Where the Air is Sweet (16 page)
Read Where the Air is Sweet Online
Authors: Tasneem Jamal
“It’s okay,” he says. “I’m modern. I like an outspoken woman.”
“Are you playing golf today?”
Jaafar nods. “First I wanted to find out what the doctor said about Ma.”
“Her electrolytes or salt or something are out of balance. The doctor has given her a solution to drink.” Mumtaz is speaking quickly. She wants to get back to reading the newspaper. “She says it tastes horrible, but it almost immediately made her feel better. She’s resting now.”
“You should come play with me,” Jaafar says.
Mumtaz raises her eyebrows. “Golf? With those
mzungu
doctors and teachers? And who will look after the children?”
“They have an
ayah.
”
“True,” she says. “But what about Bapa’s perfect chapatis? You know Bhabi can’t make them like I can.”
Jaafar’s grin is mischievous. Mumtaz has seen it on Karim’s face.
She rolls her eyes but she is smiling indulgently at him. “Some of us have to grow up. We can’t play all the time.”
“Maybe not,” he says. “But we can play far more than you realize.”
S
HAMA IS WEARING A WHITE COTTON EYELET
dress for her second-birthday party. It has an empire waist cinched with a bright pink satin sash. Mumtaz stitched it to match the dress of a doll she bought almost six months earlier. The doll has remained hidden under stacks of sarees in Mumtaz’s wardrobe. She went to four fabric shops in Kampala before she found the eyelet that matched the doll’s. The satin sash was an easier match. The night before Shama’s party, she wrapped it in brown kraft paper, careful to use small strips of Sellotape so that Shama could open it herself. She arranged for Banyankole Bakery Shop to deliver the cake. She asked the Ismaili owner to prepare the cake in the shape of a flower, and decorate it entirely in pink and purple icing. When she saw it the morning of the party, she clapped her hands. Rehmat, standing behind her, laughed. “Who is this for,
beta,
you or Shama?”
Mumtaz feels a lightness in her head as she ties Shama’s hair into two small pigtails. She begins to fasten them with white ribbons, but is forced by dizziness to stop. She lowers her head.
“Mummy?” Shama places her hands flat on Mumtaz’s head, as though in an act of benediction. “Mummy, Mummy, Mummy,” she chants.
“Mummy is tired.”
“Mumtaz, what is it?” Khatoun has walked into the sitting room.
“I need to lie down for a little while until the guests arrive. I feel weak. Can you take Shama to Mary and ask her to finish tying her hair?” She slowly stands up and walks towards her bedroom while Khatoun leads Shama outside to the children’s
ayah,
who is helping set up the table. Mumtaz stops in the washroom and throws up in the toilet. As she is washing her face, Khatoun arrives to stand in the doorway, a smile on her face.
“Another girl?”
“It must be,” Mumtaz says. “I think girls might be too much for me.”
Khatoun laughs. “But in the end, children are worth all the suffering they bring, aren’t they?” Mumtaz takes three large steps towards the toilet and vomits again.
She lies on her bed the entire morning, a small empty saucepan beside her, while the sounds of children screaming and laughing stream through her window. Each time she attempts to stand, she throws up. Esteri walks in quietly, replaces the saucepan and hands Mumtaz a cool, wet cloth. Mumtaz does not want to miss Shama’s party, but she does not want to ruin it either. She begins to cry. “I don’t want this,” she tells Esteri, who is about to step into the hallway. “I don’t want this.” Esteri walks back to the bed. She sits on it, beside Mumtaz, and holds her hand firmly in her own.
Later, when Shama and Karim are napping in the adjoining
bedroom, Rehmat shares details of the party, telling Mumtaz that Karim helped Shama blow out the candles as Mumtaz had asked him to do, and that Shama gasped and then pressed her new doll against her when she pulled it from the packaging. She assures her Jaafar took many photographs.
“Ma, how did you tolerate so many pregnancies?”
“You have difficult pregnancies,
beta.
Mine were not like this.”
Mumtaz does not ask,
Did you ever think your babies took more from you than you could give?
She has missed Shama’s second-birthday party, she missed Karim’s first. She will miss most of the next nine months of their lives. The thought makes the nausea rise up again.
