A Matter of Geography

by Jasmine D'Costa

  Intuitively, both families should have been safe had they remained inside their homes. What had started our crusade, however, was Dad’s report that some elements in the city had access to the voter lists and were targeting Muslims inside their homes. Our fears for Ali, more than the Surves, stemmed from Dad’s suspicions, reinforced by the telephone conversation he had overheard, that Mr. Farooqui’s murder had, in fact, been pre-planned and that the family continued to be in imminent danger. Mehroonisa and Ali were defenceless—making it our call to stand by them. We termed our operation ‘Saving Ali.’

  Meanwhile, the violence and the riots had spread to further parts of the city and all the police stations around us were flooded with cases of stabbings and serious riots. Dad’s police station at Nagpada, and now others, were suddenly registering more cases of Hindu deaths than Muslim. The news sparked a Hindu mob to attack a dargah in Pydhonie and another in V.P. Road, and mobs of Hindus and Muslims in various areas—depending on who were in the majority—put up roadblocks to prevent police or fire brigades from bringing calm to the area. All kinds of rumours had struck fear in the city, and finally, a curfew was called for.

  The Angelus bells at St. Anne’s chimed as they usually did at 7 p.m. I doubt this call for the Angelus had been responded to anywhere in Billimoria Building that day, except by the Fernandes family. Isabel and Anna went down to the first floor to try Ms. Ezekiel’s door around 8 p.m. as planned. Isabel could never go unnoticed; something we had overlooked. While they stood at the door, Mrs. Mitchell opened hers and peeped out.

  “Isabel, what are you doing here!”

  Her tone of wonder was less a query into purpose than the sort of rhetorical exclamation when one sees an unusual sight. Columbus had the same question—What have we here!—when he landed in America.

  But Isabel, never overwhelmed, neither at a lack for words nor resourcefulness, whipped around promptly and said, “Ah, Mrs. Mitchell, just the person I wanted to see!”

  “What about?” said Mrs. Mitchell, both curiously and hesitantly, as though she’d initiated a conversation she did not really want to continue.

  “We are looking for a contribution to a lending library we want to start for the residents. Would you like to join the library?”

  The question received the exact response it was designed for.

  “Sorry, Isabel. We have no time to read and we are not interested. We wish you well in your enterprise, and thank you for thinking of us.” Not wanting to prolong the conversation further, she scurried back into her room.

  “Aunt Isabel, are we planning a new library?”

  “No, Anna, but save the thought. We could do it sometime in future. For now I think we should push open the door and see if it is ok. If it is open, you go in and tell her we will be back at 10 p.m.”

  Anna leaned against the door and whispered, “Ms. Ezekiel, I am opening your door,” and waited for a full minute, looking around furtively and trying to act casual. Seeing the coast clear, she gently tried the door. It opened a little; it was indeed unlocked, and she pushed it ajar a bit more and slipped in, while Isabel stood outside, leaning on the balustrade and looking up at the full moon that lit up the three coconut trees in the compound. On the second floor of the building opposite, a violin cried under the bow of a very new violinist, almost eerie amid the intermittent silences in the air.

  Two minutes later, Anna rushed out and pulled the door closed behind her. She looked startled, pulled on Isabel’s hand and rushed towards the passage with Isabel, unresisting, in tow—up the stairs and into the apartment, where we were all waiting for news.

  Anna’s asthma had kicked in and we had to wait until she could speak again.

  “She’s gone, she’s g-gone,” she said.

  “Ok, slow down my child,” said Nathie soothingly. “Breathe in... hmmmm, ok, now breathe out, hmmm, breathe in….”

  “Mum, Ms. Ezekiel is not there. Her apartment is open and the rooms are empty. She has disappeared…” She began to cry.

  We all were totally silenced. Where did she go? Had she sacrificed her home for Ali? We looked around at each other. She had put us to shame—despite our Christian conscience we had found it so hard to make the decision to host the Farooqui family. She, a Jew, had never spent a day in friendship with us, yet had made the ultimate sacrifice, had given up her home.

