A Golden Age

March 1971: Shona with her back to the sun

Every year, Rehana held a party at Road 5 to mark the day she had returned to Dhaka with the children. She saved her meat rations and made biryani. She rented chairs and called the jilapiwallah to fry the hot, looping sweets in the garden. There was a red-and-yellow tent in case of rain, lemonade in case of heat, cucumber salad, spicy yoghurt. The guests were always the same: her neighbour Mrs Chowdhury and her daughter Silvi; her tenants, the Senguptas, and their son, Mithun; and Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram, better known as the gin-rummy ladies.

So, on the first morning of March, as on the first morning of every March for a decade, Rehana rose before dawn and slipped into the garden. She shivered a little and rubbed her elbows as she made her way across the lawn. Winter still lingered on the leaves and in the wisps of fog that rolled over the delta and hung low over the bungalow.

She dipped her fingers into the rosebush, heavy with dew, and plucked a flower. She held it in her hand as she wandered through the rest of the garden, ducking between the wall-hugging jasmine and the hibiscus, crossing the tiny vegetable patch that was giving them the last of the season’s cauliflower, zigzagging past the mango tree, the lemon tree, the shouting-green banana tree.

She looked up at the building that would slowly, over the course of the day, cast a long shadow over her little bungalow. Shona. She could still hear Mrs Chowdhury telling her to build the new house at the back of her property. ‘Such a big plot,’ she’d said, peering out of the window; ‘you can’t even see the boundary it’s so far away. You don’t need all that space.’

‘Should I sell it?’

Mrs Chowdhury snapped her tongue. ‘Na, don’t sell it.’

‘Then what?’

‘Build another house.’

‘What would I do with another house?’

‘Rent, my dear. Rent it out.’

Now there were two gates, two driveways, two houses. The new driveway was a narrow passage that opened into the back of Rehana’s plot. On the plot stood the house she had built to save her children. It towered above the bungalow, its two whitewashed storeys overlooking the smaller house. Like the bungalow, it had been built with its back to the sun. The house was nearly ten years old now, and a little faded. Ten monsoons had softened its edges and drawn meandering, old-age seams into the walls. But every day, as Rehana woke for the dawn Azaan, or when she went to put the washing in the garden, or when, after bathing, she fanned out her long hair on the back of a veranda chair, Rehana looked at the house with pride and a little ache. It was there to remind her of what she had lost, and what she had won. And how much the victory had cost. That is why she had named it Shona, gold. It wasn’t just because of what it had taken to build the house, but for all the precious things she wanted never to lose again.

Rehana turned back to the bungalow and entered the drawing room. She ran her palm across the flat fur of the velvet sofa, the dimpled wood of the dining table. The scratched, loved, faded whitewash of the veranda wall.

She unfurled her prayer mat, pointed it westwards and sank to her knees.

This was the start of the ritual: wake before sunrise, feel her way around the house; pray; wake the children.

They were not children any more. She had to keep reminding herself of this fact. At nineteen and seventeen, they were almost grown up. She clung greedily to the almost, but she knew it would not last long, this hovering, flirting with adulthood. Already they were beings apart, fast on their way to shedding the fierce, hungry mother-need.

Rehana lifted the mosquito net and nudged Maya’s shoulder. ‘Wake up, jaan,’ she said. ‘It’s our anniversary!’

She went to Sohail’s room and knocked, but he was already awake. ‘For you,’ she said, holding out the rose.

While the children took turns in the bath, Rehana ironed their new clothes. This year she had chosen an egg-blue sari for herself and a blue georgette with yellow polka dots for Maya. For Sohail there was a brown kurta-pyjama. She had embroidered the purple flowers on the collar herself.

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, ‘I have to go to campus after the party — I can’t wear this.’

‘I’m sure your activist friends won’t mind if you don’t wear white for one day.’

‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she retorted, tucking the sari under her elbow anyway.

After they had all bathed and put on their new clothes, the children took turns touching Rehana’s feet. ‘God bless you,’ she said, hugging them tightly, their strong, tanned arms around her neck almost beyond her imagination.

They were both taller than her. Maya had passed Rehana by a few inches, and Sohail was a full head and shoulders above them both; Rehana was often reminded of the moment she’d met Iqbal, hunched over the wedding dais, how he had towered over her like a thunder cloud. But in fact Sohail had grown to resemble Rehana. He was pale and had her small nose and her slightly crooked teeth; his hair was fashioned into a wave at the top of his head, the crest threatening to tip over his eyelids. Sometimes, like today, he wore kurta-pyjamas, but usually he was seen in more fashionable attire: tight, long-collared shirts and even tighter trousers that hung over his shoes and drew tracks in the dust.

It was Maya who looked more like her father. She had his chestnut skin and deep-set eyes that made her look serious even when she was trying to say something funny or make a joke — which rarely happened — but Rehana had often seen her friends pause and look at each other, wondering whether to laugh.

They took two rickshaws. Maya and Sohail climbed into the first and Rehana followed. She liked being behind them, watching their shoulders knocking through the rolled-up flap on the back of the rickshaw.

She hadn’t seen her own sisters for years now. Marzia had come to Dhaka a few years after the children’s return. She had brought photos of her own children, plump twin boys with big faces and windswept hair. She kept talking about the smell of salt in the Karachi streets, and the burned taste of kababs on Clifton Beach, and, even though she devoured Rehana’s dimer halwa and swallowed the sweet Dhaka air with relish, she kept asking, again and again, why Rehana hadn’t gone to live in Karachi when her husband had died. ‘Everyone is there,’ she’d said. ‘Your whole family.’

When they parted at the airport Rehana had felt empty; she wanted to long for Marzia to stay, to cry and beg to be taken with her, but in the end she was just relieved to see her go. Marzia had behaved as though Rehana had betrayed them all; she had said things like, ‘Your Urdu is not as good as it used to be; must be all that Bengali you’re speaking.’ She had pronounced it Bungali. And when she had referred to the servants at her house, she had said, ‘Yes, we’re very lucky, we have two Bungalis; Rokeya only has one and it’s never enough, you know, the houses out there are so big.’

Still, there wasn’t a day that went by that Rehana didn’t think of them, out there in the sprawling, parched western wing of their country. She held them to her by a loose bit of feeling, not fully connected, not entirely severed. She wrote them letters. Dear sisters, she would begin. She never finished one; she never sent one. She kept the letters in a biscuit tin under her bed, beside the winter blankets and the dried rice balls.

The rickshaws crossed Road 5 and made their way through Mirpur Road, blue-black and newly paved. The shops nudging the road were beginning to open, their shutters rattling up, the shopkeepers clearing their noses in the outside gutters.

A sign above the graveyard said women no admittance. Beside it, the caretaker leaned his elbow on a new length of wooden fencing painted a dull yellow and already smattered with flecks of mud. He gave Rehana a salaam and said, ‘Hot day.’ She nodded and gave him five annas. They wove through the gravestones. As she passed them, Rehana recognized old friends and noted a few new arrivals.

There was a man who had been visiting his wife every day for forty-three years. She had died, it was rumoured, in childbirth. The man was very old now, but he made the unsteady walk to his wife’s grave, laid down a small square of pati and sat facing her for hours at a time. So Rehana had always considered herself the second-most devoted mourner at the graveyard. She had never met the man, but once, after he’d left, she had approached his wife’s grave. begum hakim ullah hossain, the headstone read, wife and mother.

Over the years Rehana had made sure Iqbal’s was one of the best-tended squares in the graveyard. She began by doing what everyone else did: laying roses on his gravestone. But every time she came back to find the sight of the rotten flowers, she felt she had somehow betrayed him. She didn’t want to see dead things when she came to visit. So she planted a few seeds around the edge of the plot, and a few weeks later the tiny white jasmine flowers appeared, casting themselves resolutely upwards, as though pointing the way. Rehana came back regularly with her trowel and her watering can, trimming and perfecting the little white border.

