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‘Wake up,’ she said, turning towards Asha’s bed.

  ‘What is it?’ Asha sat up. ‘Is it from Pran?’

  ‘It’s my brother’s writing.’ Jaya opened the letter carefully with a butter knife that she’d snuck out from the mess hall, not wanting to tear a single word inside.

  ‘What does it say?’ Asha came over to her.

  Jaya finished reading and scrunched the letter in her hand.

  ‘What’s happened?’

  ‘They’ve not heard from him.’ Jaya shook her head. ‘They don’t know where he is.’

  ‘But it’s been weeks. No, it’s not possible, let me see.’ Asha scanned the neat Gujarati script inside. ‘Maybe the Indian government have detained him? It’s probably something to do with paperwork. He can’t still be in Uganda. It’s past the expulsion deadline.’

  Jaya looked up at her, the letter rustling in her hand. ‘Of course he could still be in Uganda, just like December.’ Bitterness seeped into Jaya’s words. Uganda still hung over them.

  ‘Don’t think like that, please.’ Asha placed her hand on Jaya’s arm.

  ‘He might have been taken to those camps they talked about.’ Jaya thought back. Idi Amin had warned them all that if anyone dared to stay behind, they’d be rounded up and forced to live in internment camps under army rule. He never said what would happen next.

  Asha stared at her. ‘Pran got out. He must have. It was chaos back there. But he’s safe. He has to be.’

  *

  Everyone was getting tired of their surroundings, even Alia, the little girl in the dormitory. Jaya watched her complaining to her mother one lunchtime in the mess hall. Even though Alia attended classes each morning with the new friends she’d made, she wanted her old bed, and to play out in the sunshine with those she’d left behind. ‘Where are they?’ she demanded. Arm stretched out, Alia curled her body onto her mother’s lap with the grace of a dancer. Why was everything so different, why couldn’t they could go home?

  ‘Look.’ Her mother pointed out of the window at the sky. ‘Not everything’s different. Look at the akash, that’s still blue, just like Jinja, remember?’

  Alia raised her head for a moment, then flopped back down again. The mother stroked the girl’s hair but there was little she could say to comfort her daughter. After all, nothing would bring back the home they’d lost.

  ‘We are going to stay with a Mr and Mrs Thompson of Bedfordshire,’ said Ramniklal, taking a fat chip between his fingers and inspecting it. ‘They have a room for us. And they even have a garden. We’ll leave in a couple of weeks and stay until we can get back on our feet, that’s what they called it in the letter.’

  Jaya found it perplexing. Ordinary British people were giving up rooms in their own homes to ease the burden on the barracks and help families settle across the country. ‘The Europeans’, as the Asians had called them, those who had tended to keep a polite distance in Uganda, were now opening up their homes to them.

  ‘I can’t believe they’ll send you to live with English people,’ said Madhuben. She’d left behind a fleet of cars, a sugar plantation, and a vast house, which Jaya felt she knew intimately, from the pristine lawns to the marble floors, because Madhuben never stopped going on about them.

  ‘They don’t know our customs or our ways.’ Madhuben shook her head. Her grey-brown eyes appeared faded, as though the weeks of tears had drained them of colour. ‘And what if they serve us beef?’

  ‘Or pork,’ said Mrs Khan, who’d left behind a small-town dukan near the Ugandan border. ‘Idi Amin still haunts us, even now. Here we are freezing away, worrying about what we’ll be given to eat by strangers, and he’s lazing about over there with that army of his.’

  What would Jaya give to have Pran here, freezing along with them right now? She kept him close in her heart and her prayers, but she had to focus on getting the rest of them out of the barracks.

  Asha’s voice was curt. ‘I’m sure if you ask politely they’ll not serve it while you’re there.’ She paused, her tone mellowing as she said, ‘They’re taking complete strangers from another country into their homes. How many of us would have done that?’

  The silence said it all.

  ‘Anyway, if I were you,’ Mrs Khan took a spoonful of baked beans and looked at them disdainfully as they slopped back into her plate, ‘I would be more worried about them serving you these.’

