A Golden Age (14 page)

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at Horolika Snacks in Dhanmondi. Rehana said that wasn’t pos- sible. She and Iqbal had tried all the phuchkas in Dhaka and no one could beat Horolika Snacks. Sohail said that was over a decade ago and things had changed. Rehana didn’t like to be reminded that things had changed and her husband was dead, but she was carried along by her son’s enthusiasm and agreed to see for herself. They bought a dozen phuchkas at Horolika Snacks and balanced the boxes on their knees as they took a rick- shaw to the university campus.

At the canteen Sohail ordered a dozen more. He put the tiny cups of fried dough in a row in front of Rehana. Then he poured a little tamarind water into each one, licking his lips and clap- ping his hands together and saying, ‘Horolika versus Dhaka University! Which will it be?’ Some of the students stopped talking and looked over. The owner of the canteen stood up over his counter and cheered for himself. Then Sohail told Rehana that, in the interest of fairness, she should close her eyes and taste first one, then the other.

In the end she chose the canteen phuchkas. Things really had changed. And now the canteen, along with most of the other low buildings on the university campus, had been burned down on the night of the massacre.

Rehana didn’t have to search for her daughter. She saw her as soon as the car entered the university gates. There was a line of girls, and Maya was in the front row, raising her knees higher than all the others and shouting louder than all the others. So this was what she’d been doing. She didn’t look timid, or embar- rassed that the gun she was holding was just a wooden stick. ‘Hut-two-three-four! Hut! Hut! Hut!’ she shouted.

Rehana told the driver to stop the car. She watched as the girls marched past. Some of them paused and peered through the window at Rehana. One smiled shyly; another waved. Maya, who kept her eyes straight ahead, didn’t notice her mother. The girls stopped a few feet away from the car and moved their hands over the wooden sticks, pretending to load, aim, fire, reload. They wore starched white saris with thin blue borders. They

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looked like washerwomen. They looked serious. None was as serious as Maya.

Rehana sat in the car and watched her daughter, waiting for the training, or whatever it was, to end. Once it was over she opened the car door and waved in Maya’s direction. Maya was talking to a boy and didn’t notice, but the boy, who was blowing smoke rings into the air, saw Rehana wave and whispered something to Maya. He pointed. Maya stalked over, her face coming together in a frown. ‘Are you spying on me?’ she said. The exercise had made her aggressive. Her braid was coming undone, and the stray hairs

clung wetly to her forehead.

‘No, I just – you’ve been away so much. It’s dangerous, I just wanted to see where you were.’

‘Well, now you know.’ She brushed the hair from her face. ‘I’m trying to contribute.’

‘By doing this? Running around with wooden guns?’

As was her habit, Maya mounted an attack. ‘Why did you bring us back here?’

‘What do you mean?’

‘From Lahore? Why did you bother to bring us back? You have no feeling for this place.’

What did she mean? ‘This is my home. Your father’s home.’ ‘Then why won’t you let me do something?’

‘I just want to protect you. Everything I’ve done I’ve done for you and your brother. Now please, get in the car, the curfew’s about to ring.’

‘I’m not coming.’ ‘What?’

‘I’m not coming. You go home, I’ll stay here.’

‘You come with me right now. You get in the car.’ Rehana felt the futility of it, but she insisted, grabbing Maya’s elbow and pulling her towards the car. She was surprised at her own strength. Maya tried to wrench her arm away, and Rehana gripped harder. ‘Don’t make a scene,’ she said coldly.

They said nothing to one another in the car. When they got home, Maya turned on her mother and began with a shout: ‘You

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are not so good at this either. You couldn’t keep my brother back, and you can’t keep me!’

Keep me. The words were poisoned arrows. ‘You don’t know what you’re saying.’

‘You’ve been crazy – ever since – ever since Abboo died, you have this thing about keeping us at home. You’re mad! You want to lock us up!’

Rehana tried to change the subject. ‘I’m so sorry about Sharmeen, I know you’re upset.’

‘Don’t speak about her. You could never understand.’ ‘Of course I understand.’

‘I mean you could never understand what it’s like for me and Sohail.’

‘Leave your brother out of it.’

‘Sohail,’ she said, ‘where is he now? Probably dead, killed by one of your Pak soldiers!’

It happened so quickly. She hadn’t meant to hit so hard, and it was only when she saw the red flowering on Maya’s cheek that she realized what she’d done.

Maya put her hand to her face, looking surprised, and then almost relieved. Then she said, ‘You should have left us in Pakistan.’

Rehana wanted to say sorry for the slap. She wanted to shake her until Maya took it back. But she stayed quiet, only glaring at her daughter and hoping Maya would not see the weak tremble in her jaw.

Maya stopped speaking. There were no more pleasantries, no more ‘good mornings’ and ‘I’m not hungrys’. With Sohail and the Senguptas gone, and Mrs Chowdhury and Silvi locked up in their house, Rehana felt a kinship with the deserted city. Maya took her plate and ate silently in Sohail’s room. The light would stay on deep into the night, and Rehana began to know her daughter only through the line of pale yellow that crept in below the door, and through the small sounds she made: the click of the ceiling-fan switch, the swish of the bedcover as she peeled it

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back, the faint whistle of a turning page. It went on this way for two weeks, as April, with its dense, stifling heat, spooled out before them.

Then one day Maya suddenly announced: ‘The soldiers need blankets. We’re collecting old saris.’

‘You’re sewing kathas?’

‘Yes. We need material. Things you’d throw away.’

