A Burning(43)

The courtroom laughs again.

Lovely continues seriously, as if she has not heard. “I am an actress, so I need to be reading scripts and having fluent English, you understand? So that is how I am knowing Jivan, sweet girl. She was spending her time on teaching the poors. How many of you are doing that in your own life?” she demands. “Who are you all to judge her?”



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*

ON THE NINTH DAY, when my one sari is wrinkled, its luster gone, the judge speaks. He clears his throat, and speaks in English. First, he reads out the charges.

Waging of war against the government. Murder and criminal conspiracy. Knowingly facilitating acts preparatory to a terrorist act. Voluntarily harboring terrorists.

“We have given both sides a fair hearing,” the judge reads from his prepared notes, his spectacles at the tip of his nose. “The defendant was at the train station, carrying a package. The defendant had an ongoing relationship, on this website called Facebook, with a known terrorist recruiter. The defendant’s own former teacher has told us that she left school, discontinued her education, under suspicious circumstances. And, on the other hand, we have the word of a hijra, an individual who begs on the streets for money, saying the defendant taught her English. Be that as it may”—the judge takes a deep breath, and I feel the air in my own lungs—“it is clear that the defendant has long been disloyal to the values of this nation. The defendant has spoken clearly against the government, against the police, on the Internet, on Facebook dot-com. This lack of loyalty is not something to be taken lightly. It is its own strong piece of evidence. There is a case to be made, as well, for soothing the conscience of the city, of the country. The people demand justice.”

    He goes on.

They have been unable to trace the terrorists, and the railway station had no CCTV. Possibly the terrorists crossed the border. They have truly disappeared into the night. Only I, fool that I am, am here.

Then the judge pauses, and turns the page. The sound, in the silent room, is like the crack of a whip. Then the judge sentences the accused to death.

I don’t know whom he is speaking about.

Have we moved to a different case?

Somewhere behind me, an animal cries in pain, as if a bolt has been driven into its brain. It is my mother. I turn around. My mother, there in the third row, sari wrapped around her shoulders, stands up, then collapses. I hear the whole courtroom catch their breath. My mother falls, and I stand. Two guards jump up from the back and shout for a stretcher. A huddle of policemen positioned at the exit nearest me watch me like hawks.

    When a canvas stretcher appears, the two guards together load her on it—

I shout after them, “Where are you taking her?”

My lawyer tells me to sit down.

“Wait a moment,” I shout. “She will get better.”

“Please be quiet,” calls the judge.





LOVELY


IN THE MORNING, AT the municipal tap, I am hearing the news. When I am hearing the chatter about the “murderer,” my heart is agitating inside my rib cage.

I was going, just a few days ago, to the court. Even though Arjuni Ma was telling me not to get involved in this court business, I was going. Everybody was thinking that I was being hauled in for something, so proudly I was telling everyone around me, from a Xerox shop lady to a lawyer who was chewing his lips and looking at his phone, that I was there to give evidence. That is how Gobind was explaining it to me. The whole time I was wishing for one moment to see Jivan, to be giving her one kind look, but they were putting up white cloths so we were not being able to see each other. One strange detail which they are never showing in movies.

Truly I am not believing this verdict. Surely Gobind will be filing something, appealing something, saving Jivan somehow. Isn’t that his job?

I am going to a small crossing by myself and halfheartedly begging for coins. I am knocking at this car and that car. I am seeing a cinema of faces in the windows. In a back seat, a child is squirming. Two men are sitting and drinking Mango Frooti. Even a dog which is looking like a wolf is enjoying the ride in AC comfort. All of them are ignoring me.

    The public is wanting blood.

The media is wanting death.

All around me, that is what people are saying. The public is killing her.

When an office worker is walking by, in his clean leather shoes and ironed pants, I am feeling like shouting at him, “People like you killed her! You put your own two hands on her neck!”

Instead I am finding my voice and saying, “Brother, give.”

Out of nowhere two child beggars are arriving. They are giving me dirty looks because I am in their territory. They are shouting, “Who made this your crossing?”

I am sticking my tongue out at them and walking away. Behind me I am hearing the two children laughing, shrieking, feeling cursed themselves or maybe just making fun of me.



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*

MY FEET ARE TAKING ME to Jivan’s house. There are fifty or a hundred reporters there. Their cars and trucks, with satellite dishes on top, are blocking all the lanes. Their cameras and lights and wires are everywhere.

Father of Jivan is leaning on his walking stick, and coming out blinking in the daylight. I am watching from the back of the crowd.

    “Look,” he is saying, “look at me, I am a lame man, a limp man, and I am not being able to save my daughter.”