The Shaytan Bride

by The Shaytan Bride (retail) (epub)

  I skim the emails again. I read between and on the lines: the pressure I faced in Dhaka to make a decision when I didn’t have a real choice, yet was made to feel as if I had one, therefore rendering the wedding an event I chose and encouraged. My behaviour then was considered inconsistent, and the anger I expressed, my self-assertion, my loyalty, and my longing for who I loved were all considered a sign of jinni possession (although I couldn’t rule this out — who was I to say?). My persistent will, even in my small acts of resistance, was not something anyone expected. Irrespective of how ill-informed or troubled I seemed at nineteen, or how terrible I was at garnering trust with my kin, everyone who had participated in one way or another sidestepped their accountability, or just believed they were somehow saving me, acting in my best interest. I am grateful, however, for the family I have. Over the years our efforts have become greater in understanding each other, and this has brought us closer together. The strength of our bond is continually tested, and we continually seem to find a way back to each other. Matin means strong, and that, I believe, is what we are as a family.

  Alhumdulillah. I close my eyes. I fall asleep.

  I text Bhav the next day, I know it has been over ten years, but I am still hurt.

  Bhav writes back, I understand. If we were going to end up in the same predicament, we should have just ended up together but we didn’t.

  No, we didn’t. I have moved on. Allah knows what is best.

  Still, I ache, looking out onto the 401, the cars passing by. Remembering the deep devotion that I once felt, I think that I’m still not an expert on love, nor can I really define it, but what I do sense deeply within my core is that it is not bound by these tests, nor by space or time or a physical, gendered body. Love shows its face in places and during ages one can never predict. When Allah writes people into our lives, even for a short time, there is a bigger reason.

  When on the phone with Bhav again, he says, “I think you should kill Bhav.”

  “What?” I am confused.

  “Bhav, in your book. Kill me. He needs to die.”

  I remind him my book is non-fiction. I don’t love him that way, but it still hurts. And then, while resisting the urge to fall on my knees, I ask myself, Is it possible that all those who have touched us coexist in our hearts, simply because their essence is really a manifestation of the attributes of God? It’s what the person gave us, their gift, something that we needed to see and experience at a particular point in time, and becomes a part of us. When we own that part we can let go, but would that mean we love less? We can still appreciate their gifts from afar with a certain tenderness. The people I loved, the people for whom I am deeply grateful.

  Still, I ask him, “Do you want me to kill you from my consciousness?”

  He is quiet. He says nothing.

  “Thank you,” I tell him. “You were what I needed then to be who I am now.”

  He reminds me that I’ve always been a strong, loving, intelligent woman, and that no life event should convince me otherwise.

  We say goodbye. I hang up.

  I close my eyes. On my back of my eyelids, I see the ending of this story, not as the South Asian women of our previous generations saying, I am glad you didn’t end up with him. This is what happens when you disobey your traditions, and do not follow your religion. Nor do I see the end as women of the generations after saying, Hail love over everything else, because that could also be an illusion. I see the ending as the simultaneously ugly but beautiful truth that life is a revolving door, and the opportunity to keep this door open is the greatest gift that has been bestowed.

  Jajabor / Nomad

  It had been about fourteen years since the phone call to the High Commission of Canada from the corner of Boro Mama’s bedroom, using the rotary phone, now archaic, placing my finger in the holes of the dial and rotating it, breathing so heavily, saying “Hello?” as if it were a wish.

  I was back for my younger cousin Maryam’s wedding, a grand ball, close to the country’s Victory Day, a celebration of the win allied forces had over West Pakistani forces during the Liberation War in Bangladesh. The people in the streets were hanging red and green lights on the buildings, wrapping them around the streetlamps. Just a few blocks down, the Bangladesh armed forces were practising for their military parade. I could see already that some smaller flags had been hoisted, green backdrop like the land, the red dot in the middle the marker of blood. Nine months of massacre; I considered all the lives lost.

