A Golden Age (29 page)

Quasem’s shoulders were hunched up against his ears, as though he was trying not to hear.

Rehana saw Faiz’s chin quiver in anger. Time to tell the truth. ‘I’m sorry I lied. I shouldn’t have lied—’

‘You should be ashamed of yourself.’

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‘But I’m not ashamed.’ Rehana swallowed a few times to steady herself. ‘She had a friend who was captured by the army in March. The girl’s name was Sharmeen.’

‘What does that have to do with anything?’

‘You listen to me. Her name was Sharmeen. They took her and they kept her at the cantonment – not a mile from your house. And the girl was tortured until she died. They did things – unspeakable things – to her. She was the same age as Maya. How do you explain that?’

‘I don’t have to explain these things to you.’

‘How? You think I could look my daughter in the eye and tell her it was all right?’

‘So you sent her to the muktis?’

‘I should not be ashamed; you should be ashamed.’

‘You don’t know anything.’ He turned his face away from her. She saw the square chin, the one that marked him as the older, more confident brother. ‘It’s nonsense.’ And then: ‘The girl was a casualty of war. When you believe in something, certain things have to be sacrificed.’

‘Children?’

‘There are always casualties.’

‘I thought there was a chance you didn’t know what the army was doing. But now I’m telling you. You can wash your hands of it. Surely you don’t want this on your conscience?’

With his index finger Faiz loosened the knot at his neck.

Rehana thought she saw a flicker of doubt.

The car slowed to a halt. ‘Sir,’ Quasem said, ‘Mirpur Thana.’

Faiz seemed to consider something. He paused while Rehana gathered her handbag. Then he said, ‘Go.’

‘Where?’

‘The police station is over there.’ He pointed to a low building across a field.

‘You’re not coming with me?’

‘I’m not a cruel man, bhabi. You remember that. Now you go and rescue the man yourself. I can’t risk having anything to do

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with you – if I hadn’t already sent the release order, I would send you home right now.’ He dipped his hand into his jacket and pulled out an envelope. ‘Show them this.’

‘But I – you want me to go there alone?’

‘I’m not making this my business any more.’ And he swivelled his face so that she was left looking at the thinning blackness of his hair.

She turned to leave. Suddenly all the possible consequences of his knowing collapsed upon her. ‘Are you going to tell anyone? About Maya?’

‘You should have thought of that when you let her print this garbage,’ he said roughly, still looking away.

He hadn’t answered the question. He could do anything, now that he knew. It would be easy to find out Sohail wasn’t really in Karachi. And all he had to do was arrive at Shona in the middle of the day to discover the Major. ‘Don’t forget she’s your niece. Your blood,’ Rehana said. She wanted him to turn around, so she could read something in his face. But he had dismissed her.

Rehana stumbled out of the car. The door slammed shut behind her. Quasem gave her a brief, apologetic smile, and then the car careened away, leaving her in its choking, dusty wake.

Rehana clutched the envelope in one hand and straightened her sari. She considered hailing a rickshaw and going home. Mrs Chowdhury would understand. She looked down the road, towards Dhanmondi, but she couldn’t get Sohail’s pleading face out of her head. So she made her way across the washed field, stopping occasionally to readjust her ankle strap.

High above, the sky thickened and the air swirled in a leisurely trance. It was an hour, maybe two, before the noon shower. As she approached the entrance to the thana, Rehana realized she had forgotten to rehearse what she would say. She paused outside the door, which had a rusted metal handle dulled by the press of palm prints. The field had soaked her shoes. As she opened her handbag to check for the bundle Mrs Chowdhury had given her, she shifted on her feet and tried to shake away the crawling damp. The sight

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of the bundle, rolled up comfortably in its rubber band, reassured her. She took a deep breath and prepared to enter. She was about to reach for the handle when the door swung open. A tall, bearded man in a military uniform stood there. He gave her a look of mild bemusement and brushed past her with a brief ‘Excuse me’ in Urdu. And he stepped aside to let her pass.

