A Golden Age

August, September, October: Salt Lake

The sky over Bengal is empty. No mountains interrupt it; no valleys, no hills, no dimples in the landscape. It is flat, like a swamp, or a river that has nowhere to go. The eye longs for some blister on the horizon, some marker of distance, but finds none. Occasionally there are clouds; often there is rain, but these are only colours: the laundry-white of the cumulus, the black mantle of the monsoon.

Beyond the city there are no beautiful buildings that might sink in the heat or wilt under generations of rain. The promise of the land is not in the cities — their sky-touching glamour, the tragedy of their ruin — but in the vast unfolding plains, this empty sky, this stretching horizon. Every year the land will turn to sea as it disappears under the spell of water, and then prevail again, as if by magic, and this refrain, this looping repetition, is the archive of its long, flood-turned history.

It was through this simple, spectacular landscape that Rehana’s train, the 2.55 from Agartala to Calcutta, clattered westwards, chasing the sun. Rehana was in an empty compartment, the open window whipping her hair until it haloed around her face. The long shadows of trees fell across her and moved away, light and dark, back and forth, like piano keys.

She’d had to get out of Dhaka. It’s not safe. Faiz knew about Maya. Joy and the Major thought she might have been followed. Perhaps the house was being watched. No choice. Make sure it looks as though you’ll be gone a long time. So she had locked up the two houses and draped sheets over the furniture — she had seen her father do the same, a long time ago, when they had lost Wellington Square. She wondered if it made her a refugee, this train, this distance, the sheets on the furniture.

She had to take a roundabout route, first travelling east and crossing the border into India, then catching the train to Calcutta. The train journeyed north, passing the remaining stretch of Bengal — the mustard fields, the rice fields, the chilli fields; then the land curved and dimpled as they went west and entered Assam. In the morning she woke to a rolling, jostled landscape painted in the sunwash of early light. The air was crisp and smelled of apples. Hill air.

This semicircular track, now called the Chicken Neck, had been laid by the British, a holiday route carrying memsahibs to their winter destinations: Silchar, Shilliguri, Shillong — hill stations with names like rustled leaves, where clothes did not flap, exhausted, in the humidity, where the air was dry, the lips chapped, the hats possible. It smelled of home.

The light was different here. Without the wet air to temper it, it fell directly from the sky in a brilliant, eye-aching shade, illuminating the hills below, falling on the green that covered everything and the licked, glistening dew.

Rehana turned the words around in her mouth. I’ll come for you.

She was not a refugee. The bungalow was waiting for her, a padlock on its front door. The kerosene lamps were full. The water pump was hungry. The windows were shut. The curtains were up. The beds were dressed. She had neighbours. Dirty plates. A leg of mutton in the ice-box.

She had taken Sabeer to Mrs Chowdhury’s. She had seen Silvi come out to the gate and look at her husband, her grey calf eyes dominating her face, and tiny lines appearing at the corners of her mouth, dragging it downwards.

She had left without saying goodbye.

She had done her duty. She hadn’t waited for them to realize what exactly she had brought back from Muslim Bazaar.

Rehana put her feet on the bench opposite and took out the stack of letters. They smelled of mothballs. She wondered where Silvi had kept them; perhaps folded between her clothes, between a matching salwaar and kameez, or among her jewellery, or her old schoolbooks. At the last moment, when she’d had to decide what to take and what to leave behind, Rehana could not bear to leave the letters. They were her only concession to nostalgia. The rest of her packing was purely pragmatic: three saris, three blouses, three petticoats, a nightgown, a plastic comb, a thin towel. A blanket. And a plate. Joy had told her to pack a plate.

After she had finished, the Major told her he was not going with her. He would go back to Agartala on his own. ‘It’s safer for you that way. Maya will meet you in Calcutta. Everything’s been arranged.’ She saw the slight tremble of his eyelids; battling feeling; winning.

Rehana unscrewed the cap and took a sip from her flask. How very close it is to illness. The loose, restless limbs. The feverish cheeks. The burning salt of the heart. The prickle of sweat. Love.

She remembered a line from Ghalib. Zindagi yun bhi guzar hi jaati. Life would have gone on; somehow it would have passed, unstirred, predictable, and without this, the weather in her kicked up.

As the train turned south towards Calcutta, the monsoon fields returned. Rehana gazed out on to the waterlogged landscape. The land was divided into rectangular plots of rice, framed by a raised mud bank the width of a footprint. Different stages of growth were segregated in the plots: there were the pale, tiny shoots the colour of limes, which would be pulled and replanted when they grew waist high; and then the established shoots, denser and slightly darker; and finally the milk-toned paddy, ready to be harvested. The plots were miniature islands, each in its own flooded pool; together they were a chequered palette of green and gold.

The weather changed, and suddenly the sky was the colour of washed slate. Slanted sheets of rain began to pour through Rehana’s open window. She stood up and struggled with the latch, until the window fell down with a clap upon its groove. And then there was only the sound of the train itself, the looping wheels on the track, the water falling onto the window like tapping fingers, and everything blue-black: the wood of the bench, the low-hanging clouds outside, the rattle of the window in its frame.

The train approached Shialdah Station, grunting to a halt. When the doors opened, Rehana tumbled out with her bag. It was like being thrown into a roiling human sea. People were everywhere, choked together in a dense blur. She pushed through and made her way to the end of the platform, tiptoeing to see over the mass of faces. How would Maya ever find her? She found a few inches of space in front of a bench and sat down on her bags. After a few minutes she began to distinguish the different categories of traveller. There were the just-arrived ones, wearing the same ragged, anxious expression as herself; and the recently arrived, still hanging around the station, waiting for something to happen, for someone to pick them up, or to tell them what to do now that they had made it to Calcutta; and those who had arrived weeks, months, ago, who realized that there was nowhere beyond the station, no other possible home, and so had remained there, lying down on the platform in jagged, uneven rows. Their blankets covered their faces; they had lost hope of being picked up and taken anywhere else. Whether it was day or night, time for sleep or not, they lay there, in masks of death, carving out their shroud-like places on the platform.

‘Mrs Haque?’ A young man with a friendly gap between his teeth called out to Rehana. He shuffled towards her on squat legs. ‘You’re Mrs Haque?’

Rehana wasn’t sure whether to answer. She managed a hesitant ‘Yes?’

‘Remarkable resemblance! Even in this crowd I recognized you.’ He grinned, incongruous in this mess of lost bodies.

‘You are…?’

‘Mukul, Auntie, I’m here to collect you. Maya-di couldn’t come; she’s very sorry, she sent me. I’ll take you straight to the office — she’s waiting.’

Rehana was too tired to question the boy further; and here he was, wrestling the bag out of her hands, pushing cheerfully through the crowd, leading her outside, where the heat pulsed through the open mouth of the station entrance.

