Anwar Gets Everything: Book Excerpt from The Bones of Grace by Tahmima Anam
Foreman likes to hoist the new ones up, see what they’re made of. Some of them have never climbed higher than a tree in their village. Back home the place is flat, flat. I’m here nine years, I know what’s what, so I tell them, don’t look, don’t look. Hold the torch in one hand, like this, and keep your eye on one screw at a time. From here to here, I show them, holding my fingers apart an inch, maybe an inch and a half. Your eye will see this much, no more. Understand?
I don’t tell them the whole story. Whole story is this: you look down, you die. You see the world has shrunk below you. You call God but no one answers. You recite the kalma. You see God is not there. You piss your pants. No one is watching. No one cares about your shitty speck of a life. The people below are specks and you are a speck. God looks down and sees nothing but tiny ants below Him. You choke. You move your legs. You scream. The building shifts, it moves, it throws you up, it throws you over. You’re done for, a chapatti. They scrape you off the pavement; they don’t even write to your family. Months later, someone will go to your village and tell the news to your people. And that will be the end of your life.
All this I don’t say. I say only what is useful.
This new kid won’t listen. Came in with a swagger – I spotted it right away, the way he moved his legs and his trousers hanging, his head loose on his shoulder, nodding, doesn’t look down when Foreman is talking, raises his head and gives two eyes to the boss. Eye for an eye. Foreman smiles. I know that smile; it means I’ll take that two-eyed look right out of your skull. Soon you’ll be like the rest of them, giving me the top of your head and mumbling into your shirt.
I have schooling, sir, the kid says. Intermediate pass.
Foreman says, Crane will take you to the top. And the kid says yessir as if he’s been given a gift. All that school, he doesn’t even know when his ass is being strung up.
Later I ask the kid where his people are. We’re on the same sleeping shift, starts two in the afternoon, the shed hot as an animal’s mouth. You can’t touch the metal rails on the bunk, you just jump onto the mattress and pray for a breeze.
He says he’s a Pahari, says it with a little edge, like I’m a Pahari, you gonna fuck with me? I’ve never seen such pride in a tribal, and I say, so what, no one cares here.
Army took our village, so I had to come here, make some money. He shrugs like he doesn’t mind but I can see when he closes his eyes he is going to dream about college, hearing his name in the roll-call, getting his degree and spending his life in a shirt with buttons and getting some respect. Some day, someone might even call him sir. Buy a scooter and get himself a salty wife.
But now he is here. Shit, he says, it’s like a fry pan inside.
It’s only March. Wait a few months, I tell him. Then you’ll see what hell feels like. Then I give him my two paisa little bit of advice. I tell him, stay away from Foreman and keep your mouth shut. And when he hauls you up, whatever you do, don’t look down. The kid nods, but I know what he’s thinking, thinking it’s not going to be him at the end of a rope.
I go to my bunk and try to sleep. This month I’m in the middle. We take turns, Hameed, Malek and me. Top bunk is hottest, but there’s a breeze, if you can catch it, from a small window out of the side of the shed. Bottom bunk is cooler, but closer to the ground and the toilet stink is strong. Middle is the worst, like being sandwiched between two asses, especially because this month I’ve got Malek on top. He makes the springs creak as he pleasures himself to sleep. I’m used to the steady rhythm of it, I don’t say anything. A man has his needs, out here in the desert. Myself, I can’t do it. I reach down and Megna’s face comes into my head. She won’t let me sleep. I see her little tears and she’s asking me to stay – what will I do when the baby comes? And I’m saying no, I’m shrugging. I’m calling her a slut, even though I know it was her first time, and I’d told her I loved her and meant it, except my uncle is there too, and he’s telling me Dubai, Dubai, son, it’s like paradise, shopping malls and television and air con. Marry my daughter and the ticket is in your hand. You’re a slut, I tell Megna, and I swivel around and leave her there, except I don’t leave her because whenever I try to get myself a little something, like a piece of sleep or a full stomach, she comes out and she comes out strong. I want to know what she did to the little seed I planted in her, where does it live, does it know me, and does it have the eyes of its mother. I’m in the dark and I can’t sleep. Malek sighs, rolls over, and the room gets hotter and the stink rises.
