This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  “No,” Luna said. “Thik ache.”

  “Just Amma,” I laughed. But Luna, finger to her lips, hushed me. Amma – and Mr. Chowdhury, Hasan, Razzak’s father – these people had no place with us in the garden.

  “Apa, this the bamboo. Bash bagan we say,” Luna mumbled and self-consciously sat on the edge of Razzak’s shawl. She turned her face toward him, her eyes lowered, and smiled. The pretense of my botany lesson evaporated, and was replaced with romantic tension.

  I stood nervously not knowing where to sit. But when I saw Razzak stir to shift and offer me his place on the shawl, I quickly lowered myself onto the earth and leaves and crossed my legs. Facing them.

  “No, no,” he said and rose.

  “Please, stay where you are. Sit down.” Razzak hovered. “I insist.” And I must have spoken decisively enough, as he did as I asked.

  I had a lot of things I wanted to ask him, but I hardly knew where to begin. Everything I had learned about him so far suddenly seemed tangled, his background impenetrable.

  “You like it here?” Razzak asked finally, breaking our silence.

  “Sure. There’s a lot to like and Luna’s been great.”

  “I agree with you on the second point.” He smiled slyly. Luna blushed and fussed, but still did not meet his eye. “But I am not so sure about the first.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “This place is a hell.” An ant, its rear jacked up into the air as if its waist had been cinched too tightly, crawled onto the shawl. He flicked it away.

  “But it’s your home.”

  Razzak’s parents had come to East Pakistan more than twenty years ago, fleeing parched land and religious hostility following partition – just as Afsana had described. They did not know what lay in wait for them across the border, but the uncertainty was preferable to waiting for famine or communal rioting to notice them. Razzak’s mother was almost eight months pregnant with him when they began their migration. She gave birth early, in a village just inside the border of East Pakistan. Two women she barely knew called the village birth attendant who had a cast eye and bony fingers as twisted as the trunk of a banyan tree. Together they helped her push, cut the cord, wash and wrap Razzak, and deliver into her arms a child blessed with their new nationality.

  His father could not wait until the two were strong enough to travel. He kept going. In Dhaka, he located the Bihari community and nudged his way into a slum. When Razzak and his mother arrived a few weeks later, stronger, thanks to the hospitality of the two village women, there was a tattered hut for them to call home.

  Razzak’s father accepted what work he could find, but most often, it was temporary and the kind of work no one else wanted to do. Razzak’s sisters were conceived and born, one after the other, and the family moved into a larger hut. Eventually, in the same way he nudged the family into the slum, Razzak’s father nudged his way into a typist’s job in the government. The fact he could fix a typewriter – not to mention read and write Urdu placed him above the Bengali candidates.

  “My parents suffered too much for me and my sisters. When Abba was able to join government service, they believed the suffering was over. But his good fortune was the beginning of my family’s true sorrow in this land.”

  Seven years ago, when coming home from work, Razzak’s father was stopped by five men. They pushed him down, kicked him, accused him of taking a good job away from a Bengali, and left him lying in a patch of urine-soaked weeds growing at the base of a brick wall. He could barely sit up, let alone work. But when his department threatened to find someone new to fill his place, he rushed back to the office. As a result, his body never healed properly and his back and arms still gave him much pain. But he could never take the time off to have them fixed. He would have lost his job.

  Last week, a neighbourhood mastaan had demanded money from Razzak’s father. If he didn’t pay, the thug threatened to fabricate reports of spying which he would convey to both the army and the Awami League. His father had managed to avoid the man ever since, but had not yet decided what to do.

  “Will you vote next week?” I asked. The long-awaited elections were six days away. He shrugged. “What do you think of the independence movement?” I continued.

  “Robin-Apa, even if I had an opinion, I would not tell you. Everyone is a security threat to my family. But just so you understand my point of view: independence movements are for people who have good jobs and nice houses and always enough food on the table. So are elections. The rest of us are too busy just trying to survive.”

