Spiral Road

by Adib Khan

  ‘But why did he invest so heavily in the company? Did you caution him against it?’

  ‘Has he ever taken anyone’s advice?’

  ‘What did he have to say about losing all that money?’

  ‘He seemed strangely unaffected by it. He said something about having had greater disappointments in his life.’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘He didn’t say.’

  In my mind I walk along the side of the narrow street in Dhanmondi. I can recall every building, and most of the neighbours, in minute detail. Ours was the oldest and the ugliest residence, built on a large block of land. It was a double-storeyed house, lime-washed outside and scarred by furry growths of algae.

  ‘Is the owner living in the house?’ I’ve already made up my mind about visiting the suburb.

  ‘I don’t know. There’s no reason to be in contact with him. I haven’t passed that way since the day the house was sold.’

  We talk about the disposal of the family’s other properties around the city and what can be done with the land and the remains of the ancestral house in Manikpur, abandoned and ruined as it is.

  ‘What’s the trouble with Uncle Musa?’ I ask.

  Zia looks disgusted. ‘He wants to marry again.’

  ‘But he’s almost ninety!’

  ‘And the girl he has in mind is no more than seventeen!’

  ‘Have you tried to talk him out of it?’

  Zia says he’s made several trips to the village. Unable to reason with the old man on the last visit, Zia lost his temper. There was, it seems, an exchange of acrimonious words. Secrets, wrongdoings and accusations of moral shoddiness had spilled into the open. The old man claimed that he had only been married thrice and it was his privilege, under Islamic laws, to marry once more. Zia confesses now that he stormed off after Uncle Musa ordered him out of the house, forbidding him to return if he didn’t change his ways and demonstrate more respect for the oldest living member of the family. What has complicated the situation even further is the girl’s reported willingness to marry the village patriarch.

  ‘I wonder what else she’s been offered!’ Zia gets up and paces the length of the balcony. ‘I can only guess that he’s tempted her with money and whatever he’s got left of the family jewellery!’

  ‘Did you speak to the girl’s father?’

  ‘I couldn’t find him. Every time I tried, he was away visiting relatives or wasn’t well.’

  ‘She’s probably been intimidated into agreeing.’

  Zia slumps into the chair and picks up the binoculars again. ‘Or she’s willing to sacrifice a few years of her youth so that she may become rich. She’s hopeful! It’s your turn to talk to Uncle Musa. We have to stop the marriage and get him back here!’

  I’m dismayed at the prospect of trying to convince Uncle Musa, for the family’s sake, to acknowledge the limitations of old age, and to adopt a code of behaviour that he’s always spurned.

  ‘I doubt if I can do any more than you have.’ Stubbornness is the old man’s enduring and defining trait, and secretly I can’t help wishing his inflexibility hasn’t weakened.

  ‘Do whatever you can.’ Zia sounds tired. ‘I’ve done my bit and had abuse flung at me. Familial obligations, remember? It’s your turn. Be firm!’

  The logistics of shifting Uncle Musa would be formidable. From what I’ve gathered, his house was built by a team of workers specially taken to the village from Dhaka. The cost of the new place was frightful. There were extravagances, like solid teak doors and window frames, marble floors and a large, artificially created fish pond in the back yard. A special orchard of fruit trees went in. Peaches, plums and nectarines couldn’t possibly prosper in the local climate.

  From what Zia tells me, there won’t be many offers to buy Uncle Musa’s house. Even if it were sold, finding him a similar place within the same price range in the city would be nearly impossible.

  ‘I’ve spoken to Alya about this,’ Zia says slowly, as though raising a fanciful idea. ‘She wants to set up a school in the village for the children of the workers she employs. She may be interested in buying the house—There!’ he suddenly calls out.

  ‘What?’

  He hands me the binoculars and points to his right. I have to adjust the vision. A heron flies across the flat land. A woman with a basket walks towards us. Trees and grass. I spot several grazing goats.

  ‘Do you see it?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Further to your right. Not that far!’

  ‘The bulldozer?’

