Nilofer examined the tomatoes — plump, blood red, no; not quite blood red. Is pomegranate juice more like the colour of blood? Nilofer longed for pomegranates, gorgeous pomegranates, picture perfect, that where too large for her to hold in one hand, like the ones in Kabul. Here they appeared rarely on the grocery shelves, and when they did, they were too expensive.
Bullet holes; there would be bullet holes everywhere, she imagined, even on the walls of the little mosque in their grandparent’s village, where her sister Nadira had taken refuge with her daughters Sanaa and Nihaan. That had not been such a good idea. Why hadn’t she waited, stayed back in Kabul, which had turned out to be relatively safe? She would not have known that, then. The information coming through would have been contrary and confusing.
Besides, things had not gone well for Nadira in Kabul. Her husband had gone to India to work and kept postponing sending for his family. Nadira’s parents-in-law were sympathetic, but how could they stay with them indefinitely?
Nilofer knew that when the fighting got too heavy she too would have headed across mist-filled valleys to the village at the base of a mountain, the village where they had spent so many charmed, childhood summers.
It was only natural that their mother had left Kabul and retreated to the village after their father’s premature death from a heart attack. His family too hailed from there, though he was brought up by his uncle in Kabul. Nilofer’s mother lived with her father-in-law, mother-in-law and two brothers-in-law, not far from her own mother’s house. By the time their mother left, Nadia was married and Nilofer stayed on with an aunt in Kabul to finish college.
Picking up a tomato, Nilofer put it gingerly in her basket. She thought that it might explode in her hand, with a jet of tomato juice landing god knows where. It could hit the old lady beside her as she contemplated the abundance of tomatoes, cucumbers, onions, carrots, zucchinis and potatoes before her. How embarrassing it would be to have the woman’s delicate, lilac blouse splattered red! And it would all be her fault. It was bad enough that she had access to this overabundance of food while Nadira was making do with so little.
Anything could happen, anytime. Those were Nadira’s exact words as they came over the crackling, phone line.
The words played over and over in Nilofer’s head as she sat drinking tea in the tiny balcony of their 9th floor apartment in Toronto, looking deep into her cup, mist rising in the valley. She would have given anything to have Nadira with her.
Looking up, she saw an unending stream of cars making their way along the Don Valley Parkway. Her sister’s voice came to her loud and clear, without static. It was as if Nadira was sitting right there beside her, sipping tea. Anything could happen, anytime, anywhere. Nadira had not said “anywhere,” but Nilofer heard Nadira saying “anything could happen, anytime, anywhere, in her head.
Anything, anytime, anywhere. Those three words belonged together, didn’t they? Alone they were just straws in the wind, inconsequential; together, they had a shattering force.
***
Nadira primed the stove and inhaled deeply. She waited for this moment every day, when the smell of kerosene, mist in the valley, suffused her entire being. There was just her and the fumes, united as one. The beautiful bond intensified when a noisy, purple flame with streaks of white, sprung around the ring in the stove, burning steadily. Nadira enjoyed the flame as well, strong and dependable. She was always cold and she used it to warm her hands.
How she had hated using a kerosene stove when she lived in Kabul. She had to sometimes when the lights suddenly went out. Here, in the village, most people did not have even that, using instead dung cakes in their mud hearths. Why had she hated it, she wondered. Why had she expected that lights would come on at the flick of a switch, water run out of a tap, and there would be a plethora of vegetables to choose from in the market?
Her ideas had been absurd, she realized now, as she wiped her hands and readied a pot of water for tea. Those ideas that had made her unhappy then, and had made her even more unhappy later, in her early days in the village.
But that was all done. Now she lived without ambition, working a water pump twice a day to fill buckets of water, walking once a week to the stone house converted to an administrative center in the next street for rations – flour, a little rice, oil, salt, sugar, a few dried-up potatoes, a couple of shriveled onions.
And every afternoon, she home-schooled Sanaa. She had found some old schoolbooks – hers and Nilofer’s – in an antique trunk. It was solid, made of dark-hued wood, beautifully embossed with beaten copper – a relic from another era.
Teaching Sanaa was a pleasure Nadira ranked equal to inhaling kerosene fumes. Sanaa was a serious student, attentive and quick at her lessons.
In the evening, her mother’s friends gathered in their courtyard to gossip and talk. There was more freedom in a house with a man who wasn’t quite all there. Her mother’s father and mother-in-law had died, and one of the brothers-in-law had gone to Pakistan, with his wife and children. Only the brother-in-law with Down’s Syndrome remained, closed off in his own world.
Her mother presided over the gatherings, wearing the air of a highborn lady. The women mixed family stories, history and legend, birthing an animated, collective theatre that held Nadira and Sanaa in thrall.
The oldest woman in the group was a frail, old woman who walked haltingly. Yet her eyes were young and eager. She did not talk, but sometimes she sang in a cracked, high voice that echoed in Nadia’s consciousness all through the next day.
***
Nilofer let herself quietly into the apartment. She did not want to disturb Abdul, who was sleeping off his nightshift as a security guard at a factory not far from where they lived. His engineering degree and work experience had got him nowhere so far.
She placed her grocery bag on the table and started taking out the tomatoes. Pausing, she glanced, as always, at the glossy, framed photograph on the mantelpiece. That photo was her touchstone, because there they were – four heads crowded together – Nilofer, Nadira, and her nieces, Sanaa and Nihaan – all pretty, all young, all smiling. Every time she looked, it was as if for the first time. Sometimes she went to it and run her fingers over the cool glass, assuring herself that the miraculous image was real.
Then Nilofer felt her stomach drop. The tomato in her hand split open and expelled its juice, painting a perfect arc that marked the white wall.
Nihaan skipped across a field, a playful, little girl in pigtails. Suddenly, the ground caved under her, and streams of dry, sandy earth shot into the air -- mist rising in the valley. When the dust cleared, Nihaan was nowhere in sight. But the flaming red arc made by the tomato remained – a unicoloured rainbow joining two ends of the Earth.
Anything could happen anytime, anywhere. Anything.
Suddenly Nilofer knew exactly what she had to do. She had to get her family out of there. She had to. She had to get Sanaa away from the landmines. Life was tough in Canada, but here, at least, Sanaa would get an education, grow up to be an adult. Here, at least…
Nilofer started unpacking the groceries, putting them purposefully away.