  Our awe turned to concern. Where did she go? Did she have relatives in the city? When did she leave? It was now 8 p.m and the curfew had been enforced in our neighbourhood. Had she made it through the riots? We could not be happy with this turn of events.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  We had not come very far from the medieval ages, when the curfew bell reminded everyone to turn out their lights and smother their fires before bed. Maybe even regressed since then, because the call for curfew that day was not to put out the fires that kept us warm or lit our hearths, but to quell the violent, raging fires of hatred. The city burnt in sporadic flames, as business establishments torched down by unknown hands lit up the horizon. The order for curfew should have gladdened us; the hope of establishing order in the city gone mad should have lifted our spirits; but it brought only worry in our little circle.

  A curfew meant that Surve’s son would be home and stalking around in the building. How could we safely handle this? Though we had tried to plan on all fronts, trying to cover all scenarios, we had failed to visualise this one. Mother, Mr. Fernandes and I, stood on the verandah outside No. 19, consumed with the problem. The Marchons, Oswald, Bruno, and Miriam joined us. Oswald and Bruno, always ready to suggest a speedy solution, offered to clobber him and lock him in one of the toilets. Mr. Fernandes said, “Can we leave violence out of this? How different are we from these animals?”

  The time now advancing towards nine, Surve’s son entered the building with a loud clatter on the stairs, not unlike the footsteps one uses in forests to warn the snakes of one’s arrival, hoping they leave. Snakelike, the boy hovered on the first floor passage, legs apart, a stick in his hand, ready to strike.

  Miriam finally broke the silence with, “Leave that horny b-----d to me,” opened the top button of her blouse and walked out of the room. Mr. Fernandes, not exactly happy with the new turn of events, kept silent nevertheless, knowing we had no time for moral judgement. We had to start the operation.

  Mr. Marchon went first, followed by Mr. Fernandes and me. We walked to the door of Ali’s home. Mehroonisa looked like a cloistered nun sitting on Ali’s marriage bed, her tears streaming. Ali pointed to the packed bags and boxes on the floor and we silently picked up one at a time and went down with them. I could only imagine how much more complicated this would have been had Ali’s wife been here. With the violence spread across the city, no place was entirely safe for Muslims.

  Thankfully, there was no one outside as we made our way to the first floor—Miriam had found a way to keep Surve’s son out of the way. We did not ask, nor did we want to speculate on how. Quite unknown to the Farooqui family, this was an evening of sacrifices all round.

  After we reached the first floor, Oswald and Bruno picked up a second lot of boxes, being all that the Farooquis owned, except for their furniture and some of the glassware. The Farooquis left their room in the centre of a tight band of people. Mr. Fernandes led the group with a cross in his hands and Nathie held a candle that, though lit, was really no help with light, being so short of wick. Instead, the light of the almost-full moon lit their path, and to a casual onlooker they would appear to be a group of fervent Catholics, a nun in their midst, praying for peace in the city. The little Catholic procession made its way across the verandah and past the Madrassis’ rooms. As they passed Mrs. Mitchell’s door she opened it to see what the shuffling feet was all about; the first thing she saw was Mr. Fernandes standing with the cross, and she immediately shut the door on his face. That little drama allowed Mehroonisa and Ali to slip into Ms. Ezekiel’s room and lock it from the inside quite unnoticed.

  Chapter Twent
y-Seven

  All of us were silent, as if waiting to exhale; waiting, but not certain for what. We had moved Ali and his mother two days ago, with adequate food, asking them not to show their faces or do anything to be recognised. We sat in long silences trying not to talk about it. Spending most of the time indoors, sitting at our windows, we looked out onto the road and beyond, sometimes praying, sometimes blankly listening to our heartbeats. Loud wails and moans emanated from the old cobbler’s house. His very large wife, who could barely walk, sat on the charpoy on the pavement wailing and wiping her eyes with a bright green sari pallu.

