The Bones of Grace

by Tahmima Anam

  ‘I got turned around,’ I said.

  Ali noticed Mo and grabbed the back of his neck. ‘How did you come here? Go back to your group.’

  ‘He helped me find my way out,’ I said.

  ‘He doesn’t work here,’ Ali said.

  ‘Oh, come on,’ Gabriela interjected, ‘we all know that’s not true.’

  I complimented Ali on the grandness of Grace. ‘She’s exquisite.’ I told the others there was something they should see in the big auditorium below. Ali released the back of Mo’s shirt.

  ‘You mean the piano,’ Jack said. ‘It’s really something.’

  Ali told us that the hotel owner, Mr Reza, would be inspecting the piano along with everything else on board. But he wasn’t hopeful. ‘No market for pianos in Bangladesh. We are not a cultured people in that way.’

  ‘Not in Western instruments,’ Gabriela said, ‘but you have a rich musical tradition of your own.’ Last night, at Gabriela’s request, I had outlined the highlights of Bengali culture. Tagore. Nazrul. The language movement. I had even told her about Rokeya and her imaginary utopia. We had huddled around my laptop and read Sultana’s Dream together, and she had laughed at this line: ‘The men should not do anything, excuse me; they are fit for nothing.’

  I urged everyone to follow me downstairs and take a closer look at the piano. We returned to the auditorium and gathered around the instrument, our lights casting yellow petals onto its mirrored surface. I felt a rush of pride when someone behind me emitted a gasp. I was already attached.

  Gabriela volunteered to play. She pulled out the piano stool and placed her hands on the keys. She wasn’t very good – I thought she might play the Shostakovich, but it was beyond her – yet the sound moved powerfully through the room. We felt the notes under our feet. No one seemed to want to hold up their torches any more, so the scene dissipated, Gabriela herself invisible but for her foot on the brass pedal.

  She stopped abruptly. ‘It needs tuning, she said into the darkness, ‘but it’s a lovely instrument – something almost human about it.’ We heard the lid snap shut. ‘You shouldn’t sell it to the hotel, Mr Ali.’

  ‘We had this guy, this piano player, who loved that thing,’ Jack said. ‘Think he was Hungarian. You should’ve seen the tears when we told him the ship was sold.’

  We shuffled back through the auditorium. I tried to imagine the old Hungarian man playing the Preludes as Grace cut through the sea on her way here. I asked Jack what had happened to him.

  ‘Don’t know,’ he said, blinking against the equatorial brightness as he opened the door. ‘Once you get to shore, everyone goes their own way.’

  I am not a superstitious person, but the piano and the sheet music were telling me something. A smoke signal. I hadn’t forgotten about you in the year that had passed, Elijah, but I had found a way to push you out of my mind, because there were already too many complicated things, too much to regret. I got used to the dull feeling of longing I carried around with me all the time, telling myself it wasn’t just you, but Diana too, and Rashid, and the baby I now wanted; my whole life, and somehow this made it easier, spreading the grief around. Occasionally I would look down at my phone and be tempted to dial your number, but I never got past the initial urge: I would have no idea where to begin. There was too much to tell, and I was morbidly full of all those unsaid words, but now the piano was giving me an excuse – a compulsion – so I called you and left a message, struggling to keep my voice steady: hello, it’s me, Zubaida. It’s been a long time, I know, but I was hoping we might talk. Please call me back.

  While I waited for you to return my call, I allowed myself to become friends with Mo. He ran with a few other boys in a sort of gang around the shipyard, and though he was smaller than most of them, they seemed to regard him as something of their leader. I once saw him herding a group of six or seven boys into the water, and when they were about waist-high he pushed them in, one by one, like he was launching paper boats, and then he made them hold hands and float on their backs, all in a line, and they squealed with happiness and the tickle of salt water in their ears. I wasn’t sure what work Ali had Mo do, but though he was often rough with him, I believed there was some affection between them, and that Mo’s position, if far from comfortable, was at least secure (on this count, as on many others, I was wrong, Elijah. I wonder if you soften towards me because of my honesty, or if it disgusts you to know how blind I was, not just on my own account, but on that of others).

