Bright Lines (11 page)

“Then we must talk about where we were during the final front of the war. In less than two weeks, along with the Indians, we crushed the enemy.” Anwar gestured to his letter. In the center, Ella noticed a mass of scribbles that looked like a tree. “It is a place called the Black Forest,” he said.

Just as he said this, they heard a loud shout come from upstairs. They heard a muffled roar, “WOMAN, REMEMBER WHAT I SAID!”

The apothecary’s bottles rattled, and they heard a child’s cry.

“Shit,” whispered Ella. “Is that . . . Maya’s father?”

“I am afraid so. Sallah S.’s temper has no bounds. These damn buildings are made of filler and particleboard. All manner of horribleness may pass through.” Anwar stepped back, knocking into a bottle of shampoo, which fell to the floor. “How about some lunch, Ella? I feel my blood sugar is so low I must tend to my nerves.”

“Kebabs?”

“You read my mind.”

 * * * 

Outside, the high noon sun transitioned Ella’s glasses into sunglasses. Anwar smiled at this neat trick of technology. He locked the front door and taped a sign,
BE BACK IN 20. PROMISE.

“As-salaam-wa-alaikum, Brother Saleem!” called a voice, loud and familiar.

Anwar turned around. It was Sallah S. He was dragging a rolling suitcase. He wore a navy blue suit and wire-rimmed spectacles, and
sported a neatly shaven beard.
He is quite handsome
, admitted Anwar. Three young men, one bearded, one goateed, and one balding, stood alongside him.

“Wa-alaikum salaam, Sallah,” said Anwar. He nodded hello to the other men, who nodded but said nothing.

Sallah S. lit a cigarette. “Want one?”

“No thank you,” Anwar said. “I am trying to quit. How’s the day?”

“The usual. My wife’s been very sick, and I’ve got another meeting up in Albany for a brother’s deportation hearing. He’s being held in Wasatchie.”

“Wa-satch-ie,” repeated Anwar.
Names of old Indians used to lock up new ones.
“Will it work out for him?”

“No. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to Brother Karim. Decent man—owned a grocery in Kensington, children born here. Nothing his lawyers can do for him. He is being shipped back to Tunisia in a week.” He flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk, where it bounced off Ella’s shoe. “And you, young brother? Saleem’s son?” asked Sallah S., turning to Ella.

“Eh, this is my niece, Ella.”

“Yes, yes.” Sallah S. glanced sideways at his trio. They stifled laughter.

“Wa-alaikum salaam, sister,” said the bearded fellow.

“You know, you and your brother are as brotherly as Bush and Clinton,” said Sallah S., chuckling at his own joke. He coughed and spat up a gob of phlegm.

“That is to say, we’re not different at all?” Anwar joked.

Sallah S. didn’t laugh. “Not a bad point. Anyway, how is your business? How is your family?”

“All is . . . well, as can be expected in a house full of women. Your daughter is quite lovely—”

“What?”

Anwar noticed Ella wince. “Is there something the matter?”

“Aman mentioned you knew of her whereabouts,” said Sallah S., holding up his hand. “I suppose . . . a girl needs company. We just hope it is good company.” He smiled.

“We must go; the pleasure was all mine.” Anwar skipped over Sallah’s spittle on the ground.

 * * * 

“Anwar, I remembered—I need to go do something. I’ll see you back at the house,” said Ella. She felt a slow constriction in her throat, feeling guilty just talking to Maya’s father with such civility. His yelling had penetrated the walls of the apothecary, and Ella could imagine him in his full might and terror. As for Anwar’s story, she knew that she wouldn’t hear the story of the Black Forest until much later, maybe even years later. That’s how things seemed to go when it came to stories about her father. She unlocked her bike, and rode into traffic. Noon heat burned her skin. There was the smell of a distant barbecue, and Ella’s stomach panged. As she rode along Atlantic Avenue, she rummaged through the old images that flashed in her mind, and she felt uncertain that these were true memories. Had her father run around the house with her standing on his feet? Had her mother bathed her in the kitchen sink, and taught her to kiss with her nose? Her mother had long black hair, which she’d worn in a loose braid. Ella remembered chewing on her mother’s hair. It had been crunchy and dry. She knew that their murder had been related to the war, that somehow the people who had taken their lives had been pro-Pakistani Bangladeshis. But the obsession to know the details had been diluted by time and distance. As a small child, she had been transported to a new homeland. She did not speak those first few months. She was mute, and now, remembering, she realized that she had made the decision not to talk. No amount of talking would bring them back to her. She felt that she had never quite fit in, and even after she started to speak, she never quite did.