  A stray paper that looked like the front page of the Times of India flapped and twirled as if caught in a whirlwind and flew a few feet above the road, travelling past the cobbler’s wailing wife and up St. Mary’s Road. As it flew past the municipal school, it stopped for a brief second, surprised by the silence and the emptiness, and finally disappeared, leaving us with nothing to follow except the wails of the woman down there mourning her husband.

  We children were all fixed at our windows. Our thoughts crowded our heads, which occasionally we stuck out to look at the neighbours. We nodded at each other, reassured that all of us were holding our breath. Comforting, in a way; it seemed to bring us closer.

  At eight o’clock, as if just one aspect of our life had maintained its routine, all heads disappeared inside for dinner. However, not much later we were back. Our parents hoped we would study during that time. We were expected to study every day of the year except Christmas, New Year’s day, and summer holidays in May. But they were all absorbed in their own thoughts as we hung out of the windows in silence for a second day in a row and no one wanted to talk.

  Suddenly, from the south end of Nesbit Road, we heard a low rumble—a small band of people coming up the road. They were very near Bad-rud-din/Sad-rud-din Building: twin buildings named Bad-rud-din and Sad-rud-din. Not knowing which was which, we referred to them generally as Bad-rud-din/Sad-rud-din. As the group passed the twin buildings, we could see they were brandishing choppers and sticks in the air, which glinted under the dull streetlight and the full moon as they passed beneath it. Closer now…about ten of them—and one of the more enthusiastic waved a sword in the air. We all ducked below the wall so as not to be seen and peeped over the sill to follow where they were going.

  They approached Billimoria Building, and it seemed like they were continuing onwards on Nesbit Road. They did not turn onto St. Mary’s Road and were soon out of sight, allowing us to exhale—for we had held our breath as we followed their path. Within minutes, however, loud shouts and commotion shook our relief. It sounded like hundreds of hooligans had come up the stairs on the other side of the L of our apartment building.

  The shouts grew louder. We felt terrorised, trembling behind locked doors, wondering whether the mob would break them down. We thought of Ali below us and shuddered. Even though Dad was a police inspector, he knew he could do nothing at this point.

  All of us, too scared to open our doors, stood still, helpless, alert, trying to visualize the turmoil a few feet away, trying to follow what was happening. The mob had made their way straight to Ali’s apartment in the angle of the L. It seemed like they knew exactly what they wanted. The sounds of banging, pots and pans being flung around, breaking glass, screams, shook the verandah that had, up until now, only reverberated with sounds of children’s laughter and play. Never had we heard such noise; even when the Marchon family fought with each other, their shouts seemed like purring in comparison to this.

  Just as sudden as the interruption was, the sounds died down with the last of the footsteps running down the stairs that led to St. Mary’s Road, the opposite staircase from where they had ascended. We rushed back to our windows to see the figures of the thugs streaming into the distance and disappearing into a lane that led to the B.I.T. blocks. As if their presence had been only an illusion—a collective overactive imagination in a time of discord—silence cut through the cool air, and calm took over once again.

  Suddenly Mr. Fernandes stuck his head out and asked me whether Anna was in our apartment. No, we said, instantly panicking. “Maybe the toilet,” I shouted, and then his head receded, presumably to search for the key. Finding the key, which normally hung on a cord near the door, missing, he realised that Anna had chosen to go to the toilet just before the commotion, and had perhaps held back, crouched there, when she heard the noises.

  Barely had we made this discovery when Anna’s scream, shrill above the unnatural silence, startled us. One of the men who had trashed Ali’s apartment, still hanging around, had seen Anna come out of the toilet. Still full of adrenalin, excited and considerably aroused, he grabbed her. She struggled and screamed, both of which only served to excite him further. He dragged her into the passage near the stairs, where the space was more permitting.

