once, to embrace her. ‘Oh – this is so nice,’ she said, smothered by them in their beautiful saris, the pink, the green, the blue.
‘And Mahmood,’ Mary said, coming round the car to greet my father. His head was held high.
‘And Mahmood – and the children, too,’ Era was saying. ‘How grown-up the girls look.’
Sunchita was in a pretty red-and-white polka-dotted dress, Sushmita in a proper sari, pink and silver, like a beautiful fancy cake. Though my father had put on a suit and tie, I had been allowed to wear a Panjabi shirt and pyjama trousers.
‘How nice,’ my mother kept saying. ‘How nice . . .’ as if the people about her had returned from the dead, and not just been kept from her for two years by my father’s obstinacy. As she repeated her words, she reached out and touched her sisters’ faces, one after the other, and they touched her in the same way. ‘But where is Nadira?’
‘You must come and see,’ Mira said. ‘You couldn’t manage to see me on my wedding day, so you just have to accept we are going to make the most of you today.’
In a bustle of apologies and regrets and hush-nows and more apologies, my mother was swept off by her sisters. I followed the women, as small boys may, tagging along with my sisters into the bridal chamber, strolling along with my hands in my pockets, thrust under my long shirt.
Nadira had met her husband Iqtiar in the following way. Like her, he was a singer. He was a small man, very tidy in appearance, with deep black eyes and a humorous expression. They had met first of all at the famous music school, Chhayanat. It had undergone a popular revival after independence. He was an academic by profession, but was, like her, an enthusiastic performer, too. On the first day of the new year in 1973, the Pahela Boishak festival, Nadira and Iqtiar had met for the first time at the concert that Chhayanat had organized. ‘It is a true love match,’ Era said – she liked a romance in her family. But they had done everything properly, and Iqtiar had obtained the permission of Nadira’s family and of his own. It was not like the elopement of Bubbly or of Boro-mama.
In the bedroom, Nadira sat on a chair, her body canted nervously forwards. She was dressed dramatically, her sari red and deep blue, ornamented in gold, her hair up like a film star’s. I remembered how wonderful she could look, knowing she would look wonderful in the future but never so wonderful as she did today at her wedding. ‘What is that child doing here?’ she said, referring to me. But I knew she did not mean it, and I went to embrace her. Her face was hedged about with gold, powdered and perfumed; she looked lovely, smelt like a goddess after a bath in rose and geranium petal oil, but, because of the complicated jewellery, it was like trying to kiss someone through a barbed-wire fence. I was first, but then she raised herself and put her arms around my mother.
‘And Mahmood is here, too,’ my mother said. But Nadira was exclaiming with excitement over my sisters’ appearance. She did not seem to hear that.
3.
Downstairs, in the first sitting room, the old men were sitting. Lutfur-chacha, Khandekar-nana, Nana’s friend the doctor, and others; Iqtiar, Nadira’s husband, was not there, just his brothers and an uncle. He and his brothers had come shortly before with gifts: a sari set for Nadira, boxes of sweets, carried shoulder high, box after box, and even gifts of paan. (My great-grandmother would not have approved of that, I am sure, and it still seems to me rather a private thing, not something to give as a present. You don’t know how people like their paan to be.) Then Iqtiar had departed in the proper way. In the first sitting room, they were talking about the mahr, the sum of money with which the groom buys the bride. Nobody had thought about it.
‘Well, I expect Nadira will want something,’ Iqtiar’s brother said, a little baffled. ‘I really don’t know what it should be.’
‘When I married my wife . . .’ Khandekar-nana said, but then he remembered it had been a long time ago, in Calcutta, in a different currency. ‘What do young people do nowadays?’
‘Oh, it depends,’ the doctor said. ‘Some people like to make a big fuss. But I don’t think it’s at all necessary.’
‘But,’ one of Iqtiar’s brothers said, ‘it is important not to insult your bride with a small sum of money.’
‘No one wants to be insulted,’ another brother said. ‘No one wants to insult anyone, I mean. Iqtiar told me that he just wants to do whatever Nadira expects. Surely someone can go and ask her what she is expecting.’
It seemed as if everyone was about to agree that that would be a very good idea. But then Lutfur-chacha got hold of what Iqtiar’s brother had just said. ‘I don’t think her father would approve of that at all,’ he said. ‘There is a right and a wrong way to do everything. I never heard of a groom asking his bride what she wanted and then carrying out her orders. That is beginning the marriage on exactly the wrong foot, a husband asking a wife what he should do with his own money. Her father would be very cross if he heard what had been done there.’
‘It is true,’ the doctor said thoughtfully, ‘that if her father wanted things to be done in a certain way, then he would probably have let everyone know how things were to be done. Is it likely that he would let everybody proceed in the dark in a matter like this, if he thought it was at all proper to do anything differently?’
(Both Nana and Iqtiar’s father had stayed away from this important discussion, just as they were supposed to. Some of those in the room had never had to come to a decision about a family matter without being instructed by Nana. They could have done with my father, but he was outside, embarrassedly talking to the gardeners as the many children outside raced about the flowerbeds.)
