A Fine Balance (21 page)

“You must be satisfied now,” said Mumtaz scornfully as she mopped up the spill. “Trying to scare me with your big shouting. Only the little ones are frightened of that, let me tell you.”

Ashraf took the two weeping children in his arms. “Okay, okay, no crying. See, we will all eat together.” He fed them from his plate, putting a morsel in his own mouth when they pointed to it. It soon became a new game, and they cheered up.

Dinner finished quickly, and Mumtaz began taking the pot and ladle outside to the tap for washing. Ashraf stopped her. “I was going to say something before dinner, before your shouting started.”

“I am listening now.”

“It’s about this… about what’s happening everywhere.”

“What?”

“You want me to describe in front of the children?” he whispered fiercely. “Why are you acting stupid? Sooner or later the trouble will come here. No matter what happens, it will never be the same again between the two communities.”

He noticed Ishvar and Narayan listening with dismay, and added in haste, “I don’t mean us, boys. We will always be like one family, even if we are apart.”

“But Ashraf Chacha, we don’t have to be apart,” said Narayan. “Ishvar and I are not planning to leave yet.”

“Yes, I know. But Mumtaz Chachi and the children and I, we have to leave.”

“My poor paagal nawab-sahib – gone completely crazy,” said Mumtaz. “Wants to leave. With four little ones? Where do you want to go?”

“Same place all the others are going. Across the border. What do you want to do? Sit here and wait till the hatred and insanity comes with swords and clubs and kerosene? What I am saying is, tomorrow morning I go to the station and buy our train tickets.”

Mumtaz insisted he was reacting like a foolish old man. But he refused to allow her the temporary comfort of turning her back on danger. He was determined to argue all night, he said, rather than pretend that things were normal.

“I will do whatever is necessary to save my family. How can you be so blind? I will drag you by your hair to the railway station if I have to.” At this threat, the children began crying again.

She dried their tears on her dupatta, and dissolved her opposition to the plan. It was not a case of being blind to danger – the danger could be smelt from miles away, her husband was right. Only, removing the blindfold was difficult because of what she might see.

“It won’t be possible to carry much if we are to leave in a hurry,” she said. “Clothes, a stove, some cooking pots. I’ll start packing now.”

“Yes, keep it ready for tomorrow,” said Ashraf. “The rest we will lock in the shop. Inshallah, someday we will be able to come back and claim it.” He gathered the children for bed. “Come, we must sleep early tonight. Tomorrow we have to start a long journey.”

Narayan found it unbearable to listen to or watch their troubled preparations. He doubted if anything he said would make a difference. Pretending he was going down to the shop, he slipped out the back to their neighbour and told him of the planned flight.

“Is he serious?” said the hardware-store owner. “When we talked this morning, he agreed there was nothing to worry about in our neighbourhood.”

“He has changed his mind.”

“Wait, I will come to him right now.”

He collected the coal-merchant, the banya, and the miller, and knocked on Ashraf’s door. “Forgive us for bothering you at this hour. May we come in?”

“Of course. Will you eat something? A drink?”

“Nothing, thank you. We came because we got some news that is causing us great grief.”

“What is it, what?” Ashraf was agitated, wondering if there had been riot casualties in someone’s family. “Can I help?”

“Yes, you can. You can tell us it’s not true.”

“What’s not true?”

“That you want to leave us, leave the place where you were born and your children were born. This is causing our grief.”

“You are such good people.” Ashraf’s eyes began to moisten. “But I really don’t have a choice, nah.”

“Sit down with us and think calmly,” said the hardware-store owner, putting his arm around Ashraf’s shoulder. “The situation is bad, yes, but it would be madness to attempt to leave.”

The others nodded in agreement. The coal-merchant put his hand on Ashraf’s knee. “Every day trains are crossing that new border, carrying nothing but corpses. My agent arrived yesterday from the north, he has seen it with his own eyes. The trains are stopped at the station and everyone is butchered. On both sides of the border.”

“Then what am I to do?”

The desperation in his voice drew the hardware-store owner’s hand to his shoulder again. “Stay here. You are with friends. We will let nothing happen to your family. Where is there any trouble in our neighbourhood? We have always lived here peacefully.”

“But what will happen when those outside troublemakers come?”

