This Innocent Corner

by Peggy Herring

  So I allowed the arrival of Christmas to become absorbed into the background of my life. I thought little about it until my father phoned from Lansing. It was Christmas morning for me, Christmas Eve for him.

  “Busy these days?” I asked.

  “The girls’ hockey team’s doing well. We might make the finals this year.” He taught physical education, and coached most of the school’s teams in the area tournaments.

  Hockey seemed so far away. “That’s good.”

  “Roo, I’m sending a gift,” he said abruptly. “Some money.”

  “Oh Dad, you don’t have to. It’s not like Christmas means anything here. We can celebrate when I get back.”

  “It’s for your ticket home – plus a little extra. Think of it as a Christmas and graduation gift combined. Roo, I want you to see a little of the country. Maybe go to India for a week or two.”

  “But I have classes.”

  “When you get a break then. No point missing the opportunity. Who knows when you’ll get back to that part of the world?”

  There was a wheeze on the line, followed by a high-pitched squeal, and I was connected to another conversation entirely. Two men shouted over one another in a language I could not identify.

  “Dad?” Then, a pop, and my father was back on the line.

  “Are you there, Roo?” His voice was more distant.

  “I can hear you.”

  “Good. The bank said someone will call.”

  “Merry Christmas, Dad. Thanks.”

  But the line faded. “Can you hear me? It’s only fifteen hundred –”

  “I can hear you.” One thousand five hundred? Where on earth did he get that kind of money? “Dad – ” I started my protest, but there was a burst of static. Before I could tell him such excess was not necessary, before he heard me say thank you, the line went dead. No amount of effort on my part could rouse the operator to put a call back through to him.

  We gathered around Beth’s table for Christmas dinner – her family, the Chowdhurys, and me. Beth’s two boys were dressed in little velvet vests and miniature bow-ties, one in red, the other in green. Her husband cut the turkey, though from the way he held the knife, like a hacksaw, I could see this was a task with which he was not familiar.

  “Where did you find turkey?” I asked Beth.

  “Wild,” she said. “You can get anything here, if you know where to look or who to ask, isn’t that right Salma? White or dark?”

  We were quietly eating – it felt awkward to be back to knives and forks – when Beth turned to Mr. Chowdhury. “So Yahya Khan is coming to Dhaka next week.”

  “He dare not show his face here,” Hasan said.

  “Tch tch,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “And why not? We are not yet barbarians, though they may be.” He turned to Beth. “It is true there is talk of such a visit. There is need for high level political meetings right now, isn’t it?”

  “Where is Bhutto then? Why is he not coming?” Beth asked. “As leader of the new official opposition, surely his presence is demanded.”

  “He will not accept the opposition mantle, you know,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “This is between Yahya Khan and our future president, Bangabandhu.”

  “But Bhutto must be made to cooperate. His alliance must be secured, whatever the cost,” Hasan said. “Just yesterday, Noor Alam Siddiky told us…”

  “Noor Alam Siddiky is a boy trying on men’s shoes and stumbling with each and every step. His father should have given him a good thrashing years ago. These student leaders are spreading harmful gossips. You should not pay heed to such speculation. It will only serve to draw us into battle.”

  “Your papa is right, dear,” Amma said. “Bangabandhu has instructed us to remain non-violent.”

  “But such a course is no longer possible. Our people have no choice but to fight back,” Hasan cried.

  Nervous glances were exchanged around the table. There was still a great deal of concern about the state of Amma’s blood pressure, and topics of dissension were definitely out of bounds until her condition improved.

  “But it will be the non-cooperation movement that will win in the end,” she persisted.

  Hasan was right about one thing: Bhutto, despite clearly coming second place in the election, refused to cooperate with the democratic process, and things were heading nowhere without some sort of alliance with him, no matter how tenuous or brief. But Bhutto refused all overtures. He was as stubborn as Hasan when it came down to it. Convincing either of them of anything would take extraordinary measures. But war? I didn’t believe it. Contemporary world affairs and recent history were behind me.

