A Golden Age

June: I loves you, Porgy

Throughout June, Tikka Khan’s soldiers made their way across the summer plains of Bangladesh. They looted homes and burned roofs. They raped. They murdered. They lined up the men and shot them into ponds. They practised old and new forms of torture. They were explorers, pioneers of cruelty, every day outdoing their own brutality, every day feeling closer to divinity, because they were told they were saving Pakistan, and Islam, maybe even the Almighty himself, from the depravity of the Bengalis; in this feverish, this godly journey, their resolve could know no bounds.

The Bengali resistance was weak and sporadic. General Zia relied on the youthful spirit of his soldiers, and they had small victories. A blown-up bridge here. An army-convoy ambush there. A captured railway station. They celebrated these victories with the broadcasters of the radio, who sent up cheers in the homes of their listeners, those city dwellers spending long, hot afternoons hugging their wireless radios.

After the Major came to stay and Maya left for Calcutta, Rehana’s world grew smaller. She was encouraged not to leave the house too often; if she needed something, it would be brought to her. She should go to the market in Mrs Chowdhury’s car, but buy only enough food for herself. She should sometimes visit her neighbours; she should appear concerned; she should talk about the war but only vaguely. It was agreed that if anyone asked she should say that she had sent Maya and Sohail to stay with her sisters in Karachi.

Things were quiet at Shona. Joy appeared occasionally to take care of the Major, and the doctor was in and out, but otherwise there was very little activity next door. It was just the three of them: Rehana, and the two men in the other house. She spent the nights with the kerosene lamp on. Every sound incited a fierce hammering in her heart. She thought she heard footsteps, soft knocks on the door; she thought she felt someone tugging at her feet as she slept. The Major next door was no consolation; he made her feel exposed.

On days when her nerves threatened to overwhelm her, Rehana tried to think back to a less turbulent time, when nothing of significance happened, when the passing of seasons, the thrill of the Eid moon-sighting, the smell of mangoes ripening on the trees, were the most spectacular events of the calendar. But their lives had never had any regularity — at least, not the sort Rehana was now sifting her memories for. There was always something, some uproar, in the city, or beyond, in Islamabad, where one punishing law after another was passed; and even further afield — the death of Che Guevara, whom Sohail had mourned as though he had lost a brother. Every hiccup of the political landscape made its way to their door and, when her son was old enough, came through the door and into the bungalow, into the boy’s drawn and serious face, the shadows he cast upon the corridors and over the dining table; and then into Maya, who was angrier and louder. No, there had never been any other time; their lives were populated by Lenin and Castro and Mujib and Anwar Sadaat; there was only this time, this life, this fraught and crowded era, to which they were bound without choice, without knowledge, only their passions, their loves, to lead and sustain them.

In this, as in all other things, Rehana veered between indulgence and censure. There was a part of her that wanted to allow her children anything — any whimsy, any zeal, any excess. Another part of her wanted them to have nothing to do with it all, to keep them safe, at home; in either case, she treated Maya and Sohail as though they were there to collect on an old debt, an old promise that could never be fulfilled, not in this lifetime; a yawning, cyclic, inexhaustible need. Whether the need was theirs or hers, she could not say.

Discovering herself alone in the house for the first time in many years, Rehana found she had no desire to reassemble the sewing group. She didn’t want to laugh with her friends any more; she wanted to stir the melancholy in the empty house, the deep sadness that was also a kind of quiet, a tranquillity, that she was reluctant to surrender.

Rehana found she took something close to pleasure in repeating the lonely rituals she had developed just after the children left for Lahore all those years ago. She scrubbed the house to a hospital shine; she shooed crows from her pickles; she took long, exaggerated baths under the bucket water; she dug up large sections of her garden and set about replanting the pumpkin, the marrow, the hibiscus, the jasmine.

The water would come on only between ten and twelve every day. Every morning she had to fill up the biryani pot and the three metal buckets and soak the clothes and the vegetables and gut the fish.

She went to the graveyard to tell Iqbal about the Major. When she got there, she felt like saying sorry, but she wasn’t sure what for. Well, it was obvious what for.

You would not have liked this.

A column of ants bisected Iqbal’s gravestone.

Forgive me; I haven’t come in almost a month. The flowers on your plot have cracked in the heat; that bodmash caretaker promised to water them, but of course he forgot, even though I gave him an extra five annas the last time I was here.

I am harbouring a person who I don’t know and who could get us all into very big trouble. No, you would not have liked it.

If you want to complain you should complain to your son, he brought that man and begged me to let him stay. Could I say no? No, I could not say no.

About a fortnight after the Major’s accident, Joy came to the door of the bungalow. He looked as though he’d been running: wet patches soaked through his shirt at his neck and his armpits. His cheeks glistened, and water, like tears, flowed from his forehead.

‘Auntie,’ he said softly, ‘can I come in?’

‘Of course.’

He hesitated. ‘I’m not disturbing you?’

Rehana shook her head, surprised. Joy was not known for his politeness. He hovered at the edge of the sofa, bent his fingers and rubbed his knuckles together.

Rehana had just finished preparing lunch. ‘Are you hungry?’

He shook his head. She saw the beams of his shoulders pressing against his shirt, which was a red-and-blue check. The collars were long and pointed towards his shoes.

