Читать книгу Flame Tree Road - Shona Patel - Страница 11

CHAPTER

2

Mother-in-law was mixing chickpea batter for eggplant fritters when she looked out of the kitchen window and saw Shibani and Apu, her friend from next door, gossiping and eating chili tamarind in the sunny courtyard. Baby Biren lay sleeping like a rag doll on the hammock of Shibani’s lap. She jiggled her knee and his head rolled all over the place.

“Shibani!” yelled the mother-in-law. “Have you no sense? Do you want your son to have a flat head like the village idiot? Why are you not using the mustard seed pillow I told you to use under the baby’s head?”

“Eh maa! I forgot,” said Shibani, round eyed with innocence, a smudge of chili powder on her chin. She scrambled about looking as if she was going to get up, but as soon as her mother-in-law’s back was turned she settled back down again.

“The mustard seed pillow is currently being used to round the cat’s head,” she said to Apu, giggling as she tickled Biren’s cheek. “The cat is going to have a rounder head than this one.” Biren opened his mouth and she let him suck on her fingers.

“Aye, careful!” cried Apu. “You have chili powder on your fingers.”

Biren’s little face puckered and his big black eyes flew open.

“Eh maa, look what you did,” chided Apu. “You woke the poor thing up!”

“Just look at him smiling,” said Shibani. “He’s even smacking his lips. Here, pass me the tamarind. Let’s give him another lick.”

“The things you feed him, really,” said Apu reproachfully. She never knew whether to admire Shibani’s audacious mothering or to worry about the baby. “Remember the time you made him lick a batasha? He was only four months old!”

Shibani laughed, her crooked teeth showing. “You were my coconspirator, don’t forget.”

The two of them had smuggled batasha sugar drops from the prayer room and watched in awe as the baby’s tiny pink tongue licked one down to half its size. Of course, the sugar had kept him wide-eyed and kicking all night.

“This child will learn to eat everything and sleep anywhere,” said Shibani. “I don’t care if he has a flat head, but it will be full of brains and he will be magnificently prepared to conquer the world.”

* * *

At six months Biren had a perfectly round head full of bobbing curls, the limpid eyes of a baby otter and a calm, solid disposition. He hated being carried and kicked his tiny feet till he was set down, after which he took off crawling with his little bottom wagging. He babbled and cooed constantly and a prolonged silence usually meant trouble. Shibani caught him opening and closing a brass betel nut cutter that could have easily chopped off his tiny toes. Another time he emerged from the ash dump covered with potato peels and eggshells.

“This one will crawl all the way to England if he can,” marveled the grandfather. There was a certain sad irony to his words. An Oxford or Cambridge education was, after all, the ultimate dream of many Sylhetis and, being poor, they often did have to scrape and crawl their way to get there. Even with surplus brains and a full merit scholarship, many fell short of the thirty-five-pound second-class sea fare to get to England. Sometimes the whole village pitched in, scraping together rupees and coins to send their brightest and their best into the world, hoping perhaps he would return someday to help those left behind. But most of them never did.