"Mallick offers an impressively realistic depiction of a woman caught between tradition, family, and her own sense of empowerment." ~ Kirkus Reviews
"The Black-Marketer's Daughter is a key-hole look at a few things: a mismatched marriage, the plight of immigrants in the U.S., the emotional toll of culture shock, and the brutal way Muslim women are treated, especially by men within their own community. Titling it—defining the heroine by her relationship to a man rather than as a woman in her own right—suggests how deeply ingrained that inequality can be." ~ IndieReader Reviews
"The Black-Marketer's Daughter is the portrait of a woman who endures violence, intimidation, xenophobia and grief, and yet refuses to be called a victim. In this slender novel, Suman Mallick deftly navigates the funhouse maze of immigrant life in contemporary America—around each corner the possibility of a delight, a terror, or a distorted reflection of oneself." ~ Matthew Valentine, Winner, Montana Prize for Fiction; Lecturer, University of Texas at Austin
Excerpt from The
Black-Marketer’s Daughter
By Suman Mallick
Her first winter in Texas is mild and dry. Apart from a short trip to Washington, D.C. to visit Iskander’s parents during the holidays, it passes slowly and methodically, in the kitchen, at the library, in front of the piano.
She
makes a new year’s resolution to finally master Balakirev’s Islamey, but
as the weeks progress, she finds herself spending more time doubting the
foolhardiness of undertaking that enterprise than on her piano bench. She can
get through the first section effortlessly, but then has to slow down the tempo
to negotiate all the octaves and double notes. It irks her to contemplate that
unlike the soldiers whose triumphs in hard-fought battles inspired the
composition of such a challenging masterpiece, she might lack the endurance to
truly capture its essence by pounding on strings with a hammer. At other times,
she feels somewhat grateful that at least she can recognize the limits of her
own abilities. She decides she is glad that she isn’t like Frances Ha, a
character portrayal she and Marianne both immensely enjoyed on screen, but one
whose blindness to her own limitations, whose persistence and struggles, are
truly foreign to her sensibilities.
One
afternoon the following spring, the sky turns menacing into abstract shades of
dark gray. As Zuleikha drives home from the library, a woman’s voice on her car
radio (which by now has discarded all pretense of cooperating and stays
permanently on) makes an urgent announcement about a tornado watch. Zuleikha
hurries inside their house just as the winds begin to act drunk and disorderly,
and then all of nature gets violently ill. She calls Iskander at work, leaves a
voice message, tries him again before hanging up. After a while he returns her
call, chuckling, saying she had better get used to those “tornado things,”
because they’re just a fact of life in north Texas. And by the way, the shelter
is the hallway closet in the middle of the house and away from all the windows,
just in case the siren sounds. She can just see the sly smile on his face as he
speaks on the phone, the pressed lips.
When
the siren does sound, she hides in the closet, feeling alternately ridiculous
and terrified while hail rattles the roof. It’s the first time she has been
inside an enclosed space this small. A black leather jacket hangs in a clear
garment bag. She looks closer and sees the thick wide scrapes on the leather.
On the shelf are a toolbox and an old compact-disc player. A closer inspection
in the space between them reveals a tattered, torn glove. Zuleikha reaches for
the glove and picks it up just as lightning strikes nearby and the power goes
out. She screams.
After
the eye of the storm has passed and electricity has been restored, she sits at
the piano, still unsettled, playing short pieces from memory, jumping from one
fragment to another, alternately upset with her husband for the chuckle and
with his wife for panicking so easily; scolding, willing herself to continue
playing.
She
lingers on the first of Erik Satie’s Gnossiennes,
a staple at school and a favorite ever since she borrowed a bootleg copy of The Painted Veil from Papajaan’s store
and watched it with her friends from the academy. The piece is dark and simple,
nothing like Islamey, or even Chopin’s Nocturnes or Liszt’s Concertos that still frustrate her to
no end, and when she is finished, a voice startles her.
“Amazing,”
Iskander says. Instead of leaving his car parked outside and coming in through
the front door as usual, he has entered through the garage and has been
standing in the hallway, listening, for how long she doesn’t know. It
embarrasses her.
But
isn’t this the type of affirmation from a man she’s dreamed about all these
years?
Now
her husband comes up and stands behind, his clothes, smelling of the damp air
and the rain, brushing against her. He places his hands on her shoulders and
says, “That was stunning, Zu. And in
this weather! I thought I’d walked into a haunted house up on a hill instead of
my own.”
In
an instant the chuckle from earlier is forgiven. His words spark a desire in
her, they rekindle the memory of an unforgettable high school chemistry
experiment she once observed. A pile of the dangerous but innocuous white
powder of that mercury compound (thio-something:
was it called?) was ignited, and burned with a blue flame at the tip to emerge
in the shapeshifting form of a large, winding, pyrotechnical snake, while the
students gasped in awe. It even had a fantastical name to boot: the Pharaoh’s
Serpent. All evening, Zuleikha smolders, she slithers, and she debates. It’s
about taking the initiative, which until now she hasn’t, even though they have
been amorous often enough in the way newlyweds are, or are supposed to be. But
he’s been the one leading, always. It’s about her putting an exclamation point
at the end of a remarkable evening he started with a simple word that says so
much. She wants to show how he has touched her with his appreciation for her
one true gift, which is indubitably not her culinary prowess. It’s about the
way these poignant moments always resolve themselves in her favorite movies.
When
the pregnancy is confirmed a few weeks later, she knows with all the confidence
in the world that the baby had to have been conceived that night, and on no
other.
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