Desh (9 page)

Almost on autopilot she fired back. “The kind that feeds this rapidly extending family.”

“Oh you're so smart; just sort it out!” He moved towards her bed.

Aila pulled herself up on her elbows. “Why, for God sake?”

“He's your husband, so bring him here or go over there and get him.”

“That's not gonna happen; it's out of my hands.”

“What shit are you talking about?”

Aila told father about the forced marriage unit and as she threw the duvet back and faced him, the words came out so easily and logically it took her by surprise.

He floundered. “The Border Agency? Get out of my face – you wouldn't know how. What sort of daughter does that? Your mother should be hearing this; it'd kill her.”

Something snapped at the mention of her mother and Aila let fly. Words rushed out in a torrent; she scarcely knew what she said. Then everything went black and, when she came to, her father was backed against the wall. She had no idea how much time had passed or what had happened, except Mazid stood ashen-faced outside her room and said, “You've really gone too far this time.”

No-one would tell her what she'd said, except that she'd screamed so much the entire estate probably heard every word, but Aila was spent and beyond caring. She staggered back to bed and let her mind shut down.

Black wings hovered. Nessa was speaking, trying to tell her something, but she couldn't make sense of it and it wasn't her mother as she knew her, but as a younger self, as she would have been before she was married, dressed in black.

Aila had to stay still and for some reason she had to stand where a fire had been and the fire wasn't out. Smoke rose from the middle, where the sticks and branches had been crossed and embers glowed angry red and burnt the soles of her feet as she stood rooted to the spot, listening.

When she was younger, her mother would say, ‘Dreams are a blessing; not everyone has the gift. You must learn which to take and which to leave and remember, the most truthful dreams come just before dawn, when the devils are quiet.'

By first light, Aila understood and knew what she had to do.

Her father had taken money for a visa that now had to be delivered and the only way he could do that was to appeal, which meant Aila would have to stand in a court and testify against him and she couldn't do that. Neither could she stay married yet not married any longer, caught in the shadows between Mia and Shuna, Britain and Bangladesh. She had to go back to Syhlet.

She told her father she was going back to try and make her marriage work. “I'll give it everything I've got and if it works, I'll bring my husband back with me, but if it doesn't, we call it a day and get divorced. At least then, you and Mum will know I gave it my best shot.”

Sadhan stood silent while Mazid shouted, “You can't make a decision like that in a flash; you need to think this through.”

“No, I actually don't. If I dwell on this I won't get on the plane and it needs to be done and dealt with once and for all.”

Sadhan went off to see what sort of deal he'd get from his contacts, while Mazid continued to argue and Nessa stayed in the background. When he came back with a flight to Dhaka that left in three days, Aila agreed and focussed on what had to done.

Rather than drive to work and risk having her resolve battered down by Neil, she called him instead and outlined the plan. As she expected, he didn't understand at all. To his way of thinking, the visa had been declined so she could just get on with her life. She had a job, she had friends; she should just move out. Why did she need to go back that shithole?

“This can't be left hanging anymore. My family couldn't live with that and my father won't let it go, especially now my brother's wife's got her visa. So if I'm not prepared to testify against my father then I'm married but not married and there's no way a single woman can live on her own without bringing shame on the family. Neil, if I moved out, that'd be the end of it. They'd disown me, cut me off and it'd break my mother's heart and I couldn't live with that. Please try to understand. I have to face this and resolve it once and for all. I don't want to go without your blessing.” When he realised there was no point arguing anymore, he gave up, though he still felt uneasy and begged her to at least text her passport details before she left.

Shafia didn't hold back when Aila called. “No way. You're mad. You've let him push you too far this time, Ails. Not everything has to be a reaction to your Dad. Just this once, calm down and think.”