Now she stood at the foot of Iqbal’s grave, facing the headstone that said, in black letters, muhammad iqbal haque. Sohail was on her left, Maya on her right. They cupped their hands and held them up.

This was the part when her throat always tightened.

My dear Husband, she began. Here are your two grown children. Mahshallah, it is the tenth year of their return.

Your son is now nineteen. Your daughter is seventeen. They are healthy and obedient.

Last time I was here I told you about the elections. Right now we are waiting for Mujib to be declared Prime Minister. There have been many delays. Your children are waiting for the government to change. Inshallah, once that happens they will be able to return to their studies.

She paused, took a deep breath. Steadied herself.

There was so much more she could say. I still miss you every day. Why did you leave me all alone. Why.

But she didn’t. If he was listening he would know it all anyway.

She pressed her palms to her face. Goodbye, Husband.

When she looked up, Rehana saw Sohail brush a few tears from his cheek. Maya was stroking the headstone. Then she bent down and kissed it at the top, where the dome was highest.

They returned to the bungalow to get ready for the guests. Maya dusted the drawing-room furniture, and Sohail helped the decorators to put up the tent in the garden. Rehana had made the biryani the night before, layering the ingredients and sealing the pot with flour paste. It had taken six or seven hours to cook; now she peeled back the seal, lifted the lid, and mixed up the layers of meat, potato and rice so that they were evenly distributed.

She counted out the plates. There would be about twenty people altogether. She was always nervous before this party; since she’d stopped going to the Gymkhana Club, it was one of the few times a year she saw her friends.

They had understood her absence from the club after Iqbal’s death. They came to her instead; Mrs Rahman, Rehana remembered, often brought cake. Hard, inedible cake that would sit brick-like on the dining table, collecting flies and scraps of dust. Mrs Chowdhury brought Silvi. And Mrs Akram, the youngest of them, skirted awkwardly around her, brushing the stink of bad fortune from the air with a flapping hand-fan.

After the children came back, there was, the gin-rummy ladies said, no reason for Rehana to stay away. So she tried once, a few months after she returned from Lahore, to revive the old group.

Mrs Chowdhury had been in a particularly festive mood that day, a smile playing in her eyes. ‘I have a surprise!’ she said to Rehana. Rehana had ignored her. Must be a new sweetshop she’d discovered. Best laddoos in town, she could almost hear her say. She felt awkward and nervous; it was hot inside, and the fans pulsing from the ceiling didn’t seem to be doing much good. She had been to the club many times before, but suddenly it was all very strange, and she was a little annoyed with Mrs Chowdhury for appearing so cheerful.

The square card table was decorated with flower-patterned tiles. The names of the flowers were written underneath with a curling, feminine hand. Bougainvillea, they declared. English rose. Daffodil.

Rehana had sat facing a row of yellow tulips. Across from her, Mrs Chowdhury was perched between the asters and the lilacs. Mrs Rahman shuffled over a row of dahlias. Mrs Akram made up the fourth, reapplying her lipstick in a thin sliver of mirror.

‘OK,’ Mrs Rahman said to Rehana. ‘Cut.’

Rehana divided the stack in two. Mrs Rahman shuffled again, raising her arm high and bringing it down again with a slap.

‘Face cards ten, low ace, as usual,’ she said, tossing cards to the four corners of the table.

There was a knock. A waiter wearing a coat that used to be white came in with a tray of teacups and a plate of biscuits. ‘Finally,’ Mrs Chowdhury giggled. ‘Just leave it here. No need to pour. Go. Go.’ She lifted her bag from where it sat on the floor and pulled out a small silver flask. She unscrewed the top and tipped its tea-coloured contents into the four cups. She topped up the cups with real tea. Then like a chemist, she added milk. ‘There we are!’ she said with a flourish.

‘What is it?’ Mrs Akram asked, looking up from her mirror.

‘Whisky, you idiot,’ Mrs Rahman said.

‘What’s the matter with you — drink. God knows we deserve it.’

Rehana saw Mrs Rahman trying to catch her eye. No one moved; Mrs Chowdhury sighed and lifted a cup from the tray. ‘All right, then, as you wish.’ She looked up at the ceiling with its furry cornice. ‘I just thought Rehana needed a little mischief. After all, she won’t get married!’

This last statement caused Mrs Akram to giggle. She did it nervously, in muffled, half-snorting bursts, with a hand over her mouth.

Rehana could smell the sugary aroma of the whisky rising from the cups. ‘All right,’ she said. ‘I’ll have one.’

‘Really?’ Mrs Chowdhury almost squealed with joy.

‘Yes, sure. I’ve tried it before.’ Iqbal had once given her a taste. He’d held the glass to her mouth, withdrawing it as soon as the liquid touched her lips. It was like a feverish kiss. She picked up the teacup now and sipped tentatively. The others saw her doing it and followed, smiling into their cups. Mrs Chowdhury gulped hers down and clapped.

They began to play. Rehana won the first game with four aces and a suite of hearts. Mrs Rahman won the second, and at the end of the third Mrs Chowdhury said, ‘RUMMY!’ but there was a four missing in her row of spades. She said it didn’t matter, she’d brought the whisky, that had to count for something. Then Mrs Akram, who had to use two hands to hold up all of her cards, said, ‘But it’s still a mystery, no, why our Rehana here refuses to choose a bridegroom?’

Rehana thought Mrs Chowdhury would come to her defence, but she said, ‘It’s true, Rehana, we are always worried about you — what’s the matter?’

Rehana found they were all pointing their faces at her with fixed, devouring stares. The whisky flooded into her stomach at that moment, as Rehana realized she no longer had the energy to laugh it off and be cheerful; she didn’t want to blush and bite her lip and pretend to be coy. The truth was, she had no intention of remarrying. There was that one time she had considered it, before she’d built Shona. But ever since the children had returned, the urge to be loved in that way had disappeared from her altogether. It was too risky. It could too easily go wrong. And the thought that some man might be cruel to her children was enough to make the bile rise in her throat.

She didn’t say any of this to the gin-rummy ladies. She just stopped attending the card parties. She complained of a headache, and then Maya caught the chicken pox, and so of course Sohail had to have it too, and soon they stopped asking altogether. By then Mrs Sengupta had taken her place at the table. Rehana tried to ignore her certainty that they were muttering about her refusal to marry and her general aloofness as they tossed the cards to the middle of the table and sipped their whisky-studded tea. She knew she must seem strange and remote to them. That they must wonder what was wrong. But even if she tried to explain it to them she knew they could never understand. It had never happened to anyone else.

Mrs Chowdhury arrived first. From the kitchen Rehana heard her twisting the latch on the gate. ‘Maya, keep an eye on the biryani,’ she said, and hurried to the front door.

‘Sweeten your tongue, Rehana,’ Mrs Chowdhury said, squeezing through the doorway, ‘I have some news!’ She held out a box of laddoos. A tall man in a military uniform followed her in. Behind him was Mrs Chowdhury’s daughter, Silvi, overdressed for the occasion in a ropy gold necklace and a pair of ruby earrings.

Mrs Chowdhury waved towards the uniformed man. ‘My son-in-law!’ she giggled, causing a ripple through her neck, her chin and her bottom lip. She stuffed a piece of laddoo into Rehana’s mouth.

‘Really — oh.’ The laddoo was like a lump of candy; it travelled coldly down Rehana’s throat. ‘You told me you were accepting proposals, but I didn’t know things would happen so quickly.’ She swallowed and tried to smile. ‘Congratulations.’

‘Well — they’re not engaged yet. But I wanted you to be the first to know.’

The uniformed man greeted her. ‘As-Salaam Alaikum.’ His mouth was rubber-band tight. Just above was the neatly sewn scar of a cleft lip.

