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Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali
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- Pub. Date: January 2004
- 320pp
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: January 2004
- Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Format: Hardcover, 320pp
- ISBN-13: 9780374195625
- ISBN: 0374195625
Synopsis
"A lyrical debut" (Asian Week) exploring the dilemma confronting Layla, a second generation Indian-American Muslim. As a dutiful Muslim daughter and an independent young American, Layla is torn between clashing identities. Reluctantly agreeing to her parents' wish for her to leave America and submit to an arranged marriage, Layla enters into the closed world of tradition and ritual as the wedding preparations get underway in Hyderabad. Set against a background of rising Hindu-Muslim violence, and taboo questions of sexuality, Samina Ali presents the complexities of life behind the chador, and the story of a marriage where no one is what they seem. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, Madras on Rainy Days introduces an "abundantly talented new voice."
"Her story is intriguing not for its surprises...but because she is one of a rare breed of writers who take us into the closed world behind a Muslim woman's veil."--Mitali Saran, Far Eastern Economic Review
"Layla and Sameer tussle out not just their personal and sexual struggles, but the larger questions of where and how they can belong to both the Unites States and India. The novel has a fierce and shimmering intensity....Madras on Rainy Days has given us something new."--Star Tribune
"This book goes to a place where few, if any, of its predecessors have gone before....A deeply feminist novel with richly drawn and complicated characters."--Ms. Magazine
Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised both in India and the US. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. Madras On Rainy Days is her debut novel.
Kirkus Reviews
A young woman, torn between the certainties of life in India and the potentially liberating challenges of America, undergoes an arranged Islamic marriage-with disastrous results. As in so many similar stories, the writer is most effective in describing local customs, ceremonies, locations (the city of Hyderabad), and cultures-here, the workings of an Islamic society in a majority Hindu country. But first-timer Ali is less successful in telling a compelling tale or creating credible characters. Her protagonist, 19-year-old Layla, has since childhood spent half of each year in the US with her mother and father, a doctor, and half the year in India. She appreciates the freedoms and opportunities the US offers, but also enjoys the comforting rituals and rules of India. As a result, both to please her mother and to secure a home for herself, she agrees to marry Sameer, a college graduate. Agent: Eric Simonoff/Janklow & Nesbit.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised both in India and the US. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. Madras On Rainy Days is her debut novel.
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Madras on Rainy Daysby Anonymous
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February 23, 2009: I love books about England and about the Indian culture. While this was not my favorite, I continue to find it interesting that some people can withstand much while others weaken and disappoint. I was sorry for the dad who loved his wife but could not compete with another culture or with an adolescent memory of the past.
Bizarreby Anonymous
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September 18, 2006: The book is from one extreme to another, the author is tried to create a soap opera. The book first starts off with Shatan (Satan) possessing a young girl which describes the superstition in the desi culture, and ends with bizarre westernized example of corruption, which any Indian family would frown upon. The book was shocking and dissapointing. If you want a more meaningful and positive read, try these books: the Namesake, Matrimonial Purposes, Unknown Errors of our lives, Arranged Marriage.
From the Publisher
"A lyrical debut" (Asian Week) exploring the dilemma confronting Layla, a second generation Indian-American Muslim. As a dutiful Muslim daughter and an independent young American, Layla is torn between clashing identities. Reluctantly agreeing to her parents' wish for her to leave America and submit to an arranged marriage, Layla enters into the closed world of tradition and ritual as the wedding preparations get underway in Hyderabad. Set against a background of rising Hindu-Muslim violence, and taboo questions of sexuality, Samina Ali presents the complexities of life behind the chador, and the story of a marriage where no one is what they seem. In the words of the San Francisco Chronicle, Madras on Rainy Days introduces an "abundantly talented new voice."
"Her story is intriguing not for its surprises...but because she is one of a rare breed of writers who take us into the closed world behind a Muslim woman's veil."--Mitali Saran, Far Eastern Economic Review
"Layla and Sameer tussle out not just their personal and sexual struggles, but the larger questions of where and how they can belong to both the Unites States and India. The novel has a fierce and shimmering intensity....Madras on Rainy Days has given us something new."--Star Tribune
"This book goes to a place where few, if any, of its predecessors have gone before....A deeply feminist novel with richly drawn and complicated characters."--Ms. Magazine
Samina Ali was born in Hyderabad, India, and raised both in India and the US. She received her MFA from the University of Oregon. Madras On Rainy Days is her debut novel.