  I couldn’t put off meeting the workers any longer. The first interview was arranged by Ali, and took place in his office. Gabriela set up a camera and a flat mic. In the evening, at the end of a shift, about a dozen men filed through the entrance. They wore helmets and thick rubber boots. Their hands were encased in protective gloves, and over their legs they sported the sort of thick, waterproof waders I recognised from watching television programmes about fishermen. I started by asking their names, and they belted out introductions. Rubel! Suren! Malek! Then they proceeded to tell me how wonderful Prosperity Shipbreaking was, how kind the owners were, that they were always paid on time, and that it was the best job they could hope for, that they were putting their children in school – not just the boys, the girls too – and that they were thankful to God for bringing the blessing of the shipyard to their part of the country.

  Gabriela had already told me she had reels of this sort of footage. I talked for a long time, hoping it would warm them up, a monologue about how I had never been to Chittagong before and was looking forward to seeing the sights, Patenga, the hills, Foy’s Lake. They told me a few stories about their families. I asked them where they had come from, and they were all from within a few miles. I saw one of them raise his eyes, and I had a fleeting moment of hope, but he kept going, past my face, and up, fixing his eyes on the fan that was bolted to the ceiling above our heads. After about twenty minutes, I turned to Ali and said, ‘Perhaps this is not the best place to talk.’

  ‘Ei,’ Ali scolded, looking up from his phone, ‘say something to Apa. She’s come all this way.’ Then they all started talking at once, but just repeating the things they had said in the first place, about the kindness of God and the generosity of their benefactor, Ali.

  I stood up. ‘Thank you,’ I said to them, packing away my tape recorder and notebook. I had expected something like this, yet I found it disconcerting. I tried to scan their faces as they left so that I might remember their names, but as soon as Ali dismissed them they were gone, jostling each other on their way out of the office and making tracks towards the beach. ‘You are wasting your time,’ Ali said, making a show of pouring me a cup of tea. ‘Everyone here is happy.’

  The last of the men filed away, his boots shuffling on the grey cement. A thought occurred to me. ‘These are not the men that pull those large sheets of metal up the beach,’ I said.

  ‘No, madam, they are the cutters.’

  ‘Can I talk to the other men?’

  ‘Who, the pullers? Madam, those boys are fresh from the village. They don’t know how to talk to a person such as yourself.’

  So that’s what they were called. The pullers. I had seen them take apart the last of the Splendour. Everything else was gone and it was just a matter of getting the propeller to a truck waiting on the road. A group of men tied ropes around the blades of the propeller and hauled these ropes over their shoulders. As they dragged their feet through the shallow water, they reminded me of the biblical films my parents had encouraged me to see as a child in which people were tortured and whipped while building pyramids, their bodies thin and mollusced with sweat. These men with their grey faces and mouths pursed so tightly you would think they were incapable of speech until their cries of Hey-yo! Hey-yo! Hey-yo! came punching out of their mouths. They wore their lungis folded up between their legs, their feet were bare, and sometimes, on top of their heads or over their mouths, they had those rectangles of checked cloth that used to be a bright colour but were soiled now by dirt and sand
and sweat. Everything smelled of the chemicals thrown up by the ships and the burn of the metal as it was processed, but their faces bore no trace of disgust, no recognition that the very air they breathed was poison. ‘I don’t mind,’ I said.

  ‘They are uneducated.’

  ‘I won’t keep them for long, just a few questions.’

  ‘Why don’t you give me the list of questions? I will ask them and then you will have your information.’

  ‘It won’t work that way, Mr Ali.’

  He gave me a look that was intended to make me feel he was taking me seriously. ‘Of course. I am only trying to be helpful.’

  I retreated to the apartment and told Gabriela everything. ‘I told you it was a set-up,’ she said, rummaging in her bag for a cigarette. ‘There’s no way Ali’s going to let us talk to everyone. And even if he did, they’re not going to talk in front of their boss. We have to meet them somewhere else.’

  ‘It’s not like we can invite them over here.’

  ‘That’s a fantastic idea,’ she said, lighting up and taking a deep breath. ‘Let’s do that. You could cook.’

