Spiral Road Read online

  ‘Sumita?’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Sumita!’ He stamps his foot on the ground, as though impatient with my memory lapse.

  ‘She’s gone home,’ I venture to guess, without the faintest idea of who Sumita may be.

  ‘Home?’

  ‘House.’ I draw his attention to the buildings in the distance.

  ‘Uncle’s house?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Walk,’ he frowns. ‘With Rani.’

  ‘Who is Rani?’

  ‘Rani…’ His steps quicken. ‘Talk to her…Rani! My daughter…’ He turns to me, his face registering anguish and confusion. ‘My son from Australia.’

  He begins to shake his head and mumble incoherently as I guide him slowly back to the house.

  I, too, am baffled.

  NASREEN SEATS ABBA in the veranda. Solicitously we mill around him. Ma fetches a tub of water to wash his feet. She’s gentle with him and dabs the scratches on his legs with antiseptic cream. Zia and I help him change. Abba points in the direction of his room, unable to articulate what he wishes to do. Finally he utters, ‘Lie,’ repeating the word several times before Ma deduces that he wants to sleep.

  The house settles into a lull as we disperse. In the privacy of our memories about Abba, I suspect, each of us uses the past to prop up the bruised present. It’s a clumsy try for the comfort of normality. Later, I come down from my room and join Zia and Nasreen for breakfast. We make artificial conversation about the state of the arts in Bangladesh. We talk about the movie industry, the paucity of publishing opportunities for creative writers and the popularity of soapies on TV. We ourselves are players in a drama of illusions. Our words are rambling and spontaneous, interspersed with forced laughter.

  As Zia prepares to go to work, I ask him about Sumita. He doesn’t know who she is.

  ‘She must have been someone in Abba’s life,’ I persist.

  ‘What did he say to you?’ He is testy, uncomfortable, and doesn’t wait for an answer. ‘Let’s leave things the way they are, shall we? We don’t need any more problems.’ And with briefcase bulging, he slams the front door behind him.

  Nasreen has the morning off. She will be in the company of her bank’s executives later in the day. A delegation from the Bank of China is touring the country and she has to attend a formal lunch for the visitors.

  We’re both shaken by Abba’s episode.

  ‘It’s such an insidious illness,’ she says in disbelief.

  We talk about Abba and his pivotal role in our earlier lives. I remember his letters and papers, and that he kept diaries, which he locked in the drawers of his roll-top desk.

  ‘They’re somewhere,’ she frowns, trying to recall. ‘There are trunks and boxes crammed with files, letters and receipts. The diaries could be among them. I remember Zia sorting things out some years ago when we sold the house. The loft, I think…Remind me to find the key.’

  ‘I wouldn’t mind looking through them,’ I say hesitantly, realising she might not approve. ‘He’s been such a stranger to me most of my adult life. And now it’s too late for me to know him…It’s not his fault. I’m the one who left and hardly kept in touch.’

  IN HIS BEDROOM, Abba is curled up, sleeping on his side with his mouth open, snoring gently. Even in rest he looks fatigued. I have an awful premonition that he won’t last the year. I caress the top of his head, wondering whether his life has been as dull as Uncle Musa made it out to be. Was it unblemished, as we have assumed? It doesn’t matter now. But who are Sumita—and Rani?

  Abba always indulged Ma and humoured her, even when she was unreasonable. They rarely quarrelled. As children we thought this meant a harmonious marriage. Of course, one learns later that incompatibility is not necessarily manifested in dramatic ways. She was seventeen and he was twenty-six when they married—the children of wealthy patriarchal families, where love was rarely mentioned and matrimony was intended to enhance status and wealth.

  There were unwritten codes of behaviour for a married couple. As long as the institution of marriage was seen to promote the virtues of family life, a degree of fallibility was acceptable in men. Successful procreation and family fortunes more than made up for fleshly indiscretions. So if men did not seek to leave their wives, affairs were tolerated.

