Bright Lines

by Tanwi Nandini Islam

  —Take them to Our Lady of Grace, the church, do you know it?

  The boatman nodded.

  —Tell the caretaker you must get a doctor for the girls. Tell him that Rezwan sent you.

  —I will do as you say, bhai. Just make sure you give me a little more. The boatman held his hand out for a few extra rupees.

  Anwar grabbed the man by his shirt collar. —I have given you enough, he growled. —If you molest these girls, I will find you and I will kill you.

  The girls looked at Anwar, then at the boatman. It broke Anwar’s heart to see the look in their eyes: They didn’t believe either of them.

  He watched the three of them cross the moonlit river. When they disappeared, he headed back to Rezwan and the buas. By the time he arrived, the bua who had insisted they take the girls first had died.

  * * *

  Anwar tried to focus on the captions.

  “It’s a good thing this place exists,” whispered Hashi.

  “It’s good. But very strange to be inside a museum about a time we lived through,” said Anwar. These grave artifacts were the same age as Rana. He hadn’t had a chance to properly sit with the young man, to tell him things he ought to know. Anwar thought about the things he not yet been able to tell Ella. He wouldn’t be able to write her about the girls they’d found in the farmhouse. He couldn’t bring himself to say the girls we saved, because he had no way of knowing if they had survived.

  The night in Cox’s Bazar when they’d visited Rezwan and Laila’s unmarked graves, Anwar had felt a chill in his bones. In the distance, he saw a swirl in the sky, a deep pink cloud that lingered after sunset. It had reminded him of the same pink fire of tracer bullets that marred wartime nights. Ella knew only a little about Rezwan and Laila. We’ve only let her scratch the surface.

  Anwar hoped his letter would explain the story of him and Rezwan during the war and their descent into the Black Forest, a place they were safe, and the fateful night they encountered the Rajakar twins.

  Once Ella read his letter, she would learn the whole truth. And he hoped that she would not think ill of her old man Anwar.

  “Where did you go?” asked Hashi, concerned.

  “Inside, my dear.”

  “I think it’s time we went outside.”

  * * *

  They hailed a baby taxi back to Dhanmondi. In the guest room furnished with some of Rezwan’s old belongings, Anwar found Hashi curled up in bed, clutching a pillow between her legs.

  Anwar whispered, “In this very spot . . .”

  “My brother slept.”

  He wrested the pillow from her legs, and slipped into bed with her. They stayed in the room for the rest of the evening, then all of the next morning into the night. They only left for the shower and toilet. Anwar made tea and assembled a hodgepodge of snacks from the kitchen. He’d missed the opportunity to dote on her in this way. Sure, he made her products for her beauty salon. But the way she cooked, dressed, and kept their home—he had never shown her this love back.

  The past week opened him up to her. He untied her hair from its familiar bun and let the black knot unravel. The parts of her that fell easily into his hands, her loose breasts and belly, delighted him. It was as though gravity was working in his favor. Anwar lit a pipe with some hashish, and Hashi had her first high.

  “You’re smoking me, Hashiiii-shh,” she joked.

  Anwar grabbed a fistful of her hair and pulled her close. It was the wonder of spending most of your life with someone; you could still experience firsts. “Hashi.”

  “Anwar.”

  He felt a swell of regret flood him, and for once he wished he’d shared more of himself over the years. It only now occurred to him that her reserved nature was not static, but a reaction to his tendency toward hiding his own nature. Ramona had been beyond thrilling. He’d needed to be awoken from his quotidian slumber, and Ramona had needed a distraction from her heartache. But Anwar wondered if he’d feel this rush of longing if he hadn’t squandered the trust of the woman he’d always had. Turn it to shit to turn it on. I’m a terrible man.

  “My love,” he said, voice cracking, “I am so damned sorry.”

  “Apology accept kori. Shob kichu bhule jai.”

  Let us forget everything else, indeed.

