Ever since I’d arrived, I’d been wondering about the relationship between Shafiq and Kamala.
“They are brother and sister,” Amma said. “Shafiq was married to Kamala’s elder sister. But she has passed many years ago.”
“So they’re not exactly brother and sister.” I thought for a moment. “Then they could – are they – you know – thinking about getting married?” I knew they shared quarters in a narrow building at the rear of the yard, but I couldn’t bring myself to ask Amma if they were sleeping together.
Amma looked startled and slightly alarmed. “Kamala is married.” But I had never seen another man in the house. “She has four sons.” Four more boys besides? Where? “They stay in Hatiya on the coast. They are fishermen.”
“Wow. That must be hard.”
“What, dear?”
“Being so far apart like that – the whole family, I mean. I guess they could come here on holidays. Or she could go there for her vacation. I suppose they must write often…”
An expression I had just come to recognize settled on Amma’s face. The expression normally followed a stream of things that came pouring from my mouth, one after the other, things I thought causal, linked, rational, though evidently, to Amma, they were not.
My curiosity about Shafiq and Kamala was still not satisfied. They were, after all, intimately involved in my life. They made my bed, cleaned my toilet, washed all my clothes, even my underwear, and made nearly everything that I ate. With my American sense of equality, I was certain they were just awaiting my overture before we became good friends.
A few days later, I asked Amma to help me approach them. “I was thinking I could maybe spend a day with them – you know, go to the market with Kamala – and Shafiq – well, I’m still not exactly sure what he does yet…”
“You are not alone in that,” she murmured.
Amma resisted initially. “Robin, dear, they must get on with their work and they will not be – comfortable – if you are – you ask many questions, and they are simple people from their village.”
“Then I won’t say anything. I’ll help them, too, so they’ll be able to get their work done faster. I know how to make a bed after all – it’s not an elaborate science.” Amma appeared alarmed. I had never before seen her speechless.
But eventually, she taught me how to ask them – using the more polite formal form of address, at my request – if they would mind me hanging around with them for a day.
I entered their lair – the kitchen – the next day. Light slanted through a dusty, broken shutter onto the stained concrete floor. The room smelled of mustard oil, onion and phenol. Kamala and Shafiq were sitting on low stools, cups of tea balanced on their drawn-up knees. A prayer mat was rolled up in the corner beside the door.
“Salaam aliekum.” I held out my hand and smiled.
They looked at each other. Then me. Kamala pulled the end of her saree up and over her head. It was like a beach ball had just benignly rolled into their kitchen. They didn’t quite know what to do about it, or even whether any response at all was necessary. I couldn’t remember then what I planned to say. So I backed toward the door. Just before I made my exit, Kamala burst into laughter, and for the first time, I saw her mouthful of stained, wide-gapped teeth. When I wrote my father about them the next week, I omitted the part about my attempted overture.
Once Amma became more comfortable around me, she spoke more and more often of Luna and the grief with which her daughter filled her life. Luna was, depending on the day, obstinate, inattentive, too restless, a poor student, disrespectful, and spoiled by her father. Unlikely to make anything of her life if she continued along the wayward path she was following. Because I knew a different Luna – a quick-thinking, intelligent, independent, perceptive one – I took Amma’s words with little more than a grain of salt. Clearly, Amma was going through some sort of inner battle about her daughter’s growing up, a sort of Bengali version of the empty-nest syndrome. When things got really bad, Amma’d pop a pill.
She’d bellow as though calling livestock, though from where she mustered the breath remained a mystery. “Kamala! Asho!” Come.
And Kamala, in her silent but attentive manner, as if she’d been waiting right around the corner, would materialize with Amma’s medication, which she kept in a tiny drawstring pouch on a lace around her neck, and a small glass of water.
Teary-eyed, Amma would swallow the pill Kamala offered, then hold a hand to her throbbing head because for the third afternoon in a row, despite her coaxing, Luna had chosen to spend time with a friend instead of staying home. I suspected, but didn’t know for certain that the “friend” was often Razzak.
