by Adib Khan
A young man stops next to the car and bangs the palms of his hands on the bonnet. ‘Down with capitalism!’ he yells. ‘Death to imperialism!’
‘That was intended for you,’ I tease.
Zia grips the steering wheel and looks straight ahead. ‘Why can’t they think of a few original slogans?’ he mutters.
I try to distract him by asking about the children, Omar and Afreen. Zia is a proud father. I recall two gangly teenagers, self-conscious about their dental braces, awkward in conversation. They’re adults now, I have to remind myself. I especially remember my nephew, Omar, with affection. We spent some fun-filled days together when Zia and his family visited Australia in the late eighties.
Omar had struck me then as a highly intelligent and gentle lad—curious, alert and astonishingly well read for his age. He was delighted with all things Australian, and fascinated by the bush and the diversity of the landscape. He’d loved the beach, and cricket at the MCG.
‘It must be a very just country,’ he said to me one day. ‘No one’s poor here.’
Perhaps I should have responded more truthfully. But, at the time, I was infected by his enthusiasm. I didn’t wish to tarnish my nephew’s illusions.
Then one morning, as we walked to the bakery to buy croissants, we came across an unkempt drunk, scrounging in a garbage bin. Omar stopped, as though mesmerised by the sight. He asked me to give the man some money. I refused. Without arguing, Omar took twenty dollars from his own wallet and handed it to the startled vagrant.
‘Can you not tell my father?’ Omar appealed. The money was a part of his holiday allowance. He was the recipient of regular lectures from Zia about the value of savings.
I nodded meekly.
Later that week, I took Omar to the movies and bought him a hardbound book, of his choice, on art. For a fortnight then, I was the indulgent uncle. Omar began to trust me, and sought my opinion on matters that might disturb a teenager.
‘How can I tell that what I do and think is right?’ he asked me one day, as we walked among the stalls in Victoria Market.
‘You have to trust yourself,’ I replied.
‘Would you trust me to trust myself?’
‘Absolutely.’
‘And if I make mistakes?’
‘Always leave plenty of room for those in life.’
‘That’s not how my father thinks.’
‘Why don’t you ask him if he’s never made a mistake?’
‘He doesn’t answer my questions the way you do.’
‘Still worth a try.’
Another day, I felt obliged to intervene in a protracted argument between Zia and Omar. My brother insisted that his son choose a professional career. Omar remained adamant about studying art.
Omar fell ill the day before the family was to travel to Queensland. I was on leave and offered to look after him. Reluctantly Zeenat agreed, after I promised to call her every day. Before the taxi arrived to take them to the airport, I was given a list of instructions.
It was a magical week without schedules or restrictions. We stayed in our pyjamas until around midday, ate junk food, played scrabble, watched daytime soapies, read short stories to each other, did no housework and lived in a state of carefree sloppiness. As equals.
When the others returned, bearing gifts, Zeenat was also carrying a mother’s guilt. But Omar soothed her. ‘Ma, staying here has been the best holiday I’ve had,’ he declared, opening his presents.
ZIA REMINDS ME that Afreen and her doctor husband have moved to Abu Dhabi.
‘They’re both doing very well,’ Zia says contentedly. ‘As a chartered accountant she earns more in the Middle East than Hafeez.’
‘I hope they’re happy.’
‘Of course they are! They have everything.’
Is that contentment? I remain quiet.
The traffic begins to move again.
‘And Omar?’ I know he went to a prestigious American university, did double degrees.
Zia grunts. ‘Did brilliantly in IT. He wasn’t keen on Business Management, but got himself a terrific job with a large company in Seattle. Then suddenly I had a letter saying he didn’t want to live in the States any more! I phoned him, but he’d already left…I didn’t hear from him for some time. I made arrangements to fly to America and see if I could pick up his tracks. Then, one evening, a phone call. He was travelling. He didn’t say where he was. But at least I knew he was safe.’
Why hadn’t I known all this? What kind of uncle was I, after all?
