Fava Beans For Breakfast Read online

  ‘What about okra. Have you the okra?’

  ‘Nuh.’ She appraised Nayeema closely. ‘You must be Fred’s wife. He’s a nice fella you got there, pet. I met him this morning. Naomi, is it?’

  ‘Na-yee-ma.’

  The woman squinted. ‘I’m Wendy. Listen, pet, I’ve just come back from a week in Brisbane so we’re a bit low on stock, but if you want anything fancy like those beans you’ll have to get up to Jindy.’

  ‘Jean dee?’

  ‘Three towns north of here. Straight up the highway. Take you thirty minutes to get up there,’ said Wendy, her mouth widening into a smile large enough to show Nayeema her stained gums. ‘So how youse getting on? Settling into your new house okay? I hear Tom’s been fixing it up for youse.’

  Her landlord, Tom Grieves, lived two doors away, in the most majestic house she had ever seen. Verandahs wrapped around his sandstone house like ribbons around a gift. His kitchen alone was a monument to modern technology; it glistened with red formica and bright orange tiles and appliances. In all of her twenty-one years she had never before seen such a kitchen. Not even her rich, stuck-up Aunty Salwa in el Montaza had a kitchen so perfect. Her aunty’s oven was perfectly prehistoric in comparison.

  ‘Yes, it’s very wonderful. Tom, he makes the house brand new for us, with the brand new carpet and the brand new wallpaper.’

  Wendy whistled. ‘His Granny Bess used to live in that house. So did he, for a bit. It’s one of his better rentals. Good elevation and all that. You’ve done well, pet.’

  ‘Tom, he gives us his granny’s furniture until we buy brand new. We are happy. But the kitchen is not ready yet. We have no oven, no gas cooker. Maybe next week they will come from Sydney,’ said Nayeema, breathless and excited. These were her first words since breakfast with Fawzy.

  ‘That’s rough.’

  ‘Tom, he lets me come into his house and cook dinner in his kitchen.’

  Wendy’s eyes widened. ‘Is that so?’

  ‘Yes, very wonderful kitchen.’

  She pursed her lips and slowly released a soft whistle. ‘I’ll bet. Well, I hope you settle down real nice here. You got kids?’

  ‘No kids,’ Nayeema said, as lightly as she could manage. ‘None yet, hey.’ She smiled. ‘Geez, pet, what’ve you done to yourself there?’ asked Wendy, noticing the swollen birthmark on Nayeema’s chest.

  Oh, brother. Instantly, the prick and prickle of her birthmark flared like a match. ‘Oh, it’s nothing. Small scratch,’ she lied.

  Wendy nodded contemplatively. ‘Tell you what, pet. I’ll ask Stan to order that bean you want. Bilotto. Wouldn’t hold my breath though. He hasn’t changed anything in this joint for twenty years. He’s a stubborn bastard. I’ll tell you that for nothing.’

  ‘Who is Stan?’

  ‘The Super-S,’ she said, and winked. ‘My fella.’

  As Nayeema walked away from the supermarket she felt the first stirrings of genuine enthusiasm in days. So Burraboo wasn’t just a small town in the middle of nowhere. She whispered the word again, ‘Jean dee,’ letting her tongue flit around the letters. She would tell Fawzy about this Jean dee place. It was probably like a small city. Moving to a new place was so much easier once you knew where everything was, she reassured herself. Fawzy wouldn’t understand her need to be surrounded by comforting things. His home was inside his head, where he seemed to live most of his day, a pristine palace of his own creation. She imagined that the interior of his head was plush with sated dreams, perfectly pleated drapes and orderly spaces that never collected dust.

  The shriek of cicadas grew urgent and feverishly surged in pitch. Did they ever stop? She stopped walking and tapped her heel against the pavement. Her sweaty toes were beginning to slide so far forward in her sandals that the leather was cutting into her skin. The energy she’d felt just a minute ago evaporated into the humid fug of Main Street. There was a distinct yellow smudge, a haze on the skyline, like the residual tannin drops that stubbornly remain beneath the rim of a teacup long after the tea has been drunk.

  She walked a few anxious metres down the road to the butcher’s shop, taking small steps. Oh, brother. Her temperature rose when she saw the butcher’s teenage son standing behind the meat counter. His jaw set hard when she entered. He couldn’t have been any older than sixteen and his hair looked as though it had never been washed. His eyes were as red as a rat’s.

