CHAPTER SIX

The city shattered. Everything was in pieces. She knew it straight away, glimpsed it from the painful-white insides of the ambulance. Frantic neon signs. Headlights chasing the dark. An office block, cracked with light. These shards of the broken city.

At the hospital she felt the panic. Lobby doors crashing, white coats surging, bright trolleys clanging, coffee machine snarling. She ran with her son, carried him down long corridors while the walls fled before them. And then they took him out of her hands.

Raqib lay in the glass-walled cot like a flower that had been held inside a fist and released, not crushed but crumpled. His arms were wrongly arranged, the skin around his mouth puckered, and the area beneath his ribs hollowed out.

Nazneen pressed her fingers against the incubator. He was the centre. The world had rearranged itself around this new core. It had to. Without him, life would not be possible. He was on the inside and all else looked in. The nurses and doctors who rustled and sighed, and bunched around. The hospital building with its smothering smells, its deathly hush and alarming clangs. The crystal towers and red-brick tombs. The bare-legged girls shivering at the bus stop. The hunched men and gesticulating women. The well-fed dogs and bloated pigeons. The cars that had screamed alongside the ambulance, urging it on, parting in waves.

And the city itself was just a glow on the dark earth, beneath the heaven that bent down to touch the troubled oceans, and he was beside her but no longer of her and the noise that filled her head and heart and lungs was so great that if she but opened her mouth the windows, the walls, could not withstand it.

For three days Chanu ate only cheese sandwiches from the canteen. On the fourth day he went home and cooked rice, and potato and cauliflower curry. He brought the food in flat round tins to the hospital and they ate in the room set aside for the refugee families of the gravely ill. The warm, heady smell of spices blanketed the air, twitched noses and lifted heads. A gaunt old couple, who held hands and whispered together all day as if making an infinitely complex suicide pact, halted their plans for a while and stared openly. A teenage boy, who came to be with his mother and hand her paper tissue after paper tissue, sat up straight to get a good look. The whiskered man with the flat, blank eyes of a bandicoot rat, who came alone and slept beneath the chairs, slowly licked his lips.

Nazneen ate and ate. She scraped the tins clean and put them on the floor. 'I should have brought more,' said Chanu. He closed a hand around her wrist.

'Yes. Next time, bring more.'

'Do you want to go home for a while?'

'No. I won't go yet.'

'I brought some things for you. Socks, soap, whatever I could find.'

'His blanket?'

'I've got it.'

'He needs his special blanket.'

Nazneen thought about getting up. She would wait until Chanu released her, so that she did not pull away from him. She did not want to pull away from him.

'A letter came from home,' said Chanu. His chin was grey with stubble and his hair – without coconut oil – lay like clumps of moulted fur. He spoke only a little and his voice was soft as clay.

'Hasina!'

'No, no. A letter from one of my relatives. A begging letter.'

'Another.'

'I have not heard from this man in nearly twenty years. When I left he was a young policeman with enormous moustaches, and he was feared far and wide.'

A doctor opened the door and spoke to the teenager's mother. She blew her nose and handed the sodden tissue to the boy. As she left with the doctor she glanced back at the room as if it had betrayed her. The boy sniffed. He slipped so low in his chair he threatened to fall off. Chanu tightened his grip on Nazneen's wrist.

'I've heard about him from time to time. He built himself a big house with all the bribe money, and he rose through the ranks. He had four or five servants and his wife gave the best parties. Not only that. He imported an American car. Chrysler or Chevrolet, something like that. It was talked about all over town.'

Nazneen smiled at her husband. For now, he was speaking only to her. There was no one over her shoulder. The audience had finally gone home. She put her free hand briefly across his round cheek. To touch like this was permitted here, among these stateless people, where the rules were unknown and in any case suspended.

'Now it looks like the bribe money has dried up. He's too old to wield the stick. Or he's been kicked out altogether. It's not clear what has happened. But now he only has one servant, and he is in need.' Chanu let her go. He rubbed his thighs. 'He asks me, in the name of God, not to let his family suffer. He asks only for them, not for himself.'

'Don't answer it,' said Nazneen. He read these letters over and over. He spent longer on the replies than he ever spent on his studies, and most often left them in the drawer. 'Just throw it away.'

'He just has the one servant now.'

Nazneen felt a bubble of laughter rise from her belly. She let it out behind her hand. 'Don't let his family suffer,' she said, choking.

Chanu pressed his woolly eyebrows together and looked at her. She could not stop. He smiled. She felt the others looking at them, the strange brown couple who laughed and smiled. With the end of her sari, she wiped at her eyes.

There was a mask across Raqib's face. It brought him oxygen because, Chanu explained, he needed something purer than air. Needles stuck into his arms like great javelins, and wires and tubes sprung around him, thick as coiled rope. Raqib spread his tiny limbs wide. The rash that had nearly killed him, those little red seeds, was not so livid now. The marks had changed their shape and colour, and spread beneath his creamy skin like crushed berries. His arms reached across the cot. His face was screwed into a determined ball. Nazneen thought of a game she played with Hasina, leaning into the wind that whipped off the lake and held them in a ragged embrace, flapping at their baggy trousers and holding up their arms.

Raqib was still asleep. Sometimes he opened his eyes but they were not seeing eyes. Nazneen put his special blanket inside the cot. She settled in the hard moulded plastic of the chair. Chanu sat on the other side, arms folded across his chest. Whenever a nurse walked by he half unfolded them and looked up.