“Yours is the only Muslim shop in the street. You think so many of us together cannot protect one shop?” They hugged him, promising he had nothing to fear. “Any time you want to, day or night, if you feel worried about anything, just come to our house with your wife and children.”

After the neighbours left, Narayan had an idea. “You know the sign outside – Muzaffar Tailoring Company. We could put another one in its place.”

“Why?” asked Ashraf.

Narayan was hesitant to say. “A new one…”

Then Ashraf saw the point. “Yes, with a new name. A Hindu name. It’s a very good idea.”

“Let’s do it right now,” said Ishvar. “I can get a new board from your uncle’s lumberyard. Can I take the cycle?”

“Of course. But be careful, don’t go through a Muslim area.”

An hour later Ishvar returned empty-handed without having reached his destination. “Lots of shops and houses on fire. I kept going – slowly, slowly. Then I saw some people with axes. They were chopping a man. That scared me, I turned back.”

Ashraf sat down weakly. “You were wise. What will we do now?” He was too frightened to think.

“Why do we need a new board?” said Narayan. “We can use the back of this old one. All we need is some paint.”

He went next door again, and the hardware-store owner let him have a blue tin that was open. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “What name are you going to paint?”

“Krishna Tailors, I think,” said Narayan at random.

“The blue will be perfect.” He pointed to the horizon, where smoke and a red glow filled the sky. “I heard it’s the lumberyard. But don’t tell Ashraf now.”

Night had fallen by the time they finished painting the letters and remounting the signboard. “On that old wood the paint looks very new,” said Ashraf.

“I’ll rub a handful of ashes over it,” said Ishvar. “Tomorrow morning, when it’s dry.”

“If we are not all reduced to ashes while we sleep,” said Ashraf softly. The fragile sense of security woven out of his neighbours’ assurances was starting to fray.

In bed, every noise in the darkness was danger approaching to threaten his family, until he was able to identify it as something innocuous. He relearned the familiar sounds to which he had fallen asleep all his life. The thud of the coal-merchant’s charpoy, who liked to sleep in the open, in the back yard (he slammed it down every night to shake out the bedbugs). The crash of the banya’s door being locked for the night; swollen and sticking, it needed a firm hand. The clang of someone’s pail – Ashraf had never found out whose, and what was being done with it at this late hour.

Sometime after midnight, he awoke with a start, went downstairs to the shop and began removing the three framed Koranic quotations that hung on the wall behind the cutting table. Ishvar and Narayan stirred, roused by his fumbling in the dark, and put on the light.

“It’s all right, go to sleep,” he said. “I suddenly remembered these frames.” The wall paint was darker where the frames had hung. Ashraf tried unsuccessfully to wipe away the difference with a damp rag.

“We have something you can put up instead,” said Narayan. He dragged out their trunk from under the cutting table and found three cardboard-stiffened pictures equipped with little string loops for hanging. “Ram and Sita, Krishna, and Laxmi.”

“Yes, definitely,” said Ashraf. “And tomorrow we will burn these Urdu magazines and newspapers.”

At eight-thirty a.m. Ashraf opened the shop as usual, releasing the padlock from the collapsible steel doors on the outside, but without folding them back. The interior wooden door was kept ajar. Like the day before, the street was deserted.

About ten o’clock, the coal-merchant’s son called through the grating. “Father said to ask if you need anything from market, in case it is open. He said it’s better if you don’t go.”

“God bless you, son,” said Mumtaz, “yes, a little milk, if possible, for the children. And any kind of vegetables – a few potatoes or onions, anything you can find.”

The boy returned empty-handed in fifteen minutes; the market was bare. Later, the coal-merchant sent a pitcher of milk from his cow. Mumtaz relied on the dwindling flour and lentils in the house to prepare the day’s meals. Well before dusk, Ashraf padlocked the grating and bolted the doors.

At dinnertime the youngest ones wanted Ashraf to feed them like yesterday. “Ah, you are getting fond of that game,” he smiled.

After the meal, Ishvar and Narayan rose to return downstairs, to let the family prepare for bed. “Stay,” said Ashraf, “it is still early, nah. Without customers, the devil makes the hours move slowly.”

“It should get better from tomorrow,” said Ishvar. “They say the soldiers are soon taking charge.”

