A Golden Age

May: Tikka Khan, the Butcher of Bengal!

Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram took to the sewing with the same enthusiasm they’d displayed for cards. They gathered at the bungalow every week, ready with their sewing kits. Mrs Rahman managed to get a steady supply of old saris from her various acquaintances and relations. She enlisted everyone she knew — her distant cousins, in-laws, her tailor — to make a contribution to the war effort. Of course, she was quick to point out, no one had been foolish enough to give away their best clothes.

Mrs Akram, whom they had always considered a little spoiled, surprised them by turning out the fastest stitches. And it was her idea to put sackcloths between the saris to make them more sturdy.

‘Let’s call ourselves the sewing sisters,’ Mrs Akram said. ‘Or, I know, Project Rooftop!’

‘Arre, now you want to give it a name — aren’t you the one who said we weren’t good for anything but cards?’

‘I never said that,’ Mrs Akram protested, a needle between her lips. ‘That is not the kind of faltu thing I would say.’

It was true, Rehana thought. It was not the sort of thing she would say any more. Already two months ago felt like the distant past. It was May. They had been at war since March. What was strange had become unstrange. They were used to seeing the green uniforms wherever they went; they were used to returning obediently to their homes at the peal of the curfew siren; and they were used to the dusty, empty streets, the closed shops, the hospitals with locked gates, the half-full baskets of the fruit vendors. The landscape of war was becoming familiar, and they had all found their ways to live with it.

Maya was still angry at Rehana. The silence banged around between them. They batted it back and forth. Sometimes, while she waited for Maya to return from the university, Rehana would resolve to say something, to make up; she could feel the tender words bubbling in her mouth. I’m sorry I hit you. But she couldn’t utter them; as soon as the girl came home, as soon as Rehana saw her scowling face, the way she slammed the bolt through the door, the irritation flooded back. Why couldn’t she smile, give a hint she might relent? But she didn’t, and Rehana too was frozen, the words stuck somewhere between her heart and her mouth.

The more time went by, the harder it became. Rehana organized the house; she packaged the supplies the boys had left at the bungalow; she sewed her kathas. It was a lonely, stretched-out time. The only thing she and Maya did together now was listen to the radio. In the morning they would listen to BBC Bangla, and in the afternoon Voice of America. But the programme they waited for with most anticipation was the Free Bangla Radio transmission, every day at 4.30, broadcast from a secret, undisclosed location in the liberated zone.

The number of refugees flowing into West Bengal has reached one million. The International Red Cross has stated that the refugee camps along the border between India and Bangladesh are overcrowded and suffer from a lack of clean water, sanitation and proper medical facilities. Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi has pledged her support for the people of Bangladesh, stating that the freedom-loving Bengalis would soon triumph over the fascistic regime of the Pakistani dictators.

So by the time Sohail returned to Dhaka, the city had settled back into a sort of routine. He came in the middle of the night and stood at the foot of Rehana’s bed. Later she would say she had known all along that he was there, that she’d deliberately kept her eyes closed, savouring the relief of having him back, and alive, but really she’d slept through the whole thing — his entrance through the gate, his stealthy sidestepping of the furniture and the medicine boxes, the deep breath he took before uttering her very favourite word.

‘Ma.’

She pressed her cheek against his cheek. He smelled of petrol and cigarettes. At the touch of his shirt against her hand she felt a deep, piercing loneliness.

‘Have you eaten?’ she said, then laughed at herself. Still, she got up and darted into the kitchen while he went to wake Maya. She’d had only a moment to scrutinize him. He wore a grey shirt and a pair of blue trousers; they were both dirty and looked too big. His eyes were ringed dark brown, and he was growing a beard. There was something unmistakably foreign about him now, as though some other hands had begun to shape him, hands not as loving or as tender as hers. She couldn’t help thinking back to the years he had been with Parveen. My children have not always been my children. The old wound pulsed inside her.

As she deliberated over what to cook, she heard him wake his sister. ‘Bhaiya!’ Maya cried out. It was the most cheerful thing she’d said in months. ‘Tell me everything,’ Rehana heard her say. ‘Have you been to the battlefront?’

The food — egg curry, a few strips of fried eggplant, leftover dal — was soon on the table. Sohail rolled up his sleeves eagerly and between mouthfuls began to tell them about the freedom-fighter army.

‘Joy drove us to the river and then we took the ferry. It was full of refugees. We heard the most terrible stories about that night. Lot of Hindus especially.’

‘The Senguptas haven’t come back,’ Maya said.

Sohail nodded, paused for a moment as he took another bite and smiled gratefully at his mother. Then he glanced at the door, and she knew what he was thinking.

‘She’s fine. But we hardly see her.’

Sohail nodded and continued the story. ‘We didn’t know where to go, we just heard the Bengali regiments had crossed the border and were setting up camp. Raju’s uncle is in the military. We thought we’d look for him. Three days later we found the camp. All the Bengali regiments in the east had mutinied. They were regrouping when we found them. It was just a temporary settlement at first, then we moved to Agartala, about fifteen miles further from the border. Now it’s become like a small town — there’s even a hospital, and barracks for the officers. And there are others, in Chittagong, Sylhet, Rajshahi. Seven sectors in all.’

‘We’ve been listening on the radio,’ Maya said.

‘Where do you sleep?’ Rehana asked. She could tell he wanted to talk about more important things, but she couldn’t help herself.

‘Tents, Ammoo. Not very comfortable. When I go back, you will have to give me some blankets, and a plate. I’ve been eating from banana leaves!’

So he was going back. Rehana tried not to show her disappointment. Here was her son, living such a strange life. He used to love Elvis Presley, she suddenly remembered. She leaned over the table and piled more rice on to his plate.

‘Everyone has joined. Everyone.’ And his eyes shone. ‘All the young men, fighting side by side. No one cares who anyone is. They’ve all joined, the peasant and the soldier, together, just as we’ve been dreaming.’ And then his face changed. ‘But things are bad, you know.’

‘And what will you do?’ Maya asked.

He took a deep breath. ‘I’m being trained. As a guerrilla.’

‘Guerrilla?’ She had a vague image of an outlaw. ‘Is it dangerous?’