  ‘Yes.’

  I lower the binoculars. ‘Apartments and shopping centres?’

  ‘Fast-food outlets. Spicy hamburgers and chilli pizzas. Exclusive shops that stock only designer label clothes from Japan and Italy. More exposure to consumer commodities.’ The resentment in Zia’s voice surprises me.

  Gazing over the rural stretch here, it’s hard to believe that this is such an overcrowded city. ‘Sometimes I wonder how it might have been if I had stayed in Manikpur and lived off the land.’

  ‘Without the kind of education we had, it might have been possible.’ Zia turns to look at me. ‘Do you realise that somewhere, thousands of kilometres beyond all that, there are wars? That the world is once again a prey to the greed of the West?’

  I’m disturbed by the sound of the clicking prayer beads.

  ‘I don’t think about wars now,’ I say truthfully. ‘And I mostly avoid the media coverage.’

  ‘Well!’ Zia retorts. ‘Unlike you, I don’t choose to live in a state of sublime indifference.’

  ‘I don’t want to be dragged, again, into a condition of moral fatigue.’

  I’VE ALWAYS ASSOCIATED Zia with a degree of detachment, even selfishness, in political matters. Towards the end of 1970, the military government of Yayha Khan awarded my brother a scholarship to study medicine in the United States. At the time, Zia staunchly supported the junta for maintaining the rule of law in the country. We argued. I said that this ‘rule of law’ was imposed with guns and tanks, by choking free speech and throwing people into prison for having the guts to criticise the army. But Zia remained complacent, as if his views were grounded in a form of political absolutism. He made no effort to hide his disapproval of my activities at the university.

  When the revolutionary movement swept across the land with the suddenness and intensity of a wildfire, Zia warned me against addressing political rallies to demand changes and promote the cause of Bangali nationalism. He advised me not to take sides. ‘Wait until you know who the winner is. More than likely, it will be the army. Then declare your loyalties and grab the opportunities.’

  I accused him of being unscrupulous in his advice. Zia didn’t speak to me for several weeks.

  The resistance gathered momentum. By the middle of August 1971, Zia was preparing to leave the country. I had gone into hiding in March that year, my name on a list of people the army wanted to track down. I was classified as a left-wing student, a miscreant who agitated against martial law and the college of generals governing the nation—a troublemaker who posed a security risk to the integrity of Pakistan. Someone to be eliminated.

  Late one night, I slipped into our house after scaling the backyard wall. My parents were delighted and relieved to see me. Ma immediately went to the kitchen to warm some food. Zia was busy packing.

  ‘We’ve suffered a great deal of harassment because of you,’ my brother said bluntly. ‘The Intelligence people have been here making inquiries. The army took Abba for questioning. They all want to know where you are.’

  It was a short visit. I offered the excuse that I didn’t want to keep a friend waiting, and promised to be in touch more regularly. ‘I can’t tell you where I’m living, but I’m safe,’ I said with exaggerated confidence.

  As I stole away in the darkness, a siren sounded—the beginning of the night’s curfew. There was sporadic gunfire. I could hear the rumbling of army trucks on the main roads. Except for stray dogs scave
nging for food, the streets were deserted. I didn’t know if I would see my family again.

  I thought of Zia and the different ways in which we were headed. He was boarding a plane for Karachi the next day, en route to London. He was to stay there with relatives until it was time to leave for the States. Meanwhile, I would be on my way to Jessore to cross the border into India. Destination, Kolkata—

  A crash course in guerrilla warfare. And then back into the occupied territory for adventure, heroism and liberation. The inception of a new country was our goal, and we disregarded the prospect of injury or death. But I didn’t know about the enemies who come back inside every fighter. Those invisible forces that slowly disassemble you.

  IN THE SILENCE there’s now another kind of distance between my brother and me. It’s not ideological difference that separates us. The gulf is created by what Zia chooses not to reveal. I can feel it.

  ‘You haven’t told me everything I should know.’