Kirkus Reviews
A young woman, torn between the certainties of life in India and the potentially liberating challenges of America, undergoes an arranged Islamic marriage-with disastrous results. As in so many similar stories, the writer is most effective in describing local customs, ceremonies, locations (the city of Hyderabad), and cultures-here, the workings of an Islamic society in a majority Hindu country. But first-timer Ali is less successful in telling a compelling tale or creating credible characters. Her protagonist, 19-year-old Layla, has since childhood spent half of each year in the US with her mother and father, a doctor, and half the year in India. She appreciates the freedoms and opportunities the US offers, but also enjoys the comforting rituals and rules of India. As a result, both to please her mother and to secure a home for herself, she agrees to marry Sameer, a college graduate. Agent: Eric Simonoff/Janklow & Nesbit.
Publishers Weekly
In this painstakingly detailed but strained debut, Ali explores the stifling world of Indian Muslim domestic life and the odd partnership forged by husband and wife in an arranged marriage fraught with secrets. As the novel begins, Layla, a 20-something Muslim who grew up mostly in the United States, is preparing for her marriage in Hyderabad, India, to Sameer, a man she barely knows. The elaborate ceremonies leading up to the wedding day are undercut by Layla's memories of her secret American boyfriend and by her painful cramps as she suffers through a prolonged miscarriage. Family tensions also mount-Layla's bitter divorced mother rails at her father, who has remarried-but Layla soldiers on, eventually warming to Sameer, a good-looking engineer with modern ideas of his own. After the wedding, the young couple grow steadily closer, but Layla is unable to coax Sameer to consummate the marriage. At first she thinks she is to blame, but on their honeymoon trip to Madras, she learns differently from an unexpected visitor. As Ali shows, it is not only American-raised Muslims who are seduced by Western ideals of independence and romantic love; in the end, Sameer and Layla make a complex, unconventional peace. Striving laudably for subtlety, but never quite managing to achieve a natural rhythm, Ali loses her readers with earnest, stilted conversation and exposition. At the novel's climax, the introduction of yet another weighty but insufficiently digested theme-Hindu-Muslim violence-gives the tale an extra edge of darkness. Author appearances in New York and San Francisco. (Jan.) Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information.
Loading...Product Details
- Pub. Date: January 2004
- Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
- Format: Hardcover, 320pp
- ISBN-13: 9780374195625
- ISBN: 0374195625
Read an Excerpt
Prologue: One Year AgoMung'ni
Suffering quietly in a room not my own. The door locked. The wooden shutters pulled closed and bolted. No breeze out there, nothing to rustle the leaves of the mango or coconut trees. Only stillness. Early morning on a hot May day, the middle of the summer season in Hyberabad. It must be 104 outside. In here, it feels much hotter.
One of the wooden shutters is splintered and warped along the edge, allowing a single beam of sunlight to enter the room. I am lying at the center of my aunt's bed, the one she brought with her in dowry some twenty years earlier. For her wedding night, it had been draped with a pink mosquito net, ropes of jasmine and rose hanging from the four sides, filling the air with their scent. She saw my uncle's face for the first time that evening when he made love to here---not on the soft red velvet that covered the mattress for this celebration, but carefully positioned on top of a two-by-two-foot white sheet that would give more validity to this union than her wedding necklace or their vows. The next morning, he hung the red-spotted cloth on the clothesline and it fluttered in the wind for all to see, a white flag of her surrender and his victory. Then she, having proven herself worthy of him, began the long process of forgetting her own family to become integrated with my own. Now, the bed stands naked and bare, exposing itself to be nothing more than it actually is: a wooden platform layered with a two-inch cotton mattress that doesn't even provide comfort. I feel the wood press against the hard edges of my body, the back of the head, my shoulder blades, my elbows, my heels. If a man were to lie on topof me now, I imagine I would break.
The narrow strip of sunlight falls across my lips, and as I feel them growing warmer, I think this is what red lipstick should feel like. Wedding red. Soon, though, I am uncomfortable, my neck and back sweaty, moistening the cotton sheet beneath me so I know that I am leaving an imprint.
