The Bengal Boys

by Martin Goodman

Over the side of the bridge Nurul could see the clock tower, shaped like a miniature Big Ben but made of corrugated iron. Then the wide river, its water brown and empty. The rickshaw reached the brow of the bridge then rolled down the other side, the cyclist and the boy who helped push leaping back on to steer and shout it through the stream of wheels and men.

"That was great!" Peter said.

Nurul didn't think so.

They climbed down from the rickshaw and headed for a bus. The bus they had both taken to school in England had been red and sleek, with an engine you couldn't hear beneath the chatter of kids. This one was rusted and dumpy. It was full so they got on at the back and stood. The engine churned away and the bus nosed out of the town to run between fields.

"Hey look at this," Peter said. He had sat down on the top step to peer beneath the seats. Two white birds looked back at him and cheeped, their feet bound by string as they dangled upside down from a passenger's hand.

Fingers tweaked at his ginger hair to turn his head back round.

Nurul laughed with the others, and a man caught hold of Peter to stop him tumbling down the steps in surprise. A pet monkey swung from a boy's belt to grab at another handful of Peter's hair.

"He thinks you're his brother," Nurul said.

The monkey let go and Peter stood up, bending his knees to keep balance against the swaying of the bus. An older boy rode on the steps at the front, leaning out to shout out their destination. Peter couldn't make out the name, so made up a call of his own.

"Wayolawolawoo!" he shouted.

Gripping the handrail he wheeled round till he was hanging outside the bus and grinning in through the open window. His ginger hair streamed out in the wind.

"Me monkey," he said, but his call was more like Tarzan's. "Wayolawolawoo!"

The rest of the bus laughed. Nurul just looked down between his feet and watched the road through a rusted hole in the floor.

"You were making fun," he complained when they climbed from the bus at his village.

Peter stopped and tilted his head to one side, trying to understand.

"I'm having fun," he said.

"Your Dad's an airline pilot. You fly to Bangladesh in the cockpit of his jet, then fly on up to us in Sylhet. What have we got for you? Rickshaws and rusty buses."

Peter looked at the rickshaw that was waiting to carry them further on. Its carriage was yellow, but painted also with hills and rivers and flowers, and multi-coloured faces that were both wild and friendly.

"I love your rickshaws," he said, and climbed in.

***

The driver pedalled them out of the village, turning from the road to run along a lane of baked mud, then a still narrower path raised above the flat fields. The breeze was warm, and carried scents from the distant trees that blew across Peter's face and made him smile.

"Where is your Dad's place?" he asked.

"This is it."

There was nothing around but square fields.

"He owns it all," Nurul explained. "It used to be forest but he had the trees cleared to make rice fields. That's our house over there."

A dozen fields away there ran a long plastered wall with an archway at its centre. Some of the trees from the vanished forest were collected behind it.

"It's like a lord's house," Peter said. "Behind its own walls in all this land."

"It's nothing," Nurul replied.

The path grew too narrow for the rickshaw so they had to leave it and walk the last of the way. Peter ran ahead. Nurul hung back. The sun burnt itself through his closed eyelids as he stopped. He wished he could shift it across the sky and back down to the horizon, so the day would be dark and over.

***

Nurul crouched down to touch his aunt's feet as she stepped from the shadows of the door and onto the balcony. She wore a sari of a rich blue spangled with stars. No bigger than the two boys, lines of old age slit the skin of her face. Nurul stood up and stepped aside so the lady could view Peter, who stood in the courtyard of dust. She raised her hand to point at him, then higher still toward the sun so that the silver bangles slid down her arm. She had to let a laugh fly out from her mouth before she could speak.

"She was sad," Nurul translated. "She was lonely out here on her own. She didn't know why she had lived so long. Now she understands. It was so she could see you. She is in love with your hair. She says you have fallen from the sun. She feels blessed."

Nurul brought his friend forward. The lady stopped laughing to fold her hands around his head. Peter looked back into the dark gloss of her eyes.

"Your hair is orange, your skin is white, your eyes are blue," Nurul translated again. "You are her sunboy. You must come into the house. She has the perfect drink for you."

The front room of the house held a bed, a desk, and a plain table where the boys sat down. The lady returned after a moment with two glasses of orange. It had once been fizzy, but now was flat.

Nurul pulled a face as he tasted it. "She's had it for years," he explained. "She's been saving it for a special occasion. This is it. You have a drink that matches your hair."

Peter downed it in one. The lady clapped her hands and picked up his glass for a refill. Peter shook his head. It made his hair dance into life. The lady watched it, then ran laughing into one of the back rooms.

"Quick," Nurul said. "Let's go."

The lady's voice came calling back before he could stand up.

"She is cooking you a meal," he said, and trudged through to the back of the house. "She needs water."

***

The pipe gurgled and belched as Peter pumped the handle. Clean water surged out to fall in through the neck of the silver can Nurul was holding, and Peter laughed. Nurul set the can down on the ground and stood up to face him.

"Why are you laughing?" he demanded.

"I've never done this before," Peter said. "At home I just turn the taps on. Here I pump water out of the earth. It's amazing."

"You're laughing at us. We've no electricity. No gas. We cook over a wood fire in a hole in the kitchen floor. Dad says I've got to spend a year in his home country to learn what it's like. So here I am. It doesn't mean I like it here."

