The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

By Uzma Aslam Khan

Set in the Andaman Islands over the course of oppressive imperial regimes, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali is a complex, gripping homage to those omitted from the collective memory.

Nomi and Zee are Local Borns—their father a convict condemned by the British to the Andaman Islands, their mother shipped off with him. The islands are an inhospitable place, despite their surreal beauty. In this unreliable world, the children have their friend Aye, the pet hen Priya and the distracted love of their parents to shore them up from one day to the next. Meanwhile, within the walls of the prison, Prisoner 218 D wages a war on her jailers with only her body and her memory.

When war descends upon this overlooked outpost of Empire, the British are forced out and the Japanese move in. Soon the first shot is fired and Zee is forced to flee, leaving Nomi and the other islanders to contend with a new malice. The islands—and the seas surrounding them—become a battlefield, resulting in tragedy for some and a brittle kind of freedom for others, who find themselves increasingly entangled in a mesh of alliances and betrayals. 

Ambitiously imagined and hauntingly alive, The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali writes into being the interwoven stories of people caught in the vortex of history, powerless yet with powers of their own: of bravery and wonder, empathy and endurance. Uzma Aslam Khan’s extraordinary new novel is an unflinching and lyrical page-turner, an epic telling of a largely forgotten chapter in the history of the subcontinent.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Deep Vellum Publishing
• Release date: May 17, 2022
• ISBN: 9781646051656

Uzma Aslam Khan

UZMA ASLAM KHAN is the author of Trespassing and The Geometry of God, both highly acclaimed novels published around the world. Uzma’s story “Ice, Mating” was included in Granta magazine’s hugely popular edition on Pakistan. She is the winner of the Bronze Award in the Independent Publishers Book Awards. The Geometry of God was a Kirkus Best Book of 2009 and a finalist for Foreword magazine’s Best Books of 2009. Visit her online at uzmaaslamkhan.blogspot.com.

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Praise for The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

Part of the beauty of Khan’s writing stems from the fact that she does not need to actively portray racism, she makes virtually all her characters live it . . . Khan writes with quietly restrained but powerful passion. —Dawn

Khan is adept at creating worlds that are at once magical and terrifying. She creates a universe out of a footnote of history. —Indian Express

A richly imagined universe . . . If we are to strive for a more just world, we need to hear the stories. —The Hindu 

This fiction is the new truth we need to know. —New Indian Express

A magnificent, rebellious, and moving story. [It] is striking on several levels: as a historical novel, as testimony . . . as a story of hope, friendship, and love that can survive even in the most terrible circumstances.

—Svenska Dagbladet, Sweden

Praise for Thinner Than Skin

WINNER: FRENCH EMBASSY PRIZE FOR BEST FICTION,

KARACHI LITERATURE FESTIVAL 2014

LONG-LISTED: DSC PRIZE FOR SOUTH ASIAN FICTION 2014

LONG-LISTED: MAN ASIAN LITERARY PRIZE 2012

Smart, fierce, and poignant: perhaps the most exciting novel yet by this very talented writer. —Mohsin Hamid

There is power, serenity and grace in the writing of this literary daughter of the great Pakistani poet Faiz Ahmed Faiz. —Le Monde, France

"In (a) magnificent landscape—where anthropomorphic glaciers are born of mating ice—a chance meeting with a young nomad will change lives. Thinner Than Skin is a work of piercing beauty and intelligence, and an urgent novel for our times." —Man Asian Jury Prize

Praise for The Geometry of God

A KIRKUS REVIEWS BEST BOOK OF 2009

FINALIST IN FOREWORD REVIEWS’ BEST BOOKS OF 2009

WINNER: BRONZE AWARD, INDEPENDENT PUBLISHER

BOOK AWARDS 2010

ONE OF NYLON MAGAZINE’S "TEN INCREDIBLE BOOKS BY

MUSLIM WOMEN WRITERS"

Khan’s urgent defense of free thought and action—often galvanized by strong-minded, sensuous women—courses through every page of this gorgeously complex book; but what really draws the reader in is the way Mehwish taste-tests the words she hears, as if they were pieces of fruit, and probes the meaning of human connection in a culture of intolerance, but also of stubborn hope.