  “Victory! Victory!” I heard some of the workers say. A couple of them I saw had paint spread across their faces in the shape of flags, and writing that said “Victory Day 2019.”

  I was looking at all this from the balcony where I was standing. It was evening. Down below, at the hemlines of the street, I spotted shattered glass on the roads and heaps of plastic on the road edges. The storefronts were defaced with slander and vandalism, as a form of propaganda or free expression. An election was on its way. This land, although free, continued to be in a state of survival, recovering from the negative impacts of oppression, the lateral violence it had been subjected to and was now subjecting onto others: the Rohingyas, the people of the Chittagong Hill Tracts. Another complicated hometown, and I looked at it like a voyeur, with curiosity, yet unable to participate in it fully.

  What relationship did I now have with this place? Did it scare me, being back here? Yes, to an extent. I had avoided it for fourteen years out of a fear of being trapped again. Now, here I was, being reacquainted, a sadness falling over me like the black velvet evening sky above my head. The realization that in my avoidance, I missed so many years of truly knowing the place, helping it rebuild in some way. Each time I visited, another family member or relative had left the country, or someone had died, or I had less information about what every day was like for the citizens.

  ∞

  It was the evening of Maryam’s wedding. I was wearing a maroon velvet lengha embroidered in gold. On my ears hung pearls placed on a golden frame the shape of paisley, dangling. I walked into the grand hall, where from the high ceilings hung what seemed to be gilt chandeliers. The main stage where Maryam and her husband sat was a cut-out of a Mughal palace — arched doorways, windows, and balconies swathed in roses. I stood in the middle of the hall, surrounded by over a hundred tables, my eyes trailing along the gold-tinted runway in front of the stage.

  Her wedding, she said, hadn’t been arranged, although she found her now husband’s biodata in a pile of twenty other ones handed to her. As she looked at it, she realized he was actually a distant family friend. Meant to be — fate. When she met him for their first date in New York City, their veins jolted like the everlasting electricity running the Times Square billboard lights. The city that never sleeps. That night she put checkmarks next to the criterion that she expected of him, that she expected of herself, that was once expected of her; these three things now one thing. Meant to be — fate.

  And now they were situated in what appeared visually as a fairy tale of sorts. Should I have been envious, especially after having been carelessly forced into an unwanted wedding myself? Hasad, like the type Iblis had for Adam? I couldn’t. By now, I had realized I loved myself too much to put myself through such self-sabotage, not trusting in the greater order of events. Standing there, I was overcome, actually, by exhilaration. I was happy for Maryam but also myself, that I had learned so much since the last time I’d been in Bangladesh, and this would serve me, I was sure. I felt stronger than I had ever felt.

  I reflected on marriages in Canada. Such occasions were not necessarily this big, and almost half of the people I knew who were around my age were still unwed. I thought about the late-night bars where people searched for solace, and those who also reviewed the criteria of potential mates like Maryam, headhunters looking at resumes, just in the form of swipe right or left. I wondered then about the complexities of love and the process of finding marriage, and the multitude of ways that it had been framed. The multi
tude of ways people found each other and somehow decided to be together, for a time.

  There are so many factors that shape the process of finding marriage or companionship for those who are looking: the neighbourhood one lives in, citizenship status, employment, socioeconomic status, heath, and other resources. There’s also the way societal structures work and how communities are organized — for example, consumerism and capitalism impacting the way we think about and interact in the personal, domestic sphere.

  And then I thought about arranged marriages — the Duggars and their 19 Kids and Counting. Chaperoned courtship. The arranged marriages of Hasidic Jews starting in the late teens. And the many Hindu societies where unions are often determined by caste or the stars.

  I wondered then about the complexities of all of this. How much was love an environmental set-up as it was a mysterious inner calling that answered to no one but itself?

  The multitude of ways people found each other and somehow decided to be together, for a time. How much of it was predestined, and how much of it was free will?

