Scenes From Early Life Read online

  ‘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 t
he 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 ha
s 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.’