‘So what else do you have in store for this little rascal?’
‘The khitan,’ Saadiya said.
‘What’s that?’
Saadiya wouldn’t meet his gaze. She looked away as she said,
‘The skin on the end of his, you know, his thing, has to be removed.’
Sethu stared at her, puzzled. Suddenly he knew what she was saying. He felt a tingling within his penis, a cringing of his testicles. Circumcision. That was her khitan.
‘Over my dead body,’ he said quietly.
Saadiya frowned. ‘You don’t understand …’
‘No, I don’t,’ Sethu snapped, tightening his hold around the baby. ‘I don’t understand how you, his mother, can talk of maiming him. What kind of mother are you?’
Saadiya stood up. Her eyes begged him to understand.
‘Please, listen to me. There are five acts of cleanliness in Islam. Shaving the pubic hair, plucking the hair under the armpits, shaving the moustache, clipping your nails and circumcision. Only then is fitra achieved. Fitra is an inner sense of cleanliness, which will make him a good Muslim. Without the khitan his acceptance into Islam won’t happen. You promised me that I could bring him up as a true Muslim. You promised. Don’t forget that!’
Sethu moved away. He walked to the window and stood there. The tide was beginning to rise.
‘Have I broken my word? I did all that you asked. I didn’t understand any of it, but I didn’t speak a word in protest. And even now, Saadiya, I am not saying he shouldn’t practise his acts of cleanliness. Shave his head, clip his nails, do all that you have to do. But don’t you see, when you talk of a moustache and pubic hair and hair in the armpits, you’re referring to a man. Or a boy almost a man. Someone who knows his mind. But this, circumcision, I can’t allow it. You must wait till he’s old enough to decide for himself.’
Sethu paused. ‘When I was growing up, I heard of the sunnath, but it was always performed on pre-adolescents. You must wait at least until then.’
Saadiya was silent. Then she said, ‘I am a descendant of the original Kahirs. In me is the purest of Arab blood. Islam, as we practise it, is a religion that demands sacrifice. In your village, the Muslims are converts. No matter what, they will never know what it is to be a true Muslim. Everything is compromised to make it acceptable. My son is not a convert. He has my blood.’
‘Will you stop this?’ Sethu heard his voice rise as if it were someone else’s. ‘You keep saying, my, my, my …He’s my son as well. My
blood is in him. What’s wrong with you, Saadiya? You sound like a fanatic; you sound like one of those idiots in Arabipatnam. You chose to give it up, so why are you inflicting it all on this little child?’
‘I made a mistake. I can’t allow my son to make the same.’
Sethu felt his rage evaporate. A cold sheath settled over his face, his heart, his thoughts. She looked cold and aloof. Like she had in the labour room. Only this time, he felt the same.
‘If you think you made a mistake, then I will not insist you continue doing so. You may leave. You can go back to your family and your religion, but you can’t take this child. You will not want a reminder of your mistake.’ Sethu spoke quietly. He felt his insides hurt as if someone had struck him in the ribs.
He laid the baby in its colourful cloth cradle fashioned from an old sari and went to the other room. At the door, he turned and said, ‘May God go with you. Your God, not mine, because in your narrow mind there is no room for any God but yours.’
I, Saadiya, sit on the floor. His words beat a tattoo in my head. He says, go. But where do I go? I have no place. No home …no one.
I take the baby out of its cradle.
‘Omar Masood,’ I say. ‘Your Umma has to go. Your Vaapa wants her to.’
If he would take me in his arms, all would be right again. If only he would. But that isn’t true. Nothing can change the fact that I have brought to life an infidel.
Omar Masood begins to whimper. I lay him on my shoulder. For the past five days, since I came back from the hospital, I have been in this room, resting from the rigours of birth. My legs feel unsteady. I feel cold.
The sea breeze lifts my hair. I feel a great longing to wash my feet in the waters of the sea. To lie in its embrace and never know a moment’s confusion again. To not feel so torn between my ancestry and my Ife as it is now. To just rest.
