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“Hey!” I exclaimed
“Hey!” I exclaimed
“Don’t lean forward. Sit directly behind me,” he said, spidery fingers holding the steering wheel in a death grip.
“So I’m not seen?”
“No. If you sit on the left the whole thing leans down on that side.”
He pulled a bent lever next to him and the auto kicked into the path of an oncoming bus.
“Watch it!” I yelled.
“Sorry…”
“What are you doing here?”
“Didn’t think we’d let you go without saying goodbye, did you?”
“Gods, I’m so ungrateful! I know I shouldn’t have left without saying thank you. Tell Devika and Gita and the others.”
Riven cut in behind the bus and followed it so closely that I could see the bright green of the auto reflected in the bus’s back bumper. We spurted forward, hit it and bounced back. We followed the same route that the Family parade had taken, past the alleyway leading to the Lotus project, past Lovely’s tea shop at the end of the street. I wondered how it felt for Riven, pretending to be as low caste as me, a mere auto driver although his smooth forearms, not tanned dark from driving all day under the sun, gave him away.
We made a nervous right turn at a major junction, then continued straight for two large city blocks. The auto got onto a flyover and laboured over it, grinding and falling back while Riven whimpered. The view from the topside was of endless building works going on throughout the city, the spines and shoulders of cranes, the raw edges of scratchy scaffolding and the blunt, unfinished ends of other flyovers.
The road let us down into a monster junction. It was hard to see through the smeared front window and Riven was driving blind, guiding himself by the avoidant screeches and warning honks of the vehicles surrounding us, as well as the occasional knocks, side-slams, bumper pummels and hand-slaps we were receiving from the bikers and motorcyclists who risked their lives by being near us.
These few blocks were in better shape than the ones we’d left behind. The roads were slightly less broken and there was a more definite sense of where the traffic ended and the pedestrians began. I’d thought that Riven would turn off into a side-street, but there seemed to be no side streets on these blocks, no secret lanes, alleys or shortcuts. Every road was a wide road, every turning was a major junction, everything was of a giant size.
“You’ll be working for a lady named Zizi, at a new place,” said Riven.
“A key-cutter. Lovely said.”
“Zizi relocated here herself from Block Q so you’re both in this together. She’ll train you up.”
“Is everything around here new?”
“Not new, just in a process of constant makeover that never ends.”
He got to the outermost lane by the side of the road and slowed almost to a walking pace, which made the auto shudder and threaten to tip. I looked out, noticing subtle differences between the neighbourhood I’d left behind and this one. The people, though just as shabbily dressed, held their heads a bit higher.
“What block’s this?” I asked.
“L.”
We heard the squeak of something large and mechanical right behind us and let it pass. It was a white street-cleaning van, churning out its own black Binari exhaust smoke. On the side were written three statements, each one slightly smaller than the last. Cleaner streets, was written in foot high red letters. Then, slightly smaller, in blue, Be proud to walk down yours! And then, a hand span height in green, either a promise or a shifty apology: We’re making Binar even cleaner.
We pulled up in front of a glittering, sleek, four storey mall.
“It’s in there,” said Riven. “In the basement. Zizi’s expecting you.”
“I just… go in and claim my job?”
Riven nodded.
“No-one’ll stop me?”
“Why would they? You look like a local,” he said, and that surprised me, because to me my origins were written across my face, the stench of the orphanage and whatever I’d gone through leaking from every pore.
“I suppose a lot of ex classers work in the malls, do they?” I said.
“And in the Binari service industry, generally,” he conceded.
Sitting on the wide steps leading up to the mall’s main doors were groups of secondary school kids studying together, eating crispy onion patties and fried plantains from the food vendors out front. The vendors were doing a roaring business – literally, as each stall had its radio on loud, blasting out live commentary of a horse-race. The sound of hooves and urgently shouted jockeys’ names echoed down the steps towards us.
I felt intimidated by the size of the building and unwilling to get out of the auto. Riven didn’t rush me.
“The place is owned by the Mall King,” he said. “Nasser-Khaleb Murat. On the other side of the crossing are two other malls, both his. One’s for reconditioned electrical goods and the other’s a market for knock-off Western brands.”
It was with those words and not any great farewell that we left each other. I was about to tell him again how grateful I was when a schoolgirl with a bulging rucksack ran down the steps, pushed me smartly aside and got into my seat even before I was fully out of it.
