Love in a Blue Time by Hanif Kureishi Page A

will be arriving on the 5th. Please meet her at the airport. So generous of you to offer. Look after her, she is the most precious thing in the entire world to me.
    Much love.
    At the bottom Nadia has written: ‘Looking forward to seeing you both soon.’
    Hummmm …
    Ma pours herself more coffee and considers everything. She has these terrible coffee jags. Her stomach must be like distressed leather. She is determined to be businesslike, not emotional. She says I have to cancel the visit.
    ‘It’s simple. Just write a little note and say there’s been a misunderstanding.’
    And this is how I react: ‘I don’t believe it! Why? No way! But why?’ Christ, don’t I deserve to die, though God knows I’ve tried to die enough times.
    ‘Because, Nina, I’m not at all prepared for this. I really don’t know that I want to see this sister of yours. She symbolises my betrayal by your father.’
    I clear the table of our sugar-free jam (no additives).
    ‘Symbolises?’ I say. ‘But she’s a person.’
    Ma gets on her raincoat and collects last night’s marking. You look very plain, I’m about to say. She kisses me on the head. The girls at school adore her. There, she’s a star.
    But I’m very severe. Get this: ‘Ma. Nadia’s coming. Or I’m going. I’m walking right out that door and it’ll be junk and prostitution just like the old days.’
    She drops her bag. She sits down. She slams her car keys on the table. ‘Nina, I beg you.’
2
    Heathrow. Three hours we’ve been here, Ma and I, burying our faces in doughnuts. People pour from the exit like released prisoners to walk the gauntlet of jumping relatives and chauffeurs holding cards: Welcome Ngogi of Nigeria.
    But no Nadia. ‘My day off,’ Ma says, ‘and I spend it in an airport.’
    But then. It’s her. Here she comes now. It is her! I know it is! I jump up and down waving like mad! Yes, yes, no, yes! At last! My sister! My mirror.
    We both hug Nadia, and Ma suddenly cries and her nose runs and she can’t control her mouth. I cry too and I don’t even know who the hell I’m squashing so close to me. Until I sneak a good look at the girl.
    You. Every day I’ve woken up trying to see your face, and now you’re here, your head jerking nervously, saying little, with us drenching you. I can see you’re someone I know nothing about. You make me very nervous.
    You’re smaller than me. Less pretty, if I can say that. Bigger nose. Darker, of course, with a glorious slab of hair like a piece of chocolate attached to your back. I imagined, Idon’t know why (pure prejudice, I suppose), that you’d be wearing the national dress, the baggy pants, the long top and light scarf flung all over. But you have on FU jeans and a faded blue sweatshirt – you look as if you live in Enfield. We’ll fix that.
    *
    Nadia sits in the front of the car. Ma glances at her whenever she can. She has to ask how Nadia’s father is.
    ‘Oh yes,’ Nadia replies. ‘Dad. The same as usual, thank you. No change really, Debbie.’
    ‘But we rarely see him,’ Ma says.
    ‘I see,’ Nadia says at last.
    ‘So we don’t,’ Ma says, her voice rising, ‘actually know what “same as usual” means.’
    Nadia looks out of the window at green and grey old England. I don’t want Ma getting in one of her resentful states.
    After this not another peep for about a decade and then road euphoria just bursts from Nadia.
    ‘What good roads you have here! So smooth, so wide, so long!’
    ‘Yes, they go all over,’ I say.
    ‘Wow. All over.’
    Christ, don’t they even have fucking roads over there?
    Nadia whispers. We lean towards her to hear about her dear father’s health. How often the old man pisses now, running for the pot clutching his crotch. The sad state of his old gums and his obnoxious breath. Ma and I watch this sweetie compulsively, wondering who she is: so close to us and made from my substance, and yet so other, telling us about Dad with an outrageous intimacy we can