Abba did not choose so badly. This was not a bad man. There were many bad men in the world, but this was not one of them. She could love him. Perhaps she did already. She thought she did. And if she didn't, she soon would because now she understood what he was, and why. Love would follow understanding.

Some things had become clear in the long, halogen-lit nights and the slowly dissolving days. The din that had crashed around inside her, like a giant bee in a bottle, had gone. And the quiet that came in its wake was profound. Nazneen sat and watched her son, and watched her husband rattling around the place: fetching things and returning them, bumping into carts and nurses, questioning the doctors, accosting the cleaners, poring over charts and articles, dragging chairs out of place and back again, going for coffee, going for tea, collecting the undrunk cups and spilling them on the way to the sink.

Her irritation with her husband, instead of growing steadily as it had for three years, began to subside. For the first time she felt that he was not so different. At his core, he was the same as her.

All the while, when Nazneen turned to her prayers and tried to empty her mind and accept each new thing with grace or indifference, Chanu worked his own method. He was looking for the same essential thing. But he thought he could grab it from outside and hold it against his chest like a shield. The degrees, the promotion, the Dhaka house, the library, the chair-restoring business, the import-export plans, the interminable reading. They were his self-fashioned tools. With them he tried to chisel out a special place, where he could have peace of mind.

Where Nazneen turned in, he turned out; where she strove to accept, he was determined to struggle; where she attempted to dull her mind and numb her thoughts, he argued aloud; while she wanted to look neither to the past nor to the future, he lived exclusively in both. They took different paths but they had journeyed, so she realized, together.

'He's going to be all right now,' said Chanu.

'I know.'

'We'll take him home soon.'

'As soon as he's ready.'

'I thought it was all finished.'

'I know,' she said, and knew that she would never have allowed that.

Though she spent hours sitting at the cotside she was not just sitting. Her hands lay folded in the pleated lap of her sari, hard brown knuckles against the soft pink. She was as still as a mongoose entranced by a snake. Stiller than a storm-cleared sky. But more animated than ever before. She willed him to live and he did. In the quiet she realized many things, most of all that she was immensely, inexplicably, happy.

Nazma and Sorupa came and rested ten fingers each on the sides of the cot.

'It has pleased God to make all my children strong and healthy,' said Nazma. 'The fourth one also, I feel his legs. So strong!' She rubbed her round belly.

Nazneen looked at her. Another child was coming, but with Nazma it was not easy to tell. The pregnancies came and went but the roundness always stayed.

Sorupa said, 'Also it pleases Him to make my children in fittest and healthiest of disposition.'

Nazma touched her fingers to Raqib's forehead. She glared at Sorupa. 'What is wrong with you? Have you come to gloat and boast at the sickbed?'

Sorupa nibbled her lip and looked away.

Jorina came on her way to work and could stay only a few moments. She said, 'I can sit with him at night, let you rest. These days I don't sleep so well. It would be no bother.'

In the family room, Razia clasped Nazneen against her hard chest. 'You are in an agony, I know. My sister's third child, peace upon his soul, died after a long illness. The illness was the worst part. When they are gone they are gone, but when they are ill you suffer with them.'

'I am sorry for your sister. But I am OK.'

Razia looked sideways at the old couple who faced each other and held hands. 'This woman is the bravest one you will ever see. In her youth, she wrestled crocodiles.' She looked at Nazneen. 'Shall I tell them in English now?'

'I'm glad you came.'

'Listen, I've got something for him. For when he's a bit older.' She jiggled a man-doll from a plastic bag. 'He can pull the head off this one all by himself.'

'I won't let him. I'll keep it until he knows better. Give my respects to your husband.'

Razia pulled down her headscarf. She rubbed at her strong jaw. Now that she wore trousers she sat like a man, right ankle resting across left knee and the big black shoe nodding up and down. 'I can't. We are not speaking. We are arguing. We are having, in fact, an unspoken argument.'

'Then how will you know who has won?'

'That son-of-a-bitch!'

'Razia—'

'He works all day and night. He keeps me locked up inside.'

'You go out. You came here, to the hospital.'

'If I get a job, he will kill me. He will kill me kindly, just one slit across here. That's the sort of man he is. For hours, for days, he says nothing at all, and when he speaks that's the kind of talk I get.' She held on to her foot, restraining it from further bouncing.

'But you go out. You go to the college.'

'The children are at school. What am I supposed to do all day? Gossip and more gossip. The children ask for things. Everything they see, they want. And I don't have money. Jorina can get me a sewing job, but my husband will come to the factory and slaughter me like a lamb.'

'Talk to him.' Nazneen watched the door open. She hoped it would be Chanu with more food from home. A nurse came in and touched the old couple lightly on their shoulders. They looked up at her with guilty faces. Enclosed in their sorrows, they had forgotten why they were here.

Razia pointed to the doll. 'I might as well talk to him. My husband is so miserly he will not waste even words on me. Now he has the night job, driving around with animal carcasses. If he has anything to say, he says it to them.' Razia blew hard out of her long nose, exhaling her anger. She uncrossed her legs and laced her fingers together. 'Anyway, you don't want to hear my troubles. You have enough of your own.'

'Raqib is getting stronger. I can feel it.' It was possible now to leave him alone for a while. She had tamed the machines that stood guard by talking to them softly, like a mahout calms an angry elephant. This is my son. This is my son. Take good care of him. The machines no longer frightened her. In the night they purred like civets and their bellies lit up like fireflies. By day they droned with efficiency and the flat screens made lines and curves in modest shades of green.