‘Walaikum As-Salaam,’ Rehana replied. ‘Please, come in, sit down.’ She didn’t quite know what to say next, so settled on more pleasantries. ‘I’m very glad you could come.’

‘Silvi, you sit here,’ Mrs Chowdhury instructed, ‘and jamaibabu, you sit beside her.’

Silvi and the uniformed man did as they were told.

‘The boy came over last week,’ Mrs Chowdhury whispered, ‘with his mother and his aunt. Very handsome, don’t you think? Doesn’t talk very much, but then I was thinking, that is just perfect for my shy Silvi. They’re two of a kind — and he’s a lieutenant!’ She tittered and the ripples returned, spreading to her cheeks.

Just as Rehana was trying to think of how she would break the news to Sohail, the Senguptas crossed the garden and knocked on the drawing-room window. Their son Mithun was in tow, dragging his feet in the grass.

‘Hello — it’s us.’

‘Come in, come in,’ Rehana said, grateful for the distraction.

Mrs Sengupta was wearing a peacock-blue sari and a sleeveless blouse that showed off her gleaming, ebony shoulders. Taller than her husband by at least three inches, she took advantage of her height by mounting a pair of platform heels and cutting her hair short so that it revealed the ridged length of her neck, which was adorned with a heavy gold mangalsutra, the ornament that identified her as married, and Hindu, and rich. Her husband, by contrast, was a squat man with tiny, wringing hands.

‘Mithun, would you like some lemonade?’ Rehana asked, turning her attention to the boy.

Mithun put a hot hand on Rehana’s wrist. ‘Tea, please. I have a headache.’

‘I don’t think you’re allowed tea, beta.’

‘No — that’s right,’ his mother said. ‘What’s got into you?’

‘You said it was a special occasion.’

‘True,’ Rehana said. ‘It is a special occasion. How about an orange cola?’ She left to get the drinks while Mrs Chowdhury repeated her news to the Senguptas.

Sohail and Maya were slicing cucumbers in the kitchen.

Rehana’s only thought was to get Sohail out of the house. She couldn’t think beyond that; eventually he would have to return, but she just needed time to come up with a way to tell him the news first, to somehow soften the blow. ‘Sohail,’ she said, ‘I need you to pick up some sweets from Alauddin.’

‘Aren’t we having jilapi?’

She cleared her throat and attempted to sound bossy. ‘I don’t think it’ll be enough — you know how people like a little something sweet after biryani.’

‘It’s all the way on the other side of town — I’ll be at least an hour.’

‘Don’t worry, people will stay all afternoon. You’ll be back in time.’ She gave him a few notes. ‘Take a rickshaw,’ she said. He turned towards the drawing room, more irritated than suspicious. ‘No, go out through the back or you’ll be held up for hours if Mrs Chowdhury gets hold of you.’ She watched him guiltily as he shrugged and ducked out of the kitchen.

Maya could not be duped. ‘What’s going on, Ammoo?’ She sat squatting behind the curved blade of the boti, her polka-dot sari wound around her ankles.

Rehana peered out of the kitchen window to make sure Sohail was out of earshot. ‘Silvi’s getting married.’

‘What?’

‘I know. It’s all of a sudden. I knew Mrs Chowdhury was looking for a boy, but they’ve hardly met.’

‘And Silvi agreed?’ Maya jabbed aggressively at her cucumber.

Rehana nodded.

‘God. My poor brother. What should we do?’

‘I don’t know. Just make sure he doesn’t bump into them when he comes back.’

In the drawing room Rehana found that Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram had already arrived. The two went everywhere together, and always without their husbands or their children, wearing fugitive looks and sighing about escaping from home. Rehana was happy to see the room filling up; it made her resist the urge to stare at Silvi and her fiancé. And now there was the food to distract them all.

‘Lunch is ready,’ she announced, setting the heavy tray of biryani on the table. The guests made their way across the room as Rehana filled up the plates and passed them around.

‘A wedding in the neighbourhood,’ Mrs Akram said; ‘you must be the first — what fun we’ll have!’

Rehana piled on the biryani. ‘Let me take your plate, Mr Sengupta. You must have some more.’ Rehana had prepared a special vegetarian dish for the Senguptas.

‘Enough! Your tenants will be eating you out of house and home,’ he protested, putting his hand over his plate.

‘It’s been ten years,’ Rehana said. ‘Time you stopped calling yourselves tenants.’ She made for the kitchen to replenish the biryani.

Rehana found Silvi lingering in the corridor. ‘It’s really good this year, khala-moni.’ She always addressed Rehana as khala-moni, as though Mrs Chowdhury and Rehana were real sisters. Silvi still had a pale, ashen complexion, though the pallor suited her; without it, her light eyes might have been eclipsed, but, as it was, they reflected the sun and shone like bright, chalky pinpoints.

‘Thank you — I made it in such a hurry.’ Rehana’s eyes lingered on Silvi, searching for an answer to the question she couldn’t bring herself to ask.

‘I wouldn’t have guessed — it’s delicious. You make the best biryani in Dhaka.’

Rehana nodded, accepting the compliment. Silvi glanced down at herself and straightened her necklace.

There was a long silence. ‘So. You’re getting married,’ Rehana said finally. She tried to sound cheerful.

‘Yes, I…’ Silvi stammered, ‘well, my mother was worried. I don’t like her to worry. She has high blood pressure, you know.’

‘Well, she looks very pleased,’ Rehana said. She cupped Silvi’s cheek, felt it yielding under her fingers. ‘You’ve made her very happy.’

Sohail arrived with the sweets after the guests had collapsed under the shade of the tent. Rehana tried to intercept him at the gate, but she was carrying a handful of plates and Mrs Chowdhury got to him first.

‘Sohail!’ Mrs Chowdhury grabbed Sohail’s arm. ‘Where have you been? I have news. Silvi’s getting married!’

Rehana saw Sohail brushing the hair back from his forehead with raking fingers. His other hand, holding the sweets box, rocked back and forth.

‘Come, come, you must meet him. Sabeer, this is Mrs Haque’s son, Sohail. A very old friend of Silvi — they were inseparable as children — Sohail, baba, this is Lieutenant Sabeer Mustafa.’

‘Welcome to the family,’ Sohail said.

‘Thank you,’ Sabeer replied, standing up and straightening his uniform.

‘Sohail, jaan, will you help me with these plates?’ Rehana attempted to hand him the stack.

‘Well,’ he said, ignoring her, ‘I’ve just got tickets to tomorrow’s cricket match. Pakistan vs England MCC.’ He fanned out the tickets and waved them in the air. ‘Who wants to come? Lieutenant, will you join us?’

‘No, I’m afraid I’m on duty tomorrow,’ Sabeer said.

‘Silvi? Will you?’ Sohail pointed the tickets at her.

‘I don’t think so,’ Mrs Chowdhury said, jumping in. ‘We have a lot of preparations to make.’

‘I’ll come,’ Mrs Sengupta said cheerfully. ‘Your mother will come too, won’t you, Rehana?’

‘I’ll come as well. I’m afraid there’s no room for you after all, Silvi,’ Maya said pointedly. ‘Another time perhaps.’

There was a long silence as Maya and Rehana finished clearing the rest of the plates. Rehana was hoping someone would begin a conversation, something to change the subject, but no one was saying anything. Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram passed around the box of sweets. Finally Mr Sengupta brought up everyone’s favorite topic: the election.

‘How are things on the student front, Sohail?’ he asked.

‘It’s uncertain, Uncle,’ Sohail replied, his eyes darting around the garden. ‘It’s been two months since Mujib won the election. They should have convened the national assembly by now and made him Prime Minister, but they keep delaying. Some of the students are urging Mujib to take more drastic action.’ He suddenly looked weary; his shirtsleeves were crumpled, as though someone had grabbed his arms and pulled him into a tight embrace.

