Leila

by Prayaag Akbar

  *

  After Papa died my mother seemed to search for something. Every Sunday she went to a neighbour’s house to listen to the sermons of a young man-god. She insisted on taking me. It was important we did this, she said, it would help us find peace. It wasn’t easy for her. Riz was there for me but she had no one. I could feel her sadness all the time, almost like an aura. Even when she was doing the things she loved, it remained, an invisible, impregnable coat.

  Sixteen or twenty people gathered in Mr Sharma’s living room. Incense sticks burning in bunches made a thin cedar smoke. Ma and I were each given a red, linen-bound prayer book and a string of rosary beads. This holy man was slender, even undernourished, with high cheekbones that made him look slightly surprised. He sat cross-legged on a low platform at the head of the room, dressed in a grey homespun robe, a solitary set of beads around his wrist.

  We followed the chanting with the group for twenty minutes, leafing through our books to find the right prayer. Then an apprentice came through the devotees. As the rest went on with their prayer he led Mummy and me into a small room, a guest bedroom, it looked like. When the apprentice left I begged my mother to turn around, walk out. Don’t worry so much, she said, Sanjana Auntie told me about this part. We waited, as instructed, on a long rubber mat at the foot of the bed. In a few minutes he came in. He looked even younger up close. The door was shut carefully after him by an unseen hand.

  As he lowered himself to sit cross-legged in front of us I could not help but wonder what kind of underwear he had on beneath his robe, if it was like the ordinary ones men wore or if the cowl, or his sainthood, demanded something else. He looked deep into my mother’s face, then he turned his gaze to me. His face seemed to narrow. ‘What took you so long?’ he asked. ‘I’ve waited for you your whole life.’

  I gaped at him, unsure what to say. Ma stared with equal surprise. Finally, she sputtered, ‘What do you mean?’

  He gave us a serene smile. ‘I’ve met you before,’ he said. Both of us shook our heads. ‘Tell me, do you travel a lot?’ he asked my mother. ‘Not now. When you were younger. When you just got married. Did you ever travel with your husband?’

  ‘Not that much, but we did travel, I suppose,’ my mother said. ‘My husband had a motorbike. We used to ride up to a nice spot in the mountains, spend a few days.’

  ‘I can see, now, that we met many years ago. It was a very hot place. No, not a hot place. A place that created heat. The air very cold but the ground warm. Have you ever been to a place like that?’

  ‘That could be anywhere,’ I said.

  ‘Your Papa and I did go once to a place like that,’ my mother responded. ‘To a village where there were hot springs. I’d completely forgotten. There was a young boy who took me right up, who showed me how to get to where the women were bathing. Was that you?’

  The man-god had a calm smile. ‘Indeed it was. I was an apprentice. My guru spent every summer in the springs. Did you know then that you were carrying this one?’

  ‘It might have been when we were carrying her, yes. I can’t be sure now. Maybe we had gone up to celebrate? But how could you have known, after so many years?’

  ‘I have to know. I knew then. I know now. I knew I’d see your daughter again.’

  Ma was ready to fall at his feet. It made me tremble too, the way he said that, such surety in his tone. But later I could see the clever trick he’d played on my mother, how the needed information was elicited.

  When Riz laughed at me for believing, I argued. Riz had read Dawkins in America. You weren’t there, you don’t know, I said. If you were there you’d have seen it for yourself. He took me into his arms. That’s the first thing everyone says, my beautiful girl. Should I believe the stories my mother tells me? Should I find you a sexy burqa? He laughed as I pounded him with my fists.

  *

  Dipanita is twenty-two minutes late. Her face shines from a moisture spritz. Her skin has changed, it’s noticeably lighter. The only badge of age is a tilak-like double wrinkle on her forehead. She looks so shiny, so fresh, which makes me think of finality, the roundness of each moment. This was it. My only chance. I will never look young as she does at thirty-three. She’s wearing a pale green sari, the blouse with a pumpkin-cut about her upper spine that displays a smooth white back. This is the first thing I say to her: ‘You’ve become so fair!’

