Ammu pulled the ring off my finger slyly, leaving my hand dangling in the air.
I screeched inside but said nothing.
“Someone must have cast some type of nazar on my jewel of a girl,” she said, and left the room.
What I didn’t know then was that Ammu might have been worried that my way of expressing womanhood would infringe on her way of expressing womanhood, and therefore her faith, if she didn’t fight what she perceived to be a failing of my soul. How this manifested was mostly through the topic of marriage. But Ammu couldn’t know the inner makings of my soul, only I could. Nor did I know hers.
For much of my adolescence and beyond it, I felt that being myself meant I was hurting Ammu, but the reason she was hurting wasn’t because of me, necessarily. It would be because of something innately gendered, those gendered notions hurting both her and me.
It was true also that in the middle of settlement, immigrant parents like Ammu and Abbu were still making sense of the new society they were in and how they connected to it. Like me, they were sorting out which values were core and which could be considered with more flexibility, or renewed understanding. It wasn’t fair for them to be misunderstood, either, or not have a chance to be heard for who they were, the way I also wanted. Immigrants already faced pressure to assimilate. It didn’t seem right to dismiss their thoughts, feelings, perspectives, all that made up who they were, reduce their world as old and futile. Who got to decide which worlds were valuable and which were not? Who defined what was modern, anyway?
It would be later that I’d come to understand and feel, like Ammu, the weight of the onus on a woman to be the conduit — to both negotiate and bind the meeting of different worlds, to pass on to future generations, like heirlooms of particular significance, the things considered most precious. Ammu was only fulfilling her duty, however insensitively, and it would only be later that I’d appreciate how deeply love and loss were the same — how the fear of losing what you loved, or continuing to love what you felt you were already losing, was so very painful. The panic this could create.
Ammu felt personally responsible. She would do what she could, not to just save me, but to save what was important. In the years to come, I would feel a similar way.
At the time, the traditional aspect of me had oddly become my greatest rebellion. While most of my friends were busy flirting with boys, preparing for exams, and caught up in other social, friendship entanglements, maybe deep in exploring various hobbies to discover what they liked, who they were, I already had a sense of who I was.
“In you I see potential. Study hard and focus. Better not to spend your talents and time on the wrong people,” Abbu had said. Being educated and cultured in literature, arts, and religion were important in our family; the expectation was equal for both men and women. I, too, was inclined, but at the time, I felt it would be equally honourable to be a wife and a mother.
So, when the secret phone I had that I used to call Bhav was found, I was terrified I’d never see him again. I consumed an entire bottle of Tylenol pills, almost losing my kidney and barely making it. When the white man walked in, a psychiatrist, and asked how I was doing, I thought, How can I even explain without you also wanting to save me in some way? How can you understand this particular grief, which I can’t pinpoint to any specific thing and that will most likely stay with me forever?
I sat on the hospital bed and thought of the Shayṭān Bride. She was standing there, in a milky-white sari. Nothing but the drip attached to my arm, the lights that felt stale against my skin, the buzzing of the television nearby. Was it a dream when I asked her, “What is this immense pain I feel? Is it existential, or is it the fear of losing my beloved? Is it merely Allah testing me to see what faith I truly have?”
She didn’t say anything to me, just looked on, her face stoic like mine sometimes was, despite the fire in my body that spun like a tornado, emitting no wind, no smoke.
There could have been so many ways to understand my indulgence in a yearning so deep, and why I attempted to withdraw from life, but all I knew was that this life couldn’t be it. Perhaps I had wanted to skip the steps and take the shortcuts, to get to Allah faster, even though suicide was a sin, so I could ask Him what all this was, face to face. I gulped this thought down. Allah must be testing me. I have to be grateful, and I have to hold on.
I imagined Parakeet flying in through the window and landing on the Shayṭān Bride’s shoulder. I imagined the grand blue sky I looked out into every day.
I bought another pair of rings, more expensive and sturdier. Gave one to Bhav. We were unbreakable, after all.