Sethu didn’t know what to do. Saadiya had vanished. Could she really have returned to Arabipatnam? They wouldn’t take her in. He knew that as she did. But where else could she have gone?
The body washed up three days later. A bloated Saadiya whose
funeral was devoid of all religious rites. Sethu held the baby in his arms as he lit the pyre. ‘Please, God,’ he prayed, unable to keep the tremor even out of the voice in his head. ‘Please, God, accept her in heaven. Her version of heaven, whatever it may be. This is all I ask.’
Later, when James Raj came to see him, he broke down and wept. ‘Why would she do this? That night, we quarrelled. I said some very harsh things to her, but I didn’t ever think it would lead to this. If I had known, I would have agreed to anything she wanted. I wish I had known. If only …’
James Raj patted his arm and said what he said to grieving relatives all the time, ‘Who knows? It is God’s wish that she go away from us.’
Sethu wiped his tears.
‘You must get away from here. Go somewhere your mind won’t dwell on the unpleasantness of your memories,’ James Raj added.
‘Go where?’ Sethu asked.
‘Come back to work,’ James Raj said, as if he had just thought of it.
‘But what about the baby?’
James Raj scratched his chin thoughtfully. ‘Do you remember Faith? She has left the hospital. She might be willing to take the baby into her care. You can pay her for it and I’ll ask my wife to keep an eye on them. Mary Patti is there for advice as well. Mary Patti, I don’t know if I’ve told you this before, is my relative by marriage.’
Sethu’s eyes lit up. Faith. Jada Kondai. Plaited bun. The quietest of the three. Given to bursting into cries of ‘Praise be the Lord’, whether it was for a hen laying an egg or a thunderstorm, but otherwise harmless and cheerful. She would do.
‘What shall I call him?’ Faith asked, cradling the baby in her arms.
‘Om …’ Sethu began. Then he made a decision. With Saadiya, his promise too had died. ‘I haven’t thought of a name yet. For now, you can call him Koman.’
Faith wrinkled her nose. ‘What kind of name is that?’
‘It was my uncle’s name,’ Sethu said, dropping a kiss on the baby’s head, and then he was gone.
Faith looked after the baby well. Sethu came back after three days, worried about his son. But the baby seemed to be thriving.
When he began to leave with the baby asleep on his shoulder, Faith said, ‘Perhaps you should leave him here. He’ll fret when he wakes up and you won’t be able to cope.’
Sethu paused at the doorstep. He thought of the house on the sands. It was a mausoleum of Saadiya’s dreams. Of her unrequited desires and their anger. It was also empty. He would be alone with no one to help him. And by the time he got the baby used to him and he had learnt its routine, it would be time to leave again. Faith was right.
He gave her back the baby and said, ‘I feel so inadequate.’
Mary Patti smiled. She said, ‘Don’t.’ She took a whorl of tobacco from the length Sethu had brought her. ‘Babies need women. Boys need men. We’ll look after him till we can, then he is yours. He is always yours. But you need to make a living now.’
Sethu sent them money. He went as often as he could to see them; then slowly, the time between visits grew. And each time a worm of doubt or guilt niggled in his mind, he trod it underfoot. They are good women. They care for him better than I would, he told himself.
On his last visit to see the baby, who was less than a year old then, Faith said, ‘He said he would like to see you.
‘Who?’
Sethu was curious.
‘He. The doctor.’
‘Why? Did he say anything?’
Faith shook her head. Her eyes said: as if the doctor would ever tell me why. For a long time, Faith had nurtured an infatuation for him. Some day he would turn around and notice her, she had thought. Then he had brought home a wife and Faith, her heart broken, had resigned from the hospital. She couldn’t bear to be where he was.
Sethu sat across the table. When he had knocked on the door, the doctor had grunted, ‘Come in.’
When he saw it was Sethu, he had gestured to the chair and returned to the file he was looking at. He peered over his glasses and said, ‘I will take just a few minutes.’
