Some people, who think too much about how to save a few takas, do not call a midwife.' She shook her hairless, wrinkled head. Are you waiting for a rickshaw? Go on, use your legs.'īanesa picked up Nazneen by an ankle and blew disparagingly through her gums over the tiny blue body. With one hand she held Mumtaz's shoulder, with the other a half-plucked chicken. The bed was unrolled, though she was still standing. Who else could break glass with one screech? Rupban was in the sleeping quarters. He ran across the vegetable plot, past the towers of rice stalk taller than the tallest building, over the dirt track that bounded the village, back to the compound and grabbed a club to kill the man who was killing his wife. Hamid ran from the latrine, although his business was unfinished. The scent of fried cumin and cardamom drifted over the compound. The shadows of the children playing marbles and thumping each other grew long and spiky. For a while, an hour and a half, though she did not know it, until the men came in from the fields trailing dust and slapping their stomachs, Rupban clutched Cheepy-cheepy's limp and bony neck and said only coming, coming to all enquiries about the bird. She put those things that had occurred to her aside. For seven months she had been ripening, like a mango on a tree. She pulled some more feathers and watched them float around her toes.
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