by Taj63622
Chapter 35
Sometimes Fate rewards us so unexpectedly that we wonder what good we may have unknowingly done in the past to deserve it. This whole while she was running after a Londoner, little knowing that a Londoner has travelled all the way from London, looking everywhere in Bangladesh for her long lost relatives. She, Rabia Ali Hussain, has become a close relative of a Londoner.
‘Some unknown woman claims to be my father’s sister,’ her husband, Nazrul, vociferates, ‘and you believed her?’
‘Why would she lie?’ she asks with a sigh, handing him a clean shirt.
‘To malign my reputation,’ he answers, closing the wardrobe doors angrily, finding the shirt he willed to wear in his wife’s hands.
‘Of course they are,’ she agrees with a pleasant smile, although her voice carried sarcasm. ‘Londoners are leaving Buckingham palaces to come here and ruin the reputation of a man, who is neither here nor there.’
He gives a disapproving grump and stubbornly refuses to change into the shirt she offered. He has only become aware of the unfolding of these bizarre events in his absence. If his wife had but called to inform him of unknown relatives turning up at his home, then he would have left work immediately to attend these matters instead.
‘You will be a father-in-law soon,’ she adopts humour to placate him. ‘Behaving like a child will not suit you anymore.’
She smiles sweetly at him, but he merely looks at her incredulously that she should remain so unaffected. Meeting estranged relatives does not appear to have startled her at the slightest. She offers him the shirt again, and he snatches the offending object from her hands. He studies her humoured expression intently, yet had the hardest time comprehending her.
‘Why are you so happy?’ he asks her gently. ‘How can you be so indifferent? How can you accept her in the family? The woman is a runaway. She married a non-Muslim. She returns so many years later with her mixed caste grandchild.’
Her smile remained firm upon her lips throughout his speech. She often heard that the first-borns lacked astuteness, but saw the proof in her husband today. It was through her expert advices that he attained a senior position within the Union, that their household could afford such living as to provoke envy amongst their neighbours. Or else, with his intellect, this house would have become a charity.
‘That is why,’ she answers at length, ‘we must accept them.’
Her husband now appropriately dressed, they enter her mother-in-law’s quarter. Amidst the cloudy yellow light, her husband’s London-return Fufu sat on the bed next to her mother-in-law, conversing in great lengths, trying to annul forty-seven’s of being strangers to each other. The mixed-caste girl, Mayah, and that nuisance of Sylhet, the Shahiraj of Rajshahi, who no longer wore his hat, sat nearby. Her husband’s younger brother, Azad, and his wife and two children were already present in the room and introduced to Nargis Fufu. When they enter the room, her mother-in-law looks at them brightly. ‘This is my eldest son, Nazrul,’ her mother-in-law introduces him, ‘and Shabul, Khalid and Rahim’s father.’
Dhadhi looks wonderingly at her eldest nephew, who closely resembled her brother, broad shouldered and taller than average Bengali men. Seeing the living legacy of her deceased brother had vanquished her grief. She lost one, but received many. Mayah also greets her eldest Chacha in the customary way. She has never met Dhadhi's brother, but the physique of both his sons gave good proof to his fine form. They looked younger than their age could protest, which tends to be the common theme in the Asian content. Yesterday, she scarcely had two relations, and today she found herself struggling to remember the names of her extended family.
The meeting and greeting was very overwhelming, but equally agreeable. Neighbours have gone in and out the whole day to meet the Londoni guests, gawping at her as if she were a rare treasure descended from heaven or something. The Shahiraj of Rajshahi was particularly strict of who came close to her, and often advised the old women to keep their distance, using the pretext that she suffers heavily from asthma, waving Dhadhi’s inhaler at them as if to prove his statement. In reply, the old women would often say the English are very weak. The quiet location of the house was a grave misconception. The “tilla bari”, literally meaning hill house, belonged to a neighbourhood. Behind the second house, there was a dip in the ground, overlooking houses and its inhabitants. These houses were not as handsome as this one, and the sharp contrast startled her greatly. Dhadhi's brother inherited the property after his marriage to Fatima.
Fatima is Dhahdhi’s sister-in-law. An infection in her left leg had her undergo an amputation, reducing her to the support of a wheelchair. Dhadhi’s brother married her despite her disability, inclining her to believe that he had reformed for the better. Their love story was both remarkable and endearing. As was suspected, Dhadhi’s brother had joined the forth Battalion, where his future father-in-law was the colonel. Chittagong based the fourth Battalion. The colonel and his family were native to Sylhet, but it was to be during one of their visits, when she first caught her future husband’s special attention. She was over twenty years of age, whereas he was a year younger when they first met. Her father talked highly of his character, and would often entrust him to escort her family about the base. He was always very particular towards her care, tending carefully to her needs, ensuring the ground was fit for her wheelchair, and would converse with her without much reservation or fear of talking to the colonel’s unmarried. He made her laugh and she would equally talk to him about her distresses. In his company, she never felt the disadvantage of her disability. Quite unknowingly, he made a special place within her heart. Her mother noticed their closeness. Soon, their friendship fell subject to speculation, whereupon her father asked him of his intentions with his daughter. Mukhtar answered by seeking her hand in marriage. Her father was only too pleased. He has been trying to find her a suitor for many years, but her disability often averted proposals.
Before their marriage, he declared that his family died in a fire. Years after their marriage, he confessed of having a sister, who had not died. He also confessed to his real name, that being Mukhtar Mohiuddin. He changed it when he began his career within the army. He wanted to start a new life. He made her promise to keep these truths a secret. She has not spoken a word of it since his sudden death seven years ago. He suffered a heart attack. He died very young, and she lost a dear friend and a most beloved husband.
