by Ru Freeman
“Let’s go home,” Suren said. “I learned a new song and I will play it for you.” And in this way he soothed his brother and sisters.
Ramazan: Before and After
Thanks to all the talk of armed struggles and wars, and the downing of their best kite, a sadness hung like a pall over the children. It was Raju who reminded them all that Ramazan was not far away and this cheered them up, for at least the Muslim holiday promised a return to something both familiar and enjoyable. They began to count the days left until the fragrant and lavish feast that would be shared with them when the month of fasting had ended.
“Ruweena fainted in school today,” Devi announced one afternoon as she hopped from one pile of sal mal flowers to the other, releasing their fragrance, but undoing all the work that Kamala had done to sweep the backyard. “Sister Principal forced her to drink lime juice and eat toast with marmalade. Ruweena said marmalade tastes horrible.” She looked over at Suren, Rashmi, and Nihil, who were sitting on the back veranda to their house, drinking their tea and doing their homework. “I don’t know why they have to fast at all when they have food in the house.” Devi tried to make her words sound like a statement of opinion but it was obviously a question and Suren answered her.
“Muslims fast to learn discipline and take care of their spirits,” Suren said, after taking a few sips of his tea.
“And Ramazan is celebrated in the month that the first verses of the Qu’ran were revealed to the Prophet Muhammad. That is why during Ramazan the mosques read the entire Qu’ran in the evenings.” This was said by Nihil, who had learned these details from Mr. Niles.
Mr. Niles, who was still recovering from the flu, had managed to overrule his wife in the business of letting Nihil sit beside him during Devi’s lessons, and just a few days ago they had spoken briefly about the holiday of Ramazan. He was still unable to talk for any great length of time, however, and after a short conversation and the imparting of this bit of information about what their Muslim neighbors were celebrating, he had given Nihil a new book from his collection and asked Nihil to read it aloud to him. The book, The Children of the New Forest, by a man named Captain Marryat, with its tale of deprivation and adventure revolving around four children like themselves, appealed to Nihil, who forgot, for a moment, what they were discussing, as his thoughts fled first to Mr. Niles and then to Cromwell’s England and forests the likes of which he’d never seen.
Devi’s insistent voice shook him out of his daydream: “I haven’t heard them recite the Qu’ran and I always hear the Allah hu Akbar from the mosque,” Devi said. “You must be wrong.”
She began to hop in and out of an elaborate length of hopscotch squares she had drawn in the earth with the edge of her rubber slippers. The afternoon sun filtering through the trees dappled both her and the backyard, and flower petals and leaves continued to fall singly and in bunches as a slight breeze picked up. Kamala came out and smacked her forehead at the mess that Devi had made, but she did not complain; she simply picked up the ekel broom and set about sweeping again.
Nihil laughed. “Of course you couldn’t hear them, silly, you aren’t Muslim and you don’t go to mosque. You have to be inside the mosque to hear them.” He turned to Suren for confirmation. Suren nodded.
“It is a good holiday, I think,” Suren said. “What can be bad about spending time in prayer and doing good work?”
“How do we know they do good work?” Devi asked, tiring of her game and coming over to sit beside them. She opened her books and pulled out her half-done homework. “What kind of good work? Bin Ahmeds, do they do good work?”
“We don’t have to know what they are doing,” Suren said, “only they do. And their god. He probably knows too.”
“Who is their god? What’s his name?” Devi asked, as she tipped her head to look at her map of the world, the oceans already colored carefully in varying shades of blue pencil, and the Nile, the Amazon, the Mississippi, the Yangtze, the Euphrates, and the Ganges drawn in a deep green crayon through the land masses.
“Muhammad,” Nihil said.
“Allah,” Suren said.
“I read that Ramazan is the name in Arabic for the ninth month of the year,” Rashmi burst out; she had been listening and trying to think of something important to say and felt pleased with herself for having such a rare tidbit of information and one she had finally remembered.
“I didn’t know that,” Suren said. And the rest of the afternoon was spent discussing what they did and did not know about Muslims, Muslim traditions, and Muslim food, chief among that last category of unknowing being the way in which their Muslim neighbor made their watalappan so perfectly, the custard just firm enough, the syrup thick, and the spices lingering on their tongues, making them shut their eyes with pleasure.
