Yaacob's Curry

’Hey, if it’s curry you miss, I’ll cook you one man, what’s the problem’. Yaacob was a new friend who’d gravitated to our small group of curry-deprived isolates. After six months in London we were moaning about how terrible the food was and the food we missed.

‘But where will you cook it Yaacob?’

‘In the room man, in the room.’

'Yaacob, the problem is you can't cook in the rooms. It is not allowed. We have to eat the food that is served in the hostel.'

‘That's not a problem man, these things can be done, no one will know. Its not like you are banging up a band man. It’s just curry. There is no noise in cooking’.

‘But what about the smell?’

‘Man, you wait for the right time, you place wet towels under the door to stop the smell going out and you are on, Man’.

Three days later, the door to one of our rooms is sealed with a towel, the music is turned up loud; the time is right according to Yaacob, who is now slicing the onions with a table knife secreted out of the dining room at breakfast. Soon he pulls out a lump of meat from a red plastic bag - 'Hallal lamb, man', he declares, 'from Australia'. Yaacob is from Rhodesia, then not yet Zimbabwe. His family of merchants had moved there from Gujarat before WW2. Like the rest of his family, Yaacob was a strict Muslim with his food. If he did not find Hallal food, he went to Jewish groceries for their Kosher stuff. Alcohol was Haram but he consumed prodigious amounts of Coke at parties that made him soar to heights the infidels envied.

The meat is on a pile of newspaper on the table, next to the books. Yaacob holds the meat with one hand as he struggles to cut it with the same knife he used on the onions. The blunt blade simply presses the meat down without cutting it. He then saws the meat with rapid jerky movements. His face is intense fearing to lose it to his watchful audience. Slowly, the meat separates into jagged pieces although some are still joined by the tendons and sinews. Yaacob picks up some of the pieces and bites through the stubborn threads to separate the meat into pieces.

‘Yaacob’ we gasp.

What's the problem man? I'm going to cook the damn thing'.

We wait quietly as if watching a magician about to do something incredible.

The pot is placed on a small electric stove just taken out from its unopened box. The stove is the contribution of Kuching Foo, so named because Foo is from Kuching. He lets no one else touch the stove which was one of the possessions his mother stuffed in his overweight bag before he left Kuching. Between him and his sidekick Christopher, also from Kuching, there was enough utensils to start a kitchen and enough dried meat, noodles and mushrooms to last through a war.

All their possessions are stacked neatly under their beds in the room they share. Foo will only unpack this wealth, he says, when he finds a nice girl to share a flat. “I’ll cook for her day and night and we will be so happy’, and if Christopher is present, will add, ‘Chris will have the second room’ which will make Christopher beam with pleasure.

There is a nice girl in Foo’s life, but she lives in a students’ hostel in Hackney. Whenever she turns up to visit Foo, they will sit talking in the lounge until it is time for the last train from the station, when Foo will accompany her there, take the train with her and walk her to her hostel. Alone, Foo will then walk back to his hostel, a journey of more than 2 hours. If you ever saw him then, in the early hours of the morning waiting for the hostel night watchman to open the door, you may think that some of the stars in the sky had fallen on to his long thick hair. The glow will still be with him at the breakfast table. If you ask him how the night had been, his face will break into a smile, ‘Life has never been so good.’

Kuching Foo now insists on taking charge of connecting the stove to the wall socket. He wipes the bottom of the pot and then the surface of the stove. The box, he carefully puts aside, keeping it ready to reinsert the stove when the cooking is done.

The heat crackles the water and dries the pot. Yaacob looks at us to signal that everything is going well. He empties a small tin of ghee into the heated pot. We choke on the thick fumes that erupt from the pot like a volcanic ejaculation.

The smell of burnt butter permeates the room. Someone checks the towel under the door and places his ear on the door for warning sounds. The coast is clear. The insulation was working as Yaacob had promised. We feel a stickiness on our faces as the ghee bubbles to a boil.

Like a priest offering flowers to an idol, Yaacob strews chunks of onion into the pot. There is a deafening hiss. The volcano in the pot erupts again. Thick steam from the meeting of onion and hot oil clouds the small room. Little globules of oil fly onto our faces. The smell from the onions frying in ghee is like home. But the fumes and the smell are everywhere and we fear that our secret ritual will be exposed.

We panic.

The door is opened a crack to check if anyone is coming then slammed shut, fearing that it will help the escape of the revealing smells. Another sprays after-shave lotion all over the room. We stay silent, listening.

'Shut the light, shut the light' someone shouts. The room is dark, lighted only by the street lamps outside.

The onions sizzle in the boiling ghee. We wait silently, listening intently for the tap of shoes on linoleum floors.

