The Good Muslim by Tahmima Anam Page A

afford a chicken, a half-leg of mutton, when she sees, across the road, someone familiar. Her own son. She catches the barest glimpse, but she is sure it’s him. He is getting down from a rickshaw, and she lifts her hand, is about to call out, but he looks beyond her, his face changing. He crosses the road, approaching her but not seeing her, and now he is both her son and not her son, as he walks directly past her. She turns to see what he sees: a man in another rickshaw. He approaches the man, says not a word, hauls him out of the rickshaw and punches him in the face. Three times, three punches. Then he turns and walks towards her, the muscles in his back rippling, telling her he knows this man, that this man has done terrible things, that he has seen these terrible things, and she knows now that these are the visions that have him pacing the hallway at night, the ones that leave his pillows wet and his mouth frozen stiffly, even as he tries to smile and act as if everything has gone back to normal.
    And, not knowing what else to do, because he has asked her never to speak about it, she gives him the Holy Book. The book has helped her through so many difficult times, times she could not imagine surviving. But he shakes his head, because he has come to believe that the Book was part of the problem, before the war, before Bangladesh. Because people were attached to the Book, or their idea of the Book, more than to each other, or to their neighbours, or to their country. They had called themselves revolutionaries, and believed that faith was beneath them, a consolation for simpler, lower minds. Sohail turns his face from the Book and waves his mother away.
    This wounds her, because she too has her memories, of her son, a boy who would not dismiss his mother, who would not punch a stranger in the street. That her son has seen, and committed, acts of violence, is not surprising to her – but she cannot account for the lingering of his passions so long after the end of the battle.
    Sohail rejects the Book. He lets it gather dust on his desk, and then he shelves it away high, where its spine is not in his sight.
    She decides to read to him. You don’t have to listen, she says, just sit with me.
    This was how it began. It hurt her to remember this, because everything that happened afterwards could be traced to Sohail’s first steps towards God, beginning with the Book that she gave him, that gathered dust on his bookshelf, that she prised from between Neruda and Ghalib, that she read aloud while he ate his breakfast, that he was unable to resist, that he began to memorise, then understand, then love, that finally fell into his hands as he learned to read, that wove itself into his heart – that led to revelation and his conversion, the alchemy of which none of his loved ones could trace to a single moment, a single gesture.

1984
June
    Several months after Chottu and Saima’s party, Joy telephoned with another invitation. ‘The party wasn’t really your cup of tea, was it?’
    ‘Was it yours?’ She was glad to hear his voice. ‘Why haven’t you rung?’
    He laughed. ‘I was waiting for the right opportunity and it has just come up.’
    ‘Oh? What’s that? Not another evening of whisky and dancing?’
    ‘Maya-bee, your heart is as hard as sugar. No, this is something totally different – I thought you might like to see the other side.’
    ‘The other side of what?’
    ‘People who care about the same things you do.’
    ‘No, thanks. I already did. You remember Aditi – I met her at the party? She took me to her newspaper office. The editor is giving me a column.’
    ‘Shafaat?’
    ‘You know him?’
    ‘Everyone knows him.’
    She didn’t like the way he said everyone . She was about to tell him so when he said, ‘I’m talking about real revolutionaries. Look, you won’t regret it – I’ll pick you up at three.’ Before she could reply, he hung up. Real revolutionaries. He knew she wouldn’t be able to