  She stops where she is. For a few seconds she simply stares, eyes brimming. Behind her pastel lips a jumble of questions, then tears, hot on my shoulder. She is sobbing with such force that I start to cry too. An old couple gapes at us from an adjoining table.

  ‘How has it been – where did they take you?’ she asks. ‘You look … you look …’

  ‘Older?’ I venture, with a laugh.

  ‘No, no, you’re looking good,’ she says, turning away.

  ‘I know when you’re lying.’

  She wipes her eyes, her cheeks, nods quickly a few times, grips my shoulders and studies my face. She starts to smile. I feel immediately hot. Sometimes, when I look in the mirror, it seems like something vital has been drawn from me – a monster emerged from sleep and shadow and took to my breast and now I have begun to shrivel. I admit I do want sympathy. For her to grasp what I’ve been through. I remember a time being happy, for the most, about how I looked. Dipanita now is a reminder of the difference, the chasm between that old self and me. There have been moments when I forget, when I look up expectantly at an attractive man coming down the bus aisle. He walks by without a second look. I have this sudden urge to follow him, to whisper my real age, tell him I’m just like him. But I know now, from Dipanita’s reaction when she saw me. No one cares. Even she, who can guess what I’ve been through. I feel cheated. It never really matters what brought us here. It matters only in what state we reach.

  Dipanita releases my shoulders, though her eyes continue to cast about my face. ‘You’ve gone grey,’ she says finally, in a pragmatic tone. ‘And there are lines above your cheekbones. Other than that you’re looking good.’

  ‘You look just the same,’ I laugh. I put my arm against hers. ‘Except for this glowing new skin. Look. We’re almost the same colour now.’

  She gives a strained smile. Absently, pretending she doesn’t know what she’s doing, she takes the sleeve of my kameez between her fingers and rubs it a few times, feeling the rough cloth. After the waiter has taken our order I tell her about Camp. The journey straight from the party, shoulder to shoulder with the others on wooden benches in the back of a truck. The stench of sweat and clothes soaked in urine. Every second the truck placed a vaster blackness between Leila and me, every second the panic mounted.

  ‘They’ve made homes for them, Dipanita. Council schools. Hundreds of kids, no visitors. Where they learn only the Council’s rules.’

  ‘Can’t you do something?’ she asks. ‘Show them the paperwork?’

  ‘What can I do?’ I ask. ‘I have no papers. I’m all alone. Even Mummy is gone.’

  ‘I heard about that.’ A deep, hissing breath of regret. ‘I didn’t visit her, you know. After they took you. I’m so sorry.’

  ‘Sorry? Why?’

  ‘I should have helped. She was good to me.’

  ‘That’s okay,’ I say calmly. ‘How could you have helped her? You didn’t help me.’ She flinches as if I tried to hit her. ‘That night, I mean. Even later. None of you did. Why would you help my mum?’

  She looks down at her lap. Still looking down, in a low voice she says, ‘What could we do? There were so many of them. You think we didn’t try? That summer was crazy. No one knew what to do. Who to call.’

  ‘In your letter you said you spoke to the girls. What did you mean? Were you able to think of something?’

  ‘I did, I spoke to everyone. Talked to Atul also, after he calmed down. He was so angry that I spoke to you on the phone. That’s how difficult it is now. No one can do anything. These people, they’re running things in this way. We have to accept it. For the childr
en, for our own sake. We can’t take risks. Not after what happened to you.’

  The small flame that had been trembling inside me since her letter goes immediately dark. ‘Do you know what happened to my mother?’

  ‘I don’t know. I don’t want to say. There were stories going about.’

  ‘Tell me.’

  ‘You remember Rasika? That girl from the Arora sector? She says Auntie took pills one night. Too many pills.’

  If I suspected this I had never dared neaten the thought. A flash of her sitting upright in bed, eyes shut, white lips and blue skin. Maybe she blamed herself for leaving her granddaughter’s birthday party when she did. But I told you to go, Ma. We were going to drink and dance as the kids slept upstairs. There was nothing for you, I told you to leave. Dipanita pours me a glass of water. ‘Don’t mind,’ she whispers. ‘Don’t mind. That awful woman has nothing but gossip.’