  ‘No more than what you’ve kept from me,’ he responds. ‘After the war Nasreen wrote to me—about how much the experience had changed you. I didn’t believe her until I met you again, all those years later. And yet you still never speak of what happened.’

  There’s a mosque somewhere behind the house. The muezzin’s call for mogrib prayers adds to the melancholy of the gathering darkness.

  ‘Allah is great!’ the muezzin intones.

  And mysterious, I think. Like the night girdled with unanswerable questions. Whatever one cannot clearly envisage grows in stature and assumes an awesome dimension.

  ‘La eh la ha illilah! Mohammad-e-Rasul Allah…’

  The voice touches me with its conviction and the simplicity of what it preaches. But unquestioning submission to an omnipotent God is beyond my capability. I wish I had the gift of religious faith. Sometimes I long to believe in a structured universe designed purposefully for mankind.

  ‘It’s time for prayers.’

  What am I to make of this? ‘You know I don’t pray.’

  ‘You could try it some time.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Self-awareness. Comfort. Your place in the scheme of things. It doesn’t happen overnight. But gradually prayers teach you to be more accepting of the harsher aspects of life. Of what cannot be achieved. You learn that no one’s immune to adversity.’

  ‘I didn’t expect you to have changed so much. I would have preferred the old, adversarial you.’

  ‘Genuine change is often unintentional. It happens from within.’

  Yes, belief stimulates monumental achievements—and it’s the supreme catalyst of the world’s troubles.

  ‘Do you pray regularly?’ I ask.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘When did that begin?’

  ‘After Zeenat passed away.’

  ‘With what happened at the front door, I thought…’

  ‘That had nothing to do with my beliefs.’

  ‘Have you stopped drinking alcohol?’

  Zia shifts uncomfortably in his chair. ‘No.’ He clicks the prayer beads more energetically.

  ‘Then what’s with the show of piety?’

  ‘If you let religion become unaccommodating, it will turn you into a fanatic.’

  ‘Manipulate religion or it will use you, eh? The argument of a hypocrite.’

  Zia smiles tolerantly.

  There’s buzzing near my ears.

  Zia makes a move to go inside. ‘The mosquitoes are never late.’

  The muezzin’s voice caresses the evening once again.

  For an instant I’m duped into believing that the world is sane and orderly.

  SIX

  Views So Different

  With foresight, Zia tells me on the way to Dhaka Club, I can shape my future in any way I choose. There’s a fortune to be made in the garment industry. I’m advised to ponder the benefits of entrepreneurial initiative. Age is not a valid excuse for neglecting the opportunities of a new beginning—and behold! Zia turns even the limitations of a developing nation into a landscape of dazzling possibilities. Servants, luxury house, resplendent with imported furniture, works of art and electrical gadgets, cars, overseas holidays, investments, an ever swelling bank account. Unlimited success. Power. New friends. Even a future in politics. Above everything else, the supreme advantage of returning home.

  What else could I possibly demand from life?

  Gregorian chants, mantras, solitude and the time to plant trees? Equilibrium? But I remain quiet.

  We have to satiate the wanderlust in our younger days, the sage continues. See and seek. Try to define ourselves by what we can never be. But ultimately the emotional and ethical components of a personality mature to integrate into a unified whole. When the final image of identity crystallises into its definitive shape, then it’s time to find a place in an indigenous context. Don’t I feel lost? Have I not been uprooted? Am I not struggling against a tide that flows towards my native homeland?

  It’s the direct approach. Brotherly advice under the umbrella of family rights. My privacy and individual prerogatives are being torn down without compunction.

  I manage to say something about a self-perpetuating tolerance towards my own cultural hybridity. It’s the dread of uncertainties and the fear of further changes that prevent me from undertaking another dislocation. There are occasions when I travel great distances on the highways of the mind, seeking the familiarity of a reshaped past where certain events never happened. Armchair adjustment of reality is effortless and without backlash. It’s easy on the heart and mind. A suitable compromise to my brother’s proposal.

