Spiral Road (13 page)

It’s one of those emotionally charged criticisms of the West. Conspiracy theories. Christian plots. I loiter to hear about the past glories of Islam. Ancient echoes from the frightful years of the Crusades, beginning with the Seljuk Turks’ capture of Jerusalem, reverberate today, in this
market.
Deus le volt
!
—
Pope Urban II, I recall, had inadvertently said it for both religions: how can mere mortals defy God’s will? Therefore the slaughter, pillage, rape and looting can be explained away, as part of a grand design of the Omnipotent and the Omniscient.

‘First, the godless Soviets came to Afghanistan and attempted to conquer the country,’ the mullah mocks. ‘They were humiliated and their state broken up. It was Allah’s will!’

‘
Allah O Akbar
!’ someone shouts.

‘And now the Americans!’ a shrill voice calls.

‘But this time what are we doing to help our Afghani brothers? The true upholders of Islam?
Nothing
!’ The mullah glares accusingly at the congregation. ‘It’s our
duty
to take up arms against the common enemy. My brothers, abandon your lives of comfort! Be bold and fight to fulfil Allah’s plan. Behave like holy warriors and—’

A ripe mango crashes near the mullah and explodes in a pulpy mess of yellow.

Behind me, I hear the giggle of children, then running feet.

‘The enemies stoop to using children to disrupt our objectives!’ The mullah tries to control his temper and appear dignified, as helpers clean up.

I turn away, toying with the possibility of the reincarnation of Pope Urban II as an Islamic cleric. The rhetoric couldn’t have changed all that much in nearly a thousand years—

‘Excuse me! Hello, brother!’

One of the bearded men has run after me. He’s waving his hands.

‘Yes?’

‘Why were you spying on us?’

‘Spying?’ My incredulity incenses him. ‘I only stopped to listen to what the mullah was saying.’

Another man joins him. I can see others in the assembly looking in my direction. ‘What is your name? Where are you from?’ the second man asks.

I tell him. I’m now surrounded by religious zealots. They press closer, their faces grim and their eyes smouldering with suspicion. Passers-by stop to watch with detached curiosity.

‘What do you do?’

‘I’m a librarian.’

‘How can we be sure that you’re not American?’

Fortunately my passport is in my wallet. I make a token attempt to keep the document in my hand. It’s snatched away from me. They thumb through the pages, checking the entries and inspecting my photograph. An animated discussion follows.

A sense of irony sweeps over me. Something just like this might easily happen at an airport in America. Seeing my Muslim name, immigration officials there would want to know the motives for my visit, although the Australian passport would probably lessen suspicion. Here, it’s my name that suppresses hostility, but being an Australian isn’t an advantage. I am a resident of a Christian country, they remind me, mostly inhabited by whites. Cousins of the
Americans and the British. They invaded Islamic countries. They all speak English.

‘So do I,’ I say softly in Bangla. Perhaps German or French might have been more sensible.

‘Are you trustworthy? How can we be certain that you haven’t gone over to the other side? After all, you live among them,’ one demands, stroking his beard.

I assure them that I haven’t converted to Christianity.

‘But do you live your life as a Muslim?’

They ask me to recite a surah. Fortunately I remember one. ‘
Alum doh illah eh Rab-e-Alameen…
’ I intone.

An old man grunts and nods in satisfaction. The younger men are harder to please. They remain expressionless. They huddle together in earnest consultation.

‘He’s a Muslim!’ I hear someone whisper. ‘One of us, no matter where he lives. Besides, he’s a fellow Bangali.’

Reluctantly they allow me to leave. I’m drenched in sweat. My water bottle is empty. The incident has shaken me more than I care to admit. I see an icebox in front of a grocer’s store. A woman and her two children are sipping Coke from frosty bottles.

Once I’ve drunk from an icy bottle of water, I negotiate a fare with a rickshaw
wallah
to take me home. But within minutes I change my mind and ask him to take me to Dhanmondi.

I give him the road number. ‘Drop me on the bridge near Sheik Mujib’s old house.’

W
E CAN BE
cowards in such strange ways. I loiter on the overpass, unwilling to cross and walk up the road towards our old house.
The
house, I should say and relinquish any sense of ownership. This is a comfort zone where the years dissolve and the past is enacted before my eyes. Though the water in the canal looks brackish and dirtier than I can remember, in the distance bare-bodied dhobis are lined up on the grassy slope, beating wet clothes on wooden platforms. Errant boys still fly kites. Other kids have no qualms about swimming in the canal. A man waits patiently, his fishing rod dangling over the edge of the water. This could be the scene of forty years ago—except Zia and I would probably be quarrelling over the colour of our kites.