  ‘I am a terrible cook and that’s a terrible idea.’

  ‘Why not? They look hungry, the poor sods.’

  ‘No, they don’t. They look quite well fed, in fact. And they’re wearing all the correct protective clothing. Have you ever seen them wear that stuff when they go out onto the ships?’

  ‘It’s all for show,’ Gabriela said, tapping her cigarette into the sink.

  When Rubana called, I had to confess I hadn’t made much progress. She told me to keep trying, agreeing that it was essential to get the men out of Ali’s office, to identify the ones who weren’t just window dressing for the film. ‘Peel back the layers,’ she said.

  On a Friday I returned to Khondkar Villa. Komola took some satisfaction at the sight of my dirty clothes. Why hadn’t I come sooner? I sat in the garden and smelled the jasmine, shedding the grime of the last few weeks, remembering the piano, and Mo, and the little bunk beds that sat at the bottom of the ship. I wasn’t so far from the beach now, but it could all have easily been a dream, a vision of a dark past or a dystopian future, far beyond the reach of my imagination, and I wondered, again and again, why you were not returning my call, what was making you take your time, was it another woman, had you fallen in love, or, worse, had you relegated me to the category of a casual acquaintance who did not require an immediate reply, someone you had once known yet with whom the possibility of serious connection had passed for ever? With every day and every imagined reason for your silence, the picture of you grew stronger, like liquor in a cask.

  The first thing, Ali informed me, was to get everything on Grace valued and assessed, and then sold. He had three weeks to get rid of all the goods. Once she was stripped, the cutting would begin. I was still at an impasse with the workers, and every time I asked Ali if there were others we could meet, he put me off, saying he would look into it, that a suitable place had not yet been found, all the time smiling and assuring me that my comfort and safety were of the utmost importance. In the absence of actual workers, I began to record the dismantling of the ship and documenting, in detail, what each worker was responsible for doing. So far, I had a list of professions: foreman, salesman, engineer, tank cleaner, cutter, puller, welder, roller. Each crew had its own leader, its own hierarchy, and the teams themselves fell into a sort of order, with the engineers at the top and the pullers at the bottom.

  One day I returned to the apartment and found Gabriela in the kitchen with Mo. The two were bent over the stove together, looking at a pair of pooris browning in a pan of oil. I stood in the doorway and watched their easy way with each other, Mo holding a long metal spatula and Gabriela exclaiming at the way the pooris puffed up into perfect little spheres. Something about the scene irritated me. I went into my room and put away my notebook and camera. The smell of oil and fried dough wafted through the apartment.

  ‘Gabriela,’ I said, calling out from the living room, ‘can you come here for a minute?’

  When Gabriela emerged from the kitchen, rubbing her palms along her jeans, I lowered my voice and said, ‘What’s he doing here?’

  ‘You mean Mohammed? There’s a room and a toilet behind the kitchen, did you know that?’

  ‘Yes, servants’ quarters.’

  ‘Well we don’t have servants’ quarters where I come from, so I didn’t know. I offered to let him stay there and he’s going to do some cooking for us. He was showing me—’

  ‘Pooris, I know.’ I recognised the look Gabriela was giving me, a mixture of naivety and moral superiority. ‘He has a perfectly fine place to live in the dormitory.’

  ‘It’s filthy.’

  ‘We can’t change everything and then just leave and go about our business.’

  ‘Who said anything about leaving? I’m not going, are you?’

  ‘Not right now, but eventually. Don’t pretend you’re going to be here for ever.’

  ‘Good, so he stays.’

  I wondered what my mother would have said. I remembered once when she had hired an acid-burn victim to work at our house, bringing her out of the kitchen and insisting she serve the guests. Her name was Limi. I remember the fruit cake she made on Fridays, and the way people would stare at her scarred hands when she spooned powdered milk into their tea.

  ‘Are we going to pay him?’ I asked Gabriela.

  ‘He needs a family.’

  ‘So now you want to adopt him?’

  Gabriela threw up her arms. ‘I’m not saying that. I just want to – I want to do something. We’ve been sitting on our hands and we’ve done fuck all. Don’t tell me you’re not as fed up as I am.’