  ‘That’s a cowardly way of looking at it! Do nothing. Tiptoe into old age and then fade away!’ Zia slams his foot on the brake. The car squeals to a stop, centimetres from the rear end of an auto-rickshaw that has suddenly cut across the road in front of us. I make out as if it would have been my brother’s fault had there been an accident. I ask him to stop talking and focus on the road ahead.

  The night air is thick with smoke and fumes. There’s ceaseless movement of people on the road and the footpaths. The traffic is as debilitating as a clogged artery. The heavy rumble of trucks and the metallic noise of auto-rickshaws—all this sound is relentless. We inch forward in the snarl.

  A Hindi song from one of Bollywood’s celluloid nightmares blares from a roadside food stall. Between the vehicles agile boys weave, plying their wares for sale. We are offered muri and spiced peanuts, plastic toys and biros. One small fellow pushes the palm of his hand against my window. From my side, I slap a high five. He looks bemused and then breaks into a toothless grin.

  ‘Don’t encourage them!’ Zia snaps. ‘I can’t understand why you lack ambition!’

  Garish neon signs flicker seductive messages of consumerism to uninterested pedestrians. Someone has damaged an IBM sign next to the brightly lit billboard espousing the virtues of flying with a popular Middle Eastern airline—the model aircraft has been forcibly tilted, so that it appears to be nosediving into the defaced cardboard computer.

  Just up ahead, a truck has broken down. We grind to a stop in a line of cars. A policeman waves a torch and begins to direct the traffic along a single lane of the road. Someone in front of us yells abuse through a car window. Another policeman blows a whistle and stops the vehicle.

  ‘The police here are extremely sensitive during the day to accusations of corruption,’ Zia says. ‘But at night…That poor man will pay heavily for his indiscretion. The free market economy thrives after dark.’

  Angry voices. Several cars rev their engines, adding to the din. A pushcart, piled high with furniture, clatters past us.

  I feel powerless, boxed in the stationary car.

  After nearly twenty minutes, we begin to move again. Boldly, Zia threads the car through the seething streets to Dhaka Club. I’m sweaty and palpitating when we get there.

  ‘Not much point in arriving here after midnight.’ Zia is unmoved by the ordeal.

  The club rooms are dismal.
Tacky furniture and poor lighting. But there’s a feverish energy in the dining area, as though matters of political urgency are being loudly discussed over sumptuous meals. Everywhere middle-aged men are eating and drinking. The bar is well stocked and business is brisk. We hear raucous laughter and high-pitched arguments.

  An unfamiliar face, I’m scrutinised.

  I have memories of a less frenetic atmosphere in the club. The swimming pool was rarely crowded and, during the afternoon, the main club room was a regular sanctuary for privileged teenagers mimicking adult behaviour. No one ever told us the limits of how much we could eat or how much we could spend. The families picked up the tabs without admonishment. This was the network of the younger generation of powerful people—conceited, wasteful, and aspiring towards executive positions in the world of our elders.

  Zia waves to several men eating mutton biryani. I order a beer as we scan the menu. We order chicken tikka, prawn dopiazza, pea pulau and naan.

  ‘This is where we solve the problems of the world,’ Zia declares. ‘The Taliban either disappear or become reasonable; suited politicians develop a social conscience; Israel and Palestine sort themselves out. A form of global egalitarianism is usually in place by midnight, before most of us stagger out to our cars. Then it’s home to our wives, children and debts.’

  ‘The unseating of imperialism brought about by altruistic vision, plans of noble deeds and gluttony.’

  ‘Great dreams need to be nourished.’

  I’m reluctant to shake off a belief that some form of genuine idealism about humanity pervades all the arguments about a better world, that such talk is not merely a maze of words to hide the discrepancy between intention and achievement.

  ‘Has your thinking changed much since the attack on New York?’ Zia leans forward, his elbows resting on the table. ‘I don’t just mean because of what happened there, but the whole business of the West and the Islamic world—the entrenched attitudes that have surfaced. There’s a great deal of piled-up antagonism on both sides, regardless of what some politicians say, don’t you think?’