'The next time I come I will be allowed to pick him up,' said Razia. She smiled but she could not recover her temper. 'I found out where the money goes. Shall I tell you? It goes to the imam. He is going to build a new mosque in the village.'

'God will bless you.'

'If he was God-conscious, I would not mind. But my husband is not God-conscious. Listen, is this how a God-conscious man acts?' Her husband was mean. It was getting worse. After much brooding in the kitchen, sorting through the shelves and cupboards, he denounced his wife as a wanton housekeeper. Too many jars, too many packets, too many tins. All shouting abundance, luxury, waste. There would be no more money until every last thing on the shelves was eaten. Now they were down to Sun Maid raisins and Sainsbury's Wheat Bisks. For three days the children had eaten only Wheat Bisks in water and handfuls of raisins. This will teach you, said the husband. Will teach you to buy Sun Maid, fancy packets, penny-waste here, penny-waste there. Tariq came home from school. Ma, Shefali going to the toilet nine times every day. She is getting ashamed to put her hand up.

Razia tackled him. Building mosques and killing your own children. Holy man.

He did not flinch. What you want me to do? Kill my own self, working and working, for you to spend it all on penny-thing here, penny-thing there and nothing to show at the end? I am working for bricks. When I am gone to dust, they will be standing.

Ha, she said, and whenever they crossed paths, the brick man!

Ask your father, she had told Shefali, ask him how many bricks he earn today. Shefali, twisting her hair, said, Abba, how many bricks you earn today? And landed on her back, and cried quietly into her mother's lap.

'Make it up with him,' said Nazneen. 'For the children's sake.'

Razia paced the width of the room. A little bit of shin showed above her sock where her tracksuit leg had ridden up. Chanu would have no chance in a fight with Razia. But Razia's husband was big: broad with short, thick butcher's arms and his temples indented with fury. Nazneen had seen him only a few times. He was as silent as Razia said, but it was a silence charged with thunder that made the children creep away and muffled even Razia.

Razia did not answer. She swivelled and paced the long side of the wall, knocking down some leaflets from a shelf.

'Would you really work with Jorina? She has had problems. Everyone talked. Her children got into difficulties.' Hasina was working, but Hasina had no choice. If she had a husband, or a father . . .

'We gossiped, of course,' said Razia. She stood still, and for a moment the old glint reappeared in her narrow eyes. 'We love to gossip. This is the Bangla sport.' She came and sat next to Nazneen. 'Listen, Jorina's children are no better or worse than the rest. Whatever trouble they're in, they're not the only ones. When I walked across the estate today, I saw a gang of boys – fifteen, sixteen years old – fighting. I called to them but they shouted abuse at me. Only a few years ago they would never speak like that to their elders. It's the way things are going.'

'And they play their music so loud.'

Razia began to smile. 'You know, my husband has sent radios to all of his nephews and nieces. When he goes back home, he might get stones instead of praise.'

'So he's not always a miser, then?' said Nazneen, anxious to draw some good out of the man.

'We only get what others don't want. There's a man at the doll factory – every few months he comes around with more junk and I faint with joy. When he comes, really, I'm just falling on my knees.'

'You're saving him a trip to the dump,' said Nazneen. 'It's your good deed.'

'Maybe I start charging him for each load, see how he likes that.'

'Think what you're saving him on petrol.'

'Another stepladder, tins of paint, two planks of wood. I should start a house–painting business.'

'Keep you busy.' Nazneen fought with a spasm of laughter. This was not the place for belly laughs.

'Keep my husband stubbing his toe when he gets up in the dark.' She held her knees and inhaled loudly. 'Honestly, sister, for myself I don't need anything. Have you heard me complain before? But the children suffer.'

'What will you do?'

Razia looked serious. She spread her hands and examined them as if they might spontaneously volunteer what they intended to do. 'I tell you—'

Chanu came in carrying bags and the complicated smell of a high feast. He paused when he saw Razia then offered a salaam that appeared to include her only by accident.

'Next time,' said Razia, gathering her things.

'Eat with me,' said Nazneen. She took the bags from Chanu and willed him to go away.

He cleared his throat and with great formality enquired about Mrs Islam, her health in general, her hip in particular, and the continuing good fortune of her sons. Razia made brief, polite replies but sprawled over her chair in a manner unbecoming to a Bengali wife. His enquiries exhausted, Chanu stood ill at ease as if waiting on an invitation to be seated.

'Raqib,' said Nazneen.

Chanu startled. He seemed about to run. 'What?'

'Go and check on him,' said Nazneen gently.

'Why don't I check on him?' He spoke with relief, and hurried away. One heel flapped loose where it had become unstuck. His trousers were so deeply creased at the knee-backs that the concertina effect was almost a style. She followed him to the door and whispered in his ear.

The rice was perfect. Fluffy white grains, each one separate from its neighbour. In the rainy season, back home, when the land had given way to water and the buffaloes grew webbed feet, when the hens took to the roofs, when marooned goats teetered on minuscule islands, when the women splashed across on the raised walkway to the cooking hut and found they could no longer kindle a dung-and-husk fire and looked to their reserves, when the rain rang louder than cow bells, rice was the means, the giver of life. Precooked, it congealed and made itself glue. Or fashioned itself into hard lumps that only worked loose inside the stomach, the better to bloat the innards and make even the children lie down and groan with satisfaction. Even then it was good. This rice was superb. Just the rice would be enough for her. But fresh coriander made her swoon for the chicken. The deeply oily aubergine beckoned lasciviously. She wanted to stick her tongue in the velvety dal. Chanu could cook. It had not occurred to her that, in all those years before he married, he must have cooked. And since, he had only leaned on the cupboards and rested his belly on the kitchen surfaces while she chopped and fried and wiped around him. It did not irritate her that he had not helped. She felt, instead, a touch of guilt for finding him useless, for not crediting him with this surprising ability.

