The Good Muslim Part 5

*She's been with me for six years, she's never taken a pie.'

*Well, maybe she has something against me.'

*Don't be ridiculous. Why don't you check again? Maybe you miscounted.'

Ammoo seemed so sure. *I suppose. Maybe.'

Maya discovered one of her old medical journals in the shed, an issue of the Lancet from 1960 a she remembered coming upon it at a second-hand bookstall in Nilkhet just after the war. *Common Causes of Eye Injury in the Young', she read. Suddenly she heard a scuffle, and her mother saying *This is not the first time, beta' in a low, serious voice. Maya closed the journal and tiptoed towards the kitchen. A heavy crash. Maya found Ammoo standing over Zaid, her hand in the air.

Ammoo turned around and saw her. *Maya, please go.' Zaid was holding a plate in his hand; around his feet were the remnants of another. He refused to meet Maya's eye, his head down. *Maya, I said please go, I will handle this.'

Maya slipped out, blinking into the sunshine. Later, Ammoo paced the verandah in a pair of rubber slippers, her footsteps mimicking the sound of slapping.

*It was him,' Ammoo said. *He took the money.' She handed Maya a few notes. *Here, take this.' Ammoo's hand was shaking. Tiny pearls of sweat along her hairline.

*Please, Ma, it's no big thing.'

*He steals, he lies. I don't know what to do.'

Maya remembered the Ludo board, suspiciously new. *His mother has just died, he's trying to cope.'

Ammoo shook her head. *It's not that.'

*Did you hit him?'

Ammoo shook her head. *He has a temper. A few months ago he set the curtains on fire. I thought the whole house would burn down.'

The next week Rehana was rolling out rootis. Maya and Zaid squatted on a couple of low stools, waiting for her to fry the bread and pa.s.s it around. A crow shuffled sideways on the high wall outside the kitchen window.

*Why doesn't it have shoes?' Zaid said.

*The crow?' Rehana asked.

*Because it has claws,' Maya said. *And anyway, birds don't need shoes, they have wings.' You'd like pair of wings, wouldn't you, she thought. Then she said, *Do you know your alphabet?'

*Alif, ba, ta, sa,' he mumbled, chewing intently on his rooti.

*Not Arabic, Bangla. Do you know ko kho?'

He tore off another piece of bread. *No,' he said.

*All these languages and you don't know your own alphabet. I'll teach you.'

*I have to go.' He darted from the kitchen, skipping over the rui fish that was laid out on the floor, gutted and gla.s.s-eyed.

Zaid filled his water bucket, and Maya helped him to heave it up the stairs. At the top she saw that the washing was out today, three sets of black burkhas and a white jellaba hanging between them like a flag of surrender. Rehana had told her the upstairs women dried their underthings at night and took them away before the Fajr prayer at daybreak. Fine for these hot spring nights, but probably not very effective in winter. A roomful of cold a.r.s.es a the thought made her laugh out loud.

*Come tomorrow,' she said; *we'll do ko kho.'

He looked unsure, his eyes pinched together.

The next day, when he was still unwilling to repeat the names of the letters, she said, *You know, I used to live in a village, and I know a lot of boys who still haven't learned ko kho.'

*As big as me?'

*Bigger.'

He was constantly moving, scratching his ear, ramming his finger into one nostril, then another, smashing his palm into a line of red ants crossing the garden. *I want to go to school,' he said.

*Try again,' she said, exasperated. *Ko.'

He ignored her, pressing his thumb down, a.s.sa.s.sinating one ant at a time.

She tried another tack. *You know that crow you saw yesterday?'

*Hmm.' Thumb, smash, thumb, smash. *The one without shoes?' He found one filing across his arm, and crushed it between his fingers.

*The one without shoes. Don't you want to know how to spell "crow"? You could write him a letter, ask him about his shoes.'

*Crows don't read letters.'

She fell back on the gra.s.s, defeated. *Okay, you're right.'

*I want to go to school,' he repeated.

His bucket was full. She let him carry it up the stairs on his own this time, pretending not to count the very long minutes it took him to negotiate the stairs, or the large splashes that fell overboard on the way, interrupting the dust of the driveway below.

They played Ludo almost every afternoon. *I can tell you're cheating,' Maya said one day, holding up the red Ludo piece. *Ammoo, did you see what he did there?'

*Yes,' Rehana said. *Beta, you moved an extra square.'

*See, your dadu agrees.'

*Fine,' he said, folding his arms over his chest, *put it back, then.'

*How about the alphabet?'

He shook his head. *I have to go.' He lifted up the board, letting the Ludo pieces scatter to the floor.

*Ma,' Maya said after he had gone, gathering up the round discs, *there's something I've been meaning to ask you.'

*Of course, beta.'

*I've been thinking about Zaid. You know, that day we walked to the vegetable man together and he was acting so strangely. And the stealing. There's only one thing I can think of, and I think, if we can do it, it will really work. I want to enrol him in school.'

Ammoo nodded, as if she expected this. *It's true, he talks about school.'

*I made an appointment with the headmistress at the school down the road. She said she would give him an exam, and if he pa.s.sed, he could start next January.'

