The Blue Taxi (37 page)

When something finally happened, Nisreen had been sitting motionless for a long time, not even dangling her feet. She hadn’t
taken up that knife-sharp pencil once, not to doodle, not to write down any messages, and not to poke neat holes in patterns
through any scrap of paper. Things went like this till noon. No one had come in at all.
Nobody
, it seemed to her,
needs help here but me
. She had sat there by herself, immobile, wishing she were other than she was, wishing Bibi would be quiet. Nisreen sat so
still that things in her felt silenced, too, and she wondered if a person could forget what speaking would be like, or moving,
if they sat still long enough. And so when Sugra Jeevanjee—plump, great-eyed, and pretty in a long, flowing green dress—appeared
before her, Nisreen almost shrieked.

They hadn’t talked much the last time, had simply said, “Hello,” “How wonderful!” and, “You are looking well,” and Sugra had
been late for something: she had been more like a pleasant flash that came and disappeared, caught briefly by Nisreen as she
spun
and rushed away. But this time when she saw her, Nisreen felt that Sugra had
arrived
and that she was going to stop.

Sugra had not stepped off the sunlit street, as she had the last time, but came from behind the wide door that said
Private
holding two great crutches in her arms, in front of her, as men in films sometimes hold bouquets or big gifts for their loves,
and she was smiling hugely. She had stepped into reception not carefully or slowly, as patients do, or orderlies with fragile
things to hold, but sharply, all at once. To sad Nisreen, Sugra’s popping through the doors so brightly, having gotten what
she’d come for, what she’d been asking for, for weeks, seemed almost like a sign. Something in the air went sweet and lingered,
had the aura of success. Nisreen tensed her wrists against the counter. Rose and stretched her toes along the floor. Crutches,
after all.
There’s help for crippled things
, she thought.
There must be
.

Stepping towards Nisreen, Sugra gave her old schoolmate such a lovely look—a look that said, “There’s no one else I’d rather
come upon like
this
than
you, just as you are
”—that Nisreen for a moment felt that Sugra had been sent along precisely to help her. Perhaps her gloominess, her wishing,
had themselves sent Sugra down—nevermind the crutches she’d been asking for back there for weeks, since that little boy got
hit. Nisreen dried her face with a long sleeve and, starting softly but with some effort ending with a smile, said, “Oh, Sugra,
you have got them!”

While Sugra’s greetings washed over Nisreen’s ears, too rapid to be followed, Nisreen thought:
Sugra, who might have been a nurse. How odd it is that things turned out this way
. It was true. Their destinies might really have been switched. That lovely time spent studying medicine together in a high
hall outside of town! Taking buses, eating fried muhogo chips beside a narrow river, going home with books! That time of only
being girls! Sugra had been
able, much more so than the others. Gifted. Much more expert than Nisreen.
Could have been a doctor!
And yet, Nisreen had ended closer to a medicine chest than Sugra, saw syringes every day. Counted up thermometers sometimes,
put pillboxes away. Wasn’t
that
surprising? Nisreen had married Issa, who wanted her to work (“Use the brain God gave her,” as he had said to Bibi); Sugra,
to everyone’s surprise, had taken on a man who wanted her at home tending to his children, and only made allowances for his
wife to run about if she was bettering his reputation by helping her relations, neighbors, and the poor, entirely for free.
Husbands
, Nisreen thought. It seemed to her just then that it was husbands, and not wives, who made any difference at all. She didn’t
like to think what life would be if Issa kept her home.

When Sugra finally paused, Nisreen took both her hands and squeezed them. “I’m so glad,” Nisreen said, and Sugra, through
the crutches she still held in her arms, said, “Yes, oh, yes. Me, too!” And then, because her mission was accomplished and
Sugra liked to celebrate, she said, “It’s nearly lunchtime, after all. We haven’t had a chance to talk. Can’t you get away
and walk a bit with me?” Nisreen wished to cry again. Of course. Sugra’d come to save her.