Sethu felt the smile on his face freeze. He had been prepared for the doctor’s apathy, but as the minutes stretched, he felt a slow coil of anger uncurl. He looked at a point over the man’s head. I must not lose my temper, he told himself. I must not forget that at one
time I revered this man. He dropped his gaze to the doctor’s face and encountered his eyes. It unsettled him, and he knew the doctor knew it.
‘I am very sorry to hear about your troubles,’ he said.
Sethu remained silent. Then it suddenly erupted out of him: ‘You were right. It must please you to know that your prophecy came true. Our marriage was nothing. Our love was nothing. Everything was wrong. You were right!’
The doctor took his glasses off and pinched the bridge of his nose. ‘Do you think that I called you here to gloat over your …’ he groped for a word and let it remain unspoken.
‘I am sorry that it had to end this way and believe you me, I would have wished it to be otherwise. But now my concern is for Faith and her family. And your son.’
‘What of them?’ Sethu asked. The women cared for the baby well. No matter what the doctor said, he knew that for certain.
The doctor leaned back in his chair. He wiped the lenses of his spectacles with a white handkerchief, inspected the glass and said, ‘All things are lawful for me, but all things are not expedient; all things are lawful for me but all things edify not …’
Sethu stared at the doctor and asked, ‘Corinthians I?’
The doctor smiled. ‘Your memory is as superb as ever, but I would rather that you understood the wisdom of the words. I do empathize with your position, but the world won’t.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sethu asked, puzzled by the veiled references.
‘Do you know that your son is being brought up as a Christian?’
Sethu leaned forward. ‘When he was born, you saw me whisper the Muslim call for prayer in his ear. What you and Saadiya didn’t realize is that I whispered a Hindu prayer as well. So if Faith or Mary Patti want to induct another religion into him, it doesn’t matter. One more religion won’t hurt.’
‘You think this is a joke, don’t you? Never mind your son; I can’t have Hope and Charity’s name slandered. It affects my hospital’s reputation.’
‘What do you mean?’ Sethu was even more puzzled.
‘It is natural that you would want to see your child, but your visits to Faith’s home are much speculated upon. Even her sisters are not spared. All this coming and going makes the world talk.’
‘But Mary Patti is there,’ Sethu said in defence.
‘Mary Patti is a silly old woman. They say you have bought her consent with chewing tobacco and an occasional bottle of spirits.’
Sethu sank his head into his hands. Then he rose from the chair abruptly. ‘I understand. What I don’t is that you are doing nothing to stop this vile gossip. If you were to say you trust them, the town would take your word for it!’
The doctor’s face was stern when he said, ‘I do trust them. But how can I trust you? You destroyed my faith in you.’ His eyes were grim and full of contempt.
Sethu walked out of the room. There would be no farewell, as there were no words of greeting.
He tried to explain to Faith why he would not visit again for a while. Faith wept. ‘I don’t care what anyone says. You must feel free to come here any time you wish.’
‘Thank you, Faith.’ Sethu smiled. ‘But I can’t ruin your chances of marriage.’
‘It’s all that Hope’s doing. She still hasn’t forgiven you for not telling us you weren’t a Christian.’ Faith wrung her hands.
‘I’m sorry I lied. I didn’t mean to. But at that point, that was all I could think of,’ Sethu said quietly.
‘You didn’t lie, did you? You said your name was Seth. It was Hope and Charity and the doctor who decided you were a Christian.’
‘It’s called lying by omission. But that’s all in the past now. It seems so long ago, my coming here, meeting Saadiya, and now I have to leave …Mary Patti,’ he said, turning towards her. ‘I do not want your daughters’ reputation besmirched. When my baby is a boy, I will come back for him. Until then you must give him all I would have. Three years, not a day more, and you can be sure I will return.’
Sethu started travelling. He went everywhere that James Raj had business interests. One day, he was on a train that would take him past his old home. On a whim, he stepped off the train at Shoranur. The town was some distance away from where his home had been, but this was the nearest railway station. The same one from where he had boarded the train many years ago. Then, he had barely looked around him. Now, he devoured every little detail. The flowing river. The distant hills. The green paddy fields. The coconut trees. The blue skies. The beauty of it all made his eyes smart.