Spiral Road (11 page)

‘What makes you think they won’t be?’

I mention the incident of the black pearls.

He’s infuriated. ‘They were mine!’ He stabs his sternum with an index finger. ‘All two hundred of them! I had the right to do with them as I pleased! At least
people know about my generosity. What about the pearls your father had? Huh?’ He sneers. ‘Where are they?’

‘I didn’t know he was given any! Zia hasn’t said anything about Abba having any of the pearls!’

‘That’s because I didn’t tell him! Why should I when your brother’s so ill-mannered? Your father received an equal share of the pearls. So—he hid them from you!’ His jowls wobble. A trickle of saliva dribbles from the corner of his mouth.

N
O ONE KNOWS
how my great-grandfather acquired the pearls. Rival
zamindars
had publicly claimed that two of Ismael Alam’s brothers, Suliman and Yakub, had turned to piracy and smuggling to support their opulent lifestyle and alleviate the boredom of living off the land. Rumour had it that they operated from the coast of Chittagong and sailed throughout south-east Asia, trading in opium and precious stones. Whether they ever reached Tahiti, even accidentally, is still contentious. Before they turned thirty, they both disappeared, said to have drowned in a shipwreck off the coast of Siam. Their bodies were never recovered.

I did not know about the family pearls until just after Uncle Musa’s third marriage. The wedding had gone smoothly enough and there could be no complaint about the celebration, during which the guests were lavishly treated. Contentedly we had returned home, but the next day Ma was fuming.

Apparently, as the guests arrived and wished Uncle Musa a blessed wedded life, a relative of the bride had commented on how distinguished the groom looked and what a caring husband he would be. Having endured sustained and unmitigated criticism from his children for his decision to marry again at the age of fifty-four, Uncle Musa was so flattered that he ordered the servants to bring a dozen large trays of tumblers to his room. Before dinner, the guests were to be served a rich drink made with iced milk, Persian saffron, pistachio nuts, sugar and vermicelli. Uncle Musa dropped a priceless pearl into each tumbler before pouring the
shorboth
. These drinks were then sent to the marquee where the relatives and friends of the bride had gathered before joining our family and guests for the wedding ceremony and dinner.

At the time, I thought it was a grand gesture by the bridegroom.

‘Most of them wouldn’t have even known that there was a pearl at the bottom of the glass!’ Ma raged. ‘They would’ve probably thrown them away, thinking they were some kind of black seeds!’ She was explosive and inconsolable, and for weeks afterwards she mourned.

Uncle Musa sensed her outrage, and for nearly fifteen years they didn’t speak to each other. Even when they broke their silence during the mourning period of forty days after Uncle Musa’s wife died, the exchange was coldly courteous and brief.

T
HE OLD MAN
survives a coughing fit and lights another cigar. ‘How’s your father?’

‘Not well. He doesn’t remember much.’

‘Ibrahim doesn’t have much to remember,’ he says unkindly. ‘The sort of constipated life he led is forgettable. Always careful and dutiful. Correct and moral. He never had the guts to grab life by the balls and squeeze the juice out of it.’ He looks morose. ‘Your father was responsible for our demise as landowners. He betrayed our heritage by neglecting the land and choosing a
profession
for a living!’

‘Becoming a doctor wasn’t exactly an ignoble act!’ I defend Abba heatedly. ‘The days of the
zamindars
ended with partition. He saw what was coming and acted sensibly.’

‘He was a great one for acting sensibly. That was his greatest flaw. For him, life was a soulless drawing in black-and-white lines. There was never a splash of colour on his canvas. Nothing bold or extravagant.’

I can’t think of an acceptable way to broach the subject of Uncle Musa’s return to Dhaka. ‘Will you consider selling this house and moving back to the city?’ I’m blunt and undiplomatic. ‘We could find you something smaller and more manageable. You could be closer to specialists and private hospitals.’

He’s incensed and sits upright. ‘Are you saying that I shall be terminally ill in the near future?’

‘Not at all! It’s a matter of convenience. And Alya Ahmed is looking for a building, for a school she plans to
establish here. This house would save her time and organisation.’