She knew that shirt. Where had he got it, she wanted to ask him. There must be a perfectly innocent explanation. They had the same shirt. Simple. But Joy kept sweating and saying nothing and she started to feel panicky. ‘Is something wrong?’

‘Yes, I–I have to go.’

‘Go where?’

His head dipped lower and closer to his hands; his face swam; still he didn’t move to mop his face. ‘I have to go to Agartala,’ he said. ‘Just for a few days. I’ll come back.’

‘Has something happened? Is it Sohail?’

‘Sohail?’ he said. ‘No, no, Auntie. He’s in Agartala; he’s fine; there was a telegram last night.’

‘You got a telegram? Why didn’t you tell me?’ She burned to ask him about the shirt, the telegram, why he had to go. ‘What’s happening, beta, why don’t you tell me? Here, have a glass of water.’ She forced a note of tenderness into her voice. ‘You sit here, and you tell me.’

‘My brother is dead.’ His voice was as flat as a vinyl record.

She didn’t want to believe it. ‘Aref?’ Then there was relief flooding guiltily through her. ‘Are you sure?’

‘There was an operation,’ he continued in the same voice. ‘And they were ambushed. He was shot in the chest; he died instantly.’

Rehana compared this boy to her son. There was something wrong with his face, the thick upper lip, now shimmering with sweat, the hard, angry eyes. There was no trace of childhood.

Joy rubbed the sleeve of the red-and-blue check over his forehead, slicking his hair back until it stayed wet and stiff around the edges. ‘These things happen in war,’ he said. ‘You know what our sector commander told us? Did Sohail tell you? He said, “Nobody wants a live guerrilla.’’’

He said a live guerrilla. What did he mean? He swallowed the water she gave him.

‘We are all dead!’ he said, raising his voice. ‘Not just Aref, that’s what I’m trying to say.’ His wet face leaned close; she couldn’t stop the question any more. ‘Why are you wearing Sohail’s shirt?’

He looked down at himself. She saw his lips rustle. ‘We exchanged shirts. He wore Aref’s. I took his. Aref had mine.’

Rehana picked up her gloves and her shears. She felt like attacking something.

The garden was neither pretty nor particularly ordered. The rows were messy, the colours a little chaotic, and there was too much red and white, though this was not Rehana’s fault. The delta weather was punishing; it didn’t support the frailer colours of the palette, only the muscular ones, the shocking whites, the brutal reds, the fuchsias and the violets. And so Rehana couldn’t help overplanting the jasmine and the rojonigondha and the lilies. The dahlias and the chrysanthemums were mostly white too, and the carnations and the phlox were the crimson shade of a short, violent sunset. That was why she loved her yellow roses. Amid all the stark colours of the garden, they were the sweetest, tenderest plants.

She found a clutch of weeds growing against the eastern corner of the wall that divided the bungalow property from Shona. The weeds had spirited purple flowers, spiky and punctuated, as though they knew their time was borrowed. Rehana seized them with both hands and pulled. They didn’t budge. She planted a foot on the boundary wall, leaned back and used her weight. She strained and struggled, twisting the weed around her wrist, and finally it rushed out of the earth, trailing a long, knotted root.

Another boy dead. Rehana asked God again, as she did every day, to save Sohail. What made Him spare one and take another? She didn’t know. Bless Sohail in Agartala, and my Maya in Calcutta. Maya had rung once, a few days after she’d left. She didn’t say where she was calling from, or where she was staying. She said she was all right. Don’t worry, she said, I’m happy.

Rehana devised a strict schedule for the Major: the doctor came every other afternoon, checked the stitches and adjusted the medication. Rehana brought the Major his food on a tray and left him alone to eat. Then she gave him a half bar of soap and poured a glass of water over his right hand. After lunch, he took a nap. When he woke up, she brought him tea and gave him his evening pills. The Major, who could barely speak, chose to say nothing. He always nodded thank you. He didn’t smile, though, or wave to her when she said goodnight for the evening. He liked her cooking. His plate was always licked, except when she gave him fish. He would try to hide it under a pile of rice, or mix it up with the pieces of chewed-up pickle that climbed the side of his plate. What kind of Bengali doesn’t like fish? She added more pickles and replaced the fish with egg curry; maybe if she found a chicken at the market she would try to get it for him.

She thought his first words to her might be ‘thank you’ or ‘I’m so grateful to you’ but instead he began with ‘It won’t be long now.’ She assumed he meant before he was well enough to leave Shona. He couldn’t mean before the war was over. In any case he was being optimistic, she thought. His leg still looked horribly twisted.

She had to lean forward to hear him, and hold her hair back so it wouldn’t fall on to his face. She made a note to herself to braid her hair. She caught his breath, which smelled of watermelons. She found herself wondering how a person’s breath might come to smell of watermelons. She told herself it must be because he didn’t smoke cigarettes.

The next day he said abruptly, ‘Why do you always wear white?’ which she thought was a rude observation, but then she surprised herself by answering, ‘So that you’ll be convinced I’m a nurse and not just a poor widow.’ At which he smiled, and Rehana was annoyed, in case she had accidentally begun some sort of banter with the man. But she needn’t have worried. He hardly said a word for a week after that, only smiled briefly when she brought him lunch and dinner.

