A Golden Age

by Tahmima Anam

  Silvi came in carrying a tray with tea and salty nimki in an empty Horlicks jar. A scarf was pulled around her head and knotted tightly around her chin. Stray strands of hair had been disciplined and tucked away. She worked neatly, setting down the tray, arranging the cups on their saucers, stirring the teapot.

  ‘Sabeer–we got your telegram–I’m so sorry.’

  ‘It’s God’s will,’ Silvi whispered, kneeling in front of the tray. ‘Sugar?’ she asked Rehana.

  Silvi had been making tea for Rehana since she was old enough to boil water. ‘Yes, two. And a little milk,’ Rehana said, unsteady in the face of this new formality.

  ‘Maya?’

  ‘One chini. No dood.’

  ‘Hai Allah!’ Mrs Chowdhury groaned, heaving herself backwards and piling her feet on an ottoman. ‘We tried our best. In the beginning the boy just lay there, staring up at the ceiling. He hardly spoke. And his fingers!’ She bit her tongue. ‘His fingers turned blue, and then his whole hand. Doctor said it was gangrene–they had to go. Both hands. Imagine, a young boy like that.’ She held up her own thick fingers.

  Silvi was passing the tea around steadily.

  ‘And then one day–one night, he came out of the bed and sat here, in the drawing room, and he smiled–so beautifully, na, Silvi? As though he was looking into God’s own eyes.’ She pointed to the sofa where Maya was sitting. ‘And he was gone.’

  Rehana felt her stomach lurch, as Maya, shifting with a teacup in her hand, said, ‘Did you ever find out what happened? How he was captured?’ She directed her question at Silvi.

  Silvi was unscrewing the Horlicks jar and arranging the nimki on a plate. She pursed her lips together and appeared not to hear the question.

  ‘Silvi, do you know what happened?’ Maya repeated, a little louder. Without a word, Silvi passed the plate of nimki to her mother. ‘Did you even bother to ask?’ Maya said.

  ‘These are unspeakable things,’ Mrs Chowdhury began.

  ‘Things which need to be known.’ Maya slammed her cup down with a porcelain clatter. ‘Silvi, your husband was a hero.’

  ‘That was his business,’ Silvi said finally, ‘nothing to do with me.’

  ‘But it’s your country!’

  ‘Not everyone believes what you believe,’ Silvi said simply.

  ‘You don’t believe in Bangladesh?’ The name of the country, still a new word, fell out of Maya’s mouth like a jewel.

  Silvi was still crouching next to the tray. Now she lifted it and slid smoothly out of the room.

  ‘I don’t know what’s become of her,’ Mrs Chowdhury sighed.

  ‘You have to do something,’ Maya said; ‘she sounds so strange.’

  Rehana found herself agreeing with her daughter for once, and feeling a stab of envy at how easily Maya could speak her mind.

  ‘Your problem,’ Silvi said, returning with a plate for the shondesh, ‘is that you can’t tolerate a difference of opinion. I happen to think this war–all this fighting–is a pointless waste of human life.’

  ‘When the army came and massacred us and drove us out of the country, we should have rolled over?’

  ‘They were restoring order,’ Silvi said, tugging at the knot under her chin. ‘Making things safe.’

  ‘Have you been anywhere beyond your drawing room lately? People are being massacred…’ Maya’s hands were in the air, the breath whistling out of her mouth.

  ‘Pakistan should stay together,’ Silvi said, as though reciting from a textbook. ‘That’s why it was conceived. To keep the Ummah united. To separate the wings is a sin against your religion.’

  ‘The sin is being committed against us–look outside your window!’

  ‘I’m not ignorant, Maya. Sometimes you have to make sacrifices. And I’m not the only person—’

  ‘You and the army, thinking alike. What a relief!’ Maya’s voice was beginning to crack.

  Her hysteria appeared to have a calming effect on Silvi. Mrs Chowdhury had given up and was leaning her head against her chair, looking at the ceiling like a martyr.

  ‘I want to believe in something greater than myself,’ Silvi said serenely.

  ‘So do I,’ Maya spat. ‘Ammoo, please let’s go.’ She tugged at Rehana’s elbow.

  ‘Silvi,’ Rehana said as she turned to the door, ‘the important thing is for you to look after your mother and for all of us to survive the war.’

