by Neamat Imam
Nur Hussain understood the trouble I was in. He had instincts, if not knowledge. ‘You’re a good person,’ he said. ‘Soon someone will understand you and offer you a place at the table.’ Then he sat beside me silently, probably thinking he had said almost too much and put himself in trouble. He took small breaths. His hands and feet did not move. Then, after a few minutes, he turned his face to me and smiled to cheer me up. Though I was much older than him, and was supposed to take his responsibility on my own shoulders, day by day he was becoming my most valued companion.
7
He Begins to Speak
One evening a few days later, after a long, purposeless walk across the neighbourhood, we took a break at the Shaheed Minar area and Nur Hussain suddenly began to speak from Sheikh Mujib’s speech. His voice was artificial, but deep, loud and passionate. Sitting against the reddish daylight, he spoke slowly, uttering one or two words at a time, like many of our countrymen who attended political campaigns and were so carried away by some grandiose slogans that they repeated them in their sleep. He did it, I believe, to amuse me. It was a joke, as I could tell by looking at his smiling face. When I turned away from him, he stood up.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked out of irritation. ‘Nur!’
It was clear he had no idea why I had played the speech on my cassette player. He thought I had enjoyed it and sought inspiration from it. Now in the absence of the cassette player he became the speaker for me.
He looked away down the street.
I was not used to passing time in the company of the kind of bad-mannered, drunk, reckless and lowly people that loitered at the Shaheed Minar. They smelt of burnt meat and rotten tomatoes. All poor people smelt that way, I thought. It was not because they hadn’t had a bath in weeks. The inside of their heads was rotten. Like the inside of my head was rotten now. My feet were soiled. There was a layer of dust on my cheeks and neck. It was madness to leave the flat, but I was bored. Though I was sure most people would not recognize me, I did not want to broadcast to them that Nur Hussain and I were together, and that at that moment I belonged exactly where he belonged.
‘You are drawing attention,’ I said. ‘Sit down. Sit down right now, or I am leaving.’ My warning had no effect on him.
He was not an introvert after all—at least not as introverted as I had thought. He walked away from me, stood before the columns of the Minar with glimmering eyes and continued to speak. Every word exploded in his mouth and then came out through his lips with an extraordinary vigour. He spoke only the part I had played on the cassette player. Then he sat down beside me, and said it would never happen again. But seeing that I was still gloomy, he got up to speak again, as if he would not stop until I had smiled. Small slum-children sitting on the dusty ground raised their heads to him, and a few rickshaw-wallahs pulled the brakes gently and stopped to listen. Some pedestrians paused to join the crowd and shopkeepers pushed their heads through windows to see what was going on.
He had an extraordinary power—I felt it under my skin. Though he spoke only a few sentences, it seemed he was able to rouse his audience exactly as Sheikh Mujib had done. He ended with Joy Bangla and the crowd shouted back Joy Bangla.
As he came to sit beside me, I pulled myself away slightly. ‘You don’t know me,’ I said to him; ‘don’t pretend that you do. The person you see before you now is not the real person I am. I may also not be the same person I will be in the near future. You want to embarrass yourself, go ahead, do it; nobody will stop you. But don’t you ever do things that I am uncomfortable about. You understand me?’ He wanted to say something but I said we would have the rest of the conversation at home. ‘Try to keep private matters private. It is better that way.’
A woman, whom I had seen collecting empty glass bottles from city drains and drying them on the concrete pavement, slapped her two little boys when they began a fight. ‘Tell us about the liberation struggle,’ she then said to Nur Hussain. ‘Tell us something about our future.’ Though he did not speak, she opened the knot of her sari and threw a coin at his feet, as a token of her respect for him. ‘Take this money, please,’ she said. ‘Protect our motherland.’ Some others in the crowd followed her. They threw whatever little money they had on them. I watched him as he bent down and collected the coins one by one, frequently looking at me with a worried face.
