The Bones of Grace

by Tahmima Anam

  The barber was squatting at the entrance to his shop with his lungi hanging down between his knees. He had a pile of peanuts on his lap, and, as he gazed out onto the street, he picked up a peanut, smashed the shell between his fingers and tossed the kernel into his mouth.

  ‘As-salaam walaikum,’ I said.

  ‘Walaikum as-salaam.’ He looked at me apologetically, gesturing to the peanuts that prevented him from getting up.

  ‘I’m looking for a man,’ I said. ‘A man who attacked me a few months ago. Do you remember him?’

  He shook his head. ‘No.’

  ‘It was right in front of your shop. You came over, argued with him. You pulled him away.’

  He sifted through his lap, pulled out another peanut and smashed it against the floor with the heel of his hand. ‘You must have got the wrong street. Lots of barber-shops around here.’

  It had stopped raining, but the air was packed and humid and I could see sweat gathering in droplets through his thinning hair. ‘You don’t remember me?’

  He gazed up and stared into my face, as if to be absolutely sure. ‘Forgive me.’

  I stepped back so I could read the sign above his shop. NAVEED NAPITH, that was it. I was so sure. If Gabriela had come with me, she could have confirmed it, but I still hadn’t been able to get hold of her. I paced back and forth to the shops on the left and right. There was a cigarette stall a few feet away, an electrical shop selling batteries and bits of wire, and a tailor’s. No one remembered me. I crossed the road, silently mocking myself for making the trip, ready to give up, when someone called out for me to wait. When I turned around I found a woman in red heels and a kameez dotted with sequins. She had short hair, a pointed chin and bright, clever eyes, a face that seemed out of place on this street.

  ‘I know who you want,’ she said. ‘My husband won’t tell you because he thinks you’ll call the cops.’

  I grabbed her wrist. ‘You know him? What’s his name?’

  She snapped her head back. ‘Why d’you want to know?’

  ‘I need to speak to him. It’s important.’

  She tossed her chin towards the barber-shop. ‘Anwar. Keeps looking for some girl called Megna. All day long he’s saying Megna this, Megna that. And also a kid.’

  My heart dropped several inches into my stomach. ‘He has a child?’

  ‘He’s not a reliable type. He comes and goes. One day he’s working in construction, the next day he’s a shipbreaker. Lost a lot of money too, I heard.’

  ‘What’s he doing now?’

  She crossed her arms in front of her. ‘He disappeared a few weeks ago. We haven’t heard anything. You related to him?’

  The back of my shirt was plastered with sweat. ‘Something like that. Where was the last place he worked?’

  ‘You don’t look related.’

  ‘Not exactly related. Did you say shipbreaking?’

  She took my arm and pulled me back towards the barber-shop. ‘Let’s ask Naveed,’ she said.

  Naveed was brushing the last of the peanut shells from his lungi. ‘I remember now,’ he said, looking his wife up and down and chewing the inside of his mouth. ‘It was Chittagong Shipbreaking.’

  Naveed’s wife wove her arm through his. ‘There’s no such place as Chittagong Shipbreaking. Now tell this poor lady the truth, can’t you see she’s not going to snitch?’

  ‘I won’t,’ I said, ‘I won’t tell anyone, I won’t get him into trouble. Please.’ There was a rough breeze coming from the shore, and I was almost shivering now as my skin dried and cooled.

  Naveed was still chewing his lip when he said, ‘It’s DhakaSylhet Shipbreaking partners,’ he said.

  Chittagong. Dhaka. Sylhet. He was just naming cities. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘He’s sure,’ the wife nodded. ‘He wouldn’t lie in front of me.’ And she grabbed his cheek between her index and middle knuckle and pinched hard.

  ‘Okay. Thank you.’

  ‘Give us a name,’ she said as I turned to go. She pointed to her stomach, which I could see now was protruding. She must have been six or seven months pregnant.

  ‘Mohona,’ I said, already speeding down the lane, pulling my phone out of my pocket to see if I could find a number for Dhaka-Sylhet Shipbreaking.

  *

  ‘Where have you been all day?’ Gabriela said when she saw me.

  It took me a moment to realise what she was talking about. Oh, yes, the injured men – we were supposed to meet them again today. ‘Sorry. Something came up.’