‘I’ll never sell to that bitch!’

‘She’s a very fine person!’

‘She cheated me into selling land at a cheap price!’

‘She paid the price you wanted!’

‘That was your brother’s suggestion. He colluded with her to deceive me.’ He invites me to look beyond the back wall. ‘Look at that! It’s all my land. The world out there is silent and empty. It doesn’t defy or challenge me. One day, my soul will soar across the space and up to Allah.’

‘It would be easier for us to look after you in the city.’

‘Rubbish! Will you come back from wherever you live to take care of me? Your brother? I would be left to die like a stray dog on a pile of garbage.’ He groans and struggles to his feet. ‘I couldn’t live in a smaller house. I have too much of our past to store. Can you be trusted with a secret?’

‘Of course!’

He beckons me to follow him.

Inside, the rear section of the house is dismal. We enter a dark corridor with rooms on either side. Uncle Musa leads me to the front room, intended to be the lounge. Sunlight filters through dirty windows. It’s an untidy room. The worn-out sofas are piled with newspapers, magazines on horse racing, lottery tickets, files and cutlery. Clothes are littered all over the dusty floor. Stationery, photograph albums and teacups are stacked on a writing table.

Uncle Musa steps over withered banana peels and opens a drawer. Painstakingly he examines a collection of keys until he finds the one he needs. He leads me back to the corridor. We stop in front of a door. He instructs me to focus the beam of a torch on a large padlock.

‘People say I’m selfish, that I don’t care about the family. Well, let me show you!’ he says smugly. ‘But only you!’ He grins affectionately. ‘We had good times together when you were a child. Fishing, climbing trees, swimming in the pond in the afternoon when you were supposed to be napping. Your mother never found out.’

‘It was fun.’ I remember how caring he was when he taught me how to swim. We swore each other to secrecy about our afternoon’s activities. I can’t help thinking now that whatever I’m about to see is Uncle Musa’s way of trying to reconnect with me. Perhaps he feels that he has irrevocably alienated himself from the rest of the family. Maybe he still thinks we’re allies in a necessary conspiracy.

He bends down low to peer at the lock. With an unsteady hand he turns the key. There’s an audible click. ‘There! Give me the torch. You can have a look inside. Don’t enter the room!’

He stands in front of the partially open door. With his right hand he holds the torch and guides a spot of light inside. I have to bend under his arm and stick my neck in. A strong, musty smell chokes me.

The part of the wall I see is shelved with silver trays, plates, gold eggcups and goblets. There are ivory figurines, boxes inlaid with onyx and lapis lazuli, a magnificent paan
daan
, which I recognise as one of my grandmother’s most prized possessions, tiger skins and bales of silk. In my desperation to see more, I grab the torch from him and force my way past. Furniture, hand-carved wooden chests, richly decorated jewellery boxes, silver candle stands, hand-carved ivory chess sets, gilded mirrors, crystal glassware and paintings. Cobwebs, like fishing nets left to dry, hang from the walls and the ceiling.

‘
Baas
!’ he barks. ‘You’ve seen enough!’ Uncle Musa grabs my shoulders and drags me out. His strength surprises me.

I’m too stunned to react. He locks the door and heads for the back veranda.

‘You’ve taken things from the family without telling anyone and hoarded them!’ I accuse him angrily. ‘Why?’

‘I’m the custodian of the family’s valuables,’ he replies unrepentantly. ‘If it wasn’t for me, all this would be gone. Your generation doesn’t care! Your brother, my children…you would have sold everything, pretending that you couldn’t store them, that you didn’t have time to look after the possessions. There’d be nothing left, except a few albums and memories of our
zamindari
years. And they too would disappear when your father and I finish with this life.’

‘So then what will happen to all that is stored here?’

He doesn’t reply, and goes back to the remainder of the jackfruit, which Nur has placed under a netted cover.

‘And the other rooms?’

‘Two other rooms, full of valuable things. I open a room once a week and become intimate with the past.’

‘There’s family jewellery that’s gone missing.’

‘Nothing’s gone missing.’

‘Not even my great-grandmother’s armlet?’

