I sat quietly and thought.
Abbu observed me, then said, “Don’t bother too much with these politics. Focus on iman instead. Islam doesn’t teach war, nor does it teach genocide or massacre. Self-defence, yes.”
Abbu gently picked up his cup and brought it to his lips. His eyes scanned the room, one corner at a time, and then he took a sip.
“Operation Searchlight, that was a whole massacre.” He was still shaking his head. He went on to tell me about the December 14 massacre, when Al-Badr, an undercover group of madrasa, college, and university students who opposed East Pakistani independence, came out and selectively killed Bengali professors, doctors, engineers, and many other intellectuals. The horrific event happened in Dhaka University. Abbu was in Jessore at the time, almost two hundred kilometres away, but the blood spilled across the country and mapped onto his memories. “Killing of mind, of free thought, of great thinkers is a great tragedy,” he said. “And for what? That was not Islam.”
Yet his tone was neutral. I observed it, curious to understand how he swallowed life like the way I ate my kadayif when he had been amid the painful birth pangs that gave way to a most hungry and impoverished nation. I wondered how much pain he must have seen for such tragedy to be less tragic.
“Was it painful?” I had asked. “To remember such things? To see your friends turn the war inward, onto themselves?”
“It happens in war. It was a long time ago.”
No, I thought insistently, Abbu, this is still today.
I observed the Arabic writing on the restaurant walls and intricate tapestry coloured a rich green and red. My shoulders were heavy but my chest hollow, as if a bullet had made an irrevocable wound. It pained me to think that the faith that had given me the endurance to keep living and breathing could also be used, and again and again, as a tool for massacre. As more time would go on, I’d continue to see this in other Muslim-majority countries around the world, and not just South Asia. I’d see this, too, in other faith contexts.
Abbu sometimes had the ability to read my mind. As we sat there in the restaurant, he went on to say, “In 1971, religious rhetoric was the tool for massacre, and so Bangladesh decided to separate itself from these things. It would be about acceptance of religious diversity, but not necessarily a separation of religion and state.”
Later I would learn that Bangladesh added and removed Islam as a state religion a number of times, as if it still struggled with itself and how it should be defined. I would put Bangladesh side by side with Canada. Both countries aren’t truly secular, but that doesn’t matter, anyway, because secularism itself, like religion, can also be used as a tool for hatred, prejudice, and discrimination.
Back in the living room in Dhaka, I heard Boro Mama’s shoe tap the ground as we tackled the topics of national and religious identity, and how the application of faith required true discipline. I saw his lips continue to move, but I didn’t really hear him. And then I saw a shadow pass over his face, like an eclipse. Suddenly, for the first time in my life, for the first time in his life, he slapped me.
If I said my heart stopped, would that be a lie? Does the heart actually ever stop when you’re afraid? When you’re shocked? Does my body have the capacity to disappear from life at will? To pardon itself from existence and halt my blood, devastate my organs, retract backward into whatever darkness I’d inhabited during that long stretch of time before I was born.
His hand left a red imprint across my cheek. Was it his palm or the back of his hand? In the days and weeks to come, I’d no longer be able to tell the difference. When Boro Mama glared at me, it was as if he had seen Medusa: hair of venomous snakes and the look of stone. Or was it the Shayṭān Bride? My eyes seemed to cast a complicated spell upon him. He was ever so desperate to not let it happen.
“Are you really going to be eccentric?” he shouted.
I was determined not to cry but permitted a single eccentric tear to exit my eye.
When he saw my tear, the lines around his mouth loosened, but before I could speak, he said, “I will arrange for you to meet someone, and I don’t want to hear you say no.”
“No,” I whispered under my breath, but he didn’t hear me.
In that moment, Bilkis passed us by, her eyes warm with empathy. Boro Mama stormed out of the room. I stood frozen for a minute, then left, too.