But I don't move. In fact, I don't move for the rest of the day. As the sun crosses the closed-off sky, the band of light descends my body. It leaves my lips to slip across my throat, then slices my breasts, my stomach, my pelvis and thighs, and, finally, too weak, it retreats, crawling to the turquoise wall. With not other means, this is how I have clocked the passage of time. In the end, the dust particles in the air are no longer visible. Nor are the outlines of my own skin. Everything becomes blurry and enmeshed so that the curve of my arm might really be the folds of my shirt, and where I once clearly saw my big toe sticking straight up might now actually be the doorknob from across the room.
Everything is in shadows. Except this: my mother's voice on the other side of the locked door.
She is whimpering as she thrusts her forehead against the bedroom door, then pulls away, only to thrust it forward again. Each times he smashes here head, I hear the dull thud of wood and the door vibrates, and I fear it might give way under pressure. But I keep my eyes closed, trying to ignore these motions of suffering. Still, I cannot stop this grinding of my teeth, nor the way my fingernails are tearing stretches of skin on my thighs until I can feel the sticky warmth of my own blood right through the thin, polyester shalwar. Somehow, there is relief in our j anguish.
"Your mother's heart is breaking. You are breaking your mother's heart. Devil's child, you will never be happy, you'll see." It is Amme's voice, though it no longer holds any semblance to the one I know. There seems to be another woman speaking out from her, cursing me, when we both know no curse clings better than that of mother to daughter, flesh and loam. Who is the devil's child, then, she or I?
On the other side of the shutters, leaves crunch and a twig breaks. My uncle is packing, too apprehensive yet to intervene---not because he approves of my silent protest, but because he know that it is for his sister and his wife, the women of this house, to convince me to assent to this suitor, the one they have all chosen for me to marry, then love. Yet I feel the burden of his presence and this, more than all the silly wailing, is enough to make me buckle.
My nanny and her daughter yank my mother away from the door. Their sandals shuffle and skid on the titled floor. Amme begs that they leave her be. She says she knows what she is doing. This is ancient and stubborn poise.
"You are bleeding," my nanny says. "Hai Allah, what type of daughter is this? What have you borne, you unlucky mother?" The two take Amme away, their voices fading as they leave the hallway and enter the living room.
"I don't know what else to do," Amme sobs. "He father is not here. He's never here. Is there no one who can help me? How can I do this alone?"
"Shhh..."
The room has shifted from shadows into darkness. My breathing grows shallow and I can smell my own sweat. Outside, more leaves crunch underfoot. This time, farther away. My uncle is retreating and I w is.
There are no sounds now, only the silence I know so well, and in the blackened room, I see floating images of Amme's bloody forehead and my bloodstained thighs merging and separating, becoming grotesque, and just when I tell myself I will not give in, not this time, Amme suddenly breaks free of my nanny. A chair scrapes along the floor as my nanny's old body falls against it. She screeches and Amme screeches and both tones pulsate and become one and the same before my nanny's stops short and Amme's continues. She is running back down the hall toward the bedroom, toward me, her ill-fated daughter, her voice growing louder and deeper as she comes closer.
"Whore!" she growls, pounding on the door. Fists and forehead. Fists and forehead. Bare feet. "Tell me who is your lover. Shameless whore! Just like your father. Who are you sleeping with that you can't marry another?" Of course there is no one, and I am exactly how she has raised me to be, innocent. But she condemns me and my femaleness, hoping to take control in the only way anyone can: through my body.
"I'll throw you out and you can prostitute yourself to stay alive." She has taken on my father's threats, something she has never done before. Then I hear my aunt's voice over my left shoulder, on the other side of the shutters, as she urges here husband to intervene, and my uncle sighs and steps forward, dry leaves shattering under his chappals as his knuckles knock hesitantly on the wood, "Come out, Beta," he says, meaning daughter, a loving title he uses only when provoked. "Your mother is right. You cannot build your happiness upon her ruins. All of this anger and filth is not good, not good for you, not g anyone."
