THE COLOR OF LIFE

She was exhausted. She wanted to sleep, but they wouldn't let her. They kept on thrusting those prayer books at her.

'Pray. Pray. Pray,' they told her. 'It's for his soul. It's the least you can do.'

She knew that what they thought but didn't say was: why couldn't she have died instead of their brother? The first thing that was screamed out at her by the eldest sister; the worst of them. 'Umande! What have you done to him? You have killed my brother,' she wailed and beat her breast and tore at her hair. And all the while she who was his widow had sat silently in the chair by the hospital bed, where his body lay not yet cold, looking on at this spectacle of grief, and feeling a hard knot of revulsion in the pit of her stomach.

'Hypocrite!' she wanted to spit out. 'You plagued the poor man's life with your demands of money, you harassed him because he took care of me and now you put on this display. For whose benefit?'

A short while later she was led out of the hospital and taken home to await the body that had to be washed and prayed over. Strange, she thought, listening to the people talking around her while she walked out. How easily they slip into the lingo required. How could they talk so easily about the body? Didn't they know that this same body once danced the baila so well, and could climb Adam's Peak in half the time? Didn't they know that this body they were talking of once took pleasure in every part of her body and once had a name? Say Naasir, she wanted to shout at them. Don't say the body. It's Naasir, my husband. Don't you recognize him, Munsif? Remember he loaned you some money last year to send your son abroad to the Middle East? How about you, Karim? Can you remember the job he got you at the bank? And Ahmed, can you do better than these rotters? Do you remember that it was your uncle Naasir who begged your father to send you to university abroad?

Her head moved to and fro looking at all the people around her; being reminded of her husband and his relationships with them, and she felt her heart constrict and in its release trigger a torrent of tears that tore out cruel heaving spasms of grief and caused her to bend her body with distress. And the people around were now relieved that she had broken her cold unfeeling silence and was now acting with a shred of humanity, or so they thought. And they shielded her with their bodies from the unwelcome gapes of intrigued onlookers and rushed her into the waiting car.

Through a haze of confusion she was aware of hands. Many hands all over her. Lifting. Tugging. Pushing. Unlocking. Removing. Thick, dark, thin, fair, long, short, stubby, delicate, painted, plain fingers attached to hands that poked and prodded her with the meticulous determination of a common mission. And then last of all came her eldest sister-in-law Umu Naima who with a silent and vicious grab at her fourth finger on her left hand removed her plain gold wedding band of thirty-five years. She cried then, but not in front of the witch Umu Naima. No, she would not give her that satisfaction. She went into the bathroom and looked at the tiny round mirror over the washbasin they had forgotten to cover up, and wept with a lonely feeling of sorrow and abandonment. 'Oh Naasir,' she whispered to her reflection, 'what are they doing to me? Did you want this done to me? You must have, or else you wouldn't have died so young, leaving me to these vultures. These heartless dogs who will now pounce on the carcass of my life."

***

White. A one-syllabled word. A simple word, even beautiful, some would say. White - a word that means so much it takes up two and a half pages of the New Shorter Oxford English Dictionary. A word that has caused havoc in my life. A word I now hate.

My world is one that has now turned white. It is a crudely carved out rectangular box of about thirteen feet by ten feet. The room is actually bigger than my space, but they have hung a white sheet across the breadth of the room to divide it into two. On one side sleep my two granddaughters. On their side lies the door that leads into the dining room. On my side there are windows and the door that leads into the bathroom. Everything in my room is white. Even the curtains that are to be kept drawn for the whole four months and ten days are of thick white amuredi that reluctantly let in the persistent and harsh midday sunlight. I have no adornments on the white walls of my side, only ugly black nails that mar the wall, surrounded by remnants of neat rectangle markings rubbed into the wall around them that tell tales of their previous occupants. In my space there is only the twin bed pushed onto one side of the white wall, one chair and a small table. There are no mirrors left on this side of the room, and now they have taken away the bathroom mirror. As a result I have forgotten what I look like, and I can only feel at my coarse and thick hair and guess at its wild shape. Even I have been turned into a white figure wearing only white saris with white blouses that have high necks and long sleeves. There is a white scarf that is drawn tight over my head and across my chin, and even my slippers are white. The rug given to me so that I may offer my prayers on it to Allahu Thala is white, and I eat off white plates and drink off a white tin mug.