‘Of course it’s dangerous, Ammoo!’ Maya exclaimed. ‘War! What do you think?’

‘I know what war is, Maya.’

‘Aren’t you even a little excited? A whole nation, coming together.’

‘Excited? I’m not excited, I’m sick. I’m sick with worry. This is my child.’ Rehana left the table and moved towards the kitchen, muttering something about sweets. She could hear her daughter sighing and Sohail whispering something, trying to make peace.

It began to occur to Rehana that any doubts Sohail once had about becoming a soldier had completely disappeared. As with everything else, he had taken it on with a kind of brutal devotion. He was a guerrilla. A man for his country. He would die, if he had to. Rehana wondered if she should begin to prepare herself, imagine a life without her son, carve out a hole where he used to be, familiarize herself with the shock of his absence. And as soon as she had this thought, she realized she had no choice. She could not give him up, not to fate or to nation, and if he chose to leave her anyway, there would be no way to prepare.

It was almost dawn by the time they finished eating.

‘Get some rest, Sohail.’

He looked around, as though deciding whether to speak.

‘Ammoo, Maya, I need to ask you something.’

He waved his hand and drew them closer. He dragged a chair towards himself and faced them, moving to close the curtains before sitting down. He switched off the lights and allowed the small flame of the kerosene lamp to trace shadows across his face.

He brought his palms together. ‘Some of the guerrilla operations will take place here, in Dhaka,’ he began. ‘And we need a place in the city. To store arms. A safe place to hide out before and after the operations.’ As he looked at his mother, there was no hesitation. ‘Our mission is to disrupt the normal functioning of the city. Make sure the world knows what is going on. People will not just stand by and witness the rape of Bangladesh.’ He took a deep breath, then continued, ‘I’ve come here to find shelter and to recruit more men for the guerrilla regiment.’

Rehana imagined the journey Sohail had taken to come here, eluding the barricades around the city, the powerful searchlights that scanned the docks of the river, the green trucks with guntoting soldiers. She imagined someone in charge, a military man, taking one look at her son and knowing he would be the right one to send back to Dhaka. She wanted to be more angry and less proud, but she found herself wanting to say yes, not just so that she would have Sohail’s confidence, but because she could not blame anyone but herself for making him so fine, so ready to take charge. This was who she had hoped he would become, even if she had never imagined that her son, or the world, would come to this. And she knew what he was asking her.

‘You want to use Shona.’

‘Yes.’

Shona with her back to the sun. Shona that had given her the children. Proud, vacant Shona of the many dreams.

‘The house is yours, Sohail. Your birthright.’

It didn’t take long for Sohail to set up Shona as the Dhaka headquarters of the guerrilla operations. A few days after he arrived, Rehana watched as he and the other boys dug a ditch in the rough grass beside the rosebushes to store their weapons. They worked at night, using small torches to pierce the darkness. Once, Rehana’s curiosity overcame her, and she peered inside one of the ditches, but all she saw was a set of rough wooden boxes and something shiny underneath, winking back at the sun, which beat its dry May heat. At Shona, Sohail and his friends prepared the back rooms for the new recruits. When the boys — she thought of them as boys, they were so young — needed something, they came to the bungalow and asked politely. A hammer. A glass of water. Soap. They never stayed long.

The activity at Shona kept Maya closer to home. She spent long hours helping the boys write press releases. They found her an old typewriter, and she could be seen hunched over it hungrily, scowling at the letters, hitting the keys hard with her two fore-fingers. Sounds like a machine-gun, Sohail said. At night, when Rehana insisted Maya eat with her at home, she carried the bulky typewriter back with her, the pages fluttering like the white wings of a summer bird.

Rehana watched the huddled figures that came in and out of Shona, imagining the conversations they were having, the plans, the secrets. She attempted to keep up with the activity next door by putting the bungalow in order. She rationed the money the Senguptas had left and kept a strict schedule for washing, cleaning, shopping, cooking. And there were the medical supplies to store. She found herself busy and preoccupied all the time. There were few opportunities to dwell on Sharmeen’s disappearance, or Maya’s anger, or Mrs Chowdhury and Silvi’s silence next door.

The only problem was the sewing. Mrs Akram and Mrs Rahman were due to come to the bungalow with a new supply of saris, but they couldn’t be told about Shona. Rehana felt guilty for keeping secrets from her friends, but Sohail said it was a matter of their safety; you must pretend we’re not here, he said. Not here? It was all she could think about. But Rehana had to come up with a plan to keep her friends away.

There was only one thing to do, she decided: make pickles. The mangoes on the tree were just about ready: grassy-green and tongue-smackingly sour. She asked the boys to pick them from the tree. When they were younger, this was the children’s job. Maya was by far the better climber: her foot would curl over the branches and hold her fast, while she stretched her arms and plucked the fruit, throwing it down to Rehana, who kept shouting, ‘Be careful! Be careful!’

She would slice the green mangoes and cook them slowly with chillies and mustard seeds. Then she would stuff them into jars and leave them on the roof to ripen. There was a rule about not touching pickles during the monthlies. She couldn’t remember who had told her that rule — her mother? — no, her mother had probably never sliced a mango in her brief, dreamy life. Must have been one of her sisters. Marzia, she was the best cook. And the enforcer of rules. But Rehana had decided long ago this was a stupid rule. It was hard enough to time the pickle-making anyway, between the readiness of the fruit and the weather, which had to be hot and dry.

As she recited the pickle recipe to herself, Rehana wondered what her sisters would make of her at this very moment. Guerrillas at Shona. Sewing kathas on the rooftop. Her daughter at rifle practice. The thought of their shocked faces made her want to laugh. She imagined the letter she would write. Dear sisters, she would say. Our countries are at war; yours and mine. We are on different sides now. I am making pickles for the war effort. You see how much I belong here and not to you.

The boys stripped the tree and brought her three groaning baskets of fruit. Rehana hunted down every glass jar she could find, and when she ran out of those she decided to use the clay vats that had held the yoghurt, back when there was fresh yoghurt at the market every day.

The pickle jars took up half of the roof. The nose-aching stench swelled to cover the rest. When Mrs Rahman and Mrs Akram came the next day, they would smell the drying pickles from the gate and refuse to sew.

