Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

Her cheer left her as soon as she entered the market. Dotted among the stalls and the ferry-wallahs were men in army uniforms. They strolled through the market with rifles carelessly slung across their shoulders. She passed a sweetshop and saw a group of them sitting around a plastic table, laughing with their mouths so wide open she could see, even from a distance, the peaks of their teeth. One of them spat loudly into the gutter.

As she walked with her head down, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, Rehana was annoyed at her fear, especially in this place, which had seen her through a decade of struggle. Here was where the material for the children’s school uniforms had been bought, where she had calculated the week’s rations and planned her cooking. It was where Iqbal had bought her wedding sari — only twenty-two rupees, he’d confessed — where she had come to shop for Eid gifts, wedding presents, birthday clothes for the children. New Market was the very heart of the city for Rehana, its smells and winding alleys as familiar to her as her very own Dhanmondi. And now it was suddenly an alien place, the air heavy with menace. ‘Watch out for the butchers,’ Sohail had said; ‘they’re Urdu-speaking.’

‘Why? I’m Urdu-speaking. So what?’

‘Those people are army collaborators.’

Sohail was referring to the Urdu-speaking Biharis, who were rumoured to be siding with the army. The division of the city into sympathizers and collaborators sat uncomfortably with Rehana, but he told her there had to be some way of knowing who to suspect and who to trust. They could no longer trust their instincts. Or even their friends.

Rehana followed a narrow passageway into the butchers’ quarter. The stalls were scattered haphazardly, cuts of meat hanging from each one like wet jewels. Rehana always took pleasure in buying meat; she would take her time examining the white pearl of bone, the rubied blood, the deep garnet sinews.

She found herself in front of her regular butcher.

‘What’s good today?’ she asked. She looked down at the ground, so he wouldn’t know it was her.

‘Nice chop meat, memsaab. Also mutton is good today.’

Rehana thought of the Major, his sewn-up cheek. ‘I need bones. For soup.’

‘You like soup? OK.’

It was so hot. Rehana saw the flies that hovered, then sank against the hanging meat, their buzzing amplified by the low ceiling of the market. She saw the butcher extending his arms and offering a piece he thought might impress her. It was the entire side of a small cow, a row of bones raised like curved teeth, the flesh sliced neatly so that its purple striations reflected the light. The smell of blood, metallic, laced with rot, assaulted Rehana. She shuddered and turned her face. The butcher recognized her instantly.

Rehana recalled why she had always bought her meat from this man. He was impeccably dressed; there was no blood anywhere on his shirt or on his hands. He wore a spotless white kurta, and a cap, as though he was on his way to the mosque.

‘How are you, madam?’ he asked in Urdu, and saw her start.

‘Yes, well,’ she answered quietly, and then, without meaning to, she said, ‘We’re having a war.’

‘I know.’ And when she stayed silent it was as though she was accusing him of something and he had to say, ‘I have nowhere else, madam.’ But the words were hollow, and Rehana realized how strange the language suddenly sounded: aggressive, insinuating. She saw that it was now the language of her enemy; hers and Sohail’s and the Major’s. She tried to feel something else, some tenderness for her poets, some sympathy for this man, only a meat-cutter after all.

‘You have this,’ he said, proffering the meat. And Rehana could see that he was afraid of her, and she was pleased, and then ashamed to be pleased. She quickly pulled out a five-rupee note and turned, waving away the flies that had suddenly collected around her head.

The Major was awake when she returned. Rehana could tell he was uncomfortable; he didn’t turn his head when she entered, just blinked a few times and tried to move his mouth. His eyes were two black pearls. She turned on the ceiling fan and wiped the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. He needed water. She went outside to look for Maya, and found her frowning over a book and writing in its margins with a tiny, illegible scrawl.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Reading Che Guevara Speaks ,’ she said, exposing the spine.

‘I asked you to look after the Major.’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘No, he’s awake.’

‘Well, now you can take care of him.’ And she returned to her book.

‘You don’t like him?’

‘Why not?’ she mumbled, not looking up. ‘He’s fighting for us.’

Rehana looked more closely at her daughter and tried — how many times had she done this? — to see something that might have escaped her. There was none of the panic of the night before, nothing of the need.

It started to rain.

Sighing, Rehana took a glass of water to the Major, covering her head with a plastic sheet as she crossed the garden into the other house. As he drank, she noticed his lips were not as desperate as the rest of him. He thanked her with a relieved breath, and she looked at him as though he could not see her, with a frank stare.

Joy arrived in the evening. He rubbed his hand across his chest and asked for a word. ‘I need to speak to you, Auntie,’ he said. ‘Thing is, the Pakistan Army think the Major is dead. They saw the building collapsing around him; there’s no chance he survived.’ He looked around the room, avoiding her eyes. ‘We believe we can use this to our advantage.’

‘What will you do?’

‘He’ll stay here until he recovers, if that’s all right with you.’

She remembered the sight of the Major’s leg. It could be weeks, even months. ‘I thought it would be only a few days.’

‘We could move him,’ Joy said, ‘but now that he’s in hiding, it would be better if he stayed here.’

What had she got herself into? ‘How long?’ she asked.

‘Maybe a month. And he can give out his orders — through me. I’ll go back and forth.’

‘What about Sohail?’

Joy rubbed his chest again. His fingernails were rimmed with black. ‘That’s the thing, see, it’s dangerous now for him to come here so often. So we’ll have to find him another place.’

‘He can’t stay here with you?’

‘It puts everyone in danger. You, the Major, Maya. Anyway he’ll mostly be in Agartala.’

Rehana threw up her hands. ‘Do as you will, beta.’

As it turned out, it wasn’t long before Rehana saw Sohail again. Just after lunch a few days later she received a telegram and spent the rest of the day with her head on the arm of the sofa, waiting for him. She knew he would come; he wouldn’t make her do this alone. All afternoon she heard the clatter of Maya’s typewriter; her strokes were getting faster, more confident.

By evening he was at the door. He stared emptily at Rehana and squeezed her hand. He was wearing a white kurta, like the butcher, except he had a green hat with a red metal star glued to the front.

When Maya came into the drawing room, she saw her brother staring into the garden.

‘Hey, what are you doing here?’

He approached her and pulled her into his arms. Then he said, ‘Sharmeen is in Dhaka.’

‘What? How do you know?’

‘I know.’ A beat, and then: ‘She’s at the cantonment, Maya. The hospital.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

Nobody moved.

‘Why are you sitting there? Let’s go!’ she started. ‘She must be sick. How did she end up there? But you can tell me everything later.’ And she flashed her teeth — a bluish tinge, like the sight of clouds. If she noticed her brother’s bent head, she ignored it, smoothing the middle part in her hair and changing her sandals for outside shoes.