‘I still don’t see why we can’t ask Nadira,’ somebody said. ‘I don’t believe she’s expecting anything at all. She would have mentioned it.’
‘But you have to pay the mahr,’ Lutfur-chacha said, apparently deeply shocked.
‘Indeed you do,’ Khandekar-nana said gravely. So there seemed no further discussion to be had.
4.
On the veranda, watching the children run about in the garden, was Pultoo in his first moustache. About him were Iqtiar, Alam, his friends Kajol and Kanaq. Pultoo’s sister, Alam’s wife Bubbly, perched sociably on the edge of an armchair, plump and happy. At the edge of the group was my father. All he had said to any other guest since arriving had been ‘Is Laddu here?’ But his brother-in-law was not there. Nobody knew if he was intending to come.
‘There is nothing that anyone can do,’ Pultoo was saying. ‘Well, not nothing. We can open the gates, and we can go out and give those people rice. How many?’
‘Two hundred,’ Kajol said. ‘Maybe three hundred. How many guests come to a wedding? You could ask them all to forgo the food they would have eaten, and simply take it out on to the streets instead, to give it to those people outside the gates.’
‘So three hundred people eat today,’ Pultoo said. ‘But how many people are there beyond those three hundred people? How do we feed them?’
‘And if you go on giving away your food,’ Alam said, ‘then soon you join the ranks of the hungry, too. Until you decide to stop giving away your food. My father, in Srimongol, the other day some people came to his door. And they said—’
‘But if everyone did that,’ Kanaq said, ‘there would be food enough for everyone. It would be shared out equally, and everyone would have a little bit, but nobody would have too much, and nobody would starve.’
‘I have heard that idea somewhere before,’ Bubbly said dismissively. ‘It is all the fault of the government. There is plenty of food. It is just a question of getting it to the right people.’
‘The Friend of Bengal is doing his best,’ Pultoo said plaintively. ‘I believe the factors are against him.’
They talked a little about Sheikh Mujib, their voices below a certain level. It was hard to think that the Sheikh Mujib whom the full streets and empty markets cursed was the same one that they had known, been with in the same room. There was no point in going out handing out bowls of rice and dal, they agreed – or, rather, there was a point, and all of them did it. A group of old ladies came to Nani every day, sometimes holding their huge-eyed grandchildren by the hand; they were country women, come to Dacca in the hope of food, walking a hundred miles or more. Nani fed them every day. You saw them sitting in a corner of the garden, moulding the rice with their fingers, eating in silence. Others, very like them, you saw waiting around the dustbins at the back of the house. You could not feed everyone, Nani said. The house took on its duties, and it tried to tell those it could not help directly about the food-distribution centres on the university campus. You could not feed everyone, Nana accepted, when Nani raised the question with him, and the wedding of Nadira had to take its proper form.
‘The truth of the matter is,’ Kajol said to Kanaq, ‘that if the farmers in the country stopped hoarding, there would be no famine.’ He spoke in a low voice, so that Alam and Bubbly would not hear. They had been known to defend country farmers; to say that they had a right to make a living, to feed themselves and their families.
‘Everyone knows that,’ Kanaq said, in the same voice. ‘The fact is, they think there will be a proper shortage soon, and when that happens, they will make an enormous fortune. If Mujib would just requisition the land of the property owners, there would be no famine any more.’
And then they went on to talk about mounting a concert of Tagore’s songs to raise funds for the famine victims. My father listened, his arms crossed, saying nothing.
5.
In Nadira’s room, they were talking about absent friends.
‘If only Shafi could be here,’ Mary-aunty said. ‘He would have enjoyed it so much.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Era-aunty said. ‘He would have loved it. ‘
Shafi was not my own uncle, but an uncle nevertheless. He was my cousin Rubi’s uncle. When Rubi came, she and I would play a game we had invented in the garden. It was called churui vati, or picnic, and we ate pretend food and pretended to serve each other. She was very proud of her uncle Shafi, and often told stories about his bravery, and boasted of having an uncle in uniform, as I did not. He was the only man in the whole of my immense extended family who had been in the military. One day he had come to visit Nana, to talk about something very serious, with Nana, Papa and Mama, and Rubi’s mother and father, who were related to him and to me in ways I never quite worked out. Halwa and chanachur were produced for them to eat with the tea. I had seen that Shafi was shaking, nervous and afraid; he could hardly talk at all. I had heard of him before, and wondered why he was not wearing his military uniform. Then he went, and I never saw him again. And after a few days, my cousin Rubi told me that he had disappeared. For weeks, Rubi would cry. I did not know why the army had killed Rubi’s uncle Shafi. Afterwards, Rubi would not play the game of picnic we so often played together.
‘I wish Shafi could have been here,’ Mira-aunty said to my mother, and my mother agreed.