Then one day he said, ‘I’m sorry about your husband,’ and Rehana replied, ‘It was a long time ago,’ and then she said, ‘Are you married?’

‘Yes,’ he replied, ‘I was.’ What kind of an answer was that? A look, a flash of something, passed across the Major’s face. It looked like anger. She wondered what it would be like to be close enough to the man to make him angry.

The next day he asked, ‘What happened to your husband?’ It occurred to her that it was none of his business, but somehow she felt the urge to answer.

‘He had a heart-attack.’

‘Suddenly?’

‘Just like that.’

‘Why did you never marry again?’

Still none of his business, but once she started, it was difficult to stop without appearing rude. ‘I had children,’ Rehana said; ‘a reason not to marry again.’

‘I thought that would be a good reason.’

‘No,’ she said, ‘no. Children are the worst reason to marry again.’

‘You didn’t want someone to look after them?’

‘You don’t know how hard I had to fight just to keep them.’ She told him about the court case. ‘I had to get the children back. I needed money. A lot of money. I needed money to bribe the judge. Money for the plane ticket to Lahore. Mrs Chowdhury said, “Build a house at the back of the property.” This is what my husband had intended as well. So that is what I decided to do. But I needed—’

‘Money.’

‘Yes, I needed money. I didn’t have any. My father had passed away. My sisters were in Karachi. They said they wanted to come, but they couldn’t. Things hadn’t gone well for them, they were always struggling. I was the one who was always sending them things.’ She remembered the striped aerograms with the bank drafts.

The Major looked around Mrs Sengupta’s bedroom — took in the thick walls, the immaculate white plaster, the heavy double doors leading out on to the wide veranda. With his eyes he asked, How did you do it?

Rehana considered telling the Major about stealing the money. She told herself the thought was practical; after all, she had to tell someone, she couldn’t keep it locked inside her for ever. A thing like that will eventually corrupt and destroy a person. And this man would be as good as any; better, in fact, because after he left she would probably never see him again. He might even die. Tobah as-tak farullah. She said Aytul Kursi in case he died. She said it again, sorry for having thought of his death.

She thought of telling him as her first selfish act in a very long time. Something just for herself. An act that would help no one, do nothing, feed no hunger, raise no children. She practised in front of the mirror inside the door of her steel almirah. She imagined the secret disappearing from her days. She lingered over it in her dreams, knowing it would soon be gone. She wondered if she would miss it.

But every day she put off telling him. She went to see him and talked about other things. He listened patiently, nodding, though not frequently enough to suggest he was bored. He always looked at her mouth, not her eyes. She liked that. She didn’t like being stared at in the eyes.

Whenever she intended to ask him a question, she would find herself talking instead. For instance, one day she found herself saying, ‘After my husband died I lost my tongue.’

The Major tilted his head. ‘Why?’

‘Because I had no one to tell my sorrows to.’

And he nodded.

It appeared the conversation was over. To end it with a flourish Rehana felt it was appropriate to say, ‘Iqbal was my saviour.’

‘Women always say that.’ He held his lips tight around his teeth, so the words struggled to get out.

Now she had to explain. ‘No, it’s true. We had to leave Calcutta. We — my father — had to sell everything. My sisters had moved to Karachi, but I didn’t want to go. I would have married anyone.’

‘You’re not angry he died?’

‘Yes, sometimes. He left me so suddenly.’ She considered telling him about her trips to the graveyard: the negotiations, the pleas, the stubborn, embarrassing belief he might come back, that things might return to the way they had once been. But it was too soon, or perhaps too late, for such revelations. And anyway this man did not seem the type to indulge in such acts of sentiment.

‘My wife died,’ he said suddenly.

‘Oh. I’m sorry.’

‘We weren’t really married. She was Hindu. But we loved each other. Does that count?’

‘Yes, of course it counts,’ Rehana said, thinking of Silvi’s wedding.

‘My father was a very religious man.’

‘Mine wasn’t.’

‘No?’

An old image of her father flashed before her: handsome, polished, his legs crossed confidently in front of him. ‘I didn’t really know him. I was too young. But I remember the things he liked. Pipe tobacco. Thackeray. William Makepeace Thackeray — he used to make me say that. He played the piano — we had an enormous piano. It was always the shiniest thing in the house. Someone came to tune it every time the seasons changed.’

‘You had a piano-tuner?’

‘A piano-tuner. A table-setter. A horseman. Three poets.’ She recited the list from memory, like multiplication tables. ‘Eight cooks, two butlers, twelve cars.’ She hadn’t seen any of it. By the time she was old enough to know the difference, they were already poor.

‘Your mother?’

‘She died when the money ended. 1936. I was three.’

Rehana had found a chicken at New Market. From the look on the Major’s face, she might have given him a trunk full of gold. He sucked on his fingers and licked the rim of the plate. When he was finished, he belched very quietly into his hand. And then he asked her about Iqbal again, and she found herself telling him about the trip he had made to London in ’57, when he’d ordered the Vauxhall.

‘These are the things my husband brought me from London: a black wool coat from Harrods, a gold Rolex ladies’ watch, a round box of Quality Street chocolates. I kept the coat in a box with mothballs. I divided the chocolates in half. Maya ate hers in one day, and spent the next day holding her stomach and moaning. On the third day she begged Sohail for his share. He gave them up — he could never resist her — though he kept one aside, the round caramel — do you know the one? Purple foil wrap?

