A better day for biriyani
My neighbour has been round twice this week to give us ham with a teddy face that her grandson doesn't want to eat; it has not been a good week for curry. My family and I have grazed on summer party food aimed at children: wotsits, baps and fairy cakes. Even when Salim and his mum came for tea, the most cooking I could muster was fishfingers and I was pleased with myself for remembering not to serve his on the plate with the picture of the piggy and to have hidden the teddy ham on the top shelf of the fridge. 'Can't I have rice?' he asked.
This afternoon, my body was asking the same thing. There had been one barbecued value burger too many. And so it was of immense relief to be asked to pop round to Sajida's for biriyani. 'The kids hate school dinners,' she said, 'so I always make rice for after school.' We used to have crackers with margarine in the same situation.
I hadn't recognised her at first. We were trying to manoeuvre our buggies round each others, when suddenly her eyes lit up and she switched to Urdu. She knows me. When we had met before, we had just given birth; her face had not been covered then. But even before I remembered who she was I had accepted the invitation. I don't say no to biriyani.
The last meal we ate together was breakfast on the complicated birth ward. She wanted to get home. Toast was not enough to give life, she told me, disdainful of the hospital food, and besides, her other three children needed her to cook. However, her baby was not feeding well and she was still recovering. She handed me his bottle. 'Just pop some tea into his bottle, will you? And make it milky.'
And so it was particularly gracious of her to be offering me and my children a meal after my refusal to serve her little boy that morning. Within moments of arrival she was plating up rice for me and her children, who had also gone into action, pulling up chairs to reach taps and cupboards. Clearly, they had not been grazing on quavers all day. And as she served and rolled rotis, she told me all the family news and directed each child and toddler whether at her feet or upstairs. I, meanwhile, got that hit of spice that stupefies me, enraptures me, making my head throb and my body heat up. I try to think of a courteous question to ask but my stomach takes over and I shovel more in. Firmly held opinions seem vagaries in the red glow of chilli. My mouth has better things to do than talk. And thus I have left whole streams of kindly hosts in India, Pakistan and their diasporas across Britain thinking of me as a grateful but essential dull girl, a little greedy, quietly burping and with not much to say for herself.
Her son came in and poured a large glass of whole milk. He rummaged in the cupboard and found a bottle of ruh afza, my favourite cordial, rosy and ethereally flavoured and tinted the milk pink with it. Without saying a word, this ten year old, who I'd thought a little surly at first, gave it to me: a gift. 'What a polite boy,' I said to his mother. 'How did he know that this is my favourite drink? What an absolutely extremely polite boy.'
'Well, he's alright, but he's not that great,' she said. 'He prefers pasta to rice.'
This afternoon, my body was asking the same thing. There had been one barbecued value burger too many. And so it was of immense relief to be asked to pop round to Sajida's for biriyani. 'The kids hate school dinners,' she said, 'so I always make rice for after school.' We used to have crackers with margarine in the same situation.
I hadn't recognised her at first. We were trying to manoeuvre our buggies round each others, when suddenly her eyes lit up and she switched to Urdu. She knows me. When we had met before, we had just given birth; her face had not been covered then. But even before I remembered who she was I had accepted the invitation. I don't say no to biriyani.
The last meal we ate together was breakfast on the complicated birth ward. She wanted to get home. Toast was not enough to give life, she told me, disdainful of the hospital food, and besides, her other three children needed her to cook. However, her baby was not feeding well and she was still recovering. She handed me his bottle. 'Just pop some tea into his bottle, will you? And make it milky.'
And so it was particularly gracious of her to be offering me and my children a meal after my refusal to serve her little boy that morning. Within moments of arrival she was plating up rice for me and her children, who had also gone into action, pulling up chairs to reach taps and cupboards. Clearly, they had not been grazing on quavers all day. And as she served and rolled rotis, she told me all the family news and directed each child and toddler whether at her feet or upstairs. I, meanwhile, got that hit of spice that stupefies me, enraptures me, making my head throb and my body heat up. I try to think of a courteous question to ask but my stomach takes over and I shovel more in. Firmly held opinions seem vagaries in the red glow of chilli. My mouth has better things to do than talk. And thus I have left whole streams of kindly hosts in India, Pakistan and their diasporas across Britain thinking of me as a grateful but essential dull girl, a little greedy, quietly burping and with not much to say for herself.
Her son came in and poured a large glass of whole milk. He rummaged in the cupboard and found a bottle of ruh afza, my favourite cordial, rosy and ethereally flavoured and tinted the milk pink with it. Without saying a word, this ten year old, who I'd thought a little surly at first, gave it to me: a gift. 'What a polite boy,' I said to his mother. 'How did he know that this is my favourite drink? What an absolutely extremely polite boy.'
'Well, he's alright, but he's not that great,' she said. 'He prefers pasta to rice.'
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