'It's good,' said Razia. 'Save some for your husband.' Nazneen was eating like a zealot. Razia put down her plate and spoon. 'Something I didn't mention to your husband about Mrs Islam.'

'She hasn't called. I offended her. Chanu doesn't know.'

'Something else he does not know.'

'You didn't want to gossip about her.'

'No.' Razia lowered her heavy eyelids. She leaned in. The lashes curled up like insect legs and the lids squared off the tops of the irises, which were, Nazneen noticed now, spattered with gold lights deep down in the black. 'It's not gossip. It is the truth.' She paused a while, the better to hook her audience. 'The woman is a usurer.'

'Tcha!'

'I check my facts. It is the truth. In the eyes of God, I say it again. The woman practises usury and she will be the companion of fire.'

'How can you say it?' Nazneen was forced to put down her plate.

'Listen to me. I had my suspicions. I said something to her about money difficulties and she offered a loan. Nothing specific. Then I was not sure. I thought – maybe she offers loans from the goodness of her heart. Maybe she carries bundles of five-pound notes in that big black bag, just for handing out to poor people.'

'Stop.'

'I'm not joking. You know me, always willing to see the good side.' She smiled like a jackal. 'If you don't believe me, ask Amina. Ask her what interest she is paying. Thirty-three per cent.'

'Razia!'

'You look a little scandalized. I don't make scandal. I just report what I see. It's not me who is going to hell on the day we are judged.'

'If she repents, God will forgive her.'

'Repent? Mrs Islam?' Razia dived in her bag and came up with a handkerchief. She pinched it between thumb and forefinger and waved it with her little finger cocked in the air. 'When I was a girl, no one dared to offer such insults! The best family in all of Tangail, do you not know that everyone bows before us?'

Nazneen could not speak. She stared at her friend.

Razia's gaze slid around the room. Then she became brisk. 'Amina could not make the last payment. If she doesn't come up with it next time, plus extra interest as punishment, the sons will break her arm. What kind of penance will God accept for this?'

'Who knows about it?'

Razia shrugged her large shoulders. 'Some people. Perhaps many people. They are all hypocrites. That is the thing about our community. All sinking, sinking, drinking water.'

At the English words, the teenager – as flaccid in his chair as a virgin balloon – raised himself up a little and wasted a half-glance on Razia.

'You hear all sorts of things about the sons,' Razia said. 'But for all I know, those things are just rumour.'

The boy rolled his head on the pimpled stalk of his neck and settled back. His mother looked at him as though this were the final straw and began to cry into the back of her hand.

'Time for me to go,' said Razia. 'Some things to do before I collect the children.'

'Kiss them for me. Give my salaam to the estate.'

'OK. I do it'

'Your English is getting good. Say hello to the tattoo lady from me.'

'Thank you. But the tattoo lady is gone.'

This was barely credible, even following the hard-to-swallow news of Mrs Islam, which should have made anything seem possible.

'Gone to an institution,' said Razia. She tapped at her temple. 'At the end she was sitting in her own . . . you know.'

'Oh,' said Nazneen.

'Someone should have got to her sooner. Always sitting there in the window, like a painted statue. Did no one see?'

Chanu had brought her tasbee. She held the beads and passed them. Subhanallah, she said under her breath. Subhanallah. Subhanallah. Subhanallah. When she passed the thirty-third, her fingers loitered on the big dividing bead. She breathed deeply and ploughed on. Alhamdu lillah. Thanks be to God. Yes, she thought. But would He not wish me to return to my son now? Her fingers raced through to the ninety-ninth.

There had been no chance to make her prayers in the usual way. She had offered up her personal, private pleas. Now she was giving thanks. It was God alone who saved the baby. It was His work, His power, not her own. Her own will, though it swelled like the Jamuna and flowed like a burst dam, was nothing as to His. She began the cycle again, pressing the mild wooden balls fiercely. Subhanallah. Glory to God. Alhamdu lillah. Thanks be to God. Allahu Akbar. God is great. She dropped the beads and they rolled beneath a radiator, out of reach.

With a long-handled dish cleaner, borrowed from the kitchen area, she poked the tasbee out and dusted it off. Perhaps it would be better if Chanu took it home, where it would be safe. Anyway, all the repetition made her feel drugged when she needed to be alert. It would be better if he took the beads home again.

From now on when she prayed it would be in a different, better way. She realized with some amazement that, while she had knelt, while she had prostrated herself and recited the words, she had never fully engaged in them. In prayer she sought to stupefy herself like a drunk with a bottle, like a fly against a lantern. This was not the correct way to pray. It was not the correct way to read the suras. It was not the correct way to live.

She had wanted to make a barren space inside. To stop the discontents, the bellyaches, the intemperate demands from breeding. To stop them setting up home. It was like curing a case of tapeworm by starvation. Entirely possible, and unavoidably lethal.