—Cathleen Medwick, Oprah Magazine

The characters, the poetry and the philosophical questions she raises are rendered with a power and beauty that make this novel linger in the mind and heart. —Kirkus Reviews, starred review

Elegant, sensuous and fiercely intelligent, a wonderfully inventive story that pits science against politics and the freedom of women against the insecurities of men. —Kamila Shamsie

The Miraculous True History of Nomi Ali

Uzma Aslam Khan

Deep Vellum Publishing

3000 Commerce St., Dallas,Texas 75226

deepvellum.org · @deepvellum

Deep Vellum is a 501c3 nonprofit literary arts organization

founded in 2013 with the mission to bring

the world into conversation through literature.

Copyright © 2019 Uzma Aslam Khan

First Deep Vellum edition, 2022

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher.

Support for this publication has been provided in part by the National Endowment for the Arts.

ISBNs:

978-1-64605-164-9 (hardcover)

978-1-64605-165-6 (ebook)

library of congress control number: 2021950238

Cover design by Bhavi Mehta

Cover image: detail from Asakusa Ricefields and Torinomachi Festival, No. 101, One Hundred Famous Views of Edo, 1857, by Utagawa Hiroshige (Ando).

Interior Layout and Typesetting by KGT

Printed in the United States of America

For Abbu

(1935–2009)

‘You’ve gone so far.’

‘It is when they become westernised that one doesn’t feel at home with them.’

—Sir Reginald Maxwell, The Maxwell Papers

‘Untie the knot from my tongue, that they may hear me speak.’

—Surah Taha, verse 25–28

ONE

The Night They Took Zee

1942

the soldiers arrived on a morning in spring when the sea was unswollen and everyone said they were here to save them.

‘They are Asian, like us,’ said the father of Nomi and Zee, because he was like everyone.

Zee did not believe him. ‘Nobody cares about us.’

‘The British have left. We are free.’

‘We are not free. We are now under the Japanese.’

They argued till Zee left the village in a sulk and Nomi followed him.

The soldiers were everywhere, just standing around, carrying long guns and small satchels. When the children reached the jetty, Zee said, ‘There is nothing new here, there never is.’ Pretending to study the sea, he tried to sound casual, but she knew him as well as he knew her. There was plenty new here. There were bombers in the sky and battleships in the sea. Nomi’s nose was full with black snot. The sirens had stopped.

‘Let’s go up the mountain,’ announced Zee.

‘Don’t be stupid,’ she said.

‘Are you a coward like—’

‘Shut up!’

A soldier looked at her and yawned.

Nomi thought it strange that even the Indians who had worked for the British were now gone.

‘Why would they leave, if something bad wasn’t going to happen?’ Zee had asked, during one of his fights with their father.

‘Wait and see,’ their father had repeated. ‘The Japanese are here to help.’ To their mother he said that the price of raising a family on a prison island was that the children would never know trust.

Their father was a settled convict. He had been arrested in India, long ago, for reasons the children were never told, and sent here to South Andaman Island, to the jail that looked like a starfish. After serving out his term, he had been given a ticket of leave and the hut where they now lived. Nomi and Zee were born on the island. They were the Local Borns.

Earlier this morning, Nomi had heard their mother say that the first thing the Japanese did after they arrived was release the prisoners, and now look, terrible men were wandering about stealing chickens and bothering women. She told Nomi to stay close to her, and to keep the hen, Priya, close too.

Now, as Zee pulled Nomi away from the jetty, towards the mountain, she wanted to tell her brother.

He knew her as well as she knew him. ‘Don’t be afraid.’

‘I’m afraid for Priya.’

‘The Japanese like fish, not chicken.’ He laughed at his own joke, he always did.

