Bright Lines

by Tanwi Nandini Islam

  “Come along with me to the shop today. I’ve got a box of lavender soaps I must bring and it would be fantastic if we could cycle them over.”

  “Sure.”

  Ella got up and went to her room. She came back out in a worn navy polo shirt of Anwar’s and jeans with grass stains on the knees. He considered suggesting she might change into a cleaner pair, but thought better of it.

  They split the lavender soaps into two burlap satchels, which they carried in their bicycle baskets. They wheeled their bicycles outside, where Ramona Espinal sat on the stoop, drinking a cup of tea and reading the New York Times. She wore her scrubs, light yellow cotton printed with daisies. Beside her was a pint-size mason jar of honey.

  “Buenos días!”

  “Hola, Anwar,” said Ramona. She nodded hello to Ella.

  “Going to work?” asked Anwar.

  “I am. I’m switching shifts since one of the nurses has a terrible case of morning sickness.”

  “So, no more rowdy nights for you?”

  “Pardon me?”

  “I—I mean—y-you won’t be coming home so late—since you’ve swapped shifts and all?”

  “Well, I . . . I guess not.”

  “You know, those honey bears are quite efficient, and weigh hardly anything!” Anwar gestured to the glass jar.

  “Those things get clogged up.”

  “Sí, señora, sí.”

  “Qué bonita el dia, no? Tengo que ir al hospital, te veo!”

  Anwar nodded, as if he understood.

  “You know, we’ve got to run and open up the shop. Stop by anytime,” said Ella.

  Anwar hopped onto his bicycle. Never one to forget his helmet, he had forgotten it this morning. He said a quick dua, for the asphalt to spare his brains, and rode away from Ramona Espinal. He swore he felt her eyes burning holes into him.

  The world had not quite awakened on their block, but as they made their way onto Fulton Street, morning buses and commuter traffic sped by, and a couple of cars honked at Anwar to let them pass. He felt his knees creaky with each revolution of pedals, but Ella effortlessly weaved through the morning traffic until he could no longer see her ahead.

  * * *

  Anwar’s Apothecary looked—gay and so incredibly lavender, thought Ella, as she locked her bicycle to the parking sign on Third Avenue.

  She hoisted the matching bars of soap on her shoulder and waited for her uncle. She hadn’t wanted to leave him in the dust, but it was impossible to ride that slow. She couldn’t remember sleeping, and she didn’t remember being awake when Anwar tapped her shoulder.

  Ella saw her uncle wheeling toward her.

  “You’re fast, child,” wheezed Anwar, his foot skidding on the road.

  “Sorry about that, Anwar.”

  “For what? Your youth?”

  It was still dim inside the apothecary, as the sun had not yet hit their street. The walls of glass bottles gave the room an old-world flavor and Ella suddenly felt glad she’d come. She sniffed the air—the undeniable stale smell of cannabis—and she smiled at her uncle’s brazen potheadedness. She’d only smoked a handful of times up at Cornell—drinking was more her sport—but she didn’t feel prone to addictions. She hated being high, the slipping away of her thoughts into discombobulated scenes from a bad sitcom. Hallucinations were quite enough.

  On a separate table, Anwar showcased his prized copper alembic. He used the apparatus to distill flower waters, essential oils, and spirituous elixirs. It was composed of a long copper minaret-like pot connected by tube to a large coffee can. Oxidation had turned the alembic a deep red. Nowadays Anwar preferred to make his oils and flower waters in the privacy of his home studio. He no longer used this alembic, for years of oil and vapors impregnated the copper pores, so he displayed it as a work of art. Translations of the Book of Crates, a master catalog of ninth-century Arab spirit-makers and alchemists, inspired him to use a medieval technique that had been long refined by more sophisticated industrial stills. But as they knew then, copper conducted heat most efficiently, reduced bacterial contamination, and produced the prime scent and flavors, as brewers of scotch and whiskey were well aware.

  As a child, Ella had watched him distill oil from seeds and flowers countless times. He would stuff a batch of lemon verbena leaves and boiling water into the pot. He’d heat it on the stove, attaching a tube from the pot to a condenser bucket. He would commission Ella to make a paste of rye flour and water to seal any part of the pot leaking steam. She’d hold a test tube to collect the essential oil and flower water trickling out of the condenser bucket. It amazed her as a child, this transmutation of any old garden-variety shrub into a new, potent substance.