Before they could taste those treats, however, the ruling party did something that had never been seen in the history of any country. Even the adults on Sal Mal Lane, accustomed as they had become to all manner of outrageous behavior from their elected leaders, were taken by surprise: government officials discussed among themselves and passed a vote of no confidence in the leader of the opposition.
“Bloody idiots,” Mr. Herath fumed when he came home from work that day and then, noticing that the only person in the veranda was Rashmi, he dispatched her to fetch her mother from the side garden where she was busy finding cracks and crevices in the wall into which she could press the ivy that was growing robustly under her care.
“Bloody idiots,” he repeated when she arrived, though with a little less intensity. “Did you hear? They went ahead with the vote today. Maithripala Senanayake even pointed out to them that the leader of the opposition need not have the confidence of the government. That’s the whole point!” And he banged the side of the front door, a completely uncharacteristic move for him and one that startled his wife.
“I heard, yes, the Silvas told me about it. What did the UNP imagine would happen after this fiasco?” Mrs. Herath asked rhetorically, giving up on the idea of soothing her irate husband and throwing herself into the fray. “The government can vote all they want, but if the members of the opposition have confidence in their leader there’s not a thing the government can do about it.”
“The Speaker wouldn’t even listen to Maithripala’s protests,” Mr. Herath said, sitting down heavily on a chair in the veranda, still dressed in his work clothes. “Just one member of the government voted against it. Shelton Ranaraja.” And after that they both sat there in silence, thinking about the day’s events, about their friends who belonged to the opposition, about themselves, until Kamala brought out their evening cups of tea.
Three days later, a group of Tamil militants attacked a police station in Annaikoddai, killed two police officers, and took most of the firearms. The irony of the fact that the attack targeted a Muslim and a Tamil constable alongside two Sinhalese constables was lost on everybody. It was Lucas who sallied forth to Sal Mal Lane with the news.
“Constable Jayaratne’s body has been brought to Ratnapura and now riots everywhere, Sir!” he exclaimed, arriving on the doorstep of the Herath household to deliver the information. In his state of distress he had forgotten to let down his sarong before crossing the road. He stood there with it rolled halfway up his thighs, his emaciated legs poking out underneath, leaning against the door frame and panting for breath.
“What?” Mr. Herath asked. “Riots? Where?” He was getting ready to leave for work after his lunch break, and he stood with a bundle of files in one hand and his hard-cased rectangular briefcase in the other.
“Yes, Sir. After the Annaikoddai attack, Sinhalese gangs are hitting back now! Everywhere! Ratnapura, Balangoda, Kahawatte, even in the coastal areas here and also in Batticaloa and Ampara! Even the estate Tamils.” He wheezed for a few moments, shaking his head, commiserating. “How can they attack the estate Tamils, Sir? They are the poorest! I have seen! I, Lucas, I have seen them. Poorer even than me!”
“Suren!” Mr. Herat
h called out and, receiving no answer, called out to the other three children in turn “Rashmi! Nihil! Devi!” Mrs. Herath had not returned from school or else there is no doubt that he would have hollered for her too.
The four children lined up in front of their father, even Suren, who had joined them reluctantly, his loyalties to his parents having grown ever thinner with each passing day when the promise of a musical career was not discussed or even remembered. They were given instructions to run to their neighbors.
“Go and tell Uncle Sansoni, Uncle Tissera, Uncle Silva, Uncle Jimmy, and Mr. Bin Ahmed,” Mr. Herath instructed.
“Why not the Nadesans and Uncle Raju?” Nihil asked.
“Nadesans and Raju are Tamils. They should stay indoors, along with Mr. Niles and that family,” Mr. Herath said.
“Silvas said that Jimmy Bolling is also half Tamil—” Nihil began, but his father stopped him
“Just do what I’m asking you to do for once!” Mr. Herath said, raising his voice.
“What am I supposed to tell?” Devi asked, bouncing up and down on the balls of her feet, excited by the charge she could feel in the air around her.
“Tell them that there are riots in the outstations and we must stand at the bottom of the lane to prevent any problems here. That’s all. Go!”