“Inshallah,” said Ashraf, watching his youngest play with a rag doll he had made for her. The oldest girl was reading a school book. The other two amused themselves with scraps of cloth, pretending to be dressmakers. He signalled to Ishvar and Narayan to observe their exaggerated actions.

“You used to do that when you were new here,” he said. “And you loved to wave the measure tape, make it snap.” They laughed at the memory, then lapsed into silence again.

The quiet was broken by a hammering at the shop door. Ashraf jumped up, but Ishvar stopped him. “I’ll look,” he said.

From the upstairs window he saw a group of twenty or thirty men on the pavement. They noticed him and shouted, “Open the door! We want to talk to you!”

“Sure, one moment!” he called back. “Listen,” he whispered, “all of you go next door, very quietly, from the upstairs passage. Narayan and I will go down.”

“Ya Allah!” cried Mumtaz softly. “We should have left when we had the chance! You were right, my husband, and I called you foolish, I am the foolish one who did not –”

“Shut up and come on, quick!” said Ashraf. One of the girls started to sniffle. Mumtaz took the child in her arms and quieted her. Ashraf led them out while Ishvar and Narayan descended to the shop. The banging was furious, directed with hard objects through the grating upon the wooden doors.

“Patience!” shouted Ishvar, “I first have to undo the locks!”

The crowd fell silent when the two figures became visible through the grating. Most of them had some sort of crude weapon, a stick or a spear; others had swords. A few men were wearing saffron shirts, and carried tridents.

The sight of them made Ishvar tremble. For a brief moment he was tempted to tell them the truth and step out of the way. Ashamed of the thought, he unlocked the grating and pushed it open a bit. “Namaskaar, brothers.”

“Who are you?” asked the man in front.

“My father owns Krishna Tailors. This is my brother.”

“And where is your father?”

“Gone to our native place – a relative is sick.”

There was some consultation, then the leader said, “We have information that this is a Muslim shop.”

“What?” said Ishvar and Narayan in unison. “This has been our father’s shop for twenty years!”

From the back of the crowd came complaints. No need for so much talk! Burn it! We know it’s a Muslim shop! Burn it! And those who lie to protect it – burn them, too!

“Is it possible that Muslims work in this shop?” asked the leader.

“Business is not good enough to hire anyone,” said Ishvar. “Barely enough work for my brother and me.” Men shuffled up beside him, trying to look inside the shop. They were breathing hard, and he could smell their sweat. “Please, see all you want,” he said, moving aside. “We have nothing to hide.”

The men glanced around quickly, taking in the Hindu deities on the wall behind the cutting table. One of the saffron-shirted men stepped forward. “Listen, smart boy. If you are lying, I will myself skewer you on the three points of my trishul.”

“Why should I lie?” said Ishvar. “I’m the same as you. You think I want to die to save a Muslim?”

There was more consultation outside the shop. “Step on the pavement and remove your pyjamas,” said the leader. “Both of you.”

“What?”

“Come on, hurry up! Or you won’t need pyjamas anymore!”

In the ranks there was impatience. They banged their spears on the ground and shouted to torch the place. Ishvar and Narayan obediently dropped their pyjamas.

“It’s too dark to see,” called the leader. “Give me a lantern “The light was handed over from behind the group. He bent low, held it close to their naked crotches, and was satisfied. The others crowded round to look as well. There was general agreement that the foreskins were intact.

Now the hardware-store owner opened his upstairs window and shouted, “What’s going on? Why are you harassing Hindu boys? Have you run out of Muslims?”

“And who are you?” they shouted back.

“Who am I? I am your father and your grandfather! That’s who I am! And also the owner of this hardware store! If I give the word, the whole street will unite as one to make mincemeat of you! Don’t you have somewhere else to go?”

The leader did not think it worthwhile to take up the challenge. His men started to drift away, hurling obscenities to save face. They turned to arguing among themselves about a wasted night and faulty information that had made them look like fools.

“That was beautiful acting,” said the hardware-store owner, patting Ishvar and Narayan heartily on the back. “I was watching the whole thing from upstairs. You know, if there had been any danger of you getting hurt, I would have called everybody to help. But I thought it’s better if there is no confrontation, if you can convince them and they leave quietly.” He looked around to make sure everyone believed him.