Camp

Three days after Sahana’s death, Samara, your elder sister, places a yellow brochure on your bedside table, and says, “Something to think about, dear sister.” She kisses your forehead before leaving the room. You dig into the brochure and groan. You never thought you would need to consider admitting yourself into the Camp like Nazneen, your coworker at the bank, who, after losing her son to blood cancer, had made an oath to never step out of her room. Her husband requested people from the Camp to forcibly lift her out of the room bubbling with dust and her cloying, musty smell. At that time, she spat curses at him. But almost two years later, like the Camp promised its patients, she returned beaming with an adopted son who was seven years old, the same age as her son.

You always found the Camp’s success stories—of despondent parents returning home, armed with bountiful joy and new children—dubious. You thought, how could they be so happy with the replacements after the deaths of their children? But, as weeks and months go by, hoops of sorrow pin you to the ground when you see Sahana’s pink mug, her Hello Kitty school bag and purse, her shiny medals for topping at the annual school race and art contests. You skip work to pop sleeping pills and forget the world. You occasionally buy orange popsicles for nine- or ten-year-old children who faintly resemble Sahana and draw the drilling eyes of their mothers in the blazing afternoons. You repeatedly call your ex-husband to ask if you can move in with him because you hate loneliness scratching your skin and he says no, he has a new wife (the one he cheated on you with the year Sahana was born) and that would be awkward, but you say you’ve got no problem with that and he hangs up. You begin visiting Sahana’s classroom during school hours despite Sister Gomez’s stern prohibitions and the second graders’ parents’ scrunched faces. You hear Samara say, “Enough is enough, sister! Don’t you see you are going mad?” You realize that you are, indeed, going mad. You wonder what it would be like to be one of those parents in the brochures—smiling, eyes upwards, hands stretched, waiting to get hold of a silky-haired child floating against a clear sky.

The Camp is in Savar, flanked by a dairy farm and a cement factory. It used to be a resort until the owners were arrested by the Anti-Corruption Commission on charges of money laundering. It has ten five-story apartment blocks with a circular field at the center. Behind the blocks, there are slides, swings, seesaws, mini zoos with deer, monkeys, and zebras, and an arched stretch of pond over which a zipline hangs still. An oval dining hall and auditorium with champagne-colored walls face each other on the narrow road toward the main gate. A vegetable garden on one side and a flower garden on the other slap the air with fumes gusting out of pumpkins, carrots, turnips, roses, hydrangeas, tulips, and cow dung, burnt and wet.

It has been a month since you arrived. This means Zafir—who is in charge of your apartment block, who is bald and has a thin, drooping beard—will fix you up with the potential replacement of Sahana today from the two buildings (across the arched pond) teeming with orphans, taken care of by Bangladeshi, Filipino, Pakistani, Sudanese, and Ugandan nannies. He is satisfied with your performance: socialization with other parents via sprints, puzzles, chess, and art contests, volleyball and badminton sessions, and consistency in morning and evening exercises (cardio, weight training). Of course, he never spotted you sneaking out of the field and hurrying into a bush where you wept for Sahana with your hands pressed against your mouth during the break in a two hour–long yoga session.

You poke at the sofa and twist a loose cotton fabric around your index finger. Ms. Dipa smiles at you in her full-sleeved gray smock.

“Excited?” she asks. You tilt your head, wondering what your answer should be. You are excited about the prospect of moving on. You are also fearful that those hoops of sorrow still sitting upon your torso may never leave.

“Her name is Zara,” she continues.

“Sahana. Zara,” you rhyme in your head.

“Please come outside,” she gently raises her voice, twisting her body toward the door beside the reception desk. A woman in a pink smock leads Zara toward you. A teddy bear with a missing eye hangs from her left hand. A smile reveals bits of chocolate chips lodged between her upper teeth. She looks nothing like Sahana. Although ten, like Sahana was, she is fairer, taller, and plumper. She could be easily mistaken for twelve. Whether her dissimilarity with Sahana is a relief or a new opening for grief, you don’t understand.