  ‘Yes, the food is certainly . . . different,’ said Ramniklal, smiling. He had cheerful eyes, eyebrows slanting upwards in the middle, as if trying to greet each other. He also had an unfortunate habit of speaking with his mouth full, and although he covered it when he spoke, tiny bits of spittle broke away and made their escape, landing on the table in a final dash for glory.

  Food at the camp was a minefield: the beef that was served with large mounds of baked dough put off the Hindus and Jains, and the pork sausages served with mushy potato put off the Muslims (as well as the vegetarian Hindus and all of the Jains).

  ‘At least we can use the kitchen a little,’ said Jaya, taking a chip, which she’d done her best to liven up with salt and plenty of pepper.

  They’d persuaded Mr Hutchinson to let them use the kitchen now and then, headed up by Kamlaben, who had catered every wedding and festival in the Mbarara area, cooking huge quantities of food in huge sufarya, the steel pots hand beaten in the local market. They commandeered a section of the kitchen to make vegetable shaak and rotli.

  Asha had made friends with Jack, who travelled up from Wembley every couple of weeks. He wore a navy turban and had changed his name from Jaswinder because it was easier for people he met at the pub to pronounce. Jack was hazy about how long he’d been in England but the melody of his Punjabi mother tongue was tinged with the broad vowels of a born Londoner: ‘I’ll get you anythin’ you need.’ Jack sold them the fried snacks they’d taken for granted in Uganda, along with all manner of illicit spices, traces of cumin and cardamom contraband drifting through the air despite being packed away in plastic bags.

  ‘Yes, but they still expect us to clean our own toilets. Chi!’ Madhuben pursed her lips.

  ‘Of course they expect us to clean our own toilets,’ said Asha. ‘Anyway, we’ve spent far too long letting other people decide our lives already.’

  Jaya watched her. Despite the dark shadows around Asha’s eyes, they sparkled again with life. And with no word from Pran, that was more important than ever.

  23

  Asha

  Raindrops ran in rivers down the windowpanes, and a grey haze settled across the mess hall. Asha looked along the metal trays of free food. Of course she was grateful, but what she would have given to eat thepla, to tear off the warm flatbread with swirls of fenugreek and dip each piece into a little butter.

  Jaya joined her in the queue and picked up a cheese and tomato sandwich, one of the few foods she was happy to eat (though she took out the slabs of cheese, complaining that they tasted like soured milk).

  ‘What time do you think Vijay will be back?’ Jaya asked. He’d gone with some of his friends from the barracks to look around the local shops but she wasn’t keen on him going out alone. There’d been stories about some of the young men being harassed and called names. Perhaps it would be better when they moved to London. They’d started making plans to move out of the camp, but they needed to save up some money first.

  ‘He didn’t say, but there’s a group of them, he’ll be fine.’ After months of rushing home for curfew, was it any wonder he wasn’t in a hurry to rush back now? Asha was spending more time than ever before with Jaya, but she didn’t mind, not with her own family so far away in India, sporadic letters her only connection to them.

  ‘As long as he doesn’t forget about getting a job.’

  Asha didn’t have the heart to tell Jaya how her son had been treated at the jobcentre. She didn’t want to dampen her hopes yet again.

  ‘Both my children are giving me too much cause to worry.’ Jaya tried to make light of it, but she couldn’t
hide the concern in her voice. ‘But perhaps we will hear from Pran this week,’ she said, so quietly that Asha had to move closer to hear her.

  What could Asha say? It had been two weeks since Jaya’s brother’s letter. They’d have heard by now if for some reason the Indian government had detained him. Panic gripped her once again as she remembered the haunted look in Naseem’s eyes while he threw his money into the fire, the empty storeroom after December disappeared. Pran must have made it to India, he must have. She wouldn’t let herself think about the alternatives.

  They moved to the front of the queue, putting food on their plates as they went. As Asha waited for Jaya to pour some water, she overheard a group of three women talking in hushed voices at a nearby table. Snippets of chatter carried across the mess hall bustle: ‘nasty soldiers’, ‘she might not be able to marry’.

  Asha glanced over to Jaya, who was engaged in conversation with an elderly gentleman.