Her joy was incalculable upon meeting her sister-in-law. Her husband always said she would come back to her mother country. How right he was. Meeting Nargis has given her the opportunity to reminisce of those by-gone days. Much has evolved over forty-seven years, but relations remain the same.
Upon leaving the army and having received the highest recognition, Dhadhi’s brother entered the illustrious world of politics. He became a member of Sylhet’s Regional Development Board. His peers highly recognised his input, the fame of which enabled his two sons to join Khadim Nagar Union. The younger brother, Azad, had two children. His son is Akram, scarcely twenty years of age, and his daughter – the only granddaughter of the family – is only fourteen. She was very quiet and shy, and like a dutiful girl, spent her afternoon in the kitchen, helping her mother and aunt in the kitchen prepare a fitting lunch for their “special guests” Little did they understand that hunger had no meaning today, when the heart was surpassed with joy.
They have met the whole except for Dhadhi’s niece. Being a married woman, she does not live here, but Fatima Dhadhi has promised to enable a meeting very soon. The other two women are the daughter-in-laws of the family, and Chachis to her by relation. Her eldest Chachi is Rabia, who was the woman they first outside the house. She was a pretty-looking woman, and always smiling pleasantly as if nothing can ever discontent her. She has also come to notice that Rabia Chachi had a peculiar look about, as if she was always lost in some thought, even when she was smiling or indeed talking. She had three sons. Only the eldest looked like his father, but the y
ounger had strong resemblance to their father. Shelina Chachi is the youngest daughter-in-law. Unlike Rabia Chachi, she had a darker complexion, but her features were very fine. She was very tending towards her and Dhadhi. Earlier, she made her husband fetch bottled water from the shops in fear of poisoning them with arsenic! Everyone was being very nice, adding to her regret of not bringing any gifts.
‘You have found us at a very good time,’ Rabia Chachi inputs brightly once all the greetings come to conclusion. ‘The family is about to grow bigger. In three days’ time, my son, Shabul gets married.’
One certainly becomes accustomed to the spontaneity of life in Bangladesh. In the space of a few hours, she has gone from being an imported stranger to becoming a blood relation to ten new family members, mourned the death of a person who has been dead for seven years gone, and now prepared to join the festivities of an upcoming wedding!
She yawns widely, quite ready to take a night’s rest. She has not slept peacefully since her arrival to Bangladesh. Tonight will compensate all those nights, although she did not quite understand how she will manoeuvre this belly once she lies down. Kind and considerate Rabia Chachi fed her to suffocation, as if she has been an exile in a desert for many weeks. The attentive Shelina Chachi made her bed, and offered her some fresh clothes to change into, and the softly spoken Sadia was in her company until witnessing the first yawn break through her mouth, giving her the cue to let the new arrival sleep. She was alone once again. She has not had a room to herself since arriving to this country. It felt slightly odd going to sleep alone in a house she has known only for a few hours. But it must be done. She wanted to give Dhadhi and Fatima Dhadhi some more time to talk.
A knock at the door calls her attention towards it. It was the Shahiraj of Rajshahi, asking her first if she was decent and lastly seeking her permission to enter. Her face lights up upon seeing him, before breaking into snorts of laughter at what he wore as his pyjamas. It was a blue chequered lungi. He pats her head lightly in a manner to scold her childish humour. The household could only offer him this garment to serve as his pyjamas.
Despite being amongst family, she was not quite ready to let him go. She has quite unexpectedly confronted and accepted many changes. There was little time to adjust or absorb between each, and it made her feel uneasy. She did not have to request him to stay either, for he accurately read her unspoken pleas.
You make sure you lock the doors before you go to sleep,’ he dutifully reminds her. ‘If you have any problems, you wake me up immediately. I’m sleeping in Akram’s room, which is two doors to your left. So when you leave this room facing this direction, it will be the door –’
She cuts him short, finding his directions both funny and endearing. ‘I will be fine. Besides, who will enter my room so late at night?’
‘For most people around here, you are just a visa application. There are plenty here, who want to get their papers stamped. I say, enough of your trip!’ he suddenly exclaims, looking somewhat distraught. ‘You've met who you came to meet, and you’ve done what you came to do. Time has come for Matorni to go home.’
‘Why?’ she asks him innocently, teasing him secretly. ‘Have I become burdensome?’
‘On my mind, yes you have,’ he acknowledges her. ‘Trouble follows you. I fear for your safety. This country is not for people of your innocence. It was okay when you stayed in my house, where I could always keep an eye on you. But I cannot stay here for long, and Dhadhi is likely to stay a little longer to acquaint with her brother's family. I don’t feel comfortable leaving you and Dhadhi here with new people. I don't trust anyone here.’
‘You forget, we were also strangers,’ she corrects him, whilst admiring his concerns. ‘On our second meeting, I moved into your house, which you shared with three other men. Every person was a stranger to me, but no one harmed me. If I can have faith in three male strangers, why can I not share a little in my own family?’
He had a reply, but the girl would not understand. Neither did he wish to ingrain beliefs in her head that could poison her against her own.
‘Can you trust me?’ she attempts another placation, having seen him unconvinced by her reasoning.
He studied her thoughtfully for some time. Defeated, he answers with a nod to her question. He bids her goodnight, striding to the door, by which he stops decisively. He turns around to look at her. ‘Lock the doors behind me,’ he commands her, albeit gently.
She merely shook her head hopelessly at him.