Beloved Strangers (3 page)

‘How old are you, child?’

‘I’m almost twelve,’ I said.

‘Ah, almost a woman.’

I didn’t respond.

‘Did your mother tell you that I named you?’

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘Do you know where your name comes from?’

‘No.’

‘Well, it’s time you knew. I named you after a beautiful woman called Maria al Qibtiyya. She was a Christian slave, gifted to the Prophet by the Byzantine Emperor. He was enthralled by her beauty. He married her and she bore him a son.’

He paused and stared at me. ‘Do you know why I named you after her?’

‘No,’ I said.

‘Because you’re beautiful, just like her. All women are made beautiful. Do you understand?’

‘Yes,’ I said, although I didn’t really understand his point.

‘Smart girl,’ he said.

He paused again, tightening his hands around mine.

I remember the silence and a certain heightening of my senses. I remember noticing his tongue, slightly protruding between his lips, as he studied my face. I remember smelling a strange fleshy odour and wondering where it came from. I remember that the moments passed quickly yet painstakingly, derailing my sense of time. I remember his hands wrapping around mine like tight, cold snakes. I remember the sound of my parents’ car pulling into the driveway, breaking the silence that was so terribly loud. I remember feeling the urge to urinate.

I ran to the window and watched my parents emerge with clear water-filled plastic bags full of fresh fish, alive and wriggling.

‘Did he wake up? Did he need anything?’ my mother asked anxiously.

‘He didn’t need anything,’ I said slowly.

She looked at me then, and just for a moment, she held my gaze. Then she looked away.

‘Your father will want you to wash up for evening prayers. Hurry up.’

My father was the last person I wanted to see right then. I knew I would be admonished later for not joining the prayers, but for now, I needed to hide from my parents and their beloved pir sahib.

I went to the kitchen and watched the fish flailing in the sink where Amol had dumped them. I wondered how long it would be before the air was depleted from their lungs rendering their little bodies limp and lifeless.

The month of Ramzan, which follows the cycle of a new moon, appeared at slightly different times each year. During the holy month of Ramzan, explained my father, we were to pledge our allegiance to God by fasting from dawn to dusk, cleansing ourselves of our deepest desire, the desire to eat and therefore perhaps to live. At the end of the day, we could rejuvenate ourselves by celebrating the very desire we renounced all day. I see now a blurry logic in the simultaneous renouncement and celebration of life; a roundabout attempt to affirm the entirety of the life-and-death cycle by invoking them in turn.

The year I turned fifteen, Ramzan fell in July, the hottest month of the year. School was out but there was no escape from the blistering heat. When we woke to eat sehri, the pre-dawn meal, Amol would place pitcher after pitcher of ice cold water on the table, which vanished before he had a chance to turn his back. The old ceiling fan blew nothing but hot air and even the mosquitoes were too sluggish to drink our salt-drained blood. In that heat, it was impossible to digest Amol’s flaming curries and sizzling grilled meats, so my mother poured cold milk over our rice and threw in chopped bananas to make a sticky mixture. Sitting in the semi-darkness, with our assortment of sweet milk-and-banana rice, curries, kebabs and ghee-soaked parathas, my family devoutly prepared for the day ahead. As soon as the sun started to appear in the eastern sky, illuminating the shapes of trees and buildings, I’d desperately try to gulp down one last glass of water.

‘Hurry,’ my mother often prompted. ‘When the maulana starts the morning prayer call you have to stop eating and drinking.’

‘Nonsense,’ my grandmother snapped. ‘It’s not the prayer call that matters. As long as there isn’t enough light to see the hair on your own body, you can keep eating.’

It made me wonder about those who did not have enough body hair to begin with. My grandmother had practically hairless limbs, making her sip her second cup of tea as calmly as a Buddha, while the rest of us scrambled to finish our meals.

