The Good Muslim (4 page)

‘What will we do now, I wonder?’ Sohail asked.

‘Hasn’t she told you?’ Ammoo said. ‘Maya’s going to be a doctor. Look after me in my old age.’

Maya blushed, secretly proud of herself for choosing medicine. A noble way to serve the new country. ‘The university will open soon,’ she said.

‘Back to school for us.’ Sohail appeared unhappy at the prospect of returning to university, of answering yes sir, present sir, in the roll call. ‘What kind of doctor will you be?’ He pointed to himself. ‘Arms and legs? Eyes and ears? Heart?’ He laughed, as though she couldn’t possibly be trusted with anyone’s heart.

‘Surgery,’ she said.

He clapped his hands together. ‘Vah. Perfect, brilliant. Dr Sheherezade Haque Maya, sewer of wounds, extractor of tumours.’

‘How long does it take?’ Ammoo asked.

‘Stitcher of arteries.’

‘Six years.’

‘Maybe you’ll be married then.’

Maya bristled. ‘So? I can’t be a doctor if I’m married?’

‘I was just saying, a lot can change.’

‘Where will you be, Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘in six years?’

She turned her face upwards, to where the moon would be if there were a moon. Blanketed in darkness, they couldn’t see her expression when she said, ‘Only God knows. All this time I was just wanting your safe return, that’s all.’

‘Bhaiya?’ Maya asked Sohail.

‘Six years? No way. I don’t know.’

‘Married?’

‘Can’t say. It seems like a rather optimistic thing to do.’

‘You’ve always been an optimist.’

He sighed, sank back into his chair. ‘I’m not sure any more.’ They knew what he was thinking. Ever since they could remember, Sohail had been in love with the girl who lived in the house across the road. Her name was Silvi. When the war broke out, her mother had married her off to an army officer. The officer had been killed, and now Silvi was a widow; she was still next door, perhaps waiting for the day Sohail would return and knock on her door.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

‘She’s probably still in mourning,’ Ammoo said.

And they left it at that.

That night on the porch, with her brother back from war, Maya believed their waiting days were over. She watched her mother spread her prayer mat, face west and thank God for his return, imagining the future rolling out in front of them, as flat and endless and predictable as the Delta. How wrong she had been.

1984
February

Maya couldn’t sleep. She waited until the first breath of morning, pulled on her trainers, wrapped a shawl around her head and headed into the fog. In Rajshahi she had devised an early-morning route: around the pond, cutting across her neighbour’s sesame field, circumventing the mosque, past the road that led into town, and back again at her door before the end of the dawn prayer. Now she decided to make for Dhanmondi Lake via the back roads. Shrouded in mist, asleep, the city resembled the one she remembered, the whitewashed houses, laundry dancing on balconies, the wide, hushed streets.

She circled Dhanmondi Lake, noting that the trees had aged and the path around the lake had narrowed. A clutch of boats were tied together, with a sign that said TEN TAKA ONE HOUR. She stopped, leaned against a tree, her breath whistling in her throat. She’d been running hard, harder than she had realised. She squatted by the tree for a few moments. The dark lake was the colour of limes. She pushed off again, aware now of the sounds that began the day, people leaning out of their windows and clearing their throats into the grass, the tinkle of rickshaws, shops winding open their shutters. She ran across Mirpur Road, now studded with a trickle of cars. Then she turned a corner, and found herself in front of the graveyard where her father was buried.

She looked around. The caretaker was absent, the gate unlocked. She slipped inside. The graveyard looked smaller, with buildings crowded around on all sides. What would it be like, she wondered, to have your window opening on to those small rectangles of death, watching flowers placed and prayers said and people crying, telling your children every night there were no such things as ghosts. Maybe they didn’t care. The city was running out of space, she had read in the newspaper that arrived in Rajshahi a day late; it was growing fast and soon they would have to build further and further away. Perhaps this is why the Dictator had decreed that no more than five people could assemble together at once. Because the city was too crowded, it was important to spread out.

Visiting the graveyard was a family ritual. Her mother had kept her father’s plot tidy all these years, a hedge around its perimeter, the stone polished. Maya didn’t know what to do; she had never come on her own before. She remembered the speeches her mother had made in the presence of this grave, the questions she had asked, the apologies, the regrets. She squatted next to the gravestone and placed her palm on its surface.
Hello, absent father
.