Mukul’s car was a yellow Volkswagen Beetle. Someone had thought of painting the bumper to match. Through the opening of doors and lifting of bags, he began a monologue that lasted until he’d pulled down the brake and jerked the car into motion. ‘Please, sit comfortably at the back — front seat is full of rubbish — well, not rubbish exactly, pamphlets — I was supposed to deliver them before I came to collect you but the roads were chock-a-block and I didn’t want to be late!’

‘Thank you for coming,’ Rehana said.

‘It’s an honour, Auntie. I’ve heard all about you from Maya,’ he said, catching Rehana’s eye in the rear-view.

‘Oh, really?’ Rehana muttered, trying to shield her eyes from the afternoon glare.

‘Yes, of course,’ he answered. ‘Why not? You are an example to all of us. A hero!’ The car sped past a flooded pavement and splashed a huddle of schoolboys.

‘Your first time in Calcutta?’ Mukul asked, swivelling around to face her.

‘Um, no actually, I used to live here.’

‘Really?’ Mukul asked. ‘Where? Which neighbourhood?’

Rehana was too taken aback to give him a fake address. ‘Wellington Square.’

‘Wellington Square? My goodness, your people must be rich.’

The Volkswagen hiccuped down the narrow city roads. Rehana kept the window rolled up, but even through the glass she could make out the mud-and-rotten-vegetable smell of Calcutta. She heard the clatter of the tongas, the shuffle of roasting peanuts. She fixed her eyes on her lap and resisted the temptation to look at her old home.

I have not returned to Calcutta, she told herself, I have not returned to Calcutta.

By the time her marriage to Iqbal had been arranged, she was desperate to leave. One by one her sisters had been married and shipped to Karachi. The house in Wellington Square was long gone, and they had rented a flat above a dusty bookshop on College Street. Every morning her father would go down into the bookstore and announce the names of the titles he used to own. ‘Great Expectations!’ he would shout. ‘Akbar-nama. Tales of the Alhambra.’

Mukul’s car shuddered to a halt in front of a two-storey house. A rectangular patch of garden was laid out in front like a welcome mat. The sign above the gate read number 8, theatre road.

‘Auntie,’ Mukul said, ‘please go ahead. I’ll park the car and bring your jeeneesh-potro.’

‘It’s all right — just a small bag — I’ll bring it in myself.’ Rehana climbed gratefully out of the car.

The office door was open, and she could hear the clatter of typewriters inside, and the screech of a radio being tuned. She stepped over the threshold and entered a high-ceilinged room that smelled of cobwebs and newsprint. A bright strip of tube-lights gave the room its official, fluorescent-wash feeling.

‘Ma!’ Maya ploughed into Rehana’s chest, knocking the breath out of her. Then she grabbed her by the shoulders, pushed her away and scanned her face with a giant smile. ‘Ammoo!’ Then she was pulling her close again, and Rehana thought she heard a sniffle as Maya buried her face in Rehana’s sari. ‘I’m so sorry I couldn’t come to the station — the Soviets signed the treaty, can you believe it? How are you, Ma, I’ve missed you’—she waved her arms around—‘everyone, amar Ma!’ A few people looked up from their desks and salaamed and nomoshkared Rehana. ‘You’ll meet everyone later. Was it all right, the train?’

‘Yes, yes, it was.’ Rehana took a moment to note the change in her daughter. She had exchanged her white sari for a brilliant red cotton. Her lips were chapped and bitten, and her hair was a mess, overgrown and forced into a braid that ended in a thin, weak tangle, but there was a rough health about her. On one of her fingers she wore a ring made of a cheap brown metal. Everything about her was different. Her eyes were bright, and Rehana could feel their warmth as they summed each other up. ‘I was worried,’ Maya was saying.

‘No, it was nothing, just a little tiring.’

‘Well, I’ve arranged the place — you want to go, sleep a little?’ Maya pulled the bag from Rehana’s arm.

Rehana felt her way around the new mood between them. ‘I’m a little hungry — and maybe a bath — if that’s all right — you’re not busy?’

‘No, Ma, today I’m all yours.’ She flung her arm around Rehana’s shoulders and laughed easily. ‘Where d’you want to go? Victoria Park? Wellington Square? Oooh, College Street?’

‘First let’s—’

‘Yes, sorry — home — yes, first home. Just a few minutes, Ammoo. Here, you sit behind the desk, I’ll just finish this paragraph.’

Rehana was so tired her arms were starting to grow cold.

‘Let me bring you some tea first.’ Maya ran off.

Rehana took the opportunity to examine the office more closely. There wasn’t much to see. Stacks of paper columned up the desks and covered every inch of spare floorspace. Young men in spectacles frowned over typewriters. A few posters were strung on the wall. Above a doorway leading to a back room was a framed photograph of Mujib in his black coat. Already the picture looked out of date.

Rehana pressed her head against the worn leather seat, hypnotized by the clack-clack-clack of the typewriters.

In the back room the radio squealed into focus.

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, bearing a cup of tea and a pair of biscuits, ‘the BBC broadcast, then we’ll go.’

Rehana heard snatches of the radio programme, interrupted by comments from the people at the office. This is the BBC World Service…a historic Indo-Soviet treaty…if Indira Gandhi intervenes, the war will surely be won for the people of Bangladesh…

A loud cheer went up in the room. Three telephones rang at once.

‘Joy Bangla! Joy Bangobandhu!’

The cheer was repeated several times, followed by scattered backslapping.

Rehana devoured the salty, cumin-studded biscuits and felt her knees turning to stone.

‘Beta,’ she said to Maya, ‘why don’t you just take me to — the flat?’

‘Ma, I’m so sorry — we’ll go now.’ She hesitated. ‘It’s not a flat, really.’

‘No matter. I just want to put my feet up.’ Rehana gathered her things and began to walk towards the front door.

‘No, Ammoo, this way.’ Maya led her to the back of the building, where there were yet more serious-looking workers hunched over their desks. They squeezed through a small cluster of people who were still huddled over the radio. A young woman dressed like a man in a pair of grey trousers waved to them as they brushed past.

‘Your mother?’

‘Yes — Ammoo, this is Sultana.’

The girl — boy beamed at Rehana. She had shiny, black eyes. ‘We’ve heard all about you, Auntie. You need anything, you ask me.’

They passed through a narrow doorway and into a dim stairwell. ‘It’s just upstairs,’ Maya said, climbing the stairs two at a time. Rehana followed Maya along the betel-stained corridor, stepping to avoid the crumpled bits of newspaper, the spit-globs, the smeared streaks of mud on the walls.

The stairwell opened on to a wide, flat roof. A low railing surrounded it, and beyond Rehana could see the other rooftops on Theatre Road. In the building next door a fat woman was pinning a yellow sari to a clothes line. ‘This way,’ Maya said. They crossed the roof. At the far end was a small shed topped with a sheet of tin. A set of narrow double doors was held together with a padlock.

