No New Land Read online

  ACCLAIM FOR

  NO NEW LAND

  “No New Land, like Nino Ricci’s Lives of the Saints and Sky Lee’s Disappearing Moon Café, redefines and extends our sense of the possibilities, not of multicultural literature in Canada, but of Canadian writing tout court.”

  – Books in Canada

  “A poignant story of the immigrant experience.… Vassanji has provided an absorbing snapshot of our often vulnerable neighbors.”

  – Montreal Gazette

  “[Vassanji] writes in an inviting, straightforward style laced with humour.… ”

  – Vancouver Sun

  “No New Land creates a rich portrait of a transplanted community.”

  – Calgary Herald

  “No New Land, with quiet humor and wisdom, gives deep insight into the strains and promises of immigration.”

  – World Literature Today

  BOOKS BY M.G. VASSANJI

  The Gunny Sack (1989)

  No New Land (1991)

  Uhuru Street (short stories, 1992)

  The Book of Secrets (1994)

  Amriika (1999)

  The In-Between World of Vikram Lall (2003)

  When She Was Queen (short stories, 2005)

  The Assassin’s Song (2007)

  A Place Wthin (non-fiction, 2008)

  Copyright © 1991 by M. G. Vassanji

  First published in trade paperback with flaps 1991

  Published in B-format paperback 1994

  Trade paperback edition first published 1997

  All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system, without the prior written consent of the publisher – or, in case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a licence from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency – is an infringement of the copyright law.

  Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication

  Vassanji, M. G.

  No new land / M. G. Vassanji.

  eISBN: 978-1-55199-707-0

  I. Title.

  PS8593.A87N6 2003 C813′.54 C2003-903224-8

  PR9199.3.V388N6 2003

  We acknowledge the financial support of the Government of Canada through the Book Publishing Industry Development Program and that of the Government of Ontario through the Ontario Media Development Corporation’s Ontario Book Initiative. We further acknowledge the support of the Canada Council for the Arts and the Ontario Arts Council for our publishing program.

  This is a work of fiction. The community described, and the characters in it, are fictitious, as are the events of the story. Any resemblance to persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  SERIES EDITOR: ELLEN SELIGMAN

  EMBLEM EDITIONS

  McClelland & Stewart Ltd.

  75 Sherbourne Street

  Toronto, Ontario

  M5A 2P9

  www.mcclelland.com/emblem

  v3.1

  For Anil –

  who doesn’t remember -

  and in memory of Auntie

  You tell yourself I’ll be gone

  To some other land, some other sea,

  To a city lovelier far than this.…

  There’s no new land, my friend, no

  New sea; for the city will follow you,

  In the same streets you’ll wander endlessly.…

  “The City” by C.P. Cavafy, translated by

  Lawrence Durrell in Justine

  What are houses like in Amarapur?

  Walls of gold, pillars of silver

  and floors that smell of musk.

  – Old Gujarati hymn

  Acknowledgements

  I owe no small debt of gratitude to the International Writing Program at the University of Iowa for its genii-like generosity. I thank Francis, Ahmed, Esmail, Christine, and Simon for inspiration, encouragement, sharing a world.

  The Ontario Arts Council, the Canada Council, and the Secretary of State for Multiculturalism have been generous throughout stages of this book.

  To Nurjehan, constant companion and patient critic, my appreciation, which is so little a return. Finally, thanks to my editor, Ellen Seligman, for her thoroughness and understanding.

  The (Kierkegaard) quotation on this page is from Kierkegaard’s Thoughts, by Gregor Malantschuk, edited and translated by Howard V. Hong and Edna H. Hong, Princeton, 1971.

  Contents

  Cover

  Other Books by This Author

  Title Page

  Copyright

  Dedication

  Epigraph

  Acknowledgements

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  About the Author

  1

  Rosecliffe Park Drive runs its entire short length in a curve, along the edge of a rather scenic portion of the Don Valley. It looks over dense woods which give the valley its many moods and colours; in the distance, from among the trees, rises a lone enigmatic smoke-stack, its activity sporadic and always surprising; a solitary road drops partway down the valley, turns sharply, abruptly ends. A golf course, which appears mostly deserted on the opposite side, lends its simple geometry to the landscape. And down at the bottom, the Don Valley Parkway winds its way hurriedly to the city, which from this vantage point is represented by the single needle-jab into the sky of the CN Tower. On the side facing the valley the drive itself is lined by apartment buildings identified only by their numbers – the famed “Sixty-five,” “Sixty-seven,” “Sixty-nine,” and “Seventy-one” of Rosecliffe Park – whose renown, because of their inhabitants’ connections, reaches well beyond this suburban community, fuelling dreams of emigration in friends and relatives abroad. These buildings, when new and modern the pride of Rosecliffe Park – itself once a symbol of a burgeoning Toronto – now look faded and grey, turning away sullenly from the picturesque scenery behind them to the drab reality in front. Barely maintained, they exist in a state just this side of dissolution.

