“Your husband loves you,” I say.
“Of course he does. He’s given me this new sari to wear tonight. It shows, doesn’t it, how much he cares for me?”
“But does even the most beautiful sari constitute love?”
“Yes,” she insists. “One gives unstintingly if one is in love.
When one feels intensely, one wants to give everything—money, inheritance, all that one has.”
Dolon arrives late.
She insists Anis will join her, believing that I know nothing of what has happened to him. “What can I say?” Dolon says. “He’s invested so much and he has to be so careful. His business will collapse if he doesn’t pay the closest attention. He sent me some money yesterday.” Beads of perspiration have gathered on her brow.
I wipe them away, asking her, as warmly as I can, “And what will you do with the money, Dolon?”
“Buy something for Ananda, of course.”
“That is entirely unnecessary.” I feel so sorry for her, knowing what I do about the actual state of her life. “Buy something for yourself.”
The next morning Haroon finally goes back to work. I know how much he resents having to be away from Ananda. He calls, it seems, every half hour to ask what his child is doing. “He’s asleep.” “He’s nursing.” “He’s in Habib’s arms.” “Amma is changing his diapers.” Even Hasan rocks this child, and several times a day everyone in turn grabs the phone to tell Haroon what his wondrous son is now doing. “He’s smiling!” “He’s lifting his right arm.” Everyone is involved in his baths, his naps and his meals. Everyone that is, but me.
A few days after we return from the clinic, Ranu races in to tell me that she and Hasan have arranged to go to Saudi Arabia after all.
“Our life has completely turned around,” she says.
“Why do you say that?” I’m suspicious of this new plan.
“Hasan will go first, and I will follow.”
“And you won’t miss us?”
“Why should I? I’m looking forward to a place of our own. It’s comfortable here with the family—I don’t have to worry about where to sleep, or what to eat, but I’ll breathe more easily in my own house, no matter how modestly we have to live.” Ranu is still in her teens. I was bouncing balls in Wari at her age and here she is talking like a woman of the world.
“So Ranu,” I ask her, lowering my voice. “Does Hasan love you?”
Ranu puckers her lips. “Love? What does one need that for! I want a home, and children. I dream of a house to decorate as I like, of waiting for my husband to come home in the evening.”
“And that’s enough? If you don’t care about love, don’t you long for passion?”
“I have had passion. For love and passion, I skipped school and went to the movies with Hasan. Then I dressed in my elder sister’s clothes and sat down as his bride.”
“Do you mean to tell me that during the ceremony you sat while Hasan stood up?” Ranu bursts out laughing. “In actual fact, we both sat down at the office of the justice of the peace and got married, but where I live, you say a girl ‘sits down’ to marry and a boy ‘takes a bride!’”
“Why is that? It seems strange to me.”
“Because girls stay at home and boys go out to work,” Ranu says, as if stating the obvious, and then she laughs some more.
I feel like having a serious talk with her. “Ranu, get out!” I’d say. “Leave this dreary situation behind. Read. Study. Make something of yourself!” But I know she’s not interested. Once she asked me what she had to gain by getting a college degree, and I had no convincing answer. She’d left school after seventh grade and I hold a degree in physics, but we both run a man’s household.
In the house, there is still a festive feeling in the air, even though the carnival has come to an end. Balloons still hang from the ceiling and the kitchen is overflowing with food, which is lucky because visitors continue to drop by. Soon, though, the days resume their normal rhythm and again I hear Dolon’s muffled sobs when I wake in the middle of the night. Amma returns to worrying about Hasan and Anis, and I am back in the kitchen cooking, handing off Ananda to others. My father-in-law grows grimmer by the day, and then one morning Amma asks if I’ve heard anything from Chittagong. Anis is still in prison for smuggling, and now that the baby is born, she had expected Haroon to go there to see about bailing him out.
“I’ve heard nothing about Chittagong,” I tell her.
“But Haroon said he’d see about the bail.”
“He speaks to me of nothing but his son. I can’t imagine he’ll leave Ananda even for an hour,” I tell her, returning to chopping vegetables for supper.
“But
bhabi
, he has to . . . Anis is his brother-in-law, his sister’s husband.” Out the window, Habib is strolling the garden, the baby in his arms. “And,” Amma says, “he has to think about Habib, too. The boy hasn’t taken his exams.” I go outside and take the baby from his youngest uncle’s arms.
