The Good Muslim (17 page)

The sun was at its full thrust now, as Maya stared down at her hands, sweating steadily. Here, in this room, was the only place she could believe, really believe, that her mother would live. Everywhere else the possibility of her absence had taken over: every meal Maya ate that wasn’t cooked by her, the rooms in which she read and bathed and dressed, the garden, which she had diligently watered but could not save from its yellowish cast.

That was why, day after day, she found herself sitting at Khadija’s feet. She did not read from the Qur’an or join in the prayers. She just sat cross-legged with her hands in her lap and her legs slowly falling asleep, for as long as it took for the panic to pass.

When most of her hair had gone, Rehana finally asked Maya to shear off the rest. She propped herself up on the bed, sharp shoulders blading out of her nightdress, the skin on her neck grey and tired. Sufia stood crying quietly as Maya draped her mother with a towel.

She had known this day would come; she had rehearsed it. She would remain calm, her hand steady on the instrument. She began with the scissors. Ammoo had lost her hair in patches: in some places it was gone completely; in others it was thick and clung strongly to her scalp. She cut these sections close, lingering at the weight of them, long ribboning strands, before dropping them on the floor. Sufia followed her movements with a broom. Rehana herself was dry-eyed, holding a newspaper in front of her as if it were any other morning and she were waiting for her eggs. She had obviously rehearsed it too.

Maya replaced the scissors with a blade, dipping it into a bowl of warm soapy water, and lightly, delicately, painting across her mother’s head. Now Ammoo was emerging under her hand, shiny, perfectly round. The whole planet of her.

‘I used to watch my father’, Rehana said, holding the newspaper high, ‘being shaved by his barber. He always looked so relaxed.’

‘How does it feel?’

‘Nice. A bit ticklish.’

Soon there was very little soap left. Maya rubbed her mother’s head with a thin towel. ‘I have something for you,’ she said. She went to her room and came back with a bandana she had acquired a few days before at a roadside stall. It was red and white, and fitted neatly around her mother’s forehead.

‘You look like a gypsy,’ she said. ‘Or a pirate.’

‘Give me an eye patch and I’ll rob you blind.’ They laughed.

In the evening, Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram came to play cards with Rehana. Maya agreed to make up their fourth so they could play poker. No one mentioned Rehana’s hair, except to remark that perhaps red was her lucky colour, because she won twice, with a pair of aces and a straight flush.

*

When Ramzaan, the fasting month, began, Rehana insisted that Maya do all the shopping in preparation for Eid. ‘It’s the first year I haven’t been able to keep the fast,’ Rehana said, her head light on the pillow. ‘So the least you can do is wear something nice for Eid.’

Ammoo had given strict instructions. How many yards of cloth to buy for her own salwaar-kameez. Blouse, petticoat and sari for Sufia. Gifts for Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram. Something for Sohail. Now Maya was standing in front of a fabric counter with Zaid, trying to find cloth for Sufia’s blouse.

The shopkeepers, young men with wispy moustaches, hurried back and forth from the counters to the fabrics behind them. The bolts of cloth, arranged along the wall like books on a shelf, contained every shade of colour imaginable. They began the process of finding matching fabric for the blouse by holding up the sari Maya had bought to the palette of colours that most resembled it. Then they moved along this palette, light to dark, until she nodded somewhere along the spectrum. Maya chose a navy-blue piece for Sufia.

It was time to make their way to the tailoring section of the market. Zaid pulled hard on her wrist, jumping over the cracks that rivered through the cement.

‘Do you remember what we learned yesterday,’ she asked him, ‘the numbers? Let’s see if you can count the steps from here to the tailor’s shop.’

His eyes were everywhere, taking in the brightly painted hoardings, the women in their shopping clothes, the dogs biting at fleas, the cinema posters, the sharp smell of tamarind pickle. It was a pleasant day, a brief hint of the winter to come, the breeze tickling at their knees, fingertips. Maya couldn’t help but think back to all the Eid celebrations they’d had at the bungalow. The crackle of new clothes, pressed and starched by Ammoo until they smelled of wet rice. Waiting for Sohail to return from the mosque, and breakfast, and then on a rickshaw, visiting the homes of all the people they knew, their lives suddenly full, and finally, as the afternoon peaked, stopping at the graveyard, marking another year of their threesomeness and praying at Abboo’s grave, telling him again how much he was missed.

