The Good Muslim Part 11

And neither will Sohail. She will not let him. She believes a oh, how foolish she is, how arrogant a she believes she has a say. She believes she can do something to prevent it. She believes her will is greater than the leaf in her heart and the leaf in her brother's heart.

He approaches her. *I've been praying.'

*For what?' She is reading the Observer.

*Not for anything. Just praying.'

*Please, Bhaiya,' she says, *don't start talking religious mumbo-jumbo, we won't recognise you any more.' She turns her attention away, folding her newspaper to the cla.s.sified ads.

*But that is what prayer is. It is the abandonment of all other thoughts, all other pursuits.'

She looks at him then, and he sees her searching for the joke.

*I'm serious,' he says, answering the question she is too stunned to ask. He pauses, levelling his thoughts before replying. Outside, a man is shouting on the street and banging on what sounds like a cooking pot. *Allah, Allah, Allah. Give to the poor, give to the poor.'

*It doesn't matter what brings us to G.o.d; it only matters that it does.'

*Are you quoting from some mullah now?'

*No, Maya, I am telling the truth.'

*So this has nothing to do with Piya, with the war. Did something else happen? Did you do something?'

She is close, too close. *I told you, it doesn't matter.'

*Of course it matters. How can you accept the cure without considering the disease?'

*Is it your opinion that I am ill?'

The beggar's voice grows louder. *G.o.d forgives you,' he cries. *G.o.d forgives you.'

The window behind Maya is illuminated with the gold tones of morning. The light spills across her back, and, overflowing, falls into his eyes. He can see little of her face, only the orb of her hair.

*I've been reading about it,' she says; *it's called sh.e.l.l shock.'

A splinter of anger enters his voice when he replies. *You're not listening to me. I'm not ill. Maybe, yes, after the war, it is always difficult.'

*So it has just come out of that, that's what I'm trying to tell you.'

*But even if one thing has led to another, I can only be grateful.'

Now it is her turn to be angry. *You remember, don't you, what they did to us in the name of G.o.d?'

*Just because it was usurped for evil ends doesn't make it a bad thing. That is the mistake I made.'

*Mistake? You think it was all a mistake?'

He shifts his gaze away from her, unsure how to reply. It's not that he wishes there hadn't been a war, or that he hadn't joined the fighting. But his life wasn't for that, it was for something else. How can he explain this to her? That there was a reason for his living while so many others had died. He longs for her to know, to know something of what it was like, longs for her to have a heart as heavy as his, a heart that needs to wrap itself around a certainty, a path.

Maya is gulping down her tea, and making to leave the table. *I can't believe it,' she says, *after everything, you do this.'

Rehana comes upon them at this very moment, carrying a bowl of semolina halwa she has reheated on the stove. She sees Sohail pointing to the window behind Maya.

*There's someone there,' he says.

They look. The man is bare-chested and unadorned except for his long and elaborately knotted hair, which hangs down past his shoulders. He taps on the window. *G.o.d forgives you,' he says. *G.o.d is merciful.'

They all stare at each other for a moment, and then Maya says, *What does your book tell you to do about this man, Bhaiya?'

Sohail fishes in his pockets and pulls out a folded note. The man cups his hands as the window is opened and the note slips through.

*That's it? That's all you're doing? Don't you want to know how that man came to be here?'

*Why don't you ask him yourself?'

*I'm not the one pretending to be holy.'

Sohail's fist comes down on the table. *There's nothing holy about me a nothing. Only I have the humility to admit it. There is something greater.'

*But look what your greater being has brought us. War, and a beggar tapping at our window.'

*Maya,' Rehana says, raising her voice, *that's enough.'

The man raises his hand to his forehead, then turns away, slipping through the opening in the gate. Sohail darts out of the room. They hear his door slamming shut.

Maya turns to her mother. *He's going to turn your house into a mosque, didn't you hear?'

*Why, child, why do you have to be so intolerant?' She puts her face close to her daughter's and whispers, tender, *He's going to pray, he's going to go to the mosque on Fridays. Don't be so frightened of it. It's only religion.'

Rehana was right a at first. Sohail was almost back to his old self, smiling at meals, whistling under his breath. He started to attend cla.s.ses at the university, though he didn't linger on campus or go to any of the student-union meetings. He was occasionally seen with his friends, playing cricket at Abahani Field, and in that second summer after the war, when the const.i.tution was written and the cyclone ebbing away, Rehana told Maya it was only a slight change in Sohail, that the mother had been right about her son. He didn't even grow a beard.

There were ripples of darker things. They heard that the Hussain boy, a few years younger than Sohail, had drowned himself. And the neighbour's son Shahabuddin had beaten his pregnant wife because he believed she was carrying a demon child.

