A Golden Age

by Tahmima Anam

  She tried, but could not tell them apart. They were a blur, shadows behind a veil of cigarette smoke, old and very young all at once. When the lamp was passed to him, Joy stood and approached Rehana. He held the light up, and she saw he was grinning. ‘Such bodmashes we are, Auntie, making a mess of your house.’

  ‘Don’t be silly, beta. My house is yours. But I don’t see your brother?’

  ‘Aref is in Agartala,’ Joy said. ‘He’s been assigned to another mission.’

  Maya was already there; she began circulating with the plate of puris. Rehana thought of the last time they were gathered this way, with Maya leading the songs and Sharmeen pumping the harmonium. She wanted to cradle Maya in her arms. Tell her that she remembered.

  ‘Someone will come to collect the boxes,’ Sohail said. ‘And we’ll be bringing in more donations.’

  ‘We’ve heard about your sewing group,’ Joy said; ‘the muktis will really love those–if only you could see the camp, Auntie–nothing soft about those beds!’

  The other boys laughed from the shadows.

  ‘Oof,’ one of them said, his mouth full of puri, ‘and the food–the rootis are hard as sticks, and full of holes.’

  Sohail tugged at Rehana’s arm. ‘Ammoo,’ he said, ‘this is our commanding officer.’ He led her to a corner of the room. He whispered, ‘He used to be a major in the Pak Army.’

  ‘Hello,’ the man said. He was standing directly in front of the lamp and she couldn’t make out much, except the span of his shoulders and the firm grip he returned when she, not knowing how to greet him, offered her hand.

  ‘Oh, hello,’ she said, returning the squeeze.

  ‘It’s kind of you to give up your house, Mrs Haque,’ the Major said.

  ‘Yes, yes, of course.’

  ‘The whole nation is grateful.’

  He was probably thinking she had done it out of some sense of duty, and looking at him now, the tightness of his grip still ringing in her fingers, she wished it had been so; not that the act was any less noble, having been done out of love for her son; even so, it was somehow bigger, in this room, and in this tall man’s presence, to have done something for the country and not just in the service of her children. Perhaps she really was doing it for the country.

  From the distance, the sound of the muezzin interrupted her reverie and reminded her of the time. ‘Please forgive me,’ she announced to the huddled group, ‘it’s the morning Azaan. I have to pray. And we haven’t had the halwa.’

  ‘You finish saying your prayers and then we’ll eat,’ Sohail suggested.

  ‘OK.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Would any of you like to join me?’ She glanced around; some of the boys were staring down at the ground. She was sure they needed some reassurance, some certainty, before going on their mission.

  ‘Ma,’ Sohail said finally, ‘Partho is Hindu.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rehana heard someone say from the back of the room. Still no one moved.

  Rehana was about to move to Mrs Sengupta’s bedroom when the Major said, ‘Why not? Mrs Haque, you stand in front.’

  ‘Really? You don’t mind?’ Rehana was pleased, though she knew she really shouldn’t; women weren’t supposed to lead the prayer. But she went to the curtained window that faced west, and the boys lined up behind her. Even Maya joined in, standing between Sohail and Joy. Rehana pulled her sari over her head and tucked the end behind her ear.

  God is Great.

  I bear witness that there is none other worthy of worship.

  Come to prayer, come to felicity.

  Glory to you, O Allah. Blessed is your name, exalted is your majesty.

  In you I seek refuge.

  Holy are you, and magnificent.

  Come to prayer, come to felicity.

  Rehana couldn’t sleep. Shortly after dawn she’d said goodbye to Sohail and his friends and counted, over and over like the long, repeated summer days, all the things that could possibly go wrong. The boys were too young; they were excitable; they were carried away by the thrill of danger, but what did they really know? She’d said all the prayers, Zohr and Asr and Magreb.

  In the evening, when the Radio Free Bangladesh broadcaster announced that there had been an explosion at the InterContinental Hotel, Maya let out a whoop of joy and ran through the house, waving her green and red flag.

  ‘Ammoo! Listen!’ and she pressed the radio to Rehana’s ear.

