The Minorities Read online

“I couldn’t sleep.”

  “Ergo…waffles?”

  “I thought I’d prepare them now. We can have an early breakfast later.” Her eyes sparkled alive for a moment. “Get a head start on our project.”

  My heart warmed. I had done nothing to warrant Shanti’s dedication to our project—let alone her dedication to me, for that matter—but here she was, leading, and feeding, the charge.

  I stopped beaming when I realised that introductions were in order. I placed a hand on the newcomer’s shoulder. “Shanti, this is Cantona.”

  She smiled uneasily. “Hello, Cantona. Welcome!”

  “Hi, Shanti,” he said shyly.

  “I’m sorry you caught me at a bad time,” said Shanti, pulling at the hem of her T-shirt.

  Cantona mumbled several sentences rapidly that, from the look on her face, neither Shanti nor I caught. I discerned, barely, the muddled phrases, “I’m the one who’s sorry”, “I must smell like a pig covered in a dead pig” and “I’m usually more presentable than this”.

  Into the ensuing silence, I told Shanti, “He will be staying with us for a while. Until he’s ready to get back into the water.”

  “No problem at all,” said Shanti. “What do you do, Cantona?”

  Cantona began stuttering, so I replied for him, “Cantona here is on the run.” The man shot me a look of complete panic, to which I addressed, “Don’t worry, we can trust Shanti.”

  Shanti’s tone, however, had shifted greatly. “Well it depends, what are you on the run from?”

  “From my former employers,” said Cantona, whose head seemed to have bowed even more.

  “Chang and Sons,” I elaborated, sensing that Shanti was in information-gathering mode. “A local construction company.” I told her about how we met, and the conversation we had en route.

  “Why?” Shanti directed the singular word to Cantona, and my sympathies went out to him. She tended to get dogged in the pursuit of truth and facts—it made her a great lab assistant, and a formidable interrogator. “Why are you running away from them?”

  “Because I don’t want to be a construction worker anymore,” Cantona said to the floor.

  “What do you want to be then?”

  “An artist,” replied Cantona, in the same manner one might reveal that one has herpes.

  “How do you expect to be an artist, Mr Cantona?”

  “Well, I’ve been painting…”

  “So has my six-year-old niece, but nobody’s calling her an artist,” Shanti replied sharply.

  The poor fool began stammering. “I’ve sent my art to Hilda Auger.”

  “And who might that be?” Shanti’s voice was barbs hidden behind silk. She then took out her phone, and began typing away furiously.

  Cantona saw this and couldn’t tear his eyes off her fingers jouncing across the surface of her phone as he replied, “He— She’s, well, a famous art corrector, I mean, curator and collector, who’s in Singapore now collecting works by expatriates and foreign workers for…for an exhibition in June.”

  “How do you spell Auger?” Shanti asked. Cantona told her. There was a short pause before Shanti turned her head to me and said, “It checks out.”

  “That’s settled then,” I said, breaking out of my growing discomfort. “Cantona, you can stay with us.”

  Her eyes never leaving our guest, Shanti crossed her arms, not caring that the oversized T-shirt she wore rode up. “We’ll be accessories to a crime if we let him stay with us.”

  “This man has nowhere to go, Shanti.”

  “Yes, he does,” Shanti said. “Back to Bangladesh.”

  “No, please,” Cantona cried, his desperate eyes turning to me. “Please, I do not want to go back there. There is nothing for me in Bangladesh.”

  I knew what I had to say, and I hated the fact that it had come to this. “Shanti, I am letting Cantona stay in my house, and that’s that.”

  “If they find this illegal immigrant here, it won’t be just you who gets into trouble.” Shanti turned to Cantona, and softened her voice, “Look, I have nothing against you, I truly don’t. But for as long as you’re here, we’re breaking the law by harbouring you illegally.”

  “Perfect,” I said triumphantly at “breaking the law”. “That decides it, then. Cantona, welcome to your new home.”

