The Sound of Language

by Amulya Malladi

  “Okay,” she said and started to unstrap Shahrukh.

  His head nestled on her left shoulder as she carried him to the front door. She heard Kabir reverse the car and drive away.

  Raihana opened the door with her right hand and laid the house keys on the table Layla had set by the front door. She toed off her shoes so that she wouldn't make too much noise on the wooden stairs and wake up Shahrukh.

  She was halfway inside when she saw the open window in the living room. Layla liked to keep the windows open in the summer and she had probably forgotten to shut this one before they had left in the morning. Raihana was thinking about closing the windows to keep the mosquitoes out when her eyes snapped wide open. The boy with no hair was standing outside on the street. He held a glass bottle in his hand, which looked bright with fire.

  He was looking around stealthily. When he held up the bottle that was on fire and threw it inside the house, Raihana crushed Shahrukh to her chest and ran to get through the front door.

  She didn't hear the crash the bottle made when it landed on the carpeted floor because Shahrukh cried out at the force with which she was holding him. She was outside the house, in the driveway, when she saw the fire blazing inside.

  It wasn't until she saw Kabir and Layla running toward her that she started screaming. Her voice was caught in a high pitch, waking Shahrukh up fully and drawing the attention of almost everyone on the street.

  EIGHTEEN

  ENTRY FROM ANNA'S DIARY

  A Year of Keeping Bees

  1 AUGUST 1980

  Today was a bad day! One of our colonies is anemic and the bees have deformed wings, two signs that varroa mites, which can devastate a colony, could be present.

  We called our friend, Ole, a beekeeping expert, and he confirmed our fears. Varroa mites had taken residence in one our colonies. To get rid of varroa mites, we need to spray the frames with oils of wintergreen, thyme, eucalyptus, and rosemary—as we don't want to use any chemicals. We hope we will not lose our colony.

  The fire was almost out before the fire truck arrived. A neighbor across the street was a fireman and he got everyone filling buckets of water and throwing them inside the house. The fireman used his long garden hose to douse the fire as well.

  Raihana sat on the curb shaking. Layla sat next to her huddled with Shahrukh, who thought it was great fun that people were throwing water into their home. He wanted to be set free but Layla held him in a tight grasp.

  Two of their neighbors had brought over water and juice but only Shahrukh drank. He was pointing to their house and saying, “lid, ild,” fire, fire.

  The police arrived soon after the fire truck. Helle, who lived across the street from Layla and Kabir, sat on the curb with Raihana and Layla, her arm around Raihana. She had seen a boy throw a bottle inside the house and the fire. She had called emergency services and alerted her husband, who was gardening in the backyard.

  “It's a small fire, see how quickly it was put out,” she said. “Don't worry, everything is fine. No one got hurt.”

  “But my son could have been,” Layla said, breaking into tears. “Raihana, thank Allah you ran, thank Allah.”

  Raihana couldn't respond. Her hands were cold, her breath caught in her chest, and her heart was pounding. How could this have happened? How could it happen here? And what if she hadn't run? What if Shahrukh had gotten hurt?

  A paramedic came and spoke with Kabir. He kneeled in front of Raihana. “Are you okay?” he asked.

  When Raihana didn't respond, Helle helped her up. “Maybe we should go inside my house. Please, come in,” she said to Layla.

  Kabir nodded at Layla and walked over to the policeman, who was speaking to some of the neighbors.

  Helle's house was just like theirs, only bigger. But there were no Afghan rugs or paintings; it was a Danish home, like Gunnar's. There were tea lamps everywhere and there were fresh flowers on the dining table. The paintings on the walls were Danish, of the west coast and Skagen. They had pictures of their children on the mantel over the open fireplace. They had carpets over the hardwood floors … Oh, Layla's mother's rug, Raihana thought sadly, it was right beneath the window—it must have burned.

  And Kabir's new computer? Her heart twisted. He had saved and saved to buy it. He had been so excited about it and now it was gone. But what if she hadn't moved? What if she hadn't run? What if she had stayed in the living room with Shahrukh?

