A Deconstructed Heart (4 page)

Chapter 6

“Amal?”

She stood back to let in her uncle’s student. A green truck was parked on the kerb. There were planks of wood in the bed.

“Rehan, isn’t it?” she asked.

“Assalamu alaikum. Yeah.”

“Walaikum assalam,” she mumbled.

“What’s he doing?” Rehan asked as Amal led him through to the back door in the kitchen.

“I think he’s reading.”

“No, I mean, what is he doing?” he asked again, standing still.

She stopped, with her hand on the door handle and looked at him. He was tall and thin. His orange shirt was a little too small for him and skimmed the top of his belt, like a child who had outgrown his clothes. An ipod poked out of one pocket of his loose jeans, the earphone in his ear, but she could not hear music. “I don’t really know, to be honest. But he needs your help. Before the storm comes. The tent he’s in right now…”

He nodded and stepped out into the garden. She sat at the table and worked on an essay, looking up from time to time as he walked past the kitchen door, carrying planks. Uncle Mirza was waving his arms in the air as he spoke to Rehan, and she heard hammering. When she looked out of the back window a little later, she saw a wooden platform in the center of the garden and Frank Minton was sitting on the grass threading cord through the holes in a pile of
gray canvas. It was a few hours work before the tent was standing. As she was pouring water into the kettle, and she saw her uncle stoop to drag some blankets and a chair through the two canvas flaps that hung down at the front. While she watched him, Rehan entered the kitchen.

He opened the fridge, and she saw the bony ridge of his spine as he bent over to peer inside. He closed the door, leaving a black smudge on the door, which he wiped off with his elbow. He washed his hands at the sink and then held his dripping hands up as if he were under arrest as he swiveled to find a towel. She tore off a napkin for him.

“Will it be enough?” She tipped her head towards the tent.

“For mountaineering, no.” He smiled. “For a Trenton monsoon, just about. The platform should keep the ground water off him. The top is sturdy, should be fine if the wind picks up. I’ll be back to check on him. Salam alaikum,” he said as he ducked out of the doorway.

She made a pot of tea and was about to carry out the mugs for her uncle and his neighbor, when she changed her mind and pulled out the tea tray, laying out napkins and Danish butter biscuits. She had bought the tin at the shops, imagining, at the time, a late-night feast on one of those nights when she stayed up watching repeats on the television.

They sat outside in plastic chairs, waiting for the first drizzle. “You know, the emperors of India had tents made when they traveled or went into battle,” said Mirza. “Exquisite things, made of silks and brocades, lit with beautiful lamps and decorated with their collections of paintings. And each night that they moved forward, the tents were dismantled, and a whole legion of servants would carry the fabric, the
décor, with them until they reached the next camp. And another work of art would be created in the middle of the wilderness, just like that.”

Frank held up his teacup in salute, “Nice place you’ve got here, Sultan.” Mirza looked pleased, and they sat again in cordial silence. They heard Ella’s voice calling her husband from deep within their home, and Frank stood up and bowed slightly, “I’ll be visiting again.” He paused, “Next time I’ll bring some of Ella’s butterscotch tart, and we’ll make a picnic of it.”

“Sounds too delicious,” said Mirza, “Invite your good lady wife, too. Tell her you’re taking her out for dinner.”

After their neighbor left, Amal watched the clouds knitting themselves over their heads. Her uncle was staring into the distance, the white of his kurta gleaming through the thin brown sweater stretched over his belly. She looked at the slice of pure darkness between the trembling flaps of the tent doorway and her heart sank. At least I can find a torch at the DIY shop, she thought. A rug would be too large, but maybe a few nice doormats could fit in side by side.

A cold raindrop hit her hand, and they looked at it together in silence.

“Will you be ok?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said quietly.

“Are you sure you won’t…?” she looked towards the house.