But there wasn't time. Before she could deal with the texts and missed calls that followed, the news came that Chacha had died, so she had to go straight to the house of the death in her mother's place to say prayers and do whatever needed to be done. She joined in reading the thirty parts of the holy book until Khotham – the end had been reached and left just before midnight. The funeral would be held in Forest Gate after she flew out. That was for the men, so Mazid would go. She'd done her best.

On her last night, Nessa shed copious tears. “Mum, come on. Pray there is a place for him.”

“It's not Chacha it's you, Shuna.”

“I'm going back to try and make my marriage work. It's what Dad wants, so you should be happy.”

“I don't think I'll see your face again.”

Altered states

So Aila faced the Biman desk again, handed her passport in and waited. The immaculate woman behind the check-in desk tapped into an unseen keyboard. When she glanced up at Aila's face and quickly down and tapped again, Aila sighed audibly and shifted her feet. But then a man in a different uniform appeared and asked her to follow him to an office quite a long way from behind the check-in.

“Please don't be alarmed, Miss Begum. I just need to ask you a few questions. As you may or may not be aware, your passport is flagged. Can I ask where you're travelling to, today?”

“Sylhet.”

“What is the purpose of your visit?”

“I'm married. I'm going to see my husband and my in-laws.”

“Are you under duress?”

“What's duress?”

Every so often, her British brain went blank and, as he explained that duress included physical, psychological, financial, emotional or sexual pressure, she thought that pretty much covered her life at home, except of course the last, and she assured the officer that she wasn't under duress.

He handed her an information sheet and told her to ring the forced marriage office in Syhlet on arrival; she'd then be assigned a case worker and asked to check in on a regular basis to ensure she stayed safe. As Aila scanned the bland, sympathetically-worded paragraphs above the contact numbers in bold, she realised she should have phoned Tom. Of course her passport had been flagged.

“You have a one-way ticket. Do you intend returning to the UK?”

“I don't know. I think that was all my father could afford,” she said and then more questions were asked about how much money she had and where she would be staying, which Aila answered with the same blank calm. Her emotions were locked down, along with her British brain. When the interview ended, she followed the officer out and counted the footsteps.

With her eyes on the ground, she continued to count to passport control and through the other side and got lost in the thousands when it came time to board. When she found her seat on the plane, she knew there'd be no turning back. While she dozed, she felt a blessing of hands and saw Nessa's face; then she was back at Osmani airport dragging the black suitcase through arrivals.

Her father-in-law held a sign and guided her, unsmiling to the car waiting outside, where he sat with the front with the driver, while Aila stared out the window behind them. It had been raining for three days and the whole area had taken a battering from an atmospheric tug-of-war that heralded the start of the monsoon season. When the car stopped outside the house, a tree had crashed across the courtyard, and the dog had disappeared, leaving only a grey length of rope on the ground.

She was shown to her room and left to unpack. As the locks of her suitcase unclicked, she saw how little she'd brought: just two new saris folded in cellophane and the red box with her wedding jewellery. She strained to listen through the half-open door and then decided it was as good a time as any to call the forced marriage office. They answered quickly and she spoke quietly, confirming the name of her village. If they didn't hear from her regularly, they'd be able to find her.

Good to know, she thought. The wind outside had picked up and she could feel a current of air in the room, but couldn't see any windows. High up in the bamboo wall, she saw a gap – like a slit in a castle and realised glass windows would be dangerous in a high wind. A pale shaft of light filtered through the wire mesh nailed across the gap and landed squarely on the floor in front of the bed, as if to remind her she could quite easily become a prisoner again.

She looked across the room. In the time since the wedding they'd built a bathroom. Small and ill-equipped, but nonetheless a bathroom, with a toilet, a sink and a plastic bucket on the floor for washing. It seemed somehow sad and she managed a smile when Gourab's sister came in with water for her.

After bathing, she dressed in the sari and jewellery as a new bride should and joined Gourab's parents at the table in the main room. She tried to finish the white rice and green tomatoes, but the smell of the paraffin stove stuck in her throat.