There must have been some sense that discussion had been going on downstairs about the bride’s purchase-price, the mahr. But now Lutfur-nana, an old man, appeared at the door with an apologetic air. His Panjabi was creased about his hips where he had sat for so long; he looked like a puppet that had been placed for too long in the toy trunk. I was sitting on Nadira’s lap, my arms held firmly to my sides in case I should wriggle on her sari, or turn and play with her jewellery. I remembered that Lutfur-nana was the old man who had come first of all to persuade my mother to come to Mira’s wedding. But he seemed to have been forgiven.
‘It must be time to go down to dinner,’ Nadira murmured. ‘Is everyone here now?’
‘We have been talking,’ Lutfur-nana said, ‘about the mahr. And we all agree—’
‘I really don’t mind,’ Nadira said. ‘Really, just do whatever my husband thinks best. I know you will all decide for the best, whatever it is. It is honestly no business of mine. I don’t want to know about the money – it seems so unrefined to take an interest. If my husband gives me one taka, then I will be quite satisfied with that. Everything is perfectly all right. Now. Saadi. Off you go. Get off. It must be time for dinner now.’
So Lutfur-nana was dismissed, and Nadira had her one taka. At least, I don’t know any different, at this distance in time. And everyone went down to eat the traditional mutton biriani.
6.
Nadira’s husband Iqtiar’s family lived only three or four streets away. It was quite close enough, a month later, two days before the wedding, for his family to come in procession on foot to Nana’s house. It was for the bride’s turmeric day.
The gates of their house were opened, and out came his brothers, his father, his uncles, some small boys, nephews. In their hands were sweets, shining presents, wrapped and ribboned; somewhere among them were turmeric paste and henna to decorate the bride. At the head of the procession, four small boys were carrying two enormous fish, two rui; perhaps ten pounds each. Iqtiar that morning had been to Sadarghat and had found these great shining animals, caught overnight in the river. All morning his brothers had been at work, and the fish were decorated now, one dressed as a bridegroom, the other in a ruffled paper sari as a bride. In blue pastel chalk on the rim of each silver dish, someone had written ‘Iqtiar’ and ‘Nadira’. Behind, there was mishti doi in terracotta pots in the hands of the uncles, and, in the arms of his youngest brother, held tenderly like the phantom of a dancer, Nadira’s wedding sari. She had chosen it, and told Iqtiar what she was going to wear, and where he should find it, and squared the merchant, and made absolutely sure by asking Iqtiar to describe it in as much detail as he possibly could. Still, he had fetched it, and paid for it. It was his responsibility, and now his brother was bringing it to Nadira on the bride’s turmeric day.
The procession, some fifteen-strong, walked in a stately, suppressed, self-conscious way. It was unusual for people to take a walk on the streets of Dacca so richly dressed, these days. The small boys tried not to show what they felt.
(‘What is the turmeric day?’ the man to whom I am telling this story asks.
‘Well, you know turmeric?’
‘Yes, I know turmeric,’ he says. ‘It is a yellow spice, very difficult to get out of clothes.’
‘Well, the turmeric day is a day devoted to turmeric. They make a paste out of it; they put it on the bride.’
‘Who puts it on the bride?’
‘Well, her friends do. The henna decorates her hands and feet, complicated abstract designs, while she sits on a small platform.’
‘Why is it called a turmeric day, and not a henna day?’ he asks, but I am going to ignore that question.
‘She is coloured yellow all over. With turmeric. That is what I am talking about. It makes her skin lovely and soft. Do you want to know any more?’ I say to the man who is asking these questions.
‘No,’ he says, ‘that is quite clear, thank you.’)
In orange, like monks, they walked, their expressions directed forward and almost upwards. Around them, the city amassed with its hands outstretched for alms. In those circumstances, it took a certain power to continue at the same pace, to go on as if no one to your left, no one to your right, no one with veins stretched tight under skin and over bones is asking for food. But the relations of the bridegroom walked forward, not speeding up or slowing down. They were allowed to proceed.
But in Nana’s house the men had been at work. The whole house was transformed. Pultoo had directed the arrangements. On the stairs, small lamps were painted and hanging at every step; Zahid, my brother, had been set to work by Pultoo, and Kajol and Kanaq, and the house was lit with two hundred small lamps. As you walked up the stairs, the heat to left and right was as a fire in winter, and sometimes, as one went out somewhere, there was a fierce sudden smell in the room of extinguished flame, as of hot carbon, and Rustum would go to refill the lamp with oil and relight it. The floor was painted with henna in patterns; the stage upon which Nadira already sat was richly ornamented. She was sitting on it, her arms smeared with the yellow paste with its metallic smell. Every surface was laden with lamps and candles; every single member of my family had been put to work. The table had been set on the veranda, and thirty places laid at it. Even I had been entrusted with a task – I had had to lay the unlit lamps up the staircase. The house of a Dacca lawyer, normally so orderly and restrained, had been transformed into a world of flame, lights and fantasy, and at its centre was Nadira, her sultry eyes lowered, waiting for her lover to arrive. He would not come: first would come his brothers and his uncles and his cousins, glowing in orange and bearing gifts. But later he would come. The whole house had taken on the rich smell of meat and birds, of fish, of biriani, of spice, and of the turmeric paste masking my aunt, transforming her. I stood back, clutching my mother’s hand. The metal gates to my grandfather’s house were booming with the beat of fists. Inside, the wedding feast was entering its second phase.
