Page 6…Khadeejah
While some people dedicated their lives to sadness or to love, or to their careers, Khadeejah threw herself into her cooking. The way the finger ran over a firm tomato, the way the tongue moved over a good amli sauce, the way someone exhaled after a hearty biryani provided Khadeejah with a pleasure she never found anywhere else in her life. She put her heart and soul (mingled with sadness and lost love) into her meals. People tasted her food and looked at the hunched old women in front of them with new eyes. They felt they knew her through the taste in her food. Her meals touched people. In the fluffy white rice they felt her kindness; in the strong meaty stews they felt her fierce love in her milky sweet sarbath they felt her sadness and stayed quiet for a moment after the first sip. She became a part of her food and in turn, through her food, others became a part of her. And this was why when people took down her recipes they could never quite make the food taste exactly like hers.
Page 13…Summaya
But then sometimes her thoughts would wander to other things. Real things that hurt. Real things that were so serious they almost became funny to think about. Things she pushed away in the crevices of her mind, like the cleaner in front of her who was using his broom to sweep up dust and bits of crumpled paper with soft yet strong strokes. But she couldn’t throw those thoughts into a bin like him. She could only sweep them aside.
Because nothing ever really disappears. The word itself was suspect. Disappear. Too many syllables, with such sharp pronunciation from those rounded letters.
Nothing disappears. Things mutate. Evolve. Grow. Even the dirt in the bin. Just because it’s not visible, just because it’s forgotten, doesn’t mean it’s disappeared. It’s there. Lying at the bottom amongst apple cores and bits of thread. Waiting.
Sitting in the dark with its ears pricked.
Page 18…Aneesa
Aneesa knew when her mother was lying.
Unlike other people who seemed to busy their hands, her mother would slow down. Her movements would become stiff and her voice would turn even. Almost too even. And her eyes briefly shone. A glimmer of wetness before a blink would wipe it away.
Aneesa knew when her mother was being sincere or insincere to anyone. (She was usually insincere.) But Aneesa didn’t mind too much. It was just her mother’s Way. Like the Way Nani liked the colour white. Or the Ways Mrs Chetty wrote the number eight: one small circle sitting on another. People just had Ways that you had to accept.
She was pretty sure her mother lied about most things: what she did at work, how she felt about others and what had really happened to Aneesa’s father.
Yes, Aneesa was definitely sure that her mother lied about her father.
Page 61…Aneesa
…There’s really only one way to go when you’re stuck in the stuck-in-the-middle age.Forward.
Page 81…Aneesa
For a long time she and Hoosen had wondered who They were. They being the unseen people who made rules in the world. They say it’s not nice to talk with your mouth full. They say that the winter sun can burn you. They say that you can’t smell your own smell. Aneesa imagined that They were wise old men who hid in mountains and wrote their rules on papers that were sent with birds to people all over the world. That’s who she though They were. Hoosen disagreed. He though They were tall ladies who sat in an office around a table in a high building. They wore red stilettos and lipstick of the same colour and pronounced ‘think’ as ‘tink’. They wrote memos on little square papers to governments about how rules should be implemented.
They knew everything.
Page 83…Aneesa
Hoosen found Aneesa’s mother beautiful. An unsettling sort of beauty.
Tall, with deep eyes that made you look twice. And still you couldn’t be sure of their colour. Her hair was short. Chopped bluntly around her ears and tapered around her neck. Too short for an Indian mother. And she was too tall. The combination made him slightly uncomfortable.
She was athletic and yet delicate. Her shoulder bones poked out of her shirt and her wrists were fragile looking.
He couldn’t quite stop looking at her.
Page 99…Summaya
Summaya hated Fareeda khala.
She embodied everything Summaya detested in a women: loud, manipulative, hypocritical and rude. Every family has an aunt like her. She may come in different sizes and shapes and wear different coloured hats (or scarves), but her intention is always the same: to make others miserable. The type that piles her saucer high with biscuits at teatime and steal towels on family holidays.