“Amien Technical College science lecture theatre, please,” she said.
She set her plimsolled feet together and looked at Riven expectantly. Riven furrowed his brow. I heard him gulp. I loitered next to them, half in and half out, unable to say a proper goodbye – or to fervently wish the schoolgirl all the good luck in the world as she put her life in Riven’s hands. I hoped her lecture didn’t start for a good two hours and there was an ambulance on standby when she arrived.
The auto wobbled away. The mall towered over me, elevated above the traffic, shaped like a temple, built by this Nasser-Khaleb Murat guy with the confidence of a god. But even temples needed people to clean their toilets.
I went up the main steps, heart tugged by the sight of all the well-fed, uniformed students around me, eating, reading, photographing each other, phoning their mothers. They were not so far from me in age but we may as well have been from different planets.
Just behind each door was a security guard. She blocked me.
“Side entrance.”
“Could you tell – ”
“Side entrance.”
“I just need to find – ”
“Side entrance.”
I trudged back down. The workers’ entrance was a storey lower than the main entrance, down a slope at the side. All the dust and rubbish from the street rolled into it. The wide, corrugated metal doors had been propped open with bricks and a hot fug of air came out, smelling of toilets, petrol, bleach, feet and a hundred different snack foods all stewed together, the combined smelled of the entire undercarriage of the mall. A heavy snake of chain with industrial padlocks hanging from the links sagged from the doors, to be fastened up again once we were all inside. But I didn’t see any guard or boss types. Perhaps we were supposed to lock ourselves in as a sign of good faith.
I went inside. In front of me was a settlement occupying the entire footprint of the mall. It was concrete but strangely cosy, low ceilinged, dimly lit by long yellow bulbs in cages hanging from the maze of crinkle-skinned foil ventilation tubes, sewage pipes carrying posh people’s shit over our heads, colourfully bundled electricity wires and cables and the winding guts of other utility lines.
The breezeblock wall was painted into different zones with a coloured number next to the service stairs in each zone. People were spread across the floor, families living in groups, each keeping a bit of stepping space between them and the next group, all living the same way, with a portable cooking ring, some sheets, a stack of kitchen pots. There were spots of delicate privacy: two open umbrellas used as a screen, an old veil draped across a line strung between two packing boxes, a petticoat ripped open at one seam and stretched from nails in the basement’s supporting pillars.
There were long lockers against the walls, some open and with the key in the lock, revealing bedrolls and other necessities awaiting collection by new people. Off to the sides, running alongside an open gutter, were water pumps, and next to the gutters were concrete enclosures, the walls shoulder high, for people to wash with some privacy.
As I explored, many of the others looked up and greeted me then immediately turned back to their own business. This was how such large numbers of people lived together: by remaining separate, by keeping some things for themselves, marking themselves out not with physical space but with tact and silence. Those who were at the end of their shifts were cooking whole grains and lentils, stewing spice tea in tin pots. Others just crashed out, managing to look wary even in sleep. There were small children living there too – their parents or grandparents must work at the mall – sitting cross-legged reciting sums by rote and spelling out English words loudly after their half-day at school. I noticed that all the children were wearing bright yellow bracelets on their skinny wrists. I thought it must be from some school club they were all in, until I looked at the adults and saw they were wearing the same – a neon plastic band, rubbery and biteable like a teething toy, fitted closely but not tightly. It was some kind of identification band.
The woman nearest me was sitting bowed over in a thick nest of white sheets that must have felt suffocating in this heat.
“I’m sorry to bother you. I’m new here. Could you tell me where to get one of those yellow things?” I asked her.
She looked up at me. From her armful of silver bangles and demure plait I’d assumed at first glance that she was a senior woman. But she was barely my age. She was cradling a tiny baby in one arm. The baby was fast asleep, its eyes sealed shut.
“How did you get in here without one?” she said.
“I walked in. I have a job here.”
“No-one stopped you?”
“There was no-one to stop me.”
“Those doors are never meant to be left open.”
“The doors were wide open.”
“It’s not safe.”
She squashed the baby to her protectively and it moulded itself bonelessly in her clasp.
The woman looked at me mistrustfully for a few more seconds. Clearly, though, I looked exactly as clueless as the newly arrived apprentice for a key-cutting service should look, because her expression lightened and she said,
“May I offer you a cup of tea?”
A courtesy, a traditional Mirian sign of offered trust.