Conjuring hope, I close my eyes briefly and there I am. Road 33. In front of our gate is the vendor with his cart of savouries. I constantly brag that I can eat more spicy food than Zia. The vendor hands me a plate of
phuchkas
dipped in tamarind water. ‘More chilli,’ I say, smiling at my brother. ‘I’m strong!’ Zia flounces off to tell Ma that I will suffer a stomach ache tonight. ‘You stole the change from the shopping money!’ I yell after him. He stops in mid-stride and calls me a liar. But he doesn’t go inside. We call a truce by agreeing to have ice-cream later in the afternoon.

We have an arrangement with the man who pushes the ‘Baby’ ice-cream cart on the streets of Dhanmondi.
He’s not to call out when he approaches the house. Ma has decreed that we’re not allowed ice-cream more than thrice a week. This will be our fifth treat in as many days.

We hear the car’s horn from a distance. Abba has returned for his afternoon nap before his scheduled rounds of the hospitals. The
darwan
drops his bidi and hastens to open the gates. We scuttle around to the back of the house. There’s no end in sight to the good life. The world is fine, the way we know it.

I open my eyes.

It’s a short walk to the other side of the bridge. The house of the Talukdars stands as I remember it. But now it has a rundown appearance. There are cracks in the walls streaked with lines of dirty grey. I scan the veranda for the old man in his rocking chair, scrutinising the world for its imperfections and mischief-makers. He was forever concerned about his daughters writing love letters to the boys in the neighbourhood. Once, Zia and I were the recipients of their affections. Stones tossed into his front yard incensed Talukdar and he complained bitterly to Ma. We made certain that he saw us.

I pick up a piece of broken brick and juggle it in my hand. The distance is just about right.

But there’s only a chest of drawers and three empty chairs on the veranda. Old Talukdar would be Abba’s age now if he were alive. I drop the brick near my feet just as a man opens the front gate.

‘Do the Talukdars still live here?’ I ask, crossing the street.

He looks at me dubiously. ‘This house is occupied by Mr Karim and his family.’

Further along the road, the trees and the electric poles are as I remember them. But the tiny shop that sold cigarettes, paan and kites has disappeared. A rickshaw darts across the intersecting road. I’ve come too far. I turn and retrace my steps, stopping to read the numbers on the houses, until I come to ‘13’, engraved on top of a concrete pillar.

I look up.

It can’t be. This is a four-storey block of flats. The terrace is crowded with satellite dishes. There are clothes drying on an entanglement of rubber-coated wires. I wander through open gates into a barren, oil-stained concrete yard. A uniformed man sees me and comes running.

‘There was a double-storeyed house here…’ I’m no longer certain of my bearing.

‘No house here, sir!’ he contradicts me vigorously. ‘There’s a vacant flat for lease. You can have a look. It’s fully air-conditioned, mosaic floors, large rooms—’

‘But there was a house!’

‘Only luxury flats for the rich!’ the
darwan
says proudly.

I
CAN HEAR
Ma and Nasreen talking in Abba’s bedroom. I pause near the staircase and then change my mind about going in. Solitude is what I need. I tiptoe up to my room.

Alone, I sit on the bed, and abruptly my thoughts balloon. Had today’s ordeal been at evening in a deserted bazaar, I might not have left unharmed. There’s something utterly despicable in being called a spy. You lack independence, is what it says. You are willing to lie. You’re a person who has been brain-washed. To some of those men in the bazaar, I must have looked like an outsider with insidious intentions.

I picture myself in a raincoat with a felt hat pulled low over my eyes, my footfall echoing in the dark lanes of a city—a human cliché.

After a time it seems better to be downstairs.

I wander into Abba’s room. He’s awake, sitting in bed, about to have spicy chicken broth and soft rice. He ignores me as I sit at the foot of his bed. He slurps the liquid noisily and smacks his lips, screwing up his face in distaste, while Ma encourages him to feed himself.

‘How are you feeling?’ I ask, more for the sake of saying something rather than expecting a coherent reply.

‘Huh? This…This!’ He yells, hurling a spoon across the room.

Ma immediately understands the problem. The doctors have restricted Abba to a small quantity of salt in his food.

‘Is there any point in making him miserable?’ I ask. ‘Why don’t you give him what he wants?’

‘You don’t have to look after him,’ she says despondently. ‘I follow what Zia and the other doctors tell me. It won’t make any difference if I bring him a pinch of
salt or a whole tablespoonful. He’ll put the lot in his food and then complain again.’