Rehana crossed a dark corridor and arrived at a large, win- dowless room. At one end of the room was a bald man behind an enormous glass-topped table. Metal chairs were arranged in rows in front of the desk. Anxious, silent people sat in the chairs. She felt their eyes on her as she made her way to the glass-topped desk. The whirr of the ceiling fan above the desk was accom- panied occasionally by the creak of the bald man’s chair as he shifted his weight this way and that. As she approached him, he looked up from under a pair of heavy eyebrows.

‘I need to speak with someone,’ Rehana said. Her voice came out louder than she had intended.

‘Take your form and wait over there,’ the man said absently, pointing with his chin.

‘Form?’

‘Prisoner Visit Form – here.’ He handed her a soggy sheet of paper.

‘I’m – I’m not here to visit.’

His head snapped up. ‘Then what?’ Betel juice had stained his lips a sunrise orange.

‘I’m here – to release a prisoner.’

‘
You’re
here’ – he laughed an orange saliva laugh – ‘to release a prisoner?’ Tiny orange dots of spittle fell on to the Prisoner Visit Form. ‘Who are you, Police Commissioner?
You
don’t release prisoners,
we
release prisoners – understand?’

He wore a police-blue uniform, tight at the armpits and the collar. Over the back of his chair, where his head would usually rest, was a pink-and-white striped towel. The man turned to the towel and wiped the betel spittle from his mouth.

Rehana held out the envelope Faiz had given her. ‘I have a release order,’ she said.

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‘Let me see that.’ He pulled it roughly from her hand. ‘Sabb- eer Mus-tafa,’ he said. He turned to an enormous notebook and began to shuffle through the curling pages. Rehana leaned as closely as she dared. The book gave off a sweaty smell. He ran his finger down a list of printed names.

‘He isn’t here.’ ‘What? Are you sure?’

The man turned the register around impatiently. ‘Do you see his name?’ he said, before snapping it shut with a clap.

‘Please,’ Rehana said, ‘check again.’

The book remained closed. ‘I said he’s not here. You’re wasting your time.’

Rehana pulled out the bundle of Mrs Chowdhury’s sugar money. She unwrapped it slowly, making sure the man could see the rupee notes. She pulled out fifty. ‘Check again,’ she said, mus- tering her courage.

He grabbed the money with five fingers, shoving it into a gaping breast pocket, and reopened the notebook. After a brief pause he said, ‘Yes. Mustafa. Released – no, transferred.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘To Muslim Bazaar.’

‘Muslim Bazaar? Another thana?’

He smiled, revealing a set of stripy teeth. ‘No. It’s not a thana.’

‘What is it? How will I find it?’

‘I can’t help you any more.’ He shook his head and waved her away. Rehana didn’t budge. She felt the row of chairs shift behind her. The man opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like a folded handkerchief. He unwrapped it, revealing a stack of heart-shaped leaves. He peeled one off the stack and placed it lovingly on the glass counter. Rehana watched him unscrew the lid from a small round tin. He snapped off the stem of the betel leaf and plunged it into the tin, emerging with a glob of white paste. This he smeared on the leaf. Then he added a pinch of shredded betel nut and a pinch of chewing tobacco, finishing the job with a few folds of the leaf and popping the triangular packet into his mouth.

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Rehana let him chew the paan until it settled into a round bulge in his cheek. Then she said, reaching into her bag again, ‘Perhaps you can telephone someone at Muslim Bazaar and ask them.’

The door opened behind Rehana. The man quickly swallowed his paan and tented his fingers on the desk. He cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying, the prisoner is not here.’

‘Kuddus?’ Rehana heard. She turned around to see the man she had passed on her way inside. ‘Ei Kuddus,’ he said in rough Bengali, ‘cha do.’

Kuddus disappeared for a few minutes, came back and squeezed into his chair.

‘Boss likes the Chinese tea,’ he said, sounding a little embar- rassed. He rubbed his hands on his trousers.