Barely any words were spoken throughout the meal. A good daughter-in-law should know her place, so once the dishes had been cleared away and the floor swept Aila returned to her room for the night.

It had been arranged that she would share the bed with Gourab's sister, Brusia, until he returned from Dhaka at the weekends, so she lay down on one side of the bed and let Brusia take the other side. From behind, came a stream of words and shrieks and, rolling over, she saw that Brusia appeared to be praying, though she was still asleep. As she watched, the clapping started, a strange rhythmic clapping that seemed to accompany the words of prayer.

At first, it drove her mad, but then the chanting and clapping became part of the patina of the night and she managed to drift off to sleep while the days passed in almost companionable silence as Aila did whatever chores were required of her or stayed in her room until the first Friday and Gourab came home.

No-one pressurised Aila to begin with. Abba and Amma stayed in the background to give the newly-weds space over the weekend and, just to help matters along, they made the stockroom into a bedroom for Gourab, for the time being.

The deal was to work on the friendship, but that first weekend Gourab decided to woo her and wear the mantle of a boyfriend. “What do you like?” he'd ask. “What sort of things do you like to do?”

“Shopping.”

“I can take you shopping – to Bluewater if you like?”

“They've built a Bluewater here? That's scary. No, I don't like.”

“We could go into town and have a meal or see a movie,” and “How long have you been driving?” and “Tell me about your friends – what are they like? What do they do?”

In reply, all he got were monosyllabic grunts, but her husband persisted. He'd do his best to make Aila change her mind. So, for a time, he seemed happy and Aila felt nothing beyond mild revulsion. He went back to work and the threat passed for another week. She left his mother to clean the stockroom and sort through his laundry.

In the course of week two, Manufa come to visit and Aila felt genuinely pleased to see her little cousin; less so her uncle Fadil, though. But she reassured him that his son Shamim was working hard and keeping well, and they chatted and chilled, as Manufa wrote on her Facebook page. Come five though, they had to leave to get back to her father's house. Home. Only forty minutes' drive away, but out of her reach and London was a world away. Reluctantly, she watched them leave and mulled over something her cousin had told her.

Manufa and the younger ones were deathly scared of Brusia and believed she'd been possessed, and still was. Wherever she walked, the jinn walked behind and bad things followed. As a precaution, Aila took her dupatta to bed that night and wrapped it round her, leaving the blanket for Brusia to thrash about in.

As the days rolled on, there were more visitors to the house. Amma's cousins and friends were curious and wanted to meet the new daughter-in-law, so they'd arrive unannounced and bombard her with questions: What did she do at work? How was her father keeping? Did she miss her mother? Why was she cooped up in her room all the time? Didn't she want to mingle?

Clearly word had got around, but Aila leant to smile and not say much – that way she couldn't be seen to insult anyone. When she left the room, though, she heard them ask how the newly-weds were getting on and whether she took a shower in the mornings – a sure sign of consummation.

Gourab came home for the second weekend and again, daytime was amiable enough. They watched Bollywood films in Abba's bedroom or joined the family for meals. In the evening though, he tried to stroke her neck while she pretended to be asleep, then gave up and went back to the stockroom to sleep and that was when Brusia started to get under her skin and Aila felt sure the brittle girl lying behind her did indeed know Jadoo –black magic.

In the dark three a.m., she opened her eyes and was surrounded by blood. The room had become a sea of blood in which she lay but couldn't feel, while Brusia, for a change, was still and quiet. Aila felt her own heart thump and listened to the pulse in her ears until the night passed and first light fell from the slit in the wall.

That morning, her husband announced he would be moving back into his room and his own bed and made it very clear that the stockroom was not an option for Aila to sleep in. So left with no choice, after they'd eaten a desultory supper and watched one of Amma's favourite Bollywood epics in sullen silence, she gave him Brusia's blanket and drew a line of least resistance down the middle of bed.

