This Innocent Corner
Page 6
Halfway through my tantalizing daydream, a strong gust blew open a door. Leaves and dust swept into the hall. Conversation lulled and people looked up expectantly. The door was slammed shut, and I remained in my seat, exactly where I was supposed to be.
A waiter shoveled greasy pullao onto my plate. He was followed by another who put chicken curry rich with cardamom beside it. A third carried a platter with fish stuffed with chilis and onions. It was all rich and oily, and completely delicious. After I began to feel like a glutton, I shook my head to the offer of second and third helpings. But the waiters put serving after serving on my plate anyway. Every mouthful I ate was instantly replaced with another spoonful. It was useless to refuse.
Suddenly, Luna pushed her plate away and stood up. “We go to Abba’s table now. Come,” she said to me. Did she mean the men’s side of the room? I was too stunned to move and besides, still chewing. “Come,” Luna insisted, and pulled on my arm. Amma gave a brief nod without looking up from her plate.
I rose and followed Luna. No deafening silence followed our crossing. No one even looked at us. I was so confused about the mysterious rules of this society that seemed to shift on a whim.
At Mr. Chowdhury’s table, I recognized Hasan, of course, as well as one of Luna’s uncles, a man with a skillet-flat face, and Hasan’s friend Shaheed who had his fingers resting on the side of his emptied plate. But the rest of the men around the table were strangers. Conversation stopped when we approached.
“Have you already finished your meal?” Mr. Chowdhury asked. He was impossibly built – a short man with a belly like a beach ball and legs like broomsticks. When he had entered the hall earlier, I had the feeling he would be toppled over by the wind. His face was round, like Luna’s, his head mostly bald. His eyes, dark brown, were deep as a forest and set behind glasses so thick he seemed to be much further away than he really was.
“Yes, Abba,” Luna said.
“Did you enjoy the meal, Robin?” A half-full plate rested before him.
“Too much.” I patted my full stomach.
“Join us,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “Please.” He gestured avuncularly to an empty chair. A couple of the men shifted, unprepared for our invasion of their territory. An awkwardness, impossible to ignore, took shape and landed on the table like a centrepiece. Shaheed smirked.
“I’m sorry. We’re interrupting.”
“Not at all.” Shaheed gallantly signaled a waiter to bring us another chair. “Now sit. We were discussing international relations.”
Luna and I had no choice. Mr. Chowdhury turned to one of the older men and asked a question in Bangla. I could only understand a word or two of his reply – he seemed to be chewing on his tongue while he spoke. Another man jumped in. Then another, and another, until it seemed like everyone was talking. Shaheed caught my eye and winked.
Finally, Luna’s skillet-faced uncle raised his hand until a hush fell around the table. When he spoke, they listened. Then all eyes turned to me. Expectantly.
“Chacha is right,” Luna said, breaking the silence. “For our guest, we will speaking the English.”
“We will speak English,” Hasan said. Luna glowered.
“Stop your bickering,” Mr. Chowdhury warned. “Behave nicely.” A long silence followed during which every man found something fascinating to look at – on the ceiling, their plates, at the place where the wall met the floor.
Bang. Hasan plunked down his water glass. “I have nothing to say in English.”
Mr. Chowdhury grinned. “Well, that is a relief. My son with nothing to say for a change.” Everyone laughed, except Hasan. “Please don’t mind,” Mr. Chowdhury said to me, affable as always, as though Hasan’s words were no more than a mosquito bite. “Our language is a very sensitive topic. Especially lately. Sometimes we can only express what we really mean in our own language, isn’t it?” I nodded. “We need to defend it from forces that would have it vanquished. Perhaps one day you will come to understand.”
“I want to learn your language,” I said. “Ami Bangla shikchi. That is why I am here.”
“Yes, we need such all-out support now,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “Not just from people like you. But from foreign governments. Britain, France, America…”
“The American government is nothing more than a puppet of the Mir Jafars,” Hasan said. “We don’t need such support.”
“So you do have something to say. In English, my son?” Mr. Chowdhury said dryly.
“The American government is not Apa’s fault,” Luna said.
“In a democracy, all are accountable for their governments,” Hasan said. “And yes I have plenty to say.”
“Hasan!” admonished Mr. Chowdhury.
A waste of breath. Hasan leapt to his feet, Luna followed and the arguing began in earnest.
“Children!” Mr. Chowdhury raised his voice, increasingly aggrieved. The others smiled awkwardly, shook their heads or tried to stop the argument. Only Shaheed sat back and watched like it was a spirited moment in a long cricket match.
“She is a guest from abroad,” Luna’s uncle said in English. “You must behave properly.”
“Bas! Bas! Enough!” Mr. Chowdhury was turning purple.
“Stop,” I said when I could feel other eyes in the hall turn toward us. “Please.”
They didn’t.
“Please.”