The next day, while Rehana was checking to make sure the pickles had settled properly, she heard a small commotion at the gate. It must be Mrs Akram, she thought, wiping her hands on her achol. She was always early. She leaned over the railing and was about to wave when she saw not her friend climbing out of a rickshaw but someone else, a woman, getting out of a car. Perhaps she was at the wrong address. Rehana inched closer; she was about to call out to the woman, ask her if she was lost, when she saw her reaching over her head and unlatching the gate.

‘Rehana?’ the woman said.

She would know that voice anywhere. She took the stairs two at a time, her heart clapping in her chest.

The woman was knocking at the door when Rehana approached from the garden. ‘Parveen.’

‘Rehana! Thank God!’ Parveen clasped Rehana’s hands and looked into her face with eager eyes. ‘We were so worried.’

‘Please,’ Rehana said, ‘come inside.’ Stay calm, she told herself. This time she is not coming for your children. Rehana watched Parveen glide through the door and settle, with a sigh, on the sofa. Then she leaned her head against the cushion and turned her eyes to the room.

It was ten years, Rehana remembered. The decade was gone, like a breath, when she looked into that face; she was that trembling, stupid widow who gave up her children. Her mouth flooded with bitterness. ‘What brings you to Dhaka?’ she said, intending to sound cold but not angry.

‘Why, the war, what do you think?’ Parveen said. ‘Your brother, Faiz, has been given a very important responsibility. Very important. We didn’t want to come, of course, but you know Faiz, so dutiful. Always wants to serve his country.’

Rehana was confused. What responsibility, which country?

‘We only came last week. Things have not arrived, house is still a mess, but I thought, I must go to see my sister. What will she think if she hears, na?’

Rehana didn’t know what to say. ‘Well, it’s been a long time.’

‘Too long!’

A pause stretched between them. Rehana did not want to bring up the children; let her ask, if she wants to know. When they had first come back, Rehana had refused to talk about those years apart. She hadn’t wanted to know. She had only asked if they’d been fed properly, if they’d been beaten, if anything terrible had happened to them. She had checked them for bruises. Part of her, she knew, had wanted some physical symptom, some obvious mistreatment, that would tell her the children too bore marks of their long separation. She wanted to hear nothing about the little affections, the life that had passed between them in her absence. She especially didn’t want to know if Parveen had been any good at being their mother.

‘So,’ Parveen said, slapping her hands on her knees. ‘The children. They’re well, by God’s grace?’

‘Yes, mahshallah, they are well.’

Rehana was about to tell Parveen that they weren’t home, how sorry they would be to have missed her, but Parveen cut her short. ‘And you still live here? That’s your rented house, in the back?’

‘Yes.’

‘You have tenants?’

‘Yes, the Senguptas.’

‘Hindus?’ Parveen grimaced. ‘You gave your house to Hindus?’

‘They’ve been my tenants for years,’ Rehana said; ‘they’re like family.’

‘Well, you do as you wish, Rehana, but I would not trust my house to those people…’ She screwed up her face, as though she’d just taken a sip of bad milk.

Rehana ignored this last statement; she was busy trying to unmask the purpose of the visit, of Parveen’s cavalier manner, all traces of the dirty history between them forgotten. But she really shouldn’t have been surprised. This was often the way with families; they would try to destroy one another, and then they would pretend nothing had happened; carry on with their old habits, their casual humiliations, as Parveen was doing now, pointing her eyes to the shabby state of Rehana’s furniture.

‘…just as well we’re getting rid of them.’

Rehana was drawn back to the conversation. ‘Rid of who?’

‘Haven’t you been listening, Rehana? I’m talking about the dirty elements of our great nation. The Hindus, the Communists, the separatists! That is why your brother and I are here — it’s a great duty, a privilege.’

This was the mission? Rehana’s eyes flew to the window, to Shona. Parveen was a few short feet away from the guerrilla hideout. When she assured herself there wasn’t any obvious movement in the next house, she relaxed, suddenly pleased at this deceit, to watch Parveen perched so comfortably, while next door the boys planted guns in the garden. She was about to offer her a snack, when there was a knock at the gate and the sound of it swinging open.

‘Yoo-hoo! Sorry we’re late.’ It was Mrs Akram and Mrs Rahman. She heard them crossing the driveway. ‘What on earth is that smell — Rehana, you opened a pickle factory on the roof or what?’

Rehana rushed to the door and ushered them in. ‘Come in, come in. Meet my bhabi Parveen,’ she said, trying to sound casual. ‘Bhabi, these are my friends, Mrs Akram and Mrs Rahman.’

Mrs Rahman gave Parveen a frank, appraising look. ‘Salaam-Alaikum,’ she said in a headmistress voice.

‘Salaam-Alaikum,’ Mrs Akram echoed.

‘We’ve all heard such a lot about you,’ Mrs Rahman said. ‘What brings you back to Dhaka? I thought you lived in Lahore.’

‘We’re here to fix things up!’ Parveen said with a laugh.

‘They’ve come to work for the army,’ Rehana said, praying Mrs Rahman would keep her thoughts to herself.

‘Ah, all right, I see,’ Mrs Akram said. They stood awkwardly around the door, not knowing whether to sit down.

‘What about those pickles?’ Mrs Rahman said. ‘The stench!’

‘Oh, is that what it is?’ Parveen said.

‘Sorry, friends, we’ll have to find somewhere else,’ Rehana said.

‘What possessed you?’ Mrs Rahman asked. ‘You must have been up all night.’

‘Well, I thought I should just make as many as I could — who knows what will happen to my tree?’

This brought a nod of assent from Mrs Akram. ‘So true,’ she said, ‘future is so uncertain.’

‘But who will eat so many pickles?’ Mrs Rahman asked. ‘I’m getting a bellyache just thinking about it.’

‘Maybe you can sell them,’ Mrs Akram said.

‘Arre, good idea, we can buy more thread.’

‘We’ll see,’ Rehana said, eager to get rid of them both. Luckily Parveen was ignoring them; she had stood up and was making her way to the dining table, where Rehana had kept the leftover parathas from breakfast; Maya hadn’t touched hers. ‘So shall we postpone for a day or two, until we find somewhere more suitable?’

