I resumed trying to mollify Haroon, running my fingers through his hair, stroking his face, asking him over and over again why he was so sad. Instead of answering, he jerked away in disgust, threw my hand off, and turned to the wall, his silence beating at me like a hammer. I still longed for Haroon to behave like Dipu had when he discovered Shipra was pregnant, dancing around with anticipation. Looking at Haroon, I felt sad and frightened, as if my heart were about to explode.
I couldn’t bear it any longer. Leaving his bedside, I wandered to the window where I always sought refuge. It did not fail me, and I stayed there until well past midnight, staring into the night. Haroon did not call me to bed, but I knew that he wasn’t sleeping, that all night he wouldn’t sleep a wink.
5
A
s I packed his lunch the next morning, I asked Haroon again why he was so melancholy. He said nothing. “Why are you making me suffer like this?” I asked. Without a word, he put his tie on, as if no task required more effort than tying a Windsor knot. I couldn’t stop asking myself if I’d done something to deserve this silent treatment, but I could think of nothing. How was it that Haroon was unhappy even though I was pregnant with his child? I went back to our room after he left, and I went to the bathroom and began to weep. Just as I emerged, wiping away my tears, Amma stepped into our room.
“Why has Haroon left without breakfast?” she asked.
“I cannot tell you, Amma. I tried to make him eat.”
“And he wouldn’t?”
“No.”
“And you have no idea what’s the matter with him?”
“I haven’t a clue. I have asked him many times what’s wrong, and he won’t say a thing.”
“Have you quarreled?”
“No,” I answered feebly, my eyes focused on the ground.
“My boy is so good-natured! Just leave him alone, and he’ll smile again,” Amma said, closing the door behind her as she left the room.
I could hear her heavy steps in the hallway, but all I could do was hang my head. Amma had not asked whether I had eaten or if I was hurt by her son’s behavior. Here she was, without knowing I was pregnant, advising me how to keep her son happy. I mustn’t do anything to annoy him. I must please him. My proper place was at his feet. If I did not please my husband, I could be subjected to the serpent’s sting, forced to swallow bile, burned in the fires of hell.
I remained in the kitchen the whole morning. Rosuni cut the vegetables and Sakhina scrubbed the pots and pans. At lunch Amma looked at my plate and sighed. “Poor Haroon, he must be starving!” I pushed my plate away and got up, leaving my food untouched.
“I don’t feel like eating,” I lied. “I’ll wait until your son comes home.” A smile of satisfaction crossed Amma’s face. The ground shifted under my feet; it was as if I stood at the edge of a deep abyss. Of course it would hardly have been comfortable trying to eat in her presence, given my belief that I was the root of all of her son’s problems, and, by extension, all of hers. All that afternoon, to distract myself, I went about the household with increased dedication. I prepared tea for Abba and rubbed coconut oil into the parting of Amma’s hair. As I drew her hair into a chignon, she told me stories of her youth, when the neighbors came crowding to catch a glimpse of her long luxurious hair, which fell to her knees in silky waves the color of obsidian.
Soon it was time for Haroon to come home. I reminded myself of Amma’s injunction—to keep Haroon happy no matter what. She was undoubtedly wishing me well when she advised me to cook what he liked best, to dress and do my hair in a way that would remind him of the girl he married; and never, never to rebuff him in the bedroom. “It’s not difficult, you know, for an intelligent woman like you to keep her husband happy!” she exclaimed.
I dressed myself in the Kancheepuram sari, the one Haroon had given me for my birthday before we were married. I tied my hair with golden ribbons, rouged my lips, and applied kohl to my eyes. Seeing me all dressed up, Ranu joked, “Going somewhere?”
“No.”
“Why are you all dressed up then?”
“Just for fun,” I said quickly. I couldn’t bring myself to tell her I had dressed so that Haroon would be pleased with me. So that my husband would talk and eat. And take me into his arms. But later, when Habib asked, I was emboldened to tell a happy lie. “Haroon and I are going to the theater.”