“Your trial month begins today, Ms. Zainab,” Ms. Dipa says as she caresses Zara’s cropped hair. “If your performance with this child is poor, we will provide you with a new one. If you do well, you can leave with her in a month. Should you feel like opting out of the program, please contact Ms. Anjum. She will see if she can manage any refund, although the chance is very low.”

You nod blankly. You do not care about refunds. Who bothers about refunds after losing their child? you want to tell Ms. Dipa. All you care about is the fact that you have to move home with Zara at the earliest and experience what Nazneen from the bank and the toothy people from the brochure must be experiencing.

For the first few days, you watch Barbie and Doraemon movies with Zara on your iPad. Much like Sahana, her eyes refuse to stay on the plate during lunch and dinner. You softly press morsels of rice, chicken, and lentil into her mouth while her face shines with the warmth of animations. If Sahana were alive, she would need glasses for sure in a few years, you think.

“Zara, could you please leave the iPad when you eat? Watching too much iPad will damage your eyes. Then you will have to wear glasses all the time. Not to mention the injections the doctor will push into your eyes,” you say as you put a plate of three slices of barbeque pizza in front of her on your bed.

“Okay!” she says, turning the iPad off. Your fear—that she might frown and run to the living room in protest—is dashed by the enthusiasm of her teeth, tongue, and fingers taking apart the slices.

Before sleeping, you recite surahs to her: Fatiha, Ikhlas, Falaq, and Nas. Then you sing a few songs: “Akash Eto Megla,” “Baba Bole Gelo,” and “Purano Sei Diner Kotha.” These were your rituals with Sahana. With Zara, the songs and the surahs grate in your throat as though each letter is a pebble. When she wraps her arms around you and you do the same, you are acutely aware that this is a foreign body. While she snores, the glint of strangeness doesn’t let you sleep.

▴ ▴ ▴

Her lips and fingers quiver the sixth time you tell her to turn the iPad off at dinner a few days later.

“I won’t,” she says.

“What’s wrong, Zara?” you say, cupping the back of her head.

“I don’t like it when you order me around.” Her eyes resolutely rest on yours.

“Okay, no problem. You can watch.” You take back your hands and kiss her cheeks. She smells like powder, shampoo, and lotion. You lock the bathroom door and stuff a rolled-up hand towel into your mouth. In the mirror, you watch yourself heave and leak tears. It tiptoes up your legs that you can never treat Zara like Sahana. The foreignness emanating from Zara is adamant.

▴ ▴ ▴

“Congratulations! Your first week evaluation has been excellent! Three more weeks to go! With patience and perseverance, you will succeed. Best Regards, Management,” the SMS reads the next day. You scoff at the possibility that you could have gotten one star if you didn’t give her the iPad that night. You sip the coffee and watch a slant of sunlight glint in her teddy bear’s eye. You decide to resolutely reduce her screen time. You won’t let yourself be weakened by her tantrums starting this lunch. She is running from the dining to the living room, attacking imaginary monsters with a wooden spoon, making noises of explosion with a watery mouth. At home, Sahana wasn’t this active. She was either drawing or buried in DC Comics. You walk into the kitchen and scrub the pan, sticky with omelet remnants.

“Ouch!” Zara screams. She’s hit her head against the door frame. She begins wailing, blood from her forehead dotting the floor.

“Nothing will happen to you, my child,” you say, not believing your words entirely. You press the end of your orna on the wound. All the blood leaking from Zara’s forehead brings before you the moment you crawled out of your upturned car and yanked out Sahana’s body—her face a broken, unmoving sculpture pouring out its colors. An opening widens your heart. Zara winces and grabs your forearms tight.

“It hurts so much,” she says, sniffling. You think how Sahana must have experienced wave after adamant wave of tremendous pain because the driver didn’t notice the lorry rushing in from the right. Now a softness swoops down on you and covers the opening in your heart. When you return from the doctor, you look at Zara as though she’s your own.

You have received five-star ratings from Zara for three weeks straight. It is the final week. “Ammu, please order pizza tonight,” she says, tugging at your purple prayer gown. The hairs on your skin do not rise up anymore when she calls you Ammu. Your hands do not remain stiff and move in a calculated manner when you clutch Zara into a hug when you sleep. The surahs and the songs have turned from pebbles into water.