  “What do you want me to do?” asked Ella.

  Anwar motioned for them to dump the satchels of lavender soap onto the counter. He grabbed a stack of brown paper and hemp tie. “We’re going to package these, and it will take a while.”

  Ella wrapped each bar of soap in the brown paper, each crease hard and resolute, reminding her of those old origami books she’d order from Scholastic as a kid. She tied the hemp strings into even bows, and felt all her wayward thoughts focus on this meaningless task.

  When her fingers cramped up she checked to see how far her uncle had gotten. He hadn’t been packing the soap at all. She’d seen his fingers moving from the corner of her eye, and she assumed he’d been wrapping and tying.

  He was writing on a large piece of brown paper.

  “What are you doing, Anwar?”

  “I am composing a letter.”

  “For who?”

  “For you.”

  “Why not just tell me?”

  “Well, child, it doesn’t seem as though you want to talk.”

  “I guess you’re right. Why don’t you tell me now?”

  “There’re some things . . . that are too terrible to tell when a man is in his right mind. I believe I’d have to be on my deathbed, or in some dire condition, to be able to utter certain things. But to write them is to have an astronomer’s distance.”

  “It’s hard to imagine what you’re talking about.”

  “When I write these things that happened so long ago, it’s as if I am orbiting the past, safely away from Earth, from the moon. If I should speak the past aloud, then my words belong to me, but also to the listener, to you.”

  “But isn’t it the same thing if I read the words?”

  “I won’t be around to see the reactions.”

  Ella looked at the paper, but Anwar’s loopy scrawl was a mess. She could make out the title, “Black Forest,” which was three times the size of the rest of the words.

  “Is this about my father?”

  “Yes.”

  “And you won’t say more?”

  “When trying to explain one thing, the history of a particular event, say how Rezwan and I joined the Mukti Bahini, it becomes this infinite history lesson. I’m sorry for that; I felt that same way when I asked my father a simple question about his Pala artifacts, and he’d start recounting the grand battle between Alexander the Great and the Gangaridai forces on the mouth of the Ganga, as if he’d been there. I want to tell you—yes, there was a war. And it cannot be isolated from the cyclone that preceded it, or the language movement in which students were murdered for wanting to speak Bangla instead of Urdu. You know, when I hear Charu begin to complain, ‘I am alone, no one gets me,’ or ‘that’s racist,’ or ‘Hashi bitches and moans,’ I feel like shouting, and you, my dear, you know I’m not one to shout. ‘You are not a single person. You are not a minority, child. You belong to a billion people, goddammit. You can’t sit in this house and complain about nothing, because you haven’t experienced a drop of what I’ve experienced, what sort of hunger and ordinary evil there is in this world.’ But of course, she doesn’t want to hear that. So I don’t say it.”


  Anwar paused. He walked around the counter to the back room, and Ella heard a faucet running. She heard her uncle gulping a glass of water. He blew his nose loudly—into the sink, thought Ella. He came back into the room, his hair slicked back with water. His face was wet.

  “Today I’ve gotten the itch to write this out. I dunno why; maybe since your uncle Aman left, I got to thinking a lot about brothers. I mean, I’ve never had that sense of brotherhood with any man before or since your father. But I’ve never been more afraid of a man before either.”

  “You were afraid of him?”

  “Not in the way I feared Aman as a young boy. Your father was a force of nature, an elegant brute.”

  “Where did he meet my mother?”

  “They met twice at an Alliance Française film screening.”

  “That’s it?”

  “Well, that and one long, epic night before their wedding day. War has a way of making you want to get married and have babies. Rezwan and Laila’s fathers had gone to medical school together. Your parents were both tall and spirited. They both agreed to get married.” Anwar paused. “I must tell you more another day.”

  Ella felt a warm ache in her throat. There was no more paper to fold, but there were a few more bars of soap left. “No. I want to . . . I want to hear about what you’re writing.”

  “I’m not sure that you want to hear about your father in this phase of his life.”

  “I want to know everything.”