Ammoo folded up the Ludo board and pa.s.sed it to Maya. *I've had this conversation with your brother many times, Maya.'

*But he's never here; he won't know the difference.'

*You don't understand. You think Zaid does what he wants, but he is watched like a hawk. Every minute, from upstairs.'

*If Sohail finds out, I'll say it was all my idea.'

*He'll take it out on the boy.'

Maya waved her away. *I'm telling you, I won't take no from him, I won't.' She was determined to find a way to do it.

At the end of March, just as the cool evenings were replaced by dust-coated heat, she caught him wrist-deep in her handbag. An expression of surprise came over him, but he just stood there and stared at his own hand, as though it might tell him what to say.

She ran over to him and s.n.a.t.c.hed the bag away. Now he was on his knees, his hair was brushing her feet as he uttered the words, sniffling as he did so. *I'm sorry, I didn't mean to.'

She crouched down and raised him by the armpits, until they were eye to eye.

*I am not a thief,' he said, shaking his head.

She believed him. *Then don't steal from me as though you were.' A fresh wave of tears overcame him as she set him down on the sofa. *Do you need money?' she asked.

*No,' he said. Then, *Yes.'

She tried to give him some money, but he couldn't take it from her, his body trembling. *Please don't tell Abboo,' he said, *please please please.'

She thought of what his father might say. About lying, and cheating at games, and stealing money from his aunt. She wanted to tell him these things, lessons that one taught a small child about the difference between right and wrong. But where would he be, this kid, without pretending he could speak French? G.o.d sees everything, his father would tell him, but that wouldn't bring back his mother.

After that day, whenever she noticed a few notes missing from her bag, she a.s.sumed Zaid had taken the money. She didn't care; in fact, she took a sort of pride in it. She imagined him with a piece of fruit or a boiled egg in his hands, then filling his stomach, having an ounce of pleasure because of her, because she had looked the other way.

1972.

March.

The change in Sohail began as soon as he returned from the war. Maya and Ammoo remarked on how thin he'd become, trying to scale the distance between them by talking about his appearance. It didn't take them long to see that he had fallen into himself a become a man of few and exact words, fastidious. Bathing twice, sometimes three times a day. Ironing his shirts, one in particular, a red-and-blue check, which he wore in the morning, removed in time for lunch and wore again at dusk. Those first weeks Maya waited every evening for him to tell her about the war, hoping he would begin his story as soon as Ammoo had said goodnight and taken the lamp away, telling them both not to stay up too late.

*So . . .' she began one night, turning to him.

He reached into his shirt pocket. *Do you mind?' he said, waving a packet of cigarettes.

*No, of course not. Since when do you ask my permission?'

*I don't know. Won't you tell me I'm picking up bad habits?'

*Revolutionaries are exempt from all social conventions. Haven't you heard?'

*I've dodged so many bullets that now I'm immune?'

*Exactly. No one can touch you.'

*Good,' he said, inhaling sharply. *I've had enough of following orders.'

Once again, she hoped he might unravel himself now, tell her the whole thing from start to finish, war to peace, so that, by the end of it, it would be as if she'd been there, the distance between them traversed, forgotten. It wasn't as if her own return had been uncomplicated. There were things she wanted to tell him too, and the telling would mean that it was over, that there was somewhere to lodge those nine months, somewhere comfortable and remote.

Instead, he smoked so intently she could hear the tip of his cigarette as it burned towards him.

*I'm tired,' he said, though he made no move to get up.

*Was it a long journey?' she asked, realising she didn't even know how far he'd travelled to get home.

*Yes.'

*You walked?'

*Mostly.'

He crushed the cigarette under his heel, then picked up the b.u.t.t and tossed it away. They watched it disappear into the black of the garden.

*I'm tired,' he said again, and she understood, in that moment, that he had no intention of telling her anything, that he was going to keep it all to himself and pa.r.s.e it out over the years, and in the meantime it would lie between them, silent and angry.

And then Piya arrived, and everything changed.

By the time Maya found her in front of the gate she had been standing there all morning, afraid to ring the bell. Maya was about to leave for her afternoon shift at the Rehabilitation Centre; she was dressed smartly in a churidaar and kurta. She had even allowed herself a tiny smear of lipstick.

*Are you looking for someone?' she asked, taking in the girl's worn sandals, the limp, old sari she had wound tightly around her head. The woman said nothing, just handed Maya a note. In Sohail's handwriting was their address, and the words *Inshallah, we shall meet again.'

Sohail was smoking a cigarette in the garden. He flicked it aside when he saw her.

*Someone is looking for you.'

*Who?'

*I don't know. Some girl. She won't tell me anything.'

He rushed to the gate. *Piya?'

The woman appeared to straighten at the sight of him, and a moment later they were hugging and she was wiping her face with the end of her sari. *They threw me out,' she cried. *I have no place with them.'

*You did the right thing,' he said.

Maya stood there awkwardly, her hand on the latch, guilty for the stab of jealousy she felt at the sight of their embrace. Then the woman shifted, and the covering fell from her head. Maya inhaled sharply. Her hair was short, obviously shorn just a few weeks ago. Sohail led Piya inside, casting only the briefest glance at Maya, a look that seemed to say, please don't ask me; for once, please don't ask.