  “Last year might have been the hardest year in my life. I cursed you for breaking my heart. After the girls left, when we finally had some space . . . I realized just how much I must have loved you. I was that broken. I see that there are ways we both just take each other as a right, as a duty. But where is the life in that? Where is the laughter in that?” Hashi gently plucked the last nub of their joint, and took a sensual inhale. “You have always been real, for better or for worse, Anwar. I remember the evening that we got that awful call. Rezwan Bhai and Laila Bhabi were—gone. You immediately said we would take Ella as our own. But I had a moment of hesitation. Shit, days of hesitation. Uprooting a child and raising an orphan seemed like a lifetime of difficulty ahead. But you were generous. You saw no division between my bloodline and yours. We were, and will always be—”

  “One.” Anwar traced blades of gray on Hashi’s hairline, something she’d never let show before. “No dyeing,” he whispered.

  “No.”

  “I cannot tell you what you’ve said any better. I must show you.” Anwar flipped himself over Hashi and tickled her bosom with his nose, making her laugh and laugh.

  Rezwan’s head visited him once, while Hashi slept and Anwar smoked a blunt, imagining his friend happy. They were both back home, after all. I need some privacy, friend. Rezwan raised a brow. In the trail of smoke, he floated out through the window. Each time he slipped into her, all he heard was the muffled concrete wilderness of Dhaka. Let us forget our children, forget the dead, and the hurt we carry.

  * * *

  After a couple of days, they decided to leave the house. Anwar relented and went with Hashi to brave the madhouse known as New Market, her favorite destination in Dhaka, as a child and now. She’d asked him right after they finished making love, so he couldn’t say no. She loved buying un-necessities: bangles, pillow covers, bindis, sandals that would fall apart in six months. Her excitement stirred his newfound desire. She was much more accepting out here than back in Brooklyn. Dhaka’s half-finished buildings, traffic jams, air pollution, six-year-old beggars, hijras—she didn’t criticize any of it. She deferred to the wild city.

  New Market was jam-packed for Eid-ul-Adha, which would be on the first of February. Everyone was shopping for new jewelry, saris, and groceries. Sacrificial cows were being herded in the alley.

  Headed for the slaughterhouse, poor beasts. “You know, I never really liked Qurbani Eid,” said Anwar.

  “You shouldn’t say such things!”

  “Come on, I’m just saying the actual city becomes something of a horror show, no? Decapitated cows, hides left to dry in the sun—takes the joy out of eating. At least in America you don’t know where your meat comes from.”

  Hashi pulled out a handwritten list of gifts. “A sari for Charu, kurta pyjama for Ella, Baba, Shourov. My brother wears the same pants every day!”

  “Don’t forget Rana.”

  “Of course I wouldn’t forget him,” sniffed Hashi. “Oh yes, and of course, we need to buy a new one for you. As for me—you find me something!”

  “Please don’t make me fail before we’ve even started.” Anwar followed her from store to store. He tried to take her hand into his, but she refused, making him carry bags instead. He didn’t mind. Hashi settled for cotton kurtas, suitable for everyday use. Anwar nodded his approval. While she paid for the shirts, he had an idea. He would take a little trip to Narayanganj, a riverside town outside of Dhaka. He wanted to buy her a sari from the renowned Jamdani Market in time for her birthday in late February.

  “All this shopping has made me want to lie d
own with you.” Anwar pulled her ear to his mouth.

  “You’ve lost your mind!” Hashi laughed. “But so have I. Watch.” Hashi finger-whistled at a nearby rickshaw. Anwar nodded, proud of this latent skill he’d forgotten. As the driver pedaled them away from New Market, Anwar held Hashi’s hand tight. She pressed her fingertips into his palm. Their accelerated heartbeats echoed in each other’s ears. Anwar started to tell her, You are a damned good woman—she was staring upward at the darkening sky—

  A pair of runaway cows, fleeing their fate, leather strap hanging loosely at their necks, charged into their rickshaw headfirst. They were flung onto the windshield of an oncoming baby taxi. The onslaught of bamboo sticks, shattered glass, and the tremendous scent of motor oil took Hashi first. Anwar tried to reach for her, but was trampled a minute later.