On the eighth day, out in the corridor, she made her silent classifications. Patient. Parent. Distant relative. Friend. Doctor. Nurse. Orderly. The adult patients were easy. They were the ones in slippers and slip-on, ill-fitting smiles. They smiled to show there was nothing to worry about, that they themselves were not worried, and that they were enjoying this healthful, restorative circuit-walk of the sick lanes. Passing down the corridors of the children's wards they smiled especially hard to signal their knowledge of just how lucky they were. The parents were easy too. Every dark imagining had come upon them, and their eyes and lips were pinched by shock. The worst of it – how shallow their imaginations had run. The other relatives and the friends were sometimes difficult to tell apart, except that the relatives trod more lightly while the friends took the burden of clowning, of bringing cheer and huge teddies, small chattering toys. Doctors wore their authority on their white coats and in their urgent, forbidding strides. Stop me now, and you put a life at risk. The nurses doled out nods and brief, encouraging smiles that ignited in the parents a look of expectancy, as if they had remembered something to say; on the tip of their tongue and gone again. Orderlies were a variegated bunch. They scowled and slouched along, they bustled like the doctors, they sang a fantastic kind of anti-music, howling out fragments and lapsing abruptly into silence.

Raqib's room was being cleaned. She waited outside and watched out for Chanu. Chanu had been to work this morning. The first time in over a week. Here he was. Scuttling along, turning at a right angle to pass a trolley and moving sideways like a big, soft-shelled crab. He came next to her and leaned on the radiator. If there was a solid surface in sight, Chanu would rest against it. Mental toil, he said. That is the real exercise. No harder work than mental toil.

'They're just cleaning,' she told him. 'Won't be long.'

'Ah,' he said. He chewed on his lower lip, ejected it and began to tug with his bottom teeth on the top lip.

She waited for him to speak again and grew uncomfortable when he did not. She had become used to his chatter filling up the space between them.

'Mrs Islam,' she began, and drew a breath.

'Sinking, sinking, drinking water.'

So he knew.

'Some things have to stop.'

'If she truly repents . . .'

'Enough is enough.' Chanu wound himself forward and faced her, straight as a plane tree. 'I will have to tell them.'

'Who?'

'My relatives. They will have to know. Come clean. Stop the hypocrisy.'

'Your relatives? Why should they know?'

Chanu smiled, his fat cheeks dimpled. His eyes darted here and there, looking for an escape route from this inappropriate face. He explained as if to a child. 'All this time they thought I was rich. Why should I stay here in this foreign land, if it did not make me rich? I let them think it. It suited them and it suited me. Actually, I told them some things that are not true, have never been true. Made myself a big man. Here I am only a small man, but there . . .' The smile vanished. 'I could be big. Big Man. That's how it happened.' He sighed and placed his hands atop his stomach. 'So when the begging letters come and I blame left and I blame right, what I should be blaming is this, right here.' He moved his hands up over his chest, to show how his heart, his pride, had betrayed him.

Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month, when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower.

'No,' she said. 'It is not a matter for blame.'

'Action, then. It is a matter for action. All matters, in fact, are matters for action. Talking is finished. From now on, I act.' He cleared his throat, a little like the old, talking Chanu. 'Something else to tell you. I resigned today.'

'What do you mean, resigned?'

'What do I mean? Are you against it? Have I not warned you repeatedly of my intention? I warned Dalloway and I warned you also.'

'So. You did it then.'

'There were some surprised faces, I can tell you.' His own face looked ambushed, raided by dacoits. All this action was taking its toll. He chewed again on his lip and a split appeared, stained with a little red. 'I'm clearing my desk in the morning.'

'They can spare you so soon?'

He coughed and hawked, and Nazneen feared he would spit on the floor. He swallowed. 'Of course not. But when I decide to do something, it is done. That's the way I am. From now on.' He waggled his head and blinked slowly to show there was no turning back. 'If who repents?'

'What are you saying?'

'You said, "If she truly repents".'

'I don't think so.' An orderly came by, pushing a bucket along with a mop. He whistled loudly, but not loudly enough to cover his dejection. 'I think they've finished his room. Let's go.' The cleaner raised one corner of his mouth as she passed and made a noise that said he really didn't know what the world was coming to, when he was the one to be standing there with a bucket and mop while everyone else enjoyed themselves. She turned to see Chanu marching after her, his head swivelling, eyes uselessly scanning, feet knocking over the bucket, and the cleaner – propped up by his mop – shaking his head in the dignified manner of a man deeply wronged.

Raqib was awake. 'Bah,' he said. Enough of this nonsense. He lifted his hands in front of his face and regarded them sternly. He made pincers, tested them for strength and flexibility and was satisfied. They were released. He rolled his head to the side. Nazneen cooed as he looked at her. She stroked the back of his head where the hair matted together, soft as cashmere. With a little finger she rubbed at his swollen gums, was pleased to be bitten by his little pearl teeth. Soon they would be home and he would stagger around the sitting room like a ship's deck, clinging on, undaunted by the invisible storm that buffeted him from sofa to chair to table and back again.

'Going to buy an encyclopaedia for you.' Chanu leaned over his son and touched his leg. 'Going to buy it for myself before you start asking too many difficult questions.'

'I'll go home tomorrow. Make everything ready.'

'Damn clever, this boy. See it in the size of the head.'

'Encyclopaedias are expensive.'

'Not too expensive for this boy. Let's call it an investment. All books are investments. Can't you see what a good student he's going to be?' He began to hum, then broke into song.

'We are the strength, we are the force The Band of Students that we are! Under the pitch dark night, we stir out Barefooted across the road With obstacles strewn. The soil stiff We render red with our crimson blood . . .'

