Kulfi let out a trill of high laughter. He is, she said. I’m from … from Jamshedpur. Then she paused, puzzled: What do you mean — Bengali, too?
Oh, we have another visitor in our house, Mrs Verma said, but never mind that. She turned to Alu: So you’re Bengali?
He nodded.
I see, she said. Well, you might be able to help me a little.
How? said Alu nervously.
I’ll explain later, she said. It’s a small thing, a translation. A thought struck her, and she clutched at Kulfi’s hand. I hope you can stay for a while? she asked anxiously. You’re not in a hurry or anything, are you? You must stay at least a week. At the very least. I won’t let you go before that.
Kulfi, surprised, said: Yes, we can stay a week, I’m sure.
Good, Mrs Verma said, patting her hand. Very good. She thought of what Dr Mishra would say when he heard and suddenly she was smiling radiantly, tasting for the first time the full flavour of the victory which now seemed within her grasp.
So, sighed Zindi, it looks as though we’re safe from the Bird-man at last.
There’s only one way to be sure of that, said Alu.
What?
Don’t ever say ‘We’re going west’ again.
As quick as she could Zindi slapped her hand over his mouth. But it was already too late. You’ve said it, it’s done now, she whispered, trembling, her eyes searching the corners and shadows of the café. They were empty to all appearances, but that meant nothing. It’s done now, she whispered again. Now it’s just a matter of time.
It was nothing less than a certainty; like a sorcerer’s incantation those words could conjure a presence out of emptiness.
When she first said it she could not have imagined that words could leave a trail like an animal’s spoor. Even if she had, there was nothing else she could have said then; there was no other direction they could have taken. For that was the day they reached her village and her brothers’ wives barred their doors on her and shrieked till the roof of the very house she had built for them shook: The whore’s back from al-Ghazira — Fatheyya, who’s given herself some fancy whoring name. She’s come to take our daughters for her brothel.
It was more a hamlet than a village — a little ’izba, near Damanhour, perched on the casuarina-lined banks of a canal — a few mud-walled dwellings and one big house: the house that Zindi’s brothers had built with her Ghaziri dirhams. The way there was all dust and drying cotton fields and barking dogs, but when they arrived they were cheering — all five of them, Zindi, Abu Fahl, Zaghloul, Kulfi and Alu — screaming like children waiting at a circus. For this was no ordinary hamlet: it was the dream which had kept them alive while they dragged themselves across oceans, seas and half of Egypt; it was a promise of deliverance, of refuge, of a new life. They were cheering so loud when they drew up in their hired pick-up truck that it was a long while before they noticed the eerily empty lanes, the barred doors and the screeching chorus of voices.
When she heard those voices at last, Zindi looked around her at the mud walls of the lane, glowing treacherously in the morning sun, and she knew that if she were to live in that narrow pathway, jostled with hate on every side, she would not live to see another year.
It was all over then.
But she had a revenge of sorts. Abu Fahl battered down the door and they loaded their truck with furniture, jewellery, bales of newly harvested cotton — every movable object of value they could find. But those were paltry things; they could make no difference to a woman who had lost her nephews, nieces, land, even the magic of the name she had chosen for herself (who knew from where?). She was a different Zindi now, stripped, revealed as nothing but Fatheyya, plain old Fatheyya, Fatheyya Umm-nobody, mother of nothing, poor, simple, barren Fatheyya who was once abandoned in Alexandria by a child-hungry husband. Nothing she took with her could shut her ears to the cries of her brothers’ wives, the roar which shook the dead cotton bushes in the fields and creaked in the canals with the kababis: Fatheyya the whore is gone at last, shukr Illah!
That was when, teeth gritted, eyes rolling, she said to the driver of the truck: We’ll go west.
At first she had meant nothing farther away than Alexandria. She filled the first part of their bumpy ride with plans — she still had money left, and there would be more now with that truckful of goods. It could lead to anything — a new house, a shop, even a factory. But, at the crossroads near ad-Dilinjat, Abu Fahl and Zaghloul spotted the fine two-storey houses their fathers and Abusa’s father had built with their Ghazira-earned money. They looked down the road at distant, difficult Alexandria, and then back again at their fields and the houses with their crenellated pigeon-towers; they saw their lands growing, brides smiling and children playing naked in the canals as they had done themselves. And then there was no holding them.
After that Zindi talked to the half-empty Datsun about her plans not because she believed in them any more, but because she could not bear the silence.
It happened that very evening in Alexandria. Zindi and Alu saw him while Kulfi was away buying a comb at a shop in Tahrir Square. He was standing on the Corniche, leaning on the parapet with his back to them, watching the gulls as they scavenged in the harbour.
Two days later they heard that an Indian was asking about a huge woman called Zindi and a potato-headed Indian. Zindi decided then that Alexandria wasn’t safe. Next morning she dug out the passports she had had made for them in al-Ghazira and went off to a friend in Muharram Bey who dealt in currencies and visas, and she had them stamped for every country she could think of.
He asked: Where are you going, Zindi? And she answered: We’re going west, where the sewing machines are.
It happened again. This time Alu saw him alone. Zindi had raced off to the harbour because the wind had brought news that Virat Singh, the great pehlwan of Bareilly, had turned sailor and arrived in Alexandria in a Greek freighter. So Alu, with Kulfi snarling at him, and nothing else to do, wandered off to the Mohattat ar-Raml; and there, just as he was about to cross the street to the tram station, the door of a Greek restaurant opened and the Bird-man stood opposite him, staring him in the face. He ran, managed to lose him, but only just, by barging through the crowds on Safia Zaghloul Street and doubling back down Nabi Danial.
Later he discovered that at that very moment Virat Singh had asked Zindi: And where are you going next? And Zindi had answered: Westwards.
But it turned out well, for it so happened that Virat Singh’s ship was going west, too, to Lisbon. So naturally he decided to take them with him: balls to the captain.
So the ship it was and plain sailing, with the four of them safely hidden away below deck, until Alu asked: What after Lisbon, Zindi? Absent-mindedly (for she was tending to Kulfi, who had just had an attack of chest pains) she answered: Westwards still; where the sewing machine sets.
Sure enough, at dawn the next day, when the ship docked at Tunis, soon after Zindi first detected Boss’s fever, Virat Singh came scrambling down to tell them that there was an Indian on the bridge, some kind of policeman, who was insisting that the ship be searched for stowaways.
With the help of a few friends and a little money Virat Singh smuggled them off the ship and through the port, to the vast football-field width of the Place d’Afrique. Where now, Zindi? he asked, before turning back.
Zindi covered her face and sobbed: Westwards, where else?
It broke his great pehlwan heart to see her like that. He put a huge corded arm around her shoulders and barked, tugging fiercely at his moustaches: I’ve got to go now, before they find me missing. But I’ll be back. The ship will be in Tangier exactly three weeks from now, on its way to Port Said and Bombay. If you need help, meet me there.