When she returned to the bungalow, Maya found a group of women at the foot of the stairs. At first glance, they appeared to be the women from the night before, but when she approached she noticed their faces were uncovered, and they were speaking rapidly to one another in a foreign language. Maya asked in English if she could assist them. Without introducing themselves, they embraced her one by one and kissed her on both cheeks. In broken English, they explained that they were French missionaries. The Forashi Jamaat. Maya examined them closely. They wore soft leather shoes under their robes, light traces of varnish on their fingernails, and they had about them the air of tourists – hesitant, their fingers twisted around the handles of their suitcases and rucksacks. One of them was waving a tiny paper flag wrapped around a toothpick.

After a brief discussion, the women began to climb the narrow staircase one by one, ducking into the room at the top. Maya followed them up. Inside was a rectangular room that was crammed tight with people, the air spiced and heavy. A large woman at the front was speaking, her face exposed but circled in a black headscarf. She nodded at the new arrivals and continued her speech. ‘Our Sister Rehnuma’, she said, referring to Silvi by her Islamic name, ‘has recently passed away. May her soul rest in peace.’

‘Ameen,’ the women agreed.

‘But her work must continue. The Wednesday taleem will go on. And the jamaat missions from our sisters and brothers in foreign lands will also continue. Remember, this life is but a drop in the ocean of time; the hereafter is eternal, every moment is an age, infinite.’

Nods and murmurs of assent travelled through the room.

‘We welcome our sisters from France.’ Now the others turned to the French women and greeted them enthusiastically, touching their faces and fingering the material of their burkhas. The French women mingled, opening their bags and distributing gifts. A box of chocolates was passed around. The woman giving the speech began to circulate, embracing the visitors, speaking to them in a mixture of Bengali, Arabic and sign language. Then she sat down again and began to recite a passage in Arabic, gesturing with plump, graceful hands.

I should slip out before anyone notices, Maya thought. She left the scene reluctantly, her curiosity unquenched. On her way down the stairs she crashed into a boy carrying a bucket. Water splashed her sandals and doused the bottom of her salwaar. ‘Watch out, kid,’ she said, brushing past him.

‘Hello!’ he called out. ‘Howareyoumadam?’

‘Hello,’ she said, turning around.

The boy looked her up and down and laughed out loud, revealing a mouth of misshapen teeth. He had unusually light eyes, almost grey, and a fine, delicate nose. But everything else about him suggested poverty: his too-short pyjamas, and the way he treated his lips, rubbing them roughly with the back of his hand.

‘Why are you laughing?’ Maya asked.

He pointed to her clothes, her trainers. ‘You look funny.’

She was about to wave goodbye when it occurred to her that he might know where Sohail was. What had they called him? Huzoor.

‘Hey, you know where the Huzoor is?’

He shrugged. Then he opened his mouth and laughed again. ‘But you can’t see him. Pordah, don’t you know?’

‘Never mind about that. Is he here?’

The boy released the handle of his bucket. ‘No, he’s gone. Did you see the French ladies?’ he said.

‘Yes, I did.’

‘Last month we had the Russian jamaat. I can talk in Russian.’

‘What can you say?’

He fired off a few foreign-sounding words.

‘What does it mean?’

‘Peace,’ he said, bending his knees and jumping high, ‘peace shanti peace. I know it in Spanish too.’ And he uttered another string of gibberish.

‘Do you have a book?’

He landed on his heels, rocked back and forth. ‘No books. Only my head,’ he said, pointing a finger at his temple.

‘I have to go now,’ Maya said.

‘Goodbye. Khoda Hafez. Au revoir!’ he called out. The French women must have been here before. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a flattened samosa. ‘For you,’ he said.

‘No, you have it. I’m not hungry.’

He bit off one end of the triangle. ‘Okay, ta-ta-bye-bye.’

Ammoo was in the kitchen. The servant Rehana had hired a few years ago was standing over the sink, washing the pots from last night’s dinner.

‘Maya, this is Sufia.’ Taller than Maya by at least six inches, the woman came close, smiled and placed a large hand on her shoulder.

