The Good Muslim (13 page)

*

The day before the surgery, Rehana’s friend Mrs Rahman appeared with a plate of shemai, her five-year-old grandson trailing behind her.

‘I’ve got Surjo for a week,’ she said, clamping her hand around the wrist of the wriggling boy. ‘Neleema and her husband have gone to Shillong.’ She smiled broadly. The boy was sullen and immediately wanted to tear the heads off the lilies.

‘Don’t touch that,’ Maya said, wondering what her mother would say if she returned from the hospital to find a shorn flowerbed.

Rehana appeared a few moments later wearing a sari that Maya had always liked, a moss-green cotton with a pink paisley border. She had joked once that she wanted Ammoo to bequeath the sari to her, and she remembered this now as she positioned her mother in a garden chair, with a cushion at her back.

‘It’s nothing,’ Rehana said to her friend. The boy came charging towards them, complaining he had been bitten by a fire ant. ‘Poor dear,’ Mrs Rahman said, kissing the spot on his arm where a tiny red welt had appeared. He wandered off, wielding a stick against the insects, and Rehana continued, ‘There’s nothing to worry about, please don’t make a fuss.’

Mrs Rahman nodded. ‘It’s up to Him. What’s written on your forehead is already written.’

Maya hated, more than anything, the forehead explanation of life. She was about to say something but she remembered how just that morning, when a neighbour had sent a piece of paper that she claimed would shrink the tumour because the Saint of Eight Ropes had blown on it, her mother had pleaded with her to keep her opinions to herself.

‘How are Neleema and her husband?’ Rehana asked.

‘Yes, they are well. She’s expecting.’

‘Oh, Alhamdulillah.’

Mrs Rahman paused, guilty at having imparted this piece of good news.

Maya had left Zaid in the kitchen, gnawing on a chicken leg. She found him still eating, the yellow gravy stuck to his palms and the corners of his mouth. ‘Always hungry, poor child,’ Sufia whispered.

‘Berry, berry good,’ he said, tilting his head from side to side, crunching on a piece of chicken bone.

‘Come with me,’ Maya said, pulling him to the outside tap. She scrubbed his hands with soap as he looked on. ‘When was the last time you ate?’ she said. She’d been neglecting him. Between the doctor’s visits and the cold feeling that Ammoo’s illness was her fault, she had hardly seen him. She moved up to his wrists, scrubbing now with a small washcloth, digging at the dirt that had ploughed into the creases of his hand. She rolled up his sleeve and stopped, looking at the small round scars that disappeared into his kurta. She had seen them somewhere before. Worms? She patted his stomach, taut from having just eaten, then drew him close. When he wrapped his arms around her, she caught the smell of sick.

‘Did you vomit today?’

‘No.’

She wasn’t sure if he was telling the truth. ‘Bring down your clothes,’ she said. ‘Sufia will wash them.’

He nodded.

‘And what about ABC, do you remember any of it? A for?’

The blood rushed to his cheeks. ‘Apple,’ he said, unrolling his sleeves and shaking out his legs. ‘I have to go.’

‘Don’t you want to say goodbye to Dadu? She’s going to the hospital.’

His eyes widened. ‘Is she going to be dead?’

‘No, she’s not. But she’ll be gone for a few days, so come and say goodbye.’

In the garden, Sufia was serving tea to Mrs Rahman. Surjo was darting out from behind the mango tree, balling his hands together and pointing at his grandmother. ‘Dishoom Dishoom!’

Mrs Rahman feigned mortal injury.

Zaid’s palm grew damp in Maya’s. ‘Who’s that?’

‘Mrs Rahman’s grandson. Do you want to play with him?’

‘No.’

‘Don’t worry, he’s much smaller than you.’

‘I don’t want to.’ He made to turn around, but Mrs Rahman had already spotted him. ‘Is that Sohail’s boy?’

‘Yes,’ Rehana replied, quickly scanning Zaid. At least his clothes weren’t torn.

‘Come here,’ Mrs Rahman called, and when she saw him hesitating, holding Maya’s hand in front of his face, she said, ‘I’ll give you a Mimi – come here.’

Zaid stopped for a moment, then inched closer, releasing Maya’s hand.

‘Come here.’ Rehana had given her friend a few sketchy details about Sohail, but Mrs Rahman couldn’t stop the shock from passing briefly across her face. Zaid was holding out his hand now, and Mrs Rahman was stroking his capped head. She fumbled in her bag for the promised Mimi chocolate.

‘That’s mine!’ The grandson crawled, commando-style, towards them.