High school was almost ending. I didn’t bother asking to go to prom, to avoid any disagreements. The night before, Bhav came to my window. He threw some sort of rock and I dragged myself off my bed.
I opened my window to see him standing there, whispering loudly, “I’m just here to deliver a message. Can you meet me tomorrow at 4:30 p.m. at the park?”
“Shhh!” I hushed him quiet while rubbing my eyes. “Why? Yes, okay.”
“And please bring or wear a red dress,” he advised.
“Why?” I almost shouted.
“You’ll see. That’s all. Get some sleep!”
After Bhav left, I rushed to my closet in the middle of the night to find a dress.
I changed into it the next day, right before 4:30 p.m. It was long and fitted, three-quarter sleeved. I also was wearing red stiletto heels. My hair was down, straightened with some curls at the end. I had red lipstick on, as well.
When I arrived at the park, I spotted Bhav in a tuxedo coming out of a 1989 Oldsmobile Cutlass Cruiser. The vehicle was his father’s, but he sometimes brought it out because he knew I loved classic things. The Oldsmobile was decorated with garlands of red roses.
“Welcome to our very own do-it-yourself prom, my special lady in red,” Bhav said, extending his arm to grab my hand. “May I have this dance?”
I nodded, excited to finally experience something like this, and with Bhav.
Bhav turned on his boom box to Chris DeBurgh’s “Lady in Red.” He then gently placed his right hand on my waist. And so we danced, in Caledonia Park by the decorated Oldsmobile, the birds and trees a witness to our secret prom. As we danced, I asked him, “Why this song of all songs? ‘Lady in Red’?”
“Well,” Bhav replied, twirling me around, then bringing my face back to his, “first of all, you look beautiful in red always. Secondly, you were wearing red the first time I saw you in that hallway. Thirdly, red is for passion, which is what you are in essence. And finally, fourth, this song, well it’s about how people often take who they love for granted, and that we should always pay attention.”
I remembered then how Bhav noticed almost everything.
“Stop,” I blushed. “Stop staring at me so intensely.”
He continued piercing his eyes into mine, and somewhere behind the affection lining his pupils I saw a flicker of distress. “It might be my last chance to do so. Actually, any time can be.”
“Stop, please don’t say things like that.” Knowing very well that I, too, felt and thought similar things often.
Bhav spun me again then dipped me, the tail end of my dress touching the cement. I felt my entire being melt in his hands.
Bhrura Madhye / Between the Eyebrows
It was 2005, the summer after my first year of university. I was enrolled at the University of Toronto. Ammu had just told me that the family would be going on vacation. We’d be visiting Dhaka again.
The night she told me, I looked out of my window into the onyx sky. A flashback of my last visit overcame me with the suddenness of a flying comet. It was six years ago; I had been about thirteen. My family and I had made a trip from Dhaka to Jessore, a small village where Abbu’s brother, Shajan, his wife, and daughters were living at the time. Dadi, my paternal grandmother, was also alive and living there. She was a tall woman with sharp cheekbones, peach skin, otherworldly, dressed in widow whi
te. With our family was Safa Fuppu, Abbu’s younger sister, and Nusrat, my Boro Chachi’s daughter. Boro Chachi was the wife of Abbu’s elder brother.
During this visit, I had almost drowned. Safa Fuppu, Nusrat, my younger sister, and I went out to the muddy green pond not too far from Dadi’s hut, the one by the family’s chicken farm and abundant vegetation. The afternoon was warm. We entered the pond slowly by climbing down a flight of stairs that reached the pond’s base. Our salwars were raised high up to our knees.
“Come on,” Safa Fuppu yelled out to Nusrat and I, who were at the top of the stairs. She was already in the middle of the pond, her head plunging in and out, her lumbar-length hair now floating around her head like a flat crown. Or octopus legs.
“But there are leeches,” Nusrat said.
“Yes, and snakes,” I added, for I was so afraid of snakes.
“Come on, girls! No need to be scared. I’m here,” Safa Fuppu said, laughing.
