The Blue Taxi Read online

  Tahir was not interested in either swine or locusts, very much, but he liked considering snakes. He imagined one fastened to his chest, where there were two slowly growing nipples for a slithering beast to choose. He wondered how such a thing would feel. He might frighten Agatha with an account of how it happened. How a snake can wrap itself around you, for example, and make your very life come gasping from your mouth. In the end, he did tell Agatha what snakes can do, but he kept what Maria thought about her mother wisely to himself.

  Majid, though he suspected that Maria had ideas, took a special pleasure in believing that what took place on Sarie Turner’s visits was a secret from them all. Picturing the several cousins he had left, and also old Rahman (whom he’d harmed so much that day), and even dear Sugra, Majid thought, What would they all say if they knew that crazy Jeevanjee has got himself a woman? Or that I’ve written some new poems? That I need yet another notebook, as I haven’t done in years? He wasn’t ready to find out. He liked how good he felt, and that there was no one there to see it but his mistress. Long, pale Sarie Turner. Dear Mrs. Turner, with her own secret life. Whom could Sarie tell?

  Sixteen

  Bibi, whose hurting hands were not yet loose enough to take on a new stitching, kept firm watch on Kikanga and witnessed several things. For one, she spotted Mad Majid’s little cousin Sugra, whom she had not seen since a wedding long ago, walking down the street. That Sugra, yes. The one and very same, the Sugra she had held up to her son as the real example of a fiancée when he’d proposed Nisreen. Seeing Sugra gave Bibi a boost. Hadn’t she just thought of her the other day, when looking at her Issa? Were her mere thoughts conjurings? Had she predicted Sugra?

  Bibi watched her closely. Strange, she thought. The way a person was remembered, used as an example, was sometimes different from what that person was when you saw them in the flesh. When Bibi was unhappy with Nisreen, she told her that she acted too much like a bush baby, too shy, that she startled far too easily, could be frozen by a stare; and when Bibi said these things to her, she sometimes thought of Sugra, who, surely, walked with confidence and could look trouble in the eye.

  But seeing Sugra now brought a little shock. Unlike poor Nisreen, Sugra barreled, strode, did not have a careful walk, looked a little too indifferent, Bibi was surprised to think, to the others in her path. Of course, Sugra wasn’t lame, as Nisreen was, but, still, wasn’t there, Bibi thought protectively, an elegance to Nisreen’s wary limp? Sugra, from this height, did look nicely round. And she was finely dressed, in lavender, in a long loose dress that modestly suggested but did not emphasize too much her heavy-breasted top. Yet why in such a rush? Bibi paused. Treading with such power, marching at such speed!

  The more she thought about Majid’s cousin Sugra, the more she watched her move, the more Bibi started to remember what she had forgotten, the kinds of things one does forget about people whom one doesn’t often see. Look at that! She’s frowning! For all her love of drama and her skill at telling tales, at imitating keenly this person or that, Bibi liked reserve, restraint, when a person was in public. And what could be more public than this brash Kikanga street? Little Sugra Jeevanjee, far too grown to do so—a proper woman now—was striding down the road with her eyes steady on the ground and a grimace on her face. As though it didn’t matter, not at all, what anybody thought! Bibi stretched her toes and yawned. It was pleasant to compare a person walking down the street to someone in one’s family. Yes, she sometimes wished Nisreen would spill what news she had more quickly than she did. But Nisreen doesn’t show the world her onions. Nisreen knows what’s private. Bibi closed her eyes and sighed. When she looked again, Sugra had gone on, in the direction, Bibi thought, of Libya Street or Mbuyu Mmoja Park. How nice to feel protective: My Nisreen’s refined.

  The other thing she noticed: Sarie Turner’s visits to the Jeevanjees—unless she’d started taking other routes (and would a British woman understand what alleys could be for?)—were now slowing down. She didn’t pass by Hisham’s every day, and sometimes Bibi spent entire afternoons without once seeing the woman and the girl. Twice a week or so, instead of every day. This meant, thought Bibi, that something between Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee and that woman in the too-small dresses must have been resolved. You don’t need panic-panic-daily-time, or even too-short skirts, if something’s been agreed. They were settling, she supposed, into a routine.

