Sarie found surprising. No longer startled by her height, he looked up ather, barreled bravely on. “You can come here to my home and we will bring a chair for you to sit, on this old balcony. You
have no garden where you live.”
Sarie followed Majid Ghulam inside. Ismail and Ali were at work, and Habib (how lucky!) had gone to watch the heaving buses
take off for the north. The door to Tahir’s room was closed. The hallway’s heavy air was smooth and soft and blue. Sucking
at the inner flesh of both her cheeks at once, Sarie found herself examining the back of her host’s head. Considering:
How blue the light is here. How nicely Mr. Jeevanjee is swaying now as he moves forward in the hall. My host is like a reed
on the edge of a brown pond
. A fierce, barbed tingle came tripping through her limbs.
When Majid Ghulam turned around to look at her, meaning then to say, “And now we will have tea. I will call down for Maria,”
he caught Sarie Turner looking at the space where his own head had been, and right before his eyes, she turned the rich plum
color of Ribena Concentrated Syrup. Next—suddenly—Mad Majid Ghulam pressed himself against her. His hands met briefly at the
back of Sarie’s neck, slipped along her spine, then, riffling as though through a drawer to find the urgent thing, moved across
her back and then all over her front to part the curtains of her dress and feel her freckled flesh come loose and tepid in
his palms. Sarie touched him, too.
Later, Sarie wished it had been slower than it was, so that she could make a calendar of small and sweet events:
First he… and then I and then he, oh yes. And then I, yes, and then we and then I and then he again and I knew and he touched
and I and I and I
—Sarie would have liked to savor it. But Majid, from the moment that it started, wished he could forget how it began. He wanted
to remember not the first betrayal of an ancient, dear love but a not-too-loved familiar clutching, an act he had committed
many timesbefore that did not mean so much. He wished, that is, to feel himself already in the midst, already at sea and too far from
the shore. The shore: the fact of his now-mangled little boy, the growing needs of three two-legged sons, Sugra, with her
endless energy and the kindness which so helped him but which he could not hope to repay, the Kikanga set who called him Mad
and Sad, the hungry, talky aunts, Maria with her Bible looks, the ruins of the paper, even old Rahman, and everything, everything,
that he had ever been and ever wanted to forget.
At sea they surely were. Sarie had had scant experience with romance. And so she mimed the movie actresses she had seen in
one or two hot films at the Old Empire Cinema. She released and squeezed her lips in patterns in the air. Expecting that she
might eventually feel Majid’s tongue against her mouth, she bent down to match him, pressed her brow against his neck and
sighed, keeping her eyes closed. But Majid on that day was not interested in kissing. For one thing, Sarie’s mouth was far.
He remained intent on that long chest and stomach, which he rubbed, she thought, like the lamps she read to Agatha about,
from which amazing spirits come. To Mad and Sad Majid, the space between her shoulders and her jutting hips was dangerous,
unchartable and vast.
While the embrace—sudden, hectic, endless—wound on and up and round the parents in the hall, Agatha watched Tahir. Perhaps
connected much more tightly to her mother than either of them would have cared to know, she felt a thick confusion, a warm
coal in her chest. While Sarie shivered in the hall, Agatha thought for an endless, awful moment that perhaps Tahir had died.
As Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee, failed widower, businessman, and poet, pulled Sarie Turner across the way a bit so as to prop her
up against the peeling wall, Agatha was pulled closer to the boy. She let the book drop to the floor and leaned in
have no garden where you live.”
Sarie followed Majid Ghulam inside. Ismail and Ali were at work, and Habib (how lucky!) had gone to watch the heaving buses
take off for the north. The door to Tahir’s room was closed. The hallway’s heavy air was smooth and soft and blue. Sucking
at the inner flesh of both her cheeks at once, Sarie found herself examining the back of her host’s head. Considering:
How blue the light is here. How nicely Mr. Jeevanjee is swaying now as he moves forward in the hall. My host is like a reed
on the edge of a brown pond
. A fierce, barbed tingle came tripping through her limbs.
When Majid Ghulam turned around to look at her, meaning then to say, “And now we will have tea. I will call down for Maria,”
he caught Sarie Turner looking at the space where his own head had been, and right before his eyes, she turned the rich plum
color of Ribena Concentrated Syrup. Next—suddenly—Mad Majid Ghulam pressed himself against her. His hands met briefly at the
back of Sarie’s neck, slipped along her spine, then, riffling as though through a drawer to find the urgent thing, moved across
her back and then all over her front to part the curtains of her dress and feel her freckled flesh come loose and tepid in
his palms. Sarie touched him, too.
Later, Sarie wished it had been slower than it was, so that she could make a calendar of small and sweet events:
First he… and then I and then he, oh yes. And then I, yes, and then we and then I and then he again and I knew and he touched
and I and I and I
—Sarie would have liked to savor it. But Majid, from the moment that it started, wished he could forget how it began. He wanted
to remember not the first betrayal of an ancient, dear love but a not-too-loved familiar clutching, an act he had committed
many timesbefore that did not mean so much. He wished, that is, to feel himself already in the midst, already at sea and too far from
the shore. The shore: the fact of his now-mangled little boy, the growing needs of three two-legged sons, Sugra, with her
endless energy and the kindness which so helped him but which he could not hope to repay, the Kikanga set who called him Mad
and Sad, the hungry, talky aunts, Maria with her Bible looks, the ruins of the paper, even old Rahman, and everything, everything,
that he had ever been and ever wanted to forget.
At sea they surely were. Sarie had had scant experience with romance. And so she mimed the movie actresses she had seen in
one or two hot films at the Old Empire Cinema. She released and squeezed her lips in patterns in the air. Expecting that she
might eventually feel Majid’s tongue against her mouth, she bent down to match him, pressed her brow against his neck and
sighed, keeping her eyes closed. But Majid on that day was not interested in kissing. For one thing, Sarie’s mouth was far.
He remained intent on that long chest and stomach, which he rubbed, she thought, like the lamps she read to Agatha about,
from which amazing spirits come. To Mad and Sad Majid, the space between her shoulders and her jutting hips was dangerous,
unchartable and vast.
While the embrace—sudden, hectic, endless—wound on and up and round the parents in the hall, Agatha watched Tahir. Perhaps
connected much more tightly to her mother than either of them would have cared to know, she felt a thick confusion, a warm
coal in her chest. While Sarie shivered in the hall, Agatha thought for an endless, awful moment that perhaps Tahir had died.
As Majid Ghulam Jeevanjee, failed widower, businessman, and poet, pulled Sarie Turner across the way a bit so as to prop her
up against the peeling wall, Agatha was pulled closer to the boy. She let the book drop to the floor and leaned in
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