What You Are Read online

  Zera puts on a CD of her master’s sermons. She knows them by heart, almost, yet can’t get enough of them. She’s ordered twenty more from some pirate, who lists a few hundred of them in his catalogue. I loved Missionary too, but he’s dead now, and how much more can you learn about your own faith? How long can you be harangued?

  “Let’s hear some music, Zera, for God’s sake, for a change!”

  “Don’t be frivolous!”

  “Remember that Malaika CD you liked so much?”

  “No.”

  “Meera Bai?” That’s what Missionary enjoyed too.

  “After this.”

  It’s useless to argue, but I go on all the same. Traffic’s slow, there’s time to kill.

  “We know everything about our faith, and what’s good and bad, what more is there?”

  “A lot more. What he says is deep, it takes time to sink in. We have to be reminded not to be tempted by sin.” She looks at me pertly.

  “You’re not a sinner, Zera. I know that. And do I look like a sinner to you?”

  She is silent.

  “Do I?”

  “Keep your eyes on the road! If it were not for him…”

  If it were not for Missionary. Yes. He was our spiritual father, and it was he who got us married in Dar es Salaam. And saved our marriage ten years later in Toronto, though she doesn’t know that. We were bound by him, and we are bound by his memory. He is present in our life all the time, watching us, throwing in an admonition here, a piece of advice there. All I am saying is, we don’t need him anymore. But she does.

  One day while I was walking down Market Street in Dar with my shoe samples, deep in thought, a voice called out, “Ey, Nurdin!” That dry voice. When I walked into the men’s shop, from where the voice came, he gave a chuckle. “Give him some water,” he said to the owner. “He’s a hardworking lad!” Missionary was sitting straight up as always, in the centre of the shop, facing sideways so he could look at the shopkeeper, Kassam Hirji, on his right behind the showcase, and the street on his left. And as always looking fresh, his face beaming pink. He liked to wear long-sleeved white bush shirts despite the heat, which didn’t seem to affect him, and he wore a light perfume. There was an aura to him, which made people nervous in his presence. The plump daughter of the house, having brought me water, went back to stand at the far end, where a door led inside. “Come,” Missionary said to me. “What do you have there?” I pulled out a shoe sample, a cheap brown plastic sandal. Unisex. He took a quick look at it, declared, “Hong Kong,” and returned it to me.

  “It’s cheap and very popular, Missionary Sahib,” I told him. The shopkeeper asked to look at it.

  “Nurdin—why are you not married?”

  “I don’t know…Missionary Sahib,” I could only grin and looked in the girl’s direction for sympathy, deeply embarrassed.

  “Nurdin, you marry this girl,” Missionary said. Just like that. “Zera is a good girl. What do you think, Kassam?” he asked the shopkeeper.

  “If the boy is agreed, and his parents…” Mr. Hirji replied.

  That was that.

  Zera was his student then. I’ve heard her stories about the great guru of her young days countless times. And there are those CDs. His throaty voice is etched into the folds of my brain like a recording. But late at night sometimes, when she’s gone to sleep, I go sit in the living room and listen to the silence. If I feel like it, I put on headphones, and quietly turn on my kind of music on the computer. Mukesh. Rafi. Talat. Lata. Romance and tragedy, songs from all those films I watched in Dar at the Odeon. Like a warm, sweet cup of chai on a rainy day.

  Nurdin, you marry this girl…I take a quick glance at her beside me, her eyes glued to the road in front. I have no regrets. A steady companion in life is no small thing. There was that one moment, though, soon after we came to Canada. That temptation. But he arrived just in time, our master, and he saved this marriage. An answer to Zera’s prayers? I don’t know. Events were happening just too fast for me then, at the Addiction Centre. One thing on top of another. The Guyanese workmate egging me on to commit sin…a taste of pork, that first taste of alcohol, a sip of beer. That false accusation by the Portuguese girl that I touched her inappropriately…and a sympathetic woman called Sushila who would sit with me for coffee in the cafeteria, and then took me to her apartment one day and said, Nurdin let’s get away together.