  “I agree with Amma. Non-cooperation is definitely the way to go. Look at history. Gandhi proved it and the rest of the world is following,” I said.

  “We have tried Gandhi’s way for nearly twenty-five years now,” Hasan said, “and if you were following our history, you would see just how little progress we have made with it.”

  Beth’s husband chuckled. “You know the definition of politics, do you Robin?” I shook my head. “It’s two people in a room.”

  “Now, hush, you two,” Amma cut in. “Please don’t get started. Not today.”

  But I wasn’t finished. “You have to give it time,” I said to Hasan. “It takes years to build a conflict, and an equal number of years to defuse it. Anyway, in practical terms, peace is also the most productive. You catch more flies with honey than you do with vinegar.”

  “At a time like this, you talk of vinegar and – flies?”

  “Hush,” Amma repeated. “This is a celebration. And a time of peace.”

  “Yes,” Beth said. “Let us remember why we are here.”

  Considering the occasion and Amma’s blood pressure, I held my tongue. So did everyone else.

  But the silence lived only a brief life. “Well, you had better enjoy it,” Hasan said. “From what I am hearing, the time of peace will soon be over.”

  Beth’s husband raised his water glass then, and proposed a toast to peace. Our glasses rose and came together obediently, bringing immediately to mind the image of drawn swords colliding in union before the big battle rather than the usual images I associated with the season.

  *

  In mid-January, the weather turned, and at midday, I felt a hint of the heat that I remembered from my arrival seven months ago. Though it felt good, I remembered the way it seared my skin just before the monsoon. I packed away my shawl and when, one night, I folded the kantha and pulled it to the foot of the bed, it disappeared just as mysteriously as it had appeared a few weeks ago.

  Shafiq, who no doubt was responsible for the removal of the bedding, was not so fortunate. A nasty cold settled into him just after Christmas. While the rest of us were shedding our woolens, he wrapped his head in a shawl, his body in a couple of thick sweaters, and coughed and horked his way through the day. The extra layers made him waddle like a penguin, though his body was far too emaciated to really bring to mind one of those rotund creatures.

  My Bangla took a sudden turn for the better, and I discovered I could understand more conversation and actually participate – not as intelligently as I wanted, but it was an improvement. I signed up for a course in modern Bengali lit. When I entered the classroom, I was surprised to see Shaheed among the students. Legs askew, his kurta bunched up at his waist, he slouched behind a little desk.

  I reddened. Though I had seen him several times since the wedding, it was always in the presence of several of the Chowdhurys. Not that I would have wanted to be alone with him either. I needed to first understand the meaning of our moment outside the kitchen at the wedding, and it was hardly something I could ask him about.

  The shape of his hands had remained with me and yet, I still did not quite know what to make of our moment in the kitchen corridor. I would sometimes lie in bed at night with all t
he lights off, raise my hands and curl them into the shape they were in when Shaheed had held them. By the insubstantial light from the night sky, I found that if I stared at my hands long enough, I could almost see his hands cradling mine again. The image seemed perfect, and as much as I tried to convince myself that such a notion was silly and naïve, I kept arriving back at the same place. Yet I remained uncomfortable when it came to naming it.

  He’d been friendly enough since then and we exchanged the usual winks and wry glances mostly having to do with the Chowdhury family’s various dramas. But I’d detected nothing different in his manner with me, leading me to suppose I was forcing significance onto a singular event that really amounted to nothing more than affection between friends. Perhaps it was our cultural differences that blinded my ability to understand.

  “Chotto bon,” he cried. He sat up, pursed his lips and laid a hand on his heart – a wicked imitation of Mr. Chowdhury greeting a relative to whom he felt just slightly inferior. Shaheed’s trademark grin slashed across his face. He knew I knew.

  It would be good to share a class.

