Kamila Shamsie: Salt and Saffron

Samia stood up, pulled an anthology of poetry off the shelf, and thumbed through the pages. ‘Suno,’ she said. ‘“How can those terrified vague fingers push/ The feathered glory from her loosening thighs?” Give your dadi a qatra more credit. The poem is about the seductiveness of power, right? Was it rape or seduction? The question is there. The fingers are terrified, the thighs loosen. Both things go on. We’re too modern to appreciate the aura of kings-to-be. And of gods disguised as swans. And, hang on just a … Now that I think of it, in what rash of clairvoyance do we presume Taj’s mother was unwilling?’

I turned away. ‘Dadi doesn’t understand complexity.’

‘Your view of her has changed one hundred and twenty-three degrees since we last met.’

‘Everything changed four years ago. Everything.’

Samia put her arms around me and pulled me close, my head resting against her chest. ‘Wasn’t there something about Zeus’s rape, seduction, jo bhi, of Leda that had something to do with twins?’

‘You’re right! Leda had sex with her husband, Tyndareus, on the same day that Zeus did what Zeus did. And nine months later Leda laid twin eggs. From one came Helen and Pollux, children of Zeus, and from the other came Castor and Clytemnestra, children of Tyndareus. Talk about not-quite-twins!’

‘Arré , maybe we’re descended from Leda.’

‘It’s mythology, cuz. And from a cultural tradition not our own.’

‘Actually, Point A, ancient Greek texts were kept alive through Arab translations, which were translated from Arabic back into European languages when Europe was ready to stop being barbaric and have a cultured moment. My grandmother in her little house on the Mediterranean is very adamant about this matter. And, Point B, it doesn’t sound a whole cartload more mythical than some of the stuff that’s gone on in our clan. Speaking of which, did you hear about Sameer’s lizard experience? In the loo. The bloody chhipkali practically attacked him. It was the same colour as the floor and it moved with speed.’

And then she was off, recounting a tale worthy of a place beside all the best lizard stories of our family. The one about Samia and Sameer’s grandmother ripping off her sari at a state dinner because she thought she felt a lizard run down her spine; the one about Dadi’s grandmother, who saw a lizard nestling between the pillows by her foot and reacted by leaping off her palanquin, thus showing her face to men who were neither eunuchs nor close relatives; and the one about the lizard, red and large-throated, which clambered on the grilles outside our cousin Usman’s window, prompting screams that turned into full-blown hysteria seconds later when Usman’s mother uttered the four most terrifying words imaginable: It’s in the house.

At college I was famous for my storytelling abilities, but I never told anyone that my stories were mere repetition, my abilities those of a parrot. Oh, they are a talking people, my relatives, and I have breathed in that chatter, storing it in those parts of my lungs (the alveoli, the bronchi) whose names suggest a mystery beyond breath and blood. And yes, when the need arises I can exhale those words and perpetuate the myth that is nothing more than myth because it forgets Mariam Apa; the myth, that is, of my family’s across-the-board, no-exceptions, one-hundred-percent-all-the-way garrulousness. But when I am my only audience, the wit and the one-liners, the retorts and the rebukes are just so much noise and I crave something silent as a wisp of smoke.

I can think of no one who knows me who would believe any of that. Maybe not even me. Maybe.

‘But Aliya,’ Samia said. ‘A squirrel?’

‘So, please now, while I have your attention undivided and can threaten to withhold lunch until you answer, explain to me why, I mean why, are you planning to return to the Blighted Estates of America to get a Master’s in Education?’ Samia rolled up her sleeves as she spoke.

‘What, are you planning to punch me?’

‘No,’ she said, taking my mug. ‘I’m immersing dishes in soap suds. Come to the kitchen and answer my savaal.’

‘Decisions,’ I said, hoisting myself on to the kitchen counter. ‘Where, what, why. Can’t handle them. So I’m prolonging the indecision with higher education.’

Samia pulled on a pair of rubber gloves, which made me think irrationally that she really had grown up entirely. I wondered if the same could be said of me, even though I was quite liable to scald my hands while attempting to wash the dishes and I didn’t care what the washing liquid did to my nail polish. Samia pointed a yellow finger at me. ‘My quesh is, Education, colon, why?’

‘Oh, the postcolonial why!’ I shrugged. ‘A friend of mine had application forms to various Schools of Ed.’

Samia threw a dish towel at me. ‘What happened to studying history?’

‘You’re the historian in the family.’

‘Aloo, when I was eighteen you knew as much about history as I did. And you were fourteen.’ Samia could deliver the simplest comments in tones of high outrage.

‘I knew more. But my first week at college I got a letter from Dadi.’

I would like to be proud of you again one day. But you can only make me proud if you first understand what pride means. Pride! In English it is a Deadly Sin. But in Urdu it is Fakhr and Nazish — both names that you can find more than once on our family tree. You must go back to those names, those people, in order to understand who I am and who you are. This is why it is good you are in America, where there are so many books. Study history, my darling Aliya, but not the history of the Mughals or the British in India, although our stories intersect theirs in so many ways. Study the Dard-e-Dil family. I know you don’t trust the history that comes from my mouth, so go to that continent which denies its own history, and when you find yourself mocking its arrogance and lies, go to the libraries and search among the cobwebbed books for the story of your own past. And when you do that, and you see in print the old tales that thrilled you to sleep at night, I defy you to feel no stirrings of Fakhr and Nazish.

‘Aliya? You got a letter saying what?’

‘Saying she wanted me to study history. So I didn’t.’

I opened the fridge and crouched down beside it. My cousin Samia had become a sandwich eater. Bread, mayonnaise, mustard, salami, sliced roast beef, lettuce, tomatoes, gherkins, tuna salad. Good God, how dreary.

Behind the loaf of bread was a sauce boat, not dissimilar in size and shape to Aladdin’s lamp. I lifted it out of the fridge with both hands and held it to my face. Tamarind!

‘What’s in there?’ Samia held out her hand for the sauce boat. ‘Imli?’

‘Friday nights.’

Fridays used to be Masood’s day off. He’d cycle out at sunrise and be gone all day, leaving Ami, Aba, Mariam Apa and me to lay tables, wash dishes, heat up frozen food. More often than not, at lunchtime, Mariam Apa would end up eating last night’s leftovers and Aba would drive me to the bazaar where we’d buy aloo puri with carrot pickles, and halva on the side to sweeten our mouths. Masood would return well after sunset, clothes wet, hair smelling of salt, sand glistening silver against his skin. He’d hold up two clenched fists like a boxer ready to jab, and when I tapped one he would twist his wrist, unfurl his fingers, and reveal a tamarind-based sweet wrapped in clear plastic. For a while, not so long ago, I had lost these memories of Masood; I’d like to say it was the better angels of my nature which restored the memories to me, but really it was embarrassment at the way my reaction towards him mirrored that of so many of my family members. Embarrassment, and also the visceral tug of food smells. When the taste of chillies sometimes brought tears to my eyes it was not because my palate was overwhelmed by the heat.