‘Drastic action?’

‘He should declare independence.’

‘But he’s won the election — surely now his demands will be met?’ Mr Sengupta said.

‘Yes,’ Sohail said. ‘But they’ve postponed the assembly too many times.’

Sohail looked as if he were about to start speechifying again. Rehana felt her face growing hot.

‘Mujib is a canny politician,’ Mrs Rahman interjected. ‘He must know something we don’t.’

‘Perhaps there’s still a chance for diplomacy,’ Mr Sengupta said.

‘Diplomacy? Forgive me, Chacha. You think Bhutto and Yahya want diplomacy?’

Sohail seemed on the point of turning away from the conversation when Sabeer raised his hand. ‘You think we can make it as our own country?’ he asked. Rehana wondered if Sohail would take the bait.

He did. ‘If you knew anything about the country you would know that West Pakistan is bleeding us out. We earn most of the foreign exchange. We grow the rice, we make the jute, and yet we get nothing — no schools, no hospitals, no army. We can’t even speak our own bloody language!’

Rehana waited for Sabeer to say something, something aggressive and blunt; his military training would have taught him that, but he turned away instead, fingering the buttons on his uniform.

‘Cyclone, young fellow,’ Mr Sengupta interrupted, attempting to make peace. ‘Nature. We live in a low-lying delta. And we have bad luck.’

‘Starvation is not caused by God. It is caused by irresponsible governments.’ Sohail rolled and unrolled the sleeve of his kurta. Rehana wondered if he was going to go on talking about the country’s fortunes, the jute money, the cyclone. But he looked as though he’d run out of air. ‘What we have here is an emergency,’ he said in a tired voice. ‘There is no possibility of reconciliation now. Mujib should have declared independence.’

Rehana had ordered two crates of orange cola, which she hurriedly passed around. She had to get the party back on course. The guests gratefully accepted the drinks and began to sip. They clinked the small glass bottles and smiled hesitantly into their straws. Their saris and kurtas flapped in the sugary March breeze, and the evening regained its still feeling, like the heavy pause before a mighty thunderclap.

The gin-rummy ladies offered to help Rehana put away the biryani. She wasn’t sure she wanted the company, but they insisted, and she was too tired to protest.

‘You didn’t do a very good job of finishing the food,’ Rehana complained, examining the trays of rice. ‘I’ll have to send all of this to the mosque.’

‘You might make up a packet for me,’ Mrs Chowdhury said. ‘You know how much I love it the next day.’

‘I’ve already put some aside for you,’ Rehana said, presenting her with a cardboard box. She saw Mrs Chowdhury eyeing it for size, calculating the number of meals she might make of it.

‘There’s still a lot left over.’ Perhaps she hadn’t done such a good job with the biryani this year after all.

‘Just invite a few of Sohail’s friends to dinner,’ Mrs Rahman said. ‘I’m sure they’ll have no trouble finishing up the lot.’

‘You know, I had no idea he was so involved in student politics,’ Mrs Akram said, sorting through the glasses and the empty bottles of soda.

‘He isn’t,’ Rehana replied, heaving a pile of plates into the washbasin. ‘He’s been trying to stay out of it.’ She picked up the top plate and began to circulate a sponge around its rim.

‘Sounded quite heated to me,’ Mrs Rahman said.

‘Well, you know, he’s young and full of ideas.’ Rehana felt a bit defensive. It was always difficult for the rest of them to understand: Mrs Akram’s children were still in school, Mrs Rahman’s three children had all married sensibly, and Silvi hardly strayed out of her mother’s grasp. Her own children seemed a little out of control by comparison. ‘It’s just in the air — all this talk about delaying the assembly — the students are getting nervous, they’re worried the elections won’t be honoured.’

‘He sounds quite involved to me,’ Mrs Rahman insisted. ‘And your Maya is in the Chattra League, no?’

Mrs Chowdhury decided to come to Rehana’s rescue. ‘What she’s saying is — why doesn’t the boy waste his time chasing girls instead!’

The kitchen suddenly grew quiet.

Rehana turned around and caught Mrs Chowdhury’s eye. ‘What?’ she said. ‘What?’

No one replied. Rehana realized they were making a space for her to say something. She opened her mouth and tried, but she couldn’t think of the right sequence of words.

Mrs Rahman broke the silence. ‘Are you the last to know?’ she said.

‘Know what?’

Rehana thought she might still be able to stop the conversation there, but something kept her swirling the plates with her back to the room. Let them have it out.

‘Sohail is in love with your daughter,’ she heard Mrs Rahman say.

‘Ohhhh,’ Mrs Chowdhury laughed, ‘that. Don’t be silly — that was just a childish thing.’

Rehana kept moving the sponge in circles. No one said anything; Rehana thought she could hear them all holding their breath, waiting for her to speak, but she was mesmerized by her plate and her sponge and the little orange flecks of rice that floated like petals in the dishwater.

‘Well,’ Mrs Chowdhury said finally, noisily heaving herself upright. ‘I didn’t know. The girl never told me.’

‘You had no idea?’ Mrs Rahman said.

‘Of course I had no idea!’

Just then they heard heavy, running footsteps approaching the kitchen.

‘Ammoo!’

It was Maya.

‘Ammoo,’ she said, panting and red-faced from the effort, ‘Bhaiya’s just sitting in the garden with his head in his hands.’

Lemonade, he needs lemonade. Rehana handed her daughter a clean glass. ‘Here. Get some shorbot from the fridge.’

Maya must have sensed there was something going on in the kitchen because for once she just set off obediently, her chappals clacking behind her as she ran.

‘Rehana,’ Mrs Chowdhury said, ‘you must believe me. I really didn’t know.’

Rehana turned back to the washbasin and picked up another plate.

‘She didn’t say anything,’ Mrs Chowdhury repeated, ‘and he’s so young — just a student — surely it’s foolish to think—’

‘So you did know,’ Mrs Akram said.

‘No, I didn’t.’ Rehana felt Mrs Chowdhury approach her. ‘Rehana agrees with me, don’t you, my dear — that it would be a bad idea? I’m sure she discouraged her son as well.’

Rehana swallowed the lump in her throat. ‘Yes, of course you’re right.’ What could she do now? Just save her son from any further humiliation.

‘See — she agrees,’ Mrs Chowdhury announced.

Mrs Rahman shook her head. She began spooning the leftover biryani out of the giant metal pot it had been cooked in. The kitchen swelled with its perfume, and quickly the room shrank and the air was tight, filled with the remains of the afternoon heat, the buzzing of the bulb, Mrs Chowdhury’s loud sighing.

‘I don’t know what the fuss is about. There’s no way — no way — they couldn’t be serious.’

Rehana finished rinsing her plate and began working on another. She thought that it must be the cleanest plate in the world. Mrs Akram picked it up and wiped it with the end of her sari.

‘He’s too busy with his politics — he’ll never make a good husband. Anyway, he’s younger than her.’

Rehana couldn’t bear the conversation any longer. ‘Please, Mrs Chowdhury — don’t worry. It was just a misunderstanding.’

‘That’s right,’ Mrs Chowdhury said, satisfied. ‘Nobody forced Silvi.’ Then she turned abruptly on her heel. ‘I’m tired. Goodnight, everyone. Khoda Hafez.’ She bustled away, knocking a row of empty pickle jars as she rounded the corner.

Mrs Rahman was elbow-deep in the biryani pot. ‘Rehana,’ she began, ‘I’m so sorry—’

‘Let’s not speak of it.’

Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram looked at each other as though this was exactly what they’d expected her to say.

‘You don’t speak of it. But I can say it’s a shame.’