She rode onto Joralemon Street, weaving around the hunkering buses and lackadaisical crowds of summertime shoppers, high school kids with summer jobs, along the strip of sneaker, electronics, and discount clothing stores.

Finish Line.

Ella caught the name of the store from the corner of her eye. She hit her brakes so hard to look in the store window that she almost rode into a shopping cart packed with a mountain of glass bottles.

“Watch the road, kid!” shouted the man who was pushing the cart. He wore a soda jerk cap constructed of newspaper; he looked like a mad waiter on the run.

She pulled over to the sidewalk, and the man stood still, as if waiting for a more adequate response. Ella busied herself with pretending to lock her bike on a rack, while sneaking a glance through the storefront window of Finish Line. The man lost interest and continued to push his cart down the street.

Ella fumbled with the bike lock, and looked again into the store.

There she was. Maya. She was not wearing her hijab on her head, but Ella saw it draped on her shoulders as a scarf. Her pixie haircut had grown longer onto the nape of her neck, into the start of a mullet. Ella could not see her face. Maya was kneeling on the ground as Ella had seen her do so many times, but this time, she did so in front of a girl her own age, helping her try on a pair of bright colored kicks. The girl checked out her feet in the floor mirror.

They spent almost every night together in the garden. But the past couple of nights, Maya had been exhausted after work, going straight into Ella’s bedroom to pass out.

“Look here, come on,” whispered Ella, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, transfixed, hearing nothing but:
Then you haven’t.

Anwar’s summation of her love life.

Maya smiled at the girl, who nodded that she wanted the pair of sneakers. Maya beckoned a boy to take the girl to the cash register. As soon as the boy whisked the girl away, Maya leaned against a mirrored pole, staring up at the ceiling. She did not see Ella. Maybe it was the glare from the fluorescent store lights. Maybe it was some unseen magic in the ceiling, or a leak. Maybe Maya did not feel Ella burning a hole through the glass.

Whatever it was—

“Yes, I have.”

A minute later, Maya caught Ella’s stare, and stared back. Maya shook her head, slowly, but Ella couldn’t read the gesture. All Ella felt was the massive tightening in her chest, a brilliant sensation of lightness and heaviness all at once. She waved. Maya lifted her hand up.

Just as Maya’s attention was taken to a toddler picking out her first pair of sneakers, Ella was gone.

A
fter Ella had left, Anwar started walking in the direction of Rashaud Persaud’s table. But Rashaud and his table were not there.
Strange
, thought Anwar,
Rashaud is not one to take days off
. His friend was already inhibited by weather patterns.
Perhaps he’s fallen ill
. Anwar found himself wanting to eat at Prospect Park. He could not remember the last time he’d lain on a blanket to take in passersby. But it was too far a walk to make in the middle of the day. He debated whether or not to go back into his shop for a quick smoke. He settled for his favorite halal truck on Atlantic, and sat with a kebab in the plaza of Atlantic Terminal Mall, in the middle of the blazing afternoon bustle. He wiped his brow with the cotton handkerchief he kept in his pocket.

He had almost told Ella the story of the Black Forest, and he was grateful, as appalling as it was, for Sallah’s interruption. Anwar closed his eyes, recalling the first night that he and Rezwan had taken over a command post by themselves, without any of their other comrades. Their orders were to stake out a farmhouse in Kadipur. A farmer and his family had been burned alive by Rajakar twins, who had taken a killing tour of the hillside towns around Sylhet. Rajakars were like local travel guides for the Pakistani forces, traitors to the cause. After the killing, the twins allegedly occupied the farmhouse and surrounding land, turning it into a morbid clubhouse to rape women and rest on their laurels.