But, as she lay against the wall, cocooned in the musty dupatta that had protected her the night before, he breached the second skin and slurped in her ear. “If you want to do this,” she said with burning breath, “you can. Just remember you're doing it to someone who's practically dead.” He extracted his tongue and rolled away.

“I'm your husband. I have a right to this,” he said, but when his wife failed to respond, he shouted “Do you want me to get this from someone else?” and then probably wished he hadn't.

From that point on the very fabric of house began to feel hostile to Aila and snatches of what was being said seeped through the walls. Gourab was the wounded son – the family closed ranks, and no-one spoke to her, or offered food, or bothered to bring any water to the bathroom.

Then out of nowhere, her father-in-law announced that they'd all go away together and have a holiday – a minibreak. An uncle had an apartment that Aila would love and she and Gourab could just relax and enjoy themselves – it'd be just the thing, he added, and, to show there were no hard feelings, Brusia gave her sister-in-law a new sari they'd bought especially. So, worn down to rags, Aila didn't argue. At least jolly japes might be better than Jadoo.

The uncle's place turned out to be quite luxurious: a top-floor apartment in a brand new development and, in minutes, Aila felt the stickiness lift as the air conditioning kicked in. Her scalp stopped melting and, joy of joys, there was a maid who served home-cooked food without passive-aggressive seasoning.

So when, at the end of the weekend, Abba and Amma left to go home, she didn't panic. Gourab decided to be uncharacteristically amenable by saying he had to go out for a while and, for the few hours he was gone, Aila felt safe. For breakfast, the maid cooked a rather grand curry with Dupatta roti, after which Aila spent an inordinate amount of time in a bathroom with tiles on the floor, and then, in mellow mood, she decided to call home and asked Gourab for her phone.

He said the phone was dead. There had been times, over the past few weeks that he'd asked to borrow it, and she'd handed it over without thinking any more of it. By return, it seemed reasonable that he'd top it up for her whenever he went into town, but he apparently had not and he didn't seem remotely concerned. She asked to use his phone instead and explained, as though speaking to a belligerent child, that she hadn't spoken to her own family for some while and they'd be wanting to know how things were.

Tough, she couldn't have his phone. What was she going to do about it?

War had been declared and there she sat, in a flat in the Chittagong hills, completely and utterly powerless. She could be a wife facing her husband across the void.
As perhaps Shafia and Nayan had done, or Nessa and Sadhan, or a million other people joined in marriage, forced, arranged or otherwise, and it could have been the point at which she had to capitulate, except just at that moment, she heard someone knocking outside.

Gourab buttoned his shirt back up and the knocks became more insistent as he went to open the door. Then Aila heard a male voice ask for her by name, and saw an officer in a navy uniform walk in, flanked by two older women. She covered her chest.

One of the women said, “It's all right, is there somewhere we can talk?” Aila pointed to the bedroom door and the women followed her, while the uniformed officer stayed outside with Gourab.

They asked first if Aila was safe, and she realised that these people must be something to do with the Forced Marriage Unit, though she couldn't understand how they found her. So she answered, “I'm not in danger,” and anticipated that they'd explain.

But they weren't going waste time. “Do you want to leave?”

“Yes,” she said, just like that and with no drama, no tears and no need for elaborate explanations, the women escorted her past her husband, without making eye contact and out of the flat into the back of a waiting police car.

One woman sat in the back beside her and said she would be driven to her father-in-law's house to get her passport and belongings; then she explained how they had found her. When her case officer hadn't heard from Aila, he raised the alarm and the police went straight to the village, in which, being a close-knit enclave, it had been easy to find Gourab's house and then get the address of the apartment.

The second woman sat in the front and the police officer drove, with a rifle propped upright between them. He wore the navy uniform of the Rapid Action Battalion, the ones who'd been called in to restore order when the riots broke out in Dhaka. The same ones, Aila heard, who'd cleared the butchered bodies after the massacre. She wondered if it was entirely necessary to send the fiercest law and order people just to deal with her in-laws.