Beloved Strangers (21 page)

My grandmother sits nonchalantly chewing her betel leaf and stirring sugar into her tea as if she has not heard my question. I ask her again, ‘Who lived in that tin shed, Nanu?’

She pours some tea into the saucer, blows on it and laps it up. ‘A man lived there’, she says, ‘a very long time ago.’ She reaches under her bed and pulls out a gold brass spittoon layered with at least five generations of betel-juice spit. She holds it up to the light. ‘This belonged to my mother, who got it from her mother . . .’ Her voice trails off then picks up again, ‘I never saw my father but I heard that he brought home hot mango pickle for my mother every evening because she always had a craving for it.’

My great-grandmother Mehrunessa married my great-grandfather Sohrab Hossain when she was thirteen and he was nineteen. She was seventeen years old and pregnant with their fourth child when he died of cholera. He went to the outhouse one evening and didn’t return for two hours. When they found him, he was lying face down, unconscious and drenched in sweat. He died two days later. He was all she had. A hundred years ago, when my great-grandmother was a little girl, she was never allowed to leave the house to go to school or play outside. But Sohrab Hossain was her first cousin so she was allowed to talk to him. They spoke only through love letters. When he died, she lost her mind. She did not recognise her three children, refused to touch her food, screamed and kicked for hours and tried to run away several times. No one could talk reason into her so they decided to chain her to her bed. When one of her children tried to get close to her she would look away or stare blankly. Then she had a dream.

Mehrunessa had been sleeping chained to this very bed that my grandmother and I are sitting on. She had been sleeping with these very windows wide open as a storm was about to come. It woke her and she turned just in time to see that a cloud had descended all the way to the window next to her bed. Inside the cloud was a silver chariot carrying her husband. She sighed and reached for him with her hand-cuffed limbs. He stepped off the chariot but he did not take her hand. ‘Listen to me,’ he said firmly. ‘Your time has not come. Have you forgotten that you are carrying our child and have three others to look after? When your time comes, I promise to come and get you.’ She watched him leave, the chariot cloud disappearing into the grey horizon. The rain that had threatened to split the sky open just a few minutes earlier never came. Instead the clouds gave way to a hesitant sun.

Mehrunessa jerked upright in bed and looked around in wonder. A snot-nosed toddler was playing on the floor next to her bed. Hadn’t anyone bathed her little daughter in days? She called out in a loud, incredulous voice, ‘Why on earth am I chained? Are you all
crazy
?’

Mehrunessa was stuck in the classic dilemma of the middle-class widow. She had no inheritance but could neither seek work nor reconcile herself to the idea of remarriage. She lived on a dole, meted out by extended family members, keeping up the pretence of respectability but denying herself and her children every possible pleasure. It was during those years that Najib Ali came into their lives. Her sons needed a tutor and someone wisely suggested that the little tin storage shed could be easily rented out. That was how Najib Ali, a young student of English Literature at the local university, moved into the tin shed, among the piles of junk, in the role of tutor–tenant. The villagers speculated about the young man. There was a rumour that he had fled from his village because of an uncaring father and stepmother. Though he was often seen walking in the frontyard with a book of poetry, he hardly spoke at all. In the evenings, Mehrunessa sent a servant boy with a tray of warm food to the little tin shed. This could have gone on indefinitely, but here the story veers off into a million arteries, each carrying blood to the birth of an event whose truth or exact details no one really knows.

Did Najib Ali turn up at the main house one day, knock on the door and ask to see the lady of the house for a face-to-face introduction? Did the lady of the house invite him in for a glass of cool lemonade one lonely afternoon when the overpowering July sun made it impossible to have a siesta? Or perhaps the servant boy fell ill one day and my great-grandmother decided to pull on her dark veil and carry the tray of food to Najib Ali herself. Perhaps, when he opened the door, he saw her shivering slightly, eyes shimmering in the dark. It’s possible too that she ran up unveiled to the roof one windy day, rushing to collect the dry clothes before the rains came and, Najib Ali, not expecting to be discovered, had strolled up there to enjoy Keats under an open sky. Their eyes met, he saw her long hair snaking past her waist, she noticed his delicate fingers clutching the book to his heart. She lowered her eyes first but he couldn’t look away.