  Routines were good, she thought. Knowing just what to expect, reassured by the appearance of that thing just when you knew that it was due, and knowing it would come again—now that was a real pleasure. But, she thought, stretching her poor hands, there’s also need for change. In fact, just as she was comforted by Sarie’s slowing down and by how used to Nisreen and Issa’s wakings-up and sleepings she now was, she also wondered how, and whether, anything could change. She did want things to change, some of them, at least.

  On the balcony, where the old rope bed had now become a fixture, Bibi closed her eyes and hoped that she might soon be up again to stitching. Though she had rejected it so firmly, that Morris Oxford niggled at her. She’d dreamed about it twice. How strange to have a taxi in her head. Had it really been intended? She’d been so resistant! Had she been right to let it go? From downstairs she heard Mama Moto cooking. With a smile, the kind of smile a person has when certain that if hunger strikes there are good things to eat, Bibi napped a little. In her drowse she turned away from the blue taxi and asked for something new. Tell me what to stitch once my fingers have come right, she whispered to whatever spirits were in charge of things like this—then also, to be safe, to God, Keeper of the Cosmos.

  When Bibi saw what clearly was an envelope, a pink one, fringed in dark blue stripes interlaced with red, she ground her teeth and moaned. See what happens when you ask? Naam, naam, naam. All right. Indeed. Succumb. She’d go ahead, and properly. She waited for the envelope to come into clear focus. Yes, there it was. An envelope either sent from, or going, far away. She saw the airmail motto clearly: in these parts, in the local tongue, it said, quite literally, by bird. She smiled, and experienced no surprise at all when, outside, house crows gave a call.

  An envelope. What was it going to mean? Would a cousin write from England? Visit from Dubai? Was there going to be a death? A marriage? Had someone she’d forgotten decided they remembered her? Mrs. Harries, Mrs. Livery-Jones, asking how the stitchery had fared, had little Kulthum ever started up a business of her own? Her old teacher Mr. Suleiman, who had told her she would not amount to much but who, she knew, had been charmed by her bright eyes, and who had given her a ride sometimes in his nice taxicab? A taxi cab. She shuddered. This. A second test. The envelope: could it be from dead Uncle Amal’s last and happiest wife? From a friend Issa had made once when he was far away? Well, Bibi didn’t know, but once she got her mind around it and decided that she could not go back on her word, the envelope in her mind’s eye made her feel that good things might be along, if she could only wait. The sign of an announcement? Something that she didn’t know showing it was there? She sat up slowly and prepared to go into the bedroom, where she kept a lot of woven things she could unravel for her stitching. The envelope. Pink, she’d need. And blue.

  Seventeen

  The following day, Nisreen went to work as usual. She walked in Issa’s company down to Seafront Road. The two of them had tea. Next, he brought her back up India Street and left her at the clinic. They parted as they always did: she unlocked the front doors, and Issa watched her enter, then went on back towards the ocean, where his own office was. At reception, Nisreen slipped out of her shoes. She watered the three croton plants and wiped their concrete pots. Sharpened up her pencil and looked idly at her files. Things were just the same, she tried to tell herself, as they had always been. Weren’t they?

  Nisreen’s shoulders hurt. Her eyes stung. But she did try to be brave. Weren’t things just the same? Wasn’t Issa gentle, the sea exactly where it always was, still as large and blue? Weren’t the park-side casuarinas sh
ifting loosely in the wind, as high, slim pines should do, and hadn’t her sweet tea tasted as it ever did, too milky and too hot? But though she tried to make a mental list of all the things that were none other than what they’d always been, Nisreen had the feeling—one that had been lurking there for months—that she herself was not.

  Nisreen was not blind, despite her failing eyes, and neither was she deaf And just because she limped, a little, well, it didn’t mean she couldn’t feel the ground beneath her feet. And though she didn’t think that Issa minded, didn’t think he cared as much as Bibi did about the flatness of her stomach and the smallness of her breasts, she herself was tired. She felt sad. A person must fall down, she thought, if they’re pushed and pushed enough. It wore on her, Bibi’s poking at her stomach as though fingers through a cloth could bring about conception, frowning at her chest as if a glare could call up milk. Sometimes Issa told her, “It will happen when it happens. Nevermind my mother.” But would it really? When? Nisreen wasn’t hard enough not to be upset, and she was too obedient not to wish that she could do exactly what was wanted, what old Bibi asked. And when Bibi had, the night before, just going up to bed, winked and pointed at her own ancient loins as if Nisreen did not know where anything began, Nisreen had gone into the storeroom, where she’d stayed for a long time and cried, until Issa broke open the door and pulled her, shaking, out. At her desk in the clinic, Nisreen rested her sore head on her hands and wished she were in her bed.