He walks away, toward a front gate, and it creaks as he opens and shuts it behind him, and my aunt walks in the other direction, back toward the entrance to the house, and I know she is headed for my mother, to lend her arm, to wrap it around Amme's trembling shoulders, to quiet the anger and filth because my nanny and her daughter are still crying in the living room, and the walls in this room are muttering, too softly for me to hear, yet I open my eyes and see the stillness of the overhead fan, its rounded blades disappearing into the darkened ceiling, but before I can think of the consequences of giving in, my mother smashes her head against the door, a final time, a bit too hard, and this last strike causes her to fall to the floor, a folding of her body then a thump, and the earth sighs, and I rise, finally, just another weed in this wretched soil.
Chapter 1: Shai'tan
Amme and I sat in the backseat of the Fiat, covered entirely with black chadors. Only our eyes showed, both brown, pear-shaped, and frightened. In her irises I saw my own face reflected back at me, featureless, a dark, oval mass, the ghost or the devil she already believed me to be. We were driving into the inner parts of the Old City to visit the alim. Amme was convinced the devil was inside me and she wanted the mystic to exorcise it. But I knew that when she looked into my eyes, she saw the same thing, her own face dark and formless.
My uncle sat in the front seat of the car in order to direct our driver, Ahmed. Amme didn't want anyone to know our destination, not even the driver. She worried word might reach Sameer, my fiancé, and he would break the engagement i I was possessed. So Abu Uncle guided the young driver through the maze of these narrow back alleys that looked identical with their one- to two-room shacks as he searched for the alim's house. The deeper we moved into the neighborhood, the fewer trees I saw. There were only cement walls here, one after the other, and alleys that led to more alleys, shooting off each other like veins, and I doubted we would find the alim. A few times we reached dead ends in the dirt road and had to backtrack.
"He'll take care of you," Amme whispered to me through the glistening polyester of her veil. But she was careful to sit close to the door, careful not to touch me. "Don't be worried. The dreams will stop. And the bleeding. You'll be better. It's not you, Layla, it's not." Her eyes searched me up and down as though she were looking for any signs of the devil. The more she behaved this way, the more I believed there really was something inside me. I stared at her without blinking, feeling silently powerful and mysterious, beyond any of them.
She glanced toward the front seat, at the slim and broad shoulders of Ahmed and Abu Uncle, then turned again to me. "The alim's good," she continued to whisper. "Not like the others. Your uncle says this one is authentic---he doesn't take money." Her eyes grew bigger and smaller as she spoke. "Don't look at me like that," she said. "Your eyes scare me." She gazed out the window. Beneath her black veil, on her thigh, I saw the movement of her fist as she rolled her knuckles.
Outside, the Old City streets were becoming narrower and narrower, and the cement houses smaller. In these parts, not even motor-rickshaws passed, so at the sou slow-moving car, bare-legged kids jumped out of doorways and chased after it, some waving sticks. We grew silent in their shrill laughter. A light rain was coming down, though here and there the clouds broke and sun shone down as well. It was early July in India and the monsoons were just under way.
Despite the rain, my uncle had his window open and his thick arm placed outside, the black hair becoming wet and pressed into his chocolate skin. His other arm was thrown across the length of the seat back, his fingers lingering near Ahmed's thin shoulders. I watched the tips drum the vinyl car seat and waited to see if he would actually touch Ahmed. Men did that here, openly caressed one another, and no one was sure what those touches really meant, not even the men themselves...or their brides-to-be. On the streets, men held hands and wrapped arms around waists while they walked. Having been raised in both India and America, for me these differences in cultures, slightly as they sometimes might be, had caused much confusion. Each time I arrived in India or the U.S., after spending a half year away, it was like turning a page and not knowing whether to begin reading the script from right to left or left to right, Urdu or English. Yet the direction I chose always made a difference.
"Here, here," Abu Uncle said, squeezing Ahmed's shoulder then pointing left toward an alleyway that looked like all the others. "Turn here."
"By now Ahmed had turned on the wipers and they squeaked and scratched the windshield. He stopped the car and stuck his head out the window.
"I can't go in there, sa'ab," he said to Abu Uncle. "The car will get stuck."
"No, no, I think on."
"I don't think so, sa'ab. Look how narrow the alley is. Even if the car goes in, how will any of you be able to get out?" He laughed. From behind, the hair of both was long and wavy, covering the sweaty napes of their necks.
