A Golden Age Read Free Page A

edges and drawn meandering, old-age seams into the walls. But every day, as Rehana woke for the dawn Azaan, or when she went to put the washing in the garden, or when, after bathing, she fanned out her long hair on the back of a veranda chair, Rehana looked at the house with pride and a little ache. It was there to remind her of what she had lost, and what she had won. And how much the victory had cost. That is why she had named it Shona , gold. It wasn’t just because of what it had taken to build the house, but for all the precious things she wanted never to lose again.
Rehana turned back to the bungalow and entered the drawing room. She ran her palm across the flat fur of the velvet sofa, the
     
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dimpled wood of the dining table. The scratched, loved, faded whitewash of the veranda wall.
She unfurled her prayer mat, pointed it westwards and sank to her knees.
This was the start of the ritual: wake before sunrise, feel her way around the house; pray; wake the children.
They were not children any more. She had to keep reminding herself of this fact. At nineteen and seventeen, they were almost grown up. She clung greedily to the almost , but she knew it would not last long, this hovering, flirting with adulthood. Already they were beings apart, fast on their way to shedding the fierce, hungry mother-need.
     
Rehana lifted the mosquito net and nudged Maya’s shoulder. ‘Wake up, jaan,’ she said. ‘It’s our anniversary!’
She went to Sohail’s room and knocked, but he was already awake. ‘For you,’ she said, holding out the rose.
While the children took turns in the bath, Rehana ironed their new clothes. This year she had chosen an egg-blue sari for herself and a blue georgette with yellow polka dots for Maya. For Sohail there was a brown kurta-pyjama. She had embroidered the purple flowers on the collar herself.
‘Ammoo,’ Maya said, ‘I have to go to campus after the party – I can’t wear this.’
‘I’m sure your activist friends won’t mind if you don’t wear white for one day.’
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ she retorted, tucking the sari under her elbow anyway.
After they had all bathed and put on their new clothes, the children took turns touching Rehana’s feet. ‘God bless you,’ she said, hugging them tightly, their strong, tanned arms around her neck almost beyond her imagination.
They were both taller than her. Maya had passed Rehana by a few inches, and Sohail was a full head and shoulders above them both; Rehana was often reminded of the moment she’d met Iqbal, hunched over the wedding dais, how he had towered over her like
     
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a thunder cloud. But in fact Sohail had grown to resemble Rehana. He was pale and had her small nose and her slightly crooked teeth; his hair was fashioned into a wave at the top of his head, the crest threatening to tip over his eyelids. Sometimes, like today, he wore kurta-pyjamas, but usually he was seen in more fashionable attire: tight, long-collared shirts and even tighter trousers that hung over his shoes and drew tracks in the dust.
It was Maya who looked more like her father. She had his chestnut skin and deep-set eyes that made her look serious even when she was trying to say something funny or make a joke – which rarely happened – but Rehana had often seen her friends pause and look at each other, wondering whether to laugh.
They took two rickshaws. Maya and Sohail climbed into the first and Rehana followed. She liked being behind them, watch- ing their shoulders knocking through the rolled-up flap on the back of the rickshaw.
She hadn’t seen her own sisters for years now. Marzia had come to Dhaka a few years after the children’s return. She had brought photos of her own children, plump twin boys with big faces and windswept hair. She kept talking about the smell of salt in the Karachi streets, and the burned taste of kababs on Clifton Beach, and, even though she devoured Rehana’s dimer halwa and swallowed the sweet Dhaka air with