I make a fuss of sprinkling salt in the broth. Abba looks on gleefully.

Ma returns to the kitchen. I sit and watch him finish the rest of the meal. He picks up the linen serviette and looks at it. I take it from his hand and dab his mouth.

‘What would you like to do now?’

‘Do?’

I point to the rocking chair facing the window. ‘Do you want to sit there?’

‘Sit there,’ he repeats after me.

I help him move and then part the curtains. The afternoon glare doesn’t seem to bother him. I place a cushion behind his head and cover him with a cotton sheet. He sighs, his gaze fixed on the horizon. A smile spreads across his face. He tilts his head back and his eyes close.

I feel the anguish of the distance between us.

The orderliness of my sister’s bedroom infuses calm into our conversation. For no reason, I find I’m whispering. It’s a sparsely furnished room—a single bed, a couple of chairs, a bookshelf neatly stacked with rows of secondhand paperback romances and a dressing table with an empty vase, a make-up kit, a hairbrush and half a dozen lipsticks on a brass stand. There’s a pile of toys and children’s books in a corner.

I remember Amelia telling me that a woman’s personality can be determined by the state of her dressing table. A haphazard clutter of paraphernalia is a measure of self-confidence and boldness, an indication of independence and spontaneity in the way she lives. But
there’s a sense of wholeness about Nasreen here, a unity of self. Resilience and strength. Nasreen has suffered, and yet I cannot discern the seams of healing. It’s as if she’s been stitched back together by a tailoring genius.

Nasreen tries to steer me away from talking about her marriage. I persist, but also remark on her composure.

‘If I give the impression of being unaffected by what happened to me, it’s because of Zia’s help,’ she confesses. ‘He adjusted to my needs and made me think I was important. He helped to keep my dignity intact. I felt worthy of my place in the family, even through humiliation and sleepless nights.’ Nasreen no longer engages in arguments. Silence is her way of dissent. Whatever she says is guarded and unlikely to create friction, and her voice is never raised beyond what can be judged as inoffensive and rational.

‘Are you happy working at the bank?’

‘It’s a job,’ she replies indifferently. ‘It pays reasonably well. As for being happy, it’s not a state I’m intimate with these days. I have responsibilities to my children and to the rest of the family.’

I tell her I’m uneasy about Omar.

‘Oh, he’s a private person. As long as we don’t ask too many questions, Omar is a genial soul.’ She smiles. ‘He’s good to my kids and he humours and flatters Ma as though she were a child. He’s her absolute favourite! When Omar visits, everything else becomes unimportant.’

‘So, why doesn’t he live here when he’s in Dhaka?’

‘Doesn’t get along with Zia,’ Nasreen replies frankly. ‘Omar has this view that we represent the remnants of a
decadent lifestyle. He thinks our ways reflect our inability to adjust to the needs of a new world.’

‘He may not be entirely wrong there.’

‘Sometimes I think he’s unnecessarily harsh on his father. Whenever they meet, there’s serious argument over social and political issues. Omar resents Zia’s carping about the need to give more time to the family.’

There’s a pause and I look around this austere bedroom.

‘Is there…I mean, have you ever thought of…ah…’

Nasreen understands my reticence. ‘I’m neither interested nor do I have the time to meet anyone else. The thought of another marriage scares me. Besides, I’m divorced. No family would trust me.’ She points to the bookshelf. ‘It’s far easier to engage in the emotional lives of fictitious characters. They are controlled and manipulated. Blissful lives, with predictable upheavals. By the end of a day, I’m exhausted. After work the children need attention and sometimes Ma gets depressed about Abba. I have to look after her as well. Mindless reading is all I can take.’ Nasreen pauses and looks at me as though she’s trying to figure me out. ‘Can I ask you something?’

‘Of course! There’s no need to be formal.’

‘Is there any reason why you’re still so unsettled? I know you’re upset about Abba. But something more seems to be bothering you.’ She squeezes my arm affectionately.

I don’t know how to answer. It’s not that I want to be evasive. ‘I feel…as if I’m disconnected with everything that should be important to me.’ I pause. ‘I keep looking
for…an
attachment
—the umbilical cord to feed me with the nourishment of the life I’ve known.’ I look into my sister’s concerned face. ‘I don’t have a sense of oneness like you seem to do. I can’t focus on anything—it’s as if there are bits of me all over the place…And there are things that I find I don’t understand. What was once familiar has gone. That troubles me. I’m anxious, even afraid—of what, I don’t know. I’m finding it impossible to adjust to the new reality here.’

‘Maybe you’re just tired.’