The Major didn’t reveal whether he recognized it.

‘He kept it for so long the ants got to it. But I don’t think he liked the chocolates. As for the gold Rolex, well, eventually I pawned it. But it was very beautiful, a beautiful gift. And that is the story of my husband’s trip to London in 1957.’ Rehana piled up the dinner plates and moved to carry them away.

‘Weren’t there any suitors? After your husband died?’ Maybe he thought he was changing the subject, but really he was coming closer to the truth about Shona. She fixed her gaze on his torn lip. She reached her hand out, as if to touch it, but the hand went to the bed, smoothing the sheet, tucking it into the mattress. Time to change it, she thought.

The next day there were three sharp raps at the door. Rehana rushed to the drawing room, her heart racing, because these days it could be anything, Sohail, news of Sohail, a letter from Maya, a telegram saying they were both dead, or captured, or hurt somewhere. Or it could be the army, or a spy, or someone pretending to be a spy, or someone pretending not to be a spy. It could be anyone.

The woman was carrying a silver tray. There was a bowl on the tray, a blue porcelain bowl with a white napkin on top. The napkin had golden tulips embroidered along its edge. Something hot and fragrant was inside: Rehana caught a whiff of raisins as the woman, standing in the doorway, said hello.

‘I’m Joy’s mother’, she said a little apologetically. ‘Joy and Aref.’ She had a plump, dimpled face.

‘Mrs Bashir, yes, of course. Please come in.’ Was she coming to ask about Aref? Rehana seated her on the sofa. She tried not to stare. No matter how hard you look, she told herself, you won’t be able to know if she’s telling the truth.

‘May I offer you some tea?’

‘No, please, I just came for this.’ She pointed to the silver tray, which she had balanced on her lap. The raisin smell wafted through the room. Mrs Bashir paused a little, then placed her palms on the tulip napkin. She had big hands and ragged fingernails.

‘Can you please give this to Joy?’ The words came out quickly, as though the woman was afraid her courage would suddenly leave her.

Did she know Aref was dead? If she did not know, did this mean she was telling the truth, or did it mean she was lying? ‘I’m sorry, I can’t do that.’

‘It’s nothing. Just morag polao.’

‘I don’t know where your son is.’ Your son is dead. The other son, who is wearing my son’s shirt, has gone to bury him.

‘Yes, yes, of course you don’t know.’ She paused, then said, ‘Perhaps Sohail can bring it to him.’ Mrs Bashir looked at the doorway, and Rehana could see the anxiety, the cautious curiosity and a little jealousy, perhaps, towards another woman, another war-mother who might know something she didn’t.

‘Sohail is in Karachi,’ Rehana said carefully, ‘with his aunts.’ Sohail is wearing Aref’s shirt Aref is wearing Joy’s shirt Joy is wearing Sohail’s shirt.

‘Perhaps you know someone who might pass this on. It’s his favourite.’

‘I know no one,’ Rehana said, as though she had spoken the words a thousand times before.

‘Please, Mrs Haque, you are a mother also!’

You are a mother. How many times had she repeated this very phrase to herself? I’m a mother. Above all things, a mother. Not a widow, certainly not a wife. Not a thief. A mother. But now she was something else — a mother, yes, but not just of children. Mother of a different sort. This mother knew what it was to long for her children. But she also understood the dangers of such longing.

‘I’m sorry. I know you miss your boys.’

‘Have you seen them? How are they? How is Joy, and my Aref?’

She doesn’t know her son is dead. Rehana started at the thought of Aref lying in a grave somewhere, restless and unmourned. She wanted to touch the woman’s rough hand. But it could so easily be a trick. Maybe it wasn’t her son. She had to pretend she didn’t know anything about it. To test herself, Rehana looked straight into Mrs Bashir’s eyes and said, ‘I don’t know. I haven’t seen them since the war began.’ And, as she said it, she thought of the blessing she had blown on Joy’s forehead that morning when he had left for Agartala, and the needy look in his eyes as she had whispered the words, and the tender way in which he had thanked her and touched her feet. ‘Mrs Bashir, please take your morag polao home.’

Rehana stood up in what she imagined was a guiltless manner and opened the front door.

‘You take it,’ Mrs Bashir said, thrusting the silver tray towards Rehana. ‘Please, you have it. Think that I made it for you.’

‘I’m sorry, Mrs Bashir, please go.’

‘I know he’s here, I know it. You’re a liar,’ she said softly. Her kajol-streaked tears fell sloppily on to her cheeks. She stepped towards the door, and for a moment Rehana thought she might fling the hot rice at her, but she didn’t. She smoothed the tulip napkin and walked away, leaving Rehana in the doorway reciting the morag polao recipe to herself, wondering if she had enough chicken to prepare the dish when Joy returned.

The visit from Joy’s mother was unsettling. Just after she finished the Magrib prayer, Rehana went to see the Major. She felt strangely exposed without a tray of food in front of her, a bedsheet to change or even a vial of medicine from Dr Rajesh. ‘Joy’s mother was here,’ she said. ‘I sent her away.’

He was looking into a small mirror, examining his scar. ‘You did the right thing,’ he said, tucking the mirror under his pillow.

‘But her son is dead.’