  ‘Were you with Mo?’ she said. ‘He said he’d be there, but he didn’t show up either.’

  ‘No, I was – I was trying to find someone.’

  ‘They’re saying there might be a cyclone tonight.’

  ‘Do you remember that guy, the one who came up to me near the beach?’

  ‘You mean the guy who thought you were someone else?’

  ‘I was looking for him.’

  She tugged on her shirt, impatient. ‘We need to finish the interviews before we get those men into trouble.’

  I wasn’t in the mood to hear a lecture, so I let my thoughts drift, trying to remember Anwar’s face, trying to remember exactly what he’d said to me. ‘He called me Megna, right?’

  ‘I don’t know. I suppose so. You understand what I’m saying?’

  I nodded vaguely. Then suddenly she was very agitated about Mo, and said we had to go and find him immediately. ‘If Ali finds out he’s been helping us, it’s going to be a fucking disaster.’

  It had started to rain. I tried to convince Gabriela to wait a while, until the weather improved, but she wanted to leave right away. It was getting dark, and usually you could see the light of the cutters’ blowtorches from the bedroom window. I looked now but it was impossible to make anything out, thick sheets of rain covering everything, and no moon.

  ‘You can’t even see anything.’

  ‘I have this bad feeling.’

  I was tired. I leaned over the dining table and rested my face in the crook of my elbow. ‘I’m sure he’s fine, Gabi. He’s been here longer than any of us, and they have storms here all the time.’

  ‘Please,’ Gabriela said.

  I closed my eyes and leaned back on the sofa. I was hungry. In the fridge, there was a bowl of chicken curry covered with a plate. I fished out the chicken with my fingers, eating it cold. Mo would have cooked it. I thought of his arms, those delicate elbows, leaning over the stone pestle.

  ‘Let’s go to the beach,’ I sighed. ‘We’ll find Ali and he might have some idea.’

  I found an umbrella in one of the closets, and we set off on foot. It was only a few yards between the apartment and the Prosperity gates, but in the dark and the rain our progress was slow. Gabriela was trying to tell me something, but I couldn’t hear her. We locked arms. The gates were closed, but there was always a gap between the gate and the wall, and we had squeezed through before. Gabriela had wrapped a scarf around her head and face, but I could feel the rain pounding my exposed shoulder and splashing onto my neck. Passing through the gate, we saw a light on in the Prosperity office, but when we stepped inside, it was empty, the chairs pushed under the desks and Ali’s computer switched off. The wind picked up, tossing a scattering of sand against the office windows.

  I told Gabriela we should wait. ‘Maybe Ali’s gone to check on everyone. It’s unlocked, he might come back.’

  Gabriela unwrapped her sodden scarf and draped it against the back of a chair. ‘Mo was trying to tell me something, but I didn’t understand the Bangla,’ she said. ‘Something about a girl.’

  ‘What girl?’

  ‘That girl he tried to tell us about before, you remember?’

  I wandered over to Ali’s desk. I knew he kept food in his drawer, and I rifled through his desk, fishing out a packet of Marie biscuits and offering them to Gabriela. ‘He never said anything after that day.’ Mo hadn’t confided in me – of course he hadn’t. I couldn’t be trusted. I bit down on t
he dry biscuit, the flavour of butter and nigella seeds flooding my mouth.

  ‘He came home the other day with a cut on his face.’ Gabriela tapped her eyebrow. ‘Just here. So I asked him what happened and he said “Ma”. That means mother, right? His mother?’

  We waited to see if Ali would show up. I tried him a few times on his mobile, but the lines were down.

  ‘Isn’t there someone we can call, the police maybe?’ Gabriela asked.

  ‘There are so many stray children,’ I said, repeating something I had heard my mother say many times.

  ‘I want to check the dormitory,’ Gabriela said. ‘Come with me or I won’t be able to talk to anyone.’

  They would find it strange, two women turning up after dark with wet hair and clothes. I thought about explaining this to Gabriela but I knew I wouldn’t get anywhere. Outside it seemed the rain had abated somewhat, though we still had to duck forward against the strength of the wind. We made our way as quickly as we could, our feet making impressions on the sand. As my eyes adjusted to the dark, I caught glimpses of Grace’s truncated hull.

