Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

‘No payment,’ he says, looking around at the others, who nod. ‘Brother to brother.’

The next day he comes with his paints and a piece of paper. I tell him what Megna looks like, the small, dark eyes and the crazy hair. I can’t really remember her nose so he just draws whatever nose he wants. I come up with a few other things I didn’t even know I remembered, like a small dip in the middle of her chin, and also that her face was more long than round. When he’s finished, he shows it to me and I’m surprised because it’s not exactly her but it’s not too far either, and there she is, a little pink but it’s her, staring out at me. I can’t believe it.

‘I’m going to start looking for her right now,’ I say. ‘Thank you, brother.’ I give him some money, just for the paint and the paper, and he takes it.

Rickshaw boys say, let’s photocopy the drawing, right, put it up around town with my mobile number. I like this idea. I spend fifty paying for everyone’s khichuri, another twenty on the copies. Before they can start asking where my money’s come from, I say, ‘Our parents, as in me and my sister’s, are worried, so they sold a bit of land so I could come here and look for her. All this time they were angry because she ran away, but now they’re old they’re saying let past be gone, and anyway it wasn’t her fault, bastard forced himself on her, everyone knows he was the bad egg, went off to foreign and never came back. Parents are soft now, just want to know where she is, what happened to the kid. So they sold a tiny patch of land and sent me.’ I’m telling the story and it feels so good I start to believe it, even manage to get a few tears onto my cheeks. Boys are patting me on the back and promising to put the drawings up all over town. ‘You’ll find her, brother,’ they say. ‘It won’t be long now.’

Shumon and the rickshaw boys put Megna’s picture everywhere. Two calls I get on my mobile, saying they know where she is. ‘She’s working at a shop in Tiger Pass,’ the first one says. ‘Meet me there.’ But when I go it’s just a guy asking for money. ‘Please,’ he says, ‘I need it for my father’s operation.’ I give him ten I tell him to get lost. Second time it’s a woman, and my wish is so strong I think it sounds like her. When she says ‘Hello?’ I say, ‘Megna?’ And she says, ‘The girl you’re looking for, I saw her sitting in front of a barber-shop. She looked just like the picture.’

I ask for more but she just gives me the address. Naveed Napith, on the way towards Patenga. ‘What was Megna doing?’ ‘Nothing, just sitting there.’ I don’t believe her, the barber-shop wasn’t even in town, it was near the beach, and why would she go there? I hang up.

The very next day my luck changes. Shumon comes back from work and we’re sitting with a cup of tea. ‘No charge,’ the hotel owner says. ‘You’re my regular customer now. Tea is free.’ I’ve already paid for the week up front, so he knows I’m good for it. In the morning I’m gonna pay for another week.

Shumon bounds up to the table. ‘You won’t believe it,’ he says. ‘We found her.’

‘What?’

‘Me and Rajib, we’ve been asking around, you know.’ The boy who sits at the front of the hotel with a giant vat of oil has just fired up the gas on his burner. ‘We went to Dewanhat.’

‘I told you she’s not there.’ It was a slum, the biggest one in the city. All week Shumon’s been telling me to check it out and I’ve been saying ‘Na, not Megna’s sort of place. She would never have ended up somewhere like that.’

‘She’s not there, brother. We just know the big boss at Dewanhat.’

‘What kind of boss?’ The oil is sputtering now, and the boy is popping his little samosas in there and watching them dance.

‘A guy who knows things. A guy who can find out. That kind of guy.’

I can see who he’s describing: cigarette, shirt open to his crotch, everything oily. ‘Don’t want to get mixed up with a guy like that.’

But Shumon’s grinning so big the scar on his lip disappears. ‘We showed him the picture and he says he knows where she is!’

Now the kid’s making jilapis, holding a bag of dough and drawing circles with his arms.

‘Did you hear what I said? We’re going to find your sister.’

I’m afraid to be happy. ‘What exactly did he say?’

‘Said he knows where she is, she’s right here in Chittagong.’

‘Been here the whole time?’

‘Don’t know.’

‘He gave you an address or what?’ It’s starting to hit me now, like something climbing up my legs. I’m going to get the girl back, I’m actually going to find her. It will be like the last ten years never happened. Shit. God is Great. God is Great. The words come out of my mouth before I even know what I’m saying, and then I realise that, for some people, God doesn’t just come in the bad moments, like when you’re hanging hundreds of feet from the sky, but in a moment of bliss, when you get everything you want and you can’t believe your luck, and you think, there must be something else behind this, some force that gave me my wish — it couldn’t just be that I wanted something for ten years and then I finally got it, that would be too good, too kind of the world and we all know it’s not that sort of world, at least, those of us who really know it — and I want someone to thank, or at least I want to feel like someone did this for me, to put peace in my heart. ‘Thanks be to God,’ I say.

‘So where is she?’ I can smell the jilapis now and they are floating in their sugar bath. I order us a plate and eat one straight away, burning my tongue. ‘Give me the address.’

‘Thing is,’ Shumon says, putting his hands on the table, ‘this guy, he doesn’t do anything for free.’

I push the plate of jilapis towards Shumon, but he doesn’t take one. I’m ready to say no, but already I’m wondering how much money I can scrape together. ‘How much?’

‘How much do you have?’

‘I have.’

He takes a breath. ‘Two.’

It’s more than I’ve got. ‘I’ve only got one-seventy.’

Shumon looks around the room like he’s going to find the other thirty in a corner somewhere, then he says, ‘Okay, I’ll see what I can do.’ And he gets up, pops a samosa into his mouth and leaves me with the sugary taste of Megna on my lips.

That night I stay up in bed and think about what to do. I stare up at the ceiling fan, which is off because it’s chilly at night now, and I can see a dark streak of dust on the blades. I’ve been putting off a particular question this whole time, which is, what I’m gonna do with Megna when I find her. My wish being says I’m gonna take her somewhere nice and we’ll run away together, holding hands and dancing between the trees, that sort of thing. But I know what it’s like to be away from home, what it’s like to be without people, and I won’t do that again. After so many years, Megna’s not going to want that life any more either.

So there was only one thing to do. Bring her home with me, not just to the village, but to my house. As my bride this time. Bring her home and tell everyone the whole truth. The child I would claim, and they would both have my home, my name, and Megna would finally get some respect. People in the village would have to swallow all the shit they said about her and kiss up to her just like they did to me. She would get mine. That was it, that was the only way. I owed her.

Now there was just the matter of Shathi. For a long time I thought, when Megna came back I would send her back to her father. Talak, talak, talak, that sort of thing. But, when it came down to it, when it came time for her to take sides, she chose me against her own. Looked after my father till he died. Right now she was keeping my rice, the key of the trunk around her neck, taking care of my mother. She should get something for that.