“I want to tell Uncle Raju!” she said, fear quickly replacing excitement. “You can tell him after,” Rashmi said as she took Devi’s hand and ran out of the gate. As they ran, they saw Mohan and called out to him, telling him what they had just heard and asking him to get Jith and come with them to round up the neighbors.
“We’re all going to stand at the bottom of the lane, like a parade!” Devi shouted.
“Tha says there might be trouble here,” Rashmi said.
“I know there’s trouble,” Mohan said, walking away from them. “I’m going to see what’s happening.” And he ran away from them to catch a bus toward the Galle Road, looking for others like him who wanted more trouble, not less.
Their precautions proved unnecessary; nobody came to destroy their homes, burn, loot, or otherwise plunder the things that belonged to them. But an air of expectation remained, a stirring unrest that hung over their every move. The children continued to play but they argued and picked fights just as frequently, and Devi, in a fit of unreasonable rage, even went so far as to bite the Tisseras’ son on his arm when he chased and caught Nihil in a fair game of catch. Dolly and Jith continued with their trysts, so the Herath children took Rose on, an outlier sister of sorts, to liven up their days with her bad English and cackles of laughter. None of the adults commented on the fact that Mr. Silva, though he had been asked by none other than Mr. Herath himself, had refused to join their neighborhood patrol. Every man for himself, he had said, that’s how it is these days. Better if we each watch our own homes. Tamils can watch theirs. Enough and more of them down this lane, isn’t that so?
Was it any wonder, then, that even the adults tried their best to distract the children with thoughts of Ramazan, dragging out this respite for as long as they could? Even if it meant that the entire neighborhood would lean on a single family, the Bin Ahmeds, the only Muslims down Sal Mal Lane? Ramazan, celebrated on September 11 of that year, took on the nature of a balm for all of them, and the Bin Ahmeds rose to the occasion. It had always been their lot not only to accept the heaping trays of food brought for their consumption by the three Sinhalese Buddhist and Hindu Tamil houses—Herath, Silva, and Nadesan—during their New Year in April, but to also provide all three of those families as well as the Sinhalese-Catholic, Tamil-Catholic and Burgher families—Tissera, Joseph, Niles, Bolling and Sansoni—with deep bowls of watalappan at the end of Ramazan. This year, Mrs. Bin Ahmed took special care over the making of the sweet, bringing out her best bowls in which to steam the puddings.
“How many watalappans will we get? I think three,” Devi asked and answered her own question as they took their lunch.
“Why three?” Nihil asked.
“Bin Ahmeds and Tha’s two friends, Uncle Rizvi Mohamed and Uncle Esufally.”
“They don’t have to bring us watalappan. They don’t live here,” Nihil said.
But he was wrong. The Heraths did get three bowls of the sweet dessert, the syrup from the steamed treacle and cardamom pooling thick at the bottom of each. Mrs. Herath gave one away to Alice and Lucas, who inhabited a world in which the passing of desserts between Muslim, Sinhalese, and Tamil was neither common nor expected, although those who were lucky enough, as this couple were, to have patrons—such as the people on Sal Mal Lane and Mrs. Vithanage—usually enjoyed the treats that came their way during the differnt holidays, and shared them with those who were less fortunate.
“Ah, thank you, thank you,” Lucas said, as he bowed his head a few times and accepted the white bowl from Mrs. Herath. “It is kind of you to share with us. We are old but we also like desserts!” He laughed as he carried the bowl back to Alice, who clucked her tongue in disapproval but ate a heaping plateful with deep and silent enjoyment after first having placed a saucer with a bit of watalappan floating in it out for the crows in the way she had become accustomed to doing, to appease the spirits. That’s what my mother taught me and that’s what I’m going to do, she said, with a certain haughtiness, to Lucas, when he lamented the waste.
It would be a fine thing if desserts could serve to sweeten not just tongue and imagination but life. That year, however, not only did their treats prove fleeting, even the return of the bowls took place with a certain forced gaiety whose effervescence, no matter how deserved by the impeccable quality of the dish and the grace of the giver, seemed ill-advised. The discussion, after gratitude was expressed and Mrs. Herath lingered as expected on the Bin Ahmeds’ doorstep, was not about how much the children had enjoyed the watalappan, though they had, but about the possibility of war.
