A Golden Age (40 page)

D

ear Husband,

The war will end today.

It was winter and the garden was living.

The flowers she had planted at the start of the war now studded the green. Champa, bokul, rojonigondha. The yellow roses. The hibiscus bush straddling the boundary wall.

Dawn was just breaking over the horizon. She knew she had only these few hours before the telephone started to ring and the neighbours began to pour in. People who would come to con- gratulate her and share their own stories of how they had managed to survive. They would fall on each other, as after a very long crossing.

But it was still early, and still quiet. Only the crows ringing the house.

*

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Rehana hugged the shawl around her shoulders, and carefully, slowly, crossed the garden. She had not done it since that day. After the army took the Major away, she had hardly left the bun- galow. Shona outside her window she had barely been able to look at.

Her footsteps echoed on the bare cement floor. She opened cupboards, pulled out drawers. Everything empty. Maya had done a thorough job. Cleaned up the broken pots and pillaged bookshelves. Sold the Sunguptas’ furniture and sent the money to Salt Lake. The rose-petal carpet was rolled up and pitched against a corner of the drawing room. Rehana crossed the pink- hued dining room, empty except for the portrait of Mrs Sengupta’s parents, resting in a corner.

She entered Mithun’s room. Coffee-coloured light filtered through the drawn curtain. The projector, the gramophone and the records were all gone. The shelves were wiped clean. There was no trace of him.

Mithun’s bed was wedged against the wall. For some reason Maya had left it there, with a colourful bedspread laid out across. Rehana bent to straighten the bedspread, remembering the many times she had reached out just this way, her fingers spread, to smooth his sheets.

On the floor next to the bed was a box of matches. Blue Lion, it said on top. Blue Lion Safety Matches.

Rehana opened the box. Empty. He had used the last one to examine her face. She thought of his finger, sliding the box out of its sleeve, striking the match, watching her face come alive in the sulphur light.

She retraced her steps. Pulled back the curtains. Crossed the drawing room and went through the door. Fastened the padlock.

At the bungalow she stepped on to her prayer mat.

Bismillah ir-rahman-ir-raheem.

Dear God, my merciful, my benevolent.
Forgive me
.

Maya was awake, brushing her hair. ‘You ready to go so soon?

Just give me five minutes, I’ll put on a sari.’

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‘No, you stay. Go with your brother when he comes.’

‘OK, but don’t be too long. We have to be at Shaheed Minar for the treaty.’

The rickshaw turned into Gulistan, crossed the rail line at Purano Polton. People were trickling on to the streets and the rickshaw- wallah had to manoeuvre through the thickening crowd. Every time a plane droned overhead they let up a loud cheer.

Dear husband, she practised, the war will end today.

What else could she say that he didn’t already know? That those nine months of the war were like nine generations, brim- ming with lives and deaths; that Sohail had survived, while his friends had died; and that here was the city, burned and blistered and alive, where she was going to see what remained of the man with the scar across his face who had lived in her house for ninety-six days and passed like a storm through her small life.

A boy, no older than fourteen or fifteen, guarded the door. He wore an oversized shirt with the sleeves rolled up; a belt, cinched around his waist, held up his trousers. In his arms he cradled an enormous rifle.

‘I’m Mrs Haque,’ Rehana said.

‘Salaam-Alaikum,’ he said, his hand to his forehead. The word had got out about Shona, and how she had sheltered the guerril- las and saved Sabeer. ‘They told me you were coming. Follow me.’

The room inside was battered. The police desk was over- turned. They stepped through the splintered chairs, the broken glass, the torn-up bits of paper that carpeted the floors.

The gate leading to the cells was guarded by a boy, even younger than the first. The two exchanged a few words, the gate was opened, and Rehana was led through to a corridor with a row of doors. Each door had a small opening, like a letterbox. She thought she could hear the shuffle of bodies inside. The boy took her to the end of the corridor, unlocked a door and swung it open. ‘Not to worry, Chachi, I’ll stay just behind you.’

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The shapes moved in the dark.

This was where they must have brought him. It smelled strongly of sweat and urine. There was a window carved out of a vertical slit in the far wall, but it offered no light. The walls were wet and stained. It was difficult not to turn away.

They squatted in their uniforms.

A man stood up shakily and came towards her. She heard him struggle to breathe. ‘Rehana,’ he said.

‘Faiz.’ Dark skin, heavy eyebrows. How much he resembled his brother. His left eye was swollen, the lid squeezed shut.

‘Rehana,’ he said again. His hands were cuffed. His feet were cuffed. The shackles belled and rattled. ‘You’ve come to get me out—’ He reached out a hand.

‘Get back!’ the boy shouted.

‘No, no, it’s all right,’ Rehana said. She drew closer.

‘Get me out of here,’ Faiz said. His beard was matted and soiled. ‘Please.’

She couldn’t speak; she just looked at him dumbly, this man she had feared and hated.

‘Sohail, is he – where is he?’ Faiz asked.

‘He’s fine. He’ll be home in a few days.’ She had come with a list of questions, but she couldn’t remember any of them. It must have been here, somewhere within these walls, that they’d kept him. If I look hard enough, I might find a trace.

