Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

‘No.’

‘Then where did he get them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Look, we went to New Market, and I wanted to buy him sandals, but the shopkeeper thought he was a servant.’ Sohail said nothing, just continued to stare at her. ‘Did you hear me? A servant.’

‘Why do you care about such things?’

He seemed genuinely perplexed. Why had she cared? ‘Because he was humiliated, that’s why. Your son was humiliated. It’s the same thing that happens when he walks the streets in torn clothes, or stares at the children coming out of the playground when the school bell rings.’

‘If you didn’t buy the sandals, then who did?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he bought them with his pocket money.’

‘You know very well we don’t give him pocket money.’

No toys. No pocket money. No sandals. A rattle in his chest. Dirty scabs on his arms.

‘I have to do something,’ he said, rising heavily from the sofa.

Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe Sohail would realise what he was doing to his son. ‘Yes, do something. Please.’

Sohail hesitated. Then he drew a sharp, deep breath and said, ‘I’m sending him to madrasa.’

‘ What? ’

‘In Chandpur.’

She felt her voice narrowing, trembling. ‘Where the hell is Chandpur?’

‘On the other side of the Jamuna. I thought you knew every corner of this country.’ He couldn’t resist it, the gibe.

‘But that’s days away.’

‘I hear the Huzoor is a good man.’

‘You hear? You don’t know him?’

‘He comes highly recommended. I need to spend more time at the mosque; I can’t watch over Zaid. He — he needs guidance. Even you can see that.’

‘Let him stay with us, Ammoo and me. He’s lost his mother.’

‘I am grateful for the efforts you’ve made, Maya, but I think we both know the situation is getting out of hand. Can you promise me he won’t steal any more? And he makes up stories all the time; the boy lives in his own dream-world. It’s not right.’

She couldn’t promise him the boy wouldn’t steal. She couldn’t promise him anything — she didn’t even know where Zaid was half the time, or why he returned with bruises on his arms or why he smelled of vomit.

‘Ammoo needs you,’ Sohail continued; ‘your duty lies with her.’

‘Zaid needs us too. Please, Bhaiya.’ The air closed around her throat. ‘I’m sorry about the chappals, I should have asked you first. But madrasa is too much, Bhaiya, even for you.’

His voice hardened, as if he’d just piped a line of metal through it. ‘He’s my son. The decision is made. He leaves after Zohr on Wednesday.’

There was nothing left to say; his voice left no space for argument. ‘And Ammoo?’

‘Give Ammoo my salaam.’

He would even shun his own mother. ‘You don’t want to see her?’

‘Tell her we are praying for her recovery, inshallah.’

And then he was gone.

Of course, the boy would never agree to it. He would refuse, and she would have another argument with Sohail. This time, she would be prepared; Ammoo would help. But the next day Maya found Zaid dancing on the rooftop, plucking leaves from the lemon tree that brushed the first-floor windows, sprinkling them over his head. He bounded down the stairs, yah yah yah, wearing a brand new lungi, the starch of it making him look wider than he really was, a half-sleeved kurta and a cap on his head. A small trunk was in his arms.

‘I’ve come to show you my new things.’ He laid the trunk on the ground and gently, reverently, hinged it open. Fingernails clipped. Excited hands revealing the treasures within. A comb. A stick of neem for his teeth. A crisp-paged Qur’an. Two new lungis. And the chappals, wrapped in newspaper. His father had gone back to the shop and paid for them. ‘It has a lock,’ he said, showing her the key attached to a string around his neck.

There was nothing more for her to do. She wanted to give him something for his trunk. What could she give him? Photographs were banned. No books other than the Qur’an. Toys out of the question.

In the end she packed up a few balls of sweet puffed rice. ‘Here,’ she said, ‘some snacks for your trip.’

He placed them delicately in the trunk, careful not to disturb the other objects.

‘You’ll be all right?’

He smiled, still caught up in the joy of it. School. Other children. The women upstairs no longer worrying he was getting too old to be around them. His father’s heavy hand on the back of his head.

‘How will you get there?’

‘Abboo. He says we’ll take a train, and the ferry. And a bus, and a rickshaw.’

She closed her eyes and imagined his journey. Holding his father’s hand — had he ever known it before, the grip of his father’s hand? Heaven. And the ferry, the syrupy tea, the river wind wrapped tightly around him, the sky open and vast and giving a boy a small piece of the world. And here her imagination reached its limits.

The building’s sagging mud walls and patchy green moss. The courtyard strewn with chicken bones, a dirty drain clogged with spit. He swallows the lump of disappointment, his heart lifting, for a moment, at the chorus of sound drifting into the courtyard. His father quickly releases his hand and suddenly the Huzoor appears, unsmiling, taking the key from around his neck, examining his trunk, tossing aside the sweet moori. He nods to his father, yes, he will be instructed in the way of deen, he will not be tempted by the modern life, and all the while he is watching the pale green lizards as they scurry and fuck and lose their tails, and the cane that lies upon the Huzoor’s low table, and his knees are starting to ache as his father’s speech continues, so he is relieved when he is asked to stand up, and when he is given a blanket and a plate he dreams of what he will be fed. And as he crosses the courtyard, he wonders if he will meet the other students now, and then a door opens and there is another key, and his father’s voice says As-Salaam Alaikum, the Huzoor’s face retreats and the door swings shut.

He is alone with the blanket and the plate, the grey light from a slit between the thatch and the wall, the scratch of rats, and as the lock is turned he hurls himself at the door and opens his voice to the footsteps fading with every moment, until there is nothing but his own voice, begging to be released, and his fist on the wall, and each cry echoing into the next: Abboo, Abboo, Abboo. At this moment he is more afraid of what is in the room, the aloneness and the rats and the line of light against the wall, than of what is beyond. He is wrong.

Whatever else had led Sohail to delivering sermons on his rooftop — Piya, the war, the disappointing ordinariness of freedom — Maya had always believed it was Silvi, his oldest and first love, who had finally brought about the end of his old self.

Silvi had continued to live across the road. After her husband’s death, she had started covering her head, and now, on the rare occasions when she left the house, she was seen in a black chador that masked everything but her eyes. Her mother, Mrs Chowdhury, once a great friend of Rehana, was rumoured to have become an obsessive hand-washer, spending hours in the bathroom scrubbing at her fingers until they peeled and bled. More and more rooms of the grand two-storey house were closed off, until Mrs Chowdhury lived in one bedroom, and Silvi in another.

The other neighbours had written them off, but Maya was convinced Silvi was just biding her time. She knew that whatever direction her brother might be taking, it would be Silvi who pressed him further along the journey; after all, Silvi had come to her own conclusions about the Almighty. Maya knew Silvi was watching from across the road. And she knew, though he never told her, that Sohail secretly longed for Piya, and that he had decided that this longing must be erased, must be conquered, so that he could fulfil his duty — the reason why, he believed, he had survived the war.