He struggled to lift himself up onto his elbows, dragging his broken leg, until he was sitting up and facing her. ‘You have to do these things sometimes — difficult things.’

‘I’m not sure I’m a nationalist,’ she said. She was thinking of the well-loved volumes of Urdu poetry on her shelf, right next to the Koran.

‘Well, why are you still here, in Dhaka?’

‘To take care of you, of course.’ She shouldn’t have said that. She paused for a beat, checked herself. ‘I love it here,’ she said. ‘It’s my home, and the home of my children. I would not give it up for anything. Believe me, I’ve been tested.’

‘Then you are a true nationalist.’

‘That’s kind of you to say. And you?’

‘This is the greatest thing I have ever done. If I ever leave this bed!’

Her heart sank a little at the thought of his leaving.

‘My life was a waste before this.’

‘You were in the army?’

‘I joined years ago, because I had to get away, from the village, from everything. There were too many memories.’

He looked at her, as though to ask if she knew what he meant, and she said, ‘But that is precisely why I stayed.’

Three things happened at the end of June: Joy returned from Agartala, Dr Rajesh arrived with bad news, and Rehana gave the Major her gramophone. It was her idea; he’d looked so despondent when the doctor had checked his leg and said he needed at least three more weeks’ rest. Rehana dusted the gramophone and dragged it across the garden to Shona. She hunted through Sohail’s room and found a few records. One of them said Help! Another had a black-and-white photograph of Elvis Presley with his lips caressing a microphone. The gramophone needle was spiked with dust; Rehana had to spit on her finger and pluck it out. To polish the wood she dipped a rag into a little of the olive oil she sometimes used to shine her elbows.

It was as if she’d given him a month of chicken curry. He smiled so widely his scar stretched across till it touched the tuft of hair beside his ear. ‘Thank you,’ he whispered, closing his eyes and tilting his head to the ceiling, ‘how did you know?’

In the first week he played and played again the two records she’d given him. And then one day she heard some new music. Joy must have brought the new records; or maybe it was someone else; a woman, even. After all, she didn’t know what happened at Shona after dark. No, he wouldn’t do that. He wouldn’t bring a woman into her house.

At first the records were familiar: some Tagore, a few Bengali folk songs, their lyrics changed to nationalist slogans. And then one day she heard the strangest music coming from his room. She had brought his breakfast: one scrambled egg, four triangles of toast, a glass of milk. She stood at the door, listened for what seemed like a moment but must have been much longer, because by the time she noticed the eggs they had stiffened and turned orange. What music could this be? She had never heard anything like it. She ran back to the bungalow and made new eggs, chastising herself for the waste, and retraced her steps back to Shona. But again she was rooted at the doorway.

It was a woman. In every syllable Rehana could hear the delicate intake of her breath, the tongue caressing the palette and the slow, tender piano in the background, and, as the song built, she could hear melancholy, and a low, guttural moan and stretched-out vowels. Her voice was a thousand years of sorrow. Rehana tried to make out the English words. I loves you, Porgee.

Who was this Porgee? The song was like the weather, a thing that was everywhere and nowhere all at once, the words falling into each other like overlapping raindrops, a dry day and then a wet one, the scale rising like a gust of wind. Sometimes it was as though the woman was holding her breath and then releasing it; she was young, almost girlish and then her voice would go deep, with the confidence of a secret masculinity. The weather filled the room; it travelled across the corridor until it rose up in Rehana.

By the time she had gathered the courage to enter the Major’s room, she found herself a little out of breath. She told herself it must be the fast walking, carrying the heavy tray, trying not to spill the milk. She tried to stir up some irritation at the Major. She put the tray down in front of him harder than she meant to.

‘Her name is Nina Simone,’ the Major said.

Nina. Sounded like a Bengali name.

Rehana had a melting feeling in her mouth, as though she had bitten down on a pink, overripe guava.

‘You like the music?’ he asked, when she returned for the tray.

‘It reminds me of my father,’ Rehana said.

‘He liked jazz?’

‘There was a band once. A party in the ballroom, and dancing. And champagne. Probably one of his last.’ Rehana spoke as though the memory was new to her. ‘Yes. Champagne in delicate, bowl-shaped glasses, and ladies with short hair. There were lots of instruments. And it was loud, cheerful music. Not like this.’

‘Nina Simone doesn’t sound like anybody else,’ the Major said. Rehana looked at the scattered record sleeves beside the Major’s bed. A dark man with his lips pressed against a trumpet gazed out earnestly.

Then she asked, ‘Where did you get this music?’

‘You like it?’

‘No, I don’t like it,’ she lied.

‘OK.’

Why didn’t he protest? What kind of a person wouldn’t like this music?

‘What do you like?’ he asked.

‘What sort of a question is that?’

‘Simple. If you don’t like this, what do you like?’

‘You mean, what music do I like?’

‘No, I mean, what do you like?’

‘Anything?’

‘Anything.’

How could she reply? No one had ever asked her that question. Why had no one ever asked her that question? It stunned her that a person could go through life without anybody ever asking them that question. She thought for a moment.

‘I like the flowers in my garden,’ she said slowly. ‘The yellow roses are my favourite. And I like to make dimer halwa. It’s very difficult, you know. One slip and it turns into egg scramble.’ She felt the weather rising up in her again, a squall, rippling and swirling. ‘And the cinema. I like the cinema.’ It was another lie. She loved the cinema.

