Excerpt: Drinking the Ocean by Saad Omar Khan

Excerpted with permission from Wolsak & Wynn Press

On Saturday, he received a call from his mother’s sister, Ruqayyah Khala. Khala, the only family member he had in London, was a former schoolteacher, retired from both her job and the world. She’d been in touch infrequently since he’d stopped living with her and moved into residence in Southwark. Each time she called, it was from a familial sense of duty, partly out of sincere concern, partly out of affection for his mother. That Saturday, however, she had a more specific reason to talk to Murad: Ammi had asked her to give him something and Khala wanted him to pick it up. He didn’t ask what it was, and accepted her invitation with simple acquiescence. 

She told him to come the next evening for dinner at her home in New Cross. As Murad rode the double-decker southward, he noticed how uniform the houses started to look, all one deep brown melded together, allowing no room for uniqueness. They reminded him, in their conformity, of the houses in their suburban Toronto neighbourhood, without the spaciousness that Canada afforded. 

The clouds darkened as Murad stepped off the bus. He crossed the street and pushed aside the low, rusted gate in front of Khala’s house. She’d given him the key to the front door when he’d first lived with her, allowing him free entry to her home whenever he wanted. He climbed the staircase, a narrow series of carpeted steps steeped in the smell of dank English moisture, hearing the sounds of two children speaking Yoruba over a football match behind the door to his right. Khala rented the lower unit of her house on occasion; the turnover of renters was high. At the very least, gentrification hadn’t infected this part of London. Despite the drabness, it had a vibrancy and grit that Murad found appealing. 

The door, with its peeling paint, was unlocked. This was reckless and unsafe, but typical of Khala’s trusting nature. The flat was only slightly wider than the stairwell and seemed brighter than the evening itself, as if whatever little illumination the city received came from within its walls. Murad walked into the kitchen and surveyed the scene: large pots spread everywhere, clothes lazily draped over a dinette table, a withered flower placed in a dirtied vase. In any other home it would seem a mess, yet nothing seemed chaotic or misplaced. The room had its own order and rhythm that he hesitated to disturb. 

Instinctively, he knew she would be in the small back room typically covered with old, geometric Pakistani carpets and membrane-thin curtains that barely shut out the streetlights. The pervading silence was a sign that she was praying. When he opened the door, he saw Khala on her janamaz, facing a dusty bookshelf, wearing a dark blue shalwar kameez with a white dupatta covering her hair, her limbs prostrate on the floor. Murad stayed in the doorway, peering in with arms crossed as he bent down and leaned to the side of the frame, observing his aunt as she prayed with reverence, not wanting to disturb the delicate communion he saw inside. 

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She hugged Murad closely after she finished her prayers. They ate together in the early nightfall in comfortable silence. Since he arrived in London in September, he noticed how different she seemed from the Khala he had known before. She was drawn into herself, much more self-contained than when Murad saw her on family visits to Pakistan or Britain. She was his mother’s only sister, relatively closer in age to Ammi than to her three older brothers. His grandfather was liberal enough to let one of his daughters go to school abroad, even with his wife having passed away too soon, and making his loneliness all the more acute. He was not, however, quite so liberal as to allow her to study literature rather than medicine. She did so anyway, and disobeyed her father further by staying in London, putting her at even greater odds with him and the rest of the family. 

As they ate dinner, Murad remembered an instance in Pakistan years ago when he was around ten. It was the first time he had even heard of his aunt’s existence. He sat with several of his maternal cousins at Jehangir Mamu’s dining table, the ceiling fan coating them with a light breeze as Mamu’s oldest daughter, Nazneen, taught them all how to play rummy. Murad stole bottles of RC Cola from the kitchen for the older children with his accomplice, his youngest cousin, Haniya. When they came back to the table, Nazneen, Nazneen’s cousin Hussein from her mother’s side and Nazneen’s sister Kiran were talking among themselves in the insular way older children do when they exclude younger children from a conversation. As Nazneen shuffled the cards, Kiran talked about the extended family, counting off the number of cousins and aunts and uncles, noting that Ruqayyah Khala was the odd one out, a childless anomaly that she found strange. Murad asked Kiran who Ruqayyah Khala was.

“You’ve never met her?” asked Kiran.

“How would he know who she is?” said Hussein, pouring one of the colas into a glass. “Whenever he comes to Pakistan, she’s back in London. Whenever she’s here, Murad’s everywhere else.”

“Ruqayyah Phuppo’s the oldest sister among the adults,” said Nazneen with authority, using the title phuppo to indicate her father’s sister. Murad sat next to her. As she finished dealing the cards, she looked at him, back erect in her wooden dining chair. “She lives alone in England.” 

“How come she never married?” asked Haniya innocently, standing on top of her seat at the end of the table.

“Because she wanted to have lots of boyfriends,” said Hussein. 

“Not everyone wants to have a family,” said Nazneen, almost defensively. 

“She’s too modern. That’s what always happens to people when they live in England,” said Hussein, holding his cards in his hands.

“Who told you that?” asked Kiran.

“My ammi said so,” said Hussein, as if an adult reference was needed to justify his argument. “She should have been married a long time ago. She should have had a family by now. It’s not right the way she lives.”

“No one knows why she never married,” said Nazneen, sternly. “And it’s nobody’s business why.” She stared hard at Hussein as she took the cards she had dealt to herself in her right hand. “We’re her family,” she continued. “So let’s stop talking about this. And don’t judge her so much, Hussein.”