  Foreign journalists have requested the permission of the government of Pakistan to access the front lines of the civil war after an explosion at the InterContinental Hotel revealed the extent of resistance to occupying forces. The government of Pakistan denies all reports of genocide, and President Yahya Khan accuses Sheikh Mujib and his associates in Calcutta of spreading false propaganda against the Pakistan government.

  So the operation was a success. But that still didn’t mean they’d got away with it. Rehana closed her eyes and said Aytul Kursi for what felt like the thousandth time that day. She couldn’t sleep. She thought she heard Maya in the other room. Ma! she was saying, I forgive you! I forgive you! Rehana leaped out of bed and ran to Maya’s room and found her with fingers poised over her typewriter. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Maya asked, her head tilted. ‘Did you see a ghost?’

  When Rehana heard the noises coming from the driveway she knew something had gone wrong. She had been so sure that it had; it was almost a relief to discover she was right. It was an hour before dinner; she’d just put the rice on the stove. She bolted out of the kitchen and saw Sohail and Joy pushing a green car towards the house, the engine switched off. There were others in the car, though she couldn’t make out their faces. Stricken, she ran across the garden and through the gate, meeting them just as they were taking the Major out of the car. Sohail and Joy were both covered in blood, and with them was a stranger, a slight man in a white coat, looking terrified. The Major was between them, motionless and grey.

  ‘Oh, God, he’s died.’

  Sohail dragged the man out by his shoulders. His head lolled to the side. ‘Take his legs!’ he whispered. Sweat was pouring down Sohail’s face and pooling around his chin. Joy grabbed the Major’s legs, and they pulled him to the front door.

  ‘Goddammit!’ Joy kept saying. ‘Goddammit!’

  They laid him across the rose-petal carpet. Someone had tied a cloth around his leg. He was awake, groaning, tossing his head; when he turned his face, Rehana saw there was a triangular splinter of wood lodged in his cheek. Sohail stood over him while Joy pointed a gun at the doctor.

  ‘Fix it.’

  ‘I can’t. I need things–medicine, anaesthetic.’

  ‘You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got in the bag.’

  The doctor was no older than the rest of them, probably hardly out of medical school, a thin, delicate boy with greasy hair.

  ‘You have to take him to the hospital!’ he said.

  ‘Are you mad? Do you know how many people are looking for us?’

  The doctor waved his arms. ‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’

  Rehana found herself kneeling beside the Major, looking the young doctor in the eye. ‘Listen, this is an emergency. Just do your best.’ She kept her gaze on him, until he nodded slowly.

  ‘We have to get the shards out of his leg,’ he said, looking only at her. ‘There are several smaller traumas, but the main thing is the leg. And the face. I wouldn’t know what to do with the face.’

  ‘Just patch it up,’ Joy said. ‘We’ll take him to the field hospital in the morning.’

  ‘He can’t go very far.’

  ‘Fix it! We have to move out tonight!’ Joy pressed the gun to the doctor’s temple.

  ‘Joy, baba, this man is trying to help,’ Rehana said.

  ‘Please, take the gun away. I’m on the right side.’

  ‘Just fix it.’

  ‘The gun! Take it away first!’ The doctor blinked away tears.

 
; Joy lowered the gun, but he kept his finger curled around the trigger.

  The doctor took a syringe out of his bag and filled it with the contents of a small, upturned bottle. Then he went to work on the Major’s leg. Rehana remained beside him, strangely unaffected by the sight of the Major’s torn limb, the ragged flesh exposed, the whiteness of bone shining through the dimness of the room. She didn’t hesitate when the doctor told her to peel back the Major’s trousers and begin to clean the smaller wounds. He gave her a pair of tweezers and told her to pick out the shards. She bent over the leg, working quietly, ignoring the shudders coming from the Major.

  When Rehana finished with the tweezers, the doctor started to stitch. ‘Thank you, Mrs Haque.’ She could tell he wasn’t just thanking her for helping to clean the wound.

  The wood was still lodged in the Major’s cheek.

  Sohail whispered something to Joy, and he put down his gun, crouching instead and holding a kerosene lamp over the doctor’s arm. ‘Auntie,’ Joy said, ‘you go and take a break.’