He gives me a searing look. ‘There’s no such item.’

‘Does Zia know about all this?’

‘No! Why should he?’

‘It’s a wonder thieves haven’t broken in!’

He looks at me contemptuously. ‘This is a house full of spirits. The family treasures are well guarded. Besides, didn’t you see the tigers mounted on the sides of the gate? They come alive at night to attack anyone who comes near this house.’

‘And the villagers believe you.’

His lower jaw drops in a grotesque expression of amusement. ‘You must enter their minds and create the conditions to control them. That charlatan, Hakim, does it as well. He uses belief to get them to do what he wants.’

There’s an uneasy pause.

‘Yes? Speak what your brother wants you to say.’

I figure it’s worth another effort. ‘We seriously want you to consider moving to the city. Perhaps—’

‘Never! Our ancestors are here with me. Sometimes I sit on the steps of the old house. There are those who come and whisper to me. This is where I shall die. Would you deny an old man his last years of a peaceful life?’

The manipulative plea in his voice defeats me. ‘We want you to stay where you’re happy,’ I say, giving in abjectly.

Uncle Musa beams. ‘You’re a kind boy. You understand why I cannot leave this house.’

My resolve to be steely with him has dissipated. Strangely, I feel for this desperate old man, clinging to his illusions of familial glory and resisting a loneliness which we have thrust upon him, by our negligence and our failure to accept his idiosyncrasies. The world outside this house has no bearing on his life. And we have no right to deprive him of his fantasies. Uncle Musa is a rare individual, entirely successful in thwarting us and in guiding destiny to satiate his personal needs. He’s scheming, rapacious and less than honest. But it is for the way he grasps life, making it tactile and pleasurable, that I find it impossible to dislike him.

‘I shall send you a special invitation to my wedding,’ Uncle Musa calls after me as I leave. ‘The others…They can hear about it.’

Alya’s a willing listener, but I’m talking about matters outside her experience. She possesses the rare knack of conveying her impressions without becoming garrulous. Her expressive gaze is enough to let me know that I behaved like an upstart in the village. An unflattering profile unfurls: I’m aloof and opinionated, superior in my bearing and stiff in manner—the coloured sahib, measured in his speech and exuding coldness, infected by an incestuous strain of colonial disdain.

‘The pukka sahibs are now the expatriate themselves,’ Alya simply observes.

I’m unable to articulate a case strong enough for my exclusion from this dismissive generalisation.

Over a late lunch back in Dhaka, I realise my return to Manikpur was like meeting an old lover after years of separation—one cannot hope to revive the passion, but it is possible to bask in the warmth of recollection. I had expected a bitter-sweetness of past association, perhaps some sadness of transience. Instead, I’ve remembered without much feeling. The visit has been merely a mechanical playback of a flawed recording that’s aroused mild interest in what was, but is devoid of yearning.

‘Do you realise how noticeable your foreignness was?’ Alya asks suddenly.

‘How?’

‘You wanted everything to happen instantly,’ she replies, munching on a piece of cucumber. ‘You’re so time-oriented. So finicky about what you touch and eat. The look of panic on your face when Rizwan offered us lunch.’

I can’t match Alya’s patience, I’ll grant her that. We understand the significance of
change
in our world views, but in each of us the word operates in an entirely different timeframe.

‘I don’t expect to fulfil everything I set out to achieve in my lifetime,’ she continues tangentially. ‘But I do believe that the next generation will continue the work I’ve begun.’

‘I’ve no goals,’ I say despairingly. ‘Maybe that explains my restiveness. It’s like floating in the middle of an ocean on a starless night. I’ve no sense of direction.’

In the nearly empty restaurant, two waiters hover over
our table, anxious to please. Alya asks for more bottled water. ‘Are you ashamed of your background?’

‘Of course not!’ I say hotly, unsettled by the question and the teasing behind it. ‘In fact, I’m quite proud of some things here.’

‘Oh?’

‘Like…well, that Bangladesh is not a terrorist base. The openness and the friendliness of people. The way families stick together…’

Her smile softens her scepticism. ‘How can you be certain that we don’t have terrorists operating here?’