7.
And then later, after the dinner – after all of it – when I should really have been sent to bed, all those men, the brothers and cousins and uncles and friends of Iqtiar leapt up from the table, at some signal which no one saw, and with sudden wet fists of colour – of raw reds, of pinks and yellows, of blues and purples, of orange and greens and mauves, all of dry powder and water dripping from the fists – with all of that, they leapt up and flung the dyes and pastes of blinding colour in each other’s faces, at the clothes of the children, of the bride’s family, of everyone at the table on the veranda. The garden was dark, and itching with cicadas, and the veranda hung with nets, and the air was, in a second, full of colour. I had never seen anything like that. In an instant, Nana’s garden was a storm of pigment, and everyone was laughing or rushing inside, or joining in and throwing back what dyes and shades and pigment they could. In a minute I was soaked in a red dye; it was in my mouth with the taste of iron, and everyone about me – my sisters, Zahid, Pultoo, even Dahlia – was joining in. Everyone’s clothes were ruined. Nana, all at once, was there among us. He had not been there before. He called out for peace. ‘And where is she?’ he said, as the clouds of colour subsided and everyone gave way to choking. But she had gone. No one had seen her go. It was as if Nadira had known exactly what was about to happen, and slipped away before Iqtiar’s forces could orchestrate her ruin.
Still, at the turmeric day, there was no sign of Boro-mama. It was as if he had been instructed not to come at all.
8.
It could not be helped. After the month of preliminaries, of going round to each other’s houses in procession for feasting and gift-giving and gossiping, the day on which Nadira and Iqtiar were to be married had arrived.
Nadira and her sisters were waiting for the car to take them to the hotel.
‘They were beautiful cards Pultoo made,’ Dahlia said. ‘How many did you send out, in the end?’
‘I thought he would send out cards with a lady without her clothes on,’ Bubbly said. ‘But they were nice. He is clever and talented, Little-brother. Everyone in Srimongol said how clever and talented he was.’
‘I think we sent out well over a hundred,’ Nadira said. ‘How do I look? Is my makeup smudged?’
‘Oh, Nadira,’ Mary said. She was anxiously waiting at the window, but now turned and came to her sister; she placed one hand where she could, on the elbow, in unsmudging reassurance. ‘I remember the day you were born. And here you are, getting married.’
‘The monsoon broke, and then the next day Nadira was born. A monsoon baby is the best,’ Era said.
‘No, you’re wrong,’ Mary said. ‘You aren’t remembering properly. Nadira was born and the monsoon broke the next day. Everyone was sitting about, fanning themselves, cursing the heat, waiting for the rains to come, and then there was Nadira instead. When it rained the next day, everybody said it would be good for the baby in its first days. It is so easy to make those kinds of confusion.’
‘Sister,’ Era said, ‘I remember perfectly. I remember the doctor coming through the gate in Rankin Street with his bag, and struggling with his bag and an umbrella at the same time. You must remember that.’
‘No, sister,’ Mary said. ‘The important detail—’
‘The important detail is the doctor, struggling with his umbrella, and the rains beginning. Shiri, don’t you remember?’
My mother spread her hands wide, smiling. ‘When you say the circumstances, Era, it sounds as if that is how it happened. But then Mary has a story, which sounds to me as if that is the real story. I was there, I know that. And I know that some years the rains break before Nadira’s birthday, and sometimes after; and I remember being at home in Rankin Street, and it raining so hard outside, and there was a baby in the house, crying so loud. But it could have been Mira, or it could have been Nadira. I think you will have to ask Big-brother.’
‘Where is Big-brother?’ Dahlia said. ‘He is coming, isn’t he? And Sharmin?’
‘Yes, yes,’ Nadira said. ‘Don’t fret. Everyone is coming. Do I look—’
‘Stop asking that, all the time,’ my mother said. ‘You look perfect. Don’t play with your hair and don’t keep touching your face in that nervous way, and everything will be just perfect.’
‘You will come and visit me?’ Nadira said. ‘When we go to live in England? In Sheffield?’
‘We will do our very best,’ Dahlia said. ‘It is such a long way. And it won’t be for ever that you go.’
‘Please, try to come,’ Nadira said. ‘I want you to come, all of you.’
‘Do you remember when Shiri went to Barisal?’ Mary said. ‘After she got married? I don’t know why, but none of us ever went to see her. It was just such a long way to go, and at the end of it, there was just Barisal. Did we come to visit you, Shiri?’
‘Well,’ my mother said, ‘I think Mira was planning to come and visit, but then, as things turned out, I came home in any case. I don’t remember why Mira wanted to come and visit. I don’t think anyone asked her to. But she wrote a letter saying she was hoping to come and stay, and then, of course, Mahmood became very concerned, and wondered whether we had enough furniture to entertain a guest. It was a strange thing to wonder, because when we moved into that house in Barisal there was nothing but furniture in it – the rooms just filled up with furniture from all the neighbours that none of them wanted. It took us weeks to clear it away and find somewhere else to store it. And then Mira’s letter arrived and Mahmood became concerned that he would have to go and find a bed and a chair and a table and all those things that guests seem to need.’
