The Good Muslim (25 page)

Had he predicted it? Had he known beforehand, and enjoyed those final moments, the stylish figure he cut across the university campus, the looks of admiration from his classmates, the sly glances of women?

Maya didn’t think so. The last day was probably as much a mystery to him as to everyone else. It would not have been premeditated. It would have come upon him suddenly, as a revelation: that he should dress in the style and manner of the faithful, that his outward appearance should match the changes that were occurring within, that it wouldn’t do to look like everyone else, to look as though he could attend parties and sit behind a desk and be called smart.

He would have decided on that day, and that day would have been the last. He would not have lingered over the trousers, or wanted a few final hours to enjoy them. As soon as he’d made up his mind, that would have been it.

And after:

A starched, white jellaba, the loose cotton pants underneath, pearl buttons on the collar. And, like a hand pressed in benediction, the cap that never left his head. That was what he wore every day after that last trousered day.

It wasn’t open for debate, Maya decided. If Shafaat didn’t let her write the article, she would send it to another paper. She would send it to the
Observer
. She went home and began to type.

My name is S. M. Haque, and I am here to tell you a few truths about our war. None of us is completely free of responsibility – not when we live in a country that is a living example of what we fought against – a Dictatorship, led by a man who cares nothing for this country, and a refusal to acknowledge the criminals who live among us. If we stand by and allow the crimes of the past to go unpunished, then we are complicit in those crimes. If the Dictator does not hold a trial for the war criminals, he too is a war criminal.

She signed it ‘Sheherezade Haque Maya’.

1985
February

The advance rent from the German tenant meant that there would be no money coming from the big house for six months. Maya’s savings had dried up. She decided to take up Dr Sattar’s offer of a position at the medical college hospital. He asked her to come in for an interview. The committee noted her high marks, her letters of distinction in the final examinations, but they were perplexed by her years in the countryside. Why had she given up surgery? She answered as best she could, making the years sound far more purposeful than they had been. She managed to impress them. She would be a junior doctor, subordinate to the other doctors in her class, but it was a start. She felt a lightness in her chest as she passed through the hospital on her way out. There would be a system here, charts and registers and written prescriptions. Students to boss around. She would not be held solely responsible if a patient died, or know the patient’s husband and her three other children, what they’d had to sell in order to afford the trip to hospital. Her world was contracting and expanding: she thought happily of colleagues, hospital politics, gossip in the corridors.

These were her thoughts as she returned to the bungalow that day. When she saw Joy’s car in the driveway, her stomach did a little dip.

The living room smelled of perfume. A small, middle-aged woman sat on the sofa and sipped tea from the good cups. Joy sat beside her, loading his plate with biscuits and shondesh. Ammoo was perched opposite, her hands clasped in her lap, smiling.

Because she felt she was interrupting something, Maya knocked on the doorframe.

‘Oh!’ said her mother, ‘come in, beta. Sit down. This is Mrs Bashir.’

Maya avoided looking at Joy and concentrated on the woman who was now standing up and reeling her into a tight embrace. ‘My dear girl,’ she said, ‘I am so happy to meet you. I knew your brother, but this is the first time I’m seeing you. Let me take a look. Oh, you are a beauty, those big eyes. Not so fair as your brother, but never mind, we don’t care about those things in our family.’

‘Hello,’ Maya said, leaning back as far as she could.

‘Do feet-salaam,’ her mother whispered.

‘Oh, no need for such formalities,’ Mrs Bashir said, releasing Maya. ‘Sit beside me, you must be tired. Joy told me you’re a very busy doctor. Very independent-minded,’ she said, waving her arms.

Joy crossed and uncrossed his legs. Maya tried to catch his eye, but he was looking the other way. ‘Maya,’ Ammoo said, her voice like warm milk, ‘why don’t you tell Mrs Bashir what you did today? Will you have another cup of tea, Mrs Bashir?’

‘I have to wash my hands,’ Maya said. ‘I’ve just come from the hospital. You wouldn’t want to catch TB, auntie.’

Mrs Bashir blinked, smiled through her surprise. ‘Please, beta, go right ahead.’

At the sink Maya caught a glimpse of herself. Her eyes were small and tired, and her braid had become ragged. She splashed water on herself and retied her hair.

