Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

‘For how long?’

‘A few months, maybe a year.’

So he had come to say goodbye. ‘And Ammoo?’

‘You’ll need to look after her.’

‘What about the women upstairs?’

‘Khadija is coming with me.’

She nodded, understanding. God was endless in his gifts.

She wanted to tell him that she knew about the man he had killed, she knew it was what had led him to this place, what he carried with him everywhere, a necklace of guilt around his neck, and that finally there was some sense to it all. But it was too late for that now, too late. There could be no sense between them. He would remain a hallucination to her, the ghost of a man she used to love. And she would remain a stranger to him. That he was willing to accept this without also punishing her was enough. ‘I’m so sorry, Bhaiya. I’m so very sorry.’ She bowed her head, waiting for the weight of his hand, for his blessing.

‘It is not for me to forgive you,’ he said. ‘It is not for me.’

She will return to that day. She will summon it at every crest and hinge of her life. What if. If only. Sohail had killed a man. He had taken his life and slaughtered him like an animal. Every day he hears the sound of that moment, feels the weight of the knife in his hand, the tear of flesh, the wetness of blood on his fingers. And she will do the same. She will see herself taking the ferry, banging her hands on the door of the madrasa, lifting the boy out of his cell and closing her arms around him and closing her eyes and she will tell herself not to sleep but sleep will come, and every time she opens her eyes it will be too late. What if. If only.

*

I am dreaming, dreaming. We are at the bungalow, Sohail and I. It is before the Book, before the war. Ammoo is peeling mangoes and we are waiting for the ice-cream man to ring his bicycle and shout igloo igloo igloo. We have just returned from the university and it is galloping through his veins now, the idea that there can be something greater than his own life. While I am dreaming Zaid wakes in the night, he doesn’t remember where he is, he only knows that he is about to be sent back to his father, who will return him to the madrasa, his boomerang life. The sand on the river bank is smooth; his toes curl around the silt. Alif, ba, ta, sa , he says to himself. I know the Alphabet . I am dreaming of ice cream and mangoes. I am dreaming of the three of us, the simple beauty of it because Ammoo was told she could never raise me and Sohail on her own, and here we are, with our appetites and politics and the roar of possibility glowing red in our cheeks, and where is he, my Zaid, he is sitting on the side of the Jamuna and dipping his toes into its heavy water. Warm. He is dreaming too, his hopes edge towards another life, on the other side of the river, laughter and bicycles and television all day. School. Love. Choc bars. The igloo man. The igloo man arrives on his refrigerator bicycle, and our tongues curl around this union, the mango warm from the tree, the afternoon trapped inside it, mingled with the taste of winter, sugary and cold. My brother is handsome, so handsome the girls slip notes to him in class, ink bleeding from the eager damp of their palms. He is serious and proud and he eats twice as many mangoes as Ammoo and me, but we don’t care, he has always been something of royalty in this house. The man about it. Zaid worries his loose tooth, reaches into his mouth, pulls. It is not ready; he drags it from its root; blood in his mouth. He spits.

She looks like his mother, but she is not his mother. She is taking him home. She promises he will not be sent back, that she will talk to his father. But what will she tell him? I already told him. At first he leans into the water, makes a dipper of his hands, rinses his mouth. The water is as bitter as the blood. The other side, the other side. Where teeth do not rot and there is no one to hold down his wrists. Ice cream and mangoes. Molasses. Tapping the date tree, drinking its sap. It isn’t far, that shore, he thinks. Half a mile, maybe. His father will always win. He will be sent back. He won’t go back. He won’t go. It isn’t far, that shore. I can hold my breath that long. He tips his body, minus one tooth, and the water folds over him. I can hold my breath that long.

The day is perfect. Still a hint of winter in the trees, the light pale and glistening. The scaffolding is wrapped in red-and-green cloth, and in the middle of the stage is a square fenced-in area with a raised platform. The witness box.

Soon Suhrawardy Field will be thick with faces. One by one, they will line up on stage. One by one, they will begin to tell the story. Ali Ahmed, Shahjahan Sultan, Jahanara Imam. They will talk about the war, about the children and comrades they lost. About the things they have seen and the things they have done. They will utter the words they have uttered only to themselves all these years.

Maya’s daughter, Zubaida, five years old, will hold her hand as the speeches continue into the afternoon. Their palms will grow slippery, but they will cling to one another, their fingers interlaced. ‘Ammoo,’ she will whisper, ‘are they going to hang Ghulam Azam now?’

‘Not yet, beta. First he has to be tried.’

When Jahanara Imam gets up to tell her story, Maya will look for Ammoo in the crowd. She won’t see her — there will be too many people — but she knows her mother will be there. She has promised. The crowd will listen, softening the silence with nods and clapping, wanting to be told again and again how Jahanara sent her teenage son to the battlefield. Of her duty as a mother.

And then it is time.

A woman stands up. She walks to the stage, looking straight ahead, eyeing the horizon. Everything is quiet, only the trees rustling. A gift from the crowd, as if they were holding their breaths for her.

The years have made her regal. She is heavier, but still beautiful. A young man accompanies her to the stage, cupping her elbow.

With a nod to her, Maya begins. ‘Please state your name.’

‘Piya Islam.’

‘Tell us why you are here, Mrs Islam.’

She smiles. ‘It’s Miss.’

The crowd laughs, approving.

‘Miss Islam, tell us why you are here today.’

‘I was captured by the Pakistan Army on 26 July 1971. They came to raid my village; someone had told them we were hiding the guerrillas. My father was killed.’ She stops, clears her throat. The young man passes her a glass of water. She drinks.

‘I was put on a truck. Our neighbour’s daughter was with me; she was only fourteen. She cried and vomited in the truck.

‘We were chained to the wall. Someone had been there before us — we saw her name scratched into the wall. She had hanged herself, so they shaved our hair and took our saris.’

‘Can you tell us how many there were?’

‘Twenty, thirty. They took turns. After the other girl died, it was just me.’

‘And how long were you in captivity, Miss Islam?’

‘Until the war ended.’

‘Thank you, Miss Islam. Is there anything more you would like to tell us?’

‘Yes.’ She turned to the young man. ‘This is my son. His name is Sohail. I named him after the man who rescued me from that place. The man who saved my life.’

Piya steps down from the witness box. Maya reaches for her, and in front of all these people, the people who have come to bear witness and the ones who have come to tell their stories, they embrace. All that is good in her brother, and all that is good in her, is in this field, in this woman who has named her son after him, in the girl who is named after his son. Zaid. Zubaida. A name locked in a name. Every time her daughter laughs, with the delight, the miracle-joy of it, there is a fingerprint of pain, the memory of a little linguist, a card-shark and a thief. She misses him. Every day she misses him. Zaid and Sohail. She feels it here, under her ribs and right next to her beating heart. And here, at her temples, and every time she closes her eyes and sees the picture of who Sohail has become, knowing that they will never go to the cinema or sit up at the table with Ammoo or share a joke or a book (there can be only One, there can be only One), her heart will break. But she recognises the wound in his history, the irreparable wound, because she has one too. His wound is her wound. Knowing this, she finds she can no longer wish him different.