Sethu allowed himself a smile. He felt relieved. ‘I read it a great many times and I seem to remember almost all of it. I suppose I have a good memory.’
‘Good!’ James Raj stood up. ‘You have a phenomenal memory, my boy. Do you know what that means? I can use your memory instead of ledgers. Everything will become so much simpler!’
‘For the first time in a long time, I feel sure. As if I know what has to be done,’ Sethu told Saadiya, who sat patting a mound of sand into a landscape of hillocks.
She looked up.
They were sitting on the sands by the sea. The twilight bathed the waves in a haze of colour and Sethu felt at peace.
He smiled. ‘You are such a child. And I feel so responsible for you. I was afraid, horribly so. What if I had done wrong in taking you away? What if James Raj’s job hadn’t come through? So many what ifs …Everything scared me.’
‘Why?’ she asked. What could Malik have been scared of? Her incomparable, courageous Malik.
‘Do you really want to know?’
‘Tell me.’ Her voice was softly persuasive. ‘I might not understand, but tell me.’
Sethu stretched his legs and leaned back on his elbows. He looked at the horizon.
‘Across the seas is Ceylon. This fear I have, it began before I went there,’ Sethu said, his voice already tight with the memory of pain. ‘I told you why I left home, didn’t I? When I met Maash, I thought I had got past the fear of failure. Then it began again, only this time it was because of him. Maash. The man who took me to Ceylon.
‘He was the nicest man I had met. He was kind and generous. He taught me all I knew and he even helped me get past my difficulty with arithmetic. But there was a side to him that I shut myself to. And once I left his home, it faded into an uncertain memory. Sometimes I even wondered if I had imagined it all.
‘I moved away from Colombo and in Kandy I met Balu. Balu was perhaps my first friend. A little later, he was transferred to the Pamban quarantine camp. A year after that, I went there and we
were together again. I loved him as if he were my brother.
‘One night we were talking about our growing-up years in Colombo. Balu had been drinking steadily all evening and as he spoke his words grew more and more bitter. Then he said, “All of what I have done in my life I can live with; what I find unbearable is the thought that I sold myself. I was young and didn’t know enough, and the man …” He stopped when he saw the horror in my eyes.
‘“Yes,” he said softly. “The man was persuasive—I’ll be able to help you, he said, I’ll find you a government job—and I thought, I won’t lose anything. All he wants to do is hold me when he shags. He wants to kiss my penis and lick my balls. What does it matter, I thought, as long as I didn’t care for any of it. I wasn’t being violated. The man kept his word. He helped me find this job.”
‘“There was a back issue of a newspaper in the supplies that arrived today,” Balu said after a long silence. “I saw a report that he is dead.”
‘And then Balu said, “He died in his home. He is from Kerala, like you.”
‘I felt my heart sink, Saadiya, I felt as if someone was ripping the veils off my past. It couldn’t be, I told myself. “What was his name?” I asked.
‘Then Balu spoke Maash’s name and I knew horror again. It couldn’t be true. I tried not to think of the nights Maash had crept into my bed. Of how he would put his arm around me and I would hear his fist moving. Up and down, up and down. It has to be the crudest sound ever. The sordidness of it repelled but, like Balu, I let it be. He was just holding me, I thought. I was neither a victim nor a participant. Later, when I was older, I realized that he had been using me. But I shut my mind to the thought.
‘Balu was dredging out the coarseness of that memory; the stench and vileness of it …and I felt something smash into my brain. I was angry with Maash for abusing my trust. I was furious with Balu for making me see Maash for who he truly was. More than anything else, I was angry with myself for having allowed it to continue. How could I have been such a coward? How could I have been so afraid? I knew I had let it be because if I had protested, I would have had nowhere to go.
‘I wasn’t thinking straight, you understand. I looked around wildly.
There was a penknife Balu had left on a table. I grabbed it and I remember screaming, “Stop it, stop it!” and then I stabbed him.