  I take a long draught, my eyes closed. This image of my mother is hard to evict. The coffee arrives. After the waiter has departed, I say, softer, ‘I needed her when I came back.’

  ‘What’s that?’ Dipanita says. ‘I can’t hear you.’

  ‘My mother,’ I say. ‘She couldn’t last. Not even the months I was in Purity Camp. I’d never do that to Leila. I can wait forever. I’m going to find her, you know. She needs me. I’m going to find her and be with her.’

  ‘How?’

  ‘I need you to tell me something. Promise me you’ll tell the truth.’

  ‘Of course I will. How can you ask that?’

  ‘Does he have her? Naz?’

  ‘Naz?’

  ‘Did he take her? I know he called the Repeaters.’ Dipanita rocks back in her chair in surprise. ‘I just know it. I tried many times when I got out. He refused to take my call. I went to see him but the guards at the gate wouldn’t let me in without a letter. He feels guilty, I know it. He’d become obsessed with the family property. Do you ever see him?’

  ‘Here and there. Not really. He’s become pretty political. He’s a big guy now. I heard he took possession of your flat in the East End and sold it within the year. Atul told me once that Naz made your father-in-law sign over everything. He’s something in the Council, too, now, a representative of some sort.’

  A surge of anger. I realise moments later who I am angry at. Riz’s carefree face hangs before me. How he misread his brother.

  ‘Does he have her? Do you know anything?’

  ‘She isn’t with Naz, Shalini. How would he have her? I know he has two sons. I’ve met them. They look just like him. Just like Riz. They haven’t got Leila.’

  ‘There’s another possibility. I heard one of the Repeaters at the party, just before they dragged me away. I keep going back to what he said.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘One of the young guys. He came running to the leader. Told them Leila wasn’t in the house. That Sapna, our maid, wasn’t there. What could that mean?’

  ‘There was so much commotion. They brought the kids down, made us all leave. But that leader guy was very angry. Kept shouting into his phone. Kept sending men upstairs to look for something.’

  ‘Do you think … they didn’t find her? That Leila managed to hide?’

  ‘My kids were fast asleep. They don’t remember anything. Where could Leila have hidden? They turned that place upside down. Where could she have gone?’

  I take a deep breath, closing my eyes. If Naz does not have her and the Council could not find her, there is only one other possibility, a single road to my daughter. Noises from a construction site carry softly to us. The drone of metal sawing stone. A series of hammer strikes, seven or eight in a row, the gap between them suggesting the hammer’s great weight. The sizzle of welding torch on steel. The sounds cycling, as if one person moves between each task. ‘I heard something else,’ I say, my eyes still closed.

  ‘Yeah?’

  ‘That Repeater, telling his boss. He said the brother sent a photo to them. Of us. Of Leila.’

  ‘The brother?’

  ‘That’s why I think it was Naz. Unless it was some kind of code, some designation they had? But why would they? It had to be him.’

  ‘My god,’ Dipanita says. Her hand goes slowly to her heart, as if I’ve paused its beating. ‘Are you sure?’

  I feel blood rush to my face, hear it swirling in my ears. ‘Sure! You think I’m sure of anything now? Nothing makes sense. Everything I think back to, everything is so vague. Like some black dream. Sometimes things happened one way, sometimes another. I wake up in the morning and I’m not sure the day before was real.’

  ‘It would explain what happened to their family.’ She raises her right hand to her face, each finger curled back at the first joint. There is an oval ring on her third finger with a portrait of a man-god against a black background. ‘God was punishing him,’ she says, and in a smooth, practised motion puts the ring to her chin, lips, nose and forehead.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘It was really very sad. It even made the news for a couple of days.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘When Riz’s dad died, they buried him in the family graveyard. The family was Barelvi, I think? But the priests, some local leader, someone said that he wasn’t from their zaat, their biraadiri.’

