This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  “No, no, no,” cried Amma, “no need.” She waved the air and I caught a whiff of licorice. “This is our duty to help the university. They always send us such polite and intelligent students.”

  Hasan stared, disbelieving at his mother, then at me, as though I were the one who had just finished an immodest speech about my superior intellect and well-mannered behaviour.

  I reddened. “Please Mr. Chowdhury – what is it you would like to ask?”

  “Well, Mrs. Chowdhury is right. I am the curious one, so please tell me. What are they reporting from our Bengal in your American newspapers?”

  I knew. I’d been reading everything I could since I found out about my exchange. “Well, there’s some about Pakistan. I saw in a news magazine last month…”

  “No. I said Bengal.”

  I hesitated. Bengal was half of Pakistan. The eastern half. Wasn’t it?

  “But then that’s what I expected,” he sighed. “Luna, stop it. Give your papa some fish.”

  Luna ladled a fish head onto her father’s plate, then followed with two spoons of sauce.

  “That’s my girl. You take good care of your papa.” He murmured something in Bangla and she reached for another bowl. “This is one of our problems, you see. The western journalists are not interested in the story of Bengal. Space travel and the Russian red threat, anything to do with Vietnam – and there has been some interest in the British parliament of late. But young people from abroad know nothing of what is happening here, isn’t it? Because your newspapermen do not even understand that we, in Bengal, are different from the people of West Pakistan.” Mr. Chowdhury removed an eye from the fish head. “They are missing the best part. Mmm.” He swallowed.

  What he said was for the most part true. In fact, it was probably much worse than he imagined. Pakistan – East and West – tended to get lumped together with India. So much so, that when I told my friends – whom I considered to be conscious that the world extended beyond the western hemisphere – that I was going to Dhaka for a year, many became puzzled and asked where. Others, with similar looks, asked why.

  It’s true, I could have chosen Burma or Thailand. Michigan State had close ties with universities in those countries, too. But I was drawn to Bangla, the language of East Pakistan. A fervent professor had led me on, speaking of Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabrahmsa – ancient languages whose influence was felt in dozens of words in my own mother tongue. He showed me texts in Bangla and helped me begin to learn the letters. The alphabet contained so many letters they spilled over onto a second page, making our twenty-six look insufficient.

  Still, it was odd for someone from Lansing to head overseas on anything other than a quick holiday, and that, usually, to the Caribbean. Most people were content to stay home, and the Canadian border marked the edge of the earth. Yet the peace movement, shuddering its way beyond the walls of the campus and into the town itself had opened up the world. Vietnam, yes. And what lay beyond that troubled place? I would find out.

  Hasan finally lifted his head from his plate. “Abba, what about the Legal Framework Order? What did Bangabandhu say at Narsinghdi today?”

  “The parliament must be supreme, otherwise the new constitution will be a mockery. Sheikh Mujib is wise not to change his opinion. The Awami League is adamant. This has been stated again before our assembly.”

  “But independence? We must go for it. Surely the AL will reconsider.”

  “You are rash, Hasan. Like all the boys.” Mr. Chowdhury took a long drink of water. “The four caliphs will go too far. Mujib says first we will go for the six-point plan. Our autonomy within Pakistan is realistic, isn’t it? Independence is not. But it will come. For now we must remain committed to the plan.”

  Hasan’s response, in Bangla, was directed to his dinner plate. I heard the words “constitution”, “election” and “Chairman Mao.” But the rest, like the exchange I had just heard, made no sense. His father’s face became progressively redder. My interest grew proportionately.

  “You are speaking the rubbish. As usual. Just like Yahya Khan,” Luna said cavalierly.

  Hasan shoved his chair back from the table and stood. “Don’t compare me to that criminal. Leave my sight. Go to your room.” Curry gravy speckled the right lens of his glasses.

  “That’s enough!” Mr. Chowdhury spoke. “Sit down. And be quiet.” Then he slipped into Bangla and continued until he seemed like a spring unwound by the effort.

  Hasan sat. Mrs. Chowdhury spooned some fish onto my plate. “Be careful. There are many small bones in the chhoto mach.”