  One result of this neglect is that the residents of Sixty-nine Rosecliffe Park Drive are in constant and futile battle against their three elevators. In the late afternoon the confrontation peaks, as residents returning from daily chores pack the lobby and eye with distrust the metal doors in a face-off between man and machine which the latter always wins.

  To the people crowding the lobby, waiting anxiously for this reckless and unreliable transportation, it sometimes seems that, against the laws of nature, these elevators go up more times than they go down. Every arriving individual, despairing at the size of the growing crowd, feels compelled to have at least one go at the buttons, both the “up” and the “down.” And when one of these donkeys, as these machines are also called, arrives, the doors slide open in a sudden motion that is almost a shouted jeer, and the passengers rush in without priority of age, gender, or time of wait, squeezing in regardless of the weight limit.

  In the home of the Lalanis in Sixty-nine, two catastrophes struck on the same day, one more serious than the other. Fatima Lalani was standing squeezed into an elevator on her way up to receive the tidings which she did not as yet know were bad. Her mother Zera had phoned her at the drugstore, where she worked after school, to tell her “it” had arrived, meaning the long-awaited letter from the university, and Fatima took off. In th
e elevator, although she greeted two small boys and threw a brief but disdainful glare at some of the more ordinary-looking people returning from work bearing parcels of groceries, she was as nervous as she had ever been in her life. It seemed to her that when she opened the envelope which was waiting for her, her entire life would be decided. It did not occur to her that the decision she awaited had already been made a few days before, and she whispered a prayer in much the same way her mother sometimes did; although she had never believed in, in fact had begun to scoff at, the efficacy of this remedy, and her mother was the last role model she had in mind.

  Fatima was a tall wiry girl of seventeen. Only the plump ruddy cheeks that stubbornly survived even a near-starvation diet gave evidence of the once chubbiest, and considered healthiest, baby in Dar, the town in East Africa where she was born. It is part of the recent folklore at Sixty-nine that in Canada even the children of pygmies grow up to be six-footers. And good-looking, too. As if to bear this out, Fatima towered over her parents, and in the elevator only one man was as tall as she. She was dressed in designer blue jeans and a stylishly oversized khaki shirt, and her hair was tied in two little clumps by means of bright red clips, enhancing the babyish cheeks.

  When the elevator stopped on her floor, two people had to get out to make way, and a pregnant woman with a baby carriage had to squeeze inside further before Fatima could push herself out. Then, with a swing of her shoulders and a shake of her head, as if to banish the odours of cheap perfume and sweat and groceries, she strode off to her apartment. When she let herself in, her mother was waiting like an attendant, envelope in hand. Fatima grabbed it, tore it open, quickly read the gist, and slumped down on the sofa with a loud groan.

  “What’s it?” asked Zera, her mother, having guessed the answer.

  “Arts and Science,” spoke Fatima in a mixture of grief and anger tinged with drama.

  “So? This is the end of the world then? Arts and Science – what’s wrong with it?”

  Fatima sulked, picking up the telephone and cradling it in her lap. During the last year, whenever any well-wisher asked her what she wanted to “become,” she had given one unequivocal reply: “Become rich.” To many of the girls and boys of Sixty-nine and Sixty-seven and the other high-rise apartment buildings in this part of Don Mills, this is what growing up meant – making it. To the brighter ones, those with averages in the eighties and nineties, making it meant going to university: not to study pure science or humanities, but something more tangible, with “scope,” computer science or pharmacy for instance. For the girls, the latter of the two was preferable. It was more feminine, less threatening to the boys. Among the brighter girls of Don Mills the competition for a place to study pharmacy at the university is intense. Fatima Lalani, with an average of eighty-six, had struck out.

  To Zera Lalani, of the old school, any education was a way out, a way up, and her daughter’s disappointment carried no significance beyond her having to put up with a bout of adolescent sulkiness. Zera was in her forties and rather plain, with a round face, long hair tied behind with a black ribbon, a short body with signs of recently put-on weight. As she watched her daughter, both feet up on the sofa, making cautious inquiries over the phone about the fates of her several friends and numerous acquaintances, Zera had another reason to be depressed. A little before Fatima arrived the phone had rung. Someone with a familiar voice she couldn’t place at the time told her that Nurdin would be late.

  She had been feeling a little uneasy the past few days. A premonition. She sometimes got them, she believed in them. It was about Nurdin. Recently he had started arriving late from work, bringing with him grocery items, proof of the shopping that had delayed him. But it was simply not like him to take such an initiative, go off shopping on his own. She felt he was changing. She did not like change. And this evening when she opened the apartment door, she had been hit with an oppressive feeling, a heaviness in the chest, breathlessness without exertion. The premonition. Then the phone call. Better if it had not come. If it was cheap vegetables at Kensington Market that had delayed her husband, the phone call would not have been necessary. Something had happened.

  “Leave the telephone now,” she said to Fatima, who, startled by the edge in the voice, instantly obeyed.

  The door opened, Hanif came in. At fourteen he was as tall as his sister, but bigger: broad and muscular. He went straight to the dining table, saw it to be clear, and turned to his mother: “Oh, you ate.”

  “No, we are waiting for Daddy. Where were you?” Over him Zera made the greater claim. Their daughter they had perhaps lost already, but she would never lose Hanif. No, not him.