Because Nisreen never asked for much, an orderly agreed to watch her place behind the counter for a while. Nisreen took up
her purse and head scarf, and next was squinting in the bright mid-morning light, walking beside Sugra, who at first held
to the crutches sideways, like a package, then brought them apart and held them at her side, one each—talking all the while—as
though some other, busy part of her were wondering precisely how the things were used.
How like Sugra
, Nisreen thought,
not to ask to have them brought, not to have them wrapped, not to hide what she is holding
. Other people did, Nisreen herself would have. Most people thought one should.

Here’s what some hoped to dislike in Sugra but could not, because she was so kind: Sugra, open, fearless, clear, did not like
concealment. It struck Nisreen as odd, again, that it was
she
, not Sugra, who had a job at the reception—Sugra, who didn’t mind what people knew as long as it was nearly, nearly, true
or so elaborately and fantastically false that it couldn’t really hurt. Bubbling, knife-sharp, charming Sugra, who had such
skill for talk.

If Sugra hadn’t been so kind and so good-looking, Nisreen might have been embarrassed to be walking close to her, this portly
beauty holding to the crutches for everyone to see. But Sugra could preempt all criticism with her laughter and good cheer.
Could make people feel fine. When Sugra turned to her to say, “And your glasses make you look so thoughtful, yes, like someone
at a College,” Nisreen blushed, was charmed, forgot she had a limp; she felt she wouldn’t mind what Sugra did in public. It
was good just to be with her.

In a moment, Sugra was talking about Majid. “Oh! He’s not so bad anymore, not so as you’d feel sorry.” She paused to put a
hand on Nisreen’s arm and looked into her eyes. “You know they call him Mad Majid, now, don’t you?” That was in Sugra’s manner,
too, a fairness, making certain everyone was well equipped and would appreciate whatever story was to come. Nisreen nodded,
bit back a passing impulse to mention Issa’s mother, say, “Oh, yes, I know it all,” and Sugra moved along. “Three years ago
that accident would have destroyed the man completely. But slowly-slowly. Drip by drop! He has changed. He’s only sad, now,
not so mad. I haven’t heard him shout in… oh, four years, I should say.” They walked up India Street and farther on to Mosque
Street. A boy was selling tangerines; mendicants looked on.

The talking put a bit of distance between Nisreen and her sadness. Sugra’s green dress made a
swish-swish
as they walked, and the
crutches scraped the ground. Nisreen closed her eyes and opened them again, blinking at the colors in the day. She licked
the backsides of her teeth and squinted at the sky. It was good to be outside. Sugra paused, grew quiet for a moment; and
Nisreen, who had been lulled by Sugra’s talk, almost missed a step. Quiet still, Sugra touched Nisreen lightly on the arm.
Nisreen stopped and turned. Sugra’s face was tight. Nisreen could hear her breathe. “Tahir,” Sugra asked. “Did you see him
come in?”

Bibi hadn’t asked her, had felt too sure that
she’d
discovered him to think that anyone would have something to add. Not even Issa’d asked. But of course Nisreen
had
seen him brought in.
Poor one
, she had thought. And though the news was sad, being asked made Nisreen feel a lightening inside her. It was good for her
to talk. She
wanted
to. And next Nisreen was telling Sugra—a bit eagerly, perhaps, too clumsy with her timid change of mood—about how Tahir Majid
Jeevanjee had looked when they had brought him in. How terrible. How they’d brought the leg inside before the boy, and how
Nisreen had known from looking at it—how short it was, the foot that did not seem a grown-up’s—that the limb was once a child’s.
How she had never seen a person coming in, in parts that way before. How when his living body followed, the little boy was
pale, a sort of gummy green. His whimpering had filled the hallways with a heat. How it had made Nisreen feel afraid of wishing
for herself. How could it be borne, to see a broken boy like that, and know that he was yours? How she had thought, and then
immediately unthought,
It’s good Hayaam is dead
.