It was Joy who brought the projector. It was the last day of June, and the rain had started to appear every evening just as the sun plunged crimson-shy under the horizon.

Rehana didn’t know what it was at first. When she saw the hard black box she thought it might be some other thing to bury in the garden, a weapon, but then Joy opened the two buckles on the side and she saw the reel and the lens; even then she thought it must be some sort of camera, because she’d never seen one up close. It was Joy’s grin that gave it away: a smile full of mischief and pride, the new face he’d acquired to mask his grief.

‘Where did you get it?’

‘Naz Cinema. The owner is a Hindu. They killed him in March.’

So this was what he was doing. Looting and stealing. ‘So you just took the projector?’ The Major hadn’t said anything, and Rehana didn’t know whose idea the projector was. She thought it was probably Joy’s, because lately he was doing those slightly criminal things to prove there could still be pleasure, and roguishness, in the world. Or maybe he did it to forget the dead face of his brother.

‘It was lying there, gathering dust.’

‘You can’t just take things.’

‘It probably doesn’t work,’ Joy said, and as soon as he said it she knew they were going to keep it.

‘Of course it works. Why wouldn’t it work? I’ve seen at least a dozen films there.’ She went through the films in her head: Roman Holiday, High Society, Charade, The Maltese Falcon, The Big Sleep, Casablanca. She was suddenly giddy. ‘Shall we try it out?’ She looked inside the box. Mughal-e-Azam. ‘How did you know?’

‘I just pulled this one out.’

It couldn’t have been a coincidence. Sohail must have told him. ‘Thank you, thank you. It’s really too much.’

‘Consider it a gift from the guerrillas.’ Joy smiled, his face broad.

The tears welled up even before the credits began. Joy adjusted the focus and walked backwards to the door.

‘You’re leaving?’

‘Not for me,’ Joy said. ‘I’ll go soft!’

Rehana was already ignoring him. Akbar came on screen, praying to God for an heir. Let me not die without a trace, he was saying.

‘You won’t understand,’ Rehana whispered; ‘it’s in Urdu.’

‘Doesn’t matter,’ the Major whispered back.

‘Don’t you want to know the story?’

‘Tell me quickly,’ he said, ‘before it starts.’

‘It’s complicated.’ She had her eye on the screen, where Akbar was making his way across the desert to Nadir Shah. ‘It’s a love story — the Prince, Salim — Akbar’s son — he falls in love with a servant girl, Anarkali. And then—’

He reached over and laid a finger on her arm. ‘I understand,’ he said.

Anarkali came on, posing as a statue. She flashed her tilted smile. She spoke; the throaty sugar of her voice echoed through the room. Rehana’s ribs began to throb. Anarkali danced her rolling-hips dance. Prince Salim fell in love. Akbar, infuriated, jailed them both. ‘Keep your precious India,’ Prince Salim said. ‘I will have my Anarkali.’

‘She has to pretend she’s betrayed him,’ Rehana whispered.

‘Hush.’ The Major raised a finger to his lips. The film shadows moved over his face.

‘You see,’ Rehana said, ‘it’s the finest love story.’

‘Right. You were right.’

‘Joy really shouldn’t have stolen the projector.’

‘You would have taken it yourself if you’d had half the chance.’

Rehana took a deep breath. There wouldn’t be a better time. The room was dark, and the projector fan was still running, a static buzz that seemed to brighten the window of white that hovered in front of the Major’s bed.

Rehana turned to the Major. He made no move to turn off the projector, as though he knew she was about to tell him something. Maybe he’d planned all of this, getting Joy to steal the projector, watching Mughal-e-Azam, which he wouldn’t understand. If so, she was willing to fall into the trap; she wanted to tell him as badly as he wanted to know.

‘After the children were taken away, I thought I would die. I didn’t know what to do, and the worst thing was, I actually started to think they were better off with that woman. I didn’t have anything to give them, not even the money to pay off the judge. And I was such a coward, believing it was all for the best and letting Faiz take the children away from me. I will never forgive myself for that.’

Rehana looked at the Major and waited for him to say something, something like What could you do? or You poor woman. These were the things that she had grown so used to hearing, the words that followed her everywhere. But he was just waiting for her to go on.

‘I closed the doors and refused to see anyone. I dismissed the servants — there was no money to keep them anyway. Mrs Chowdhury’s daughter came over sometimes, and sometimes I liked that, but then she reminded me of the children, and I sent her away. I was cruel, I think, but she’s a very sweet girl, she’s forgotten all about it.’

Rehana paused, wondering if she should tell the Major about Sohail and Silvi.

‘Mrs Chowdhury came over one day. I was asleep, in the middle of the afternoon, wearing Iqbal’s coat, and she came in through the garden — I never used to shut that gate — and she said she had an idea. That I should borrow money from the bank and build a house on the property. It was just the bungalow then, and a huge tract of land, wild grass, where I was always telling the children not to play. Iqbal and I had dreamed of building a big house some day, but it never occurred to me after he died. Mortgage the land, Mrs Chowdhury said, take a loan, build the house.’

