"Ma doesn't understand why you didn't stay around and eat breakfast," Kamal said.

"I had to get started on this work."

"But she said she cooked your favorite pittha. You knew that she was going to do that this morning."

"I didn't have time."

"It doesn't take that long. You'd work better on a full stomach."

"I'll go over and eat soon. Is that all right with you?" His voice rose.

Altaf had been thrilled that even though winter was two months away, his mother had chosen this morning to make pitthas for him. But he had already informed her that he would go back and eat. Why did she have to send his brother to nag him? Now Altaf was determined to stay longer at the boat than he had originally intended.

Well, if demands were going to be made on him, he could make some himself. He looked at his brother and barked out, "So where were you yesterday? I told you that I would take you out for a boat ride."

"Oh, I had to go over to Shona Bu's house. It got so late that she wouldn't let me go. I left before dawn this morning."

Altaf noted that Kamal did not say why he had to go to their sister's village. They had planned this trip a week ago.

"You didn't show up last week either."

"I had to go into town and buy some things. You know, some of us have obligations."

Altaf stopped his work, glared at his brother and demanded, "What is that supposed to mean?"

Kamal replied, "Nothing. You know the work around here. After Father died, it all fell on me."

The tone was lowered, but the accusation was not withdrawn. Just hidden behind a few declarations of fact that Altaf could not refute.

"You're looking at the future, you know." With a wave of his arms toward the country boats in the distance, he continued, "In a few years those vessels will be obsolete. Look at them, they go so slow. Scrawny men with their poles and oars. And those flimsy sails. No, the future belongs to steel, oil, and engine power. We are so lucky the English are bringing modern machinery into this country."

Kamal stood there, his face blank.

Altaf went on, "It was good that you were able to get that tar from town last week. The boat's been taking on water. Without that tar I don't know how I would make it back."

"It may not be Calcutta," Kamal replied, "But we have plenty here."

Altaf snapped, "What do you know about Calcutta anyway? You've hardly gone beyond the other side of the Meghna!" He regretted his words even as they poured out of his mouth.

The long silence that followed was broken by a small voice yelling in the distance. Masoom came tearing down the footpath, all out of breath. Altaf smiled at him and asked, "What, you're up already and didn't come to help your uncle?"

"Grandma cooked pittha this morning. I had to watch her cook and get the first bite. Uncle Kamal, she wants you to do something for her."

Kamal motioned to the child, "Let's go. I'll make sure she gives you another bite."

Altaf pointed in Shiraj's direction. "Take him with you and give him one too." The boy, who'd been sitting quietly in the background, leapt to his feet.

Altaf welcomed the chance to be alone. He had never imagined that his brother would be so open with his resentments. The two of them were only three years apart. When children, they had their share of arguments and even a fistfight or two, but they also spent hours talking about everything that entered their world. When one of them heard an elephant's bell, they ran to get the other so they could both join the village children trailing behind the giant beast. They consoled each other when their father punished them. Altaf had missed these conversations. Coming home, he had hoped Kamal would join him on a river cruise so the two of them could catch up. But his brother refused to give him that satisfaction.

Altaf caught sight of Shiraj who was back stirring the tar. The boy licked his lips and exclaimed to Altaf that he had never tasted anything so delicious.

Shiraj chose this moment to remind Altaf. "Can we go by my village? I'll help you find the way."

"There just isn't enough time."

"Please, sir, just for one day."

"We don't have enough fuel."

"We can get it at the riverport. You don't have to pay me wages for a whole month."

Altaf shook his head. "I'll send you back on vacation next month."

"But it won't be the same. We are so close. I could even get my grandfather the pir to bless your boat."

Altaf shook his head. "It's just not possible."

The boy disappeared to the other side of the boat. Altaf heard him weeping. He wished he could oblige, but he just wanted to be done with this journey. He noticed that Kamal had now returned. His brother had sat down this time. With his back leaning on one of the two coconut trees near the boat, he was preparing to smoke a cigarette. Of the two trees Kamal had chosen the one further away from the boat.

Taking one deep drag from his cigarette, he blew the smoke out, then said, "Ma is crying. She cooked the pitthas but you weren't around to eat them when they were hot. She also says that she asked you to stay one more day but you turned her down."

"You know I can't stay longer. I have to be back at my job in five days' time. Why doesn't she understand that?"

"It's not just this. Do you even care about us anymore? Why did you stay away for ten years? When Father died, you didn't come. When Shona Bu got married, you didn't come. She wanted so badly for you to be here and bid her goodbye."

Altaf felt the hair on his arms bristle. So now the accusations finally came into the open. Oh yes, he'd felt them in the glances from his mother and sister, looks that spoke of pleasure at seeing him again but that could not conceal the buried hurts of the past. But he was never sure whether the insinuations were really there or if his own conscience was conjuring them up.

He knew that his response would be feeble, but he gave it a try. "Look, when you have a job with the Ingreji raj, you just can't up and leave any time."

