Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

But now he is here. ‘Shit,’ he says, ‘it’s like a fry pan inside.’

It’s only March. Wait a few months, I tell him. Then you’ll see what hell feels like. Then I give him my two paisa little bit of advice. I tell him, ‘Stay away from foreman and keep your mouth shut. And when he hauls you up, whatever you do, don’t look down.’ The kid nods, but I know what he’s thinking, thinking it’s not going to be him at the end of a rope.

I go to my bunk and try to sleep. This month I’m in the middle. We take turns, Hameed, Malek and me. Top bunk is hottest, but there’s a breeze, if you can catch it, from a small window out of the side of the shed. Bottom bunk is cooler, but closer to the ground and the toilet stink is strong. Middle is the worst, like being sandwiched between two asses, especially because this month I’ve got Malek on top. He makes the springs creak as he pleasures himself to sleep. I’m used to the steady rhythm of it, I don’t say anything. A man has his needs, out here in the desert. Myself, I can’t do it. I reach down and Megna’s face comes into my head. She won’t let me sleep. I see her little tears and she’s asking me to stay — ‘What will I do when the baby comes?’ And I’m saying no, I’m shrugging. I’m calling her a slut, even though I know it was her first time, and I’d told her I loved her and meant it, except my uncle is there too, and he’s telling me, ‘Dubai, Dubai, son, it’s like paradise, shopping malls and television and air con. Marry my daughter and the ticket is in your hand.’ ‘You’re a slut,’ I tell Megna, and I swivel around and leave her there, except I don’t leave her, because whenever I try to get myself a little something, like a piece of sleep or a full stomach, she comes out and she comes out strong. I want to know what she did to the little seed I planted in her, where does it live, does it know me, and does it have the eyes of its mother? I’m in the dark and I can’t sleep. Malek sighs, rolls over, and the room gets hotter and the stink rises.

Too quickly the sleep shift is over and it’s time to get back to the site. Pahari kid is about to get his first kick in the head, but he doesn’t know it, he just pulls on his uniform like he’s the sheikh himself. I have to throw water on Malek’s face to wake him up. He curses me and jumps down. The floor vibrates. Next shift is already waiting outside — it’s dark, and starting to cool down, the lucky bastards.

The bus drops us at the canteen. Hameed sits at the end of the table so people can bring him the letters. He’s the only one who can read. We pay him a few dirhams to tell us the news from home. He reads me letters from my darkie wife, she says, ‘Take care don’t forget to eat and does it get cold do you have a shawl?’ The others are always laughing — ‘She’s going to tell you how to wipe the shit from your ass,’ they say. I laugh with them. Stupid girl. I don’t write back.

Hameed says sometimes he changes the letters, because there’s only so much a man can take. Last week he read that Chottu’s mother had died. Poor bastard’s only been here a month, still cries every time he has to stand out in the baking hot, carrying bricks on his head. So Hameed told him his mother was well, much better, in fact, since he started sending money for her asthma medicine. Later, when Chottu gets hard like the rest of us, Hameed will tell him the truth. And by then he won’t even stop to take a breath.

The canteen manager is Filipino, so stingy we get a piece of bread, dal and a few vegetables, and even that they cut from our pay. Eid comes he gives us meat, but only bones and fat. One thing my uncle said was true — as much Coke as we want, straight out of a spout.

‘Tareque Bhai,’ Hameed says, ‘your sister has given birth to a healthy baby boy.’

‘Mashallah,’ Tareque Bhai says. Tareque has been here the longest and he has gone the religious way. Two ways a man can go here, in the direction of God or the direction of believing there is nothing up there but a sun that will kill you whether you pray five times or not.

We wash our hands and head to the site. They’ve turned the lights on, the buildings are winking. We come to the Mall of Dubai, which Tareque Bhai remembers was only a few years ago a pile of rubble, and Pahari kid says, ‘Why don’t we walk through here?’ And we all look at him like he was born yesterday. Even dumber than I thought.

‘You can’t go in there,’ I say.

‘Why, is there a law?’

‘Doesn’t have to be a law.’

‘I’m going in,’ he says, loose, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. ‘Anyone coming with me?’

I think Hameed’s going — those book-learning types always stick together — but it’s Malek that breaks off and joins him and I’m cursing myself for not grabbing him before it’s too late, telling him, don’t even smell that, it’ll kill you.

The rest of us make tracks, shaking our heads. This month, Hameed and me are in the hole. Two buildings going up side by side. We call them ‘Bride and Groom’. Bride is almost finished, Groom still in foundations. ‘Fifty-fifty,’ they tell us, fifty storeys for Bride, fifty for Groom. Who knows what they’ll name it once it’s finished? Burj-al-Arab-al-Sheikh-al-Maktoum-al-kiss-my-ass. Shit, if I said that aloud I would be finished. I giggle to myself and Hameed swings his arm around my shoulder, laughing with me even though he hasn’t heard the joke.

Bride and Groom make me think of darkie wife. She was the skinniest, ugliest girl I ever saw. I took one look at her and I swear a few tears came to my eyes. To this girl I was going to be tied for life? ‘Just do it,’ my mother said, ‘you won’t even see her for years. Who knows what will happen between now and then? But give us a grandchild, something to keep us company while you’re gone.’

I did my duty. Girl started to cry and I even felt a little sorry for her, though I was also thinking, two times I’ve done it and both times the girl has burst into tears — something wrong with me or what? Next day I took her to the cinema, but even Shah Rukh Khan couldn’t wipe the sad from her face.

We climb down and the bright lights make the hole turn blue-grey. The diggers are awake and we start to haul the dirt around, everything dry and sucked of life.

I pick up a basket. I wonder if Malek and Pahari have made it out of the mall without getting their eyes pulled out, and just as I’m imagining what it must have looked like, two guys in their blue jumpsuits staring at those diamond-necked swans of Dubai, I feel a jab in my side, and there’s Malek, laughing so hard I can see the gap where he lost a tooth last year after biting down on a piece of candy he bought from the Filipino. ‘Worth it,’ he’d said, ‘I never tasted anything so good.’ Now he’s telling me about the mall, the cold air that made your sweat dry to salt, and the high ceilings, and the women, the women, didn’t cover their legs, no, or even their breasts. ‘Breasts, man, like you wouldn’t believe.’ He slaps me hard on the back, shaking up my basket so I can taste the dirt. ‘Go to work,’ I say, but he’s too busy talking, and now some of the other boys, Hameed and even Tareque Bhai, have joined in, and I can see them all thinking it could be them next, them in the ice-cream cold of the mall, gaping and staring and taking a little slice of heaven back to the hole to chew over.

Worst of all, Pahari kid got hauled up to the top of Bride and nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. He swung like a monkey and laughed his way through the shift. Turns out those tribals like floating on top of buildings, hitched up so the whole world is spread below them.

For the next two weeks, every day, Malek and Pahari pass through the Mall of Dubai on their way to the site. They take their jumpsuits in a plastic bag and go in wearing trousers and T-shirts. One day Malek comes over to my bunk with a pair of sunglasses draped over his eyes. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m James Bond now.’