“Go in, beti. I know you are taking good care of things there, care of me,” he faltered. “More than I should be asking of you.” His hands lay loosely on his lap, palms upward. She touched him gently on the shoulder, and his head dropped to his chest. They sat there for a while as the raindrops began tapping at the canvas, and then she rose and gathered the tea things and took them into the house. As she switched off the kitchen light to go up to bed, she looked out into the darkness and saw the tent, like a shard of bone in the night, the plastic chairs slick and shining, huddled together on the black grass like stranded crows.

The sound of the rain was soothing, like a gentle tabla on the canvas. Mirza had climbed into a sleeping bag that he had found in the attic, a leftover from an ill-fated camping trip to France. The rubber mat beneath him was dry and comfortable, traversed by the occasional ant that had sought shelter with him. “I will soon have ants in the pants,” he thought to himself, and as he chuckled out loud, he enjoyed the sound of his voice booming in the hollowness.

There was a square cardboard box along one canvas wall, holding a neat row of books and a torch. He took out the torch now, and flicked the switch on and surveyed his new home, slowly, methodically. He saw the drops of water shining as they fell from the entrance flaps, studied the grain of the wooden planks, the shadows made by grass blades peeking up around the rubber mat.

The boy would come back, thought Mirza, as he switched off the torch and shimmied his heavy frame further into the sleeping bag. Like Amal, he pondered, and he felt a pang of guilt at the fact that he had brought her into this, making her take care of him like a spoiled child. He pushed his toes against the bottom of the sleeping bag and
the cloth’s resistance felt comforting. He thought of his niece’s quiet presence in the house and as his eyes closed he had the sensation of falling, arms outstretched, the wind rushing past his ears. There was a face, too, that appeared for a moment in the space between consciousness and dreams, but he was asleep before he realized whom she was.

After a week, the Council sent a man round to see if the tent was a permanent fixture in the back garden. Mirza was offended when he shook the wooden planks to determine how easy they would be to uproot and dismantle and declared that it was a temporary residence, and therefore permissible.

“Bloody fool doesn’t know good workmanship if it hit him in the nose with a spirit level,” he fumed, “This could be a bomb shelter this. Solid,” he said to Amal and Rehan, who were holding up their teacups in agreement. “Solid.”

“It’s OK, man,” said Rehan. “The boys will take a look at it after the seminar. Have you got enough chairs in the garage? Where’re they going to sit?” Rehan had persuaded some friends from Mirza’s architecture course to come over for a seminar that afternoon. “He needs to keep teaching,” he had told Amal a few days ago when he was alone with her in the kitchen, “He’s never going to come back to his job otherwise, and then where’ll he be? Pitching his tent in some alley then.” Amal had winced at his directness but agreed.

“I think we have one more chair, but that’s it,” she said now, taking his teacup and putting it on the tray where it lay on the grass. “Any suggestions?”

He shrugged. “We’re going to do this again,” he said, glancing at Mirza, “so nothing we have to keep dragging in and out. No nice house furniture, that’ll get ruined.” Mirza nodded approvingly. “Let’s go see what we’ve got.” They walked to the garage to take a look. Rehan pulled out an overstuffed suitcase and used the corner of his shirt to wipe off the dust. Amal saw a flat triangle of his stomach and looked away.

“Really?” she asked, when he had finished. “You think so?”

“They’re not going to sit on the top of it, we’ll put it on its side.” He unzipped the suitcase, his hand diving into tightly packed swirls of bright fabric. “Nothing breakable, I think.” He found a small chest and a plastic storage tub without a lid. She found some dishcloths in the kitc
hen, but when she came back, the front of his t-shirt was already blackened with years of dirt.