Honestly I was getting ready to entice my husband into joyfulness. I had been moping for the past weeks, sick with my pregnancy, hardly worth talking to. Perhaps if he saw me dressed beautifully, he would take my hand again and we would go out on the town. After all, this was the husband who had taken me to the Swiss, the same man who had pulled me toward the best sari shop in Dhaka when I would have been content to visit a bookstore. How poignant it was now to think of those afternoons on the riverbank
when he listened as I sang Tagore.
Tonight, under the light of the full moon . . .
“Where have you been?” Haroon barked when he stomped in from work.
“Nowhere.”
“Why are you dressed up?” I felt sheepish. Now that he had spoken so harshly, how could I say that I wished to dazzle him with my beauty, to remind him that he had not been cheated in his choice of a wife. I said nothing as he began to change into the pyjama he always wore at home.
“Let’s go somewhere!” I urged. “Like old times! Those were happy days!”
“Happy days!” Haroon said. He staggered back as if I’d struck him.
“We ought to be happy for the baby’s sake,” I said.
“Baby!” He turned his face away with a jerk.
Haroon left the room in a huff. I followed and found him stretched out on Amma’s bed.
“Are you ill?” I asked him as Amma hovered nearby.
“Maybe,” he said. Amma was immediately anxious. She ordered Dolon to sit near her brother, dispatched Ranu to fetch him a glass of water with fresh lime, and suggested firmly that I stroke his hand. But Haroon refused all attention. He didn’t need any drink, he repeated, and he didn’t want the women of the house fussing. He wanted to be left alone.
I left Amma’s room and climbed slowly upstairs to our room and my window. My face was still made up and I was still wearing my Kancheepuram sari. Looking up, I considered how close to me the sky was. It was this blue strip of
sky that was my confidante. What might that blueness say about my husband’s mysterious condition? Had he fallen in love with someone else? Or was he thinking of Lipi, the girl he had once loved? Haroon always insisted that old romance was finished, but hadn’t I seen love rekindle, bloom again from dried up roots like a dahlia in July? It had happened to my childhood playmate Arzu. He had been in love with a girl when he was very young and barely remembered her when a chance meeting revived his passion, causing him to abandon a current girlfriend for that old love.
Standing next to the open window, I was desolate. My husband’s house where I lived with his family had turned into a place where my most reliable companion was the blue sky and a quiet bedroom.
But soon I heard Haroon shouting. I found him, still on his mother’s bed, screaming at Dolon who had done no more than offer to massage his temples. “
Bouma
,” Amma said, addressing me as daughter-in-law, “where did you disappear to? Will you please find out what’s bothering him?” Again Haroon insisted there was nothing wrong and that he didn’t want me around. In fact, he said, he’d be really relieved if I left the room and got busy doing something else. But I had already prepared dinner and all the rooms were swept clean. Even Rosuni and Sakhina had finished their chores; I could hear them through the window, chatting on Hasan’s balcony above.
“Would you like to have tea?” I asked Haroon.
“No,” he said.
“Go and get some,” Amma said, and so I went to the
kitchen to prepare tea for everybody. As I entered the room with the tea tray, Haroon left, insisting again that he wanted nothing.
“What have you said to him, Bouma?” Amma said.
“I haven’t said anything.” My head was bare, and I felt awkward at seeming to disrespect Amma, but there was no way, holding the tray, that I could get the sari over my head without the tray capsizing.
“You must have. Otherwise why would he be so upset?”
“Perhaps something’s wrong at the office,” I mumbled.
“Abba has inquired and there’s no problem,” Amma said. “It’s you he’s not talking to.” Her tone was definitive, and I could tell by their expressions that she and Dolon had come to the conclusion that I was the root of Haroon’s unhappiness. I decided to try again, carrying the tea into our bedroom.
Haroon was prostrate on our bed. I put down the tray, sat next to him, and placed my hands gently on his shoulders, but no sooner had I touched him than he arched like a bow, repelled. Usually if Haroon didn’t want tea in the afternoon, he preferred a kiss.
“What’s the matter?” I said, but again, he turned his head away. I sipped. “The tea isn’t bad!” I said lamely, not prompting the slightest response. “Why are you doing this to me?” I asked, putting the cup down. “How can you be upset now, when we have just had this wonderful news? What are you hiding from me?”
