The Storm

by Arif Anwar

  “We’re fishermen, not fishwives,” Gauranga says. “Every word we hear on the boat we drown before we set foot on land.”

  Jamir’s desperation for a second opinion outweighs his mistrust, and he shares with the two men what he discovered in the hut a few weeks ago, though he omits Abbas’s assessment of the contents of the letter.

  “Well?” Jamir inquires when the two men exchange a look but produce no words, mortified to have potentially traded his secrets for naught.

  Gauranga sets down the bottle of tari. Jamir picks it up. “Let me ask you something, my son. What is it you wish to know most about me? I believe I have the answer, but I want to hear it from you.”

  Jamir’s principal curiosity about Gauranga has always revolved around the sailor’s missing eye. Unshackled somewhat by the drink, he requests the story behind it.

  Humayun chuckles. “Not that story again. Here, give me a sip. I need it.”

  He wrests the bottle from Jamir.

  Gauranga smiles. “I thought as much.” He flips his eye-patch to reveal a raw red socket housing the milky remains of his withered left eye. Jamir manages to not flinch.

  “Settle down, this will take some time.”

  As the older man begins his tale, Humayun passes the bottle to Jamir, who takes another gulp. Gauranga speaks loudly but slowly, in the cadence and diction of a wandering baul—a singer-storyteller.

  “I was seven years old when my father took me to the haat one day. His name was Ram, the same as the god-warrior. And like the god-warrior, he could be both benevolent and frightening, in turn.

  “But that day he just wanted to show me the fish he had caught. The big prizes from the sea that he had sold for a high price at the market. He would fish on a steamboat, its purpose identical to the one we are now on. But it was different in the way it ran.

  “It was a hot day in the month of Asharh. The rains from the previous night had left the ground squelchy with mud. The sun was hot even early in the day, and the air steamy and heavy. Nonetheless, I recall wanting to skip as we walked past the lime orchards. The fields of aubergines. My father was all mine. During the day, he was different from the man who would stagger home, as he did so many nights, his breath thick and rank with drink.

  “We arrived at the haat to find it swarming with people. As it should be on Sundays. My father’s catches were spread out evenly among the three biggest fishmongers, but Kartik’s shop had the pick of the lot, for he had the deepest pockets.

  “While my father and Kartik chatted, I gawked at the catches, told myself then and there that I would be a sea fisherman and not a river one. I could not imagine the depths of the rivers holding anything nearly as wondrous as what I saw before me—the giant morays with their snake-like snouts and evil eyes, the jagged-toothed reef sharks. I made my way to the prize of the lot—a giant stingray that hung from the lintel, its silvery gleam undimmed in death. It was not meant to sell for much, of course, as ray meat can be chewy and tough. Rather, it was there to draw attention to Kartik’s shop.

  “Kartik and my father were deep in discussion.

  “I put my face close to the ray’s leathery skin and saw that what I thought was pure silver was actually scored with a smaller repeating pattern of dark gray.

  “I gently touched the ray’s back, where it met the thick muscular base of the tail, just to feel the rough texture of the creature’s skin. It swayed in the breeze, the long, evil-looking stinger hanging just fingers above the ground.

  “I touched it once more.

  “The creature I thought dead spasmed as though I were God and my finger had given it life. The tail swung like a whip, too quick for me to jump out of the way. Agony more massive and cruel than anything I could imagine exploded on the left half of my face, and I fell to the ground shrieking.

  “There were no physicians at the haat to treat my wound, no kabiraj to put on a poultice and draw out the poison. So my father, Ram, ran back with me in his arms the three miles between our house and the haat, passing again the lemon orchards, the fields of aubergines. The sun burning on our faces. I was told later that I was unconscious as he carried me. Barely breathing. My eye was a crater from which a red river ran.

  “I burned with a vicious fever the next three days. My mother would tell me I was so hot that she could barely keep her hand on my forehead. My father chased down healers from all the nearby villages. My mother poured buckets of cold well-water on me. But it was not until the fourth day that I woke, my forehead cool and body limp, and asked my mother for rice porridge. Both my parents burst into tears of relief.

