A Golden Age (24 page)

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one small boy, or a very old man, or even a dog, who would look up at the sky and wait for the first fat drop with his tongue out- stretched, his face full of hope, all knowledge of the morning entirely forgotten.

But this was not August; it was July, a timid, confused month that cowered under the threat of what was to come. It was only the warm-up.

It was on such an in-between day that a wail could be heard coming from Number 12, a woman calling hysterically for water, ice water for her head. When Rehana arrived at her bedside, she exclaimed, ‘My poor daughter! My poor daughter!’ In the garden, a dog named Juliet howled at the afternoon.

The war had finally found Mrs Chowdhury.

She was beached on the four-poster with a wet compress on her forehead. The ceiling fan was on at full speed, slicing vio- lently through the air. Silvi was fanning her mother’s face with a jute hand-fan. Between the ceiling fan and the hand-fan, Mrs Chowdhury’s face was flattened, the hair plastered to her fore- head.

‘Faster, faster! I’m so hot!’ Mrs Chowdhury said. ‘Silvi, get my thermometer. I’m burning up!’

Impassively Silvi passed the hand-fan to Rehana and went to fetch the thermometer. Someone had stitched a red border around the rim of the fan, so that it looked like a seashell dipped in red paint.

‘One minute hot, one minute cold,’ Mrs Chowdhury cried. Rehana worked the fan back and forth over her, watching the loose tendrils of hair float from side to side. Mrs Chowdhury’s bedroom was crowded with family antiques. There was the mammoth four-poster that required a stepladder to mount, a dressing table with a heavy oval mirror and a wall of solid teak wardrobes, each with an open-mouthed keyhole the size of a baby’s fist. Tucked into Mrs Chowdhury’s sari was a gold chabir gocha that held the keys to the wardrobe and to the other import- ant locks in the house: the sugar and oil store, the front gate, the back gate, the drawing room (which stayed locked and sheet-

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draped for special occasions), the ice-box room and, most impor- tantly, the jewellery safe, set into the wall of Mrs Chowdhury’s heaviest steel almirah.

The rest of Mrs Chowdhury’s house was a museum of better times. Room after room contained haphazardly assembled family heirlooms. Some were so crowded that it was difficult to navigate among the furniture, the tarnished silver candlesticks, the clashing statues of Venus de Milo and Nataraj; others were mostly empty, a grandfather clock ticking erratically in one, a solitary birdcage in another, swaying in the breeze of an open window, its creaking echoing against damp, blistered walls. An air of accident permeated Mrs Chowdhury’s house, an expec- tation that something would come along and stir the sad, dormant air. Only a few knew the reason for this arrangement, and Rehana was one of them: Mrs Chowdhury was still waiting for her long-lost husband to come home.

Silvi returned with the thermometer and inserted it into her mother’s open mouth. She turned to Rehana and whispered, ‘Sabeer has been captured.’ Her voice was flat and unconcerned.

Mrs Chowdhury tried to speak through clamped lips. ‘Just wait one minute,’ Silvi told her. And then, ‘Ammoo, there’s no fever.’

‘Rehana,’ Mrs Chowdhury said. ‘This is my poor daughter’s fate. I knew she shouldn’t have married that man.’

‘What happened?’

‘His regiment were fighting the Pak Army in Mymensingh,’ Silvi began.

‘Why we had to get involved in this business,’ her mother interjected. ‘It was you, Silvi, you just had to marry him – because he was an officer. You were so impressed. Fan harder, Rehana, I’m burning up. But I never trust military men, never. You never know what kind of trouble they’re going to drag you into. What did you say my temperature was, girl? 98? That can’t be. Check it again. No, not that way. You have to wash it first. Go, go and wash it and bring it back.’

Silvi turned to go, and that is when Rehana noticed her head was covered in a dupatta. At first she thought Silvi might be

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getting ready for the Zohr prayer, but she checked the clock above Mrs Chowdhury’s bed and saw that it was only noon, still an hour before the Azaan.

‘It’s God’s will,’ Silvi said, coming back. She put the therm- ometer into its leather sleeve.