The gin-rummy ladies left, patting Rehana on the back, whispering, Tell us all about it tomorrow. A few minutes later Parveen took her leave too, inviting Rehana to bring the children to her new house. Everything happened so quickly that Rehana could almost convince herself it was a dream. And had Parveen’s perfume trails not clung to the walls, or had her words not insinuated themselves into her ears, or had the sight of her shiny beaked hair, her gauzy sari, vanished, even faded, it might have been possible. But of course it was not, and Rehana was left to face the afternoon, replaying the scene, and wondering why, after all, Parveen had decided to come.

Another week passed in much the same manner as the last; Sohail and his friends went in and out of Shona; Rehana watched the pickles ripening on the rooftop; the May sun crashed through the windows every morning and threatened to suffocate them. Then Sohail appeared at the bungalow and said, ‘We’re ready, Ammoo.’

‘Ready for what?’

‘For the operation. I’ve recruited a team, and we’ve received our orders.’

Rehana hadn’t given much thought to what they would actually do once they’d dug up the garden and readied the house. It already looked like work. But they had only been preparing. For this.

‘What will you do?’

‘We’re planting an explosive at the InterCon Hotel. We’re making a statement.’ He put his hand to his cheek and rubbed his jaw.

‘Statement? What sort of a statement? Will people get killed?’

‘No. We’re hoping there won’t be any casualties.’

Now he was referring to dead people as casualties.

‘Is it dangerous?’

‘You want me to lie, don’t you?’

Yes, please. ‘Of course not.’

‘It’s not dangerous. I’m just the lookout.’ He held her wrists. ‘Thank you, Ammoo. I keep meaning to say that.’

‘I’m just happy to have you near me.’ She wanted to ask him to promise nothing would happen. That he would be safe. That he wouldn’t get himself killed, or maimed, or something selfish like that. ‘When will it happen?’

‘Tomorrow, early morning — before sunrise.’

‘I’ll be praying,’ was all she could think to say.

His hand was on his jaw again, and he seemed to consider something. ‘Why don’t you come before we set off? You can meet everyone.’

‘Your friends wouldn’t mind?’

‘They’ll be happy to get your blessings. Some of them haven’t seen their own mothers in a long time.’

Rehana understood. She felt a flush of pride at being asked.

Sohail put his hand to his cheek again.

‘Do you have a toothache?’

He grinned, then winced a little. ‘Just a small one. Nothing to worry.’

A toothache is the sort of thing I used to worry about. Now I worry about your legs, your heart, your life.

Before dawn the next day Rehana crossed the garden and walked through the narrow iron gate she had built to divide the properties. She had made puris, half with potatoes, half with dal, and halwa. It felt foolish nowadays to take pride in cooking, but she couldn’t resist taking pleasure in the domed rise of the puris, the perfect, vague sweetness of the halwa. It was her first time at Shona since the guerrillas had taken over. From the outside, nothing seemed different; she knew some of the plants had been dug up, but they’d settled back, even though they looked a little ragged and unkempt. I must remember to water everything tomorrow, she thought.

The first thing she noticed when she stepped inside was the thick darkness. The curtains were drawn, so that even the weak moonlight and the even weaker streetlights did not penetrate; it was like closing her eyes to sleep. As she adjusted to the darkness Rehana could make out shapes crouched on the floor. Then there were moving pinpoints of light: cigarettes, she gathered, from the smell.

‘Hello?’ she said into the darkness.

‘Partho, turn on the light,’ someone said. She heard a scratching sound, then saw the flame of a match. The hurricane lamp was lit.

The lamp was passed along. Each face glowed orange, one at a time, as though they were a cast of actors introducing themselves. They smiled or nodded at her; one raised his hand to his forehead and salaamed. She couldn’t help thinking they all looked so happy. Not scared. Not as though they might be facing death, or worse. But as though they were about to play cricket and found themselves gifted with a cool afternoon. Casual. Carefree.

She tried, but could not tell them apart. They were a blur, shadows behind a veil of cigarette smoke, old and very young all at once. When the lamp was passed to him, Joy stood and approached Rehana. He held the light up, and she saw he was grinning. ‘Such bodmashes we are, Auntie, making a mess of your house.’

‘Don’t be silly, beta. My house is yours. But I don’t see your brother?’

‘Aref is in Agartala,’ Joy said. ‘He’s been assigned to another mission.’

Maya was already there; she began circulating with the plate of puris. Rehana thought of the last time they were gathered this way, with Maya leading the songs and Sharmeen pumping the harmonium. She wanted to cradle Maya in her arms. Tell her that she remembered.

‘Someone will come to collect the boxes,’ Sohail said. ‘And we’ll be bringing in more donations.’

‘We’ve heard about your sewing group,’ Joy said; ‘the muktis will really love those — if only you could see the camp, Auntie — nothing soft about those beds!’

The other boys laughed from the shadows.

‘Oof,’ one of them said, his mouth full of puri, ‘and the food — the rootis are hard as sticks, and full of holes.’

Sohail tugged at Rehana’s arm. ‘Ammoo,’ he said, ‘this is our commanding officer.’ He led her to a corner of the room. He whispered, ‘He used to be a major in the Pak Army.’

‘Hello,’ the man said. He was standing directly in front of the lamp and she couldn’t make out much, except the span of his shoulders and the firm grip he returned when she, not knowing how to greet him, offered her hand.

‘Oh, hello,’ she said, returning the squeeze.

‘It’s kind of you to give up your house, Mrs Haque,’ the Major said.

‘Yes, yes, of course.’

‘The whole nation is grateful.’

He was probably thinking she had done it out of some sense of duty, and looking at him now, the tightness of his grip still ringing in her fingers, she wished it had been so; not that the act was any less noble, having been done out of love for her son; even so, it was somehow bigger, in this room, and in this tall man’s presence, to have done something for the country and not just in the service of her children. Perhaps she really was doing it for the country.

From the distance, the sound of the muezzin interrupted her reverie and reminded her of the time. ‘Please forgive me,’ she announced to the huddled group, ‘it’s the morning Azaan. I have to pray. And we haven’t had the halwa.’

‘You finish saying your prayers and then we’ll eat,’ Sohail suggested.

