Tahmima Anam - The Good Muslim

‘Surgery,’ she said.

He clapped his hands together. ‘Vah. Perfect, brilliant. Dr Sheherezade Haque Maya, sewer of wounds, extractor of tumours.’

‘How long does it take?’ Ammoo asked.

‘Stitcher of arteries.’

‘Six years.’

‘Maybe you’ll be married then.’

Maya bristled. ‘So? I can’t be a doctor if I’m married?’

‘I was just saying, a lot can change.’

‘Where will you be, Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘in six years?’

She turned her face upwards, to where the moon would be if there were a moon. Blanketed in darkness, they couldn’t see her expression when she said, ‘Only God knows. All this time I was just wanting your safe return, that’s all.’

‘Bhaiya?’ Maya asked Sohail.

‘Six years? No way. I don’t know.’

‘Married?’

‘Can’t say. It seems like a rather optimistic thing to do.’

‘You’ve always been an optimist.’

He sighed, sank back into his chair. ‘I’m not sure any more.’ They knew what he was thinking. Ever since they could remember, Sohail had been in love with the girl who lived in the house across the road. Her name was Silvi. When the war broke out, her mother had married her off to an army officer. The officer had been killed, and now Silvi was a widow; she was still next door, perhaps waiting for the day Sohail would return and knock on her door.

Nobody said anything for a long time.

‘She’s probably still in mourning,’ Ammoo said.

And they left it at that.

That night on the porch, with her brother back from war, Maya believed their waiting days were over. She watched her mother spread her prayer mat, face west and thank God for his return, imagining the future rolling out in front of them, as flat and endless and predictable as the Delta. How wrong she had been.

Maya couldn’t sleep. She waited until the first breath of morning, pulled on her trainers, wrapped a shawl around her head and headed into the fog. In Rajshahi she had devised an early-morning route: around the pond, cutting across her neighbour’s sesame field, circumventing the mosque, past the road that led into town, and back again at her door before the end of the dawn prayer. Now she decided to make for Dhanmondi Lake via the back roads. Shrouded in mist, asleep, the city resembled the one she remembered, the whitewashed houses, laundry dancing on balconies, the wide, hushed streets.

She circled Dhanmondi Lake, noting that the trees had aged and the path around the lake had narrowed. A clutch of boats were tied together, with a sign that said TEN TAKA ONE HOUR. She stopped, leaned against a tree, her breath whistling in her throat. She’d been running hard, harder than she had realised. She squatted by the tree for a few moments. The dark lake was the colour of limes. She pushed off again, aware now of the sounds that began the day, people leaning out of their windows and clearing their throats into the grass, the tinkle of rickshaws, shops winding open their shutters. She ran across Mirpur Road, now studded with a trickle of cars. Then she turned a corner, and found herself in front of the graveyard where her father was buried.

She looked around. The caretaker was absent, the gate unlocked. She slipped inside. The graveyard looked smaller, with buildings crowded around on all sides. What would it be like, she wondered, to have your window opening on to those small rectangles of death, watching flowers placed and prayers said and people crying, telling your children every night there were no such things as ghosts. Maybe they didn’t care. The city was running out of space, she had read in the newspaper that arrived in Rajshahi a day late; it was growing fast and soon they would have to build further and further away. Perhaps this is why the Dictator had decreed that no more than five people could assemble together at once. Because the city was too crowded, it was important to spread out.

Visiting the graveyard was a family ritual. Her mother had kept her father’s plot tidy all these years, a hedge around its perimeter, the stone polished. Maya didn’t know what to do; she had never come on her own before. She remembered the speeches her mother had made in the presence of this grave, the questions she had asked, the apologies, the regrets. She squatted next to the gravestone and placed her palm on its surface. Hello, absent father .

When she returned to the bungalow, Maya found a group of women at the foot of the stairs. At first glance, they appeared to be the women from the night before, but when she approached she noticed their faces were uncovered, and they were speaking rapidly to one another in a foreign language. Maya asked in English if she could assist them. Without introducing themselves, they embraced her one by one and kissed her on both cheeks. In broken English, they explained that they were French missionaries. The Forashi Jamaat. Maya examined them closely. They wore soft leather shoes under their robes, light traces of varnish on their fingernails, and they had about them the air of tourists — hesitant, their fingers twisted around the handles of their suitcases and rucksacks. One of them was waving a tiny paper flag wrapped around a toothpick.

After a brief discussion, the women began to climb the narrow staircase one by one, ducking into the room at the top. Maya followed them up. Inside was a rectangular room that was crammed tight with people, the air spiced and heavy. A large woman at the front was speaking, her face exposed but circled in a black headscarf. She nodded at the new arrivals and continued her speech. ‘Our Sister Rehnuma’, she said, referring to Silvi by her Islamic name, ‘has recently passed away. May her soul rest in peace.’

‘Ameen,’ the women agreed.

‘But her work must continue. The Wednesday taleem will go on. And the jamaat missions from our sisters and brothers in foreign lands will also continue. Remember, this life is but a drop in the ocean of time; the hereafter is eternal, every moment is an age, infinite.’

Nods and murmurs of assent travelled through the room.

‘We welcome our sisters from France.’ Now the others turned to the French women and greeted them enthusiastically, touching their faces and fingering the material of their burkhas. The French women mingled, opening their bags and distributing gifts. A box of chocolates was passed around. The woman giving the speech began to circulate, embracing the visitors, speaking to them in a mixture of Bengali, Arabic and sign language. Then she sat down again and began to recite a passage in Arabic, gesturing with plump, graceful hands.

I should slip out before anyone notices, Maya thought. She left the scene reluctantly, her curiosity unquenched. On her way down the stairs she crashed into a boy carrying a bucket. Water splashed her sandals and doused the bottom of her salwaar. ‘Watch out, kid,’ she said, brushing past him.

‘Hello!’ he called out. ‘Howareyoumadam?’

‘Hello,’ she said, turning around.

The boy looked her up and down and laughed out loud, revealing a mouth of misshapen teeth. He had unusually light eyes, almost grey, and a fine, delicate nose. But everything else about him suggested poverty: his too-short pyjamas, and the way he treated his lips, rubbing them roughly with the back of his hand.

‘Why are you laughing?’ Maya asked.

He pointed to her clothes, her trainers. ‘You look funny.’

She was about to wave goodbye when it occurred to her that he might know where Sohail was. What had they called him? Huzoor.

‘Hey, you know where the Huzoor is?’

He shrugged. Then he opened his mouth and laughed again. ‘But you can’t see him. Pordah, don’t you know?’