  “My father gave the biggest fish from his next catch to the kabiraj who ministered to me. Our neighbors came by to visit with the child who made a miraculous recovery after being struck by an undead demon from the deep seas. Kartik, the shop owner, brought with him the severed stinger of the ray to commemorate the nearly tragic event. This period of celebrity was short-lived. My mother concluded that my father’s carelessness had destroyed my future, that now I may as well join the beggar children before the temple who harried the steps of rich men.

  “My father did not respond to my mother’s haranguing. Rather, he focused on crafting for me an eye-patch made of string and bark from a palm tree. The stinger my mother fashioned into a pendant as a reminder for me to never again be so careless.

  “Following my injury, my eye had filmed over, withdrawn into its socket in the manner of a wounded animal slinking back to its cave. But I would come to know that it was far from dead. A miracle was taking place within its ravaged socket, where the ray’s venom had taken root, shooting forth enchanted tendrils into my gray matter, bonding to it through unknown alchemy and stoking within me some eldritch magic.

  “I first discovered my new powers when I moved my eye-patch over my good eye and tried to look out through the ruined one. I saw only a solid blackness at first, but over time light penetrated and changed into a world of shadows that sharpened over the weeks and months. As the light grew stronger, I began to see twisted shapes—boats that appeared bloated and trembling, tree branches that bloomed like veins, the sea like an inky mass crashing endlessly on platinum shores.

  “The greatest change was in people. When their backs were turned to me, I would quickly switch over my eye-patch and peruse them through my ruined eye.

  “In most cases I saw only misty contours. But around some people I saw a bright glow, a comforting, warm light. For others—shadows flaring out from behind like the wings of giant ravens.

  “I would follow these few strange souls and over time discover a pattern. The slow bovine son of the police daroga who bullied me had black wings. As did the evil old zamindar (thank goodness he has been replaced by Rahim Sahib), who would strut about on his horse. In contrast, the girl I played with, who sat at my door for three straight days while I burned from the stinger’s poison, was wrapped in light. As was my mother.

  “The ray’s blow had taken from my eye sharpness, farsightedness. But it was a trade, not a robbery. Because it gave me the Eye of Judgment in return.

  “My father could not look at my face anymore, perhaps because it reminded him that he was to blame for my state. But it made him less likely to beat me. At least for a while.

  “One night, months after my injury, he staggered home drunk and roaring, and saw that I had scrawled all over our rattan walls with a piece of chalk I had found outside a schoolhouse. Enraged, he slapped me until my lips bled and I was nearly unconscious. Mother screamed, asking him to stop. Please stop.

  “Later, he stumbled off to bed. I stayed in my mother’s lap. She tried to console me the best she could, cooing in my ear that my father had not meant it, that he would take me back to the haat the next day and buy me the most colorful kite they sold.

  “I only half-listened, switching over my eye-patch to see my father. To really see him as he slept with his back to us. I stared until my good eye ached and my mother’s tears mingled with mine, until the lamp’s fla
me died and the moon’s silver light replaced its gold.

  “But I never saw black wings emerge from my father’s back, nor saw an aura of light envelop him. He was just an ordinary man.

  “Other than the two of you, I’ve shared the secret of my eye with only one other—my wife (the same girl who cried at my doorsteps all those years before) on the night of our wedding. Making love for the first time emptied me as I had never imagined. When I climaxed inside her, at most a few minutes following my initial fumbling entrance, it loosened within me a torrent whose undertow pulled everything I had hidden in myself, including the story of my powers. So, as I lay in bed with her, soft and sated, I told her the story of my eye.

  “It was a mistake, for even as I spoke, I could see her transform, the expression on her face morphing from surprise to distrust to fear.