  Shahrukh was aware that something was wrong but butter cookies and a huge box of LEGO toys took his mind off the fire in his house. Helle had two girls who played with Shahrukh even as they kept peering out of the window to see what was happening. The sirens had stopped, but the flashing lights were still on. The fire was completely out and smoke was rising up from the house.

  Helle made tea and served it to Layla and Raihana as the paramedic checked first Shahrukh's vital signs and then Raihana's.

  “Can you breathe?” the paramedic asked.

  Raihana started to cry.

  Layla put a hand on her shoulder. “No, she ran … ran with my son.

  The paramedic nodded. “It's okay then. No one got hurt.”

  They kept saying that, Raihana thought. But what about the hurt inside her body? The pain of knowing that she was not going to be safe ever again, not here, not in Kabul, nowhere. What about that hurt?

  A policeman came in with Kabir and Helle's husband. He sat across from Raihana and Layla and introduced himself. “I'm Inspector Vittrup.”

  “Coffee, Jon?” Helle asked, and he shook his head.

  “You called us?” He looked at Helle.

  Helle looked at her children before answering him. “Maj, Stine, take Shahrukh and go into your rooms.”

  “But Mor— ” the older one began and then stopped short when her mother glared at her. They took Shahrukh to their room, promising him more toys.

  Layla wanted to keep Shahrukh with her but she curbed the impulse. There were two little girls playing with her son; nothing bad was going to happen to him.

  “It was a boy with his head shaved,” Helle said. “He came with two others on bicycles; their heads were shaved too. I saw this one boy light something and I thought it was a cigarette. I was thinking that boys start young these days.”

  “Then what happened?” Jon asked.

  Helle sighed. “I was cleaning the windows, Stine ate cake and put her fingers all over and … anyway, I saw one of the boys take a lit bottle and throw it inside the house. I knew it was a firebomb. I'm married to a fireman, I know that much. So I called 112.”

  Jon looked at Raihana. “Gunnar came to me when you got hurt last week. I spoke to all the boys, I warned them … I had hoped that was the end of it.”

  When Raihana didn't respond he continued, “Did you see anything?”

  Raihana rubbed her face with both hands. “And now what? You will threaten again? And then what will they do? Shoot us? This is all my fault… my fault.” She started to speak in Dari then. “These good people give me a home and what happens? Their home is burned down.”

  “No, it wasn't your fault,” Kabir said in Danish. “You are not to blame. We don't blame you, do we, Layla?”

  “Of course not,” Layla said quickly. “You saved my boy.”

  “I put him in danger,” Raihana continued in Dari. “I put all of you in danger. Maybe I should go back to Kabul … what would the difference be? Maybe it'll be better there. At least I'll expect the violence.

  Jon looked at Helle. “A cup of coffee will help.”

  “Did you see anything?” he asked Raihana again.

  “I saw the boy,” she said to Layla in Dari. “I … I can't speak in

  Danish right now.” Kabir translated what she said into Danish.

  “Who was this boy? Have you seen him before?” Jon asked and took the coffee Helle had brought.

  “It was the same boy who threw the stone at me,” Raihana said to Kabir and then turned to Jon. “Samme dreng. Jeg har set.”

&
nbsp; “This is very serious,” Jon said gravely. “This time I will have to arrest them. If I show you pictures, could you pick out the one who threw the bottle?”

  “Jeg kan aldrig glemte hans ansigt,” Raihana said to Jon. She would never forget that face. She had forgotten the faces of the people who had arrested Aamir. The people she had seen dead on the streets, the soldiers whom she feared, but this boy, she would always remember his face. He was the boy who had brought Kabul into Denmark.

  “Good,” Jon said. “Then we will arrange for you to see a lineup tomorrow.”

  Kabir was about to translate but Raihana spoke in Danish. “I understand,” she told him.

  “Where will you stay tonight?” Jon asked Kabir.