  ‘Ji, khala-moni, thank you.’ She relaxed her forehead and her eyebrows separated, revealing her old, reverent face.

  Sohail was waiting for them at the bungalow.

  ‘I can’t believe–I’ve known her my whole life!’ Maya was shouting at the walls, ignoring her brother.

  ‘She’s shocked–her husband dying like that.’

  ‘What’s going on?’ Sohail asked, moving his eyes from mother to sister.

  ‘But how?’ Maya’s cheeks were wet, and she was swallowing large gulps of air. ‘How could this happen?’

  ‘You want so badly for everyone to believe.’

  ‘Of course I do.’ Maya rubbed her nose violently against the sleeve of her blouse. She looked angrily at Sohail and bolted out of the room.

  ‘She’s upset,’ Rehana said slowly, ‘because Silvi wouldn’t—’

  ‘Wouldn’t what?’

  ‘She wouldn’t acknowledge the war in any way, beta.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘She doesn’t think we’re doing the right thing.’

  ‘That can’t be true. You must have misunderstood.’

  ‘She said she thought it was a sin, the country splitting.’ Rehana put a hand against Sohail’s back, where his shoulder blades were stretched apart.

  ‘Someone must have done this to her. A bad influence.’

  ‘Doesn’t matter how. She’s turned against it, for whatever reason.’

  ‘Religion?’

  ‘Maybe,’ Rehana said, trying not to put the blame on God, ‘but she’s so young, who can know why?’

  Maya came back into the room. She had tried to compose herself, and failed. Her face was wet and her lips a dark, angry bruise.

  ‘So you heard what happened?’ she said to Sohail.

  He nodded silently, his eyes avoiding hers.

  ‘It’s a disgrace,’ she continued, brushing away the tears with the back of her hand.

  Sohail pressed his palms against his face.

  ‘Are you still in love with her?’

  ‘Maya—’ Rehana warned.

  ‘You’re still in love with her. You’re bloody still in love with her!’

  ‘No,’ Sohail said, shaking his head weakly, ‘of course not.’

  ‘Look,’ Maya said in a thick, fierce voice, ‘this is the moment when you decide what is more important to you. Understand? This moment, right now. That girl is over there with her stupid, twisted politics and she’s not even thinking about you, and you’ve risked everything–everything–to get her. Now you let her go, bhaiya, please, I’m begging you, for all of us, let her go.’

  ‘Don’t question my loyalty,’ Sohail whispered.

  ‘I’m not questioning your loyalty, I’m questioning your judgement.’

  He moved his hands away from his face, and for a moment it looked as though he was going to get into a fight with her, shout things about devotion and love and the country, but instead he strode over to her and put his arms around her. ‘You’re right,’ he said, his shoulders shaking, ‘you’re right.’

  It was getting late. Sohail was waiting for Joy at Shona; they were going to dig up the guns. ‘We have to make Sehri,’ Rehana said to Maya. ‘What do you want to eat?’

  ‘I don’t know.’ The tears were still falling heavily on to Maya’s cheeks. ‘Do we have to fast?’

  ‘Of course we do. Tomorrow of all days.’

  For once Maya didn’t argue. She took the glass of water Rehana offered. ‘I want dalpuri,’ she said with a sniff.

  ‘Good idea. I’ll put the dal on.’

  Ma
ya brought the glass to her lips. As she began to drink, a fresh wave of tears overcame her.

  ‘Maya,’ Rehana said, chiding her, ‘we have more important things to worry about today.’

  ‘I know, I’m sorry–I just can’t help it.’ She blew her nose thunderously. ‘It’s just that it wounds me’–she prodded herself with a finger–‘here.’

  ‘The boys will be here in a few hours.’

  Rehana parted the curtains and watched from the drawing-room window.

  Joy and Sohail filed in through the back gate and circled the rosebush. It was hard to see through the moonless black. She recognized Joy’s bulk, and beside him was Sohail, slighter, carrying a shovel and a hurricane lamp. She allowed herself only a brief moment of disappointment. There was no reason to expect the Major.

  Joy lit the lamp, and Sohail began to dig. After a few minutes they exchanged places, Sohail holding the weak light while Joy squatted down and pulled at the earth, the silt piling up beside them. Finally they paused, and Joy leaned over the hole they had dug. He shifted, laying flat on his stomach, and started to tug at something. Rehana could barely make out his face, twisting with the effort.