"They give you time off. You could have come sometime."

"Didn't I send money?"

"Money?" Kamal spat out. "You think that's enough? Are we beggars? Yes, everyone lives slightly better because of the money you send. But you've changed into someone nobody seems to know." Kamal slowly added, "It looks like you've become the Ingreji sahib that everyone first thought you were when you pulled up in that boat."

"Shoorer bachha!"

"If I am the child of a pig, what does that make you?"

"How dare you? Have you forgotten that I am still your older brother?"

The words 'Ingreji sahib' burned into Altaf's flesh. Oh, he'd enjoyed it when the village children had first addressed him that way. Now, coming from Kamal, this was no child's cry of admiration.

For a minute the two brothers stared at each other. Kamal was the first to make a move. He took a final puff from his cigarette, and then, tossing the butt into the water, he stood up and walked away.

How could Altaf explain to his people why he had stayed away all these years?

He had often yearned to come back. Sure, the city had its enchantments: the cinema, music, whiskey and women. But that was not why he stayed away for so long. He was convinced that running away, abandoning an eldest son's duties, had marked him with a stigma and he wanted some way to set things in balance. During the time he hung around Wilkins's boatyard, drawing lines and shapes in his head, Altaf seized on the vision of a boat of his own as the solution to put order back into his life. He could return home with a possession that would make the village look at him with pride and respect. In the glow of that admiration who would recall the circumstances in which he had stolen away ten years earlier?

A vision this grand, he had understood, required sacrifice. And the price was high. It wasn't just the money, though that took years to save. The friendship with Wilkins wasn't exactly like how he had portrayed it to his family. True enough, the Englishman had seen something in him, but the line that separated colonial from native had remained intact, even if it had blurred on a few occasions. For an entire year before Wilkins taught him anything, Altaf was merely an errand boy for the man. This, he was told, was normal for an apprentice. So Altaf shopped, hired laborers, and even delivered women to Wilkins. Even though he could carry the Englishman's tools, Altaf was not allowed to use any of the machinery. He could only stand and watch. It was during this year that the letters had come from home asking him to return for his sister's wedding and his father's funeral. But he couldn't comply because he was enmeshed in his obligations to Wilkins, and he didn't want to risk his precarious relationship with the Englishman.

Now here he was just about to leave his village once again, discovering that his calculations had been entirely wrong. He'd only succeeded in creating new imbalances.

The next day it rained. On and off, all through the day and night. Altaf was pleased that he had put the tar on the boat the day before. The last day he spent inside the house, telling stories to Masoom, and trying to argue his mother out of packing a hundred bundles of food to take back to the city.

Early the next morning, Altaf and Shiraj began their return journey. It was a bright, clear day, and they made good distance by the time night fell. They stopped at one of the small towns along the water and moored the boat for the night.

After they had eaten and the boy fell asleep, Altaf prepared to rest for the night. There was a cool nip in the air. Winter came early along the riverways of Bengal. He unfolded the quilt his mother had thrust into his hands as she had said her goodbye with tearful eyes. He recognized the worn fabric as coming from the saris she used to wear during his childhood. He could remember how she used to feel and smell when he ran to her and wrapped himself around her legs. Did she really save those old pieces of cloth so many years to sew into a quilt for him? Or had she made the quilt years back when she had prayed for him to return?

He held the soft fabric to his face.

Something dropped out of the quilt and fell to the bottom of the boat. He felt around his feet and found the object. It was a tiny copper cylinder with a black string attached to it. His mother had tried to tie the tabeez around his arm as he was about to leave. He had refused to put it on. What could an amulet do? For his return journey, he put his faith in his store of fuel not being used up, in the coat of tar he'd put on with his own sweat, and in the hope that the weather would hold.

He rubbed the amulet in the palm of his hand. He felt the polished copper and the silken string. He wrapped the string around one of his fingers as he recalled his mother's face. When he had rejected the amulet, she had not protested but simply let out a sigh of resignation. Now he realized she hadn't given up at all, just come up with a different strategy. He felt a tiny blade of anger. He unwrapped the string from his finger and stood up. Then, raising his arm behind him, he hurled the amulet into the water. As far as he could.

Unfolding the quilt, all the way this time, Altaf wrapped himself in it. He glanced sideways at Shiraj's sleeping face. The boy's jaw was clenched and his breaths labored, as if he was having an anguished dream. Tomorrow morning, Altaf told himself, he would finally make up his mind whether they should turn back and travel to the boy's village. He would probably do it. He no longer felt in a hurry to get anywhere.

What would he be risking if he showed up a couple of days late to work? His English superiors might yell at him, but more than likely they would simply tut-tut among themselves: They are all the same. Even the ones who looked so promising. You send them home on holiday and what do you get? They return to Indian Time.

He could live with that.

Mahmud Rahman is a Bangladeshi writer who lives in Oakland, California.