  In Ma’s youth, women were expected to be patient, and understanding of their husbands’ weaknesses. In fact, it was said that widening the experiences of men made them more appreciative of the stability they enjoyed at home. Maintaining such tolerance was made possible by accommodating wives who were aware of their own lack of education and limited opportunity outside marital lives. They were compelled to develop stoical fortitude and pretended to be ignorant and scornful of any rumour about their husbands’ infidelities. Their compensations were domestic security, jewellery, expensive clothing and abundant supplies of money.

  Women who married into our family became bored housewives. But they wanted nothing for their physical comforts. It could have been out of a sense of guilt that their husbands treated them gently at home and did not interfere in household matters. I know that Abba made Ma feel important in the way he listened patiently to whatever she had to say and encouraged her to make decisions related to our lifestyle.

  ‘What is love but an ideal, sometimes a disturbance that unhinges reason?’ Abba once said to me wistfully. On that day Ma had insisted he talk to me about my friends at university. She had found out that I was seeing a girl who was not from an affluent family. Shahana’s khandhan lacked pedigree. Her father was in the civil service and her mother was a school teacher. ‘Familial duty and honour must have priority,’ Abba went on, without a modicum of conviction.

  I bristled, anticipating a lecture and an argument.

  But then he locked my bedroom door, and dropped his voice to a conspiratorial whisper:‘My son, follow your instincts. Be more courageous than I was.’

  He sounded forlorn and bitter.

  This was a moment of revelation for me. My father lived with personal regrets! But still he was my father and I dared not think him capable of anything ignoble. My questions went unasked. Unwittingly, in that moment, it was I who created the distance between us, by shrouding him in a layer of mystery.

  Ma had led a sheltered existence. She had no formal education, being tutored at home only for her future role as a housewife. Abba had been educated in Britain and travelled extensively. He was tradition-oriented, a man of the world, compassionate, shrewd and a thinker. Everything in his life was transparent and orderly, our relatives said admiringly.

  ‘A civilised man must strive to control his anger and preserve the wholeness of his dignity,’ Abba would tell us repeatedly. ‘Always try to think through your problems and you’ll find solutions most of the time. When there are no answers, learn to compromise with your circumstances. We have to live within the framework of our limitations and the mistakes we make. Argue with Destiny, but never try to wrestle it into submission. If you do, you’ll end up losing.’

  Now I’m beginning to suspect that the advice was grounded in personal experience. Or is that too presumptuous? I imagine a little girl…then an adult, someone close to my age. Is she still alive? A parent herself, perhaps? Is our father shaped by her memory, someone she has to mostly invent, to placate a past she does not understand?

  And hovering in the background is a shadowy and evasive figure. A part of me does not wish to profile her. Sumita, who must be Rani’s mother, can stay faceless, condemned to the realm of speculation. But I’m unable to ignore what must be my father’s deception. Yet am I unnecessarily suspicious? Sumita and Rani could be fabrications of a delirious imagination. It’s a forlorn wish, but one that I don’t let go; otherwise I’ll have to wonder: did Ma ever find out or suspect? If she had, I guess she would have suffered the pain silently. That was her destiny, she would have rationalised.

  I wander through the near empty house, impatient to search the boxes and the trunks in the loft. There may be
a revealing letter or a telltale photograph, perhaps an indiscreet diary entry.

  In my room I flop on the bed to study maps of Jordan and Turkey and look over my itinerary. Petra, Bodrum, the ruins of Troy. My guide books help me visualise historical sites, the deserts of ancient lands, and the waters of the Aegean and Mediterranean. The hypnotic pull of all this lies in the prospects of tactile contact with history, and escaping to something entirely different for a few weeks. I want to live spontaneously, without thinking about schedules and chores. Lose all sense of time and drift among strangers and unfamiliar customs. I don’t think of bombs exploding or terrorist attacks. Perhaps I’m becoming attuned, here, to a state of dangerous carelessness.

  There are postcards to write and a letter to Amelia. I miss her and the inadvertent variation she has brought to my life. I trifle with the idea of giving more shape and direction to the future. Why live as if time needs no organisation beyond the next day? It’s more like a young man’s state of thoughtlessness.