‘Why? I don’t know. Perhaps because he tore that last veil off. Then I ran. I ran into the ocean where the fishermen were about to leave and I left with them. I have been running ever since, Saadiya. How can I shrug off my past? There is the sordidness of my association with Maash. There is Balu. I do not know if he is alive or if I am a murderer. And now …’ Sethu paused.
Saadiya leaned forward. ‘And now …’ she prompted.
Sethu looked at her. He wondered if she had understood anything at all of what he had said—the murkiness of his past, his fears and anxieties. She was such a child.
He wanted to tell her how, with James Raj on his side, he felt secure and protected. And he saw that she waited for him to say that it was she who made the difference.
Sethu took her foot in his hand. How small it was, the arch high and curved. He stroked the instep, causing grains of sand to rain and said, ‘Now it doesn’t matter. When I met you, it was as if my life had come full circle. I was cleansed. And this job, it makes me feel that we have a chance.’
Saadiya smiled. Such was the triumph of their love, she thought. Sethu gleaned the smile and understood the measure of that triumph, for it was his as well.
So Sethu went to work and Saadiya cooked, cleaned, stared at the sea, and waited. This was what wives in Arabipatnam did and Saadiya did it easily enough. Till the waiting began to stretch late into the evening and sometimes way past midnight and into the early hours of dawn. In those silent hours, even the sea sounded listless to her. When she looked out of the window, the expanse of the skies and the glaze of the sand hurt her eyes.
Days stretched into months and Saadiya knew fear again. It wasn’t the fear of poverty. This was the fear of another hunger. To be with her sisters and Ummama, Suleiman and Zuleika. To be with Vaapa. She felt sorrow creep into her mind. For her family she would never see again. For all the pain she had caused. She began to fear that she would have to pay a price for abandoning them. This was to be her punishment, she thought: to be lonely. To be trapped in a space as
confined and as short of air as Arabipatnam had been. She wept and then hastily wiped her eyes, hearing the creak of the gate. Sethu would be furious if he knew that she cried for them.
Another night, when she lay by herself in her bed, wondering when Sethu would arrive, she remembered how Ummama had said that one could find solace in the Holy Koran. So the next day, when Sethu returned home, Saadiya asked him if he would bring her a copy.
Sethu felt a weight settle on his brow. Was this the difference the doctor had prophesied? ‘Why do you need one?’ he demanded, setting down his cup of tea. ‘I thought we told each other that we don’t need religion or religious teachings.’
‘This has nothing to do with religion. I have so much time and I do nothing.’
‘In which case, why don’t you do some handiwork? Weave baskets, or make silk flowers, or sew. You could do some embroidery. I can bring you beautiful threads. Something other than read the Koran,’ Sethu said quickly.
‘You are turning this into something else. How many baskets can I weave? How many flowers do I embroider? I am alone all day. I am lonely. Don’t you understand?’ Saadiya snapped.
Sethu looked at her with narrowed eyes. That night she turned the yellow panel of the lantern on. Sethu sighed. Despite all their frequent squabbling, at night all was forgotten and her passion matched his. To punish him with the lexicon he had taught her was cruel. He turned the panel to green. She moved the panel back to yellow. ‘Don’t be cruel, Saadiya,’ he pleaded.
She turned on her side in reply. Sethu smiled in the darkness and caressed her arm. She shrugged his hand away. He felt her stiffen. He thought he heard a muffled sob. ‘Oh lord, Saadiya, why are you crying?’ he pleaded. ‘I’ll fetch you whatever you want.’
When Saadiya turned to him, he felt his misery lift. He couldn’t deny her what she wanted, but he would find a way around this unhealthy craving.
He brought her the Koran, and the Holy Bible, the Thirukkural and the Ramayana. ‘I know you read the Koran in Arabic, but didn’t you tell me that your community writes Arabic using the Tamil alphabet? So you can read Tamil, isn’t that right? In which case, you
can read all these books. You can have the religions of the world to fill your empty hours.’
