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modern, why does he stop to listen to them?’
    ‘In these matters all men are old fashioned,’ said Mother.
    ‘What about the others?’ asked Razia.
    ‘Oh!’ Alzira got up. ‘Next time – I’ll tell you about them next time!’
    ‘There were many then?’
    ‘Yes, lots!’
    ‘How old do you think she is?’ Razia said to no one in particular when Alzira had left.
    ‘Twenty-five,’ Mehroon said knowingly.
    ‘Mummy, do you think it’s too late for her?’
    ‘It all depends on her kismet,’ Mother answered broodingly, picking her chin. ‘She will get whatever’s written for her, good or bad.’
    We knew what she meant – birth, marriage, and death werepreordained, as she often said. You had many choices in life: but not with these three.
    When next time Alzira came down and was cornered we found out that there had been only one other suitor. A dealer in tusks and hides, she said, who operated from Goa. He wrote to her in a long sloping hand, as she showed us. But she didn’t believe he would come for her. ‘He can’t leave his old mother, you see,’ she said. My sisters tried to convince her that she should go and fetch him herself.
    ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘I’ve given him up.’ She looked at me with a smile and announced: ‘I’ll wait for
him
to grow up!’
    ‘Take him now,’ Mother said, ‘I’ve had enough of him!’
    I liked Alzira and was flattered by her remark. There was something in her that deeply touched me and warmed me to her. She was plain but jolly, and deep, kind, not frivolous.

    All of the two months allowed for Maria’s engagement passed without the wedding date being set. The flurry of activity which had begun to enliven their home subsided, and then the preparations ceased altogether. People stopped asking questions. Roshan Mattress humphed when she passed Alzira, and Maria was not to be seen. ‘Gone to become a nun,’ Mrs Daya reported. ‘Gone to visit our aunt,’ said Alzira. She admitted that the wedding had been called off. The man’s mother had been against it all the time. ‘It’s all for the better, he was too much under her influence,’ she said.
    It was Sunday afternoon and Mother was waiting for Alzira to leave before giving the servant the signal to begin the elaborate preparations for closing. Sunday was half day and it was past the time. Mehroon and Razia were upstairs, cooking and cleaning, and only I was with Mother. There was a silence inside the shop, and Mother was staring out, deep in thought. Alzira was busydarning. At this point a sudden commotion arose outside on the pavement, with much shouting and laughing. ‘Tembo-mbili-potea!’ one voice called out, and then another.
    Apparently Tembo-mbili was passing. He was one of Dar’s several crazies, a small, thin Goan man. He had recently taken to passing our street on Sunday afternoons, dragging a foot and being jeered all the way by the Africans in the street. It was said that he had landed from a steamer in delirium one day, muttering ‘Tembo-mbili-potea’ – ‘Two elephants lost.’ The elephants, they said, only referred to the brand of beer that came with the picture of an elephant and the man was drunk, but the name stuck. He had close-cropped hair and always wore a crumpled and dirty ‘khaki and white’. With downcast eyes he shuffled along, looking tired and docile. ‘Tembo-mbili-potea!’ men would jeer when he’d passed them, ‘Tembo … mbili … poteaaa!’ He would ignore them. After some time, his patience worn out, wearily and without a word he would pick up the closest large stone he could find and hurl it at some offender. He would have made a mean fielder. He could throw cleanly across a block, from one end to the other, and the stone would land with a crash on the pavement, sometimes bouncing off walls and doors. No one dared to tease him from up close.
    But this time some bold rascal had stolen up behind him and hitting his arm had dislodged the stone from his