‘I know all about you,’ Sufia said. She looked her up and down. Maya saw her thinking, so this is the daughter who won’t come home. Looks like a peasant. Cheap salwaar-kameez, not even starched. Long hair, yes, but what skin, burned all dark by the sun. She kept smiling and patting her heavily.

‘I was running,’ Maya said. ‘I went to the graveyard.’

Ammoo nodded. Then she came close and put her hand on Maya’s cheek. ‘I am so happy.’

Maya was happy too. The warmth of it spread through her. She wanted to say it, to tell her mother she was home now, that she was staying put, but she couldn’t. It wouldn’t be true. When Ammoo took the samosas out of the frying pan, she remembered Nazia’s children, how they would save up their Eid money and buy samosas in town, sharing one, arguing over who had been given the bigger half.

‘Where is Sohail?’

‘He came to see me this morning,’ Ammoo said. ‘He asked me to tell you he sends his love.’

Love? Was that the word he had used? ‘Did he say when he’s coming back?’

‘Not for a few weeks.’

Sufia began to grind turmeric with a giant stone shaped like a rolling pin. She passed the stone back and forth over the turmeric bulb, smashing it into a rough paste, and then went over it again and again until it turned smooth, darkening to the colour of crushed marigolds. ‘Always coming and going,’ she said, scooping the turmeric on to a plate and starting the whole process again with a handful of garlic. ‘Coming and going.’

‘It’s like the United Nations up there. They weren’t even speaking Bangla.’

‘They come from all over the world,’ Ammoo said, pouring more oil into her pan.

‘Because of Sohail and Silvi?’

‘That’s what they do – they go from country to country, like missionaries.’

As a boy Sohail had attended a Jesuit school called St Gregory’s. Maya had visited him once on Games Day. The priests were dressed in long linen gowns with strings tied around their waists. An egg-and-spoon race. These were the images that came to mind when Ammoo said missionaries, not the cinnamon-scented women upstairs.

Ammoo lifted something out of the frying pan. ‘You want a samosa?’

The thought came rushing into Maya’s mind. Grey eyes. About the right age. ‘Was that Sohail’s son I just saw upstairs?’

‘If he was carrying a bucket, that’s the one,’ Sufia said, turning now to a pile of lavender-skinned onions.

‘But he looks . . . Ammoo, did you see him?’

Ammoo put down her spatula and gathered the samosas on to a plate. ‘Yes, beta, I know. I was going to talk to you about it this morning.’

‘And?’

‘And’, Sufia interjected, ‘there’s nothing to be done. Boy runs around like a ruffian; that’s how they want it.’

‘Doesn’t he go to school?’

‘Sometimes they read the Book with him,’ Ammoo said.

‘And you just let them?’

Rehana passed the plate of samosas to Maya. Maya saw a great weariness in her mother’s gesture. She saw that, whatever was happening upstairs, Ammoo had decided to ignore it. She was no longer the protective, panicky mother she had once been. If Sohail wanted to burn his books, if he wanted to throw away his furniture and unscrew the light sockets and piss into a hole in the ground, so be it. Once she had given everything for her children. Now she was in retreat from them, passively accepting whatever it was they chose to do: turning to God, running away, refusing to send their children to school. There was nothing of the struggle left in her any more.

It was then Maya realised the years had been far, far longer for her mother.

‘He’s not my son,’ Ammoo said simply. ‘And he’s not yours. We do what we can, but you have to remember that.’

Maya remembered something else. The tree. She fetched it from Sohail’s room and presented it to her mother. ‘From Rajshahi,’ she said simply, knowing Ammoo would realise at once it was a prized mango tree, and that, if it survived the winter, it would yield the tart, complicated fruit that could be found nowhere else.

His name was Muhammad Zaid bin Haque. A long name for a small boy. The next day Maya kept her eye on the staircase, and as soon as she caught the shape of him she rushed outside and stood in his way. ‘Zaid, remember me?’

He shook his head, then, seeing her face fall, he said, ‘Ha ha, I fooled you!’

‘So you’re a joker and a linguist?’

‘What’s a linguist?’

‘Someone who knows a lot of languages. I know some languages too. How about I teach you a few things?’

He held up the bucket, empty. ‘I have to go,’ he said, running to the tap.

Later, he knocked on the door. ‘Do you want to play Ludo?’ he said, slipping off his sandals and stepping into her room.