‘Hold on, darling boy, I think there’s enough for both of you.’ She brandished the small bar of chocolate with the photograph of an orange on its wrapper, breaking it in two and offering half to each.

‘It’s mine.’ Surjo stood up and grabbed both halves, stuffing one aggressively into his mouth.

‘Be a good boy now,’ she said. ‘Don’t you want to share? No? I’ll buy you another one on the way home. I’ll buy you two. Now give the chocolate to the little boy. There’s a jaanoo. Yes, what a little angel you are.’

Surjo passed the half-bar of chocolate to Zaid, smearing it against his palm. Zaid gazed at it for a moment as it softened against his hand. Then he turned around, holding the chocolate as far from his body as he could, and walked slowly, one foot in front of the other.

‘Khoda Hafez,’ Rehana called out. ‘I shall see you again very soon.’ Zaid turned his head towards her and nodded once, then continued his slow tread until he reached the edge of the lawn, where he stopped, raised his hand to his mouth and lapped delicately at the treasure on his palm.

*

The copy of
Rise Bangladesh!
came through the gate and landed on the porch. Shafaat had published her article on the third page, next to a long essay about the military–industrial complex, and opposite an advertisement celebrating the anniversary of the socialist revolution in Bulgaria. ‘Confessions of a Country Doctor’, by S. M. Haque. She had thought of choosing a more glamorous penname, but nothing had sprung to mind. Already the time before Ammoo’s illness seemed a long way away. She had started with Nazia’s story; now she wondered where to go next. Being here in Dhaka, living in the bungalow, had breached levees she had carefully constructed of what she remembered about the past, about her brother, the war. She remembered the meeting with Jahanara Imam, the way she had stormed out. And why. And the projector in the garden shed.
I once knew a girl called Piya
.

*

Zaid had given her lice. In the hospital, Rehana parted Maya’s hair into sections, seaming each one with kerosene, mining her scalp for the white lice eggs.

‘Ammoo, stop now, I can get Sufia to do it later. You need to get ready for the surgery.’

Sufia was sobbing heavily in the corner. ‘What will I do if you die?’ she wailed in Rehana’s direction. ‘Who will look after me?’

Behind her back, Maya could feel her mother sighing. ‘I won’t be dead for a long time. You’ll be dead before me, I’m sure.’ Having oiled and thoroughly picked through Maya’s hair, she began to run a thin-toothed comb through it.

‘This one’, Sufia said, pointing at Maya, ‘doesn’t even like me. She’d have me on the street in half a second.’

‘She only looks mean,’ Rehana said, combing Maya’s hair into a towel. ‘Inside she’s as soft as rice pudding. Maya, you have an infestation. Look.’

Maya turned around and saw a smattering of little black insects nestled on the towel. Ammoo began squeezing each one between her thumbnails.

‘Disgusting,’ Maya said. ‘I can’t believe they grew so fast.’

‘It’s because you didn’t take care of it straight away.’

‘That kid. I’m going to thrash him.’

Rehana reached over, pulled Maya’s face into her hands. ‘Don’t ever say that,’ she said, ‘don’t say it. Ever.’

‘I’m sorry, Ma, I just – sometimes I just don’t know what to do with him.’ That morning she had made him promise to practise his lessons, but he had insisted she take him to the graveyard, so he could ask his mother again about the bicycle. And he had irritated her on the way back, demanding to go to school, a proper school. But don’t you like Maya-school? she teased, and he shook his head. It’s no good, he said. No good.

‘She hasn’t said a word to me since she arrived,’ Sufia said, blowing her nose.

Rehana had finished combing and braiding Maya’s hair. ‘It’s a routine operation,’ Maya said, standing up and straightening her kameez. ‘She’ll be fine.’

‘Maya, I don’t think she knows what a routine operation is.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ Maya said. She stepped out of the room and paced the corridor until she found what she was looking for: a medical student. ‘Excuse me,’ she said, ‘may I borrow that?’ And she pulled the stethoscope from around his neck before he could protest. ‘I’ll give it back,’ she said, returning to Ammoo’s bedside. ‘Sufia, come over here.’

Sufia approached tentatively. Maya put the chestpiece of the stethoscope on Ammoo and let Sufia listen. ‘You hear this? It’s her heart.’

Sufia’s eyes widened. ‘Strong.’

‘Strong as an ox,’ Rehana said; ‘they can’t kill me.’

‘The surgery will take two, three hours at the most,’ Maya said, repeating the sentences she’d been telling herself over and over again. ‘Dr Sattar is one of the best surgeons in the country.’

