by Puja Guha
Twenty-five years, seven months, and two days. Tareq’s eyes seared into Mariam’s picture, the audacity of spirit that he’d always seen in her taunting him. There were a few lines on her face, around her mouth, by her eyes, and her cheekbones were more filled out than he remembered, but she looked much the same, still beautiful. She wore a long burgundy dress, and he ached to see her figure, her curves move in the soft fabric, but that part of the picture was hidden by the other two women.
In turn, Tareq glared at them, first imagining driving a knife into Dinah’s gut. The other woman next to Mariam ceased to be his niece Nadia. She morphed into the woman who had hit him the night Mariam got away and he grimaced, visualizing the same knife stopping her heart.
If it weren’t for you, Mariam would never have left me, this is all your fault. His eyes narrowed, he would deal with both of them when the time was right, after he had Mariam back in his arms.
They will pay.
Bolstered by his resolve, Tareq let his desire level, and the picture in his hand returned to normal. He fixed his gaze on Nadia, and his smile returned—he had all the power over her. His expression sobered, and he retraced the scar. He would have to make sure that she didn’t warn Dinah. His threats against her had remained a secret thus far, Nadia was too much of a lamb to say anything, but he had to keep it that way. Perhaps it was time for him to agree to his sister’s offer, the one that he’d refused for the last few months. He couldn’t afford to risk anything that might spoil the surprise for Mariam, she would be so overjoyed to see him. He rubbed his chin, recalling how much she had enjoyed his touch, even when she had fought and cried. They deserved to have that again, they would have that again.
My Mariam, my wife.
Tareq stood up, widened his smile and practiced speaking to his sister in the mirror. “I’ve changed my mind. I’d like to try moving in with you for the next month.” Once he had tried it a few times, he was content with his performance, ready to put on a show. Nothing would stop him from having Mariam back, and he wasn’t going to allow Nadia or anyone else get in his way. He repeated the words to himself before heading for the door to speak to his sister.
She will always be mine.
Salmiya, Kuwait – August, 1990
Mariam cowered in the fetal position and rocked back and forth. After staring at the ceiling for what felt like hours, she’d given up on sleep—it’s not as if a bed sheet on the floor of the office that they had been assigned offered much comfort. She still couldn’t believe it, Tareq was dead.
He’s dead because of me.
Her body quaked as she grappled with that reality. If only she had left him months earlier, none of this would have happened. I could already have been in Europe, and my baby would be safe. With her hands on her belly, her torso racked with sobs. Tareq was gone, but her life was still as bleak as ever—she would never be free, she would have to explain what had happened, how he had died. The recollection of him touching her, the movement of his tongue down her throat as he tore at her underwear—she could not get away from it. Each time she would have to recount, and relive, what he had done to her. As she lay there on the floor, she doubted she would be able to survive that. She had to be strong, she had to take care of her baby, but Tareq’s ghost would follow her forever.
I will never be free of him, I will always be weak and at his mercy. Her diaphragm pulsed uncontrollably as she curled in a ball and surrendered to sobs, desperately trying to be as quiet as possible.
MARIAM EVENTUALLY DOZED off, her body finally granting her a temporary respite from the series of traps that her memories had become. When she opened her eyes, sunlight was streaming in through the office windows, and she shifted in her spot, realizing how much of an impact the day before had had on her. In the morning, the world, and her future in it, seemed a little less dire, even though nothing about the situation had actually changed. She rose slowly and made her way down the hall in search of the restrooms past a myriad of people she didn’t recognize. There were several different clusters in the various rooms that she passed, some still sleeping under conference room tables and corners of the hallway in front of her. She could make out what sounded like at least three different languages. At least Janhvi was right when she said that we didn’t necessarily have to speak in Hindi to blend in.
When she got to the end of the hallway, she made a guess and turned right. She could hear more people talking that way than to the left. The hallway opened out into a massive canteen, and the echoing chatter filled her ears as soon as she stepped inside. If she hadn’t known better, she would have thought it was any old workday, the canteen was packed to the brim with people seated at a series of rectangular and oblong tables set along the windows. The discussion sounded lively even if she couldn’t understand a word, although there were some terms that seemed vaguely familiar, jogging her memories of her housekeeper and reflecting the similar roots that Arabic and Urdu shared. She craned her neck to see the back of the room and was relieved to see Dinah and Janhvi sequestered at a high-top table in the far corner. Mariam exhaled and waved, then made her way toward them.
MARIAM WAS IN the process of wolfing down half of a paratha from Janhvi’s plate when she noticed Dinah and Janhvi looking past her. Mariam gulped down the morsel before she glanced to her left, where a tall Indian man was standing. He said something in what she recognized as Hindi, although she only understood a fraction of it.
I think he asked if we’re okay? Mariam gave him a puzzled look.
Janhvi responded to him, something about how they didn’t speak Hindi, and he frowned in obvious surprise, before speaking in English. “I hope you’re all right, Miss. I heard you last night, but I wasn’t sure if there was anything I could do, and I didn’t want to wake anyone else up.”