When the doctor confirms the pregnancy one week later, Mumtaz is disappointed. “Maybe I’ll be better this time,” she says, ashamed of her reaction, looking at the doctor. “Maybe I won’t be so sick.”
But she is sick, constantly. She sees Shama and Karim for only minutes each day. They are both frightened by the sight of her vomiting. And seeing them excites her, pumps her blood faster and makes the nausea worsen.
Jaafar celebrates the arrival of the New Year without Mumtaz. She does not know where he has gone, to which party, to which hotel or house. He told her, but the words slipped through her mind like water. She stays home in bed. She is asleep when the clock strikes midnight and marks the beginning of 1971.
Three weeks later, when Mumtaz reaches the eleventh week of her pregnancy, she begins to bleed. The doctor instructs her to
lie on her back, with her feet on a pillow. The bleeding goes on for three days, light but continuous.
After the fourth full day of bleeding, during the darkest hour of the night, Mumtaz is awoken by a sharp cramp in her lower abdomen. She lets out a cry, a small cry, and presses her hand over her mouth. Jaafar, who is sleeping beside her, does not stir. Her nightdress is damp, stuck to her skin. She steps out of bed and walks across the hall to the bathroom, her hands on her pelvis, which is contorting. When she switches on the light, she sees that below her waist, the nightdress is soaked in blood. She has left her bloody fingerprints on the light switch. Warm fluid begins to run down the inside of her thigh.
Quickly, she walks towards the toilet. She does not want blood to drip onto the floor. It will be impossible to clean once it seeps into the concrete. Raju renovated this bathroom five years ago, before Mumtaz moved into the house. He installed a European-style toilet and a bathtub. He is proud of it. Mumtaz has seen him standing at the doorway, staring in, his fingers drumming his chest. She sits down heavily on the toilet, holding her knees apart to keep the blood-soaked panties from slipping down to her ankles and touching the floor. She is listening to the sound of blood hitting water. She folds her body to ease the cramps so that her swollen breasts almost touch her knees. When she feels clumps leave her body, the cramps stop. She begins to shiver. When the flow of blood slows down, she stands up, holds a towel between her legs and rinses her panties as best she can with one hand. Then she fills the sink and leaves them to soak. She does not remember when she stopped feeling nauseated. Now she feels hollow. She prefers feeling hollow to feeling always like she will throw up.
She pushes this thought into the back of her mind. But it keeps pushing its way forward.
Holding the towel between her legs, she walks to the bedroom. “Get up. Can you get up?” she says to Jaafar. “Everything is a mess.”
“What?” He looks up at her, his eyes swollen with sleep, like he has been in a fight. “What?
Su thyu?
What happened? What time is it?”
She returns to the bathroom, kneels in front of the bathtub and turns on the taps. She sees Jaafar’s shadow fall over the bathtub. She doesn’t turn to look at him.
“The blood isn’t on the floor or the tiles. It will come off everything else.”
“Are you all right?” He crouches down behind her and puts his hands gently on her arms.
She stiffens. His hands feel like hot coals on her skin. “Can you pull the sheets off?” She does not look at him. “I’m afraid the mattress will have to be thrown out. Maybe Esteri can clean it. I don’t know.”
Jaafar does not move.
“Please, you need to do it quickly.” She looks at him. “I’m fine. Please, go.”
When Jaafar returns from the servants’ quarters, Esteri behind him, Mumtaz has washed and is wearing a long dress she stitched from a
kanga.
She hates this dress. She was rushing when she made it and accidentally stitched the Swahili proverb into the seam. Now it is illegible. Mumtaz buys
kangas
for the proverbs rather than for the patterns. She ruined this one. But
she cannot bring herself to give it away. Jaafar is staring at her. She does not know what expression has settled on her face. She does not know where her thoughts are going. Or why.
“We’ll take the BMW. I won’t waste time putting the roof on the convertible,” he says.
The doctor confirms that Mumtaz has miscarried. He performs a dilation and curettage and she remains in the hospital the whole of the morning and through lunch, resting, periodically having her blood pressure checked. Shortly after 3:30, the doctor tells Jaafar he can take her home.
“It’s for the best,” Jaafar says, as they sit down in the car. “Watching you suffer through the pregnancy with Shama—” He stops midsentence.