‘Please.’ Rehana chewed the inside of her lip. She gripped her plate; the soap slipped between her fingers. ‘I’ll take care of the rest — the children will help — it’s getting late, I shouldn’t keep you.’ She brushed her cheek with the back of her wrist, where it itched.

‘Let’s go,’ Mrs Akram said. ‘Come on.’ She peeled Mrs Rahman’s arm out of the biryani dish.

‘Goodnight, Rehana,’ they said softly.

‘Goodnight, friends,’ she whispered back. She wasn’t sure if they’d heard her.

Later, after the children had fallen asleep, Rehana climbed under her mosquito net and pulled the katha up to her chin.

She lingered over the Silvi episode, wondering if there was something she could have done. Sohail had avoided her all evening and gone to bed without his tea. She thought she saw a small accusation in the set of his mouth as he said goodnight.

He’ll never make a good husband, she heard Mrs Chowdhury say. Too much politics.

The comment had stung because it was probably true. Lately the children had little time for anything but the struggle. It had started when Sohail entered the university. Ever since ’48, the Pakistani authorities had ruled the eastern wing of the country like a colony. First they tried to force everyone to speak Urdu instead of Bengali. They took the jute money from Bengal and spent it on factories in Karachi and Islamabad. One general after another made promises they had no intention of keeping. The Dhaka University students had been involved in the protests from the very beginning, so it was no surprise Sohail had got caught up, and Maya too. Even Rehana could see the logic: what sense did it make to have a country in two halves, poised on either side of India like a pair of horns?

But in 1970, when the cyclone hit, it was as though everything came into focus. Rehana remembered the day Sohail and Maya had returned from the rescue operation: the red in their eyes as they told her how they had waited for the food trucks to come and watched as the water rose and the bodies washed up on the shore; how they had realized, with mounting panic, that the food wouldn’t come because it had never been sent.

The next day Maya had joined the student Communist Party. She donated all of her clothes to the cyclone victims and began wearing only white saris. Rehana hated to see the white saris on her daughter, but Maya didn’t notice. She swallowed, like sugar, every idea passed to her by the party elders. Uprising. Revolution. She bandied the words about as though she had discovered a lost, ancient language.

As for Sohail, he would have made a powerful student leader. But he had refused to join any of the student movements, claiming he couldn’t be swayed by one faction or another. He was unmoved by the differences between the various Communist parties: the parties that sided with Peking, the ones that sided with Moscow, the Mao-lovers, the Mao-haters, the Marxist — Leninists, the Stalinists, the Bolshevists. It might have been a problem, but Sohail collected friends and offended no one. He was popular and well loved by everyone. Mullahs and bad-boys. Communists and bullies and goodfornothings. Arts faculty, science faculty. Physicists, engineers, painters, anthropologists. Girls and boys. Girls, especially. His fellow students might have interpreted Sohail’s absence from their meetings as a sign of disloyalty, but no one who knew him doubted his commitment to the cause. Sohail loved Bengal. He may have inherited his mother’s love of Urdu poetry, but it was nothing to the love he had for all things Bengali: the swimming mud of the delta; the translucent, bony river fish; the shocking green palette of the paddy and the open, aching blue of the sky over flat land.

People said his popularity had something to do with his being handsome, but Rehana was convinced it had more to do with the sound of his voice and the manner in which he spoke, a gentle, whispering baritone. And he always held his hands behind his back in a posture of deference, fixing his gaze on whomever he was addressing, the effect disarming and magical and the reason women followed him from Curzon Hall to Madhu’s Canteen every afternoon when he went to meet his friends under the giant banyan tree where every major student movement in Dhaka had ever been born.

But Sohail loved Silvi. He had loved her when they had watched Cleopatra in the summer after his father died, and he loved her when he came back from Lahore and they saw Audrey Hepburn in Roman Holiday; he loved her at school, where her roll number was 33 and her uniform slate and blue, and he loved her when her breasts began pushing against the V of her school uniform dupatta; he loved her still when he discovered poetry and when she wrote him letters sealed with India ink lip prints; he loved her at the university when they rode home together in rickshaws, their knees knocking together over potholes; and he loved her when she started to read the Koran, and he loved her when she agreed to marry according to her mother’s wishes; and he even loved her after that, when she closed the shutters of her bedroom and refused to come to the window when he rapped, gently, with the rubber end of his pencil.

Yes, it was probably true. He was still a student, and too young. And he would recover from this first heartache, as men so easily do. Still, Rehana thought, the party could hardly be called a success. It was supposed to be a celebration of the children’s return, that ten-year-old day when she brought them back.

As she lay in the dark, the story of their return began to play itself out like an old film reel, rusty and clicking but with the images still intact, still potent. This was the end of the ritual: a recounting of the past, an attempt at a reckoning.

First, Rehana had sold Iqbal’s precious Vauxhall. Mrs Akram had convinced her husband to buy it. ‘Sell us the car,’ she said to Rehana, ‘it’s almost new — I’ve seen my husband eyeing it. I could convince him to give you a thousand.’ At first Rehana refused, but after paying the lawyer she had exactly 250 rupees left. She said yes. ‘Tell your husband to take it away when I’m at the bazaar tomorrow morning,’ she told Mrs Akram; ‘I don’t want to see it go.’ And when she returned that afternoon it was gone, leaving only a dark oily stain in the middle of the driveway and four bare patches where the wheels had been.

The Vauxhall brought her a thousand rupees. Still not enough money to bring the children back, raise them, keep them in ribbons and socks and uniforms. Not nearly enough. She pawned the rest of her jewels: the sun-shaped locket and matching earrings, the ruby ring, a few gold chains. She counted the total: 2,652. Still not enough. She sold the carved teak mirror frame above her dressing table, an antique from the house in Wellington Square, sent on a cart to Dhaka after her wedding, with a note from her father: I’m sorry, this is all I could save. The mirror always reminded her of her father’s last days in the Calcutta mansion, knocking around the empty rooms, his footsteps spelling defeat, as one truckload after another disappeared down the alley, bound for the coffers of the people to whom he owed money, or gold, or acres.

Then Mrs Chowdhury had her idea.

Rehana hired an architect. It was May, two months after the court case. Make the house as big as possible, was Rehana’s only request. Make it grand. The workers arrived in July and began to dig the foundations, their backs like black pearls in the dense midsummer heat. They poured cement into the hole. Metal girders to support the structure. Wooden scaffolding for the walls. But by August the money was gone.

She went to the bank for a loan. She tried Habib Bank first, then United and National banks. She had no guarantor. She could mortgage the land, they said. She wouldn’t mortgage the land. Then a round-faced man with an oily forehead said yes and took her to his office at the back of a building, where he slipped his hand under her elbow like a question mark, to which she too almost said yes, until he came close and she smelled his curry breath and saw the cigarette tracks on his teeth. She leaped out of the room, still gripping the instrument she had brought along to sign the papers, a green metal fountain pen with a letter opener at the top.

Months passed. A stubble of moss covered the cement foundations. September, October. The monsoon washed through, turning the bricks to sand, the sandbags to bricks, forming a fetid, stagnant pond where the mosaic floor of the house should have been. Rehana stood at its edge and watched the tadpoles swimming like lines of ink, the thin garden snakes curling around the girders, snapping the mosquito-laced air.

And then she found the money. Exactly how was a secret she had kept all these years, because she wanted to remember what she had done, how far she had gone, to get her children back, and also because the burden of it, she knew, should be only hers.

After that the house seemed to go up on its own: by the end of the year the walls had been raised; two months later the plaster was smooth; by March the fierce spring heat was drying the blue-grey whitewash, and Rehana was looking on as her carpenter Abdul scratched the letters on to a smoothed piece of mahogany she had saved from the building of the front door. Shona, she said, and he asked, ‘Your mother’s name?’ ‘No,’ she replied, ‘just the name of the house.’ For all that she had lost, and all that she wanted never to lose again.

