Tahmima Anam - A Golden Age

Jabeen unbuckled his gun and pointed it. Then he changed his mind, turned the gun around and hit him with the muzzle. It collided with the man’s chin; Jabeen’s arm came down again, and with his other hand he threw a fist into the man’s stomach. The man did not try to fight. He collapsed on to the floor, a small triangle of blood on his cheek. He tried to smile. Then he was doubled over, and Jabeen was kicking his back, his arms. ‘I should kill you right now, you Bengali sonofabitch. Thought you would take out the lights?’

‘Wait! This is not my son.’

Jabeen paused, his boot in the air. ‘What?’

‘He’s not my son.’

The boot landed, heel first, on a hand. A muffled grunt, bitten back.

‘Look at him — he’s too old to be my son.’

‘You want to trick me, woman?’ Jabeen was panting, exhilarated with the effort. ‘Who is he?’ His breath was hot on her face.

‘I don’t know. He could be anyone — you just picked him off the street.’

‘You think I don’t know a mukti when I see one? I know every single one of those bastards — I hunt them for a living. I know them better than you. I am their executioner. You are only their mother.’ Jabeen laughed. The back of his mouth was grey. He wanted something more savage. This was it.

‘This is not my son. I tell you, this is not my son. I swear on God, on the Holy Koran, on my mother’s grave, this is not my son. What good will it do you to catch the wrong man? Where’s the glory in that?’

And Jabeen stopped, patting his pockets, shaking off a trickle of sweat at the tip of his nose. ‘Dammit!’ he said, with a final kick to the man. ‘Sergeant!’

‘Yes, sir.’

‘Get on the radio. See if there’s any development.’

‘Should I tell them about him?’

‘What did I tell you? Go!’

Rehana’s head was in her hands. If only she didn’t look at him. Maybe it wasn’t even him; maybe it was as she said, he was a stranger, caught crossing the road at the wrong time.

The Sergeant came back. ‘Colonel, sir, it’s on the radio. They’ve been found.’

Rehana’s heart fell to her feet.

‘All three?’

‘No, sir. Not Sohail Haque. The other two. Tracked them in Comilla.’

Thank you, God. Thank you thank you thank you. But where was Sohail? They were supposed to take the road to Daudkhandi, into the thick autumn rice, threading through villages, swimming across eddies, their trousers rolled up, their guns held over their heads.

Jabeen crouched, wove his fingers through the man’s hair and raised his head. This time he turned to Maya. ‘Let’s try this again. Is this man your brother?’

She said nothing, pushing urgently against Rehana’s arm. ‘Is this man your brother?’ Jabeen repeated.

‘Tell them,’ the Major said, the breath whistling out of his mouth.

She had once told him her secret. Which was not about T. Ali, or about her father’s lost wealth, or the stolen jewellery, or her secret love of the cinema, but about the children. How far she would go. Anywhere. Any distance. That was the secret. The shameless, hungry secret.

And with his knowledge, he held her children in his hands, breathing them to life.

It was her choice, not his. She had asked him herself. Take my affliction . The rest could only follow as it did. One love that swallowed another. Stacked up like clouds in a hot sky.

She wanted the knowledge back. I should never have told you .

I’m so grateful , he said, so grateful you told me.

All my life I’ve been waiting for this day.

This is the greatest thing I’ve ever done. All my life I’ve been waiting for this day. Now say it, and let’s be done.

She said it.

‘God be with you, my son.’

‘And you. My mother.’

Your life for mine.

Take my affliction . She had asked him, and he had answered.

The Sergeant wrenched him away, a hand on his collar, and he was gone, in the dragging, loping walk of a handcuffed man. Maya was pulling Rehana from the window, but she was like a stone. She owed him the looking. She fixed her look. She held him tightly in her gaze, through the black hood they slipped over his head, knowing he could see through it, and through the heart-shaped grille, and into the bungalow, and into her eyes, so that he would know all that she thought, all that she was, at that very moment, belonging to him as he disappeared from sight.

Dear Husband,

The war will end today.

It was winter and the garden was living.

The flowers she had planted at the start of the war now studded the green. Champa, bokul, rojonigondha. The yellow roses. The hibiscus bush straddling the boundary wall.

Dawn was just breaking over the horizon. She knew she had only these few hours before the telephone started to ring and the neighbours began to pour in. People who would come to congratulate her and share their own stories of how they had managed to survive. They would fall on each other, as after a very long crossing.

But it was still early, and still quiet. Only the crows ringing the house.

Rehana hugged the shawl around her shoulders, and carefully, slowly, crossed the garden. She had not done it since that day. After the army took the Major away, she had hardly left the bungalow. Shona outside her window she had barely been able to look at.

Her footsteps echoed on the bare cement floor. She opened cupboards, pulled out drawers. Everything empty. Maya had done a thorough job. Cleaned up the broken pots and pillaged bookshelves. Sold the Sunguptas’ furniture and sent the money to Salt Lake. The rose-petal carpet was rolled up and pitched against a corner of the drawing room. Rehana crossed the pink-hued dining room, empty except for the portrait of Mrs Sengupta’s parents, resting in a corner.

She entered Mithun’s room. Coffee-coloured light filtered through the drawn curtain. The projector, the gramophone and the records were all gone. The shelves were wiped clean. There was no trace of him.

Mithun’s bed was wedged against the wall. For some reason Maya had left it there, with a colourful bedspread laid out across. Rehana bent to straighten the bedspread, remembering the many times she had reached out just this way, her fingers spread, to smooth his sheets.

On the floor next to the bed was a box of matches. Blue Lion, it said on top. Blue Lion Safety Matches.

Rehana opened the box. Empty. He had used the last one to examine her face. She thought of his finger, sliding the box out of its sleeve, striking the match, watching her face come alive in the sulphur light.

She retraced her steps. Pulled back the curtains. Crossed the drawing room and went through the door. Fastened the padlock.

At the bungalow she stepped on to her prayer mat.

Bismillah ir-rahman-ir-raheem.

Dear God, my merciful, my benevolent. Forgive me .

Maya was awake, brushing her hair. ‘You ready to go so soon? Just give me five minutes, I’ll put on a sari.’

‘No, you stay. Go with your brother when he comes.’

‘OK, but don’t be too long. We have to be at Shaheed Minar for the treaty.’

The rickshaw turned into Gulistan, crossed the rail line at Purano Polton. People were trickling on to the streets and the rickshaw-wallah had to manoeuvre through the thickening crowd. Every time a plane droned overhead they let up a loud cheer.

Dear husband, she practised, the war will end today.

What else could she say that he didn’t already know? That those nine months of the war were like nine generations, brimming with lives and deaths; that Sohail had survived, while his friends had died; and that here was the city, burned and blistered and alive, where she was going to see what remained of the man with the scar across his face who had lived in her house for ninety-six days and passed like a storm through her small life.