Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

‘I don’t mind,’ I say.

Next day I scrub up as best I can and wear the trousers I bought for the hospital. When I show up at the shop, shopkeeper tells me to wait at the back. There’s a guy with a van on the street, piled high with junk. All I can see are metal legs, cables, things that used to work but now they’re just broken parts.

At the back of the shop there’s a bunk bed with metal bars, reminds me of our dormitory in Dubai. Wonder where those boys are now, who’s building and who’s gone home.

I sit down on the bed and wait a long time, then I hear steps coming in my direction and I sit up, straighten out my shirt.

Shopkeeper comes in. ‘Here’s the one I was telling you about.’

The guy is squat and has a nose like a dog, all squashed up against his face. He’s breathing hard and sweating like fat people do. He looks at me like I’m a chicken he’s thinking of buying. ‘You done construction work?’

‘He’s used to working hard,’ the shopkeeper tells him.

‘I worked in foreign, in Dubai,’ I say, hoping that will sway him. People are always impressed with talk of foreign.

‘You got any schooling?’

‘No, sir.’

‘Pity. I could use an assistant. But never mind. You come tomorrow, I’ll put you on the ship. We got some tankers that need finishing up. Give this to the man at the gate, he’ll let you pass.’

He gives me his card. Before I can ask him about the pay, he’s out the door, his doggy breaths getting faster as he walks away.

When I was a kid my father made me dig out the latrine. It was supposed to run to the river, but two, three times a year it got stuck, all the shit clogged and flowing up to the ground. He sent me in with a shovel, said nothing, just pointed to the river. The stink was so strong I gagged for weeks after just thinking about it. I hated my father for making me to do it, but I see now that I should’ve waited, because I’m hanging off the side of a ship with a flimsy rope around my waist, and I realise, this is hell, not the latrine, not the desert, not even up there against the glass with Pahari. But this is what I deserve after all the bad I’ve done. This work at the end of the world.

I do what they say. Tell me to climb to the top of a broken ship and hang there like a tree-snake, I do it. Tell me to tie a rope around my waist and cut the flesh of a metal beast, that’s me. No word, no talkback. Pahari, if he was here, he’d be ashamed of me. What he wouldn’t say about the pathetic road I chose, all coward and no brave. What could I do, Pahari? After you died and scared the shit out of me for ever the only thing I could think was, I just want to hide in Megna’s sari, and my kid, just want to protect my kid. All coward and no brave. In my head Pahari says, I died for nothing, and I tell him, people like us always die for nothing. And he’s shaking his head, loose, like he used to, as if he didn’t get his bones ground to dust, as if every wish he ever had hadn’t disappeared into the desert like a drop of water on a leaf.

Now every day is latrine day. Every day I fall to sleep with poison in my blood. I get one day’s teaching from a guy who hands me a blowtorch and says, ‘When I tell you to cut, you cut.’ Today I’m up on the east side of the ship. Rope’s around my waist, goggles for my eyes that’s getting cut from my pay. Sparks come out of the blowtorch and land on my legs like a line of ants, sun burning my back, and all for a scrap of money. For that little scrap I’m all cut up from the metal, arms about to fall off from carrying it, and so hungry I’ll eat anything, sleep anywhere, thirsty like I’ve never known, not even in jail.

There’s a row of shacks behind the yard and they offer me a bed for a sum I guess is about half my pay. I don’t have a choice so I take my things and sign up. Mostly I decide to keep to myself, but after a few days I let myself make one friend. His character is black and he’s a real bastard of a guy, which tells me at least he’s honest, no tricks at the last minute thinking he’s a winner and then realising he’s out to cut my throat.

We share the hut with four others. The first day, he points me to the pallet by the door, says, ‘That one’s for you. It’ll break your back but nobody gives a shit about the new guy.’

He’s from the north, where there’s never enough food. ‘You’ll die on this beach,’ he says. ‘Something will fall on your head and you’ll crack open like an egg. Or fire. Or poison.’

‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘No one will miss me, so.’

‘Yah, another miserable son-of-a-bitch with no one to love him. Plenty of us around here, na?’

The others ignore him.

‘You’ll die alone like the rest of us. But at least we won’t be happier than you.’

He climbs onto his bed, farts in my direction, and goes to sleep.

My bed isn’t broken, it’s slanted. I sleep with my feet a few inches lower than my head. Next day, I find a piece of wood and I fix it. My friend, Dulal, is impressed. Tells everyone what a useful guy I am, soon I’m fixing all kinds of things. The leaky tap at the end of the row of huts where we line up to brush our teeth; a broken ladder. I’m not an expert but I know my way around. All this I do at night. During the day, I’m on the shitty little rope, the blowtorch, giant squares of metal dragged down the beach. We chant as we heave, ‘Hei-yo, hei-yo, hei-yo.’ Look, we’re taking out the trash. Feet sink into the sand, grey and oily. ‘Hei-yo, listen up, nobody in this world for me.’

I think about going home, but no way I can do that. Shathi’s not going to open the door for me, not now. And there’s the fingernail of hope I’ll still find Megna and the kid. But how? I’m so tired from the ship I can hardly move my legs at the end of the day. I haven’t even seen Naveed since I went to tell him I wasn’t going to sleep at the shop any more.

It’s going to be Eid next week and they’re giving us a day off.

I go back to the beach. I’m hollowed out now, I’m done. Thought when I started, I could look for them for years, my hair would turn grey and still I’d be on the hunt. But my bones are dead. I’m stupid and my luck is over. I have to give up. I’m an even bigger fool if I don’t see that my girl and my kid are never going to be found, that the world swallowed them up and I’ll never see them again.

The hut is quiet. Everyone else has somewhere to go. No one’s going back to their village — too far for most. But they’re not here. I crawl onto my pallet. Now I wish it was still slanted, because I can’t stand the sound of blood pumping to my heart.

I close my eyes, wishing for sleep. Maybe I drop off for a minute, because someone’s beside me, breathing on my face. I smell booze. I open my eyes and it’s Dulal, drunk, his face inches from mine and grinning like a fool. I’m so fed up with my life it’s like I’m drunk too, so I say, ‘I don’t even know if it’s a son or a daughter.’

He nods, serious, not like he’s laughing at me, and then he shows me what’s in his hand and it’s a bottle. I take a swig, it goes down hot and burning, right to my stomach. In five minutes I’m drunk. Thank God. My tongue is loose and he’s not listening anyway, so I tell him the whole stupid story. He comes in sometimes, saying things like ‘You fool’ or ‘Shit, brother, you had that coming’, but mostly he’s quiet, and when I’m finished he repeats some of the stuff I’ve just said, like ‘poor bastard Pahari’ or ‘Policemen, they’re all crooks’.

After I’m done, he stays quiet for a long time and I think he’s asleep. I think I should sleep too, it’s getting late, and I’m about to head to the toilet when he sits up in his bed and shouts, ‘I’m a genius!’ And then: ‘There’s one place open on Eid day.’