I can’t tell whether she’s being deliberately provocative. ‘Are you implying that there
are
terrorists in the country?’

She urges me to look past the stereotypical context of ‘terrorist’. There are cultural and economic dimensions that the sophisticated ‘terrorist’ has begun to exploit. Professionals and business people, educated in the West, are coming back disgruntled with their lives, especially in America and Britain. Such potential recruits, she says, are intelligent and resourceful.

‘But that’s not to say that all disillusioned Muslims are members of Al Qaeda!’ I feel disquiet, and aggrieved. I wish to deny.

‘What defines a member? By what he does or what he thinks? Even the Pentagon can’t penetrate what people carry in their minds. Get rid of the image that everyone associated with Al Qaeda speaks Arabic or Pashtun or Duric, wears a certain type of clothes, carries a gun and is eager to be a martyr.’

I’ve an uneasy feeling that Alya is skirting around an issue over which she has a far greater grasp than I do. I lose my appetite for the rest of the kebabs and push the plate away. ‘There was an interesting article in the newspaper by a journalist named Shabir Jamal.’

‘Yes,’ she says quietly. ‘I see him often.’

‘I see.’ I’m slow to interpret
often.
Then I laugh. The relief I feel is undercut by mild disappointment. ‘Does my mother know?’

‘No. I should tell her, shouldn’t I? But I don’t want to upset her. I’m very fond of your mother.’ She grins impishly. ‘She has plans for you.’

‘And you!’

Alya and I can be friends now, harmless and silent coconspirators in the face of Ma’s romantic notions. I admire Alya, and her sense of fun.

We talk about local newspapers and journalists. I tell her how I’m impressed with the English daily in which Shabir Jamal’s piece on Osama Bin Laden and Al Qaeda appeared.

‘It’s one of the few independent newspapers in the country,’ she frowns. ‘About a month ago, Shabir wrote something on government corruption. He didn’t mention names, but it was obvious who he had in mind…Well, before the day was over, there were threatening phone calls. That night someone daubed his motorbike with red paint.’

L
ATER, THAT NIGHT
, I go to see Zia in his study. It’s been a long day. The travel and the heat have exhausted me.

‘Well? How was the meeting with Uncle Musa?’ my brother asks.

‘Interesting.’

‘Meaning what?’

‘He’s still alert and active, not the decrepit old man I was expecting to meet. He’s slow on his feet, but that’s natural at his age.’

‘Will he return to the city?’

‘No. And he will marry the girl.’

Zia looks disgusted. I don’t mention the rooms hoarded with family treasures.

‘He’s not terminally ill! He’s a proud old man who doesn’t like his decisions challenged.’

‘What do you suggest we do?’ Zia demands heatedly. ‘Pay for his wedding? Turn up on the day to celebrate this monumental act of foolishness?’

‘Leave him alone to decide what makes his life worthwhile.’

Latif brings in a tray of food. Zia and I eat in the brooding presence of Saladin.

‘Among the great men of the past, who do you admire the most?’ Zia asks between mouthfuls of rice.

‘I’m a man without heroes.’

‘How does that feel?’

‘Lonely and deprived. Almost as if a bird might feel without its wings. I can’t soar any more to heights of idealism.’

‘If you really understood a political cause and felt strongly about it, would that make a difference?’

My mind swivels back to the giddy days of March 1971. There was an ideal then. I thought it was more important than life itself. ‘I can’t say,’ I mumble sleepily.

In bed, I reinvent my adult life. I don’t leave Dhaka. The war never happens. Pakistan remains unified. I have an unexciting but well-paid job. Marriage and children. I’m towards the end of my working life, sitting on a balcony, contemplating retirement. The uneventful years have slipped away. I’m left wondering what else I could’ve done. But I’m not burdened by the enormity of twin cultures or strained by the tension of polarised selves.

A car starts up. It pulls me from my thoughts.

My lips are dry and I’m thirsty. I listen. The sound of frogs and crickets. Otherwise the street is quiet. Too quiet. As if gagged into silence. I stagger out of the bed and lurch to the window. It’s a clear night.

I’m almost disappointed that the street is empty.