Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘Please,’ Rehana said, ‘check again.’

The book remained closed. ‘I said he’s not here. You’re wasting your time.’

Rehana pulled out the bundle of Mrs Chowdhury’s sugar money. She unwrapped it slowly, making sure the man could see the rupee notes. She pulled out fifty. ‘Check again,’ she said, mustering her courage.

He grabbed the money with five fingers, shoving it into a gaping breast pocket, and reopened the notebook. After a brief pause he said, ‘Yes. Mustafa. Released — no, transferred.’ He raised an eyebrow. ‘To Muslim Bazaar.’

‘Muslim Bazaar? Another thana?’

He smiled, revealing a set of stripy teeth. ‘No. It’s not a thana.’

‘What is it? How will I find it?’

‘I can’t help you any more.’ He shook his head and waved her away. Rehana didn’t budge. She felt the row of chairs shift behind her. The man opened a drawer and pulled out what looked like a folded handkerchief. He unwrapped it, revealing a stack of heart-shaped leaves. He peeled one off the stack and placed it lovingly on the glass counter. Rehana watched him unscrew the lid from a small round tin. He snapped off the stem of the betel leaf and plunged it into the tin, emerging with a glob of white paste. This he smeared on the leaf. Then he added a pinch of shredded betel nut and a pinch of chewing tobacco, finishing the job with a few folds of the leaf and popping the triangular packet into his mouth.

Rehana let him chew the paan until it settled into a round bulge in his cheek. Then she said, reaching into her bag again, ‘Perhaps you can telephone someone at Muslim Bazaar and ask them.’

The door opened behind Rehana. The man quickly swallowed his paan and tented his fingers on the desk. He cleared his throat. ‘As I was saying, the prisoner is not here.’

‘Kuddus?’ Rehana heard. She turned around to see the man she had passed on her way inside. ‘Ei Kuddus,’ he said in rough Bengali, ‘cha do.’

Kuddus disappeared for a few minutes, came back and squeezed into his chair.

‘Boss likes the Chinese tea,’ he said, sounding a little embarrassed. He rubbed his hands on his trousers.

Rehana was ready with another fifty. ‘Can you ask someone to bring him here?’ She pressed the note on to the glass.

The Chinese tea had made allies of them. ‘I’ll see,’ he said. He picked up the heavy black telephone and turned the dial. ‘Hullo? Inspector Kuddus. Mirpur Thana. There’s a woman here. Says she has a release order. Sabeer Mustafa. Was here — he’s been transferred to you. Hold on? OK. Who’s this? Oh, yes, sorry, sir. Sir, the woman is asking — yes, yes of course. I’ll tell her. Ji. Khoda Hafez, sir. Ji, sir, Pakistan Zindabad.’ He turned slowly to Rehana.

‘You’ll have to go over there yourself,’ he said, almost regretfully. ‘They have to see the paperwork. I’ll send word. They’ll be expecting you. You can catch a rickshaw — tell them Muslim Bazaar, the pump house. They all know it.’

‘Thank you,’ Rehana said.

‘No problem. Best of luck.’ Kuddus looked her over and nodded. Then his face changed as he pointed over Rehana’s shoulder. ‘Sen?’ he said, ‘Mr and Mrs Sen?’

An elderly couple approached the desk, their heads tilted towards one another, the woman holding a tiffin carrier. Rehana heard the slosh of something liquid inside the tiffin carrier and conjured up an image of this woman’s son, sinking his grateful hands into his mother’s dal.

‘You can go in now.’ Kuddus stood up and unhooked a circle of keys from his belt. ‘Come with me.’ They left together. Rehana heard the clang of the gate as he locked it behind him.

Outside, it was raining. Thick sheets of water fell heavily from the sky, hardened by a bellowing, circular wind. The sucking sound of her feet accompanied Rehana as she made her way back across the field and on to the main road. An uneven line of tea stalls greeted her at the roadside, surrounded by a cluster of rickshaws. Rehana tried her best to cover her head with her achol, but it was no use; the wind attacked from all sides, knocking the achol out of her hand and sending her flailing to gather her sari together.

She ducked under the slim awning of the nearest stall, where she saw a group of men sitting cross-legged on the raised floor, their faces lit red by a flickering kerosene lamp.

‘Muslim Bazaar? Keo jabe? Anyone?’ The stall smelled of biscuits and petrol.

They were saying something to one another. Rehana couldn’t hear through the drumming rain on the tin roof. One of them, the youngest and smallest, uncrossed his legs and rose. ‘Bokul will take you,’ a man at the back said, motioning towards the boy with the burning point of his biri. Bokul packed and tucked his lungi between his legs. He looked like he was down to his underwear, but Rehana was beyond embarrassment; her sari was moulded to her body, and she didn’t let herself look down to see what had happened to the colour. At least the rickshaw-men had the decency to gaze into the kerosene lamp rather than to look at her directly.

‘Wait here,’ the boy said, darting out of the shop. Rehana watched him struggle with the hood of a rickshaw; once he had secured it, he pulled a sheet of plastic from under the seat. ‘Ashen! Come quick!’

Rehana clung to the scalloped rim of the rickshaw hood as Bokul pumped mechanically through the rain. He stopped just once, to yank the front wheel out of a flooded ditch. She couldn’t see anything, she was only aware of the driving, unceasing rain, of the sari clinging to her and the violent wind, which made her shiver and wish desperately for a change of clothes. She ignored the street names and stopped looking for familiar landmarks. The trees glistened in the wet.

Bokul stopped in front of a square concrete building. The building had a high, triangular roof made of wavy sheets of tin. A faded sign painted on the tin read india gymnasium. As she made her way out of the rickshaw, Rehana gave Bokul twenty rupees. ‘I’ll have another twenty for you when I come out. You wait here for me,’ she said, shouting above the roar of the rain. ‘You wait here, no matter how long it takes. An hour, two hours — anything — you wait, you hear me?’

Bokul nodded. ‘Ji, apa!’ he said.

In the third hour of her vigil, Rehana began to worry about food. She had no idea what time it was. She was hungry; it must be after lunch. She berated herself for not packing a biscuit in her bag. She couldn’t be seen fainting. The rain made it difficult to determine the hour; the sun was blotted out by the grey mass of clouds that sat low on the horizon. Through a narrow, barred window pitched close to the ceiling, Rehana could see it was still pouring steadily. By the time her sari was dry, her eyes were stinging, and there was a dull throbbing in her joints. She folded her knees under her and thought of closing her eyes, just for a moment, just until they stopped burning.

When the guard finally brought Sabeer out, Rehana thought she might be dreaming. She jerked herself upright, ignoring the ache in her arms from where her head had rested. The thana was a dim memory. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been asleep. It had stopped raining. The tube light buzzed steadily; it smelled of evening.

There was something black covering his head. A mask — no, a hood. It was pulled tight over his face. She could see his nose, his square chin. He shook his head back and forth, breathing noisily through the gaps in the weave.

He wore no shoes. His soles made sliding tracks in the dirt.

Rehana turned to the man who had brought Sabeer. She saw a sleek black beard. Her gaze travelled upwards. He was very tall. Had she seen this man before? She checked again. Don’t look . The man smiled briefly. Stop panicking. She held hands with herself to stop from trembling.