He broke off. 'All right. All right. No need for faces. We used to sing that at Dhaka University. It's a respectable song.' He continued the tune, humming this time.

The baby slept. Nazneen directed her energy towards him and sat perfectly still. Chanu sat with his book. Nazneen thought of asking what they would do for money. What job he would get now. She watched him take off his shoe and his sock. He bent down to examine his corns, squeezed each one in turn and said ish under his breath. For a few moments, the book caught his attention again, then he hummed for a while, drummed his fingers, sat looking at the air, the shoe and sock abandoned and forgotten.

She put her hand on Raqib's forehead. Just for the feel of him. To give him strength. Although, of course, only God gave strength. Whatever she did, only God decided. God knows everything. He knows the number of hairs on your head. Don't forget. Amma said that when they went off to school. She called after them, shouting in her strangled voice. 'He sees you. Don't forget. He knows the number of hairs on your head.' She thought about it. No, all that she had done for Raqib was nothing. God decided. She thought about How You Were Left To Your Fate. See! It made no difference. Amma did nothing to save her. And she lived. It was in God's hands. Raqib's chest rose and fell. He stirred and passed wind, which moved her deeply.

At once she was enraged. A mother who did nothing to save her own child! If Nazneen (her husband's part she did not consider) had not brought the baby to hospital at once, he would have died. The doctors said it. It was no lie. Did she kick about at home wailing and wringing her hands? Did she draw attention to her plight with long sighs and ostentatiously hidden weeping? Did she call piously for God to take what he would and leave her with nothing? Did she act, in short, like her mother? A saint?

And something else Amma was wrong about. Childbirth is like indigestion! Yes, if a snake bites like an ant. Exactly the same. Nothing different.

No wonder, she thought and shocked herself by it, no wonder Abba went off for days. The tears flooded him out. They made him angry. Even at the burial he was angry. When he lowered her, legs first, the white winding sheet already spattered with mud while the rain raced to fill the hole, he let her go too soon. Uncle held on and stopped her rolling on her back. Abba smacked his hands together. Blue lightning ripped open the stone sky as the prayer began, thunder took the words from the imam's lips, and the rain filled all their ears and eyes and mouths.

'Go and play,' Mumtaz had said. 'I'll bring you in to see her when I've finished.' Hasina ran off, but Nazneen stayed. 'All right then,' said Mumtaz. 'Make yourself useful. You are a woman now, after all.' She gave Nazneen the brass dish to hold, while she dipped in a cloth and squeezed it damp. She lowered the sheet and washed Amma's face. Forehead, temples, cheeks, chin, over the eyelids, inside the ears, inside the nostrils. Her hand knocked against the top lip and the lip stayed curled and raised, revealing for ever two of the melon-seed teeth that Amma, all her life, was so keen to hide. Sheet raised, she turned to her niece. 'I don't know what your mother would say about it.'

'Fate!' said Nazneen, and pinched the back of her neck.

Mumtaz looked at her. 'About you being here.'

The back of her neck was on fire. 'Oh.'

'Anyway. You are a woman now.' Beneath the sheet she began to wash the right side of the upper body. She pulled out the arm and ran the cloth along it. 'You mustn't think she died alone.'

'Angels.' She wished she had a way with tears. It seemed wrong. No one was crying. The village had lost its best mourner.

'They were with her, and God. The sari is ruined, of course. Her best one. The rest you can share out with Hasina.' She washed the torso. As the sheet lifted, Nazneen saw her mother's breast lolling against her armpit. A rag, brown with blood, plugged the hole just to the left.

When Mumtaz dipped the cloth in the bowl, little blood crusts floated free and congregated round the edges.

Nazneen went to change the water. When she tipped out the bowl she couldn't help thinking it was a shame to be pouring a bit of her mother away.

'She always said,' Mumtaz reflected, 'that everything can be changed, like this.' She snapped her fingers. 'God has made His plans. I told her, "Sister, but until He reveals them we have to get on by ourselves." Well. . .' She sucked her teeth. 'Now the plan is clear. It's come and gone. Puff!'

She was displeased with something. Nazneen stood up straight, hoping she looked as solemn as she was trying to feel. In truth, she felt bored by now and squeamish at seeing the body.

Mumtaz finished with the left foot (how yellow the toenails!) and began on the winding. She uncovered Amma's lower half, and Nazneen in spite of herself stared at this unprecedented nakedness. A loincloth went around her upper thighs and hips. Another cloth tied the first at the waist. A third sheet made a kind of short, straight dress and the next became a veil. 'Oh,' said Mumtaz. 'The hair.' She removed the veil and began to plait the hair, squatting behind the choki and sticking out her tongue in concentration. It was then that the rain started. Heralded the past few weeks by electric skies and air so hot it shimmered just out of reach and scorched the nostrils of those foolhardy enough to breathe, the rain was greeted with joy. It beat down on the tin roof, it hit the ground and bounced jubilantly up, it hurled great fat globs through the doorway. Nazneen, holding her bowl, watched as children ran outside for a shower. Squeaking, they flapped each other's wet shirts, rubbed at their hair. The adults came more slowly, feigning lack of interest, as if the allotted hour of their regular walk around the compound had arrived. Abba walked across the yard and the children scattered, holding each other back before this mighty and unpredictable presence. He reached out and patted a sodden-headed small boy. He smiled and the children began to move once more. Nazneen at last found her tears, and spilled them over the final, all-encasing winding sheet that it was Amma's Fate to wear.