  Rehana went to Mrs Sengupta’s kitchen for a glass of water. She was taking a giant gulp, sighing into the glass, when Sohail approached and hugged her tightly. She felt him crying into her shoulder.

  ‘Ammoo,’ he whispered, ‘it was my fault.’

  ‘What happened?’

  ‘It was me. I was supposed to fix the timer on the explosive. But I got there and I just froze. I couldn’t move. The Major pushed me aside and did it himself, but it was too late; he got caught up in the blast. It should have been me; I messed it up.’

  Rehana didn’t know what to say. She held his head, stroking it slowly.

  ‘I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do this–I’m no good–the firing, training–I shouldn’t have gone.’

  ‘It’s not your fault. Whatever it was, it can’t have been your fault.’

  ‘He saved my life,’ Sohail said. ‘I would’ve been dead without him.’

  The doctor finished his work.

  ‘I’ve sutured the wounds, but I can’t promise there won’t be an infection. He needs medicine. And even then he might lose his leg.’

  ‘Can we take him away?’ Joy asked.

  ‘Maybe a few roads, but no further.’

  ‘There’s a field hospital in Agartala, near our camp.’

  ‘Across the border? Absolutely not.’

  ‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘you have to let him stay here.’

  Rehana was tired; there was blood everywhere; Mrs Sengupta’s carpet was ruined. She wanted to feel sorry for the man, but she couldn’t. He was so ugly, lying on the carpet, his mouth open horribly. But he had saved her son’s life.

  But it was Maya who said, ‘No. He can’t stay here.’ She had been quiet ever since the boys arrived, hovering at the periphery of the scene. Now she was standing over the Major, pumping her fists.

  ‘Maya, please,’ Sohail said, ‘there’s no choice.’

  ‘Then you stay. You stay here and take care of him. Don’t make us do it.’

  ‘We can’t stay here. We’re wanted men.’

  ‘This is all your fault.’

  ‘It is, it is my fault!’ Sohail’s eyes opened wide, red and ferocious. ‘Ma, you have to take him. Please say you’ll take him.’

  Rehana was torn. ‘You’re sure there’s nowhere else he can go?’

  ‘Ma,’ Maya gasped, ‘you want another man dying in your house?’

  Another man? Was she talking about her father?

  ‘This man cannot be moved,’ the doctor said. He looked at Maya, who was leaning against her mother and breathing heavily, as though she’d been running. Then he said, ‘I will stay. I will stay here and make sure he doesn’t die.’

  Rehana breathed a sigh of relief. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the doctor.

  ‘Rajesh.’

  ‘Maya. Maya, please look at me. Look at me. Dr Rajesh is going to stay here and take care of the Major. No one is going to die. OK? No one is dying. You wanted to do something, remember? You wanted to do something? Here it is. We’ll take care of him. He saved your brother. Enough, enough. No crying.’ And she stroked her daughter’s hair.

  Rehana opened her eyes and for a moment forgot where she was, only sensing the wrongness of the place, and then remembered, and woke with a start, moving the hair from her forehead, feeling for the frayed braid, untying, retying, out of habit. She was positioned awkwardly on the sofa. Looking across the room, she saw the rubble from the night before–the stained bandages, the muddy footprints across the floor, the little bits of plaster and wood from the explosion–and accounted for the tiredness in her limbs.

  The Major was installed in Mithun’s bedroom. When Rehana approached him, she saw the lace curtain was drawn, and in the early-morning light the pattern traced shadows across his face. There, on his forehead, a star-shaped flower; and there, across the thigh, a speckled row of hearts. He slept without a sound, immobile but for the lace shadow that stirred slightly with his every shallow breath.

  In slumber, the Major was enormous. His arms and feet spilled out from the bed, his hands like spreading spider webs. The doctor had left just after dawn, declaring the Major stable and promising to return the next day with medicine and more bandages. The first night will be the worst, he had said. You must stay here.

  And here she still was.

  The night had made him no prettier. On his face, in a jagged, angry curve, was a scar. It travelled, meandering, from the outer edge of his left eyebrow to the corner of his upper lip. A bluish stain marked the other side of his face. The rest of him, except the bandaged leg, seemed strangely untouched, healthy in fact, the skin on the neck and arms taut and glowing in the pale morning sunlight.