  She said hello to him. He returned with a stare. Pointing at the lamb mince, she asked for three kilograms. The boy looked at her as though she had said nothing. She focused on the fluffy hair on his upper cheeks.

  ‘Three kilograms please,’ Nayeema repeated.

  ‘What did you say?’

  The buzzer at the door sounded. An elderly woman walked into the shop. ‘Won’t keep you waiting long, Mrs Walker,’ the boy said.

  ‘I would like three kilograms, please,’ said Nayeema, pleased that the words came out as she’d intended.

  ‘Of what?’ said the boy.

  ‘Of mince. Three kilo of mince.’

  ‘You want three kilograms.’ He spoke slowly and loudly. He didn’t move.

  ‘Yes.’ Sweat gathered on Nayeema’s forehead.

  Another buzz sounded from the door but Nayeema kept her gaze on the boy. He started to reach for lamb chops.

  ‘Mince.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘Mince. I want mince.’

  ‘Okay, okay. Lamb chops and mince.’ He smirked.

  Nayeema wanted to slap his grubby face. ‘No. Just mince.’

  The boy crossed his arms and his mouth formed a vile smile. ‘What did you say? I didn’t understand.’

  ‘For gawd’s sake, Len.’ Nayeema recognised the voice even before she looked. It was Wendy from the Super-S Supermarket. Wendy winked at her and scowled at the boy. ‘You want me to tell your old man about this or are you gonna give the lady what she asked for?’

  The boy mumbled under his breath and began scooping mince from the tray on the counter. Nayeema offered Wendy a feeble smile of gratitude. With hot ears she paid the butcher’s boy, snatched the bag of mince from the countertop, and rushed out of the shop just before the first hot tear fell down her cheek.

  She bolted straight up the hill towards Hungerford Place, paying no attention to the weight of the shopping she carried. Tchhh. That stupid bugger-off son of butcher, il kalb, he was a dog. Never again would she set foot in that butcher shop. Sweat streamed down her back as the prick and prickle on her chest intensified.

  When she finally reached her house on Hungerford Place she went straight into the bathroom and stared at her birthmark in the mirror. She knew she shouldn’t. She wouldn’t. Her chest stung like lemon juice on a cut finger. With a groan she cursed the butcher’s son and then her birthmark for the thousand humiliations it had caused her. In a single motion she pulled off her pale blue blouse and unclipped her bra. She had to. She must. She scratched and savaged her swollen skin until the backs of her fingernails were filled with blood.

  Fawzy would not be happy with her lack of control. Not at all. She splashed cold water on her chest for several minutes until some of the swelling reduced and a small pond had collected between her feet. She carelessly flicked the water towards the drain, pausing a moment from her current misery to take in the delightful bathroom. All of it was brand new. Peach and daffodil-coloured tiles, peach framed mirror. Very fashionable. Very wow.

  She looked at her watch. In two-and-a-half hours’ time she would let herself into Tom Grieves’ house. She would meticulously prepare the evening’s meal. She would have something to do other than think about the butcher’s son.

  She shuffled down the hallway, felt the tickle of the newly laid shag pile carpet between her toes. Brand new. She brushed the palm of her hand over the embossed orange and cream striped wallpaper. Brand new. She passed the half-completed kitchen. Soon the appliances would arrive and the kitchen would be brand new, too.

  She slumped down on the sofa and st
ared at the mulberry-coloured carpet. Her legs were shaky and her head felt as swollen as a fig soaked in water. For two hours she didn’t move except to roll from her back to her side, but sleep did not come. How could she relax when this prick and prickle was all torment?

  The last time her birthmark had pricked and prickled like this was the day her parents were killed in a tram accident. Before that, just before her brother Sayad had fallen sick with pneumonia; before that, when magnoon Mamdouh, mad Mamdouh, had made her watch him break the neck of a pigeon; before that, the morning of the day her best friend had fallen into an unmarked pit in the road and broken her leg in three places; before that, the day a neighbour had almost set their entire building alight when she’d fallen asleep with a cigarette still burning in her hand. Bad things happened whenever her birthmark pricked and prickled. It was an unassailable truth.

  CHAPTER TWO

  Nayeema watched Tom Grieves tilt his girth sideways as he stepped into his kitchen. His feet were the size of ciabatta loaves. There was a gentle smattering of grey that made his otherwise shiny brown hair look dull in patches. He was probably older than her eldest brother.

