The Good Muslim (12 page)

‘Well, I don’t like it,’ she said, moving forward nonetheless, climbing the wide steps that led up to the building. ‘Where’s the entrance?’

‘I don’t know. We’re not supposed to go inside; just admire it from here.’

They turned their backs to the building and took in the view of the grounds. The lawn stretched out on either side, reaching Sher-e Bangla Nagar to the east, Mirpur Road to the west. It was impressive, there was no denying that. Already the trees ringing the compound looked ancient. Dotted around the gardens, she saw couples holding hands, trying to catch the shade of a tree. On a patch of grass near the main road, a phuchka-vendor had set up his cart. He waved, beckoning. ‘Hungry, Ma?’ Maya said.

They settled into the crude wooden chairs and ordered two plates. The sun was starting its rapid descent, sending horizontal ribbons of light across the wide carpet of green that led up to the building. Suddenly she wanted to be somewhere else; her eye ached for the groves of Rajshahi, for her little brick house. She wondered if Nazia would call her again, imagined the trouble it would be for her to pay the postman, get him to dial the number. ‘That little village was like home,’ she said suddenly, her eye lingering on the building, resisting its grey curves, the way it floated, solid yet delicate, on its American-made lake.

‘It will be hard to leave behind,’ her mother said. I can still go back, Maya thought. I can pack up again and march out the door and become a country doctor again.

The phuchkas arrived, a dozen shells, each filled with its chickpea and potato mixture. Maya poured in the tamarind water and popped one into her mouth. Immediately her eyes began to water. ‘Mmm,’ she said, smiling.

‘Ay,’ Rehana said, ‘he’s put too much chilli.’ She waved at the phuchka-man.

‘No, Ammoo, leave it, they’re perfect,’ Maya said, wiping her streaming eyes. ‘Seriously. Perfect.’ Her mother passed her a handkerchief. ‘I’d forgotten how yummy they were.’ A steady procession of cars drove past the wide avenue in front of the parliament compound. In between bites of phuchka, Maya heard car horns, and the tinkle of rickshaw-bells as they turned corners or changed lanes, and, every few minutes, the Dhanmondi–Gazipur bus, tilted to one side as the passengers hung, Tarzan-like, to the railings.

Now, with the pastry about to collapse in her mouth, and sunlight beaming sideways, pink and orange, against her mother’s cheek, she suddenly remembered all the times she had been loved. It was like that with her mother – memory upon memory stacked together like the feathers in a wild bird, there to keep her warm, or when she needed to, fly. She was the wings of her, the very wings.

‘The road is so busy,’ Maya said, sipping the tea they had been brought by the phuchka-man.

Her mother nodded. ‘Everything is speeding up. Only thirteen years since independence and you can’t recognise anything.’

Thirteen. Her broken wishbone of a country was thirteen years old. Didn’t sound like very long, but in that time the nation had rolled and unrolled tanks from its streets. It had had leaders elected and ordained. It had murdered two presidents. In its infancy, it had started cannibalising itself, killing the tribals in the south, drowning villages for dams, razing the ancient trees of Modhupur Forest. A fast-acting country: quick to anger, quick to self-destruct.

The phuchkas were finished, the tea cooling in their cups. Maya didn’t want the day to end. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘let’s go to New Market. I want to buy you a sari.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve missed seven of your birthdays, and seven Eid days – fourteen, if you count both Eids.’ A sari, she realised as she said it, would never add up to that many missed days. But she liked the thought of returning to their favourite shops in New Market, haggling with the sari-vendors who would order cold drinks and model their wares on the hips of their young sons.

‘Okay,’ Rehana said, ‘let’s go.’

The rickshaw-puller turned on Mirpur Road, crossed its length, past Gawsia and Chandni Chawk. Just as he was about to make the turn into the market, a crowd emerged from Fuller Road, a wall of people marching towards them, holding up a large painted banner.

‘It’s the Chattro League,’ Maya said, recognising their logo from her university days. The marchers advanced slowly, filling the area in front of the New Market gate. Their megaphones blared. She saw herself multiplied. ‘What do they want?’

Their voices were drowned out by the chanting. Something about the vice-chancellor being sacked. And the Dictator’s corruption.

A canvas-covered truck arrived, and uniformed men spilled out of the open flap at the back. The marchers took a step back, still holding the banner in an uneven line. A man behind the megaphone said, ‘We are here in peace. We want to be heard.’