‘Ek,’ Zaid began hesitantly, ‘dui.’ The cap on his head bobbed up and down. ‘Teen.’
One. Two. Three
.

‘Here,’ Maya said, gripped by a sudden tenderness for the boy, ‘hold these.’ She gave him the shopping bags and lifted him into her arms. He was light, a whisper of a child.

‘What do you want?’ she said. ‘Choose something.’

‘For me?’

‘Anything you like. Anything in all of New Market.’

He flashed her a smile, his crooked teeth beautifully white, cleaned, she knew with charcoal and the branch of a cypress tree, because toothbrushes were banned upstairs. He tried to decide what he wanted, looking down at himself, taking in his filthy kurta-pyjama, the crescent-shaped dirt under his fingernails. She thought he might ask for the bicycle he had spoken of at the graveyard, but he surprised her by leaning close and whispering in her ear: ‘Sandal.’

‘Really, you just want sandals? I said you could have anything in all of New Market and you want a pair of sandals?’

He nodded solemnly.

‘Okay, then we have to turn around.’ She set him down and they made their way back through the market until they reached Bata. A thin salesman in a blue shirt spotted Maya before she entered the shop.

‘Heel for you, madam? Coat-shoe?’

‘We’re here for the boy,’ Maya said, leading Zaid inside. Into his ear she whispered, ‘What colour do you want?’

‘Blue,’ he whispered back.

‘We’d like a pair of blue sandals.’

The salesman brought out a pair of blue chappals not unlike the ones Zaid was already wearing, which were worn down to the nub and already a little too small.

Maya slipped the new sandals on his feet. ‘Walk from here to there,’ she said; ‘let’s see if they fit.’

He took a few narrow steps, placing each foot on the shop floor with a careful touch. He shuffled back towards her. His lips were red and his eyes were brimming with tears. She cupped his shoulders. ‘It’s all right. Go on, see if they fit.’ Then she turned him around and pushed him gently away.

‘Can’t you find him something better, a sandal-shoe maybe?’

Zaid charged the length of the shop, then hopped back towards her, whistling.

‘Don’t run,’ the salesman said, putting his finger to his lips. Turning to Maya, he said, ‘How much do you want to spend?’

‘It doesn’t matter,’ she said, ‘just show me another style.’

‘How very kind of you,’ he said, shuffling through the shoe-boxes, ‘bringing your servant boy to the market.’

‘He’s not—’

Zaid was holding the shoes in his hands now, threading them through his fingers and clapping them together, seal-like. She looked at him and she looked at the salesman. He was holding out another crude pair of rubber sandals.

‘Let’s go,’ Maya said, pulling the shoes from Zaid’s hands and returning them to the salesman. ‘Give us back the old sandals.’

‘I’ve thrown them away.’

‘Get them back.’

Zaid began to cry. ‘Sush,’ she said, impatient, and suddenly angry at him for being so shabbily dressed. She saw the way he breathed through his mouth, and the caked mucus in the corners of his eyes. He did look like a servant boy, his collars rimmed with grey, short scabs dotting his forearms.

The salesman returned, holding the old shoes by the very tips of his fingers. She grabbed them and nudged Zaid out of the shop. By now the boy had dropped into a hard silence, refusing to hold her hand, walking a few paces behind. She tried to tell him
the salesman thought you were a servant boy, the bastard
, but he refused to listen, keeping his back to her and swatting her hand away when she tried to touch him. She finished her errand at the tailor’s, haggling unnecessarily about the price of stitching, demanding the clothes be ready in three days even though Eid was still weeks away, and then they left, ignoring each other in the rickshaw. When they reached the bungalow Maya tried again to address him, but Zaid bounded up the stairs two at a time, refusing to look back at her when she called out goodbye.

‘Did you get everything?’ Ammoo asked. Her voice was down to a whisper, chalk in the dust.

‘I did.’

‘I need the toilet. Call Sufia.’

‘She’s washing the pots. I’ll take you.’

Ammoo didn’t have the strength to protest. Maya slid an arm under her shoulders, and with a soft grunt Ammoo sat upright. She held up her hand. ‘Wait,’ she said. She caught her breath. Swung her legs over the side of the bed. Waved to Maya to hold out her arm so she could stand up. Together they shuffled to the hallway.

