Gravel Heart(24)
‘Yes, I remember,’ I said.
‘Well, I don’t think I told you that your uncle was detained for several days, did I?’
‘No! You mean detained in jail? I’ve never heard that,’ I said with overstated horror, although I really did not know that Uncle Amir had been detained. But this was the story coming, I thought.
‘Yes, in jail,’ Auntie Asha said. ‘Your mother helped him then when he was in trouble. Do you know why he was held? It was to do with us, the two of us. We had just met then, and my brother Hakim, your uncle Hakim, did not approve of us being together.’
She paused there and looked at me in a teasingly tantalising way, as if she was considering withholding the rest of her story after all. I thought she was enjoying the telling of it, and, despite myself, I smiled. She smiled too, and then continued. ‘Well, it was worse than that. I mean it was worse than disapproving. It was a complete misunderstanding. Hakim just got it wrong. He got angry with Amir, very very very VERY angry, and you probably know what he’s like when he loses his temper. He …’ she paused for a moment as she looked for the right words but then she changed direction ‘… so he had Amir arrested. It was a mistake, Hakim just got it wrong. He thought our family had been insulted. He lost his temper and decided to be nasty, that’s all. But –’ she laughed, and waved her brother’s rage away with a sweep of her bangled arm ‘– when he saw your mother he fell in love with her, and your uncle Amir was released from jail and we are now living happily ever after. So that’s what he owes your mother.’
The words sat in my mouth for a few minutes before I spoke, filling it up until I could not keep them in any more. ‘Did she have a choice?’ I asked, eyes lowered, trying to avoid a challenge.
‘What!’ said Auntie Asha sharply, retreating from the table, but then she spoke more calmly. ‘What did you mean by that?’
The words had been sitting in my mouth for months, but I had not dared to let them out because the question seemed so wild. I had seen that man on television, the Minister of State for Something, with his shaved head and powerful stubborn neck, and when I thought back to that face I thought to myself: he forced her. Why not? A lot of wives and daughters had been forced to make themselves available to the powerful. I did not know about Uncle Amir’s detention then.
When I did not reply, Auntie Asha said, ‘What did you say just now?’ Her voice crackled with the beginnings of outrage, and I took heed and did not speak. ‘Nobody forced her, do you understand? You can ask her yourself. How can you say such a thing about your mother? You have no respect. You don’t even know what you are talking about. How can you say such a thing? How can you even think such a thing? You are an enemy, you are a snake. And what does that make your uncle Amir? How dare you! How dare you!’ Auntie Asha said, her voice trembling with rage now. ‘You are a despicable, dirty insect. You are an ungrateful, filthy boy. How can you live in the man’s house and say such a thing? He has been like a father to you. How can you eat the food we put in front of you and think this?’
Because I am feeble and shameless, and have taught myself to eat shit, I thought but did not say, could not say. Because I have been fed deference and defeat in my mother’s milk. Because my mother wanted this for me and she has seen enough sadness. Now I am here like a vagabond at your mercy.
‘Don’t you dare say a word about this to your uncle, do you understand?’ Auntie Asha said and then left the kitchen.
I rose to my feet as well, collected the books that I now carried with me around the house as a sign of my intent to obey, and went upstairs to my room. I will write to my mother, I will demand to know, I told myself, but I knew I could not do that. The meaning of Auntie Asha’s rage must be that something bad happened, and it had something to do with my father leaving.
I expected that when Auntie Asha reported what I had said and put whatever inflection she chose to on my words, Uncle Amir would come hurrying upstairs to rage at me, but no feet pounded up the stairs. When dinner was ready Eddie was sent up to call me, and I went down and ate without a word being addressed to me – no instructional lecture tonight – while Uncle Amir and Auntie Asha talked to their children. In the days that followed Uncle Amir did not speak to me at all, and did not even look my way. He spoke to Auntie Asha and the children in his normal way, as if I was not there.
All my penitent studying amounted to little. I knew after each of my examinations that I had failed. I just could not work up the urgency and did not have the knowledge. I could only complete one answer and dabble at the other two in each of the papers, despite the genuine effort I had made in those last weeks. I decided to speak to my uncle, to negotiate my exit before Uncle Amir formulated a decree. I had been in England for two years by then, and I thought I knew enough to be able to fumble my own way around, but to stay on at all I needed Uncle Amir’s cooperation. So during the weekend after the results came out, when he was in his study doing paperwork, I knocked on his door.
‘I made a mistake with this course,’ I said. ‘It was my own fault, I should have spoken sooner, I should not have lied to you. I should’ve explained to you what I really wanted to study and persuaded you to support me. I am sorry that I have been unable to repay your generosity by turning out to be a successful student. I had thought that with application and perseverance I would be able to succeed even in a subject that I had little enthusiasm for, but I could not after all. I am sorry for all the trouble I have caused you.