Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

‘Don’t question my loyalty,’ Sohail whispered.

‘I’m not questioning your loyalty, I’m questioning your judgement.’

He moved his hands away from his face, and for a moment it looked as though he was going to get into a fight with her, shout things about devotion and love and the country, but instead he strode over to her and put his arms around her. ‘You’re right,’ he said, his shoulders shaking, ‘you’re right.’

It was getting late. Sohail was waiting for Joy at Shona; they were going to dig up the guns. ‘We have to make Sehri,’ Rehana said to Maya. ‘What do you want to eat?’

‘I don’t know.’ The tears were still falling heavily on to Maya’s cheeks. ‘Do we have to fast?’

‘Of course we do. Tomorrow of all days.’

For once Maya didn’t argue. She took the glass of water Rehana offered. ‘I want dalpuri,’ she said with a sniff.

‘Good idea. I’ll put the dal on.’

Maya brought the glass to her lips. As she began to drink, a fresh wave of tears overcame her.

‘Maya,’ Rehana said, chiding her, ‘we have more important things to worry about today.’

‘I know, I’m sorry — I just can’t help it.’ She blew her nose thunderously. ‘It’s just that it wounds me’—she prodded herself with a finger—‘here.’

‘The boys will be here in a few hours.’

Rehana parted the curtains and watched from the drawing-room window.

Joy and Sohail filed in through the back gate and circled the rosebush. It was hard to see through the moonless black. She recognized Joy’s bulk, and beside him was Sohail, slighter, carrying a shovel and a hurricane lamp. She allowed herself only a brief moment of disappointment. There was no reason to expect the Major.

Joy lit the lamp, and Sohail began to dig. After a few minutes they exchanged places, Sohail holding the weak light while Joy squatted down and pulled at the earth, the silt piling up beside them. Finally they paused, and Joy leaned over the hole they had dug. He shifted, laying flat on his stomach, and started to tug at something. Rehana could barely make out his face, twisting with the effort.

Just as Joy had pulled the object — a rectangular wooden box, discoloured by its long burial — they heard a scattered, staccato drumroll. Gunfire. The sound grew suddenly, filling the air. The boys crouched on the ground, dipping their heads. It was Joy who raised the box above his shoulders and stood upright and scurried out of the garden. He slipped behind the mango tree and waited for Sohail, who was shimmying towards him on his elbows. They became shadows, rustling through the branches of the tree. And then they were gone.

Rehana became aware of her heart pounding against her chest, and her breath making circles that grew and retreated on the closed window.

The drumming grew louder and Rehana froze, fixed in her place facing the empty garden, the hole they had left like a shout under the rosebush.

‘Ammoo?’ Maya came into the room, her hands white with flour. ‘What’s going on?’

They moved to the other side of the room, where the windows faced the road. Rehana parted the curtain in time to see a convoy of trucks hurtling down their street. A pillar of soldiers in green stood on the back of a truck, waving their guns in the air. Passing through the street they shouted, ‘Pakistan Zindabad! Pakistan Zindabad!’ As the last truck ambled away, one of the soldiers, a young boy with a thick mop of raven hair, pointed his gun at the bungalow. I could kill you right now, his face said.

Rehana snapped her head back and yanked the curtain closed.

‘Did you see that?’

Maya circled an arm around Rehana’s shoulder. ‘It’s just a show of force, Ma. It doesn’t mean anything.’

‘But why here? It’s just a small road. That shipahi was pointing right at us.’

‘They’re getting hints India’s going to come down on our side. And then it’ll be over.’

They had started saying things like ‘when the war is over’. Rehana thought it was too soon, but people, especially the young ones, were confident the freedom fighters would save them. A rescue by the world. It had to end soon. I can taste the end , Sohail had said, and Rehana had thought of it as the kind of thing a child says to his mother when the lines between them become blurry and he no longer wants to be the child, and she no longer the mother. She had relaxed into the phrase, and his cool hand on her forehead. But she hadn’t believed him.

Without the diversion of meals, Friday spooled out slowly ahead of them. There were still things to be done. Pretend it’s any other day. Do the washing. The preparations for Sehri, for Iftar. Air out the house. Collect water from the taps. Boil it for drinking. Drag down the cobwebs.

All day she ignored the cold fear at her back. Sohail left in the afternoon, his face unmoved as she kissed his forehead and said Aytul Kursi and blew the blessing on his eyes. The fear breathed on her neck and sent the hair upright, electric. It caught her in the double-beat of her heart, the pulse she could feel at her temple, the tremor of her hand as she fried the Iftar food. Beguni, the crunchy strips of eggplant. Chickpeas and tomatoes. The dalpuri Maya had rolled out and stuffed. Orange juice. Tamarind juice. Lassi. It was not elaborate enough for a special occasion, not simple enough to indicate want. A meal for an ordinary day. A meal for a day without war.

Rehana brought the food to the table. They ate in silence, their fingers working the pooris with small wet slaps.

Afterwards Maya crawled under the bed and pulled out the kerosene lamp.

‘Put that away!’ Rehana said.

‘Why? When the current goes out—’

‘We don’t know the current is going to go out.’

‘Of course it will.’

Rehana shot Maya a warning look. ‘Put the lamp away and say Isha with me.’

With Shona’s long shadows edging towards the bungalow, they tried to pick up the radio transmission. Maya fiddled with the knob, but all they heard was static.

‘Do you want a song, Ma?’

Rehana was taken aback by the offer. ‘Really? I would love that. Sing “Amar Shonar Bangla”.’

At nine o’clock, when only blackness and the nail-shaped crescent moon remained, they held their breaths and waited.

Rehana began to think of what she would like to be doing when the lights went out. She could go into Sohail’s room and count the medicines and blankets that still needed to be distributed. She could start a letter to her sisters. But what would she say? The letter would have to be full of lies. And she wouldn’t end up sending it anyway, or she would have to contend with a reply. Thank Allah you’re alive — we’ve been worried sick — why don’t you leave that godforsaken place and come to Karachi — we’ve been telling you for years. No, she wouldn’t write a letter.

Maya was fidgeting with the dinner plates, stacking them carelessly.

‘Just leave those.’

‘I want to make sure—’ Maya bit her tongue.

‘Leave them.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ma.’ But she left them anyway and threw herself on the sofa beside Rehana.

‘What now?’

‘We wait.’

Maya had never been good at waiting for anything.

‘But there’s nothing to do.’

‘Do you want to play rummy?’

Her face brightened. ‘Shotti? We haven’t played since—’

‘Since Sohail started beating you and you refused to play.’

‘No — no, that’s not how it happened. He discovered poetry that year, and everything else was forgotten.’

‘That was a year later. There was a period in between, for about eight months, when you wouldn’t play anything with him — not cards, or chess, or badminton.’