Amme and I leaned forward. It was early morning on a Friday, the holy day for Muslims, so the streets were unusually empty, which made them visible in their entirety. I studied the narrow passageway that lay between two rows of tiny houses, but couldn't be certain if we would fit or not. The Fiat was smaller than the BMW I drove in Minneapolis, so I couldn't trust my judgment.
"Try to go in as far as you can, Ahmed," Amme said. "Get us in closer."
"I don't think it'll go," Ahmed said, turning to face her.
"I know what can fit and what can't, Ahmed. Just go in farther. I won't be caught walking these streets. What will people say if they see us?"
"But memsa'ab..."
"Do it," Abu Uncle ordered.
Ahmed sighed and turned the car. The kids snickered and yelled, then smacked the trunk with open palms. The metal echoed. Ahmed mumbled that no one could recognize Amme and me with our chadors on, and we pretended no to hear any of it. The street was cobblestone and I assumed it had been built during the time of Nizam. Today, back alleys were nothing but dirt pathways. A sign of progress, indeed. The engine groaned but the car only inched forward as the kids pretended to push the Fiat from the sides and back. Ahmed drove us in about five feet then simply turned off the engine. The children's sneers grew louder.
On either side of us were white cement row houses, the roofs of corrugated sheet metal, the windows barr wide open to catch what air there might be back here. Every ten or so feet a different-colored door---blue, orange, pink, shades of yellow---each color representing a different house.
"I'll run the rest of the way and see if he's in," Abu Uncle offered. He had an angular face with thick eyebrows.
Amme nodded. My uncle gave me a quick glance then tried on a smile. I stared at him, knowing he couldn't see anything but my eyes, so I needn't force an expression. He opened the door, which hit against the wall of a house, and squeezed out. I watched his black-and-red checkered shirt disappear around the corner as he ran down the length of the curved passageway.
"They call this Elephant Alley," Ahmed said, turning toward us. His lips were dark from smoking. "It's famous because not even an elephant could get through. It got stuck up there." He pointed in the direction Abu Uncle had just gone down. "It took the men four hours to pull out the dumb animal."
"People here are always forcing things to happen," I said, scrutinizing the whitewashed walls for any signs of skin or blood. There was none. "It's only the show that counts. Poor animal."
"It happened because of a wedding," Ahmed explained.
"Everything here happens because of weddings," I mumbled.
The driver kept talking on, "The groom was riding the elephant to meet his bride at the mosque down the street. The entire wedding band was here, you see, and they were playing on their trumpets and banging on their drums as they led the groom. This way the bride and guests know the groom has arrived. You'll see in just two days at your..."
"Ahmed," I warned. I wasn't in the mood to discuss my we much."
"Sorry, Layla-bebe," he said, smiling. I was sure he thought that I was behaving as a bride should, bashful, too mortified to talk about the upcoming event---for it meant the loss of virginity on the wedding night---and I let him think this.
The children continued to pound on the trunk, the sound of the reverberating metal bringing women to their doorways and windows. They wore old cotton saris and one had a baby in her arms, its eyes lined black with kohl so the child wouldn't catch the evil eye. They stood just outside our car and watched us. Amme and I clutched the smooth fabric against our faces, my mother so hidden inside her veil that only half her eyes showed.
"Cover up," she snapped to me, but I ignored her. What more could I hide?
The car jiggled as the kids pushed against it. My stomach began to cramp at even this slight motion and I turned and gave the brats a nasty look. They didn't see me. So I imagined using my demonic powers. Maybe my eyes would turn red as I stared at them. Maybe I could fling them away without even a touch. But these were just images I had picked up in American horror movies. What did it mean, then, in real life, to be possessed?
Amme began whispering prayers for my salvation, her eyes closed, the veil's fabric rippling against here lips, and I realized there was nothing she could now do to save me.
Read a Sample Chapter
Madras on Rainy Days
By Samina Ali
Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Copyright © 2004 Zainab AliAll right reserved.
