The Bones of Grace. Tahmima Anam
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and sold them at department stores and boutiques, the price tags printed on crumpled brown paper. By the time I’d finished college, our financial circumstances had changed dramatically, but Ammoo and Abboo remained conflicted about their increasing wealth, because it interfered with their idea of themselves, forged all those years ago during the war. They kept to their Spartan lifestyle, driving their old Toyota, holding on to the battered cane set they had been given as a wedding gift. Their one concession was the apartment in Gulshan, and they had only bought that on the urging of Rashid’s parents, who had themselves made the move across town years ago.
‘I’ll think about it,’ I promised, remembering the last time I had been to the factory, the rows of sewing machines, the smell of kerosene and cotton, women bent over their work, plastic barrettes in their hair. Abboo reached out and held my hand, and I glanced at the stub which was all that was left of the finger he had lost in the war. Then he was looking out at the water, shaking his wrist to loosen his watch. I felt like there had never been a moment such as this one, and I was about to ask him to tell me something about the adoption, something he hadn’t yet told me, something that would break it open and make it all right to talk about. But he cleared his throat and a lone fish broke the surface of the lake and the moment passed without commotion.
Ammoo flew back in time for dinner, strangely elated. We avoided asking her about the trial or the witnesses she had gone to find. Anyway, she wanted to talk about yoghurt. ‘The food in Barisal is incredible,’ she said. ‘I tasted a superlative sweet doi. And the fish was also excellent.’ The fish reminded her of something. ‘Where’s Rashid?’ she asked. It was Friday, and Rashid always came to our house for dinner on Fridays.
Bashonti had made egg curry. I put a piece of egg in my mouth and chewed slowly. ‘I didn’t really feel like seeing him tonight.’
‘Why not? Dolly said we should start thinking about setting the date.’
‘Oof Ammoo why?’
‘Why not? Is something the matter?’ Ammoo peered into my face. ‘Something wrong between you?’ She sometimes liked to act as if my engagement to Rashid was the only good thing in her life.
‘I’m on the verge of a spectacular failure – can’t you see that?’
Abboo reached over and put his hand on my shoulder. ‘Okay, sweetheart, you take your time.’
Ammoo poured herself a glass of water. ‘What do I tell Dolly?’
‘All I ever wanted to do was find that stupid fossil,’ I said.
She took a gulp of water and put her glass down loudly. ‘It’s fine,’ she said; ‘you people do whatever you like.’
Your latest message to me was: Trouble in Mind. In my head I still couldn’t resist telling you about every small thing that happened, but I had replied simply: Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood. I played the music you gave me, listening for clues as to whether I would ever see you again, telling myself it shouldn’t matter, but knowing that it did, more than I could admit, and I thought again and again about Zamzam, and all the choices people made about their loyalties, and I knew that, no matter what I did, there would always be that tug in another direction, a headwind that would cast a sweeping and overwhelming doubt.
My father’s village was three hours out of Dhaka and at the last minute I had agreed to accompany him to the wedding of a distant relative. I had played kabaddi with the children, watched my cousins fish in the pond beside the family compound, and finally, with leftover biryani packed into the trunk of the car, we started for home. It was early evening, and we’d had good luck with the traffic, so we were maybe twenty minutes from Chowrasta, the main intersection leading into the city. The light was softening and fading, and beyond the narrow highway and the string of shops were neon fields of young rice. Suddenly the car lurched, then stalled. Our driver, Abul Hussain, switched off the engine, then restarted it. The car whinnied, then shuddered to a stop. Abul Hussain turned around and said, with a tremor in his voice, that we had run out of petrol. He had meant to fill the tank in the morning and forgotten. He eased the car to the side of the road and then bolted out, making for one of the roadside shops to get help.
‘Stay in the car,’ Abboo said, following him. I opened the doors and let the evening air drift in. After a few minutes they both returned. The petrol station was several miles away. Abul Hussain would start walking and hope to find a rickshaw on the way. I got out of the car and wandered over to a vegetable cart, admiring the neat pyramids of gourd, pumpkin, and eggplant. Ammoo would be happy if I brought home some vegetables – she would say, oh, the marrow is so much sweeter outside of Dhaka – so I tried to get the attention of the man selling them. I was about to pay when I heard someone calling my name, and because I was in the middle of nowhere and the sun was about to set, I spun around with an aggressive word on my lips and saw that it was, in fact, Rashid, smiling down at me, a halo of hair framing his face.
He hugged me, his shirt stretched across his shoulders. ‘What are you doing here?’ I asked, my mouth against his ear.
‘Your father called me,’ he said.
I smelled his skin beneath soap and aftershave. ‘Thank you,’ I mumbled. He continued to hold me, unlike him to care so little that people on the street had begun to stare.
That morning, Jimmy had sent me a link: BODY OF DISSIDENT FOUND OUTSIDE OF QUETTA read the headline. Though the man bore marks of torture, the authorities were refusing to tender any sort of explanation. Zamzam’s mother, Jimmy wrote, was still striking outside the Quetta Press Club. Abboo was getting ready for the trip to the village, pulling on his sneakers and ordering Bashonti to pack a bag of oranges for the drive. I asked if I could come with him, and he was of course overjoyed, assuming it was a sign of my recovery from whatever strangeness had gripped me since my return from Pakistan, but the road out of Dhaka, the children swarming around my knees, tilapia in the pond, all these images were meant, if not to erase, then at least to soften the picture of Zamzam, face down in a ditch, as dead as Ambulocetus.
Rashid had sent his driver in search of Abul Hussain – they would soon return with the petrol. He suggested we wait together at a small restaurant down the road. ‘Why did you call him?’ I whispered to Abboo as we climbed into Rashid’s jeep, but Abboo didn’t reply.
We took our seats on a row of plastic chairs in the restaurant, which was nothing more than a long, narrow room jutting out of the highway.
I said I needed to wash my hands, and the waiter pointed to a hallway. The bathroom was disgusting. There was no lock so I leaned against the door and dialled your number. I had 300 taka of credit on my phone, so if you answered I would only be able to talk for a minute or two. After three rings, I hung up. I splashed water on my face. There was no paper. I rubbed an arm over my face and headed back to the others, trying to form the sentences I would have to say to explain it all to Rashid, to appear calm and in control, as if my ignoring him for the past few weeks was part of some premeditated plan.
‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said. ‘You don’t have to take everything so personally. Let’s just focus on the good news, which is that you’re here sooner than we thought, and forget about everything else.’
Forget everything else. How sweet that would be, how wonderfully pleasant. ‘I’m an idiot,’ I said. I examined him closely, his mother-of-pearl cufflinks, the untroubled way he bore himself. At the table he passed around the small glasses of tea, and I heard Abboo sighing as leaned back against the chair and closed his eyes. At that moment my phone buzzed and I thought it might be you, so I pulled it out of my bag. It was Jimmy. It isn’t him, the message said simply.
Rashid and I went out the following night, to a Chinese restaurant we had frequented in high school, and afterwards we went to Movenpick and shared an ice cream in a cup, and he thought to provide two spoons, and I wondered if I was sharing that ice cream with you, Elijah, if we would have shared a spoon with no concern for who was eating more of it, and this thought, for some reason, made me want to shout out to no one in particular that I was being presented with an impossible choice. Then it was Sally’s birthday, and we all