  The professor entered. She was tall and angled, physically Amma’s opposite, with dark skin and a droopy bun on the back of her head. Her saree was plain cotton with minimal trim. Simple sandals shuffled across the floor. People sat, papers stopped rustling.

  She wrote on the board with chalk that seemed to disintegrate with each stroke – Prof. Selina Akhtar. “Welcome,” she said. “Take your reading list.” She nodded at a boy, who leapt up and began distributing the papers she handed him. I glanced at it – Tagore and Nazrul, of course. I knew them already. But Sunil Gangopadhyay, Syed Waliullah, Akhtaruzzaman Elias? Intellectual hunger welled up in me. This was the course I’d been waiting for.

  Professor Akhtar began lecturing right away in a voice thick as melted chocolate. She spoke slowly and clearly, and even though it was all Bangla, I understood.

  We were to read ten novels in her course. With a nod to me and a student from Czechoslovakia, she offered the option of reading English translations – though three of the books were available only in Bangla. I was still struggling over the script, sometimes arcane, for there seemed to be no end to the ways the consonants could be jammed together to make sounds unheard of in English. But I vowed to try, certain the books would make clear the things about Bengali culture that had been puzzling me, things I could never ask Amma, even if I knew she were able to explain them. I wanted to understand the coarse thread that wove the divergent levels of society together; I wanted explanations for unwritten and unspoken rules; and desperately I needed to know the true meaning of respectable and what it meant not to be born so. I sensed there were layers and contradictions, though mostly I just found them incomprehensible and, as a result, frustrating. I knew there had to exist concrete answers and I hoped these writers would provide them.

  Protest poetry by Sufia Kamal, Shamsur Rahman and Sukanto Bhottacharya were also on the syllabus. I thought it an admirable way to affect change, certainly preferable to the violence espoused by Hasan and his type, more of which seemed to be appearing every day.

  As the liberation movement flourished, and advocated more aggressive tactics, Hasan ate and breathed it like a small boy collecting hockey or baseball cards. He let his hair grow even longer, as long as Amma would permit, in imitation of his heroes. A beard grew in patches on his cheeks, jaw and neck. He spoke of Mao, Marx, the people, and the revolution. The tiny, outdated nowka pin which began to sprout rust never left his lapel. His urgent pleas to Amma to allow him to join the movement were rebuffed. “It is the wrong course of action, your Abba and I agree. Besides, you have responsibilities to your studies.”

  “But Amma – studies cease to be relevant in the face of such intolerable oppression as our nation is experiencing.”

  “Studies are always relevant. Studies are your future. Violence is not.”

  “All the boys are joining. Some girls, too.”

  “And since when do we take a course of action because others have chosen it?” Mr. Chowdhury asked. Amma nodded vigourously.

  I thought skeptically about this question, in light of all the things Amma had told me I must do – and not do – in order that others not get the wrong impression. Was there a subtlety that I was missing, that allowed double standards to sit so easily on their shoulders? For the moment, though, I saw no reason to point out their inconsistency lest it interrupt the castigation of Hasan.

  “You will do as your mother says. Studies first. Politics only when they are satisfactorily completed.”

  “You should look to Mahatma Gandhi for guidance,” I offered.

  Hasan bristled. “Guidance? What guidance has he to offer? The man’s deteriorating mental health was well-known, as even a junior student of world affairs could tell you.”

  “He practiced what he preached. Civil disobedience is the only way to deal with intolerable violence. He knew what it meant to turn the other cheek because he did so often himself.”

  “When the most pivotal moment of his life occurred, he was a coward. The fool sat idly by while Pakistan was hammered together from pieces that any child would tell you do not fit.”

  “What was he supposed to do? Get a rifle and shoot the dissenters? Is that what bravery means? They’d just have gotten some bigger rifles and shot back. That’s all violence can do – make more violence. And in the end, is that justifiable? Where does it stop?”

  “It is good you mention the end. Because it will come for Bengalis. For our language and culture, if we do not fight back.”

