The Good Muslim Part 15

No toys. No pocket money. No sandals. A rattle in his chest. Dirty scabs on his arms.

*I have to do something,' he said, rising heavily from the sofa.

Maybe this was a good thing. Maybe Sohail would realise what he was doing to his son. *Yes, do something. Please.'

Sohail hesitated. Then he drew a sharp, deep breath and said, *I'm sending him to madrasa.'

*What?'

*In Chandpur.'

She felt her voice narrowing, trembling. *Where the h.e.l.l is Chandpur?'

*On the other side of the Jamuna. I thought you knew every corner of this country.' He couldn't resist it, the gibe.

*But that's days away.'

*I hear the Huzoor is a good man.'

*You hear? You don't know him?'

*He comes highly recommended. I need to spend more time at the mosque; I can't watch over Zaid. He a he needs guidance. Even you can see that.'

*Let him stay with us, Ammoo and me. He's lost his mother.'

*I am grateful for the efforts you've made, Maya, but I think we both know the situation is getting out of hand. Can you promise me he won't steal any more? And he makes up stories all the time; the boy lives in his own dream-world. It's not right.'

She couldn't promise him the boy wouldn't steal. She couldn't promise him anything a she didn't even know where Zaid was half the time, or why he returned with bruises on his arms or why he smelled of vomit.

*Ammoo needs you,' Sohail continued; *your duty lies with her.'

*Zaid needs us too. Please, Bhaiya.' The air closed around her throat. *I'm sorry about the chappals, I should have asked you first. But madrasa is too much, Bhaiya, even for you.'

His voice hardened, as if he'd just piped a line of metal through it. *He's my son. The decision is made. He leaves after Zohr on Wednesday.'

There was nothing left to say; his voice left no s.p.a.ce for argument. *And Ammoo?'

*Give Ammoo my salaam.'

He would even shun his own mother. *You don't want to see her?'

*Tell her we are praying for her recovery, inshallah.'

And then he was gone.

Of course, the boy would never agree to it. He would refuse, and she would have another argument with Sohail. This time, she would be prepared; Ammoo would help. But the next day Maya found Zaid dancing on the rooftop, plucking leaves from the lemon tree that brushed the first-floor windows, sprinkling them over his head. He bounded down the stairs, yah yah yah, wearing a brand new lungi, the starch of it making him look wider than he really was, a half-sleeved kurta and a cap on his head. A small trunk was in his arms.

*I've come to show you my new things.' He laid the trunk on the ground and gently, reverently, hinged it open. Fingernails clipped. Excited hands revealing the treasures within. A comb. A stick of neem for his teeth. A crisp-paged Qur'an. Two new lungis. And the chappals, wrapped in newspaper. His father had gone back to the shop and paid for them. *It has a lock,' he said, showing her the key attached to a string around his neck.

There was nothing more for her to do. She wanted to give him something for his trunk. What could she give him? Photographs were banned. No books other than the Qur'an. Toys out of the question.

In the end she packed up a few b.a.l.l.s of sweet puffed rice. *Here,' she said, *some snacks for your trip.'

He placed them delicately in the trunk, careful not to disturb the other objects.

*You'll be all right?'

He smiled, still caught up in the joy of it. School. Other children. The women upstairs no longer worrying he was getting too old to be around them. His father's heavy hand on the back of his head.

*How will you get there?'

*Abboo. He says we'll take a train, and the ferry. And a bus, and a rickshaw.'

She closed her eyes and imagined his journey. Holding his father's hand a had he ever known it before, the grip of his father's hand? Heaven. And the ferry, the syrupy tea, the river wind wrapped tightly around him, the sky open and vast and giving a boy a small piece of the world. And here her imagination reached its limits.

The building's sagging mud walls and patchy green moss. The courtyard strewn with chicken bones, a dirty drain clogged with spit. He swallows the lump of disappointment, his heart lifting, for a moment, at the chorus of sound drifting into the courtyard. His father quickly releases his hand and suddenly the Huzoor appears, unsmiling, taking the key from around his neck, examining his trunk, tossing aside the sweet moori. He nods to his father, yes, he will be instructed in the way of deen, he will not be tempted by the modern life, and all the while he is watching the pale green lizards as they scurry and f.u.c.k and lose their tails, and the cane that lies upon the Huzoor's low table, and his knees are starting to ache as his father's speech continues, so he is relieved when he is asked to stand up, and when he is given a blanket and a plate he dreams of what he will be fed. And as he crosses the courtyard, he wonders if he will meet the other students now, and then a door opens and there is another key, and his father's voice says As-Salaam Alaik.u.m, the Huzoor's face retreats and the door swings shut.

He is alone with the blanket and the plate, the grey light from a slit between the thatch and the wall, the scratch of rats, and as the lock is turned he hurls himself at the door and opens his voice to the footsteps fading with every moment, until there is nothing but his own voice, begging to be released, and his fist on the wall, and each cry echoing into the next: Abboo, Abboo, Abboo. At this moment he is more afraid of what is in the room, the aloneness and the rats and the line of light against the wall, than of what is beyond. He is wrong.