  25

  Ella sat on the porch of the Cox’s Bazar house, waiting for Azim and Rana to arrive. This sense of dread in her throat was suffocating. Charu had locked herself in a bedroom. Because of the open nature of the house, everyone heard her alternate between howling and total silence. She had avoided Ella since hearing the news, and spoke only to Stalin. But Stalin had disappeared into town. With Charu out of commission, Ella said she would prepare Hashi’s body for burial. Azim would ready Anwar. Three nights ago, on the car ride back from Rangamati, Ella found herself waiting for her hallucinations to begin. Perhaps Maya would appear, to comfort her.

  Somehow to test them, and see if they would come when she needed—

  My parents. Ella dropped her head onto her knees, letting tears wet her jeans. She wondered if they’d known that she loved them like real parents, not mere substitutes. She heard Charu wail from inside the house. Just as her cousin had promised, they would go to the graveyard together.

  * * *

  Around four o’clock in the afternoon, a minivan festooned with neon-painted lotuses and peacocks pulled up the dirt path. It was the young man named Raahil. Apparently Stalin had met him in Rangamati during their boat ride. They’d rented his van to pick up the bodies from the airport.

  Azim limped out of the van, leaning heavily on a bamboo cane. “Ella. How are you, beta? Where is your sister?”

  “In bed,” said Ella.

  “I see.” Azim turned to Rana. “Please, my boy, wait here. You and Ella must walk over Anwar and Hashi together, to the preparation room. Unfortunately, I am too old to be of much use, but I will keep you company.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  Together, Ella and Rana lifted Hashi’s wooden casket out of the back of the van. They needed to walk it over to the local masjid, a ten-minute walk from the house. No cars were allowed on that dusty strip of land. The casket was heavy, and Ella felt the black strap handles boring into her palms.

  “The body is heavy as lead when a person dies,” Azim whispered.

  On the dirt path, they passed a woman who carried a giant water drum on her head. She lowered her eyes as they passed.

  Masjid al-Hajj was a spare limestone building with a lone minaret. Ghats led to a bathing pond beside the masjid. Only a few men lingered for night prayer. The imam nodded, acknowledging Azim’s loss. While there were separate entrances for men and women, Ella, Rana, and Azim went through the men’s entrance in order to get to the bathing chamber. The men seemed not to notice any breach as Ella passed by. A dried-up fountain stood in front of the bathing chamber for the dead. It was a small redbrick house shaded by a large koroi tree, which kept the building and corpses cool in the ungodly heat.

  Ella and Rana looked at one another as if to ask, Ready?

  They unlatched the pine box and hoisted Hashi out of the plastic shroud. Ella felt the furious clenching in her throat. Her mouth was dry and she needed a glass of water, but there was no water to drink besides the basin’s unfiltered tap. They rested Hashi on the platform in the center of the room. Early evening light shone through the thatched ceiling and cast shadows across Hashi’s embalmed face. Azim gasped, “Allah re!” Rana held the old man in his arms, steadying him to keep him on his feet. “My poor girl.”

  Rana had explained yesterday that last rites—burial within twenty-four hours—was in accordance with nature’s way and made logical sense. But embalming, forbidden by faith but deemed necessary in modern times, allowed Hashi to look intact. The mortician who’d reconstructed Hashi impressed Ella. Whoever he was, he’d spared them the sight of her aunt’s injuries—a crushed windpipe had killed her. Hashi’s lips were painted the same shade of rose she’d worn in life. Azim Nana cupped her chin in his withered hand, then pointed toward the easterly wall of the room. “See that, child?”

  “Yes,” said Ella.

  “These are the instructions you must follow.”

  The wall was made of tiles and bricks from the villagers’ leftover construction projects. Nailed to it was a sign, with hand-painted instructions from the Hadith, Sahih al-Bukhari, . Azim recited the words first in Arabic, then in English, for Ella and Rana to understand.

  Said the Apostle:

  “Bathe my daughter.

  Wash her three times with water and Sidr.

  Sprinkle camphor and shroud her in simplicity.

  Comb her hair and divide it in three braids . . .”

  “Wear these, child,” said Azim, his voice suddenly taking on a no-nonsense tone. He pulled a pair of latex gloves from his pocket and handed them to Ella. “Rana and I will prepare Anwar. We will see you quite soon.” He started to leave, but stopped and said, “After the fiasco with Rezwan’s grave, I thought I should want a proper burial ground for myself one day. A place for my family to visit me after death.”