‘That’s not what I mean. Mama says there are freed convicts who are savages.’

‘What if Baba was still a prisoner? Would you call him that?’

‘I’m just telling you what she said.’

‘Mama is usually wrong.’

‘No, she isn’t.’

‘Yes, she is.’

‘What about what Baba says?’

‘Always wrong.’

‘I want to go back.’

‘No, you don’t.’

‘Yes, I do.’

‘They can’t both be right.’

‘About what?’

‘Mama sides with the British, Baba with the Japanese, whose side are you on?’

She was stumped. What sort of question was this? Their mother would not be here if not for the British, she had been forced, it was called transportation for life, just because Zee was already in her stomach when Baba did what he did. Her family said she was with his child now and belonged to him. Nomi had heard their mother say this, sometimes holding Nomi while Nomi held Priya—it was one of the important things she had to discuss with Zee.

But he was confusing her. She was twelve—only a year younger than their mother when she got married—yet, with Zee, Nomi felt like a child. Maybe this was why Priya grew muddled and went where she should not. One of the other chickens was saying stupid things.

‘That makes no sense,’ she decided.

He laughed. ‘You’re on nobody’s side, okay? Because nobody’s on our side.’

He looked at her. She looked at him.

And she has wondered ever since, ever since, why she did not think to ask, What’s our side, Zee?

•

They started climbing. Their mother never allowed them up the mountain that Nomi called Mount Top, but Nomi had been here once before. It was their secret, hers and Zee’s.

There were no Indian guards telling them not to go up. There were only the Japanese, some lying in the grass with their boots off and long guns to the sky. They said things hard to understand, but did not stop Nomi and Zee from continuing. For a few steps it was just the two of them, then more olive-green uniforms, different up here against the bushes than down there against the sea. And again Zee gripped her arm, and again she wanted to be home, but they kept climbing. There was the lake they had been to before. Then, a little further, through the padauk trees on the summit of the next hill, they saw it. The jail. Shaped like a starfish and the colour of a wound, its seven arms severed by the tall, tall trees.

This was as far as she had ever come. The higher up Zee took her, the more the ocean flew through the trees, and she tried to focus on this because it was beautiful.

From up here she could finally see where she lived. Where she had always lived. Zee had told her that the Andaman Islands were the tip of a submerged mountain range. Below the surface of the sea, there were many Mount Tops, far taller than the one on which they now stood. If Nomi shut her eyes and listened closely, she could hear a rhythmic rumbling all around her. The islands were breathing. The whole universe seemed to sing. The sea was so many greens and blues, all glassy and glittering. The surf rolled sweetly along the white beaches, though she had never known a beach to be white, a surf to be sweet. The sky was absolutely clear, and there was just enough of a breeze to kiss the sweat from her arms, but not the terrible kind that said a storm was coming and they would be wet for days.

There was another story about how these islands were made. Lord Rama had created them, perhaps on a day such as this, as a bridge to cross the sea. His wife Sita had been abducted by a demon, and he wished for a way to retrieve her. He did recover Sita, but finding the islands too forested for his feet, Rama fled, in search of a softer landing. He soon forgot about this corner of the world.

But on this afternoon, the islands appeared soft to Nomi. She wanted to pull them to her, all the soft corners of the world.

Zee was pointing to the purest of sands below, where palm trees swayed in prayer. Nearby were strict rows of coconut palms, a whole army of them. These were the plantations where some women worked. From this height, the other islands were just dots, and now Zee was pointing to the one where there had been a sawmill and elephants to clear the forests. When the Japanese bombed it, the cry of elephants could be heard even over the sirens, and some people reported seeing monstrous globes of fire charging into the sea. According to Zee, the black snot in Nomi’s nose was scorched elephant flesh.

She could hear no elephants now. And though she had not climbed all the way to the top of the mountain, already she had seen the world, already she had grown older.

‘We don’t have to keep going up if you’re tired,’ said Zee. He seemed happy with her now that she had stopped wanting to go back. ‘Let’s sit here.’