“No – but thank you. If you could just show me where to go…”
“This is the under-basement. Minus Two floor. The key-cutter’s in the basement – Minus One. Go to the orange staircase, number 4.”
“Staircase 4,” I repeated. The staircase closest to us was numbered 28.
We fell into conversation and she told me her name was Nimet. She worked on the third floor in the back of a shop that printed people’s digital photos, sent faxes and scanned documents. She shared the job with her mother, who was there now. Her father worked in the Bata shoe store as a shelf stacker.
“The key-cutters’ and other mending and fixing things are at the opposite end from the fortune-tellers and reflexologists and the dog groomers, which are exactly above us now. The new Binar rich like to keep dogs as domestic pets,” she scoffed, “and they feed them well, too. In the middle of the basement floor, between you and them, there’s a travel service and ticket booking. And a crèche. Not for the children of the people who work here,” she corrected hastily, “I mean the children of the shoppers. They’d be disgusted to know we live here, crawling under their feet like rats.”
She rocked the baby. The baby’s little arm flopped and I saw how thin it was, how the palm had a tinge of yellow to it.
“If I’m going up I’d better offload these,” I said, opening my bag and taking out the meat fries Lovely had given me. They had flattened out inside their napkins and had an over-ripe, rancidly delicious smell. I offered them to Nimet.
“Aren’t you having any?” she asked.
“I’m full.”
“I can’t accept them,” she said, though mutedly.
“Please. They’d have to be thrown away otherwise. And I don’t think that’d be very hygienic round here. If there are vermin or anything.” I added hastily, “But I see everyone who stays here keeps everything clean.”
“Of course we do,” she said sharply.
Before taking the food, Nimet carefully pushed the white cloth from around her as though it was made of spun silk. I looked at it more closely. It was made of spun silk. It was covered in tiny silver stitches and a thin silver needle was pegged into the top fold.
“I take in sewing for some of the shops in the locality,” she explained.
I ran my hand under one leaf of the white silk. It floated stiffly over my skin. I turned it over and looked at the underside. Nimet’s work was so fine that the underside was almost as perfect as the top.
“You’ve already embroidered so many metres,” I said.
“My mother’ll be back soon, then there’ll be an hour where neither of us has any duties up there, so she looks after Femi,” she indicated the baby, “and I do another half-inch of sewing.”
“Is it a wedding veil?”
“A shroud.”
“All that labour, just to go in the fire.”
“No! It goes on.”
“What?”
“It goes on.”
“On where?”
“Ahead. The soul goes to the next place,” said insistently. “But there’ll be wedding clothes to make soon, with Prince Raed’s wedding coming up.”
“Don’t tell me you care who these Family royals marry and how Majesty magazine covers it?”
“There’ll be commissions for textiles, clothing, jewellery, decorations, glassware, all through the capital. No person will go without employment. They’ll need drivers, car-washers, waiters, ushers, caterers, cleaners, security guards. That’s a good opportunity.”
“It’s a good opportunity for a rich family to pay people like us very little money for hours of work, in the knowledge that labouring at a royal wedding’s such a thing in itself that there are plenty who’d happily work for even less than usual, just to say they’d been there,” I said.
The baby, Femi, gave a pained squawk and began to wake up.
“Excuse me. I have to feed him,” said Nimet.
The sight of little Femi’s peaky yellow face made me take the plastic tub out of my bag and say,
“This is weighing me down a bit. I wondered if you might like some. It’s… vitamin tablets,” I finished, unable to think of any decent lie or polite cover-up.
“I’ll take them,” she said quickly, nakedly. “I can crush them into milk. Or water.”
We said goodbye and I walked along the middle of the under-basement city. The place must have been half a mile long, or more. Staircase 9 was painted violet, 8 was light grey. Staircase 7 was green. I could see the orange wall around staircase 4, and the back wall, half of which was taken up with more lockers. I was amazed that the other residents of the floor hadn’t helped themselves to more bedding to pad up what they already had. So much ran on trust. If just one person out of the hundreds here broke that group faith, that fine and delicate unspoken civility, the invisible mutual protection and consideration which enclosed us all, everything would shatter and break.
In the furthest shadow of the furthest corner was a man sitting by himself on a plastic chair, leafing through a black-covered moneylender’s ledger, poring over the details. He was the only one in that vast space who looked at me warily, following me with his dead pellet eyes.
I climbed staircase 4 until I reached the door to Minus One. I opened it and was immediately in a new world.