  Rana led Azim out the wooden door. It banged closed; a drumming echo trembled through the chamber. Hashi lay still in the dissipating light.

  Ella peeled off the linen shroud.

  Hashi’s face seemed browner with postmortem cosmetics—something she would disapprove of—but her body was so pale she seemed translucent. Ella dipped a washcloth in the basin and dabbed Hashi’s face. The lightest trace of makeup smeared the towel. She did this again, harder. Unnamed alarm rose in her—the guilt of one healthy and alive. Ella felt like a mother desperate to cool her feverish child’s temperature. She recalled last summer, when Hashi bathed her in the ice-cold water. Now she washed her aunt’s body, her most private parts, her flattened breasts pinched into red brown nipples ringed with the finest hair, her trimmed pubis—the hair of the dead does grow, Ella realized, noticing the faintest stubble on her legs. It had only been four days since she had died.

  Ella filled a small bucket with water, and poured it over Hashi’s entire body. She did it three times, remembering Hashi once told her that Muslims liked to wash in threes. She pressed her fingertips into a jar of camphor basil, collected the pungent wax. Gently, she rubbed the stuff into Hashi’s skin. Limb by limb, Ella covered her aunt in a linen shroud.

  She did not realize she’d been crying until Hashi was completely covered. She clutched Hashi’s hand, which was cold in a way that Ella had never touched. She took several deep breaths. Something great will happen to you, Hashi had told her last summer. Something great had happened. And just as soon as Ella had realized it, Maya disappeared. She wondered if they would meet again, and if she would find the words to say things, do things differently.

  She pulled a comb from a tin can of combs and divided Hashi’s hair into three parts. Even when Ella’d had long hair, she’d never combed it. Ella braided the wet, dyed-black strands into thick plaits. Hashi would be proud.

  * * *

  Charu opened her eyes to total darkness. There was a sensation of drifting through a lucid nightmare, one in which she was being shaken awake for school by her mother. As soon as her brain formed the thought Ma and Baba, Charu felt a howl spread from her belly across her entire body. But still, she could not let the howl out. She tried to sit up in bed, but swooned every time. She took
in a deep breath, picturing herself a hot air balloon, willing herself upright.

  Why didn’t I convince them to stay here? Her parents often required the slightest show of concern to tilt them toward a decision. She realized she hadn’t wanted them to come to the coast. The thought of being isolated with Stalin had thrilled her. It would have been impossible to move under Hashi’s watchful eye. She’d ignored their calls for months and had a semester’s worth of voice mails she hadn’t listened to. And now, using calling cards Stalin bought her, she listened to their voice mails. They were the only line she had into her parents’ love, concern, and quotidian ramblings.

  Finally, she rose from bed, but did not bother to turn on the lamp. She wanted to revel in the darkness, a purgatory she deserved. She wanted to cut apologies into her skin with a razor. Instead, during the days of exile in her room, Charu had shaved her head with Stalin’s shaving kit. When she went to open the door, the knob turned, but the door wouldn’t budge. Something was blocking her exit.

  “LET ME OUT!” she roared, panicked, finally letting the howl out. “LETMEOUTLETMEOUTLETMEOUT—”

  Ella opened the door and Charu spilled into her sister’s arms, still banging her fists.

  “I’m here, I’m here,” said Ella. She gestured to a jute mat on the floor. “I’ve been sitting here, worried about you. What did you do to your hair?”

  Charu wailed loud, in unison with crows that had flown into the courtyard to feed on a pile of trash. Charu followed Ella to the back of the house. It would be good to catch some fresh air.

  Ella gestured for her to lie down on Azim’s hammock, and sat on a jute stool next to her. The scent of rajanigandha flowers filled the night air. Charu could hear the cooks bustling pots of food in the kitchen next door. As sweet as Malika the cook tried to be, checking in on her with food and water, Charu had no appetite.

  “I’m an orphan, El,” whispered Charu. “New member of the melancholy orphans club, largest chapter located right here in Bangladesh.” She rested her buzzed head against Ella’s shoulder. Her soft, virgin scalp was sweaty. Her temples throbbed.