Nurul carried the water to the kitchen while Peter waited outside. When he came back they wandered into the garden together. Trees grew high on slender grey trunks, their branches reaching across to shade the path, as Nurul led the way. The trees stopped at a stone rim that surrounded a large pool of water. Peter could sense the cool vapours rising from its surface.

"Dad calls it a swimming pool," Nurul said.

Peter pulled his shirt over his head, pressed his feet out of his trainers, and pushed down his shorts.

"What are you doing?" Nurul asked. "You can't go in there, Peter. It's filthy. It hasn't been cleaned in years."

Peter ignored him. There were stone steps leading into the water, but Peter chose to stand on the edge. His body was as white as his underpants. Nurul watched the splash of his dive, and the pale streak of the body darting under the water.

"You're mad," he said. "You wouldn't catch me in there."

Peter swam back to the side of the pool and pressed his feet through the mulch of leaves collected on the bottom. He stretched his arms behind him, then brought them quickly forward. A wave surged out of the pool to slap against Nurul's chest.

"There," he said. "You can't get any wetter than that. You may as well come in."

Nurul ran back through the trees a few steps, but not to run away. He needed the distance to build up speed. He came running back and sprang high from the edge, wrapping his arms about his legs, bombing like a cannonball to drop upon his friend. The wind of the flight blew against his face. The sun whipped between the branches and the sky spread out its blue. He stretched out his arms and legs to match it. The roar of his anger exploded as he fell through the centre of his giant splash.

He was laughing.

***

The sun steamed Nurul's clothes dry while they sat in the shade.

"Fancy having a pool like that to swim in all day," Peter said.

"You'd get bored. It's different with you here. Normally I'm on my own."

"Who are they then?" Peter nodded towards all the children he could see. They stood in a wide ring, some on the far side of the pool and some behind the boys backs, each child half-hiding behind the trunk of a tree.

"They don't count," Nurul said. "They're from the families that work Dad's farm."

"What's wrong with that?"

"Nothing. They live their life, I live mine. When Dad comes to visit he has to sit for hours. Families bring their problems to him. He's like a judge in court. I'm his son. I can't just run about like those kids. It's not done."

"Nothing's done," Peter said. "Till you do it."

He stood up and pulled on his clothes. "Where are you going?" Nurul asked.

"To the football pitch."

"But there isn't one."

Peter didn't seem to mind. He walked off in any case.

***

He sat on the balcony and pumped up the football he had brought as a present for Nurul. By the time it was firm the children had come out from the trees to gather in a semi-circle across the courtyard.

"Here's the ball," Peter said, and bounced it. "This is the pitch. Those are our players. All we've got to do is pick teams."

"They don't know how to play," Nurul said.

"That's OK. They won't know what rubbish we are. We're always picked last at school. Now we get to be captains."

The children were shy at first, running away from the ball which wasn't theirs to kick. Then the sight of Nurul and Peter chasing and tackling each other gave them confidence. Soon the ball was weaving a pattern amongst them all. Adults lined the balcony to turn it into a grandstand. Peter heard the laughter of the lady in blue in amongst their cheers.

"The colour's run from your hair," Nurul translated. "You're orange all over."

Sweat had plastered Peter's hair to his head. He had kept skidding to the ground as he stretched after the ball. The orange dust had stuck to his skin and clothes.

"She says she's got the perfect lunch for you."

The meal was rice, with three separate dishes of beans and meat. They were all coated in a bright orange sauce.

"Your Aunty can be our football trainer," Peter said. "She can bring out the oranges at half time."

***

A boy and girl stood in the courtyard, the girl in a pale yellow dress with puffed out sleeves, the boy in a pair of baggy brown shorts and a purple vest. They didn't move, but held white kites out in front of them.

"They want us to come and play," Nurul said.

"Play?" Peter said, and pretended to be in a huff. "Who do they think we are? Children?"

The kites were made of paper tacked on to strips of bamboo. Strands of green vine hung down as tails. They carried them out of the garden through a small gate in the side wall, past a scattering of red hens, through a small village of earthen huts with thatched roofs, till they were back out among the network of paths that were raised above the fields. The boy and girl hoisted their kites into the air, then passed the wooden handles to Peter and Nurul. The strings sang as they unwound, then grew taut as the kites touched their highest points and yearned to reach still higher.

"I thought kites needed wind. And that winds were cold," Peter said, and jigged the string to tip the kite into the sunlight. It flashed moments of brilliant white. "There's so much life in the air."

***

There was a pole that reached up to the roof of the house, with rungs to either side. Peter had wanted to climb up and sleep the night. He thought the stars might shine more brightly than any he had seen, like those on the lady's blue sari. But they had to get back to the family house in town.

"Promise me," Peter said, as they waited on the main road for the bus. "Promise me we can come out here again."

"I thought you'd hate it," Nurul told him. "I thought you'd collect jokes to tell back at school. I thought you'd laugh at all the things we've not got."

"I'll swap you," Peter offered. "You go back to England and tell the jokes. I'll stay here and enjoy it."

They jumped straight into a rickshaw when the bus arrived in Sylhet. The driver pedalled them to the bridge then climbed down to push them up its slope. Nurul called Peter to climb down too, and the two of them helped push from behind. At the top of the bridge, as the rickshaw gathered its own speed to go downhill, they got a toehold on the small tailboard. Nurul tipped back his head to face the stars. Even here, above the lights of town, they looked especially bright.

The breeze from the river joined the wind of their journey to blow his hair back from his face.

"Wayolawolawoo!" he called out, and grinned across at Peter as they flew down through the crowds.