Page 120…Aneesa
…Hope was a funny word with a funny meaning. It was a love-hate word. Some people hated hoping. Others loved it. False hope. Dash your hopes. Here’s hoping. Don’t get your hopes up. Hope against hope. It was an ugly word that she wanted to hold close to her. A sad word that she wanted to make her happy.
Hope.
Hope was a colour.
A foggy dream colour.
Black and white with poor editing.
Page 122…Summaya
Colours made up Summaya's life. They seemed attached to everything she did.
Ideas. Thoughts. Memories. Emotions.
Yellow. Black. Green. White. And Red?
Red was the colour of the silent scream that never ended. Therefore red could not be a colour. On a good day red was simply a word made up of letters. It meant nothing.
Page 124…Summaya
…It was amazing to think that that much liquid flowed inside one person. One person’s shape, one person’s skin held all that liquid. Like a well-defined water balloon.
Except this a blood balloon.
A burst blood balloon.
Page 130…Aneesa
People said, don’t change Aneesa. Stay as sweet as you are. But what if she changed and couldn’t help it? Then she thought, no, she would never change her personality. She would never betray her Now-Self. Never. But she became worried that she might change without knowing. What if change crept up on her like a shadow that she didn’t know was there until it was upon her. Or what if it happened slowly. Little things she wouldn’t realise until she had changed too much. Then her Future-Self would betray her Now-Self. She tried to remember if she was the same person she was two years ago.
And what if she changed for better? Then what?
Page 142…Khadeejah
…Her greatest pleasure in life came from little things. Wiping wet jars. Slitting a shiny green chilly. Peeling big smooth potatoes. Pushing her hand into a sack of rice. Watching a rich curry boil and bubble.
Page 165…Khadeejah
The older one got, the more one remembered Things Lost, thought Khadeejah as she began frying the rotis on the stove. No one really pondered Things Gained. The mind always held onto things that had been there…Certain people. Special relationships. Habits. Little incidents.
No wonder the head felt heavy at times! The mind held too many things. She lifted a roti off the frying pan with her spatula and glanced down at the huge ring on her finger.
Even memories of dead people who didn’t matter anymore.
Page 166-167…Summaya
There are different types of love…
Page 182…Summaya
But things have a Funny Way of turning out. Once she had been an ambitious person. With a Mind of Her Own. With an opinion… But things have a Funny Way of turning out. Sometimes all it took was a mistake. And Things You Never Expected happened. And it wasn’t what you ever planned for. The change affects you deeply; it shocks your very core. Your faith wavers. You become afraid of the future because you’re suddenly not in control. Eventually you become quiet and accept the change. You let it seep into your life. Until you forget that this is the way it always was and always will Be.
Until one day you take a moment to look at the pile of papers next to you, hear the telephone ringing, look at the fish shop on the road below. Until you come to a single moment when everything stops.
The sounds. The smells. The people.
And you stop breathing and say out aloud in a clear voice:
‘Who am I? What am I doing here?’
Page 183…Summaya
Everyone has a secret.
Everyone is hiding something. Hiding thoughts in their mind. Hiding smiles behind their hands. Hiding fear in their laughs. Hiding people in their back seats.
Everyone has a secret.
Everyone is scared of being discovered. The child with the smashed teacup on the floor shivers when she hears someone approach. She pushes the mess behind an unused cupboard with the toe of her shoe. She believes no one will ever find it.
But cups are counted, shards get left behind, cupboards are moved. Lights fall on everything, whether instantly or years later.
Married men meet their mistresses secretly on the terraces of expensive, quiet restaurants. They never take their wives there. They choose big white umbrellas to sit under with sunglasses and a newspaper to hide behind. They prefer the business section of the Times. They sip smooth cocktails whilst glancing at their watches. They fool themselves that no one will come to know.