The color of life left me with my husband's death. White is the color of non-existence. Almost like an attempt to erase me off the face of the world. Now, black, a color I was previously never fond of has taken a special place in my mind. Black is a statement, harsh and unavoidable, it declares its existence with a shout. White on the other hand is nothingness, a minus, a space to be occupied by anything and everything. By anybody and everybody.

There is someone with me all the time. Like a watchdog she stands over me. She hardly speaks to me and even then does not look into my eyes. She sucks the space out of me. Umu Naima put her there with whispered instructions. When Umu Naima comes on her daily evening rounds the watchdog reports my activities with diligence, and I see Umu Naima shovelling the details of my misery into her elephantine memory with relish.

I have plenty of visitors. They stream in bearing trays of food, which are portioned out and offered to others. On some days they all come at once and with all the food and drink and talk - but not for me - it almost resembles a party. But more often they come in little clusters of two and three and sit in with me, wearing carefully positioned faces-of blankness. They rarely talk to me. Most times they talk amongst themselves and then they pray. So much prayer that little rectangle of mine heard. So many prayers that floated out of the little stacked books into their eyes and then out of their mouths to hang heavy over me long after they had gone. Prayers that were prayed by those who could not understand. Prayers that did not console.

Most of my visitors I didn't know. Old women, themselves widowed with time heavy on their hands, who seem to thrive on the morbidity of widowhood. And seemed to extract a twisted vicarious pleasure that justified their own personal experience. A reassurance of the natural order of their life.

It was a world of Muslim women. No non-Muslims, Umu Naima harshly warned the watchdog on that day of death, and no men of course Umu Naima added, causing the watchdog to gasp in shock. I sat against the wall, my legs drawn up against me and thought: do they really think that I will think of other men with my husband buried only a few hours? In silence I watched Umu Naima strut in and out of the makeshift room, flaunting her widowless state and laying down the rules of grief.

Four months and ten days. It's a long time. It makes one think. Of all sorts of things. But most of all I thought of my life with Naasir. What sort of life was it? Did I have a good life with him? Did I make him happy? Was I happy? I remembered the first two years of marriage when Naasir and I were forced to stay with Umu Naima. Was he aware of the harassment she inflicted on me? Didn't he know that I too would have liked to come out with them for those dinners and dances? That I was frightened of Umu Naima and only told him that I wouldn't come because that's what she had told me to say. A Muslim wife should stay at home, she would say, and I would cry for hours alone in my bedroom because he had left me behind without a second thought.

I thought of the lean years I had with Naasir when he would get drunk and hit me for not having brought a larger dowry. And I also thought of the mean years with Naasir when he would come straight from his mistress to me and force himself onto me, holding me down by the hair and shouting out her name as he came violently into me.

And then came the stroke that broke him. And I was the only one left. Where were the friends? Where was the mistress? There was only me. They were the happiest years, I think, of our life.

***

She was dressed and waiting when Umu Naima marched into the house. She saw Umu Naima's bulbous eyes sweep over her, noting the pale blue sari and matching slippers. In a gesture of defiance she prominently displayed the gold band on her fourth finger of her left hand, which made Umu Naima snort. In rapid Shona Tamil Umu Naima instructed the watchdog as to what must be done and sent them on their way with the driver of her car. She didn't know why it had to be Mutwal. Maybe because it was sufficiently remote, but the watchdog muttered something about it having to be where the sea divides. Just before she walked in the thought did cross her mind that Mecca was in the desert, so just where was this ritual enacted in Muhammad's Arabia? But no matter. It was not important.

Widow. She rolled the word around her mouth over and over again. It sounded so neutral, nothing to convey the meaning in its sound. She walked back to the beach and turned to look at the sea. Had it always been this blue? She took deep breaths and looked up at the sky. Had it always been this open? For a second she closed her eyes, turning her face upwards. A fitful wind whipped the wet edges of her sari around her ankles, and her sari pota billowed out behind her. She heard something whisper into her ears. Live! She heard, and then she opened her eyes.