‘OK.’ There was an awkward pause. ‘Would any of you like to join me?’ She glanced around; some of the boys were staring down at the ground. She was sure they needed some reassurance, some certainty, before going on their mission.

‘Ma,’ Sohail said finally, ‘Partho is Hindu.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ Rehana heard someone say from the back of the room. Still no one moved.

Rehana was about to move to Mrs Sengupta’s bedroom when the Major said, ‘Why not? Mrs Haque, you stand in front.’

‘Really? You don’t mind?’ Rehana was pleased, though she knew she really shouldn’t; women weren’t supposed to lead the prayer. But she went to the curtained window that faced west, and the boys lined up behind her. Even Maya joined in, standing between Sohail and Joy. Rehana pulled her sari over her head and tucked the end behind her ear.

God is Great.

I bear witness that there is none other worthy of worship.

Come to prayer, come to felicity.

Glory to you, O Allah. Blessed is your name, exalted is your majesty.

In you I seek refuge.

Holy are you, and magnificent.

Come to prayer, come to felicity.

Rehana couldn’t sleep. Shortly after dawn she’d said goodbye to Sohail and his friends and counted, over and over like the long, repeated summer days, all the things that could possibly go wrong. The boys were too young; they were excitable; they were carried away by the thrill of danger, but what did they really know? She’d said all the prayers, Zohr and Asr and Magreb.

In the evening, when the Radio Free Bangladesh broadcaster announced that there had been an explosion at the InterContinental Hotel, Maya let out a whoop of joy and ran through the house, waving her green and red flag.

‘Ammoo! Listen!’ and she pressed the radio to Rehana’s ear.

Foreign journalists have requested the permission of the government of Pakistan to access the front lines of the civil war after an explosion at the InterContinental Hotel revealed the extent of resistance to occupying forces. The government of Pakistan denies all reports of genocide, and President Yahya Khan accuses Sheikh Mujib and his associates in Calcutta of spreading false propaganda against the Pakistan government.

So the operation was a success. But that still didn’t mean they’d got away with it. Rehana closed her eyes and said Aytul Kursi for what felt like the thousandth time that day. She couldn’t sleep. She thought she heard Maya in the other room. Ma! she was saying, I forgive you! I forgive you! Rehana leaped out of bed and ran to Maya’s room and found her with fingers poised over her typewriter. Her heart was pounding painfully in her chest.

‘What are you doing?’ Maya asked, her head tilted. ‘Did you see a ghost?’

When Rehana heard the noises coming from the driveway she knew something had gone wrong. She had been so sure that it had; it was almost a relief to discover she was right. It was an hour before dinner; she’d just put the rice on the stove. She bolted out of the kitchen and saw Sohail and Joy pushing a green car towards the house, the engine switched off. There were others in the car, though she couldn’t make out their faces. Stricken, she ran across the garden and through the gate, meeting them just as they were taking the Major out of the car. Sohail and Joy were both covered in blood, and with them was a stranger, a slight man in a white coat, looking terrified. The Major was between them, motionless and grey.

‘Oh, God, he’s died.’

Sohail dragged the man out by his shoulders. His head lolled to the side. ‘Take his legs!’ he whispered. Sweat was pouring down Sohail’s face and pooling around his chin. Joy grabbed the Major’s legs, and they pulled him to the front door.

‘Goddammit!’ Joy kept saying. ‘Goddammit!’

They laid him across the rose-petal carpet. Someone had tied a cloth around his leg. He was awake, groaning, tossing his head; when he turned his face, Rehana saw there was a triangular splinter of wood lodged in his cheek. Sohail stood over him while Joy pointed a gun at the doctor.

‘Fix it.’

‘I can’t. I need things — medicine, anaesthetic.’

‘You’ll have to make do with what you’ve got in the bag.’

The doctor was no older than the rest of them, probably hardly out of medical school, a thin, delicate boy with greasy hair.

‘You have to take him to the hospital!’ he said.

‘Are you mad? Do you know how many people are looking for us?’

The doctor waved his arms. ‘I can’t. I can’t do it.’

Rehana found herself kneeling beside the Major, looking the young doctor in the eye. ‘Listen, this is an emergency. Just do your best.’ She kept her gaze on him, until he nodded slowly.

‘We have to get the shards out of his leg,’ he said, looking only at her. ‘There are several smaller traumas, but the main thing is the leg. And the face. I wouldn’t know what to do with the face.’

‘Just patch it up,’ Joy said. ‘We’ll take him to the field hospital in the morning.’

‘He can’t go very far.’

‘Fix it! We have to move out tonight!’ Joy pressed the gun to the doctor’s temple.

‘Joy, baba, this man is trying to help,’ Rehana said.

‘Please, take the gun away. I’m on the right side.’

‘Just fix it.’

‘The gun! Take it away first!’ The doctor blinked away tears.

Joy lowered the gun, but he kept his finger curled around the trigger.

The doctor took a syringe out of his bag and filled it with the contents of a small, upturned bottle. Then he went to work on the Major’s leg. Rehana remained beside him, strangely unaffected by the sight of the Major’s torn limb, the ragged flesh exposed, the whiteness of bone shining through the dimness of the room. She didn’t hesitate when the doctor told her to peel back the Major’s trousers and begin to clean the smaller wounds. He gave her a pair of tweezers and told her to pick out the shards. She bent over the leg, working quietly, ignoring the shudders coming from the Major.

When Rehana finished with the tweezers, the doctor started to stitch. ‘Thank you, Mrs Haque.’ She could tell he wasn’t just thanking her for helping to clean the wound.

The wood was still lodged in the Major’s cheek.

Sohail whispered something to Joy, and he put down his gun, crouching instead and holding a kerosene lamp over the doctor’s arm. ‘Auntie,’ Joy said, ‘you go and take a break.’

Rehana went to Mrs Sengupta’s kitchen for a glass of water. She was taking a giant gulp, sighing into the glass, when Sohail approached and hugged her tightly. She felt him crying into her shoulder.

‘Ammoo,’ he whispered, ‘it was my fault.’

‘What happened?’

‘It was me. I was supposed to fix the timer on the explosive. But I got there and I just froze. I couldn’t move. The Major pushed me aside and did it himself, but it was too late; he got caught up in the blast. It should have been me; I messed it up.’