He pulled her through a loop of padauk trees, the tallest tree-loop she had seen, and a wide, wide fig tree with a mesh of vines in its endless loving arms. A flock of yellow parrots fluttered far into the dazzling sky. There was a bench with curly etching. Harriett Tytler, brave and beloved wife of Colonel Robert Tytler. Nomi did not like the smell of the bench but when Zee sat down, so did she.

He released her arm. ‘Are you still afraid?’

‘No,’ she lied. The smell was familiar. She did not know why.

‘You don’t need to be. I have this.’ From somewhere under his shirt, he pulled out a small gun. ‘It’s an air pistol,’ he added, as if this meant something.

She was horrified. ‘Baba will be angry.’

‘Pish!’

‘Where did you get it?’

‘From Mr Campbell, before he left.’

Mr Campbell had been their school teacher. ‘He gave it to you?’

‘I found it in his office drawer.’

‘You stole it?’

‘So? What would he do—transport me?’ Again he laughed at his own joke. ‘Anyway, he’s gone. Maybe he thought I should have it.’

Zee was staring ahead, a smile around his lips. He was not happy with her but with himself. His hair had grown again. As the wind blew, the hair lifted off his forehead, where he had a rash. The rash was all over his body. He had to always keep dry and clean, which was hard on a wet island, with only three shirts. Many children at school had what their mother called ‘the itchiness.’ Nomi checked her skin for the itchiness often.

This is how she will always see him, her brother, Zeeshan Haider Ali. Gazing at the sea, always at the sea, with a tuft of hair pointing to the sky, like the comb of a rooster. His cheek is red and covered in dark bristles because shaving irritates his skin. So do mosquitoes. He slaps his cheek to move them away, killing one. It hangs from his bristles. He says shaving is the worst part of growing up. His voice has become the best part, since it stopped changing. It is now deep and warm, it is why she follows him. His eyes are light brown, like their mother’s. His brows are thick and folded with a deep hollow in the middle, like their father’s.

When she flicked the dead mosquito off his cheek, a spot of blood hung on her finger.

‘Instead of teaching us to read,’ said Zee, ‘don’t you wish they’d taught us to swim?’ He was stroking the gun and still staring ahead, at the everlasting blue below.

The smell was closer now. She could almost touch it, almost name it. Then she heard something.

The bench rested on a level patch of ground, a few feet before the mountain began to descend. There were bushes all around, cupping them. The fig tree had as many roots as arms, and the grass was high. The sound could have come from anywhere. Slowly, Zee began to hide the gun under his shirt. Then he grabbed her arm again, a finger of the free hand firmly to his lips.

It happened again. A shift in the bushes to their right. Zee’s hand grew so tight the mark would stay with her for the rest of the day. But she did not feel it, not till later.

From out of the air sprang a toddy cat.

Nomi exhaled.

She had seen one before, at school. The boys pulled its long tail, cheering till the teacher came outside and said to leave it. This civet was smaller, with a hiss that was louder. There was a white spot beneath each brown eye. A white band swept across the forehead, as though it lived inside a worried mask. The tail whipped the air twice before the cat raced over the mountain. They both knew it was time to do as the civet had shown, and go back down.

Instead, Nomi looked behind her. That smell again.

A soldier was pissing in the bushes, the sprinkles brushing her arm. Another crouched and farted. Others emerged from the tall grass, zipping up pants, tucking in shirts. This was their latrine and this was the smell: of the camp of prisoner families before prisoners served out their term and were given a hut. Nomi was born in a camp. She had never wanted to smell that smell again.

Zee pulled her past them, quickly. The soldiers began to yell and whistle and seemed to be everywhere now, shirts off, boots off, kicking at grass. There was a restlessness in the air, she could feel it. It had taken hold of them in the time since they started climbing. They were surrounded by mosquitoes and gnats, the drone filled the heat-haze, the breeze was dead. The white vests under their uniforms were soaked in sweat and mud. They looked at her the way boys in the camp looked at girls. The way boys at school did too, except at her, because she was the sister of Zee. These men were irritated and bored, and their mother always said the bored ones made trouble.