Too quickly the sleep shift is over and it’s time to get back to the site. Pahari kid is about to get his first kick in the head, but he doesn’t know it, he just pulls on his uniform like he’s the Sheikh himself. I have to throw water on Malek’s face to wake him up. He curses me and jumps down. The floor vibrates. How the man stays fat with hardly any rice in his stomach is beyond me. Next shift is already waiting outside – it’s dark, and starting to cool down, the lucky bastards.
The bus drops us at the canteen. Hameed sits at the end of the table so people can bring him the letters. He’s the only one who can read. We pay him a few dirhams to tell us the news from home. He reads me letters from my darkie wife, she says take care don’t forget to eat and does it get cold do you have a shawl? The others are always laughing, she’s going to tell you how to wipe the shit from your ass, they say. I laugh with them. Stupid girl. I don’t write back.
Hameed says sometimes he changes the letters, because there’s only so much a man can take. Last week he read that Chottu’s mother had died. Poor bastard’s only been here a month, still cries every time he has to stand out in the baking hot, carrying bricks on his head. So Hameed told him his mother was well, much better in fact, since he started sending money for her asthma medicine. Later, when Chottu gets hard like the rest of us, Hameed will tell him the truth. And by then he won’t even stop to take a breath.
The canteen manager is Filipino, so stingy we get a piece of bread, dal and a few vegetables, and even that they cut from our pay. Eid comes he gives us meat, but only bones and fat. One thing my uncle said was true – as much Coke as we want, straight out of a spout.
Tareque Bhai, Hameed says, your sister has given birth to a healthy baby boy.
Mahshallah, Tareque Bhai says. Tareque has been here the longest and he has gone the religious way. Two ways a man can go here, in the direction of God or the direction of believing there is nothing up there but a sun that will kill you whether you pray five times or not.
We wash our hands and head to the site. They’ve turned the lights on, the buildings are winking. We come to the Mall of Dubai, which Tareque Bhai remembers was only a few years ago a pile of rubble, and Pahari kid says, why don’t we walk through here? And we all look at him like he was born yesterday. Even dumber than I thought.
You can’t go in there, I say.
Why, is there a law?
Doesn’t have to be a law.
I’m going in, he says, loose, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. Anyone coming with me?
I think Hameed’s going – those book-learning types always stick together – but it’s Malek that breaks off and joins him and I’m cursing myself for not grabbing him before it’s too late, telling him, don’t even smell that, it’ll kill you.
The rest of us make tracks, shaking our heads. This month, Hameed and me are in the hole. Two buildings going up side by side, facing each other. We call them Bride and Groom. Bride is almost finished, Groom still in foundations. Fifty-fifty, they tell us, fifty stories for Bride, fifty for Groom. Who knows what they’ll name it once it’s finished. Burj-al-Arab-al-Sheikh-al-Maktoum-al-kiss-myass. Shit, if I said that aloud I would be finished. I giggle to myself and Hameed swings his arm around my shoulder, laughing with me even though he hasn’t heard the joke.
Bride and Groom makes me think of darkie wife. She was the skinniest, ugliest girl I ever saw. I took one look at her and I swear a few tears came to my eyes. To this girl I was going to be tied for life? Just do it, my mother said, you won’t even see her for years. Who knows what will happen between now and then? But give us a grandchild, something to keep us company while you’re gone.
I did my duty. Girl started to cry and I even felt a little sorry for her though I was also thinking, two times I’ve done it and both times the girl has burst into tears – something wrong with me or what? Next day I took her to the cinema, but even Shah Rukh Khan couldn’t wipe the sad from her face.
We climb down and the bright lights make the hole turn bluegrey. The diggers are awake and we start to haul the dirt around, everything dry and sucked of life.