‘And then I didn’t come after all,’ Mira said.
‘No, that’s so,’ my mother said. ‘It wasn’t your fault, truly, though. I think you would have come if I hadn’t come home again. I don’t know why you wanted to come. I kept saying in my letters how beastly Barisal was. I’m sure it wasn’t really. I’m sure if you went back there it would be just a place like any other. But you know how things were.’
‘We thought you were just being polite,’ Era said. ‘I thought you were saying those things about Barisal because you thought, if you pretended it was lovely, we would all feel that we had no excuse for not coming to visit. We thought you were putting us off as visitors.’
‘But Mira wanted to come anyway,’ my mother said sensibly.
‘Please come to Sheffield,’ Nadira said, her eyes big and frightened. ‘I don’t know what I would do if I thought I wasn’t going to—’
‘Nadira, don’t you start crying,’ Mira said. ‘If you start crying, we are just going to start all over again.’
‘I’m not going to cry,’ Nadira said. ‘And there is the first car. I think it’s the first car, isn’t it?’
9.
Pultoo had organized all the children, and half a dozen cousins, to stand at the door of the hotel where Iqtiar and Nadira were to marry. The hotel reception halls were hung with garlands, and decorated under Pultoo’s direction: banners, flowers, lamps, bowls of water with water-lilies floating in them; he had even cleverly veiled some of the lights with coloured cellophane to warm up the light in the room. At the door, his nieces and nephews and cousins and cousins’ children were leaping up and down with excitement. The rest of Nadira’s family had gone inside, and it was only for Pultoo and his gang of merry pranksters to carry out the last act of Pultoo’s meticulous plot. In each hand, all of the gang held a shoe. They were Iqtiar’s shoes, and Pultoo had stolen every last one of them.
The night before, one of Iqtiar’s brothers had let Pultoo into their house after everyone had gone to bed. The same brother, who had been told all about the prank, had managed to remove not just Iqtiar’s wedding shoes, but every pair of shoes Iqtiar owned from the bridegroom’s room. Pultoo had brought a sack, and the seven pairs of shoes had gone into it before he had fled. Behind him, Iqtiar’s brother was covering his mouth and trying not to laugh.
Now, all fourteen shoes were in the hands of Pultoo’s gang. ‘Remember,’ Pultoo said to us. ‘He doesn’t get them back – not a single shoe – without paying us the ransom money. Do you understand, Saadi?’
‘Yes, yes,’ I said. ‘I understand, Choto-mama. He doesn’t get his old shoe back from me.’
Choto-mama had asked me the question because I was the smallest of the conspirators, and the one most likely to forget what I was supposed to do and hand the shoe over if Iqtiar-uncle asked politely. But Choto-mama underestimated me. I was going to hang on for dear life.
And then, on the other side of the glass doors of the hotel, the cars of Iqtiar and his family drew up. His father and uncles, his cousins, sisters, brothers – including the brother who had been Pultoo’s co-conspirator – came into the hotel, laughing. We could see why: every one of them was wearing shoes, except for Iqtiar, coming in last. He was barefoot, and looking very serious.
‘You see,’ Iqtiar’s brother explained later, ‘Iqtiar knew that Pultoo was going to steal his wedding shoes. He told us two days before. He said that he didn’t care – that if Pultoo stole the wedding shoes, he was going to wear his best shoes anyway. He did not reckon on two things. The first was that one of the culprits was in the room, and in his own family. Namely, me. The second was that the pranksters had set their hearts on stealing not just the wedding shoes he had bought for the express purpose. We were planning to steal all his shoes, altogether.
‘Well, when he woke, and started getting dressed, it did not take him long to understand that all his shoes were gone. So he said to me, “Who takes the same size in shoes as I do, bhai?” And I had to admit that I did. So he said, “Give me your shoes, bhai.” “I am not giving you these shoes,” I said. “I am wearing these shoes, to your wedding, you fool.” “Well, give me your best shoes,” he said. “I have sent them away to be cleaned,” I said. “Well, your second-best shoes,” he said. “The sole is detached, and the heel has come off,” I said. “Then your third-best shoes,” he said. “Alas,” I said. “Those too have been stolen by the pranksters. They must have mistaken my third-best shoes for your best pair.” “Then give me your fourth-best shoes,” he said, in a fit of rage. “My fourth-best shoes?” I said. “Your fourth-best shoes,” he said. “I have lent my fourth-best shoes to Grandmother,” I said. “She finds them very comfortable.” “Is there nobody else in this family who can lend me a pair of shoes?” Iqtiar-brother then shouted out. But answer came there none.’
I had been nominated by the gang to negotiate a price for the return of Iqtiar’s shoes. I was the youngest, and that was my task. I was pushed to the front. In my hand, I was gripping one of the wedding shoes. Pultoo had thoroughly briefed me in what I was to say.