  Just as Joy had pulled the object–a rectangular wooden box, discoloured by its long burial–they heard a scattered, staccato drumroll. Gunfire. The sound grew suddenly, filling the air. The boys crouched on the ground, dipping their heads. It was Joy who raised the box above his shoulders and stood upright and scurried out of the garden. He slipped behind the mango tree and waited for Sohail, who was shimmying towards him on his elbows. They became shadows, rustling through the branches of the tree. And then they were gone.

  Rehana became aware of her heart pounding against her chest, and her breath making circles that grew and retreated on the closed window.

  The drumming grew louder and Rehana froze, fixed in her place facing the empty garden, the hole they had left like a shout under the rosebush.

  ‘Ammoo?’ Maya came into the room, her hands white with flour. ‘What’s going on?’

  They moved to the other side of the room, where the windows faced the road. Rehana parted the curtain in time to see a convoy of trucks hurtling down their street. A pillar of soldiers in green stood on the back of a truck, waving their guns in the air. Passing through the street they shouted, ‘Pakistan Zindabad! Pakistan Zindabad!’ As the last truck ambled away, one of the soldiers, a young boy with a thick mop of raven hair, pointed his gun at the bungalow. I could kill you right now, his face said.

  Rehana snapped her head back and yanked the curtain closed.

  ‘Did you see that?’

  Maya circled an arm around Rehana’s shoulder. ‘It’s just a show of force, Ma. It doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘But why here? It’s just a small road. That shipahi was pointing right at us.’

  ‘They’re getting hints India’s going to come down on our side. And then it’ll be over.’

  They had started saying things like ‘when the war is over’. Rehana thought it was too soon, but people, especially the young ones, were confident the freedom fighters would save them. A rescue by the world. It had to end soon. I can taste the end, Sohail had said, and Rehana had thought of it as the kind of thing a child says to his mother when the lines between them become blurry and he no longer wants to be the child, and she no longer the mother. She had relaxed into the phrase, and his cool hand on her forehead. But she hadn’t believed him.

  Without the diversion of meals, Friday spooled out slowly ahead of them. There were still things to be done. Pretend it’s any other day. Do the washing. The preparations for Sehri, for Iftar. Air out the house. Collect water from the taps. Boil it for drinking. Drag down the cobwebs.

  All day she ignored the cold fear at her back. Sohail left in the afternoon, his face unmoved as she kissed his forehead and said Aytul Kursi and blew the blessing on his eyes. The fear breathed on her neck and sent the hair upright, electric. It caught her in the double-beat of her heart, the pulse she could feel at her temple, the tremor of her hand as she fried the Iftar food. Beguni, the crunchy strips of eggplant. Chickpeas and tomatoes. The dalpuri Maya had rolled out and stuffed. Orange juice. Tamarind juice. Lassi. It was not elaborate enough for a special occasion, not simple enough to indicate want. A meal for an ordinary day. A meal for a day without war.

  Rehana brought the food to the table. They ate in silence, their fingers working the pooris with small wet slaps.

  Afterwards Maya crawled under the bed and pulled out the kerosene lamp.

  ‘Put that away!’ Rehana said.

  ‘Why? When the current goes out—’

  ‘We don’t know the current is going to go out.’

  ‘Of course it will.’

  Rehana shot Maya a warning look. ‘Put the lamp away and say Isha with me.’

  With Shona’s long shadows edging towards the bungalow, they tried to pick up the radio transmission. Maya fiddled with the knob, but all they heard was static.

  ‘Do you want a song, Ma?’

  Rehana was taken aback by the offer. ‘Really? I would love that. Sing “Amar Shonar Bangla”.’

  At nine o’clock, when only blackness and the nail-shaped crescent moon remained, they held their breaths and waited.

  Rehana began to think of what she would like to be doing when the lights went out. She could go into Sohail’s room and count the medicines and blankets that still needed to be distributed. She could start a letter to her sisters. But what would she say? The letter would have to be full of lies. And she wouldn’t end up sending it anyway, or she would have to contend with a reply. Thank Allah you’re alive–we’ve been worried sick–why don’t you leave that godforsaken place and come to Karachi–we’ve been telling you for years. No, she wouldn’t write a letter.

