Tahirul was bewildered. He felt terribly embarrassed. He turned his head to see whether Maruf had heard. He probably hadn’t. He had turned his face away. He didn’t feel bold enough to give Ayan any further advice. He moved away from the boy.

Meanwhile, a problem had cropped up. A student was missing. He was seventeen years old. A fifteen-para hafez. The boy had been here for seven years, but he hadn’t become a hafez yet. Apparently, some boys had this problem. In the face of the thrashing by the teachers in the madrasa and the strict discipline, a few boys fled the place. The guardians and teachers responded saying that the fires of hell would not touch the spots lashed by the teacher’s cane. Perhaps this boy didn’t feel reassured by that. His name was Zaman Baidya. He belonged to South 24 Parganas district. Amin Saheb appeared quite worried on that account. Maruf and Tahirul didn’t stay for long. They left the place.

Arriving at the bus stand, Maruf and Tahirul stopped at a shop to have some tea. Suddenly, amidst the crowd in the bus stand, they spotted a boy sitting huddled in a corner. He looked like a madrasa student. It didn’t take Maruf long to guess that this boy was Zaman Baidya. He had a dirty white panjabi on. But the cap on his head was clean. He looked out of place. Tahirul exclaimed to Maruf, ‘Go and catch him! Send him back to the madrasa. Let me stay out of sight. The boy knows me. He’ll run the moment he sees me. It’s late, where can he go now?’

Maruf wanted to have a bit of fun in the process of rescuing the boy! Affecting a grave voice, like a Pir or a darbesh, he called him. ‘Hey Zaman! Come here, son! Come here!’

He had been able to startle the boy. Dumbfounded at being spotted, he came up docilely to Maruf. He then asked him, ‘Zaman Baidya! Where are you going?’

‘How did you know my name?’

‘You study in the madrasa, don’t you?’

‘Yes, Sir.’

‘So then you surely know what ilm-e-baten and ilm-e-zahir are?’

‘No. We are students of the Hafezi Madrasa. We only memorize the Koran. I don’t know about any of that.’

‘Those who acquire secret knowledge are called ilm-e-baten. Like me. I am not supposed to know your name. But I know you belong to South 24 Parganas. It’s night now. How will you go home? You could get lost too!’

‘Please tell me who you are. You don’t have to worry about me. Just like I got out, I’ll make my way home.’

Perhaps the boy didn’t believe in ilm-e-baten and suchlike. Or perhaps he only understood reality. Maruf was taken aback a bit to see that he had not really been able to startle the boy. How harsh this chit of a boy’s words were! And such confidence! Maruf said, ‘You have nothing in your pocket. Come, let me get you something to eat.’

That worked. The boy agreed to eat. He hadn’t been able to board a bus because he had no money. Once the boy relaxed, Maruf asked him, ‘Why are you running away?’

‘My Abba passed away five years ago. I have four siblings, and I’m the eldest. We are very poor. I am not going home now. I’ll go to Metiabruz. I’m going to learn tailoring there. There’s someone from our village who works there. I’m going to meet him. I have his address. He told me he will teach me the trade.’

‘Do your folks at home know about this?’

‘No. My Ma says that no matter what the difficulty is, I must become a Hafez Saheb.’

‘You should have heeded your Ma’s words.’

The boy was silent. Maruf had purchased a cake for him. After he took a bite of that, he began sobbing. In between his sobs, he said to Maruf, ‘My Ma works as a maidservant in people’s homes … I want to make things easier for Ma! Whatever I’ve learnt is enough. Now I have to learn a trade. Unless I do that, I can’t help Ma. But she doesn’t want me to leave my studies and start working. That’s why I ran away.’

Maruf was gazing at the boy all the while. He wondered where the boy got his sensitivity from. Was poverty his teacher? Perhaps so. A bus bound for Kolkata had arrived. Maruf took out a five-hundred-rupee note from his pocket and stuffed it into the boy’s hand. He said, ‘Make your Ma happy, son! Go, get on this bus!’

Maulana Tahirul reappeared and asked him exasperatedly, ‘What did you do, Maruf Bhai? You let him go? The boy’s boarded the bus!’

‘Hujur, I realized that we are not policemen, and the boy Zaman Baidya is not a criminal either, that’s why…’

‘The boy is thickheaded. Or else, would he have remained stuck at fifteen paras after seven years!’

‘Really? In that case, I did well, Hujur! There’s nothing to worry about, he’ll get to his destination all right.’

‘But where is he going?’

‘To heaven.’

‘Meaning? What are you saying?’

‘Meaning, there’s nothing to fear. He won’t die and he won’t get lost. He is going to make things better for his Ma. And heaven lies at the feet of one’s mother, isn’t it?’

forty

Riziya was reading. She seemed to have become addicted to reading. But she did that only to cheer herself up. She ignored her college academic stuff and submerged herself in various books. Riziya derived joy from that. She banged on the shut door of her conscience. The air of freedom swooshed in. She could breathe even though she was submerged. She enriched herself through the eclectic set of books she read. Riziya was amazed! How little I know! She knew what she didn’t know, she began to know what had hitherto remained unknown to her.

The other day she had opened a book and glanced at the first page. She saw something written by Tahirul, with his signature. He had written: ‘A gift for Riziya, with a touch of affection’. Hujur had misspelt ‘sneho’, the word for affection, as ‘seneho’. Riziya laughed to herself. Which touch are you referring to, Hujur, she wondered.