She woke with a stiff neck. The hospital was quiet. The room was dark except for the glow of the machines. Chanu was not in his chair and Razia was standing on the other side of the cot. Hair disarrayed, eyes the narrowest slits. Bony hands to her face, chewing on the knuckles.

'What is it?' cried Nazneen.

Razia put a finger over her lips. 'Shush. Don't wake him.'

'What is it?' This time in a whisper.

'Very beautiful,' said Razia, leaning into the cot. 'Much better at that age, when they don't answer back. My two, they need a good whipping.' Her voice was breaking, but her eyes, as far as could be seen, stayed dry.

'Do you want tea?'

'Tea? No. I'm not having any more tea. All day there has been tea drinking.' She shook herself to get rid of the thought.

'Come and sit with me.'

Razia came round and sat. Her shoulders heaved. She pressed on her chest and pulled at her long nose. Her shoes knocked together. Finally, she said, 'He is dead.'

'What do you mean?' said Nazneen senselessly.

'My husband is dead. The work has killed him.'

The rage, thought Nazneen. It killed him.

'At the slaughter place. They were going to load up, but there was an accident.'

Nazneen tried to find words.

'Killed by falling cows. He was only alone a few moments and when they went back in he was underneath the cows. Seventeen frozen cows. All on top of him.' She looked at Nazneen. Her mouth twitched. 'This is how it ended,' she added. 'And the mosque not even built.'

'The children

'At Mrs Islam's.' She shrugged slightly. 'People came. Made tea, made wailing and that sort of thing. I told them I wanted to be on my own. But when they had gone, I didn't want to be on my own with . . . you know. I kept thinking about those cows. So I came here.'

Nazneen took hold of her hand and massaged it inch by inch, to rub away a little of the pain, to absorb some for herself. The machines purred with satisfaction and the screens played out their endless dance. Somewhere, behind walls, a woman shouted in indistinct anguish. The disinfected floor shone dully beneath their feet and gave off its smell of neutered grief.

Razia groaned. 'I can get that job now. No slaughter man to slaughter me now.'

She walked into a lunatic's room. Signs of madness everywhere. The crushing furniture stacked high, spread out, jumbled up. Papers and books strewn liberally – lewdly! – over windowsills, tables, floor. Alarming rugs of every colour, deviously designed to confuse the eye and arrest the heart. Corner cabinet and glass showcase panting with knick-knacks. Yellow wallpaper lined up and down with squares and circles. The clutter of frames that fought for space on the walls. Someone, delirious, had wired plates to those same walls so that it appeared that the crockery was trying to escape.

How quickly she had grown used to the hospital. With a sigh, she realized how quickly she would grow used to this room again. She examined the nearest chair. She did not remember it. To get to the far end of the room she had to climb over the glass-topped, orange-legged coffee table. The cane-backed chair had had its bottom removed. Two lone hairy strings were rigged loosely across the hole. To the side lay a ball of twine and a pair of pliers. So the chair-restoring business had begun. She picked up the pliers, thinking they were dangerous to leave around with Raqib coming home so soon. She picked up three pens, a notebook and a mug, then put them all down again to gather up a stray nappy, half a biscuit and an empty cocoa tin that Raqib had used as a drum. Let's be systematic, she thought, and set everything on the floor. Have a bath first, then make space in the kitchen drawers, then tidy things away. If she was quick, there would be time to call on Razia. (This is the tragedy, Chanu had said. Man works like a donkey. Working like a donkey here, but never made a go. In his heart, he never left the village. Here, Chanu began to project his voice. What can you do? An uneducated man like that. This is the immigrant tragedy.)

Hanufa came to the door before Nazneen got to the bathroom. 'I've been watching for you,' she said. 'I've brought some food.'

Nazneen took the containers. 'My husband has been cooking.'

'I know,' said Hanufa. 'But I didn't know what else to bring.'

Nazneen soaped herself with a bar of Pears, washed her hair with Fairy Liquid and, when she had finished, dusted between her toes with baby talc. In the bedroom, she stood in her underskirt and choli and looked through her saris. The wardrobe doors touched the side of the bed, making another black-walled room inside a room. A pair of Chanu's trousers lay on the floor of the wardrobe. Another pair draped over a chair that was wedged beneath the hanging clothes. She picked them up, stepped out of her underskirt and put them on. To see herself she had to stand on the bed and look in the curly-edged dressing-table mirror. Then she could see only her legs, and ducked and twisted to try to gain an impression of the whole. She took the trousers off, put her underskirt back on and hitched it up so that it stopped at the knees. Walking over the bedspread, she imagined herself swinging a handbag like the white girls. She pulled the skirt higher, and examined her legs in the mirror. She walked towards the headboard, turning her trunk to catch the rear view, a flash of pants. Close to the wall, eyes to the mirror, she raised one leg as high as she could. She closed her eyes and skated off. Ridiculous. Her leg wobbled. She opened her eyes and was thrilled by her slim brown legs. Slowly, she drew the left leg up and rested the heel on the inside of her right thigh. She tried to spin and got caught up in the bedspread, and fell on the mattress, giggling.

Now, she thought, where's the harm? She rolled over to wrap herself up in the bed covers and decided to float free for a while. Nothing came to her mind. She stared at the ceiling. Remember to pack his hat, she thought. He'll need that for the journey home. Then nothing. The fridge needs cleaning. More toilet roll. She slapped the bed. Write to Hasina. That was better. Wash a few clothes out, before too much piles up. No, no, no. She pulled the cover over her head. Ice e-skating, she said aloud. Torvill and Dean. Still nothing. She got out of bed and dressed quickly. Then she found pen and paper and a book to rest on and sat down on the edge of the mattress.