“No, Zara. We have eaten pizza for so many days straight! Look, I have prepared polao and roasted chicken!”

“But I want pizza.” Zara sits in front of you on the prayer mat.

“Honey, please understand. It will destroy your liver.” You slip out of the gown and hang it behind the door.

“I won’t have dinner then.” Zara kicks the steel cupboard before storming out.

“Zara, don’t behave like this, dear,” you trail after her.

“I want pizza!” she shouts.

“You shouldn’t speak like this with your elders.” You place a hand on her shoulder. She shrugs it off and kicks your right shin. You wince and hitch up your salwar to find white and yellow fluid oozing out of the wound from the accident. You grab Zara’s arm and lock her in the bathroom. “Let me out! You are a bitch!” she screams. She says bitch in English. From a ten-year-old’s mouth, the word is like a boulder hanging from a stick. You are certain too much iPad exposure has taught her the word.

Her screams fade in the background. You swipe through Sahana’s photos on the phone gallery—she roars, tiger whiskers drawn on her face; she licks the chocolate ice-cream on top of a cone; she bares her teeth holding a glittery card she had made on Mother’s Day (best mom in the world, it says) ; her legs twist around your neck and for some reason, you both are laughing, the camera flash illuminating her silver anklets. Zara’s voice swirls into focus. She has begun crying, all the rage drained from her voice. Your chest sags. You open the door and lock her in a hug. Your kameez sleeves turn wet.

The next day, when you return to the apartment from the yoga session on the field, you find pizza boxes and ice-cream wrappers lying on the kitchen floor. Zara is on the sofa, her legs locked one on top of another. She laughs so loud that Ninja Hattori’s voice gets muffled.

“What’s all these, Zara?” You place the yoga mat beside the main door.

“I ordered pizzas and ice-cream cones when you were gone, Ammu.” You sense a roiling malice in her voice, in the way her gaze doesn’t meet yours.

“What did I tell you last night, Zara? You should respect your elders!”

Zara continues laughing. She is making up for the damage she suffered last night, you believe.

“This is mine. You can’t use it if you don’t follow my advice.” You pull the iPad from her lap.

“What are you doing, Ammu?” Zara stands up. “Please give it to me.”

“No, it will stay with me as long as you keep being such a brat!” You turn toward the room. When you put the iPad inside the cupboard, your head is awash in an exploding sensation. Zara is pulling your ponytail. You bend sideways and fall on the ground. She spits on you and runs out of the apartment.

▴ ▴ ▴

“What can I say, Ms. Zainab? These kids can be very troublesome. You know how they grow up without parents and all that. One is lucky if they get a polite kid here,” Ms. Dipa says, her face resting on her hand. “I understand it can be very tough to put up with so much trouble. If you find it burdensome, you can opt out, you know. With your ratings so far, you might also get a 10 percent refund of your admission fee.”

“This week’s ratings may not be as excellent,” you say.

“Well, should you continue with the program, you will be fixed up with a new kid. Who knows, that one might turn out to be a normal one!”

“The thing is, I have already grown attached to her. Yes, I do feel like leaving the program when she acts terrible. But when she cries, I can’t handle it. I don’t know why or how, but it reminds me of Sahana.” Your vision is blurry. You press the orna into your eyes.

“Well, then you have your answer, Ms. Zainab.” She places her hands on top of yours. Her ring is cold against your small finger.

Walking out of Ms. Dipa’s office beside the playground, you dive into the chaotic sea of children, sweaty and glowing under the soft sun. Zara and six others are running around as a blindfolded boy chases them with his hands spread out. Sahana hated the game because once she tripped over a stone and peed in her pants out of shock. You wait until the round is over. The kids sit on a bench, panting and deciding what to play next.

“Zara, come here, please.”

She swiftly turns her face away.

“I have something to show you. Please come?”

She strides out of the cluster of her friends. “What is it?”

“You can have the iPad.”

“Are you lying just to get me home?”

“No, you can have it. Trust me.”

Zara hugs you. You stroke her matted hair.

