by Adib Khan
‘Both have bloody histories.’
‘The trouble is no one has had the courage to openly declare that Christianity and Islam have a problem with each other. Goes back nearly a thousand years. It’s the longest surviving hidden agenda in human history: Islam has been the only serious rival of Christianity.’
My eyes stray to the bar.
Steven Mills.
He’s with another Westerner—a blond, thick-set man with closely cropped hair. Talking to them is a local who looks like a thoughtful academic stuck on an obtuse problem of some magnitude. The two foreigners listen attentively.
‘That’s Shabir Jamal,’ Zia tells me. ‘He’s a journalist.’
I am struck by the change in Mills’s demeanour. He looks serious and concerned about whatever he’s hearing. It’s a different image to the one I encountered on the plane.
Two men stroll up to our table. Zia greets them warmly. He introduces them as Sadiq and Irfan. No surnames. They’re businessmen from Pakistan.
Both look similar—tall and angular, with luxurious growths of moustache. They walk with measured steps and there’s a military stiffness in their manner. Warily, their eyes flit over me.
There’s some small talk, then Sadiq asks my brother, ‘Everything ready?’ His companion looks furtively around him.
‘Everything’s fine,’ Zia assures him. ‘I’ve cleared things with customs.’
‘Three boxes?’
‘Five. They’ll be on the plane day after tomorrow.’
‘Shabash Zia Bhai!’ Sadiq commends my brother.
‘How are things at your end?’
Sadiq nods guardedly. ‘Not easy, but we’re managing.’
‘They’ll take as much as we can provide!’ Irfan adds.
‘I can’t promise any more for the next couple of months. How are the border regions?’ Zia asks.
‘Nothing’s changed,’ Irfan replies uneasily, darting a suspicious look at me. ‘The mountains are a timeless harbour for safe shelter.’
Zia nods stiffly, looking puzzled by the relevance of the metaphor.
Suddenly I feel cold, as though I’ve opened the door of a house to an unexpected blast of icy wind.
They agree to meet for lunch the next day before the Pakistanis catch an afternoon flight for Karachi.
Unfinished business to be discussed, I guess. Perhaps in my absence Zia’s question about the area between Afghanistan and Pakistan will be answered in greater detail.
The two men leave as our food arrives.
‘What sort of business are they in?’ I ask, managing to make the words sound innocuous.
‘Pharmaceutical products. Let me order you another beer.’
‘What’re you sending them?’
‘Bandages, medical equipment. Sample medicine.’
‘Who for?’
‘There are people in the remote regions of Waziristan and all along the Afghanistan border. They’re badly caught up in the war. They need assistance.’
‘How can you be certain that what you send isn’t being siphoned off to the enemy?’
‘Who’s the enemy?’ Zia stabs a prawn with his fork without taking his eyes off me.
I’m the one who looks away.
Zia drinks thirstily and empties his glass. He dabs his mouth with a napkin and looks grimly at me. ‘It’s purely a business arrangement. I would like to think that the tribal people of Pakistan are being helped.’
My silence only provokes him.
‘Okay, I take an interest in what’s happening in that region. But I’m not an arms dealer! I know I’m not supposed to sell sample medicine, but what I’m supplying goes to help the injured,’ he says, sounding defensive. ‘Poor tribal people hurt and suffer as much as anyone else. To me, their lives are just as precious as those of Westerners. I give the money to an orphanage! But then, you don’t take an interest in politics or religion any more, do you?’
‘Not much.’
He looks at me sharply, as though surprised by the firmness in my voice. ‘Any further questions about the morality of what I’m doing?’
‘No.’
‘THERE’S FAZAL!’ Zia waves his arm until my longtime friend notices us.
There’s not only Fazal Ali, but Nizam Malik and Sami Huda as well. Close school friends with whom I also went to university. They fought in the Bangladesh War, and have prospered since liberation. In the fighting Fazal took a bullet through his right shoulder. The movement of his arm has been restricted ever since. Both Sami and Nizam were hit in the legs. In Nizam’s case, gangrene meant his left leg had to be amputated.