When Nusrat and I entered the muddy waters, we floated slowly to Safa Fuppu, past the water lilies, web of algae, and reflections of palm trees. The sun above was relentless in how it breathed its hot heavy breath on our faces. The water slithered between and through our fingers and toes.
“The villagers come here with their large silk thread nets to catch tilapia and catla fish,” Safa Fuppu explained. “But it’s also where people sometimes bathe.”
As Safa Fuppu spoke and we watched her dive in and out, as if she was following the U-shaped trail of an oxbow lake, I forgot about the dark creatures under my feet. Instead, I cupped my hands and filled it with the water and threw it on Nusrat’s face, who screamed. With that, I suddenly tumbled backward, the back of my head sinking deeper. I jerked it back up, trying to keep the water above my head. Against the tips of my toes rubbed smarmy substances. I cycled my feet under the water as quickly as I could, screaming between my gasps. I felt tiny teeth. Could have been the minnows or a blood-sucking leech.
I struggled to stay afloat and, at times, stopped treading water. I let my legs drop like heavy cargo from a ship. I stopped flapping my arms and brought them closer to my chest. Then I shrieked so loudly that I could have tipped nearby canoes. In the seconds between breathing air and water I looked around for some kind of anchor and only saw floating logs on the other end of the pond, where Safa Fuppu was now swimming. When she saw me, she dived in the water and kicked her feet harder. She was too far away. I looked to my right and there I saw Nusrat floating, also in a blip, tumbling. We were both drowning.
I pushed Nusrat’s shoulders down in order to pull myself up, sending both her and I deeper, almost unable to breathe. It was then that I saw Safa Fuppu with the log. She pushed it to us both and we hoisted ourselves onto it.
Later, back in the hut, after we were in dry clothes and Safa Fuppu sauntered in with warm dhal in a cup, I saw that Nusrat had her back turned; she was no longer talking to me. When I asked Safa Fuppu what was wrong, she said, “She’s upset that you tried to save yourself first.”
“I am sorry,” I told Nusrat. But she did not turn around.
I spent much of the next few days immersed in guilt, as the looks of disapproval were sent my way here and there, like letters from old enemies received unexpectedly. At the same time, I was enraged. What had she expected me to do? It was a reflex, an instinct. I was driven to survive; this was strong in me.
The situation left me wondering whether saving yourself from drowning would be the same kind of selfishness as standing up for yourself, advocating for your needs. If such a thing would be considered foolish or headstrong, and to what extent. I wondered, also, Will Nusrat ever forgive me for this?
Nusrat did eventually forgive me, it seemed, or at least we chose not to talk about it. Instead, we spent the rest of the weeks taking singing lessons from a well-known actress and singer named Shampa Reza, a friend of her mother, my Boro Chachi, who was once an actress herself. Boro Chachi had eyes that were the arboreal wildcat type, always lined with kohl, paired with a rather contagious smile, a large circular red bindi, and terracotta earrings. She was fond of poetry, especially that which could be found in between the notes of songs. Her brother was a famous rock star in the country. She was the quintessential Bengali woman. She had wings on her back that were heavy but redemptive, and a heart that could reach depths of understanding. I observed her keenly and deduced that the space between heaven and hell was a long stretch of grey. That although I felt a deep sense of shame for what I had done, I could forgive myself for simply wanting to survive.
So, when thinking about the Dhaka I visited six years ago, I thought of her, Nusrat, Safa Fuppu, Dadi, and everyone else. Memories of both fear and joy. It had been a magical time overall, all of us generally immersed in whimsies of the heart and nature, music, then later dancing on rooftops in the rain.
Now that I’d be returning to Bangladesh, I wondered what it would be like this time.
Ridoyer Porda / Veils of the Heart
A few weeks later, I boarded a plane to Dhaka. After many hours of flying and a layover, we landed at Shahjalal International Airport. When I got off the plane, my nose was plugged by smog, the kind that makes you choke just a little.
As I walked from the plane to the airport door, the sharp sunrays began melting the cherry balm off my lips. My loose puff-sleeved cotton blouse now clung to my chest. My jeans were stiff against my legs.