‘Wait!’ shouted a soldier in English. He had a caterpillar moustache and round glasses.

‘Keep walking,’ Zee hissed. And then he was dragging her down the mountain so fast she stopped feeling the grass beneath her feet, there was only the sea, all glassy and glittering, they were floating, Nomi and Zee, while behind them, the soldiers laughed.

•

That night their friend Aye came to their hut. He was Burmese, older than Nomi and Zee, and also a Local Born. Earlier today, Aye said, the soldiers had entered the homes of a village near his own, and everyone should be careful.

‘Why would they come to our huts?’ asked their father, stooping through the door.

Aye answered in whispers.

Nomi looked at Zee, who put a finger to his lips. She had not told their mother where they were today. She said, ‘I went with Zee to the empty school to look for more books but it was empty,’ and their mother raised one eyebrow.

The door shut. Their parents talked softly. Then their father shuffled to the neighbour’s hut, to repeat what Aye had said. The neighbour went to the next hut, and so on, till someone arrived at the house where an escaped prisoner, a woman known as the one who got away, was once seen. Afterwards, people began saying that no one could escape the island, not even a ghost.

Soon, everyone who lived around Aberdeen Square had spread the word about the soldiers coming to a nearby village, and then their father was back in bed, with a drink.

Priya the chicken lay in her corner, next to where Nomi slept. She was behaving well and did not go out when the door was opened to Aye. From the way she breathed, Nomi could tell she was sleepy. Zee was reading She by candlelight. Their teacher had lent him the book and Zee had read it many times, he just liked turning the pages.

‘The soldiers must be hungry,’ their father whispered.

‘They have more food than we do,’ their mother said, loudly.

‘Why don’t you keep some ready, in case they come?’ His voice was calm.

‘They should be feeding us if they are here to help!’

Zee turned a page.

‘Anyway,’ she continued, ‘what food do we have? You know there’s no more fishing, since they put mines in the water. I can’t imagine they like tinday ki bhujiya.’

Nomi giggled. Zee kicked her under the table, but his face in the candlelight was so red, she knew he was also laughing. She could feel the mark around her arm, where he had grabbed her on the mountain, reminding her of their father’s neck mark.

Nomi had heard the stories. Maybe they started with the neighbours, soft sounds that were picked up the way the swiftlets that lived in mountain caves would pick up soft sounds, till everybody could hear them. Their father had tried to run away before she was born, when Zee was a baby. He was caught and punished as an example to other prisoners. There was a long burn mark around his neck, as thick as a rope, and those welts down his back were not only from being flogged for refusing to grind the mill.

She kept feeling the imprint on her skin.

‘Go to sleep, both of you,’ snapped their mother.

‘One more chapter,’ said Zee.

‘How long is a chapter?’ asked their father.

‘Pish!’ said Zee.

Nomi left the table and slipped under the sheet next to Priya, who clucked happily when Nomi stroked her back, and Zee turned another page.

•

Next evening, they came. Their father was outside in the toilet, their mother with him. Zee was standing near a shop with two boys from school. There were chickens milling about and no one noticed, not even the village women complaining about rising prices while their daughters ran in circles. The doors of many huts were open. It was cooler this way.

Their father returned from the toilet, coughing. Their mother left the door open. Through it, Nomi could see five soldiers enter the square. Priya ran for the door. Nomi grabbed her. Priya flapped her wings. The boys stopped talking. The girls stopped playing. The soldiers entered the shop without a sound, coming back out with the shopkeeper and glasses full of icy sharbat. They kept walking. As the sun set, the sky turned the same vivid colour as the drink in their hands.