“So, Habib, what’s the news about your studies?”
“They’re in the doldrums,” he says with a grin.
“And your music, has that also come to an end?”
“No,” he says, “of course not
bhabi
. And have I told you the name of our group? Different Touch! Isn’t that great?”
“Why do all the boys give their bands English names nowadays?”
Habib laughs, wriggling his slim body like some creeping plant. “You talk as if you live in a different era!
Bhabi
, are you feeling like an old lady?”
“I’m a mother now.”
“Don’t pamper Habib about his singing,” Amma interjects. “Tell him to study and become a man.”
Suddenly Amma values my opinion! Suddenly I’m considered wise, not silly! That’s why the rent from downstairs now comes straight to me. Haroon has seen to that. He tells me the money is for household expenses. I am now the person who does all the shopping, makes the menus, supervises the cooking.
“If you don’t study, Habib, Haroon will banish you to another country.”
“Oh
bhabi
, don’t let him do that! The band is finally successful! You’ll see. I will become someone someday.”
Later Amma thanks me for taking Habib to task, but Haroon pays no attention when she pleads with him to go to Chittagong, to see after Hasan, or to set Habib straight. His attention is entirely absorbed by little Ananda. He has hired a twelve-year-old girl to take care of his son—to wash his diapers, warm his milk, bathe him, and above all, to see that he doesn’t fall out of bed in his sleep. In spite of the fact
that Ananda is just weeks old and cannot yet play, he’s gotten him a car that you wind up and a talking doll. It is Haroon who rises at night when the baby cries and changes him, he who takes him out in the stroller in the late afternoon when he comes home from work.
“It seems that Ananda is all yours and not mine at all,” I protest. Haroon smiles, a smile of satisfaction. I’ve taken to calling him “Ananda’s Baba” adopting the family form of address, and Haroon is pleased as punch. When I shout “Ananda’s Baba, where have you gone?” or “Come here Ananda’s Baba!” his eyes light up with pride.
Everywhere he goes, he finds an excuse to take Ananda with him, showing the baby’s marvelous accomplishments to anyone who expresses the slightest interest. These days Haroon no longer lifts Somaiya and whirls her in his arms, and she sits silent and forlorn, watching her uncle, completely besotted, play with his infant son. It gives me some satisfaction to see the family so upended. And I am also happy in my own secret way to see how much Haroon loves our little Ananda.
18
T
ime passes before we know what has happened, disappearing like a flock of birds rises into the sky, never to return. If I am being poetic, please accept my apologies. Time passes, free-flowing, unlike the lives of mothers and daughters, of wives and mothers-in-law, women who live confined within the walls of kitchens and nurseries, inhabiting lives that they have not chosen, or have chosen unaware.
Sleeping, I stretch a hand toward Ananda, and suddenly I’m awake. I am about to shake Haroon from sleep and ask him where our child has gone, but then I remember that Ananda is one year old now and sleeps in Amma’s room, in a bed of his own.
More time passes and soon he is at nursery school in the neighborhood. He’s no longer small—he can walk and run and talk and paint, and even, placing a small finger on a letter, begin to distinguish words. Haroon’s happiness has not diminished in the slightest, and because of his diligent teaching, he has been rewarded. Even before he was able to say “Ma,” Ananda called for his father, “Baba.” And then,
“Baba is eating.” “Baba is walking.” And “I want Baba’s lap.” Haroon, of course, was ecstatic. To honor his intense love for his son, he has changed the name of his business from Modern Traders to Ananda Trading.
Much has changed in our household these three years of Ananda’s short life. Haroon’s father died of a heart attack, Hasan and Ranu have left for Saudi Arabia, and Habib has given up Different Touch and gotten a job. Dolon is divorced and she and Somaiya have come to live with us. I still hear Dolon’s cries at night; I fear she is slowly losing her mind. She talks to herself, rips apart Somaiya’s school books and throws them into pails of water. One day in a fit, she tossed Ananda’s gold chain out the window. Amma weeps most of the time, sits for hours praying, hands lifted to the sky. Sebati and her husband have left the apartment downstairs and others have moved in—a middle-aged couple with two sons and four daughters. Before she left, Sebati came to see me. She’d heard from Afzal, she said. He’d married an Australian girl, taken citizenship there, and was contented. Sebati transferred from Dhaka Medical College to a hospital in Mymensingh in the north and Anwar was working for a nongovernmental organization headquartered near Chittagong.