It used to look like a field of paddy, Rehana thought, with only the tall furry grasses, and the mango tree in the middle, like a finger pointing to the sky. ‘But I was just a woman. Without a male guarantor, all the banks turned me down. And then Mrs Chowdury said there was a man she knew, a Mr Qureishi, an old friend of her brother, and he had agreed to meet me. I went to the bank — Habib Bank, you know the one? The big branch, in Motijheel.

‘That Qureishi man was a fraud. It wasn’t Mrs Chowdhury’s fault — I should have taken her with me, but I went alone, and I must have looked terrible, lost, and the man tried to take advantage.’

There he was, pressing the gristle of his cheek against her mouth, and his hand was on the sleeve of her blouse, and she could smell the curry breakfast he’d eaten that morning, and the stale old soap, and the sick, brutal need.

Still the Major didn’t say anything. She saw him biting the inside of his lip, the right side, the one that wasn’t torn.

‘So there was no loan. Then Mrs Chowdhury decided I should find a husband. You must think I listen to everything she says, and it’s true, back then it was like I was sleepwalking. And I desperately wanted someone to tell me what to do. My whole life the only decision I ever made was to marry Iqbal. And that was only because…well, I already told you.’

The difficult part remained ahead. Poor T. Ali, the gentle blind man with the phantom wife.

‘Mrs Chowdhury suggested T. Ali. He had just moved to the neighbourhood. He was much older than me — already an old man, really — and his wife had died. And he was blind — did I say that before? Yes, he was blind. But he was rich; his father was into tea; he had inherited a fortune.’ The words tumbled out of her mouth.

‘The man was quiet, and the first time we met — Mrs Chowdhury invited us to dinner — he didn’t speak a word to me. He ate, said a polite goodbye to Mrs Chowdhury and left. I’m sure he likes you, she said.

‘I almost did it. T. Ali indicated he was willing to consider remarrying, but that I must allow him to keep the portrait of his wife in the drawing room. He invited me to his house to see the portrait. I wasn’t sure I should go, but I was curious, and I thought, maybe he’s just a sweet old man — a little odd, perhaps — but if we married, I was just going to ask him straight out if he could give me the money to bribe the judge, the tickets to Lahore.’

T. Ali’s house had been built in the traditional style, one storey with a large central courtyard and a wide veranda with rooms leading out of it. From the road it looked like a fortress, and Rehana had walked in and seen the man crouching over a chair in a dimly lit drawing room. He was wearing a chocolate-brown suit and a deep red bow tie. His hand was pressed against his chest, and at first Rehana thought he might be having a heart-attack, and she was about to curse her luck. But then he raised his hand, and in it was a small oval frame. He was holding the frame in the palm of one hand and stroking it with the other. My Rose, my sweet Rose, he kept saying. The room — the muscular wood furniture, the old carpets, the honey-toned walls, the portrait that dominated everything — smelt of crumbling plaster and damp, the colours bleeding into one another. Rose was a young woman, so pale her face foretold her death, with delicate hands folded across her lap. She wore a dress and looked like an English woman, the ones who had had worn wide, sloping hats and gloves, even in the warmest weather. Her dress, which reached down to her ankles, was a light pea-green with lace around the high collar and a tight row of buttons from chin to waist.

Rehana thought about what it would be like to have this ethereal presence staring down at her. She stepped gingerly across the threshold.

‘Ali-saab,’ she said softly.

‘You have such a kind voice, my dear,’ he said, patting the seat. ‘Come, sit. Would you like some tea? Juice?’

‘No, thank you,’ Rehana said. And then, ‘Your wife is lovely.’

‘Yes, she was very beautiful. We only had a few years together.’

‘I’m very sorry.’

A man in a black suit and chappals entered the room with a tray. When he reached the edge of the moss carpet, he removed the chappals and proceeded in bare feet. He set down a tray in front of Rehana. On it were two tall glasses of pink liquid each topped with a spray of froth.

‘Rosewater shorbot,’ T. Ali said, a hint of pride creeping into his voice. ‘I have rosebushes.’

The shorbot was over-sweet and made her jaws tingle. ‘Delicious,’ she said, warmed by the thought of his rosebushes. She allowed herself to imagine his garden, leaning over his plants, the sun at her neck. Maybe she could marry him. The house was certainly big enough. So what about the portrait? The woman was dead, after all.

‘What do you think of her?’ he said lifting his cane in the direction of the portrait.

‘She’s lovely,’ Rehana replied.

He cleared his throat. ‘You see, I had tuberculosis. I was very ill — the doctor told me I didn’t have much time left. And she said, “No, I won’t let him die.” She sat at my bedside and held my hands — I don’t remember it; they told me afterwards. She said, “We never had children.” I remember her saying that. She begged God not to take me from her before we could have children. She prayed all the time, every day.’

Water came to T. Ali’s eyes. He turned his face away from Rehana. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and wriggled out of his glasses.

‘By the grace of God, I recovered. It was 1943. And then she died that very year. Tuberculosis. I couldn’t save her.’

His voice grew faint and watery. ‘She was a remarkable woman.’ He nodded and worked his mouth, as though he was chewing on the memory. It made him look old. Rehana tried not to guess his age. ‘Here, let me show you.’

He stood up and walked through the memorized room with his cane. His step was light and confident. Rehana felt herself relax a little as she followed him. He held the door open and invited her to pass through. As she brushed past him, she noticed the smell of mothballs, dusty and sweet. A comforting, not-sobad smell.