1974.

January.

Whatever else had led Sohail to delivering sermons on his rooftop a Piya, the war, the disappointing ordinariness of freedom a Maya had always believed it was Silvi, his oldest and first love, who had finally brought about the end of his old self.

Silvi had continued to live across the road. After her husband's death, she had started covering her head, and now, on the rare occasions when she left the house, she was seen in a black chador that masked everything but her eyes. Her mother, Mrs Chowdhury, once a great friend of Rehana, was rumoured to have become an obsessive hand-washer, spending hours in the bathroom scrubbing at her fingers until they peeled and bled. More and more rooms of the grand two-storey house were closed off, until Mrs Chowdhury lived in one bedroom, and Silvi in another.

The other neighbours had written them off, but Maya was convinced Silvi was just biding her time. She knew that whatever direction her brother might be taking, it would be Silvi who pressed him further along the journey; after all, Silvi had come to her own conclusions about the Almighty. Maya knew Silvi was watching from across the road. And she knew, though he never told her, that Sohail secretly longed for Piya, and that he had decided that this longing must be erased, must be conquered, so that he could fulfil his duty a the reason why, he believed, he had survived the war.

It was true. For months Silvi had kept her vigil, as the people gathered to hear Sohail speak. She saw the men and women sitting in columns, side by side. She couldn't hear his words, but from her rooftop she saw his rooftop, and the bodies that swayed with the cadence of his voice.

And while Silvi watched Sohail, Maya watched Silvi. She saw the parting of Silvi's curtains whenever Sohail appeared. She saw the black outline of her, hanging up her was.h.i.+ng on the rooftop so she could peer across at Sohail and his followers. One day, after the sermon had ended and the Azaan been recited, Maya saw Silvi open her gate and cross the road. Silvi caught the eye of a young woman on her way out. Come here, she said, motioning with her hand. The woman looked very little like a religious supplicant a she wore a plain salwaar-kameez and didn't even cover her head. Maya stood behind her own gate and listened to the exchange.

*What goes on in that house?' Silvi asked.

The woman smiled. *He is a very wise man,' she said. *A wise and humble man.' And she gazed directly into Silvi's eye, and Maya knew that Silvi was being told everything she needed to know, because Silvi must remember the hypnotic quality of Sohail's voice, and the way he made people want to believe everything he said, and the deep conviction he brought to every word, and the rising colour in his cheek, and the way he raised his hand, gently, as if he were about to caress you, and the stillness of the rest of him, all his energy, his power, channelled into his voice, its current swift, and long, and steady.

What exactly was he preaching, Silvi wanted to know.

*It cannot be explained,' the woman said, looking more and more as if she were in love, *it cannot be explained.'

And the woman left Silvi at the bungalow gate, treading confidently away, taking with her a piece of that river voice, that little piece of astonishment. Maya was about to confront her, to warn her away, to tell her that she had already broken Sohail's heart once, and that she no longer had a claim to him. But before Maya could act, Silvi climbed up the ladder, surprisingly nimble in her cloak. Maya never knew what happened on that roof, what words were exchanged by Silvi and her brother. She tried to imagine it and she could conjure up only this: that Silvi approached Sohail, still kneeling from the prayer, and said, *You remember the slave Bilal. He was punished by Ummayah for becoming a Muslim. He was forced to lie outside in the heat with a stone on his chest. And what did he shout to the sun, beating mercilessly on him?'

*One,' Sohail replied, *One.'

That is how she dealt the final blow. *One,' she said. *There can be only One.'

Sohail and Silvi were married in March of the following year. Maya attended out of pity for her mother, who was pretending it was all for the best. Ammoo suggested to Sohail that, because her first marriage had been hastily conducted, Silvi might want to enjoy being a bride this time around. She might like to have her hair done, or hire a girl to decorate her hands and feet. But Sohail said Silvi didn't want any of it. Quietly, they said. No ceremony.

So Rehana printed a few cards and sent them with boxes of sweets to everyone she knew. Orange-studded Laddus and curd-dusted Pranharas, the sweet named for heartache.

Mrs Rehana Haque is delighted to announce.

the marriage of her son.

Muhammad Sohail Haque.

to

Rehnuma Chowdhury (Silvi).

daughter of late Mr Kamran Chowdhury

and Mrs Aziza Chowdhury.

May G.o.d bless the Happy Couple.

This was how they came to cross the road on a Friday morning in March, carrying a set of clothes for Silvi and a small pair of gold earrings. It was all the jewellery Rehana could afford. Maya had good intentions as she was getting ready, telling herself there was nothing to be done, that she should try to make amends before it was too late, but halfway across the road, between the bungalow and the crumbling mansion, she was seized with a sudden hatred for Silvi. How grim this whole operation was, Sohail retreating to the woman who had once spurned him, who was taking him back only because his fears had suddenly aligned with her own.