▴ ▴ ▴

“Congratulations on completing the program with a streak of perfect ratings!” the SMS reads at the end of the week. Zara’s bags have been packed: three large suitcases for clothes and one for all the presents she has received from The Camp as parting gifts. You wait downstairs for the Uber.

“Dear, don’t be mischievous, okay?” Ms. Dipa says. She kisses Zara’s hands and gives her a medium-sized KitKat. The security guard pushes the luggage trolley as a ToyotaNoah emerges from the distance.

“Take care, Ms. Zainab,” Zafir, the employee who originally placed you with Zara, says. He is in an olive tracksuit. A running session with the remaining participants is about to start in a few minutes. “Call us anytime you have a problem.”

▴ ▴ ▴

Samara awaits your arrival at home with her husband, Rafi, her twelve-year-old twin daughters, pakodas, shingaras, and sandwiches.

“I haven’t seen you in so long, my lovely sister,” she says before hugging you and kissing your neck.

You greet Rafi with a smile and the twins with pats on their cheeks.

“Welcome home, sweetheart!” Samara says upon noticing Zara. Rafi hands her a large box wrapped in a fruit-themed paper.

“Go on, open it,” he says.

She struggles to tear it open. You bring a knife from the kitchen and reveal the Barbie set: three dolls and a duplex house with separate furniture.

“How much?” You mouth to Samara. Areh, forget it! the fling of her hand says.

“Do you like it?” Rafi asks from behind.

“No,” Zara replies.

Samara stares at you, the smile dimming from her face. The twins are startled into big-eyed concentration. One suppresses an incoming laughter.

“Ahh. I’m sorry, mamoni. What do you want? Tell me. I will give it to you.” Rafi bends over to her height. You want to push him aside and zip his mouth shut.

“Really? I want an iPad. My own!”

Rafi laughs and takes off his spectacles. “I don’t know what to say,” he mouths to you and Samara.

▴ ▴ ▴

You begin going to the bank. In a month, Zara will catch the academic session starting in June at the English Medium school on the other side of the lake. Until then, you have hired a nanny for Zara for the stretch of your office hours. On the second day the nanny calls you at the office, “Apa, I cannot stand this girl! She broke a plate and now she has locked herself in the bathroom. She says she won’t come out until I order pizza. Does she think I have a garden full of money?” You rub your forehead, your concentration shifted from the PowerPoint presentation due in three hours to Zara.

“Okay, okay. You just calm down. Ask Nafisa bhabi from next door. Tell her I will pay when I come home.”

“Zara. Honey. Listen. You cannot always have your way.” You massage her hair with coconut oil. “And you have to learn how to respect the elders.”

Zara is in a world of her own as she makes two Barbie dolls punch and kick one another. Her audacity brings a bitter cloud of violence over you; her hair begs to be pulled.

You go to the kitchen and put the beef curry in the microwave. You make a mental calculation; you have enough in your savings. You can return Zara to the Camp by paying their cancellation fee.

▴ ▴ ▴

On Friday evening, a series of frantic bells rattle your house. You hurry out of the Isha prayer and open the door to find Nafisa bhabi—her pink, mascara-stained face and sweat patches popping up here and there across her kameez have obliterated the minimalistic grace with which she usually presented herself.

“Where is your little one?” she shouts. “Tell me! Where is she?”

“What happened, bhabi? Are you okay?” You block the door. She pushes you inside and strides into the apartment.

“What’s wrong with you, bhabi?” You grab her wrist. She flings her hand free.

“That evil kid you’ve brought home. That bastard has killed my cat! And you’re asking what’s wrong with me?”

You are not surprised. “I am sure there’s an explanation. You please calm down and sit.”

Zara watches from behind the curtain of her door.

Nafisa spots her and lunges in that direction. You grab her arm, and her sleeve tears a little.

“You don’t believe me, Zainab? We have been neighbours for twelve years and you still don’t trust me? Come with me to the caretaker’s room. Just come! I’ll show you the CCTV footage. They show how she followed my baby all the way to the back and mercilessly hit him!” Nafisa’s voice trails away and gives way to sobbing. You pull Nafisa into a hug. You stroke her back, warm and wet. You meet Zara’s blank face staring through the curtain.