Everyone comes to know.
They make phone calls in hushed voices in the middle of the night from their bathrooms. Their whispers bounce off cold tiles. They bluff themselves that they are in love.
A secret love always sounds more romantic. The secrecy of it leads them to take long drives to far-flung beaches. They are the men you see racing along deserted beach roads with a hint of a smile visible through their tinted panes. They are skilled at spotting a familiar face from a distance, tipping the brim of their sunhats low, grabbing a hand and making their way to the nearest exit.
Page 208…Summaya
They had taken that little puckered-faced thing from inside her and put it in her arms. And she had said no and pushed it away. But the nurse, knowing things that only nurses seem to know, had insisted she hold the slimy thing. And when she had the child in her arms, Summaya had stopped. Stopped moaning, stopped perspiring, stopped breathing. The world stopped. While she stared at the tiny wrinkled baby. It blinked at her from beady eyes. And she had cried. Because then it was real. This piece of flesh growing inside her was real and breathing.
And beautiful.
And it amazed her that it had been growing inside her for so long. In between her muscles and organs a child had been forming. And she loved the thing. The cooing, clawing, little thing that relied on her, on her, for sustenance. She cried so much then. And she tried to talk between her sobs, to try and express the lightness in her heart. She opened and closed her mouth and made small noises at the back of her throat. The nurse shushed her and nodded. Knowing what nurses seemed to know. The baby grasped her finger tightly and Summaya named her Aneesa – the affectionate. Onion or mango – affectionate of all.
The world was steady; there were no secrets and nothing was red. And life, for a time, had been perfect.
214…Khadeejah
But as they grew older things Changed. Time just pretended to stand still. Meanwhile the branches grew brittle, the river dried up and the train station was closed and then abandoned….
For a long time Khadeejah only thought of Khaled as her best friend who was perhaps handsome and a tad conceited.
But the stuck-in-the-middle age brings along with it great ponderings under the sun. And without meaning to, Khadeejah began to like Khaled. It happened suddenly one day while they sitting together. She had looked at his hands. Properly. They were beautiful, slim and delicate. And then she knew.
She loved him.
She didn’t think it would change anything between them. After all, it had always been there. Now she just acknowledged it.
But things change. She became awkward around him. She twitched if their knees accidentally banged in the tub. She couldn’t look him in his eyes anymore. Instead she stared at his lower eyelashes…
Khaled noticed nothing. He was completely oblivious to the way Khadeejah had become clumsy and flustered. He still grabbed her hand in that frantic childish way when he wanted to show her something. A rabbit. Or mating flies. He still tousled her hair and ran away. He didn’t notice her pause and smile. He never saw her in that Way. Boys were just like that. They never saw something until you point it out to them.
Like the wasp nest in the guava tree.
It had happened the week Khaled was moving to Johannesburg. His father was moving his business out of Bronkhorstspruit and into the city. They were climbing trees the day before he had to leave. She had seen the nest between the leaves while he climbed nearby. She had screamed suddenly as he was about to place his hand on the nest. He had jerked his hand too quickly and lost his balance. He fell with a dull thud.
They sat in the bathtub while she tried to locate any wounds on his head. It was just the beginning of winter and the setting sun cast a dark light on them. She was looking at his eyelashes and his freckled cheeks and the glint of the sunset in his eyes. And she kissed him very softly on his lips. A childish kiss. A curious peck. And he had turned to look at her in surprise. He touched his lips, the tip of his finger hanging off his bottom lip. The next morning when he left for Johannesburg he had waved at her and said he would write. She couldn’t read his eyes or smile. She didn’t see his for long after that.
And when she finally did he had Changed…
‘What happened to you?’ she once plucked up the courage to ask him.‘Me? Nothing. What do you mean?’ He seemed genuinely surprised.‘You…Oh, it’s nothing.’He didn’t press her. They hardly spoke after that.
Because people Change. Inside and out.