“Daughters are far more difficult than sons,” Amma said once. I tried to visualize my own father saying such things to a stranger, but it seemed bizarre. “You will understand when you start your family.”
“I’d rather finish my degree first. And then I’m getting a job.”
“But you will marry. And have children. Just like my Luna.”
“Don’t you wish for something better for Luna? You’re her mother.”
“But what could be better for a woman than having children? Your time will come. Don’t worry.” She assumed the extremely aggravating air of a wizened sage on a mountaintop.
“I’m not the least bit worried. Where I come from, women have fought hard to earn the right to choose. Why should a woman have to marry? Have children? Now women can do anything they want.”
“What? As though they were God?”
“It’s not like that,” I reddened, but insisted. “But they have more control over their lives than…than they used to,” I finished weakly. More control than women like you. That’s what I had meant to say.
Amma just harrumphed. “It is not natural to place so much value on control.”
“Perhaps. But I think it is natural and necessary to ask questions.”
“Yes, questions are good. Knowledge is good,” Amma said. “But it is peculiar to America, this idea that somehow you can make your way in life by yourself.”
“But what is the alternative? Give up? Do exactly what you’re told? Admit defeat before you even have a chance to begin? That’s not what I was raised to believe.”
She sat back and considered my words. Aha, I thought. I am finally making her understand. But I became conscious of noise from outside – a hawker sharpening knives and scissors rang a bell and announced his presence on the street in front of the house. Amma smiled when she heard him, self-assured once again, grounded by her reality. “OK. I am defeated. By your American arguments. But you will see one day. You will see what I mean when your daughter is born.”
I shook my head firmly. “Uh-uh. Sorry Amma.”
Her smile remained unbroken though, as if she knew something I didn’t.
*
“Please, I cannot do this.”
Luna and I were alone in a corner of the Girls’ Common Room in the Arts Faculty.
“You’re going to have to sooner or later. May as well be up front about it,” I said. “Just tell your mother. Then you and Razzak won’t need to sneak around anymore.”
“You do not understand.”
“I’ll go with you. We’ll make Amma understand together.”
“No, Apa, she will be too much angry.”
Luna had just asked me to hand-deliver a love letter to Razzak. I, of course, refused. My participation in such a foolish scheme would only further the deception and make it more difficult to disentangle the affair later. However, I saw a window of opportunity to meaningfully help Luna get her life back under control. She needed to tell her parents about Razzak.
“The answer is no. Sorry.”
“But you are my friend.”
I wavered, but only for an instant, then steeled as I thought of a solution. “Then get Ruby to deliver the l
etter. She’s your friend, too. Besides, she said Razzak’s place is right by her uncle’s.”
“She cannot help,” Luna said. “If her baba, her bhai, anyone sees her passing letters to a Bihari boy, ahh –” She drew a breath. “People talk too much in Dhaka city. There will be trouble.” I closed my eyes. She grasped my hand.
It was just a letter.
“I am trusting you,” she continued.
“That means a lot, but –”
“You are the only one who can help me.”
“Okay.” I nodded. “Thik ache. But only one time. Then you’re going to have to tell them.”
“I will, I will. Oh, thank you, Apa.”
Her delivery instructions were detailed and explicit. I was to go to Jahangir’s Bakery, the place with the greasy windows she’d shown me on Elephant Road, at precisely 5:15 – right in the middle of my Bangla lesson with Amma, so I would have to excuse myself as best I could. When I got to Jahangir’s, I was to order a cup of tea and a sweet, syrupy gulab jamun – we practiced the words together. And when the cola delivery van pulled up outside, I was to walk out of the bakery and leave an empty notebook on the table beside my tea cup. On the cover was a drawing of an iridescent blue dolphin leaping out of the water, silhouetted by a full moon. Inside the notebook would be the letter.