  All the dormitory doors were shut. ‘Upstairs,’ Gabriela shouted into the wind. I heard the dull clap of thunder in the distance, and the rain came down hard again, pouring over the concrete steps as we attempted to make our way up. I banged on the first door. When there was no reply, I travelled down the corridor and tried the other three, pounding my fists as hard as I could. Gabriela too. They probably couldn’t hear anything. We went back to the first door and tried again, shouting to be let in. It finally opened and we were ushered inside before the rain followed us in. Tube lights illuminated the room, windowless except for a small opening near the ceiling, which was criss-crossed with metal bars. Rain was coming in through this opening, and someone had placed a bucket and a few bits of clothing underneath.

  There were maybe twenty men in the room. I didn’t recognise any of them. ‘Mo?’ Gabriela said. ‘Mo?’

  ‘Have any of you seen the boy?’ Zubaida asked. ‘We’re looking for him.’

  ‘Who sent you?’ someone asked.

  ‘No one. But he’s been missing all day and we can’t find him.’

  Someone offered me a dry cloth. I wiped my face and passed it to Gabriela, who did the same. ‘Could he be somewhere in the building?’ I asked.

  ‘Could be.’ Two men offered to search, ducking out into the rain. It was awkward, looking around for something to do while we waited.

  ‘Are the storms always like this in summer?’ I asked one of the men.

  ‘Worse,’ he said.

  ‘Which crew are you?’

  ‘Cutting,’ he said.

  I nodded. The beds were bunked three high. Underneath the beds and against the walls their things were jammed together, battered trunks and plastic buckets and cups and plates made of tin. A clothes line, heavy with lungis and gamchas, hung between the beds. Some of them had photographs of wives and children pinned to the side of their bunks.

  ‘How long has Mo been on the beach?’ I asked. ‘Does anyone know?’

  ‘Was here when I came,’ someone said. ‘That was three years ago.’

  ‘They tell me he was born here,’ another chimed in.

  Again, I was struck with how little I knew. How few questions I’d asked. ‘Doesn’t he have any people?’

  The door opened again. The two men who had gone in search of Mo reappeared. ‘No one’s seen him,’ they said, water pooling around their feet. ‘Boss sir says you should go back.’

  ‘Mr Ali is here?’

  ‘In the office.’

  ‘We’re going,’ I said to Gabriela.

  ‘Can you tell him,’ one of them said, ‘that you came to look for the boy? He doesn’t like us to walk around.’

  Gabriela said to give them my phone number. ‘In case Mo turns up.’

  I obeyed, writing it down on a piece of paper, knowing they didn’t have mobile phones, and that they probably couldn’t read anyway, but it made me feel better too, because now I was also starting to worry. I had never known Mo to be anywhere but on the beach or at the apartment. Sometimes he shopped for our food at the market. But the market would be closed now. I wished again that he had told me more about this girl, his friend. The guilt pricked at me again, but there was no point in staying here. I was wet and cold. We would explain everything to Ali and then go home.

  Ali was calling someone on the landline when we struggled back through the storm and into his office. I was aware of the clothes sticking to me, and of Gabriela, whose pale blouse was showing the outline of her bra. Ali gestured for us to come in, listening to someone on the other end. ‘Yes, sir. Of course. We will do all the accounting, of course. Storm came without warning, sir.’ It must be Harrison. ‘Very sorry, sir. Yes, yes. I will do it immediately, of course.’

  ‘Something the matter?’ I asked when he’d hung up. I noticed we had neglected to return the biscuits to his drawer.

  ‘It’s the storm. We are trying to assess the damage.’

  His phone rang again. He excused himself and wandered into the corridor, speaking in a low voice. ‘Forgive me,’ he said when he returned. ‘Sir is very concerned. Please, sit down. You were looking for me? In this storm?’

  ‘We are in search of Mo,’ Gabriela said. ‘Have you seen him?’

  I didn’t have time to signal to her. ‘You came out in this storm to look for the boy?’ Ali was confused, almost offended, that we would make such an effort and put ourselves in an embarrassing situation just for the sake of Mo.

  I rolled my eyes and lowered my voice. ‘It’s her,’ I said, glancing at Gabriela over my shoulder. ‘She’s become … attached.’

