Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

I couldn’t put off meeting the workers any longer. The first interview was arranged by Ali, and took place in his office. Gabriela set up a camera and a flat mic. In the evening, at the end of a shift, about a dozen men filed through the entrance. They wore helmets and thick rubber boots. Their hands were encased in protective gloves, and over their legs they sported the sort of thick, waterproof waders I recognised from watching television programmes about fishermen. I started by asking their names, and they belted out introductions. Rubel! Suren! Malek! Then they proceeded to tell me how wonderful Prosperity Shipbreaking was, how kind the owners were, that they were always paid on time, and that it was the best job they could hope for, that they were putting their children in school — not just the boys, the girls too — and that they were thankful to God for bringing the blessing of the shipyard to their part of the country.

Gabriela had already told me she had reels of this sort of footage. I talked for a long time, hoping it would warm them up, a monologue about how I had never been to Chittagong before and was looking forward to seeing the sights, Patenga, the hills, Foy’s Lake. They told me a few stories about their families. I asked them where they had come from, and they were all from within a few miles. I saw one of them raise his eyes, and I had a fleeting moment of hope, but he kept going, past my face, and up, fixing his eyes on the fan that was bolted to the ceiling above our heads. After about twenty minutes, I turned to Ali and said, ‘Perhaps this is not the best place to talk.’

‘Ei,’ Ali scolded, looking up from his phone, ‘say something to Apa. She’s come all this way.’ Then they all started talking at once, but just repeating the things they had said in the first place, about the kindness of God and the generosity of their benefactor, Ali.

I stood up. ‘Thank you,’ I said to them, packing away my tape recorder and notebook. I had expected something like this, yet I found it disconcerting. I tried to scan their faces as they left so that I might remember their names, but as soon as Ali dismissed them they were gone, jostling each other on their way out of the office and making tracks towards the beach. ‘You are wasting your time,’ Ali said, making a show of pouring me a cup of tea. ‘Everyone here is happy.’

The last of the men filed away, his boots shuffling on the grey cement. A thought occurred to me. ‘These are not the men that pull those large sheets of metal up the beach,’ I said.

‘No, madam, they are the cutters.’

‘Can I talk to the other men?’

‘Who, the pullers? Madam, those boys are fresh from the village. They don’t know how to talk to a person such as yourself.’

So that’s what they were called. The pullers. I had seen them take apart the last of the Splendour . Everything else was gone and it was just a matter of getting the propeller to a truck waiting on the road. A group of men tied ropes around the blades of the propeller and hauled these ropes over their shoulders. As they dragged their feet through the shallow water, they reminded me of the biblical films my parents had encouraged me to see as a child in which people were tortured and whipped while building pyramids, their bodies thin and mollusced with sweat. These men with their grey faces and mouths pursed so tightly you would think they were incapable of speech until their cries of Hey-yo! Hey-yo! Hey-yo! came punching out of their mouths. They wore their lungis folded up between their legs, their feet were bare, and sometimes, on top of their heads or over their mouths, they had those rectangles of checked cloth that used to be a bright colour but were soiled now by dirt and sand and sweat. Everything smelled of the chemicals thrown up by the ships and the burn of the metal as it was processed, but their faces bore no trace of disgust, no recognition that the very air they breathed was poison. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said.

‘They are uneducated.’

‘I won’t keep them for long, just a few questions.’

‘Why don’t you give me the list of questions? I will ask them and then you will have your information.’

‘It won’t work that way, Mr Ali.’

He gave me a look that was intended to make me feel he was taking me seriously. ‘Of course. I am only trying to be helpful.’

I retreated to the apartment and told Gabriela everything. ‘I told you it was a set-up,’ she said, rummaging in her bag for a cigarette. ‘There’s no way Ali’s going to let us talk to everyone. And even if he did, they’re not going to talk in front of their boss. We have to meet them somewhere else.’

‘It’s not like we can invite them over here.’

‘That’s a fantastic idea,’ she said, lighting up and taking a deep breath. ‘Let’s do that. You could cook.’

‘I am a terrible cook and that’s a terrible idea.’

‘Why not? They look hungry, the poor sods.’

‘No, they don’t. They look quite well fed, in fact. And they’re wearing all the correct protective clothing. Have you ever seen them wear that stuff when they go out onto the ships?’

‘It’s all for show,’ Gabriela said, tapping her cigarette into the sink.

When Rubana called, I had to confess I hadn’t made much progress. She told me to keep trying, agreeing that it was essential to get the men out of Ali’s office, to identify the ones who weren’t just window dressing for the film. ‘Peel back the layers,’ she said.

On a Friday I returned to Khondkar Villa. Komola took some satisfaction at the sight of my dirty clothes. Why hadn’t I come sooner? I sat in the garden and smelled the jasmine, shedding the grime of the last few weeks, remembering the piano, and Mo, and the little bunk beds that sat at the bottom of the ship. I wasn’t so far from the beach now, but it could all have easily been a dream, a vision of a dark past or a dystopian future, far beyond the reach of my imagination, and I wondered, again and again, why you were not returning my call, what was making you take your time, was it another woman, had you fallen in love, or, worse, had you relegated me to the category of a casual acquaintance who did not require an immediate reply, someone you had once known yet with whom the possibility of serious connection had passed for ever? With every day and every imagined reason for your silence, the picture of you grew stronger, like liquor in a cask.

The first thing, Ali informed me, was to get everything on Grace valued and assessed, and then sold. He had three weeks to get rid of all the goods. Once she was stripped, the cutting would begin. I was still at an impasse with the workers, and every time I asked Ali if there were others we could meet, he put me off, saying he would look into it, that a suitable place had not yet been found, all the time smiling and assuring me that my comfort and safety were of the utmost importance. In the absence of actual workers, I began to record the dismantling of the ship and documenting, in detail, what each worker was responsible for doing. So far, I had a list of professions: foreman, salesman, engineer, tank cleaner, cutter, puller, welder, roller. Each crew had its own leader, its own hierarchy, and the teams themselves fell into a sort of order, with the engineers at the top and the pullers at the bottom.

One day I returned to the apartment and found Gabriela in the kitchen with Mo. The two were bent over the stove together, looking at a pair of pooris browning in a pan of oil. I stood in the doorway and watched their easy way with each other, Mo holding a long metal spatula and Gabriela exclaiming at the way the pooris puffed up into perfect little spheres. Something about the scene irritated me. I went into my room and put away my notebook and camera. The smell of oil and fried dough wafted through the apartment.