He led her through an unlit corridor; then he reached for a handle and turned it. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘I’ve left it just as it was.’

He moved through the room with ease, pointing to things. It was as though here, in this house, and especially in this room, he was no longer blind. In the far corner was an upright piano, the lid lifted over the keys like a curled lip. There was chair beside it, with an airy pink dress draped across the back. T. Ali touched the dress and said it was the very last thing his wife had worn. There was a dressing table with a faded velvet seat, its metal bolts black with rust. The table displayed a brush with a silver handle, a jewellery box and a plate of powder with the puff facing downwards, ready to be swept across the lovely Rose’s face.

‘Do you play the piano?’ Rehana asked, approaching the instrument.

‘Me? No,’ he replied.

‘The Well-tempered Clavier’ was written in a curling hand above a sheet of black notes.

‘It’s very pretty,’ Rehana managed, not knowing what else to say. The room was hot and airless. It made her want to whisper. It made her want to comb her hair and rub on some lipstick.

She turned to the mirror and examined her own face. Her cheeks were tawny with the heat. She caught the ordinariness of her looks, the starched whiteness of her dress. Mrs T. Ali, with her satin gown, her pale lips, her floating crimplene, flashed before her.

She imagined living here, in this dusty and frozen world. She forced out thoughts of the bungalow, her lemon tree, the note of bees around the jasmine. It had to be done. It had to be borne. It wasn’t love, but it wasn’t the worst thing that could happen.

Rehana picked up the hairbrush. It left a gleaming face in the dust, where the polished wood shone through. As she moved to set it down, she knocked it against the plate of powder.

T. Ali swivelled to face Rehana. ‘Please don’t touch that,’ he said. He rushed to take it from her. He collided with her elbow, and then ran his hand up her arm, until he found the hairbrush. He held fast. Rehana shrank from his touch, the intimacy of his rolling, searching hands. She didn’t know why, but she curled her fingers around the handle and refused to let it go. They struggled for a few seconds, until it slipped out of Rehana’s hand.

At that very moment T. Ali was pulling in the opposite direction. The brush flew out of his grasp and hurtled against the mirror.

It didn’t shatter at first. A swirl of cracks opened like an eye, twisted outwards and spread through the length and width of the mirror. Then the pieces began to fall, slowly, but then in a sudden, violent rush.

T. Ali flung himself at the mirror.

‘What are you doing?’

‘You stupid girl!’

A bead of spittle appeared on his lip as he shouted over to her. Then he was on his hands and knees, picking through the shattered glass.

‘I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to upset you.’

‘You’ve ruined everything!’

‘Please, Mr Ali, you must get up.’

‘Get out! Get out of here! This is my Rose’s room!’

Rehana tugged at T. Ali’s hands. He began to cry. ‘I said get out!’

He was ignoring her, mumbling something to himself. Rehana tried again to move his hands away from the broken mirror. Then suddenly she spotted the jewellery box, its mouth open, lying on its side in a hail of glass. She picked it up without thinking, the crunch of glass under her feet masking the sound of the clasp fitting into its groove. She tucked it under her arm. Her heart was hammering in her chest. She was sure he could see her, that his map of the room would give her away.

But he was still. ‘Haven’t you gone yet? Leave us in peace, I say. Leave us. Oh, my poor, my poor Rose.’

Rehana made her way to the door.

He knew. He must know. She thought of leaving the box by the door; it wasn’t too late; better than to be caught with it; any minute now he would climb down from the dressing table and pounce on her; he could see, she knew he could see. But a second later she was out the door and darting across the hallway; through the drawing room, where the rose-shorbot glasses had been cleared; unlatching the front door and out on the street, whose darkness instantly swallowed her; and then at home, where she crawled into her bed and sobbed, and cheered, and sobbed.

‘You stole,’ the Major said. It was too dark to make out his face.

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes, I stole.’

‘From a blind man.’

He was about to hate her; she knew it. But it was too late. ‘Yes, from a blind man.’

‘And his dead wife.’

‘Yes, I just told you. T. Ali’s wife.’

She heard something — was he crying? — and then he slapped his knee, once, twice. He cleared his throat. He swallowed.

‘I’m sorry — it’s just—’

‘What?’

‘You kept this secret all these years?’

‘Yes, I never told a soul.’

He slapped his knee again. His breath was noisy now, and she couldn’t see, but she could tell his mouth was open and he was trying, with difficulty, to speak. ‘I thought at the very least you’d murdered someone.’

‘What kind of a thing is that to say?’

He’d given up trying to say anything, and now he was just laughing, heh heh heh — a silly, ridiculous laugh. Rehana felt a tickle at the back of her throat. She coughed it away. It came back. She took refuge in scolding him. ‘You think this is funny?’

‘No, no. Of course it’s not funny.’ And he snorted. ‘Excuse me!’

‘Chih! I tell you this dark, terrible thing, and all you can do is laugh.’ She turned away indignantly, grateful that it was too dark for him to make out the expression on her own face. It could have been a smile, or it could have been a grimace. And the tickle in her throat could have been a chuckle or it could have been tears. It was mixed up: sad; funny; unfunny. She didn’t care. And she left him there, with the projector humming in the dark afterglow of the cinema, his head tilted back gratefully, laughing as though she had just given him a prize.