Far From My Father’s House. Jill McGivering

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СКАЧАТЬ out at their hunched shoulders and tight faces, watching the bobbing red of their cigarettes, and prayed to Allah, not for the first time, that He in His Wisdom might finally turn me into a boy so I could sit there beside Baba on a charpoy and take part in important talking and be always at his side in the day too and not stuck here in our suffocating compound, surrounded by giggling girls and empty-headed Aunties.

      One evening, Hamid Uncle came home carrying a parcel and told everyone to gather round. When he tore off the paper, two bundles of material fell out. They were off-white in colour and shiny. He took one and held it up to show us. It hung in tightly pleated folds which bulged shapelessly like a vast cloak. The top part was rounded and shaped like a head. A tight grid of cotton strands lay where the face should be.

      ‘A burqa.’ Jamila Auntie was the first to speak. ‘So, has it come to this? You want to make us disappear altogether?’

      She turned to Baba and he looked down, embarrassed.

      ‘It’s for your own safety,’ said Hamid Uncle. ‘I’m the head of this family and if it is needful for any woman to leave this compound, this is what she must wear.’

      The Aunties stared at each other. We had always covered our heads in public but this burqa was something new. Jamila Auntie crossed her arms over her chest. Finally one of the Aunties put out a hand to take the burqa from Hamid Uncle and look at it more closely. She opened it out and pulled it over her head, disappearing from view, then walked carefully round the yard. When she pulled it off again, her hair was untidy and her face flushed.

      ‘So hot.’ She fanned at her face with her free hand. ‘Like an oven.’

      The other Aunties crowded round to try. One by one, they were turned into anonymous blobs by the cloth, as formless as the snow people the boys built on the mountain in winter. Only the toes of their sandals were visible, poking out as they stepped forwards.

      Baba asked us once in school what special powers we’d each like to have, if it be the will of Allah. I said I should like very much to fly, but my classmate said she’d like an invisible cloak, so she could go anywhere and do anything and no one would ever know. Now, watching the Aunties as they were swallowed whole by the burqa, I thought of her wish.

      Finally the Aunties finished playing with the burqa and it was my turn. I pulled the great bundle of cloth over my head. The narrow cap tightened round my skull, then its folds tumbled to the ground, almost covering my feet. The compound fell away from me and, peering through the squared grid over my eyes, I felt as if I’d disappeared into a separate world and was looking out at the familiar scene from a faraway place. The grid was narrow. I could only see things directly in front of me. Now the compound gates. Now, as I turned my head, the charpoys where the boys sat, fidgeting and fighting. Now, as I twisted my body further round, the faces of the Aunties, Mama and Baba and finally Jamila Auntie’s cross face.

      I walked up and down carefully, not tripping as some of the girls had done. I imagined all the places I could visit in secret inside this burqa and all the conversations I could overhear, without anyone knowing it was me. I was tall for my age. I could easily be taken for a grown woman.

      I turned and started to walk back across the yard, pleased with myself, until I saw Mama and Baba’s faces. Mama’s eyes were full of pain and she was wringing her hands, squeezing out an invisible rope of washing. Baba was watching me with the same look of sorrow I’d seen on the day of the picnic.

      ‘What?’ I tore off the burqa as fast as I could as if it might burn into me like a second skin. ‘What’s wrong?’

      Mama’s stomach grew huge. Then her birthing pains came. She lay groaning on her back on the cot while the Auntie who knew how to deliver babies fussed round her and wiped sweat from her face. On the third day, the moans rose to screams and when I helped Auntie wash Mama down with a wet cloth, it came away from between her legs sodden with blood. When I rinsed it out, the water in the pail made red clouds.

      Auntie looked worried. I followed her outside. Something was wrong, she told the women there. The baby was coming out badly and Baba should take Mama to the clinic in town as soon as possible.

      Jamila Auntie slowly shook her head. ‘She can’t go there.’

      ‘But the baby’s stuck.’ Auntie pulled a face behind Jamila Auntie’s back and spat into the dust. The spittle hung there for some time, in the shape of a silver fish, as if the ground were reluctant to receive it.

      Jamila Auntie leant forwards and lowered her voice to a whisper. ‘You don’t understand,’ she said. ‘It’s not safe.’

      Auntie called over a boy and sent him to fetch Baba from school.

      Mama was so weak that she could barely walk. The Aunties packed cloths between her legs to hide the bleeding, then hoisted her from the charpoy onto her feet. Her eyes were closed and she was panting with short, hard breaths. When they pulled a burqa over her head, her belly pushed out the loose folds into a ball.

      Baba came breathlessly through the compound gate. I thanked Allah for getting him home quickly. He helped the Aunties move Mama to the door and lower her backwards into a wheelbarrow. She sat there, her head lolled forwards onto her chest, her legs hanging limp over the front. He picked up the handles and pushed her, accompanied by the rumble and squeak of the wheels and the low animal moan emerging from beneath the burqa.

      One of the Aunties picked up the second burqa and pushed it at me.

      ‘Go with your mother,’ she said. ‘You’re old enough.’

      Jamila Auntie opened her mouth and seemed about to speak, then closed it again. I knew why. I’ve told her a hundred times since I was little that she is not my mama and she had no business telling me what to do. Now, for once, I wished she would. The other women were staring at me so I swallowed down my fear, pulled the burqa over my head and followed Baba across the yard.

      ‘Stay close to me,’ Baba whispered as we reached the gate, ‘and don’t say a word.’ His tone was fierce. ‘This isn’t a game, Layla. Do as you’re told.’

      Baba and Hamid Uncle pushed Mama in her wheelbarrow out into the village street. The barrow was tossing and bumping on the rough ground, throwing her from side to side. Her covered head bounced on her chest and her groans came in bursts. I wanted to help but I didn’t know how and I imagined the Aunties watching from behind and whispering. I kept my eyes on the ground, watching my feet through the burqa grid and matching my steps to Baba’s.

      The path was strangely quiet and empty. The gates of our neighbours’ compounds were all tightly closed. Two boys from the other side of the village came creeping towards us. They shrank against the wall and stared with big eyes as we passed. All around us, the village was so silent, it was eerie. Even the goats and donkeys and chickens seemed afraid.

      We turned into the steep path past the mosque. Baba went to the front of the wheelbarrow to steady it on the slope as we descended. The paper notices were still clinging, tattered now, to the trees at the entrance to the mosque. I looked past them to the mosque, ashamed, thinking about the stolen paper hidden under my cot.

      I stopped in my tracks, then strained to see through the burqa grid. The yard surrounding the mosque was so different. It was full of dark pieces of canvas and shiny plastic which had been strung from posts and trees to make shelter. Dusty pickup trucks, not from our village, stood between them. Everywhere strong young men were swarming, men I’d never seen before, dressed in grimy shirts and turbans. Their beards were thick and unkempt. There was no music and no one was laughing or even СКАЧАТЬ