The Shaytan Bride

by The Shaytan Bride (retail) (epub)

  “Do they get sick like this? Are they always in battle?” she asked.

  I thought then about the women who held pregnancy tests in their hands wondering if they wanted children at all but felt they had to. The women who tried for years but were unable. Women who loved women. Women who wanted to leave but couldn’t.

  “It seems she doesn’t have the energy for life. She lives only with the company of her bed,” the lady said.

  “Maybe she’s sad,” I suggested “When I’m sad I don’t want to get out of bed, either. Maybe she’s really, really sad. Heartbroken.”

  I sat with my statement for a moment. It hit me that perhaps depression in this context could have been perceived as a type of isolation, a separation from one’s God or the social fabric within which one was immersed. I thought perhaps I had been a little too daring in revealing my thoughts to this lady, not only because I knew not much of adult life in Dhaka but because the intersection between beliefs and mental health was complex. Also, word could easily travel to Boro Mama about what I had shared, and who knew how he would react.

  The door flew open. Ammu and Sweety Khala rushed out.

  The lady stood up. Both Ammu and Sweety Khala hugged her.

  “It is unfortunate, vhabi,” Ammu said to the lady, “to see your beautiful daughter like this. Inshallah she will get better.”

  Later in the night, while lying on the bed, again I watched the fan blades above my head rotate in unison, forming perfect round circles. The wind was making a musical note that did little to soothe. I sank deeper into the dark with each rotation of the blades; the streak of light pouring in through the window blinds kept me grasping onto the edges of my consciousness. And then, finally, I fell asleep.

  As I drifted off to sleep I imagined the young woman again. I was in that same room she was in before. I ambled over to her standing figure, until we were side by side. I heard her breathe, in and out, steady. From the corner of my eye, I tried to make out her face, but it wasn’t until I took that extra step forward and to the right that I saw it. Heart-shaped face, a small dimple on her left cheek. Iris the colour of hazelnut wood, cornea pearl white. A nose not too straight or thin, lips full, supple, ruddy. She dragged these eyes of hers across my face, her head slowly rising up as she did. She grimaced. Upsurge of laughter.

  I looked down at her body. She was naked. On her wrist there was a series of intricate blue veins in a vile winding trail. I followed them up her thin arms to her collarbone, which pulled on the surrounding skin like an anchor. She had perfectly round nipples, a small brown beauty mark under the right one. From her abdomen and the small pouch around it, she pulled through an inhale then released the air through her mouth, as if she was releasing life itself. It was a breath of fire, agni-prasana. She was alive. To this I also smiled. I placed my hands on the dips between her waist and hips. My hands fit the concaves effortlessly. Then we both started laughing. Her hot breath in my mouth and mine in hers. We dived into the brown of each other’s eyes as if looking away itself could result in some death. So, in our locked gaze, we saw all the embarrassing romantic, sexual desire and all the ridiculous absurdity of the heart, the passion, the longing, the ego — the entire world. How beautiful, when she respired. I reached out to touch her face until black enveloped the back of my eyelids — my eyes opened. I was awake. I could not move my body for a few minutes, yet my senses were perked: I heard feet walking and knobs turning, and may have seen a flickering light in the distance. Behind my head I felt warm, rising air, and a weight on my chest as if someone was there, sitting on top of it, their legs wrapping and holding me in place, stuck. I mumbled Ayatul Kursi under my breath, my voice rising with each sentence:

  “Allahu laaa ilaaha illaa huwal haiyul qai-yoom

  laa taakhuzuhoo sinatunw wa laa nawm

  lahoo maa fissamaawaati wa maa fil ard

  man zallazee yashfa’u indahooo illaa be iznih

  ya’lamu maa baina aideehim wa maa khalfahum

  wa laa yuheetoona beshai ’immin ’ilmihee illa be maa shaaaa

  wasi’a kursiyyuhus samaa waati wal arda wa la ya’ooduho hifzuhumaa

  wa huwal aliyyul ’azeem.”

  As the sensations passed and I twitched, the eeriness of the woman dissipated with her. I only realized then that she was just a regular woman.