Rehana didn’t know what to say. She held his head, stroking it slowly.

‘I don’t know, I don’t know if I can do this — I’m no good — the firing, training — I shouldn’t have gone.’

‘It’s not your fault. Whatever it was, it can’t have been your fault.’

‘He saved my life,’ Sohail said. ‘I would’ve been dead without him.’

The doctor finished his work.

‘I’ve sutured the wounds, but I can’t promise there won’t be an infection. He needs medicine. And even then he might lose his leg.’

‘Can we take him away?’ Joy asked.

‘Maybe a few roads, but no further.’

‘There’s a field hospital in Agartala, near our camp.’

‘Across the border? Absolutely not.’

‘Ammoo,’ Sohail said, ‘you have to let him stay here.’

Rehana was tired; there was blood everywhere; Mrs Sengupta’s carpet was ruined. She wanted to feel sorry for the man, but she couldn’t. He was so ugly, lying on the carpet, his mouth open horribly. But he had saved her son’s life.

But it was Maya who said, ‘No. He can’t stay here.’ She had been quiet ever since the boys arrived, hovering at the periphery of the scene. Now she was standing over the Major, pumping her fists.

‘Maya, please,’ Sohail said, ‘there’s no choice.’

‘Then you stay. You stay here and take care of him. Don’t make us do it.’

‘We can’t stay here. We’re wanted men.’

‘This is all your fault.’

‘It is, it is my fault!’ Sohail’s eyes opened wide, red and ferocious. ‘Ma, you have to take him. Please say you’ll take him.’

Rehana was torn. ‘You’re sure there’s nowhere else he can go?’

‘Ma,’ Maya gasped, ‘you want another man dying in your house?’

Another man? Was she talking about her father?

‘This man cannot be moved,’ the doctor said. He looked at Maya, who was leaning against her mother and breathing heavily, as though she’d been running. Then he said, ‘I will stay. I will stay here and make sure he doesn’t die.’

Rehana breathed a sigh of relief. ‘What’s your name?’ she asked the doctor.

‘Rajesh.’

‘Maya. Maya, please look at me. Look at me. Dr Rajesh is going to stay here and take care of the Major. No one is going to die. OK? No one is dying. You wanted to do something, remember? You wanted to do something? Here it is. We’ll take care of him. He saved your brother. Enough, enough. No crying.’ And she stroked her daughter’s hair.

Rehana opened her eyes and for a moment forgot where she was, only sensing the wrongness of the place, and then remembered, and woke with a start, moving the hair from her forehead, feeling for the frayed braid, untying, retying, out of habit. She was positioned awkwardly on the sofa. Looking across the room, she saw the rubble from the night before — the stained bandages, the muddy footprints across the floor, the little bits of plaster and wood from the explosion — and accounted for the tiredness in her limbs.

The Major was installed in Mithun’s bedroom. When Rehana approached him, she saw the lace curtain was drawn, and in the early-morning light the pattern traced shadows across his face. There, on his forehead, a star-shaped flower; and there, across the thigh, a speckled row of hearts. He slept without a sound, immobile but for the lace shadow that stirred slightly with his every shallow breath.

In slumber, the Major was enormous. His arms and feet spilled out from the bed, his hands like spreading spider webs. The doctor had left just after dawn, declaring the Major stable and promising to return the next day with medicine and more bandages. The first night will be the worst, he had said. You must stay here.

And here she still was.

The night had made him no prettier. On his face, in a jagged, angry curve, was a scar. It travelled, meandering, from the outer edge of his left eyebrow to the corner of his upper lip. A bluish stain marked the other side of his face. The rest of him, except the bandaged leg, seemed strangely untouched, healthy in fact, the skin on the neck and arms taut and glowing in the pale morning sunlight.

Rehana looked at him and felt a surge of pride in his solid presence, as though he were a fallen angel, ugly and beaten, but maybe still a little blessed.

Suddenly she was hungry; she couldn’t remember when she’d last eaten. She had a craving for lychees, not the dry ones they imported from China but the local variety with the smooth, leathery skin. The lychees made her think of other indulgences; perhaps she should buy some meat, some better rice. She would go to New Market. She felt the urge to venture out, to leave the house and the sight of the night’s chaos.

It was a bright day with no clouds at all, the sort of day when the sky is holding its breath and everything is still and perfectly clear. The market was the same as it had been ever since the start of the war: every week another shop or two closed, the vegetables dusty and shrivelled, the fish small and dull-eyed. But Rehana was buoyed by the thought of haggling with the vendors or finding some small treasure, a fresh chicken or a late-season papaya.

Her cheer left her as soon as she entered the market. Dotted among the stalls and the ferry-wallahs were men in army uniforms. They strolled through the market with rifles carelessly slung across their shoulders. She passed a sweetshop and saw a group of them sitting around a plastic table, laughing with their mouths so wide open she could see, even from a distance, the peaks of their teeth. One of them spat loudly into the gutter.

As she walked with her head down, trying not to catch anyone’s eye, Rehana was annoyed at her fear, especially in this place, which had seen her through a decade of struggle. Here was where the material for the children’s school uniforms had been bought, where she had calculated the week’s rations and planned her cooking. It was where Iqbal had bought her wedding sari — only twenty-two rupees, he’d confessed — where she had come to shop for Eid gifts, wedding presents, birthday clothes for the children. New Market was the very heart of the city for Rehana, its smells and winding alleys as familiar to her as her very own Dhanmondi. And now it was suddenly an alien place, the air heavy with menace. ‘Watch out for the butchers,’ Sohail had said; ‘they’re Urdu-speaking.’

‘Why? I’m Urdu-speaking. So what?’

‘Those people are army collaborators.’

Sohail was referring to the Urdu-speaking Biharis, who were rumoured to be siding with the army. The division of the city into sympathizers and collaborators sat uncomfortably with Rehana, but he told her there had to be some way of knowing who to suspect and who to trust. They could no longer trust their instincts. Or even their friends.

Rehana followed a narrow passageway into the butchers’ quarter. The stalls were scattered haphazardly, cuts of meat hanging from each one like wet jewels. Rehana always took pleasure in buying meat; she would take her time examining the white pearl of bone, the rubied blood, the deep garnet sinews.

