by Tahmima Anam
When Sohail and Maya returned, they were mute, their faces lined with ash. The story of the night unfolded slowly. First, Mujib had been arrested and flown to West Pakistan. The army had started its attack at the university, demolishing the dormitories and The Madhu Canteen. On their way to the old town, the tanks had bulldozed the slums that clung to each side of the Phulbaria rail track; they needed that rail line to get across the city, so they had swiped their guns through the cardboard and tin shacks, the flimsy homes held together with glue and cinema posters. And then they had gone into the Hindu neighbourhoods on jeeps because their tanks were too wide for the narrow lanes, and mounted on their jeeps they had fired through shutters and doorways and shirts and hearts.
In the evening Rehana and the children heard the announcement on the radio:
I, Major Zia, provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Liberation Army, hereby proclaim, on behalf of our great national leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the independence of Bangladesh. I also declare we have already formed a sovereign, legal government under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. I appeal to all nations to mobilize public opinion in their respective countries against the brutal genocide in Bangladesh.
So this was it: a war had come to find them. Whatever was going to happen had already happened; now they would have to live in its shadow. Rehana wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed tight, willing the old strength to rise up within her again.
April
Radio Free Bangladesh
The city slowly adjusted to occupied life. It adjusted to the stiff-backed soldiers who manned the streets, their uniforms starched, their pale faces grimacing. It adjusted to the tanks sitting fatly in the middle of roads, and to checkpoints where soldiers leaned into car windows and barked orders at drivers who held up their hands and shook their heads, protesting their innocence. And it adjusted to the silence, because there were no more speeches, or marches, or processions, just an eerie, still quietness, interrupted twice a day by the wail of the curfew siren; but otherwise all was ghostly, only the rustle of trees and the sizzle of the April sun to draw the line between day and night.
Wild rumours circulated in the quiet. The army had dug a mass grave to hide the bodies. There was a warehouse, somewhere on the outskirts of town, where they tortured the prisoners. The animals in Mirpur Zoo, even the Bengal tiger, had all died of fright. But no one seemed to know anything for sure. The newspapers announced, ‘Yahya saves Pakistan!’ and Dhaka, so long at the centre of the struggle, was now a besieged and vacant city that kept its knowledge close and hidden.
Those people who had never really been citizens of the city erased their faint tracks and returned to their villages. The butchers, the tailors, the milkmen, the rickshaw-pullers, the boys who painted cinema actresses on the back flaps of rickshaws and the even younger boys who made tea in rusting kettles on pavements–all left silently, snaking out of the city with bundles on their shoulders, children cradled against their backs.
As she witnessed the emptying of the city, Rehana counted her blessings.
The children were safe.
Mrs Chowdhury and Silvi.
The gin-rummy ladies. Mrs Akram had spent that night with the shutters closed and her hands over her ears. Later her husband would say she’d been hysterical, screaming about Kayamat, the end of the world. They’d had to tie her to the bedposts and press their hands over her mouth. She remembered none of it. When she came to see Rehana, two days after the curfew was lifted, she tried to hide the weals on her wrists by wearing wide, mirror-studded bangles. But she was alive.
Romeo was dead. Mrs Chowdhury had him buried under the tallest coconut tree in her garden.
Mrs Rahman had almost not been so lucky. She had accepted an invitation to dine with an old schoolfriend. The schoolfriend’s husband owned a tailoring shop in the old town, and they lived above it, on Nawabpur Road. At the last minute Mrs Rahman had pleaded a headache, dreading the choked roads she would have to pass through to get there, remembering the dreary furniture, the bony curry she’d been fed the last time. She felt guilty but consoled herself by resolving to send her friend a gift the very next day. A sari perhaps, or a pair of earrings.
Nawabpur Road was in the army’s way as they passed through the old town on their way to Shakaripotti, the Hindu neighbourhood. Perhaps they had taken a wrong turn; perhaps they’d held their maps upside down; or maybe it was taking too long to get there and they were impatient, the blood leaping in their skins. They swiped with their machine-guns, back and forth, and one of their bullets found the house on Nawabpur Road. Mrs Rahman’s schoolfriend escaped with a grazed cheek, but her husband, crouching under the dining table, did not.
