Noor counts three couplets in the first chapter, two in Urdu, one in Punjabi. The first one praises Allah, the second reminds the readers that they are all doomed and worms will eat their innards, and the third eulogises a variety of herbs that He has created. “Are we going to sit here and recite poetry? Zainab has never shown any interest in poetry. She doesn’t even know what poetry is.” Noor looks at Zainab, who has been in a slumber for thirty-six hours, waking up only to suck on an orange. He hasn’t slept for thirty-six hours. He feels delirious, like a seventeen-year-old who has to keep vigil at his mother’s bedside while watching out for his own untimely bouts of lust. He tries not to think about Alice taking off her red dress. And if the wedding really took place on a boat, was she wearing a sailor’s white shirt? He tries not to think about Alice Bhatti’s shirts. He achieves this by conjuring up Teddy’s upper torso, taut and slippery and smelling of mustard oil.
“No,” says Alice, grabbing the copy from his hands. She flips some pages and turns to Chapter Two: Growing Your Cures in Your Back Garden.
She starts reading aloud, at first haltingly, then with the confidence that comes from being married for three whole days. There are too many words that Noor doesn’t understand, exotic plants that he has never heard of — banafsha, ajwain, nazbo — and seasons that he doesn’t even know exist: towards the end of spring collect the blooms that have only withered for three-fifths of a day. The text blurs the distinction between gardening and the growth of cancer, as if the lump around Zainab’s liver isn’t a poisonous tumour eating her innards but a lump of wet earth about to sprout end-of-winter gardenias.
Noor listens as Alice reads. She asks him to jot down strange ingredients for strange concoctions. He makes circles around the ingredients whose names he can’t recognise.
They seem like two travellers lost in a desert who have just stumbled upon a treasure map and for a moment have forgotten all about their thirst and lack of direction.
If Noor had been a bit experienced in these matters, he might have seen through Alice Bhatti’s heroics. He might have noticed that she was dreamy-eyed and saying things like river of life and fresh beginnings and balancing your personal universe. Noor himself doesn’t know what he wants or what he wants first or what he is willing to swap for what he doesn’t yet know he wants. He wants to save his mother’s life, but failing that, he wants her to die without pain — or maybe he just wants Alice, newly married Alice or the old, not-converted, not-married Alice. He asks himself trick questions at night: what if Zainab is saved but he can never see Alice again? What if Alice leaves Teddy but Zainab has to suffer more? He knows this is not logical. But are three types of cancer logical? Is it logical for him to sit at his mother’s bedside and wonder if Teddy Butt is doing all those things with Alice that he claims he has done with a variety of other women?
When Alice Bhatti assumes the role of Zainab’s saviour, Noor is grateful, but she assumes the wrong role. He doesn’t want her to be a saviour. He wants her on his lap. He is at that age where he could even be on her lap. The hormonal rage is such that he could make love to that chair warmed by her, the latex gloves she has discarded; he could live happily ever after with that stethoscope she has snaking around her neck.
In the confusion caused by his raging hormones and impending grief, he doesn’t remind Alice that they have no back garden to grow their cures in.
♦
An oncologist on a charitable visit from Houston stops by Zainab’s bed, looks at her latest reports and says, “Six weeks. I think you should probably take her home.” Everybody around the bed looks down. Nobody wants to tell the charitable oncologist that this is her home. Alice Bhatti escorts him to the next patient and Noor hears the good doctor from Houston cooing, “What an interesting case, what a rare strain of non-Hodgkin’s.”
Alice Bhatti returns later and tries to reassure Noor. “Who does he thinks he is? A TV doctor? Did you see his teeth? So white.” They don’t mention six weeks again.
With Dr Pereira spending more and more time with patients who are not on six weeks’ notice, Alice Bhatti elevates herself to the role of oncologist and cancer diet specialist.
Noor marks dates on a mental calendar, but he can’t really tell what the doctor from Houston meant when he said six weeks. She is there, suffering, in pain but still there. She goes to sleep, she wakes up, she takes her pills, she pees and she drools and feebly scratches the dry patches on her legs. How could it get any worse? Will she die a little bit every day, until the last day of the sixth week, when nothing will remain of her? He wants to ask someone.
Noor can’t ask Alice Bhatti any of this. They talk about uncooked food instead, which Alice’s manual tells her is the best way to fight cancer. “It’s feeding on you, so you feed yourself what cancer doesn’t like,” Alice Bhatti reads out from her book.
“What if we give her uncooked vegetables only?” Noor says to Alice, who has her rubber gloves on and is picking syringes from a stainless-steel tray and putting them into recycled cellophane sheaths. The top button on her white shirt has come off and it’s held together with a safety pin. Noor catches a glimpse of her skin-coloured bra, its lace frayed on the edges. “Or pomegranate juice. I read somewhere that pomegranates are full of antioxidants. That will be good for her. Yes?”
Alice starts to unpeel her gloves. “It will not cure her,” she says, unfolding the gloves carefully and turning to throw them in a bin.
Noor wonders if her panties are also skin-coloured. His cheeks become red and he starts to massage Zainab’s feet. “But it will stop it from spreading,” he says. “Her cells will resist, fight back.”
“Good idea,” says Alice. “You fetch pomegranates and I’ll get this ready.” She takes out six Leukeran generics from a packet, puts them in a little white stone bowl. Then she opens a drawer, produces a cylindrical black pill pulveriser and starts pounding the pills. Noor looks at her hand around the stone pestle and blushes again.
♦
As the days go by, they start thinking of themselves as a team that will find a cure for cancer and defeat the inevitable. But they are going through the motions, playing a part written for them. In his heart, Noor knows that despite the luxury bed and an abundance of very expensive painkillers sourced by Sister Alice, Zainab is slowly moving towards her six-week deadline.
If you have spent most of your life in hospital, you know that there is only so much all the scanners and antiseptics and radiation machines can do. The injections that Zainab and Noor could never have afforded are administered regularly. But Zainab seems to be slipping into longer and longer comas.
When she wakes up, Noor slips a little piece of sweet in her mouth. She chews it slowly, then a smile spreads around her lips as if she has just recognised a long-forgotten flavour. Noor sees her smile and gets excited. “Alice,” he tells her. “She got married. Our Alice from the Borstal. She is married now. She brought these sweets.”
“Why are you shouting? I am not deaf,” Zainab says. “I know all about marriages. I got married once. Is it a love marriage?” She doesn’t wait to hear his answer and slips back into sleep, as if all those happy memories have tired her out or she doesn’t want to think about what happens in a marriage necessitated by love and made public with things made of milk, flour and sugar.
♦
The boxes of sweets that Alice distributes are meant to bring the rumours to an end, but people want confirmation. They come to her, congratulate her and then ask: so what is your new name? “Why should I have a new name? Don’t you like my name? I like my name.” Alice tells everyone the same thing and they leave whispering a bit more: See, she has not converted. For all we know she is not even married to that Butt man. Were you invited to the wedding? Was anyone invited? Even her lapdog Noor wasn’t invited. What kind of wedding is this where the only evidence is a box of cheap sweets? They are probably living in sin. People touch their ears and sigh as they imagine all the sinful things that Alice and Teddy are doing in private, and hiding behind a few boxes of sweets.