Amitav Ghosh - The Shadow Lines

At that my grandmother gave up. She sighed and got up to go. There’s no use talking to him any more, she said. We’ve done what we can. We’d better go now.

Then Saifuddin the mechanic, who had been listening carefully, went quickly across the room and said: It’s no use talking to him . He’s not responsible for what he says; it’s the same as being mad. You’ll have to think of some other way of taking him back.

Suddenly Khalil turned to my grandmother, appealing with open arms.

Don’t listen to him, he cried. He’s only saying this because he wants to put in a claim for the whole house and he can’t do it while the old man is still living here. You can’t take him away; he won’t go. Besides, he’s like a grandfather to my children now — what will they do without him?

The mechanic wrenched him around and pushed him back against the wall.

He’s lying, he said. It’s got nothing to do with claiming the house. You can see Khalil is simple-minded; he doesn’t understand anything. I’m telling you to take him away for his sake. He’s made a lot of enemies over the years. The last time there was trouble we had a hard time protecting him. Who knows what’ll happen the next time?

You can’t take him away, cried Khalil. He’ll die.

Then a female voice broke in; it was Khalil’s wife, half hidden by the curtain.

Take him with you, she said. Khalil doesn’t know what he’s saying. He doesn’t have to cook for him and feed him. We have two other children too. How long can we go on like this? Where will the money come from?

And while they were sitting there, frozen into a tableau of indecision, the driver of their car came running up to the door.

Please come quickly, madam, he shouted. We have to leave — there’s going to be trouble outside.

He turned on his heel and disappeared.

My grandmother made up her mind.

Listen, Khalil, she said. What we’ll do is this: we’ll take him back now and keep him with us for a few days, until the trouble’s over. Then if he wants to return, we’ll bring him back. What about that?

Khalil’s head was hanging down in defeat now. All right, he said sullenly. But he won’t go in your car. I’ll have to bring him in my rickshaw. I’ll tell him he’s got to go to court — otherwise he won’t leave the house. I’ll follow your car.

The mechanic laughed scornfully. How can you follow their car? he said. Have you seen it? It’s a Mercedes.

Don’t worry, Khalil said, glaring at him. I’ll manage: if they go a little slowly.

Then he went up to the old man and said something into his ear. The old man turned his head away and shook his hands wildly in the air. But Khalil argued with him for a while and at last he nodded and stretched out his arms. Khalil took a black cotton coat off a peg and helped him into it. Then, reaching under the bed, he pulled out a pair of shoes, put them on his feet and tied the laces.

All right, said the old man. I’m ready to go now.

Khalil handed him his walking-stick, put an arm around his shoulders, and helped him climb off the bed.

Go on ahead, he said to my grandmother. Get into your car.

They left the room with Khalil and the old man following behind. When they reached the yard Tridib helped Khalil lift the old man into the rickshaw.

The mechanic walked with them as far as the gate.

You’re doing the right thing, he said to Mayadebi and my grandmother. It’s the only thing you could have done.

Ignoring him, they turned to take a last look at the house: at the balconies and terraces, rising in steps out of the ground; at the garden where they had once spent their evenings making up stories about their uncle’s part of the house.

Then they stepped through the gate and set off down the lane.

The children were waiting for them and followed them down the lane, laughing and chattering amongst themselves. The little girl who had befriended May appeared again and took hold of her hand. Some of them ran along with the rickshaw, talking to Khalil, and trying to jump up on the handlebars.

The driver was waving to them frantically from the car. He and the security guard threw the doors open and hurried them in.

Quickly now, madam, the driver said, biting his lip. Quickly now.

Robi had expected to see a crowd waiting for them, but the road was empty, deserted, and all the shops were shut.

There’s no trouble here, he said to the driver. What were you so worried about?

Just wait a little, the driver said, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. Just a few minutes, Robi-master.

He started the car and they set off slowly down the empty road with the rickshaw following close behind.

It was Robi who saw them first, immediately after they turned the first corner, the corner my grandmother remembered so well, where the boys used to play football on a patch of grass.

There were dozens of them, stretched all the way across the road. They had lit a fire in the middle of the road, with a few broken chairs and bits of wood. Some of them were squatting around the fire, others were leaning against the lamp-posts and the shop-fronts. Robi could tell from the way they were watching the road that they had been waiting for their car.

He knew then, because of the chill that was spreading outwards from the pit of his stomach, that trouble had come to him at last.

Every word I write about those events of 1964 is the product of a struggle with silence. It is a struggle I am destined to lose — have already lost — for even after all these years I do not know where within me, in which corner of my world, this silence lies. All I know of it is what it is not. It is not, for example, the silence of an imperfect memory. Nor is it a silence enforced by a ruthless state — nothing like that: no barbed wire, no check-points to tell me where its boundaries lie. I know nothing of this silence except that it lies outside the reach of my intelligence, beyond words — that is why this silence must win, must inevitably defeat me, because it is not a presence at all; it is simply a gap, a hole, an emptiness in which there are no words.

The enemy of silence is speech, but there can be no speech without words, and there can be no words without meanings — so it follows, inexorably, in the manner of syllogisms, that when we try to speak of events of which we do not know the meaning, we must lose ourselves in the silence that lies in the gap between words and the world. This is a silence that is proof against any conceivable act of scorn or courage; it lies beyond defiance — for what means have we to defy the mere absence of meaning? Where there is no meaning, there is banality, and that is what this silence consists in, that is why it cannot be defeated — because it is the silence of an absolute, impenetrable banality.

So complete is this silence that it actually took me fifteen years to discover that there was a connection between my nightmare bus ride back from school and the events that befell Tridib and the others in Dhaka. And then, too, my discovery was the result of the merest accident, a chance remark. For a long time after I made that discovery it was difficult for me to forgive my own stupidity. But of course, in a sense, there was nothing to forgive. I was a child, and like all the children around me, I grew up believing in the truth of the precepts that were available to me: I believed in the reality of space; I believed that distance separates, that it is a corporeal substance; I believed in the reality of nations and borders; I believed that across the border there existed another reality. The only relationship my vocabulary permitted between those separate realities was war or friendship. There was no room in it for this other thing. And things which did not fit my vocabulary were merely pushed over the edge into the chasm of that silence.