  I moved past Seventeen Lives, still wondering which of the two cats in the painting had eight out of its nine lives remaining. I also wondered if a cat with eight lives lived a partial existence, with one-ninth of its identity lost to that abyss in the red-and-white striped hat of life, or if it had eight full lives left to lose.

  I wondered if I should get a pet cat.

  The function hall of the Asian Civilisations Museum was abuzz with chatter, and the waves of attendees ebbed and crested around Our Ziggurat, undulating from one cluster of paintings to the next. There was still no sign of Tights.

  The third painting by Cantona was of a barren land ending in a canyon so deep it felt like the very boundaries of the world. A line of donkeys walked the land, towards the edge of the canyon. Some of the donkeys were falling off the edge, and the ones that had fallen were morphing—melting—into grotesque grey globs of sullen humanoid faces wearing expressions of despair and sorrow.

  I glanced down at its label. Assess Your Head.

  “What is the worst thing about death?” asked a great feminine voice behind me. “That you are lifeless? Or that you are meaningless?”

  I turned to find Hilda Auger, hands clasped behind her. “Hello, Miss Hilda,” I said, clasping my hands behind my back. “Maybe the worst thing about death is that you never get to see donkeys again.”

  “It’s a rather sordid painting, isn’t it?” she said. “Asses ambling to their death, and in those death throes, they transform into some horrible semblance of humanity.” She seemed to be testing me, prodding me with her seemingly disdainful attitude towards Cantona’s art.

  “There is a certain dark beauty to it,” I said. “This piece was painted with hope.”

  “And hope is signified by this line of donkeys?”

  “Have you heard of the Mongolian Pony Express?” I turned away from Hilda, back towards Cantona’s painting.

  “Can’t believe I have.”

  “When Temujin—”

  “Who’s Temujin?”

  I pressed on. “When Genghis Khan’s empire began expanding rapidly, he knew that consolidating political power was not as easy as winning wars. So, he created the Pony Express, a network of relay stations to transport supplies and intelligence between encampments and settlements and towns and conquered cities. Ponies and mules were its lifeblood. Mr Nocta saw hope in—”

  Hilda interjected, “Who are you to Mr Nocta?” She was wearing a thin-lipped smile.

  “I am his friend.”

  “What is your name?” she asked.

  “Jamal,” I replied, trying to keep my right hand from trembling.

  “Does he live with you, Jamal?”

  “No,” I said, perhaps too quickly.

  Hilda began eyeing me from my hair to my shoes. “You’re local. How did a Singaporean man come to befriend a foreign worker?”

  “Why are you suspicious about two human beings becoming friends?”

  She answered briskly, “Mr Nocta’s art has attracted the attention of several high-value individuals. Your friend is a brilliant artist, that much is clear.” I wanted to smile. Cantona’s art was good, and Cantona’s art deserved the attention of individuals of values both high and low. But… “For a transaction to occur, I need complete transparency from the artist, or somebody who represents him. Now, I know A. N. Nocta is not his real name but for some reason, when I asked him for it, he told me to come to you. Imagine that.”

  I chuckled. “I’m as qualified to represent Mr Nocta as I am qualified to be Scarlett Johansson’s body double.”

  Hilda remained silent. Confusion flashed across her eyes.

  “She’s an actress—”


  “I’m a busy woman, Mr Jamal,” she interjected impatiently.

  “With a choir of assistants and yet you come to me.”

  She sighed, and her features softened. “Let me put my cards on the table. I want to help your friend, but for as long as I’ve known him, he’s been very secretive about where he’s from, where he lives—even his real name.”

  “I’m sure he has his reasons.”

  “Be that as it may, I cannot sell his art in Singapore if I cannot furnish the artist’s full details in the bill of sale and the contract for the transfer of ownership.”

  I attempted a shrug. “Don’t sell it in Singapore, then.”

  “I would very much like to sell it in your country’s currency, Mr Jamal.” She began pointing her index finger to the floor. “There. One more card on the table.”

  “Sell it in a country with a stronger currency. The States—”

  “—have a President who cut arts patronage and has bred a zeitgeist of suspicion towards foreigners.”

  “Europe?”