Before she even realized it, Rehana had an idea that led her to an old steel almirah she hadn’t opened in years. She found the heavy key tucked behind the lowest shelf in the kitchen where she kept the emergency supplies of rice and dal. A life of variable for- tunes had taught her never to finish anything. She always kept behind a tiny bit – a finger of ginger, a stick of cinnamon, a handful of rice – in case the next time she went to buy these things they somehow eluded her, through poverty or the unreli- ability of the country’s fortunes.

The key, despite years of disuse, slid smoothly into the lock. As she turned it and twisted the handle to release the bolt, Rehana recognized the old sound of scraping metal, and she steadied herself for the smell of mothballs and silk. The doors rasped in protest as she swung them open and surveyed the con- tents of the almirah. Here were the saris Iqbal had given her in the eight years of their marriage. After his death, she had washed, ironed and hung them up in the order in which they had been presented to her.

She remembered each occasion, the sari arriving in the red- and-white cardboard box of the sari shop, still smelling of the attar of the market and the ash of young cigarette-smoking boys who were enlisted to bring down the starched saris from high shelves and drape them delicately around their youthful hips. They would sway in imitation of women, dangling the achol from outstretched arms to show off the elaborate embroidery, the swimming colours.

It had not been difficult to arrange the saris; as the years had gone by, Iqbal’s prosperity, and his gratitude for his wife, had meant more and more daring purchases. Simple cottons became

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diaphanous chiffons, prints were given up in favour of embroi- dery, the threads of each sari always heavier than the last, the patterns more refined, the silk more serious, until, just a few weeks before his death, Iqbal had presented Rehana with the jewel of the collection, a blue Benarsi silk.

Rehana regarded the saris and tried to recall the feeling they had given her, of being at once enveloped and set free, the tight revolutions of material around her hips and legs limiting move- ment, the empty space between blouse and petticoat permitting unexpected sensations – the thrill of a breeze that has strayed low, through an open window, the knowledge of heat in strange places, the back, the exposed belly. It was the bringing together of night and day, the sari: as it concealed the skin, it also released it, so that one body, one woman, would know something of the complications of her sex.

The saris stared at Rehana like pictures in a photo album, evoca- tive, a little accusing. She hadn’t worn a single one in years. She was not sorry to lose them, just sorry she would never again have occa- sion to wear them. She piled the saris loosely into her arms, rushed into the drawing room and presented them to her daughter.

‘Here. Blankets for your freedom fighters. I’ll help you sew.’

Maya stared at her mother. ‘I asked you for cottons,’ she said quietly. ‘What’s the point of all this expensive material? The blankets will itch.’

‘Put them inside. It will be winter before you know it, and the silk will keep everyone warm.’

The sight of the saris stirred something in Maya. ‘Please don’t give them away,’ she said softly.

‘Why not? You never wear anything but white.’ Rehana was aware of a punishing note in her voice. Why, despite her best intentions, did the words to her daughter always sound so sharp?

Maya’s face closed up. ‘It’s foolish to give these away. They’re of no use; you should put them back.’

Rehana called Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram to the bungalow. ‘Follow me,’ she said, leading them up the stairs to the roof. She

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had laid out a jute pati and a few cushions. The saris were stacked up in a basket. Beside the basket was Rehana’s sewing box. The box contained a row of needles and a bundle of black spools. There were small pattern cutouts and a collection of thimbles. A tomato-shaped pin-cushion.

‘What’s all this?’ Mrs Rahman said, sliding off her chappals and flopping on to the pati. ‘You want to open a tailoring shop?’ ‘Don’t you know? We’re at war, and my daughter says I have to do something. To prove I belong here. So I’m doing some- thing.’ Rehana felt a tear crawling out of her eye; she tilted her head, sent it back. ‘I’m doing something. Making blankets for

the refugees.’ She felt her lip curling back on to her teeth. ‘What’s going on – where’s Sohail?’ Mrs Akram asked.

She was desperate to tell them. ‘He isn’t here – I sent him to Karachi.’

‘Really? I thought—’

‘Don’t you know what they’re doing to all the university boys? They’re making them disappear. What would you have me do, just sit back and let them take him?’

‘Rehana,’ Mrs Rahman said, pointing to the silks, ‘you don’t have to use these. We can find some old cottons.’

Rehana dug in her heels. ‘Why not? Everyone has to make sac- rifices, why not me? It’s my country too.’

‘Of course it’s your country—’ Mrs Akram began. ‘My daughter doesn’t think so.’

‘She said that? She couldn’t have meant it; you know how chil- dren are.’

‘I slapped her.’

‘Oh, Rehana.’ Mrs Akram put a hand on Rehana’s arm. ‘I couldn’t help it, I just did it. She’s out of control.’ ‘Rehana, you must have patience,’ Mrs Rahman said.

‘Patience? I have nothing but patience for the children. Running around all over town, revolution this, democracy that – nothing but patience!’

‘For Sohail, yes, but—’ ‘What are you saying?’

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The two women exchanged cautious looks. ‘We know she hasn’t exactly been easy,’ Mrs Rahman said. ‘But you’ve always been – a little more unforgiving of Maya.’

‘Unforgiving? Me? I’m only one person – I have to do every- thing – is it possible, humanly possible?’ But she knew they were right. The knowledge burned inside her, but she couldn’t bring herself to say it. You’re right. I’ve been unfair. ‘You want to help me,’ she said instead. ‘Sew.’

On the last day of April, it rained. Rehana watched the cotton clouds shout to a hungry, cracked earth. She imagined it raining on the human exodus on the Jessore Road and the Mymensingh Road and on the widows and the swollen bellies, trying to wash away the tears, falling in skyfuls over the slowly departing. And falling on her Sohail and his friends as they picked through the spring prairie grasses, through the low paddy, the bleached stacks of wheat, as they searched for the war with only their wet- toothed smiles, their poems, their death-defying youth.

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