Faiz put his palms together. He put his palms together and begged.

She had come to ask him about the Major. Where they had taken him. What they had done. But now she knew the questions were useless; she had her answers. The walls, the sound of the chains, told her everything she needed to know.

‘Rehana,’ he was saying, ‘for the sake of my brother. One word from you and they would let me go. Find forgiveness in your heart.’

She searched. It was true, they would let him go if she asked. They were just children, after all, the boys running around with guns, their hearts hungry for revenge. She thought of forgiving

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Faiz. She imagined telling him to go back to Pakistan, to never come back, never show his face to her again. And saying, It is not for me to punish you but God.

She didn’t say anything for a few minutes. Faiz breathed louder and harder as he asked, and asked again. She tried to look into his swollen face. She was about to utter the words
for my husband’s sake
, but then the sight of all of them, Joy and Aref and Mrs Sengupta, floated in front of her. Even then she might have forgiven him, but then she remembered the look on Maya’s face when they had told her about Sharmeen, and those first few days of the war when it dawned on her that she would not come out of this with her world intact. ‘I cannot forgive you, brother. For my daughter I cannot forgive you.’

She turned away, the lock clanging shut behind her. She heard his fist on the door, and the chains, and his fading, strangled cries.

The graveyard was cool and dusty. She glanced around for the caretaker, but she was alone. The chill made her half walk, half run, to Iqbal’s plot.

She brushed the fallen leaves from his gravestone. She had been nervous about this meeting, wondering what she would say, how she would explain, but now the words came easily.

Dear Husband,

I came to tell you the story of our war and how we have lived.

The war will end today. I have aged a thousand years. I am ugly and tired. But I live.

A man lived in our house for ninety-six days. At first I was angry he was there, because he was training Sohail to be a guer- rilla and he seemed to have that savage need to save the country that I saw burning in Sohail’s eyes just before he left for the fight- ing.

But then I was left with him and that poor boy whose brother died and who is lost now, even as it all ends and we have to try to find ways to exist in a country without war. Your son became a

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soldier and then he lost his friends. They wore each other’s shirts. They died in them.

In the midst of all the madness I found the world seemed right for the first time in a very long time. I heard the song of a woman whose voice held a thousand years of sorrow. And yes, I loved him. For the smallest fraction of those ninety-six days, I loved him.

As it was with you, so it was also with him. Only the briefest moment. And I told him everything, about the day I became a thief and the day I became a widow and the day I lost the chil- dren. And I told him if I had a chance, just one chance, to choose again I would finally be free of it. So I know he did not blame me for not running to Faiz and Parveen, or to that police station, to beg them to let him go. I let them think they had Sohail. That is what I chose. To let that man pay my debt.

For this, my husband, I pray you will forgive me. And I pray to God to forgive me.

The war will end today. Niazi will sign the treaty and I will walk into the streets. Your daughter will hold my hand. There will be a pressing crowd on the pavement but Maya will elbow us to the front. A boy will sell flags for two taka and everyone will wave and crane their necks to see the road. Coloured paper will sail from buildings; fists will wave in the air; there will be dancing, a man on a flute, a woman beating a dhol slung across her shoulder. Someone will think to plug a megaphone to the radio. The roads are flat and dusty; we are spellbound, love- bound, home-bound, singing ‘
How I love you, my golden Bengal
.’ The sky is pale and iridescent and today the war has ended, and today I will clutch my flag, hold my breath and wait for our son.

I know what I have done.

This war that has taken so many sons has spared mine. This age that has burned so many daughters has not burned mine.

I have not let it.

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Acknowledgements
‌

I am privileged to be indebted to the following people:

Anya Serota, for her commitment to the book before it was even written and for sheer editorial brilliance. My agent, Peter Straus, who knows more about books than just about anyone, for his wisdom and much-needed counsel. Ellie Birne, Nikki Barrow, James Spackman, Roland Philipps, Sara Marafini and all my friends at John Murray; Lisa Baker, Rowan Routh, Stephen Edwards and the team at RCW. Donna Poppy, magical trans- former of the muddy sentence. Myrlin Hermes and Joe Treasure, my genius critics; Andrew Motion for lessons and guidance; David Cross and the Arts Council for their generous support; Liza Glen and Jane Filip for hours around the table. Roland Lamb, for inspiring me to write Rehana better. Michael Veal, Dan Mirsky, Siddhartha Deb and Michele Ashley, for early enthusiasm and confidence; Shaveena Anam, my co-conspirator. Kaiser Haq, for his timely translation of Shamsur Rahman’s

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‘Shadhinota Tumi’. All my freedom-fighter friends, Habibul Alam, Shahidullah Khan, Naila Zaman, Shireen Huq, Akhtar Ahmed, Shireen Banu, Mofidul Huq, Sultana Zaman, Colonel Nuruzzaman and Aly Zaker; Shahadat Chowdhury, whom we keep alive in our hearts. My mother and father, who told me so many stories about the war that I couldn’t help but become a writer.