▴ ▴ ▴

You see the video replay in the caretaker’s room as Nafisa sniffles and coughs behind you. In the videos, Zara follows Nafisa’s small ginger tabby to the ground floor with a bowl of steamed rice. “Come here, boy!” she says, thinning her voice. “Come here! Come to mommy!” Back at the Camp, she used to address all the cats like that despite some of them feeling no affinity toward her, you remember. The cat mews and trails farther away from her. It infrequently bares its baby fangs. She follows it to the backside of the building where the drainage system wiggles through a patch of neem trees. It pauses before a dead sparrow. It sniffs the bird.

“Chih! You are so dirty! Stop it, boy, and come to mommy,” she calls. It stares at Zara and mews longer. Zara scoops the rice into a ball and stretches her hand toward the cat. The cat bites Zara’s index finger. She wriggles it free. You wonder if the bite is too painful. She jumps over the cat so it can’t escape. She pinches its neck and hurls it against the building’s granite wall. Its mews grow louder. She picks up a brick lying beneath the trellis choked with night-blooming jasmine and slams it at the tabby. She runs into the building. You can discern the satisfaction buoying her cheery steps.

At the monthly meeting, the building committee decides that you must send Zara back to the Camp.

“We cannot accept the presence of such a violent child in the midst of our children. She can jeopardize their safety alongside the entire building’s,” reads the letter they send you. “If you fail to return her to the Camp, we will be compelled to take legal action against you for harboring a violent child who is not biologically related to you. We are well aware that the Camp allows for parents to return their adopted children if they prove to be a nuisance. Considering the fact you have lived with us for more than a decade, we will be willing to help you in paying the Camp’s cancellation fees.”

▴ ▴ ▴

“See what you’ve done? Do you still not realize how mannerless and shameless you’ve become? Go apologize to Nafisa bhabi right now. Go!” You push her. Her apology won’t fix anything. But you are giving her the chance to mend herself. This is how you will decide whether you will keep her.

“I won’t!” She is on the verge of crying.

You are imprisoned by the urge to slap her into discipline. You have never hit Sahana.

You drag her toward the door. The softness of her flesh sticks to your palms. “Go on. Ring the bell. I am waiting.”

Zara stares at you as though she would stab your belly if she had a knife.

“Go!”

Zara spits on your face—right on the bridge of your nose—and bounds down the stairs.

▴ ▴ ▴

When it’s ten p.m., you call Samara to check whether Zara is at hers, even though you know she doesn’t know the way to Mohammadpur from Dhanmondi.

“No, she isn’t here. Is everything fine? You want me to come over?” You think of calling the Camp, but she doesn’t know the way to Savar either. You check the grocery stores in the neighborhood. Some security guards join you alongside a few maids. One of the guards announces with a mic: “A child has gone missing. Ten years of age. Healthy. Fair. She was last seen wearing a green frock. Her hair is up to her neck. Please contact Building 37, Flat F8, if found. Reward: 10,000 Taka.”

The ordeal of looking for her from one street to another—inside every garage, every floor, every house, behind every car; behind bushes; beneath the streetside cafeteria tables—surrounds you with disinfectant-smelling smoke. A hospital corridor leading to the operation theater assembles into view. (In this view, a nurse is dressing up your wounds as you mutter prayers under your breath, your hands folded. You are rocking back and forth, the prayers weighing down your lips and squeezing your eyes shut. A few minutes lapse, and the doctor announces Sahana dead. “She died at the spot, unfortunately,” she says, her expression conveniently hidden by a mask. You knew she had died at the spot. You were the one to rush her unbreathing body to the hospital. You liked holding on to the fragrant tail of disbelief.)

You cross the main road outside the neighborhood and enter the shopping mall. You sweep through the toy shops and fast-food restaurants on the ground floor.

“Ammu, look!” Zara screams from the second floor as she spots you in front of the escalator. “Come, come. Look what I’ve found!” she says. She holds your hand and leads you to an Apple store. Her fingers are sticky with bits of white cotton candy dotted around the nails.

“Look, this iPad is even better than the one you have! Ask Rafi uncle to buy me this one, please?”

Your feet tremble. You crumple to the ground and press your head against her small chest.