  Ammu told me about the young woman’s life. I learned that she had fallen in love with a rural man she couldn’t be with. He loved her, too, but some city dwellers believed they didn’t belong together.

  Days, months, and years passed of their secret meetings and their protests to be together. When Ammu shared this, I imagined the young woman and her secret lover meeting at Lalbagh Fort, their agreed-upon place. This was a Mughal complex that stood before the Buriganga River, its construction started by Prince Muhammad Azam, son of Emperor Aurangzeb. I imagined them both strolling in the complex discreetly, drifting in and out of crowds.

  They’d both find their way to the rooftop garden, where they’d stand parallel to each other, keeping their gaze ahead but their elbows grazing, until they could no longer resist. The young woman would remove her black sunglasses and pull back the scarf on her head to reveal the deep kohl that would draw him in. Once she smiled, he would perhaps reach out his hand, and she’d hold it. They stroll through the grounds, past the old mosque with the three domes and the Diwani-i-Am. Although historically it was a place of loss, unfulfilled dreams, and beauty in ruins, this young woman and her lover only felt hope.

  “You see, the people had heard that the man asked her to elope one day, but she couldn’t do it then, and rightly so, as there was a lot to consider.” A disembodied voice floated as I continued to envisage the lovers. It was Ammu’s. She shook me by the shoulders.

  She continued to tell me that the man had disappeared, and the woman’s voice disappeared along with him. A few years later, her lover returned, married to another woman with a child in her belly. He had moved on.

  I asked Ammu if the woman felt regret, and Ammu said, “Do you want to end up like these women? Do you want this fate? There is only sadness and risk.”

  Distrust lingered in the air.

  “What happened that day when you met with her?” I asked. I had been wanting to know this for a few days now.

  “Nothing. I asked her questions. Told her she still had a chance at life,” Ammu explained.

  “And then?”

  “She’s too far gone. There was no response. Poor girl. I pity her. It’s better you stay away from her or don’t even ask — it’s still possible there’s a jinni in her.”

  I thought about the young woman and others like her every day. She was the woman who had to decide between doing what she was told to do or staying true to what she wanted for herself, both of which came with consequences. So, she stayed in stasis. In her radical stillness, she had a type of agency; she resisted. In her situation, could inertia have been a type of freedom, an assertion of will? Or perhaps she was paralyzed from all that had happened to her, the friction of society against her bones. I still have not heard her speak, however, so there will always be holes in this story as I tell it.

  Obhishonkot / Fork in the Road

  It was still late September 2005.

  “So, what will you do?” Boro Mama paced back and forth.

  By this time, I barely spoke, as my available willpower was dwindling. I was still trying to reserve whatever I had left for whatever I was going to do.

  “Are you going to do it?” he asked.

  I stayed quiet. By then, it actually hurt to talk.

  “The man who visited us weeks ago, the small man with the white beard, that was Shoaib’s father and he is not well,” he spilled.

  Aha, I thought. He had treated me with a familiarity I didn’t understand then but did now.

  “Given his health, he wants his son to marry sooner rather than later.”

  I had also learned, and this was worse, that my own brother, who was just twelve, had been a
dmitted to the local hospital because he was not well. He did not take to the climate or the food in Bangladesh, where he had not been born. So, he was now connected to saline drips and would be for days. I was not allowed to visit him at all. Abbu was also not well, a condition I had no details about. Only Boro Mama knew the details about all of these sicknesses and, like a doctor coveting and selectively releasing information, he kept them all to himself.

  “Given that your brother is not well, your family will have to go back. However, since your issue is not resolved, we’ll just have to keep you here,” he said.

  More than ever I felt the urgency to do something — but what?

  “Worst comes to worst, maybe you can stay in a village. No access to technology. Maybe you can finally clear your head and think.”

  My legs shook. Still, I said nothing; I simply had no strength. Why waste words on one who couldn’t hear them?

  “I will look very bad if you don’t meet Shoaib at least one more time. Just save my face, do this for me once. Then we can talk about your final decision.”