‘Nothing to do with God,’ Mrs Chowdhury said. ‘You see what’s happened to her, Rehana? Covering her head? She’s in pordah all of a sudden; spends all her time reading the Holy Book. Foolishness, that’s what it is. Sabeer should have fled, left the country, like Sohail. Your children have some
sense
. What possessed him to join that silly army? Your husband is a fool, girl, a fool and a dead man.’

‘Perhaps they’ll free him,’ Rehana tried to say, but Mrs Chowdhury wasn’t listening.

‘I’ve even lost my appetite,’ she said. ‘I can’t eat, I can’t sleep, I’m so hot.’

Rehana began smoothing Mrs Chowdhury’s forehead with the wet compress.

‘Please, apa, don’t make yourself sick.’

‘We don’t know where he is, what’s happened. We wouldn’t even have known he’s captured, but one of his soldier friends sent a letter to Silvi. Show her the letter, Silvi.’

Silvi nodded but didn’t move to get the letter. She was massag- ing her mother’s foot, moving her thumb in circles along the heel.

On the antique canopy bed, Mrs Chowdhury’s bulk rose like freshly pressed dough.

‘There’s nothing to be done, Rehana, I don’t even know why I called you. Nothing! And I thought he would be the one pro- tecting us.’ Mrs Chowdhury closed her eyes and waved Rehana away. She sighed deeply and turned over on to her side; in a few minutes she was snoring lightly. Silvi glanced at Rehana and whispered, ‘Thank you for coming, khala-moni.’

‘I’ll bring some food over this evening,’ was all Rehana could manage. How had Sabeer been captured? How did they know? And what was it about Silvi’s look, her calm self-assurance, pressing her mother’s feet instead of wailing and beating her

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chest like any other wife? Rehana felt slightly queasy, as though she hadn’t eaten all day.

After lunch, Silvi appeared at the front door carrying a small cloth shopping bag. She was panting and worked up, as though she had leaped across the street, and she gave off that summer body smell: sweat masked by a heap of perfumed talc. She was wearing a loose, long-sleeved salwaar-kameez, her face framed tightly in the dupatta.

‘Ammoo’s asleep,’ she explained, unwrapping her head. Rehana watched her hair coming loose. ‘Here,’ she said,

pouring a glass of water. ‘Drink.’

Silvi drank the water in one gulp. She set the glass down with an emphatic ‘Sobhan Allah!’ Then she said, as though they were already in the middle of a conversation, ‘It would be arrogant to say that God had found me, or that I had found God. Who are we to find Him, that holiest, most exalted of beings? For He is everywhere, in every breath, every heart. One has only to look.’ Her eyes shone healthily. ‘All this is but an illusion – do you not see that, khala-moni? This bodily life, this suffering.’ Her hands were restless, playing with the dupatta, smoothing the sleeves of the kameez. ‘You were the one who taught me the prayers, remember? Ammoo didn’t have the patience. It was you. You will be blessed for ever for that deed.’

Rehana gave Silvi a surprised nod of thanks, remembering the thin bones of the girl’s hands as she raised them, once, twice, three times, to her forehead.

‘God forgives everything, but only if we atone. Every day I beg for forgiveness.’

‘What could you possibly have to atone for?’

Silvi’s face was vigorously scrubbed, and she looked trans- parent, undifferentiated, all the colours blurred into a pale pink heat, except her cheeks, which pulsed, red and alive. She took a breath, hesitating, and Rehana could see the girl’s entire past in one instant: the stifling but strangely indifferent love of her mother; the vast, crowded house; the burden of losing her

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father, knowing that if she had been a boy, he might have stayed. Rehana had always imagined she could see into Silvi; the guilt she carried around with her had reminded her of her own guilt, her own burden. But now, in her simplicity, Silvi was predatory, fierce.

Silvi was clutching her bag and trying to say something. When she finally opened her mouth, her speech was formal, more like a recitation. ‘I wanted to give these to you. I would have burned them but I wanted you to bear witness to me, giving these to you, giving them up. So that you would know. I wanted someone – you, I wanted you. To know.’ Now the words were rushing out of her mouth. ‘God sees everything, so it should have been enough that He was witnessing it, but I’m ashamed to say it wasn’t.’ Silvi put her hand to her forehead and smoothed the middle part in her hair.