Mr and Mrs Sengupta had replied to Rehana’s advertisement in the Pakistan Observer. brand-new 4-bed house in dhanmondi. drawing-dining, kitchen, large lawn. 6-mth advance required.

Mr Sengupta owned a tea plantation in Sylhet. He would be away for weeks at a time and would be grateful if Rehana could look in on his young wife. They had been married a few months; he was looking for just such a place, where the neighbours might provide his wife with some companionship.

Supriya Sengupta did not appear to need looking after. She was writing a novel, she said to Rehana. She wanted to be just like Royeya Sakhawat Hossain — had Rehana read Sultana’s Dream?

Rehana had not read Sultana’s Dream. But she nodded and told them she needed six months’ rent in advance. Mr Sengupta handed her the money in a toffee-coloured envelope. She passed him a set of keys. The next day she paid a visit to the judge, and then, clutching the court order in her hands, she packed her bags, boarded the next morning’s PIA flight and set off to rescue her children.

She remembered the reunion exactly. They were playing hula hoops on the lawn. Their faces were darker and their legs were longer and her heart had stopped at the sight of them, and even now, a decade later, she was sometimes frozen in that moment of disbelief, at the possibility that she might discover them, repossess them, bring them home and become their mother again.

And that was how it had happened. Rehana finished telling herself the story and waited for the tears to dry up on her cheeks.

By some miracle they were in the lead.

When Azmat Rana scored his first half-century, dashing past the stumps with his knees raised high and the dust swirling around his feet, the stadium pitched and roared. People stood up and howled, thumped their feet and beat crude drums they had brought along, all the while whistling and chanting ‘Joy Bangla! Joy Bangla! Joy Bangla!’ By the time he had scored his second, the announcer could not be heard over the shouting, the air electric with the shock and pleasure of victory.

The oval-shaped stadium was packed with families who’d arrived with picnics and cones full of spicy puffed rice, come to clap, feel the sun burning the tops of their heads, peer into the glittering afternoon and watch their heroes at play.

Rehana had made chicken sandwiches. She opened the paper-wrapped package and passed it to Sohail, who was sitting in the next row with his friend Aref and Aref’s brother, Joy. ‘Very nice,’ Sohail said, taking a bite. He gave her the barest hint of a smile and passed the sandwiches to his friends.

Rehana, Maya and Mrs Sengupta were sitting together. ‘Have they set a wedding date?’ Mrs Sengupta asked.

‘No,’ Rehana muttered.

‘She’s so young,’ Mrs Sengupta said, rolling her sunglasses to the top of her head. ‘What’s the rush?’

Rehana wanted to agree, but instead she squeezed Mrs Sengupta’s elbow. ‘Let’s have some drinks,’ she said.

Sohail waved to the drinks boy. ‘Who wants lemonade and who wants orange?’ He counted the raised hands and reached into his pocket.

‘No, please, I insist,’ Mrs Sengupta said, holding out her hand.

‘Oh,’ Sohail said, ‘all right.’ And he sat down.

Now the crowd was cheering and blocking Rehana’s view with its waving arms. She wanted to get a good look at Azmat while he was still at the crease, so she climbed up on to the bench and peered over the long rows of dark heads in front of her, her hand raised to her eyes. Giddiness was everywhere. Rehana felt a laugh start at her feet and climb up her legs. She began to giggle with her mouth open. She tilted her head back and squinted at the sun, brilliant, invisible in its mid-afternoon blaze. It might be, she thought, the happiest day of her life. Never mind all that hangama with Silvi; Sohail would soon forget it. Look at him now, linking hands with his friends and cheering at the cricket. Rehana fanned her face, heating up as the afternoon bloomed on.

Maya, turning to look beside her, was startled to find her mother climbing down from the bench. ‘Ammoo, what are you doing?’

‘I told you before, I love Azmat Rana. So handsome, he reminds me of your father. We are definitely winning today. Have some more lemonade, Maya,’ she said, passing her daughter the bottle. Always too sober, she thought to herself. What’s the big deal? Only a little cheering.

Nigel Gifford, arm wooden against his side, prepared to run at Azmat Rana.

Maya settled back into her seat and stared at the pitch with her arms crossed in front of her. In the next row Sohail was arguing with his friends. They were saying something about the military-industrial complex. Sohail was insisting it didn’t matter whether they were a part of Pakistan or not; the injustices towards the poor would continue unless they changed the way the economy was organized. Rehana could almost recite the speech from memory. Aref said the important thing was that the assembly should convene as soon as possible and make Mujib Prime Minister. Without that, the whole election would be revealed as a sham, and who knew what would happen.

Just as Nigel Gifford raised his right hand and prepared to release the worn red ball from his fingertips and send it, straight as a bullet, through the air to Azmat, who waited with bent knees and bat tilted against the sharp, cloudless afternoon sun, the crowd shifted, tensed. They felt it together, in the open intimacy of the packed stadium.

People began to get up and wave their fists in the air. A roar climbed through the stadium. They didn’t appear to be cheering for the players. The players stared up from the pitch, their shoulders raised in confusion. Rehana looked around her, and the crowd, a moment ago a mass of cheering fans, looked restless; their eyes were angry white specks; the cricket was forgotten, the puffed rice, the picnics, the drums. It was as though everyone knew before they knew; it almost didn’t matter what, just that their huge, runaway joy suddenly had to go.

Someone threw a brick on to the field. Someone else threw a cracked wooden stick. Bits of torn newspaper floated down from an aisle above them. ‘What’s happening?’ Rehana heard Sohail ask. He nudged the knot of men who had already begun to clog the aisle.

‘We don’t know,’ one of them answered, ‘something on the radio—’

Rehana began to pack up the sandwiches. ‘Let’s go, Ammoo,’ Sohail said; ‘forget the things.’ People were climbing over the stalls. The throng heaved towards the doors, choking the exits. Sohail, Aref and Joy pushed against the crowd and cleared a path.

The cricket stopped, and the players, peeling off their gloves and their caps, scattered to the edge of the field. No one saw the sun breaking through the clouds and shining on Azmat Rana, who gazed in the direction of the Ramna Racecourse, where they had all gathered a few weeks before to celebrate Sheikh Mujib’s victory. And they did not hear the announcer trying to calm them down and remind them to Please Remain Seated.

As they moved towards the exits, they were jostled and pushed against one another. Rehana, holding Maya’s slippery elbow, lost sight of Mrs Sengupta. She tried to keep track of Sohail’s head, the thick brushstroke of his hair. The smell of sweat and stale breath enveloped her. She resisted the urge to panic and run back inside. Armpits and elbows collided; backs met faces and dangling children’s feet. Rehana held tightly to Maya’s arm and pushed her way through the tunnel and down the stairs. In the car park Sohail was waving and gathering them together. ‘Stay behind me!’ he was saying. ‘I know where the car is.’ His voice was flattened by the lost and searching people.

Sohail took the wheel of Mrs Sengupta’s 1959 Skoda Octavia. Joy and Aref crowded into the front seat. Rehana, Maya and Mrs Sengupta squeezed into the back. Rehana saw Maya reaching for the handle and said, ‘Keep the window up.’

They turned out of the stadium and on to Paltan Road. ‘I want to see what’s happening,’ Maya said.

‘You can see from here.’ It was stuffy inside the car, but at least they were safe. Rehana was used to seeing crowds on the streets — they’d had so many processions in the months leading up to the election — yet today was somehow different; there was a hint of calamity in the air. She tried to catch Sohail’s eye in the mirror, but he was concentrating on the road, his hands curled around the steering wheel.