  ‘Yeah, they were Barelvi. So what happened?’

  ‘Naz was new to the Council then. Atul says he let them do it, refused to object because it might lose him the vote. But maybe he couldn’t have done anything. You know what it’s like when these people get their fire up.’

  ‘I don’t understand, what did they do?’

  ‘They dug him up one night. Can you believe that? Accused him of all kinds of things. Worshipping in temples. Said he didn’t care for their zaat. That his family broke the rules. They dug him up. Sent the body back to the house in an ambulance one night.’

  I can’t bear to listen. Shame curls into me. It feels like we’ve let him down. Riz’s father was so proud, a tall, stern man, much darker than his sons, with a sweep of white hair old age had not breached and a tiny flap of umber skin dangling from the outside of his right pinkie. Abbu refused to have this removed, he called it his lucky sixth finger. Things got so bad between Riz and his father after we moved away that in the last years they didn’t speak at all. But Abbu had never kicked up the fuss he could have. He would quietly send money for Riz’s business. Maybe that’s why Naz was so worried. He could see Abbu still loved Riz.

  ‘He was always so dignified. So commanding. All his life. I can’t believe they would do that.’

  The waiter is back, asking for a selection. Every item on the menu is written in light green. On the top right corner of each page are three Purity Stars. I decline another coffee.

  ‘How is Atul? I’ve brought something for the kids.’

  ‘What was the need, Shal? Really. They’re so spoilt already.’

  No one has called me Shal for a long time. It feels comfortable, though also strange. I hand her the polythene bag with the gifts. At the corners of her lips a gloat flickers. Look at these offerings. Or is it a different smile? Satisfied. She is the successful protector, her nest undisturbed. Dipanita hoists the plastic bag onto her lap and pulls the cricket bat out.

  ‘Anshu loves cricket,’ she says. ‘He’ll like this. I keep telling him there’s no point.’

  ‘No point?’

  ‘No one from here makes it to the team. Everyone knows. The selectors have routes. They know who has the best fast bowlers, which communities produce the batsmen, best fielders. Atul tells him the same thing. He has to concentrate on his studies.’

  She extracts the pink box from the plastic bag and turns it over in her hands, eyes widening at the woman on the flap. ‘This I can’t give.’ She looks up. ‘Pari isn’t this type of girl. Her father would never let her use it.’

  ‘Type of girl? Come on. We had nail polish at her age.’

  ‘You don’t know how important it is now. We have to bring g
irls up the right way. That’s the main thing. Everyone is watching. Comparing. Until a good man takes her away we have to be careful.’

  ‘Careful how?’

  ‘Can you blame us? Look what they did to you.’

  ‘Ah. That was my fault, was it?’

  Her face is wide with guilt. ‘Shalini. You know that’s not what I’m saying.’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Atul tells me all the time. That’s why I couldn’t call you home. Community is the most important thing nowadays. Those fancy ideas we had as children, of love and pleasure, adventure, those are bad words now.’ Her arms, crossed next to her coffee cup, are trembling, rattling the table delicately. ‘We can’t bring our children up like that. We have to be careful what the neighbours think. Meeting you was risk enough. That’s why no one would come today, not one of the gang. We aren’t allowed to meet Tower people, you know. It’s too much risk. I just can’t. I won’t bring any risk to my kids.’

  Something that she said earlier, something I must ask about. The guitar trio approaches. The man with the guitarron is grinning at me, the swollen back of the instrument bouncing against his hip as he walks, gums stained with ringworms of paan juice. On the front pocket of his uniform ‘No Tips Please’ has been embroidered. Dipanita sticks an angry arm out and waves the troupe away.

  ‘There is one thing I want you to do for me, Dips. Don’t worry, it’s not so bad. I want you to get in touch with Naz.’

  ‘I haven’t spoken to him in years, Shal. I can’t just contact him. Things aren’t the same. That kind of thing doesn’t fly any more.’

  ‘Then get in touch with Gazala. That might be better, actually. She’s a mother. Maybe she will feel something.’