  Above his top lip sat a thick, clipped moustache, styled like George Harrison’s but neater and glossier. His muscular neck fanned out from the base of his head like an ancient tree trunk. But his ears were like a far out; they were something to behold. His lobes were succulent and detached. The top of his ear sat high and proud, positioned above his upper eyelid, while the bottom of his ear lined up precisely with the end of his nose. Some might say he had an ear that was too flashy. Not Nayeema. His tragus, the part of the ear positioned opposite to the entrance of the ear canal, was pale with a distinct oval-shaped bulge like the bulb of a spring onion. The tubular rim of Tom’s ear, the helix, was a red, dense, solid cage. It was this bit of his ear that had her staring every time.

  In the Paprika Triangle, Sheena Chen, a neighbour from Shanghai, had told her that the Chinese believed a person’s fortune could be read from the position of his ears. Ears that started above the line of the eyebrows indicated a person of higher intellect. Yes. Very wow.

  ‘Neema.’ He waved his hand in greeting. His voice came from somewhere deep in his thick belly. There was an edge to his voice, buried within his baritone, like the sound of a drill muffled inside a blanket.

  Why did Australians find her name so difficult to pronounce? She had a good name, a solid name. Na-yee-ma: to live a life that is enjoyable and prosperous. She was named after her father’s great aunt, whose greatest talent, it was said, was her ability to foresee the future. Predictions of calamities were her great aunt’s specialty. ‘Why don’t you call yourself Nina?’ Fawzy often asked. No, she would not dishonour the memory of her great aunt by butchering her name. Fawzy had no business, no business at all, to ask her to lie about her name. Yet, there was something so charming and humorous about Tom’s interpretation of her name that she hadn’t once corrected him.

  She placed her hand casually over her swollen birthmark and felt her nipple pulse with fervour. Without checking her reflection on the oven door, she knew that her nipple was now upright and as stiff as a bayonet. Pretend like normal. She concentrated on finely chopping the onions with the half-moon blade that she had brought with her from Sydney.

  ‘Hey. Smells great in here,’ he sniffed appreciatively. She watched his gaze move across the kitchen bench before landing on the weeping mess of broken, bloodied skin on her chest. His eyes widened with horror or curiosity. He opened his mouth to speak but changed his mind. ‘Leave you to it,’ he said abruptly, and started to make his way towards the back verandah.

  She touched her chest. Fudge bucket damn. Her birthmark was starting to weep into her blouse. It was too late to hide the indignity of her appearance now. To the hell with the birthmark.

  ‘Tom, wait, before you go, please … there is a tray I need. Is too high for me. Can you help?’ She pointed at an overhead cupboard.

  He gave a big toothy smile. ‘No worries.’ He stepped back into the kitchen and opened the cupboard.

  He plonked the tray on the bench and waited for a moment near the oven. ‘You know, I’m real sorry about your kitchen still not being ready. I’ll call about your oven and cooktop tomorrow. I reckon the delivery can’t be too far away.’ He spoke in the direction of the oven but his eyes darted everywhere, flitting in uneasy watchfulness. ‘I hope you’re happy with the rest of the house.’

  ‘Oh, yes. Brand new carpet and the brand new wallpaper. Is very wonderful house. Thank you.’

  ‘Maybe you’ll think about buying it off me one of these days.’

  ‘Oh no, we won’t be here for long time. We buy in Sydney.’

  ‘I was joking.’

  ‘We stay here for two years,’ Nayeema said, more for herself than for Tom. She threw the chopped onions into the bowl of minced beef, pine nuts, parsley and garlic. Into the palm of her hand she poured a triangle of salt and added that to the mixture of ground coriander, paprika and dried chilli. She sampled the mixture with her finger. It was a little too hot for kofta, meatballs. Fawzy wouldn’t approve. She smiled and added a little more dried chilli. Perfect.

  Tom raised his eyebrows with exaggerated surprise and pressed his lips together. ‘Funny, I’d heard that if things worked out for Fred, he’d be taking over the pharmacy. You know, buying it.’

