Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘Go go cholo cholo,’ she said, in the mixed Bengali — English she used when she was nervous, or in a hurry.

‘She’s dead,’ Sohail said finally. His beard, now dense like a solid black mantle, reflected the thickness of his eyebrows, the paleness of his skin.

Maya ran out into the garden and started speaking to them through the window.

‘Why would she be in the hospital if she were dead?’ She had to shout to make herself heard.

‘She’s been there, Maya. She’s been there all along.’

‘What? And you knew?’

‘Yes. But there was no point in telling you. There wasn’t anything we could do.’

‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have got her out of there myself.’ Then, as though it had just occurred to her, she realized the truth was uglier than she had imagined. Rehana, seeing her daughter through the open window, knew that for ever afterwards Maya would remember where her brother had told her the news, there in the shade of the mango tree, the air expectant, just after rain, the sky dark as though it were night, could only be night, but wasn’t, and the pale glow of the jasmine and the bougainvillea, abundant, perfumed; the Major asleep, or dead, in a far corner of Shona.

And then he told her everything.

‘She died in the hospital.’ He would have gone outside to comfort her, but she gripped the window bars and held him with a terrible look.

‘She was pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’

Maya turned her face away and kicked the foot of the tree. ‘She hated men. She hated them! She hated sex, did you know that? She never had sex. Everyone else did, but not her.’ Rehana wanted to flinch, or to tell Maya to shut up, but she stopped herself and just stared, letting a tear trickle slowly from her eye.

‘I want to know their names.’

‘Who?’

‘The ones who raped her. I want to know.’

‘They’re soldiers, Maya. Tikka Khan’s soldiers.’

‘Tikka Khan,’ Maya shouted, as though she were making an announcement, ‘the Butcher of Bengal!’ And then she kicked at the tree again, reached up and hugged a ropy branch, looking as though she might swing from it, but then just stood there with her arms raised and her face pressed against the bark.

That night Rehana dreamed of Iqbal. She dreamed he was knocking at the door. In life, he had never knocked.

He would come home every evening at exactly six o’clock. Rehana, her eyes on the wall clock, would be ready with his evening refresher: a tumbler of whisky, at first with water, then soda and eventually, as the years passed, with two cubes of ice.

Even though she had been waiting for him all day and she knew he would not be late, she would sit quietly with her back to the door and her hands folded on her lap instead of staring out of the window or unfastening the latch or even waiting on the veranda so he could see her as soon as he stepped through the gate. She would close her eyes and smell the jasmine crawling over the vine, and the green lemons in the tree, ripening and swelling with each passing hour.

She sat and waited, waited even as he pulled at the gate and it swung open in front of him; she waited still as his footsteps drew nearer, and then — she knew exactly when — just as he was about to pull his hand out of his pocket and curl his fingers around to knock, she would sweep across the room, pull down the latch and throw the doors open in one liquid movement.

Every evening it was the same, and every evening a new, breathless thing.

When she woke she was angry. He owed her, she wanted to tell him; he owed her for staying behind and taking care of the mess; for getting to the end, which was never the end; for finishing it or, at least, for standing up to the struggle.

She moved through the house, her cheeks hot with memory. Maya’s bed was empty. Rehana had spent the evening with her, feeding her jao bhaat and running her hands over her forehead. She went to check on the Major occasionally, but otherwise the two houses were quiet, with only the swift rustle of leaves and a stretch of brief, sudden showers. Sohail said he would keep things quiet around Shona for a few days, until they decided what to do with Maya. It wasn’t safe to have her at home any more; now that she knew about Sharmeen, there was no telling what she might do. And then they’d fallen asleep, Rehana more deeply than she had intended, and now here was Maya’s bed, empty.

She searched the house stealthily, listening at the bathroom door, scanning the kitchen sink, the dining table. She peered out into the garden and saw a faint light coming from Shona. The light drew her in; she staggered across the garden in the darkness and hovered outside the window, where she could make out faint shadows cast by a flickering kerosene lamp.

It was Maya. She was in the Major’s room.

She was circling him. Abruptly she sat down at the edge of the bed and turned up the sheet to reveal the black soles of his feet. Rehana watched silently; she couldn’t bring herself to interrupt. Maya ducked under the bed and plunged her hand into a bucket of water, emerging with a wet cloth and wringing it gently, the water falling back with the sound of bare feet on a cool cement floor. She pressed the cloth against the Major’s soles, first left, then right, then both together. Rehana thought she heard the Major sigh, though he kept perfectly still, and then, suddenly and awkwardly, Maya bent her head and hovered over the Major’s feet, and Rehana saw that she was weeping, her tears falling on to the Major’s rolled-up military trousers.

And when she looked up, Maya saw her mother watching from the window and fled, leaving the bucket where it was, the dark water rippling and gleaming, a luminous, blinking eye.

Rehana’s first thought was that she should be sent away. She was guilty for thinking it; she wanted to believe her daughter should stay close, with her. Or she should go with her, wherever it was. But she couldn’t leave Sohail, wouldn’t leave Shona, the Major, Joy. It was not a choice; even though the whole thing sometimes felt like an accident, she was caught up; she couldn’t leave now. But Maya had to go. Rehana considered, then rejected, the idea of sending her to Karachi to stay with her aunts; it would incense her, and anyway Rehana had no idea how her sisters had taken the news of the war. They hadn’t written to her since the war had begun, and, while she wanted to blame it on the post, she knew they were secretly berating her, and in their hearts calling her gaddar. Traitor .

In the end Maya made it easy. She came to her mother the next afternoon, her eyes scratched and red.

‘I’m going to Calcutta. I’ve arranged it with bhaiya.’

Rehana didn’t know what to say; all the things she had been storing up for Maya — the soft words, the sorrys, her regret at knowing she had not been able to love her as she should — crowded for her attention.

Maya misunderstood Rehana’s silence. ‘Please don’t be angry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to be angry.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not angry, I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’

‘It’s all right.’ She smiled at her daughter. ‘You don’t worry about me.’

‘I loved her so much!’ Maya said, trying to keep from crying. Her chin shook, and she kept swallowing and pressing her lips together. ‘I have to do something. It’s so unfair.’

Rehana nodded.

Maya looked into the distance and didn’t say anything for a long time. ‘They need people to write the press statements,’ she said finally, the anguish gone from her voice. ‘Sohail knows someone at the headquarters. Maybe I can even go into the liberated areas.’

‘You be careful. I’ll be worried about you. I’m always worried about you.’