  “At our home,” Layla responded.

  “There is a lot of damage,” Jon said.

  “It's our home, no one will scare us away,” Layla said.

  Jon arranged for Kabir and Raihana to visit the police station the next day. Raihana would identify the boy who had thrown the firebomb and give an official statement regarding what had happened.

  Raihana wasn't sure if it would help. First they had been throwing stones, now they were throwing firebombs. The police in Denmark could do nothing to stop them —they didn't even want to. Who cared if a few Afghans got hurt or killed?

  “It's my fault,” Raihana said, crying again. “I'm so sorry for putting your son in danger.”

  “What is she saying?” Helle asked Layla.

  “She blames herself,” Layla said.

  “Why?” Helle asked. “Bad people do bad things to good people. That is the law of nature, it isn't your fault.”

  · · ·

  Gunnar and Lars heard about the firebombing from a friend of a friend while they were in the summer house. They reached Kabir's house a few minutes after Jon left.

  Lars was furious. “You should've had him arrested when he threw that damn stone,” he said.

  Gunnar nodded. This was his fault, he thought. He was pretending to be a hero by inviting Raihana and her family to his home, but had done nothing to keep Raihana safe from those boys. He should have let Kabir file a complaint. A real complaint would have meant a real punishment for those boys and then this wouldn't have happened.

  Lars and Kabir walked through Kabir and Layla's house and Gunnar invited them to stay at his house for as long as it took to fix the damage. But Layla was adamant. This was their home and they would not be pushed out because of some crazy teenagers.

  Gunnar admired their courage and their conviction and had to agree that the damage was only downstairs; their bedrooms were untouched.

  She and Layla were standing in the damaged living room. Shahrukh was still in Helle's house at her insistence. “Just let him stay here. We'll feed him and put him to sleep; you can take him when you're settled,” Helle had told them.

  Raihana was trying not to panic at how much work they'd have to do fix the place up.

  “We'll take care of this,” Gunnar said to Raihana.

  How was he going to do that, Raihana wondered.

  “I'm not coming back for the bees,” she told Gunnar. “Thank you for your help, but I can't come back.”

  Gunnar knew it was futile to speak with her now. She had just been through a shock; she needed time to process the incident and find her way. But he promised himself that he would make this right, somehow.

  · · ·

  Kabir closed the window through which the firebomb had been thrown. It was amazingly untouched. There were some burn marks on the windowpanes and the wood and it didn't close as tightly as it did before, but it did close.

  Layla's mother's carpet was nothing but sodden burned cloth and Kabir's computer, a dark shell of what it used to be. The sofa was completely soaked but only a little burned on the arms. Layla thought it could be salvaged; Raihana was doubtful. The desk on which the computer sat was ruined as was the chair that went with it. But the worst was the floor. The carpet was burned and so had the wood beneath.

  It was almost two in the morning when they got to bed. Shahrukh had fallen asleep in Helle's house and Layla and Kabir carried him into their own bed.

  Raihana couldn't sleep. She paced her room and her mind wandered. She had to move out of Kabir and Layla's house, no discussion there. And she had to stop working for Gunnar, no discussion there either. She would ask Christina what women like her did. Was there someplace for women like her, who had nowhere else to go? She stopped to think about Rafeeq … what about him? She couldn't think about that right now. When he came back from Pakistan, then she would think about him.

  She had no illusions that those boys would be arrested. Danes would not arrest Danes for hurting immigrants. She could simply not see it happening.

  Raihana was going downstairs to get water and see the living room again when she overheard Kabir and Layla.

  “Will we have to pay for all the repairs?” Layla was asking.

  “Yes, we don't have renter's insurance, remember, it was too expensive,” Kabir said. “The owner will want the room repaired. The walls have to be painted and there is all that water damage.”

  “We have some money, the house money,” Layla said. They had been saving up to buy their own house; they would soon have enough for a down payment.

  “We can buy a house later,” Kabir said.

  “You're right…” Layla trailed off. Then Shahrukh started to cry and they stopped talking.

