The Courthouse
Rehana watched the days go by. She began letters to Sohail and Maya:
The mangoes will be perfect this year. It has been hot and raining at all the right times. I can already smell the tree.
She threw that one away. She also threw away the one that began:
My dearest children, how I miss you.
She wrote cheerful, newsy letters. The children should not be confused. They should know these important facts:
She was going to get them back soon.
The world was still a generally friendly place.
Silvi had not forgotten them.
The neighbourhood was exactly as it had always been.
Her memories of the children were scrambled and vague. The more she clutched at them the more distant they became. She tried to stick to facts: Maya’s favourite colour is blue, Sohail’s is red. Sohail has a small scar on his chin; just below the ridge. She had teased him and said, this is a scar only your wife will see, because she will stand just beneath you and look up, and he had said, very seriously, what if she is a very tall girl?
Her son had a sense of humour. No, he was completely unfunny. He barely ever smiled. Which was it?
She took comfort in telling them apart. She remembered which was the loud, demanding child, which the quiet, watchful one. The one who sang to birds to see if they would sing back. The one whose fingernails she had to check, because she liked the taste of mud. The one who caught chills, whether the day was cold or fiercely hot; the one who sucked red juice from the tiny flowers of the exora bush; the one who spoke, the one who wouldn’t; the one who loved Clark Gable; the one who loved Dilip Kumar, and stray dogs, and crows that landed on the gate with sharp, clicking talons, and milk-rice, and ice cream.
And she couldn’t get out of her mind all the times Iqbal had fretted over them, making them wear sweaters when it wasn’t even cold, having the doctor visit every month to put his ear to their little chests; holding hands on busy roads and empty roads; just in case, just in case, just in case. And there was that train journey a year ago, that they almost didn’t take.
It was Maya’s fourth birthday, and Iqbal’s new Vauxhall had just arrived from England. It was on a special consignment of fifty cars brought to Dhaka from the Vauxhall factory in London, in 1957. Iqbal had seen an advertisement that told him about the smart new car with the restyled radiator and the winding handles. There was a photograph. He fell in love with the car: the smooth curves, the side-view mirrors that jutted out of the frame. He imagined driving it into their garage, a big ribbon tied around the top, the horn blaring. But when it arrived, Iqbal was too nervous to drive the car and decided to leave it in the hands of a driver he hired for the purpose, an ex-employee of the British consul-general who had driven His Excellency’s Rolls-Royce and was an expert behind the wheel. His name was Kamal. It was Kamal who was driving the Vauxhall the day Maya waved to her father from the window of the Tejgaon–Phulbaria rail carriage.
As a special birthday treat for Maya, they had decided to take a train ride between Phulbaria railway station and a new station on the fringes of the city. The new tracks had just been opened and it was now a short trip to the city’s heart; from the brightly painted station built by a hopeful government to the crumbling colonial building that housed the old carriages of the Raj. It was to be their very first train ride.
On the appointed day, Rehana made kabab rolls and Iqbal counted clouds, hoping to declare an incoming storm and cancel the whole affair. But there was only a cool October breeze and a scattering of lacy, translucent threads in the sky. Kamal started the car and opened the doors for them. Iqbal instructed everyone to sit in the back. Maya entered first, in her birthday dress, which Rehana had sewn of pale blue satin. There was a netted petticoat, which made the dress puff out at an unlikely angle. Blue ribbons were fastened to her hair, and she had managed to convince Rehana to dab her mouth with the lightest frost of pink lipstick; this she attempted to safeguard by keeping her lips held in a stiff pout. Rehana settled into the car, balancing the food on her lap, and motioned for Iqbal and Sohail to hurry up. But they were having some sort of argument outside.
‘But Abboo, there’s no space at the back.’
‘You can’t sit in front, it’s too dangerous.’
‘Oof, Abboo, I’m not a baby any more!’ Sohail stomped a foot on the ground.
‘Accidents can happen, doesn’t matter if you are big boy or small. Accident doesn’t discriminate!’
Rehana rolled down the window. ‘Sohail, do as your abboo says.’
In the end Sohail piled sullenly into the car, with Iqbal following. It was tight, with all four of them in the back. Maya’s dress swelled out in front of her like a small blue high tide. The netting was starting to itch, though she kept stoically still, lest she collapse the puff or wrinkle her ironed ribbons. Iqbal’s white sharkskin suit was getting crumpled. Really, Rehana thought, he should have just let the poor boy sit in front with the driver. It was so hot. She rolled the window down defiantly, and motioned for Sohail to do the same on his side, not caring if they inhaled the street’s dust. Maya’s ribbons lapped gently in the breeze.
By the time they had reached Tejgaon, Iqbal had begun to worry about the journey again. If they were stuck on the train, how would anyone know? What if Kamal was late? He mentally calculated the odds of this happening. As Kamal drove them up to the station, he had an idea.
‘Rehana, you go with the children. I have decided to stay.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I will stay in the car with Kamal. We’ll drive beside the train. That way, if anything happens, you can just leave the train and ride in the car.’ Ingenious!
So that is what they did. She remembered it clearly: the man in the car, his family on the train, the train carriage on the new rail line and the new foreign car on the adjacent road, the taste of kabab rolls and lemonade lingering lazily on their tongues, and her husband, beaming to himself, satisfied at last that no harm would come to his family, because he, Iqbal, had made absolutely sure.
It was a profound arrogance, she now realized, for him to think he could save them from anything. She thought this, as outside, the mango tree pressed its fragrance into summer and, beside it, the dust-licked Vauxhall sank into the driveway.