  When something finally happened, Nisreen had been sitting motionless for a long time, not even dangling her feet. She hadn’t taken up that knife-sharp pencil once, not to doodle, not to write down any messages, and not to poke neat holes in patterns through any scrap of paper. Things went like this till noon. No one had come in at all. Nobody, it seemed to her, needs help here but me. She had sat there by herself, immobile, wishing she were other than she was, wishing Bibi would be quiet. Nisreen sat so still that things in her felt silenced, too, and she wondered if a person could forget what speaking would be like, or moving, if they sat still long enough. And so when Sugra Jeevanjee—plump, great-eyed, and pretty in a long, flowing green dress—appeared before her, Nisreen almost shrieked.

  They hadn’t talked much the last time, had simply said, “Hello,” “How wonderful!” and, “You are looking well,” and Sugra had been late for something: she had been more like a pleasant flash that came and disappeared, caught briefly by Nisreen as she spun and rushed away. But this time when she saw her, Nisreen felt that Sugra had arrived and that she was going to stop.

  Sugra had not stepped off the sunlit street, as she had the last time, but came from behind the wide door that said Private holding two great crutches in her arms, in front of her, as men in films sometimes hold bouquets or big gifts for their loves, and she was smiling hugely. She had stepped into reception not carefully or slowly, as patients do, or orderlies with fragile things to hold, but sharply, all at once. To sad Nisreen, Sugra’s popping through the doors so brightly, having gotten what she’d come for, what she’d been asking for, for weeks, seemed almost like a sign. Something in the air went sweet and lingered, had the aura of success. Nisreen tensed her wrists against the counter. Rose and stretched her toes along the floor. Crutches, after all. There’s help for crippled things, she thought. There must be.

  Stepping towards Nisreen, Sugra gave her old schoolmate such a lovely look—a look that said, “There’s no one else I’d rather come upon like this than you, just as you are”—that Nisreen for a moment felt that Sugra had been sent along precisely to help her. Perhaps her gloominess, her wishing, had themselves sent Sugra down—nevermind the crutches she’d been asking for back there for weeks, since that little boy got hit. Nisreen dried her face with a long sleeve and, starting softly but with some effort ending with a smile, said, “Oh, Sugra, you have got them!”

  While Sugra’s greetings washed over Nisreen’s ears, too rapid to be followed, Nisreen thought: Sugra, who might have been a nurse. How odd it is that things turned out this way. It was true. Their destinies might really have been switched. That lovely time spent studying medicine together in a high hall outside of town! Taking buses, eating fried muhogo chips beside a narrow river, going home with books! That time of only being girls! Sugra had been able, much more so than the others. Gifted. Much more expert than Nisreen. Could have been a doctor! And yet, Nisreen had ended closer to a medicine chest than Sugra, saw syringes every day. Counted up thermometers sometimes, put pillboxes away. Wasn’t that surprising? Nisreen had married Issa, who wanted her to work (“Use the brain God gave her,” as he had said to Bibi); Sugra, to everyone’s surprise, had taken on a man who wanted her at home tending to his children, and only made allowances for his wife to run about if she was bettering his reputation by helping her relations, neighbors, and the poor, entirely for free. Husbands, Nisreen thought. It seemed to her just then that it was husbands, and not wives, who made any difference at all. She didn’t like to think what life would be if Issa kept her home.

  When Sugra finally paused, Nisreen took both her hands and squeezed them. “I’m so glad,” Nisreen said, and Sugra, through the crutches she still held in her arms, said, “Yes, oh, yes. Me, too!” And then, because her mission was accomplished and Sugra liked to celebrate, she said, “It’s nearly lunchtime, after all. We haven’t had a chance to talk. Can’t you get away and walk a bit with me?” Nisreen wished to cry again. Of course. Sugra’d come to save her.

