Season of the Rainbirds

by Nadeem Aslam

  Arshad Ali forced a smile at the physician’s comment. With a wave of his free hand – the other clasping the front of his shirt to the wounds – he sent the two men away. The surgery was divided into two sections by a large curtain; behind the curtain female patients would sit. On the wall above the couch was an old calendar depicting a Nigerian rural scene – a souvenir of the four years Dr Sharif had spent in Africa.

  ‘What happened?’ Dr Sharif asked as he approached the couch, collecting as he came a kidney-shaped receptacle holding a pair of scissors, gauze and a roll of surgical tape.

  ‘One of my birds,’ Arshad Ali managed to say before a spike of pain forced him to wince.

  Dr Sharif examined the wounds. Three of the four gashes, each a three-quarter-inch tear, could be clearly seen; the fourth was hidden in the bristly moustache. ‘You’re lucky it wasn’t an eye,’ the physician said and pressed cottonwool to the cheek to absorb blood and the glistening beads of sweat. ‘There’s no need for stitches but you’ll have to have a course of tetanus injections.’ Dr Sharif dipped the cottonwool in the beaker of water. The water turned orange.

  ‘There is something I have always wanted to know, doctor-sahib,’ Arshad Ali said through stiff lips. ‘When we were children we used to say that if a dog bit you, you had to have fourteen injections in your stomach. Is that true?’

  Dr Sharif concentrated on his work. He had begun to feel along the edges of the wounds – clearly defined now that the excess blood had been swabbed up. Then he drenched a large piece of cottonwool in antiseptic solution and began to dress the cuts, sticking the wool to the skin with canvas tape.

  ‘Will I be able to patrol tonight?’ Arshad Ali asked from under the physician’s hands.

  ‘I would advise you to go home and get to bed. I’m sure your brother’s men are perfectly capable of looking after us.’

  As it evaporated the alcoholic content of the antiseptic solution began to numb the pain. Arshad Ali smiled. ‘It’s not that,’ he said. ‘We had planned a mahfil for tonight. A roast, hemp, cane liquor. And, of course, a whore.’

  Dr Sharif glanced at the closed door behind which were his living quarters and spoke in a dropped voice: ‘Isn’t there enough of that sort of tamasha in this town already? My wife was in an uproar when she found out. And people here in the surgery have been talking of nothing else for the past fortnight.’

  ‘I too have heard about the DC and his woman. Is she pretty?’

  With difficulty Dr Sharif was cutting the hair growing around the wound in the upper lip. He stopped and looked deep into Arshad Ali’s eyes. ‘Don’t worry about it,’ he said, and after a moment’s pause he added: ‘Why don’t your brothers find you a job? A nice consular post in Argentina, perhaps.’

  Arshad Ali smiled again. ‘Don’t ruin my moustache, doctor-sahib.’ The physician waited for the smile to fade, scissors suspended in air. ‘My brothers were exactly the same at my age, doctor-sahib. The Ali seed is spread liberally throughout this region. Let me ask you something … it’s a kind of joke. What happened to the man who once talked of sexual liberation? Tell me.’

  Dr Sharif went over to the shelf to switch on the radio. The set, encased in dark mahogany with a cloth front, responded to the flick of the switch by emitting a grainy burst of melody. Dr Sharif lowered the volume and rotated the dial until he arrived at a frequency where someone was speaking in a foreign language. He consulted his wristwatch and came back to the couch.

  Arshad Ali was waiting to complete his joke: ‘His wife bore him a daughter.’

  The voice on the radio stopped speaking, and after a few bars of music and a rapid succession of pips another voice said: ‘This is the BBC World Service. Here is the news, read by—’

  Dr Sharif lowered his head to the wounds.

  The newscaster spoke in an impersonal voice: the monsoon floods in Bangladesh had been declared some of the worst in the region’s history. Mark Tully, speaking over the sound of a torrent, expressed fears of a famine. Geography had made Bangladesh disaster-prone: most of the country was a giant river delta less than twenty feet above sea level, lying at the heart of a natural funnel formed by the Bay of Bengal. But the effects were magnified by poverty: in a nation where more than half the people were landless, the richly fertile silt islands that appeared and disappeared offshore were a great temptation – as soon as they built up, people paddled out to settle them.