We kept in touch for a few years. Their letters cajoled me to return from Australia: they offered generous partnerships in their businesses, without investment of any of my capital. But I’m enjoying my academic studies in Melbourne, I wrote back. Perhaps in a few years…Gradually the correspondence became less frequent, and then inevitably ceased. Zia occasionally told me about them. They married, had children and continued to prosper. I couldn’t deny my envy at the predictable course of their lives.
Now the warmth of greeting melts away the years. And the talk is about our lives, our families, their work. I’m selective about my personal details. They don’t show even polite curiosity about my professional life—but then a librarian wouldn’t rate in their lucrative world.
‘Girlfriend?’ Nizam asks without inhibitions.
I smile. ‘Yes, but there are no further plans.’
‘Why not?’ Sami demands, with the bluntness of old ties. There was a time when we had no secrets from each other. Fazal and Nizam watch me closely.
‘That’s how it is.’
I often grapple with my feelings towards Amelia. We’ve had the conversations about love and commitment; about apathy and the stereotypical modern male. Tight-arsed. Narcissistic. Unwilling to accept responsibilities. ‘Inaccurate generalisations,’ I have protested weakly.
Where does she stand in my life? Amelia has asked me. The truth is, I don’t know. She remains confused when I withdraw to an inner sanctum where obligations and decisions are not required, where I’m silent and lost in a murky past which I don’t want her to share. If she decided not to see me again, I wonder how upset I would be. There would be quiet regret and self-recrimination. I can’t say how else I might react.
My friends are joking about fixing me up with an affluent Bangali widow with several children of her own. It’s an opportunity, they tease, to be a man of leisure, allow what’s left of my hair to grow and return to writing mediocre poetry about politics…
We don’t talk about 1971.
THE MEN’S TOILETS are at the end of a narrow corridor on one side of the bar. The urinals smell heavily of mothballs.
A hand taps me on the shoulder. ‘G’day, mate. Remember me?’
It’s Steven Mills and I’m not pleased to see him. But gone is the flippant larrikin. He seems subdued, perturbed even.
He looks at the white tiled wall in front of us. ‘Who’s that with you, mate?’
I resist the temptation to say that it’s none of his concern. ‘My brother.’
‘How much do you know about the two blokes who were speaking to him earlier?’
I shrug my shoulders.
‘Former members of Pakistan Army’s Inter-Services-Intelligence,’ he informs me. ‘Dubious allegiance.’
‘What kind of business are you in?’ I ask with renewed suspicion. ‘Why are you here?’
‘Earning an honest quid,’ he grins. ‘There’s a mortgage to be paid and a family to be fed. You know how it is. The good life mired in debt. Glad to be back?’
‘Yes.’
‘How long are you in the country?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ I don’t filter the irritation out of my voice.
He’s impervious to my hostility. ‘Take a piece of advice from a fellow Aussie, mate. Don’t get involved in anything you might regret later. You’ve a clean record. Keep it that way.’
‘It�
��s none of your affair what I do here!’ I explode.
‘Perhaps we can have a talk some time?’ He washes his hands, gives me a card and leaves.
‘What do you mean a clean record?’ I shout indignantly as the door shuts behind him.
I’m still fuming when I stride back to the table. Mills and his companions are nowhere to be seen.
My friends are arguing about the spate of recent bomb attacks in the city. Acceptance of this violence seems a condition of living in a politically uncertain country: rather than the gruesomeness of the destruction, it’s the possible motives and connections of the bombers that’s causing friction.
Zia and Sami are convinced that local and politically affiliated groups are responsible for communal instability and the disorder in the country, a drift towards anarchy.
Nizam is dismissive of their opinion. ‘Rubbish!’ he scorns. ‘Religious fundamentalists, with links to Al Qaeda, are the culprits! And they’re growing in alarming numbers. Take that fellow Bangla Bhai, for instance. He has openly told the press that he wants to form a Taliban-modelled religious government.’ Nizam turns to me. ‘We have a fairly liberal Bangla newspaper, Prothom Khobor. Its editorial once suggested that some madrassas are the training grounds for militants. Well! You should have seen the reaction! Protests and harassment of journalists, copies of the newspaper burned, demands that it be shut down.’
