A House Called Askival by Merryn Glover

from the tawa . Iqbal served them with small flourishes and fragments of song, and Ruth found herself laughing and caught a glow in her father’s hawk eyes.
    Throughout the meal, Iqbal beamed at her like she was his own child, plying her with extra helpings and questions.
    â€˜Did you manage to eat that rubbish they gave you on the plane?’
    â€˜Oh yes. I always eat it. Every last cracker.’
    â€˜You must have been so, so hungry! Here, have some more gosht .’ And he dolloped the mutton on her plate as if trying to compensate for years of inadequate rations.
    â€˜Oh thanks. No, I wasn’t that hungry. Just the habit of a life time. I can’t leave food.’
    â€˜Never allowed to,’ James said.
    â€˜Say that again. If you didn’t eat something on the plane, Mom would wrap it in a napkin and you’d get it for your next meal.’
    â€˜Waste not want not!’ chimed Iqbal, lifting a finger.
    Ruth tore her chapatti in half and scooped up a piece of slippery mutton. She shot a look at James.
    â€˜Oh yes,’ she said, dragging her words. ‘We never wasted anything.’
    Pencils had been used till they were stumps and pages from old notebooks folded into medicine packets for the pharmacy. Clothes were patched and repaired, old sweaters re-knitted as socks. Food was never thrown out, not even a grain of rice. And as for time, it was most sacred of all and never to be wasted on idle pleasures.
    But the wanting? That never ceased. Ruth had felt it like an ache in the air around them. Her mother’s eyes drawn to shop windows, fingers stroking a bolt of silk. Hannah straining for approval, and gaining approval, yet straining still. Ruth’s own miserable longing to be at the centre of their hearts, for once. But more than all of them, James. Wanting only to serve God, he always claimed, to take up his cross.And yet no matter how hard he served and how far he dragged that damn thing – dragging them behind – it never seemed enough. Always that hunger in his eyes, that bent back, the troubled hands. Always the wanting, and never getting.
    Like me, Ruth thought. She was not what he had wanted, right from birth – she was convinced of it – because after big sister Hannah, she should have been a boy. They’d even received A Word when Ellen became pregnant. The Lord to Abraham: ‘Your wife will have a son.’ Perfect. But when a girl emerged, red-faced and howling, it was clear their appropriation of prophecy had rather let them down. Or Ruth had. One way or the other, it set the precedent.
    After supper, Iqbal refused Ruth’s help in clearing up and they argued again, good-naturedly, while James’ mouth curled into a half smile and he muttered something about an unstoppable force and an immovable object. Iqbal won, again. All grinning and gur eyes, damn him. But Ruth extracted a promise that she could help from the next day.
    â€˜ Accha, accha .’ He tilted his head from side to side and sent her off with a mug of chai, its spiced smell rising like a genie. She put it on the coffee table and got out her cigarettes, glancing at James on the sofa, gangly legs crossed at the ankles, hands tucked in his armpits, eyes closed. He looked asleep but she felt his alertness, the tuning of his ears, the waiting. At the sink, Iqbal hummed as he washed the dishes, his tune light and folksy and vaguely familiar. She stepped out the door and huddled under the narrow eaves, the rain against her legs.
    I don’t get it, she thought, as the lighter flared. Who the hell is this guy and what’s he doing here? When she’d tried a few casual questions over dinner, Iqbal had been evasive.
    â€˜Oh, I’m just the fat fellow in the films,’ he’d said. ‘How do you say—? Comic belief?’
    â€˜Relief,’ said James.
    â€˜Ah yes!’ He laughed. ‘I’m that one. Wheeled on when the story gets too