The Submission - Amy Waldman [129]
Except maybe God, the greatest of all plotters, meant for her to return home. She had her money and her American experience, which told her that hard work made any enterprise possible, even if Bangladesh’s corruption and chaos would test that. She would found a girls’ school there. Maybe they couldn’t change a country of 140 million people now, but if each girl founded a school, and each of those students founded a school …
The power was God’s. This was what the imam had been trying to tell her about Inam’s death, that she had no right to anything in life, not a place, not a position, not a person. Even her own child, born from her womb, was His creation and could be safeguarded only with His blessing. He could take away all He had given. Only He could not be taken. He would not abandon her if she did not abandon Him: she trusted in this. The garden in New York, all that she was being wrenched from, would be nothing next to what awaited her.
Tugging her chunni, the parrot-green one, away from her perspiring neck, Asma marched down the stairs from the Mahmouds’ apartment. She carried Abdul, and behind her Nasruddin and Mr. Mahmoud came laden with her bags and boxes; and behind them Laila Fathi, holding Asma’s travel documents; and behind her Mrs. Mahmoud and Mrs. Ahmed, crying and holding each other.
As soon as Asma came out of her building a crowd surrounded her, women reaching out to touch her in a way that reminded Nasruddin of pilgrims at the graves of saints. What they hoped to take from the touch he couldn’t say: her luck wasn’t something to covet—losing her husband, losing her place—and yet he understood. It seemed every Bangladeshi in Kensington and many from beyond had come to witness Asma’s departure, to commiserate or gloat or simply gawk at this woman, one of them, who had become a celebrity. They filled the sidewalks and the street, hung from windows, clung to fire escapes, peered from roofs. Without hearing them, Nasruddin knew what they were saying. They’d been saying it ever since the effort to deport Asma had begun. Bhabiakoriokaj, koriabhabiona—“Think before acting, don’t act before thinking.”
To her face they were all kindness, all sympathy. Her efforts to pack had been complicated by the endless stream of visitors, all of them picked over like a pile of burro bananas by Mrs. Mahmoud. She determined who got access to the inner sanctum (Asma’s room), who to the apartment at large, who had to wait in the hall. They brought sweets and small gifts, toys for Abdul, but mostly they came to take news of her purchases and packing back to the street.
Intermingled among the Bangladeshis today there were also police, who had come to keep order, and reporters and news crews, the satellites atop their vans like giant ears cocked to the sky. The Post, not satisfied with exposing Asma’s status, had also somehow obtained her itinerary. In full gloat at its success in pushing Asma from the country, that morning’s paper had informed the whole world when she would leave.
At Asma’s appearance the press pushed forward, shoving through the Bangladeshis to get close to her. Already peeved at the reporters’ sense of entitlement and his neighbors’ deference toward them, Nasruddin was furious when he saw Alyssa Spier in their ranks, notebook ready to chronicle the humiliation she had engineered. He tried to order her away, but his hands were full with Asma’s boxes. The reporters circled Asma, shouting questions at her, pressing in on her with their microphones and cameras, swallowing her up.
Nasruddin lost sight of her, and his attention wandered to the crowd, which had a relaxed air, as if it were celebrating a minor holiday. In honor of