Fazal has been watching me with quiet amusement. He leans over and whispers. ‘We don’t discuss the arts or the stock market or the price of property any more.’
‘What’s the real cause of the violence?’ I ask.
‘It’s best not to worry about the growing confusion that grips us,’ Sami concludes. ‘Being Bangalis no longer gives us the same satisfaction of identity that we fought for. As a friend of mine said, “There are also Bangalis across the border in India. We owe a great deal of our culture to them. The main difference is that most of them are Hindus. We need something more distinctive and independent. Something to define the sui generis nature of our people.”’
The conversation peters out and we slouch in our chairs, bloated with beer and rich food, gulping mineral water. The silence contains more than irreconcilable differences. It seems that each of us has decided to erect barriers around those experiences that cannot be shared. But perhaps it’s my obsession with privacy that makes me think this way. Do my friends have unrealised dreams? Do they, too, have a past to hide? There’s something fake about our friendship now. A sense of hollow ritual.
A uniformed chauffeur appears and stands behind Fazal’s chair. He coughs politely.
‘Ah, Belal! Time to go home. My wife never forgets to send the car. What would I do without Rashida?’ Fazal clasps my shoulder. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing, old friend. You must marry! We’ll be in touch.’
Sami stands to go too, clicks his heels and salutes me.
‘Sometimes I wish we could go back to those exciting times!’ Nizam sighs, looking at me with glazed eyes, as though attempting to stoke my enthusiasm for experiences we once shared. Alcohol makes him maudlin. ‘We were responsible for changing our world. If nothing else, we had noble motives. Utopian dreams.’
He begins to sing the national anthem. Fazal and Sami help him lurch towards the door.
‘My golden Bengal, I love you,’ I murmur, more out of curiosity than patriotism. The words sound shallow and unfaithful, as if I’m a fickle lover.
Suddenly I remember Steven Mills. Tipsy, I tell Zia what he had said about Irfan and Sadiq.
‘An Australian! How interesting! “A clean record,”’ he muses. ‘Sounds like a stern headmaster. What did he say he was?’
‘A businessman.’
Zia throws back his head and laughs. ‘The world’s full of people disguised as businessmen.’
‘Well, I don’t think he’s one,’ I admit. ‘Who do you think he really is?’
His eyes widen in mock ignorance. ‘Someone whose business it is to be moral, to be on the side of a just cause.’
‘What about Irfan and Sadiq?’ I persist.
‘What they were previously doesn’t bother me. Ours is purely a small venture to help those in need,’ Zia insists.
‘Sending supplies that might reach terrorists?’
‘Don’t be paranoid! Stop looking at the world with Western lenses. Take them off! You might see and understand things differently. Try relating to the thinking that shapes what we are in this part of the world.’
I follow Zia to the car, troubled by the possibility that Steven Mills might know more about my brother than I do.
SEVEN
Strands
‘An idle kitchen indicates a dysfunctional household,’ my ailing grandfather would say. In his final months, as he withered away, food became his only consolation. He would sit in a wheelchair with his shoulders hunched forward, as though in anticipation of what he could eat on that day. To the alarm of the rest of the family, he eventually abandoned all restraint and embarked on a sustained bout of gluttony. ‘I intend to continue enjoying the gift of food Allah has bestowed on life,’ he once told my mother when she tried to caution him against overeating. ‘It’s the surest way to Paradise. “Oh Thou Merciful and Compassionate Allah, your true servant has never rejected your bountiful blessings. My faith in your generosity has never wavered.” Do you believe He will reject me after I say that to Him?’
This morning the pungent smell of freshly ground garlic, ginger, turmeric and cumin wafts through the dining room. I hear the grating noise of a heavy pestle crushing spices on a flat slab of stone mortar. Dada’s view about an active kitchen remains enshrined at the core of domesticity in our family.
