Brick Lane (94 page)

The girls looked at Nazneen. They saw that it was true. Bibi chewed the ends of both her plaits. Shahana went to her father and put her arms around his neck. 'But who will cook for you, Abba?'

'Who will cut your corns?' said Bibi.

Chanu tickled Shahana under the arms. 'What? Do you not know? I am a better cook than your mother. And look, Bibi, my stomach has gone flatter than a paratha. I can reach my own toes now.' He bent down to prove it. Then he began to rearrange bags and money, tickets and passports. He clicked on his money belt and tested the catch. 'Be good girls, do as your mother tells you, finish your homework every night, don't waste time on television and all that rubbish, read Tagore (I recommend
Gitanjali
)
,
don't think that there's anything you're not good enough for, remember that—' He broke off. 'Yes, well. That should do for now.'

Nazneen stirred the dal.

'We're hungry as well,' said Shahana.

The girls came into the kitchen and began the hunt for the rice.

They took their plates into the sitting room and made space on the table.

'When will we go to Dhaka?' said Bibi.

'If
we go,' said Shahana. 'We don't have to go. Do we, Amma?'

'What about Abba?' said Bibi quickly. 'We can't just leave him on his own.'

'He could come back,' explained Shahana. 'I bet he'll come back. And when he comes back he'll be a lot happier.'

'Why will he be happier?'

Shahana shrugged. 'He just will. I'm telling you.'

'So are we not going, Amma?'

'Just wait and—' Nazneen interrupted herself. She took more rice. She took more dal. She offered more to her daughters. 'We'll talk about it tomorrow, or later, and we'll decide what to do. Staying or going, it's up to us three.'

M
ARCH
2002

Razia took off her glasses. She held the sketch up to her face, almost touching her long nose. 'No problem,' she said. 'We can do this very, very easy.' She put her glasses back on. 'But it's going to cost them more. Do you see all this beading?' She offered the paper to Hanufa. 'Five pounds extra per piece. They can take it or leave it.'

Hanufa passed the drawing to Nazneen. The trousers sat low on the hips, without a waistband, and the bodice cut away above the belly button. The detail indicated gold and diamanté dhakba work and the ends of the dupatta were beaded in a cobweb design. The swatch attached was ice-blue silk.

'What about white organza for the scarf?' said Nazneen. 'Nice contrast.'

'They don't pay us to design as well,' said Razia. She got up and pressed her hands into the small of her back. 'This sofa is an old bitch. It's more broken down than me.'

The sofa came from a junk shop. It was pretend leather, dyed an uncertain purple, the colour of pigeon shit. It was so plastic that if your skin touched it, you received some kind of static shock to the teeth.

'Why not?' said Nazneen.

Razia looked at her sidelong, through narrowed eyes.

'They can pay extra for it.'

'Do it then. You make a design. I'll sell it.'

Razia had been the one to set it up. Walked into Fusion Fashions, bold as a mynah bird, and asked for work. She cleared out of the sweat shop. She got on the bus and went to distant lands: Tooting, Ealing, Southall, Wembley. She came back with orders, swatches, samples, patterns, beads, laces, feather trims, leather trims, fake fur, rubber and crystals. 'These young girls' – she sucked in her lips and sprayed her words like lead shot – 'they'll put anything on a piece of cloth and call it an outfit. They'll be sewing kettles on their pants before you can say "lengha".' She laughed and her laugh clattered around the room like a couple of saucepans dropped from a great height.

Hanufa gasped. 'Oh, poor Mrs Islam. Haven't you heard? She is very ill. She is not even coming out of her house. I am keeping her in my prayers.'

'The old faker,' said Razia. 'She'll outlive us all.'

'The doctors can't find what is wrong with her. She has baffled them all. Do you know, they called a fellow from Manchester. Another came from Scotland. And a third was flown from India. It's a terrible thing.'

'Oh, yes, terrible thing. They can't find anything wrong, do you say?' Razia lay down on the floor. She had got used to the floor and now she thought it was better for her back.

Hanufa opened her eyes a little wider. 'There's a special clinic in Switzerland. Probably she is going there to recuperate. In fact, she is thinking of taking her entire family with her.'

'Her entire family,' said Razia. 'And all her bank accounts.'

The bedroom door opened and Jorina tiptoed out. She wore a cherry-blossom-pink outfit of appliquéd chiffon, with shoestring shoulder straps and trousers slashed to the thigh to reveal the translucent pink silk churidar beneath.

'Oh, my God.' Razia rolled onto her side. 'What has this Bollywood Beauty done with our Jorina?'

Jorina twirled around, still on tiptoe. 'Look! It fits me so perfectly. Do you think I should keep it? It's like it was made for me.'

'We took your measurements for the pattern,' said Razia. 'You are Mrs Average Shape. Don't get carried away. Are you going to wear it for frying onions? Listen, let us build up the trade first, then we can start dressing like film stars.' She reached over for her accounts book and chewed on the end of a pen while she studied the figures. 'Hanufa, I'm going to pay you today. Nazneen and Jorina, you wait until tomorrow because I get another payment in then. OK with everybody?'

It was.

Razia parcelled out the work. She had a brief conference with Jorina about the stretch in a woollen jersey fabric destined for a salwaar kameez. She made some calculations and gave Hanufa her money. Nazneen watched her friend, Razia, the businesswoman. In her head, she began work on the new designs.

'How is your son?' Hanufa asked Razia. 'His studies and – everything.'

'Studies are OK-Ma. Everything is OK-Ma.' Razia put her hand on Hanufa's wrist. She leaned in close. 'I thought I lost my Tariq. I thought, "He does not want to live this life I made for him."'

Jorina said, 'But that is our problem – making lives for our children. They want to make them for themselves.'

'Yes,' said Razia. 'They will do that. Even if it kills them.'

Nazneen dropped her work off at the flat. She collected her bag and headed out again to the shops to pick up some lace trimmings. From the edge of the courtyard she glanced up to see how the window boxes looked from down here. Over the edge of the long white tubs a few dark green leaves were visible. She had bought winter pansies and they would soon be in flower. Razia had her washing out on a line tied between an overflow pipe and an iron hook. Her Union Jack sweatshirt flapped against the double glazing.

Nazneen turned left, going towards the back streets behind Columbia Road. She hurried because she wanted to be home again before the girls came back from school. When Chanu went home, Bibi turned into a little owl. Nazneen would wake to find her sitting on the edge of the bed, her knees tucked up inside her white nightdress. Or she went to check on the girls and Bibi would be on a chair, keeping watch over her sister. In the day she was silent, black-eyed and sleepy. By night she was on guard, alert to the slightest movement.

Only now was she beginning to relax. Nazneen found her curled up by the bedroom door, or asleep on the floor next to Shahana's bed.

'I'm not going anywhere without you,' Nazneen told her.

'I know that,' said Bibi. 'You won't, will you?'

She always asked for stories. She wanted the words because the words stitched her mother close.