Rehana’s children were safe. That was the most important thing. She could not help feeling grateful to Mrs Chowdhury for holding Silvi’s engagement party that night, keeping her children close to home, when they could so easily have been in one of the university halls.
Sohail and Maya accounted for their friends. Joy and Aref had been among the students who had heard rumours of an attack on the city. They had broken into their dormitory cafeteria and stolen all the chairs, which they’d stacked at the mouth of Nilkhet Road. They set fire to glass bottles and hurled them into the streets. But when the tanks climbed over the barricades and splintered the chairs, they fled, weaving through the buildings and hiding in Curzon Hall. The bullets missed them.
But Sharmeen. Sharmeen could not be found.
At first Maya was vaguely irritated she’d missed everything. All her friends had stories of that night, and, while she kept saying, ‘Good thing I wasn’t on campus,’ there was a slight regret at having been sidelined. She wanted some mark, some sign, that the thing had happened to her. A bruise on the cheek. A tear in her blouse. She waited for Sharmeen to show up at the gate, to give her a little of the moment.
But on the third day there was still no sign of her.
‘It’s all right,’ Rehana soothed, not knowing what to say; ‘there must be some explanation.’ Everything she knew about Sharmeen prevented her from fearing for the girl. She was too big, too stormy, to simply vanish. Maya must have thought the same thing, because she refused to worry.
On the fourth day the Senguptas decided to leave. Rehana found them at Shona with their belongings strewn across the drawing-room floor, dotting Mrs Sengupta’s pink rose-petal carpet.
‘We have to go,’ Mrs Sengupta began. It was obvious she had been the one to urge her husband to leave; she was nervous, drawing her achol over her shoulder and smoothing her pleats.
Rehana didn’t say anything, only nodded.
‘It’s not safe for Hindus in the city,’ Mr Sengupta explained. ‘As you know.’ The refugees had stayed a couple of days, making their home on the lawn, keeping vigil at night with hurricane lamps and lengths of wood they had saved from their doorframes. Then they too had left, for villages in the interior, or across the border to India. They had thanked Rehana for her kindness, gathered up their things and latched the gate behind them.
‘Are you going to India?’ Rehana asked.
Mr Sengupta made a show of being surprised. ‘Why? No, why would we go to India? We are going to our village in Pabna. We haven’t been to stay in a long while. Mithun should see his ancestral home, meet his cousins.’ Mr Sengupta parted the net curtains on the window behind him and looked out at his son chasing a crow in the garden.
‘Of course,’ Rehana said, ‘you know what is best. But there are disturbing reports. Burning villages. Targeting Hindus.’
‘That’s just a rumour. The city is dangerous, but they won’t go that far inland,’ he said. ‘It takes two days just to reach the town–mud roads, nothing paved. Why would they bother?’ And he made a sound somewhere between a short laugh and a snort.
‘The people in your village,’ Rehana said, pressing him a little, ‘can you trust them?’
‘My village people? Of course! My family has been in that village for generations. Mrs Haque, would you h
ave all Hindus flee to India?’
Rehana could see she had offended him. There was now a clear note of challenge, a probe, to see which side of things she was on. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. Mrs Sengupta was nervously fiddling with the hem of her sari. Looking at her, Rehana was reminded of herself at a younger, more confident age, when she’d had the luxury of retreating when she wanted to, allowing someone else to make decisions, declare the lines of argument.
Mrs Sengupta leaned over to Rehana and took her hand. ‘We feel terribly about leaving you alone. Will you be all right?’
‘Of course,’ Rehana said, though it had just occurred to her that she would not have any money until the Senguptas returned. In the way Mrs Sengupta was looking at her, Rehana could tell this was the reason for the apology. Her friend took out an envelope and held it between her palms. ‘Oh, no, Supriya, you mustn’t do that.’