Preparation for lunch and dinner has always begun as soon as the cook returns from shopping in the local bazaar. He then rattles off an account of how much has been spent on each item, with Ma checking the prices against a master list updated every week.
Today an argument flares after Mirza justifies the price hikes by reminding Ma of the devastating floods that crippled the country less than twelve months ago. Mirza squats on his haunches and produces the butt of a pencil from behind his right ear. This old custom too is still in place. To Ma’s annoyance, he wets the lead tip with his tongue. He consults a grease-stained notebook and ticks off each item of shopping.
‘Mirza, can you read and write?’ I ask.
‘Sometimes.’ He grins impishly.
‘When it suits him!’ Ma says impatiently. ‘Mirza, why are we paying so much for the bazaar every day?’
‘The shopkeepers want to make up their losses from last year,’ he explains phlegmatically, unruffled by Ma’s severe look and stern tone. He scrutinises the notebook again. ‘Begum Sahib, you owe me ten takas for the gorom moshla.’
‘You should go to several shops and compare the prices before buying!’
Mirza scratches his head as if in meek admonishment of Ma’s lack of logic. ‘But then I’ll be late with the bazaar and you will scold me.’
I wonder how much money Mirza has managed to scrape for himself today.
Mirza’s a survivor. He’s been here for four years, after Ma hired and fired eight cooks within a period of ten months. I understand why he hasn’t been dismissed. His protests are mild and he agrees obsequiously with most things that Ma says. It’s the sign of someone in surreptitious control. Mirza is tolerant of my mother, much in the same way as an adult might make allowance for a child’s petulant behaviour.
Ma ignores my request for plain toast. ‘I’m making your breakfast,’ she announces, heading into the kitchen.
I turn to Mirza. ‘How much money do you make on the bazaar every day?’
He looks offended. ‘Choto Babu, I’m an honest—’
‘Mirza!’
He scratches the back of his head and looks around furtively.
‘I won’t tell Ma.’
He grins apologetically, backs towards the door. ‘Choto Babu, just enough for my bidis, paan and afternoon te
a at the stall where servants from other houses meet. It’s my only entertainment.’
My sister joins me at the table. Freshly made parathas and a spicy omelette with chopped green chillies and diced red onions appear within minutes. Nasreen has dry toast and pineapple juice.
I’m on my second cup of tea when the phone rings. I can hear Ma’s voice, cautious at first, then syrupy and compliant. She calls out to me.
It’s Alya, inviting me to go to the village factory on Monday. It’s a convenient arrangement, we agree. While she checks the accounts, talks to the workers and takes stock of supplies, I can visit Uncle Musa.
The conversation lasts no more than a couple of minutes. Yet it’s enough to send Ma into a swoon of encouraging words.
I look pleadingly at Nasreen. She continues to file her nails.
Over the years, I’ve been tempted to tell Ma about Mrs Bennett. I must find out if Jane Austen has been translated into Bangla. I would like to advise my mother that I don’t possess the large fortune necessary to qualify me for that famous universal truth.
I can guess the way Ma’s mind is working. A whirlwind courtship is to be followed by a brief period of engagement and a grand wedding. It wouldn’t surprise me if she has already started preparing a guest list. I ignore her praise of Alya’s personal virtues and escape to the lounge to read the newspapers. But this only excites Ma’s attention.
‘There’s no need to be embarrassed,’ she coos, following me to the lounge. ‘Alya’s a fine person. Very caring and generous. She’s still capable of having children.’
‘Ma, I’m going with her to see her cottage-industry factory! It’ll also give me the chance to see Uncle Musa. That’s all I’m interested in.’
Distracted, Ma presses the palms of her hands against her cheeks. ‘May Allah forgive Musa Bhai for his sins.’
‘Allah allows him four marriages. As Uncle Musa says, he can marry once more before committing a sin.’
‘But that stupid girl is young enough to be his great-granddaughter!’ she protests. ‘What will people say?’
‘They’ll probably be envious of his virility.’