Maya slipped a key into the lock. The doors swung open to reveal a tiny room with a sagging cot against one wall and a heavy wooden desk against the other. Between the cot and the desk was a sliver of window criss-crossed with crude metal bars. A tired gamcha hung from the bars, its chequered red-and-green pattern casting weak Christmas shadows on the concrete floor.

‘Ammoo, this was the best I could do.’

Rehana pushed aside her surprise.

‘I cleaned it!’ A tattered mop was angled against the wall.

‘It’s all right, jaan. It’s not for long.’

‘It’s a promotion! All this time I’ve been sleeping downstairs.’

‘In the office?’

‘There’s no other place,’ Maya said, shrugging, ‘and anyway it’s been rather fun.’ Maya was unwrapping herself from her sari, and Rehana followed, her back to the window. She pulled her head through her nightgown and began to pick the pins out of her hair.

Maya was already sprawled out on the cot when she said, ‘Ammoo, I heard about Sabeer.’

She didn’t really want to talk about Sabeer, but she told Maya about Sohail, the flat in Nilkhet, how he’d begged her to help.

‘Mrs Chowdhury was hysterical.’

‘And Silvi?’

‘Sohail thought…well, he wanted to do it for Silvi. He thought she might love him again if he — I–brought Sabeer back.’

‘And?’

‘Jani na. Sabeer was in very bad shape.’

‘You persuaded them to let him go?’

‘I had to ask your Faiz Chacha.’

‘How did you do it?’

‘I honestly don’t know.’ She realized she was telling the truth; that day was a blur, as though it had happened to someone else and she had just borrowed the memory.

‘You’re braver than you thought.’

‘Or perhaps I’m just foolish.’ Rehana rifled through her bag. She pulled out the blanket and held it to her face, breathing in the scent of the sun on her clothes line.

‘You look different,’ Maya said, ‘something…I don’t know.’

Rehana wrapped the blanket around her shoulders and wedged herself between the wall and her daughter. She looked up at the dimpled ceiling. Damp patches shaped like clouds dotted the whitewash. ‘I was thinking the same about you.’

Maya flipped on to her back. ‘I needed to leave, Ammoo, I hope you can understand that. I felt so bad leaving you all alone…’

She hadn’t been all alone. She’d watched Mughal-e-Azam and fallen in love with a stranger and uttered words she’d kept hidden for more than a decade.

Maya was still speaking: ‘…and it’s been so busy here, I hardly have time to think.’ With a start she sat up and parted her hair in the middle, grabbing the left side and twisting it into a braid. The mattress pitched and wobbled. Rehana swallowed a groan. She had forgotten how restless the girl could be.

‘Was he — Sabeer — what did they do to him?’

Rehana didn’t move her eyes from the ceiling. She considered which version of the truth Maya would not immediately reject.

‘We’ve been getting reports about the prisoners,’ Maya said. ‘I already know.’

‘Then I don’t need to tell you.’

‘I still want to know.’ She was working on the second braid now and climbing into her younger, schoolgirl face.

‘He was tortured.’

‘How? What did they do?’

‘I don’t know.’

‘Of course you know.’

‘I don’t really want—’

‘For God’s sake, Ammoo, I’m not a child!’

Rehana sighed, resigned. ‘All right.’ Keep your eyes on the clouds, she told herself. ‘They beat him, broke his ribs.

‘They made him stare at the sun for hours, days.

‘They burned cigarette holes on his back.

‘They hung him upside down.

‘They made him drink salt water until his lips cracked.

‘And they tore out his fingernails.’ The tears travelled across her cheeks and pooled in her ears. She closed her eyes and saw the blood pulsing through her eyelids. When she opened them, Maya was at the window, folding and unfolding the torn gamcha. Then she turned around and said in a hospital voice, ‘He’s lucky you came for him. They would have made him dig his own grave and buried him in it.’

Rehana turned and pressed her forehead to the wall. It was rough and spiked with dust.

‘Ma, you were so brave,’ Maya said, collapsing heavily on to the cot. ‘So brave.’ She stroked Rehana’s back. ‘Let’s sleep, now, OK?’ She turned and curled herself around her mother. Rehana felt her daughter’s restless warmth at her back. ‘Tomorrow we’ll visit the camp.’

She lay awake and thought about the Major, his blue-threaded arm, the weight of his breath.

It wasn’t like the love for children.

It wasn’t like the love of home.

Or the accidental love of her husband.

It was a swallowing, hungry love. Already she wanted more. Not one day had passed and she wanted more. There was pain in it, but not a pain she knew. Not the pain of losing fathermotherhusband. Not the grinding pain of waving goodbye from a foggy airport window.

‘Ammoo, utho, wake up!’ A lock of hair tickled Rehana’s cheek. She opened a clammy eye to find her daughter bent over the cot, a steaming mug of tea in one hand, a toothbrush in the other. She tried to remember where she was. ‘We have to hurry,’ Maya said, handing the toothbrush to Rehana and swallowing a gulp of tea. Yesterday’s softness was gone, replaced by a charmless efficiency.

‘What time is it?’ Rehana turned on to her back, wincing at the stiffness in her neck. ‘It’s still dark.’

‘Five thirty. We have to get ready and meet Sultana.’ She waved the mug in the direction of the door. ‘She’s waiting downstairs.’

‘Where are we going?’

‘I told you, today is my day at the camp.’

Rehana’s stomach was hot and empty. ‘What about breakfast?’

‘There’s a canteen — the food’s not bad — just hurry up and we might have time for a little aloo paratha before we go.’

‘All right,’ Rehana said, heaving herself out of the bowl of the mattress, ‘I’ll just change and get ready. Go downstairs, I’m just coming.’

Half an hour later, after Rehana had dressed, brushed her teeth in a downstairs toilet that smelled of sweat and wolfed down a few potatoes rolled in a greasy paratha, she found herself wedged between Sultana and Maya in the front of a shabby truck. Sultana was behind the wheel, wearing the same grey trousers and an open-necked white kurta. She’s driving a truck, Rehana mouthed to Maya, who carried a box labelled oral rehydration therapy on her lap. Maya turned to Rehana and smiled inscrutably. ‘It’s a war, Ammoo,’ she whispered; ‘we can do whatever we want.’

They stopped in front of a battered coffee house. Mukul, smelling like eggs and toothpaste, stuck his head through the open window and shouted, ‘Nomoshkar! Good morning, Auntie.’ Then he jumped into the back of the trunk and settled among the medical boxes and tins of dried milk.

An hour later the sky was not even yellow and the heavy night-time dew still clung to the trees and the windscreen. Maya and Sultana picked up a song. Sultana said something about a Pakistani soldier and a jackfruit that made Maya hold her stomach and laugh. Rehana willed the journey to pass quickly.

‘Halfway!’ Maya called out cheerfully. And then it started to rain. Criss-crossing sheets made baby rattles on the windscreen. The road stretched ahead, vague and muddy.