‘After that there were sporadic calls. Always brief and with the same message. He was well…’ Zia pauses. He looks reflective. ‘Omar landed back here after about ten months—with a wild idea about setting up his own textile business. He bought some land near Chittagong, because it was relatively cheap. Frankly, I was surprised by his enterprise. He organised a loan from one of the Middle Eastern banks, employed a draughtsman and, in no time, the construction of the factory had begun! It was almost as if a divine hand was behind his scheme. No delays or bureaucratic bungling…Most of the workers in his factory are Chakmas, Marma or Mru.’
I express my approval, knowing that the tribes from the Chittagong Hill Tracts regions are disadvantaged because of their ethnicity.
‘He’s coming to Dhaka in the next few days. Omar’s very fond of you.’
‘Feeling’s mutual.’
‘I don’t see much of him. He suddenly turns up for a few days and then leaves without telling me. I don’t know my own son! He’s changed so much.’
‘How?’
‘He’s much quieter. Always guarded about what he says. He’s relaxed only with his grandmother. He’s never got over Zeenat’s death—’ Zia changes tack abruptly. ‘And you? You never write about yourself.’
‘There’s nothing much to say. I don’t have an exciting life.’
‘How can you get so much holiday at any one time?’
I explain the principle of long-service leave. ‘I thought I might travel and see places I’ve never visited. I had to change a few plans after your letter.’
‘Ma kept nagging me to write to you,’ Zia says unapologetically. ‘She goes through these phases of periodic panic about the family. It’s to do with obsolete notions of togetherness and well-being. We’re a scattered lot these days. You’re in Australia. Cousins in Britain, Canada and the States. And she’s never reconciled herself to Nasreen’s divorce. Now there are other matters that concern her.’ He smiles wryly.
We’ve reached Banani, one of Dhaka’s most affluent suburbs. The signs of prosperity show only in the glimpses of the houses behind high walls and screened by mango, jackfruit and papaya trees. The streets themselves don’t indicate the people who live here, except by the new imported cars that negotiate their ways among cycle rickshaws, three-wheeled auto-rickshaws, trucks, carts, cows and stray dogs, bicycles and pedestrians.
Zia takes several turns. ‘I’ll make a slight detour,’ he says, ‘to show you the house I’m building for my retirement.’
We stop in front of a nearly completed mushroom-coloured two-storey building. There’s no sign of work in progress.
‘Nice place,’ I comment.
‘I’m waiting for some Italian tiles and indoor fittings. A young Bangali architect planned it for me,’ Zia says proudly. ‘He trained in Germany.’
Then we’re back on Kamal Ataturk Avenue, driving across the bridge over Lake Banani. The traffic congestion disappears. We turn past a suburban market and shopping centre. The road surface is without bumps and potholes, lined on either side with krishnachura trees. In the cooler months, the flaming red and yellow flowers would be like ruby-studded gold tiaras. There’s a scattering of imposing-looking houses, most of them recently built. The street ends abruptly ahead of us. And beyond, a vast field and the edge of the lake.
Zia stops the car. ‘Similar to what we once knew.’
Shards of childhood memories surface again. Sharp and brittle, like slivers of glass. I find mys
elf drifting once more, back to our family home. Wrestling with Zia and pelting him with guavas. Cricket matches played with tennis balls and twenty bricks to make up the numbers in our opposing teams. Arguments about who broke the window. Ma yelling at us as we splashed through water-logged fields and played in the mud.
I break out of the sanitised cocoon of the car by rolling down the window.
The open expanse of land is covered with wild grass and clusters of banyan trees. It breathes quietly, awakening remembrance of untroubled times. I grew up without any inkling of the potential for depravity in the human soul. Now I know that with each passing year, the mind can become darker and the past more tainted. The shadows of questionable deeds proliferate and threaten to occupy even those spaces where there are patches of sunlight. If there’s a way to escape the mishaps of youthful idealism and choice, then I’ve yet to discover it. I was twenty-one when the world I knew broke apart.
‘In five years, it’ll be gone.’ Zia sounds crestfallen. ‘Roads and electric poles. Houses. Shopping centres. More systematic wrecking of the environment. Our bungled attempts to fast forward further into the twentyfirst century.’