  “Jamal, I have buyers here. I have people who want to buy Mr Nocta’s art in Singaporean dollars. I have an opportunity to establish my name in the art industry here.” She touched my arm. “We have an opportunity to establish Mr Nocta’s name in the art industry here. His art recalls the Renaissance—collectors love that. We can make him rich.”

  I glanced around. I couldn’t see any of my friends. I tried not to sigh, but she had a point. Cantona could be rich—but it meant he would have to go back to Bangladesh. “Speak to Can—Mr Nocta. Lay your cards out for him. Let him know what’s truly at stake. If he agrees to share the information you need, then I’ll be his rep.”

  “Very well.” She bestowed upon me a radiant smile, this goddess of Toil & Canvas. Then she turned and walked back towards the VIP bar.

  My right hand was still quivering, as it always did when I lied. I told two lies to Hilda, and I hoped she didn’t spot my tell.

  Cantona hates donkeys.

  After my father’s death, his room was left practically untouched, except by a steadily thickening film of dust. The room was spartan. There was a small metal bed with a thin mattress and pillows that looked like large white bricks, a writing table so tiny it looked like a high stool and a cupboard barely a metre wide.

  When Cantona first laid eyes upon the room, he had said, “It’s perfect, sir.”

  “Make yourself at home,” I told him, stepping into the room for the first time in weeks. “It’s yours for as long as you need.”

  He stopped by the bed. “I cannot afford to pay you rent.”

  “I know,” I told him. “You don’t have to.”

  “I will never be able to repay you.”

  “I don’t remember asking you to.”

  He stared at me, studying me, I believed, for signs of sarcasm or sinister intent.

  “You can stay as long as you’d like, and you can leave any time you want,” I told him. “There’s no catch.”

  A smile danced fleetingly across his face. “Thank you,” he said, almost sadly.

  I put a hand on his shoulder. “Now, settle in. Let me get you something to eat.”

  “There’s no need—”

  “—I insist.”

  I headed to the kitchen, where Shanti was now preparing a cup of coffee. She avoided my eyes, only a slight tilt of the head betraying her acknowledgement of my presence.

  I called out to her from across the kitchen, soft, low, apologetic. She said, “Hey,” soft, low and apologetic as well.

  Shanti came closer, leaving her cup of dark brown powder balancing precariously on hot water. “I’m sorry about just now. You risked so much taking me in—it’s not fair for me to question your decision,” she said, so close I could see the creases near her brows that underlined her guilt.

  “It’s not me you should be apologising to,” I said to her, walking over to stir Shanti’s cup of coffee-powder-hot-water.

  At the old, fraying fridge, I extracted a small can of condensed milk. I poured two teaspoons of the stuff into the cup, and stirred lightly. I then turned back to Shanti, and placed the cup gently in her hands.

  “Why did you even bring him here?” she asked, taking a sip of coffee as sweet as night.

  “Remember what I said to you on your first night here?”

  “‘I don’t have women’s clothes to lend you?”

  “No, not that!”

  Shanti laughed, and after she stopped, a look of terrible guilt settled upon her face. “Yeah, I know, I know,” she said. She took another sip of coffee, as dawn’s symphony of cricket songs and fading traffic crept into the kitchen.

  “Where are the waffles you made?”

  I prepared a tray, a plate and a cup as Shanti retired to her room.

  “I’ve been meaning to ask,” I said to Cantona several minutes later, setting a tray of waffles, bananas and hot cocoa on my father’s old desk. Something rattled in the tray, and I saw that it was a stray almond.

  Cantona was sitting on the bed, fresh from a shower, clad in one of my father’s old T-shirts and linen harem pants. “Ask away, my friend.”

  I took the chair by the table. “Why don’t you want to go back to Bangladesh?”

  “Let me tell you about life in Bangladesh.”

  I leaned forward, always eager to hear stories of exotic locales and colourful cultures. “Tell me.”

  “I lived with my uncle in Comilla. He owns a dairy farm. Every night, he makes love to goats.”

  “Makes love as in…”

  “He—how do you say?—fucks them.”