  It was impossible for me to equate Razzak and his family with the picture of Bihari villains painted by Hasan, Ruby and their ilk. Was I missing something? The disparity in the stories was nearly unfathomable. Was Razzak lying? No one could have invented such detail. I looked at Razzak and wondered, though my doubt, however slight it might be, felt disloyal to Luna.

  Luna stretched out her legs and shifted, and I saw Razzak reach for her fingers. She swatted his hand, and turned her shoulder away, but her smile said she was pleased he had tried. They sat, joined by the shawl and protected by the bamboo, lovers with one foot in this world, and the other in a world of their own. I looked away. It was all I could do to offer a few moments of precious privacy.

  Even the azan seemed to respect their space. Though I knew there were two mosques not far away, the sound of the noon-time call to prayer barely reached us.

  When we became thirsty, Luna gave some coins to Razzak to fetch us drinks. While he was away, she showed me the tiny lajja-patta plants whose delicate fringe of leaves folds up when touched.

  “How does it work?” I asked.

  She shrugged. I brushed another to see it happen again. Then, I remained still, waiting until the pale, closed up plant unfurled itself once more. It took much longer to open than it had to close.

  Luna gently stroked a patch of lajja-patta and as the leaves lay down she said, “Thank you, Apa, for giving me the most perfect day of my life.”

  Razzak returned with three sodas, flimsy straws bubbling up from the narrow necks of bottles. We drank. The whisper from deep within the bamboo grove was the only conversation. We respected the silence – we recognized one another’s mute spaces. Razzak, an exile in this country, me a foreigner, and Luna, a woman incapable of publicly declaring the love that shaped her life. We basked in this familiarity, while leaves rustled around us. It seemed impossible that we had known one another for only a few months. For the first time since I had entered East Pakistan, I discovered a corner where I belonged.

  Then down the path. “Holy shit,” I said. “Shafiq.”

  Luna jerked away from Razzak, while he pushed himself off the ground like a sprinter. He ducked behind the bamboo. “Koi?”

  I pointed. I didn’t even know he was back from the village.

  She smoothed her fingers over her clothes, her lips and cheeks. She arranged her dupatta like a schoolgirl’s, so it concealed her chest. “Taratari,” she whispered to Razzak. “Jao.” Quickly. Go.

  Razzak crawled on his belly to the other side of the grove, and when a group of school girls in uniform, white ribbons like stiff-winged insects in their hair, darted across the path in front of Shafiq, he rose and nonchalantly walked away.

  Rickety old Shafiq strode through the trees in a way that made me marvel. His chappals flopped as though they might slide off his feet. His spindly legs buckled, but did not let him down.

  “Asho,” he cried. “Tomar ma hospital giyeche.” Your mother has gone to the hospital.

  Amma.

  Luna leapt up.

  “Asho, asho,” Shafiq urged.

  “Where is the car?” Luna cried. “Come on.” She pulled my arm so hard, my sleeve tore at the shoulder seam.

  And Shafiq scooped up the shawl we’d been sitting on. The shawl that belonged to Razzak.

  *

&nb
sp; Amma sat in bed, her face as grey as the over-laundered and worn-out sheet wrapped around her hips and legs. She was wired to a monitor that flickered in time to her heartbeat. A bandage was looped under her chin and tied on top of her head. It gave her a comical look, like a magician’s rabbit with a cartoon toothache.

  “Thik ache, thik ache,” she said as we burst into the room. “All this fuss for a clumsy old woman. There’s no need.” She struggled to get out of bed.

  “Amma, calm yourself,” Hasan ordered. “Sit.” He pushed her back onto the bed, with more force than necessary. Even at a moment like this he could not be gentle. She raised a hand to the back of her neck and squinted in pain, but said nothing.

  “Amma, what happened?” Luna cried. “Where’s Abba?”

  “He’s coming,” Hasan said. “He was in Tongi.”

