Snatched

I sit in one tight corner of the hall and see smoke rise from the incense sticks. At first, it rises straight, then turns into three beautiful curls, and finally disintegrates. It is by disintegrating that it serves its purpose of spreading aroma around the hall. Women from the neighborhood, most elderly but a few of the young and a couple of them barely teenagers sit bent upon the siparas- the thirty parts of the Holy Quran, rhythmically moving to and from as they recite from them. They are reciting for my deceased grandmother. The soft hum emanating from the collective recital and the smell of jasmine sticks is lulling me to sleep. I haven’t slept well since grandma passed three days ago. Now I wish I could doze off but it would be rude. Besides Amma can call me any moment. There is much work around the house and she is herself worn out. I should perhaps go and ask what is to be done but I don’t get up. I just sit rooted to my corner and blankly gaze at the rising smoke. One of the elderly women, a companion of my grandmother mistakes my lethargy for grief and draws me close to her bosom. She smells just like my grandma and suddenly I feel incredibly close to her. She sobs and I realize that it was not so much for my benefit but her own that she had hugged me. I hug her bag, holding her tight taking in the familiar smell as her frail old body shakes with the sorrow of losing a friend of many years.

I am beyond crying now. I haven’t cried in about a year. The last time I cried was when they took a father away, labeling him a traitor and a terrorist, calling him all sorts of filthy names as they dragged him down the stairs to the jeep waiting outside the house. Father and I had been playing carrom on the terrace at that time. Mother had gone to the market and grandma had been visiting neighbors. I remember how my heart had leaped into my throat as I followed father down the stairs trying to extract him from the grip of his abductors. At one point a sturdy hand had tossed me aside like a plastic doll. I had gotten up and resumed the struggle to free my father from the men. What had I been thinking pitching my meager strength against that of five grown-up men? I had even asked them to show a warrant. They hadn’t. 

Grandmother’s friend said that she grandma died of a broken heart. That, I believe is true. Her health had started to deteriorate soon after my father was taken away. In her last days she had had just one desire- to be able to see her son free. Father’s freedom is a far call. After it had become clear that grandma did not have long to live father applied for interim bail so that he may attend to his ailing mother. Even that would have brought immense respite to grandma. We would not have told her that father is out just for a few days. We would have made her believe that father has been fully exonerated and let her die in peace. But the bail was continuously denied. The man who went to office in the week days and played carrom with his daughter on weekends was now deemed too dangerous to be let out of jail. 

‘I can’t believe,’ my mother would say, ‘there are people actually spending time and energy to prove these fictional charges against my husband. This sham is what they drawing salaries for!’ I find it outrageous too, that people should be thriving on the lie that has distorted our lives beyond recognition. My mother smiles sardonically, like Mona Lisa when she talks to my uncle about the outrageousness of the situation. But other than that, she seldom smiles now. Her smile has practically dried up leaving behind perpetually parched lips that match perfectly well with her sunken eyes. I am worried about her health. She has lost many kilos since her father’s arrest. Of late there has been a detectable quiver in her voice. She doesn’t let on but I know that father’s arrest is eating her up from the inside. It’s not just the trauma of father being snatched away from us. There are other difficulties too.

The legal process is slow, tedious, and above all expensive. We have run out of our savings. The lawyer charges exorbitant fees. My mother has already sold some of her jewelry to pay his fees and grandma just a few minutes before dying had taken off her gold bracelets and put them on my mother’s palm. 

 ‘Don’t give up on him,’ she had said to mother in a strained whisper.

‘How can I ever give up on him Amma?’ my mother had replied stroking grandma’s forehead, tears silently running down her cheeks that used to be full but are now emaciated. Amma doesn’t eat much now. I am not sure if she has genuinely lost her appetite or if she is being prudent in spending the ration. Perhaps I too should practice some prudence in eating. The road ahead is long and fraught with uncertainties. If it were not for my uncle and aunty, Amma’s brother and sister we would have starved by now. Uncle gets our ration containers refilled every month. He has been doing that regularly for the last seven months. Aunty orders fruits and vegetables online and they get delivered on our doorstep; exquisitely wrapped in brown paper packets and transparent disposable boxes. I am sure if Amma hadn’t been fighting her inner and outer demons all the time, if she were her former jovial self, she would have washed and collected these delicate boxes and put them to some good use. She would have decorated some of them with paint and some with laces and mirrors. Then she would have placed them on the dresser and put her lipsticks, clips, and its bottles in them. Such small pleasures, Amma and I now feel disqualified for. Last week aunty had ordered daseri mangoes for us. As soon as I opened the packaging the house got filled with the aroma of mango and for a moment, just for a fleeting moment, I got transported to the old times when father and I used to get mango crates from the wholesale fruit market stacking them up on the back seat of our car. For days afterward the car smelt of mangoes. The house too smelt of mangoes and so did I. 

‘Mango girl’, my father used to tease me. 

‘Aam aadmi,’ I would tease him in return.  

Some of the mangoes we would keep and some we would distribute to relatives and neighbors. 

‘Mango is happiness,’ my father would say, slicing the juicy fruit and placing portions of it in our mouths – grandma’s, Amma’s, and mine. How full of life my father was. He still is, I would like to believe. 

I washed, peeled, and cut the mangoes sent my aunty and took them to Amma and grandma. Grandma was unable to sit up on her own or even hold a fork or spoon. I helped her to the sitting position and Amma alternatively fed the mango to her and me with her hands. It felt like a sin to enjoy mangoes while the father was locked away in a dark and damp prison cell. But we couldn’t throw the fruit either. Could we? So, we ate in silence and then my grandmother said to my mother, ‘convey my thanks to your sister, may Allah increase her risk,’ and Amma nodded silently.

Two days later was father’s bail hearing and we had high hopes. The lawyer was positive about securing an interim bail at least. All day I stayed with my grandmother and prayed for my father’s bail. In the late afternoon, my mother called me to inform me that the bail has been denied. Father would not come home. The courts deemed him too dangerous to be let free even for a week. The same evening grandma passed away and father was informed in the prison. I imagined him wailing in agony. Alone. At night, as my uncle and neighbors buried my grandma and put handfuls of soil in her grave, father must have laid on the hard prison floor and sobbed. Then he would have prayed for her maghfirat and for getting united with her in eternal life. 

The next day I saw on my mother’s phone the video of a young man who had been charged under the same section as my father but had just been granted bail. Exuberant and beaming he reiterated his trust in the judiciary of the country and posed for the camera making a V sign with his index and middle finger. This confident young man as far as I can tell was completely innocent, just like my father. His demeanor gave me hope. He didn’t look dejected or hopeless. Maybe they don’t treat prisoners as badly as I had imagined, I thought. The clip was coming to an end when a news reporter asked him how he was treated in jail. Just like me, the reporter was probably expecting a positive reply. ‘I was tortured very badly. They broke three bones in my body and starved me for many days. They did other things that I would rather not speak of here,’ said the young man, his face darkening slightly before he regained his former exuberance. The clip came to an end while the visibly shocked reporter was pestering him for details. I felt sick as my heart plummeted into my stomach. 

That night, in my dream I saw my father being beaten by an unseen man. He was bleeding and calling out to me but when I tried to shout at my father’s tormentor to stop him from beating my father, no sound escaped my throat. I woke up drenched in sweat and at once thankful that it was just a dream. Mother pulled me close to herself and I buried my head in her bosom but found none of the usual comforts that I find in her warmth and the dull thud of her beating heart. I stayed awake thinking of prisoners - bleeding, broken and many of them forgotten.