  One of the women at the table, who wore a green salwar kameez with a cardigan buttoned over the top, carried on talking. ‘And then they dragged her away, two soldiers, her father screaming.’ She shook her head. ‘But there was nothing he could do.’

  Nothing he could do. The girl who’d been taken by the soldier could do nothing either, but it was the men they focused on: the soldiers who attacked her, the father left behind. A silent space for the girl, except for how it related to her ‘ruined honour’.

  ‘They’ve wrecked her life,’ said the woman opposite her.

  Asha put down her plate at the women’s table, her hands flat against the wood. She looked each of them in the eye. ‘All you can think about is how these women are tainted? That’s the worst part of all of this? Not what happened to them?’

  ‘That’s not—’ The woman in the green salwar began to speak, but her voice faded. Her gaze darted across the room. Everyone was staring.

  ‘Asha,’ Jaya called gently.

  ‘Gossiping like this?’ said Asha, thinking of the soldier’s hand on her. Thinking of Grace and the fury in her eyes when she guessed they’d all been talking about her at Mrs Goswami’s house. They’d never be free of the memories. A wound that never heals.

  The women bowed their heads down at their plates. Was this how people thought about her?

  ‘Asha,’ Jaya said again, coming over and taking her arm. ‘Come.’

  She stayed where she was, staring at the women. She wouldn’t move until they’d looked her in the eye.

  Jaya led her to another table in silence. It would never leave her, Asha thought, the attack, haunting her. The thoughts and comments of others, following her like spectres wherever she went.

  Asha and Jaya sat down, staring at the plates of food as they grew cold in front of them.

  *

  The next morning, Asha joined Jaya and Vijay on a large blanket on the mess hall floor. The bright blue sky and the crisp sunlight that filled the room still surprised her, playing tricks on her, making her think it was warm enough out there to go outside in a cotton blouse and skirt.

  Jaya and a few of the others from the barracks had set up a makeshift temple in the mess hall after breakfast. They’d draped a table with a bandhani sari; intricate tie-dyed yellow dots swirled across the red cotton. On top, there was a collection of metal and wooden-carved deities that they’d managed to cobble together between them.

  Asha marvelled at the way Jaya had coped. Every day, she was up by seven o’clock, braving the chilly mornings to get ready and say her prayers. She’d got to know the other women in the dormitories, their names, where they used to live, what kinds of business their families had left behind. Jaya still talked about her old life, but she focused on the good memories: the trips to temple, the funny things Mrs Goswami used to say, family outings to Entebbe. It was almost as though she was trying to rewrite their history and pretend that the bad things had never happened, that the life she’d enjoyed for many years was perfectly preserved, untainted by the horror.

  Asha tried not to look back; she needed to make new memories as quickly as possible. Bury the old ones forever, hoping that the noise around her, the cacophony of languages, the daily sounds of life, could drown out the past.

  Once everyone was settled, one of the men began the prayer songs. Asha joined in, as she always did. She’d been brought up on trips to the temple every Sunday morning, not to mention for festivals and weddings. There were even trips to the gurudwara during Vaisakhi and congregations outside the mosque during Eid. Like everyone she knew, Asha had been wrapped up in this medley of religion all her life: a part of her as familiar as the magnolia trees in her family home or the sound of the street sellers hawking their wares. But had she really thought about the reasons for all the rituals? She’d gone along with the rules, never questioning any of it. Your deeds came back to you, that’s what she’d been taught. But then, if that was true, after everything that had happened, why wasn’t Idi Amin’s body bobbing in the Nile along with those of his victims?

  Jaya, on the other hand, held onto her faith as tightly as she clung to her mara. There was certainty in her prayer beads, never faltering. Each morning in the barracks dormitory, Jaya lit agarbatti, despite the fact that Mr Hutchinson had told them all that lighting matches or candles was forbidden. Even Jaya could rebel when it suited her.

  And then there was Vijay, like so many men Asha knew, dutifully attending temple as often as necessary, sitting peacefully and praying, eyes shut tight. What did Vijay really think? Their religion told them that misdeeds in your past lives led to hardship in the present one. No one said it out loud, but it could only mean that they believed that Vijay’s arm was a kind of punishment.

