The Pickup

Chapter 31

Friday is the day for visits and family affairs. The shops are closed for noon prayers at the mosque, so is the vehicle workshop. During the day it was not unusual for the Uncle’s silver-blue BMW with tasselled blinds to draw up in the street before the gate. Tea was quickly made, sweetmeats taken from their biscuit tin, Coke from the refrigerator (which like the car for his nephew also had been his gift to the family) because the Uncle’s preferences are well-known. He always brings gifts for the children of the house, particularly for those of the son of the house who has not been heard from, disappeared to the oil fields, and he greets everyone with the enthusiasm of a mayor meeting his constituents, and then retires with the mother, his sister. They are left in private, either under the awning or in the parents’ room, where a special, comfortable chair for the Uncle is carried in by young Muhammad. It is understood that serious family matters are discussed. The father seldom takes part but this is not regarded by him, or anyone else, as demeaning of what would be his authority. No-one questions the position of Ibrahim’s mother.

On this Friday afternoon the brother and sister had emerged from their privacy and were in the company of the rest of the family, taking tea and refreshments. Only Ibrahim and his wife were not there; summoned by the mother, Maryam was sent to call them, rapping softly with the knuckle of her third finger on the clapboard door. They had heard the talk and laughter, orchestrated by the unmistakable lead of the Uncle’s voice — impossible not to, through the thin door — but Ibrahim was on the iron bed reading newspapers; Julie, amusing small Leila, who liked to spend time in the lean-to decking herself out in the few Ndebele and Zulu bead necklaces that had somehow been tossed into the elegant suitcase, had sent the child out to join the Friday gathering. Leila, your mummy wants you. The child caught the gist of English-Arabic pidgin, laughing, and obeyed, first resting her plump cheek a moment, smooth against the back of Julie’s hand.

After the knock on the door, Julie stretched, peered over the newspaper, opened her eyes wide and pulled her mouth down in a closed smile: come. A finger placed somewhere on a column answered that he would finish what he was reading. She brushed her hair for the company.

She took his hand as they entered, whether in support of him, comforting his reluctance to spend any part of his hours to himself with the voice that reverberated through the workshop, or to support herself in her claim to be one of the family. There were warm greetings; only Khadija seemed not to see them; whenever the Uncle appeared she sat transfixed, like that, on him, her children drawn around under her arms, watching his lips for word that he was going to do something for her — something to find and bring back her husband and the father of these children. Others could only look away from the sister-in-law, not to shame her in the spectacle of her demanding humiliation. Anyone could see she was expecting an announcement of some kind, believing her situation, the well-born woman deserted by a son of the family for a woman at the oil fields only after his money, must have been the matter deliberated between his Uncle and mother.

But apparently, unusually, whatever the private talk was about, the father had been present; been required? The three sat ranged together.

Ibrahim’s mother’s breast, prow of the family, rose and fell deeply; his wife saw it, ominous. At a signal to Maryam, the handing round of tea stopped and talk broke off, the gaiety of children was reduced to whispering.

The mother called her son and his wife over to her where room had been made for them to sit. She drew herself up and leaned forward, took another of her deep slow breaths that customarily ended in a sigh (she would rise from prayer with a breath like that) but now gave weight of importance to what she was about to say. It was an announcement, yes, but not for the one who awaited something.

The mother looked slowly at her son and his wife, singling them out as if her hands were laid upon them, and spoke in the language of which his wife, suddenly inexplicably tense, forgot all she had learnt and could make out only the name of the Uncle — Uncle Yaqub, Uncle Yaqub, repeated, and the familiar invocation, Al-Hamdu lillah. When the mother had done, the son, lover, husband stood; at bay. That was what she, who had found him, followed him restored to his family, saw he was. With a lifting of spread-fingered hand to his forehead, and the drop of the hand to his side, a strange kind of obeisance, it seemed he took permission to himself to turn to her and translate in a low even voice from his mother tongue.

He thinks about, he thinks to make me his workshop manager.

The father summoned his own small store of English and understood what had been left out. — Your Uncle Yaqub, he can take you into his business …—

Everybody — poor Khadija is nobody — was animated in congratulatory exclamations, murmurs, a happy confusion of interruption with admiration for the Uncle’s generosity and the transformation he has the power to bring close to their lives.

It was hardly necessary for Ibrahim to respond: the family was doing it for him. Wonderful. Uncle Yaqub! In business with Uncle Yaqub! But his mother was gazing at him with proudly raised head. At once the message flashed: she had done it for him.

Julie was surrounded by the excited talk, unable to follow much, hearing approximations she could invent from the joyous cadence, what an opportunity, how lucky, how good, how generous an Uncle. And one of the brothers, Ahmad the slaughterer whose only opportunity was to have blood on his hands, jumped up with another kind of generosity and spoke for the brothers, a voice raised out of normal pitch by emotion. Ibrahim heard in their language: —We are full of joy for you, you deserve this. It’s great, my brother, for us to have you back with us as we were when we were kids! It has never been right, without you. Allah be praised. May you and your wife be blessed with happiness and prosperity. And now that this has happened, please — let our parents and your brothers and sisters see you married in our law, let us have a real wedding, we were not invited to the wedding before you came home.—

Laughter from everyone at this last. Maryam quickly translated breathily in her friend’s ear, and the two young women laughed and nodded, together.

His mother, perhaps alone of the gathering, was waiting for him to have the chance to speak for himself what everyone knew he must be feeling, what he wished to say to his Uncle, who had singled him out among her sons, the blessed one, the success.

Ibrahim was vaguely lifting and lowering his outspread hands — to quiet the affectionate voices answering for him, or to take in those hands — a lovely gesture, some interpreted — the opportunity offered him. In all the attention that pinned him down he felt that of his wife and he turned a moment to her and gave her a version — strange, final, its awful beauty — a culminating version of that smile she always awaited from him. He addressed his Uncle in the full formality of their tongue, as if there were no-one else present: He did not know what to say. It was an offer he would never have thought of, never have expected. Never. He knows how much the business his Uncle has created means to him. He thanked him, with the greatest respect, for his generosity, on behalf of his mother and father, brothers and sisters, for what he had done now, this day. He asked, with the greatest respect to have … a little time… to realize …

He did not turn to her. He sought the eyes of his mother; now she was the only one present.

And they all understood: overcome! They clapped and passed him from one to the other, men and women, in their embraces.

She kept somewhat in the background, although she, too, was embraced. She had had from him that smile that couldn’t be explained.

Something else was not explained: out of delicacy of feeling, among the family present, although all were aware of it. The Uncle has decided to take Ibrahim in; workshop manager? This means heir apparent. Of the vehicle repair workshop that has valuable contracts for maintenance of provincial government vehicles, the mayor’s fleet, whatever other notables this poor district has, and a franchise for sales of parts, a dealership in sales of both second-hand and new models of the best German and American cars. There is no son of the Uncle’s own begetting, alive, alas, and the son-in-law and prospective son-in-law of the educated daughters are not interested in learning the business by dirtying their hands — they want to have government positions, sitting on their backsides in air-conditioned offices in the capital. So when Uncle Yaqub retires — long may he be granted life in good health — and dies, Ibrahim will inherit the business, and live in a house with fine carpets and furniture in the style of gilt and velvet French kings used to have, with a maid to clean it all, as the house of the notable employs Maryam to do. That is Ibrahim’s blessed future. Al-Hamdu lillah. Praise be to God.