Tamarind Mem Read Online Free PDF Page A

don’t tease Linda Ayah.”

    Two afternoons later, when Ma took her nap, I crawled through the hedge again. I couldn’t see anyone in the verandah; the screens were rolled up and rattled slightly in the breeze. So I was startled when the Nigerian’s apartment door banged open and he appeared suddenly. He glanced down the length of the verandah, spotted me and smiled. “Hey, little girl,” he called. “What you doing there, eh?”
    He knew that I was the nosy-parker girl and now he was going to yell at me. I edged back towards the safety of the besharam hedge. Would he catch me before I could squeeze through the hole to my own garden? Did it hurt to be turned into a moth and put in a bottle? My mouth was dry, my ponytail stuck to my neck.
    “Hey, hey!” said the man, his voice so loud in the still afternoon. “Visiting your neighbour? I met your Daddy at work today.”
    Don’t
shout
so, I thought, Ma might wake up. Linda Ayah might come running to see what’s going on.
    He knew my Dadda, so he couldn’t be bad. He also had pink palms, I could see that now. He was not a
hubshi.
    “I am sorry I was peeping at you,” I said.
    “Ah, a curious girl aren’t you? Not as curious as my little girl, though.”
    “You have a little girl?”
    “Yes, yes, and two boys, but my little girl is the smart one, eh?”
    “What does she do?”
    “She reads books better than her Daddy and Mam, that’s what,” said the man. “Can you read?”
    “Of course I can!” I replied. “Does your little girl read about Nora and Tilly?”
    “I don’t know about Noratilly, but she knows Tongua the jackal and Nubi the Mighty King,” said the man. “Do you want to hear those stories? Better than your Noratilly.”
    He stared out at the garden. “In a river lived a wicked crocodile and across the river lived Nubi the Mighty Who Ruled the Land,” he began, and I was instantly entranced. The story ended quickly, however, and the man said in a soft, sad voice, “That happened long-long ago when the land was green and the river heavy with water.”
    “And now, isn’t the land green now?” I was puzzled by the change in his voice, for when he told the story it became singsong, swinging up and down, assuming different pitches for the various characters: the crocodile, the king, the jackals and the little princess who could balance ten pots of water on her head without dropping a single one.
    “No, now it is as brown as these little sparrows,” he said pointing at the tiny chattering birds hopping on the dusty grass growing through the cracks in the cement paving outside the verandah.
    “My Linda Ayah can catch the sparrows in her sari,” I said.
    “Why you want to catch those little fellows, eh?”
    “I don’t keep them,” I said, a little frightened. I had remained standing through the story, poised to run down the verandah if the man showed any sign of anger. “I just look at them and let them fly away.”
    “I’ll show you something,” said the man. “Wait here.”
    He went into his apartment and returned a few minutes later with a few grains of rice in his hand. “Now keep very still and watch,” he said, squatting on the edge of the verandah and stretching his hand out slowly to where thesparrows pecked and hopped. The grains of rice sat invitingly on his pink palm. The sparrows hopped closer to the palm, pecking ceaselessly at the dry ground. Then a daring one fluttered on to his hand, picked up a grain and flew away. Another sparrow did the same thing. The man sat motionless as a third sparrow landed on the outstretched palm. It did not fly away; instead it stayed there as the man gently closed his fingers around the tiny body and stroked its head.
    “See,” he said, “not afraid of me. It says to itself, this man, he is kind, he won’t hurt any living thing.”
    He opened his hand and the bird flew down to the ground again, throwing up little pinwheels of dust as it scrabbled for grains of rice. Outside the