  Fragmentation has grown in me here. I feel emotionally torn. All these landscapes are too diverse to unify my thinking. The wandering migrant…The roaming atheist. The sense of loss is maddening because I’m unable to pinpoint the reasons for the regret I feel. I doubt if I’ll ever come back to live here again, and yet there’s an elusive being within me that wants to redefine belonging, and whispers about homecoming and mortality. About ending where I began. About a completion to the circle of life.

  THE MORNING DRAGS on. I dither about going for a walk. I look in on Abba. Ma is out shopping, but the carer is here.

  ‘I might go out for a while.’

  Raffat Salaam cheerfully waves me away.

  Outside it’s muggy. I avoid the large stores and the supermarket and head for the local bazaar, stopping along the way to admire the liveliness of the street scene.

  The bazaar is noisy. The pungent aroma of spices hangs heavily in the air. In a food stall, kebabs are being grilled over a charcoal fire. The skewered meat looks moist and tender. On a large aluminium plate there are freshly made parathas. It was standard fare in my university days. I remember long hours spent with friends in Darul Kebab, eating chicken tikka, naan and piping hot jelabis. We drank endless cups of cha and discussed our lives and sorted out the problems of the world. Now I resist the temptation to have a paratha roll. Eating in an open-air stall isn’t prudent. I have no inclination to prolong my stay in Dhaka. I must accept the restrictions of being a foreigner here. It’s sad to think what I’ve lost in my migrant years.

  The shops are crammed with cheap trinkets, jute carpets and items of clothing. I can’t decide on gifts for Amelia and the girls. Perhaps something more upmarket from one of Alya’s shops.

  At the next tea stall a group of bearded men has gathered. Among them is a mullah, delivering a fiery speech on the religious imperative of Bangladesh becoming an Islamic republic and helping fellow Muslims around the world.

  It’s one of those emotionally charged criticisms of the West. Conspiracy theories. Christian plots. I loiter to hear about the past glories of Islam. Ancient echoes from the frightful years of the Crusades, beginning with the Seljuk Turks’ capture of Jerusalem, reverberate today, in this market. Deus le volt! — Pope Urban II, I recall, had inadvertently said it for both religions: how can mere mortals defy God’s will? Therefore the slaughter, pillage, rape and looting can be explained away, as part of a grand design of the Omnipotent and the Omniscient.

  ‘First, the godless Soviets came to Afghanistan and attempted to conquer the country,’ the mullah mocks. ‘They were humiliated and their state broken up. It was Allah’s will!’

  ‘Allah O Akbar!’ someone shouts.

  ‘And now the Americans!’ a shrill voice calls.

  ‘But this time what are we doing to help our Afghani brothers? The true upholders of Islam? Nothing!’ The mullah glares accusingly at the congregation. ‘It’s our duty to take up arms against the common enemy. My brothers, abandon your lives of comfort! Be bold and fight to fulfil Allah’s plan. Behave like holy warriors and—’

  A ripe mango crashes near the mullah and explodes in a pulpy mess of yellow.

  Behind me, I hear the giggle of children, then running feet.

  ‘The enemies stoop to using children to disrupt our objectives!’ The mullah tries to control his temper and appear dignified, as helpers clean up.

  I turn away, toying with the possibility of the reincarnation of Pope Urban II as an Islamic cleric. The rhetoric couldn’t have changed all that much in nearly a thousand years—

  ‘Excuse me! Hello, brother!’

  One of the bearded men has run after me. He’s waving his hands.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘Why were you spying on us?’

  ‘Spying?’ My incredulity incenses him. ‘I only stopped to listen to what the mullah was saying.’

  Another man joins him. I can see others in the assembly looking in my direction. ‘What is your name? Where are you from?’ the second man asks.

  I tell him. I’m now surrounded by religious zealots. They press closer, their faces grim and their eyes smouldering with suspicion. Passers-by stop to watch with detached curiosity.

  ‘What do you do?’

  ‘I’m a librarian.’

  ‘How can we be sure that you’re not American?’

  Fortunately my passport is in my wallet. I make a token attempt to keep the document in my hand. It’s snatched away from me. They thumb through the pages, checking the entries and inspecting my photograph. An animated discussion follows.