Years later, Najib Ali showed no signs of returning to his own village, nor did he seem keen on securing another job, even though the boys had almost outgrown his tutelage. My grandmother who had been only five years old when he had arrived on their premises grew up to be an adolescent in his presence. He had become more than a tutor, he had become a permanent fixture. When Najib Ali’s father came to visit him he was so impressed with the way his son’s health and manner had improved that he went to Mehrunessa and said, ‘My son is now under your care. I will not come to see him any more.’

At about the same time, vicious gossip started to spread. It had been almost eight years of cohabitation and companionship. Mehrunessa’s reputation was the most important thing to her. Najib Ali could have left in the middle of the night or he could have stayed on as he was, defying scandal. It was not up to him. Mehrunessa locked herself in her room until she reached a decision.

Did my great-grandmother think it a tribute to her dead husband to prove her chastity to the world? Or did she feel that her children should not have to suffer the humiliation of an ill-reputed mother? I only know that after many sleepless nights, Mehrunessa decided that the only way to stop the wagging tongues and correct her slandered reputation was to have Najib Ali marry her thirteen-year-old daughter, my grandmother.

Najib Ali did not agree to this proposition. How could he marry a girl who had sat on his lap with her thumb in her mouth, a mere child? But when the insane streak flared in my great-grandmother, no amount of reasoning worked. I imagine she attacked him with her rapacious rage, hair flying, eyes flashing, consuming him completely with her anger and her beauty. I imagine Najib Ali realised that if he wanted to stay in the only place he had ever received love, he had no choice. Or, could it be that Mehrunessa did not want him to leave? And this was the only way she knew how to guarantee his presence in her life? Whatever they had shared was larger than them. To contain it, ordinary measures would not be enough.

Like her mother Mehrunessa, Saira was also married at thirteen. Saira had just had her first period but had still not outgrown her frocks when they adorned her in bridal garments and told her she was now the wife of Najib Ali. Saira did not protest. She thought it was fun to dress up in beautiful clothes and jewellery, never doubting that she would return to school and her dolls after the festivities ended. Not too late in the wedding night, the bride went missing. Mehrunessa found her daughter fast asleep in her own bed, still dressed like a bride. It took the older women of her family much time to convince Saira to start sleeping in her husband’s bed.

Najib Ali moved into the main bedroom of the main house, while Mehrunessa moved to a smaller guest chamber. Every night, Saira, exhausted from demanding that she be allowed to go to school or to the playfield, climbed back into her own bed and fell into a confused sleep. Many nights, her mother or her aunt would carry her sleeping form to her husband’s bed but she would always find her way back. Not knowing what else to do, the women implored upon Najib Ali to take a stronger stand. Keep her in bed! Act like a husband! A month later, both Saira and Najib Ali succumbed to their fates and Saira soon became pregnant with her first child.

My grandmother stops speaking, reaches for the gold filigreed spittoon and spurts a glob of red juice into it. ‘So, there you are,’ she sighs, ‘it was your grandfather who lived in that tin shed.’

My grandfather. The stranger. The poet. The teacher. The friend. The dutiful husband. But what kind of a lover was he?

‘Did you love him?’ I ask Nanu.

Nanu doesn’t answer. A wind howls around the crumbling cottage, pushing past the wooden traps of the old windows. We hear the sky rumble, followed by the thuds of tree-ripened mangoes in the backyard. The scents of monsoon flowers – keya and champa – rise up from somewhere. By the big pond behind the house, a bunch of naked slum children shriek in anticipation of the swiftly approaching torrent. I wait uncertainly, in the pale blue light, but Nanu is somewhere far away.

The year before, Alan had visited Nanu’s cottage. True to his wish, he had accompanied Yameen and me to Dhaka to see the places of my youth. He had looked cartoon-like in my great-grandmother’s ancient mahogany four-poster bed, his long body curled in a defensively shy manner, blue eyes scouting the unfamiliar terrain. Is that how I had looked to him one summer in Amagansett, childlike, ready to recoil at the first sign of trouble in an unusual world? Or had I been too inviting, too eager for transformation?

