Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

It was at some point in the first hours of your coming to Chittagong that I told you my nickname. You said the name aloud to me a few times. Putul, Putul, Putul. Perhaps it was the unfamiliar sound that made it a softer, sweeter word in your mouth, the emphasis on the second syllable, and for you it did not carry the baggage of its meaning in the same way. After hearing you say it, I began to grow fond of the name, and later it even became the way I began to refer to myself. Zee was the girl who married with a gold chain fastened to her head; Putul was the girl who hated the smell of henna on her hands and left home to find a new patch of air among the scrapheap of the world, Putul the bird who flew south in search of a warmer climate and a place to spread her wings.

It was early in the morning when you finally called me back; I was lying in bed and watching the sky brighten through the gauze of my mosquito net. ‘Hello,’ you said. ‘It’s Elijah.’

You sounded distant. ‘How are you?’ you asked, formal.

‘I’m well,’ I said, trying not to cry.

‘I’m sorry it has taken me so long to return your call.’

‘Were you busy?’

‘No.’

The tone of your voice told me everything. You weren’t busy, you were angry. Disappointed. What could I say to you now, knowing that I’d been wrong about you? I started telling you about Dera Bugti, leaving long pauses for you to murmur your sympathy for my failure, for Zamzam, but you didn’t. You let the silence sit between us. Then you asked me what I had worn to my wedding, and I described with shame the brocade sari that had hung so heavily on my shoulders and cut into my waist.

‘Can I see you?’ you asked finally, and we migrated to our laptops and I noticed that you had grown your hair over your ears, and something glinted in the hollow above your collar — a grey, porous stone attached to a leather string around your neck. I was talking to you but I was taking note of all of this, and for some reason I couldn’t understand I experienced this alteration as a betrayal, a sign that time had passed, time in which we had done everything but be together. And of course this was my fault. I had married Rashid — all you had done was grow your hair out and put a piece of string through a rock.

It was late by the time we finished talking. I promised to call again the next day. The next day, I had my speech all planned. The first thing I said to you was: ‘Please come to Bangladesh.’ And you said, ‘I don’t think so, Zubaida.’ I gave you all the arguments I’d prepared: I said it was because of the piano, that you had to hear it for yourself, and that you would never again have the chance to see a piano bolted to the floor of a ship, and then watch that very ship get taken apart. ‘That has got to be,’ I said to you, ‘one of the strangest and weirdest things one could possibly witness.’ The sheet music was still there — I had left it exactly as I’d found it, wedged between the keys and the lid. You would have to come and you would have to play that music on that piano. I have no idea what went through your mind, but you resisted for a long time, for the rest of that phone call and the several others that followed, but I kept pressing you, and finally you relented. When you agreed I thought you might fix a date in the distant future, and I was getting ready to argue again, to remind you that the piano may not be on Grace for much longer, but you said you would be there the following week. I know now that you are the sort of person who can do that, get up and materialise on the other side of the world on short notice, but at the time I remember being surprised, and then deciding, not for the first time — and certainly not for the last — that everything about you was tinged with magic.

At Chittagong Airport, I watched you help a man manoeuvre a refrigerator-shaped box onto a trolley, then lift your own suitcase from the carousel and drag it behind you. You were easy to spot through the panels of glass that separated the arriving people from the waiting people on the other side. You wore a shirt with a round collar and those same loose trousers I had seen on you that first day. You were walking through customs when an officer looked you up and down and motioned you over to a desk. Worried you’d be stopped, I made my way towards you and waved my arms.

You looked up and met my eyes through the glass. The customs officer put his hands deep into your suitcase and began to remove your things. A pair of trousers. A T-shirt. He opened the zippered case of your toiletries bag. Toothpaste. You were beautiful. That’s all I could think as you held my gaze, tilting your head to the side. Smiling hello. A sandal. A square package wrapped in red tissue. You tried to stop him but he shook his head, tore open the gift. Dark blue silk melted out of the paper and onto his hand. Embarrassed, he passed it to you. You turned and held it up, showing it was for me. I smiled. Thank you. Three paperbacks. Underwear. A linen shirt. The other sandal. My heart was exploding in my chest. Shampoo. At the bottom of the suitcase the officer found a heavy container with a green cap. He pulled it out and thrust it at you. You tried to explain. The officer shook his head. You held up your hands. Wait, please. You twisted off the cap. Lifted the jug and poured a little of the contents into the upturned cap. An offering. What’s happening? Wait, please. You gestured to the officer to put his finger into the liquid and taste. He did. You smiling. The officer smiling. Screwing the lid back on the jug. Patting each other on the back. Tucking a strand of hair behind your ear. Repacking your suitcase. A pair of trousers. T-shirt. Toothpaste. Sandals. A silk blouse. Maple syrup. I watched you put everything back in its place, pull the zipper back around the suitcase and start walking towards me.

I had practised again and again what would happen when you arrived. What we would say to each other. I believed the time that had passed had made us both more distant and more intimate, the trick of a long separation and those cryptic song titles. But when I caught sight of you, gesturing to me through the glass, I was struck with the one thing I had not rehearsed, the one thing that was entirely unanticipated. I had practised warmth, I had practised small talk, a little awkwardness, and, yes, also disappointment (a person thought of so often, and used in my imagination in such diverse ways, how could he measure up?), but I had not practised what occurred, which was this: terror. When I saw you, I felt you were coming to me after the separation of war, a feeling at once desperate, pathetic, stomach-churning, want-heavy, and entirely unwelcome. It wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be, to fear someone so much, to be sickened, at the very moment of their arrival, at the prospect of their ever going away again. As you approached me, I thought of being apart from you, that I would never be able to tolerate that again, that the distance between us right now, the several feet, was horrible, and as the space narrowed, as your face came into focus, there was a lightness on the horizon of my vision, the sensation of floating, your image multiplying as my eyes watered from longing to see you more; and then, the collision of our bodies as you hugged me over the railing that divided us.

I was trained in the art of keeping up appearances, and I wonder if you knew, when I greeted you politely, that I wanted to dig my fingernails into your bearded cheeks. I may have told you later that when you leaned over the railing and hugged me that I had the urge to blame you for everything that had occurred in the last year, because if it hadn’t been for you, I would have been a happier person, but that in your presence, happiness was immaterial — you had taken that away from me. But I didn’t say any of that. I believe I displayed all the appropriate reactions, keeping my fists to myself, words hidden under my tongue, fingernails safely away from your cheeks.