Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

Now, with the pastry about to collapse in her mouth, and sunlight beaming sideways, pink and orange, against her mother’s cheek, she suddenly remembered all the times she had been loved. It was like that with her mother — memory upon memory stacked together like the feathers in a wild bird, there to keep her warm, or when she needed to, fly. She was the wings of her, the very wings.

‘The road is so busy,’ Maya said, sipping the tea they had been brought by the phuchka-man.

Her mother nodded. ‘Everything is speeding up. Only thirteen years since independence and you can’t recognise anything.’

Thirteen. Her broken wishbone of a country was thirteen years old. Didn’t sound like very long, but in that time the nation had rolled and unrolled tanks from its streets. It had had leaders elected and ordained. It had murdered two presidents. In its infancy, it had started cannibalising itself, killing the tribals in the south, drowning villages for dams, razing the ancient trees of Modhupur Forest. A fast-acting country: quick to anger, quick to self-destruct.

The phuchkas were finished, the tea cooling in their cups. Maya didn’t want the day to end. ‘I know,’ she said, ‘let’s go to New Market. I want to buy you a sari.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’ve missed seven of your birthdays, and seven Eid days — fourteen, if you count both Eids.’ A sari, she realised as she said it, would never add up to that many missed days. But she liked the thought of returning to their favourite shops in New Market, haggling with the sari-vendors who would order cold drinks and model their wares on the hips of their young sons.

‘Okay,’ Rehana said, ‘let’s go.’

The rickshaw-puller turned on Mirpur Road, crossed its length, past Gawsia and Chandni Chawk. Just as he was about to make the turn into the market, a crowd emerged from Fuller Road, a wall of people marching towards them, holding up a large painted banner.

‘It’s the Chattro League,’ Maya said, recognising their logo from her university days. The marchers advanced slowly, filling the area in front of the New Market gate. Their megaphones blared. She saw herself multiplied. ‘What do they want?’

Their voices were drowned out by the chanting. Something about the vice-chancellor being sacked. And the Dictator’s corruption.

A canvas-covered truck arrived, and uniformed men spilled out of the open flap at the back. The marchers took a step back, still holding the banner in an uneven line. A man behind the megaphone said, ‘We are here in peace. We want to be heard.’

The uniformed men held up their shields and their lathis.

‘Chattro League demands—’

As they charged, the policemen looked like angry housewives. They smashed their rolling pins on the backs of the front line. The banner collapsed, falling to the ground and getting tangled in the legs of the protesters. The marchers scattered, but the police chased them down, beating hard on their backs, until they crumpled, one by one, and were dragged by their armpits into the waiting truck.

Maya saw a boy with his hands around his head, blood leaking from between his fingers. The rickshaw-wallah tried to turn around, but there were too many cars behind them, and the police vans were blocking the road ahead. ‘Forgive me but you’ll have to walk,’ he said, refusing to take his fare. ‘Hurry, if you don’t go now you’ll get stuck here for hours.’

They followed the footpath and headed west, away from New Market. Behind them, clouds of teargas billowed upwards. Maya grabbed her mother’s elbow. ‘Quickly, Ammoo.’ They broke into a jog, turned off Mirpur Road and began to cross the bridge. They turned a corner and the side streets were suddenly quiet, no sign of the police. Maya turned around and hugged Ammoo, out of breath. Tears clogged her throat.

‘You used to look like that,’ Rehana said, reading her thoughts.

She laughed, wiping her eyes. ‘Like what? Youthful and carefree?’

‘Like you were only alive to be on the streets.’

They returned to the bungalow. At six o’clock Maya switched on the news. The newsreader, her sari pinned tightly to her shoulder, began narrating the day’s events. The Dictator had announced he would build a strong Bangladesh. The finance minister announced they would not trade with India on unfavourable terms. There was no mention of the protests, the arrests or the beatings.

‘What a bullshit newsreader. All that lipstick and she can’t tell the truth. I don’t know why you keep this stupid television here.’ Maya slammed her palm against the dial.

‘Leave that on,’ Ammoo said. She was ironing a sari, leaning heavily on the crumpled border.

‘I can’t believe you’re falling for this propaganda.’

Rehana stood the iron upright and straightened her back. ‘Who do you think talked to me all day long? Before you came back? Nobody. Sometimes I used to ask Sufia to sing a village song while she was dusting, just so I knew there was someone else here. I bought the TV because otherwise it’s so quiet I can hear the rats trying to get into the house. So don’t you tell me to switch it off. I’ll have it if I want to.’ And she, in turn, slammed a palm on the dial, making the images jump on to the screen, then disappear. She fiddled with the antenna. ‘Damn,’ she said, while the picture flickered in and out. Finally she found the signal and, with the iron still plugged into its socket, leaned against the sofa and listened to the weather report.

‘I don’t want to go back,’ Maya said. And there it was. Easy as one sentence. Maya felt herself warming with relief. She wouldn’t stop sending letters to Rajshahi, and maybe, once the seasons turned and the memory of that day receded, she would go back for a visit. Check up on the postman’s daughter, hand out a few packets of antibiotics. But she would stop imagining it was possible to return; she would stay here, begin some kind of life with what was left. She would not forget Nazia; Nazia’s story, her daring to swim in the pond and the lashes with which she paid for such bravery, would be chronicled. It would be there in black and white; people would read it and they would know that their freedom was as thin as the skin around Nazia’s ankles. But she would stay here, with her mother, the Dictator at their doorstep, the little boy under her wing.

There were tears in Ammoo’s eyes. ‘It’s your house,’ she said. ‘Stay as long as you like.’ They embraced again, and then the news programme ended, and it was time for Dallas . Maya promised to watch if Ammoo would fill her in on the plot. ‘All right,’ she said, ‘but it’s going to take a while, it’s very complicated.’

As Ammoo put up her feet on the coffee table, Maya noticed a slight swelling around her midriff. ‘What’s this?’ she said, patting her mother’s stomach.

‘It’s nothing,’ Rehana said, batting Maya’s hand away.

‘Let me see.’

‘Leave it alone, beta. I’m just getting fat.’ And she bent towards the television again, turning up the volume.

That night, Maya lay awake and thought of Sohail. When she was six and Sohail eight, they were sent away to live with their aunt and uncle in Lahore. Their father had died not long before, and everyone thought it would be better if they went away for a while to give their mother a chance to recover, build a new life for herself. There was talk of another marriage, more children. They would only be in the way.

Ammoo did not agree. There was a judge, and a court case, which she lost.

They lived in Lahore for two years with their father’s brother, Faiz, and his wife, Parveen. An enormous house. She and Sohail had an ayah who slept on the verandah outside their room. If they needed something, they were told to ring the bell beside the light switch.