  Dr Sharif went to the other side of the room to close a window that was letting in insects. He fastened the bolt. Arshad Ali had closed his eyes – enjoying the cool alcohol on his face and inhaling its light vapour. Mark Tully came to the end of his report, and the newscaster moved on to the second story.

  Arshad Ali opened his eyes and let out a whistle of disbelief. Dr Sharif rushed to the radio set and turned up the volume.

  ‘A missile!’ Arshad Ali gasped.

  Dr Sharif raised a hand to quieten him and leaned in towards the radio. The General’s plane had narrowly escaped a missile fired at it soon after take-off. The terrorist organisation allegedly led by the hanged prime minister’s son was said to be responsible.

  ‘A SAM-7,’ said Dr Sharif, as though he knew what that was.

  The newscaster moved on. Dr Sharif stood still for a few moments, hands dropped to his side, the open-beaked scissors clucking at the floor. Then he twisted the dial and arrived – through a series of high-pitched whistles, fragments of words and strains of music – at the national station. Here too news was under way.

  ‘We’ll have to wait for the summary at the end,’ the physician said. They had obviously missed the lead item.

  Working in silence the doctor finished dressing the wounds. Arshad Ali too listened intently. When the newscaster came to the end of the bulletin she repeated the headlines.

  ‘I thought as much,’ Dr Sharif said. ‘They are not going to tell us about it.’ He went to the shelf and turned off the radio with a savage twist.

  ‘So,’ Arshad Ali said. ‘Nothing happened?’

  ‘Obviously,’ smiled Dr Sharif. ‘As usual.’ He put the remains of the gauze and the bottle of antiseptic in the curved dish and carried it to the desk. Frowning, he took the pen from his pocket and began writing on the note pad. ‘The bandages will have to be changed every other day,’ he said without looking up. ‘And tomorrow’ – he tore the page off the pad – ‘send someone to the city to get these tetanus injections.’

  Arshad Ali was standing up. ‘In my stomach?’ he joked and even managed to pull a face. But the doctor did not respond. He seemed eager to discuss the news with his wife.

  Arshad Ali went to the door. The blood on his shirt was beginning to stiffen. Dr Sharif got up to let him out.

  It was raining. Crickets sang. Darkness and silence pressed down on the huddled street; and for a brief confused moment Dr Sharif was unable to distinguish between the two. Then, filling his lungs with the warm humid air, he shouted after Arshad Ali: ‘And make sure the chemist takes the injections out of a refrigerator.’ A child had recently contracted polio in spite of the fact that she had been vaccinated. The heat had denatured the vaccine.

  Thursday

  The town awoke to the noisy heaving of the swollen rivers. A gigantic sweep of wind, rain and thunder had invaded the region during the night. The salt from the doorsteps was washed away and the rags stuffed in the drainpipes had to be taken out to drain the courtyards. Soon the houses were again full of the dancing water lizards. Screaming with rage servant girls all over the town drove clusters of them out of the downstairs rooms, only to find, moments later, even greater numbers entering the house through the gaps under the doors and through the drains.

  The sky remained hidden behind thick clouds until noon when sunlight at last began to filter through. Mr Kasmi, immaculate in his starched and pressed attire, held the closed umbrella out of the front door and, releasing the catch, stepped on to the street. Other doors were being opened, too. Mr Kasmi covered the length of the street acknowledgin
g and returning calls of greeting. He turned into the street that led to the school. The talli trees leaned over the pavement, dripping. In the far distance someone was walking towards him. Hidden somewhere in the tallis a papiha gave its mournful call. Mr Kasmi recognised the approaching figure as the newspaper photographer. His shoulders were hunched and his hands were thrust deep into the pockets of a large raincoat. The collar was turned up against the drizzle: Mr Kasmi liked the effect. The photographer saw Mr Kasmi and came to a stop under one of the trees.

  ‘Saif Aziz has disappeared,’ the man said, looking dejected, as Mr Kasmi came near. ‘He’s taken the car. His things aren’t in the room and the hotel manager knows nothing.’

  Mr Kasmi listened attentively. ‘Perhaps he’s gone back. It must have been an emergency,’ he said. ‘Maybe something to do with his family.’

