Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

He stopped. ‘He’s lonely, I know.’

Because you left him alone, only days after his mother died. ‘He’s a sweet child.’ She had said the wrong thing, revealed how little she knew the boy.

Sohail shook his head. ‘His education is continuing in the hands of Sister Khadija.’

Maya swallowed the lump of anger rising in her throat. ‘Do you remember what it was like, when Abboo died?’

He turned, smiled, his lips criss-crossed by the beard. ‘Of course I remember.’

‘How hard it was.’

‘Yes.’

She guessed that he was not unaware of suffering, but had decided he would no longer be in thrall to it. That he would embrace it. The death of his father, his wife. There was a grand design, and it left no room for self-pity. But she ploughed on. ‘He’s only six. His mother has just passed, he needs us, me and Ammoo. We’re his family.’

He said nothing, turning his face away and peering into the water. Perhaps he was about to tell her about all the ways he had reconstructed the word ‘family’, and that she was nothing more than a girl he once knew.

She looked towards the camp, where Zaid was no doubt waiting, swinging his arms and pacing through the alleys. She was about to renew her appeal, repeat the arguments, but Sohail reached out and clutched her arm, pulling her towards him. He peered straight into her, awakening all the parts of her that he had once known.

This was it. This was her moment. She had thought of it so often, it was a dream, a dream worn out from constant dreaming. He would see himself reflected through her eyes — see the absurdity of what he had become. He would see the ugliness of turning his family away, the cruelty of his own fathering. Cracks would appear in his belief, his faith would be shaken — not in the Almighty, she would not wish to take that away from him (or perhaps she did, but she was not willing to admit to it), but in whatever force had taken him from her and delivered up a stranger.

He would remember himself, awaken and resume the life she had imagined for him. And he would forgive her for wishing him different.

A man is not born once, she would say, a man can come into the world again.

The years disappeared.

She was ready to forget everything.

Brother, I will be yours again. I don’t care about the people upstairs, and it doesn’t matter if you’ve forgotten about our war, or our youth, no matter if this life is no longer your concern, that you have given up Ghalib and dear, dear Shakespeare, and no matter that I have ached in my bones because you appeared to forget me. If you want to put it aside, I say, yes, I accept, I forgive you, I ask you the same, let us return to it.

‘School is out of the question,’ he said.

Out of the question. Out . The burning sensation started in her gut and rose to her throat. She felt herself struggling to breathe. How foolish she had been to imagine she could come here and get her brother back; the dream was just that, a mirage. Her limbs were restless, angry. Yet she fought the urge to run from him. She had done enough running. Think of the boy, she said to herself. Forget your disappointment and think of the boy.

She swallowed her anger, ready to negotiate. ‘All right, then. Can I teach him a few things — sums, the alphabet? When he’s not busy upstairs, of course.’ For the moment, she would settle for this. One agreement at a time.

‘All right,’ Sohail said finally. ‘I will consider it.’ He bent to embrace her again, and she knew the meeting was over. She darted away, tucking a few strands of hair behind her ear, clinging to her small scrap of victory. She would be Zaid’s tutor, and when Sohail saw how quickly he learned, she would persuade him to send the boy to school. She would mourn her little dream later, at night when the sight of him came back to her, his serious, closed face. But for now she told herself to be satisfied, and so she slipped into the crowd, eager to share the good news with her little charge.

Zaid came down for a few hours every day, at lunchtime. He ate undisturbed while Maya taught him the alphabet. Then, as a treat, she showed him a few card games. He cheated, hiding cards under the table or in the sleeve of his kurta. Sometimes her purse was lighter than it should have been, but she didn’t tell Ammoo. She didn’t mind. It was only a few coins, only Gin Rummy and 21. Sohail departed again, on a mission to Nepal, and she didn’t see him after that day by the river. She tried to call Rajshahi again but the line was constantly engaged. She wrote another letter to Nazia, pleading for a reply. She spent another day in the garden shed, looking for newspaper cuttings from the war, and she stumbled across a typed page dated September 1971. It was one of her old articles from the war — no one had agreed to publish it, she remembered, and she smiled now as she read the title: ‘The World Looks on as Bangladesh Bleeds: A Cry for Help’ by Miss Sheherezade Maya Haque.

It took her awhile to find the shabby building in Old Dhaka. It was at the back of an alley that led down to the river, flanked by a leather factory. The stench of the tannery was overpowering. She held her nose and knocked. Aditi came to the door.

‘Ah, the doctor!’ she said. She was dressed as she had been at Saima’s party, in a pair of jeans and a short kurta, but she looked different. Her fingertips were stained with ink, and she wore a green bandana around her hair. ‘I’m so glad you decided to come. I won’t hug you, I’m filthy.’ She waved Maya inside.

‘It smells like death,’ Maya said.

Aditi laughed. ‘It’s horrible, isn’t it? We’re all used to it, don’t even notice any more.’

Inside was a windowless room, piled high to the ceiling with stacks of newsprint. There was a large table on one side, scattered with pens, books, empty cups of tea. A man sat with his back to them, huddled over a typewriter, his knees bouncing up and down.

‘Aditi, is that you? Bring me some tea, please, my nimble fingers are about to produce a miracle of a sentence.’

Aditi cleared her throat. ‘We have a guest, Shafaat, please behave.’

The man swung around. ‘I am so sorry, how rude. Hello, I’m Shafaat. Shafaat Rahman.’

‘Shafaat is the editor.’

‘Editor, reporter, manager, tea-boy.’

‘Well, not the tea-boy, it seems,’ Maya said.

‘Yes, you’ve spotted my weakness. What can I say, I like to give orders. But don’t worry, no one ever listens to me.’ He lit a cigarette and dangled it on the edge of his mouth. ‘The next issue comes out in a week. Here’s a mock-up.’ He handed her a leaflet printed on cheap paper. She began to flip through the articles. There was one about the Dictator’s wealth, another exposing corruption in the army. It ended with a tirade on the changes that were being made to the constitution.

‘You can print this?’

The man smiled through dark, tobacco-stained lips. ‘No, but we do.’

‘Won’t you get arrested?’

‘Arre, who’s afraid of a little time with uncle?’

As she turned the pages, the ink bled on to her fingers. She looked around, took in the typewriters, the empty glasses of tea, the floor littered with bits of paper, and for the first time since returning to the city she felt a ripple of belonging.

‘Aditi tells me you’ve been away.’

‘I lived in Rajshahi for a few years.’

‘Really? Do you have people there?’

‘No, my people are here.’ She could count all her people on the fingers of one hand.

‘So you went all the way to the middle of the country, for what?’

She looked at Aditi. ‘I was a “crusading” doctor.’

‘Aditi tells me you want to write.’