Priya screeched. Never before had she made so panicked a sound, so Nomi dropped her. Priya ran into the square. Nomi followed. Another hen, white with a droopy comb, began running between a soldier’s boots. He bent to pick her up, his sharbat falling down her back. Now her feathers matched the sky. When she hopped out of his arms, the soldier followed her through the open door of a hut. The chicken ran under the bed and over the chair and behind the stove and between his legs. Over the bed and onto a window and down again. Other soldiers came inside. They threw away their drinks and joined the chase. The neighbour’s home was littered in feathers and dirt and glass. Finally, a soldier caught the sharbat-pink hen. He put her in his satchel. Her owner tried to explain that she gave his family eggs. They walked past him, chasing other chickens till only three were left, including Priya.

Zee and the other boys were telling the soldiers to stop. ‘Oh ho! Oh ho!’ they begged. One boy tried to pull a hen out of a satchel. The soldier made a strange sound, almost a bark, and the boy moved aside. But the owner of the hen continued objecting, ‘They are not yours, please give them back,’ and someone added, ‘A chicken that size costs five rupees!’

Nomi couldn’t catch Priya. The chicken was in her muddled state, going where she should not, pecking at a soldier’s boots, making everyone as nervous as herself. Maybe she was trying to protect them. Maybe she thought she could. She flapped aside then raced back, to strike the soldier’s shoulder. Normally, she could barely snag a worm. Her final attack was aimed at his ear. The soldier swiped her face. When she fell backward, the shot was fired. It happened before she could even sit back up, dazed.

It was Zee. He had fired Mr Campbell’s gun into the air. All five soldiers were unarmed, three with chickens in their satchels. They talked angrily amongst themselves. Before leaving, the one who had slapped Priya looked at Zee and ran a finger across his neck.

Everyone knew the Japanese would be back. Though Nomi also knew, only later would she understand the meaning of loss to exist somewhere in that moment when first a chicken and then a boy could cause grown men to look foolish. That single moment, it was racing ahead, farther and farther than the ocean that she and Zee had gazed upon together, just yesterday, and she would spend her life trying to catch up with it. But that life, it had not yet begun.

Their father moved quickly. They did not know he could. With left hand to hunched back, he waddled from door to door, seeking help in hiding Zee. Before leaving, he told their mother to find a disguise. She moved quickly. They knew she could. She found a sari, green like the forest, and tore it in half so Zee would not trip as he ran. Priya was in her corner, quiet. Zee was at the table, not turning pages, also quiet. Nomi packed She and the sulphur cream for his skin. Their mother packed lassi, bread, water and three golden eggs. She packed the soap and matches made by prisoners.

Their father returned with his friend Dr Singh, who asked if Zee still had the gun. When Zee said yes, Nomi wondered why no one had said anything angry about it. If Zee had not taken the gun, she would have lost Priya, but she would not lose Zee.

When she ran to him, he held her, his rough cheek to her own, his thick hair full with fear. The mark around her arm, where he held her on the mountain, had vanished. As he slipped into the night the green sari billowed behind him. It would lift him into the clouds, helping him to rise, rise, like the island that had come up for air. She could tell. She knew him and he knew Nomi.

Arrival of the S.S. Noor

1936

six years before zee fled the Japanese, Nomi would see the prisoner who would come to be known as the one who got away arrive on South Andaman Island. It was February, and Nomi was six years old. Though the winter monsoons had been fierce, that day the rain was soft and a lean sun scattered across the water.

An hour before the prison ship docked, Nomi was at school with Zee, her mind on monsoon winds. She had seen a shrew spiral backward into the sea. She wanted a pet. A chicken, or a dog. Something to keep her from blowing away before the storms started up again.

The teacher, Mr Campbell, was trying to convince Zee to re-read The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook. ‘Your sister likes it,’ he said, looking briefly from Zee to Nomi.

She could tell Zee wanted something new. Books came to the island many years too late, and he often complained that his choices were limited. He liked Just William, but Mr Campbell said it incited restlessness and adventure, impulses that had to be tamed.