  If guilt was already making Raihana's stomach churn this conversation made her feel worse. Why did she have to be so stubborn and keep going to work with those bees? Why? If she hadn't gone to the bees, the boys would never have seen her, they would have left her alone.

  She sat in her room up in the attic and finally fell asleep a few hours later, convinced she had to leave Kabir and Layla's house as soon as possible.

  Raihana was shown six pictures in the policeman's office. She easily picked the boy whom she had seen outside the window. She told Jon Vittrup that she knew his face, had seen it before when he had thrown a stone at her.

  Jon slid two more sets of pictures and she picked out the other two boys who had been there when the first boy threw the stone. She had not seen them by Layla and Kabir's house, though, and she said as much to the policeman.

  “They were all arrested last night,” Jon said. “Your neighbor, Helle, she also identified all three, including the one who threw the firebomb into your house.”

  Raihana understood bits and pieces of what the policeman said. Her nerves had started to fray almost as soon as they arrived at the police station. And she when she was under stress Danish was harder for her.

  “What happens now?” Kabir asked.

  “The other two boys probably won't go to jail for too long, if at all,” Jon said. “But the boy who threw the firebomb will get four to six years. Of course, if he knew that someone was inside the house when he threw the bomb in, then it becomes eight to ten years.”

  “I don't know if he saw me or not. When I looked at him he was looking around, not looking inside the house,” she told Kabir in Dari.

  Kabir translated for Jon.

  “The boy says he didn't know you were inside the house,” Jon said. “He says he saw the car drive up and leave; that's why he threw the bomb then.”

  “What do you think? Did they know she was inside with my son?” Kabir asked Jon.

  “I don't think he has the guts to kill someone, but I think he's stupid enough and malicious enough to want to damage your house,” Jon said.

  “What happens now?” Raihana asked.

  “There'll be a trial. You'll be called in to tell the court what happened. Don't worry, there will be a translator and you can testify in Dari if you like,” Jon said when he saw the panic in Raihana's eyes.

  “By the time you have a trial, her Danish will be better,” Kabir said confidently. “How long will it take, a year or so?”

  “I expect we'll get a court date within a month at the latest.”
/>   “Court? Will they say it my fault?” Raihana asked.

  “How is it your fault?” Jon asked, confused.

  “I work with bees, with Gunnar, that wrong people think … court also think that wrong and …”

  “No matter what you do, Raihana, no one has the right to hurt you,” Jon said.

  As they drove back, Kabir seemed pleased with the meeting at the police station. “That was a good policeman,” he said. “In the past few days I have met many good Danes.”

  “And some bad ones tried to burn your house down,” Raihana said.

  “Yes,” Kabir agreed. “But no one thinks it's okay for them to do that. All the Danes I have spoken to say it was wrong. That makes me happy. It makes me feel safe.”

  “I don't know when I will start feeling safe again in this country,” Raihana said bitterly.

  “It will happen slowly,” Kabir said. “After nothing bad happens for a while you'll stop feeling afraid.”

  “I know this is going to cost you a lot of money,” Raihana said. “I have some saved up and … don't say no, Kabir, that money is yours to fix the house.”

  “I wasn't going to say no,” Kabir said. “We need the money. But it'll be a loan. Once I have a job we'll pay you back … and you don't say no to that.”

  When they got back Layla was standing outside their house on the street, talking with Helle. Two trucks were parked outside the house and workmen were going in and out.

  The burned computer, the sofa, and almost everything from the living room was in the driveway. Kabir parked behind one of the trucks, then he and Raihana walked up to Layla.

  “They showed up right after you left,” Layla said, half laughing, half crying. “They just came, seven or eight of them, and started to move things out. Told me I shouldn't clean and one of them asked me to get out.”

  “But what are they doing?” Raihana asked.

  Kabir started toward the house. He smiled when he understood what was going on.

  Gunnar peered out of the window through which the boy had thrown the firebomb and waved at Raihana.