Beauty by Raphael Selbourne

again. And so it went on. Eventually Dulal tried to reason with her.
    ‘Who else is gonna marry you? You ain’t gonna find anyone – you’re ugly, dark and dumb – who’s gonna look at you? Anyone marries you’s gonna drag you by the hair and kick you out the kitchen door.’
    She’d heard it before, but her brother’s words always hurt more than his punches. And what if he was right? With a broken marriage behind her, who would look at her? And it was true, she was dark-skinned; darker than anyone else in the family.
    The men left the room. Beauty’s mother pushed past them to comfort her child, and persuade her to do what was right. It wouldn’t be so bad, she said. Once she’d spent a couple of years with Habib Choudhury and divorced him she would be free to come back home and look after the family.
    Later on, after they’d eaten the food Beauty had prepared, Dulal told her to stay downstairs and not go up to Sharifa’s room where their mum would be explaining everything to the little girl. That her big sister would be going away again soon. Back home or to Saudi Arabia. Beauty would have liked to have gone upstairs to liedown with her mother and sister, and feel their warmth on either side of her, but
Bhai-sahb
and the old man rarely let her do that.
    Beauty got up from the sofa and went to the window to look down on the estate. There was more life outside at this time of night. Scary black blokes in hooded tops and young Iraqis moved about in the darkness below her. She’d be on a flight back to Bangladesh, or Saudi Arabia, as soon as they’d fixed everything. How long? In two weeks? A month?
    They were all tired of fighting now. Tonight had been the last time.
    I’ll go there, get married, and come straight back, aynit?
    No, you won’t. They’ll keep you there until you do what everyone wants. You’ll give in eventually.
    Al-lh, I gotta get out.
    How? You got no money. Where you gonna sleep?
    In the station.
    You’ll get raped by black blokes.
    They got places for Asians in London.
    They’ll find you wandering about and stick you in a loony bin, the same way what happened to Fatima.
    I am faggol like her. Crazy.
    Outside, the rain fell through the glow of the street lamps. Beauty looked at the squat buildings below her in the darkness, and across the road to the tower block. What would it be like to live there, alone, and look down from its windows? Free.
    To do what?
    Stuff. Like walk to the shops on my own and talk to people. I won’t have to stay in, looking out of the
window. I won’t have to listen to the old man shouting at my mum. I won’t have to turn the TV over when they kiss on EastEnders
.
    You can’t watch people kissing on TV. Thass gross!
    OK then, I won’t have to cook and clean for them again, ever.
    But Mum can’t do it; she’s ill.
    She aynt ill, she just says that to make me do everything. Anyway, Sharifa can learn how to do them stuff. She’s old enough.
    She’s only nine.
    So? I started when I was that age.
    Thass a different story. You were born back home. Nowadays-girls don’t learn to cook.
    So the old man can help out. Mum won’t have to do it all. Bhai-sahb’s a good cook, too. And at Eid I won’t have to cook for everyone and sit alone.
    You’ll always be alone.
    I’ll meet people. Not everyone out there’s a monster.
    Who’s gonna be friends with a dumb corner-girl?
    Maybe I’ll stop being dumb. I could try the reading thing again.
    That aynt gonna work. They tried everything.
    Like what, the mullah’s pervert brother?
    What else you gonna do?
    I’ll be able to … to go out at night.
    Thass for Sikhs. You’re a Muslim girl.
    Muslim girls don’t go out? I saw what they were like in Dhaka. I’ll be able to wear what I want, too.
    What about Mum?
    She’ll be OK. They can tell people I’m ill. Gone to hospital. And the fighting’s gonna stop if I go. It’s gonna be better for the kids too. Fa ranná. This aynt good for them.
    *
    It’s a zinna