Anwar and Rezwan’s training—swimming through leech-infested muddy swamps—was unnecessary for tonight: They rode to the farmland on their new black Royal Enfield motorcycle, which
they’d claimed during their first guerrilla attack. They parked the motorcycle in a field of spinach and watermelon crop. The plants thrived despite their owner’s absence.

After surveying the farmhouse for the enemy—no one was there—they stopped at a trickling khal, a tributary of the Piyain that irrigated the land. In the night water, the full moon’s reflection appeared. Anwar turned up to see the real moon, but it had disappeared. He looked back down at the river, which now seemed invisible. The entire sky had gone pitch-black. He felt a shudder in his heart, and glanced at Rezwan, who was busy with ablutions for his night prayer. Something as silly as the moon in a puddle did not interest him.

“What is it, man?” asked Rezwan.

“The moon.”

“What about the moon?”

“I saw its reflection in the water. But now I cannot see it. It’s disappeared.”

“It’s the passing of clouds, the rotation of the earth, which veils your precious moon. She’ll be back,” said Rezwan, chuckling. “It’s the nature of Maya.”

“You sound like my father.”

Anwar wondered if he had offended his friend by comparing him to a conservative archaeologist. He clutched his bayonet, trying to relax. His father often spoke of Maya, man’s illusion, which kept him separated from the truth. The moon existed in the puddle, but not when he had looked up to behold it. And still, he knew the truth—the moon existed, even if he didn’t see it with his own eyes.

“Look, Anwar, there is your moon.”

They sat at the foot of the tree for a while, without speaking, staring at the moon as it rose higher in the sky.

“Do you fear anything?” asked Anwar.

“I fear God,” Rezwan replied without hesitation.

“I cannot believe that.”

“Not in the way you think.”

“Eternal punishment?”

“Of how possibly meaningless this all is. How he laughs at our stupidity. I was also thinking, if I’d had a brother like yours, I’d cut his balls off.”

“I can’t do that to my brother. Besides, I don’t want to touch his balls.”

“Point is—men like that are preprogrammed. They’re perfect for war, but too indifferent to others to fight.”

Anwar wondered what would happen if he and Rezwan came upon these brothers. Killed them. What made their killing right and the brothers’ killing wrong? Anwar knew the answer he hoped was true: Mukti Bahini did not rape, raid, or kill innocents. But there were disturbing rumors: Mukti Bahini had raped Bihari girls as revenge. Anwar did not want to believe this, but the way he’d seen a couple of his comrades stroking their rifles, lusty and mad-eyed, sometimes a grave doubt about independence flared in him—Anwar admitted this once—that the wisest move would be to remain with India. “Remain with India?” Rezwan thundered. “And resign ourselves to being India’s armpit? Fuck your mother, man!” As soon as he said this favorite catchphrase, Rezwan grew remorseful and apologetic.

“I’ve got no mother to fuck,” Anwar replied. On the hardest nights, he found himself whispering for his mother, whom he had never known.

 * * * 

Before sunrise, they decided to head back to the Black Forest, which lay on the border between Tamabil and Dawki, dividing East Pakistan and India. Once they reached the river, a boatman took them across to Dawki, to the India side. They wheeled their motorcycle through a clearing, just west of the BSF jawan’s post—it was a long “shortcut” to avoid dealing with a checkpoint. They came up to a bridge composed entirely of gnarled rubber tree roots, which ran over a stream. The road from the bridge tapered into a barren moor. A single stone obelisk stood on a hill, erected by ancient Khasis. As they entered the sacred land, the trees at the helm of the grove were sparse, flute-thin supari and betel leaf. Deeper into the forest, everything multiplied, and the air was thick with dew and the scent of burning teakwood. Rezwan brought a finger to his lips. For a well-built man, he was graceful. Anwar followed him toward a woman’s cry, and a baby’s wail. The harder they tried to be quiet, the more sounds he imagined: a smattering of laughter, exploded
mortars. Anwar shook his head. Out here, in the Black Forest, they were safe from the war.