  Rehana looked at him and felt a surge of pride in his solid presence, as though he were a fallen angel, ugly and beaten, but maybe still a little blessed.

  Suddenly she was hungry; she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. She had a craving for lychees, not the dry ones they imported from China but the local variety with the smooth, leathery skin. The lychees made her think of other indulgences; perhaps she should buy some meat, some better rice. She would go to New Market. She felt the urge to venture out, to leave the house and the sight of the night’s chaos.

  It was a bright day with no clouds at all, the sort of day when the sky is holding its breath and everything is still and perfectly clear. The market was the same as it had been ever since the start of the war: every week another shop or two closed, the vegetables dusty and shrivelled, the fish small and dull-eyed. But Rehana was buoyed by the thought of haggling with the vendors or finding some small treasure, a fresh chicken or a late-season papaya.

  Her cheer left her as soon as she entered the market. Dotted among the stalls and the ferry-wallahs were men in army uniforms. They strolled through the market with rifles carelessly slung across their shoulders. She passed a sweetshop and saw a group of them sitting around a plastic table, laughing with their mouths so wide open she could see, even from a distance, the peaks of their teeth. One of them spat loudly into the gutter.

  As she walked with her head down, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, Rehana was annoyed at her fear, especially in this place, which had seen her through a decade of struggle. Here was where the material for the children’s school uniforms had been bought, where she had calculated the week’s rations and planned her cooking. It was where Iqbal had bought her wedding sari–only twenty-two rupees, he’d confessed–where she had come to shop for Eid gifts, wedding presents, birthday clothes for the children. New Market was the very heart of the city for Rehana, its smells and winding alleys as familiar to her as her very own Dhanmondi. And now it was suddenly an alien place, the air heavy with menace. ‘Watch out for the butchers,’ Sohail had said; ‘they’re Urdu-speaking.’

  ‘Why? I’m Urdu-speaking. So what?’

  ‘Those people are army collaborators.’

  Sohail was referring to the Urdu-speaking Biharis, who were rumoured
to be siding with the army. The division of the city into sympathizers and collaborators sat uncomfortably with Rehana, but he told her there had to be some way of knowing who to suspect and who to trust. They could no longer trust their instincts. Or even their friends.

  Rehana followed a narrow passageway into the butchers’ quarter. The stalls were scattered haphazardly, cuts of meat hanging from each one like wet jewels. Rehana always took pleasure in buying meat; she would take her time examining the white pearl of bone, the rubied blood, the deep garnet sinews.

  She found herself in front of her regular butcher.

  ‘What’s good today?’ she asked. She looked down at the ground, so he wouldn’t know it was her.

  ‘Nice chop meat, memsaab. Also mutton is good today.’

  Rehana thought of the Major, his sewn-up cheek. ‘I need bones. For soup.’

  ‘You like soup? OK.’

  It was so hot. Rehana saw the flies that hovered, then sank against the hanging meat, their buzzing amplified by the low ceiling of the market. She saw the butcher extending his arms and offering a piece he thought might impress her. It was the entire side of a small cow, a row of bones raised like curved teeth, the flesh sliced neatly so that its purple striations reflected the light. The smell of blood, metallic, laced with rot, assaulted Rehana. She shuddered and turned her face. The butcher recognized her instantly.

  Rehana recalled why she had always bought her meat from this man. He was impeccably dressed; there was no blood anywhere on his shirt or on his hands. He wore a spotless white kurta, and a cap, as though he was on his way to the mosque.

  ‘How are you, madam?’ he asked in Urdu, and saw her start.

  ‘Yes, well,’ she answered quietly, and then, without meaning to, she said, ‘We’re having a war.’

  ‘I know.’ And when she stayed silent it was as though she was accusing him of something and he had to say, ‘I have nowhere else, madam.’ But the words were hollow, and Rehana realized how strange the language suddenly sounded: aggressive, insinuating. She saw that it was now the language of her enemy; hers and Sohail’s and the Major’s. She tried to feel something else, some tenderness for her poets, some sympathy for this man, only a meat-cutter after all.