  “Then we must talk about where we were during the final front of the war. In less than two weeks, along with the Indians, we crushed the enemy.” Anwar gestured to his letter. In the center, Ella noticed a mass of scribbles that looked like a tree. “It is a place called the Black Forest,” he said.

  Just as he said this, they heard a loud shout come from upstairs. They heard a muffled roar, “WOMAN, REMEMBER WHAT I SAID!”

  The apothecary’s bottles rattled, and they heard a child’s cry.

  “Shit,” whispered Ella. “Is that . . . Maya’s father?”

  “I am afraid so. Sallah S.’s temper has no bounds. These damn buildings are made of filler and particleboard. All manner of horribleness may pass through.” Anwar stepped back, knocking into a bottle of shampoo, which fell to the floor. “How about some lunch, Ella? I feel my blood sugar is so low I must tend to my nerves.”

  “Kebabs?”

  “You read my mind.”

  * * *

  Outside, the high noon sun transitioned Ella’s glasses into sunglasses. Anwar smiled at this neat trick of technology. He locked the front door and taped a sign, BE BACK IN 20. PROMISE.

  “As-salaam-wa-alaikum, Brother Saleem!” called a voice, loud and familiar.

  Anwar turned around. It was Sallah S. He was dragging a rolling suitcase. He wore a navy blue suit and wire-rimmed spectacles, and sported a neatly shaven beard. He is quite handsome, admitted Anwar. Three young men, one bearded, one goateed, and one balding, stood alongside him.

  “Wa-alaikum salaam, Sallah,” said Anwar. He nodded hello to the other men, who nodded but said nothing.

  Sallah S. lit a cigarette. “Want one?”

  “No thank you,” Anwar said. “I am trying to quit. How’s the day?”

  “The usual. My wife’s been very sick, and I’ve got another meeting up in Albany for a brother’s deportation hearing. He’s being held in Wasatchie.”

  “Wa-satch-ie,” repeated Anwar. Names of old Indians used to lock up new ones. “Will it work out for him?”

  “No. It’s a disgrace what they’ve done to Brother Karim. Decent man—owned a grocery in Kensington, children born here. Nothing his lawyers can do for him. He is being shipped back to Tunisia in a week.” He flicked his cigarette onto the sidewalk, where it bounced off Ella’s shoe. “And you, young brother? Saleem’s son?” asked Sallah S., turning to Ella.

  “Eh, this is my niece, Ella.”

  “Yes, yes.” Sallah S. glanced sideways at his trio. They stifled laughter.

  “Wa-alaikum salaam, sister,” said the bearded fellow.

  “You know, you and your brother are as brotherly as Bush and Clinton,” said Sallah S., chuckling at his own joke. He coughed and spat up a gob of phlegm.

  “That is to say, we’re not different at all?” Anwar joked.

  Sallah S. didn’t laugh. “Not a bad point. Anyway, how is your business? How is your family?”

  “All is . . . well, as can be expected in a house full of women. Your daughter is quite lovely—”

  “What?”

  Anwar noticed Ella wince. “Is there something the matter?”

  “Aman mentioned you knew of her whereabouts,” said Sallah S., holding up his hand. “I suppose . . . a girl needs company. We just hope it is good company.” He smiled.

  “We must go; the pleasure was all mine.” Anwar skipped over Sallah’s spittle on the ground.

  * * *

  “Anwar, I remembered—I need to go do something. I’ll see you back at the house,” said Ella. She felt a slow constriction in her throat, feeling guilty just talking to Maya’s father with such civility. His yelling had penetrated the walls of the apothecary, and Ella could imagine him in his full might and terror. As for Anwar’s story, she knew that she wouldn’t hear the story of the Black Forest until much later, maybe even years later. That’s how things seemed to go when it came to stories about her father. She unlocked her bike, and rode into traffic. Noon heat burned her skin. There was the smell of a distant barbecue, and Ella’s stomach panged. As she rode along Atlantic Avenue, she rummaged through the old images that flashed in her mind, and she felt uncertain that these were true memories. Had her father run around the house with her standing on his feet? Had her mother bathed her in the kitchen sink, and taught her to kiss with her nose? Her mother had long black hair, which she’d worn in a loose braid. Ella remembered chewing on her mother’s hair. It had been crunchy and dry. She knew that their murder had been related to the war, that somehow the people who had taken their lives had been pro-Pakistani Bangladeshis. But the obsession to know the details had been diluted by time and distance. As a small child, she had been transported to a new homeland. She did not speak those first few months. She was mute, and now, remembering, she realized that she had made the decision not to talk. No amount of talking would bring them back to her. She felt that she had never quite fit in, and even after she started to speak, she never quite did.