“Soon the real rain will start. North-West monsoons will be here,” Mr. Bin Ahmed said, looking at the skies even though there was nothing there to indicate that a torrential downpour was imminent and even though the monsoons he mentioned were several months away.
“Yes, rains . . .” Mrs. Herath murmured, knowing what was being intimated. She looked at his neat house, the garden so basic and yet so pleasing, with its wall topped with purple bougainvillea, the soil covered with sea sand and tiled to mimic the desert homes of the dry zone. She tried to think of something else that she could say to these neighbors who kept so much to themselves and yet emerged with such generosity each Ramazan. Nothing else came to mind so she repeated herself. “Yes, the rains will be here soon. We won’t have to water the flowers so much.”
“We can make more paper boats then,” Devi, who had accompanied her mother, said, hopping on one foot as she chased a smooth stone across the short paved walkway to the Bin Ahmeds’ bright-blue front door.
“Hope there is no trouble for us, down our lane,” Mr. Bin Ahmed said, though it was not just a wish, it was also a request, and they both knew it. “Government and Tamil party both wanted the District Development Council elections and the TULF won, even though the government’s representative, Thiagarajah, was killed by the militants. But the Tigers don’t want any political negotiations and they opposed TULF all the way. Lot of violence on every side. Now the Tamils don’t know whom to believe, the Tigers or the TULF. I am afraid that eventually somehow they will bring all these troubles here.”
Mrs. Herath took in Mr. Bin Ahmed’s small frame, his comb-over, the graying threads of hair glistening with oil to keep them in place. He was a short man, just about an inch taller than she was, a man at ease with his aging, but a frail-looking one. She felt sorry for him.
“Why should there be, Mr. Ahmed? We haven’t caused any problems for anybody, after all, isn’t that so?” Mrs. Herath said, inhabiting her Buddhist upbringing for a while, and thinking about karma. She reached behind her and tugged the fall of her sari away from Devi, who was trying to fix it to her own head like a veil.
Mr
s. Bin Ahmed came out and Mrs. Herath thanked her for the dessert. “That’s a lovely color on you, Mrs. Ahmed,” Mrs. Herath said, fingering the pretty orange sari that Mrs. Bin Ahmed was wearing.
Mrs. Bin Ahmed smiled. “It belonged to my mother’s mother!” she said. “In the old days they made things to last.”
“Yes, you are right. One of my best saris is one that belonged to my great-grandmother,” Mrs. Herath said.
They continued to talk for a while longer about preferred fabrics, favorite colors, the impossibility that anything they bought during their lifetimes could be good enough to last and be handed down to a third generation.
Mr. Bin Ahmed waited until they finished exchanging pleasantries and then said slowly, “It’s not that we have caused problems, it’s that other people want to cause us problems. That’s the real issue here. Look at all of us, living peacefully down this lane. Look at our family. We don’t bother anybody.”
Just at that moment Sonna strode out from the Bolling house, kicking the door shut behind him. He looked over at them, and hacked and spat into the dirt. Then he stopped and lit a cigarette in full view of the three adults. They watched him until he had walked to the end of the road and turned the corner.
“Yes,” Mrs. Herath said, “we live well here, for the most part, but there are bad eggs everywhere. Whatever our differences, our lane is a safe place. We should try to be careful and keep to ourselves, stay away from all these problems that are going on in other places.”
That we was a charitable inclusion. Mrs. Herath knew that each family shared a different physical and emotional reality and that, between them, her family name made her less uncertain in the face of the news from the North. Still, despite their many differences, until now they had all found a way to balance their own rituals and devotions and languages with those of other people. Soon it would be time for Deepavali again and, this year too, Mrs. Herath was sure that Nihil and Devi and perhaps even Rashmi would go over to the Nadesans’ house to help them decorate their home and light oil lamps around the designs they painted on the ground. Later in the year, her children would surely be asked to help with Kala Niles’s preparations for Christmas, Suren would play carols on the piano in the evenings, and all of them would sing. Wasn’t there harmony in that?