Something happened to me that year. Something dislodged and broke away somewhere deep inside my cells, leaving a gluttonous, gaping hole. It left me breathless and impatient. It left me standing in the midday sun, throwing stones at the crows that came to scrounge scraps of food from the small veranda next to the kitchen. Sweat stuck to my skin and clothes like honey, leaving me so parched I felt I could drink water out of a toilet bowl. I found myself walking to the kitchen every so often to get a whiff of iftar, the delectable evening meal that Amol prepared for the breaking of fast. My mind kept whirring around the images of spicy red daal marinated and fried to crispiness, black peas curried with onions and tomatoes and the delicious caramely Mecca dates, imported specially for Ramzan. Being Christian, Amol didn’t observe Ramzan, and I hovered around him, finding twisted consolation in watching him eat his meals: breakfast of sugared milk with thickly buttered chapatti; for lunch, generous portions of fried fish, rice and fresh cool salads of coriander, tomatoes and cucumber.

During Ramzan, my father usually came home early from work. He’d stack his briefcase neatly under his desk, change into a clean white kurta, place a white topi on his head and quietly settle into his favourite chair, prayer beads in hand. I was disconcerted by the serenity he exuded, the stillness in his posture. How could he look so content when all I could do was count the seconds till I dowsed the fire in my belly?

To make matters worse, the terrible pangs of hunger were followed by terrible pangs of guilt. The whole point of fasting was to conquer the throes of hunger and desire and every time I groaned or complained or thought about food, I fell from God’s grace. So I gritted my teeth and plodded through the day, because, Heaven forbid, if I made my feelings known, I would fall from my father’s grace as well.

The desperate attempt to distract myself from my all-consuming hunger, led me, one intolerable afternoon, to pick up the phone and call my friend Raqib. Half an hour later, we were sitting on the rooftop, gazing unsurely at the street below. I had always liked him but why had I sought his company just then and why had he complied so easily? Thoughts bubbled up to our lips but starvation left us too exhausted to speak. In truth, words were useless. I clasped his hand in mine, more out of frustration than anything else.

At the touch, our hunger flowed out of us with volcanic rage, sweeping everything else out of our way. Our bodies were so clammy we could barely slide our hands over each other’s skin but we clung to each other. Our kiss was deep and voracious but also inexpert and unexciting. It was not a kiss that was born out of love or lust. It was a kiss born out of starvation and frustration. And yet we knew that fasting was supposed to give us a sense of spiritual fulfilment and purpose that would help us rise above the physical hardship of the feat. So where was it, that restorative feeling of salvation at the end of every blood-draining fast? I waited for it every day and when it didn’t come, I tried to find it through that kiss, an act of defiance, a silent mutiny. I had hoped that by violating the rules of a fast (through engaging in any form of physical union), I could at least guilt my way back to being an unquestioning believer in its worth.

But, at the end of the long kiss, I was surprised by the rush of relief that swept over of me. It was as if a high fever had broken and, along with it, my delirium. By breaking the divinely ordained rules of fasting, I had unleashed a profound hunger, one that neither food nor flesh could satisfy. I began to understand that it was precisely this kind of hunger – this corroding, corrupting hunger, a hunger that turned us into untamed, untethered creatures – that we were meant to curb and conquer. Through fasting.

Despite the sanctioned celebration of all those fleshy delights – the kebabs and grills and stews for sehri and iftar and countless other occasions, such as the naming ceremony of a newborn or the odd animal sacrifice to ward off a forthcoming misfortune, my mother just couldn’t make me eat enough meat. I wanted white jasmine rice, potatoes in red jackets, the golden soup of slow-cooked lentils, the long green bodies of lady’s fingers and green beans, the fiery red of tomatoes and the purple of eggplants. I could not bear to look at the sinewy masses of flesh floating in Amol’s curries. When I ate meat every bit of me became aware of the distinct textures of bone, muscle and cartilage. The first time I saw the heart of a chicken, I stared at the caricature of the human heart, noticing that the slender pipe-like ventricle that separated the atria connected the chambers in much the same manner as mine. Later, I was served the same heart, its slippery consistency singed into a congealed mass that no longer quivered. In fact, we had intimate knowledge of not only the bird’s unfortunate heart but also of its gizzard, its liver and other bits of the gastrointestinal tract that I do not care to recall.