Through the half-door she could hear their friend Aye in the corridor, changing the light bulb. Like Zee, Aye was always hungry for real news. The kind Mr Campbell never spoke of. The kind whispered most often on the island: the freedom movement on the mainland. The teacher would say there was a civil war in Spain and a Depression in America and pretend nothing was happening in India.

‘What is a civil war?’

‘Where is America?’

‘Chain!’

‘Brain!’

And Nomi would search privately for rhyme words that came so easily to them.

She and Zee were happy to stay after school, to help Mr Campbell with tasks. Aye fixed bulbs, Zee put chairs upside down on the desks, and she helped Zee empty out the bowls scattered everywhere on the floor to catch the rain. Besides, Mr Campbell, who was unmarried, was often in need of company. At the right moment, he would speak to them, if not about the world, at least about the island.

The rain that day began soon after dawn and was slowing to a drizzle and the sky turned slate grey. The single electric bulb dangling from the ceiling from a long black wire flickered on and off. The ceiling leaked from several points that Nomi had memorised like constellations in wood. Every now and then, a new star was born.

The swinging half-door leading to the corridor creaked. Aye stepped inside to say he had replaced the bulb. Mr Campbell asked him to replace this one too, but there were no more bulbs. He muttered something about needing to put the order in place or the place in order, please remind him. His King Charles Spaniel, Georgina, was at his feet. The half-door kept groaning. ‘Why can I never grow accustomed to this ghastly climate?’ He loosened his shirt collar and stashed The Milly-Molly-Mandy Storybook (twice rejected) in his drawer.

Zee stood watch over Nomi as she stood watch over a bowl, expecting it to overflow at any moment. New stars were the leakiest.

Earlier today, she had learned the names of as many bodies of water as drops in the bowl. The Arabian Sea. The Andaman Sea. The Bay of Bengal, which was not a sea but part of a sea. The Indian Ocean, with too many bays to name. The Pacific Ocean, around the corner. She recited these names again. Nomi was the keeper of seas that flowed into each other, into her bowl. Bodies of land, on the other hand, did not flow into each other, she could not collect them. Though, sand carried on wind. Ants carried dirt here and there. These she could collect. But what about Kala Paani, Black Water, the prisoners’ name for exile? Was Black Water a body of water or a body of land?

‘May I be excused, sir?’ asked Aye of Mr Campbell. ‘I am, er, late for work.’

‘What? Oh, yes. Yes, yes.’

Aye thanked the teacher, cast Zee a meaningful glance—one that said If he tells you anything about anything, tell me—and left.

‘Do it,’ Zee whispered in Nomi’s ear. She picked up the bowl, ran outside to empty it in the sand, without spilling, and returned just in time to catch the next drip.

Mr Campbell put down his pen. ‘I think that will be all for today.’ His mouth fell slightly open while his hand stroked Georgina’s pelt.

The drizzle had almost ceased. Only a few drops fell from the ceiling, like frog song. When one called, after the count of two, another answered. Within a few minutes, the gaps began to increase.

Interrupting the composition, Mr Campbell tapped a test book on his desk. ‘Well done, my boy. You have written a most successful essay. It is purposeful, accurate, and has only one spelling mistake. Do you know, if you were not a convict’s son, I would recommend you for study in England?’

Zee’s rash turned bright pink.

‘Perhaps it is time for a drink,’ continued Mr Campbell. Georgina sat up, wagging her feathery tail.

The rain stopped. If it did not start again till tomorrow, the bowls would no more overflow. Zee left his post to help Mr Campbell pack his leather briefcase. It was tan in colour and properly stiff, as though still new, with three smooth sections inside: one for papers, one for books, and a third for items Zee could not touch. There was also the ‘Big Red,’ a red-capped Parker pen with a gold nib that was prized by the teacher almost as much as his dog, who bounced beside Nomi.

‘Georgina, down,’ commanded Mr Campbell.

The dog sat.

‘May I play with her, sir?’ Nomi asked.

