Tahmima Anam - The Bones of Grace

In the morning, after Nanu had fed us all breakfast and we went our separate ways, my mother back to Sirajganj to start another round of interviews, my father to the factory, I considered the failure of my search, casting my mind to the time my parents made the decision to adopt me. The country, at peace, must have been unsatisfying to my parents. They missed the people they had become when their names began with ‘Comrade’. Returned to ordinariness, they no longer hummed the protest songs as they fell asleep, now in unstrange places. Too quickly they forgot the tragedies of that hour, and what remained was a lingering sense of loss, because now they were citizens, and the business of citizenship was inferior by far to the business of revolution. What they wanted, more than anything, was an anchoring hope, and that anchoring hope was me.

And that is why I would never know who my mother was. They had destroyed the evidence and started a family in the new country.

I wandered around the city. I walked up road 27 and went into various shops, one displaying only black-and-white saris, another selling handicrafts, its walls decorated with rickshaw art. I bought a postcard. Elijah , I wrote, I will never know who my mother is . On an impulse, I took a rickshaw to the Dhanmondi Post Office and stood in line behind a string of men in identical pale-blue half-sleeve shirts and I wrote down your address and paid the severe woman behind the counter. Immediately I regretted it, wishing I could reach behind the metal grille and retrieve the postcard, but the lunchtime crowd swelled and I lost my will. Eventually, hunger drove me home, past the parliament building which sat like a giant grey crab on Manik Mia Avenue, past the planetarium and the tiny bookshop tucked behind the old airport, and finally into Banani, where I stopped at a cheap bakery to buy a chocolate Swiss roll that I knew would irritate Dolly. All the while I was thinking, my search is over. I was still the restless being I had always been, but now that I knew there was nothing left to discover, was the mystery greater, or did it shrink?

I could not decide this on my own. There was no one for me to ask, no one to tell me how to feel about this, the failure and resolution of my search, not my parents, not my husband, not the friends I had gathered over the years at home. I realised that I had spent much of my life parcelling myself out, giving a little to this person, a little to that, and there was no one to connect the dots, no one to understand the sum total of all the parts, the orphan, the scientist, the daughter of revolutionaries. Except you, of course. But, in spite, or perhaps because, of that, I had given you up.

I dialled Rubana’s number. I knew she would scold me for leaving the beach abruptly, but I suppose I wanted someone to tell me to follow through, to be better. She didn’t reply, so I sent her a text message, and about an hour later she called me back.

‘I’m filing a case with the High Court,’ she said, as if we had been cut off in mid-sentence. ‘I’ll be using your interviews.’

‘I thought they were just for the film.’

‘The case studies will make a difference. Put a human face to all the misery. You’ve done a good thing.’

A good thing. I thought about the way I had treated Mo. ‘Bilal told me you left,’ she said.

‘I’m sorry. I had some personal issues to deal with.’

‘I hope your mother doesn’t regret sending you to me.’ I heard a pause, then a clicking sound, as if she was pressing her lips together and separating them. ‘I’ve heard things, about an American boy.’

Of course Rubana would have heard. My face burned as I busied myself with a crease on my kameez.

‘You know I don’t really care about these things — your life is yours. But you can’t give people excuses for not taking you seriously.’

I felt guilty at the strength with which I wished this woman was my mother. I told myself it was time to stop doing this, a habit I had developed over the years — stop looking for her at every turn, imagining she was this person, or that. Strangers on the street. Women I had known my whole life.

As if she had read my mind, Rubana said, ‘You could go back and do a few more interviews.’

‘Thank you,’ I said, relieved. She was giving me a way out again, and I was taking it with both hands.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said to everyone. ‘Rubana needs me to finish some work.’

Rashid refused the tub of pistachio ice cream being passed around the table. ‘When will you be back?’ he asked.

‘My baby-babu misses his bride,’ Dolly said.

‘A few weeks.’ Under the table, I reached for his hand.

‘Can’t someone else do it?’ Dolly said. ‘It’s so sad when newlyweds have to be apart.’

‘Why don’t we all go down for a weekend?’ Bulbul said. ‘We haven’t been to the house in months.’

‘It’s going to rain the whole time. You’ll catch a cold. Rubana is really being unreasonable,’ Dolly said.

‘I’ve missed the Chittagong golf course,’ Bulbul said. ‘If we go down I can play a few rounds.’

Dolly plunged her spoon into the ice-cream tub. ‘That’s it. You’ll drag me all the way down there and disappear for the whole day.’

‘Weather is nice this time of year.’

‘No, it’s not. And Sigma and Pultu will be disappointed if we don’t invite them for lunch.’

‘Of course,’ Bulbul said, leaning back in his chair. ‘But Pultu can play a round with me and we can have lunch at the club.’

Dolly and Bulbul went back and forth a few times about whether they should fly or drive down to Chittagong, where they should have lunch, and Rashid excused himself, and we all dispersed before the tea trolley arrived. ‘You really have to go?’ he asked as soon as we had closed the bedroom door behind us. He pulled his phone out of his pocket, unrolled his shirtsleeves and threw himself down on the armchair.

Rashid had decided not to think about the depth of my entanglement with you, but simply about the fact that I had strayed, because it would then remain a problem to be solved. That had always been his way. And I knew that his main strategy was keeping me close, watching over me and treating me with great care, as if I had developed a hairline crack all across my body that would slowly heal, but only if my two halves remained pressed together for a long time.

‘You can come to Chittagong and visit, like your mother said.’

‘I wish you would call her Ammoo,’ he said, bringing up a conversation we’d had months ago, about what we would call each other’s parents once we were married. Rashid had slipped easily into calling my parents ‘Ammoo and Abboo’ after a lifetime of ‘Maya auntie and Joy uncle’, but I had been unable to make the transition.

I was in no mood to argue. ‘Like Ammoo said.’

He stood up, removed his watch, placed it carefully back in its case, and started to undress. ‘I need to get out of here,’ I said. ‘I feel like someone cut my anchor.’

He looked at me and I saw myself through his eyes, clouded and unreadable. ‘I don’t understand. You have everything in life. Everything.’

I wanted to tell him about the day before, about what my parents had told me, that I was giving up the search — I knew this would appease him — but instead I unbuttoned his shirt and let it fall to the ground, slipping my arms around him and stroking the ribbed cotton of his singlet. I raised my face to kiss him and he lowered his mouth towards me, but he stopped as our lips briefly touched, pushing my elbows away. ‘I can’t,’ he said. I nodded, stepping away, feeling rejected despite everything. He picked up his shirt from the floor and darted into the bathroom, and I cried while he brushed his teeth. When he came back he lay down on the bed and fell asleep quickly, letting me curl around his tense, bowed back.