I find it strange that Zia should have such reservations. I thought he was in favour of the corporate ideals of progress—profitability and expansion in business opportunities. ‘The positive spin-offs of greed,’ he used to provoke me at university. ‘Something for you lefties to think about. Know your appetite for wealth!’
Perhaps I need to tackle the changes in people before I confront the foreignness of a city that I once called my own.
We’re in front of an ornate cast-iron gate. Beyond is a large double-storeyed house, its white walls gleaming in the sun. There are cars parked at an angle on either side of the entrance.
‘It’s warming to see everyone together once in a while.’ Zia senses my discomfort. He honks twice.
The boundary walls are draped with an array of purple, red and pink. But the bougainvilleas are a temporary distraction. I’m more fascinated by the height of the walls, by their crowns of iron spikes.
The gate is swung open by a uniformed darwan who salutes smartly when he sees that the master of the house is accompanied by a visitor.
Zia makes no move to drive the car through the gate. Instead, he turns to face me. ‘Be patient with Ma. She means well.’
FOUR
Family Matters
My mind spirals back to Richmond. To my modest home. The evenings spent in the quietness of my own company. Reading or watching television. Randomly passing through the early hours of night. If there are shadows from a distant life casting their darkness in the corners, then they’ve become unobtrusive enough to be ignored.
This here might as well be a landscape conjured up by an overworked imagination.
The euphoria over my homecoming is dissipated by my mother’s sudden fit of panic. Her voice becomes shrill. There are innuendoes and a barrage of criticism on filial negligence. Zia is targeted for special attention and castigated for his forgetfulness.
It’s not his fault, he protests feebly. Is it reasonable that he should be expected to remember every superstition that afflicts the family? Zia’s choice of words is injudicious. It’s like pouring ghee over a flickering flame.
‘Che! Che!’ Ma shrieks. ‘Superstititon? How can you be so irreverent?’ With a regal swish of her hand, she draws the aachol of her sari around her shoulders and over her head. She’s appalled by her oldest son’s casualness. Is she too demanding in asking us to observe venerated practices without contaminating them with our imported brand of cynicism? Is this what education has done to us? Why are her children such nastiks?
Ma turns to Nasreen. ‘My copy. It’s on my bedside table.’
My sister rushes inside to fetch the Koran.
‘Disbeliever!’ I hiss in my brother’s ear.
‘Infidel from the land of Iblis!’ he retorts.
‘Fuck off,’ I whisper.
I don’t realise that my niece, Yasmin, is hovering behind me. Her hand flies to her mouth. She stifles a giggle. ‘Nanu!’ she complains, clinging to her grandmother. ‘Uncle said a naughty word!’
‘That’s what happens when people live in Christian countries where they speak English,’ Zia explains loudly. He shakes with silent laughter.
Ma scowls at him and ignores me.
With her vitriol subsiding, Zia resorts to reassuring platitudes about the sincerity of his religious beliefs.
It’s imperative that I be zapped—de-Christianised, de-Westernised and redefined. But the issue is sensitive enough for Ma to refrain from stating her intention directly, in case I’m offended. My flaws, accumulated in an unfamiliar environment, have to be eradicated with a rarely enacted ritual.
I visualise being stripped bare and processed through a decontamination chamber to emerge as a cleansed entity.
I’m obliged to go out and re-enter the house; otherwise my return may bring misfortune to me and the rest of the family. I stand outside the entrance, barely controlling my impatience in the heat. Relatives gather at the door, curious about the furore.
This is huge entertainment for Zia. He winks his approval. ‘Patience! Welcome back from the wilderness to the true faith.’
With utmost solemnity, Ma holds up the Koran in both hands, muttering surahs. When she beckons, I walk under the Holy Book and step inside.
Instant purgation. My true identity is restored in the air-conditioned coolness of the foyer.
EAGERLY I SEEK my father, but he looks at me with vacant eyes.
Abba has lost weight and his entire body seems to have shrunk into a sack of loose bones. His shoulders are hunched and his face is creased and emaciated.