  Family politics, country politics – the simple mechanics of eating what was before me. I could make sense of none of them. It was like the hot light that sliced through the cracks in the heavy brocade drapes in the sitting room at noon, when I’d just arrived at their home. Enough so you’d notice, not enough to illuminate anything.

  Then I bit off a tiny piece of my green chili. I let it burn into my tongue before swallowing. I refused to look at Hasan though I felt he watched and mocked me.

  *

  I startled when the bicycle rickshaw ran up on the brick sidewalk and headed for Luna and me. The driver, head covered by a dirty, lacy topi, expertly steered through the crowd and came to a stop an instant before collision. I threw up my hands. He grinned at my reaction, his teeth stained scarlet as a Bing cherry by the betel crammed into his cheek.

  Though she was tiny and, I thought, somewhat prim, Luna turned on him like a tornado. His bemusement seemed to inspire her, but finally, when through, she pulled me away. “He is always making mischief for the girls. Don’t mind. Come.”

  I thought I heard the rickshaw driver laugh but I didn’t dare turn to check for fear I would bump into the people we jostled against, or knock down one of the store displays that tumbled onto the sidewalk.

  I had woken well before the hot summer sun rose. Jet lag was certainly to blame, but besides, it was my first morning in Dhaka – and I was itching for this first-hand look at the street life. Scenes had flit by the window of the car just yesterday, as I was taken from the airport to the Chowdhury home. I wanted to slow them down. To linger, and perhaps to begin to piece together some understanding of East Pakistan. I wanted to hear the language, be introduced to the customs of the everyday, as people negotiated their way through markets and livestock, heat and air dripping with moisture, and the burgeoning crowds into which everyone eventually dissolved.

  I had to wait all morning though. Wait for meals to be served, baths to be had, clothes to be donned, and hair to be fixed. The list of chores to be given to Kamala and Shafiq. Schedules to be worked out – and reworked countless times – and all finally approved by Mrs. Chowdhury. “No shop will open until late morning anyway,” she reassured. I suspected she was hiding the best part of the day, but I had no good reason to doubt her then. I chose to wait until she pronounced the family ready for their day – and gave permission for Luna to take me walking to the shops on Elephant Road. Hasan was to accompany us.

  I stepped around a mangy pariah dog, teats hanging thinly to her ankles, attesting to her recent, though absent litter. Her snout was buried up to her ears in a heap of yellow rice. Good thing, too. I was afraid to catch her eye.

  The street was filled with afternoon traffic. More rickshaws. Pedestrians. A horse-pulled tonga. And a large hump-backed cow that stood at the edge of traffic and reached for dusty leaves on a spindly tree in a planter. A few cars wove in and out. Although the intensity of noon had passed, heat still rippled up from the pavement and I sweated.

  Hasan ably maintained a distance five steps ahead and never looked back. I resented both his presence and his distance, and could not understand why he had to be with us.

  We passed a man sharpening knives on a pitted stone wheel. Another man polished dirty, creased shoes in a haze of solvents. A third man sat before an untidy heap of baskets. When he c
alled out, I hesitated then met his eye.

  “Come,” said Luna, and pulled me forward before I could enter into any kind of negotiation. When the crowd grew too thick, I followed the long, thick braid that snaked down her back like a length of rope.

  She stopped before the dark, greasy window of a small restaurant. “Look.”

  She cupped her hands around her eyes to block out the sunlight and peered through the glass. Her expression was pure expectation – clear, unselfconscious and radiant.

  “He is not there,” she whispered. I looked. Inside, a few people huddled around tables.

  “Who?”

  “Sometimes he is there. We take tea and sweets.” I could barely hear her.

  “Who?” I spoke more loudly this time.

  “Shh.” She looked over her shoulder. “Razzak – my boyfriend.” She leaned close. “Apa, one time, he hold my hand. You think I bad girl? Please don’t tell Amma or Hasan.” In the days of free love in America, her innocence both astonished and moved me.

  Luna was nineteen, less than a year younger than me; working on an undergrad in botany; interested besides in books, film and fashion. The university-supplied dossier on the Chowdhury family had provided this much information. At dinner last night, I’d filled in the blanks – a devoted daughter, a squabbling sibling. But this latest information intrigued me. Clever Luna also had a secret life.