Her arms laden with the books, Saadiya said, ‘I like reading and I will read them all, but you can’t expect me to forget what I have learnt ever since I was a child. The Koran is more than a book. The Koran teaches a way of life. Is that so wrong?’
‘So does Hinduism,’ Sethu retorted. ‘Besides, it is an older religion.’
‘You don’t understand what I am saying.’ Saadiya shook her head. Was it in exasperation or sorrow?
Sethu looked at her for a long moment and then turned away. He didn’t understand her any more. Why was she being so difficult? He could see that she was miserable, but couldn’t understand what caused the misery. Particularly when life had become so much easier.
James Raj was a good employer. He made no unreasonable demands and if Sethu worked long hours, it was because he volunteered to do so. As for the business without a name, Sethu called it trading, though there were no ledgers or written records of transactions. Some might even call it smuggling, but it wasn’t really so. Besides, Sethu liked the challenge. He was making money, too. More than he had ever expected to. James Raj gave him a bonus for every successful transaction and Sethu was beginning to feel a confidence that had eluded him since he struck a knife in Balu’s abdomen.
If only Saadiya wouldn’t be so trying. She seldom smiled, and her eyes hurled accusations at him.
Sethu went to Nazareth. He needed to talk to someone. There was only James Raj. James Raj listened to him quietly. ‘I don’t understand her any more,’ Sethu said.
‘Here, drink some buttermilk,’ James Raj said, gesturing to the glasses of buttermilk that someone had brought in.
‘She is lonely. She is used to being with people. Here, she is all by herself most of the day. It fosters strange thoughts, peculiar cravings,’ the older man said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand. ‘Once she has a baby, she will be all right. Find her a pet for now. A kitten, perhaps. It’ll grow up quickly and won’t need much caring for after that. By that time, if she is pregnant, she will have the thought of the baby to occupy her.’
Sethu grinned. This was why he liked James Raj. The man was
practical, unlike the doctor who would have quoted a verse from the Bible and asked him to pray for guidance.
When Saadiya missed her period for the second time, the midwife confirmed the pregnancy. Sethu swallowed his pride and took her to Nazareth, to Dr Samuel Sagayaraj. No matter what their differences, the doctor was the best man to help bring this baby of theirs into the world.
The doctor examined her, gave her a list of dos and don’ts, and patted her back with a smile. He looked through Sethu and acknowledged him just once, to explain the prescription.
Sethu was quiet on their way home. The doctor’s rejection had hurt him. Once he could have talked to Saadiya about it. Now, it was as if she had withdrawn from him. Completely. Irrevocably.
Where was his Saadiya?
I could tell him. I, Saadiya Mehrunnisa could tell him if only he would care to listen.
I lie here in this bed. The doctor tells me that I should fight the pain. He has gone to look for Sethu. To bring him to my side to persuade me to shout my pain, vent my agony.
My anguish is like a ball of iron. It stays rooted and refuses to budge.
I see disdain. In the holy books that you brought me—yours, mine and others’, I see contempt for a love we tried to tend. Ours is an unholy love.
I see contempt in the eyes of our neighbours. They will not let their wives or daughters associate with me. He is blameless; she is the wanton creature, they say. She is the one who ran away from home. What could he do? The poor man. He had to take her in. That is what they say.
Everywhere I go, everything I do, I hear the words: You are to blame.
When the baby kicks me, I hear the echo: You are to blame.
I try praying, but even God turns his head away.
You, my husband—but you are not my husband, for we are not wed—tell me I am silly. That these voices of contempt I hear are merely voices in my head.
But I know. My anguish blossoms from that.
Early this afternoon, as I waited in the hospital corridor while you went to fetch the doctor, I saw Vaapa and Suleiman.
I saw them look at my distended belly. I saw Vaapa’s eyes narrow and heard Suleiman gasp. Then Suleiman’s eyes met mine and I saw the uncertainty in them. I saw his love for me vanquish the hatred and his lips stretch into an arc of tenderness. I saw him lean towards me and I saw Vaapa touch his elbow with a finger.