Salt and Saffron by Kamila Shamsie Page A

was wrong the moment I returned from school and the only smell to assail my nostrils as I walked up the driveway was that of the manure recently delivered to my neighbour’s garden. Ami was standing in the kitchen as I ran in, staring in mystification at Masood’s rack of spices.
    â€˜What’s happened? Where is he? Is he ill?’
    â€˜No, no, he’s not ill. He had to leave. His father has died. Masood’s the head of the family now. So he’s gone.’
    â€˜For how long?’ I didn’t stop for a moment to think about Masood’s loss; I just wondered how long I’d have to do without his cooking.
    â€˜Jaan,
he’s gone. They need him there. It’s feudal land, you know. It seems his father was the cook at the home of the
zamindar,
and Masood will be taking over that position. He said to tell you he’s sorry he didn’t have time to say goodbye, but he had to catch the morning train.’
    â€˜But how will we …’ I looked around the kitchen, cavernous and strange. ‘What about Mariam Apa?’
    Ami shook her head. ‘I don’t know. We’ve already founda new cook – the one who worked for your dadi when Mohommed was on leave – and he’s starting tomorrow, but I don’t know if Mariam … I don’t know what. I don’t know.’
    All I was thinking was, I’ll never hear her voice again. But when I saw the flutter of Ami’s hands across the spice jars and her refusal to meet my eye, I thought, Oh dear God.
    It’s not just that she only spoke to speak to him of food; she also only ate when it was his food she was eating. When Masood had taken his father on haj, two years earlier, he’d frozen a week’s supply of food for Mariam Apa so that she wouldn’t starve.
    â€˜Where is she?’ I said.
    â€˜In her room. When Masood was leaving he told her to keep eating, otherwise she’ll fall ill and cause him much pain. And she smiled and … hugged him. Briefly. She hugged him goodbye.’
    I stared. A hug – across class and gender. And he wasn’t even much older than her. Before this had their fingers even touched as they passed a tomato from one to the other? I doubted it. A hug! I wouldn’t have, and Masood had carried me piggy-back style when I was a child.
    But when I entered Mariam Apa’s room she was reclining in bed, reading the afternoon papers, as though it were just another day. I stood in the doorway, watching for the throbbing vein in her neck, for the inward curl of her fingers, for the awkwardly angled shoulders or the tooth biting down on her lip. But all I got, instead, was the tiniest alteration in the curve of her mouth to tell me she knew she was being watched.
    â€˜Will you eat?’ I burst out, and flung myself across the bed. Without looking at me she shook her head. I touchedher wrist and, still not turning her eyes towards me, she reached out and pushed my hair off my face with fingers so stiff I jerked my head back in fright. Rigor mortis, is what I absurdly thought when I should have been thinking of how hard she was trying not to tremble. But right then I could only see the hollows of her form. Hollow between clavicle and neck, hollow of cupped palm which held itself just short of supplication, hollow of her mouth.
    I backed away and stood up. ‘You can’t do this to me.’
    Her eyes closed and opened. And closed again.
    Three days later she still hadn’t touched a morsel of food, and Aba was raging through the house, railing against the stubbornness of women. He was looking for a fight, of course, but Ami and I were too despondent to rise to the challenge.
    In the silence that followed a protracted outburst we heard the door swing open. Auntie Tano, an old family friend, walked in.
    â€˜Guess who I met?’ she said, after proffering her cheek all around to be kissed.
    â€˜Why don’t you just tell us,’ Aba