A Private Business by Barbara Nadel Read Free Book Online Page B

“I’ve found God.”
    â€œYou go to church, I know,” Lee said. “So do lots of people.”
    Maria shook her head impatiently. “No,” she said, “I don’t
just
go to church. As you say, a lot of people do that, pedophile priests do that. I’m not talking about Catholicism. No, I am being born again. I’ve committed to take Jesus into my life. I’ve found God and I know that he loves me. I also know that he wants what is best for me, and it isn’t this act.”
    * * *
    â€œThese fundamentalist chaps dishonor God.”
    Baharat was holding forth again, distressed by the ten o’clock news. Some Muslim boys had been arrested in Manchester for apparently plotting to blow up a church.
    â€œThey think they’re doing jihad.” Baharat shrugged his shoulders. “What do silly bloody kids from Manchester know of jihad? Like those silly bloody buggers meeting at the café, talking nonsense.”
    Sumita pulled her sari down across her shoulders and carried on folding the ironing. Ranting in English was one of her husband’s very few pleasures and so she just let him get on with it.
    â€œI mean, what do these sods think that the Brits will do now, eh? Islamophobia is what that character from the Muslim Council of Britain calls it. Islamophobia! But who can blame them? They see these silly buggers and their hatred and of course they think we’re all the same!”
    The television was turned up so loudly, Sumita could hardly hear herself think. Baharat was over seventy now and as deaf as a post. He shouted, always in English. His father, even though he’d never left Dhaka in his life, had always believed that English was “civilized.” Sumita’s grasp of it was at best adequate.
    â€œThey should hang them,” Baharat continued. “That ridiculous bugger in the café and those boys he has with him too. Talking about beating up the girls who don’t cover their heads. Modesty is what a Muslim woman shoulddisplay, whether her head is covered or not. That is a choice. We are not fanatics in this society!”
    Baharat made her tired, but Sumita couldn’t charge him with hypocrisy, not exactly. Their only daughter, Mumtaz, had never been obliged to cover her head by her father. Her brothers had gone through a phase of thinking that this was shameful, but Baharat, as usual, had had the final say on the matter. “If the girl wants to cover, then that is down to her,” he’d said. “If she doesn’t, that is her business too.” But he
had
kept her close. Working in the shop until she married that man that Sumita had never liked. She’d admired him, she’d wanted her daughter to marry him, but … A man with Savile Row suits, a Rolex on his wrist and perfume in his dyed black hair. She’d never liked Ahmed Hakim. He’d
made
Mumtaz cover her head.
    â€œThey want to close that café down, the police,” Baharat said. “Bangla Town, it calls itself. Huh! A dishonor to the home country. And that ridiculous sod sitting in there all day telling silly boys he’s some sort of sheikh. The man pours pure poison into people’s ears. It’s not right! It’s not moral! It’s not Islamic!”
    He’d been stabbed, Ahmed Hakim. In front of her daughter. Only then had they discovered that all the wealth he’d dazzled Baharat with had been just so much smoke. Now Mumtaz had some job, now she made it her business to look after her husband’s child. Alone. Far awayfrom Brick Lane in that big, lonely house in Forest Gate. Sumita missed her so much she could feel her heart bleeding sometimes in her chest.
    Baharat looked away from the television set and rolled himself a cigarette. He was a good Muslim who prayed five times a day, didn’t eat pork, didn’t drink, but he did smoke and he had a cough that was persistent and impressively loud. Sumita wished