Back in the bedroom, I found Ammu, Nani, and Mami whispering on the bed. They looked at my red cheek and asked, “What did you tell him?” I could see then, from the way they looked at me — lips slightly parted, breath halted, hands shaking — that they were scared of Boro Mama, perhaps even more than I had ever been.
I spent most days in the storage closet trying to understand who everyone was, as people were behaving in unpredictable ways, as if I had not known them at all. Could I also say the same about myself? The passing days felt like one long stretched-out hour. Certainly, Bhav would have doubted me in this long silent absence. We never went a day without speaking: did he wonder why I hadn’t emailed? Phoned? Mailed a letter? Texted again? Did he think I didn’t love him? Did he still love me? I wondered about him, and sometimes talked to him out loud, as if he were there, the way I often spoke with God. What was he thinking? What was he feeling? I held onto the promise ring and closed my eyes, trying to astral project sometimes, across the Indian and Altantic oceans, the Arabian Sea.
Sometimes in the storage closet, I thought about the absurdity of the Radcliffe Line, drawn by the colonial cartographers during Partition, and afterward all the other decisions and events that further divided all the people drinking from the same Ganga River into factions, in the name of religion or whatever else. I thought about how it could have all contributed to the exact moment I was then in, in the storage closet without Bhav. During Partition, it was as if the colonial cartographers drew their lines with their eyes closed, ears shut to the voices on the other side of the margins. People of varying creeds, ethnicities, and tongues living in a similar place, and the complicated history that intertwined them now erased. Perhaps colonizers thought they were doing India a favour, or perhaps they wanted to withdraw sooner than later, for some apparent gain or protection. It probably came down to a thirst for power, whatever flawed mythology they constructed to justify themselves.
Whatever the reason was, there were now these seemingly irrevocable severances. I thought sometimes about the violence on India’s West side. The women who screamed when their clothes were torn off and they were made to march naked, who were soon after gang raped and murdered by enemy soldiers. The wife of the railway porter, whose hands were chopped off, her body thrown into fire and then a well, along with her two daughters and a son. The chopped breasts of women of enemy states, torn labia dripping what was called polluted blood. There were also the Hindu families who threw their daughters into wells so the Muslim men couldn’t touch them. The feet of rioters kicking remnants of the shikharas, the spires of temples placed at the centre of the universe, the axis of the world. Golden Mount Meru. The feet of rioters picking up fragments of the garbhagriha, the temple’s womb chamber, to inspect them and then throw them away again. The feet of the rioters kicking the crushed-dome multi-patterned rooftops of mosques, the vaults of heaven. The feet of the rioters picking up fragments of the mihrab, doorways layered with tiles and the inked strings of Arabic letters joined together. The mihrab broken, the direction to Mecca lost. The feet of rioters rushing forward and backward in crowds, their bodies swaying with sounds of people’s anguish, the moans, screams, and blood dripping from swords.
I thought also about the violence on the East side. In mother Bengal, the riots during Partition and the decades after. The 1946 Calcutta Killings and Noakhali riots. Hindus and Sikhs and Muslims who ended up dead. Hindus and Sikhs who felt unsafe in East Bengal, and Muslims who felt unsafe in the West. Abduction, death, mass rape. Ethnic cleansing. I looked at my feet, now shaking. By them I imagined the bodies of women raped, abandoned, and killed, corpses covered in r
otten filth. Their bodies washed over with the echoes of voices of both strangers and kin. It was always the women who got the brunt of it, their bodies the battleground for all the sins.
Despite having been born three generations after familial exposure to many of these atrocities, the screams of these women were still with me.
I thought then that a new renaissance needed to be birthed, where the people of diaspora could help mend these previous India-Pakistan-Bangladesh atrocities based on religious, linguistic, and ethnic divides, so the next hundred years could be different.
All the generations that would come after could be haunted less by beliefs that travelled across seas and influenced the kindness that people had or didn’t have for each other of the same brown skin. They’d be more conscious of the ways colonization was still bleeding into their everyday.