‘Eat,’ my mother said, if we put up the slightest resistance. ‘I don’t have time for any nonsense.’

‘Spoiled children,’ my grandmother added. ‘Do you know how many kids in this country starve every day?’

Hers was a curious logic. Poor kids could not eat so rich kids should eat everything in sight. Nonetheless, on the morning when I witnessed the Great Sacrifice, I did see for myself the desperation in the eyes of those scrawny, hungry children.

The sounds of preparation woke me early: steel knives sharpening against stone blocks, the clang of pots and pans and the chop chop chop of onions and garlic. Through the gap in my curtains, I saw the woman next door arranging young, green banana leaves on the floor of her balcony. I heard the plaintive bleating of animals held captive by an entire city of devotees. It was the day of Eid-ul-Adha, the day on which Abraham sacrificed his son to prove his love for God. The world changed thereafter, for sheep and cattle anyway, as humankind was led, by example, to perform the supreme sacrifice that kept their sons at home but still managed to please God.

By the time I showed up in my new Eid dress, the men had neatly divided into two groups of starched white soldiers. My father and uncles were issuing orders and instructions, while the cook and the butchers were bustling around with the tools of their trade. The cows had been brought from the stinking shed in the backyard. One of the young calves nestled against his mother while the other squatted, head reclined feverishly. Their mother stood calmly. One of the men followed my gaze.

‘Hello, little missy, you like? Very tender meat,’ he grinned. ‘Good for seekh kebab.’

Then it was time. The buzz of conversation died, everyone got into position. The head-butcher stepped forward with a long curved knife while four men circled the mother cow. In one imperceptible, lightning motion, they threw her down on the damp ground and flipped her on her back. She laid there, belly up, surprised, as they expertly tied all four of her legs together. She seemed to resist but only for one jerking, joking second.

‘In the name of God,’ chanted a chorus of voices as the gleaming machete came down on the soft skin of her throat.

I peered into her dying eyes that had turned skywards and I saw the life seeping out of them. A fountain of blood sprouted from her neck and I sensed the warmth bubbling out of her body. A final guttural groan was wrenched from deep within her and splashed across the humid morning. Red betel juice dripped from the corners of the machete man’s mouth and trickled slowly down his chin.

I watched as she turned into a limpid pool of redness, a mountain of white bones. They spread her out on banana leaves, skin, head, limbs and torso. Her eyes were glassy but her jaws were parted with slight deliberation. It was the hint of a smile, a smile that gave her the dignity to rise above her massacred body.

The hordes of children started to arrive with their empty gunny sacks. They approached boldly and climbed up the rusted iron grille of the old gate like little monkeys. It did not shock me that they awaited their day’s meal with pleasure. What unsettled me was the look in their eyes, the way they stared at the kill, with the grim satisfaction of those who could only understand the meaning of blood in the context of spilling it. What fast could curb such appetite, tame such impulsion?

The butcher was heading towards the squatting calf. I turned around and started to run back to the house.

‘Hey you,’ yelled someone. ‘Don’t be such a sissy.’

I kept running. Behind me I heard the voices rise again as they prepared to slaughter the calf. Just as I reached the threshold of our porch, I turned back to look at my father. But he had his back to me. Had he even noticed me slip away? Or was he too disappointed to acknowledge my cowardice?

The sight of the catfish wiggling in the shallow green pool of water in front of Shah Jalal Baba’s shrine filled me with foreboding because my father told me they were not real fish. In 1303, when Shah Jalal, the great saint from Delhi, came to Bengal to preach Islam, he defeated the ruling Hindu king, Gour Gobinda. Deeming that many of the king’s followers practised witchcraft, he turned them into catfish, condemning them as eternal examples of those who stray from the true path of God. Through centuries, these human-catfishes continued to live, their souls trapped in ugly black bodies, their bodies kept in a filthy tank for display.