Razzak would take it from there.
“It is simple,” Luna said. “And no one will suspect you of anything more than being forgetful.”
“What if someone else picks it up?”
“Razzak will be there first,” she said. “If he says he will be there, he will be there.”
So I told Amma I needed to see a girl from my history class to lend her my notes. “It’s urgent. She lost hers.”
Amma was predictably reluctant. I would miss half my lesson. And I’d be wandering the streets by myself, a feat which she was not yet confident I would be able to master. Though it was true that I hadn’t yet been out anywhere by myself – more by accident than design since everyone seemed happy to accompany me wherever I wanted to go – I thought her reaction typical Amma: over-protective and controlling.
But Amma also understood very well duty and responsibility. She wanted me to make new friends, too. Helping a classmate would be high on her list of priorities. She offered to send Shafiq to meet the girl.
“But I’ll only be a few minutes. He’s busy, and besides, too slow.”
Amma’s face opened and closed as she weighed the arguments. Then she sighed, defeated. “Go, then. But don’t dawdle over tea and gossip, thik ache?”
In Jahangir’s, I placed my order. Then it was as Luna predicted. Razzak entered the bakery with a friend. They did not look my way. The delivery van arrived. Razzak’s friend went to the counter to place an order. No one noticed when I left. Or when the young Bihari man sidled up to the table I had just vacated, picked up the notebook I’d left and tucked it under his arm.
I was back with Amma in less than twenty minutes, though unable to focus on how “pora” as a verb meant either to study, to read, to wear, to be uncultivated, to be vacant, to be unpaid, to ooze, to burn, to attack, or to fall.
“How is anyone supposed to know which one it is?”
Amma sighed when faced again by my now rather predictable question.
I buried my face in my hands and wailed. “I’ll never learn this language.”
Luna glowed when I told her about the letter later that afternoon. “Did he give any letter for me?”
“No. Sorry.”
“Then you must help again.”
“No, Luna,” I said. I had already fulfilled my part of the pact. Now it was her turn. To tell her parents.
“But it was easy. You said so yourself.”
“No. I said one time only.”
“Apa –”
“I don’t like lying to your mother.”
“Fine. Then I will take care of that. I will tell her – I will tell her you are going to see Afsana. With me and Ruby. Then you don’t need to say a thing.”
“But –”
“Not a thing.”
And the next day, at the same time, I left Luna at a bookstall half-concealed by a pair of Radha-Krishnachura trees whose flowers had long since disappeared. I went back to the bakery to pick up the dolphin notebook. It was propped up behind a menu on the same small table. There was a thin, dirty envelope inside. I had only two sips of tea and a single bite of a biscuit. The delivery van pulled up and belched a plume of black smoke. While it coughed and idled, I stashed the notebook in my bag and left the bakery.
When she asked about a third letter, a week later, I said, “Definitely not.”
“Apa –”
“I said once, and I did it twice. No more.” She flopped down on my bed and buried her face in my pillow. I stood up and opened the door to my almirah, contemplating the contents. “You said you were going to tell your mother and father how you feel and you haven’t.” I turned. “You have to now. They’re eventually going to support you, you know.”
Even muffled by the pillow, I could tell Luna was exasperated. “You do not understand.”
“I do understand. It’s not easy. It never is. But who said it? Shakespeare? ‘The course of true love never runs smooth’? Do you know that?”
“They will kill him,” Luna said, lifting her head. “And then me.”
“You’re so dramatic, you and Ruby. Your mother with what – a gun? Kamala’s boti? Come on.” I pulled a long woven dupatta Luna had given me off a hanger and held it to my face. The smell was warm and woody, slightly musty, faintly soapy.
“I have already written it.” She showed me the envelope – drawn on the back, over the glue-stained seal, was a heart around two hands, their fingers entwined. The childish image jerked my heart. “Please.”