I thought also about the greater Muslim ummah, the ways Muslims across the globe were tied together by faith, a faith which was under intense scrutiny by those who feared it, and which supposedly formed the bedrock of communities that continued to discriminate amongst themselves. The alienation, the segregation.
What a shit show, I thought. I usually refrained from profanity but was now unable to help it. How are we supposed to fix this?
I wondered about Abbu. How was he keeping?
We didn’t have many other relatives visiting the residence, especially those from Abbu’s side of the family. One day I heard Boro Chachi would be visiting, Abbu’s elder brother’s wife, the Chachi with the arboreal wildcat eyes. She would be bringing her daughter Nusrat along, the one I almost drowned out of reflex during my last visit, as well as her son Manshoor, who was about my age. At first Boro Mama advised Boro Chachi that it was probably not a good idea to visit, as there were some important matters being dealt with, but Boro Chachi persisted, saying she had missed me and the rest of the family. It was odd that I hadn’t visited her, for usually I’d love spending time with these family members, who were more on the artistic side.
So, Boro Chachi was invited, and as she entered, Mami greeted her and her children with a plate of cake rusks and tea. They all sat on the claret cloth sofa. I was next door in the storage closet, scribbling in my journal. When I heard Boro Chachi’s voice through the walls, I was instantly calmed. She would surely understand my passion, as well as the injustice of the situation. I jerked up and went to the bedroom door, preparing to open it and meet them, when Nani, who was on the bed, called me from the jai-namaz.
“Sit here,” she instructed.
I trudged to the bed, fighting the urge to run out the door to Boro Chachi and tell her everything.
“I need to know,” she said, “how intimate you’ve been. And remember, you cannot lie.” She pointed to the prayer mat, which I took a seat on.
“Tell me,” she asked again, shaking my arms.
I stayed quiet, looking down at the green fibre of the jai-namaz, which reminded me of the greenery Paradise was supposed to have. I trembled. Nani replied, “Child, your nonresponse says it all.”
I felt strange, sitting on a prayer mat with a third party, face to face with the shame I already felt. At the same time, I held firmly onto the remembrance of my niyat and Bhav’s.
“Nani, it’s not what you think. Yes, I know Allah will not be pleased with me, but I do believe Allah knows that Bhav loves me and I him. We intend to be together forever, I promise.”
Now, I was holding onto Nani’s ankles, my head on her feet.
“Again, with this love. Your ideals are too high. A man’s true commitment shows after he has married his wife. One day as an older woman, when the rush of your hormones has diminished, when you see the world for what it really is, when there are a few wrinkles on your face, you will sit like me, telling your daughters the same thing.”
“No, Nani, no!” I cried, still gently pulling on her feet. “I’m sorry.”
Before Nani could respond, Mami entered. She opened her mouth to say something, froze looking at us, then continued. “You can go and meet Boro Chachi now.”
“Go,” Nani instructed me.
I got up from the bed and she added, “I’m only telling you for your own good. I hope you learn, my child. Listen to your Boro Mama, do what he says, or you’ll be cast out. You still have time to ask him for forgiveness.”
I left the room with Mami, eager to see Boro Chachi’s familiar face. In the living room Boro Chachi dipped a cake rusk in her tea. When she saw me walking in, her eyes widened. She put her cup down then got up to give me a hug. Her soft cotton sari felt good against my skin. Nusrat and Manshoor also stood up and shuffled over to me. They both looked like they did the last time I visited, except a little more mature. Manshoor had grown his hair out just a little bit, had stubble on his face, and wore his usual goofy smile. Nusrat now wore glasses, appearing timid, but in reality she was always saucier than expected. They hugged me. All the physical contact was exhilarating and uncomfortable at the same time. It was as if I had forgotten what a hug was supposed to feel like, what genuine affection was supposed to feel like.
Nusrat and Manshoor sat down. They were beaming as they sipped their tea, eager to converse.
“You are so thin, and you seem so tired. Sit down,” Boro Chachi said. “Where is everyone else?”
