I plopped my tired body on the bed as Nani tiptoed into the room. Lovely Nani, in a white cotton sari as soft as a pillow, her henna-red hair still vivid. She hugged us all. I smelled rain on her shoulders and thought of the evenings of monsoon season in her white house in Rajshahi. Each time Nani embraced me, each time I smelled the cleansing monsoon rain, I felt belonging. I wondered how much of me though belonged to Dhaka and how much of that sense of belonging was now fraudulent, negated by my life in Toronto. The thought filled me with a nervous grief. Was this still my home?
There was a lapse between the minutes that passed, during which I was simultaneously embodied in these two worlds of mine that I felt were distinctly separate. When the lapse passed, the worlds were together again. So much time had gone by, yet it seemed my old role in the family still existed.
“My second-eldest granddaughter, I am so pleased to see your face, and that you are here,” Nani said, beaming. “Wash up soon, everyone, and come to the dining room. You must all be so hungry.”
And so we did. Shortly after, all of us other than Mami’s three boys were at the table nose-deep in mustard oil from her famous egg curry. There was also an assortment of other colourful dishes. Mami scooped the orange spiced pumpkin mash and vivid red-purple amaranth spinach leaves sautéed and tossed with panch phoran into neat portions on our plates. As I asked for a fork, she passed it, saying, “Don’t you eat with your hands?”
I shook my head.
That same night, under the whirring of the fan’s plastic blades, as I sat on the pillow-top mattress looking through my Moleskine journal pages, Ammu ambled over and said, “This will be a great trip, don’t you think? We can maybe have you meet some young men.”
I flipped through my journal pages, almost tearing one by accident. “I don’t want to,” I responded.
“Why not?” she asked, and I sighed, as she knew very well about Bhav by now.
Each time Bhav’s name was not spoken or heard, I would feel my chest cave. So, when Ammu swung around and huffed through the room’s sliding door, the weight of my chest pulled me down to the cotton-cased pillow and I appeased myself to a deep slumber.
During the next two to three weeks, things were as normal as they could be on a family trip to Bangladesh. There were countless visits from relatives and family friends — some of whom I had previously met and others I had never seen. We sipped cha on the balcony, played different boardgames, rode rickshaws to local markets to purchase traditional clothing, sat around in the living room watching natoks and Bollywood films, prayed with the family, and later had discussions about politics. I became reacquainted with cousins I had not seen, who were curious about my life in Canada. Sweety Khala’s two younger daughters, Nabila and Maryam, took me to their school to show me off to their friends. “Our cousin from Canada, who we told you about,” they said, and the other girls ogled with a sort of fascination, as if I were a celebrity living some coveted life, although I wasn’t sure why, because their own lives seemed to have no shortage of luxury and comfort compared to the average Canadian — minus, maybe, the access to universal health care.
“What’s the secret behind your pretty eyes?” They giggled and rummaged through my makeup bag, looking for some magical Western brand of makeup they thought existed that they hadn’t yet discovered, but which I might have had.
“Say Mashallah!” I reminded them. “And stop. You two are beautiful.” I hugged them close.
During these early weeks, I also spoke more with Boro Mama’s sons Shahzad and Shayan, as well as Saad, who was just a toddler then. Although I was older than them, they often teased me and pulled pranks, which I appreciated, for they made me laugh. I sat often on the veranda eating chanachur while they played cricket, observing their mischief with each other, which dissipated as soon as Boro Mama entered through the front door. Their smiles would drop to their feet and they would run into their room to get their books.
In between these moments of simplicity and people-watching, Ammu interrupted with her very same question. “So, will you meet anyone?” I ignored it, holding on to my frustration, hoping she’d soon give up her efforts. However, Ammu seemed increasingly worried with each passing day, revealed by the way she paced back and forth.
One day I noticed Shahzad taking a cellphone out of his pocket and putting it on the glass table on the veranda before he took a swing with his cricket bat.
Although I knew this was the son of Boro Mama, which meant whatever I did or said could somehow travel back to his ears, I took a risk.