‘You must pay me off!’ I shouted. ‘Iqtiar-mama! I have your shoes. You must pay me before I give them to you. Do you understand?’
‘I understand, Saadi,’ Iqtiar said, in his bare feet. Behind him, his brothers and uncles gathered, giggling. Iqtiar was keeping a straight face. But I knew he was not cross. I knew he was expecting exactly this exchange. ‘How much do you want for my shoes?’
Pultoo had told me what to ask. ‘I want a thousand taka!’ I said. ‘Not one taka less. One thousand taka.’
‘Oh, that is nonsense,’ Pultoo said. ‘For one thousand taka I can buy two hundred shoes, better than those old things. I will give you twenty taka, and that is my final offer.’
‘No! No! No!’ I shouted. Behind me, my brother and sisters, my aunts and cousins, all Nadira’s relatives, were laughing and pointing.
‘I knew you shouldn’t have thrown paint over Saadi,’ Pultoo called. ‘He is going to drive a hard bargain.’
‘Twenty taka!’
‘No!’ I shouted.
‘Thirty!’
‘No!’
‘Forty!’
‘No, no, no, no, no!’
‘He’s good, this little one,’ someone murmured behind me.
‘Fifty!’ Iqtiar said, with an air of finality.
‘No!’ I said. ‘No, no, no, no, no. One thousand taka, or nothing!’
‘Come on, Saadi,’ Pultoo said, poking me in the back. In fact, he had agreed that I would refuse to take any money until Iqtiar reached fifty taka, and then I would give way and take the money. That would be mine. In the event, I was quite delirious with the excitement of standing firm in the negotiation. I saw no reason to stop at fifty. It did not occur to me that the whole business had been squared with Iqtiar.
‘Very well then,’ Iqtiar said. He folded his arms. He glowered down at me. He turned to his supporters, bewailing this tiny monster. ‘What can I do?’ he said. ‘How can a man negotiate with a monster, a terror, a pocket financial genius, a merchant-king three feet tall? How is it possible? Very well then,’ Iqtiar-uncle said. ‘Sixty.’
From behind, Pultoo or somebody else gave me a firm shake about the head. That was good enough. Iqtiar handed over the sixty taka to me as everyone cheered and applauded and laughed. As the money went into my palm, the left shoe was taken away from me, and the right from Shibli, and Iqtiar slipped them on his bare feet. Around us, in the foyer of the hotel, people who were not invited, passers-by, complete strangers, applauded. The whole hotel glittered with light and flowers, flame and mirrors. Proceeding into the hall where the marriage was to take place, I felt at the centre of the marvellous event. It was time for Iqtiar to get married.
10.
The Kazi was inside; he was somebody that Nana knew. In a beautiful black sherwani and cap, he sat and waited patiently, smiling. I knew he had published books about religion; it was an honour, Mother had said, that he was conducting Nadira’s wedding for her, and I should take care not to misbehave in front of him. He had seen the chaos of the shoe-theft before, many times, and he smiled as both sides came laughing into the room to take their places. There were two assistants with him. One was carrying a marriage register, for official purposes; the other, the Mulavi, had nothing with him. He carried what he needed in his head.
There were some official transactions to be got through. The Kazi went to Nadira, and asked her what she thought; he went to Iqtiar, now flushed but shod, and asked him the same. But you know what a wedding is like. You have seen how the veil is draped over the pair of them, a mirror before them; you know how the groom looks in the mirror and says what he feels on first seeing his bride; you know that he usually says that it is as if he has seen the moon. The Mulavi stood, and he said what he had to say: ‘Enter the garden, you and your wives,’ he said, his tone ringing out in the room, ‘in beauty and rejoicing.’ You could not help seeing how very thin the Mulavi was. His eyes were enormous in his face.
11.
Nana rose when he saw my father at the reception, and came towards him. For the first time since Nadira’s wedding had begun, they embraced. Nana had chosen his moment: he wanted to embrace my father in front of everybody. The reception was held at Iqtiar’s family house. They were English teachers, and their house was in the English colony in Dacca. Behind high walls, the events in the street that we had seen on driving from the wedding to the reception retreated a little bit.
‘Look,’ Mrs Khandekar said, to one of her friends. ‘Look, my old friend is making it up with his son-in-law.’
‘Making it up?’ she said. ‘How?’
‘They fell out. There was a terrible falling-out, not between those two, but between brothers-in-law. Or so I believe. They were dividing a house between them, and some people are not made to divide a single house. It was terrible at the time, and I don’t believe they have spoken for two years.’
‘But it was not those two who fell out, was it?’ the friend said. ‘If he fell out with his brother-in-law, shouldn’t he make it up with that brother-in-law?’
‘I don’t know that that will happen,’ Mrs Khandekar said. ‘But there we are.’