Mariam’s face flushed, “I’m okay, thank you.” She turned her gaze back to the last piece of the paratha on her plate—not only was she hungry, she wanted to limit conversation as much as possible. The more she or Dinah spoke to anyone here, the more likely it was that someone would figure out that they weren’t Indian. While she didn’t know what arrangement the office owner had made with the Iraqi soldiers, she definitely wasn’t going to risk their safety for a bit of conversation, even if the man initiating it was quite attractive.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he said in a quiet voice. “I’m Raj.”
“Mariam.”
“I’m Janhvi, and this is Dinah,” Janhvi sat up straighter in an obvious attempt to take them out of the hot seat.
“Nice to meet you. I’m sure I’ll see you,” Raj said before he turned and sat down at one of the long rectangular tables.
“What’s the matter with you, Mariam?” Dinah asked, crossing her arms. “We can’t be rude to the people here—we don’t want to attract that kind of attention.”
“Oh…I thought I shouldn’t talk to him in case he figures out who we are.”
Dinah shrugged, “They’ll know who we are soon enough. We just have to hope that no one turns us in. There’s no way we can keep it a real secret—look at us, we can’t speak Hindi, we barely know how to wear a salwar kamese. It’s only a matter of time, but this is still better than anywhere else we could be right now.” She turned toward Janhvi, and her voice cracked. “I don’t even know how to thank you for bringing us here. You saved us, you saved us both—from the Iraqis, and from Tareq.”
Salmiya, Kuwait – Two weeks later, August, 1990
Raj Ghosh dropped the last bag of rice onto the kitchen floor and leaned against the wall to catch his breath. Earlier in the week, he had helped relocate the makeshift refugee camp from the office building to the nearby Salmiya Indian School. Two businessmen had taken on primary leadership of the group and had recruited him, amongst a few others, to help with the effort once they had secured permission to move to the school. Raj had primarily dealt with Sanjay, an architect turned businessman with whom he had dealings with as part of his construction work, but he’d been equally
impressed with Daniels, more commonly known as Hyundai Daniels due to his involvement in the management of several local car dealerships in Kuwait. Both possessed a deep serenity and gravitas that had been invaluable in organizing and managing the massive group of Indians who had taken up residence at the school.
Raj picked up a large bottle of water and resisted the urge to dump half of it over his head to cool off. Thankfully they’d been able to wheel in a number of crates from the nearby cooperative—the different jamaiyas had been generous with water and basic dry food supplies—but he couldn’t exactly justify wasting a bottle of water under the circumstances. The tap water was never as cold as water from the fridge though, and the bottle wouldn’t stay cold. He sighed and instead of pouring it over his head, gulped it down, then went to the sink and splashed some water on his face and the back of his neck. With a deep breath, he was ready to rejoin the world, at least temporarily.
Sanjay had requested his help in several aspects of running the camp: “You’re used to running a construction crew, maybe you could help resolve some of the disputes that keep coming up between the different families.” Raj had agreed, but he’d had no idea that he was basically committing to climb a mountain with his hands tied behind his back. The families had only been living together for a couple of weeks, yet the number of petty disputes was multiplying at an alarming rate. When he’d had to deal with disputes within his construction crew—even though there were far fewer than the number he dealt with here on a daily basis—he’d had the ability to enforce his decisions: he could fire someone for refusing to follow his instructions, or at the very least, sanction them. Now all he could do was threaten to move them to a different room, and everyone was generally aware that that was mostly an empty threat. In the office, people had essentially been sleeping on top of one another, they had more space at the school, but their needs had increased exponentially. The father in one family wanted to make sure that there were no other men in the same room with his teenage daughter, another mother wanted her family to stay separate from the family of two boys that had gotten her son in trouble at school. Those were at least the more descriptive, perhaps even the more reasonable demands. The ones that were much worse were: “Ranvir makes the bathroom stinky so we need to put him on a schedule,” or “Visab snores really loud, can he move to another room?” Raj’s personal favorite was, “Everyone in that room stinks, I need a private bedroom.” It had taken all of his self-control not to burst out laughing at that one in particular. It’s August in Kuwait and only some of the rooms have air conditioning—everyone stinks, including you. He’d almost wrinkled his nose but had just managed to stop himself.
Raj sighed. The list went on and on, without any reprieve in sight. Still, there were moments he welcomed the disputes as a distraction from the slew of rumors that flew around with each passing day—every morning he heard that another building was on fire, another person had vanished, another Kuwaiti woman had been raped, and there’d been another shooting in some other neighborhood. If the rumors were to be believed, most of the country had already gone up in smoke. In truth, they rarely heard bullets after the first week. Raj saw the evidence each time he ventured outside the school grounds—the sky wasn’t ablaze and there were only a few regular checkpoints manned by the few well-dressed Iraqi officers—yet it wasn’t enough to silence the fear that plagued him, magnified at least ten-fold amongst the school’s residents. The rumors were far more effective than reality, the fear muzzled any discussion of resistance and rendered most of them into pure survival mode. Only a small pocket of resistance was centered in the Sabah Al-Salem neighborhood where many Kuwaitis lived, but from what Raj had heard they struggled with a lack of clear leadership since most of the government had fled at the start of the invasion.