Once they had crossed Howrah Bridge and left the perimeter of Calcutta, the landscape was barren and yellow with fields of drying hay. They passed a jute factory, with its smell of grass and dung, and a leather factory, spilling its fishy odour on to the road, and a cement factory, with black towers of smoke and a piercing, staccato clatter. Half an hour later Mukul rapped on the glass. ‘Almost there!’ he shouted, pointing ahead to a handwritten sign that read salt lake 2 kilometres. The wind flattened his hair and ears.

Sultana swung the steering wheel to the right, and they passed on to a narrow, rough track. In the distance Rehana saw an enormous tent, and beside it an expanse of makeshift shacks and hutments. The fields beyond were stacked with oversized cement pipes.

‘Is this it?’

‘Ji, Auntie,’ Sultana said, ‘this is it.’

As they approached the tent, Rehana saw a giant banner painted with a Red Cross sign.

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, ‘this is it. Salt Lake Refugee Camp.’

‘What’s that tent?’

‘It’s a hospital.’

Long wooden boards made a path from the car to the tent. The field that lay between was littered with the detritus of people who had hastily abandoned their homes. Shoes, combs, fragments of clothing, broken cooking pots were sinking into the mud like swirls of confetti.

Maya and Sultana skipped over the boards, manoeuvring through the oily puddles and smudged footprints. Maya had pinned the red sari a little high, so that it just skimmed her ankles; she wore closed, sturdy shoes. No one had told Rehana what to expect. She hitched up her sari so that it wouldn’t trail in the mud, and with the other hand she covered her head with a copy of the Calcutta Statesman, because the sun had begun to force itself through the clouds, trapping the air in a hazy, thick heat. She kept her head down and concentrated on navigating the tilting, uneven boards.

Inside the Red Cross tent Maya and Sultana were greeted with cheers and handshakes. A tall man in a white coat came striding towards them. ‘Ah, my Tuesday angels,’ he bellowed.

‘Dr Rao, this is my mother,’ Maya said.

He had glittering olive eyes. ‘Welcome to Calcutta. Why don’t you join me later, when I do the rounds?’ He put a hand on Maya’s elbow.

‘Sure,’ Maya said, colouring, ‘we’ll just unpack the supplies.’

‘OK then, see you later,’ he said, sailing away on long, quick legs.

Sultana was already unpacking the supplies and giving instructions to the half-dozen volunteers who had gathered around her. Maya joined her in an assembly line, cracking the boxes open with a blade, pointing to the different shelves that made up the medicine stores. Rehana wedged herself into a corner and watched, shifting her weight from one foot to another. It was like being with her sisters again, disappearing while they went on with important, grown-up tasks.

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, unwrapping a package of syringes, ‘do you want to have a look around?’

‘Yes, sure,’ Rehana replied, relieved.

‘Sultana, we’ll just be back.’

‘I’ll catch up with you later.’ And she raised a teasing eyebrow. ‘We can meet Dr Rao.’

When they stepped outside the tent, Rehana saw a ragged line of families snaking out to one side.

‘What are they waiting for?’

‘Vaccinations,’ Maya said. She checked her watch. ‘They do them every morning at ten.’ At the head of the queue, on a foldout table, a sandy-haired man in a coat plunged needles into spindly baby arms.

Maya was leading her to the field of shanties, where the beehives of discarded cement pipes were stacked three or four high.

‘This is where they bring the newcomers,’ Maya said, pointing to the pipes.

‘Where?’

‘Over there.’

There weren’t any buildings, only the pipes. ‘I can’t see anything.’

‘Inside the pipes, Ma, look.’

Rehana put her hand to her forehead and looked. The scene came into focus.

It was true. The pipes, each just wide enough for a grown man’s stretched arms, had people huddled inside them. Lungis hung across some for privacy. Saris lay drying on top. Inside, their backs bent against the curve of the pipes, men and women pitched against the sloping walls.

Maya and Rehana walked on, drawing closer to the pipes. The ground grew more sodden as they approached, and boards were laid down again. The stench of human waste suddenly assaulted Rehana, and she stopped in her tracks.

‘Maya,’ Rehana said, covering her mouth with her sari, ‘how long do you think we’ll be here?’

‘At the camp?’

‘No, in Calcutta.’

‘Why?’

‘I just want to know — how long before we go home?’

‘Dhaka isn’t safe any more. They’ve been raiding houses, and if even one person tells the authorities you’ve been harbouring freedom fighters, we could all end up in custody. Especially you. Sohail’s very worried.’

‘But I knew all of this when I decided to do it.’

‘Things have changed. The army is nervous; they’re cracking down.’

Rehana knew it was childish to indulge in feeling homesick, but she couldn’t help it. Everything had happened so quickly, she hadn’t even had time to consider what would happen next, after she arrived. She hadn’t bargained on feeling so lost. She shouldn’t have come.

‘Don’t worry, Ma. You’ll soon settle in.’

They marched on.

The pipes were no bigger at close range. Children dangled from their edges, while women hung back inside, their faces covered with the limp ends of their saris.

They found a boy, no more than six or seven, squatting beside his pipe. ‘You arrive today?’ Maya asked, crouching down herself and looking him up and down. ‘I haven’t seen you before.’

The boy was braiding two flat lengths of jute. When he looked up, Rehana saw the skin stretched over his face. On his neck, where his pulse should have been, was a pink millipede scar.

He kept his eyes on his hands and mumbled something incoherent.

‘Speak up, boy,’ Maya said roughly, taking his chin in her hands.

‘Ji, apa.’ He finished his braid and began another one.

‘Where are you from?’

‘Pabna,’ he whispered.

‘Where?’

‘Pabna,’ he said, even more softly, holding the first braid in his mouth.

‘Which village?’ Maya asked.

‘I don’t know.’

‘You don’t know the village?’

‘Dulal, tara tari koro.’ A woman with a fist on each hip crawled out of her pipe and looked Rehana up and down. ‘I need that basket.’ She had something — a chicken — tucked into the crook of her elbow. She twisted it around and held it by its wing.

‘Who’s this?’ she asked, looking at the boy and pointing to Maya. The chicken flapped its free wing against the woman’s leg.

Maya stood up. ‘My name is Maya. I work here.’ Maya didn’t introduce Rehana. ‘Is this your boy?’

‘No. He’s from my village.’

‘Where are his people?’

‘Dead,’ the woman said stiffly.

‘See that tent?’ Maya said, pointing, ‘go and register there. Him too. You can get food, medicine. Bujlen?’

The woman nodded. She passed the chicken to Dulal, who had tied his jute braids together into a loose net. Rehana wanted to ask her a few more questions, how old she was, how she had arrived at the camp, did she have parents, a husband, children of her own, but Maya was already moving on, waving her hands at an old man with a lungi hitched up around his knees.