But I held on, firm in my convictions. “No, Luna. And I’m very sorry. I’ve got to go. Amma’s taking me to the tailor.” I was being measured for two new sets of salwar kameez. Amma claimed I needed the new clothes for propriety’s sake. I didn’t argue, but I wanted them for entirely different reasons – it was time to retire my peasant skirts and big blouses. They were worn and faded from Kamala’s vigourous washing, but most importantly, I wanted to wear what everyone else on campus wore.
“That’s perfect!” Luna’s face lit up. “Amma? Amma!” She ran from my room.
And when I finally found her and Amma in the drawing room, both faces fixed with radiant smiles, I realized I was sunk. “Luna will take you to the tailor, Robin dear. I have too much to do this afternoon. And now, this headache.” She grimaced, then smiled proudly at her daughter. “It’s only because I trust Faizul bhai perfectly, one hundred percent. He will not dare to misbehave with you girls. He is like a brother to this family. Now go.”
By way of dismissal, she held hand to temple and turned away from the mid-day light that forced its way through the opening in the drapes.
*
“Where were you all afternoon?” Hasan asked from the threshold of Luna’s room. Luna and I were on her bed going through fabric samples hastily collected from Faizul the tailor who appeared slightly insulted when we refused both cups of cha, and to see the exclusive prints he’d set aside for Amma.
“I like the blue,” I said. I lifted the frayed little square, pulled it between my fingers. I ignored Hasan.
But Luna wasn’t able to brush him off so easily. “The tailor.” Then, to me. “Georgette is pretty. But the lilac is better for you.”
“Which tailor?” Hasan wasn’t letting us off. “In Calcutta?”
“Amma’s tailor,” I jumped in to defend Luna. “It was Amma’s idea. She sent us.” But Hasan ignored me.
“You were gone more than two hours.” He allowed a rebuking silence to grow. Our hair was still damp from the cloudburst that began just before we got back in the hou
se. I had strands clinging to the nape of my neck. “Two-and-a-quarter hours to be exact.”
“We stopped and had a cup of tea,” I continued. That much was true. “With Ruby.” That was not true. “At Jahangir’s,” I threw in for good measure, it also being true.
Luna’s face fell. But it was too late.
“Jahangir’s is the unsavoury meeting place of mastaans. It is not fit for girls unless they seek the cheap attention of criminals. Don’t go there anymore.”
“There’s nothing wrong with Jahangir’s,” I protested. “Nothing wrong a little soap and water wouldn’t fix anyway.”
But he continued with his tirade. “And Ruby Islam is a silly, shameless girl. The way she smokes in public – like a man. It is a disgrace. You should spend time with your studies, not with your silly gossips and talks about clothes and film stars.” Luna said nothing. “Now come. Amma is calling you for tea. Abba has been waiting.”
We followed him into the drawing room. “He shouldn’t tell you where you can and cannot go, or who your friends should be,” I whispered. But Luna hushed me.
Shafiq, in his usual cloud of silence, was arranging the tea things on a table. I was surprised to see Hasan had a friend over, too. Not that he was anti-social – just the opposite – but he and his friends rarely spent time with the rest of the family, preferring their own company and what I imagined to be dull, dogmatic conversation. Anyway, a friend here, now, was good. Perhaps Hasan and his friend could withdraw into a corner to discuss the finer points of Bengali independence – and as a result, be less focused on Luna and me.
“Asalaam aliekum, chotto bon,” the friend said when he was introduced. Little sister. “Kemon acho tumi?” How are you?
His name was Shaheed. I summoned up the Bangla words I knew to reply. “Bhalo achi. Ki khobor, boro bhai?” I’m fine. What’s your news, big brother? I stammered, especially over calling him brother when we’d only just met, but I knew these were the right words.
Laughter burst from Shaheed’s lips, and I would have been offended had it not been for the admiration which was as much in evidence as was his amusement. “Bhalo.” He looked at Amma.
This Innocent Corner Page 4