“Can I ask you for a favour?”
“Yes?” Shahzad answered, swinging his bat, as Shayan prepared to throw the ball.
“Do you think I can text my friend? It’s just that, this is going to be one long trip. I just want to say hi, discuss what classes I might consider signing up for when I return.”
“Hmmm,” Shahzad swung, missing the first time. “I don’t know. Baba makes me keep it in his office, and he usually checks my messages. I don’t know if it’s a good idea.”
“I promise I’ll delete the message. Just one message, and one response. Please,” I begged him quietly.
Shahzad hit the ball a second time and it almost hit the glass table. I ran after the ball and picked it up, then I picked up the phone. I pointed it at his face. “Listen, I will owe you for life. This is really important.”
Shahzad looked around. Mami was in the kitchen cooking. “Okay, fine. Go ahead.” He nodded.
I smiled then took off my orna and wrapped the phone in it. I ran to the bedroom, past Ammu, through the storage closet, and into the bathroom. I let the water run from the tap. I clicked on the icon for text messages and typed in Bhav’s phone number with the appropriate area code. I told him that I was now in my uncle’s home and that, so far, the trip was going all right, other than the questions about marriage, which were increasing, but that I loved him and couldn’t wait to return. I told him not to text beyond one text.
As soon as I finished typing the message, I hit send with my perspiring fingers. I went to the veranda where Shahzad was now preparing for his tutoring lesson. I handed him the phone. “Please don’t read this. Do you think you can hide this from your father for the next few hours? Give me the phone back in the morning, just to check?”
Shahzad nodded. “Okay, fine.” He took the phone and put it in his pocket. As he did, we heard the front door open, and Boro Mama’s booming voice, “Shahzad, Shayan, Saad, where are you?”
Shahzad hastily opened up his notebook, and I scurried off the veranda, keeping my eyes on the floor.
That night, sleep did not even visit my eyes. I tossed under the fan blades. I had an inkling that something unpleasant would soon happen. I sat up, waiting for the sun to meet the earth, their union only temporary but at least consistent. I remembered Allah then, and how my thoughts of Him also drifted in and out of my consciousness, and my desire to have Him there permanently. “Allah, please stay with me,” I whispered.
As the morning unravelled, I found my way to the veranda. Mami was setting the table, bringing out morning cha, roti, paratha, potatoes, and scrambled eggs. A gentle wind lifted my orna, and I breathed in deeply. Boro Mama had already left for work. Soon, in my periphery, I saw Shahzad tripping out of his room in his school uniform. I went to him.
“Do you have it?” I asked, keeping my tone low.
“Yes, here. You have two minutes. The driver is going to pick us up in a few minutes, after breakfast.”
I snatched the phone he pulled out from his pocket, and found the corner of a nearby room. I flipped the phone open and scrolled down the text messages to look for Bhav’s, and there it was. Bhav reminded me to stay strong, that we would see each other soon, that I just had to make it through this time, that he loved me, too, and thought of me all the time.
The phone almost fell out of my hands. Although his words brought me a certain calm, I couldn’t stop fidgeting with the end of my kameez with my other hand. I wish you co
uld see and feel the tension I am sensing. How it is growing, I thought, rubbing my lips together. I heard the wall clock tick. Jerked back to the present, I pulled my body forward and dragged myself to the breakfast table. Shahzad, Shayan, and Saad were already there. I could see Mami was still bringing out the plates of food, and that Ammu and Nani were also making their way to the table. I sat next to Shahzad and handed him the phone underneath the table.
“Thank you,” I said.
“You know I can’t do this again,” he reminded me with his widened eyes.
“Yes, I understand.”
A few days passed. One afternoon, when it was time for cha and siesta, Mami was in the kitchen cutting gourd, onions, and kerala, and Nani was sitting with her hip-length hair out on the veranda, the scent of amla coming through the window crack. I was in the bedroom reading a book. I had just had a disagreement with Ammu the night before. She said I was much too angry and for no reason, and I told her that I felt a similar way about her. We had been two women making sense of their anger. So, this morning I sat reserved, when Boro Mama’s silhouette on the other side of the sliding door appeared to grow larger. He stormed in with his face furrowed.