Rehana rifled through her handbag and pulled out a few notes. ‘I can give you some taka—’

The woman gave Rehana a parched, blinkless stare. ‘I don’t need money,’ she said.

Rehana reached out a hand to touch the woman’s arm, but she shifted slightly and her fingers grazed the sari instead. She ran to catch up with Maya.

They went deeper into the camp. It was getting unbearably hot and the stench was even worse there; the stacks of cement pipes had given way to shacks and makeshift shelters built out of plastic and scraps of wood. The lucky ones had a few pieces of tin sheeting to keep off the rain. Rehana pulled her sari around her ankles, and with the other hand she tried to swat away a family of flies that were following her. Everywhere she looked she saw the haunted faces of the refugees. They held out their hands, and she thought they might grab her, drag her into the muck. She had an image of them forcing her into one of their pipes, making her weave those jute strings all day. You’re one of us, they would say, you’re one of us. She imagined Maya leaving her there, going back in the truck with Sultana and Mukul, laughing all the way to Theatre Road.

‘Maya,’ Rehana said finally, ‘I can’t go on.’

‘It’s just a bit further,’ Maya said, pointing ahead. ‘There’s someone I want to see on that side.’

‘Really,’ Rehana said, feeling her stomach twist, ‘you go ahead, I’ll stay here and wait for you.’

‘Where will you wait?’

Rehana glanced around. There was no place to sit. ‘I’ll go back to the tent.’

‘Will you be able to find it?’

‘Yes — just go ahead.’ Rehana couldn’t wait to get rid of her; she could stop pretending to be interested and run back to the tent. She thought about the truck. Maybe she could go back to the truck with a cold glass of water and listen to the radio. Or sit beside those volunteers and their medicine boxes. Anything, anything but this stink.

She picked her way to the tent. Slipping quietly through the flaps, she found herself in the hospital ward. All the beds were pushed up against each other, so that it looked like an unbroken stretch of bodies. She walked through the aisle, stepping over people. It was the women who made the breath catch in her throat. It was the way they squatted next to the children, holding up empty breasts to their mouths, their hair matted with the road.

‘Mrs Haque?’ A man approached: it was the doctor, coming towards her with a quizzical wave. A pair of white rubber gloves were stretched across his hands. Rehana saw dark spots on the fingertips, and, as he drew nearer, a smattering of red above the pocket of his white coat. ‘Chachi? What are you doing here?’

She wanted to hug him. ‘I–I came to look around a little.’

‘Well, this is it. We have a small operating theatre at the back, and a dispensary. Shall I take you around?’

‘No — it’s all right. I just — I wanted to see.’

‘There are so many,’ Dr Rao said, fixing his gaze on her. ‘From all over the country. They’ve left everything, walked for days, only to arrive at this place.’

Rehana couldn’t keep her eyes from the red smudges on his gloves.

‘There’s a register — I can show it to you.’

They turned a corner and entered another room. There were more crowds, echoes of wailing children. A grating mechanical hum shrouded all of the other sounds.

‘What is that noise?’

‘Generator,’ the doctor replied. ‘We get power for the OT, and a few hours of light in the evening.’

‘Do you stay here?’

‘Yes,’ he sighed, smiling. ‘There’s another small tent in a far corner of the field.’

‘Where are you from?’

‘Kashmir.’

‘You came to Calcutta to study?’

‘No,’ he said. ‘No. I came for this.’

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said that night, ‘Dr Rao suggested that you might want to help at the camp.’

I knew. I knew she wanted to leave me there. ‘Me? What can I do?’

‘They really need help. You could do what you did at Shona — just talk to the refugees.’

Rehana did not want to talk to the refugees. Why was it always her? Rescue this one, save that one. ‘If I’m in the way I should just go back to Dhaka.’

‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, ‘you know you can’t do that.’

‘I should never have come.’

‘It’s very serious, they could have arrested you.’

The thought of spending months there, in the shed, or worse, at the camp, was suddenly unbearable. ‘So what? I deserve to be arrested.’

‘Stop talking nonsense.’

‘I don’t want to go back to that camp.’

‘Fine. Stay here.’ Maya turned her back and folded her hands under her cheek. Just like her father slept, Rehana thought. As though she were praying.

The stifling heat in the shed woke Rehana. The bed was empty; Maya’s clothes were strewn across the floor. Rehana started picking up the clothes and folding them. There was a smell coming from Maya’s kameez. It needed a wash. The rest of her clothes were no better: the hems of all her saris and petticoats were streaked with mud.

Rehana stepped out of the shed to see if there was a tap. She circled the perimeter of the roof, holding a hand against the sun. She followed a copper pipe, and in a far corner she found what she was looking for, fastened to the wall. Below it was a hole where the water would run off.

There wasn’t any laundry soap. She took out the cream-coloured bar of soap she had brought to wash her face. She turned the tap, and a weak trickle made its way out. The water was warm and comfortable; she soon felt herself relax as she kneaded Maya’s salwaar-kameez in a familiar double beat: clap-clap, clap-clap, clap-clap.

She hung the clothes over the railing, pleased with the sight of them sizzling under the sun. The fat woman from the other day was on the next-door roof again, pinning up the same yellow sari. She waved. Rehana waved back.

Downstairs, Maya was attacking the typewriter with a pen in her mouth. The pen had leaked a little; on one corner of her lip was a growing patch of indigo.

‘Ma, where’ve you been?’

‘Just tidying a little upstairs.’ Rehana pointed to her mouth. ‘You have a little—’

Maya had already turned back to her typewriter. ‘Isn’t it hot up there?’ she said distractedly.

‘I’ll go out and see if I can get us a few things,’ Rehana said. ‘We need soap, and maybe a few snacks.’

‘All right,’ Maya said, her eyes on her punching fingers. ‘You go ahead.’

On her way out, Rehana passed Mukul pasting a flyer on to the wall. He wore a blue cap that was pulled down to hide his eyes.

‘Auntie, hello,’ he said, raising his chin so he could see her. ‘You going out in this heat?’

‘Just down the road for a few things.’

‘It’s burning up!’

‘I’ll only be gone a few minutes.’

‘Here, why don’t you take my cap?’ he said, peeling it off his head. His hair was plastered wetly to his forehead. She saw the ring of sweat around the rim.

‘No, really.’

‘Please, I insist.’

‘No, no, don’t worry, I’ll just be back.’

It was furiously hot outside. Within seconds Rehana’s cheeks began to burn. She considered turning back, but the thought of Mukul in his sweaty cap kept her moving ahead; she continued down the street until she came to a junction. Tram tracks bisected the road, and on either side there were shops with open doors and loud, clashing hoardings. Rehana didn’t remember this part of Calcutta, but the tonga-wallahs, skipping barefoot through the traffic with their elbows pointed up and out, and the shapes of the buildings, the wide avenues, the trams — she recognized all of these, despite the years of wilful forgetting.