  “Ah.” I sat less upright.

  “It was difficult living there with him,” Cantona went on. “Every night, I could hear him sneaking out into the barn and having his way with them. Everyone else in our village knew, and they made jokes behind his back. They called him Jamal the Goat Fucker.”

  “Is your uncle’s name Jamal?”

  “Yes.”

  “Your townspeople are a straightforward folk.”

  “They are.”

  There was a question weighing heavily on my mind, graver than the grave and more pressing than the press. “Does your uncle only do female goats? Does he do male goats as well?”

  “I don’t know! Possibly?”

  “Then it’s bigoatry, what he’s doing.”

  “Isn’t it pronounced—oh, wait.” And then Cantona laughed and laughed.

  I smiled. “You’re the first person I’ve met who personally knows someone who’s actually into bestiality.”

  “Don’t get me wrong,” Cantona said. “Bangladesh beyond that is beautiful.”

  “No doubt,” I replied doubtfully, unable to shake off the image of an older, more wizened version of Cantona caressing a billy goat gruffly as the defining representation of Bangladesh. “Where are your parents in all this?”

  His eyes left mine. “They passed some time ago.”

  “I’m sorry to bring it up. I didn’t mean to.”

  Our eyes met again. “It’s all right,” he said. “It was a long time ago.”

  “May I ask how they passed?”

  Cantona sighed.

  “You don’t have to answer,” I said quickly.

  “No, it’s not that,” said Cantona, who suddenly appeared more tired than when I had picked him up after his mad run through the jungle. He took a deep breath, as though steeling himself for a punch. Then he told me, “My father died when I was five. He was on his way to catch the Champions League final between Manchester United and Bayern Munich at Camp Nou.”

  “Did he make it to Barcelona?”

  “No.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that. Did his plane crash?”

  “No, he was riding an ass—”

  “He was riding an ass?”

  “A mule,” clarified Cantona. “He joined a mule caravan that would bring him to Turkey, and from there, he would take a ship across the Mediterranean to Barcelona. He didn’t even make it out
of Bangladesh.”

  “What happened?”

  “The caravan got ambushed by bandits. My father was shot dead in

  the skirmish.”

  “I’m so sorry, Cantona.”

  “Don’t be. It was a long time ago.”

  “How did your mother take it?”

  “Pretty well. She moved us in with my uncle. For six years, she worked two jobs. She helped at my uncle’s farm and worked at an Internet café in town.”

  “What happened after those six years?”

  “She died.”

  I then hated myself for having begun this conversation.

  He was still talking, but now his voice seemed uneven, staggering under the weight of what he was about to tell me. “They were only teenagers—kids from town whose parents we knew. They were bad kids, they’d go to the café and do terrible things. Eventually, the café owner had enough, and he banned porn sites and deleted all hacking tools, and the kids, they started getting angry. One night, when Mother was working, they came over and they started trashing the place. They had cricket bats and they bashed at computers, at the walls. They broke open the till and stole the cash. Mother tried to call the police, but one of them cut the telephone cables with a knife. He said, ‘You’re Cantona’s mother, aren’t you?’ Mother, she nods proudly but it was a stupid, stupid, stupid thing to do. They laughed and spat at her, called her a disgrace for giving me a foreign name. They then took turns kung-fu-kicking her, like Eric Cantona did to that Crystal Palace fan all those years ago—only they were drunk and worked up, with violence in their souls, thirsting for blood. Mother died on the way to the hospital from head injuries.” Cantona paused. He was not crying. He clenched his jaw. “And where was I? At the dye factory, working overtime so I could buy a fucking paintbrush.”

  It was then that it hit me: of course he ran from his employers. Of course he took matters into his own hands. Of course he risked deportation. His life was lacerated with gashes of tragic helplessness. I was glad to give him refuge, but I doubted I could lift the burden upon his soul.

  A strangling unease coursed through my body. I was too familiar with this man, whom I had met mere hours ago. I knew too much of his life, too soon. It felt like he had encroached into my personal space, and erected shrines of bleeding effigies upon my being.