“Come, I would like to talk to you,” he said.
My breaths became thin. Although I hadn’t spoken to Boro Mama alone in recent years, and for more than five minutes, I knew enough to intuit that his requests for individual meetings signalled something serious. I thought, however, that I could have been mistaken. Perhaps he really just wanted to know how I had been keeping, as such meetings were also quite formal in nature.
I followed him to the other side of the sliding door, into the living room. He sat down on a wooden claret cloth sofa and gestured for me to sit across from him, which I did.
After I left the country, Boro Mama ceased to be in my immediate thoughts, other than the brief moments in the middle of some nights, when Ammu passed the phone to me to say hello. His voice would be faint on the other side, and I’d answer, “yes,” “okay,” “all right.” What could he ask now? Where would we start? There had been a lot that had happened during the years that had passed, but certainly, his sense of authority was still there.
“Your mother told me about the boy in Canada,” he said matter-of-factly. The suddenness with which he stated a secret I had hidden for months felt like a dagger being pulled from my gut. When it was revealed, the truth of how much I desired Bhav drained all the blood from my face.
I saw the bobbing heads of his three sons peeking from the veranda window across from us.
“In love at nineteen is infatuation,” Boro Mama continued, and I gulped while holding my breath, trying to quiet my heart, tame my expression, not give away my fear. “But you are a sensible young woman. You already know this.”
An image of my elder cousin Azeema arose without warning. I recalled her sitting on her bed, surrounded by all the Khalas and Boro Mama with a finger pointed at her face. It was what I had seen the last time I had visited six years ago. Azeema had protested for years, more than the number of fingers on my own hand, to marry Saif, the person she loved, who was now her husband. Regardless of her curfew and the informants that monitored her day and night, Azeema found ways to meet Saif discreetly at college, amid garment sellers in the hubbub of Gausia market, and behind century-old banyan trees that would keep their secrets. Both Azeema and Saif had a large network of friends that worked together to covertly deliver their coded messages to each other, as well as gifts. Saif was indeed a rather intelligent and successful businessman, quite the socialite, too, and of the same cultural background and religion, but Boro Mama wouldn’t have it because love was not a thing.
“Eccentric,” he had said, and now he told me the same thing.
For a moment, a faint inkling of the Shayṭān Bride came and went. For a moment, I wondered about Boro Mama. Hadn’t he ever simmered with passion for another until he felt he might explode if he suffered through another lonely hour without them? Hadn’t he dreamed of someone’s hair, their eyes, thought he heard their voice or had visions of them walking toward him with arms outstretched? Had he ever whispered “I love you” to himself, to an empty bed, to a wall because of the condition of the heart, the way the mind searches for compatibility, compassion, comfort, kindness, companionship? Had he ever closed his eyes to piece together his lover’s face to see if the memory itself could invoke the feelings he felt when he was with the person? Had he ever been struck unexpectantly with pangs of visceral sadness while going about his day, reminding him that he was not with the one he wanted? Did all people not have a part of themselves that was like this?
Boro Mama interrupted my thoughts. “First of all, he’s Punjabi. Secondly, he’s of a different religion. Thirdly, you’re only nineteen. I heard you’re out of line. Is this why I sent you to Canada? To become so uncultured and disrespectful? You’ve had exposure, you’ve had opportunities to better use your brain.”
Boro Mama listed on his fingers all the reasons this was trouble. The complexities of an interreligious, intercultural quandary were too difficult to break down, and the possibilities of zina, unlawful sexual relations in Islam, were far too great.
How does he perceive me? I thought. A Canadian with minimal understanding of her ethnic and religious identities? Her gender role? Or a Bangladeshi Muslim immigrant who has lost her way? An outright disbeliever or an ill-informed person in a terrible situation?