I too have changed. I no longer keep my head covered and I go out alone if I have to, to shop, roam the city, or travel to Wari to see my parents and sister. Often I spend the day with Shipra or get together with my old friends, Nadira, Chandana, Subhash, and Arzu. Chandana is married now and Nadira has decided to remain single. Subhash is still considering marriage, but he is busy looking after his
family. He tutors for a living because he hasn’t yet found a full-time job. Arzu is working in his father’s firm.
For many years we hadn’t gotten together as a group, so one day, I suggest to Haroon that we invite my friends for a reunion dinner.
“Your friends?”
“Yes, my friends.”
“Which friends?”
I look at him with steady eyes and say without a trace of emotion. “You remember them! My college friends and the boys I knew in Wari—Subhash, Nadira, Chandana, and Arzu.”
“Oh yes, of course!” And we invite them and ransack the best markets, buying up the freshest fish and lamb, the most luscious produce, and sweets of the highest quality. Rosuni and Sakhina set about chopping and cooking. It will be a sumptuous feast! Haroon dons a fresh panjabi and pyjama and sprinkles himself with cologne, and I wear a white sari with a red border and a gardenia in my hair. As we await our guests, I can only smile, brushing aside all the years of heartache. My husband greets my old friends with a broad smile. Despite our long separation, my ties with these friends have not weakened, and I sit down with them, lighthearted. When I explain that it was I, not Haroon, who was responsible for the long silence, they relax and laugh as if he too were their old friend. Happily, we eat together, falling into gales of laughter as we remember the days at college and childhood in Wari. When I see a trace of sadness cross Subhash’s face, I want to ask him about his brother Sujit’s death, but I do not because I don’t want to break the spell.
Everyone believed Sujit had died in an automobile accident, but my father told me the real story. Sujit had gone alone to kick a football on the grounds of Armanitola, the high school near the Star Mosque. A couple of boys who looked familiar called to him and then grabbed him and took him to the entrance of the mosque. “Why have you brought me here?” Sujit asked. In one voice, the boys responded, “Because you are an infidel.” Sujit turned and began to run, but the boys caught up with him, dragged him to the river, and there, throngs of young men emerged from the darkness and hacked him to death. I am deep in the horror of that moment, when the laughter of my friends brings me back, and I turn to Subhash, “Don’t forget your friends after you marry!”
“Subhash’s marriage isn’t taking place, my dear!” Chandana said. “Haven’t you heard? The dastardly Mina has disappeared!”
“After such a long courtship?” Subhash had been completely besotted with her, and Mina seemed to return his affections. “Well, clearly she doesn’t deserve such devotion,” I said, trying to repair my faux pas. I had tried to cheer Subhash, but had succeeded only in bringing up another painful subject. He hadn’t told me anything of his brother’s death or that his mother, Kakima, who had lived with us all those years, was suffering from cancer. I look at my dear friend and still see the young boy he was when I first knew him. “Don’t leave us, Subhash,” I say to myself. “The river that flows through our city may be sullied with Sujit’s blood, but there is love for you here with us.”
Click. Arzu has picked up his new camera and caught me in my reverie. Subhash is embarrassed and makes Arzu
click again because he thinks he looked awful in the first shot, and then Arzu says, “Haroonbhai, go embrace your wife.” Haroon does so. “I want you both smiling,” Arzu says, and we do. Smile. Click. And Arzu clicks on and on and then Chandana rushes out for Ananda and puts him on our laps, and, click, lo and behold, the image of a happy family! And click again, and, with one arm holding Ananda and the other around Haroon, I am the smiling wife of an equally smiling husband and the smiling mother of his son. Click. Click. I ask Arzu to give the camera to Haroon.
“Now you take some,” I say, and I stand among my old friends, leaning against Chandana, putting my arm around Arzu. Haroon, the dutiful husband, shows no irritation whatsoever. Perhaps he thinks I am at last indissolubly tied to his family, a bond effected by the joining of our blood in the veins of our child.