Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine. Vol. 133, Nos. 3 & 4. Whole Nos. 811 & 812, March/April 2009

“I am tired, but I cannot sleep.”

“I understand. Hasan — it is difficult.”

“Ji.”

Farid gestured him to sit in the only chair, a stool before an ancient wooden desk that had once served in a sea officer’s cabin. A decorated reed mat covered part of the cement floor. “I’m sorry, I cannot offer cha, the kettle is empty.”

Mohit shook his head, it did not matter. Farid lowered himself onto his charpoy rope bed and they sat in silence for a time.

“You are, of course, welcome to continue in the carrying team,” Farid said eventually. “Indeed, I would be grateful.”

“Dhonnobad.” Mohit nodded his thanks. He looked at the photographs on the wall — studio snapshots of Farid’s daughter, posed against painted backgrounds of gardens and villas.

“She is well,” Farid said, following his gaze. “In the madrassa already. I have trouble believing she has grown so fast.”

“It is hard, being away from your family?”

“Of course.” Farid lifted his shoulders, just a bit. “But how am I to support them, otherwise? School fees alone take nearly everything, forget food. It has been another difficult year. Aii, you know.”

“Yes.” Ghorarchar, like the rest of the northeast, had suffered even more than usual during the season known simply as Hunger.

“Bhaiya, I went to the jua shala just now.”

Farid frowned. “You did not gamble, did you?”

“No. I spoke with Chauhan.”

Farid coughed in surprise.

“Yes.” Mohit described his earlier visit to Hasan’s widow, and how he’d gone for help in seeking the housebreaker.

“But I fear he is escaped, with my money, and all of Hasan’s.”

“Insha Allah.” Farid looked sad. “It is God’s will.”

Mohit started to brush off the mud streaking his legs, then remembered he was inside. He looked up at Farid. “Bhaiya, is it possible that the explosion was... arranged, somehow?”

“Arranged?”

“Not an accident. Set up. How else could Hasan, the most able of cutters, have made such a mistake?”

Farid considered. They heard a pair of men go by outside, fading voices complaining of the rain, their awful luck, the labor awaiting them in the morning.

“The gunda who robbed Hasan’s family, I doubt he would have had the ability,” Farid said. “It would be complex. To guess where Hasan would begin his vent, to place an incendiary of some sort — too much for a common thug.”

“Perhaps not him.” Mohit thought of the drunken cutter, celebrating his promotion.

“I don’t know.” Farid made an unsure gesture with one hand. “Possible, yes, by someone with much knowledge and luck. But to what end, I cannot see.”

Mohit looked down again and said nothing.

“It was a terrible misfortune,” Farid said. “For us all. You need not make it worse.”

“Perhaps.”

“Go home, Mohit. Sleep. Life goes on.”

“Does it?”

Farid’s lamp guttered, and Mohit noticed the tang of burnt kerosene.

“Do you remember when I recruited you?” Farid said. “In Ghorarchar, I needed just four men that spring, though thirty at least had already asked me, and more came every hour. You were young. Many others were stronger, or older, or, to be honest, more desperate. But I could see that you had the more important quality — you had courage. In five minutes I could see that.”

Mohit shook his head, embarrassed.

“It was true,” Farid continued. “Anyone can lift steel for a day or a week. Some endure long enough to become accustomed to the work, and fewer still can make a living of it. But the rare ones, they can look beyond, and plan for another life.”

“Hmm.”

Farid sighed. “You are still strong, Mohit. This is an enormous reversal, I can barely imagine how you must feel. But I know you will come through.” He gestured — at the room, at the rain, at the shanties and mud and broken ships and tens of thousands of men of Chittagong. “You are better than this,” he said.

After a while Mohit nodded and stood, feet and back aching, his shirt scraping painfully where the cable had wounded his shoulders.

“I wish you were right,” he said.

Friday the rains stopped, the sun broke through for a few minutes, and Bhatiary took on a tenuous holiday feel, almost giddy. It was the week’s day of rest. Most people wore their best clothes, shirts scrubbed clean and white, the breaking yards put out of mind for a few hours. Men stood in the open air, cheerful and dry, talking with friends. Some were the worse for alcohol, of course, and others squinted in the morning brightness, weary already. But most ambled along, glad to be out and free on a pleasant day.

Mohit, though not particularly religious, had gone to services that morning. He hadn’t paid attention to the imam’s long sermon, but the chants were nostalgic and comforting, and when he’d stretched out his arms and placed his head to the carpet — damp, yes, and suffused with the faint, inevitable reek of the beach — he’d felt more at peace than he could remember.

“Khodahafez,” said one of the mosque’s acolytes as he left. “Thank you for coming this morning.”

“It was a pleasure,” said Mohit, and he meant it.