‘It’s the only way we could even consider leaving.’ She turned to her husband. He appeared to have recovered and nodded vigorously. ‘It’s not much. But we couldn’t leave you empty-handed.’
‘I won’t hear of it,’ Rehana insisted, wondering how long she would have to pretend she didn’t really need the money. She murmured a few more words of protest but took it in the end, warning the couple that if they stayed away too long she might find new tenants. The idea of anyone moving to Dhaka at a time like this made everyone laugh.
‘I’m sorry we’ve left such a mess,’ Mrs Sengupta said, waving her arm around the room.
‘Don’t worry, Maya and I will take care of the rest.’
‘Really?’
‘Of course. Just take what you need. You’ll be back soon, I know it.’
‘Mithun!’ Mr Sengupta called out into the garden. ‘Say goodbye to your auntie!’
Despite her best efforts to appear casual, Rehana felt a sting in her eyes as she embraced Mrs Sengupta. ‘God be with you,’ she said, squeezing her friend’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’
By the middle of April they began to realize that the attack on Dhaka was only the beginning. The army was making its way across the country, subduing one district after another, leaving behind a trail of burning villages. And there were stories of boys running away from home to join the resistance, slipping away in the middle of the night with their shoes in their pockets, crossing the border to find Major Zia, who had made the announcement on the radio.
One day Joy and Aref came to the bungalow in a truck. It was filled with crates of different sizes, which they began unloading and stacking up against the gate.
‘What’s this?’ Rehana asked.
‘Auntie, we need your help,’ Joy said. ‘We need to store some things in your house.’
Sohail came out of his room. ‘Where did you get them?’
‘What’s going on?’ Rehana asked. They were all behaving as though it was perfectly ordinary. As if people arrived with trucks full of mysterious things every day.
‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘we’ve heard reports of refugee camps across the border. They need medicine.’
‘Where did you get these?’
Sohail waited for Joy to reply. Aref was counting the remaining boxes in the truck. ‘PG Hospital.’ He put his hands on his waist. There was a pause while the boys waited for Rehana to ask how they had convinced the doctors at PG hospital to give them a truckful of medicine.
She decided not to ask. If she asked, they would have to tell her they had stolen it. ‘Good idea,’ she said finally, ‘bring it all inside. Do you boys want to stay for lunch?’
Aref beamed at Rehana from above. ‘We knew you’d understand,’ he said, blowing her a kiss.
The next day they came again. They carried eight crates of powdered milk, three boxes of cotton wool, four drums of rice, sixteen cases of dal. Buckets. Shovels. Rehana put the food in the passage between her bedroom and the kitchen. Now they had to walk sideways to get to the kitchen. The dining chairs were stacked on top of the table, the medicines stored underneath. They started taking meals with plates on their laps.
Maya was soothed by the crowded house. She put her cheeks against the boxes of cotton wool, ran her finger along the tops of the medicine cases.
It had been almost two weeks, and Sharmeen was still missing. No one knew where the girl was, but she was making her presence felt at the bungalow, as they each silently imagined what might have happened to her. Still Maya refused to talk about it. She drifted through the house like a cloud of dust. Rehana tried to bring it up, but every time she approached Maya it felt like a trespass.
‘Where is her mother?’ Rehana asked finally.
‘She’s in Mymensingh.’
‘Maybe Sharmeen went to see her?’
‘I already contacted her family. She’s not there.’
‘Does she have brothers?’
‘Not really.’
Sharmeen’s mother, Rehana remembered, had remarried. There were other children. And a stepfather. That is why Sharmeen lived in the dormitory, and why she was always at the bungalow for Eid. And why her clothes were mixed up with Maya’s in the cupboard. And her toothbrush in the bathroom cabinet. She had a stake in their house. Rehana knew all of this, but, as the picture of Sharmeen’s life came into focus, she felt guilty for sometimes resenting her presence at the bungalow. She could have been warmer towards her. She might not have saved the girl, but she could have loved her.
She still didn’t know what to do with Maya. ‘Are you hungry?’
