Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

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.