  She rode onto Joralemon Street, weaving around the hunkering buses and lackadaisical crowds of summertime shoppers, high school kids with summer jobs, along the strip of sneaker, electronics, and discount clothing stores.

  Finish Line.

  Ella caught the name of the store from the corner of her eye. She hit her brakes so hard to look in the store window that she almost rode into a shopping cart packed with a mountain of glass bottles.

  “Watch the road, kid!” shouted the man who was pushing the cart. He wore a soda jerk cap constructed of newspaper; he looked like a mad waiter on the run.

  She pulled over to the sidewalk, and the man stood still, as if waiting for a more adequate response. Ella busied herself with pretending to lock her bike on a rack, while sneaking a glance through the storefront window of Finish Line. The man lost interest and continued to push his cart down the street.

  Ella fumbled with the bike lock, and looked again into the store.

  There she was. Maya. She was not wearing her hijab on her head, but Ella saw it draped on her shoulders as a scarf. Her pixie haircut had grown longer onto the nape of her neck, into the start of a mullet. Ella could not see her face. Maya was kneeling on the ground as Ella had seen her do so many times, but this time, she did so in front of a girl her own age, helping her try on a pair of bright colored kicks. The girl checked out her feet in the floor mirror.

  They spent almost every night together in the
garden. But the past couple of nights, Maya had been exhausted after work, going straight into Ella’s bedroom to pass out.

  “Look here, come on,” whispered Ella, standing in the middle of the sidewalk, transfixed, hearing nothing but: Then you haven’t.

  Anwar’s summation of her love life.

  Maya smiled at the girl, who nodded that she wanted the pair of sneakers. Maya beckoned a boy to take the girl to the cash register. As soon as the boy whisked the girl away, Maya leaned against a mirrored pole, staring up at the ceiling. She did not see Ella. Maybe it was the glare from the fluorescent store lights. Maybe it was some unseen magic in the ceiling, or a leak. Maybe Maya did not feel Ella burning a hole through the glass.

  Whatever it was—

  “Yes, I have.”

  A minute later, Maya caught Ella’s stare, and stared back. Maya shook her head, slowly, but Ella couldn’t read the gesture. All Ella felt was the massive tightening in her chest, a brilliant sensation of lightness and heaviness all at once. She waved. Maya lifted her hand up.

  Just as Maya’s attention was taken to a toddler picking out her first pair of sneakers, Ella was gone.

  13

  After Ella had left, Anwar started walking in the direction of Rashaud Persaud’s table. But Rashaud and his table were not there. Strange, thought Anwar, Rashaud is not one to take days off. His friend was already inhibited by weather patterns. Perhaps he’s fallen ill. Anwar found himself wanting to eat at Prospect Park. He could not remember the last time he’d lain on a blanket to take in passersby. But it was too far a walk to make in the middle of the day. He debated whether or not to go back into his shop for a quick smoke. He settled for his favorite halal truck on Atlantic, and sat with a kebab in the plaza of Atlantic Terminal Mall, in the middle of the blazing afternoon bustle. He wiped his brow with the cotton handkerchief he kept in his pocket.

  He had almost told Ella the story of the Black Forest, and he was grateful, as appalling as it was, for Sallah’s interruption. Anwar closed his eyes, recalling the first night that he and Rezwan had taken over a command post by themselves, without any of their other comrades. Their orders were to stake out a farmhouse in Kadipur. A farmer and his family had been burned alive by Rajakar twins, who had taken a killing tour of the hillside towns around Sylhet. Rajakars were like local travel guides for the Pakistani forces, traitors to the cause. After the killing, the twins allegedly occupied the farmhouse and surrounding land, turning it into a morbid clubhouse to rape women and rest on their laurels.