  “Okay.”

  I watched the passing rickshaw wheels turn. Shoaib stood at the front gates of Boro Mama’s place. He was in an off-white half-sleeved shirt and beige pants.

  I wondered what Bhav would think of me being in this position. I thought about the discomfort he might feel, like that which I would have if he started seeing other people.

  “As-salam alaykum.” Shoaib greeted me in a manner that made me think that I had felt him at the scene even before he had even arrived.

  “Wa alaikum salam,” I responded, looking around. “I heard your father is not well. How is he now?”

  He pointed to an incoming cluster of rickshaws ringing their bells all at once.

  “Yes, he is still bedridden. We are not sure what it is, but Inshallah he will get better.”

  Shoaib called over a rickshaw depicting a serene white Taj Mahal nested between petals of a pink lotus flower. When we climbed onto our seats, I noticed its rumal was painted a cherry red, like my lips. I love makeup. As much as I’d been begrudgingly coerced into meeting Shoaib, I’d enjoyed the process of getting ready. I missed the creativity.

  Sensing Shoaib’s leg from the side of mine, I tucked in my lavender orna to my side. Shoaib gracefully shifted away an inch to establish a respectful gap between us.

  The wheels began to roll over rocks and squeeze past men with large pots of fish or vegetables for sale balanced on their heads. Shoaib fixed the cuffs of his shirt and repositioned the pen in his front left pocket. The rickshawala pedalling us to our destination was wearing a white sleeveless shirt that was drenched in sweat and a turquoise lungi. He pushed the wheels for about ten minutes or so, until they rolled, then halted, then squeezed in between other wheels of cars, scooters, and other rickshaws in the middle of the jammed road. We were bombarded by two young boys, a young girl, and their mother. They were barefoot and wearing tattered clothing. They circled around the rickshaw. Shoaib felt his pant pocket for his wallet, found and opened it to give each family member one hundred taka. The children’s mother mumbled a prayer, blew it toward our faces like fairy dust, and went away.

  Shoaib smiled at me then looked ahead. We rolled over pebbles and potholes, past more groups of beggars, sideswiping cars, and residents. Eventually we turned down a series of emptier narrow streets, and then onto wider busy ones again.

  During the thirty-minute ride, Shoaib asked me about my life in Canada. “How is it like?”

  “Fine,” I answered.

  I could have told him then about my typical day, filling my backpack with books, making my way down to the University of Toronto buildings in Queen’s Park, usually Convocation Hall, where I’d be one in a crowd of young aspirers. I could have detailed my friends, enemies, and acquaintances, their personalities, appearances, concerns, and complexities, how we passed our time, all of the places downtown: bookstores, cafes, theatres, parks. I could have told him then about Bhav, but instead I asked, “How do you spend your time in Dhaka?”

  “Well, work and friends. Of course, taking care of my parents, as well.” He went on to tell me about the thriving city; its recent developments and promises for the future. “Maybe you didn’t learn this in Canada, but Bangladesh has always been seen as a rather failing country. After its independence, it was left in shambles, not that it wasn’t suffering before, either, but we’re moving along, we’re moving along. Beneath our feet are the lives lost; they don’t give us sadness, only strength. There is so much more to this place.”

  I remember looking around and feeling somewhat the same, as if I’d never left the place at all. As if Canada was like a lightning bolt that came and passed.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, noticing me in a bit of a daze.

  “Yes.”

  The rickshaw toppled slightly as we entered Sher-E Bangla Nagar, one of the neighbourhoods in Dhaka, where they have government offices, banks, shops, and financial institutions. It was also where the prime minister lived. In this area was the National Assembly Complex, or Jatiya Sangsad Bhaban, seat of the national parliament. I was struck by the simple geometry, circles, triangles, squares, and half-circles, the ease with which they were held together in one frame, red-bricked and from afar, the perfectly sized windows and solid but hollow columns, reflecting light in the most intriguing ways.

  “Beautiful, isn’t it?” Shoaib asked me. “You should see it at night, with lights. It sits near a stretch of water, sparkling like the sky above it. It’s quite magical.”