They had stopped beneath an awning. Sugra pulled Nisreen towards her in the shade. Her nice eyes grew a shimmer; her bright
face looked blue. Nisreen wondered if she’d said too much. Didn’t know if she should put a hand on her friend’s arm. If she
should say some more, or stop. Then Sugra seemed not to be listening
anymore. She interrupted her. “He’s the best of them, you know.” Sugra looked at her own feet, then up, away from her companion.
“That Tahir. Really, really good.” Nisreen bit her lip. Sugra turned towards her again and took up Nisreen’s hand. She squeezed
it, hard, to show she was all right.

They walked. Nisreen had never seen Sugra really soft, or crushed, before. It wouldn’t have occurred to her that Sugra, glowing,
funny Sugra,
could
be sad, like this. Sugra talked a little less. She focused on the crutches, setting their ends down beside her and pressing
with her weight, just lightly, each time she took a step. She sniffed. Plumped her weighty chest. “It won’t be so hard as
that. I’ll show him. This.” She paused on the left crutch and delicately lifted up one foot. “And this.” She set the next
foot down and followed with the crutch. “Like this.” It was not quite the right way, but Nisreen didn’t say so.
Strange
, she thought.
It’s me now who must do the cheering-up
. It occurred to Nisreen, too—an odd thought, one that she had never had—that perhaps Sugra and Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee had
been cut from the same cloth.
If Sugra got unhappy
, Nisreen thought,
desperately unhappy, would she short-circuit, too?
Weren’t laughing-laughing and such friendliness just the underside of vast hostility and tears? Weren’t they both unstable,
in a way?
And what if it were me?

At Libya Street, Sugra made as if to turn. But Nisreen, thinking about sadness, and that she ought somehow return the kindness
she felt Sugra had done her by appearing at exactly the right time, had the germ of an idea. Yes, they’d come this way for
a reason. Taking on a shadow of her friend’s ordinary brightness, borrowing from her, she said how nice it was to have seen
Sugra these days; and if she was taking, after all, a break from work, which she so rarely did, it might at least be special.
Wouldn’t it be sweet to go up to the Park and have a fruit ice in the shade?

Mbuyu Mmoja Park, with its avenues of bushes, benches, and dry fountains, was shimmering and busy. The men who transformed
neckties into guavas and briefcases to baskets were holding their best shows, entertaining groups of children and adults who
were also taking breaks from offices and school. At the edges of the crowd, young men sold crackling dubbed cassettes of country
music from the U.S.A. and Germany, rally songs for youth, local church recitals, and qasidas from Malaysia. Coffee vendors
clicked their cups and litter women rose and bent and men with palm brooms swept. The Emmanuel Revival Tabernacle House, with
its pretty, shady grounds, was milling with the faithful. Boys rode by on bicycles, trailing boxy freezers filled with fruity
ice. Beneath three ancient flame trees, at one remove from all the buzz and hum, the doctors from the islands tended to their
patients; roots and powders passed discreetly from proffered hand to hand.

Sugra and Nisreen found a cement bench beneath a frangipani, the pink flowers of which, Sugra told her friend, reminded her
of sweets. Nisreen stopped a cycling boy and bought four orange pops. Each of them ate two. The freshness tugged Nisreen and
Sugra from their sorrows—Sugra a bit faster, because she was resilient, and Nisreen rather jaggedly; but with each gritty
lick and swallow, Nisreen was more certain that leaving work at noon had been a good idea, that Issa needn’t know, that she’d
done the right thing. That there might be a pattern to this day, that her tears had been a wet but necessary step towards
something in particular. That ending here, at Mbuyu Mmoja Park, just might be significant.

Sugra told old stories they both knew from their bright student days. As she spoke, Nisreen thought about how she’d heard
Bibi say to Issa that Sugra was a woman and that Nisreen was not. She
didn’t think this jealously. She pondered. In some ways it seemed true: how Sugra, with a lightness, pleasure, that Nisreen
didn’t have, took other people’s news to heart; how Sugra swelled with kids (was it two, now? three or four?). Oh, yes, for
Bibi, Nisreen thought, tongue flat at her teeth then in farthest corners of her mouth, Sugra would be fine. Nisreen smiled.
But Bibi doesn’t have her. She only has me
.