  He left the room, drawing the argument to a close – for now. I didn’t think Gandhi deserved all the blame for the creation of a divided Pakistan, but for certain, especially with people like Hasan, the two halves would never see eye to eye.

  *

  It took six weeks before I found out that all the closed doors and silences in the Chowdhury home had nothing to do with fallout from the election or the by now impending confrontation of east and west. I was sure Amma had not meant to tell me. She interrupted a lesson on the different words Muslims, Hindus and Christians use to describe their family relations. Fingers yet again pressed to her temple, she slid into her familiar refrain in English. “You cannot possibly understand what a burden it is to raise a daughter.”

  “Sorry Amma, I know I’ve asked you before but I still don’t understand. Why would it be any different from raising a son? Why wouldn’t it depend on the child?” I knew these were among the questions about society that Amma found the most difficult to answer and though I didn’t expect any answer today either, I couldn’t let her comment pass.

  She sighed deeply. “Though I explain everything, you still do not understand our culture. Luna must be protected.”

  “From what exactly?” I considered that I had again missed something, and that perhaps Luna was in danger related to the unrest.

  Amma pressed her lips together. “It is time,” she said finally, “for Luna to marry. Mr. Chowdhury is looking for a suitable boy and if the families agree, we will have the wedding before grishokal.”

  Wedding? A suitable boy? Her words whirled like a storm. Grishokal, grishokal, it was a season, but which one, when, I couldn’t remember. “You mean arrange a marriage for Luna?”

  “But of course.” Amma frowned. “What else would I have meant?”

  Then I remembered. Grisho was the hot season. It began in three months. I was struck dumb. Luna would have an arranged marriage in less than three months.

  Of course I knew about arranged marriage. It happened all the time, and had even happened to California Qashem. I must have been naïve to think it would not happen to Luna. As eventually it would happen to Hasan. And Shaheed, too.

  I had just never imagined an arranged marriage happening to anyone I knew. I couldn’t imagine myself married to someone I didn’t even know, let alone love.
r />   “We have been too distracted of late – elections, the cyclone. We have not been doing our duty to our daughter,” Amma continued.

  I needed to help Luna. Though I knew I could never sway Amma from the idea of an arranged marriage, perhaps I could try to delay the proceedings – at least until she found the courage to introduce Razzak to her family.

  “But what about her studies? You always tell Hasan his studies are important.”

  She dismissed my words with the wave of a hand.

  There was one more chance to help Luna though it carried some risk. “Perhaps she knows someone she’d like to marry,” I ventured.

  Amma laughed. “Oh, Robin, you have very American ideas. A love match is not possible and besides, where would she meet anyone – suitable? And it precisely because I am her mother that I need to take this decision. The more I think about it, the more I am convinced. Luna must be married before summer.”

  *

  Then Shaheed disappeared.

  His parents called early one Friday morning when he failed to show up for breakfast. They became even more frantic when they discovered he had not spent the night at the Chowdhurys. It was early February, and the days were growing longer and warmer and the flamboyant spring blossoms danced on trees that lined the paths on campus.

  “We will find him,” Mr. Chowdhury said. “I will make inquiries, isn’t it?”

  “Abba, you must pull out all stops,” Hasan said.

  “His poor mother,” Amma declared with hand-wringing. “Inshallah, another tragedy shall not befall his family.” Though his mother had remarried long ago, his father by birth was a national hero who had died in the 1952 language movement. Shortly after Shaheed told me about his father over tea and biscuits, I began to repeatedly spot his father’s scratchy, indistinct photo in the newspapers.

  I, too, felt worried, but refused to give in to panic. Though it was not like him to stay away all night without telling his family, it was possible. More than likely, I surmised, he’d been visiting another friend’s home and when he finally decided to leave, it was quite late, and so he’d decided to stay. Then, not atypically, the phone lines were down when he tried to call home, and were probably still down. It wasn’t hard to find a plausible and comforting explanation. He would turn up shortly.