Behind the Beautiful Forevers_ Life, Death, and Hope in a Mumbai Undercity - Katherine Boo [91]
What was the policeman telling the judge? What was the judge telling the prosecutor? The prosecutor had an orange comb-over, stiff with hair spray, and when he nodded vigorously, one clump of hair came loose and traveled upward. More vigorous nodding and it was straight in the air, like a finger pointing to the heavens. Hearing over. Come back in a week. Kehkashan stopped leaning forward, started sagging in her seat. She was so poised the day Fatima’s husband took the stand.
A few months back, Fatima’s husband, Abdul Shaikh, had brought his daughters to the Husain home for Eid, the holiest day of the Muslim year. Young Abdul had dejugulated a goat on the maidan, and old Abdul had worked with him shoulder to shoulder, stripping back the muscle to mine the meat for the feast. Same as they’d always done at Eid. A good goat this year, a good time. But the trial was a matter of honor for Fatima’s husband, just as it was for the Husains.
The old garbage sorter had been able to hear more than the Husains could, from his seat in the middle of the courtroom. As the trial progressed, he realized that Fatima’s deathbed account of a beating and a throttling was being undermined. Witnesses kept saying the fight had been one of hot words. Abdul Shaikh was disturbed by this contradiction of the first and last official statement of his wife.
He and Fatima had not been happy, after the first warm year. They’d fought regularly about her lovers, the force with which she beat the children, the force with which he beat her when drunk. He didn’t have it in him to prettify their history. But day in and day out since Fatima’s death, he had had to live beside the Husains, hearing Zehrunisa singing to her daughters, hearing Mirchi making everyone laugh. Fatima’s suicide had thieved him of the chance, however remote, of finding peace with his wife and giving his beloved daughters a happy home.
He wanted to blame someone other than his wife for this loss of future possibility. He wanted the judge to convict the Husains. The problem was that he wasn’t sure what the Husains had or hadn’t done to Fatima, and had said so in his original statement to the police. He’d been at work, arriving home only to see his wife grotesquely injured. His daughters, underfoot during the fight, had told him that no one had hit anyone. But where did that leave those girls? He didn’t want them to grow up knowing that their mother had burned herself, lied, and died.
His daughters were back at Annawadi now. He’d removed them from Sister Paulette’s care upon finding bruises on their arms and legs. They’d been elated to leave. “Always we had to say ‘Thank you, Jesus’ to a picture of a white man,” his younger daughter said. “It was so boring!” Since coming home, they hadn’t once asked about their mother, but Noori, who’d seen the burning through the window, had changed. She’d stand in the road as if she wanted the oncoming cars to hit her, and had developed a nervous habit of chewing her head scarf.
Today, though, she’d been excited to take the train across the city to the courthouse, and especially enthusiastic about the television cameras set up outside. “Some big trial must be happening today,” Abdul Shaikh had told his daughters, who’d run in front of one camera to smile and wave. Other Annawadians said the younger daughter, Heena, smiled just like her mother. Abdul Shaikh thought this was correct, though he didn’t have a great mental reserve of Fatima smiles to reflect on.
“Will they show us on TV now?” Noori had asked as the three of them went through a low metal security gate. Turning to answer, Abdul Shaikh banged his head hard on the gate. He still felt dazed an hour later,