She used to have great respect for the man, she still did. But she was unable to support his orthodox beliefs. She couldn’t forget the way he behaved when he saw her talking to Suman Da. She had felt terribly humiliated. So she had deliberately distanced herself for a few days. How could she converse with him? Did Hujur have any idea about how much Suman Da meant to her? Because she was pretty-looking, dowry-free marriage proposals had begun to arrive right from her teen days, when she was in Class Nine. Her Mama, too, was most keen to get her married. But it was this very Suman Da who had counselled her Mama and Mami. He had said to them, ‘Let her complete Secondary school, what’s the great hurry?’ How could she forget that? After all, he had forced them to let her continue her schooling. She had sailed through Secondary and Higher Secondary school, and was in college now. How could she not turn furious when she was spoken to so insultingly!

Riziya consoled herself now. She realized that Hujur had only acted in keeping with his nature. After all, he was the imam of the village. He had the authority to speak.

As she held the book with Tahirul’s signature in her hand, she began to realize something else. The man undoubtedly loved her! She revisited the moments she had spent with him, on the streets of Kolkata, in the bookshop in College Street, sitting with him beside the swimming pool, roaming around. Those were sweet memories. But she suddenly felt remorseful. Riziya realized that she, too, had caused him a lot of anguish these last few days.

She felt like writing a letter. But how would she get the letter delivered? Ayan was away at the madrasa. After all, it was Hujur who had conspired to get him admitted to the madrasa! Even though Riziya held the book in her hand, she did not read it. She shut it with a thump. She put it on the bookshelf. Her sense of hurt, against Tahirul, was rekindled.

Owing to her reading addiction, Riziya hardly went out anywhere nowadays. So she decided to visit Reshma Bhabi today. She hadn’t chatted and gossiped with her in a long time. There had been no prolonged adda.

It was past noon; there was a long time to go for the afternoon Asr prayer. Just as she reached Reshma’s doorstep, she heard her voice. ‘Do you think he can divorce you simply by saying “talaq”? Aren’t there laws in the country? Go and inform the village elders. See what they say. What’s the use of simply crying? Besides, I don’t see how Rizi is to blame!’

Riziya froze. The sound of sobbing that followed Reshma Bhabi’s words perturbed her. Wasn’t it Fulsura? What had happened to her? Had there been a blazing row in her household? Had she been ruined? As soon as she entered cautiously, Reshma spotted her. Prodding Fulsura with her elbow, Reshma smiled and said, ‘Come, Rizi, have you completely forgotten your Bhabi?’

Riziya observed that Fulsura was trying to conceal her tears with a false smile. Without beating around the bush, Riziya directly asked her, ‘What’s happened to you people? What were you saying about me?’

‘When? We didn’t say anything!’

‘Then why was Fulsura crying?’

Fulsura smiled then. As if nothing had happened. She stirred. ‘Listen to her! Why on earth would I cry? I was just…’

‘There’s no need to hide anything from me. Tell me what’s happened.’

All of them were silent now. Reshma was at a loss regarding what to tell her. Having been caught lying by Riziya, she really began to weep now. In between her sobs, she said, ‘Your Dulha Bhai has given me talaq, dear Rizi! Talaq!’

‘Talaq!’

Riziya was stunned. Muslim women were familiar with the word ‘talaq’ right from their childhood. It was something compared to an unnatural death. But they also knew that no one ever divorced his wife without a reason. That was the plight of wayward, loud-mouthed women of bad character. But why would Dulha Bhai divorce an innocent girl like Fulsura? And that too because of Riziya? After all, she was barely acquainted with Dulha Bhai. She had hardly even spoken to him! Riziya was unable to understand any of what was going on. She felt dizzy the moment she heard the dreaded term. She was at a loss for words for quite a while. She quietly sat down on a plastic chair next to Fulsura.

Is this how talaq happened? The marriage contract was snapped on a sudden whim on her husband’s part although Fulsura was not at fault! If marriage was a contract, then talaq could be given or received on the grounds of breach of contract. But could it happen just because the husband wanted that? Could a policeman fire his weapon at will simply because he was carrying one? If he fired illegitimately, he would be punished. But what about illegitimate talaq? The woman was no longer his wife. She was now a stranger. Was the husband freed of all responsibility in a moment? Terrible! A host of questions hovered in Riziya’s mind. But most of all, she was curious about her role in Fulsura’s talaq. Why was her name associated with this terrible, heinous act?

‘How did it happen? And how am I connected with it? It’s driving me mad!’

Fulsura narrated her tale. Riziya and Reshma heard her with full attention. What she said was more or less like this:

They didn’t make too many enquiries prior to the marriage. Rahman Dada had agreed seeing it was a wealthy ostagar family. But subsequently it was discovered that he was indeed a man of qualities! He returned home drunk every night. Fulsura protested against that. She tried to restrain him. Sometimes he wouldn’t return home at night. It became unbearable. There were quarrels almost every day. The astonishing thing was that not a single person from his family helped her. No one said that Jamir was wrong. They said, ‘Oh, but he didn’t harm you in any way, daughter-in-law! He didn’t starve you. He didn’t beat you when he was drunk.’ It was Fulsura who had to listen to disparaging remarks. Each of her married sisters-in-law visited their parents’ house and laid the blame on Fulsura. They said she was the one who hadn’t learnt how to adjust. That made Fulsura leave in rage. It was going to be two months since leaving home.