Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel (37 page)

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Authors: Samina Ali

BOOK: Madras on Rainy Days: A Novel
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We had no weapons. Just knives. One or two wooden sticks. A walking cane.
 
 
WE LOCKED OURSELVES in my room, Zeba and I, first locking the front door, then the inner
divan
door, then the bedroom door. We could not help but feel we were locking our men out. So we bolted one shutter, left one ajar. To listen. The men had promised that, as
gorkhas
used to, they would strike a stick against the roof at each hour, informing us, in this way, that all was still okay.
It did not seem possible that we would hear such a strike.
“How will we know if they come?”
“It’s a noise like no other—not their motorcycles and hollering, but the beating of our own hearts. It always knows when it is about to die. Now put on your jeans. No, not like that. Under your
shalwar.
Protect yourself as much as you can.”
I slid them on and found they no longer fit. Too many days of lying about, sequestered to this very room. How was it that my prison had become my only refuge? I rummaged through a drawer. It wasn’t on rollers and the wood kept thudding onto wood, sounding too much like the noise I expected to hear any minute, so I pulled the whole thing out. It crashed onto the floor. I found a safety pin and pulled it through the buttonhole and pinned the jeans together.
When I looked up, she was shaking her head at me, tears running down her face. She sat on the bed, just under the window, the open shutter letting in silence. She adjusted her green
duppatta
and opened the Qur’an—the only thing she’d grabbed before we’d locked ourselves inside, the dinner she had set out on the table, intending for us to eat just after our family
manjalis,
growing cold.
I crawled to the other side of her, to where her son usually slept. I lay down, sat up, then moved against the wall and pressed my back to the hard cement, letting it hold me up. The mosquito netting stretched, pulled by my weight, the peacock’s head creaking in protest. The chip across its beak, which had been painted over in a tone lighter than the ivory, made the thing look like it was gagged. Though it was hot, we kept the fan turned off. Kept it from whining as it spun. We wanted to hear what was happening outside. And what was the use of sitting refreshed and cool, awaiting our killers?
The strike of wood. Eleven o’clock. We had seven hours to go until dawn. Nothing to do but sit. Sit and wait.
 
 
“I JUST REALIZED, the drumming has stopped. They know. They know! Yet, no one is coming to help us!”
Her head was bowed over the Qur’an, back swaying as she read. She had not asked me to join her.
After a while, I said, “What if Sameer is on his way back? What if he runs into that gang? You’ve not once shown concern for him. Yes, you’ve thanked your husband for keeping us here tonight—otherwise we would have been returning when this … this gang … but you’ve not once expressed concern for him, your son!”
She continued reciting, switching back and forth from Arabic to Urdu, her voice steady. It was the chapter called “Man,” the verses describing what believers should expect after death, the promises of heaven.
“They shall be served with silver dishes, and beakers as large as goblets; … and cups filled with ginger-flavored water from the Fountain of Selsabil. They shall be attended by boys graced with eternal youth …”
I broke in again, “He’s with Naveed, his lover, while I am trapped here. He’s safe. He imprisoned me, then he abandoned me, here, to be raped and killed. If he’s on his way back, he’ll be returning from his lover’s, just like that day he got into the accident. Are you secretly praying that he runs into the gang, that he dies tonight?” Or was it the very thing I myself was praying for?
She finally looked up at me and her heavy chest rose in a deep sigh. “Do not pester me anymore, child. The time has come for each to weigh her own soul. Tally up your sins. You might soon be facing your creator!”
 
 
THE WOODEN STICK struck twice. Two o’clock.
My head was folded into my arms. I couldn’t stop crying.
She said, “I have been thinking about my childhood. Your mother and I used to walk to school together, both of us in our blue uniforms, except I wore
chappals,
while she wore shoes. Your
nana
wouldn’t tolerate his children wearing
chappals;
he said they would make their feet flat, the toes all spread out. He wanted them to have perfectly shaped feet.” She giggled like a girl.
I looked up at her. She was sitting against the headboard, right next to the open shutter. The Qur’an was closed, the
duppatta
flung off to expose her thin braid, gray died maroon with henna. The last time I had seen her uncovered was when she had confronted me about Sameer and our failed union. She now had a hand cupped over her lips, her usual tight smile replaced with an openmouthed grin.
“We didn’t get a good education,” she said, “but your mother and I didn’t care. We were attending school to admire our teachers. They were all so young, just out of school themselves. Teaching in our village was their first post. They’d come only for two or three months, until they could get a transfer. Then we would be left with no teacher for two to three months, and finally someone would show up again and all the kids in the village would be rounded up.” She lowered her eyes in modesty, though the wide smile remained visible behind her hand. “We fell in love with every teacher. It’s all she and I talked about, marrying one, leaving the village. We would stroll home through the woods inventing our lives.” She shook her head and grunted. “Now our lives have come to an end. At this age, the only dreaming left to do is for the children, their futures. That is the limitation of being human. No matter what, we have to be able to envision our lives continuing. in some form. Otherwise …” she turned and gazed at my face, the tears that were running freely.
“Your mother was much younger than you when this happened to her. The workers suddenly rose up against your
nana
and looted his
manzil,
then burned everything, including the saris because the fabric was lined with gold and silver. I was told they made balls of gold and carried them off to wherever they went. Her family had been warned, too. One of your
nana’s
friends told them to flee. Another friend had already been shot with a rifle. And, of course, they shot and killed your
nana’s
dog. But your
nana
was too proud. He wouldn’t go. He’s lucky they didn’t kill the whole family.” She rested her head against the curves of the peacock’s wings, and the overhead light splashed across her sweaty face, baring the lines on the broad cheekbones, the corners of her mouth.
 
