The accidents always happened after dark.
More often than not, it was only the victims who were present when misfortune stole upon them. That something had happened was not in question; the broken bones, or the damage to property proved beyond doubt that an incident had taken place. Rather it was whether the events had unfolded as was stated that was under consideration. All of the nine women knew that when it came to truthful observation, it was only Allah who could be trusted.
The night of the storm had been a restless one for Kalima. This was no ordinary thunderstorm, but one of the kaalboishaakhi – those that arrived with the steaming April days and were notorious on the islands for their remarkable, somewhat ostentatious cruelty. Their violence was acknowledged in whispers behind the wizened palms of women like Kalima. She had passed enough summers on this earth to believe that the storms were a necessary, if ruthless, cleansing, ridding the land of the accumulated dirt and grime of the past twelve months in preparation for the beginning of the Bengali New Year.
Ominous charcoal clouds scudded across the skies in a masquerade of darkness, accompanied by yowling winds, thunder and pummelling rain that skittered and bounced upon the rooftops. For anyone unfamiliar with the storms, it sounded as though the world around them was tearing itself apart.
The winds had begun stirring restlessly at dusk, the village’s only warning that something was afoot. The temperature soon plummeted, the unbearable stickiness of those early-summer nights replaced by an ominous chill, hurrying people away from the tea shops to their homes, to wait. The storm quickly gathered momentum, and before long it was prowling through the village, ripping apart trees with murderous, moaning cracks. Tin and bamboo roofs were splintered apart, the pieces dragged into the vortex of the squall, before being angrily discarded.
Kalima had lain awake for some time, listening to the sounds outside with a muted alarm and, closer, to the steady breaths of her granddaughter Iffat, curled beside her. She had seen enough of the kaalboishaakhi to know that her house would hold, but she was fretting that the pen for her ducks, which she had carefully weighted down, might nonetheless topple over or be crushed under falling debris. She resorted to a familiar comfort, murmuring verses from the Quran – the skipping Arabic words that she did not understand but had learned by heart soothing her, nudging her towards sleep – before her thoughts sharpened once more at the screech of buckling metal.
Her mind flew to her son. Riyaz lived apart from the main homestead in a one-roomed shack on the edge of the clearing, with his wife Roshini and their three small children. Its recently constructed walls were roughly hewn and brittle, not like the thick foundations of her own home, which had stood in this exact spot since the village was first settled. It had been her father’s before hers, her grandfather’s before that. Riyaz may have understood the contours of bricks and steel, but he had not yet refined the older art of coaxing natural materials to come together to form a structure. She listened, straining her failing ears against the rush of the wind, anxiety blooming in her chest for the son she adored, in spite of everything. There was nothing.
The next morning the azaan rang out at dawn as it always did, when darkness was still blanketing the land, the stars slow to take their leave from the bruised sky. The village awoke tentatively to survey the damage. Later that day Kalima would wonder why she had not checked on her neighbours sooner. When she learned that their house had been destroyed and offered to take care of the children – six small scraps of dirty skin and torn clothing, who raced around the clearing in a tangle of games with her own four grandchildren – she thought to herself how lucky it was that no one had been hurt. Standing, hands on hips, fingers tensed as though inadvertently searching beneath the cotton folds of her sari for the comfort of her ageing bones, Kalima shook her head, marvelling both at her neighbour’s misfortune and at her own impulsive generosity.
She spat into the dust. She would give them three days, she decided, that was all.
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