‘I am. But that doesn’t necessarily explain this perilous condition. It’s like standing on the edge of a maze. I fear if I enter, I’ll be lost.’

‘You’re upset by the changes you’ve found. The country. The population explosion in the city. Landmarks that have disappeared. The family…we’ve known better days.’

I nod in quick agreement. ‘I’m flustered by Abba’s condition, even though Zia warned me about it. I’m saddened by the struggle to keep up our pretences of landed gentry. I suspect Zia lives beyond his means just to keep Ma’s illusions intact. And I’m equally guilty. It’s utterly irrational to be yearning for a past that’s vanished, I tell myself. But that doesn’t work. I guess I’m afraid that it’ll disappear from my memory as well.’ I recall my consternation earlier in the day. ‘I didn’t know that our old house in Dhanmondi had been demolished. I’m upset about that. It felt as if someone had deliberately smashed me with a jackhammer.’

‘We didn’t have any say over what the new owner did, once it was sold,’ Nasreen says guilelessly.

‘Everything’s different except my recollection of how things were once. And that too cracked after this morning.’

Nasreen hugs me. ‘Don’t surrender so abjectly to the past. It will only bring you anguish. The ability to forget is a rare gift, I’ve found.’

E
VENING ARRIVES, ACCOMPANIED
by a thunderstorm. Silvery whips lash the southern sky, goading it into a chesty rumble.

I manage to corner Zia.

‘You never told me the house had been demolished.’

‘What difference does it make?’ Zia asks tonelessly. ‘It had to be sold.’

‘Who bought it?’

‘A property contractor.’

‘Did you know what he was planning to do?’

‘Yes.’ Zia’s careful to avoid looking at me.

‘And you still went ahead with the sale!’

‘He offered substantially more than the others did. One has to be practical about such matters.’

I pause to wonder what I might have done in his position—dithered, allowed my attachment to the house to enervate me. Everywhere I go, the land elicits my migrant guilt. My brother does not have the luxury of wooing memories as I do. While I’ve been reinventing the past and placating my conscience from the safety of a time and distance that, to an extent, embalms reality, Zia has had to deal with the problems close-up, pragmatically and
as they’ve occurred. Abba’s financial indiscretions crashlanded on my brother without warning. His generosity to our parents, his magnanimity towards Nasreen and her children—these are not lost on me. He’s never complained or accused me of selfishness or of not doing enough. And I feel wretched about that.

‘Yes,’ I murmur reluctantly. ‘I suppose one does.’

‘It hurt me too, you know.’ Zia sounds as though he has reached inside me to know how I feel. ‘That day when the last truckload of furniture left the house, I felt I was falling apart and losing parts of my past. I had seen death, but not this kind of loss. It was different, as though I was witnessing my own passing away. But you have to pick yourself up and move along.’

M
A IS PLEASED
that Uncle Rafiq has dropped in to see us. Then Omar appears—an added delight!

His presence energises Ma and gradually we’re all affected by her enthusiasm for the gathering. It’s one of those rare occasions when we’re consciously grateful to her for knitting us together again as a family.

‘Without her…’ Zia shakes his head as though unable to conceive of any cohesion among us in Ma’s absence.

‘The wife, mother, sister, aunt and grandmother work furiously together in Ma all the time,’ Nasreen observes affectionately. ‘Sometimes it creates a whirlwind of confusion.’

‘For her or for us?’ I say with a straight face.

Zia laughs and Nasreen slaps me playfully on the arm.

Ma tells us the story of the time Zia and I raided the pantry and gorged ourselves on sweetmeats that were intended for guests. We took no notice of the thin, edible silver foil and sprinkled almonds that decorated the sweets. We tore into them like savages!

Then we embarrass Ma by recalling her fit of rage afterwards. Nasreen had dobbed us in because we wouldn’t share the sweets with her. Ma reacted by chasing us unsuccessfully through the rooms upstairs, waving a wooden ruler. Trying to smack me, she took a wild swipe, missed, and hit a door instead. The ruler broke in two. Meanwhile downstairs, unaware of these antics, Abba was entertaining the guests in the lounge.

Within minutes Ma gave up and joined the party as if nothing had happened. Zia and I could hear her chatting animatedly. The driver was sent out to find a sweet shop that was open for business. Dinner was deliberately delayed on the pretext that the cook had suddenly fallen ill. (Much to the cook’s surprise, he had been given money and told to disappear for an hour!) We knew that Ma’s anger never lasted. We were safe, our daring made all the more enjoyable by Nasreen’s sulking. She had realised that we would escape without retribution!