  I watched Shoaib peer up at the sky as if he were paying a certain homage to something intangible. “It was designed by an American. It is about governing in a way that is aligned with the universe.”

  I smiled. Toronto, in comparison, was grey and hard and severe. The buildings seemed indifferent, even for objects. Godless. It wasn’t common that thoughts about the universe, of something bigger than oneself, influenced the designing of structures or when materializing the aspirations of a space. This was something I often craved.

  Shoaib studied me further, his eyes fixed on mine, then said, the same way you point out an interesting vintage car or a public restroom, “Quick, look, there. Our wedding will be held there, in the parliament building. On November ninth. You’ll see the insides, don’t worry. It will be grand.”

  Startled, I furrowed my brow and shook my head. Shoaib asked, “Are you all right? Shall I stop the driver and get some water? Perhaps a shawl of some sort?”

  I hadn’t agreed to anything. It flabbergasted me how quickly the situation had arrived. As if I’d been sleeping the whole way.

  When the rickshaw stopped and I stood up to come down, Shoaib jumped out and eagerly ran around to my side to extend his hand to help me out. How strange it was, that I suddenly felt like the wife of this stranger?

  What am I doing? I wondered.

  Shoaib guided me to the entrance of the restaurant, bordered with flowers, ghasful, jasmine, bonak, and udla. The karaoke box inside blasted. The lead singer with long red hair, wearing oxidized jewellery and a black-and-silver salwar kameez began to sing.

  “This beautiful song.” Shoaib pointed to the ceiling and subtly nodded his head to the rhythm. He pulled out the chair at the table we had walked to and gestured for me to sit down. “It’s called ‘Dukhini Duhkho Koro Na’ by James or Nagar Baul. A lot of Bengali music is inspired by Sufism, mysticism, and folklore. Isn’t it nice?”

  “It’s a lovely song. What does it mean?” I asked him, as I still didn’t understand all the dialects or more difficult Bangla words.

  “It’s about going outside, dancing with joy, seeing the rainbow, and visiting the garden of dreams under the newly risen sun. Not lamenting or remaining in melancholy.”

  I skimmed the room, then Shoaib’s placid expression as he flipped through pages of the menu in front of him. I wasn’t sure how I was even conversing, physically moving, interacting after what I had just been told. I had learned that No
vember 9, 2005, would be my wedding when my ecstatic groom told me with eyes softened by a certain rosy fondness.

  We sat across from each other, and Shoaib shared with me snippets of his life: his aspirations as a businessman, what he loved most and least about the busy city, more about his father and his noble mother.

  “You do a lot, caring about the well-being of others,” I told him, realizing as I said it that this was the same reason that I’d fallen for Bhav.

  He responded, “When it comes to the people you love, your commitment must not be waves at the shore, but rather the depth of the middle of the sea.”

  As he spoke, I had begun to believe we had met before somehow, sat across from each other in this very same restaurant. I thought I would hate this person, but no, I appreciated his company. Things had been chaotic, people duplicitous. He reminded me of normality.

  I considered then that if I hadn’t left at age six, I would likely be here in this restaurant every other day. I imagined that if I had never left here, I would perhaps be catching a rickshaw every morning to travel to college, later meeting some girlfriends at the Dhaka Café or maybe Dhanmondi mall, laughing for hours over chaat papri. Or going to dawats in salwar kameezes, shararas, ghagras, lenghas, or saris. Being taken to the latest spots by drivers and attending week-long weddings. And, of course, the serene adhan during Ramadans and shorter workdays for proper fasting. And during Eid, the endless feasting.

  If I had never left here, I would perhaps have pursued becoming a university professor, taught literature, got involved in politics or volunteered at a local charity, sung different songs, danced differently, and taken to playing the harmonium even more seriously. Perhaps I’d consider pursuing a career in the arts, although Boro Mama probably wouldn’t have it. There was much to do in this city. It had so much potential. Why had I insisted on keeping my eyes closed, as if all of Dhaka was simply an extension of Boro Mama? As if I already knew all there was to know?