The uniformed men held up their shields and their lathis.

‘Chattro League demands—’

As they charged, the policemen looked like angry housewives. They smashed their rolling pins on the backs of the front line. The banner collapsed, falling to the ground and getting tangled in the legs of the protesters. The marchers scattered, but the police chased them down, beating hard on their backs, until they crumpled, one by one, and were dragged by their armpits into the waiting truck.

Maya saw a boy with his hands around his head, blood leaking from between his fingers. The rickshaw-wallah tried to turn around, but there were too many cars behind them, and the police vans were blocking the road ahead. ‘Forgive me but you’ll have to walk,’ he said, refusing to take his fare. ‘Hurry, if you don’t go now you’ll get stuck here for hours.’

They followed the footpath and headed west, away from New Market. Behind them, clouds of teargas billowed upwards. Maya grabbed her mother’s elbow. ‘Quickly, Ammoo.’ They broke into a jog, turned off Mirpur Road and began to cross the bridge. They turned a corner and the side streets were suddenly quiet, no sign of the police. Maya turned around and hugged Ammoo, out of breath. Tears clogged her throat.

‘You used to look like that,’ Rehana said, reading her thoughts.

She laughed, wiping her eyes. ‘Like what? Youthful and carefree?’

‘Like you were only alive to be on the streets.’

They returned to the bungalow. At six o’clock Maya switched on the news. The newsreader, her sari pinned tightly to her shoulder, began narrating the day’s events. The Dictator had announced he would build a strong Bangladesh. The finance minister announced they would not trade with India on unfavourable terms. There was no mention of the protests, the arrests or the beatings.

‘What a bullshit newsreader. All that lipstick and she can’t tell the truth. I don’t know why you keep this stupid television here.’ Maya slammed her palm against the dial.

‘Leave that on,’ Ammoo said. She was ironing a sari, leaning heavily on the crumpled border.

‘I can’t believe you’re falling for this propaganda.’

Rehana stood the iron upright and straightened her back. ‘Who do you think talked to me all day long? Before you came back? Nobody. Sometimes I used to ask Sufia to sing a village song while she was dusting, just so I knew there was someone else here. I bought the TV because otherwise it’s so quiet I can hear the rats trying to get into the house. So don’t you tell me to switch it off. I’ll have it if I want to.’ And she, in turn, slammed a palm on the dial, making the images jump on to the screen, then disappear. She fiddled with the antenna. ‘Damn,’ she said, while the picture flickered in and out. Finally she found the signal and, with the iron still plugged into its socket, leaned against the sofa and listened to the weather report.

‘I don’t want to go back,’ Maya said. And there it was. Easy as one sentence. Maya felt herself warming with relief. She wouldn’t stop sending letters to Rajshahi, and maybe, once the seasons turned and the memory of that day receded, she would go back for a visit. Check up on the postman’s daughter, hand out a few packets of antibiotics. But she would stop imagining it was possible to return; she would stay here, begin some kind of life with what was left. She would not forget Nazia; Nazia’s story, her daring to swim in the pond and the lashes with which she paid for such bravery, would be chronicled. It would be there in black and white; people would read it and they would know that their freedom was as thin as the skin around Nazia’s ankles. But she would stay here, with her mother, the Dictator at their doorstep, the little boy under her wing.

There were tears in Ammoo’s eyes. ‘It’s your house,’ she said. ‘Stay as long as you like.’ They embraced again, and then the news programme ended, and it was time for
Dallas
. Maya promised to watch if Ammoo would fill her in on the plot. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but it’s going to take a while, it’s very complicated.’

As Ammoo put up her feet on the coffee table, Maya noticed a slight swelling around her midriff. ‘What’s this?’ she said, patting her mother’s stomach.

‘It’s nothing,’ Rehana said, batting Maya’s hand away.

‘Let me see.’

‘Leave it alone, beta. I’m just getting fat.’ And she bent towards the television again, turning up the volume.

That night, Maya lay awake and thought of Sohail. When she was six and Sohail eight, they were sent away to live with their aunt and uncle in Lahore. Their father had died not long before, and everyone thought it would be better if they went away for a while to give their mother a chance to recover, build a new life for herself. There was talk of another marriage, more children. They would only be in the way.

Ammoo did not agree. There was a judge, and a court case, which she lost.