“Why are you doing this? You don’t have to be here. You’re not his family.” She said this gently, but regretted it immediately. He pressed his lips together and was silent for a moment. He was looking at the floor and lifted his chin to look at her, his head angled as if he were looking under a door. “I haven’t seen my dad since I was too young to remember. My mum told
 me he died, he loved me…” he waved his hand at the empty garage. “I eventually realized she was hiding something, ‘cause she’d be arguing on the phone and crying and stuff when I was supposed to be asleep. I found her phone book with just this number on one of the pages, no name, but I knew it was his ‘cause she had doodled boxes all over that page. Just these thick lined boxes, like she’d gone over the outlines again and again, almost through the paper. I memorized that number, still know it now, although I only called it once. I pretended to be sick from school the next day, knew she had to leave me so that she could go to work. When I dialed, before I even spoke, there was like this angry silence on the other end, and then this woman’s voice, telling me to fuck off, I wasn’t getting him back, he was with her now. She thought it was my mum.” His voice was tight, and the last words barely made it out.

“
Oh…” said Amal, “That must have been…” She felt a trite word come to her mouth and stopped.

“I recognized his secretary’s voice. All I could think of was those tan tights she would wear whenever I visited his office, how they wrinkled around her ankles, like elephant skin. I don’t even remember her face anymore, but I can still see that. I’m getting nasty
, aren’t I?” he asked. His brown face seemed tinged with gray, and there was a slight sneer on his lips.

She shook her head.

“I was so angry, I wanted to blame my mum, I was a real shit to her for a while, there’s no excuse for that, but all I could see was that something was taken away from me. I’m 22 now, and I still feel like it was taken away. It’s pathetic really,” he said, not looking at her, “like I’m waiting for him to come home with some shiny red toy train, or something. Anyway, Professor Chaudry, Mirza Uncle… he doesn’t really ask, but he seems to need us, right?” Now he was nodding vigorously at her, and she found herself nodding back.

“I’m glad you want to be here,” she said, “because I can’t do this on my own.”

“Nah,” he said, grinning as he held the suitcase in front of him, as if it were a dog on a leash. The suitcase was not that heavy, she realized, and she understood that he did not want to step too close to her in that quiet garage, using the suitcase like a safety barrier between their bodies as he walked past her out of the garage. He looked behind him as he left, but he was not trying to catch her eye as he said “He knew what he was doing when he asked you here. He got that right.”

The mountaineers among Rehan’s friends had plenty of advice about the tent when they finally arrived for the seminar. The first 30 minutes were spent discussing wind direction and insulation. Mirza Uncle was nodding and looking over at Rehan to make sure he was taking this all in. Rehan was calling her over, beckoning towards the kitchen window with a long thin arm. She knew he could not see her in the darkness of the house, but he must have known she would be standing there and she felt strangely cheered by that small act of faith.

There were seven students in all, including Rehan. The only girl was Vanessa, one of the mountaineers, and she smiled as Amal came to stand at the back of the al-fresco class. Sven towered over them all, even from his low vantage point on the side of the suitcase, his wide back and shoulders seemed to dominate the space. There were two men whose names Amal did not catch, and Kiran, Jason and Saad. Kiran and Jason were studiously making notes as the professor spoke. Saad saw her and inhaled deeply with his eyes closed and then stuck up his thumb at her. She smiled, but Mirza Uncle was asking the class a question.

She looked around the garden. The grass was still too long, and full of weeds now, but with rows of students at work in the back garden, the enclosure looked neater, purposeful, and her uncle no longer looked so small as he strode up and down in front of his class. ‘They need dictaphones,’ she thought, watching the wind teasing the corners of Vanessa’s notes as she thumped her fist down to hold them in place. ‘And a chalkboard,’ she thought, watching Mirza Uncle. ‘No, a projector,’ she thought again as the sun dipped behind a cloud and the light dimmed in the late afternoon sky.

Afterwards, she watched her uncle smiling to himself as he piled the storage boxes, suitcase and few plastic chairs into a tidy pile in the corner of the garden. Vanessa and Sven were in the kitchen with her, Sven’s large hand on his girlfriend’s hip, his eyes blinking hard whenever her corkscrew curls bounced in his face with every slight turn of her head as she ate her biscuit.

“It’s funny,” Amal said, “Like the kitchen door is the 18th parallel. Like between North and South Korea. Like he’ll be shot, or some world war will start if he steps in.”