I pick up a basket and start hauling the dirt. I wonder if Malek and Pahari have made it out of the mall without getting their eyes pulled out and just as I’m imagining what it must have looked like, two guys in their blue jumpsuits staring at those diamond-necked swans of Dubai, I feel a jab in my side, and there’s Malek, laughing so hard I can see the gap where he lost a tooth last year after biting down on a piece of candy he bought from the Filipino. Worth it, he’d said, I never tasted anything so good. Now he’s telling me about the mall, the cold air that made your sweat dry to salt, and the high ceilings, and the women, the women, didn’t cover their legs, no, or even their breasts. Breasts, man, like you wouldn’t believe. He slaps me hard on the back, shaking up my basket so I can taste the dirt. Go to work, I say, but he’s too busy talking, and now some of the other boys, Hameed and even Tareque Bhai, have joined in, and I can see them all thinking it could be them next, them in the ice-cream cold of the mall, gaping and staring and taking a little slice of heaven back to the hole to chew over.
Worst of all, Pahari kid got hauled up to the top of Bride and nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. He swung like a monkey and laughed his way through the shift. Turns out those tribals like floating on top of buildings, hitched up so the whole world is spread below them.
For the next two weeks, every day, Malek and Pahari pass through the Mall of Dubai on their way to the site. They take their jumpsuits in a plastic bag and go in wearing trousers and T-shirts. One day Malek comes over to my bunk with a pair of sunglasses draped over his eyes. Look, he says, I’m James Bond now.
I keep my head down. I have debts to pay, I can’t take the chance.
Once, only once, I am tempted. They are going to the cinema – not the cheap, rundown place by the camp, I’m talking a brand-new theatre, air con, seats like pillows. Pahari knows this guy at the ticket stall, been wooing him since day one, going up, talking about home, saying yaar this and my friend that. And finally the guy gave it up, late show on Monday nights usually empty, come in with the cleaning crew and sit at the back. Four people, max. Don’t get me fired or I’ll tell the cops everything, even about the girl.
Pahari has a girlfriend. Not even a darkie or a Chink, a proper fair-faced blondie, a shopgirl who sells perfume. He leans over the counter and she smiles like she’s seen Shah Rukh Khan. We huddle close to Pahari, trying to catch a whisper of that girl’s smell.
While we’re heaving bags of sand to Groom, Pahari and Malek start arguing about what to see. Malek says it has to be the new Dhoom! But our boy wants to see an English film. What you’re going to do with an
English film, you little shit? But Pahari’s not thinking about himself, he’s thinking of his girl, moving his hand in the dark, cupping her knee, fingering the border of her skirt, and what’s going to make her open up, a movie with mummy-daddy and fake
kissing and chasing around trees, or real humpty-dumpty, tongues and blonde hair and New York City?
Pahari has a point, but I’m just hauling the sand, keeping my head low. Wife has sent another letter. April and the waters are going up, up. Last week my brother, who works at a weaving mill, came home with a bad leg. Needs an operation. Can I send money? I shove the letter under my mattress.
Send money, send money. All anyone ever wants. I have to ask for an advance, so I crawl to Foreman. He’s got a toothpick hanging out from the side of his mouth, and he twirls it around and around. You
Bangladeshis, he says, can’t hold on to your money, na. Look at this. He points to a big black book, lines of names. Everyone borrowing, nobody saving. You’re going to drown, all of you.
He opens his mouth, toothpick falls out, frayed and shining with spit. Should I pick it up? I stare at my feet.
How much you want?
I don’t know why, but I don’t say anything for a long time. Pahari and Malek are going to the movies tonight. He’s going to lean back on that chair and swing his arm over his girl. He’s going to sip Coke through a straw and the music will breeze through him, free and liquid.
Then I say, I have been loyal, sir.
Foreman leans back. Chair squeaks like a dying mouse.
Sure, you never stole.
Yes, sir. I always do what you say.
I lift my chin a little and he knows what I’m talking about, the little cover-ups, taking a few bags of cement off the truck, losing a little cash. The boss, the Sheikh with three wives, always wearing a prayer cap and telling us to call him Master Al-Haj because he goes to Saudi every year and kisses the prophet’s grave – he wouldn’t miss a few things here and there. A sack of rivets, a few pots of paint were nothing to him.
So you’re telling me what, na, that I should be grateful? Fresh toothpick in his mouth. Now I’m thinking about Megna, her thick river of hair, how she smelled so good and told me I should be a proud man. Nothing to be proud of, I always said.