  The twinkle lights flashed and I closed my eyes. I climbed up onto the stage, went down the shiny runaway, the golden hemline of my lengha skirt gently brushing against the floor. The twinkle lights sparkled and there was a lightness at the soles of my feet. I could almost run like the character Paro from the film Devdas then, my arm extended, shouting “No, stop, come back!” He once had too much ego to make her his, so he drowned himself in his despair, drinking, eventual death.

  I thought about Iblis. There’s no such thing as tragedy in Islam, but I couldn’t help but wonder if Iblis was really a tragic romantic hero after all, like some Sufis said — forsaken by the one he loved so much because he wouldn’t bow down to someone else — before the door of Paradise was closed on him. I thought about the betrayal, then, of women becoming demonized and of God not yet correcting the wrongs done toward them in His name or in that of something else. It was possible to free ourselves from all of this, I believed, but not by subjection to those pretending to be God and the ideas they perpetuated, and not through Shayṭān’s vengeance, either, but by Iblis’s independence and ability to truly trust ourselves. And divine decree.

  I twirled my lengha skirt under the chandeliers. Pins pressed against my flesh; my exposed midriff momentarily caressed by a passing breeze. The moment within which I twirled felt like a century.

  I took a red car to Boro Mama’s new home. I had avoided this moment for many years, but now it had come. This new flat he lived in was a few miles farther away than the old one. As I sat there, in the leather back seat of a red car, I barely noticed the half-naked boys and girls that passed by. I concentrated instead on how Boro Mama’s face would now look, seeing me suddenly walk through his doors, once again under his roof. I closed my eyes tightly, conjuring up the image I remembered most vividly: Boro Mama towering over me as if he were ten storeys high, fury between the eyebrows and lining his jaw, teeth clenched, dark-brown pupils sinking deep into an abyss of a face. He looked down at me, I looked up at him, and between us the friction of two clashing wills.

  The red car came to a halt before the teal-painted iron gate. Sweety Khala’s driver, in his grey dress pants, half-sleeved white cotton collared shirt, and fine black dress shoes, walked out and over to the gate guard. He explained who I was, pointing at me as I stood by the car door, once again shrinking, the building towering over me like Boro Mama would. Sweety Khala’s driver slicked his hair back as he nodded, listening intently to the white-bearded senior in his matching beige shirt and slacks who was sitting sluggishly on a salmon-pink plastic chair.

  Sweety Khala’s driver gestured me to get back into the car, which I did with relief, suddenly regretting the decision to see Boro Mama again. I had been in Dhaka for almost a week now and I was planning to stay for only one more. I was at first reluctant to meet him, but later thought, Who knows when I will see him next?

  I got in the car and the driver followed behind. He pressed the pedal with his right foot. I saw him in the rear-view mirror, checking on me, me fidgeting with my white orna draped over my chest. I was wearing a blue-and-white salwar kameez.

  The teal gates opened, and the red car pulled in. We parked in one of the parking spots, and I stepped out of the car again, the driver gesturing me forward now. I followed him to the elevator, my heartbeats increasing in pace as if I was back in Toronto on the treadmill of my condominium gym. The elevator stopped. Its doors opened, a little too slowly for my liking, yet giving me a few minutes to gather my thoughts, which I so desperately needed. Somehow, I had not prepared for this moment at all in the last fourteen years. What would I say to him now? What would he say to me? Would he express disappointment? Or perhaps apologize? In what ways had I ruined his life, as he had claimed I would fourteen years ago?

  Sweety Khala’s driver was a quiet man, or so it seemed. When we got to the right floor, he gestured me forward as if to say, “You can do this,” but what he actually said was “I will be downstairs. When you are done, please let the gate guard know, and I’ll prepare the car for your departure.” I watched him hurry down the stairs. I wondered how bored these personal drivers were as they waited for their employers and how they used the time they had.

  The sound of the driver’s footsteps faded. I made my way to Boro Mama’s rosewood door.