  “After she drifted off to sleep, I lay awake, convinced that my new bride thought me a madman. But a few days after, when a visitor came to ask permission to borrow my boat for the first time, she asked me if I had looked at the man with ‘the Eye.’ I gave her a stern look, unsure at first if she were mocking me. No, I told her. I did not see anything wrong in the fellow. But over the years, my eye has taught me that in this world the devils outnumber the angels.”

  THROUGHOUT Gauranga’s story, Jamir listens enchanted. As the boat sways gently and the low pinging of the engines subsides, the only sound is that of the water sloshing against the hull, the steady whooshing cadence of the men’s breaths.

  Gauranga recounts his story with his good eye closed. Upon finishing he turns its bleary regard to Jamir. “But you, my son. When I see you, I don’t just see an aura, but wings. Silver wings of light. You are a farishta, son. One of God’s own angels sent down to rescue us all.”

  Before Jamir can find words in response, Humayun’s booming laughter reverberates in the engine room.

  Humayun is not just laughing, but is doubled over and pounding the ground with his fists as tears leak from his eyes.

  “If . . . if you bought that, then I have a mermaid’s hand to give in marriage,” he wheezes. “I hope you don’t mind the fish smell.”

  Gauranga scowls, points to the stinger around Jamir’s neck. “You bastard. I carried it for fifty years until I lent it to Jamir.”

  “He cut it off a ray we caught a few years back,” Humayun explains. “As for his eye, he lost it drunk one night falling on a sharpened piece of bamboo. I was there. He was more worried about what his wife would say than the eye.”

  “Is this true?” Jamir asks, angry at being played a fool.

  “Pay him no mind, lad,” Gauranga says. “The point of the story is not whether I have the Eye of Judgment, rather that you don’t. We can’t have the measure of someone just from a look. Truth is a many-sided thing.”

  He lights a biri. After a few drags, he taps away ash and asks a question of such simplicity that Jamir cannot believe he has not already considered it.

  “How do you know the letter is hers?”

  “I found it in the hut. She is the only one of us who can read and write.”

  “That means little. She might have written the letter on behalf of someone else. She might have found it washed up in a bottle. I ask again, how do you know the letter is hers?”

  Unable to muster a reply, he sits silently in the gloom of the engine room. But for the first time, immersed in despair, he glimpses a ray of sunlight, a shimmering, wavering shaft a mile above that he can swim to.

  The letter is hers because Abbas told me so, he wants to tell the men. And I believe him, because . . .

  He does not complete the thought. He cannot. “It’s possible that I have been too quick to doubt her.”

  “The senses wander, and when you let your mind follow, you become as a windblown ship,” Gauranga says. “According to the Bhagavat Gita anyway.”

  He queries Humayun, who has leaned back against the wall and closed his eyes. “What does the Koran say?”

  “What makes you think I’d know?”

  Gauranga claps a hand on Jamir’s shoulder. “Wives are a tricky lot, lad. They’ll scream at you, make you feel lower than an ant when you come home and shrink your pecker like a turtle if they so wish. But in times of trouble you won’t find a faster and truer friend, one who will stand by your side no matter what storms may come. If you doubt your wife, go speak to her before acting rashly.”

  Humayun stands, stretches and heads for the exit. “For someone who claims to not be a fishwife, you sure talk like one.”

  After he leaves, Jamir says, “Thank you for your story. Was the part about your father at least true?”

  “Aye. I’m sorry to say.”

  “The memories of my own father are also painful. But in a way different than yours.”

  “Don’t feel obliged to tell your story because I’ve told you mine,” Gauranga says. Sitting on his haunches with his long arms splayed over his knees, he reminds Jamir of a large, benevolent bird. “But I’ve found in my life that the pain of the past can fester if left inside, poisoning your blood. A way to release it is by speaking of it.”

  Jamir takes a long sinful sip of the tari before he begins.

  “It all started with the woman.

  “The first time I saw her, I was helping my father with his boat, a beauty. Big, with a prow that reached for the skies. He said that it would be mine one day. Like yours, my father was a sea fisherman. But that was not enough in those days. So on Sundays he gave boat rides to the English soldiers and their wives that were there because of the war.