Yes, sir, I find myself saying. Loyalty like that, it doesn’t come easy.
And I suppose you want something for your trouble? He’s getting up, he’s coming towards me, he’s going to give me something, a little money and a slap on the shoulder, friendly like. You have to ask for it, I think. All you have to do is ask. Foreman’s close now, he takes my chin in his hand, lifts me up so we’re eye to eye, and for a minute I see him staring at my lips and I think he’s going to kiss me. He
opens his mouth. And then he spits, toothpick flying out of his mouth, right there on my face.
You stinking bitch, fuck off. You blackmailing me? He makes a fist, sends it to my cheek. I fall, cursing Megna, her hair and her stupid wisdom. I try to make myself small. He kicks me. I feel his shoe in my stomach. I double up, he kicks me again. My face explodes. I taste blood. A tooth comes loose.
Who pulled you out of the shithole you call a country?
You.
Louder!
You!
Who gave you a job when you came crawling back?
You.
Say it.
You!
And then I make the begging sounds, I tell him about my brother, about his leg, they make him sit in those clay pits, eighteen, twenty hours, feeding silk into the loom, the cold grabbing his thighs. Please, Foreman, I say, forgive me.
Piece of shit. Get out.
Pahari and Malek come back from the cinema with smiles so big I can see their back teeth. I show off my broken face.
What happened to you? Malek asks.
Foreman. What you get for thinking big thoughts.
You?
Ya, me. Surprise.
Pahari’s looking at my face, my swollen eye.
Uglier than ever, I say, trying to laugh.
He’s shaking his head. That’s not right. They can’t do that.
They can do whatever the fuck they like. It’s their country.
We’ll go to the police. He can’t just beat you.
He makes me cheerful with his baby talk. It’s nothing, I say. Sit. Tell me about the cinema. I pat the bunk. Come, Malek. But he’s pacing the tiny corridor between our beds.
Bastard, bastard, he mutters.
I turn to Pahari. So what did you see?
English film, he says, raising his eyebrows. Lots of shooting.
Your girl enjoyed?
He lay back on the bunk, raised his hands to his face. Shit, man.
I could almost remember that feeling, the first time I tasted a woman’s mouth.
Be careful, was all I could say. They put you under a spell and then you’re finished.
So what you’ll do about your brother? Malek is squeezing himself onto my bunk.
Brother will have to wait.
Let me give it to you.
What do you have?
I have, I have.
I can’t help it, my tongue keeps going to the missing tooth, the gap made of jelly. Malek tries to press me but I won’t eat his rice.
Oh, I almost forgot, brother. We brought you a gift. Pahari takes a packet of candy out of his pocket. I chew with my good side.
Sleep now, I say to them both. It will last longer if you dream about it.
Next day, Foreman comes to the camp. I have a job, he says.
Bride is almost finished, she just needs her windows cleaned. Sheikh Abdullah Bin-Richistan is coming to cut a ribbon and everything has to be perfect. We’re running out of time and job needs to be done in a hurry. I’ll go, Pahari says, even though it’s higher, much higher, than he’s ever been, but he wants to take his girl out, proper restaurant this time, with people smiling and asking if he wants ice in his Coke and bringing plates to the table.
I want double overtime, he says. Foreman smiles and says, all right, and then, because I see something in the boss’s eye, I raise my hand too, and before you know it, Malek is watching us drive off in a truck. Foreman takes us into Bride’s lobby, empty and shining, and I give myself a little smile, because I know I put this thing together with my own hands, me and Malek and the other boys, working through the devil’s breath of summer. Pahari is looking around, dreaming of when he’s going to own the whole place. They’ve taken off the elevator on the outside, but there’s another one at the back of the building, where all the cooks and cleaners and guards will come and go, and we’re going up, up, all the way. Wear this, Foreman says, handing us a pair of hard hats. Then he slides open a big door, and we are on the roof of the building, flat and open to the sky. I wonder if Pahari’s thinking it wasn’t such a good idea after all, but he’s not one to admit it. When I put my hand on his back he shrugs it away, moving with speed to where Foreman is pointing, to a little balcony hanging over the edge of the building.
