A Golden Age (11 page)

When Sohail and Maya returned, they were mute, their faces lined with ash. The story of the night unfolded slowly. First, Mujib had been arrested and flown to West Pakistan. The army had started its attack at the university, demolishing the dormitories and The Madhu Canteen. On their way to the old town, the tanks had bulldozed the slums that clung to each side of the Phulbaria rail track; they needed that rail line to get across the city, so they had swiped their guns through the cardboard and tin shacks, the flimsy homes held together with glue and cinema posters. And then they had gone into the Hindu neighbourhoods on jeeps because their tanks were too wide for the narrow lanes, and mounted on their jeeps

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they had fired through shutters and doorways and shirts and hearts.

In the evening Rehana and the children heard the announce- ment on the radio:

I, Major Zia, provisional Commander-in-Chief of the Bangladesh Liberation Army, hereby proclaim, on behalf of our great national leader Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the independence of Bangladesh. I also declare we have already formed a sovereign, legal govern- ment under Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. I appeal to all nations to mobilize public opinion in their respective countries against the brutal genocide in Bangladesh.

So this was it: a war had come to find them. Whatever was going to happen had already happened; now they would have to live in its shadow. Rehana wrapped her arms around herself and squeezed tight, willing the old strength to rise up within her again.

65

April
‌

Radio Free Bangladesh

T

he city slowly adjusted to occupied life. It adjusted to the stiff-backed soldiers who manned the streets, their uniforms starched, their pale faces grimacing. It adjusted to the tanks sitting fatly in the middle of roads, and to checkpoints where sol- diers leaned into car windows and barked orders at drivers who held up their hands and shook their heads, protesting their inno- cence. And it adjusted to the silence, because there were no more speeches, or marches, or processions, just an eerie, still quietness, interrupted twice a day by the wail of the curfew siren; but otherwise all was ghostly, only the rustle of trees and the sizzle

of the April sun to draw the line between day and night.

Wild rumours circulated in the quiet. The army had dug a mass grave to hide the bodies. There was a warehouse, some- where on the outskirts of town, where they tortured the prison- ers. The animals in Mirpur Zoo, even the Bengal tiger, had all died of fright. But no one seemed to know anything for sure. The newspapers announced, ‘Yahya saves Pakistan!’ and Dhaka, so

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long at the centre of the struggle, was now a besieged and vacant city that kept its knowledge close and hidden.

Those people who had never really been citizens of the city erased their faint tracks and returned to their villages. The butchers, the tailors, the milkmen, the rickshaw-pullers, the boys who painted cinema actresses on the back flaps of rickshaws and the even younger boys who made tea in rusting kettles on pave- ments – all left silently, snaking out of the city with bundles on their shoulders, children cradled against their backs.

As she witnessed the emptying of the city, Rehana counted her blessings.

The children were safe. Mrs Chowdhury and Silvi.

The gin-rummy ladies. Mrs Akram had spent that night with the shutters closed and her hands over her ears. Later her husband would say she’d been hysterical, screaming about Kayamat, the end of the world. They’d had to tie her to the bed- posts and press their hands over her mouth. She remembered none of it. When she came to see Rehana, two days after the curfew was lifted, she tried to hide the weals on her wrists by wearing wide, mirror-studded bangles. But she was alive.

Romeo was dead. Mrs Chowdhury had him buried under the tallest coconut tree in her garden.

Mrs Rahman had almost not been so lucky. She had accepted an invitation to dine with an old schoolfriend. The school- friend’s husband owned a tailoring shop in the old town, and they lived above it, on Nawabpur Road. At the last minute Mrs Rahman had pleaded a headache, dreading the choked roads she would have to pass through to get there, remembering the dreary furniture, the bony curry she’d been fed the last time. She felt guilty but consoled herself by resolving to send her friend a gift the very next day. A sari perhaps, or a pair of earrings.

Nawabpur Road was in the army’s way as they passed through the old town on their way to Shakaripotti, the Hindu neigh- bourhood. Perhaps they had taken a wrong turn; perhaps they’d held their maps upside down; or maybe it was taking too long to

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get there and they were impatient, the blood leaping in their skins. They swiped with their machine-guns, back and forth, and one of their bullets found the house on Nawabpur Road. Mrs Rahman’s schoolfriend escaped with a grazed cheek, but her husband, crouching under the dining table, did not.

Rehana’s children were safe. That was the most important thing. She could not help feeling grateful to Mrs Chowdhury for holding Silvi’s engagement party that night, keeping her children close to home, when they could so easily have been in one of the university halls.