My dearest sister, she began, and chewed on the end of the pen. I am well and my husband also. Raqib was ill but now he is better. She chewed some more. The thought of writing was always pleasant, but the process was painful. However much she thought of to tell, however the words flowed in her head as she performed her chores, despite the emotion that swelled and throbbed while the storylines formed, the telling was inevitably brief and blunt, a poor thing, stunted as a failed crop. We took him to hospital, she wrote. I was very sad, and then suddenly I was very happy, even before he was better. Soon I will bring him home. She read it over. Then crumpled the page. On a fresh sheet she wrote: My dearest sister, I hope you are well. Thank you for your letter. Raqib was very ill but better now. We took him to hospital. A strange thing happened. I sat beside him and felt happy. Not happy for him to be ill, but happy about something inside myself. Chanu has given up his job. He is well. I hope you are well.

She reviewed the composition, crossed out the last sentence where she had repeated herself. She changed but better now to but now he is better. Then crossed out the part about being happy. She chewed on the end of the pen.

She would have to explain more carefully. She tried to think it through. What had made her so happy? She drew a face and made it smile. I fought for him. She added a matchstick body. Not accepting. Fighting. She drew a flower and gave it a long stem. Fate! Fate business. A bird, she attempted a bird, but it looked more like a coat hanger. I move my pen. This way. That way. Began an elephant and turned the back legs to a horse. Nobody else here. Nobody else moving this pen.

Now she wrote again. My dearest sister, I hope everything is well with you. The baby has been sick in hospital, but we expect to bring him home soon. Chanu has given up his job. I do not worry, and you must not worry. When the baby is home, I will write again. A long letter next time. Pray God keep you safe.

She tidied the flat and tried to make some space in the sitting room by piling furniture. Once she had finished piling she prodded the stacks and watched them wobble. Then she began unpiling. She worked quickly and rehearsed out loud asking the bus conductor for a ticket. Suddenly the thought came to her that she had killed Razia's husband. Raqib was meant to die, but she had forced Death away. Death was forced to choose again. Be gone from me! she shouted. Be gone! Back to hell, where you belong. And with these words, banished the jinn that had danced, briefly, spitefully, through the room and into her head.

By the time she reached the courtyard she had forgotten the jinn. The sun was out and the now familiar but still nameless tree on the corner showed pale green buds. The grass, brave despite the odds, was attempting new growth. A fresh dog turd steamed gently on black tarmac. The concrete had been covered over, and the tarmac smelled of rubber and essence of car fume. It undermined the smell of shit, even when Nazneen stepped over the mess. Sun on her face felt good; she would have liked to feel it on her legs. When she passed a group of young Bangla men on the path, they parted and bowed with mock formality. One remained straight and still and she caught his look, challenging or denying. Another lad fell to his knees. Oh, oh. I'm dying. She's breaking my heart! Nazneen pulled her headscarf over her face to hide her lips that flickered up at the corners and parted and twitched again.

Hospital, hospital, hospital. She had another English word. She caressed it all the way down the corridor. Chanu did not hear her come in, or he heard and did not turn round. She put her hand on his shoulder, and was surprised as always at how thin it was. There was a little spot on the top of his head, an angry little spot among the thin weeds of hair. He did not look up. Then she saw the empty cot. Raqib had been taken for more tests. 'Gone?' said Nazneen.

'He's gone,' said Chanu and looked up at her. His stomach pressed forward beneath his shirt.

'Don't worry. They won't take long. They'll give him back to us soon.'

Chanu blinked. His eyes seemed more beleaguered than ever. 'Will you wash him? I don't think I can wash him.'

'I always give him his bath.' Nazneen went to sit.

The room was quieter than usual, a quietness that rose somehow above the muted din of the hospital. The machines were off, that's what it was.

'Sponge bath,' said Nazneen. 'That's how I've been doing it.'

Chanu's head hung forward. He did not talk. The action man was not talking. Neither was he doing. Nazneen regarded the plastic cups by the sink, the towels and clothes playing havoc on the pull-down bed where she and Chanu took turns sleeping. She sprang up. 'Got to get this straight.'

'God. God,' Chanu moaned. 'Leave it.'

'Action man,' she said, and remembered with a shiver Razia's words: brick man.

'He's not even cold yet! Your son is not even cold. Don't bloody tidy up.'

'My son?' and now, even now, she refused.

Chanu squeezed at his eyes, and some water trickled down his cheeks so that he looked to be wringing out the tears. 'We have to go and get him. They don't bring him back here.'

They don't bring him back here. She was still holding the plastic cups. She picked up another and slotted it into her stack.

'They said they will release the body quickly. They said they know we are Muslim. They know, they said they know, about how quickly we like to bury our dead.'

How quickly we like to bury our dead. She began folding clothes. She picked a stray thread from a vest, pulled fluff off a jumper. Chanu came to her and held her arms. He prised her fingers from Raqib's jacket. To get her to sit he had to push her onto the bed. She let him take her hand in his.

Yes, she would wash him. She brought him in and she would take him out. She had seen babies buried. In the village, babies were buried often. She could remember the funerals, one or two, of cousins who came into the world and left again promptly, as if they had wandered into a room by mistake, apologized and turned back. Little white parcels popped inside a hole and covered with leaves or canes, so that the soil would not stain them, so they left as pristine as they entered. She remembered the burying; of the buried she retained nothing.