• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 11992 0

Major Latif on the spot. I also believe today that my parents had already come to the conclusion that their daughter’s gift was too extraordinary to keep to themselves; the sublime magic of her angel’s voice had begun to teach them the inevitable imperatives of talent. But Ahmed and Amina had one concern. “Our daughter,” Ahmed said—he was always the more old-fashioned of the two beneath the surface—“is from a good family; but you want to put her on a stage in front of God knows how many strange men …?” The Major looked affronted. “Sir,” he said stiffly, “you think I am not a man of sensibility? Got daughters myself, old man. Seven, thank God. Set up a little travel agency business for them; strictly over the telephone, though. Wouldn’t dream of sitting them in an office-window. It’s the biggest telephonic travel agency in the place, actually. We send train-drivers to England, matter of fact; bus-wallahs, too. My point,” he added hastily, “is that your daughter would be given as much respect as mine. More, actually; she’s going to be a star!”

Major Latif’s daughters—Safia and Rafia and five other -afias—were dubbed, collectively, “the Puffias” by the remaining Monkey in my sister; their father was nicknamed first “Father-Puffia” and then Uncle—a courtesy title—Puffs. He was as good as his word; in six months Jamila Singer was to have hit records, an army of admirers, everything; and all, as I’ll explain in a moment, without revealing her face.

Uncle Puffs became a fixture in our lives; he visited the Clayton Road house most evenings, at what I used to think of as the cocktail hour, to sip pomegranate juice and ask Jamila to sing a little something. She, who was growing into the sweetest-natured of girls, always obliged … afterwards he would clear his throat as if something had got stuck in it and begin to joke heartily with me about getting married. Twenty-four-carat grins blinded me as he, “Time you took a wife, young man. Take my advice: pick a girl with good brains and bad teeth; you’ll have got a friend and a safe-deposit box rolled into one!” Uncle Puffs’ daughters, he claimed, all conformed to the above description … I, embarrassed, smelling out that he was only half-joking, would cry, “O, Uncle Puffs!” He knew his nickname; quite liked it, even. Slapping my thigh, he cried, “Playing hard to get, eh? Darn right. Okay my boy: you pick one of my girls, and I guarantee to have all her teeth pulled out; by the time you marry her she’ll have a million-buck smile for a dowry!” Whereupon my mother usually contrived to change the subject; she wasn’t keen on Uncle Puffs’ idea, no matter how pricey the dentures … on that first night, as so often afterwards, Jamila sang to Major Alauddin Latif. Her voice wafted out through the window and silenced the traffic; the birds stopped chattering and, at the hamburger shop across the street, the radio was switched off; the street was full of stationary people, and my sister’s voice washed over them … when she finished, we noticed that Uncle Puffs was crying.

“A jewel,” he said, honking into a handkerchief, “Sir and Madam, your daughter is a jewel. I am humbled, absolutely. Darn humbled. She has proved to me that a golden voice is preferable even to golden teeth.”

And when Jamila Singer’s fame had reached the point at which she could no longer avoid giving a public concert, it was Uncle Puffs who started the rumor that she had been involved in a terrible, disfiguring car-crash; it was Major (Retired) Latif who devised her famous, all-concealing, white silk chadar, the curtain or veil, heavily embroidered in gold brocade-work and religious calligraphy, behind which she sat demurely whenever she performed in public. The chadar of Jamila Singer was held up by two tireless, muscular figures, also (but more simply) veiled from head to foot—the official story was that they were her female attendants, but their sex was impossible to determine through their burqas; and at its very center, the Major had cut a hole. Diameter: three inches. Circumference: embroidered in finest gold thread. That