ISBN: 0-374-19562-5
Chapter One
Shai'tanAMME AND I sat in the backseat of the Fiat, covered entirely with black chadors. Only our eyes showed, both brown, pear-shaped, and frightened. In her irises I saw my own face reflected back at me, featureless, a dark, oval mass, the ghost or the devil she already believed me to be. We were driving into the inner parts of the Old City to visit the alim. Amme was convinced the devil was inside me and she wanted the mystic to exorcise it. But I knew that when she looked into my eyes, she saw the same thing, her own face dark and formless.
My uncle sat in the front seat of the car in order to direct our driver, Ahmed. Amme didn't want anyone to know our destination, not even the driver. She worried word might reach Sameer, my fiancé, and he would break the engagement if he heard I was possessed. So Abu Uncle guided the young driver through the maze of these narrow back alleys that looked identical with their one- to two-room shacks as he searched For the alim's house. The deeper we moved into the neighborhood, the fewer trees I saw. There were only cement walls here, one after the other, and alleys that led to more alleys, shooting off each other like veins, and I doubted we would find the alim. A few times we reached dead ends in the dirt road and had to backtrack.
"He'll take care of you," Amme whispered to me through the glistening polyester of her veil. But she was careful to sit close to the door, careful not to touch me. "Don't be worried. The dreams will stop. And the bleeding. You'll be better. It's not you, Layla, it's not." Her eyes searched me up and down as though she were looking for any signs of the devil. The more she behaved this way, the more I believed there really was something inside me. I stared at her without blinking, feeling silently powerful and mysterious, beyond any of them.
She glanced toward the front seat, at the slim and broad shoulders of Ahmed and Abu Uncle, then turned again to me. "The alim's good," she continued to whisper. "Not like the others. Your uncle says this one is authentic-he doesn't take money." Her eyes grew bigger and smaller as she spoke. "Don't look at me like that," she said. "Your eyes scare me." She gazed out the window. Beneath her black veil, on her thigh, I saw the movement of her fist as she rolled her knuckles.
Outside, the Old City streets were becoming narrower and narrower, and the cement houses smaller. In these parts, not even motor-rickshaws passed, so at the sound of our slow-moving car, bare-legged kids jumped out of doorways and chased after it, some waving sticks. We grew silent in their shrill laughter. A light rain was coming down, though here and there the clouds broke and sun shone down as well. It was early July in India and the monsoons were just under way.
Despite the rain, my uncle had his window open and his thick arm placed outside, the black hair becoming wet and pressed into his chocolate skin. His other arm was thrown across the length of the seat back, his fingers lingering near Ahmed's thin shoulders. I watched the tips drum the vinyl car seat and waited to see if he would actually touch Ahmed. Men did that here, openly caressed one another, and no one was sure what those touches really meant, not even the men themselves ... or their brides-to-be. On the streets, men held hands and wrapped arms around waists while they walked. Having been raised in both India and America, for me these differences in cultures, slight as they sometimes might be, had caused much confusion. Each time I arrived in India or the U.S., after spending a half year away, it was like turning a page and not knowing whether to begin reading the script from right to left or left to right, Urdu or English. Yet the direction I chose always made a difference.
"Here, here," Abu Uncle said, squeezing Ahmed's shoulder then pointing left toward an alleyway that looked like all the others. "Turn here."
By now Ahmed had turned on the wipers and they squeaked and scratched the windshield. He stopped the car and stuck his head out the window.
"I can't go in there, sa'ab," he said to Abu Uncle. "The car will get stuck."
"No, no, I think this will work. Go on, go on."
"I don't think so, sa'ab. Look how narrow the alley is. Even if the car goes in, how will any of you be able to get out?" He laughed. From behind, the hair of both was long and wavy, covering the sweaty napes of their necks.
Amme and I leaned forward. It was early morning on a Friday, the holy day for Muslims, so the streets were unusually empty, which made them visible in their entirety. I studied the narrow passageway that lay between two rows of tiny houses, but couldn't be certain if we would fit or not. The Fiat was smaller than the BMW I drove in Minneapolis, so I couldn't trust my judgment.
"Try to go in as far as you can, Ahmed," Amme said. "Get us in closer."
"I don't think it'll go," Ahmed said, turning to face her.
"I know what can fit and what can't, Ahmed. Just go in farther. I won't be caught walking these streets. What will people say if they see us?"
"But memsa'ab ..."