  The other day I saw her again. A ghost, walking towards me on Don Mills Road, attractive in a sari, the way I remembered her. Older, but the same. The hair, allowed to grey, tied in a bun.

  “Hello, Nurdin Bhai! Is it really you?”

  “Sushila?”

  Why pretend, when I instantly recognized her? But what a scare that was.

  “Yes. Haven’t seen you in years!”

  “Yes…nice to see you again. You live around here these days?”

  “St. Dennis. That one…” She pointed behind her.

  A bright light in a corner of my life when everywhere else looked dark, with a court appearance pending, and Zera into God and guru. No satisfaction…there was a song with that name in those days. It completely described my condition. But then suddenly everything got resolved with Missionary’s arrival, and we were all in good order. I didn’t go to meet Sushila at our rendezvous as we’d planned. Bay and Wellesley, second floor. Two-bedroom. I still recall that door-hanging, the brass bells chiming as you entered. I didn’t even call her one last time.

  This time we didn’t bother to say, See you again, we just nodded at each other and walked away. I was always a coward.

  When we get home, we hasten inside. Hanif is in the living room, having fallen asleep on the sofa watching baseball. There is a bottle of pills on the coffee table in front of him. They are to help him with his headaches. Thank God it’s still close to full.

  * * *

  —

  Every Friday at one, the Arabic call to prayer goes out from the Rosecliffe Park mosque; a bright yellow border of parked taxis has formed in front, their Pakistani drivers having arrived in numbers for the namaz. If you ask them, they all say they are from Lahore. Not from a village near Lahore, not from Karachi. Men and boys in long shirts and caps hurry along the sidewalk, anxious not to miss the Friday prayer. We pass the cabs to reach the strip mall at the end of the street and are lucky to find a car backing out of a spot across from Maqbool’s Supermarket. You have to be quick. After our shopping, our purchases in the car trunk, we go and sit at Maqbool’s Halal Kabab next door. People from nearby offices flock here every day at lunchtime for the cheap thali specials. “If they come here every day, they’ll get fat,” Zera says, not for the first time, watching a group of young men at a table. “They run off to the gym afterwards,” I reply. That’s our usual joke. It’s not as if we ourselves are in the best of shape. Just as we sit down, my eye falls on her—Sushila, sitting by herself at the far end, close to the window, where a loud group of Kutchi-speaking men and women have gathered. I look away. Moments later I cast a casual look towards her and see her ambling over.

  “Hello, Nurdin Bhai! I haven’t seen you here before.”

  “We come every week to shop…and then for a snack here.”

  I introduce her to Zera: “We used to work together at the Addiction Centre a long time ago. What a coincidence…and you live around here?”

  Sushila gives me a look and says, “Yes. I moved here a few months ago only.”

  Zera asks, “Are you eating alone? Come and join us, bring your tray over.”

  Sushila does just that. And it’s Zera and Sushila who do most of the talking. Zera tells Sushila about Jamila and Hanif, lies about how well both are doing and how good it is to have them close to home in Toronto. Sushila says no, she doesn’t have children. “Jamila is the smart one, isn’t she?” she asks, and Zera eyes her, then me. Sushila goes on, “I recall Nurdin Bhai tellin
g me about her. She wanted to be a scientist.”

  “She has her own company!” Zera responds proudly. “She designs clothes.”

  “How lucky you are. Any prospects of marriage?—or is she already—”

  “Soon now. She’s found a suitable boy.”

  “You’re lucky,” Sushila says, sounding wistful, looking away. Perhaps she would have liked kids.

  “It’s God’s mercy. We have little to do with our fates.”

  “How right you are.”

  They discuss “back there,” Dar es Salaam, and where they lived. Zera above the men’s shop on Market Street, Sushila behind the cobbler shop in an old house on Uhuru Street. Zera recalls the cobbler shop, it was next to Nurdin’s place. She had gone there a few times and even had her feet measurements taken by the cobbler. “My father, Jairam Solanki,” Sushila says, and they both get excited. He would be sitting on the floor, Zera recalls, and there was a calendar on the wall behind him, with the picture of a god on it. Sushila nods, her eyes look wet, and she takes a few spoonfuls from her bowl of bhel. They begin chatting again and discuss Gujarati foods at length.