  “The first time I saw her was during one of those boat rides. She was driving on the beach with her friend. They were doctors or nurses at the British army hospital. I had not seen much of the English before, and I thought the women, with their exotic-colored eyes and hair, were so beautiful. The woman’s friend had dark hair, and she had little to say to either my father or me before lying down on the stern to take a nap. But the woman I speak of had red hair. That, combined with her fair skin, made it seem as though she was burning under the sun, a fire being—a djinn who’d stepped out of childhood stories and into my life. She was also much kinder than her friend. She spoke to me and my father as equals, offered me a flat slab of some dark sweet that I would learn later was called chocolate. I took it, of course.

  “A week after I met her, my father’s boat crew came to see my mother and told her that an extraordinary thing had happened. The Englishwoman came to see them while they were pulling the boats ashore for the coming storm and asked if they would take a Japanese man with them to Burma. A soldier. My father was reluctant, but the money offered was such that he couldn’t say no. So he divided half the money among the crew, and went alone to take the Japanese soldier to Burma.

  “A storm was forecast that day, and my father’s crew was worried for him, but they knew how good a sailor he was. We all had confidence that we would see our Hashim in a day, two at the most.

  “And so it was. We spent two fearful and sleepless nights waiting for him. A storm hit the coast while he was away. It spent its fury on our shores. But on the dawn of the second day, when one of my father’s crew finally saw his black sails in the distance, from the hills, he ran to our hut to tell us.

  “I ran out to the beach. My father was close enough by then that I could see him standing at the prow. We waved at each other. But then I saw for the first time the eyes etched on his boat, eyes that made it come to life. I could see writing there too, a script I’d never seen before. It filled me with fear.

  “And then I saw the man.

  “I drifted to a stop. He was tall and thin. A gora—an Englishman. He stood on the beach facing the sea. He wore a greatcoat. Its tails were dancing in the wind.

  “By then my father was very close. He’d jumped off the boat and was dragging it to shore. He had to have seen the man. But it gave him no pause. Perhaps he’d already resigned himself to trouble.

  “He stopped when close to the shore. His chest
was heaving. The thick boat rope was braced against his shoulder. The three of us formed a triangle—I was on the beach, the man at the edge of the water, and my father in it.

  “The man said something to my father. It sounded like a question.

  “My father nodded. Then the man shot him.

  “He fell slowly, to his knees, then face-first into the waters. Strangely enough, he still held the boat rope in his hand.

  “The gora said some words in English that I did not understand and walked away slowly, with a complete lack of guilt or fear. He was in no hurry because he had done nothing wrong.

  “I held my father’s head. I was small, and it filled most of my lap. He opened his eyes. There was still some light in them. He whispered something to me, but try as I might, I couldn’t hear his words over the crashing of the waves. Even though I bent my head so close to his that his lips were caressing my ears, I still could not hear.

  “I held him in my lap as the light fled his eyes.”

  Jamir stops to catch his breath. They fall into a long, contemplative silence that Gauranga eventually ends. “What a hard life you’ve led, my son. What a thing for a child to have witnessed. All along the coast fishermen have known the story of Hashim, yet all this while I never knew that he was your father. Did you ever find the man who shot him?”

  “No. I was too young to understand why my father was taken from me, just that he was taken. We did nothing because we were up against the English, who were more than men back then, more than kings, they were gods. And you did not battle the gods and win.

  “But I’d see that woman again. Late one night, a few days after my father’s death, there was a knock on our door. My mother was bedridden with grief. So I went out to see.

  “Her mouth, nose and red hair were disguised by the tagelmust wrapped around her face, but I recognized her green eyes. She held me to her for a little while, sobbing, whispering a stream of words in my ears. I recognized only my father’s name. Her tone was one of apology, remorse.

  “She released me, took out from her bag a silver flask that found a way to shine even in the dark, as though drawing the light of the stars to itself. It was heavy in my hands, cold like the night.