Nothing.

We sigh and talk in whispers. The light is switched on again.

Yaacob the alchemist is about to offer the meat to the pot. 'Give me the ladle, give me the ladle man'.

A ladle is handed to him carefully like the way a knife is given to a friend. Yaacob pushes the meat into the pot, piece by piece from yesterday's newspaper. The headlines say something about an imminent war in Biafra.

The pot goes silent, the steam is contained. We regain our courage. Yaacob thrusts the ladle into the pot as if to teach the meat a lesson for not yielding to his knife. New smells arise as our stomach juices mix with nostalgia and the longing for home. We love Yaacob. We clear the way as he walks to the window for some air. A can of coke is handed to him before he once again crouches on the floor next to the stove. A can of Veerasamy's Madras Curry Powder Very Hot appears from his shopping bag. Several spoonfuls of the orange powder are added to the pot and stirred in the jerky fashion of Yaacob. Now the smell of the curry emerges. This is what we have been missing for six months. We are now back in our homes waiting for dinner.

Two cans of tomatoes are opened and dumped into the mixture by the magician.

Some of us remark about the amount of tomatoes. ‘We want curry Yaacob, not tomato soup’.
‘For the gravy man, for the gravy, you can’t eat the rice without gravy.’

Someone then remembered that the rice cooker, also the property of Kuching Foo, was not turned on. Foo lets no one else touch anything as he himself turns on the pot to ’Cook’.

'We wait for the curry to boil', Yaacob says.

'What about the potatoes?' someone asks.

'Not yet' the master answers.

The pot dances on the stove as it boils. The lid rattles in harmony. The aroma is killing. Someone breaks into a song. Beer is handed around but not to Yaacob. The pot boils. The steam rises from the rice cooker. In less than ten minutes, according to Yaacob, the curry will be ready.

My mother used to say 'Be careful when you are exhilarated. The moments of happiness are always at the precipice of disappointment. Control your ecstasies, never go to the ends of pleasure or they will drop you into the deep chasm of sadness.'

Someone was fumbling on the door lock trying to open it. Then it is flung open and standing there were almost all the nuns in the world and Father Frederico.

'You have broken house rules. There will be a price to be paid. For now we are confiscating all your utensils.' Then wrinkling his nose at the boiling pot, he said, ‘We serve wholesome food after all. Breakfast and Dinner and lunch on Sundays. You don’t need this.’ Then raising his voice he uttered his command.

‘George!’

George, who was standing hidden behind the crowd, weaved a kitchen trolley into the room. ‘Podgy George’, christened with many names by the residents, was the night watchman whose duty was to enforce the rules of the hostel after wardens retire for the night. He was a kindly man. He never refuses to open the main door when you return after midnight, when the rules prohibit entry or arraign you to the wardens the next day for your misdemeanor. All he asked was a hug in return.

‘Who’s gonna give Georgie a hug now?’ he would say, putting out his arms. In his embrace his hands will be all over you, groping your private parts. We learned not to complain, but took it as either the incentive to keep the rules or the price to pay for breaking them.

Now, in the presence of his masters, George averts his eyes from ours as one by one he places on the trolley, the pot with curry, the stove and the rice cooker with a full pot of rice. Kuching Foo tried to intervene but was held back by some of us.
In just a few seconds, our anticipation that was built over several days and which was almost to be consummated was snuffed, smashed, crushed. The door slammed behind the enforcers and we stood silently as we heard the trolley’s wheels squeal as it was pushed away along the corridor. The only other sound n the room was Kuching Foo's sobs.

‘Bloody hell’ was all we could say and we all said it in turns. ‘Bloody hell’. ‘Bloody hell’. ‘Bloody hell’…

‘I forgot to add the salt’, said Yaacob. Someone giggled.

‘You also forgot the potatoes', Kuching Foo added, which made us all laugh. But our disappointment needed more than a giggle and a laugh as we looked at the mementoes of the night that were left behind by the invaders - the empty cans of tomatoes, the diced potatoes, the blood stained newspaper warning of war in Biafra and the silver capped salt shaker from the breakfast room. The lingering aroma we relished.

We sat silent and defeated. The clock ticked past midnight. Then just as we thought we’ll go back to our rooms, we heard a soft knock on the door. We expected a second attack, but nothing happened. Then we heard another knock. We looked at each other. We opened the door and there was George.
‘Your disgusting food is in the kitchen you Wogs’, he said smiling like a conspirator. ‘Go and get it.’

Stunned, we stood looking at him and then broke into laughter realising that Podgie George was actually on our side. As we tried to find words to thank him, George simply held out his hands.

‘Who’s gonna give Georgie a hug now?’

There were eight of us in the room.