‘I’m sorry about Sabeer, beti,’ Rehana finally said. ‘Are you sure it isn’t just a rumour?’

‘It’s not a rumour.’ ‘How do you know?’

‘Sohail,’ Silvi said, as though it was his fault, or even Rehana’s, but that she forgave them both.

Rehana felt her heart stop. ‘You’ve seen him?’ she asked, trying not to raise her voice, ‘Where is he?’

‘No. I haven’t seen him. I’m in pordah. I don’t appear before strangers.’

Strangers? What had happened to Silvi? What religion had possessed her? Certainly not the familiar kind. Rehana was not irreligious herself. She prayed every day, at least once, at Magreb, the most important prayer-time of the day. When Iqbal died, she had used the prayer to give her something to do, something that didn’t immediately remind her of the cruel hand she’d just been dealt, and she was unashamed about the solace it had given her. Life had punished her enough; the God she prayed to was not a punishing, not a vengeful, brutal God; He was a God of comfort, a God of consolation. She accepted the relief with entitlement, with confidence, and in turn she demanded very little from Him

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– no absolution, no change of destiny. She knew, from experi- ence, that this could not be achieved.

Now Silvi riffled through her bag and took out a square packet. It was tied together with a length of deep red silk. As Silvi untied the knot, a few flattened flower petals tumbled out, their edges brown and brittle. She unwrapped the package, and inside was a stack of folded pieces of paper. They were of dif- ferent shapes and sizes, some of them lined, like school note- books, others plain, with a small but confident hand. Rehana glimpsed English, Bengali, a snatch of Urdu – and then she knew.

‘From Sohail,’ Silvi said. When Rehana didn’t answer, she continued, ‘I wanted to burn them. And then I thought, perhaps you would want to have them. In case.’

‘In case of what?’

‘In case something happens to him.’ She said the words with deep sigh. ‘I can’t keep them any more.’

Rehana wondered if she should feel wounded, for Sohail’s sake. ‘But they’re yours.’

‘At first I was worried Sabeer would find them. But now I just don’t want to have them. It’s not right.’

‘You’re sure?’

Though her face betrayed no signs of a struggle, Silvi was still holding tightly to the stack of letters.

‘Yes, yes, of course I’m sure. You can read them. There’s nothing – just poetry, a lot of poetry. I thought you might want it.’

‘All right. Give them to me. I’ll keep them.’

Still she clutched the letters, ‘Or burn them. I was going to burn them.’

A few seconds passed. Then Silvi carefully picked up the petals and retied the bundle, her fingers smoothing the fabric, stretch- ing it tightly, mask-like, over the letters.

When she finally held out the package, Rehana was struck with a presentiment, as though her son had already died and the letters were like a gift, an exchange – a life for a stack of letters. She promised herself she wouldn’t open them.

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‘I’m sorry about Sabeer,’ Rehana repeated, in an effort to change the subject. Thank God, Rehana was thinking, thank God my son is alive. ‘So, Sohail told you about Sabeer?’ And again she thought that her son was alive. It sang in her chest. Just being able to ask was a relief. ‘You spoke to him?’

‘He came to the house. “I’m in pordah,” I said, but he insisted. So I opened the window, but I stayed behind the curtain. And he said, “Sabeer’s been captured. They’re holding him somewhere. I’m going to find out.” And he said, “Don’t worry, I’ll bring him back to you.”’

Foolish, foolish boy.

How much did the girl know? Rehana clutched the letters. Her poor, foolish boy.

She went straight to the Major. ‘I want to see Sohail,’ she said, keeping her eyes on his broken leg. ‘Did you know he was in Dhaka?’ She knew the answer. ‘You knew he was here but you didn’t tell me?’

As usual, he offered no explanation. ‘It’s too risky.’

‘I don’t care. Just do it. I haven’t asked you for anything. I’ve taken care of you. Now you have to do this for me.’