Rehana put her hand, IV-threaded, on her hand. ‘Say Aytul Kursi with me.’

Maya turned away from her, facing the doorway of the cubicle; the thin curtains parted to reveal the scene in the corridor, the nurses walking purposefully, holding metal kidney dishes, bags of blood and saline. She was suddenly afraid for her mother, and the feeling she’d had under the jackfruit tree in Rajshahi came flooding back to her – all the things that could go wrong, and the nagging sense that it was all her fault, that the tumour had somehow grown out of her mother’s loneliness. She wanted to ask Ammoo to cancel the surgery, postpone it to another day, perhaps till winter, when it was cooler and the electricity was less likely to go out; or perhaps until there was a better doctor, a younger man who had just returned from foreign with new techniques, advanced anaesthesiology. And Sufia was right: if her mother died, she could never be the one to replace her – the bougainvillea would die and the fruit would fall from the guava tree, unpicked. And Ammoo was the only person left in the world who still loved her.

All Ammoo wanted was a prayer. Surely she could give her that. She tried to unlock the words, but they were buried deep, and knotted among all the other things. The disappointments, the heartache, the state of the country and the Dictator who said Allah between every other word – all latched on to those words, that Book. Don’t worry, she wanted to tell her mother, we don’t need Aytul Kursi. We have science. But she couldn’t help but remember that every death she had ever witnessed – on the battlefield, at the field hospital, in the wards – had been accompanied by the sound of prayer, the same words embroidering every parting of flesh and spirit.

Dr Sattar pulled the curtain aside and stepped in. A clutch of medical students followed, crowding into the space. ‘Is my patient ready?’ He picked up the chart at the foot of the bed.

Rehana waved at him, as if from a great distance. ‘Dakhtar, you needn’t have come yourself.’

Dr Sattar surprised Maya by smiling. ‘Nonsense. We take good care of our own, don’t we, Dr Haque?’

‘Yes, sir,’ she replied.

He ordered the students to check Rehana’s blood pressure and adjust her IV. They shuffled nervously around him. ‘Your brother is waiting outside,’ one of them said.

‘Brother?’ Maya and Rehana spoke in unison. For a moment Maya thought it might be a distant cousin of her mother’s, here from Karachi after receiving the telegram she had sent their relatives about the surgery. Then she knew it must be Sohail.

‘Ma,’ she said, ‘I’ll just be back. The nurse will be here if you need anything.’

Sohail was leaning against the balcony railing, his eyes on the mosaic tiling below. The sky was darkening overhead, purple and grey, the air quiet, everything hovering in that moment before the afternoon rain.

‘How is Ammoo?’ he asked.

‘She’s fine. You should go in and see her.’ Our mother might die and we might be orphans and I might be your last remaining kin. Was he thinking the same thing?

‘The surgeon—’

‘He’s very experienced, don’t worry. She’ll be all right.’ Or she won’t. Was he persuaded by the tone she tried to bring to her voice, the doctor’s certainty?

He nodded. ‘Inshallah.’

‘And you, are you well?’ She looked him up and down, her eye lingering on the bruise that blossomed on his forehead, pearly and blue-black, from his daily submission to the prayer mat.

‘I am well, by the Grace of Allah.’ It started to rain, that slanted, sideways rain that reminded Maya of childhood, the smell of wet cement, the two of them rushing to close the windows before the mattresses were soaked. Sohail did not retreat from the edge of the railing, Maya too remained beside him, and now they were both being pelted with rain. His beard took on the sheen of water. He straightened, fixed his gaze on her. Was it tenderness she saw? She struggled to keep her eyes open against the torrent.
It would be too much
, she wanted him to say,
too much to lose our mother now
. But instead he said, ‘Zaid tells me you’re teaching him the English letters.’

‘Yes. Soon he’ll be reading
Middlemarch
.’

He laughed. She laughed. The rain stopped as suddenly as it began. She wanted to hug him, and she did, and he returned her embrace, squeezing his arms around her. Rain mixed with tears, salty and warm.

‘Nothing bad will happen, Bhaiya,’ she said.

‘Sister Khadija told me you taught Zaid to play cards.’

‘Yes,’ she said, ‘he’s a shark.’

‘Sister Khadija is dismayed. Gambling is not allowed.’

Maya stepped back, the shock of his words dipping slowly, painfully into her. ‘But it’s just a game. Ammoo plays too.’

‘You know the difference between Halal and Haram. If you don’t, then perhaps Sister Khadija should take over Zaid’s education.’