  Amma had passed out in the long hallway that led from the front of the house to the bedrooms at the back. Kamala found her right away, called Hasan, who called an ambulance which took her to Holy Family Hospital. Doctors took care of the rest – high blood pressure and a nasty knock to her head. No serious damage, they said, other than the bump.

  “But your pressure,” Hasan said. “That is no joke.”

  Amma brushed away his words. “Rubbish. Perhaps I did not eat enough breakfast.”

  “You didn’t take your medication, did you?” Hasan said.

  “Don’t be foolish.” She patted her belly. “An old woman’s empty stomach is all.”

  “We were so worried,” I said finally. “Amma, you have to take care of yourself.”

  She was sent home before nightfall with two more prescriptions and instructions to rest in bed for ten days.

  Mr. Chowdhury finally arrived an hour later. “That daft messenger became lost – he is a stupid – and then no one would allow him entry into the meeting. The fools at the door did not understand the urgency of his message. I went straight to the hospital as soon as I knew, isn’t it? But they told me you had been discharged.”

  “What was the outcome of the assembly, Abba?” Hasan said.

  “Unfortunately, I do not know, as I had to leave.”

  “But in general. What was the mood of the delegates?”

  “Not good,” he said, shaking his head. “Not good at all.” Amma’s chest began to rise and fall. She wheezed like a concertina. “But this is no time for idle chatter. We must do the needful, isn’t it? Go. Your mother and I have matters to discuss.” Luna, Hasan and I dragged ourselves away from her side. Like zombies we slid down the hall to our respective rooms.

  Luna closed her door, leaving Hasan and me alone. I was about to enter my room. “You can do what you want with your private affairs. But leave her out of it.”

  “Are you talking to me?” I asked. But there was no one else in sight, and the answer to my question was obvious.

  “Trying to stop you is like standing up to an armored tank. But you leave her be.”

  I felt caught although it was not possible that he knew our whole outing was a set-up and that Razzak had been there.

  “What are you talking about?” I feigned what innocence I could summon.

  “Don’t pretend. She is a respectable girl from a respectable family. You will not get away with it.”

  I considered briefly that Shafiq could have told him something. But no. It was far more likely than Hasan was fishing for information and hoping I’d stumble over some detail that would allow him to figure everything out.

  “Get away with what?” My innocence this time sounded forced.

  “Amma will be informed.”

  “Amma’s sick.” And with that, I decided I would no longer play this game. “Butt out. It’s not your business.”

  “And what makes you think it is yours?” he asked. “Before you introduce any more modern ideas to my sister just ask yourself: why am I doing this? What will happen to her when I leave for my so-called free country and she must stay behind here and feel the consequences of her secrets? Ask yourself if you are acting in her best interests.”

  He spun around, his outrageous questions pulled away in a wake of air. The door to his room slammed.

  I entered my room and closed the door behind me. Of course I had Luna’s best interests in mind. Why else would I have been going to such lengths – risking Amma’s disapproval and possibly jeopardizing my home stay? I agreed with one thing he said: it was detrimental to keep her relationship a secret from her family. Eventually, there would be consequences. Likely after I had left the country. Hasan had a point. But hadn’t I been the one encouraging Luna to open up and tell the truth?

  Amma recovered. However, her bed rest consisted of ten hours, not days. Next morning, I overheard her on the phone with Beth, downplaying the whole event. “Just an empty stomach, that’s all,” she said. “But perhaps I will take the medicine. Doctor’s orders.”

  She went marketing Monday morning, visited her sister’s for lunch, and by the following day, except for the now uncovered and fading bruise on her head, she was the same old Amma. She tottered home in the evening with a new picture for the sitting room. She had Shafiq hammer a nail in the wall using a heavy iron tava from the kitchen, and hang the shrink-wrapped photograph of a tiny chalet in the Swiss Alps. The mountains were unnaturally green, the sky a disturbingly vivid blue, but you could only see them under a certain light and from a certain angle, confined as they were to their cellophane wrapping. “So beautiful,” she sighed, smoothing a wrinkle in one corner with her thumb. “It will do me good to see this peaceful corner of the earth every day.”