On a dais at the far end of the room, music began. It was a small group; players on harmonium, tabla and sitar. They sat cross-legged against fat red cushions, concentrating on their work. I did not recognize what they were playing – it was a wedding song, I now assume, so I would not have heard it before. But I recognized them. Two out of the three of them were Nadira’s music teachers. There was the tall one and the short one; they were the ones Nana’s family treated with such respect, standing up and saying farewell when they left for the day. On the dais, Altaf and Amit practised their art; the tabla pattered like rain, in gusts and spurts; the harmonium gave its thoughtful song; and the sitar reflectively punctuated the sound, like drops of water in a still pond. I ran up to the dais, knowing who they were, expecting that they would greet me. But they continued to play on the dais, which was draped in blue velvet. Only the harmonium player raised his face and looked at me. He smiled – he nearly smiled.
Nana was leading my father and mother up to the top table. ‘Look, look,’ Mrs Khandekar said. She always enjoyed a dramatic scene, and Nana making a place of special dignity for my mother and father was satisfying all her longings in this respect. But then there was a flurry of attention from the other end of the room, and people could be seen to be backing away, to be making room, to be standing if they had been sitting, and reversing if they had been standing. Nana abandoned my mother and father where they were. Who was it? Some dignitary, some judge, some painter, some poet, some film-maker, some professor, some politician? Something was drawing Nana away from the scene, but what it was nobody could tell through the crush. Somewhere in there, somebody was sparing time from his office, his fame, his celebrity, congratulating Nadira and Iqtiar, finding a kind word for Pultoo, shaking the hands of his colleagues and acquaintances. Nana hurried over, knowing his obligations.
‘You will always remember today, won’t you?’ an old woman said to me. I could tell she was trying to be good with children. But I was more interested in the food, which was now arriving. Bowls of rice, of meat in a rich sauce, of whole fish beautifully decorated and roasted, plates of pickles, more meat, and then the vegetables: potol piled high, okra, potato and cauliflower dishes, yellow like a meadow flower, biriani, stews, curries, plates of dry grilled meat, everything you could imagine. My mother and father were seated at the best table – I could see that my mother was flushed with embarrassment and pleasure. My father, upright, was embarrassed and pleased in a different way. And it now seemed as if the drama of the scene had hardly begun. Nana’s obeisance before his daughter and son-in-law, the interruption of the arriving dignitary, those had merely been prefatory to the large drama of reconciliation playing itself out at Nadira’s wedding. Then, all of a sudden, there was Boro-mama, coming towards them. Mother and Father had not seen him. ‘Look,’ I said to Sunchita, but she had already seen him, and was saying the same thing to Sushmita.
‘Look . . .’
Boro-mama took a dish of rice from one waiter, and made a gesture to another, bearing a dish of meat, to stand by him. He came to stand behind my mother and father, and I could see him saying something, quite gently. I found my hand being taken, and I looked up. It was Sharmin-aunty, wearing a vivid silver sari. On the top table, Father looked about in surprise; but on his face was an expression of pleasure and relief. Boro-mama did something very beautiful: he served my father rice, just as a waiter would, and then my mother. He handed the bowl of rice back to the waiter, and then served them both, first my father, then my mother, with the meat. He had the air of someone so unconscious of his stance, so natural in his gesture, that I did not realize almost everyone in the room was watching what he was doing. My father stood up and embraced Boro-mama. He was not an embracing man, my father, but he knew when an embrace was called for. And then I knew that everyone in the room had been watching, because the near-silence that had fallen was now broken, and everyone started talking again.
12.
Nadira-aunty and her new husband left Dacca two days later. I had never been to Dacca airport before. Perhaps I was so excited at the prospect of going there that I did not fully understand that I would never see Nadira-aunty again. This time I would get to see an aeroplane up close.
I did not know how far Sheffield was from Dacca. I knew only that it was near London, which I had seen in pictures in Nana’s album. I had also seen pictures of England in a school book, from which my sisters learnt English. It was called The Radiant Way, and its heroes, Sushmita had told me, pointing to the pictures, were Jack and Matt, boys in ties and shorts.
I had heard stories about planes from my friend Rashid. He had an uncle named Younus, who lived and worked in Dubai. Neither Rashid nor I knew where Dubai was, nor had we seen any photograph. But many presents had come for Rashid from Dubai, carried on aeroplanes. Two-in-one tape recorders, walkie-talkie phones, tiger-faced kombol, golden tablecloths and dried dates: all these had come from Dubai, carried by Rashid’s Younus-mama on an aeroplane. One day, Rashid came to my house with a toy gun. He owned up that he did not care for it and its terrible noise. He much preferred the wooden pistol he had, like mine.
Another time, Rashid’s Younus-mama presented his family with a large jar of water. Rashid told me it was holy water, from Mecca. I was awestruck, and afterwards asked my mother what holy water was.
She said, ‘Rubbish. Who said it was holy water?’
‘Rashid,’ I said.
‘Well,’ she said, ‘if Rashid gives you any, don’t drink it.’
Rashid was a boy who liked to boast, and he also showed me chocolates that had been handed out on the aeroplane to his uncle, and a pen bearing a picture of the plane. Rashid said it was the same plane that he himself had seen. Though nobody, Rashid said, could go near the plane, he had gone near it, gone with his father.
