Where the Air is Sweet (13 page)

Mumtaz is quiet.

After a few moments, Raju speaks: “But the nonsense that Augustine Kamya began, telling people to refuse to go to any Asian shops, demanding that Asians hand over their trading business. This was wrong.”

“But the Mahatma urged people not to buy British cloth. Was this wrong, too?”

“The British put taxes on cloth from India so British companies could have advantages they did not earn. We did not cheat the Baganda, or anyone, like this. We provided things that no one else did. This is how you do business. This is fair.”

“But it doesn’t matter. We are not African. That is why they punished us,” Mumtaz says. “The British gave India back. They gave Uganda back. They gave Kenya back. Because Africa is for Africans, isn’t it? And India for Indians?”

“But India wasn’t for me,” Raju says quietly.

Mumtaz is aware for the first time in their conversation that she is standing, her camera strap heavy around her neck, the dining chairs scattered in the room. She sits down in a chair opposite Raju, facing him, her face slightly higher than his, so that she is looking down at him.

“Is India for you?” he asks. “Is Pakistan for you?”

Maybe, she thinks but does not say.

“Europeans left not because Africa is for Africans. They left because they realized they were fools. They tried to take what could not be taken.”

“But I’m afraid,” she says, looking down at the camera resting on her lap. “We don’t belong here. We are not wanted. This is not our land.”

“Who says this is not our land?”

Mumtaz looks at him. Is he being deliberately naïve? “Bapa,
we are foreigners. This is what the Baganda believe. It’s what the British believe. That’s why they are creating passport restrictions for Asians.”

“When does a land become ours? People don’t sprout from the earth. We move to find our homes. If you honour the land you live on, if you honour the people living near you, it becomes your home.
Beta,
there is nothing to fear.”

Rehmat is sitting on a
patlo
in the middle of the kitchen, an aluminum saucepan between her bare feet. She is leaning forward, her face over the saucepan, rubbing a mango against a gunny sack. Mumtaz is slicing onions at the counter.

“Ma, what are you doing?”

Mumtaz turns to see Khatoun standing in the doorway to the kitchen, dabbing the perspiration from her face with a handkerchief.

“
Beta,
your father wanted to eat
keri nu ras,
” Rehmat says.

“But I could have come early to make it,” Khatoun says, her eyes on Mumtaz. “Look at all this,” she says, walking towards Rehmat and peering into the saucepan, which is more than half full of mango pulp. “You have been at this for hours. You shouldn’t. Your heart is weak.”

“But my heart is strong,” Rehmat says, laughing. “It is my body that fails me.”

“Come,” says Khatoun, tucking the handkerchief into her brassiere and gently taking her mother-in-law’s elbow. “I will finish.”

Rehmat stands at the sink, splashing water on her hands and arms. Khatoun leans towards her and whispers loudly, “Ma, aren’t we lucky that our rascal Jaafar has found a wife so she
can help us cook?” Khatoun begins laughing. Mumtaz turns her eyes back to the onions.

“Mumtaz is more than a help,” Rehmat says. “She is our daughter.”

Mumtaz watches Rehmat sit down on the floor with a tray of uncooked rice. She tucks her left foot in towards her and keeps her right foot flat on the floor. With her elbow resting on her raised knee, she begins sifting through the rice, looking for stones. Mumtaz turns to Khatoun. She is sitting on the
patlo,
the saucepan in front of her. She deftly peels one half of a mango with a knife. Then she takes hold of the gunny sack and begins furiously rubbing the mango against it, letting the juice drip into the saucepan while the flesh of the mango sticks to the sack. When one side of the mango has been squeezed of all its juice, she peels the other side and begins rubbing it against the sack.

An hour later, Mumtaz is sprinkling fresh cilantro into a dish of curried potatoes.

Esteri, the middle-aged Muganda housegirl, walks into the kitchen from a door that leads to the back garden. She begins collecting the mango peels and seeds and takes them outside. She returns with a pail filled with water and soap and squats down on the floor, a large cloth in her hand.

“Esteri, please. How many times have I told you not to wash the floor when we are in the kitchen?” says Khatoun, her cheeks flushed, wet patches under the arms of her dress reaching almost to her waist. She is sitting near the
sagri,
a small coal-fuelled stove.

Esteri stands up, gripping the cloth, her eyes lowered. “
Polé,
Mama,” she says.