I took Alan and Yameen to see the smoky mountains of Sylhet along with the rest of my family. We rented a quaint bungalow on a tea estate, surrounded by acres of garden. In the evenings we played card games around a fire. Sometimes, when I peered at the darkness beyond the windows invaded only by the flicker of a firefly, I let myself imagine I was back in Bagh Bari and Father was in the next room, reading his newspaper. Deer skins and stuffed tiger heads, not unlike the ones in my paternal grandfather’s house, hung above us in watchful silence. The mornings were more lucid, leaving less room for imagination. Yameen wandered off on his own, hauling his tripod on his shoulders. I knew that the photographs he took would end up in one of the brown cardboard boxes in his bedroom, next to thousands of other pictures he had taken during his travels. With his numerous cameras he tried to capture and freeze a beauty that escaped the normal lens of his vision. In my presence he maintained a reproachful distance, never asking for anything, as if to say that he had no interest in the world that he suspected would reclaim me into its depths. But every once in a while he emerged from his sullenness and made a feeble attempt to make himself known. ‘Interesting place,’ he’d say, ‘but I can’t see you here any more.’ Need I tell him that he didn’t see me at all?

Though I had never hoped for the fervour of our time together in Amagansett or New York, a part of me was startled by the aloofness with which Alan regarded me while in Bangladesh, the place he had been so eager to share with me. I played the polite host and he was the gracious guest, as we had been during his first visits to Thorne Street. Yet he got along superbly with my mother. Just as Alan had guessed, it was as if they had always known each other. My mother couldn’t imagine why a wonderful man like Alan was not married with children. That, to her, was even more perplexing than my own shabby attempt at domesticity. One morning I woke up to find Alan sitting in the garden staring into the distance. From the way he held his body, arched and beseeching, I knew he was deep in prayer. I watched him for a few minutes then called out his name. He turned quickly, and for a minute I saw in his sunken eyes the dead weight of remorse. Seeing Alan like that broke me in much the same way as loving him had kept me together – quietly, irreversibly.

On our last day in Sylhet Alan approached me on the open balcony where I was watching the afternoon diffuse into a purple twilight. Avi and Yameen had gone into town and Mother and Naveen were resting in their rooms.

‘I wanted to thank you,’ he said, smiling sadly.

‘What for?’ I tried to smile back.

‘I’ve been meaning to tell you that this place is full of magic. I’ve never been anywhere like this and I’ve never been so inspired to pray.’

‘What did you pray for?’ I ask, knowing that he wanted me to.

‘I prayed for you,’ he said, unhesitatingly, ‘I prayed for us to find happiness.’

I stared at him. Had he really not known? Had he not felt the pure joy when we were together in the candle-lit rooms of Amagansett, that flickering light a deceptive testament to the raging fire in our hearts. What else was needed to give happiness its legitimate credit? What blessing was required, and in which God’s name, to turn shame into love and grief into bliss? And what of those who never find themselves face to face with God? Does their love amount to nothing? Are they forever suspended between love and its sanctification? But I began to understand, truly, why Alan was so drawn to my history, my life. He perceived, somewhere in its tangle, his own piteous need to be judged, punished and finally forgiven, before he could feel free to pursue his own. And it dawned on me why Mother and Alan were so fond of each other.

The storm has subsided and the rain now comes at a slower, steadier pace. The blue light around us begins to clear. Nanu shifts her position. She reaches for the spittoon one more time, spits into it and clears her throat.

‘Your Nana wanted me to chew paan. He liked the way it always kept my lips red.’

‘He must have been smitten by you,’ I tease her.

She reddens. She has already shared too much. Never, not once, other than that monsoon’s day, have I heard my grandmother talk about love or pleasure or anguish. She has lived all of it, from the red in her lips to the grey around her temples, even if she cannot put any of it into words. But I haven’t inherited Mehrunessa’s gall or Saira’s grace or even my mother’s charm. I have inherited only the tender cores of their spirits – famished for love, for redemption, for exaltation. It erupts from my centre, this hankering for love, this lava-like substance, both cleansing and noxious, heating my body and cooling my soul, constantly shifting the tectonic plates of my existence.