Now everything was louder and more crowded. People choked the streets and tilted the tram carriages. They perched on the edge of the sidewalk and left barely a sliver of pavement through which Rehana could push her way. She ducked into the nearest shop, blinking against the change in light. It was a dark, narrow room with a row of shelves lining one wall, a counter running alongside. The shelves held a confused and mismatched assortment of things — chocolates, baby formula, shampoo, pomade, pickles. A man stood in front of the display with his palms on the countertop.

Rehana pointed to a blue bar of washing soap. ‘That one please, how much?’

‘Six annas,’ the man said, chewing his gums.

‘Give me one. And a pao of moori. And a — do you have scissors?’

‘Scissors?’

‘Yes, I need a pair of scissors.’

The man pulled out a drawer and showed Rehana several samples. After inspecting the blade and putting her thumb through the handle of each one, she chose the smallest pair.

‘Total comes to three rupees, twelve annas.’

Rehana was about to pay the man when he said, ‘Have I seen you before?’

She took a closer look at him. He was old; her father’s age. Could she know him? Trust me to find the one person in Calcutta who remembers me. But no, she hadn’t seen him before. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘I’m sure I know you,’ he insisted.

‘But I don’t live here.’

‘Where are you from — are you Joy Bangla?’

‘Sorry?’

‘Are you from Dhaka? Bangladesh? Joy Bangla?’

No, actually, she thought, I’m from Calcutta. But she said, ‘Yes, I’m Joy Bangla.’

‘Ten per cent discount,’ he said, smiling. ‘Ten per cent refugee discount.’ He passed her the shopping bag with a freckled hand. ‘I was a refugee also, in ’47. That’s why I recognize you.’ And then he looked at her with such fatherly tenderness. ‘You come back here when you need anything. Anything at all.’

Suddenly the man was a blur. He waved his hand at her. ‘Please, don’t cry! You want a choc bar? Milon, get my daughter here a choc bar. Don’t cry, Ma, don’t cry.’

Rehana tugged at the paper with wet fingers. Her teeth broke into the chocolate and through the ice-cream.

‘Go on, Ma. You go on.’

She stepped back into the noon heat with the ice-cream turning to milk on her tongue. She walked a little further, passing a tobacco shop and a Chinese restaurant. On the corner of the next street she found a bench, shaded by the shadow of a three-storeyed State Bank of India. The two women who had already collapsed on the bench wriggled together to make room for Rehana. There was a tram stop across the road, and Rehana watched the passengers emptying and filling the compartments.

She saw that they were the same as the people from the train station, and from Shona’s garden, and from the camps, refugees now trawling through the streets.

There were some that seemed less desperate, almost ordinary. But, despite their attempts to blend in, she could tell they were also refugees. They kept their hands in their pockets and a grateful smile stitched to their lips. They had unwashed hair and dirty shoes. Clothes that looked decent, but, looking closely she could see the ragged hems, the worn pleats. And everywhere they went their memories argued for space, so that they forgot to cross the road when the lights were red, or over-milked their tea, or whispered into their newspapers as they scanned hungrily for news of home. Rehana found she could not bear to look at them; she was afraid she would see herself; she was afraid she wouldn’t see herself; she wanted to be different and the same as them all at once, neither option offering relief from the rasping feeling of loss, and the swallowing, hungry love.

‘I’m going to cut your hair, Maya,’ Rehana said. It was night again, and they were getting ready for bed. Rehana had tidied and swept the shed. Maya’s clothes, smelling of afternoon sun, were folded and stacked on the desk. The window was open, and there was just the hint of a breeze.

‘There’s nothing wrong with my hair,’ Maya said. Her first instinct was always to say no to everything. ‘What’s wrong with my hair?’

‘Nothing. I just want to trim the edges. Look at this,’ Rehana said, showing Maya the tatty end of her braid. ‘I’ll just make it straight.’

‘How do you know how to cut hair?’

‘I’ve always known. My sisters made me cut theirs.’ Right here, in Calcutta. And she used to cut her father’s, when they were poor and there was no more credit at the barber’s.

‘Really? How is it you never cut mine?’

‘You never let me get near your hair! I used to cut Sohail’s.’

Maya smiled wryly. ‘Yes, I think I remember now. I always thought it was because he was your favourite.’

‘Na, it was because you were so stubborn.’

‘Go ahead, then, let’s see what you can do.’

Rehana was ready with the scissors and a small mug of water. She dipped the end of Maya’s raggedy braid into the water, then she undid it and began to comb.

‘Full of knots!’ she said. ‘It’s a mess.’

‘No commentary from the haircutter, please.’

Rehana pushed Maya’s head forward and started to work the scissors. ‘Stop moving,’ she said, ‘or it’ll be uneven.’

The curling half-moons fell to the ground. ‘Maya, I was thinking about what the doctor said — perhaps it is a good idea.’

‘Really, Ma, you don’t have to.’ She twisted around to face Rehana.

‘Hold still.’ Rehana pushed Maya’s head back into position. ‘There’s really nothing much for me to do here.’

‘I’m sorry, I know I’ve been busy.’

‘You have your work. It’ll be good for me to have something to do. There must be some reason why I came here.’ Rehana pulled two ends of Maya’s hair together to see if she’d cut a straight line. ‘All right,’ she said, patting Maya’s shoulder, ‘all done.’

‘The war will be over soon,’ Maya said; ‘we won’t be here for ever.’

It wasn’t until September that Rehana got her reason. She was trailing Dr Rao through the ward, taking notes on the new patients, writing down their medications and prescriptions. They came to the end of the row of cots, and on the last bed was a woman Rehana hadn’t seen before. A blanket covered most of her face, but her forehead and her long hair were visible, and one arm, on which she wore a red-and-gold glass bangle.

‘Who’s this?’ Rehana asked. There was something about her, lying there on the cot, that made Rehana want to see her face.

‘I’m not sure,’ Dr Rao said. ‘I don’t think I’ve seen her before.’

Rehana peeled back the katha and saw a pair of closed eyes, framed by long, ropy strands of hair. She looked closer. She knew this woman. ‘Supriya.’ It couldn’t be her. Could it? She looked again. Of course, of course it was her. It was the kind of thing that happened so easily these days. ‘This is my friend, Mrs Sengupta,’ Rehana said, ‘from Dhaka.’

Dr Rao lifted the bangled arm with his thumb and forefinger, his eyes on his wristwatch. ‘Why don’t you stay here, Chachi? I’ll see if I can find out who’s been treating her.’

‘Her husband must have brought her. See if you can find him. Mr Sengupta.’

Rehana pulled off the katha. Mrs Sengupta’s sari was bunched around her knees. Her calves were grey and papery. Rehana dragged the sari down and covered her legs. She looked like a felled tree.

‘What happened to you?’ Rehana whispered. She lifted Mrs Sengupta’s head and pulled the soggy hair away from her neck. She saw her friend’s eyelids shift, as though she were dreaming, and then she opened them slowly, turning first to the ceiling and then slowly focusing on Rehana.