“It’s my fault,
beta,
” says Rehmat, looking at Khatoun, speaking, as they always do with one another, in Gujarati. “I asked Esteri to clean the floor after I finished making the
keri nu ras.
” She does not tell Khatoun that Esteri peeled the mangoes for her, that she rubbed them against the gunny for close to an hour.

“Still, Ma,” says Khatoun, choosing to answer in Swahili, her eyes on Esteri. “Can’t she think?”

Esteri does not look up. She does not move.

“
Arré,
go!” Khatoun says, slapping her hand on her forehead. “Where is your brain?” Esteri drops the cloth into the soapy water, picks up the pail with two hands and walks towards the door. “Do it this afternoon, when Mzee sleeps.” Esteri nods without turning around and goes out the door. Khatoun sucks her teeth as she holds her hand, palm down, above the hot oil. “Stupid
karki.
”

Mumtaz stiffens. She lifts a jug and pours cool water into a glass carafe, adding yogurt, salt and ground cumin. Stirring it with a wooden spoon, she looks out the open door and watches Esteri empty the pail in front of the servants’ quarters. As suds gather around the drain, she wrings out the cloth and flings it over the concrete wall that separates the entrance of the quarters from the yard. She hears Rehmat inhale sharply.

“I will tell Esteri to move the cloth,” Mumtaz says. “Before Bapa sees it.” She looks over at Khatoun, who is carefully placing
pouris
into hot oil. “Esteri has endured enough scolding for one day.”

“On a day this hot,” Khatoun says, ignoring Mumtaz, her
eyes on the
pouris
puffing up in the bubbling oil, sweat glistening on her forehead, “I do not want to be doing this.”

“I told Esteri about you before the wedding,” Rehmat tells Mumtaz one morning, gesturing to the housegirl, speaking in Swahili. They are standing in the front yard, Mumtaz, Rehmat and Esteri.

“I told her you are from Toro. I told her you are a Punjabi girl. Gujarat is far from Punjab. But here, in Africa, we live side by side, Gujarati and Punjabi.”

“In Toro and Ankole,” Esteri says.

Mumtaz smiles.

“Your children will be blessed,” Esteri says.

“Will they?” Mumaz asks.

“With new blood,” says Esteri.

Each day, Rehmat and Esteri go for a walk. Esteri has been working for Rehmat for more than twenty-five years and for the past fifteen, they have walked together almost every day. Esteri’s husband died many years ago, Rehmat explained to Mumtaz, when her daughters were small, when Esteri could still bear children. Rehmat and Esteri began their walks during those days, while Esteri grieved her loss and slowly began to smile at her new-found freedom. Rehmat and Esteri don’t walk far. They move in circles on the grass, they stop, talk, laugh. They rarely stray beyond the property or Baku’s, though on occasion they venture farther down Constantino Lobo Road. Once, Rehmat told Mumtaz, they walked to Rajabali Auto Repairs. They did not stop in to say hello. Rehmat stood on the street and stared at the signs. She did not read them because
she cannot read, because she has never attended school. A young boy stepped out of the showroom. His shorts and shirt were coated in grease. He is the
totoboy,
Rehmat knew. She had heard Jaafar speak of a boy with wild hair that reaches longingly to the sky. The
totoboy’s
eyes passed quickly over Rehmat and Esteri. He did not recognize Rehmat as his employer’s wife. She has never set foot in the garage, even for its two grand openings. She turned around, Esteri beside her, and walked back home.

Today, Mumtaz has joined them on their walk. The two women move at the same pace, the same rhythm. They speak to each other in a Swahili interspersed with Gujarati, Luganda and small hand gestures. It is their language. Mumtaz feels like an intruder, a visitor from another land, politely welcomed but not really wanted.

“Jamul trees are everywhere in Gujarat,” Rehmat says when they reach the shade of one. “They thrive here. Many trees and flowers native to Gujarat thrive here.”

“Perhaps they are trees native to Ankole that thrive there,” Esteri says, lifting the side of her mouth in a half smile, exposing her sharp cheekbone.

Rehmat told Mumtaz that when each of Esteri’s four daughters was married, Rehmat gave her a small gold bangle. She did not tell Raju. She picked the bangles out of her own jewellery and told Esteri not to let Raju or anyone in her household see them. Esteri asked Rehmat to come, to see her daughters be married. Each time she asked, Rehmat shook her head. “Mzee would not allow it.”