  The only difference in the house following Amma’s collapse was that Kamala now had three bottles of pills cinched in the bag around her neck. She’d shake once, twice, three times, and palm the pills over to Amma, then push a glass of water into her other hand.

  *

  There was another change in the house, though far more subtle and therefore, impossible to ask Amma about. There were more closed doors than ever before, more quiet voices, more somber faces around the dining table and the tea trolley. Amma and Mr. Chowdhury, Hasan and a squadron of relatives came and went – I was not included in their discussions. In fact, when I appeared, silence fell, then harmless topics of conversation were raised – weather, cricket, the rising price of essentials – mundane matters that had never concerned me before. I put it down to the election, which was now just a couple of days away.

  Even Shafiq and Kamala were more grim than usual. They went about their duties with funeral parlor solemnity. The kitchen door was pushed shut whenever I passed. Their voices were muffled and indistinguishable through the wood, though once I heard Kamala cackle.

  Another piece of business in the house remained strangely unfinished. Razzak’s shawl disappeared. Luna and I weighed the possibilities.

  “Maybe Shafiq kept it,” I offered.

  “No. That not his way.”

  “But what would he do with it?” She did not answer. “Anyway, what does a shawl prove?”

  “I think Shafiq telling something.”

  “But how would Shafiq know? He’s too blind to have seen anything, and besides, he’s too cowardly.”

  But I was not convinced. In that house, nothing disappeared. Not with Amma around. Certainly not with Hasan. That was a house in which gossip traveled so fast, people knew your business even before you did. And no one hesitated to solicit public opinions on even the most private matters.

  But Luna and I could not locate the incriminating garment. We had to brace ourselves and wait for its reappearance.

  *

  My twentieth birthday went nearly unnoticed in the intrigue and pandemonium. Amma made sure there was a cake – pink, ornate, insubstantial – and painfully sweet, as she herself would like. But when Mr. Chowdhury was absent from dinner and Hasan left the table before dessert was served, she apologetically t
old me that birthdays were not a big deal in Bengali culture, and I should not take it personally. I was not used to being so cavalier about birthdays. But Amma and Luna made a point of staying at the table with me until I’d finished my piece of cake and for that I was grateful.

  Three days later, we learned the results of the election: Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League won, and the People’s Party of West Pakistan came a close, but undeniably second place. Still, the martial law administrator, Yahya Khan refused to call a parliament, refused to resign his presidency. The two leaders toured parts of the country from where they received support, loudly declaring their victories, each denouncing the other for lack of cooperation.

  “Bhutto is desperate. He is a lame duck,” Hasan declared at tea time, “and he knows it.”

  “Unfortunately, I suspect he wields more power than we acknowledge,” Mr. Chowdhury said, and emptied his cup. “Now come.” The two of them were headed for the mosque, hungry for new rumours to fuel their discussions.

  Politically, the country was in upheaval. Though some political prisoners were released and Bhutto announced support for maximum provincial control in a new constitution, these were seen by most people in East Pakistan as empty gestures. The prices of rice, oil, dal and vegetables shot through the roof. People postponed their plans for holidays, weddings, moving and other major changes until there was clear indication of what would happen in the coming days.

  The political situation distracted everyone, including me, from Christmas. Though aware of its approach, I had none of the cues I’d get back home – no shopping malls, no tinsel and lights along The Gut, no advertisements, no frantic people scouring the shelves of Knapp’s, or Jacobson’s if they were flush enough, for festive purchases. No snow. In Dhaka, the sun was much lower in the sky and it was cool during the day – I carried a shawl. It was cold and foggy some nights, and I snuggled up underneath the mothball-smelling, cotton-filled kantha, that mysteriously appeared on my bed one evening. No doubt it was Shafiq’s doing, though I wondered how he lifted and folded the bulky quilt without tumbling backwards.