Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

‘It’s locked,’ she said.

‘Yes, of course. I forgot. I’m sorry I don’t have the key.’

She cupped her hands against a window, peered inside.

‘Piya,’ he said, ‘there’s something I have to tell you.’

‘Me too.’

‘I want to get married.’ He tried to see her, but the light was too weak. ‘I want us to get married — what do you think?’

‘If that is what you wish,’ she replied, sitting on the top step.

‘Is that what you want?’

‘What will everyone say?’

‘Who cares?’

‘They’ll say I did it to get your things, this house.’

‘It doesn’t matter. You love me, don’t you?’

She didn’t say anything, only sat perfectly still, caught in the yellow tinge of moonlight. ‘If you want, I will be your wife. But I am not a good woman.’

‘What happened to you — it’s not your fault.’

‘I’m very tired,’ she said.

He sat down beside her. Laced his fingers through hers. ‘It’s all right, I’m tired too. I don’t care about anything, what anyone says. Do you understand? I’m tired too, I’m so tired. I want to lie with my head in your lap — forgive me — I want to kiss you again. I want to forget everything that happened before. I want our children to live in the country, free children in a free country. But you decide. Don’t choose me because you’re here, because you can’t go home. Choose me if you love me — do you understand? That’s what I believe. You have to love me.’

Her grip tightened, and then, abruptly, she let go and sprang up, light on the grass, like a girl who had grown up without shoes. She disappeared across the lawn.

Buoyant, he imagined it was a skip of joy, that flight across the lawn, but it was the lightning speed of departure, a farewell without ceremony.

By the morning she was gone. Her small bundle of clothes, her plastic comb, the stick of neem she used to clean her teeth. Her extra sari, drying that morning on the washing line.

He set out to look for her. He didn’t mean to, but he found himself travelling all the way back to her village, taking a bus to Mymensingh, a rickshaw the rest of the way. We never saw her again, an old woman said, spitting betel from the side of her mouth. The village was no longer beautiful, the houses ragged and dusty in the rising heat. He returned to the city and walked aimlessly from street to street, asking strangers if they had seen a young brown-eyed girl, walking alone. All the walking-alone girls had brown eyes. What was her father’s name? A girl had drowned herself in Dhanmondi Lake. It could have been her. He arrived too late at the morgue; someone had already claimed the body. She was on a bus bound for the border. Or she had boarded one of the planes taking the Pakistan Army back to Islamabad. There were women on that plane? Our women? Yes, there were women. They had been promised marriage. She could have gone with them.

‘Bhaiya,’ Maya said softly, ‘it was your child?’

He sprang up, knocking over an open crate. ‘You can ask me this, after everything?’

‘It’s all right.’

‘I didn’t touch her, you understand? I wouldn’t touch her. Not after what happened to her.’ He was shaking now, his arms hanging limp at his sides. ‘You gave her the operation, without asking any of us, me or Ammoo?’

‘But I didn’t do it, Bhaiya. I didn’t do it — she changed her mind.’

He started to cry. She could see his eyes welling up and he turned his face away from her.

‘You thought I was enjoying the days after liberation. But they were blood-soaked, Bhaiya, for everyone.’

He shook his hands at her, as if they were wet. ‘But I killed, Maya. I killed.’

Of course she misunderstood. ‘It’s all right, Bhaiya, it was the right thing to do. It was a just war, a right war. For us, for our freedom.’

He shook his head. ‘I didn’t mean to. I was so angry.’

‘If they had let me fight, I would have shot them in the knees and let them die slowly.’

‘He was innocent.’

None of them were innocent. She told him that.

‘You want to talk about saving — Silvi saved me. You were too busy killing those children.’

So he had chosen. His wife, a future without books. The thought unleashed a fury in Maya, a tight, searing fury. ‘You put those books in crates, I’m going to take them out and lay them open for you. Every book you put away I will unpack and leave at your doorstep. I’ll read them aloud. Remember when Ammoo used to read the Qur’an to you? I’m going to do the same thing. I’m going to keep bringing the books back until you can’t ignore them any more.’

His hand was dipped inside a crate. Slowly, he straightened. ‘I’ll have to find something else to do with them,’ he said softly.

He’ll give them away, she thought. He’ll give them all away. Damn it. She slipped out of the room then, without a word, stalked through the garden, loosening her braid and running her fingers roughly through the tangle of her hair. Do something, she told herself. Do something. Your brother is turning, turning. Soon you won’t recognise him. He had been her oldest friend, all the things a brother should be: protective, bullying, pushing her to be better. He knew all her frailties, knew she tended towards the hysterical, the dogmatic. That she was angry most of the time. He pushed her against herself. She needed him. It was selfish, but she needed him. No, it was not selfish. They all needed him. He was the lighthouse. The country needed him. Sheikh Mujib had said so himself. Oh, God, Mujib was dead. Sohail could not be gone too, it would be too much. The world would collapse. What could she do? Silvi was in command now, Silvi, whose thin lips and foreign eyes had turned a wounded man into a prophet.

She thought of all the things he liked to do. Before the war, before Piya and Silvi. Cricket on the shortwave. Mangoes and ice cream. Dante and Ibsen. Jimi Hendrix and John Lennon. Her voice on the harmonium. Her voice. When was the last time he had heard her sing? She could sing to him. She could play the harmonium and open her voice. She had sometimes watched people’s eyes widen when she sounded her first note, and afterwards, even if they knew her, she would see that a new formality had opened up between them, because her voice would have altered her in their eyes. Such tenderness out of such a hard girl. Small woman, big voice.

Silvi could go to hell. She would sing. She pulled her harmonium out of its case. It had been a long time since she’d pushed open the bellows at the back of the instrument, since the war, probably.

She was at war now. War with Silvi. She had the books on her side, and the harmonium, and Tagore, and she would fight. Already she felt flush with victory, her hand in a fist, pacing the garden and punching the air. She couldn’t rely on her friends any more, not after Sohail had converted Kona on the spot. Weak souls! She would have to do it herself. Sohail was still in his bedroom, probably wondering what to do with his books. This would be the perfect time to strike. She dusted off the top of the harmonium. Laid out a jute pati in the garden. She would do it right there. Ammoo would come home to find her singing in the garden and she would agree that they had to use all the weapons in their arsenal to battle Silvi. They would fight fervour with fervour. The sun was beginning to go down for the night, the evening sounds taking over the daytime ones. Crickets, mosquitoes. She already had a few bites on her arm. She didn’t care. She lit a mosquito coil. All right, here we are. She started with one of Sohail’s favourites, ‘Ekla Chalo Re’. ‘Jodi tor daak shune keu na, tobe chalo re.’

She faltered with the harmonium a bit at first, her fingers getting tangled in the keys, but she soon caught up with herself, pumping the bellows with her left hand, pushing the keys down with her other. Tagore, just the man for the job.