Останься, дочь / Stay, Daughter

He brought reports of buildings three and four times as tall as their house, verandahs enclosed with rows of glass windows, and gates of polished brass you could mistake for gold. She tried to imagine what a motorcar looked like, marveled that white ladies walked all on their own in broad daylight, and that children were taken around in wheeled carriages. The day she heard about water that had turned into cold blocks of stone covered in sawdust, and sold by a man who pushed a cart, she wondered whether her brother made things up.

Marmee was most impatient to know about the happenings in the homes of the wealthy shangakara Muslims in the Galle Fort. To be told about their large houses with ornate gables, tiled roofs, spacious courtyards, and name boards with English lettering: Ocean View, Eglington, Jasmine Cottage, Haley; the ebony divans and elaborately carved tables set up in the front halls; the tall ceramic vases and dwarf palms along the inner courtyards. And how intricately carved and beautiful the wooden lattice screens were, without exception, that sealed off the women’s quarters.

Her brother described what he saw as he walked by the double Dutch doors that opened out onto wide verandahs. What lay within he didn’t know. He never stepped inside any of those stately homes. In those early days, Kuhaffa Hadjiar’s jewelry shop on Leyn Baan Street was the only smooth floor in the Galle Fort that took the imprint of his dusty feet.

Before Marmee was done with her questions, her mother waved her aside.

“A jackfruit fell down in the front garden. Pick it up before someone else does… Walk to cousin Zubeida’s house and tell her I’ll come by to see her after dark… I’ve been waiting to drink something. Can you pluck a King coconut for me?”

Wappah was happy to oblige – he didn’t want his mother to go outside her home more than absolutely necessary.

His presence at home was valued most, at least by Marmee, when the roving salesman, Majeed Nana, came to the village. This itinerant trader carried on his head, a huge cloth bundle packed tight with textiles and fancy goods. His appearance always thrilled the maidens of Shollai who never set foot in a shop themselves.