  ‘Who tells you this?’ She snorted, adding vigorous shakes of black pepper to the mixture in the bowl, her arms tense at the thought of being trapped inside el professeur’s Burraboo fantasy. ‘Fawzy buying the pharmacy, this is impossible, hah,’ she said as playfully as she could manage. ‘Must be joke. We make agreement to go back to Sydney in two years.’ She added long lugs of olive oil to the mixture and plunged both hands into the bowl. With her fingers she coaxed the kofta mixture together in gentle plucking motions, before using her palms, alternating one after the other to combine the ingredients. The satisfying squelch of the oil as she pummelled the mince and squeezed it between her fingers warmed her to her toes.

  Tom’s eyes focused on the mince. ‘You just never know. You might change your mind. This place has a way of working its way into you. I never thought I’d end up back here,’ he laughed and jammed a hand into his trouser pocket. ‘Course, that’s for you and Fred to decide.’

  ‘We decide already.’

  ‘Sure. Okay … well, if you need anything else, I’ll be on the verandah.’

  His hefty torso almost blocked the dwindling daylight as he passed through the doorway. She stared at a half-cut lemon on the bench. Fawzy wouldn’t do such a donkey-fool thing as buy a pharmacy in this village-town. Her hand went limp as some mince mixture slithered between her fingers onto the floor and her birthmark kicked. He wouldn’t, would he?

  * * *

  The kofta were cooking in the oven. The air was thick with the aroma of ground coriander, cumin, cinnamon, paprika, sumac and parsley. In every corner of Tom’s kitchen was the dance of garlic as she finely chopped a couple of cloves for the ta’leya, a heady sauce of fried garlic, tomato puree, minced chilli pepper and spices that she’d let splutter in a hot pan for five minutes. She would pour it over the fried eggplant, which she’d cut into rings, seconds before serving it to the dinner table. It was the final component. The rice was cooked, the salad chopped, the tahini prepared. Nayeema checked the time. It would be another half-hour before Fawzy arrived.

  She stepped outside into the cooling evening. A briny wind raced through the treetops. Thin clouds splayed across the dimmed sky like flat ribbons of filo pastry. Tom was still seated in his green wicker chair. His socks had rolled down from mid-calf to just above his ankle, to reveal soft and pale skin below the crisp line that the sun had worn into his flesh. His forearms were tanned and freckled. Shallow grooves ran down his forehead to meet his eyebrows, just like Dawud el Al’aan, Dawud the Worried, who roasted the best sugar-coated almonds in Alexandria. Tom’s lips were red and plump and reminded her of David Cassidy�
��s lips. She would never have thought that wrinkles like Tom’s could co-exist with those lips. It wasn’t too great a stretch to imagine that in his younger years, Tom might have looked quite a bit like David Cassidy. His broad nose had an elegant tip. His face was held together stiffly until he smiled; and when he smiled it was as though the rains had come to the delta and flooded its banks.

  ‘Is very beautiful, your view … the sunset. Is very wow,’ she said, and helped herself to a chair next to him. She took in his sprawling backyard, which extended into the next block. Mid-summer roses grew in random combinations alongside a riot of thick green ferns and palms that sprung from the knotted buffalo grass.

  ‘Yeah, I’ve always loved it. I miss it when I’m travelling,’ he boomed into the delicate beginnings of the evening, his eyes steady on the horizon. ‘Do you miss Sydney?’

  ‘Yes, many friends I have there.’ She thought of Jehan in the Paprika Triangle. She thought of the lively conversations that took place in the corridors and hallways of the apartment block on warm evenings when her neighbours occasionally left their children asleep in their beds to have a chat outside. Back in the Paprika Triangle, there was a shared experience of aspirations, failures, humour, and even food, though they all had arrived in Australia with different tongues, cultures, and religions. Oh, she knew that they all talked too: about her self-imposed exile from her brothers in Alexandria, her childless marriage. But people knew who she was back in Sydney. There, she was a part of something.

  She turned her head away from Tom, feeling her cheeks colour for the lack of words at her disposal. Where were the words that could explain the life she had in Sydney? In frustration and embarrassment her mind fell blank and she felt her chest drift up towards her mouth, to where the words should have been. It was times like this that she felt herself contracting in this new country. She patted down the front of her skirt and hoped that she appeared less pathetic than she felt.

  ‘How long were you living there?’

  ‘Only two years,’ she sighed. ‘Just long enough for Fawzy to do his bridging course, you know, at the university. He had to study a second time … his degree from Egypt was not enough, you know. He studied so hard, always studying. I think, maybe, he could have failed just a little … you know, to give us more time in Sydney. I am a city girl. In the city, there is everything.’