‘How could they let you near the plane?’ I asked.
Not only did Rashid have an uncle who travelled to Dubai, he also had a relation who worked at Dacca airport – a military official. ‘He took us,’ Rashid said airily.
I was eaten up with envy and longing. I wanted to see if it was the same plane that was depicted on the pen. I longed to see the plane. But mostly I longed to possess the pen with a picture of the plane on it.
‘Can I come to see the planes with you?’ I had said.
‘My father says you need to have a big man to be allowed to go in,’ Rashid said. ‘Do you have an uncle in the military, by any chance?’
He knew the answer. ‘No,’ I said.
‘I don’t think you can go,’ Rashid said. ‘I believe you need a big man as an uncle to be allowed to go inside, to go close to the plane.’
‘Acha,’ I said, agreeing coldly. I did not want to discuss this any longer. I was sad, and ashamed to be sad, that I did not have any uncle who was in the military.
But now I was going to see the planes, without the help of any big man as my uncle. I was going to see them because Nadira-aunty was going away. We went to Nana’s house, and there, upstairs, Nadira was finishing her packing. There were three big brown leather suitcases.
I knew that Nadira had bought many new clothes. She was wearing a new dark blue sari – my favourite colour for her to wear – and I reached out and touched the hem. ‘You like this colour on me, Saadi?’ she said. ‘You like this navy blue?’
I nodded. I did not know why the colour was called ‘navy blue’. But Nadira always looked at her most beautiful when she wore this colour. I did not understand why. When I wore shorts of dark blue, I did not like the way it made my legs look very dark. I preferred to wear white or grey shorts, or sometimes even red. But that was my personal preference.
Nadira was placing books in the suitcase to take with her. I recognized a collection of songs by Tagore. I had seen it many times on top of the harmonium. In it was a song I loved, a song called ‘We Are All Kings’; it was the only song that Nadira-aunty ever let me sing with her.
‘Are you taking the harmonium?’ I asked Nadira.
‘No,’ she said. ‘It is too heavy.’
‘Iqtiar-mama says he is going to buy a new one for you, Nadira,’ my mother said, referring to Nadira’s new husband. ‘I heard him say so last night.’
‘Oh, I know,’ Nadira said. ‘He is so sweet. But all the same . . .’
‘You can’t help wanting to take your own harmonium,’ Nani said. ‘I understand.’
And that meant a lot to Nani, since the harmonium had been given to Nadira as a present by Nana, quite out of the blue, on her sixteenth birthday.
‘Well,’ Nadira said, ‘what is done is done. I can’t take everything, and Iqtiar is going to buy me a new harmonium when we get to Sheffield. It won’t be the same, but the harmoniums in England might be good in their own way.’
‘And perhaps someone will be going to England, before too long,’ Nani said. ‘If they do, they can bring something with them.’
‘Oh, Ma,’ Nadira said. ‘If they come . . .’
‘I don’t know who is coming,’ Nani said.
‘And perhaps no one will come,’ my mother sensibly said. ‘Don’t take that for granted.’
‘But if they do,’ Nadira said, ‘they could bring my notebooks, they could bring my music – they could even bring my harmonium. Who is going to England?’
‘Well, it could be Omar-uncle,’ my mother said. (Omar was a remote uncle; he, too, was studying in England, and flitting to and fro like a bat; he had friends studying in England; their wives, too, came and went. It could be anyone who had a spare suitcase for everything Nadira could not take with her.) But then I had a bright idea.
‘Pumpkin-aunty,’ I said, ‘can I keep your notebooks safe?’
‘Don’t call me “Pumpkin”,’ Nadira said. ‘It is not polite. I know I am fatter than I was a month ago. It is not my fault. There was just so much to eat in the last month. People would be offended if you didn’t eat.’
‘Pumpkin-aunty,’ I said again.
‘Shiri, curb your child,’ Nadira said, but I pressed on.
‘I’ll keep your notebooks,’ I said. ‘I will keep them safe with my exercise books. They would never be lost there. I promise I won’t lose them.’
Nadira was not cross with me for calling her ‘Pumpkin’. She rubbed the back of her hand against my cheek; she would not pinch it as some grown-ups did. She gave me the most beautiful smile, and said, ‘Are you sure, Little-pumpkin?’
‘I promise,’ I said.
‘Then here you are,’ Nadira said. ‘They are yours. I trust you.’
The next day, we returned from the airport to our own house. By now Nadira would be in mid-air, with her clever, handsome husband. She would be above the clouds, high in the sky. This time tomorrow she would be in a completely different country, and she would be walking through it, cold and wet, but glowing in her beautiful navy blue sari. I could see her, as if in the illustrations to my English book. I went to my room, and to the shelf where my mother had placed all Nadira’s notebooks. Into them she had copied her favourite songs. The first in the book was ‘Amra Sobai Raja’. I smiled and held that notebook with one hand. I loved that song, ‘We Are All Kings’. I started humming it. ‘Amra Sobai Raja’.