Joy was waiting for her outside the bathroom. ‘TB?’

‘Well, there’s been an outbreak. I wanted to warn your mother.’

In the living room, more tea had been served. Maya sat as far from Mrs Bashir as she could and stared at the ceiling. Mrs Bashir looked expectantly around the room. Her eye caught the basket beside Maya’s chair.

‘Do you knit, Maya?’

‘No, not me.’ Had Joy told this woman nothing? ‘It’s Ammoo’s.’

‘I’m just a novice,’ Rehana said. ‘Something to do with my hands. I thought I’d start with a scarf.’

Mrs Bashir’s voice trembled when she said, ‘I used to knit too. For my husband.’

They had found their common ground. ‘Maya, why don’t you and Joy sit in the garden for a while while us mothers have a talk?’

Outside, Joy tried to take her hand. She shrugged him off.

‘You want to go for a drive?’

‘No, let’s walk. We need candles; the electricity’s been going off at night.’

They left through the kitchen door. As soon as they had crossed the road, Maya turned to Joy. ‘What’s going on?’

‘Nothing.’ He searched his pockets and pulled out a packet of cigarettes. ‘I told my mother I wanted to marry you, and she said the proper thing to do would be to pay a visit to your house. She insisted.’

He wanted to marry her.
Marry her
. She suppressed the tiny cheer that went up, unbidden. Marriage was a life sentence. ‘Do you do everything your mother says?’

‘No.’

Why hadn’t he said anything to her? ‘And did you think of consulting me first?’

‘Of course. But I thought it would be best if I appealed to auntie.’

‘That’s pathetic.’

‘Look,’ he said, inhaling sharply, ‘there’s no conspiracy here.’

‘It’s pathetic and you are just trying to make me feel guilty. You know how much she wants me to get married – you’re just using it against me. She’s dying, you know.’

‘I thought she was in remission.’

‘Well, it’s just a matter of time. Don’t you know I think about giving her some comfort – wedding, babies?’

‘I thought you didn’t want any babies.’

‘That’s not the point. The point is I have never given her anything.’ Would it be for herself, or for Ammoo? She might never know.

‘Well, then, all the more reason not to delay.’

‘You don’t care whether I love you, you just want to take advantage of my position?’ They were at the park now, where the road curved. She turned, marching towards the small cluster of shops on the corner.

‘Maya, please, I know you don’t mean that. Why do you always have to talk that way?’

‘Because I’m a hard-hearted woman, that’s why. You shouldn’t want – shouldn’t even dream of marrying me.’

‘I dream, I can’t help it.’

‘Well, I can’t help myself either. You can’t marry me. You can’t marry me and turn me into one of those women, with the jewellery and making perfectly round parathas and doing everything my mother-in-law says and only letting nice words out of my mouth.’

‘Think of all the nice words you have stored up. Since you’ve used up all the nasty ones.’

‘Don’t joke.’

He flicked away the cigarette and stopped in front of her. They had arrived at the shop, which was dimly lit by a hurricane lamp. The shopkeeper recognised her and waved. ‘I’m not joking. I want to marry you.’

‘You can’t. Go now, I have to buy the candles.’ She walked away from him and up to the shopkeeper’s counter, ordered the candles. She heard his footsteps retreating, and she lingered, buying oil, soap, eggs, chiding herself for listening out for him, for hoping he would come back, beg her again.

When she got home, he was leaning on the bonnet of his car.

‘Drive,’ she said, flinging herself into the passenger seat.

He was slow, almost casual, as he backed out of the driveway. She pressed her face against the window and the breath dragoned out of her, hot and fierce.

‘Where do you want to go?’ One hand on the steering wheel, the elbow poking out. It made the blood pound in her ears.

‘Just drive. I don’t care.’ Don’t cry, she told herself. It’ll be so stupid if you cry. ‘You could have asked me yourself, you know.’

‘I wanted to get your mother on my side first.’

‘She is on your side. Everyone is on your side.’

‘There isn’t a side.’

‘You just said.’

‘No sides.’

‘Do you even love me?’

He shifted into fourth. Relaxed on the clutch. Smooth as forest honey.

‘So you don’t even love me.’

‘You have something against marriage?’