‘No.’
Rehana did not know what else to say. If Maya would not discuss Sharmeen, Rehana could not console her. She could not find a way into her daughter’s grief, drawn so tightly around her.
Rehana often wondered if she could help loving one child better. She had a blunt, tired love for her daughter. It was full of effort. Sohail was her first-born, and so tender, and Maya was so hard, all sympathy worked out of her by the throaty chants of the street march, the pitch of the slogan. Too many strong words had come out of her mouth. The ideas were like an affliction; they had taken her over so completely she had even changed physically: suddenly the angles of her face had moved, sharpened, so that she was no longer young, or even pretty. And she wore only widow’s white, which always felt to Rehana like an insult.
She had only two remnants of a gentler self: the thick braid that snaked down her back like a swollen, black river, and her singing voice. Both had escaped being sacrificed. She often threatened her mother with photographs of women with short hair, the bob that stared out of magazine covers, the boy-cut some of her friends had dared to ask for at the parlour. But somehow, despite the threats, she had never lopped off the hair that so definitively identified her as Rehana’s daughter, in its shine and its straightness, in its dark blue hue, its thickness and weight. Rehana had even caught Maya caring for her hair, combing or massaging it with coconut oil, though if she herself ever offered to help she was met with a withering stare and a short ‘nothing doing’.
And when she sang, Maya could not stop the tenderness from covering her features like a fine winter mist. There was nothing harsh in her voice–in fact, it was even a little girlish, defying the learning that had so hardened her spoken words. She opened her mouth, and from her lips, her throat, the immature heart, came sweet, rapturous song. She had learned her mother’s ghazals, but her politics had turned her to the banned songs of Tagore, and these suited her better. For they did not demand the plaintive, mournful tenor of forsaken love but rather, a more innocent form of sentiment, which Tagore, uncomplicated lover of God, of earth, of beauty, had delivered in such abundance.
Her hands on the harmonium were delicate, square-tipped, her bitten-down nails paying homage to the seriousness of the task; her brows were knitted together in service of the song, and in the end it was only to the music that she was bound. In singing she was, if only briefly, a supplicant, as though in the presence of a divinity that even she, devout non-believer, had to somehow acknowledge.
Re
hana thought of it as her biggest failure. That her daughter had not found a way into her heart.
On the day Joy and Aref appeared without the truck, they had another boy with them, a Hindu boy named Partho whose family had fled the city.
‘Don’t let them in,’ Sohail said to Rehana, but they had already climbed over the gate. Aref was shifting from one foot to another and adjusting his round-rimmed glasses with the tip of his finger. There was a black bag between Partho and Joy.
She couldn’t imagine why Sohail would shun his friends.
Joy cupped his hands around his mouth and shouted, ‘Sohail! Dost! Aye na! Come out!’
When Sohail didn’t reply, Rehana stepped through the veranda and asked them what they wanted. They looked rough, as though they hadn’t bathed or changed clothes. Joy’s hair curled like a comma above his head, and Aref’s hung limp between his ears. Partho was staring past Rehana and into the windows of the bungalow to see if Sohail would emerge.
‘As-Salaam Alaikum, Auntie,’ Aref said. ‘Sohail achhe?’
These were his friends. Surely he wouldn’t mind if she invited them in. ‘Do you want to come in?’
Joy and Aref looked at the black bag. ‘No,’ Joy replied, ‘we’ll stay here.’
Aref was fidgeting with a matchbox. He held a packet of cigarettes out to Partho, who shook his head. He lit one. ‘Is he there?’ he said.
Rehana considered lying but decided not to. ‘I think he’s upset.’ She was annoyed at not knowing the cause of this sudden change of heart. One minute he was glued to his friends, the next he didn’t want to see them.
‘We just want to talk. Can he come to the window?’
‘I don’t know, I’ll see.’ She went back through the house and found Sohail pacing the drawing room with the loose drawstring of his pyjamas flapping between his knees. ‘Tell them to go away,’ he said, tugging at the string.
‘They’ve come all the way—’