‘Keep the door unlocked,’ Maya said. She heard the water running, and then a slap against the wall and the sound of retching. ‘Are you all right, Ma? Let me come in.’

She didn’t hear anything. ‘Ma? Let me come in, Ma, please.’ Still nothing. She pushed the door open and found Ammoo lying beside the toilet, her arm over her face. Maya tried to lift her up. Her cheek and chin were coated in vomit. Maya poured a mugful of water over her, and then another. Ammoo lay very still, opening her eyes against the cool splash of water. The sounds of the garden came through the small bathroom window. Maya peeled away Ammoo’s sari and placed it in the washing bucket. Ammoo lifted her head. They inched their way back to the bed. Ammoo mouthed something and Maya came close, trying to understand.

‘Everything,’ she said softly, ‘did you get everything?’

‘Don’t worry, Ma,’ Maya replied. ‘Eid will be just like it always is.’

Shafaat rang, excited. ‘We’ve been getting letters about your column,’ he said. ‘People like it.’

She didn’t care if people liked it. Did they understand it? ‘Yes,’ he said, ‘your message is certainly getting across. We had a letter from the Khatib of Rajshahi Mosque. An upstanding fellow, apparently.’

‘Is it threatening?’ She didn’t care for herself, only for the people of the village, for Nazia.

He told her not to worry. Static through the receiver as he blew smoke out of the corner of his mouth. All right, then. She would keep on writing.

Travelling through the rugged south of the country, I found myself among the Hill tribes, the Garo and the Chakma. Ask yourself, citizen, have you ever met a tribal? Ever sat next to one at school? Ever known anyone who knows anyone who has a tribal for a friend? I thought not.

They know the medicine of the forest. Plants that you soak and paste over a wound. They chew the leaf and smear it over your cut. There is a treasure, they say, in every inch of this land.

In exchange, we raze their villages and let the army rape their women. We take their forests and smoke them out of their villages. This is no kind of freedom.

*

Ammoo grew weaker every day. The change was hardly perceptible, but occasionally Maya would notice something, the angle of her cheekbones, the sleek profile she had acquired. She tried to monitor other things – her eating, her bowel movements, the vomiting from chemotherapy. But Ammoo remained scrupulously private, refusing to talk openly about her disease, always preferring Sufia’s help to hers. She was so careful to obscure the details of the cancer that Maya began to wonder if she should be there at all.

But she couldn’t imagine being anywhere else. Her time away had dissolved, like sugar in water, leaving no imprint. She rarely thought of Nazia and whether she might call again. The season of mangoes had come and gone in Rajshahi, and she might have spent a few moments remembering the currents of scent that blew into the village and made everyone’s mouth water, but she didn’t. She thought only of Ammoo, only of banishing the premonition. She was a regular visitor upstairs, sitting on the fringes of their strange world, transfixed by its rituals, the air of calm and certainty that surrounded them. She once asked Rokeya what she thought of President Zia’s death, and Rokeya looked at her blankly as though unaware of which Zia she meant. Was there a Zia in the Qur’an, she saw her wondering. A Zia in their extended family? But instead of experiencing the familiar surge of anger, instead of repeating her usual lines – about citizens who do not deserve the freedom they had fought so hard to gain, about how they deserve their dirty politicians, and about how it was people like her who had brought all of this upon the country – Maya found herself relieved. She was tired of letting everything break her heart, the politicians and crooks and the women whose babies died because they didn’t make it to the hospital on time. This was a world in which it didn’t matter that two of their presidents had been assassinated, and that they were now fully in the throes of irony, with their very own Dictator, their own injustices, their own dirty little war down south. There was just this room, this hot room with its stink of men and its stink of women, and the feeling that she was pulling the end of a rope with all her weight, pulling her mother back as she careened towards death.

Zaid forgave Maya for the incident in the market, and came and went as usual. As before, she fed him and tried to teach him things. Halal things, no card games, no television. She was working on addition and subtraction. His frenzied energy was the only bright thing in the bungalow. He tiptoed into Rehana’s room and sat at her feet, radiating a sort of brisk optimism, no matter that she was sinking into the mattress, that she was as frail as a bird in its nest, a trembling, bruise-breasted robin.