Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

‘Gabriela,’ I said, calling out from the living room, ‘can you come here for a minute?’

When Gabriela emerged from the kitchen, rubbing her palms along her jeans, I lowered my voice and said, ‘What’s he doing here?’

‘You mean Mohammed? There’s a room and a toilet behind the kitchen, did you know that?’

‘Yes, servants’ quarters.’

‘Well we don’t have servants’ quarters where I come from, so I didn’t know. I offered to let him stay there and he’s going to do some cooking for us. He was showing me—’

‘Pooris, I know.’ I recognised the look Gabriela was giving me, a mixture of naivety and moral superiority. ‘He has a perfectly fine place to live in the dormitory.’

‘It’s filthy.’

‘We can’t change everything and then just leave and go about our business.’

‘Who said anything about leaving? I’m not going, are you?’

‘Not right now, but eventually. Don’t pretend you’re going to be here for ever.’

‘Good, so he stays.’

I wondered what my mother would have said. I remembered once when she had hired an acid-burn victim to work at our house, bringing her out of the kitchen and insisting she serve the guests. Her name was Limi. I remember the fruit cake she made on Fridays, and the way people would stare at her scarred hands when she spooned powdered milk into their tea.

‘Are we going to pay him?’ I asked Gabriela.

‘He needs a family.’

‘So now you want to adopt him?’

Gabriela threw up her arms. ‘I’m not saying that. I just want to — I want to do something. We’ve been sitting on our hands and we’ve done fuck all. Don’t tell me you’re not as fed up as I am.’

When we returned to the living area we found that Mo had set the table, placing the pooris in the middle. He was standing back and admiring his handiwork, the table mats, the glasses filled three quarters of the way with water, a jar of pickles, open, with a spoon inside.

‘Mo,’ I asked, ‘where did you come from?’

‘The food will get cold,’ he said. I noticed that he was wearing a clean shirt with buttons and a pair of trousers, both slightly too big. Gabriela and I seated ourselves around the table. With ceremony, we passed the plate of pooris back and forth.

‘Marvellous,’ Gabriela said. ‘Tell him they are the best pooris in the whole world.’

‘Where did you learn to cook?’ I asked him.

‘Whatever they tell me to do, I do.’

‘Ask him,’ Gabriela said, folding a poori into quarters and stuffing it into her mouth. ‘Does he know the men who work on the beach?’

I translated. ‘I know all of them,’ Mo said. ‘The new boys always come to me first.’

Gabriela clapped her hands together to brush off the poori crumbs. ‘Maybe he can introduce us.’

‘Mo, can you make tea?’ I asked.

When Mo had darted into the kitchen, Gabriela said, ‘We’ve been here almost a month and no one will tell us anything. Maybe he can help.’

This was a much better idea than the one she’d had before, but I was still unsure. For one thing, the others might consider Mo a snitch if they knew he was helping us. I told her so.

‘But if they talk to us, we can help them. We can put them in the film.’

When he returned with the tea, I said, ‘Mo, can we come and meet some of your friends?’

He put down the tray in front of me and passed me a cup. ‘Which friends?’ he asked.

‘Your friends from the beach,’ Gabriela said. ‘We want to make a film about them.’

I repeated the words in Bangla. He turned to me. ‘What film?’

‘A movie about the beach, about the ships and the workers.’

I was sure — and halfway hoping — that he would say no. But Gabriela kneeled in front of him and pulled at his collar, straightening and smoothing. ‘It’s very important,’ she said. ‘Will you help us?’

‘We need to talk to the men,’ I said. ‘Not the ones Ali selects for us — the others.’

‘Do you want to talk to the day shift or the night shift?’ he asked.

‘Which shift are you?’ I said, but he didn’t reply to that, only cleared away the plates and disappeared into the kitchen. I followed him to the back of the apartment, where there was an empty room with a small square window on one side. It was dark, and the cement floor was streaked with dust. ‘Do you want to stay here?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Only sometimes, when Ali doesn’t need me.’

I looked at him closely. His hair sprouted vertically from his scalp, and when I extended my hand to stroke his head I felt a uniform coarseness, the gentle slope of his crown, and the upright tendons at the base of his neck.

‘Bring your things,’ I said. He nodded and we looked at the room together, the grey floor, the grille crudely fixed to the sill of the window. Mo said he had to go and that he would come by later with his bag. Then he padded away in bare feet, closing the door behind him with a sharp click.

And that is how Mo came to live with us, how he came to be the link between me and the crew of men who worked on the beach. How Gabriela and I came to belong to this place, came to know all the men who hauled the bodies of ships along the metal-flecked sand. Everything that happened in the later chapters of this story occurred because Mo said yes; even you, Elijah.

The dormitory that housed the Prosperity workers was built by Harrison Master’s father. He was an old-fashioned sort of businessman who knew the names of all his workers and asked after their wives and children back home, ordered them off the beach in a rage if they talked back to the foreman or got caught in one of the brothels in town. That is what Dulu, one of the men Mo had lined up to talk to us, told me. But the businessman died and his son inherited the place and hired Ali, which was how they all came to be here, crammed into the dormitory, because the son didn’t believe in expanding the facility, and anyway they were grateful it was there at all, because the men in the neighbouring beaches didn’t get anything, they just lived on whatever ship they were breaking, which was bad news, because if the fires didn’t kill you, the fumes from the tanks would finish you off slowly. Not that there was much living to do here anyway.

The men that Mo had chosen for our film were the lowest and poorest on site, the ones who took whatever scrap of metal was peeled off the ship and dragged it up the beach to the smelter. The pullers came from the north of the country, where there weren’t any jobs and the threat of famine hung over them every winter. The men that Ali had introduced me to were locals; they were given their jobs in exchange for permission to use their land. They had clout with Ali, setting their own price and acting as supervisors to the other workers. But these men — boys, really — from up north were recruited in the winter, paid by the hour, and sent home at the end of the season, their pockets only a little fuller than when they arrived.

Before they would agree to speak to me, I had to answer a few of their questions. Mo pointed to a young boy, older than him but not by much, and said, ‘Shuja wants to know if you are married.’

The others covered their mouths and giggled.

‘Yes, I am.’

‘Do you have children?’

‘No.’

‘What is your father’s name?’

‘Farhan Bashir. His nickname is Joy.’

‘How many brothers and sisters?’

‘None. It’s just me.’

‘Hai, Allah!’ Shuja said. ‘Are they dead?’

‘Shut up motherfucker,’ Mo said.

‘My father was a freedom fighter,’ I said.

Shuja asked to see a photograph of my parents. I handed him my phone, and he passed it around. He turned to Gabriela. ‘Is that the real colour of your hair?’