  When we returned to the living area we found that Mo had set the table, placing the pooris in the middle. He was standing back and admiring his handiwork, the table mats, the glasses filled three quarters of the way with water, a jar of pickles, open, with a spoon inside.

  ‘Mo,’ I asked, ‘where did you come from?’

  ‘The food will get cold,’ he said. I noticed that he was wearing a clean shirt with buttons and a pair of trousers, both slightly too big. Gabriela and I seated ourselves around the table. With ceremony, we passed the plate of pooris back and forth.

  ‘Marvellous,’ Gabriela said. ‘Tell him they are the best pooris in the whole world.’

  ‘Where did you learn to cook?’ I asked him.

  ‘Whatever they tell me to do, I do.’

  ‘Ask him,’ Gabriela said, folding a poori into quarters and stuffing it into her mouth. ‘Does he know the men who work on the beach?’

  I translated. ‘I know all of them,’ Mo said. ‘The new boys always come to me first.’

  Gabriela clapped her hands together to brush off the poori crumbs. ‘Maybe he can introduce us.’

  ‘Mo, can you make tea?’ I asked.

  When Mo had darted into the kitchen, Gabriela said, ‘We’ve been here almost a month and no one will tell us anything. Maybe he can help.’

  This was a much better idea than the one she’d had before, but I was still unsure. For one thing, the others might consider Mo a snitch if they knew he was helping us. I told her so.

  ‘But if they talk to us, we can help them. We can put them in the film.’

  When he returned with the tea, I said, ‘Mo, can we come and meet some of your friends?’

  He put down the tray in front of me and passed me a cup. ‘Which friends?’ he asked.

  ‘Your friends from the beach,’ Gabriela said. ‘We want to make a film about them.’

  I repeated the words in Bangla. He turned to me. ‘What film?’

  ‘A movie about the beach, about the ships and the workers.’

  I was sure – and halfway hoping – that he would say no. But Gabriela kneeled in front of him and pulled at his collar, straightening and smoothing. ‘It’s very important,’ she said. ‘Will you help us?’

  ‘We need to talk to the men,’ I said. �
�Not the ones Ali selects for us – the others.’

  ‘Do you want to talk to the day shift or the night shift?’ he asked.

  ‘Which shift are you?’ I said, but he didn’t reply to that, only cleared away the plates and disappeared into the kitchen. I followed him to the back of the apartment, where there was an empty room with a small square window on one side. It was dark, and the cement floor was streaked with dust. ‘Do you want to stay here?’ I asked him, and he said, ‘Only sometimes, when Ali doesn’t need me.’

  I looked at him closely. His hair sprouted vertically from his scalp, and when I extended my hand to stroke his head I felt a uniform coarseness, the gentle slope of his crown, and the upright tendons at the base of his neck.

  ‘Bring your things,’ I said. He nodded and we looked at the room together, the grey floor, the grille crudely fixed to the sill of the window. Mo said he had to go and that he would come by later with his bag. Then he padded away in bare feet, closing the door behind him with a sharp click.

  And that is how Mo came to live with us, how he came to be the link between me and the crew of men who worked on the beach. How Gabriela and I came to belong to this place, came to know all the men who hauled the bodies of ships along the metal-flecked sand. Everything that happened in the later chapters of this story occurred because Mo said yes; even you, Elijah.

  The dormitory that housed the Prosperity workers was built by Harrison Master’s father. He was an old-fashioned sort of businessman who knew the names of all his workers and asked after their wives and children back home, ordered them off the beach in a rage if they talked back to the foreman or got caught in one of the brothels in town. That is what Dulu, one of the men Mo had lined up to talk to us, told me. But the businessman died and his son inherited the place and hired Ali, which was how they all came to be here, crammed into the dormitory, because the son didn’t believe in expanding the facility, and anyway they were grateful it was there at all, because the men in the neighbouring beaches didn’t get anything, they just lived on whatever ship they were breaking, which was bad news, because if the fires didn’t kill you, the fumes from the tanks would finish you off slowly. Not that there was much living to do here anyway.