They entered the university compound. The car sped past Curzon Hall, Rokeya Hall, Iqbal Hall. In front of the Teacher — Student Centre, they saw a wave of people in white clothes and black armbands carrying banners, making fists and chanting in circular, overlapping beats. Maya cupped her hands against the window and shouted, ‘Joy Bangla! Joy Sheikh Mujib!’

The procession was heading towards them. Sohail looked over his shoulder and tried to back up, but they were stuck in front of a line of cars. The chants rose, the words slowly becoming audible.

Maya tried to identify the people in the crowd. ‘Who is it? Chattra League?’

‘I can’t tell,’ Sohail said; ‘should we get out?’

Rehana shook her head. ‘We’re safer in the car. Let’s stay inside.’ Mrs Sengupta nodded in agreement. Maya kept shifting between her seat and the rear window, pressing her face against the glass. Rehana knew it was no use telling her to stop; she was just grateful the girl didn’t break open the door.

Within minutes they were swallowed. As they snaked past, people knocked against the hood of the car. They pounded the boot. Bared their teeth and pressed their faces against the glass. ‘Joy Bangla!’ they shouted. ‘Death to Pakistan! Death to dictatorship!’ Their breaths made clouds on the glass.

Someone recognized Sohail. He rapped with his knuckles. ‘Dost!’

Maya slapped the window. ‘Jhinu!’

The boy made binoculars with his hands and peered inside. ‘What are you doing in the car?’ he shouted.

Sohail opened his window and the boy stuck his fingers through the gap. ‘I’m just taking my mother and my sister home,’ Sohail said. ‘What’s going on?’

‘You haven’t heard? Assembly postponed indefinitely.’

‘What?’

‘Sala. Bastard Bhutto’s convinced Yahya there can’t be a Bengali running Pakistan.’

‘What?’ Maya said. ‘Election cancelled?’

Joy and Aref started firing questions at Jhinu, asking what he thought Mujib was going to do. They all kept saying we knew, we knew this was going to happen. It was only a few moments, a few sentences, but Rehana had the feeling they were deciding something important. She kept telling herself she was still in charge, that nothing would be done without her consent. She pitched forward on the seat.

‘Sohail, beta, the crowd is thinning, perhaps we should go?’

Sohail was rapping the steering wheel with his fingers, whispering something to Joy. He turned around. ‘OK, Ammoo, let’s go.’

Good. She would find a way to make sure he didn’t go back.

‘We’ll join you,’ he said to the boy in the window; ‘we’re just coming.’

‘Hurry up — we’ll be at the TSC later.’

‘Why don’t you boys go ahead? I’ll drive,’ Mrs Sengupta said.

‘Na, Supriya, let the boys take us home,’ Rehana said.

‘Nonsense,’ Mrs Sengupta insisted. ‘They’ll just have to come all the way back. Pull over, Sohail.’

Rehana cursed the day Mr Sengupta had taught his wife to drive. She just wanted them all home. ‘Really,’ she said, ‘do you think it’s safe for us to go by ourselves?’

‘Of course it’s safe. We’ll be in the car, what could happen?’

‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said a little eagerly, ‘you’ll be OK?’

‘Yes,’ Rehana replied. It came out weakly, but he didn’t seem to need much convincing.

They waited until the last of the procession passed. Sohail parked the car in front of Rokeya Hall and left the engine running. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Yes, don’t worry,’ Mrs Sengupta said. ‘I’ll get them home. You join your friends. Jao.’

‘OK. Ammoo — I’ll just find out what’s happening and come straight home.’

Rehana fought off a wave of panic. ‘Be careful, beta.’

‘Don’t worry. Bye!’

‘Khoda Hafez.’

Mrs Sengupta was already at the front of the car, waiting to take the wheel. She held out the door for Rehana with a flourish. ‘Don’t worry so much!’ she said.

Suddenly a thin, lungi-clad boy bolted past. Mrs Sengupta’s sari slid from her shoulder, exposing her blouse and her bare stomach, and, as she bent to rearrange herself, she slipped and tumbled forward, her head knocking against the wheel before she could stretch out her arms to break the fall.

Rehana rushed to her side and struggled to lift her up. ‘Are you hurt?’ She pulled Mrs Sengupta into the driver’s seat and slammed the doors. ‘Are you hurt?’ she repeated.

‘No, it’s nothing,’ Mrs Sengupta said, ‘just a little dirty.’

‘Here, take my handkerchief.’

‘Just an accident. Nothing to worry.’ She took the handkerchief and began to wipe the mud from her palms.

‘Supriya,’ Rehana said, ‘you’ve lost your teep.’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Sengupta touched her forehead and then looked into the folds of her sari. ‘I hadn’t realized.’ She rolled down her window and hurriedly brushed a few stray tears from her eyes. ‘Just a little startled,’ she said, laughing nervously. Then she adjusted her seat, checked her reflection in the mirror and cupped her palm over the gear.

Rehana looked back to check on Maya. Her daughter was watching the retreating procession as it crossed the university intersection and headed towards Nilkhet.

Waiting for them in front of the bungalow gate was Sharmeen, a tall young woman with broad shoulders and a tough, ageless face. She was a student at the art college, famous on campus for her political posters, and Maya’s best friend, or comrade, as she liked to be called.

‘Where’ve you been?’ Sharmeen said, as they tumbled out of the car. She was struggling with a giant roll of paper. Mrs Sengupta smoothed the back of her head. From across the road, Mrs Chowdhury’s cocker spaniels, Romeo and Juliet, began to bark.

Maya hugged Sharmeen. ‘We were driving back from the cricket match. We got stuck in Paltan.’

‘I came to find you as soon as I heard. Help me with this?’

‘I don’t think you can get back,’ Maya said, catching one end of the roll.

‘Don’t worry,’ Rehana said, unlatching the gate, ‘you can stay here.’ It was an unnecessary invitation; Sharmeen was always staying over. There was a mattress under Rehana’s bed that hardly ever gathered dust. Her toothbrush was in the cabinet behind the bathroom mirror.

They’d been best friends since Maya’s first day at Vikarunnessa Noon School. The children had just arrived from Lahore, and Rehana decided it was time for them to learn Bengali. Not the fractured Bengali they picked up at the sweetshop and the playground but proper, school Bengali. So Maya was sent to Vikarunnessa, where the nuns were weathered and the girls wore hard braids and white knee socks. On that first day Maya stood up behind her desk and announced: ‘My name is Sheherezade Haque Maya. I was named after a famous storyteller. My father is dead. I am Lahore-returned. We have a big house called Shona.’ She was met with a vibrating silence as the girls shuffled and cocked their ears at her strained, accented Bengali. And then, chased by cries of ‘Bihari! Bihari!’, she fled into a far corner of the hockey field, her uniform skirt billowing around her legs, and that is where Sharmeen had found her, sitting inside her hula hoop, chewing on a piece of dried mango.

‘Can I have some?’

‘I already licked the whole thing.’

‘Doesn’t matter.’ Sharmeen pinched with two fingers the wet leather of mango and popped it into her mouth. ‘So. Your father’s dead? Mine too.’

‘How did yours go?’

‘Typhoid. Yours?’

‘Heart-attack.’

And their friendship was sealed.

Maya had always regarded Sharmeen with awe, as though she could never quite figure out why Sharmeen chose her when there were so many other stern young women in the movement. But Maya had underestimated Sharmeen’s need to be adored. She didn’t question, as Rehana often did, the fact that Sharmeen spent so many of her holidays at the bungalow in Dhanmondi instead of at home with her own family. It appeared the girl had nowhere else to go. Rehana accepted Sharmeen’s presence in the house, and, even though she wasn’t particularly fond of her, she liked to think of herself as the kind of person who took in strays.

In the drawing room Sharmeen and Maya locked arms and surveyed the poster.

‘It’s perfect,’ Maya said.

‘I think it needs more colour here,’ Sharmeen said, pointing with her brush to a blank area of the canvas. Her hands were amphibious, the fingers green and stuck together with paint.