  “Why don’t you come home?” Zera says. “I can show you muthia and you can tell me how to make spiced bajra roti and undhio.”

  It’s decided.

  I return from volunteering at East York General one afternoon and there’s Sushila busy kneading bajra flour on the kitchen counter, Zera putting finishing touches to something on the stove. They’re talking away like old chums, and I’m jealous, when I should be pleased. I sit down in front of the TV and nod off. After a while Sushila calls me to the table for tea. She puts a cup in front of me. A look is exchanged. Zera brings dhokra on a plate and calls out to Hanif to join us. He doesn’t answer. She goes to his room and soon returns. “He’ll eat later,” she reports. The three of us have the dhokra with green chutney.

  “So Nurdin Bhai, you volunteer at the hospital, how wonderful!”

  “Yes, I go twice a week. Give directions to people, tell them where to go. That sort of thing.”

  “I think that’s marvellous. I should do something like that too. And you, Zera Bai, how do you pass your time?”

  Zera beams at her. “I go for yoga every morning.”

  “You do? Where?”

  “At the community centre. Here, at Rosecliffe Park itself.”

  “I should come too!”

  I can imagine them doing yoga and then sitting down to eat dhokra together. Why do I also imagine her looking at me, and why, when I happen to glance at her, do I feel that she has just turned her eyes away? Guilty, guilty, I find myself pleading, guilty of playing it safe and standing you up.

  One afternoon while I’m sorting coupons on the table, Sushila arrives. She goes to the living room, where Hanif has been lying down on the sofa. He sits up. Zera is out shopping. It’s while Sushila and Hanif are exchanging pleasantries that Hanif reveals to her that he is suffering from depression.

  “Sometimes I feel like…”

  “Like what, Hanif? You’re too young to be depressed. Look at you—young and tall and handsome—and strong!”

  He tells her about his wife Sonia and his son Pablito, now three years old. He misses them. Sonia left him when he lost his job in Madrid and went back to her parents in Seville. They had been happy until then. He didn’t think she would return, her parents had been against the match all along, because he was dark and Muslim. Zera and I know this story, but it did not come out as fluently for us, it’s a marvel how Sushila has grabbed his trust. When she takes him out for a walk, we exchange a long look and I feel completely inadequate. I would like to speak to her for a few moments. Did she wait for me that day twenty years ago at the corner of Bay and Wellesley? Does she understand? She had nothing to lose, I had to abandon wife and two kids. Does she recall what I recall…that afternoon in her apartment when she made me tea, and we sat on her bed. Perhaps I only imagine that…that possibility of sin. A different life. But Missionary arrived, and somehow I knew what I must do.

  Over the next few days, Sushila comes every morning at ten and gives Hanif a head massage, then prepares a drink for him, with milk, honey, and a concoction of ground spices that she brings with her. She puts her hands on the sides of his head and chants something, and then they go out for a walk. It seems a miracle.

  “What if she’s working some Hindu charm on him?” Zera asks me in alarm one day when the two have just left. “I’m really worried, Nurdin. Could she be some kind of witch, a dakini who has seduced us? What do you know of her?”

  “What do you care if it’s a Hindu or a Zulu charm, as long as it works? And she’s not a witch, Zera, she was my co-worker and now she’s your friend!”

  “What was she like?”

  “I don’t remember, but what does it matter?”

  She was bright and beautiful and one day I promised to go away with her.

  “If Missionary were here…He must have spoken about magic and so on…in one of his talks. I should look for the CD…”

  “Out of a thousand CDs you hope to find one where he speaks about Hindu magic. Remember, Missionary was always broad-minded. And think of Hanif.”

  Whatever charm Sushila has, it also works on Zera, whose worried look soon vanishes, and the two are back to normal and do their yoga together.

