The Good Muslim Part 18

*What is this?' She pointed to something on the menu.

*Oh, they've just misspelled cheeseburger. Have you had one before? It's like a keema sandwich. They can be rather bland a I can ask them to put some chillies on it for you.'

*All right, chillies. But no cheese.'

*You don't like cheese?'

*It gives me wind.'

He laughed.

*What?'

*It's like you missed the lesson at school on how to talk to boys.'

*I'm a doctor,' she said, irritated, *bodily functions don't embarra.s.s me. And what kind of education did you get? Mine certainly didn't include any life lessons.'

*I went to the same school as your brother. St Gregory's. Those Jesuits told us everything we needed to know about girls.'

The waiter approached and took their orders. Joy was polite to the man, called him Bhai, said thank you after he'd jotted down the order. *Do you want a drink?'

*Yes, lemonade.'

*It's very sour. Sure you want to take the risk?'

*Shut up.'

*Now,' he said, placing his hands on the table, *what do you want to know?'

*About your women.'

*There was just the one.'

*Really? I hear rumours.'

*People always trying to set me up a you know, poor injured freedom fighter needs a wife.'

*Perhaps you'll succ.u.mb.'

*Perhaps. You want to know about Cheryl. But maybe before you hear that story, I should tell you about all the shocking jobs I did while I was in New York. Just to get it over with a full disclosure. For a year I washed dishes. I drove a taxi, I told you that already. I cleaned hotel rooms for a while, then I moved on to cleaning houses. Rich people, Park Avenue, you wouldn't believe. Offices too. I saw a lot of things in those offices, after dark and all that. But the last job I had was for an old man. He was dying. He had doctors, nurses, everything, but he needed someone to watch him at night. I slept in his room. That's how I met Cheryl.'

*She worked for him too?'

*She was his daughter.'

Maya's eyebrows went up.

*Yes, that's exactly what her family thought. Marrying the help. Big scandal. I needed a pa.s.sport, she needed to rebel, that was it.'

*Did you love her?' Maya imagined a light-filled room, cigarette smoke deep in the furniture, and a tall, elegant woman in a man's shirt, the collars wide about her neck.

He seemed to consider the question. *Maybe a little. It wasn't just a business transaction. We had to live together, learn about each other. But in the end we couldn't stay together.'

*Why not?'

*Because the relationship was incomplete. I couldn't tell her everything.'

The food arrived, a pair of meat patties between soggy layers of bread. Maya took a bite, the grease leaking on to her fingers. It was salty, and fiery from the chillies. She decided she liked it. *Very good, your American dish,' she said, wiping her mouth. *So, you ended it.'

*I came home.'

*Poor girl. To be left behind.' She thought of Cheryl, now without the solid bulk of Joy. How hollow her life must seem.

*She couldn't have been here with me.'

*"Never the twain shall meet"?'

He shrugged, confused.

*Kipling, you know? And Forster too.'

*I don't know what you mean.'

*Nothing. Just something I read in a book.' She remembered now, he wasn't the bookish type.

*I'm not very well read.' He crumpled the napkin in his hand and tossed it on to his plate. *Not like your brother.'

*Don't worry. He burned his books anyway.'

*Burned?'

*Hitler-style. In the garden.'

Joy clapped his hand over his mouth.

*Yes, really.' She had relived the incident so many times in her mind, she had forgotten how shocking it was.

They sat for a moment, picking at the remnants of their meal. Joy didn't ask her why, or how, Sohail had burned his books, and she was happy not to have to describe it.

*I suppose you've answered my question. I wanted to know why you left home, why you stayed away so long. Was it because of the books?'

She made a chopping motion with her hands. *Everything was finished in that moment.'

*What year was it?'

*'77. I waited five years longer than you did.'

*True. You had higher hopes.'

*The famine, and then Mujib dying, and then the army came in and it was like the war had never happened. But when Sohail did that a I mean, he wasn't just my brother. People looked up to him. They worshipped him.'

*They still do,' he said.

He was right. *Yes, I've seen it with my own eyes.'

*So you ran away.'

*I couldn't bear it. You want to hear what I did, what my jobs were? I was training to be a surgeon, you know, before I left the city. Then one day, as I was travelling through some small town, I don't even remember where it was exactly, I heard a woman screaming. She was squatting at the back of a tailoring shop, in labour. I helped her, and I felt a well, I hadn't felt like that in a long time. Like I was finally good for something. After I finished the training, I started doing it full time. I opened a clinic, trained dayyis not to use rusty knives, to boil their instruments. I convinced the husbands to send their wives to hospital when complications came up.'

*Did it make you think of having children?'

Maya shifted in her seat. *Not really, no. I mean, I suppose I would know what to a to expect, but I don't think it's for me. I was good at it, though.' She flagged the waiter down and ordered two cups of tea.

*Much better than cleaning an old man's p.i.s.sy sheets.'

*There's dignity in that. You were shepherding him out of this life, that's a n.o.ble thing.'

*Sohail probably thinks he's doing the same thing. Helping people into the afterlife. And I guess he feels quite n.o.ble doing it.'

*Did you know, I went upstairs and attended their taleems when Ammoo was sick?'

He tilted his head. *I'm surprised.'

*It was a it felt like the only place in the world where I had hope she wouldn't die.'

Joy reached across the table and brushed his knuckles against hers. She was still gripping the teacup, and he moved his hand and circled her wrist with his fingers. She felt the tears coming again. *Twice in one day,' she said, dabbing at her face with her free hand. *You might think I cry all the time.'

*No, I imagine you hardly ever cry at all.'

