Maimon had been thinking about this Som woman since her husband’s death. There were two things, she thought, where life had cheated her. The first was the rain coming at the wrong time. The second was Som. Maimon could not bear to think that her grief for Abu Bakar could be shared by another woman who was once his wife too. Who might have even believed that if only Abu Bakar had stayed with his first love he would have lived a little longer. She wondered which of his wives Abu Bakar would choose to accompany him in heaven if God were to let him have only one.* * *“Look at all this. We were ready.” Maimon pointed to some opened suitcases on the floor. There were some books with Arabic words on them. There was also a lot of white cloth.
“He was packing up all this, and every day he asked me when I was going to pack my things. He was excited. I think the old man knew that he was going,” said Maimon.
“He had a lot of plans,” said Jamilah.
“He said that one of the things he wanted to do when we got to Mecca was pray for you. We wanted to pray for you and Azhar. We know you’ve wanted children for so long. You’ve been trying. We know that in Mecca, if you pray and your heart is pure, your prayers are answered.”
Jamilah turned away from her mother to inspect the things in the suitcases. Inside her a word knotted itself and grimaced: enough. There was an electric shaver, a portable iron and even an electric heating coil, for boiling hot water. There was also a box which Jamilah opened excitedly. She unwrapped its insides from a bubble sheet.
“Mak, he bought this?” Jamilah asked, holding up the video camera.
“Yah. Why?”
“Where did he get the money?”
“Your father was the sort who saved his money. He didn’t spend on things like snacks and biscuits.”
“How much is this?”
“Nine hundred, I think. If you want it you can have it.”
“Wow...” Jamilah started to play with the buttons. “There are batteries inside. Mak, I can see you from here.” Jamilah was peering at the bluish miniature of her mother from the eyehole. “Mak, say something.”
“Don’t want lah, put it away.”
“Say anything, Mak, don’t be shy!”
“You want it you take it. Don’t play with it here.”
Maimon reached out and took the video camera away from her daughter’s hands. She walked into the kitchen and placed it on the table beside a basket that held bananas. Then she walked back into the living room.
“When he bought it, I was really shocked. Nine hundred dollars for that! I asked him, are you out of your mind or what? But your father, he just laughed at me. Then he took out the strap and attached it to the camera. He slung the thing on himself and walked around the living room. He was telling me, it’s important to wear it with the strap because when we ride on camels the camera might fall off. He was talking about camels!”
“He was funny, Mak. Ayah was always funny,” Jamilah said.
But Maimon said, “Your father was a dreamer.”* * *It was evening when Azhar got back from work. When he walked into his living room he found his wife watching The Pyramid Game on television while eating chestnuts.
“You went to see your mother just now?” Azhar asked. “How is she?”
“She’s well,” Jamilah answered.
“That’s good.”
Jamilah passed her bowl of shelled chestnuts over to her husband.
“She’s got a video camera.”
“For what?”
“My father bought it for the Haj trip.”
Azhar looked at the television screen and munched slowly on the chestnuts in his mouth.
“Is the new host better than the old one?” Azhar asked.
“He’s okay.”
“The old one didn’t look too comfortable in front of the camera. But this one is better I think.”
“You know, just now, Mak said I could have her video camera if I wanted it. She wants to give it away.”
“You want it?”
“I don’t know. It’s expensive.”
“What do you want to do with the video camera? You want to make a movie? Send to America’s Funniest Home Videos? Send them one of yourself doing aerobics.”
Jamilah looked down into her bowl of chestnuts. “My friend has a video camera.”
“But really, Jamilah, what do we need it for? What do your friends use it for?”
“Birthday parties. Holidays. I saw this advertisement once. They said that if you had a video camera you can catch the first time your baby learns to speak, or to walk. We can catch a lot of first times on video.”
Azhar looked at the television screen one more time before he walked into the bedroom. Before he went off he said, “They’re all the same, all these hosts. He’s no better than the previous one. It’s a lousy show. Why do you keep watching? You want to see who wins, right? After that, then what? Wasting time!”* * *The next day Jamilah visited her mother again. When Maimon opened the door she told her daughter, “I was just thinking about you.”
“What were you thinking about?” Jamilah asked.
“Come in first.”
Jamilah walked into her old house and noticed that the suitcases were not around any more. In fact the place looked so neat and unchanged that she had to remind herself that the house had lost half its occupants. The sofa set with its wooden armrests and brown velvety cushion covers was still around. The television still had its crocheted white cover, and on the walls were the two white plates which her parents had bought from a bazaar in Malacca: one reading ‘Allah’, and the other ‘Muhammad’ in Arabic. The cuckoo clock hung above the television set, with its two pendulous handles. And on the floor was the linoleum which had spots of dirt at its edges. When Jamilah was a child, she liked scratching off those sticky bits