  I closed my eyes, clenched my fist, and knocked. Mami opened the door, wide-eyed as usual, as if the past seven hundred and twenty weeks had not even gently touched her with age. She beamed still, like a halo, sunny citrus mid-tone yellow, as if she truly belonged somewhere up in the sky. She was in her usual floral maxi, a cup of doodh cha in her left hand with the twinkling red nail paint, ordering about the four maids, who were meticulously sweeping corners with straw brooms. I’d only really heard Mami’s voice when she complained to these maids about the spots they left untouched, or the rotis they accidentally burned, or the bedsheets they left wrinkled. Occasionally she yelled at her three sons, but mostly related to their performance at school or their adab. I wondered about Mami, her selective expressions of frustration and her silence; if it was really buried rage that showed its face in seemingly mundane activities. For I couldn’t see her expressing any dissatisfaction in Boro Mama’s presence. Most of the time I saw her dressed up and attending fancy events, eating well, preparing food for charities, and going for weekly spa visits, among other activities. Her life seemed balanced. She seemed, in general, happier and healthier than many women I had met in North America. Mami’s sons were now abroad — England and Australia — and I wondered what it was like now for her to have them gone.

  Mami screamed when she saw me, the doodh cha spilling on the floor and soiling her floral maxi. I was astounded by her reaction but before I could ask her why, I saw in the hall mirror from the periphery of my left eye a glimpse of my own reflection: the Shayṭān Bride. I was dressed in a maroon katan sari, golden embroidery and narrow fringe, the blouse slightly past my shoulder. Vivacious lips, gold bangles, and golden nath, long black hair pulled over my left shoulder, and deep kohl — the kind made from burning oil-covered monosha leaf in a mud lamp.

  I reached out to Mami, her mouth agape, she turned her back to me and darted away. I stood there looking back at the reflection of myself, dressed as a bride as if it was fourteen years ago and I was getting ready to be married.

  With my last blink, I was back again, in front of the door, my fist one centimetre away from the rosewood. This time when Mami opened the door, after I knocked once or maybe twice, she simpered as usual. She appeared as I had imagined before, but this time less threatened.

  “You were able to make it. That’s good. How are you?” she asked me, gesturing me in. The new flat looked slightly smaller than their previous home. I supposed it made sense, with her sons now gone. There was a small kitchen, where I saw a little girl, maybe twelve or thirteen. A maid. She chopped onions with one hand, and wiped her eyes with the other, using the trail end of her
orchid orna. I speculated about what had happened to Bilkis.

  Passing the maid in the kitchen, I followed Mami to the wooden dining-room table, on which laid an assortment of dishes: rice, dhaal, fish, egg, chicken, shrimp curries, bhortas, sautéed and roasted vegetables. As I sat down, she pulled out a white plate from the pile of plates, placing it in front of me. She covered it with food, and I repeated, “No, no, I can’t eat much.” And yet I did, the intense aromatic spices now beginning to warm up my blood.

  “Your Boro Mama is just finishing up some work. He will be out in a couple of minutes. You enjoy your meal.”

  She sat there watching me eat, as if to observe my every flinch, to her food or the whole awkward experience, I couldn’t tell. Did she remember anything, or had she forgotten? She seemed somewhat genuinely relieved that I had come, as if it were a dishonour to not have a meal by her hands after having come all this way. She did not say much, until she’d left the room for perhaps a minute or two and then came back to say, as she poked her head from the doorway, “When you’re done, feel free to make your way to the living room. Your Boro Mama will be waiting for you there.”

  As I stood up, the curry on my lip now tasted saltier. I wiped it off with a tissue and went to wash my hands. Soon after I was on my way to the living room, my heart thumping with each step. As I walked into the room I saw Boro Mama sitting there on the light-mauve sofa, his right ankle piled on his left knee. His arms were outreached on the sofa, he leaned back in the self-assuredness that I knew him to have. As I stepped forward, I could see more clearly that age had begun to settle on his skin like invisible dust. His face had withered slightly, and his stature, as well. He looked, in fact, quite small.