She turned to face him. ‘How old am I?’

‘I don’t know, twenty-six?’

‘Thirty-bloody-two. You think I would be thirty-bloody-two without a husband if I didn’t have a problem with marriage?’

‘Here I was, thinking it was just a matter of the right man.’

‘There is no such thing.’

‘No such thing as the right man?’

‘They start out all right, but then, somewhere along the way, their egos turn to glass and you have to spend your whole life with your arms around them, making them feel better while your own life turns to shit.’ She banged her fist on the dashboard.

‘Is this about Shafaat?’

‘Shafaat – what? Oh, you’re jealous now. Exactly what I meant. Ego like an eggshell. And stop smiling, damn it, this isn’t funny.’

‘Stings like a bee,’ he said quietly, marshmallow-tender.

They were near Paltan now, and she leaned out of the car to see Paltan Maidan, the vast open field she knew so well. The car turned and she saw a brightly lit sign. She banged on the window. ‘Stop here – stop. Stop the car.’

He braked, jolted. ‘What?’

She wrenched open the door and flew out of the car. ‘What’s this?’ It was dark, and hard to see beyond the gate, but she caught sight of what looked like a Ferris wheel and, beyond, the plastic animals with human faces that told her this was a playground, a children’s playground. SHISHU PARK, the sign said.

Maya screamed. ‘Shishu Park!’ She pulled at the gates. ‘Did you know?’

She could see Joy getting out of his car and coming towards her. He must know why she was crying now, and pulling at the gates. ‘Who did this?’ she said. ‘Who did this?’

‘I don’t know.’ He stood a few feet away from her, smoking a cigarette. At first she thought of sitting there, right there in front of the gate, and waiting for someone to come and explain to her why Paltan Maidan had been turned into an amusement park. She dragged her hands across the bars. Joy finished his cigarette and came up behind her and put his arms around her. Then he led her to the car, opening the door for her before getting in and starting the engine. By the time they had turned around, she had wiped her face on the end of her sari.

‘It’s just a place,’ she said, ‘just an open field. They could have done anything with it, they could have left it there.’ She was imagining it now, the playground, a place that in the daytime would be littered with the newspaper cones of roasted peanuts, and tiny grains of puffed rice with mustard oil clinging to them, and the ribbons that fell from the braids of little girls as they ran from the bumper cars to the Ferris Wheel and screeched to their parents to hold their hands and the unwound shoelaces and the scraps of Mimi chocolate and pink glucose biscuit wrappers. A playground. Paltan Maidan, the most sacred site of the whole country, the place where Mujib had made all his speeches, and where the Pakistan Army had surrendered, and where he had returned after his nine months in exile and inaugurated the country, wiping tears from his eyes with a handkerchief, which he then waved at the crowd, thousands and thousands of them, as if to say, I come in peace, I am your father.

It was where, for a moment, they had won. Now their history would be papered over by peanuts and the smell of candy floss.

Joy stopped the car again, on a side road. He unbuckled his seatbelt and turned to her. A few feet away was a roadside biri stall. The man behind the stall was asleep, his ankles crossed, his arm flung over his eyes. She started to cry again. Everyone else was passing by this park every day; they were buying tickets and going inside and having a good time. No one else was angry.

Joy peeled her fingers from her face. ‘Hey,’ he said, ‘it’s okay. The first time I saw it, I cried too.’ He leaned close. He smelled of lemons. She felt the lifting of her senses. She wrapped her hand around the back of his neck and pulled him towards her. Lips yielding. He was saying something but she couldn’t hear him. She pulled him closer – now her mouth was scraping his cheek. Smooth, with a hint of bristle. Rough-smooth. Lemonaftershave. She exhaled. She could hear him now, his lips at her ear.

‘Let me tell you something about love,’ he said. ‘They chopped off my finger with a cleaver, did you know that? I don’t know where they got it, a heavy big knife like that. Probably got it off some butcher. But you know what I was thinking when they did it? I was thinking that of all the people I knew, you would be the only one who wouldn’t mind. And when I got home and found my mother in a white sari, I knew you would understand that too, because you had a dead father all those years. I have loved you this whole time,’ he said. ‘All this time.’ He pulled away, serious now, his hands cupped over her shoulders.