She looked at him closely then, and noticed that one of his eyes was slightly bigger than the other. And his smile was crooked. It was as though his mother had loved one side of his face better than the other. I would love your whole face, she thought. I would love your whole face, and your nine and a half fingers. She caught herself staring at his lips. The last few months, Ammoo's illness, were making her forget herself. She swallowed her tea. *I must go,' she said, rising abruptly from her seat. She insisted on paying for the meal. And when he offered to drive her home, she refused, rushing into a rickshaw and looking back only when the driver had pulled away, catching sight of his arm as it waved to her, and his eyebrows up, bemused.

Rehana was cured. There was no other way to put it. Dr Sattar said the chemotherapy had worked and she was in remission. She had drunk the Zamzam and the cancer had fled out of her, like birds from a tree when a shot is fired. Sohail was the shot. Rehana was cured. She walked around the garden, pulling weeds from the beds of sunflowers and dahlias. She reached between the plants, tearing them out with a flick of her wrist, and then she straightened, and stroked her belly, as if she missed it, whatever had been inside her.

Maya often caught herself staring at Ammoo, wondering what she had done to deserve this second chance. Episodes from their life together came back to her: leaving Ammoo in Dhaka while she and Sohail were taken to Lah.o.r.e; leaving her again while they went off to war; and later, when she was angry at Sohail but ended up abandoning Ammoo. Leaving, always leaving. That is what she had done. She told herself to think of times she had returned to Ammoo, to this house, and recalled one day, just after the war, when she found Ammoo in the bedroom, sawing her bed in half.

It was the day after the army had surrendered, and Ammoo was holding a saw in one hand and balancing herself against the bed with the other. She had tucked the loose end of her sari around her waist, tied her hair up in a high knot and thrown all of her weight into the cutting.

Maya asked her mother what she was doing, but she ignored her, grunting and moving as though her life depended on it. The streets were filled with people celebrating and Maya was about to join them; she could already hear the radio blasting from a neighbour's window and, in the distance, shouts, firecrackers. She stood and watched, ready to leave her mother to whatever crazy sense of destruction had overcome her, eager to join in the frenzy outside.

Rehana had cut through the foot end and was making her way through the baseboard. The wood was thinner here, which made her work slightly easier, but the position was awkward. Now she struggled to lift the entire frame upright, so she could cut along its length. Maya found herself helping her to lift it, lean it against the wall and hold it steady as she stood on a chair and bore down.

*I'm doing this for you,' she said as she approached the headboard. She descended from the chair.

*What?'

She paused, wiped her forehead. *I need some water.'

*You hold this,' Maya said, showing her how to keep it steady, *I'll bring you a gla.s.s.'

When she returned, Ammoo was standing where she'd left her, one hand on the upturned bed, the other on her hip. She gulped the water down.

The bed was ornately carved, made of heavy teak, and it had been in that room as long as Maya could remember, one of the few wedding presents her mother had received. An heirloom. But she appeared to take great pleasure in vandalising it.

It took them over an hour just to cut through the headboard; the wood was dense and resisted their efforts. They took turns with the saw. Tiny shavings stuck to their clothes, like field bugs.

When they were finished, the two ends of what used to be Rehana's bed looked like the belly of a ship, pointing down towards the depths. Rehana said, *Sohail will be back soon, and you'll have to share this room with me again. I thought you should have your own bed. At least.'

*We need legs,' Maya said.

There were a few offcuts of wood in the garden shed, which Maya retrieved. But they had no nails or glue of any kind, or sandpaper to smooth down the edges. Their sawing was reasonably straight but crude.

That night, they made their bed in the living room. It was cold, with just the carpet underneath them, the December chill sunk deep into the red cement floors.

*He will be back, won't he?' Rehana asked, after they had switched off the lights and tucked the blankets under their feet.

*He will,' Maya said. He had to be. He had to be all right, and coming home; too much had been sacrificed for there to be any other ending. She had missed the celebrations, but she didn't mind. Ammoo was preparing her for life after the war: new beds, a room for Sohail. Knowing this, she fell asleep with a quiet comfort in her bones.

They had slept on that sawed-in-half bed for the next few years, through Piya's arrival and Sohail's conversion, through his marrying and moving upstairs. While Maya was away, Ammoo had hired a carpenter and had the bed put back together, and it was whole now, with just a thin line on the headboard, visible if you looked closely, a long, meandering thunderbolt.

*There's something I'd like to contribute to the next issue. Under my own name.'

Shafaat was wedged into his chair. *Of course, my dear, what would you like to write?'

*It's about the war-'

*Oh, would you be a darling and get me a cup of tea? I'm parched.'

b.a.s.t.a.r.d. She decided not to argue, found her way to the tea station, boiled water, brewed, slammed the cup down beside his elbow. He did not raise his eyes.

*Where's Aditi?' she asked.

*At the printers. She's going to try to get us a better rate, so we can print 800 copies next issue.' He started to strike the typewriter.

*As I was saying.'

He stopped, two index fingers in the air. *You want to write under your own name? I think our readers would prefer to hear S. M. Haque's latest diatribe.' He took a large gulp of tea. *Did you make my tea with condensed milk?'

*Condensed milk and sugar. I thought you liked it sweet.'

*I do. But I don't like condensed milk. Please make it again. Milk and sugar.' When he saw her face darken he said, *Come on, it'll only take you a minute. A writer needs his tea.'

As he was sipping her second attempt and nodding in satisfaction, she said, *Jahanara Imam has called for a trial. For all the war criminals.'

He set the mug on his typewriter. *Hasn't this been debated too many times already? We should have had a trial, I'm not denying that, but it's too late now, my dear. Too late.'