Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

On the day Joy and Aref appeared without the truck, they had another boy with them, a Hindu boy named Partho whose family had fled the city.

‘Don’t let them in,’ Sohail said to Rehana, but they had already climbed over the gate. Aref was shifting from one foot to another and adjusting his round-rimmed glasses with the tip of his finger. There was a black bag between Partho and Joy.

She couldn’t imagine why Sohail would shun his friends.

Joy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘Sohail! Dost! Aye na! Come out!’

When Sohail didn’t reply, Rehana stepped through the veranda and asked them what they wanted. They looked rough, as though they hadn’t bathed or changed clothes. Joy’s hair curled like a comma above his head, and Aref’s hung limp between his ears. Partho was staring past Rehana and into the windows of the bungalow to see if Sohail would emerge.

‘As-Salaam Alaikum, Auntie,’ Aref said. ‘Sohail achhe?’

These were his friends. Surely he wouldn’t mind if she invited them in. ‘Do you want to come in?’

Joy and Aref looked at the black bag. ‘No,’ Joy replied, ‘we’ll stay here.’

Aref was fidgeting with a matchbox. He held a packet of cigarettes out to Partho, who shook his head. He lit one. ‘Is he there?’ he said.

Rehana considered lying but decided not to. ‘I think he’s upset.’ She was annoyed at not knowing the cause of this sudden change of heart. One minute he was glued to his friends, the next he didn’t want to see them.

‘We just want to talk. Can he come to the window?’

‘I don’t know, I’ll see.’ She went back through the house and found Sohail pacing the drawing room with the loose drawstring of his pyjamas flapping between his knees. ‘Tell them to go away,’ he said, tugging at the string.

‘They’ve come all the way—’

‘I don’t care.’

Rehana paused for a moment, exasperated. ‘OK, I give up. I’m going to Shona. You decide what to do with your friends.’

Rehana and Maya were at Shona, packing up the last of Mrs Sengupta’s things, when Sohail entered. He hung in the doorway of the dining room, watching Rehana wrap Mrs Sengupta’s plates in sheets of newspaper. The newspaper was mostly blank, giant banner advertisements for Tibet Soap and Brylcreem framing empty spaces.

Maya was helping Rehana put the wrapped plates into a crate, but as soon as she saw Sohail she abandoned the crate and put up her hands.

‘What’s happening?’ she asked.

‘Nothing. Aref and Joy came to see if we were all right. We’re waiting to see how things will evolve.’

‘Waiting for what?’

‘The foreign journalists at the InterContinental Hotel saw everything. Can you believe those bastards? They didn’t even try to cover their tracks. It’ll be all over the international news.’

‘Your friends. What did they want?’

‘We need support from the UN.’

‘Don’t change the subject,’ Maya needled. ‘You’re planning something.’

‘Nothing — what would we be planning?’

‘They had something — a package — Ammoo told me. Were they asking you to hide something?’ She pressed him. Rehana knew he hated lying.

He looked straight at Maya, as though daring her to ask again.

‘You’re going, aren’t you?’

Going? Where would he be going? Wait, Rehana wanted to say. I thought you were arguing about something small. Something insignificant. Not about going. If only they’d told me it was something to do with going, I would have stood at the door myself and refused to let them in.

Sohail pushed the hair from his eyes. Rehana fought the wave of panic crawling through her arms.

‘Just tell me, bhaiya, please, I just want to know,’ Maya said. She pointed her face to the box of plates, as though to say, You owe me .

‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said the next day, ‘there’s something I have to tell you.’ The full moon was hammocked over Dhaka; it shone through the windows of the bungalow, revealing the dark, speckled shadow on Sohail’s chin, on his fist tightening and loosening.

‘Don’t tell me.’

He looked very sorry. ‘I have to go.’

‘Go? Where? Where will you go?’

‘We heard there’s a resistance across the border. All the Bengali regiments have mutinied. Didn’t you hear Zia?’

‘This is a thing between soldiers. What does it have to do with you?’

‘They need volunteers. Aref and Joy and Partho are going too.’

‘I thought you were a pacifist.’ She clung to the word. Pacifist. Someone who does not rush off to join a war. Someone who stays behind and doesn’t break his mother’s heart.

‘I really struggled, Ammoo, but I realized I don’t have a choice.’

‘Of course you have a choice. You always have a choice.’ Rehana held her head in her hands and tried not to sound desperate. ‘What if something happens to you?’ She choked a little at the words. He had missed a button on his shirt. It was his favourite, a red-and-blue check, and as she leaned over to tuck the stray button through its loop he put his hand on her head, as though he were giving her his blessing. ‘I thought you hated war,’ Rehana said weakly.

‘This isn’t war. It’s genocide.’

‘Is it Silvi?’

‘No, of course not.’ He paused, seemed to hold his breath, then said, ‘I can’t sit back and do nothing, Ma. Everyone is fighting. Even people who weren’t sure, people who wanted to stay with Pakistan.’

‘How will you go?’

‘Aref’s cousin Raju has a car. He’ll drive us to the border.’

He didn’t say when. Maybe if she delayed him it wouldn’t happen at all. She wanted so much for it to depend on her. ‘I can’t decide now. Can I decide later? Can I decide tomorrow? We’ll go to the graveyard.’

‘It won’t be for a few days,’ he said. ‘Let’s go to sleep now.’

Rehana nodded. And then she had a sudden thought: what if he left in the middle of the night, like the other boys, without telling her? It might be better. No. No, it wouldn’t be better. ‘Don’t go without telling me.’

‘I won’t.’

‘Promise.’

‘I promise.’

‘Promise on my life.’

‘I promise on your life, Ammoo.’

The next day Rehana and Sohail took a rickshaw to the graveyard. Rehana was silent all the way, though in her head there was a shout. Don’t go, the shout said. Please, don’t go.

They passed a group of schoolboys on the street. Rehana wondered if their thoughts, like Sohail’s, were full of war. If they turned the idea over in their mouths like sugar-candy. If they were waiting for the right moment to tell their mothers and disappear.

The graveyard was pristine, a crisp open sky above it.

Here is your son, she said to Iqbal. Surely you would not have wanted this. Your son wants to fight for his country. He says he has no choice. I want to, but cannot be angry with him. So I leave it to you.

The quiet rumbled in her ears; the brief rustle of the drying graveyard grasses, the tinkle of a passing rickshaw, the burning tip of the caretaker’s biri as he lit it through the open glass of his kerosene lamp. The sounds roared; they screeched; they pierced. Please don’t go.

‘Don’t go,’ she finally said aloud. ‘There must be another way you can help.’

Sohail looked at her as though to say, Let’s not do this in front of Abboo. But Rehana was strengthened by Iqbal’s presence. Of the two of them, he would have been the one to protest. He would have forbidden it — yes, forbidden. I forbid you to go, he would have said. I forbid it! She should try to utter that word; it had such an unyielding quality.

But of course she could forbid nothing. She was seized with a sudden, gripping exhaustion. ‘I just keep hoping you’ll change your mind.’