221…Summaya
‘We have to end this,’ Faheem had said.
And she had stood there.
‘We have to end this now, before we drag each other any further.’
And she had stood there.
Believing if she didn’t say anything, if she just stood there then maybe she she could just pretend he hadn’t said anything.
‘Summaya, are you listening to me? This is important.’
‘I know.’
And she had stood there and tried to look like she was talking about something important. (How do you look when you are discussing something important? Stick out your chest? Stand taller? Make a serious expression?)
She tried not to let her lip quiver (because quivering lips didn’t make you look like you were discussing something i-m-p-o-r-t-a-n-t).
She finally found the courage to ask why. Why he wanted to end it. Because he had said it. He had said he wanted to leave. And now that he had said it, the worst was over.
And now there was nothing more to it but to ask why and pack up her things. Little things like that.
With a stiff upper lip.
‘I don’t love you anymore. I don’t know when it happened. Or why. I wish I could stop it. But I just can’t be with someone I don’t love. There’s no one else. I just can’t do this anymore. I’m so sorry.’
226…Khadeejah
It was too much for Khadeejah. She had to see her daughter who refused to eat, her grandchild who refused to stay clean and customers who refused to cut her some slack. And she was not as strong as she used to be. Physically as well as emotionally. She didn’t have to defend her actions as much as she had to when she was younger. She had earned a certain amount of respect. And so Khadeejah Bibi Ballim had grown a bit soft around the edges. A plasticine sort of soft. She left her age. And her sadness for her daughter made her feel a little older.
Sometimes she considered picking up the phone and telling that man that he was a coward for leaving his wife. Yes, sometimes marriage was complicated. And, yes, sometimes Summaya was difficult. But wasn’t everyone? Didn’t everyone have some irritating trait or other? Hadn’t Khadeejah put up with Haroon? What was this new love-love notion? Once you were married that was it. Khallas! You agreed to stay with that person for the rest of your life. Only continual beating or cheating was a good reason to end it. She felt if you could love each other once then you owed responsibility to the magnitude of that emotion. How could you leave, just like that? What nonsense! You stuck by what you said. It was the right thing to do.
230…Aneesa
…The phone in the house held many secrets – messages of love and hate pressed into it by small whispering mouths. The phone listened unashamedly to every word spoken and committed everything to its memory (for nothing disappears). The phone remembered the promises the man had made to that women once. It remembered the earnestness of his voice and the eagerness of hers. The phone heard how he promised to love her Forever. And so when the phone rang that day and when it heard who was on the other side, it shivered a little. A small startled crackle of static shot through its line.
236…Aneesa
A small part of her held her back.
Because people didn’t act the way they acted in dreams. People acted strange and nervous.
253…Aneesa
‘Once upon a time there was a boy who lived … in a forest with his mother. They were very happy. The mother cooked chickens in the yard and the boy chopped firewood for fire. One day the boy was climbing a tree and he fell down and broke his leg. It hurt very, very much. The boy was so angry that his mother wasn’t there to catch him when he fell. He screamed and screamed at her and she was very sad.’
‘But – it wasn’t her fault,’ interrupted Khadeejah.
‘He knew it wasn’t her fault. But he was angry about his leg, Nani.’
Aneesa hugged her chest. ‘He was angry about his leg – don’t you see? And so one day when his leg got better, he ran away from home. He was cold and tired and he cried everyday because he missed his mother. But he didn’t go home. Years later his mother dies while she was trying to cut firewood. The boy didn’t know.’ Aneesa turned to her grandmother and whispered, ‘Because he was angry about his leg, Nani.’
267…Khadeejah
Khadeejah looked at the stair. There was a faint red stain on it. A memory rose within her of Khaled’s father reading Macbeth to them in his loud voice.
Out, damn spot! Out I say! …Here’s the smell of the blood still. All the perfumes of Arabia will not sweeten this little hand. Oh! Oh! Oh!