But most of the boys and girls were as serious and obedient as they had ever been. They attended their cla.s.ses; they married and bore children and warmed milk for their parents every evening. They put their memories away as best as they could, and they wiped the traces of blood from their hands and from the hems of their saris. And Rehana rested easy, sure that her son wouldn't take his interest too far. After all, she was the one who had given him the Book.

1984.

August.

Cancer. Every time Dr Sattar said the word his voice dipped, until he started calling it *the disease' and then, occasionally, *the C'. The operation was only the beginning. Rehana would need chemotherapy, powerful poisons that would kill the cancer. But they might kill her too. It was an uncertain science, the treatment often worse than the disease. Maya listened and the words went straight to her blood. She had never taken seriously the possibility that she might someday have to live without her mother. Death was something that had already happened to her; her father had died before she even knew that death was longer than sleep; later, death happened to the people she treated; she held her hand up against it every day, against dysentery and malaria and snakebites. Death had even skirted past n.a.z.ia, leaving scars on her legs but allowing her to live. She had never imagined, never seriously, that death would take something from her again.

That year the rain was everywhere. The gutters overflowed in Dhaka, and the rivers burst their banks, the Padma, the Jamuna, swallowing houses and farm animals and drowning the young rice. Maya brought Ammoo back from the hospital and paced the verandah. At night she cried into the crook of her arm. She found Sufia in her bedroom once, holding up the kerosene lamp and nodding, nodding.

The telephone girl brought Maya a message. Sister Khadija was going to hold a special Milaad for Ammoo. The upstairs women would recite, between them, the entire Qur'an and direct their blessings to Ammoo's recovery. Would she like to come? The picture in her mind was serene, the smell of bodies mingling with the cinder waft of attar. She found herself saying yes.

The women were casually laid out, in clumps of three or four. Their heads were covered, but their hands and feet, normally gloved and socked, were visible, and busy: they carried plates of food into the room, distributed cushions, stepped purposefully around each other. Khadija embraced her warmly.

*Sister,' she said. *Please, sit down, sit here.' The floor was cleared, a fresh cloth placed under her feet. Maya looked around and saw many faces turned towards her. *This is the Huzoor's sister, Maya.'

A chorus of salaams travelled through the room. *Everyone knows who you are. Huzoor has spoken of you.'

A young woman approached, raven-haired, and smiled dazzlingly at Maya. The telephone girl. *Maya, this is Rokeya.' Rokeya salaamed. *You're a doctor?' she said.

*Yes, I trained in surgery.'

*Under Sattar sir?'

*Yes, he was my supervisor. You know him?'

*I trained at Dhaka Medical.'

*Really a what batch?'

*'83.'

So she had finished her training only last year. What a waste, Maya thought; now she was waiting for her husband, probably some wrinkled old thing, to call every afternoon, laying out blankets for me and calling my brother Huzoor.

*Let me make you a cup of tea,' Rokeya offered, adjusting her scarf. *How do you take it?'

She darted away and Khadija motioned again for Maya to sit down. Then she turned to the other women and said, *Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem, it is time.'

Each of them pulled out a tasbi and began to recite the Kalma under her breath. The beads of stone and wood pa.s.sed through their palms as they pulled the tasbi across with their thumbs. Empty bowls were pa.s.sed around, and in the four corners of the room were small piles of dried beans. As soon as someone finished a cycle on her tasbi, she put a chickpea into the bowl in front of her.

Khadija sat down heavily and opened her Qur'an. She began to recite.

On the second day Rokeya told her that Sohail was going to make a rare appearance at the taleem. A personal sermon. Would she like to come?

When she arrived, it was already quiet, and the women were rearranging themselves around her, turning to the back of the room. They worked silently, clearing plates and lifting sheets from the floor, shaking them out, pointing, you sit there, let Sister Zayna have a cushion.

It was just like the funeral. A curtain was pulled across the room, dividing it in half. The women fitted themselves into what had become the back of the room. On the other side, footsteps, lowered voices, the sound of men filing in. Men, clearing their throats. On the women's side, the scarves were pulled tighter, as though the very sound of their brothers on the other side warranted an extra dose of vigilance.

From beyond the part.i.tion, her own brother began to speak.

*My brothers and sisters, Bismillah ir-Rahman ir-Raheem. I speak of the prophet Abraham, may peace and blessings be upon him. The story of Abraham is an old and sacred one. Our prophet and brother Abraham, peace be upon him, was a man of letters. He translated the ancient texts into Hebrew; he was fluent in the language of the Greeks and the a.s.syrians. In his great learning, he yearned also to know the secrets of human feeling, the joys and pleasures a not of the flesh, but of the heart and the mind. Thus, when he picked up his son Isaac, he felt the swell of love rise in his breast like the pull of the moon. He recorded it in himself; it was a matter of learning. And when the myths of the ancients caused Abraham to cry, with pity or fury at their folly, this too he recorded as a piece of sacred knowledge, for the ability to empathise is a purely human trait, given to us by the Almighty.

