The Courthouse

In the morning the children were gone. Rehana had packed their things in a hurry, crying into the comb, the ragged copy of Treasure Island, forgetting to fold, jamming shoes into the corners of the trunk. Sandwiched between their clothes was a photograph of Iqbal in his three-piece suit, one thumb hooked into his waistband, another on the dial of his pocketwatch. She packed a copy of the Holy Book, then took it out. She had tried to write them a letter, but she had no words. Finally she had settled for a few mooris and a bar of chocolate.

Afterwards, when the door was shut behind them, Rehana turned to find their little things strewn over the bedroom, the corridors. A sock, a sliver of ribbon. A page from Sohail’s notebook. The stray things rattled around the bungalow like a cough.

They still called it the bungalow, because it was a modest house on a vast, empty plot – a one-storey building with just two bedrooms, a drawing room, a kitchen, a wrap-around veranda. The bedrooms faced the garden and the empty land beyond; the living room and kitchen faced the street. There were plans for a grander house at the back of the property. The bungalow would be for visitors, perhaps an office. But Iqbal hadn’t stayed to build the big house.

It was Iqbal’s idea to buy the plot in Dhanmondi. Less than a year after they were married, he had insisted they move out of their flat on Aga Masih Lane in the old part of town. Rehana was reluctant to go; she loved the narrow streets, the smell of the Buriganga river, the shuttered buildings built by the first pioneers into the city: the river-boat owners, the traders, the Bible-wielding Jesuits. It had a sense of its own history. Dhanmondi, on the other hand, was a new residential area, just a few dirt roads carved out from the paddy. It’s the future, Iqbal had said. Soon this will be the best neighbourhood in Dhaka.

And so it was. Sprawling, flat-roofed buildings set back from the road, speaking of prosperity and new money.

Rehana looked out at her tract of empty land. She had created a border with rose bushes and red hibiscus and a pair of banana trees. Inside the border was the bungalow, the small vegetable patch, and the sagging mango tree that had come with the plot. Beyond it the land was wild, the earth soft and yielding, the kind of earth that swallowed sandals and sprouted thick tufts of moss even on the coldest days.

Rehana unlatched the veranda gate and stepped into the garden. She took off her sandals and felt the grass prickling her feet, and then, a few seconds later, the cool embrace of silt between her toes. She made her way to the back of the garden, and found the small garden tap she’d used to water her roses – pink – all through the dry season. Their tired blooms surrounded her, staring as she kneeled in front of the tap and pressed her forehead against it. The metal felt cool and indifferent; the water, once she twisted the knob, inviting her to squat underneath the stream, which she did, bending her neck to make it fit. She had been here before; she knew what to do.

She sat under the tap until she was fully soaked. She was not sure if she was cold. She closed her eyes and felt the poisonous sting behind them. Then she lay down beneath the tap and fell asleep.

She dreamed of her wedding night. They had lain side by side, she frozen in her brocade sari, her eyes shut, waiting for her husband to do his business. But he hadn’t touched her. Once, she thought she felt his little finger brush against her elbow, but she wasn’t sure if it was him or just the blanket shifting in the tense November air.

The next morning, Rehana had woken up feeling stiff and uncomfortable. The sari had scratched her knees and bunched uncomfortably around her shoulders. She found a bathroom and tugged on the taps. She pried off her make-up, rubbed the kajol out of her eyes, twisted out of the sari. She put on the starched cotton she’d been given to wear, raising it off the wet floor, avoiding the drip-drip of her long hair, and then she opened the door to greet her husband, wondering what soothing, palliative words she might offer to avert his displeasure. The door swung open, and there, on the outside lip of the doorway, were her slippers.

Who had put them there?

There was no servant. Aside from Faiz, Iqbal had no family, no fussing grandmothers, no giggling nieces. Rehana had asked her father to find her a man with few relations. A man whose fortunes had nowhere to go. And she wanted to live in Dhaka, far from the memories of their lost Calcutta, further still from the barren sprawl of Karachi, where her sisters had gone to marry.

It could only have been him. A man who brought his wife’s slippers to the bathroom door. What sort of a man was this?

Rehana’s devotion was born at that very moment. Not devotion of the ordinary kind; the devotion of a woman whose husband is concerned with the coldness of her feet. And that is what she dreamed of. The slippers. The possible kindness of men.