What I did know, but he didn’t know about me, was that I did have dissonance. He didn’t know about the countless number of times I found myself asking Allah, sometimes on the jai-namaz or mumbled under my breath, to show me the way. To retain the purity of the love I felt, to reconcile it amid the felt divides, within myself and the world within which we were all embedded. Boro Mama didn’t know about the Istikhara I prayed, often with wavering patience and sometimes anger borne through hefty silence.
As Boro Mama spoke, goosebumps sprouted across my forearms and on the back of my neck. My purple T-shirt and grey jogging pants scratched my skin. Was it the hot climate that suddenly made this clothing uncomfortable, or the aspect of me I was being asked to shed? He spoke as if he had known me forever and was a close friend. In Canada, although I considered the thoughts of those around me, their advice and direction, I aspired to be an independent thinker, and Abbu himself encouraged in me such things, while still desiring between us a deep philosophical and worldview resemblance. I also always tried to speak my truth, and it was usually a natural inclination. I’d do it, of course, with a bit of discretion. Here in Dhaka, remembering Azeema and the stories of other relatives who had similar interactions with Boro Mama, and considering Ammu’s strong desire for approval from him, I gulped down my urge to interrupt. He was still my elder, after all, and that much I respected. I had only just returned. The last thing I wanted was to stir up unnecessary trouble.
“She’s overcome.” Ammu marched in the room with both Mami and Nani.
They looked at each other, nodding their heads. They said something about me mistaking myself as Canadian, but also that being Canadian, I should have far greater sense. Yet, I still didn’t know what being Canadian really meant; its multiple meanings presented a sort of double-bind situation, repeated exposure to irreconcilable concurrences, without opportunities to resolve one or the other, or both.
Boro Mama abruptly stood up from the sofa and strode over to Ammu, Mami, and Nani, all of their eyebrows slightly raised. “Did I ask any of you to be here? Come on, please leave. I am speaking to her.”
As always, his order was final. He didn’t need to say anything else for them to dash away. Nor did he need to say much else for me to plead, “Boro Mama, I’m sorry. His name is Bhav and I love him.”
Boro Mama squinted a little but did not blink. It was as if, for an instant, he had thought, Who is this? He was motionless, other than his fingers, which tapped against the sofa’s arm. I tried to pinpoint where on his face, within each fold, he was storing his temper. Yet,
he remained still before asking me to elaborate about Bhav — how I had met him, what he was like, what he himself expected — and I excitedly shared, for I believed Bhav’s good character would shine through any disapproval or concern. His thoughtfulness, sense of responsibility, and loyalty, sometimes exceeding his own need to eat or sleep. His sentimentality. I could depend on him.
After listening to me, observing my animated face, and extensive hand gestures, my emboldened eyes and blushed skin, Boro Mama cleared his throat and responded, “Perhaps you need to sleep on it. We’ll continue our conversation later.”
With that he returned to the dining table, where he pulled out a chair and sat, flipped through the pages of the local paper, then yelled out to the maid to bring him more tea. I saw her then, the maid named Bilkis. She was wearing a cotton black-and-pink floral dress down to her knees, and a red headband. Bilkis stared at me with her big brown eyes from across the room, as if she wanted to say something. I was shuffling toward her slowly when Boro Mama turned from his chair and shouted at her, “Why are you standing there? Go on, get lost.”
Bilkis ran away as fast as she could.
I went to bed unsure of what exactly to expect. What does Boro Mama think about all the positives I had listed? Would I get to marry Bhav? Or would he decide otherwise? And if he did, what would he do then?
The conversations continued every day, happening in a similar way, like a repeated waking nightmare. Me mustering all of my bravery and dragging over to the living room hazily, Boro Mama laying out all the pros and cons of my predicament as we sat across from each other at the glass table. The familiarity of his rather judicious approach was striking. We’d done this before my family had emigrated. It was as if Bhav himself were the entire country of Canada. Suddenly, I was that young girl again, sitting next to him as I did my math homework, him leaning in, saying, “Good, good. Carry the one over like this.” Him tapping his fingers and feet, then leaving the room shortly after to smoke a cigarette.
The Shaytan Bride Page 12