‘Supriya?’

Mrs Sengupta stared emptily at Rehana. She opened her mouth. Her lips were black.

‘What happened to you? Where’s Mithun?’ But she had already turned away, her face shut.

The doctor returned a few minutes later. He carried a blood-pressure cuff and a bag of saline. ‘I’m afraid she’s here alone, Mrs Haque. No one has seen any family.’

‘That can’t be right. She has a husband, and a son. She wouldn’t have come without them.’

When Rehana went to the ward the next day, Mrs Sengupta was exactly as she had left her, smeared across the cot with the sari around her knees. But she was awake. Rehana stroked her forehead. There was no fiery teep, no sindoor.

Rehana began to make a habit of spending her afternoons at Mrs Sengupta’s bedside. She poured coconut oil into her hair and picked out the dirt. Then she washed it with a small square of soap she had bought from the old man on Theatre Road. She cut Mrs Sengupta’s nails and creamed her elbows. Her friend followed her with her eyes, but still she said nothing. Aside from a small bamboo pipe she kept under her pillow, she appeared to have no possessions.

It was not unlike sitting at Iqbal’s grave. There was never any answer, but she imagined somehow Mrs Sengupta could hear her.

‘After you left a lot of other people left also. The club shut down and the markets were mostly deserted. And a lot of boys ran off to join the army. Sohail wanted to go but I said no.’

Sometimes, as with Iqbal, she was tempted to lie, or exaggerate.

‘But he went anyway. You would not believe the change in him. And Silvi. She looks nothing like the girl we knew. We should never have let her marry that boy. I met him again, you know, but under very different circumstances.’

She kept certain things from Mrs Sengupta. The details of Sabeer’s capture, for instance. She didn’t want to upset her. And she didn’t talk about the Major. She didn’t know how she could put it. I fell in love with a stranger. Having to explain would mean giving some reason. Which it did not have. It was an unreasonable thing. She hardly even knew him. Sometimes it occurred to her how very little she did know. For instance, if he had any brothers or sisters. Or what he planned to do once the war was over. She had never even asked him when, or if, she would see him again.

In the afternoons, when Mrs Sengupta slept, Rehana walked around the hospital with Dr Rao. She befriended a few other women, stopping beside their cots and holding their hands while they told her how they had come to be there. They started to recognize her. They called her apa. Every day they told her new stories about the war. She waited for a letter from Sohail. She waited for a letter from the Major. Neither came.

Rehana got used to the rides in the truck with Mukul, and by October the rooftop was almost pleasant. She kept the doors of the shed open and sat on the threshold, watching the evening descend and the city slide easily into dusk. The fat woman was there every few days, flapping and pinning her yellow sari.

Every day it was the same. Mrs Sengupta had still not uttered a word. ‘Won’t you say anything, Supriya? Tell me what happened? Maybe I can help.’

One night on the roof Rehana was patching up the torn hem of her white petticoat. She hadn’t brought enough clothes for such a long stay, and the ones she had brought were starting to wear out. She was threading a needle when the thought suddenly occurred to her that, even though Mrs Sengupta didn’t want to speak, perhaps she would agree to write. She remembered the day Mrs Sengupta had asked her about Sultana’s Dream. She put down her petticoat and went downstairs to ask Maya for a notebook or a few scraps of paper. The next day at the camp Rehana presented these to Mrs Sengupta, along with a sharpened pencil.

Mrs Sengupta lifted her head. She shook it.

Rehana pointed to the notebook. ‘That’s for you.’

A few days before this, Rehana had said, ‘Did you know the story of how I lost the children?’ She told Mrs Sengupta about the courthouse and the judge, and how she had allowed her grief to betray her. ‘But I got them back. You can find Mithun too. And Mr Sengupta.’

Rehana was convinced it was just a matter of being lost. Maybe they were rushing to get somewhere and Mrs Sengupta got separated from the others. Mr Sengupta must be looking for her right now; that’s why Rehana kept checking the register to see who had arrived at the camp. Rehana had visions of Mr Sengupta hunting through every refugee camp, every train station, every hospital, for news of his wife. Surely if they were patient, they would find each other again.

The next morning, when Rehana went back, Mrs Sengupta held up the notebook. She had written a few lines. I went into the reeds, it said. In the pond. She pulled the bamboo pipe from under her pillow and put it to her mouth. I left him, she wrote.

‘I don’t know what you mean, Mrs Sengupta,’ Rehana said. An image came, unbidden, of Mrs Sengupta sinking into a grey-brown silt.

Mrs Sengupta’s hand moved slowly over the page. She finished a sentence, crossed it out, then wrote again. After what felt like a long time, she handed the notebook back to Rehana. I left him and ran into the pond.

It couldn’t be right. It couldn’t have happened that way.

‘You got separated?’

Again she began her slow scrawl, her fingers knotting together. I didn’t think about him, I just ran.

‘Mr Sengupta?’ Rehana asked. She had already written something down and was pointing to it now. They shot him.

She couldn’t bear to see any more. ‘Supriya, get some rest now, I’ll be back with some lunch.’

Mrs Sengupta gripped her notebook.

True, she wrote, true true true. She closed her eyes.

Rehana left her that way, black-lipped and shaking her head back and forth.

Rehana didn’t know what to say. She was afraid some accusation might slip from her lips, even if she said it was all right, that she understood. No matter how she tried to picture it, she still could not help feeling disgusted by the thought of Mrs Sengupta aban-doning her son. There must have been some other way. There was always another way. She could have taken him with her. Or stood between him and those soldiers. And how could she bear to be alive, not knowing, imagining he might be somewhere, lost, with strangers, or worse?

The next day Rehana avoided Mrs Sengupta. She did not visit her the day after that. A week passed, and she tried to put it out of her mind. Then she found the telegram. It was early in the morning, and she was looking for a safety pin among Maya’s things when she found it, dated 16 October 1971. Two days ago.

SABEER DEAD STOP TRIED OUR BEST STOP

COULDN’T SAVE STOP GOD BLESS MRS C

Rehana folded the telegram, neatly, making sure the edges lined up. She felt weak and shaky and her fingers trembled, but she continued to fold, until it was a tiny sliver of paper that she could tuck into her blouse, like loose change. All the way to Salt Lake she felt her heart beating against it. She remembered that terrible night, lashing herself to Sabeer as they travelled through the dark, his chipped hands hugged to his breast. Then her thoughts lingered on Silvi, and Mrs Chowdhury, and Romeo turning to dust under a coconut tree, and her whole body burned with the need to go home, back to the neighbourhood, to the bungalow, and to Shona.

Home made her think of Mrs Sengupta. Where would Supriya go, when this was all over? Rehana decided to approach her, to tell her the truth. That she didn’t understand how a mother could abandon her son to save her own life, but that it was not, in the end, her place to understand. That was between her and her maker. She was only her friend.