  Just then, a child in a dirty maroon dress appeared. One sleeve was held in place by a safety pin. Her face was smudged with dirt, the corners of her mouth crusty yellow. She held out her hand. Tears welled up in her eyes.

  Luna pressed a coin into her palm. “Jao!” The girl disappeared among torsos. “Come – your first lesson in Bangla.”

  “What did you say?”

  “I told her: go.”

  A few shops ahead, Hasan waited until we caught up. “Where were you? I have better things to do than loiter on the street like a vagrant and wait for you.”

  Luna looked at me and rolled her eyes.

  “Do not misbehave or Abba will hear about this. Do not idle any longer.”

  “But we were just helping a starving little girl,” I said, and pointed back.

  The girl had emerged from the crowd – and was nuzzled up to a modestly-dressed young woman on the corner. There was no sign of tears now. The young woman spoke softly into the girl’s hair before mussing it with the heel of her hand. She passed the girl a candy then steered her into the stream of traffic, nodding her head, urging the girl on. The girl skipped up to the window of a stopped car and knocked on the glass. Like an actor, her face wrenched suddenly and deliberately into a pitiful look as one hand moved up and down to her mouth, miming the act of eating, and the other rubbed her belly.

  I didn’t know what to say. I’d seen people begging in Detroit and Chicago, of course, for food, work, money, warm clothes. Shabby men and women whose entire lives were tragic. But no one begged in Lansing, and I hadn’t put any further thought into it.

  Now Hasan rolled his eyes and walked ahead.

  “Apa, look!” Luna stopped before a tiny stall, no wider than my desk back home. Bangles – boxes, trays and cylinders of gold, silver and coloured glass were piled up rather precariously, nearly touching the fluorescent tube that appeared to be hanging from nothing more than a single red wire. It was hard to know where to look first. They were dazzling. But Luna immediately pointed to a pale green set of bangles that sparkled like cut crystal. They were displayed on a white plaster forearm that appeared to have been severed at the elbow from its mannequin owner. “So beautiful,” she sighed. “You like?”

  The shopkeeper slid the bangles off the artificial wrist and passed one of them to Luna.

  “Shundar,” she sighed again and held it up to admire it further. By some miracle, it caught a shard of natural light that had found its way into the stall, and splintered it into tiny rainbows that rippled on the wall and ceiling for an instant. But even in that brief moment, anyone could have seen how Luna’s trick of light outshone the shop’s bangles and made the beautiful bracelets suddenly appear tawdry. I marveled at how she accidentally engineered such a simple but wondrous sight.

  The bangle seller’s chin jerked up as we heard a commotion outside. Hasan’s voice rose and blended with the shouts of others. Luna dropped the bangle and ran toward the ruckus.

  Two doors away, in front of a shoe store, Hasan was face to face with a man who appeared to be the shopkeeper. A crowd had gathered, some also yelling at the shopkeeper, others bellowing at Hasan.

  “Bapre bap,” Luna said. “He is always fighting.”

  “What’s happening?”

  She listened. “You see the signboard?” she finally said. On the window, a hand-lettered piece of paper hung askew. “It says gent’s shoes.”

  “So?”

  “It is Urdu language. Not our language. You know?”

  “I know. You speak Bangla.”

  “The government in West Pakistan wants us to speak Urdu. Ever since partition they are saying Urdu is now your language.

  “This shopkeeper he is maybe Bihari. He is speaking Urdu. Hasan is saying you stop speaking Urdu, you speak Bangla.”

  “Who cares what he speaks?” I didn’t understand why such a trivial and crude notice would create such animosity. Then a scrawny man, his face ugly with rage, pushed his way in front of Hasan. He slapped the shopkeeper’s face. The crowd roared. “Why did he hit him?”

  “Razzak is Bihari, too. Apa, don’t mind,” Luna lowered her voice again. “Please don’t tell Amma.”

  “Why? What’s wrong with being Bihari?”

  “Come. We go.”

  “Shouldn’t we wait for Hasan?”

  Luna laughed. “Hasan is not listening, Apa. He never listening.”

  Hasan tore the sign down. It was like gas thrown on a fire.