Clips and ropes fix us to the sides of the balcony. I’m going to lower you all the way down, Foreman says. You do one floor at a time, slowly. Then you push the button, and you go up. He shows me how to work it. I see there isn’t anything holding us to the side of the building; we’re only attached at the top. It’s going to sway. I look over at Pahari again, wondering if I should cut out of the whole thing, but he’s grinning like it’s Eid. Don’t worry, Foreman says. And he winks.
On the way down Pahari hangs on the edge and makes a strange, low sound which I think maybe is panic but then he turns around and says, FLYING! The bastard is laughing, holding his arms out and shaking his shoulders around like he’s hero in a filmi dance sequence. The windows are like mirrors, we can see our reflections. He puts his arm around me and we are floating down, angels from heaven, Superman and God and people who don’t eat shit for a living.
Every window we clean, we go up one more flight. We’re shining up that Bride and she’s looking good. There’s a wind up here, the balcony moves a little, then a bit more as we move higher. Now we’re holding on with one hand and cleaning with another. We wash, I push the button, we go up, wind gets stronger.
I’m going to marry her, Pahari tells me.
A man marrying for love. Too good for me, but nothing’s too good for Pahari. He wants everything.
Do it, I say. Is she going to convert?
I’m Christian, you idiot.
All this time, and I didn’t even know. That was my problem. I thought everyone was the same, but it didn’t have to be that way. Even I didn’t have to be the same. I could be different. The wind dies down and we have a moment of quiet so I can think about all the ways I could be different. And then, before my dreaming starts making me big, wind picks up again. This time, it comes with sand. Minute later the air is thick with it, so thick I can only just make out Pahari on the other side, holding on with both arms. It will pass, I shout, swallowing a mouthful of the desert. Don’t worry. Hold on.
We wait, turning our backs to the wind, becoming small, small as we can. I crawl to Pahari and I grab his jumpsuit, put my arm through his arm. We groan as the sand comes into our ears, into our clothes, the devil’s spit. The balcony lifts, higher on one side and then another. I pull the lever, but we can only go up, not down. Only one way, so I climb us up, slow as I can. Close to the top and suddenly it shudders to a stop, and I push and push but nothing happens. I crawl to the other side, see if I can make the ropes move. I can’t. I ask myself if this is the time to start praying, but no God was going to hear me now, not after all the curses I had sent in His direction. It will pass, it will pass, I keep saying, but Pahari can’t hear me now, he’s on the other side, and the wind is too high, and before I know it, we’re going back and forth like a swing, and it’s everything I’ve got to keep my arm around the bars of the platform, and I do just like what I teach those boys when they first get here, just focus on a small piece of the building, not the tall of it falling away below me, just this little piece in front of me, and I will the moment to stand very still, and then I see Pahari, his arm has come loose, and the ropes that tie him to the machine, and the sound of him falling is swallowed by the hiss of the desert, that shape-shifting snake.
Now I’m home and I’ve got everything. Because Pahari’s dead and they paid me off. I’m the greedy bastard now. I’m the one who isn’t the same. The old me would’ve stayed, maybe made sure Pahari got his proper burial, maybe I wouldn’t even have taken their dirty money, maybe I would’ve made a stink about it, but soon as they handed me that envelope I was gone. Malek told me the Sheikh was getting rid of
Foreman. We shouldn’t have been up there, not without better safety equipment. It’s not something they can cover up, like the boys who jump because they miss their mamas and can’t take another day. We were up there for over an hour; lots of people saw, real people who matter. We can make our demands, Malek said, ask for better pay, overtime and a good place to sleep.
But I didn’t care about any of that. Because when I was going to die, when I was hanging up there with the storm in my face, all I could think about was my kid. My kid, walking around with no memory of a father, a kid who would look at himself in the mirror and not know where his face came from. Who knows what Megna had told him, though if she said bad, it would all be true, because I was a bastard for letting it come into the world without a name. Now I want it all, I want my fridge and my socks and my name and Megna, my little piece of heaven, and I’m coming to get it.
Tahmina Anam
Tahmima Anam is the author of the Bengal Trilogy, which chronicles three generations of the Haque family from the Bangladesh war of independence to the present day.