*All along, Abraham was a seeker of knowledge. But his knowledge was woven to the will of G.o.d. When his followers began to worship idols of clay, he told G.o.d and G.o.d struck them down. His quest for knowledge was second only to his deference to the will of G.o.d. So when G.o.d asked Abraham to sacrifice his son, Abraham could not rebuff G.o.d. Abraham was G.o.d's servant, and it was not in his nature or his will to say no; but he was motivated by more than his duty. He sought to know, in himself, the true nature of his faith, and whether this faith, which had become so beloved to him, could withstand the pull of his devotion to his son. He leaned over his son, the knife heavy in his hands. And G.o.d gave him a ram instead of Isaac.

*We come to know G.o.d by giving our will to him. By accepting that He knows better than we do, and that surrender is the only path to true faith. The very best of our humanness is in our ability to recognise the truth of the Almighty, the truth that is beyond us.'

She heard the pointed tone of his voice. He was telling her something. He was telling her that she had not learned to be humble; that she had put her will before that of G.o.d's. And was she being punished, was that it?

Maya was reminded of a story she had heard during the war. A man had been shot with a machine gun, three bullets entering his back. The field doctors had operated (no anaesthetic, only a rag between his teeth) and removed two bullets, missing the third entry wound. A fragment of the bullet had entered his bloodstream and circulated within him, travelling through arteries like a tourist, until it had finally lodged in his heart, killing him instantly.

Medically, she knew the story could not be true. But she allowed herself to imagine it was this way with her and Sohail. They had been injured, perhaps by the death of their father, or by the thin whisper of poverty that hung on their backs throughout their childhood. In Maya, the pointed black thing travelled freely, now touching her liver, now her limbs, now her stomach. She would awake to it, and unleash some of its poison on whoever happened to be nearest. Ammoo had received the worst of it; Sohail too.

But Sohail's shrapnel had lodged in his flesh, percolating through him ever so slowly, until, like the rest of them, he was dying on his feet, only faster, and the knowledge of this speed, that earthy scent of the grave, was what had made him, from that early age, a creature half-spirit, half-man. It was why he commanded an audience whenever he spoke, on the march or in the pulpit, why those in his...o...b..t scrambled for a closer look, a touch. He had been born for prophesy, already, from those early moments, the master of himself. But what he was saying to her now was that the source of his power was not in command but in surrender. She too should now accept her smallness, her human limitations. And if she did not, the consequences would be unhappy.

Afterwards, the men cleared out, the curtain was drawn open, and the women began to make their preparations for the evening meal. Sohail's sermon nagged at Maya. She left the meeting room and found Khadija squatting over a small gas burner in the kitchen.

*Were you pleased by the bayaan?' she asked. Even without the cadence of recitation, Khadija's speech was formal.

Maya didn't know how to reply. Pleased was not how she would have put it.

*The boy,' she began, *my nephew.'

*You are referring to Huzoor's son?'

*Yes, Zaid. I've been teaching him a few things, lessons, but with Ammoo's illness, I don't have as much time. I would like to enrol him in school.'

Khadija appeared to consider this for a moment. She stirred a handful of chillies into the pot of dal.

*He's troubled,' Maya continued.

*You are right,' she said, taking her by surprise. *I will not deny it. Your brother agrees.'

*So you know.'

*We were discussing it yesterday, with Haji Muda.s.ser.'

Maya knew who Haji Muda.s.ser was. The people upstairs consulted him on every matter, no matter how small. They lowered their heads in front of him and took his blessing on their heads. They did everything he said.

*Haji Muda.s.ser has told us that it is our duty to ensure the boy's proper upbringing. We understand that we have failed at this.'

Khadija stretched out her hand, thick and solid, and wrapped her fingers around Maya's wrist. *We have resolved to do better. Amra neyot korechi.' They had made a promise, under the watchful eyes of the Almighty.

Khadija appeared unwilling to say more. Maya allowed herself a thin thread of hope.

*Will you join us? The Maghreb Azaan will begin in a few minutes.'

*I have to get back. Ammoo needs me.'

*We pray for her every day. The Huzoor is a devoted son.'

*Thank you,' Maya said, suddenly moved by this statement.

*Have faith, Sister Maya,' Khadija said. *The boy will be looked after, and your mother will soon recover.' Khadija continued to grasp her hand. Maya had a flash, a presentiment, that Khadija would be her sister, the fellow spirit she had always searched for. Khadija put her hand on Maya's forehead, which she took as a sign that it was time for her to leave.

Maya walked back downstairs, her forehead hot from the imprint of Khadija's hand. Surprised at how reluctant she had been to leave her.