"Do it," Abu Uncle ordered.
Ahmed sighed and turned the car. The kids snickered and yelled, then smacked the trunk with open palms. The metal echoed. Ahmed mumbled that no one could recognize Amme and me with our chadors on, and we pretended not to hear any of it. The street was cobblestone and I assumed it had been built during the time of Nizam. Today, back alleys were nothing but dirt pathways. A sign of progress, indeed. The engine groaned but the car only inched forward as the kids pretended to push the Fiat from the sides and back. Ahmed drove us in about five feet then simply turned off the engine. The children's sneers grew louder.
On either side of us were white cement row houses, the roofs of corrugated sheet metal, the windows barred, the wooden shutters wide open to catch what air there might be back here. Every ten or so feet a different-colored door-blue, orange, pink, shades of yellow-each color representing a different house.
"I'll run the rest of the way and see if he's in," Abu Uncle offered. He had an angular face with thick eyebrows.
Amme nodded. My uncle gave me a quick glance then tried on a smile. I stared at him, knowing he couldn't see anything but my eyes, so I needn't force an expression. He opened the door, which hit against the wall of a house, and squeezed out. I watched his black-and-red checkered shirt disappear around a corner as he ran down the length of the curved passageway.
"They call this Elephant Alley," Ahmed said, turning toward us. His lips were dark from smoking. "It's famous because not even an elephant could get through. It got stuck up there." He pointed in the direction Abu Uncle had just gone down. "It took the men four hours to pull out the dumb animal."
"People here are always forcing things to happen," I said, scrutinizing the whitewashed walls for any signs of skin or blood. There was none. "It's only the show that counts. Poor animal."
"It happened because of a wedding," Ahmed explained.
"Everything here happens because of weddings," I mumbled.
The driver kept talking on, "The groom was riding the elephant to meet his bride at the mosque down the street. The entire wedding band was here, you see, and they were playing on their trumpets and banging on their drums as they led the groom. This way the bride and guests know the groom has arrived. You'll see in just two days at your ..."
"Ahmed," I warned. I wasn't in the mood to discuss my wedding. "You always talk too much."
"Sorry, Layla-bebe," he said, smiling. I was sure he thought that I was behaving as a bride should, bashful, too mortified to talk about the upcoming event-for it meant the loss of virginity on the wedding night-and I let him think this.
The children continued to pound on the trunk, the sound of the reverberating metal bringing women to their doorways and windows. They wore old cotton saris and one had a baby in her arms, its eyes lined black with kohl so the child wouldn't catch the evil eye. They stood just outside our car and watched us. Amme and I clutched the smooth fabric against our faces, my mother so hidden inside her veil that only half her eyes showed.
"Cover up," she snapped to me, but I ignored her. What more could I hide?
The car jiggled as the kids pushed against it. My stomach began to cramp at even this slight motion and I turned and gave the brats a nasty look. They didn't see me. So I imagined using my demonic powers. Maybe my eyes would turn red as I stared at them. Maybe I could fling them away without even a touch. But these were just images I had picked up in American horror movies. What did it mean, then, in real life, to be possessed?
Amme began whispering prayers for my salvation, her eyes closed, the veil's fabric rippling against her lips, and I realized there was nothing she could now do to save me.
"MAKE THE KIDS go away," I told Ahmed. His dark cheeks were covered with pockmarks.
He stuck his head out the driver's window and screamed at them. They screamed back, then continued to shake the car.
"Such disgusting children," Amme said, her surahs finally completed. "These mothers have kids, then throw them to the streets. No discipline, no worry. Let whatever happens happen. Then they wonder why India is making no progress. Thoo!" She spat out the window to show the women her contempt. Then she quickly covered her face.
"Forget them, memsa'ab," Ahmed said, trying to console her. "They are only alley kids."
"I don't care about them," she said. "I'm worried about the car." She leaned out and yelled at the kids. "Get away from the car, you bastard!" They stopped moving at once. I turned and saw that three or four were actually sitting on the roof and sliding down the back window. Their skinny thighs were pressed flat against the glass. "Who's going to pay for the damages? Your father? Move away or I'll come out and use those sticks on you."