  A sense of irony sweeps over me. Something just like this might easily happen at an airport in America. Seeing my Muslim name, immigration officials there would want to know the motives for my visit, although the Australian passport would probably lessen suspicion. Here, it’s my name that suppresses hostility, but being an Australian isn’t an advantage. I am a resident of a Christian country, they remind me, mostly inhabited by whites. Cousins of the Americans and the British. They invaded Islamic countries. They all speak English.

  ‘So do I,’ I say softly in Bangla. Perhaps German or French might have been more sensible.

  ‘Are you trustworthy? How can we be certain that you haven’t gone over to the other side? After all, you live among them,’ one demands, stroking his beard.

  I assure them that I haven’t converted to Christianity.

  ‘But do you live your life as a Muslim?’

  They ask me to recite a surah. Fortunately I remember one. ‘Alum doh illah eh Rab-e-Alameen…’ I intone.

  An old man grunts and nods in satisfaction. The younger men are harder to please. They remain expressionless. They huddle together in earnest consultation.

  ‘He’s a Muslim!’ I hear someone whisper. ‘One of us, no matter where he lives. Besides, he’s a fellow Bangali.’

  Reluctantly they allow me to leave. I’m drenched in sweat. My water bottle is empty. The incident has shaken me more than I care to admit. I see an icebox in front of a grocer’s store. A woman and her two children are sipping Coke from frosty bottles.

  Once I’ve drunk from an icy bottle of water, I negotiate a fare with a rickshaw wallah to take me home. But within minutes I change my mind and ask him to take me to Dhanmondi.

  I give him the road number. ‘Drop me on the bridge near Sheik Mujib’s old house.’

  WE CAN BE cowards in such strange ways. I loiter on the overpass, unwilling to cross and walk up the road towards our old house. The house, I should say and relinquish any sense of ownership. This is a comfort zone where the years dissolve and the past is enacted before my eyes. Though the water in the canal looks brackish and dirtier than I can remember, in the distance bare-bodied dhobis are lined up on the grassy slope, beating wet clothes on wooden platforms. Errant boys still fly kites. Other kids have no qualms about swimming in the canal. A man waits patiently, his fishing rod dangling over the edge of the water. This could be the scene of forty years ago—except Zia and I would
probably be quarrelling over the colour of our kites.

  Conjuring hope, I close my eyes briefly and there I am. Road 33. In front of our gate is the vendor with his cart of savouries. I constantly brag that I can eat more spicy food than Zia. The vendor hands me a plate of phuchkas dipped in tamarind water. ‘More chilli,’ I say, smiling at my brother. ‘I’m strong!’ Zia flounces off to tell Ma that I will suffer a stomach ache tonight. ‘You stole the change from the shopping money!’ I yell after him. He stops in mid-stride and calls me a liar. But he doesn’t go inside. We call a truce by agreeing to have ice-cream later in the afternoon.

  We have an arrangement with the man who pushes the ‘Baby’ ice-cream cart on the streets of Dhanmondi. He’s not to call out when he approaches the house. Ma has decreed that we’re not allowed ice-cream more than thrice a week. This will be our fifth treat in as many days.

  We hear the car’s horn from a distance. Abba has returned for his afternoon nap before his scheduled rounds of the hospitals. The darwan drops his bidi and hastens to open the gates. We scuttle around to the back of the house. There’s no end in sight to the good life. The world is fine, the way we know it.

  I open my eyes.

  It’s a short walk to the other side of the bridge. The house of the Talukdars stands as I remember it. But now it has a rundown appearance. There are cracks in the walls streaked with lines of dirty grey. I scan the veranda for the old man in his rocking chair, scrutinising the world for its imperfections and mischief-makers. He was forever concerned about his daughters writing love letters to the boys in the neighbourhood. Once, Zia and I were the recipients of their affections. Stones tossed into his front yard incensed Talukdar and he complained bitterly to Ma. We made certain that he saw us.

  I pick up a piece of broken brick and juggle it in my hand. The distance is just about right.

  But there’s only a chest of drawers and three empty chairs on the veranda. Old Talukdar would be Abba’s age now if he were alive. I drop the brick near my feet just as a man opens the front gate.