Sunjeev Sahota - The Year of the Runaways

‘Please, massiji. If you tell me what the problem is maybe I can help.’

The woman stayed silent, staring.

‘Please. Our gurus said we have to help one another.’

Inside, the weedy little courtyard was covered in trapezoid shadows cast by the trough, at which an old emaciated buffalo nosed mildly. Here and there were peaky slops of dark-green buffalo shit, and these Narinder worked hard to avoid as she tried to keep up. She was shown to a sticky leather settee in a dark, airless room.

‘The electricity,’ the woman said, both index fingers pointing to the sky. ‘It is gone.’

Narinder placed the blankets on her tidy lap and her hands on top of the blankets. Her silver kara dug uncomfortably into her wrist. The woman crouched on the stone floor, knees flaring out indecently.

‘You want to help?’

Narinder nodded. ‘Please.’

‘How old are you?’

‘Twenty, with the guru’s grace.’

‘The same age my daughter was when she left here.’

Narinder lay on her bunk that night unable to sleep. In the bed underneath was a young sikhni from Fresno and her quiet sighs swept the room. The moon hung tiny in the far window. Narinder turned back to the ceiling. Everything was so peaceful, the night so heavy-lidded, that she half thought she had only to lie there as still as she could and she’d catch herself in the act of thinking. That she’d be able to observe herself thinking. It was something she’d often tried to do, and in some unexplainable but vital way it was an impulse linked to the idea that if she flicked her pupils quickly enough she’d be able to glimpse the side of her face, the part that was otherwise only visible to her when looked at in the mirror. Childish habits, for the child in her.

She’d left the woman’s home promising to do her best and, God willing, find her daughter and tell her to contact her family. Narinder imagined the girl wandering lost in England. Asking for help and no one listening, no one caring. Strangely, sleepily, this feeling of loss opened out into a further memory. They’d been sitting together at the back of the Croydon gurdwara, Narinder playing with her mother’s green rosary, when Bibi Jeet Kaur smiled and said that if she were to die now, by her twenty-first year Narinder wouldn’t even be able to recall what her mother had looked like. Lying on her bunk, sadness washed over Narinder in a single large wave, for her mother had been right. Already her face was becoming nothing more than a warm smile surrounded by a faraway blur.

She told her father about the encounter with the woman and the missing daughter in England. He was at the dining table, going through his pension statements, and light from the standard lamp made his beard glow red.

He listened to Narinder without interrupting, then returned to his work. ‘It’s a police matter, beiti. Let’s not get involved.’

‘Ji,’ Narinder said, nodding. She looked down, looked up. ‘I’m sorry, Baba, but does she not need our help?’

‘I agree she needs help. She should go to the police.’ He looked across, smiled. ‘You can’t take on all the world’s troubles. I’ll say an ardaas for them both tomorrow. Theek?’

‘Ji. It’s just that I thought I could maybe—’

‘Narinder? We’re not getting involved, acha?’

She nodded. ‘Yes, Baba.’

She regressed into the daily shuffling between the house and the gurdwara, to reading and tidying and heating up meals, to working at the langar hall and awaiting her turn on the harmonium. If a verse was unfamiliar, she brought the songsheets home and stood them on her dressing table, against the wall. She practised by imagining keys on the wood, eyes slightly scrunched in application, whispering the words. Time seemed to vanish and her father had to shout to get her attention.

‘Ji?’ she said, moving onto the landing and stretching over the banister.

‘I said I’m going to the bank. I’ll be back before lunch.’ She heard the door shut. She paused. She was still leaning over the banister. The house was silent. She returned to her dressing table and took the piece of paper from the drawer. It was the number of the agent in Ludhiana who’d arranged the missing girl’s transit. She went down to the hallway and dialled the number. The agent answered and very happily gave Narinder ‘full, all disclosure’ details of the fabric factory the girl was headed to on reaching England. Encouraged by how easy that was, Narinder called the factory. Another man answered — gruff voice, thick Indian accent — and said he had no sister-fucking idea who she was talking about and to leave him the fuck alone. Shocked, Narinder put the phone down, her hand shaking on the receiver. She looked over her shoulder, though she knew the house was empty.

In August, Baba Tarsem Singh said he’d arranged for her to perform the kirtan during the gurdwara’s morning service.

‘It must get very boring for you to spend so much time in the house with me.’

‘I’m not bored, Baba. I love you.’

‘You’re a kind daughter. Nevertheless, it will do you good.’

She loved these services, with their accompanying birdsong, and afterwards she had at least four hours before her father arrived to escort her back home. Usually she did some sort of seva, but one morning she buttoned up her duffel coat and caught the train to Newham and waited outside the factory boss’s office. She was a girl to whom waiting came easily and when the man showed up he didn’t seem able to turn her away. He pored through his battered tea-stained register and said that the girl had left some months ago. He did, however, have the girl’s telephone number. Did Narinder want that? The next day, she called the number from the payphone in the gurdwara and it was several minutes before the old lady understood that this wasn’t her granddaughter Anastasia calling. It transpired that she had had an Indian girl staying in her basement — ‘lovely-looking thing she were, too’ — but not any more.

‘Said she was going to Poplar. God knows why.’

Narinder smiled into the phone at that.

It was almost September before she had sufficient opportunity to attend the Sri Guru Go bind gurdwara nearest to Poplar. The granthi, a snowy-bearded man with a wooden cane, sighed disappointedly and confirmed that it had been brought to his attention that they had a handful of daughters living illegally in the area, who needed the community’s help. It was rumoured they lived in some sheds backing onto one of the alleys. He gave Narinder the address and, in the name of their gurus, asked her to help these sisters of hers.

‘Third one along, pehnji. Look for the rubbers,’ a brown girl with severely straightened hair directed, and at last Narinder walked up the alley, sidestepping the used, teaty condoms, the thrown-out sofas and TVs. She wasn’t sure which of the wooden gates to knock on first and then, sooner than expected, found herself at the alley’s end, facing a concrete wall sprayed with rude green graffiti. She frowned at herself. Be brave. Guruji is with you. She firm-stepped it to the first gate but hadn’t even knocked when it was hauled open and a frightening Indian woman loomed above her. Chapped pink lipstick and emerald eyeshadow. Orange-henna hair frizzing back like an afro. All on a thick, angry face with a pronounced chin-wobble.

‘What the fuck you spying up and down for?’

‘I’m sorry. I’m looking for Savraj.’ Then, more confidently: ‘I have a message from her mother.’

The woman shifted her weight onto her other foot. ‘What message?’

‘Does Savraj live here?’

‘I said what message?’

‘Her mother’s worried. She hasn’t heard from her daughter in months. I promised I’d try to find her and see how she is. If she needs any help.’