I wrapped on the surface of the table like a wizened congressman or a schoolhouse ma’am – thunk thunk thunk – until slowly, finally, silence fell over at our table, and then, one or two tables nearby. Luna, then Hasan sat. “You can speak whatever language you want. In fact, please speak Bangla. I can understand some. Besides, it’s the only way I’ll learn.”
“I thought you Americans already knew everything,” Hasan said.
Another sweeping statement. It was somebody’s wedding – but how many more insults could I let pass? “What do you mean?”
“That’s what you believe, isn’t it?”
“You’re wrong. Besides, that’s not fair. You’re not giving me a chance.” I was so flustered now. I knew of no way to respond to his accusations. There were so many. He was like a hungry flea the way he jumped from one contention to another, never remaining on any long enough for me to be able to formulate and speak clearly my thoughts.
“What chance are you giving us? You think you have come from some supreme nation and we’re all supposed to walk on eggshells to avoid insulting your delicate feelings.”
“Hasan!” Mr. Chowdhury scolded again.
“What gives you that idea? You don’t listen to a thing I say.”
“When you say something worthy, then I’ll listen.”
“Bas!” Mr. Chowdhury spoke loudly.
“Your government is offering full cooperation to the West Pakistanis,” Hasan continued. “Why? Self-interest. So the dictators of Islamabad will keep the red Russians out of this region.”
“And what exactly have I done? Whatever it is, I apologize. And if it helps explain anything to anyone who might be tempted to believe the ridiculous propaganda you spout about me, not every American blindly supports the government. That’s democracy. And there’s nothing I can do about that.”
I pulled all six metres of saree up off my chair and left the table.
*
“You must not let him get to you like that,” Shaheed said. We were in a corridor, leading to the kitchen. There was nowhere else to escape. Though waiters streamed up and down beside us like trout, this was the one place where we could be, in effect, alone. They were busy. No guest was likely to venture near the area where food was being prepared. “He is often too serious and at times a little quarrelsome.”
I shook as my anger coursed down to the tips of my fingers. “At times? Everything he says is hateful. And wrong.” I fought to prevent the rage spilling from my eyes.
A waiter balancing four partially-filled jugs of water slipped by us, sideways. I gave in, and cried.
“Then why doesn’t anyone say anything? Why don’t you? He’s your friend.”
Shaheed took my hands and squeezed. I let my fingers go limp. I knew as well as he did that this physical contact between us was inappropriate. Yet he held tight. “All right. I shall. Now calm yourself.” A shared breath later, he released my hands, for which I felt glad, knowing it would not be prudent to be seen in such a compromising position, but also disappointed because I hadn’t yet figured out what the gesture meant, if anything. “Now don’t let the evening be spoiled so soon. I’m sure you and Hasan have many more things to argue about tonight. Besides, the second and third course of our meal is coming up –” He laughed when he saw my face. “Fooled you.”
I rolled my eyes, but smiled as I left him with the waiters and the overdone smells from the kitchen that reassured me the meal was indeed over, even if Hasan and I were nowhere near such a détente.
*
The celebrations and arguments distracted us temporarily from the storm outside. It had intensified during our meal. When we finally went to leave, I opened the door into the wind, and the handle was torn from my fingers. Rain and hail blown horizontally pelted my face. My hair collapsed and I feared my saree in the style of a gothic romance would be ripped from my body.
Days later, when news of the full impact of the cyclone reached Dhaka, I found out this was not uncommon. The newspapers published pictures of naked women and children, wandering around a swampy moonscape, looking for their families, homes, livestock and belongings. Not even a shred of clothing to cover their bare flesh. The force of the wind literally ripped the clothes from their backs.
Imagine celebrating a wedding anniversary, as Mira and Qashem would, on the same day as what one newspaper called “the worst disaster of the century.” November 12, 1970. No one would ever forget it. Two hundred and fifty miles of coastline on the Bay of Bengal was devastated, a huge V chewed out of the side of the country. Homes, crops, cattle and poultry, everything blown or washed away. To where? It was impossible to say. Though I imagined this place, somewhere to the north, butted up against the Himalayas, where the wind and waves had died down, and a massive pile of wood and metal, clothes, shoes, steel pots, pans, broken dishes, bodies of chickens and cows and goats, family photos, jewellery, school projects and notebooks, dolls, diapers and every single edible thing in the country lay. Cemented together by that distinctive silt that was the soil of East Pakistan.
One million people died. Unofficial, but the Chowdhurys had more faith in that than the first official estimate of fifty dead.
Though I felt embarrassed and bruised by yet another argument with Hasan – it was the first in which we had such a large audience, and the first in which I had truly lost my temper – my feelings faded in the wake of the disaster. The Chowdhurys lost a window that night. Six panes shattered when a gust of wind snapped a large bough of a neem tree and tossed its bulk against the side of the house. I was awake, of course, listening to the storm and alternately fuming about Hasan and wondering about Shaheed. The house’s foundation trembled with the impact.
“God has blessed us,” Amma said as she oversaw Shafiq picking up the shards the next morning.