 
“WE’RE SAFE.”
“What?”
“We’re safe. No one is coming to the house.”
“How do you know?”
“I had a dream.”
“You were sleeping? There, like that, you fell asleep!”
“I was running down the street when two women in chadors stopped me. They had luminous eyes. They asked me why I was crying. I told them my house was about to be overtaken, and I was out searching for my son. Was he dead? They put a hand on my shoulder to calm me. They said, ‘Don’t worry, Amma, your family is safe. No one will destroy your home. You are sheltered, even those outside. Allah has provided your well-being.’”
I closed my eyes, relieved to be safe, even in dream.
“I don’t want my son to die,” she whispered, then covered herself again and hid her face behind the green fabric. Her shoulders shook in sobs. “
Ya
Allah, what you have shown me tonight! Forgive me, forgive me, and let me hold my son to my breasts again.”
I slid over and we clung to each other, crying, and, for a moment, I felt like I was holding my own mother in the way I had always wanted, all that had come between us erased, if only for now.
Together, through the open shutter, we watched the early morning light overtake the darkness, and we heard the crackle of a distant loudspeaker being turned on.
“Allah
ho Akbar
.”
It was as though I was hearing the first words God had ever created. The first words uttered by mankind.
 
 
THE MEN KNOCKED at well past eight, each returning to his home and waiting like a stranger to be let in. We unlocked the bedroom door, the
divan
door, the front door, making our way out of the house in the
same way we had made our way in, as anxious as intruders. The metal locks echoed in the empty rooms. Zeba slid each key into her blouse, pushing it deep inside the bra, as though to ensure we would never use it again.
The two men stood in the sunlight, clothes crumpled, faces worn, arms limp. They were each holding a weapon, a knife, a wooden cane. They threw them in the courtyard, just outside the front door, before filing in. They sat at the dining table and took turns in the bathroom to clean up. Last night’s dinner lay before them, flies buzzing over it, close to their faces. One landed on Ibrahim’s lips, but he didn’t brush it away. It crawled about until I batted at it. Zeba and I quickly cleared the table.
Then the obligatory making of breakfast no one wanted, Zeba allowing me back into the kitchen. Milk boiled for chai. Finally, Feroz went to the prayer room and fell on the floor, on his stomach, weeping, falling asleep.
 
 
SAMEER CAME HOME after the second call to prayer, and the family celebrated quietly, the joy for our own survival muted on this eighth day of mourning. The drumming had resumed and pounded all around the house, hemming us in.
At the sound of his motorbike, the neighbors had wandered over, all, like us, still wearing the green clothes from yesterday. Seeing them, Ibrahim asked Sameer to remain in the courtyard. He explained to him that, yesterday, we had stood together like this, listening to a stranger tell us about our deaths, so now we would listen to his son tell us what had kept us alive.
My husband looked weak and haggard. His face dark from stubble, his hair standing up, the weaker leg shaking, barely holding him straight. There was mud on his boots. But without protest, he jerked the motorbike onto its stand and sat on it, long legs thrown in one direction, hands on his lap. He was trembling.
Zeba stood next to him, the length of her body against the length
of his, perhaps to give him strength, and it appeared as though mother and son had become attached once more. She had brought out a plate of food and fed her son by hand, the rice and dal we had been unable to eat ourselves, without him.
I watched and listened from the doorway, half inside the empty house, half joining this odd little community. Once the gathering was quiet, without needing the urgings of anyone, he simply began his story. So fluid it came out, so full of life and detail, this tragic tale of what had occurred mere blocks from our home, just minutes from when the gang would have most evidently fallen on us, that I knew he had told this story before, if only to himself a thousand times.
 
 
PERHAPS IT HAD been two or three in the morning when he had witnessed their terror. The end of life as these two young people had known it. He couldn’t be sure. He had not had the wherewithal to look at his watch.
He had not intended to be on the road so late. But earlier, while he was trying to leave the Old City, the back tire of his bike had blown. He couldn’t find a petrol pump nearby that was open to fix it. Not knowing what else to do, he screwed off the tire and carried it onto a bus to downtown. There, outside the Old City, the bazaars were lit and people strolled, talking and singing and laughing. He’d had no problem getting someone to mend it. Then, the long bus ride back to the abandoned cycle. By the time he’d gotten the tire back on, it was dark. He recalled using the frail light of a streetlamp to screw in the bolts.
Even at that hour, the Old City was alive, voices pumping out of loudspeakers, each surging with the sound of a different
manjalis,
a different dirge, each at a different movement, wailing or chest beating, the sorrow overflowing the moment and reaching back hundreds of years. So the silence of the colony chilled him even more. Where were the drums for Ganesh, calling forth this god of protection?
He turned off the engine and coasted to the side of the road to take shelter under the trees where he and I had once stood, together.
He was at the top of the hill that dropped into the colony, and voices from below rose up to him. Screaming. A woman crying. Men laughing. The sound of flesh being beaten. Then a round light flickered. Coming his way up the hill. Not steady. But zigzagging. Out of control. He hid farther within the branches. A scooter moaned past. A man on it. Steering with one hand. The other folded against his chest. He was screaming. He was yelling out for help.
Sameer let go of his bike and moved forward. Then hesitated and stepped back into the shadows.
Down the hill, the woman had stopped crying. But the men were still laughing. He heard the breaking of glass. When he eased out of the branches once more, he saw headlights surrounding dim figures. They were rising and falling. Pushing at one another. Three bodies were on the ground, lying on top of each other, writhing.

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