Silvi changed into the clothes they had brought, the earrings obscured by the tight headscarf she wrapped across her forehead. Sohail sat alone in Mrs Chowdhury's drawing room while the rest of them crowded into Silvi's bedroom. Silvi sat hunched under her sari, her face invisible. When the contract was pushed in front of her, she signed it quickly and with a sure hand.

It still surprised Maya how small their world had remained. There were no swarms of relations, no uncles and grandparents. It had always been this way: they had spent Eid with Ammoo and her friends from the Ladies' Club; their birthdays were celebrated thinly, with a few neighbours dropping in. And yet Maya could never remember feeling alone, anxious that they were marooned on their own little island while everyone else was sheltered by their extended circle of relations. It must have been difficult for Ammoo, responsible for constructing a family out of just the three of them. Perhaps this is why she and Sohail, and eventually Ammoo, had attached themselves so much to the war effort. Suddenly it did not matter that they had grown up without a father, that their relations were a thousand miles away and had abandoned them, because all the fighters, and their mothers and sisters, were kin, their very own people, as though they shared features, histories, bloodlines. But all of this was before Silvi and Sohail made their own family, with followers and supplicants. They wouldn't need a war after that, or even their own blood.

After the ceremony, Mrs Chowdhury served tea and luchialoo, puffed bread and sour potato curry. Ammoo suggested Maya sing a song to entertain them, but Silvi shook her head and whispered no. Maya noted the way her mother obeyed her. They ate their luchi-aloo in silence.

At the end of the meal Mrs Chowdhury's servant appeared with a red suitcase, which he handed to Sohail. Then the four of them, Rehana, Sohail, Silvi and Maya, crossed the road and returned to the bungalow. Mrs Chowdhury did not even see them to the gate, maybe because Silvi herself did not seem sorry to be leaving home, or her mother.

After loving the girl from across the road, after witnessing her marriage to another man, after waiting, patiently and without malice, for him to die, and after conquering his own desire for the girl he had found in the barracks, Sohail had finally got his bride. Nothing could separate them now. Despite the joyless, quiet ceremony, Maya knew Sohail was revelling in this small bit of satisfaction.

And what of the rooftop? The sermons continued, but they were no longer about the many faces of G.o.d. There was only one. One message. One Book. The world narrowed. Curtains between men and women. Lines drawn in the sand. And Silvi, coated in black, reigned in her brother's heart.

1984.

October.

By morning, the cell has achieved its purpose. There are no more shouts in his throat. No words remain. He clutches his plate and he is no longer lonely, or broken-hearted by the memory of his father's footsteps, or determined to trace his way back home. He is only hungry. He can think only about what will fill that plate.

He is led to the courtyard, where he blinks at the light and the delicate, feathery aroma of the morning.

The others are already seated, fingers dipped into their breakfast. A circle of eyes follows him as he sits down and places his plate in front of him. They laugh, a moment before a hard, tight-fingered palm strikes the back of his head. The voice says, *Wazu, prayer, then you eat, bodmaish.'

He locates the square of cement on to which he is meant to squat, and the tiny tap that protrudes from the side of the building. Most of the boys have returned to their meal, but some watch while he removes his cap and circles one hand over another, prods the insides of his nostrils and ears. He prays.

Finally, he is allowed to eat. The rice is cold and overcooked, but he swallows it in great gulping mouthfuls. As he takes his final bite, a boy throws a spray of rocks at him.

He has missed the dawn lesson. After breakfast he is led into a room with long rows of low, wooden tables. When he sits cross-legged on the mud floor, the table reaches his chest and on it he can place his Qur'an. A man sits at the front of the room with a square desk of his own. His Qur'an is raised by a triangular shelf that holds the book open. In his hand is a length of cane that catches the light and casts snake-like shadows across the room.

He pretends to read, his fingers on the Book, his body moving back and forth, as if at sea and battered by the tide, but now his mind meanders back to his father, the cell, the ferry ride, and as the anger heats up within him he is suddenly very tired, his eyes dragging downwards. To stay awake he concentrates on the wiry shape of the cane, the thought of it striking his legs. He wonders if he can sneak into the Huzoor's room and retrieve his puffed-rice snacks. He misses Maya. He looks around the room to see if anyone is trying to catch his eye, but no eyes reach out to his; they are all on the same s.h.i.+p, all battered by the same tide.

Later, he tries to sleep, after counting the different noises in the room, the rats, the hum-snoring, the rustle of mosquito nets as they are tucked into sleeping mats. His father has neglected to give him a mosquito net. The Huzoor has instructed the other boys to stretch their nets over his mat, but they have refused. He counts the number of times a mosquito lands near his ear, its buzzing louder than anything he has heard all day. Even the roar let out by the Huzoor when he discovered the boy didn't know the Arabic alphabet. What comes after alif, ba, ta, sa? What comes after the walking-stick letter? He doesn't know. The Huzoor strikes him three times across the palm. One, two, three. The mosquito is louder than the strike, beating its wings together, hectic, stereophonic.

He falls asleep in the company of wings.

1984.

November.

Joy was leaning against his car. She had heard the horn, gone outside to see who it was and found him smiling, his hands in his pockets.