Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

He looked unsure, his eyes pinched together.

The next day, when he was still unwilling to repeat the names of the letters, she said, ‘You know, I used to live in a village, and I know a lot of boys who still haven’t learned ko kho.’

‘As big as me?’

‘Bigger.’

He was constantly moving, scratching his ear, ramming his finger into one nostril, then another, smashing his palm into a line of red ants crossing the garden. ‘I want to go to school,’ he said.

‘Try again,’ she said, exasperated. ‘Ko.’

He ignored her, pressing his thumb down, assassinating one ant at a time.

She tried another tack. ‘You know that crow you saw yesterday?’

‘Hmm.’ Thumb, smash, thumb, smash. ‘The one without shoes?’ He found one filing across his arm, and crushed it between his fingers.

‘The one without shoes. Don’t you want to know how to spell “crow”? You could write him a letter, ask him about his shoes.’

‘Crows don’t read letters.’

She fell back on the grass, defeated. ‘Okay, you’re right.’

‘I want to go to school,’ he repeated.

His bucket was full. She let him carry it up the stairs on his own this time, pretending not to count the very long minutes it took him to negotiate the stairs, or the large splashes that fell overboard on the way, interrupting the dust of the driveway below.

They played Ludo almost every afternoon. ‘I can tell you’re cheating,’ Maya said one day, holding up the red Ludo piece. ‘Ammoo, did you see what he did there?’

‘Yes,’ Rehana said. ‘Beta, you moved an extra square.’

‘See, your dadu agrees.’

‘Fine,’ he said, folding his arms over his chest, ‘put it back, then.’

‘How about the alphabet?’

He shook his head. ‘I have to go.’ He lifted up the board, letting the Ludo pieces scatter to the floor.

‘Ma,’ Maya said after he had gone, gathering up the round discs, ‘there’s something I’ve been meaning to ask you.’

‘Of course, beta.’

‘I’ve been thinking about Zaid. You know, that day we walked to the vegetable man together and he was acting so strangely. And the stealing. There’s only one thing I can think of, and I think, if we can do it, it will really work. I want to enrol him in school.’

Ammoo nodded, as if she expected this. ‘It’s true, he talks about school.’

‘I made an appointment with the headmistress at the school down the road. She said she would give him an exam, and if he passed, he could start next January.’

Ammoo folded up the Ludo board and passed it to Maya. ‘I’ve had this conversation with your brother many times, Maya.’

‘But he’s never here; he won’t know the difference.’

‘You don’t understand. You think Zaid does what he wants, but he is watched like a hawk. Every minute, from upstairs.’

‘If Sohail finds out, I’ll say it was all my idea.’

‘He’ll take it out on the boy.’

Maya waved her away. ‘I’m telling you, I won’t take no from him, I won’t.’ She was determined to find a way to do it.

At the end of March, just as the cool evenings were replaced by dust-coated heat, she caught him wrist-deep in her handbag. An expression of surprise came over him, but he just stood there and stared at his own hand, as though it might tell him what to say.

She ran over to him and snatched the bag away. Now he was on his knees, his hair was brushing her feet as he uttered the words, sniffling as he did so. ‘I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to.’

She crouched down and raised him by the armpits, until they were eye to eye.

‘I am not a thief,’ he said, shaking his head.

She believed him. ‘Then don’t steal from me as though you were.’ A fresh wave of tears overcame him as she set him down on the sofa. ‘Do you need money?’ she asked.

‘No,’ he said. Then, ‘Yes.’

She tried to give him some money, but he couldn’t take it from her, his body trembling. ‘Please don’t tell Abboo,’ he said, ‘please please please.’

She thought of what his father might say. About lying, and cheating at games, and stealing money from his aunt. She wanted to tell him these things, lessons that one taught a small child about the difference between right and wrong. But where would he be, this kid, without pretending he could speak French? God sees everything, his father would tell him, but that wouldn’t bring back his mother.

After that day, whenever she noticed a few notes missing from her bag, she assumed Zaid had taken the money. She didn’t care; in fact, she took a sort of pride in it. She imagined him with a piece of fruit or a boiled egg in his hands, then filling his stomach, having an ounce of pleasure because of her, because she had looked the other way.

The change in Sohail began as soon as he returned from the war. Maya and Ammoo remarked on how thin he’d become, trying to scale the distance between them by talking about his appearance. It didn’t take them long to see that he had fallen into himself — become a man of few and exact words, fastidious. Bathing twice, sometimes three times a day. Ironing his shirts, one in particular, a red-and-blue check, which he wore in the morning, removed in time for lunch and wore again at dusk. Those first weeks Maya waited every evening for him to tell her about the war, hoping he would begin his story as soon as Ammoo had said goodnight and taken the lamp away, telling them both not to stay up too late.

‘So. .’ she began one night, turning to him.

He reached into his shirt pocket. ‘Do you mind?’ he said, waving a packet of cigarettes.

‘No, of course not. Since when do you ask my permission?’

‘I don’t know. Won’t you tell me I’m picking up bad habits?’

‘Revolutionaries are exempt from all social conventions. Haven’t you heard?’

‘I’ve dodged so many bullets that now I’m immune?’

‘Exactly. No one can touch you.’

‘Good,’ he said, inhaling sharply. ‘I’ve had enough of following orders.’

Once again, she hoped he might unravel himself now, tell her the whole thing from start to finish, war to peace, so that, by the end of it, it would be as if she’d been there, the distance between them traversed, forgotten. It wasn’t as if her own return had been uncomplicated. There were things she wanted to tell him too, and the telling would mean that it was over, that there was somewhere to lodge those nine months, somewhere comfortable and remote.

Instead, he smoked so intently she could hear the tip of his cigarette as it burned towards him.

‘I’m tired,’ he said, though he made no move to get up.

‘Was it a long journey?’ she asked, realising she didn’t even know how far he’d travelled to get home.

‘Yes.’

‘You walked?’

‘Mostly.’

He crushed the cigarette under his heel, then picked up the butt and tossed it away. They watched it disappear into the black of the garden.

‘I’m tired,’ he said again, and she understood, in that moment, that he had no intention of telling her anything, that he was going to keep it all to himself and parse it out over the years, and in the meantime it would lie between them, silent and angry.

And then Piya arrived, and everything changed.

By the time Maya found her in front of the gate she had been standing there all morning, afraid to ring the bell. Maya was about to leave for her afternoon shift at the Rehabilitation Centre; she was dressed smartly in a churidaar and kurta. She had even allowed herself a tiny smear of lipstick.

‘Are you looking for someone?’ she asked, taking in the girl’s worn sandals, the limp, old sari she had wound tightly around her head. The woman said nothing, just handed Maya a note. In Sohail’s handwriting was their address, and the words ‘Inshallah, we shall meet again.’