A Golden Age Read online

  ‘Rehana, you go with the children. I have decided to stay.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘I will stay in the car with Kamal. We’ll drive beside the train. That way, if anything happens, you can just leave the train and ride in the car.’ Ingenious!

  So that is what they did. She remembered it clearly: the man in the car, his family on the train, the train carriage on the new rail line and the new foreign car on the adjacent road, the taste of kabab rolls and lemonade lingering lazily on their tongues, and her husband, beaming to himself, satisfied at last that no harm would come to his family, because he, Iqbal, had made absolutely sure.

  March 1971

  Shona with her back to the sun

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

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

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

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

  ‘Should I sell it?’

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

  ‘Then what?’

  ‘Build another house.’

  ‘What would I do with another house?’

  ‘Rent, my dear. Rent it out.’

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  This was the part when her throat always tightened.

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

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

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

  She paused, took a deep breath. Steadied herself.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  ‘Whisky, you idiot,’ Mrs Rahman said.

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

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

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

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

  ‘Really?’ Mrs Chowdhury almost squealed with joy.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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