The Hangings at Victoria Park

Dhaka, 1857          

If they'd been in Delhi or Meerut or Lucknow, maybe they'd see and hear a different story. If they'd fought at Kanpur they'd at least have had a chance to prove themselves. Here in Dhaka, inside this unfinished dream of a grieving father, another of the Mughal breed, all they could do was wait – wait to be disarmed, as word had had all hackles raised that British marines were on their way to take away their guns.

Of course that bastard Nawab Abdul Ghani sided with the British, of course he did. What else to expect from a line of thieves that let the British in to begin with. Royal charter. Trading firm. One clot of bandits making blood deals with another. The age-old order of things.

Sharif had been listening to a huddle of his comrades for the last endless hour, spinning the same few thoughts around and around like a thrashing, dying chicken. They'd called his name a few times to get him in on the nonsense, but he ignored them and closed his eyes. Their plans of doing this and doing that when they finally shed the Company's uniform would be laughable if he didn't actually pity them for it.

He'd drifted off. In a gauzy dream Usha came to him, beckoning. That was all he wanted, to answer her summons. Life would be complete. He'd left home to get away from the vipers of his squabbling clan. His brothers tearing at each other over square inches of land, their wives in a battle of their own hurling curses, spitting spells. Thank God, his parents were gone. Dead no doubt from anguish, but out of the fray, God-willing better off. Usha, the one, the only, his sole reason to make it out alive.

"Rise and shine, Subhedar Qureshi, rise and shine." The gently mocking tone split the night to blinding day. Sharif smelled them before he saw them, not needing to open his eyes even fully to know what he would see. The house, the paltry yard, the remnants of the fire, Sharif's money, still on the ground where he'd laid it at the old man's feet, were surrounded by white faces, one of whom, the one with the morning's greetings, held the rifle Sharif had dropped somewhere along the way.

A roar, a train out of control, thunder barreling across the heavens, and he was pulled to his feet, barely getting purchase before he tumbled, and smacked against a snarling white face. The horde of them were here and up ahead a dust storm kicked up by scuffling boots and dragging bodies had the world obscured. Sharif was sure his dream of Usha had slipped into a nightmare choked with British marines, that he wasn't actually awake and stumbling around for balance while the marine barked and tussled with him. But he was wide awake, had gotten to his feet, had shouted back that he was not laying down arms. The huddle of fellow sepoys had done the same, defied orders to surrender and Sharif blind with sleep and fury had charged into the fray.

Looking him up and down the old farmer frowned.

"You ran here from Dhaka?"

"I've been running for days."

"Why?"

"To get away from people."

The old man may have rasped a laugh, it was impossible to tell, the sickness in his chest a sucking void. He'd not believed Sharif was who he said he was.

"Qureshi? The Qureshis? You? Looking like that?"

"I'm a sepoy."

"I can see that. Which then? Qureshi or sepoy?"

"Both."

"Go from here." The farmer started closing the door.

From inside a boot Sharif produced a wad of cash.

"Are you trouble?"

"Only for myself. Please," Sharif counted out enough to pay the farmer's taxes for the year and the ones in arrears.

"You look thirsty," the old man said.

Sharif watched him and a young boy that had appeared out of the miserable hut build a fire, sipping water from an earthen cup. The night was cool. Neither the farmer nor the boy had more than rags to keep them warm. The boy had eyed Sharif's uniform several times with pupils brightly alert in a face that was dead before its time.

The farmer was the boy's grandfather. The boy's father, mother, and older brother had been killed by their landlord's overseers. The old man and the boy were spared to keep on working, paying the taxes. Gnarled from shoulders to ankles, the old man often shook with pain, and the boy could barely stand for lack of food.

Sharif held out the rest of the money, which the farmer noted but didn't reach for. Sharif placed it at his feet.

The boy tugged at Sharif's elbow. He led him to the darkness of the surrounding fields and pointed at the night.

"Okay, I'll leave," Sharif said.

"No," the old man said. "That's not it. He wants you to look."

There was nothing but a starless, moonless sky and land unknown to him. The boy kept pointing, like a command to run.

"I see nothing."

"They're out there, under the soil. He wants you to know. His family."

Appeased enough, the boy left Sharif and returned to the old man's side and warmed his hands by the fire mirroring how the man held his.

"What is a rich man's son doing in the Company's army? Can't think of a better way to die?"

"I didn't want to be a rich man's son."

The old man stared at the fire, the fire glinting double in his tired but alert eyes. The same eyes as the boy's.

"You're landlords, you Qureshis."

"Yes."

"Big ones."

Sharif said nothing.

"How do you treat your people like me?"

"We should do better."

Later, after the man and boy were asleep, Sharif went the way the boy had pointed with a lantern. A breeze stroked the back of his neck, teased and threatened the lantern flame. Fifty or so feet later, Sharif stopped and made a circle with the light held above his head. He would think there would be some disturbance on the ground, earth interrupted, to indicate the graves. The lantern was pointless. The night was too fiercely dark to let it shine on all it hid.

When he walked back to the house he saw that he hadn't gone that far, maybe a hundred yards. He killed the lantern and sat with his back against the house, looking out in the direction he had come from hours before.

He went in and out of sleep, the state of being in neither one nor the other bringing Usha and taking her away over and over, making him start awake each time and finding that she wasn't there after all, that the veil had fallen again and again between the place of dreaming and the real.

"Rise and shine, Subhedar Qureshi, rise and shine." The gently mocking tone split the night to blinding day. Sharif smelled them before he saw them, not needing to open his eyes even fully to know what he would see.  The house, the paltry yard, the remnants of the fire, Sharif's money, still on the ground where he'd laid it at the old man's feet, were surrounded by white faces, one of whom, the one with the morning's greetings, held the rifle Sharif had dropped somewhere along the way.

They called it a trial. There was a woman, the sole woman. None of the men could figure out her crime – anymore, for that matter, than they could their own. But one more time today, the judgement was in their hands. Their laws, allowing them to call the sepoys' Rebellion Mutiny. One more time, as the hood darkened Sharif's eyes, there was Usha, in a flash, among the throngs watching the gallows at the park.  

Nadeem Zaman is the author of the novel In the Time of the Others (long listed for the 2019 DSC Prize in South Asian Literature) and the story collection Up in the Main House & Other Stories. His fiction has appeared in journals in the US, Hong Kong, India, and Bangladesh.