  Because Nisreen never asked for much, an orderly agreed to watch her place behind the counter for a while. Nisreen took up her purse and head scarf, and next was squinting in the bright mid-morning light, walking beside Sugra, who at first held to the crutches sideways, like a package, then brought them apart and held them at her side, one each—talking all the while—as though some other, busy part of her were wondering precisely how the things were used. How like Sugra, Nisreen thought, not to ask to have them brought, not to have them wrapped, not to hide what she is holding. Other people did, Nisreen herself would have. Most people thought one should.

  Here’s what some hoped to dislike in Sugra but could not, because she was so kind: Sugra, open, fearless, clear, did not like concealment. It struck Nisreen as odd, again, that it was she, not Sugra, who had a job at the reception—Sugra, who didn’t mind what people knew as long as it was nearly, nearly, true or so elaborately and fantastically false that it couldn’t really hurt. Bubbling, knife-sharp, charming Sugra, who had such skill for talk.

  If Sugra hadn’t been so kind and so good-looking, Nisreen might have been embarrassed to be walking close to her, this portly beauty holding to the crutches for everyone to see. But Sugra could preempt all criticism with her laughter and good cheer. Could make people feel fine. When Sugra turned to her to say, “And your glasses make you look so thoughtful, yes, like someone at a College,” Nisreen blushed, was charmed, forgot she had a limp; she felt she wouldn’t mind what Sugra did in public. It was good just to be with her.

  In a moment, Sugra was talking about Majid. “Oh! He’s not so bad anymore, not so as you’d feel sorry.” She paused to put a hand on Nisreen’s arm and looked into her eyes. “You know they call him Mad Majid, now, don’t you?” That was in Sugra’s manner, too, a fairness, making certain everyone was well equipped and would appreciate whatever story was to come. Nisreen nodded, bit back a passing impulse to mention Issa’s mother, say, “Oh, yes, I know it all,” and Sugra moved along. “Three years ago that accident would have destroyed the man completely. But slowly-slowly. Drip by drop! He has changed. He’s only sad, now, not so mad. I haven’t heard him shout in… oh, four years, I should say.” They walked up India Street and farther on to Mosque Street. A boy was selling tangerines; mendicants looked on.

  The talking put a bit of distance between Nisreen and her sadness. Sugra’s green dress made a swish-swish as they walked, and the crutches scraped the ground. Nisreen closed her eyes and opened them again, blinking at the colors in the day. She licked
the backsides of her teeth and squinted at the sky. It was good to be outside. Sugra paused, grew quiet for a moment; and Nisreen, who had been lulled by Sugra’s talk, almost missed a step. Quiet still, Sugra touched Nisreen lightly on the arm. Nisreen stopped and turned. Sugra’s face was tight. Nisreen could hear her breathe. “Tahir,” Sugra asked. “Did you see him come in?”

  Bibi hadn’t asked her, had felt too sure that she’d discovered him to think that anyone would have something to add. Not even Issa’d asked. But of course Nisreen had seen him brought in. Poor one, she had thought. And though the news was sad, being asked made Nisreen feel a lightening inside her. It was good for her to talk. She wanted to. And next Nisreen was telling Sugra—a bit eagerly, perhaps, too clumsy with her timid change of mood—about how Tahir Majid Jeevanjee had looked when they had brought him in. How terrible. How they’d brought the leg inside before the boy, and how Nisreen had known from looking at it—how short it was, the foot that did not seem a grown-up’s—that the limb was once a child’s. How she had never seen a person coming in, in parts that way before. How when his living body followed, the little boy was pale, a sort of gummy green. His whimpering had filled the hallways with a heat. How it had made Nisreen feel afraid of wishing for herself. How could it be borne, to see a broken boy like that, and know that he was yours? How she had thought, and then immediately unthought, It’s good Hayaam is dead.

  They had stopped beneath an awning. Sugra pulled Nisreen towards her in the shade. Her nice eyes grew a shimmer; her bright face looked blue. Nisreen wondered if she’d said too much. Didn’t know if she should put a hand on her friend’s arm. If she should say some more, or stop. Then Sugra seemed not to be listening anymore. She interrupted her. “He’s the best of them, you know.” Sugra looked at her own feet, then up, away from her companion. “That Tahir. Really, really good.” Nisreen bit her lip. Sugra turned towards her again and took up Nisreen’s hand. She squeezed it, hard, to show she was all right.