  ‘No.’ The photographer took his hands out of the pockets. A piece of cottonwool was pressed to his forehead, held in place by two lengths of canvas tape that crossed each other at right angles. ‘Haven’t you heard about the attempt on the General’s life?’

  Mr Kasmi gave a nod.

  ‘Saif’s gone into hiding for fear of arrest.’

  Mr Kasmi started to walk. ‘Are you sure? Are you suggesting that he knew about it in advance.’

  ‘No.’ There was an edge to the photographer’s voice. ‘But there are bound to be repercussions. Anybody who has ever uttered a word against the regime is bound to be rounded up.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ said Mr Kasmi, ‘he got a telegram saying one of the children is ill.’

  ‘What telegram! There is no post office in this town.’

  Mr Kasmi rounded his lips into an ‘ah’, remembering. ‘Does the hotel have a telephone?’

  The photographer shook his head slowly. They had drawn level with the optician’s stall and began to cross the street. Sitting under the transparent canopy, the optician appeared to be engaged in a passionate discussion with the three men sitting with him on the bench. One of the men jabbed his finger furiously at the newspaper that lay folded in his lap and seemed to conclude his argument: ‘It’s a conspiracy!’

  As Mr Kasmi and the photographer approached, all four men stood up respectfully to shake hands with the schoolteacher. ‘What can I do for you, Kasmi-sahib?’ asked the optician. The three men had remained standing.

  ‘I was just on my way to …’ Mr Kasmi pointed to the school-house fifty or so paces along the street. ‘But has any of you seen the journalist this morning?’

  The men shook their heads. One of them turned to the photographer and asked, ‘Do you know anything about what happened last night?’

  The photographer looked puzzled. ‘I heard about it on Indian radio this morning. I am as much in the dark as you. There’s nothing in the newspapers.’

  ‘It’s just international propaganda to weaken our country,’ one of the men said forcefully. He was close to shouting. ‘The General is a good man. Didn’t he say that his civil servants should spend ten out of every thirty days living amongst ordinary people? If they don’t obey him then it isn’t his fault.’

  A mocking smile – almost a sneer – played on the lips of the man with the newspaper. ‘The man is an evil tyrant. Simple,’ he said. ‘Perhaps he should have gates put up at the ends of all the streets of the capital.’

  The optician laughed. ‘How about moats around the presidential palace. Just like in the days of the Mogul emperors.’

  The jeers caused the General’s supporter to shake his head in despair.

  Mr Kasmi looked around. ‘So,’ he said quietly, ‘you haven’t seen him?’ The group became suddenly serious. One man murmured a ‘no’.

  Mr Kasmi beckoned to the photographer and began to walk on. ‘You should see Azhar about using his telephone. Try to get in touch with the offices of your paper and ask if they know why your friend has left.’

  ‘I know why he’s left,’ the photographer grimaced.

  Mr Kasmi nodded. ‘If that is so then he must be a very honest man. He will have gone to prison under every government in the past thirty years.’ At the end of the street they stopped. Mr Kasmi pointed along the side street and said, ‘Turn left there. It’s a small house with green doors and windows.’

  The photographer took his handkerchief from his pocket and went down the street. Mr Kasmi too pressed his handkerchief to his nose. Fissures ran along the base of the school’s outside wall. The surfaces were uneven, and water lizards – and most of the stench, Mr Kasmi supposed – escaped through these openings. A few sections of the wall leaned at dangerous angles while others had collapsed completely.

  ‘Tarmac?’ said the headmaster.

  Mr Kasmi had come to propose a solution to the problem of the proliferating water lizards and the stench. ‘Hot tarmac poured into the cracks will get rid of them.’

  The headmaster heaved himself out of the chair and went to find the caretaker. Mr Kasmi looked around the office. On a shelf to the left of the headmaster’s chair were two tarnished sports trophies. Above them on the wall were many black-and-white photographs of groups of students and teachers. Mr Kasmi appeared in a few. Directly above the chair was a large portrait of the Founder. And on the third wall, nailed around the window, there were framed ink drawings of the ancient buildings that had housed the first Islamic universities. These universities in Baghdad, Jerusalem, Cairo, Alexandria were a source of great pride throughout the Muslim world, despite the knowledge that most of these cities were famous as centres of learning long before the rise of Islam. The window was fringed on the outside by a trailing vine whose orange, trumpet-shaped flower, with its distinct stigma and stamens, had proved an indispensable visual aid to the science teacher who structured the biology course in such a way that the section dealing with plant reproduction always coincided with April.

