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The Important Things
THE BIG BLUE van rattles past. Its horn shrieks.
Another second and I would have been mango pulp. Guava jelly.
“Yasmin,” Umma scolds, “don’t give me a heart attack! Always with your head in the clouds, always wrapped up in your own thoughts. What will I do with you?”
The fruit man’s wife clucks at me from her veggie stand next to his. She waves her hand to let me know that I should step off the road and onto the broken pavement, which I do.
I am not always wrapped up in my own thoughts, I want to say. But I don’t say it, because Umma is the one wrapped up now in worry. She is wearing a big blanket of worry that has to do with Rafiq Uncle and how his visits always give Wapa a headache.
That roar again. The van is back!
“Be careful,” warns the fruit man. “Nothing better to do — these political heroes of ours and their election campaign people. They don’t care about election issues. They think life is nothing but one big TV screen.”
The van pulls up, slows down. It has two big posters like a tent on its roof. Karate Samuel is kicking and punching all over those posters as if he is doing his karate demo to the very loud music from the van’s speakers.
Over the music, the driver shouts, “Want a tip-top mayor? Vote for Karate Samuel!”
“What’ll he do for me?” the fruit man shouts back.
“And me?” his wife pipes up from her vegetable stand. She picks up an onion and tosses it in one hand, as if she’s practicing. As if any minute she will throw it at Karate Samuel’s poster.
The driver only yells as he drives off, “A-One hero! Karate Samuel for mayor!”
“Who are you going to vote for?” I ask my mother.
“I don’t know,” says Umma.
“What about him?” I point after the van. It has now sped through a red light and is quickly vanishing into the traffic.
“That cinema-kaaran?” says Umma. “Why should I vote for him?”
“Just asking,” I say. She’s right. He is a cinema guy. But is that a problem?
“They all want votes,” says the fruit man. “Then when they get elected, they don’t do anything.”
That is a problem. Because grown-ups are supposed to keep their promises, aren’t they?
We buy onions and potatoes and bitter melon from the fruit man’s wife.
“I don’t like bitter melon,” I say.
Umma buys it anyway. She needs to show Rafiq Uncle that she is no slouch in the kitchen and that she can make traditional dishes. She does not say this but I know. The vegetable lady fills our second bag and hands it to me. I grab it with both hands. It is heavy.
Then we walk home.
“Umma,” I ask as I drag the bag full of veggies up the stairs. “What is an election issue?”
“The things that people care about,” says Umma, jiggling the key in the keyhole. She pushes the door open with her shoulder. “The candidates’ positions on things.”
“What things?”
“You know, important things.” She waves her hand as if the important things will appear in our flat and walk across our floor. “Things that political leaders have to manage.”
“Does Mayor SLY manage important things?” I ask.
She tries to be serious. “Uh … ye-e-es, I suppose he …” Then she laughs at the silly name that everyone calls the mayor, because really, it fits him so well. “I don’t know, Minu. I don’t trust him, either.”