She has turned away from him to look out the window at the African mothers and children camped on the lawn. They are different mothers and children, they must be, than the last time she was here. But they look the same, even their poses, their expressions. As eternal as the horizon. Waiting for their turn.
Jaafar pulls onto the main road. He turns on the radio. The music is loud, overbearing. It pounds on her head, which has begun to ache. She looks at Jaafar.
“It’s martial music,” he says. “Army music.” He reaches for the dial. Before his hand touches it, the music is interrupted.
“Here is a message from the soldiers of the Uganda army.”
Mumtaz turns back to the window.
Warrant Officer Wilfred Aswa is speaking. He is struggling to pronounce the English words. He sounds disconnected from the words he is reading, as though he doesn’t understand them. He says the army has overthrown the government. He says the government detained people without charge for indefinite
periods. He says the government was corrupt; ministers and senior civil servants took people’s money and spent it on their own lavish lifestyle. He says the army believed Obote’s policies would lead to bloodshed; he too often favoured his own tribe, the Langi. The warrant officer continues to list reasons why the army was forced to save the country from Obote.
“Wow,” says Jaafar. “This is something.”
“Is it?” Mumtaz is staring at the sun, low on the western horizon. “It means nothing to me.”
M
UMTAZ IS WALKING ON A DIRT ROAD. SHE IS
alone. She has dropped Karim at school and has decided to get some fresh air.
A week earlier, Mumtaz had an IUD inserted. After her miscarriage six months earlier, she began taking birth control pills. For months this made her sick, nauseated, almost as though she were pregnant again. When she asked the doctor to perform a tubal ligation, he laughed. “You are only twenty-six years old. You have no idea yet what life will bring.” She did not know there were other options, more easily reversible options. With the IUD, Mumtaz feels in control. She feels no longer afraid of her body, of what it can do, what it can cause her to do.
After seeing her son off at school, she didn’t want to rush home. She wanted to be away from home, where she has hidden for months, and move freely. So she has begun to walk on a dirt road, the BMW parked in front of Karim’s school.
As Mumtaz walks, aimlessly, she finds herself at the Mbarara Country Club. Karim’s English nursery school is located next to the club’s golf course. A year ago, when his teacher at the
Aga Khan school told Mumtaz that her son was a slow learner, she did not say a word. The next day, she removed him from class, forfeiting the term’s fees, and enrolled him at the English school. Within days, his new teacher told Mumtaz that her son was clever. “We have found the right place for him,” Mumtaz said. The portly Englishwoman smiled.
Mumtaz begins to walk towards the clubhouse. She is wearing a pale yellow tunic. It is embroidered with matching thread and reaches just below her hips. After she bought the tunic, she stitched darts into it so that it fits her snugly, so that it does not hang on her small frame and hide it. Her white fitted trousers reach mid-calf. She is wearing brown leather
champals.
The leather of the
champals
is distressed, worn out; Mumtaz wears them only at home. But this is the first day she has driven Karim to school in months and, without thinking, she left the house wearing them.
A man wearing a dirtied white hat, the
mshamba
presumably, is crouched in front of a hedge near the clubhouse. He is pruning flowers. She stops and stares at him. When he looks up, she smiles. He lowers his eyes and nods and then continues his work. Mumtaz prunes the flowers in her garden, though the family has a gardener. This man’s work is careful. He is not pruning more than necessary, which Mumtaz often does, cutting the healthy with the sick in her desire for neatness, for order.
The sound of voices draws her attention away from the
mshamba.
Two Englishwomen emerge from the clubhouse. They are wearing short, pleated white tennis skirts. The skirts are crisp, as are their white shirts. The clothes have been pressed, carefully ironed. The women are engrossed in a conversation
and, as they walk, their faces are turned to each other, animated, only inches apart. One of the women has long brown hair she has pulled into a ponytail. She is holding her wooden racket, balancing it on her shoulder. Mumtaz can see that her fingernails have been painted pink. The other woman has black hair cut to her chin. The hair is parted to one side and an invisible pin holds it off her face. She is swinging her racket beside her, tapping it, sometimes, against the side of her bare knee. Both of the women are thin, too thin. They appear unhealthy, undernourished. Their skin is tanned but it looks weathered, old, though the women must be young, Mumtaz thinks, no older than she is.