In the airport, I moved my head from left to right, searching for a passing breeze, even from an air conditioner, but all I felt were the heavy hot breaths of the men in passing crowds, their leering eyes piercing through my skin, dismembering me bit by bit.
I looked for my suitcase in the baggage claim. It was made of a Tegris material painted a black grey. I saw it on the conveyor belt but couldn’t reach it due to the family blocking me: a thin hijabi woman who appeared to not have slept for days, her two chubby teenage sons, as energetic as the bounce of their black curls, and her grey-bearded husband limping. They were all waving their hands in the air and shouting at their bags on the conveyor belt, as if their bags had feet to march to them.
Once I found my bag, I pulled it off the conveyor belt, and Ammu, my siblings, and I once again passed in and out of crowds in a kind of osmosis.
As we did, I thought this trip would indeed be long without Abbu. Abbu and I were of a similar temperament, not fans of excessive noise or small talk. Ammu would stretch the hours of our vacation, filling every minute with visits to relatives and heated debates about family dynamics.
We made it to the airport’s reception area quickly, and didn’t have to wait very long. Boro Mama strode toward us, removing his hands from his pockets to wave them in the air. The last time I saw Boro Mama, we were standing in the same airport, on two different sides of the gate. His eyes pure of surety, as if he were saying, “You’ll be something great, I know you will.”
The folds around his eyes and speckles of grey in his hair reminded me that he had aged. I hadn’t thought about Boro Mama all these years but now I remembered everything: him helping me with my homework, him sipping tea asking me about my progress at school while I sat on the sofa dangling my legs, him bringing me an assortment of toys when I had passed certain tests.
“As-salam alaykum, Boro Mama,” I said.
I was secretly excited to share with him all that I’d been up to: the many awards I had won during my last graduation, the fact that I had been the valedictorian again, the As I had received in my new enriched academics program, and, of course, my excitement over making it so far in the Royal Canadian Legion public speaking competitions. Yes, I would brag, because he would certainly be proud of these achievements. There were also things I could potentially share but probably wouldn’t, such as my playing on the school’s volleyball team, as I wasn’t quite sure where he stood on sports. However, I definitely wouldn’t mention that I had been considering dying my hair another colour after this mahogany brown, or that I was in love. I anticipated that he would be upset that
I wasn’t going into medicine, although for a time I had been fascinated with the idea of becoming a heart surgeon; that I was instead curious about the mind, storytelling, and world issues, despite deep down secretly wanting to be a writer and an actress. These were the details I preferred to keep hidden.
In the airport, Boro Mama gestured us to move through the aisles and out to the parking garage, where stood his very professional driver wearing a white shirt with a fancy ballpoint pen in the left pocket. On the highway, two wide-open asphalt roads with two or three lanes separated by white paint. Between the two sets of opposing traffic were orange-red gulmohars, also known as flame trees. This Dhaka wasn’t in my memories. It seemed so modern and so spacious.
It took us about an hour to get to the interior. As we did, the streetlamps and paved roads turned into dirt pathways. I saw cows marching in front of the shiny black Jeep and half-naked children who ran up to the car windows, their soiled hands leaving prints on the glass. The ringing rickshaw bells startled me, their horns melding into the commotion of passing pedestrians and peddlers, that familiar discordant melody. The melody that cradled me at night and woke me in the morning. I remembered it now.
Boro Mama’s wife, my Mami, opened the door when we got to the house. Mami looked as she did always, glistening skin, silky black hair in a bun, her two lips the colour of the intoxicating punch they served at high school dances in all the teen shows I watched. She was wearing an orange maxi with white floral print, a cerise orna across her chest. She waved a straw broom while shouting at her three young sons, then turned to us and, in a soft voice, said, “As-salam alaykum” and “Kamon acho?”
Inside, we were taken to a room with two large beds and a ceiling fan that revolved above our heads. One side of the room was attached to an open veranda with a hanging swing. The other to what seemed a dark storage closet and, attached to the storage closet, a bathroom larger than my room in Canada. Across from the two beds was a metal almari within which Ammu placed our things.
The Shaytan Bride Page 11