He noticed Ishvar and Narayan listening with dismay, and added in haste, “I don’t mean us, boys. We will always be like one family, even if we are apart.”
“But Ashraf Chacha, we don’t have to be apart,” said Narayan. “Ishvar and I are not planning to leave yet.”
“Yes, I know. But Mumtaz Chachi and the children and I, we have to leave.”
“My poor paagal nawab-sahib — gone completely crazy,” said Mumtaz. “Wants to leave. With four little ones? Where do you want to go?”
“Same place all the others are going. Across the border. What do you want to do? Sit here and wait till the hatred and insanity comes with swords and clubs and kerosene? What I am saying is, tomorrow morning I go to the station and buy our train tickets.”
Mumtaz insisted he was reacting like a foolish old man. But he refused to allow her the temporary comfort of turning her back on danger. He was determined to argue all night, he said, rather than pretend that things were normal.
“I will do whatever is necessary to save my family. How can you be so blind? I will drag you by your hair to the railway station if I have to.” At this threat, the children began crying again.
She dried their tears on her dupatta, and dissolved her opposition to the plan. It was not a case of being blind to danger — the danger could be smelt from miles away, her husband was right. Only, removing the blindfold was difficult because of what she might see.
“It won’t be possible to carry much if we are to leave in a hurry,” she said. “Clothes, a stove, some cooking pots. I’ll start packing now.”
“Yes, keep it ready for tomorrow,” said Ashraf. “The rest we will lock in the shop. Inshallah, someday we will be able to come back and claim it.” He gathered the children for bed. “Come, we must sleep early tonight. Tomorrow we have to start a long journey.”
Narayan found it unbearable to listen to or watch their troubled preparations. He doubted if anything he said would make a difference. Pretending he was going down to the shop, he slipped out the back to their neighbour and told him of the planned flight.
“Is he serious?” said the hardware-store owner. “When we talked this morning, he agreed there was nothing to worry about in our neighbourhood.”
“He has changed his mind.”
“Wait, I will come to him right now.”
He collected the coal-merchant, the banya, and the miller, and knocked on Ashraf’s door. “Forgive us for bothering you at this hour. May we come in?”
“Of course. Will you eat something? A drink?”
“Nothing, thank you. We came because we got some news that is causing us great grief.”
“What is it, what?” Ashraf was agitated, wondering if there had been riot casualties in someone’s family. “Can I help?”
“Yes, you can. You can tell us it’s not true.”
“What’s not true?”
“That you want to leave us, leave the place where you were born and your children were born. This is causing our grief.”
“You are such good people.” Ashraf’s eyes began to moisten. “But I really don’t have a choice, nah.”
“Sit down with us and think calmly,” said the hardware-store owner, putting his arm around Ashraf’s shoulder. “The situation is bad, yes, but it would be madness to attempt to leave.”
The others nodded in agreement. The coal-merchant put his hand on Ashraf’s knee. “Every day trains are crossing that new border, carrying nothing but corpses. My agent arrived yesterday from the north, he has seen it with his own eyes. The trains are stopped at the station and everyone is butchered. On both sides of the border.”
“Then what am I to do?”
The desperation in his voice drew the hardware-store owner’s hand to his shoulder again. “Stay here. You are with friends. We will let nothing happen to your family. Where is there any trouble in our neighbourhood? We have always lived here peacefully.”
“But what will happen when those outside troublemakers come?”
“Yours is the only Muslim shop in the street. You think so many of us together cannot protect one shop?” They hugged him, promising he had nothing to fear. “Any time you want to, day or night, if you feel worried about anything, just come to our house with your wife and children.”
After the neighbours left, Narayan had an idea. “You know the sign outside — Muzaffar Tailoring Company. We could put another one in its place.”
“Why?” asked Ashraf.
Narayan was hesitant to say. “A new one…”
Then Ashraf saw the point. “Yes, with a new name. A Hindu name. It’s a very good idea.”
“Let’s do it right now,” said Ishvar. “I can get a new board from your uncle’s lumberyard. Can I take the cycle?”
“Of course. But be careful, don’t go through a Muslim area.”
An hour later Ishvar returned empty-handed without having reached his destination. “Lots of shops and houses on fire. I kept going — slowly, slowly. Then I saw some people with axes. They were chopping a man. That scared me, I turned back.”
Ashraf sat down weakly. “You were wise. What will we do now?” He was too frightened to think.
“Why do we need a new board?” said Narayan. “We can use the back of this old one. All we need is some paint.”
He went next door again, and the hardware-store owner let him have a blue tin that was open. “It’s a good idea,” he said. “What name are you going to paint?”
“Krishna Tailors, I think,” said Narayan at random.
“The blue will be perfect.” He pointed to the horizon, where smoke and a red glow filled the sky. “I heard it’s the lumberyard. But don’t tell Ashraf now.”
Night had fallen by the time they finished painting the letters and remounting the signboard. “On that old wood the paint looks very new,” said Ashraf.
“I’ll rub a handful of ashes over it,” said Ishvar. “Tomorrow morning, when it’s dry.”
“If we are not all reduced to ashes while we sleep,” said Ashraf softly. The fragile sense of security woven out of his neighbours’ assurances was starting to fray.
In bed, every noise in the darkness was danger approaching to threaten his family, until he was able to identify it as something innocuous. He relearned the familiar sounds to which he had fallen asleep all his life. The thud of the coal-merchant’s charpoy, who liked to sleep in the open, in the back yard (he slammed it down every night to shake out the bedbugs). The crash of the banya’s door being locked for the night; swollen and sticking, it needed a firm hand. The clang of someone’s pail — Ashraf had never found out whose, and what was being done with it at this late hour.
Sometime after midnight, he awoke with a start, went downstairs to the shop and began removing the three framed Koranic quotations that hung on the wall behind the cutting table. Ishvar and Narayan stirred, roused by his fumbling in the dark, and put on the light.
“It’s all right, go to sleep,” he said. “I suddenly remembered these frames.” The wall paint was darker where the frames had hung. Ashraf tried unsuccessfully to wipe away the difference with a damp rag.
“We have something you can put up instead,” said Narayan. He dragged out their trunk from under the cutting table and found three cardboard-stiffened pictures equipped with little string loops for hanging. “Ram and Sita, Krishna, and Laxmi.”
“Yes, definitely,” said Ashraf. “And tomorrow we will burn these Urdu magazines and newspapers.”
At eight-thirty a.m. Ashraf opened the shop as usual, releasing the padlock from the collapsible steel doors on the outside, but without folding them back. The interior wooden door was kept ajar. Like the day before, the street was deserted.
About ten o’clock, the coal-merchant’s son called through the grating. “Father said to ask if you need