They followed the ominous timbre to a circular house in the center of the woods. Once they arrived, Rezwan relaxed. He knelt beside the woman, nursing her child on the porch. He kissed her forehead.

“Hello, my love.”

 * * * 

And now, on a bench in Brooklyn, Anwar chewed overcooked halal beef kebab of questionable origin, like a cannibalistic cow smacking her lips. He spat the meat into a napkin. The sun had drained his energy to eat, to move, to think anymore. He was glad he had made this time for Ella, whose remarkable likeness to Rezwan saddened him. Not because it was a bad thing to be like one’s father, but that he had spent the past sixteen years playing at it. She was nearly twenty-one, an adult in her own right, but still, Anwar wondered if he’d made any impression. He felt he had failed to teach Ella who her parents had been, where she came from. He hadn’t wanted to haunt her childhood, he supposed, just as he found himself haunted. Rezwan’s head trailed his highs like a broken memory.
I have to type up the mess on that paper
, Anwar told himself, remembering the brown parchment he’d titled “Black Forest.” He closed his eyes and fell asleep for some time. When he awoke, Atlantic Mall was still as crowded as when he’d sat down. He touched his face, which felt painfully raw.

All this dreaming of the moon
and
I’ve been burned by the sun.

Anwar walked back to the shop, ready to close.

 * * * 

Anwar walked up to his storefront and blinked his eyes several times to be sure of what he was seeing. The window of the apothecary was shattered in a cracked spiderweb of glass, with shards scattered inside the shop. His tower of Magic Jojoba shampoo had toppled over. He leaned into the gaping hole of his storefront window. Bricks. Anwar counted four, and on one of them, someone had written “Pig” with a white paint marker pen. Anwar paused to catch his breath and leaned against the wall between the apothecary and A Holy
Bookstore. His bones hurt; never had he felt so run-down. He remembered a book from Charu’s childhood, and thought: Anwar and the Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Day.
Kids are smart,
he thought,
especially those three boys with Sallah S. No
older than eighteen, alive and trigger-happy, comfortable in packs.
But they are unlike wolves and more like feral dogs
. Each boy held allegiance to himself, first and foremost, united when it was time to play. For a moment, Anwar considered that maybe this was a message from Sallah S., a blatant warning about his daughter’s chosen company. Unlikely, he decided. This was a wanton act. Summer’s usual mayhem.

 * * * 

By eight o’clock in the evening, the world basked in the setting sun’s amber glow. Ella had biked around the park, and through their neighborhood for hours, working off her elation at seeing Maya. She turned onto the quaint ride up Willoughby Avenue. On Willoughby, things were quieter, dotted with a car or two, a dog walker, a lady sitting on her stoop. She felt she was riding in a foreign land, saturated with color and secrets.
I’ve never left the country since I got here
, she realized. She wanted to whisk Maya out of those fluorescent lights, into all that was out here. They could ride their bicycles cross-country, maybe even into Mexico. She pictured them trekking through a desert, into the night, counting constellations, building a fire.

When Ella arrived back at 111 Cambridge Place, she heard nothing but the drumming of Charu’s sewing machine. There was no smell of dinner. No sign of Anwar, or Hashi. Maybe they were on one of their evening walks, though she couldn’t remember the last time they’d done that.

Ella wondered if she should tell Charu, or even Anwar, that she loved Maya.

No
, Ella thought.
This is mine.

 * * * 

Later that night, Maya invited Ella and Charu to a warehouse party along the border of Bed-Stuy and Bushwick. This time, Ella agreed to go.