  “Oh, at Eeyore’s.… ” He opened the fridge for a snack. Having extracted what he needed, he sat down at the table, surrounded by food.

  “Pig,” said his sister.

  “Pig yourself. I thought we were not speaking.”

  “Why can’t you wait for the rest of us?”

  “Because I’m hungry. Where’s the old man gone?”

  “Ask Mum.”

  “Hey, Mum, where’s Dad?”

  His mother turned to look at him. “He’s going to be late.”

  The boy ate and watched her restlessness. Sitting, getting up to do something, forgetting what it was … lips pursed, hands clasped in front of her, head raised in a momentary faraway look, in hastily snatched prayer, the large – immense – bosom heaving. He cleared the table and left the room, having thrown a glance at the letter in Fatima’s hand. She followed.

  “Hey, aren’t you going to ask me what it says?”

  “No. You can tell me if you want to. Besides, I know what it says.”

  Then he arrived, much later than usual. He shuffled in, dragging his feet, after fumbling with the lock. Dejection and defeat written all over his face, confirming Zera’s dread. He looked like a shrunken version of himself, red eyed and weary, his clothes crumpled, the day’s growth of beard bristly on his face. Immediately he was attacked by a barrage of questions and semi-accusations. “Where have you been? What happened? … Do you know? … We were all …”

  “Oh, nothing,” Nurdin answered hoarsely. He went straight for his armchair and sat down, staring in front of him through the window at the darkness outside, ignoring all further attention. Zera went about setting the table with a little more clatter than usual, and then came and stood in his view, expectantly. He had gathered himself and turned to face her with a pleading look.

  “They say I attacked a girl.”

  “Who?”

  “The police … and – oh – everyone at work … except Romesh.”

  She realized then it was Romesh who had called her. The kids stood at the doorway now, looking in. They were all quiet for some moments. Finally Hanif broke in.

  “She must have done something. Was she rude, Dad? Did she insult you?”

  “Your father is not one to attack girls.”

  “Did you?” the boy asked him.

  “Did you?” echoed his wife.

  “What kind of question is that?” Nurdin asked irritably.

  “Well, what girl?” Fatima exploded. “Where? What happened? Tell us!”

  “Later,” said Nurdin wearily, refusing to be baited.

  Another momentary quiet followed. “What now?” “What now?” The girl and boy asked.

  “We must call Jamal,” said Zera.

  It was some time late that night before husband and wife, alone, found their friend – their former friend, they had to remind themselves, now that he’d moved up in the world – the lawyer Jamal at home, in an irate mood at being called this late. He promised to come the next day.

  There was in Nurdin, Zera observed – even after she had heard him relate the incident at work and had heard him answer the children’s probing questions – a certain reserve, a disturbing uneasiness, as if he was not telling all, as if he was skirting a certain area, a part of his experience, some part of his life. What was he hiding? Was he guilty? She had never bel
ieved she knew all his thoughts, but if called upon she would have guessed his mind, and guessed close enough to satisfy herself. This time was different. He was beyond her and she felt left out. They sat for a long time in silence, side by side, immersed in their own thoughts.

  We are but creatures of our origins, and however stalwartly we march forward, paving new roads, seeking new worlds, the ghosts from our pasts stand not far behind and are not easily shaken off. An account of Nurdin Lalani’s predicaments must therefore go back in time and begin at a different place.

  2

  On a stone bench in Dar, at Oyster Bay overlooking the Indian Ocean, two men would quietly sit every afternoon enjoying the cool breeze and each other’s company. They were in high spirits and chatty enough when they arrived, but the vastness of the ocean and the rhythm of the wind and the waves and the rustle of the leaves overhead soon drew them in separately, lulling them to stillness, until each man sat motionless, contemplating the expanse in front of them and what lay across it: the land of their birth which they had left a long time ago, to which even the longing to return had been muted, although memories still persisted.

  One afternoon the older of the two men breathed deeply from his thoughts, sat back as if exhausted, and then fell sideways towards his companion. The companion let out a startled “Ha!” and then with quick recognition set the old man’s head to rest on the bench and quickly took off towards the road to seek help. He was tall, almost bald, and portly in a light blue suit, with a bearing that used to earn the description of “gentleman” in those parts. He was a preacher who had tried his hand at conversion, and was simply called “Missionary” by those who knew him. With a crumpled handkerchief he extracted from his breast pocket he proceeded to flag down the first car that came by. It was driven by a European man and ignored him. Similarly the second. When the third car showed not the slightest indication of slowing down, Missionary simply stepped onto the road. The car braked, and an awkwardly built, gangly European, red faced and in crumpled white trousers and shirt, got out in irritation. It was Mr. Fletcher, the English teacher at the Boys’ School, whom he instantly recognized since both his boys went there. Missionary, wiping his face with the handkerchief before putting it away, explained to the teacher what had happened and hastened with him to the bench. They lifted and carried the dead man, Haji Lalani, and lay him on the back seat of the car before proceeding to the nearest hospital, until recently called “European Hospital.”