  The headmaster returned, accompanied by the caretaker – a hunched, torpid creature who, according to generations of students, had one glass eye. ‘Nothing can be done till the rains stop,’ he told Mr Kasmi. ‘The boiling tarmac would have to be poured on dry earth. No use pouring it into mud.’ He was holding his left hand flat and plunged his other hand on to it to demonstrate the act of pouring.

  After the caretaker left, Mr Kasmi said, ‘I suppose there’d be the same problem in trying to fill the holes with cement.’

  The headmaster nodded. ‘Nothing can be done till next spring.’

  Mr Kasmi looked out through the open door: the door to the classroom across the corridor was shut. ‘Not many students are attending school today, I suppose.’

  ‘No.’ The headmaster sat forward eagerly. ‘How is this country ever going to get ahead if a mere shower brings it to a standstill?’ He seemed to adopt, Mr Kasmi noticed, the attitude which he employed during the morning assembly. ‘It wouldn’t happen anywhere else in the world. People in other countries go to work despite the rains. Even in snow. Here shops are closed and people idle about at home.’

  Mr Kasmi picked up his bag. He hesitated before he spoke. ‘It’s not as simple as that. If you have only one pair of shoes and can only afford one set of presentable clothes then it is advisable to stay at home during the rains and not get them muddied. Have you seen the state of the streets?’

  ‘Excuses, excuses, Kasmi-sahib.’

  ‘Things are changing, but it will take time. Remember the school at the beginning? Now it’s bigger and has more teachers. We have to be patient.’

  ‘No. If the school is bigger it’s because someone has worked for it. I went and stood at every door, asking for donations, ceiling fans, anything. It would not have expanded if, as you suggest, we had just waited.’

  ‘I didn’t suggest that,’ Mr Kasmi said, ‘I just think we should be tolerant.’ He was standing up.

  A square packet stood on the floor by the headmaster’s desk. Part of its brown wrapper had been torn to reveal the contents: a row of identical books, each the size of an address book, no more than a few inches in length, and b
ound in a beautiful green.

  The headmaster said, ‘Bad habits have to be criticised, Kasmi-sahib. Otherwise nothing will change.’ He registered Mr Kasmi’s glance at the packet of books and bent down to take one out through the opening in the wrapper. ‘They arrived on Monday. The parcel was one of the things in the lost mail-bag.’ He passed the book to Mr Kasmi.

  ‘The Little Green Book,’ Mr Kasmi read aloud the words embossed in goldleaf on the brow of the book. He opened it. It was a book commissioned by the country’s first chief martial-law administrator and contained ‘the President’s thoughts’. Copies of it had been sent to schools, mosques, cinema houses, hotels, roadside tea-stalls and, it was said at the time, to brothels.

  Mr Kasmi was shaking his head. ‘It was …’ he struggled, ‘how many years ago?’

  ‘Nineteen. The gold leaf is still incredibly shiny though.’

  Mr Kasmi closed the book.

  ‘Take it,’ the headmaster offered. ‘I don’t know what to do with them.’

  Mr Kasmi unzipped his bag and placed the book inside. ‘Perhaps we should try to block the holes with them.’

  His words were choked by the gust of foul smell that rose to meet him from below.

  Azhar held the cigarette in his mouth, his lips curling around the yellow filter, and lowered his head to the flame. He inhaled the smoke deep into his body and letting the matchstick fall on to the marble floor stepped on it without looking down.

  ‘I still don’t know what to do about the post office,’ he said. ‘There’s no sign of the postmaster.’

  Mujeeb Ali said, ‘It’ll be hard to find him now. What with this thing last night about the General. He won’t come out into the daylight for a long while yet.’

  Azhar nodded. ‘I haven’t received the list yet but I’m sure his name will be near the top.’ The words were muffled by the thick blue smoke he exhaled. The smoke floated out of the open window, towards the twisting river.