She found herself in front of her regular butcher.

‘What’s good today?’ she asked. She looked down at the ground, so he wouldn’t know it was her.

‘Nice chop meat, memsaab. Also mutton is good today.’

Rehana thought of the Major, his sewn-up cheek. ‘I need bones. For soup.’

‘You like soup? OK.’

It was so hot. Rehana saw the flies that hovered, then sank against the hanging meat, their buzzing amplified by the low ceiling of the market. She saw the butcher extending his arms and offering a piece he thought might impress her. It was the entire side of a small cow, a row of bones raised like curved teeth, the flesh sliced neatly so that its purple striations reflected the light. The smell of blood, metallic, laced with rot, assaulted Rehana. She shuddered and turned her face. The butcher recognized her instantly.

Rehana recalled why she had always bought her meat from this man. He was impeccably dressed; there was no blood anywhere on his shirt or on his hands. He wore a spotless white kurta, and a cap, as though he was on his way to the mosque.

‘How are you, madam?’ he asked in Urdu, and saw her start.

‘Yes, well,’ she answered quietly, and then, without meaning to, she said, ‘We’re having a war.’

‘I know.’ And when she stayed silent it was as though she was accusing him of something and he had to say, ‘I have nowhere else, madam.’ But the words were hollow, and Rehana realized how strange the language suddenly sounded: aggressive, insinuating. She saw that it was now the language of her enemy; hers and Sohail’s and the Major’s. She tried to feel something else, some tenderness for her poets, some sympathy for this man, only a meat-cutter after all.

‘You have this,’ he said, proffering the meat. And Rehana could see that he was afraid of her, and she was pleased, and then ashamed to be pleased. She quickly pulled out a five-rupee note and turned, waving away the flies that had suddenly collected around her head.

The Major was awake when she returned. Rehana could tell he was uncomfortable; he didn’t turn his head when she entered, just blinked a few times and tried to move his mouth. His eyes were two black pearls. She turned on the ceiling fan and wiped the sweat that had gathered on his forehead. He needed water. She went outside to look for Maya, and found her frowning over a book and writing in its margins with a tiny, illegible scrawl.

‘What are you doing?’

‘Reading Che Guevara Speaks,’ she said, exposing the spine.

‘I asked you to look after the Major.’

‘He’s asleep.’

‘No, he’s awake.’

‘Well, now you can take care of him.’ And she returned to her book.

‘You don’t like him?’

‘Why not?’ she mumbled, not looking up. ‘He’s fighting for us.’

Rehana looked more closely at her daughter and tried — how many times had she done this? — to see something that might have escaped her. There was none of the panic of the night before, nothing of the need.

It started to rain.

Sighing, Rehana took a glass of water to the Major, covering her head with a plastic sheet as she crossed the garden into the other house. As he drank, she noticed his lips were not as desperate as the rest of him. He thanked her with a relieved breath, and she looked at him as though he could not see her, with a frank stare.

Joy arrived in the evening. He rubbed his hand across his chest and asked for a word. ‘I need to speak to you, Auntie,’ he said. ‘Thing is, the Pakistan Army think the Major is dead. They saw the building collapsing around him; there’s no chance he survived.’ He looked around the room, avoiding her eyes. ‘We believe we can use this to our advantage.’

‘What will you do?’

‘He’ll stay here until he recovers, if that’s all right with you.’

She remembered the sight of the Major’s leg. It could be weeks, even months. ‘I thought it would be only a few days.’

‘We could move him,’ Joy said, ‘but now that he’s in hiding, it would be better if he stayed here.’

What had she got herself into? ‘How long?’ she asked.

‘Maybe a month. And he can give out his orders — through me. I’ll go back and forth.’

‘What about Sohail?’

Joy rubbed his chest again. His fingernails were rimmed with black. ‘That’s the thing, see, it’s dangerous now for him to come here so often. So we’ll have to find him another place.’

‘He can’t stay here with you?’

‘It puts everyone in danger. You, the Major, Maya. Anyway he’ll mostly be in Agartala.’

Rehana threw up her hands. ‘Do as you will, beta.’

As it turned out, it wasn’t long before Rehana saw Sohail again. Just after lunch a few days later she received a telegram and spent the rest of the day with her head on the arm of the sofa, waiting for him. She knew he would come; he wouldn’t make her do this alone. All afternoon she heard the clatter of Maya’s typewriter; her strokes were getting faster, more confident.

By evening he was at the door. He stared emptily at Rehana and squeezed her hand. He was wearing a white kurta, like the butcher, except he had a green hat with a red metal star glued to the front.

When Maya came into the drawing room, she saw her brother staring into the garden.

‘Hey, what are you doing here?’

He approached her and pulled her into his arms. Then he said, ‘Sharmeen is in Dhaka.’

‘What? How do you know?’

‘I know.’ A beat, and then: ‘She’s at the cantonment, Maya. The hospital.’

‘Let’s go, then.’

Nobody moved.

‘Why are you sitting there? Let’s go!’ she started. ‘She must be sick. How did she end up there? But you can tell me everything later.’ And she flashed her teeth — a bluish tinge, like the sight of clouds. If she noticed her brother’s bent head, she ignored it, smoothing the middle part in her hair and changing her sandals for outside shoes.

‘Go go cholo cholo,’ she said, in the mixed Bengali — English she used when she was nervous, or in a hurry.

‘She’s dead,’ Sohail said finally. His beard, now dense like a solid black mantle, reflected the thickness of his eyebrows, the paleness of his skin.

Maya ran out into the garden and started speaking to them through the window.

‘Why would she be in the hospital if she were dead?’ She had to shout to make herself heard.

‘She’s been there, Maya. She’s been there all along.’

‘What? And you knew?’

‘Yes. But there was no point in telling you. There wasn’t anything we could do.’

‘Why? Why didn’t you tell me? I would have got her out of there myself.’ Then, as though it had just occurred to her, she realized the truth was uglier than she had imagined. Rehana, seeing her daughter through the open window, knew that for ever afterwards Maya would remember where her brother had told her the news, there in the shade of the mango tree, the air expectant, just after rain, the sky dark as though it were night, could only be night, but wasn’t, and the pale glow of the jasmine and the bougainvillea, abundant, perfumed; the Major asleep, or dead, in a far corner of Shona.