The party was at an old garment factory, a behemoth concrete
structure that had survived mass arsons in the seventies, workers’ strikes, and squatting artists. Young people strutted at all corners of the spot, leaning against walls, waiting in line for the bathroom, vogue-dancing in the center of the room. Ella realized she’d never been to one of these legend-in-the-making, underground-type parties before. She let Maya take her hand and lead her into the barrage of action: chain-smoking, rum-punch sipping from flasks masked with paper bags. Two girls in different shades of lipstick, lip-locked. They parted and smiled at Maya.

“Maya! You made it!” said the pink-lipped girl.

“I did. It’s a fabulous party.”

“Get a drink—who’re your fly-as-hell friends?”

“Heyyy, daddy,” said the other girl, grinning a red-smeared smile at Ella.

“She’s not
your
daddy, sweetheart.”

“She yours!” the girl howled. “Have a beautiful night, ladies, as-salaam-alaikum!” sounding more like
a salami lake ’em
!

“I should’ve worn my heels,” complained Charu.

“Not smart if you want to dance,” said Maya. “Come this way.”

Ella was conscious of people looking at her. Did they find her attractive? Queers everywhere, every which way she looked. Girls, women, boys, men, and some she couldn’t be sure. She contemplated removing her glasses to let all these kids take bizarre shapes and hues, but she didn’t want them to catch her looking.

“Let’s walk to the fire escape. I told Halim I’d meet him there.” Maya pointed toward the massive wrought iron staircase zigzagging three stories.

“I can’t do that,” mumbled Charu.

“Why not?” asked Maya.

“She’s afraid of heights,” said Ella.

“With that tree outside your window? What a shame, girl!” Maya laughed.

“Yeah. I don’t really do rooftop parties, fire escapes, or roller coasters,” said Charu. “I try to stay grounded.”

“I like that,” said a girl, who appeared out of nowhere by Charu’s side. “Wanna dance, ma?” She had a freshly shaved head and sported cologne straight from a magazine insert.

“Sure, why not?” said Charu. “See y’all in a few.”

On the fire escape, a few couples smoked and chatted, away from the clamor of the dance floor. Ella sat on the landing between the second and third floor, and Maya moved with a tightrope walker’s poise forward and backward to her own rhythm. A breeze crept into her hijab and the multicolored fabric flew around her head.

“You look like a hot air balloon,” said Ella. She grabbed Maya’s ankles, so that she fell neatly on her bottom next to her.

Maya yelped, “My poor ass!” She pulled off Ella’s glasses and took out a small silver flask from her purse. “Take a sip.”

Ella took a hearty swig and then another. She checked her watch—it was midnight. Black, yellow, and brown kids rocked wondrous hairstyles. Braided, dyed, feathered, twisted, cornrowed, flat-topped, matched with mesmerizing fashions—stirrup pants, Adidas tracksuits, tattoos, piercings, spray-painted sneakers. She envied their freedom.

There was a shot of rum left. The alcohol made it hard to focus her eyes. She saw Maya engulfed in scarlet waves, then cloaked in white foam. She shook her head but the image remained.

“You take a sip,” said Ella, handing Maya back the flask. She swiped her glasses, which were perched on Maya’s head.

“No, not for me. I can’t right now.”

“Why’s that?”

“I can’t right now.”

“Guess I might as well,” said Ella, swishing the last drop in her mouth like it was Listerine.

A loud couple ran onto the fire escape with the same abandon she feared would cause someone to fall.

“Stop, Halim! Give it back!” yelled his boyfriend, the formerly mouse-quiet Marque, whom Ella remembered from Maya’s birthday picnic in July.

Halim held Marque’s backpack a foot above his head. “Not until you kiss me,” said Halim, holding the bag higher.

“Hell no—not till you give it back!”

“Now, now, Halim,” said Maya, laughing. “That’s a very bad idea.”

Halim dropped the backpack into Marque’s hands. “Sweethearts!”

“You’ve got me worried. What if you’d fallen?” Maya shook her head. “When are you leaving for Rutgers?”

“Not until Labor Day. And you? What’s your plan? Come with me. You can crash at my dorm when I start school.”