It must have been before noon that we turned off the main highway onto rough back roads. Some were no more than wheel tracks as we traveled deeper into the countryside. I was beginning to feel sick to my stomach. Ram stopped the car, and Padar had me sit up front with him. He held my head as I tried to hold back the nausea.
The two men chatted and bantered as we drove. Ram was full of stories about people I didn’t know, dignitaries he had flown all over Asia and Europe.
We now passed farm houses and villages that were more primitive, simple mud huts with shaggy thatched roofs. When I couldn’t hold back my nausea any longer, Ram pulled over and I threw up on the side of the road. Padar held on to me as I leaned over a grassy ditch.
When we were back to driving, Ram soon came to a crossroads. He turned left and far down, I could see a building in the middle of the road.
“There’s the border crossing,” Ram said. “It’s very isolated. Once we’re across here, we will join back up with the road to Kolkata.”
He rolled the car slowly up to the gate and stopped a couple of yards from it. He turned off the ignition. Our car sat in the middle of the dusty road. In the silence, we stared out the window at the guard post. A border soldier in rumpled camouflage fatigues with a rifle slung over his shoulder sauntered into the sunshine to inspect our car.
“You kids stay here,” Padar said. “We’ll be right back.”
“This won’t take long,” Ram said.
They both got out, closed the doors, and walked slowly up to the guard, who had now been joined by another one. Both of them had rifles. We rolled down the windows to listen. At first they simply talked, Ram gesturing with his hands, the guards shaking their heads. A third uniformed man came out of the building and stood with the men.
They asked Ram and Padar many questions and gestured toward the car. We watched through the window as the questioning became more intense, with one of the soldiers stepping close to Ram, who must have felt threatened, because he moved back. Padar spoke very little and only in reply to the guards’ questions. Finally, Ram shouted something back at one of the men in uniform. The soldier struck Ram on the side of the head with his fist. Ram staggered back and fell to the ground.
“What are they doing?” Zia shouted. Laila told him to shush, and we all sat up, clenching the seat backs and each other, watching more intently through the windshield.
One of the guards began hitting Padar. I screamed, and we all jumped out, running toward the fight. By the time we reached him, he and the soldier were trading blows. I feared they were going to shoot him, he fought back so ferociously. Ram and Padar were both fighting with the soldier. Finally, an officer stepped forward and stopped the fight.
“That’s enough. That’s enough.”
The fighting stopped, and they backed off. Padar and Ram stood their ground.
The soldier stood close by us. He waved his hand back toward Bangladesh. “Go back to where you came from. Don’t try to enter India again, or we will arrest you all.”
Ram and Padar turned to the car and motioned for us to follow them. Ram limped slowly, trying to catch his breath. Padar’s nose was bloody, and red rivulets ran down his cheeks, over his lips, and down his chin.
Once we were all back in the car, I retrieved a cloth from my backpack and gave it to Padar to clean his face. He held it to his bleeding nose. We sat in the silent heat for a few minutes until Ram had gathered himself enough to start the car. He turned it around and slowly headed back the way we had come. We settled into the back seat quietly; it wasn’t the time to pepper Padar with questions.
We drove for a while. “I will find another way,” Ram finally said, as if he had been thinking things over carefully. “Do you want to try again?”
“Of course,” Padar said from beneath the cloth, without a moment’s hesitation. “My children are survivors. One thing I can tell you, no one can stop them. If the whole world fell apart, there would be four survivors—my children. I’ll give up before they do.”
In the back seat, we glanced at each other in amazement. If he was disappointed or discouraged by the fight with the border guards, he didn’t show it. He was more determined than ever to get to India. Somehow, someway, we were going to see Mommy. It was our destiny.
19
GARDEN OF DREAMS
We were parked outside a low-slung village market in the afternoon heat. After leaving the border, Ram had made his way off the dirt roads back to the main highway to a village with markets, mosques, and office buildings. We were beginning to sweat in the back seat as we waited for Padar and Ram to return. They had disappeared inside the market at least a half hour before to purchase some food and sodas. The street was busy with traffic and activity—small cars, trucks, and the occasional rickshaw with passengers. We’d been warned not to leave the car, so we bided our time watching the people pass by.
The two men came out carrying what they had gone in for. Back in their seats, they passed out cold sodas and a local flatbread sandwich, a chicken shawarma. We were famished.
While we ate, we listened to Ram and Padar discuss what they’d learned in the market. Evidently, they’d been asking the locals questions about the best way to cross the border.
“It’s just not safe to cross here,” Ram said. “Too much violence lately.” We heard him retell what the shopkeeper had told him. Just last year, not far from the Bangladeshi border, over in West Bengal, the locals had risen up and massacred many illegal immigrants. Now the border guards stopped everyone to demand to see their papers, even farmers crossing their fields, since many of the farms ran right up to the border markers, and some lay on both sides of the boundary. Indians in West Bengal were angry at the flood of illegal immigrants, so intruders were often harshly sent back across the border, sometimes beaten, other times robbed, or worse.
“Someone inside the store said the Indian Border Security Force had shoot-to-kill orders,” Ram said. “I have not heard of it, but it could be true.”
“I’m not taking any risks with the kids,” Padar said. “There has to be someplace safe to cross. The border is very long.”
“There is. Don’t worry, my brother, we will find it.” Ram started the car and returned to the highway. At dusk we pulled into a city along the banks of the Padma River, the wide one we had crossed earlier that morning by ferry. The smell of the river was strong, of fish and dampness.
We stayed in a motel that night. Sisters in one room and Zia and the men in the other. We gathered in the men’s room to eat, huddled on one of the two beds in the room. Ram sat at the small desk, speaking on the phone in hushed tones for quite some time. After he hung up, he and Padar went into the adjoining room and closed the door.
When they returned an hour later, Padar retrieved his backpack. He opened it on the bed and took out several bundles of bills that were tightly wrapped in rubber bands. He counted out thousands of rupees and handed all of it over to Ram, who stuffed the big rolls into his own backpack. Then Padar stood up as if he had an announcement.
“Gather around, children,” he said to us.
We sat up straight, dinners on our laps.
“Ram is going to take us to Nepal.”
“What?” Laila said.
“We’ve worked out a plan that will get us legally across the border into India, but we have to be in Nepal as tourists in order to cross over safely,” Ram said.
“Where’s Nepal?” Zulaikha said.
“This is the safest way,” Padar said.
“But where’s Nepal?” I asked. “Is it far from here?” I had heard of the country of high mountains, but I had no idea how we would get there or how far away it was. It seemed that every day, we got farther and farther away from India and Mommy. I sprang to my feet on the floor between the two beds; my dinner, which had been balanced in my lap, sprayed across the floor. “We’re never going to see Mommy. Never! Never! Never!” I couldn’t stop gushing out my angst. “We’re going to get arrested. Deported. Or shot. They’re going to kill us.”