And then he told her everything.

‘She died in the hospital.’ He would have gone outside to comfort her, but she gripped the window bars and held him with a terrible look.

‘She was pregnant.’

‘Pregnant?’

Maya turned her face away and kicked the foot of the tree. ‘She hated men. She hated them! She hated sex, did you know that? She never had sex. Everyone else did, but not her.’ Rehana wanted to flinch, or to tell Maya to shut up, but she stopped herself and just stared, letting a tear trickle slowly from her eye.

‘I want to know their names.’

‘Who?’

‘The ones who raped her. I want to know.’

‘They’re soldiers, Maya. Tikka Khan’s soldiers.’

‘Tikka Khan,’ Maya shouted, as though she were making an announcement, ‘the Butcher of Bengal!’ And then she kicked at the tree again, reached up and hugged a ropy branch, looking as though she might swing from it, but then just stood there with her arms raised and her face pressed against the bark.

That night Rehana dreamed of Iqbal. She dreamed he was knocking at the door. In life, he had never knocked.

He would come home every evening at exactly six o’clock. Rehana, her eyes on the wall clock, would be ready with his evening refresher: a tumbler of whisky, at first with water, then soda and eventually, as the years passed, with two cubes of ice.

Even though she had been waiting for him all day and she knew he would not be late, she would sit quietly with her back to the door and her hands folded on her lap instead of staring out of the window or unfastening the latch or even waiting on the veranda so he could see her as soon as he stepped through the gate. She would close her eyes and smell the jasmine crawling over the vine, and the green lemons in the tree, ripening and swelling with each passing hour.

She sat and waited, waited even as he pulled at the gate and it swung open in front of him; she waited still as his footsteps drew nearer, and then — she knew exactly when — just as he was about to pull his hand out of his pocket and curl his fingers around to knock, she would sweep across the room, pull down the latch and throw the doors open in one liquid movement.

Every evening it was the same, and every evening a new, breathless thing.

When she woke she was angry. He owed her, she wanted to tell him; he owed her for staying behind and taking care of the mess; for getting to the end, which was never the end; for finishing it or, at least, for standing up to the struggle.

She moved through the house, her cheeks hot with memory. Maya’s bed was empty. Rehana had spent the evening with her, feeding her jao bhaat and running her hands over her forehead. She went to check on the Major occasionally, but otherwise the two houses were quiet, with only the swift rustle of leaves and a stretch of brief, sudden showers. Sohail said he would keep things quiet around Shona for a few days, until they decided what to do with Maya. It wasn’t safe to have her at home any more; now that she knew about Sharmeen, there was no telling what she might do. And then they’d fallen asleep, Rehana more deeply than she had intended, and now here was Maya’s bed, empty.

She searched the house stealthily, listening at the bathroom door, scanning the kitchen sink, the dining table. She peered out into the garden and saw a faint light coming from Shona. The light drew her in; she staggered across the garden in the darkness and hovered outside the window, where she could make out faint shadows cast by a flickering kerosene lamp.

It was Maya. She was in the Major’s room.

She was circling him. Abruptly she sat down at the edge of the bed and turned up the sheet to reveal the black soles of his feet. Rehana watched silently; she couldn’t bring herself to interrupt. Maya ducked under the bed and plunged her hand into a bucket of water, emerging with a wet cloth and wringing it gently, the water falling back with the sound of bare feet on a cool cement floor. She pressed the cloth against the Major’s soles, first left, then right, then both together. Rehana thought she heard the Major sigh, though he kept perfectly still, and then, suddenly and awkwardly, Maya bent her head and hovered over the Major’s feet, and Rehana saw that she was weeping, her tears falling on to the Major’s rolled-up military trousers.

And when she looked up, Maya saw her mother watching from the window and fled, leaving the bucket where it was, the dark water rippling and gleaming, a luminous, blinking eye.

Rehana’s first thought was that she should be sent away. She was guilty for thinking it; she wanted to believe her daughter should stay close, with her. Or she should go with her, wherever it was. But she couldn’t leave Sohail, wouldn’t leave Shona, the Major, Joy. It was not a choice; even though the whole thing sometimes felt like an accident, she was caught up; she couldn’t leave now. But Maya had to go. Rehana considered, then rejected, the idea of sending her to Karachi to stay with her aunts; it would incense her, and anyway Rehana had no idea how her sisters had taken the news of the war. They hadn’t written to her since the war had begun, and, while she wanted to blame it on the post, she knew they were secretly berating her, and in their hearts calling her gaddar. Traitor.

In the end Maya made it easy. She came to her mother the next afternoon, her eyes scratched and red.

‘I’m going to Calcutta. I’ve arranged it with bhaiya.’

Rehana didn’t know what to say; all the things she had been storing up for Maya — the soft words, the sorrys, her regret at knowing she had not been able to love her as she should — crowded for her attention.

Maya misunderstood Rehana’s silence. ‘Please don’t be angry,’ she said. ‘I don’t want you to be angry.’

‘Oh, no, I’m not angry, I’m so sorry.’

‘I don’t want to leave you alone.’

‘It’s all right.’ She smiled at her daughter. ‘You don’t worry about me.’

‘I loved her so much!’ Maya said, trying to keep from crying. Her chin shook, and she kept swallowing and pressing her lips together. ‘I have to do something. It’s so unfair.’

Rehana nodded.

Maya looked into the distance and didn’t say anything for a long time. ‘They need people to write the press statements,’ she said finally, the anguish gone from her voice. ‘Sohail knows someone at the headquarters. Maybe I can even go into the liberated areas.’

‘You be careful. I’ll be worried about you. I’m always worried about you.’

‘I’m always worried about you!’

Rehana was surprised to hear the words, but realized they must be true, and here it was, the thing she had been looking for, a small window into her daughter’s locked heart. It was not that she was diffident but burdened. Burdened by the beloved, the disappeared. By her own widowed mother. Rehana embraced Maya, who was still so thin and brittle, but instead of telling her to be careful she found herself saying, ‘Write some good stories.’