‘Maybe — but it could signify, you know, the space of possibility — the future,’ Maya said.

‘You don’t think that’s too abstract?’

‘Probably.’ She shrugged her shoulders to indicate that people who didn’t understand the significance of the blank space didn’t deserve to know the meaning of the poster.

Rehana retreated to her room; her head was throbbing, and she couldn’t get the sight of Mrs Sengupta’s fallen sari and her shocked mouth out of her head. And Sohail, drumming his fingers against that steering wheel. What was he doing now? Probably adding a voice of reason, she told herself. That was what he always did. He was so persuasive. If the students wanted to riot, he would tell them they shouldn’t tear down their own classrooms just to prove a point. He would slowly shift the language of the conversation, so that they were no longer shouting about revenge and saying things like who do they think they are.

Rehana stroked her forehead in time to the rotating ceiling fan. I’ll just close my eyes for one minute, she thought. And then I’ll wake up and worry again.

By the time she emerged from her room a few hours later it was dark outside, the hum of a gentle storm rustling the leaves in the garden. She followed the voices to the drawing room and found it crammed with Sohail’s friends.

‘Salaam-Alaikum, Auntie,’ they said in scattered chorus. No one was smoking, but the cigarette stink clung to the air. Maya and Sharmeen were bent over another sheet of paper. Aref was unpacking his guitar.

‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said, raising his voice over the throng, ‘Mujib has called a meeting on the 7th. You should come.’

‘Me? Why?’

‘Because history will be made.’

‘Yes, Auntie,’ Aref said, twisting a knob on his guitar. ‘You must be there — it’s going to be even bigger than the last one.’

‘You go,’ Rehana said a little nervously. ‘Tell me about it afterwards.’ She suddenly felt awkward, like she had stumbled into the Men Only room at the Gymkhana.

‘Ma, seriously,’ Maya interjected, ‘you can’t miss it — Mujib might declare independence.’

‘I don’t know — we’ll see, OK? Do you all need anything? Are you hungry?’

‘Don’t worry about us, Ammoo,’ Sohail said, waving to her. ‘We feed on the revolution.’

As she turned back to the kitchen, Rehana wondered if she should attend the meeting. They were always telling her to come with them to their rallies and their get-togethers, but, not being young or part of the student movement, and not having attended the conferences of the Nationalist Party or the elections of the student unions, and not, like Sohail and Maya, having read the Communist Manifesto and sat for hours under the banyan tree debating the finer points of the resistance, she did not have the proper trappings of a nationalist. She did not have the youth or the appearance or the words. The correct words, though by now familiar to her, did not glide easily from her tongue: ‘comrade’, ‘proletariat’, ‘revolution’. They were hard, precise words and did not capture Rehana’s ambiguous feelings about the country she had adopted. She spoke, with fluency, the Urdu of the enemy. She was unable to pretend, as she saw so many others doing, that she could replace her mixed tongue with a pure Bengali one, so that the Muslim salutation, As-Salaam Alaikum was replaced by the neutral Adaab, or even Nomoshkar, the Hindu greeting. Rehana’s tongue was too confused for these changes. She could not give up her love of Urdu, its lyrical lilts, its double meanings, its furrowed beat.

No, Rehana did not have the exactness to become a true revolutionary. But she had realized long ago that, while the children would remain fixed at the centre of her life, she would gradually fade out of theirs. In the meantime she wanted to hold on for as long as she could, especially now that their dreams had suddenly grown so spacious. She turned into the kitchen and wondered how she would feed all those hungry dreamers.

‘Ammoo, we have a present for you,’ Sohail said, after they’d all eaten. Rehana had decided on khichuri, which was quick and meant there was no need to cook the dal separately. And she’d made omelettes with chilli and fried onions. The whole lot had been devoured in seconds.

‘What?’ Rehana said.

Sohail pulled out a large bag from underneath his chair. He unfolded the packet and held up a rectangular length of cloth. It was a rich, muddy green, the colour of the lowest leaves in the mangrove. Sewn into the middle was a circle, a little uneven, in red. Inside the circle was a yellow cut-out map of East Pakistan.

‘This is our flag, Ammoo.’ And he opened his arms to show her its full length. Aref took hold of one side, and they stretched it across the room. A few people clapped. ‘Joy Bangla!’ someone shouted. A flag without a country, Rehana thought, but didn’t say. Maya whooped, draped the flag around her shoulders and ran to find a bamboo pole so they could secure it to the rooftop.

The days following the cricket match were full of strikes and processions, curfews disobeyed and slogans shouted from blaring megaphones. Sohail and Maya spent most of their days at the university, returning home late every night, talking excitedly about the change in the air. But Dhanmondi was quiet, and things mostly went on as normal. Occasionally Mrs Chowdhury would arrive at Rehana’s doorstep with a mountain of small brown packets containing the latest shopping for Silvi’s wedding. One sari after another was purchased, then the blouses and petticoats to match, and the lace trim to go around the sleeves of the blouses, and the matching clips for her hair. One day Mrs Chowdhury appeared with only her handbag, and on that day Rehana knew she’d been to the jeweller. She pulled out two red boxes covered in velvet and opened them with a snap, and Rehana had to ooh and aah at the locket and the pair of earrings that winked from inside.

Despite her initial reluctance, Rehana found herself at the racecourse on the 7th of March. She arrived early but the field was already full. It was as though the whole country had turned up: people flooded the grounds and all Rehana could see for miles was a vast sea of shining black heads, glowing in the sunshine like a restless horizon of darkness.

Sheikh Mujib was a tiny white figure in the distance. In the years since he’d become the leader of the movement, his short black coat, his reedy voice and the finger he always pointed at the sky had become familiar sights, but there was still a thrill at seeing him in the flesh. As he made his way on to the stage, the crowd bucked, and Rehana watched as he waved his arms to quiet and reassure his people. His. They belonged to him now; they were his charge, his children. They called him father. They loved him the way orphans dream of their lost parents: without promise, only hope. He cleared his throat and began to speak. Rehana could barely hear him amid the shouts of the crowd, the whistles and the cheers; the afternoon sun beating down on the cloud of flags that dotted the racecourse ground seemed to make his words bend and quiver in the heat. ‘Make every home a fortress,’ she could just hear him say.

The scene appeared before Rehana like a glamorous black-and-white picture; there was the white of Mujib’s kurta-pyjama, the black of his short coat, the black — she knew, though she could not see — of his thick-framed glasses, the white of the tent pitched to cover the stage. By the end she found herself shouting Joy Bangla, Joy Bangla, Joy Bangla with the crowd, the rhythm of her words chiming with the hard thump of her chest, and she recognized, at once, the incendiary thrill of shouting. Maya looked over at her mother and flashed her a wide, encouraging smile. Rehana suddenly felt young, plunged into a world of limitless possibility.

At thirty-eight, Rehana’s body had finally caught up with its history. People who did not know used to assume she was a student, or that she was unmarried, because she didn’t wear a wedding ring or a single piece of gold jewellery, but no longer. She had gained a little weight, and she enjoyed the occasional heaviness of her limbs, the stubborn, outward curve of her belly, the slight effort of movement, an awareness of breath and bone. Her new, comfortable shape came with new imperfections: the bowed line between nose and chin, the slight shadow above her lip, the thickening of her waist and ankles. All fortunate developments for Rehana, as they signified the battle-weary body of a woman who had passed years in the effort to raise her children.

Maya leaned over and held her mother’s hand — not, as she sometimes did, for a reassuring squeeze but in solidarity, and suddenly Rehana felt sure it would all resolve itself: Sheikh Mujib would be Prime Minister, and the country would go on being her home, and the children would go on being her children. In no time at all the world would right itself, and they would go on living ordinary, unexceptional lives.