  The Oliveras’ apartment adjoined the passage. Aaron dragged a chair and stood on it to peep from the top shutter of their door, to investigate what was transpiring. Alarmed with what he saw, he then stuck his head out of the window and yelled, flailing his arms, “He has Anna, he has Anna.”

  In a nanosecond, Mr. Fernandes picked up the nearest weapon, a thick, cricket-bat-like wooden piece used to beat clothes while washing, and ran to the passage. All of us on this side of the L stepped out of our doors and followed in his path. In a fury, Mr. Fernandes swung the clothes beater at the man and nailed him in the head. He achieved that just moments before I had raised my own cricket bat to do the very same thing. He grabbed Anna and lifted his sobbing daughter, her clothes ripped, her hands covered in bruises, and ran back along the verandah towards their room, moaning with the horror he felt for her.

  He rushed past where I was standing agape. Anna’s clothes, ripped from the top, had bared her right breast. And in that fleeting instant as he passed me, a stray moonbeam that had squeezed through the palm trees and building opposite lit a gleaming nipple—oh my God, Anna has breasts!

  Isn’t it startling how a moment can change the way you look at someone?

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  You might imagine this to be the main event I’ve wanted to recall, but it was subsequent events that defined the life and fortunes of the Fernandes family and, consequentially, those of the rest of us.

  Sammy, Bruno, and Oswald Marchon rushed to the passage where the attacker lay face down, a deep gash on the back of his head. Imagine their shock when they flipped the body over and found the son of Mr. Surve lying there, his blood slowly spreading on the black and white tiles of the passage floor. It was hard to tell if he was alive. Not only had he sold out the Farooquis, he had attacked our own sweet Anna in his youthful lust. They picked up the bleeding body—dead or not, they didn’t care. No one could violate the neighbourly code and get away with it. Bruno and Oswald, who had their own code of acceptable behaviour, knew exactly what to do. The loud splat on the pavement below splintered the body into a few severed parts.

  Dad, now Inspector D’Souza dressed in uniform, exited the apartment and went down to the pavement. He called the local police to come down to the building (after the blood on the floor of the passage had been mopped up and the rags put in paper bags and disposed of in the garbage bin in the compound, by the Marchon family, who were obviously very experienced in such emergencies). The local inspector arrived with his team and inspected the meat on the pavement. He realised he could not draw a chalk outline to mark the place of the body and so prepared to begin questioning. He spotted Oswald near the scene and walked up to him.

  “So you are here too?” he said. Oswald was, of course, well known to the inspector. “So what have we here?” He looked down at the splattered road and kicked a piece out of the way with his shoe.

  “He’s dead,” said Oswald, quite unnecessarily.

  “I can see that, but what are you doing here?”

  “I live here.” He pointed to the second floor. “We saw him fall and came down here.”

  “Did he jump?”r />
  “Don’t know. We were at our windows when a group of youth stormed the building with swords and choppers and trashed our neighbour’s apartment.”

  “Which neighbour?”

  “Farooqui.”

  “Never mind that,” the inspector said, brushing off the incident. “How did this happen? Did the Farooquis do it?”

  “No, they are not there. They went away on a vacation. The hoodlums who trashed their apartment may have done it.”

  “Did you actually see it happen?”

  Oswald shook his head. “I was in my apartment, heard the noise, and we looked out of the window and saw this.”

  The inspector glanced around at the small crowd. “Who saw this happen?”

  Everyone turned on their heels and dispersed. Inspector D’Souza was left staring down at the road.

  “Inspector, do you know how this happened?”

  My father looked weary. “I have the same information that you have. I think we have to put it down to a casualty of the riots. The city unrest has to stop. Anyway, I would suggest that since we cannot recognise the body we will have to wait for a missing person report before we ascertain whose it is.” He shrugged. “Since the city morgues are full and so are the hospitals I don’t know whether we have the space for one more. But this is your jurisdiction and you will have to take a decision.”