Rehana was ready with another fifty. ‘Can you ask someone to bring him here?’ She pressed the note on to the glass.

The Chinese tea had made allies of them. ‘I’ll see,’ he said. He picked up the heavy black telephone and turned the dial. ‘Hullo? Inspector Kuddus. Mirpur Thana. There’s a woman here. Says she has a release order. Sabeer Mustafa. Was here – he’s been transferred to you. Hold on? OK. Who’s this? Oh, yes, sorry, sir. Sir, the woman is asking – yes, yes of course. I’ll tell her. Ji. Khoda Hafez, sir. Ji, sir, Pakistan Zindabad.’ He turned slowly to Rehana.

‘You’ll have to go over there yourself,’ he said, almost regret- fully. ‘They have to see the paperwork. I’ll send word. They’ll be expecting you. You can catch a rickshaw – tell them Muslim Bazaar, the pump house. They all know it.’

‘Thank you,’ Rehana said.

‘No problem. Best of luck.’ Kuddus looked her over and nodded. Then his face changed as he pointed over Rehana’s shoulder. ‘Sen?’ he said, ‘Mr and Mrs Sen?’

An elderly couple approached the desk, their heads tilted towards one another, the woman holding a tiffin carrier. Rehana heard the slosh of something liquid inside the tiffin carrier and conjured up an image of this woman’s son, sinking his grateful hands into his mother’s dal.

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‘You can go in now.’ Kuddus stood up and unhooked a circle of keys from his belt. ‘Come with me.’ They left together. Rehana heard the clang of the gate as he locked it behind him.

Outside, it was raining. Thick sheets of water fell heavily from the sky, hardened by a bellowing, circular wind. The sucking sound of her feet accompanied Rehana as she made her way back across the field and on to the main road. An uneven line of tea stalls greeted her at the roadside, surrounded by a cluster of rick- shaws. Rehana tried her best to cover her head with her achol, but it was no use; the wind attacked from all sides, knocking the achol out of her hand and sending her flailing to gather her sari together.

She ducked under the slim awning of the nearest stall, where she saw a group of men sitting cross-legged on the raised floor, their faces lit red by a flickering kerosene lamp.

‘Muslim Bazaar? Keo jabe? Anyone?’ The stall smelled of bis- cuits and petrol.

They were saying something to one another. Rehana couldn’t hear through the drumming rain on the tin roof. One of them, the youngest and smallest, uncrossed his legs and rose. ‘Bokul will take you,’ a man at the back said, motioning towards the boy with the burning point of his biri. Bokul packed and tucked his lungi between his legs. He looked like he was down to his under- wear, but Rehana was beyond embarrassment; her sari was moulded to her body, and she didn’t let herself look down to see what had happened to the colour. At least the rickshaw-men had the decency to gaze into the kerosene lamp rather than to look at her directly.

‘Wait here,’ the boy said, darting out of the shop. Rehana watched him struggle with the hood of a rickshaw; once he had secured it, he pulled a sheet of plastic from under the seat. ‘Ashen! Come quick!’

Rehana clung to the scalloped rim of the rickshaw hood as Bokul pumped mechanically through the rain. He stopped just once, to yank the front wheel out of a flooded ditch. She couldn’t

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see anything, she was only aware of the driving, unceasing rain, of the sari clinging to her and the violent wind, which made her shiver and wish desperately for a change of clothes. She ignored the street names and stopped looking for familiar landmarks. The trees glistened in the wet.

Bokul stopped in front of a square concrete building. The building had a high, triangular roof made of wavy sheets of tin. A faded sign painted on the tin read india gymnasium. As she made her way out of the rickshaw, Rehana gave Bokul twenty rupees. ‘I’ll have another twenty for you when I come out. You wait here for me,’ she said, shouting above the roar of the rain. ‘You wait here, no matter how long it takes. An hour, two hours

– anything – you wait, you hear me?’ Bokul nodded. ‘Ji, apa!’ he said.