“Indeed,” said Mr. Chowdhury.
The Chowdhurys suffered nothing compared to the rest of the city. Trees were uprooted. Sheets of corrugated iron were lifted off their shanties in the exposed areas. Billboards bowed to touch the ground, their iron support rails bent into arches so perfect, they would be the envy of any architect. The pathways between the homes in the slums became rivers that toted away shoes and pots, baskets and buckets. Anything not fastened down. Several generations worth of possessions.
When people finally emerged from their houses, they wandered the streets like ghosts and shook their heads. They marvelled over the tree, the shack, the pole, the wall, the sign. Yes, it was there, I remember, don’t you?
When all the details emerged, Kamala cried and Shafiq took leave. Coastal Hatiya, their ancestral village, had been flattened by the tidal wave that followed the cyclone.
“We need him here,” Amma said, “but what can I do?” I looked at spindly Shafiq. He would never survive the trip. Nonetheless, Amma gave him three hundred rupees, a kilo of rice and some dried fish. He rolled up his prayer mat, tucked it under his arm and left the next day on a launch.
Barisal, Patuakhali, Khulna. In some places, fewer than one in five people had survived. Places I had never heard of before, statistics that numbed the mind became part of my daily vocabulary. Burying the dead was an impossible task. There were so many bodies. They swelled up on the riverbanks and, in the hot sun, threatened to burst with disease. Cholera spread like fire in wood-shavings. No one could explain why it took more than four days for the armed forces to get out their shovels.
“Abba, Amma,” Hasan roared into the house, returning from Friday prayers. “They knew. Those black bastards knew.”
“Knew what?” Mr. Chowdhury pulled a newspaper from his face.
“Do not use such language in this house,” Amma said.
“And they dare to question our piety. Who deserves to be called ‘half Muslim’ now?”
“Go on, go on.” Mr. Chowdhury was impatient.
“For two whole days the meteorologists knew about the storm. The early warning system works fine. But they were too lazy to tell the people. Our imam has revealed all. Filthy swine. They are not fit to wipe dirt from my shoes.”
According to Hasan’s report, the public had been warned – once. Someone in charge then had assumed that adequate precautions would follow. Surely people had the sense to tie down their possessions, and move their families and livestock to higher ground. Regular radio programs resumed, uninterrupted. Whatever updates were necessary were contained in regularly scheduled weather reports.
It took the president six days to visit the disaster areas. Only then was the official death toll raised to 175,000. Only then was the notion of relief taken seriously. Only then was the international community asked for help.
But of course it was too late for West Pakistan’s political forces. By then, all support had galvanized around Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League. Within hours, he spoke before a crowd of twenty thousand in a little town called Moulvi Bazaar. It was so quiet, you could hear a pin drop.
Finally, Hasan and I could agree on something. Victory at the elections, scheduled for a mere three weeks after the disaster, would most certainly go to Bangabandhu.
*
Luna picked a day in late November when she knew the Students Action Committee was having a meeting beneath the banyan tree on campus that Hasan would never miss. “I want to show Robin the Botanical Gardens Saturday morning,” she told her mother.
Amma was troubled of course, and suggested another day, another time, when Hasan would be available to escort us, but Luna had prepared herself with excuses: a test she had to study for; an important but fictitious phone call I was expecting from the dean’s office in East Lansing; my own twentieth birthday which was mere days away now; the weather forecast. She had prepared such a barrage of excuses, even Amma couldn’t withstand it.
“Go then,” she said. “My head is aching too much to fight with you any longer.” She placed her hand on her temple and closed her eyes. “But stay on the pathways and don’t waste your paisa on the mehendi-wallahs.” All it took was ten minutes and a couple of coins, and you could have a dark woman or a man with missing teeth paint the palms of your hands or the soles of your feet with henna. Luna was a fan of the lavish designs, but the one time I had it applied, flowers and vines drawn up to my fingertips, it tickled as it dried. I involuntarily curled my fingers – an instant of forgetfulness – and the pattern blurred.
Luna paid no attention to any of it. Single-mindedly, she led me deeper and deeper into the garden. We passed children who ran up and down the pathways, and called to their parents when the man selling chewing gum or hard candies in crisp, cellophane wrappers appeared. Groups of college-aged girls hovered aimlessly and furtively watched the groups of college-aged boys who were, in turn, watching them. Couples, heads bowed together, were the least active. They sat on benches or beneath trees, laying claim to whatever quiet, shady corner of the garden they could.
We found Razzak in a clearing, thick with bamboo, arching branches knit together in dusty, dried knots. He sat on a shawl spread on the earth littered with dry leaves and curved slabs of bark. Though we’d been creeping around the city together, our lives inextricably linked by the secret we shared, this was my first official meeting with him. Face to face with him, finally, I found him assessing me with the same curiosity I had about him.
“Did you have any problem coming here today?” he asked. His eyes were webbed with red as though he hadn’t slept.