Omar moves easily among us, playing with Nasreen’s children, walking Abba around the room, teasing his grandmother and talking to his aunt. For a few minutes, Zia and I talk idly about the health problems that afflict middle-aged men.

But Zafar and Yasmin demand attention. We’re obliged to play hide and seek. A ludo board appears and, much to Yasmin’s delight, she wins the first two games. Zia and I pretend to be offended and huff off to the corridor, where Omar and Zafar are playing indoor cricket with a plastic bat and a table tennis ball.

Yasmin follows us.

‘Girls can’t play cricket,’ Zafar says superciliously.

The men nod in agreement.

Yasmin’s piercing howl draws Ma’s attention. She buries her face in her grandmother’s stomach and sobs about our meanness.

‘She will play!’ Ma declares, grabbing the bat from Omar’s hand.

‘That is not fair!’ Zafar cries.

‘It’s very fair,’ Nasreen says sternly.

‘We better do what we’re told!’ Omar grins. ‘Otherwise, we may not get to eat.’

The game resumes. This time there are no concessions for Yasmin.

I enjoy being absorbed into the ordinariness of this gathering, the cosiness, the intimacy of knowing everyone. It’s the warmth that emanates from a sense of belonging. Here I don’t have to stand in a corner with a drink in my hand, giving the impression that I’m having fun. I feel as if the house is my own, as though I’ve shed layers of social pretensions to be my natural self, without being viewed with reservation or spoken to with a wary politeness. This evening I’m not a cultural outsider. The years of changes
are momentarily rescinded and my rhythm of being merges with the ebb and flow of familial life. It’s almost an induced delusion to think that nothing that matters has changed.

Zia offers to drive Uncle Rafiq home. I don’t understand the rapport between them now. Zia used to hate Uncle Rafiq, for his belief that religious rituals define a Muslim. When he was in medical school, Zia would even seek confrontations with the old man. He was eager to prove the superiority of rational thinking over the tenets of religious belief.

Abba and the children are fed and sent to bed, but not before a noisy protest from Zafar and Yasmin. Ma’s favourite television show has been recorded and, dutifully, Nasreen agrees to watch it with her.

Omar makes no move to leave. I suggest we go up to Zia’s study.

‘I’m sure your father won’t mind if we sit there,’ I say, as we head up the stairs. ‘What do you think of Saladin?’

‘Yeah…Another age. Different values. You could afford to be honourable. They didn’t have cluster bombs back then.’

T
HE ROOM IS
locked.

‘You never know what secrets my father may be hiding,’ Omar says lightheartedly.

‘Seems to be a family characteristic.’

Omar looks alarmed and then laughs. ‘Speaking from experience?’

‘I’ll never forget my tenth birthday. There was a party for my friends and a dinner for the family. I knew Dada was giving me a special present. But he kept insisting that it had to be kept a secret until evening—“A family without secrets has no imagination,” he teased me. “Where have you hidden it?” I demanded. “Behind the moon, where it’s always dark,” he said!’

‘What was the present?’

‘The best new bicycle that was available.’

‘Behind the moon…’ Omar muses aloud as we head for my bedroom. ‘That’s not a bad hiding place.’

‘Maybe that’s where clever terrorists hide,’ I joke.

‘Osama’s hideaway.’ Omar sprawls on the bed. ‘So! How are you enjoying it here?’

‘It’s a bit like standing in front of a mirror after years of not seeing my own image. Frankly, I’m also a little bored.’ I rock gently on the padded chair that Zia has sent up to the room.

‘You’re not the only one who’s changed. The entire world has, we’re told.’

‘Your aunt said something similar…I see how different your father is now. And you.’

‘How am I different?’ He sounds amused, as though I’ve made a superficial judgement of him.

‘Well, you’ve matured, of course. You’re very articulate. A handsome young man. And…’ I falter, groping for a subtler dimension.

‘Yes?’ he says sharply.

‘I can’t put it in words. It’s something elusive that I sense in your father as well. It’s as if, in your own ways, you’ve each stumbled upon a—a
meaningful
existence. And yet you don’t want to share it with others…A kind of unshakeable faith seems to guide both of you. Does that make sense?’

Omar laughs. ‘Uncle, no one can accuse you of lacking intuition. But you do realise that you’re as much of a mystery to me?’

‘I suppose.’

‘Why won’t you talk about your war experiences?’ he pushes. ‘My father knows as little as I do about what happened. Or, at least, that’s what he’s told me.’

‘They’re not experiences to be proud of,’ I say cautiously. ‘There’s no point in publicly flagellating oneself.’