The children laughed. There must have been ten of them. By now, their nylon shirts had become drenched and their hair was flat on the crowns of their heads, making their ears stick out.
"Zaheer," one of the women called from her doorway. She rested her palms on the hood as she peered over the car at the children. "Do as the lady says and stop playing with the car."
There was silence, then the boy who must have been Zaheer ordered the others away. As the ones on the roof jumped off, the car bounced.
Amme moved back inside and sat satisfied against the seat. "Ageeb log hai," she said. "I have never seen such strange people."
"So listen," Ahmed began again. "The groom was so eager to get married, he leapt off the rear of the elephant and ran to the mosque-without the band! They were on the other side and didn't even see him go ..."
"Ahmed, stop your babbling," Amme said. "You're making me more angry."
"I'm just telling a story. It's to calm Layla-bebe."
"Layla-bebe doesn't need calming. Why would you think that?"
"Of course she doesn't," he said and smiled.
So, he already knew it all. Servants always did. You couldn't keep any secrets from them. I glanced at Amme, but she hadn't noticed his smile. She had grown even more restless and was turning this way and that, looking behind us, then in front.
"When is he coming back?" she asked. "You can't trust anyone with anything. He knows we can't be seen out here. And still he takes his time."
"No one can recognize you under the veil," I said, trying to help. "Even I wouldn't be able to."
"Don't be so naive, Layla, everyone knows us," she snapped, knuckles once more turning on a thigh. She had been this way all morning, ever since I told her about my bleeding and suggested we cancel the wedding. "Someone might even recognize this car," she went on. "Or Ahmed. Ahmed!" She turned to him. "Stop looking around. Hide your face."
"Ar're, memsa'ab," he said, grinning. "No one will recognize me"
"If you don't stop arguing with me, Ahmed, I'll throw you out and get another driver. You're only one in a dozen. Don't forget that."
His face grew solemn and he dropped low behind the steering wheel. I was glad she had shut him up.
"And don't you tell me you wouldn't know your own mother," she said, turning her face away from me. "You have such a black tongue. So ungrateful-just like your father. Every day you grow more and more like him. No matter what I do, neither of you sees it. Conveniently blind. Both of you, the same."
I, too, slid down in my seat and looked absently out the front window to the narrowing alley beyond. Though I had done everything I could not to be like my father-including agreeing to this marriage-I could no longer say that she was wrong.
ABU UNCLE APPEARED around the corner, out of breath, and the women hid inside their houses so they wouldn't be seen by the unknown man. Just when they disappeared, the alley kids ran back to the car and began jumping on the trunk again. We shook inside. I held my stomach. It was round and hard. Abu Uncle leaned in through the passenger window. Ahmed sat up. "The alim is there," my uncle said. "He'll see us."
"How many other visitors does he have?" Amme asked.
"Only three people. He says he'll seat us in the bedroom until they leave, but we have to be quick. It's late already and getting time for his prayers."
"Let's go then," she said, turning to me.
I breathed in as I stepped out of the car. The kids laughed and ran away.
"Come on, come on. Quickly," Abu Uncle said, waving to me. Amme was already racing through the alley, her head down. A black ghost against the white walls. I followed my uncle. We passed several open doors and windows, and from behind the curtains, I saw half faces, eyes, watching us pass. I was thankful for the chador and how invisible I became inside it.
Behind us, Ahmed began yelling at the kids, while ahead, the alley curved, then led to the same monotony on the other side of the bend. Rows of concrete. The rain continued to fall. Hardly a breeze back here and only the stink of sharp urine and dull spices. The hem of my veil flapped against my ankles. Our sandals skidded on the wet cobblestones and echoed. Water pooled between rocks. One eye, half lips, stones. The rough heels of Abu Uncle's sandaled feet. That was all I saw. I quickly lost my breath, then my foot caught and I slipped. I fell forward and a hot cramp pierced through my stomach. Abu Uncle grabbed my arm. His thumbnail jabbed into my flesh and I shrugged him away.
"Sorry," I said through the chador. I pressed my palm against my abdomen to soothe it, thankful that neither he nor Amme could see me doing this.
"Careful," he said.
Continues...
Excerpted from Madras on Rainy Days by Samina Ali Copyright © 2004 by Zainab Ali. Excerpted by permission.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.
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