At the ward Rehana waited for her daily appointment with Dr Rao. The trembling in her fingers spread to her arms, a cold travelling shiver.

The doctor approached, making his hurried, long-legged strides. He was right on time, as usual.

‘Did you check the list today?’ Rehana asked.

‘Yes, Chachi, I checked the list.’

‘And?’

‘Nothing, I’m sorry.’ He sighed. They went through this every day. ‘Chachi, I know she’s your friend, but there’s really not much more we can do.’

‘But her son is lost — now we know exactly where he was last seen. We have to keep looking. Promise me you’ll keep looking.’ She stood up to go. The floor tilted towards her. She lunged forward, leaning heavily on the doctor’s arm.

‘Chachi? Are you all right?’

‘Nothing. I should probably have some breakfast — haven’t eaten all morning.’

‘There must be something in the kitchen. Shall I take you?’

‘No, please don’t worry. The list — you’ll keep checking? Sabeer Mustafa. I mean, no — Mithun. Mithun Sengupta. You got the name?’

‘Yes, Chachi.’

The spinning went on as Rehana made her way to the canteen. The din of the hospital was by now familiar to her, and she had learned to ignore it, just as she could ignore the pressing mass of people with urgent faces who lined the corridors. But now there was a roar in her head like rushing water. She put her hand to her mouth and felt the flame of her breath. I need to sit down, she said to herself. Just for a moment. She was scanning the room, looking for an empty chair, when Maya intercepted her.

‘Ammoo, are you all right?’

‘Nothing, jaan, just a little weakness.’ A feathery shiver passed through her body. ‘The telegram — why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Ammoo, let’s sit down somewhere.’

‘OK.’ Maya grabbed hold of Rehana’s hand. They made their way though the beds. Some of the women waved to Rehana as they passed and cried out, ‘Apa!’ Rehana heard them as a warbled, rippling echo.

‘Maya-jaan, I’m not feeling well,’ she whispered. Maya was in front of her now, pushing people aside. ‘Make way, please!’ she was saying.

Rehana slipped out of Maya’s grip. The people rushing into the hospital overcame her, and she let go, falling into the throng, strange, icy hands gripping her shoulders, raising her up, her arms flopping like fish fins, and then darkness.

Rehana drifted in and out of a heavy-lidded sleep, her throat thick with questions. She dreamed of Sabeer, his cracked lips mouthing something incoherent, and Mithun, with a face like Sohail’s, under water, wailing for his mother.

‘Ma,’ she heard Sohail say, ‘I’m here, Ma.’

When she woke, she patted herself; her face was still hot, but the shivering had stopped, and now there was just an aching heaviness in her limbs and a hard throbbing in her head. She rubbed her feet together; they were buttery, even the heels. Someone had been tending to them. She turned and caught a whiff of jobakusum.

‘My hair…’

‘Mrs Sengupta’s been washing it,’ she heard a man’s voice say. ‘Doesn’t speak to anybody, just does it. And your feet.’ The voice had a weathered rasp.

She wondered if she was dreaming. ‘Sohail?’

He leaned over her so she could see it was really him.

‘When did you come?’

‘I was coming anyway — you didn’t get my letter. Just a few days. You’ve been in and out.’

‘What happened?’

‘Jaundice. Rao said you’ve probably had it for weeks, you just didn’t know. It’s very contagious — they had to check everyone.’

‘Maya?’

‘She’s fine.’

Rehana had so many questions, but she was too tired to form the words. ‘Hold my hand,’ was all she managed to say. Before she drifted away, she saw Sohail’s arm, caramel and shiny with sun, moving across the bed.

‘I have an assignment, Ammoo,’ she heard him say the next day. He had brought her a green coconut with a triangular hole cut into the top, which she was tipping slowly into her mouth. ‘We’re going to take out the grid.’

The coconut water was milky and sweet. She dipped her finger into it and pulled out a strip of the flesh. Sohail smiled through his beard-cloud. Rehana couldn’t help noticing how beautiful he was, and so alive, his eyes electric as he told her the news.

‘Whole city will be in total darkness. We’re going to dig up the stash in the garden, Ammoo. I have to go back to Dhaka.’

‘What about us?’

‘You too. I’ve come to take you home. And Maya.’

Home. She wanted to throw her hands in the air and send up a cheer.

‘Is it safe?’

‘It’s been two months since you left and we’ve kept a close watch on the house — it doesn’t look like they know anything.’

‘Sabeer died.’

‘I know.’ His face betrayed nothing — no relief, no shame.

‘He didn’t die for nothing, Ma. We’ve made some major gains. Just last week we took the Pak Army out of one of their major supply routes in Comilla.’

‘Are we going to win?’ It was the first time she had asked him the question.

Sohail was about to say, Yes, of course. But she gave him a weak squeeze of the wrist that meant she wanted to know the truth, and he paused for a minute before saying, ‘It’s not impossible.’ He waited another moment, and then said, ‘We’re outnumbered, outgunned, outmanned. But sometimes we can beat the hell out of them.’ And again he smiled his cloudy smile and said, ‘I can taste the end. The modhu-roshogolla-honey end.’

When she opened her eyes again, Mrs Sengupta was at the foot of her cot. She looked like a dark apparition, the washed planes of her face muted and still. She wore a clean sari and flat sandals. Her hair was oiled and tied into a glossy braid.

‘Now I’m the one in the sickbed,’ Rehana said.

The barest smile touched Mrs Sengupta’s lips.

What happened to you, Rehana wanted to ask. Instead she said, ‘You washed my hair?’

Mrs Sengupta bent her head but didn’t open her mouth. She waited stiffly at the foot of the bed. A few moments struggled by. ‘I’m going back to Dhaka,’ Rehana said finally. ‘Why don’t you come? The war will be over soon. It’ll be like it was before. You can stay at Shona — we’ll be neighbours again. Or come and stay at the bungalow with me. Remember Road 5? And Mrs Chowdhury, and our card-friends — they’ll all want to see you.’ Rehana’s throat was sandy. ‘It’s your home too. Come with us.’

Mrs Sengupta showed no hint of understanding. She kept her eyes on Rehana’s face and fingered her glass bangle, moving it up and down her forearm. Then she walked around to the side of the cot. Rehana reached a hand to her hand. She felt the blood leaping under Mrs Sengupta’s skin. At that very moment she was convinced the glass bangle had kept her friend alive, like a pulse at her wrist.

Mrs Sengupta dipped her face to the cot. Rehana thought she might be trying to tell her something; she struggled to lift her head. It was the barest, faintest touch as Mrs Sengupta’s lips brushed Rehana’s cheek. Then she rose and turned to go.

Rehana made one last attempt. ‘Please, Supriya — come home with me.’

But she was already gone, pulling the sari over her shoulder and moving with that slow grace Rehana had envied since the first day she had arrived at Shona, perched on her high heels with a book under her arm.