Leaning his head back, Raj contemplated what he’d overheard a few days earlier: some of the other men that Sanjay had recruited to help with the move expected the invasion to be over in less than a month. They claimed that the international community wouldn’t stand for it, but Raj wasn’t so sure. He kept his opinions to himself, there was no point in crushing everyone else’s optimism because he couldn’t summon any of his own. Something deep down told him that their situation wouldn’t end that quickly—as far as he could tell, prior to the occupation, no one had actually expected Saddam to attack. The news had been all ablaze, but in private settings, everyone had believed Saddam would fall in line. He was, after all, a long-time American ally, and he needed their cooperation more than he needed Kuwait’s oil—or so they had all believed. Now we know better. With that in mind, Raj was willing to bet that all of the rational sentiment behind a quick end to the conflict would be for naught. He also remembered his father’s stories about the Naxalite movement in Bengal—how it had grown from something small into a revolution and continued far longer than anyone could have predicted. He’d been a child at the time, but recalled the same sorts of discussions he was often privy to now, discussions that were so confident everything would turn out fine, and quickly at that. He had learned that lesson the hard way back then, he wished that he didn’t have to see it in action again now.
Once was more than enough.
With another sigh he walked into one of the two sitting rooms that he supervised—old classrooms that had been turned into eating areas for the residents of the school. Residents of the school. He noted how odd that phrase sounded in his head. The first room was always the hardest, once he got through it and made it to the second, the worst was usually behind him, at least for that particular evening. Each of the hall monitors—as he affectionately called himself—and the other supervisors Sanjay had appointed had their own systems. Some of them did rounds and dealt with disputes on the go at the same time, others set up specific sessions for people to come to them with their issues. Really it all just went to hell most of the time since people didn’t exactly respect or operate on the schedules they set, but it still helped to feel as if they were drawing some semblance of boundaries. Raj used a slight variation on his construction crew schedule: rounds in the morning and evenings, followed by short office hours in the late morning, ensuring that all discussions took place after mealtimes. During his normal workday, rounds before the meal allowed him to get his crew working faster, but here, waiting to entertain complaints till everyone was fed dampened their intensity. No one is quite as angry on a full stomach. He’d experimented with other times, such as late afternoon tea time, but had discovered that those were the worst. His charges were hungry and had been able to stew most of the day. Other than a few blowups at the dinner table, the new schedule was working tolerably well, now that his expectations had been recalibrated to their worst.
That thought made him chuckle. If I can deal with this all the time, my next construction project will be a breeze—nothing like that last one. Remembering his last construction job made a lump form in his throat, and he turned away from the sitting room door to head straight for the bathrooms.
He locked himself in and leaned over the sink to get control of his breathing.
I’ll see you tomorrow morning.
That had been the last thing his wife Ritika had said to him when he’d dropped her off for her overnight nursing shift at Farwaniya Hospital the afternoon before the Iraqis had crossed the border. They were supposed to have more time together, to get to know each other, but she had disappeared. He had gone back to the hospital at every possible opportunity, taking far too many risks driving out in the roads especially in the first couple of days after the invasion. He kicked at the wall underneath the sink.
How could Ritika be gone?
And how could he care so little?
The feelings came in waves, it wasn’t as if he didn’t feel anything, but his parents had arranged the wedding in India only the month before. Prior to that, he and Ritika had met once and spoken over the phone twice. She had arrived in Kuwait less than a week before the occupation began, and he’d been so busy with his project that he�
��d kept putting off spending time with her. He could count the number of real conversations they’d had on one hand, the number of nights they had spent together on the other. He felt something at her disappearance, a gap, a sense of loss, but nothing in comparison to the emotion that losing his wife should evoke.
“Damn it,” he cried out as his foot connected with the wall again. This onslaught of emotions had only come on a few times, but when it did, he couldn’t interact with anyone. Sanjay was the only person at the camp that he had told about Ritika and her disappearance, Raj hadn’t even informed the men from his construction crew that had taken residence at the school. Before he’d left for India for the wedding, he had been so uncertain about the whole thing that he hadn’t bothered to mention the purpose of his vacation. He’d figured that he would tell them when he felt like he was married, not when the paperwork was signed. He had hoped that he and Ritika would reach that point—his mother had always claimed that you could learn to love someone, that she and his father had fallen in love in exactly that way. It was nothing like the movies, but it could be real and true, and he had seen it in his parents’ interactions, although there was much of their relationship that he wanted never to replicate. Yet, now Ritika was gone, vanished, and he had no way to find her. He’d returned to the hospital and to their old apartment, along with the one restaurant that he had taken her to the day after they had arrived in Kuwait. The restaurant was closed, their apartment was abandoned, and the hospital was full of soldiers. There was nowhere else to look, but he clung to the hope that she would hear about this shelter and come to find him.