  Ali nodded knowingly, as if foreign women came to the beach and took people under their wing all the time. ‘I understand,’ he said. ‘But I’m afraid I can’t help you.’

  ‘You could send out a search party,’ Gabriela said, putting her damp palms on his desk. ‘We haven’t been able to find him anywhere.’

  He moved his eyes to his lap, to the other side of the room, the ceiling, anything to avoid looking at her. ‘Please don’t worry, madam. The boy is used to these types of storms. You will see, he’ll turn up tomorrow, grinning from ear to ear. I assure you, he’s perfectly safe.’

  Gabriela shook her head, looking as if she was about to cry. ‘I have a bad feeling,’ she said again.

  ‘Gabi,’ I said, ‘Mr Ali knows what he’s talking about. Let’s go home. Maybe Mo’s come looking for us. And if he’s still missing tomorrow, we’ll make some calls.’

  ‘Yes,’ Ali said. ‘If he hasn’t turned up by morning – which I’m sure he will – we will investigate further.’

  I led her away. ‘Thank you, Mr Ali.’

  ‘Shall I escort you home?’

  ‘No, really, it’s not far.’ At the door, I paused. ‘What are you doing here so late yourself, Mr Ali?’

  He waved his hand in front of his face. ‘There is the matter of your friend’s piano. We are going to transport it first thing tomorrow morning. Sir has ordered an air-conditioned truck to carry it to Dhaka. But the storm has made it difficult. Nothing to worry about. Please, go home.’

  Outside, the darkness was thickened by rain. We paused for a moment, as if by standing there we would find a trace of Mo. Gabriela suddenly broke away and started running towards the sea. I followed her, and after a few paces I almost knocked into the group of men gathered on shore. I could hear Gabriela’s voice asking, in her awkward Bangla, for Mo. More men crowded onto the beach. Through the dense sheets of water, I could make out a milky moon, and as I was forced further towards the water’s edge, I saw lights illuminating the breached hull of Grace. The crowd grew around me, pressing against me, water falling from above, and, it seemed, also from the sides and from below, and very quickly my hair was plastered against my face and I was soaked through. I felt a hand grabbing my elbow, and when I turned around Gabriela was gesturing for me to bring my ear close to her mouth. ‘They’r
e angry about the piano,’ she said.

  I looked around at the workers. They had pulled themselves into a semicircle, and in the middle was the man with the heavy forehead who had taken me to see the injured men. He raised his arm up now, throwing his voice into the crowd.

  ‘The chair is coming!’ someone said. I lost sight of Gabriela. My eyes adjusted to the half-dark, and I made out a crude wooden ramp laid against the side of Grace. A few minutes later, a knot of men came out, balancing something very large and heavy on their shoulders. The crowd around me shifted, raising their voices higher. The men on the ramp started to move. It was a large rectangular crate. There were three men at the bottom, while the others pushed from above. Everyone started shouting as they made their way, inch by inch, down the ramp. I stood transfixed, understanding now that it was the piano – your piano, Elijah – that they were trying to manoeuvre out of the ship, and every second seemed to stretch as we waited, and they were halfway down and the shouts of anger turned into cheers, as if it had gone from being a protest to a crowd at a cricket match. I heard laughter. Then, it happened: one of them hesitated, broke the pattern, his arms going down when they should have been up, and everything moved very quickly after that: the crate rolling over on its side, pulling everyone to the edge of the ramp, the leader telling them to hold on, hold steady, but from where I was standing, I could see there was no way they were going to save it, so I ran towards them and shouted for them to let go, let go, save yourselves, it doesn’t matter, telling everyone to stand back, because it was going to fall and they would be crushed beneath it, and they rushed back and allowed it to fall, twenty, thirty feet below them, the crate breaking open like an egg, and the sound, a thousand notes being played all at once, the clap of every hammer against every string, the rain a drone of accompaniment, and then the rip of breaking wood, a tearing, ugly sound, and the instrument spilling out from inside, in pieces of black and bone, and then, a flash of colour, a human cry among the sound of breaking, a body, falling and then another, tumbling together and matching the cries of the piano as it shattered above and below them, and finally we saw, pinned under a piece of the crate and the heavy lid of the piano, their arms around each other, a pair of children. And before I blacked out, I heard a voice. ‘My girl,’ the voice said, ‘my girl. My girl.’