Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

Rehana reached out a hand to touch the woman’s arm, but she shifted slightly and her fingers grazed the sari instead. She ran to catch up with Maya.

They went deeper into the camp. It was getting unbearably hot and the stench was even worse there; the stacks of cement pipes had given way to shacks and makeshift shelters built out of plastic and scraps of wood. The lucky ones had a few pieces of tin sheeting to keep off the rain. Rehana pulled her sari around her ankles, and with the other hand she tried to swat away a family of flies that were following her. Everywhere she looked she saw the haunted faces of the refugees. They held out their hands, and she thought they might grab her, drag her into the muck. She had an image of them forcing her into one of their pipes, making her weave those jute strings all day. You’re one of us, they would say, you’re one of us. She imagined Maya leaving her there, going back in the truck with Sultana and Mukul, laughing all the way to Theatre Road.

‘Maya,’ Rehana said finally, ‘I can’t go on.’

‘It’s just a bit further,’ Maya said, pointing ahead. ‘There’s someone I want to see on that side.’

‘Really,’ Rehana said, feeling her stomach twist, ‘you go ahead, I’ll stay here and wait for you.’

‘Where will you wait?’

Rehana glanced around. There was no place to sit. ‘I’ll go back to the tent.’

‘Will you be able to find it?’

‘Yes — just go ahead.’ Rehana couldn’t wait to get rid of her; she could stop pretending to be interested and run back to the tent. She thought about the truck. Maybe she could go back to the truck with a cold glass of water and listen to the radio. Or sit beside those volunteers and their medicine boxes. Anything, anything but this stink.

She picked her way to the tent. Slipping quietly through the flaps, she found herself in the hospital ward. All the beds were pushed up against each other, so that it looked like an unbroken stretch of bodies. She walked through the aisle, stepping over people. It was the women who made the breath catch in her throat. It was the way they squatted next to the children, holding up empty breasts to their mouths, their hair matted with the road.

‘Mrs Haque?’ A man approached: it was the doctor, coming towards her with a quizzical wave. A pair of white rubber gloves were stretched across his hands. Rehana saw dark spots on the fingertips, and, as he drew nearer, a smattering of red above the pocket of his white coat. ‘Chachi? What are you doing here?’

She wanted to hug him. ‘I–I came to look around a little.’

‘Well, this is it. We have a small operating theatre at the back, and a dispensary. Shall I take you around?’

‘No — it’s all right. I just — I wanted to see.’

‘There are so many,’ Dr Rao said, fixing his gaze on her. ‘From all over the country. They’ve left everything, walked for days, only to arrive at this place.’

Rehana couldn’t keep her eyes from the red smudges on his gloves.

‘There’s a register — I can show it to you.’

They turned a corner and entered another room. There were more crowds, echoes of wailing children. A grating mechanical hum shrouded all of the other sounds.

‘What is that noise?’

‘Generator,’ the doctor replied. ‘We get power for the OT, and a few hours of light in the evening.’

‘Do you stay here?’

‘Yes,’ he sighed, smiling. ‘There’s another small tent in a far corner of the field.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Kashmir.’

‘You came to Calcutta to study?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I came for this.’

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said that night, ‘Dr Rao suggested that you might want to help at the camp.’

I knew . I knew she wanted to leave me there. ‘Me? What can I do?’

‘They really need help. You could do what you did at Shona — just talk to the refugees.’

Rehana did not want to talk to the refugees. Why was it always her? Rescue this one, save that one. ‘If I’m in the way I should just go back to Dhaka.’

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, ‘you know you can’t do that.’

‘I should never have come.’

‘It’s very serious, they could have arrested you.’

The thought of spending months there, in the shed, or worse, at the camp, was suddenly unbearable. ‘So what? I deserve to be arrested.’

‘Stop talking nonsense.’

‘I don’t want to go back to that camp.’

‘Fine. Stay here.’ Maya turned her back and folded her hands under her cheek. Just like her father slept, Rehana thought. As though she were praying.

The stifling heat in the shed woke Rehana. The bed was empty; Maya’s clothes were strewn across the floor. Rehana started picking up the clothes and folding them. There was a smell coming from Maya’s kameez. It needed a wash. The rest of her clothes were no better: the hems of all her saris and petticoats were streaked with mud.

Rehana stepped out of the shed to see if there was a tap. She circled the perimeter of the roof, holding a hand against the sun. She followed a copper pipe, and in a far corner she found what she was looking for, fastened to the wall. Below it was a hole where the water would run off.

There wasn’t any laundry soap. She took out the cream-coloured bar of soap she had brought to wash her face. She turned the tap, and a weak trickle made its way out. The water was warm and comfortable; she soon felt herself relax as she kneaded Maya’s salwaar-kameez in a familiar double beat: clap-clap, clap-clap, clap-clap.

She hung the clothes over the railing, pleased with the sight of them sizzling under the sun. The fat woman from the other day was on the next-door roof again, pinning up the same yellow sari. She waved. Rehana waved back.

Downstairs, Maya was attacking the typewriter with a pen in her mouth. The pen had leaked a little; on one corner of her lip was a growing patch of indigo.

‘Ma, where’ve you been?’

‘Just tidying a little upstairs.’ Rehana pointed to her mouth. ‘You have a little—’

Maya had already turned back to her typewriter. ‘Isn’t it hot up there?’ she said distractedly.

‘I’ll go out and see if I can get us a few things,’ Rehana said. ‘We need soap, and maybe a few snacks.’

‘All right,’ Maya said, her eyes on her punching fingers. ‘You go ahead.’

On her way out, Rehana passed Mukul pasting a flyer on to the wall. He wore a blue cap that was pulled down to hide his eyes.

‘Auntie, hello,’ he said, raising his chin so he could see her. ‘You going out in this heat?’

‘Just down the road for a few things.’

‘It’s burning up!’

‘I’ll only be gone a few minutes.’

‘Here, why don’t you take my cap?’ he said, peeling it off his head. His hair was plastered wetly to his forehead. She saw the ring of sweat around the rim.

‘No, really.’

‘Please, I insist.’

‘No, no, don’t worry, I’ll just be back.’

It was furiously hot outside. Within seconds Rehana’s cheeks began to burn. She considered turning back, but the thought of Mukul in his sweaty cap kept her moving ahead; she continued down the street until she came to a junction. Tram tracks bisected the road, and on either side there were shops with open doors and loud, clashing hoardings. Rehana didn’t remember this part of Calcutta, but the tonga-wallahs, skipping barefoot through the traffic with their elbows pointed up and out, and the shapes of the buildings, the wide avenues, the trams — she recognized all of these, despite the years of wilful forgetting.

Now everything was louder and more crowded. People choked the streets and tilted the tram carriages. They perched on the edge of the sidewalk and left barely a sliver of pavement through which Rehana could push her way. She ducked into the nearest shop, blinking against the change in light. It was a dark, narrow room with a row of shelves lining one wall, a counter running alongside. The shelves held a confused and mismatched assortment of things — chocolates, baby formula, shampoo, pomade, pickles. A man stood in front of the display with his palms on the countertop.