‘Not now. You children always make her dirty.’ He leashed the dog and started to walk with Zee to Browning Club, the European club at the corner of Aberdeen Square.

Nomi followed close behind, watching her brother tilt to his left as he carried the heavy briefcase with both hands. The sea was to their right and the waves rose and fell, like a row of schoolchildren moving along. Aberdeen, the village where Nomi and Zee lived, lay ahead. It was named after a place in Scotland, because the British, though they came willingly, were always homesick. Beyond Aberdeen was the summit with the red starfish jail.

The path was slippery but the rain did not start up again. Nomi’s white uniform would not get too muddy. After school, she had little to do. While Zee did extra homework, she sometimes played with the neighbours. Other times, the Japanese dentist, Susumu Adachi, would give her and other children rides on his bicycle, or she went up to the Female Factory where their mother worked, or she hovered outside the shop where their father and other men would drink. She used to look for Aye, but lately he had been going to the European farm to be with White Paula, so she looked for him less.

The two hornbills that always appeared around this time flew to the papaya tree at the top of the street. Zee always said they had a nose like Nomi’s. He said even when she was a baby, her nose was too big for her face, and her arms too long and bony, like chicken legs. As they walked down the street, the hornbills were chattering. The whole neighbourhood was chattering, but it was different from the noise at the camp, where they lived till just last year with other prisoner families. This chatter faded when doors were shut, when it was time to sleep. At the camp, there were no doors. Families lived in tents and talked all night and many children were never taught to go outside to do their business. They would do it in the tents, even on the tents.

They passed the shop of the Japanese taxidermist who kept stuffed birds in the window. Two doors away was the dentist Susumu Adachi’s clinic. He gave children tin toys after fixing their teeth and they were to call him Susumu San.

Outside the dental clinic Mr Campbell looked over his shoulder and handed Georgina’s leash to Nomi. He had trusted Zee with it, but this was his first time trusting Nomi.

She took the leash. Immediately, a living warmth pulsed through it. She wanted never to reach the club. In this way, Georgina would forever walk beside her, black nose to wet soil. When the rain returned, they would keep each other from tossing into the sea.

They reached the club. She returned Georgina to the teacher, who took his briefcase from Zee and disappeared inside the building.

Zee looked at her closely. ‘You don’t have to go to the factory today. I’ll tell Mama we got late at school. It’s even true.’

She could still feel the round of Georgina’s soft stomach against the leather, and the force of her will as she sniffed the ground and took her time.

‘Come with me to the jetty,’ said Zee.

‘Why?’

‘A ship is coming. Didn’t you hear Mr Campbell?’

‘But where’s Aye?’

‘Collecting nests.’

‘Let’s wait.’

‘The ship will not wait for him, silly.’

•

The children were not the only ones come to witness a new batch of prisoners arrive. As the S.S. Noor heaved into the harbour, the jetty was crowded.

It happened nine times a year and they were always there, to watch the giant ship dock sullenly and sluggishly after a four-day trek from Calcutta. It took longer if she stopped to pick up prisoners in Madras and Rangoon along the way. She wore black, as though always in mourning. She was the namesake of the Darya-e-Noor, the Sea of Light, the first ship to carry prisoners to the colony, and herself a namesake. The Darya-e-Noor was one of the largest cut diamonds in the world, and was last seen on King George V, just before his death. Unable to part from the diamond even in the next life, he swallowed it, or so people said. The ship was shrouded in no less mystery. On her return from the islands to Calcutta one day, she disappeared, leaving no trace of herself, or her crew.

The S.S. Noor carried a heavy burden. Not only did she transport men and women to a life unknown, but she followed in the wake of a haunted ship and fatal gem. No wonder she moaned and swayed and looked the other way.

Zee liked to tell Nomi that one day someone would find pieces of the vanished Darya-e-Noor and that someone would be him. ‘You can’t swim,’ she always replied, to which he countered, ‘Pish!’

Now Zee rolled on the balls of his feet, hands scrunched in pockets, while she inspected the mob. Aye and White