They lived in Lahore for two years with their father’s brother, Faiz, and his wife, Parveen. An enormous house. She and Sohail had an ayah who slept on the verandah outside their room. If they needed something, they were told to ring the bell beside the light switch.

On some nights Parveen would slip into Maya’s bed and put her hand gently on her forehead, believing she was asleep. Maya would hear her sigh deeply, her breath medicinal and light, and she would drift off to the sound of Parveen’s gentle snoring.

Her memories of those two years were full of Sohail. Sohail holding her hand on the aeroplane. Sohail bending down and retying her shoelaces. Sohail’s handkerchief against her lashes. Sohail instructing her to stay silent at school until she knew enough Urdu. Sohail breaking her rootis into small pieces and stacking them up, just the way she liked.

He was father and mother and bhaiya to her. Her closest human. Her only friend.

When they returned to Dhaka, a very large two-storey building stood where half of the garden had once been. Ammoo took them on a tour, their shoes clattering against the bare cement floors. From the upstairs verandah, which wrapped around the building like a vine, you could see the flat roof of their shabby little bungalow, rainwater gathering in mossy pools, whitewash greying.

They couldn’t live in it. Ammoo was going to rent it out and buy them things with the money. It was her two-storeyed bit of insurance, that house. She whispered a prayer every time she stepped into it; she dusted and redusted the banisters; she stretched her hand up, touching the frame of the front door. And she made them call it Shona, as though it were built of solid gold.

Book Two

Every soul shall taste death

1984
July

‘I
t’s a good thing you’re staying,’ Ammoo said; ‘you’ll be here for the surgery.’

Maya was only half listening, her hands twisted into a mound of warm dough. Ammoo was teaching her to make parathas, the trick of which, she said, was that the water should be boiling hot when mixed with the flour. She thought her mother was telling her she would be here for so-and-so’s wedding, or daughter’s naming ceremony. Then she heard it. ‘Surgery?’

‘You were right. I went to see the doctor. I have a tumour.’ She patted her stomach. ‘In my uterus. They have to take it out.’

Maya could see it now, protruding lightly from her middle. And she hadn’t been the one to diagnose it. Her hands moved in the dough, but Ammoo shook her head. ‘Parathas first, then you can doctor me.’

‘How long have you known?’

‘Not long.’

Maya began to knead, hard and furious, reaching into the elastic warmth of flour, water. ‘Enough, Maya,’ Ammoo said; ‘now divide it. Put some flour on your hands, like this.’ She pulled off a section, rolled it between her palms, fingers extended like a dancer’s, and passed her a perfect sphere.

‘More flour,’ she said, and handed Maya the rolling pin.

‘You didn’t tell me.’ She rolled, pressed, turned the disc, rolled again.

Rehana wiped the flour from her hands. ‘I was going to tell you, I just didn’t want you to worry unnecessarily.’

‘Why would you do that, why would you keep this a secret?’

She came up behind Maya, guiding her hands on the rolling pin. ‘You’re making it square,’ she said. ‘I told you, I didn’t mean to. And they said it isn’t anything serious.’

The dreams Maya had had in Rajshahi, the blade of premonition when the postman delivered the telegram, were coming true. She shrugged off the sensation that it had somehow been ordained, and that Ammoo would die now, just as she had dreamed, wrapped in a shroud of white and sent into the ground with prayers and fistfuls of mud. The air thickened in her chest. Stop, she told herself. You’re a doctor, focus on what you can do. Tumours in the uterus were the best kind of tumour; they lay in the womb like a seed, and they grew within it, but the uterus could easily be disposed of. Ammoo didn’t need it any more. That is what they would do. They would perform a hysterectomy, and the whole thing would be over. Finished.

She immediately called her old professor Dr Sattar, scratching at a loose bit of plaster on the wall as she waited for the medical college switchboard to connect her. He was the best surgeon at the hospital; people waited months for his steady hands to cut into them. He came on the line, irritated, and she introduced herself formally, reminding him of the year she had enrolled at the medical college (‘Sir, it was just after the war, sir . . .’). There was no softening, no note of recognition, but he asked for details of Ammoo’s tumour, its location and size. Maya read from the report Ammoo had given her. And then he agreed to see her, to do an X-ray and decide the next course of action. Yes, he said, a hysterectomy was probably called for. He didn’t say anything about the risks, or the complications, or about her chances; he just treated it like any other thing, something to put in his diary. Call my secretary, he said, make an appointment. That’s what she liked about surgeons, they didn’t stand on ceremony.