“He objected?” Mumtaz asked.

“What else would he have done?” Rehmat asked, surprised. “I didn’t even dare to ask him.”

Rehmat and Esteri are walking now as they walk always, side by side, Rehmat’s arm hooked around her housegirl’s elbow, as though she were a blind woman and Esteri her guide. Mumtaz asks them to stop for a moment. She lifts her camera to her eye and photographs them like this. Attached. Rehmat expressionless, Esteri’s eyes lowered.

When Mumtaz receives the print, the women appear as a blur, as though they had been moving too quickly for the camera to capture them. Mumtaz grimaces as she realizes her mistake. The tree behind them is in focus. Mumtaz sharpened the wrong part of the photo. Without intending to, she made the women the background.

12

“W
E NEED TO TEACH YOU TO DRIVE,” JAAFAR
tells Mumtaz one morning. He is eating breakfast and she is replenishing his teacup. “I want my wife to know how to operate a car.”

She has never thought of driving. It is something only men do. It is something she has seen only men do. She smiles. She will spend time with Jaafar again, learning something new.

“I know a Muganda who runs a driving school. I’ve arranged for him to give you lessons. You start tomorrow.”

She looks at her feet so that he doesn’t detect her disappointment.

“He’s a smart fellow,” Jaafar says. “His English is excellent. Like yours.”

“Mine?”

“Your English is better than mine,” he says, laughing. Nervously, she thinks.

“It’s not.”

“Yes, it is. By the time you began school, Aga Khan schools were educating fully in English. We were taught in Gujarati at
the Indian primary. Baku and Amir learned English in secondary school.”

“Where did you learn?”

“At work, as a boy, whenever I saw a
mzungu
customer coming, I would run and hide so I wouldn’t have to stare stupidly at him while he spoke his incomprehensible language. But I knew this couldn’t continue. So I learned from our African employees, the ones who went to mission schools.”

“Poor Africans taught you the language of the great English?”

Jaafar nods. “The padres from the Roman Catholic mission would help me when they came to the garage, correcting me. Kindly. Improving my English. I can’t speak as proper as Amir. But I learned.”

“You speak very proper,” Mumtaz says in English.

He smiles. “When we have children, I will speak to them in English from the moment they are born. So the language of power rolls elegantly from their tongues.”

“Only if I can speak to them in Punjabi. So the language of their mother rolls elegantly from their tongues.”

He laughs. “Of course.”

The next morning, Mumtaz walks slowly towards the BMW and the young man leaning against it. She would rather be in the house with Rehmat, who is frying
ganthias.
The man walks quickly towards her.

“
Jambo,
Mrs. Jaafar,” he says, bowing.
“Habari ghani?”

His bow is a stiff and quick gesture, something he wants out of the way. Mumtaz wonders why he bothers bowing at all.
He is small, only an inch or two taller than her, and slight. His face is symmetrical, his eyes set wide apart, his teeth aligned and all the same size. He is a pleasant-looking man, an altogether handsome man. His shirt is crisp, well fitted and tucked neatly into his trousers, which, though not tailored and one size too large, are pressed. His shoes, she notices, are shining.

Whenever Mumtaz meets African employees, men or women, they do not look directly at her. Their eyes hover somewhere near her feet. She has come to expect this presumed sign of respect; she is surprised when it is otherwise. But the custom makes her uncomfortable, forcing her into a role she does not want. This young man looks directly at her, his chestnut eyes smiling, his chestnut skin glowing.

“My name is Eliab.”

“How old are you, Eliab?” She straightens her back.

“I’m twenty-three, Mrs. Jaafar.”

She laughs. “You look so young. I thought you were just a boy.”

A shadow passes over his face for a moment. “But you’re not,” she adds, quickly, her face growing warm.

He immediately asks her to sit in the driver’s seat. He climbs into the passenger seat and shows her the gearshift, the pedals, the dashboard, the switches. It is Jaafar’s car, but he speaks about it as though it is his. He unfolds a piece of paper with a hand-drawn diagram of the shift pattern. He begins to test her, to make sure that she is listening, that she is absorbing. He explains how to start the car, how to use the clutch, how to shift gears, how to release and apply the brake. She practises pushing down the clutch and shifting gears. She enjoys the lesson.