I bend down to touch his feet.
‘Do you remember Masud?’ Zia is gentle with him.
‘Masud?’
‘He’s your son.’
Abba looks stunned and turns to Zia. ‘You…my son?’
‘Yes, I am. But Masud is also your son.’
Abba’s face twitches with a nervous smile. Confusion makes him wring his hands. I’m another loose end in the wiring of his mind.
I feel inadequate and ill-equipped for this meeting. I didn’t know what might confront me, but I hadn’t expected such despair. In desperation I resort to the most mundane and predictable of questions. ‘How are you?’
He reaches out with his right hand and touches my face. His fingers tremble against my cheek. ‘Masud?’
‘He’s come to see you, all the way from Australia,’ Zia explains, patting his back.
‘Australia,’ Abba mumbles, his eyes fixed on my face. ‘My son! Australia?’
Before I can hug him, he turns around and shuffles away as though the confusion is too much to bear.
‘He’s a different person each day,’ Zia says. ‘We live in a perpetual state of adjustment.’
IN THE L-SHAPED lounge room are two large chandeliers and imported furniture. The walls are lined with handcrafted units crowded with bric-a-brac and family memorabilia.
There are sixteen of us for lunch. Fifteen family members—aunts, uncles, cousins, nephews and nieces—and a friend of Nasreen’s.
But before I can strike up any conversation, my mother calls us into the dining room. Ma stands at the head of the table and directs us to our chairs. She looks displeased when I swap places with my Aunt Salma so that I can be next to Nasreen. That must have upset Ma’s plans for the afternoon because she hastily rearranges other positions so that my sister’s friend is seated opposite us.
It’s like the days in our old home in suburban Dhanmondi, when celebratory lunches and dinners were ostentatious and timeless affairs. Pieces of antique French sterling-silver flatware gleam on a white damask tablecloth. Presumably they’ll remain untouched. We’ll be using our fingers, provided I take the initiative. Some time later in the afternoon, Ma will wipe the knives, spoons and forks with a piece of muslin before they’re returned to their velvet-lined oak cases and sto
red under her bed.
We’re to eat off plates which my grandfather bought at an auction in Kolkata, just before partition. ‘These graced Lord Curzon’s dining table,’ he had boasted, as though such distinguished ownership justified the price he paid for them. Originally, there were thirty-six plates. During the confusion of the Bangladesh War, fifteen disappeared.
The Bohemian crystal epergne, which once dominated the centre of our dining table, is missing here. I remember how it was always laden with seasonal fruits. Every morning, Ma would examine each piece for texture and colouring. Even the slightest hint of staleness or bruising meant the disposal of the offending item. We weren’t allowed to touch or eat the fruits displayed on the table. They were waxed and periodically sprinkled with cold water. Mangoes, lychees, guavas, papayas, custard apples and bananas—they were meant to be looked at and admired like art. By way of compensation, we had access to a large fruit-filled basket on a sideboard in the kitchen.
There are fewer servants now—Mirza, the cook, and Latif, a teenaged orphan from Manikpur. The food is rich and plentiful. Parathas, shami kebabs, pea pulau, mutton and chicken curries. A choice of sweetmeats and chilled sweet yoghurt. We eat with relish, in crosscurrents of noisy conversation and laughter.
But I want to talk privately to Nasreen. How is her new life—living in Zia’s house and working as a liaison officer in a bank? How well has she recovered from the traumas of divorce? It was a violent marriage. Our family did its best to smooth things over and pretend that her relationship with her husband, Hanif Akram, was improving. Then, late one night, Nasreen and her two children turned up at the front door of Zia’s house. Later Zia wrote to tell me that there were bruises on her face, and the children were clinging silently to their mother. Zia put the children to bed and then sat with Nasreen, administering an ice pack to the bruises. The next morning he told Ma that Nasreen would be seeking a divorce from Hanif.
I’ve had to imagine Ma’s reaction.
Now Nasreen smiles warmly and squeezes my arm. ‘I’m so glad you’re here.’