through life, directing its forces towards my mundane needs. It’s a selfish attitude. I wasn’t always like this. Once I, too, believed in a cause. When I was twenty-one.
I get up lethargically, shower and change. I part the bedroom curtains and look down at the street below. Three men, sitting on a straw mat, smoke bidis under the afternoon shade of a krishnachura tree outside the gate. One of them is our uniformed darwan .
The tiredness creeps in my limbs, but I’m not sleepy. I hear Ma’s voice, instructing Latif about afternoon tea. A door bangs shut and a child squeals. Yasmin.
Then Zafar yells something about sword practice. I hear Zorro’s name. From the top of the staircase I watch my nephew jabbing an old doll with a knitting needle. With each thrust, Yasmin’s cry of anguish becomes shriller, as though she herself is being attacked.
Ma and Nasreen intervene. Mirza appears and adds his bit, to calm Zafar.
Raised voices and angry words. Zafar is sent to his room. Ma placates Yasmin and cuddles her.
I slip back into my room.
It feels strange to be in a house occupied by others, especially children. One is obliged always to make constant adjustments and compromises. I think of my own place. It’s dark when I get off the tram in Bridge Road at the end of a working day. Sometimes I stop at the supermarket for milk and bread before walking past the oval and cutting across to Kent Street. Then there’s the undeniable loneliness of entering a cold and unlit house.
There isn’t much traffic on my street at that hour. Only the odd pedestrian headed home, or a passing car. The rest of the world seems remote and indifferent. But that’s what I prefer. I open the mail and have a drink. News and current affairs on TV. No fixed time for the evening meal. Usually I’m in bed by midnight, after meditating for half an hour. Sometimes, when Amelia comes over, she stays the night.
There’s a knock on the door.
‘I was just about to come and see you,’ I greet my sister. ‘Come in.’ I’m pleased to see her.
Nasreen looks at me with those dark and penetrative eyes that have always been able to see beyond the obvious. Years ago, after the creation of the new nation, she had been the only one in the family who was concerned for me, worried that something had changed me in the nine months that I had been away from home.
‘You look well,’ she observes. ‘Much calmer, as if you’re at ease with yourself.’
‘To an extent, maybe. But not with the world as I know it at the moment.’
Nasreen sits on the edge of my bed. I touch a strand of white hair on her head.
She doesn’t draw away. ‘Ageing shouldn’t feed on a pile of hurtful experiences.’
‘Or on ones we don’t understand,’ I add.
Nasreen tells me about the changes in her life, about the resentment and anger in everything for nearly a year after she left Hanif. ‘Oceans of self-pity,’ she says. ‘But then my attention had to be on Yasmin and Zafar. On being both parents at the same time. Hanif now lives in Manchester. He doesn’t keep in touch or support the children. It’s Zia who’s looked after us.’
She laughs at my expression of wonderment. ‘Yes, he did surprise me from the moment he opened the front door. Not a word about how he knew the marriage wouldn’t work. He hasn’t ever been patronising. He just quietly took care of everything. The children’s education, my employment…I’ve never felt as if I’m a visitor in this house. Zeenat’s death has changed him.You know, for a while it seemed to take away his centre. And there’s an air of permanent sadness about him—as if he has a much greater understanding of life’s fragility. It has made him more accepting of other people’s failings. It’s like he’s been made to join the mainstream of humanity. But even now, there’s something in him that I can’t reach…a kind of aloofness that’s hard to understand.’
Nasreen reminds me of the years that have
I get up lethargically, shower and change. I part the bedroom curtains and look down at the street below. Three men, sitting on a straw mat, smoke bidis under the afternoon shade of a krishnachura tree outside the gate. One of them is our uniformed darwan .
The tiredness creeps in my limbs, but I’m not sleepy. I hear Ma’s voice, instructing Latif about afternoon tea. A door bangs shut and a child squeals. Yasmin.
Then Zafar yells something about sword practice. I hear Zorro’s name. From the top of the staircase I watch my nephew jabbing an old doll with a knitting needle. With each thrust, Yasmin’s cry of anguish becomes shriller, as though she herself is being attacked.
Ma and Nasreen intervene. Mirza appears and adds his bit, to calm Zafar.
Raised voices and angry words. Zafar is sent to his room. Ma placates Yasmin and cuddles her.
I slip back into my room.
It feels strange to be in a house occupied by others, especially children. One is obliged always to make constant adjustments and compromises. I think of my own place. It’s dark when I get off the tram in Bridge Road at the end of a working day. Sometimes I stop at the supermarket for milk and bread before walking past the oval and cutting across to Kent Street. Then there’s the undeniable loneliness of entering a cold and unlit house.
There isn’t much traffic on my street at that hour. Only the odd pedestrian headed home, or a passing car. The rest of the world seems remote and indifferent. But that’s what I prefer. I open the mail and have a drink. News and current affairs on TV. No fixed time for the evening meal. Usually I’m in bed by midnight, after meditating for half an hour. Sometimes, when Amelia comes over, she stays the night.
There’s a knock on the door.
‘I was just about to come and see you,’ I greet my sister. ‘Come in.’ I’m pleased to see her.
Nasreen looks at me with those dark and penetrative eyes that have always been able to see beyond the obvious. Years ago, after the creation of the new nation, she had been the only one in the family who was concerned for me, worried that something had changed me in the nine months that I had been away from home.
‘You look well,’ she observes. ‘Much calmer, as if you’re at ease with yourself.’
‘To an extent, maybe. But not with the world as I know it at the moment.’
Nasreen sits on the edge of my bed. I touch a strand of white hair on her head.
She doesn’t draw away. ‘Ageing shouldn’t feed on a pile of hurtful experiences.’
‘Or on ones we don’t understand,’ I add.
Nasreen tells me about the changes in her life, about the resentment and anger in everything for nearly a year after she left Hanif. ‘Oceans of self-pity,’ she says. ‘But then my attention had to be on Yasmin and Zafar. On being both parents at the same time. Hanif now lives in Manchester. He doesn’t keep in touch or support the children. It’s Zia who’s looked after us.’
She laughs at my expression of wonderment. ‘Yes, he did surprise me from the moment he opened the front door. Not a word about how he knew the marriage wouldn’t work. He hasn’t ever been patronising. He just quietly took care of everything. The children’s education, my employment…I’ve never felt as if I’m a visitor in this house. Zeenat’s death has changed him.You know, for a while it seemed to take away his centre. And there’s an air of permanent sadness about him—as if he has a much greater understanding of life’s fragility. It has made him more accepting of other people’s failings. It’s like he’s been made to join the mainstream of humanity. But even now, there’s something in him that I can’t reach…a kind of aloofness that’s hard to understand.’
Nasreen reminds me of the years that have
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