  Maya was fidgeting with the dinner plates, stacking them carelessly.

  ‘Just leave those.’

  ‘I want to make sure—’ Maya bit her tongue.

  ‘Leave them.’

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake, Ma.’ But she left them anyway and threw herself on the sofa beside Rehana.

  ‘What now?’

  ‘We wait.’

  Maya had never been good at waiting for anything.

  ‘But there’s nothing to do.’

  ‘Do you want to play rummy?’

  Her face brightened. ‘Shotti? We haven’t played since—’

  ‘Since Sohail started beating you and you refused to play.’

  ‘No–no, that’s not how it happened. He discovered poetry that year, and everything else was forgotten.’

  ‘That was a year later. There was a period in between, for about eight months, when you wouldn’t play anything with him–not cards, or chess, or badminton.’

  ‘You can’t blame me for the badminton. He was so tall, it wasn’t fair.’

  ‘True. But poor Silvi–she persevered.’

  ‘That’s because he always let her win.’

  They grew silent, collecting their memories together.

  ‘OK,’ Maya said, slapping the armrest, ‘I’ll get the cards.’

  But Rehana had changed her mind. ‘Do you mind if we skip the cards? I want to read a little.’

  Maya nodded. ‘OK.’

  ‘What do you want?’ Rehana asked, but Maya was already in Sohail’s room, fingering his bookshelf.

  ‘Let’s have some tea.’ Maya pulled out a slim volume. ‘I’ll make it,’ she said, tucking the book under her arm.

  A few minutes later she emerged from the kitchen with a tray.

  ‘I think I’ll read Iqbal,’ Rehana said, ‘it’s been a while.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘Baal-e-Jibreel.’

  Maya pulled out her own choice with a flourish. ‘Gitanjali!’ she said mischievously. Tagore had been banned, and, though the poetry was all about love and God and the monsoon, there was still an incendiary thrill in reading it. His white beard triangled down the cover, matching the shock of white hair that framed a
long, serious face.

  They climbed into bed with their tea and their books. Rehana forced herself to read hers from the beginning. Perhaps once she reached her favourite, ‘Chamak Teri Ayaan’, the house would be in darkness. By an unspoken consent they kept the overhead tube-light buzzing and the fan rotating at full speed. The circulating air kept their pages rustling.

  ‘Chamak Teri Ayaan’ came and went. Maya was flipping her own pages slowly, reading out the title of each poem before she began it. She made her way through ‘Alo Amar Alo’ and lingered at ‘Amar E Gaan’, which Rehana knew was her favourite.

  Rehana was at ‘Kya Kahun Apne Chaman’, with three poems to go, when they heard something in the distance, like passing thunder. ‘Was that it?’ Maya leaped to the window and peered out into the street. ‘All the lights are still on. Maybe they couldn’t do it–maybe they tried, and they just couldn’t.’

  Rehana ignored her, and eventually Maya crawled back under her katha. She sighed heavily and picked up her book again. Rehana could tell she was beginning to regret not having chosen a longer volume.

  Iqbal was finished and the lights were still blazing. Rehana checked her watch. 12.20. Her eyes were beginning to sting. Maya had slipped Gitanjali under her pillow and was unbraiding her hair. ‘I’ll brush my teeth,’ she said in a joyless voice.

  She was stepping over the threshold with the empty teacups, sighing heavily, when it happened: a scratching thud, unmistakable, a flicker of the light, an electric blink, and they were sunk into darkness.

  ‘Maya?’ Rehana felt under the bed. ‘Come back and take the hurricane.’

  ‘THEY DID IT THEY DID IT THEY DID IT!’

  They fell asleep in their clothes, Maya laughing into her pillow.

  ‘Rehana.’

  ‘Who’s there?’

  ‘Shhh.’ A finger on her lip. A lip on her lip. Hands tunnelling under her, lifting her up, swinging her out of the room. Three long strides to the garden gate, kicking it open, navigating the steps. Ashes in her nostrils, measured breath in her ear; her body was a feather, a wisp of cotton, a gust of wind in his arms. Swivelling past the gate, through Shona’s front door, her bare feet brushing the frame.