country?’
‘Why do you want to know?’ I don’t filter the irritation out of my voice.
He’s impervious to my hostility. ‘Take a piece of advice from a fellow Aussie, mate. Don’t get involved in anything you might regret later. You’ve a clean record. Keep it that way.’
‘It’s none of your affair what I do here!’ I explode.
‘Perhaps we can have a talk some time?’ He washes his hands, gives me a card and leaves.
‘What do you mean a clean record?’ I shout indignantly as the door shuts behind him.
I’m still fuming when I stride back to the table. Mills and his companions are nowhere to be seen.
My friends are arguing about the spate of recent bomb attacks in the city. Acceptance of this violence seems a condition of living in a politically uncertain country: rather than the gruesomeness of the destruction, it’s the possible motives and connections of the bombers that’s causing friction.
Zia and Sami are convinced that local and politically affiliated groups are responsible for communal instability and the disorder in the country, a drift towards anarchy.
Nizam is dismissive of their opinion. ‘Rubbish!’ he scorns. ‘Religious fundamentalists, with links to Al Qaeda, are the culprits! And they’re growing in alarming numbers. Take that fellow Bangla Bhai, for instance. He has openly told the press that he wants to form a Taliban-modelled religious government.’ Nizam turns to me. ‘We have a fairly liberal Bangla newspaper, Prothom Khobor . Its editorial once suggested that some madrassas are the training grounds for militants. Well! You should have seen the reaction! Protests and harassment of journalists, copies of the newspaper burned, demands that it be shut down.’
Fazal has been watching me with quiet amusement. He leans over and whispers. ‘We don’t discuss the arts or the stock market or the price of property any more.’
‘What’s the real cause of the violence?’ I ask.
‘It’s best not to worry about the growing confusion that grips us,’ Sami concludes. ‘Being Bangalis no longer gives us the same satisfaction of identity that we fought for. As a friend of mine said, “There are also Bangalisacross the border in India. We owe a great deal of our culture to them. The main difference is that most of them are Hindus. We need something more distinctive and independent. Something to define the sui generis nature of our people.”’
The conversation peters out and we slouch in our chairs, bloated with beer and rich food, gulping mineral water. The silence contains more than irreconcilable differences. It seems that each of us has decided to erect barriers around those experiences that cannot be shared. But perhaps it’s my obsession with privacy that makes me think this way. Do my friends have unrealised dreams? Do they, too, have a past to hide? There’s something fake about our friendship now. A sense of hollow ritual.
A uniformed chauffeur appears and stands behind Fazal’s chair. He coughs politely.
‘Ah, Belal! Time to go home. My wife never forgets to send the car. What would I do without Rashida?’ Fazal clasps my shoulder. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing, old friend. You must marry! We’ll be in touch.’
Sami stands to go too, clicks his heels and salutes me.
‘Sometimes I wish we could go back to those exciting times!’ Nizam sighs, looking at me with glazed eyes, as though attempting to stoke my enthusiasm for experiences we once shared. Alcohol makes him maudlin. ‘We were responsible for changing our world. If nothing else, we had noble motives. Utopian dreams.’
He begins to sing the national anthem. Fazal and Sami help him lurch towards the door.
‘ My golden Bengal, I love you, ’ I murmur, more out of curiosity than patriotism. The words sound shallow and unfaithful, as if I’m a fickle lover.
Suddenly I remember Steven Mills. Tipsy, I tell Zia what he had said about Irfan and Sadiq.
‘An Australian! How
‘Why do you want to know?’ I don’t filter the irritation out of my voice.
He’s impervious to my hostility. ‘Take a piece of advice from a fellow Aussie, mate. Don’t get involved in anything you might regret later. You’ve a clean record. Keep it that way.’
‘It’s none of your affair what I do here!’ I explode.
‘Perhaps we can have a talk some time?’ He washes his hands, gives me a card and leaves.
‘What do you mean a clean record?’ I shout indignantly as the door shuts behind him.
I’m still fuming when I stride back to the table. Mills and his companions are nowhere to be seen.
My friends are arguing about the spate of recent bomb attacks in the city. Acceptance of this violence seems a condition of living in a politically uncertain country: rather than the gruesomeness of the destruction, it’s the possible motives and connections of the bombers that’s causing friction.
Zia and Sami are convinced that local and politically affiliated groups are responsible for communal instability and the disorder in the country, a drift towards anarchy.
Nizam is dismissive of their opinion. ‘Rubbish!’ he scorns. ‘Religious fundamentalists, with links to Al Qaeda, are the culprits! And they’re growing in alarming numbers. Take that fellow Bangla Bhai, for instance. He has openly told the press that he wants to form a Taliban-modelled religious government.’ Nizam turns to me. ‘We have a fairly liberal Bangla newspaper, Prothom Khobor . Its editorial once suggested that some madrassas are the training grounds for militants. Well! You should have seen the reaction! Protests and harassment of journalists, copies of the newspaper burned, demands that it be shut down.’
Fazal has been watching me with quiet amusement. He leans over and whispers. ‘We don’t discuss the arts or the stock market or the price of property any more.’
‘What’s the real cause of the violence?’ I ask.
‘It’s best not to worry about the growing confusion that grips us,’ Sami concludes. ‘Being Bangalis no longer gives us the same satisfaction of identity that we fought for. As a friend of mine said, “There are also Bangalisacross the border in India. We owe a great deal of our culture to them. The main difference is that most of them are Hindus. We need something more distinctive and independent. Something to define the sui generis nature of our people.”’
The conversation peters out and we slouch in our chairs, bloated with beer and rich food, gulping mineral water. The silence contains more than irreconcilable differences. It seems that each of us has decided to erect barriers around those experiences that cannot be shared. But perhaps it’s my obsession with privacy that makes me think this way. Do my friends have unrealised dreams? Do they, too, have a past to hide? There’s something fake about our friendship now. A sense of hollow ritual.
A uniformed chauffeur appears and stands behind Fazal’s chair. He coughs politely.
‘Ah, Belal! Time to go home. My wife never forgets to send the car. What would I do without Rashida?’ Fazal clasps my shoulder. ‘You don’t know what you’re missing, old friend. You must marry! We’ll be in touch.’
Sami stands to go too, clicks his heels and salutes me.
‘Sometimes I wish we could go back to those exciting times!’ Nizam sighs, looking at me with glazed eyes, as though attempting to stoke my enthusiasm for experiences we once shared. Alcohol makes him maudlin. ‘We were responsible for changing our world. If nothing else, we had noble motives. Utopian dreams.’
He begins to sing the national anthem. Fazal and Sami help him lurch towards the door.
‘ My golden Bengal, I love you, ’ I murmur, more out of curiosity than patriotism. The words sound shallow and unfaithful, as if I’m a fickle lover.
Suddenly I remember Steven Mills. Tipsy, I tell Zia what he had said about Irfan and Sadiq.
‘An Australian! How