“They’ve gone out to the market. They’ll be back soon,” Mami replied.
“Okay, well, why haven’t you visited? We’ve hardly seen you and your family this time.” Boro Chachi leaned in. I fought the urge to open my mouth, the urge to do whatever it took, just to get someone to appease Boro Mama, to stop everything.
As I was about to respond, Mami squinted at me and Nani appeared, and so I said, “I don’t know. You’ll have to ask Ammu.”
“Okay, that’s fine,” Boro Chachi continued. She offered me some cake rusk, which I refused. Nusrat and Manshoor asked me questions about life in Canada, how I was keeping, all while Mami stood over us, just watching. Nani was now sitting beside me, also carefully observing. I forced a smile. I asked them questions, too, about their lives. I thought then how often people did this in regular life, presenting one way on the outside while battling something else inside. Eccedentesiast.
As we spoke, I heard the doorbell ring. Mami went to answer it, leaving us for a moment.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” I said. “I’ll be back.” They nodded that it was fine. I went through the hallway and the bedroom and then closed the bathroom door behind me. I splashed a handful of water on my face. I needed a way to tell Boro Chachi, Nusrat, and Manshoor what was happening. They would most likely advocate for me. Boro Chachi especially appreciated understanding the interior worlds of her children. Could she do the same for me, too?
As I wiped my face with a ghamcha, leaving the bathroom and entering the bedroom, I saw Manshoor standing there.
“Hi. I just came to get you. I think they are serving some lunch,” he said.
The beating of my heart reverberated in my ears, drowning out every other sound. The thought came to me as clear as could be: I would tell Manshoor everything in the two minutes I now had with him. But like a pendulum, my trust swayed back and forth. My doubt remained. I took the risk, anyway. Should I tell him? I did.
“Manshoor, I have to tell you something. I only have two minutes.”
He scrunched his eyebrows in bewilderment. “Okay.”
I ran into the storage closet and pulled out my journal from under some clothing. I ripped out a blank page, took a pen, and scribbled down Bhav’s name, phone number, and email. I returned to Manshoor and handed him the piece of paper.
“All you need to know now is I am trapped here. I’m being asked to meet with men here who are interested in marriage. I don’t want this. This number is Bhav’s number. He is the man I love. The man I want to marry. I need to find my way back to him. Will you please help me? Will you get in touch with him? Just tell him that I haven’t been able to contact him because things here are getting worse. Okay?” It was
the fastest I’d ever spoken in my life.
Manshoor stood there quietly holding the paper.
I told him about the endless circular conversations, how my actions were monitored, and that I couldn’t go anywhere. How nervous I was that if I said or did anything oppositional, I could be stuck here for longer.
“Are you both coming?” I heard Nani shout, and then, shortly after, Ammu’s voice. She must have just returned from the market.
“Please,” I repeated, my eyes frantic and voice now raspy.
Manshoor seemed tormented. I could see his hands were trembling. “How could they do this to you? This is violence. This isn’t right.”
“What?” Mami appeared and he quickly stuffed the paper in his pocket. We both exchanged looks with each other to confirm our arrangement. We left the room.
Manshoor sent Bhav an email soon after:
From:
Sent: September 1, 2005 9:51 AM
To:
Subject: about ............your love..........
hi this is . cosine and friend. she is in a lot of troble. she is
being forced to get married. i can read her heart. she will die without u.
so think fast and take a discision. u know what i am saying. it is about what will be your steps when she returns to canada. she may not be able to return canada as single. cause her elders have gone mad. they are pushing her harder and harder.
I would have to wait until I could talk to Manshoor again to know Bhav’s response.
One day, in Boro Mama’s home, while I was under house arrest, some relatives were invited over.
“They’re here to visit the family. I trust you won’t share what we’ve talked about. They don’t need to hear it,” he said.
Mami entered and handed me a golden peach sari.
I nodded, as by this time I was getting tired.
The Shaytan Bride Page 14