  Luna took my hand. “Come. Amma waiting for us.”

  *

  Just as I itched to get out on the street, Mrs. Chowdhury yearned to introduce me to the only American in Dhaka with whom she was intimately acquainted. I shrugged at her suggestion of a visit – it was only my third day, and I was thinking instead of a nap to alleviate the jet lag and avoid the dense afternoon heat. “Beth will be your close friend in Dhaka,” Mrs. Chowdhury said. “We must go now.” I was puzzled by her insistence and even more confused by her assured pronouncement of my friendship with a woman I’d never even met, let alone one who was married with children. But before I could object, I saw Luna at the front door, smiling sweetly.

  Her smile widened, her eyebrows rose – conspiratorially – and I saw in a flash that she understood exactly what I was thinking about her mother. Through a nearly imperceptible gesture, Luna sent me a survival message: save your breath. Any follow-up question or protest will be in vain.

  Another sign of Luna’s astuteness? I was most definitely intrigued now.

  A servant led us to Beth’s terrace. It was late afternoon, just slightly cooler since it had rained during lunch. Among the flowers and potted shrubs, the air was almost bearable. Mrs. Chowdhury sat on a cane armchair under a canopy propped up by bamboo, well out of the sun. When Luna sat on a swing suspended from an iron frame, I joined her.

  “Beth loves her garden,” Mrs. Chowdhury said.

  Luna set the swing in motion. It squeaked, but soothed. We swayed in and out of the sun, and lapped up the breeze our movement created.

  “I tell her: you need the mali, this is too much work for one person. But she is out here with the sunrise. Stubborn woman,” Mrs. Chowdhury continued.

  Pink bougainvillea clambered up and tumbled over a wall. There was a smaller white one beside it, being trained to climb up jute cords that spun off in five or six directions. A windmill palm quivered as though caressed in the breeze. Two rows of pots stood empty along a wall, their clay waiting for se
eds or seedlings to push up and colour that part of the terrace.

  “You should see her dahlias in the spring,” Mrs. Chowdhury said. “Like footballs. I tell her she is practicing sorcery to grow them so big.”

  “Salma,” a voice said. “You must be baking out here. Why don’t you come inside?”

  “Oh no, it’s so lovely and cool when one is out of the sun. You have the most beautiful terrace in all Dhaka city,” Mrs. Chowdhury gushed. She rose and embraced the tall, lean woman, pecked both her cheeks. “This is Robin Rowe. And this is my good friend of many years, Beth Ahmed.” She pronounced it ‘bait.’

  I rose, we shook hands, and she said a quiet hello to Luna. Her ivory saree, patterned with deep green twisting ivy, flowed with her movements. I thought of a fish swaying within a net, unaware of the filaments about to close in.

  “I’ve been waiting to meet you. How are you?”

  “Not bad. Hot.” By now, there were several layers of sweat on my forehead. Beth smiled. “But Mrs. Chowdhury’s bending over backwards to make me feel welcome.” I glanced at Luna, but she was watching Beth and continued to rock the swing softly, and stir a breeze.

  “No, no, it’s my duty,” Mrs. Chowdhury declared.

  “Sit, sit,” Beth said. “You have no tea? What is that boy thinking of, showing you out here and not a drop to drink? Hamid!”

  A few minutes later, she served tea piping hot. “It cools the body, you know. It’s simple physics.” Mrs. Chowdhury nodded happily. “That’s what they say in the desert.” There were cookies, too and a fragile crystal dish of rice pudding with cloves, cardamom and chocolaty flakes of cinnamon bark. And squat bananas like fat fingers.

  “So how are you finding our Dhaka city?” Beth asked.

  “She is becoming accustomed,” Mrs. Chowdhury said. “We begin Bangla lessons tomorrow.” She beamed. I smiled back.

  “I haven’t seen much yet. But it’s different from Michigan,” I said to Beth. I looked over at Luna – who’d finally stopped swinging when the tea was served. She cradled an untouched bowl of rice pudding. I wondered what she knew about Michigan, about me and my life with my Dad, what she had already imagined and how I measured up to her expectations. Her face was impassive though, and she offered no opinion.