The Good Muslim (19 page)

He recited words from the Torah, the Gita, the Bible. He praised the prophets of old, Ram and Odysseus, Jesus and Arjun, the Buddha and Guru Nanak. They were all messengers of God, in their way. Separate in time, diverse in their teaching, yet equal in their desire for human betterment. He spoke to those, like Kona, who had never thought seriously about their faith; he read to them from the Qur’an, and he told them stories about the place where their faith was born, in the high desert of Arabia, where the warring tribes of the Quraysh came together in the shadow of the Ka’bah.

Other religions had their saints, their icons. They had their churches, their gospels, their commandments, their strife, their exiles, their miracles. We, he said, have our Prophet, and our Book. The Book was the miracle. It was so simple. That was the power of the message. It turned them into brothers and guardians of one another. It promised equality. It promised freedom. It was perfect.

The Book spoke to his every sorrow, to every bruise of his life. It spoke to the knife passing across the throat of an innocent man; it spoke to the day his father died, hand on his arrested heart; and it spoke to the machine-gun sound that echoed in his chest, night after night, and to the hollow where Piya had been. And every idea he had ever had about the world, it spoke to those too. That every man was equal before God – how foolish of him to believe that Marx had invented this concept, when it was ancient, even deeper than ancient, embedded in the very germ of every being; that is what God had intended, what God had created. He wept from the beauty of it.

1984
October

She had forgotten about the trip to New Market when Sohail came through the door a few weeks later. His face was red, the air coming hard out of his mouth. He held a small paper bag in his hands.

‘How is Ammoo?’ he asked, sitting down heavily.

‘She has cancer, how do you think?’ She hadn’t meant to sound so sharp, but he hadn’t been to see Ammoo since that day at the hospital. Ammoo asked after him constantly, and Maya had to tell her he was off somewhere on important jamaat business, that he had sent his love and blessings. There were messages from upstairs, informing them that the Qur’an had been read three times from start to finish in Rehana’s name. Khadija had sent food, sometimes in excessive amounts, which they’d had to throw away because there was no one to eat it.

‘I’ve been praying,’ Sohail said.

‘I know. I heard.’ She remembered his sermon, the way he had admonished her.

He rubbed his face with both hands. Then he held out the paper bag. Inside were the Bata sandals, blue and brand new. She felt a cold flood of panic. Sohail tented his fingers and said, ‘I would like to know how these sandals came to be in my son’s possession.’ Maya noticed a ring on his left thumb, a silver ring with a cheap green stone. She stared at it as she tried to decide how to explain it to him – the market, the salesman, the insult.

‘They were a gift from me. His old sandals were torn.’

‘They were not torn. I have seen them myself.’

‘You’re right, they weren’t torn. But they were too small.’

‘You know I regard humility and truthfulness above all things.’

‘He wanted—’

‘Of course he wanted. He’s a child.’

‘Exactly. He’s a kid – you don’t treat him like one.’

Sohail looked at her directly, sword-like. Damn it, he always knew when she was lying. ‘Did you give him the sandals?’

‘No.’

‘Then where did he get them?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘I don’t believe you.’

‘Look, we went to New Market, and I wanted to buy him sandals, but the shopkeeper thought he was a servant.’ Sohail said nothing, just continued to stare at her. ‘Did you hear me? A servant.’

‘Why do you care about such things?’

He seemed genuinely perplexed. Why
had
she cared? ‘Because he was humiliated, that’s why. Your son was humiliated. It’s the same thing that happens when he walks the streets in torn clothes, or stares at the children coming out of the playground when the school bell rings.’

‘If you didn’t buy the sandals, then who did?’

‘I don’t know. Maybe he bought them with his pocket money.’

‘You know very well we don’t give him pocket money.’

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 hell 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 – 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 – 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 space 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 balls 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 – 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 fuck 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 Alaikum, 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 – Piya, the war, the disappointing ordinariness of freedom – 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 – 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 washing 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 – 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.