  * * *

  —

  Jamila calls.

  “So you’re not coming to Lisbon with me? You won’t get another chance, Dad. A free trip at the best hotel.”

  “I’m needed here, beti. I have to be here for your brother. You should come to see him some time. But have fun in Lisbon…”

  “And who’s this woman who’s taken over Mom’s life? I have reports that she is there every day! How can you allow someone to brainwash your wife? Be a man, for God’s sake!”

  And so she goes on. She calls not to say hello but to harangue.

  AN AFRICAN PROBLEM

  In Baghdad early one morning during the time of the sultans—so the story goes—when people arrived for prayer at their beloved mosque and found a drunkard inside, slouched against a pillar, they dragged the brazen fellow out by his feet and started cursing and raining blows upon him with their slippers. But the stinking man waved them away, and with a hiccup and another attempted swig from his bottle—for the God’s faithful had not dared to snatch it away lest they touch the satanic liquid—cried out to them, Yaaro—my friends!—if I have offended by drinking in the house of God, forgive me but show me at which place Allah does not reside!

  Thus the difference between the pedant, who goes up and down on the mat five times a day lacking true awareness, and the mystic, the true lover of the One and Only who sees Him everywhere all the time. This and other stories Mulla Jamaluddin often related to his charges in the Saturday morning classes he taught at the Salam-e-deen mosque in Toronto’s Rosecliffe Park. No wonder this purveyor of unorthodox ideas was often on the verge of being dismissed by the mosque’s board of trustees.

  I watched Mulla across the table from me in the New Safari Grill. The dingy, long and narrow room with its gritty wooden floor and dull blue oil paint was full, all its tables set against the two sides, an aisle running across the middle to the bar and kitchen; at the front stood a woman before a mike singing old Bollywood numbers to karaoke music. Yasmin, as someone called out to her, was sexy-looking in a decadent sort of way, the thin kameez tight on her full body, the makeup a bit too heavy. She had a child, a young boy, who was sitting alone at a table with a book and pencil. Now and then she would throw a glance towards him. He never looked up. There was a sadness to Yasmin as she sang to nostalgic requests with the aid of her songbook and I wondered what her story might be. My eyes trailed away from her to a tray of beer and kababs floating past me in the air. Mulla followed my mournful gaze.

  Mulla Jamaluddin was my neighbour in the apartment build
ing where I had recently moved. We had soon become friends. I was single and, solicitous of me, he often invited me to join him for tea and a chat or a meal with his wife. Sometimes he asked me to sit in on his Saturday class. He was originally from Lahore, where he had belonged to a Sufi order and—astonishingly—also been a police detective. He had come to Canada to attend a police seminar in Pembroke and decided to stay on in the country. After a year in that small town he had come down to the metropolis and was lucky to find a part-time job as a teacher at the mosque. On Thursday evenings, he also held a session of Sufi chanting at his place, which I sometimes attended to pass the time.

  Mulla had been summoned to a meeting at the New Safari and he had asked me to accompany him. Appropriately, he wore his western clothes tonight, though the skullcap drew some stares. I had argued with him, in a friendly manner, If you are going to wear pants and jacket, Mulla, why top that with a “Muslim” cap and draw attention to yourself? A habit, he replied. It’s like my accent, I can’t change it.

  I looked around the room. The fare was meat mostly, kababs and curries, the pakodas thrown in as a sop to veg cuisine. The glazed-eyed, well-heeled patrons, the women in colourful salwar kameezes, seemed familiar with each other. Now and then someone would wave at someone else or walk over for a chat. Not a face under forty; or over sixty, except Mulla—who was staring at me.

  “A sad place,” he pronounced.

  “Indeed. But what makes you say that, Mulla-ji?”

  “None of the people you see here grew up in a home where alcohol was consumed; and now they’ve come all the way to this dark hideaway to consume beer and whiskey with their friends.”

  “And kababs. They look good.”

  “Yes, no doubt. They are African-style, I am told—round and black, made with ground meat. These people here are mostly from Africa, though they are Asian.”