Sohail and Maya accounted for their friends. Joy and Aref had been among the students who had heard rumours of an attack on the city. They had broken into their dormitory cafeteria and stolen all the chairs, which they’d stacked at the mouth of Nilkhet Road. They set fire to glass bottles and hurled them into the streets. But when the tanks climbed over the barricades and splintered the chairs, they fled, weaving through the buildings and hiding in Curzon Hall. The bullets missed them.

But Sharmeen. Sharmeen could not be found.

At first Maya was vaguely irritated she’d missed everything. All her friends had stories of that night, and, while she kept saying, ‘Good thing I wasn’t on campus,’ there was a slight regret at having been sidelined. She wanted some mark, some sign, that the thing had happened to her. A bruise on the cheek. A tear in her blouse. She waited for Sharmeen to show up at the gate, to give her a little of the moment.

But on the third day there was still no sign of her.

‘It’s all right,’ Rehana soothed, not knowing what to say; ‘there must be some explanation.’ Everything she knew about Sharmeen prevented her from fearing for the girl. She was too big, too stormy, to simply vanish. Maya must have thought the same thing, because she refused to worry.

On the fourth day the Senguptas decided to leave. Rehana found them at Shona with their belongings strewn across the drawing-room floor, dotting Mrs Sengupta’s pink rose-petal carpet.

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‘We have to go,’ Mrs Sengupta began. It was obvious she had been the one to urge her husband to leave; she was nervous, drawing her achol over her shoulder and smoothing her pleats.

Rehana didn’t say anything, only nodded.

‘It’s not safe for Hindus in the city,’ Mr Sengupta explained. ‘As you know.’ The refugees had stayed a couple of days, making their home on the lawn, keeping vigil at night with hurricane lamps and lengths of wood they had saved from their door- frames. Then they too had left, for villages in the interior, or across the border to India. They had thanked Rehana for her kindness, gathered up their things and latched the gate behind them.

‘Are you going to India?’ Rehana asked.

Mr Sengupta made a show of being surprised. ‘Why? No, why would we go to India? We are going to our village in Pabna. We haven’t been to stay in a long while. Mithun should see his ancestral home, meet his cousins.’ Mr Sengupta parted the net curtains on the window behind him and looked out at his son chasing a crow in the garden.

‘Of course,’ Rehana said, ‘you know what is best. But there are disturbing reports. Burning villages. Targeting Hindus.’

‘That’s just a rumour. The city is dangerous, but they won’t go that far inland,’ he said. ‘It takes two days just to reach the town – mud roads, nothing paved. Why would they bother?’ And he made a sound somewhere between a short laugh and a snort.

‘The people in your village,’ Rehana said, pressing him a little, ‘can you trust them?’

‘My village people? Of course! My family has been in that village for generations. Mrs Haque, would you have all Hindus flee to India?’

Rehana could see she had offended him. There was now a clear note of challenge, a probe, to see which side of things she was on. He crossed and uncrossed his legs. Mrs Sengupta was ner- vously fiddling with the hem of her sari. Looking at her, Rehana was reminded of herself at a younger, more confident age, when

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she’d had the luxury of retreating when she wanted to, allowing someone else to make decisions, declare the lines of argument.

Mrs Sengupta leaned over to Rehana and took her hand. ‘We feel terribly about leaving you alone. Will you be all right?’

‘Of course,’ Rehana said, though it had just occurred to her that she would not have any money until the Senguptas returned. In the way Mrs Sengupta was looking at her, Rehana could tell this was the reason for the apology. Her friend took out an envelope and held it between her palms. ‘Oh, no, Supriya, you mustn’t do that.’

‘It’s the only way we could even consider leaving.’ She turned to her husband. He appeared to have recovered and nodded vigorously. ‘It’s not much. But we couldn’t leave you empty- handed.’

‘I won’t hear of it,’ Rehana insisted, wondering how long she would have to pretend she didn’t really need the money. She murmured a few more words of protest but took it in the end, warning the couple that if they stayed away too long she might find new tenants. The idea of anyone moving to Dhaka at a time like this made everyone laugh.

‘I’m sorry we’ve left such a mess,’ Mrs Sengupta said, waving her arm around the room.

‘Don’t worry, Maya and I will take care of the rest.’ ‘Really?’

‘Of course. Just take what you need. You’ll be back soon, I know it.’

‘Mithun!’ Mr Sengupta called out into the garden. ‘Say goodbye to your auntie!’

Despite her best efforts to appear casual, Rehana felt a sting in her eyes as she embraced Mrs Sengupta. ‘God be with you,’ she said, squeezing her friend’s shoulder. ‘I’ll be waiting for you.’