Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

I could give her some money and send her on her way, but where would she go?

And then I went to the thought I had avoided. I was the big man in the village now, I could have two wives. Two wives, two beds. I had never touched Shathi, and I never would. She could keep living in my house, though, she could tend her vegetables and fatten her cows.

I know this can’t work because Megna wouldn’t have it, not if she was the same girl I knew ten years ago. But it’s the best I can think of. I’m uneasy but decided. I’ll call Shathi in the morning and tell her everything.

I’m awake. Can’t sleep thinking what I’ll say to Megna when I see her. She’ll be angry, that I know. I tell myself, be ready for that. Maybe she won’t see my face and I’ll have to go back three, four times. But she’ll melt soon enough, and who knows, maybe the years made her a little softer, maybe she can see that I was young and drunk on the thought of foreign — nothing anyone can do about that when it hits them. I got a chance and I took it. And, see, I made good, got some money in my pocket now, something to show for the last ten years, a home, fridge. What’s she got? Well, she’s got my kid, for one thing. Raised that kid right, I bet. School and all that.

I’m up and dressed before the sun, folding my towel on the rail and making it all neat, in case a miracle happens and she comes with me tonight. I go downstairs and I can hardly stomach my own saliva, it’s bitter and foul in my mouth. Downstairs the hotel owner is waiting for me, hot cup of tea in his hand. He wants to chat but I’m in no mood, I barely swallow the tea he gives me. I just want to sit quiet with my thoughts. Soon enough Shumon comes in, sits opposite me. ‘You got the money,’ he says, no hello, no nothing.

It’s tied up in my lungi, all one hundred seventy thousand of it, a trick I learned from my uncle. He used to fold his wages into the knot of his lungi, a few notes at a time, folding and knotting, folding and knotting. Then he would wear a loose shirt over it, and just look like one of those men with a paunch, maybe a lazy guy, someone who liked eating the fatty parts of the cow.

‘Ya, I got the money,’ I say to Shumon. ‘Take me to her.’

‘You stay here, I’m gonna give him the money, come back with the address.’

Something about the way he says it, I don’t like. That scar over his lip is looking all twisty-curvy, and all of a sudden I’m not so willing to just hand it over.

‘No, I’ll come with you. That way when he tells us where she is, I’ll just go over.’

‘You don’t have to do that.’

I order a glass of water and pass it across the table to Shumon.

He looks down at the glass. Takes a sip.

‘Why don’t we do this: I’ll give him the money, then when he tells me I’ll call your mobile?’

‘Yaar,’ I say, all friendly-like, ‘I’m coming with you, that’s that.’

‘Okay, let me make a call.’ He takes a mobile out of his shirt pocket and goes outside. For a second he disappears, then I see him talking again, holding the phone to one ear, bending over to close out the street noise.

I’m starting to get restless now, I can’t wait to see Megna, my stomach is high up where my heart should be, everything tight, I can’t breathe. I down another cup of tea. The hotel owner comes in again, tries to catch my eye, but I can’t talk to him now. Shumon comes back and Awal is with him.

‘Okay,’ I say, ‘let’s go.’

Awal puts his arm on my shoulder.

‘Brother,’ I say, ‘no rickshaw pulling today?’ I know how much his family needs the money. One day out and they’re over the edge.

‘Important day for you, brother. I’ll do the night shift.’

I’m glad Awal’s here. If that guy from Dewanhat tries to pull anything, there’ll be three of us. Awal and me get into Shumon’s rickshaw, and he turns the cycle around, taking us down the main road. Traffic isn’t too bad, we only stop at a few lights. Shumon’s legs are young and quick. I toss a coin to an old woman at the intersection. This way I’m sending a message to God I’m not ungrateful for what’s about to happen. She reminds me of my mother, who still isn’t well. Shathi told me this morning when I called to tell her I needed more money. Not a lot, just enough to get me through a few more days here. Did I tell her what I decided last night? No. In the morning it seemed like the worst idea I ever had. Better to just bring Megna home and deal with it later. Nothing anyone can do when you just show up and say what’s what. Maybe I felt sorry for Shathi. Maybe I was a coward, who knows. She would find out soon enough, let her wait.

The slum is behind a new shopping mall. Shopping mall makes me think of Pahari, but I quickly push him out of my mind. We leave Shumon’s rickshaw and enter an alley behind the mall. We cross a bridge over a canal that’s just an open drain, and then we’re inside the slum, rows and rows of shacks and a lot of stink. Dark rooms with skinny cats and children and piles of rotting garbage.

I’m following Shumon as we go deep into the stomach of Dewanhat. I can’t see the sky because there are wires strung up everywhere, between the houses and over the tin roofs. Dewanhat has electricity. Awal tells me some of the shacks even have cable TV. ‘Lucky bastards,’ he says. I don’t think so. I’m the lucky one. I never had to move to the city. Out there in the village, no matter how hungry you are, you wake up every morning and you smell paddy, you smell mud and earth and dung. Dung is roses compared to human shit. We rule the world but our shit smells worse than any animal’s — we had to get brains, big brains, just to find ways to cover up our own stench.

At the end of another long row, we stop and Shumon ducks his head inside. He comes back and he says, ‘Okay, now give it to me.’

I’m better than these people. I have the sun in my face and a house and a little patch of land. I’m even thinking, time for me to go back to earning a wage. Blood money’s not gonna last for ever, its gonna dry out, and anyway I want to be working again, sweating over something so my days have a start and a finish. All this I’m thinking while we’re walking, so when Shumon asks me for the money I’m not ready to hand it over.

‘I want to meet this guy,’ I say. ‘I want to make sure he knows my Megna.’

‘He knows, he knows,’ he says.

‘What about the kid?’

‘What d’you mean?’

‘If he knows where Megna is, he knows where the kid is. What does he say about the kid?’

Shumon comes up real close to me now. ‘You’re going to kill this whole thing,’ he says. ‘He knows about the kid. The girl and the kid are together, just give me the money and he’ll tell you where they are.’

Awal turns when he thinks I’m not looking, so I push past Shumon and before I know it I’m inside the shack.

It takes a minute for me to take it all in. Then I see them all, the hotel owner, the rickshaw boys, the kid making the samosas. All of them.

They’re in a room with a table and two chairs. There’s a tube light fixed to the tin wall and everything’s bright. I’m about to call them by name, and then I see the hotel owner’s got an orange stain on his lips. In fact, now I notice they all have orange lips. They’ve been sitting here and chewing paan and waiting for me.

I start to shout. Words are coming out of my mouth I’m not sure what they are. Curses. Bad words. Threats. They all sit there and stare at me, not moving, all looking me in the eye, and for a second I think, am I crazy? Are these people really sitting here and staring at me? Or is it a trick of my mind, actually nothing is happening and after all these years of not finding Megna, nothing is worse than a bad thing, so I am hallucinating a bad thing, wishing for it — actually these men are really my friends, and in a moment we’ll sit around and drink tea and laugh at something rude. I hear a sound behind me and it’s two more men — I’ve seen them before too, the policemen from the hotel, the fat one and his sidekick. They raise their sticks and just before the pain blinds me and I black out, I think, at least I am not crazy, at least I have that.