  Asha took in the rhythmic chanting of temple hymns, the chime of the finger cymbals: a comfort, a constant. But as she said the words, whispering the prayers her mother had taught her when Asha could barely write her own name, it was the sound, the familiar beat, the memory of saying them hundreds of times that she clung to. The words themselves had lost their meaning.

  When the group stopped, in the quiet moment for silent prayers, she could no longer fight the thoughts, couldn’t fight the reminder of the army barracks, forcing her mind back to those last days in Uganda. She thought of Pran, trying to conjure his smiling face, the small hollow of his dimples beneath her fingers, but all she saw was that dull look in his eyes the night that December had disappeared. How he’d stood there, frozen, while Vijay lay on the floor of the kitchen. Shock, fear perhaps? Pran, the one who usually took charge.

  She kept her eyes shut tight, grasping for another memory of her husband, the musky yet sweet scent of him. But all that came to her was the image of the soldier. Fingernails digging into her arms. Her thoughts of Pran, tainted.

  24

  Jaya

  Outside the barracks, frost coated the blades of grass and the pearly-white leaves shivered in the wind. Inside, ice crystals had gathered along the window frames and pockets of cold air lingered in corners where the electric heaters couldn’t reach. Jaya wrapped herself in her thickest saal and joined Vijay in the hallway, following the other residents to the mess hall.

  Mrs Boswell stood at the entrance to the dining area, pink cheeks glowing. She opened the doors to the hall, calling out a cheerful greeting that Jaya didn’t understand.

  Every possible surface, tables, walls, even the ceiling, was covered in red, green and gold. Glossy leaves and red berries, paper and foil garlands looped across the walls, although one garland that had intricate shapes cut into it was now lying pitifully on the floor. Mrs Boswell picked it up, expanding it out like an accordion and hammering the end back onto the wall with her fist.

  ‘This reminds me of Saila’s wedding,’ muttered Jaya, looking around.

  ‘But with worse singing,’ Vijay grinned.

  ‘What is all this?’ Jaya pulled out a hankie from the cuff of her cardigan and blew her nose.

  ‘It’s Christmas, do you remember?’ Vijay helped himself to some dark cake with w
hite icing, the clove and cinnamon scent reminding her of her own childhood sweets.

  Jaya nodded, recalling the days off that December took each year, along with some of the other neighbourhood workers, to visit family or attend church. Her throat burned at the memory of him. She blinked back her tears. ‘But we’re not Christian?’

  ‘No, but Mrs Boswell said she thought it would be nice for us to celebrate with them, the way we included them in ours.’ A sultana fell to the floor as he took another bite of the cake.

  Jaya looked around and now recognized the fairy lights draped across a window, and the red candles that had been lined up on one of the tables that Mrs Boswell had put out in November so that they could celebrate Divari.

  The barracks volunteers stood in a line, proudly singing songs from paper booklets. She wondered what they sang about. Like the temple songs, some of the music was gentle, almost melancholy, while others were jolly and upbeat. The younger children, faces lit up with glee, chattered around the dark-green tree in the corner, wooden decorations hanging from its branches, presents sparkling underneath.

  Asha rushed into the mess hall, stuffing an airmail letter into Jaya’s hands. She looked down, her eyes filling with tears as she took in the words, the handwriting.

  Pran’s handwriting.

  They hurried out into the hallway. ‘You didn’t open it?’ said Vijay.

  ‘I wanted to wait until we were together,’ Asha said. And delay the bad news? Jaya wondered.

  ‘At least it shows he’s OK.’ Vijay ran his hand through his hair. ‘I mean, he wrote the letter.’

  The hope in his voice made Jaya hopeful too. She looked over at Asha, whose face was pale.

  Jaya stared at the patchy charcoal postmark in the corner, something she didn’t recognize, definitely not India. She opened the letter, heart soaring at the sight of the familiar neat loops and lines of Pran’s handwriting.

  ‘I’ve left my reading glasses in the room,’ said Jaya, the words blurry in front of her.