Haroon lay silent with his eyes shut. I had always handled his moods pretty well before we were married, but now
I felt as if I were speaking a language he’d never understood. Quietly I got up, and as I walked around the room, I uncovered my head.
“Haroon, my darling,” I thought to myself, “out of love for you, I’ve worn the sari you’ve given me. I’ve put up my hair in the way you like and I’ve placed a dot on my forehead. Am I not the bride you took so eagerly that first time? I’ve colored my lips with the red that once made you go wild for a kiss. Can you not take me in your arms, brush your lips against my eyes, let your mouth travel down to where your child sleeps, tenderly caressing my belly so that you do not disturb its slumber? Who will our child resemble, you or me?”
I was back in the trance of love I’d felt for him when he was the bold young man on the riverbank. “If our child is a boy,” I continued to myself, “he will inherit your beautiful eyes, your forehead, your fine nose. I’m deep in an ocean of happiness, but see, I’ve kept our thrilling news from everyone else. How I want you, Haroon. How I want you on my arm, radiant, as we announce the coming birth of our first child.”
I said none of these things, but I sat down on the bed again and gave Haroon a vigorous shake. “Tell me, which of us will our child resemble?”
Not a word came from his lips and his eyes remained closed.
“You know how discreet I am. I haven’t told anyone the news, not even my family.”
Then he opened his eyes. Not being able to read meaning into his sudden presence, I whispered, smiling shyly, “Look,
you must tell me who it will look like! Look,” I said, pouting like a little girl, “I know you want a boy, but a girl would be just as nice, wouldn’t it? I’ll name her Bhalibassa, in celebration of the spirit of our marriage, a name that means love. What do you think?”
Haroon looked at me, bewildered. “Are you not in the least eager to make an announcement? Don’t give them a shock,” I pleaded. “You must at least tell your mother.” I leaned into him, bringing my lips close to his. This was what he always wanted, but he did not respond. His eyes remained cold, fixed as stone until at last he spoke.
“So who do you think it will look like?” he asked.
“You, of course,” I said, running my fingers through his hair, laughing, bending over his body as I outlined his features with a finger. “Your eyes, your lips, your nose.”
Haroon pushed my hand away. “I’ll take you to the doctor tomorrow.”
“Why tomorrow?”
“You can ask why when we get there.”
“Not Dr. Mazundar—she said I should come back in three months.”
Haroon scrambled out of bed. “To abort the baby.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Just what I said. We have to get rid of this child.”
“What are you saying?”
“I’m telling you what needs to be done.”
My body began to tremble. “But why?” I asked. The trembling was uncontrollable. My hands and face turned numb as the room swayed and I clutched at the mattress to steady myself. I began to weep out loud. Haroon stepped
back when I began to wail, but he didn’t try to comfort me. I grabbed him with all my might. “This is our first child!” I was shouting now, tears bursting from my eyes. “It’s our first child and you want to get rid of it? What’s come over you? Who has put these evil thoughts into your mind? Who has come into your life that you want our child out of the way?”
“So you think it’s possible to conceive in six weeks time,” Haroon snorted, standing there, looking down at me.
“What are you talking about?”
“Just what I say.”
“I don’t understand!”
“Yes you do.”
“But the doctor said I was with child. She didn’t suggest anything abnormal. Don’t you believe the doctor?”
“Of course I believe the doctor.”
My mind was struggling to understand what on earth Haroon was suggesting. “Why are you suspicious?” I demanded.
“Because it’s not possible for someone to get pregnant so soon.”
“So you believe the doctor has made a mistake.”
“No, she has not made a mistake.”
“Then-”
“Then what?”
“Then why do I have to abort? Why?”
“You must surely know the reason.”
“What’s the reason?”
“Why are you pretending? You have asked me several times who I thought the baby would resemble while knowing that certainly it will not resemble me!”
“Why wouldn’t it?”
“Because I am not the father.”
“Then who on earth is the father?”
“Only you would know.”
“You mean you do not know who fathered this child?”
“How would I know? How would I know whose baby you had in your womb when you entered this house! You were in such a hurry to get married! You gave me no time to think.”