I wished I had never allowed him into my house. Who would steal from a beggar? I sat there hiding my eyes behind my palm, disgust filling my throat. A small line of sweat appeared on my nose. I could imagine people were looking at me instead of at him though he was doing the speaking. Who is this person—they were asking in their minds—is he suffering from a serious mental disorder? What is he doing here with that imbecile? I could not raise my eyes to look at them, to answer their contempt for me.
Then we walked home, silently, I before him, following the narrow neighbourhood street. The street was momentarily lit by the lanterns on the rickshaws passing by. Through that light I looked back. He was pressing the coins to his chest.
At home he poured the coins on the kitchen table and went to his room. He did not count them. Neither did I—until after supper when I was sure he was asleep. I did not know what was happening to me but I found myself closing the kitchen door, cleaning the coins on a wet towel, counting them several times. The coins, many of them with Sheikh Mujib’s portrait on them, shone in the light.
That night, and three more nights after that, I sat at the table up to midnight. My head ached. Too many thoughts had surfaced there. Was it pity in people’s minds that compelled them to throw their money at him when they needed that money more than he did? Though he actually did not extend his hands to people to receive their coins, was he indirectly begging from them in the name of Sheikh Mujib because I was not in a position to help him any more? Did he feel real love for Sheikh Mujib when he recited the speech which helped him imitate his voice so enthusiastically, while I felt nothing as I listened to it on my cassette player?
When I looked at Nur Hussain the following morning, I thought he looked rather like Sheikh Mujib. My heart shook but I quickly gathered myself. After a few hours, I looked at him again in the daylight when he stood at the window. He did have a certain resemblance to Sheikh Mujib, I had to admit. I believed the woman was right. She did what was a very natural thing to do—she admired him. I believed the crowd knew what they were doing when they sacrificed their precious coins.
I played the speech again, not this time to understand the inner meaning of Mujib’s words, but to see if Nur Hussain was present in his voice. I did not have to play it for long. The opening sentences were enough. He was there, in an unbelievably unambiguous way. It would not be easy to separate them by listening to their voices only, I thought. Nur was Sheikh Mujib’s copy, a true, honest, reliable and enviable copy.
‘I am sorry for what I did,’ he said on the fourth day. ‘I did something that was very painful for you. I should have controlled myself. If you want, I can go back to the Shaheed Minar and return the money. Maybe the exact people would not be there, but whoever is there would be grateful to receive one or two coins.’
He rose, as I did not answer. He took his shirt, slowly collected the coins in his pocket and prepared to leave.
‘It is not necessary any more,’ I said. He looked back, surprised. ‘Yes.’ I sat on the sofa, looking for an easy way to communicate with him. ‘I do not know what I am thinking,’ I said, after a long pause, ‘but I am thinking something. I cannot tell even if you as a person would like to be associated with it, though it is about you and involving you. But I will explain it to you in detail so that you know what is what, and you can pull me back if I appear unreasonable and crazy. Come sit.’
8
The Speech
From my pile of books I pulled out a booklet published during the war. It was called The Motherland. It contained Sheikh Mujib’s entire speech. I separated the relevant pages and glued them to the wall. Nur Hussain began to read imm
ediately.
I could see he was not good at reading. Sometimes he sounded out every syllable of a word but could not connect them together to pronounce it correctly. He even forgot the sentences he had known by heart when he enunciated the words syllable by syllable at my request.
‘Minor problems,’ I said, like an experienced adult education instructor who knew numerous tactics to counter learning disabilities. He should not worry. It was only a few hours’ job. I told him I would read the speech end to end so that he knew it was not intimidating at all as a piece of text. There was nothing to panic about. I took several deep breaths and began. He sat attentively, looking at me. I would show him how Sheikh Mujib spoke it in his own way. Sheikh Mujib did not pronounce all the words correctly, following the standard rules of our language; but he was able to create a beautiful music in the speech that helped people understand his spirit. His commitment appeared heartfelt to them. He had used judicious repetitions, short sentences and striking but easily relatable images to make his content easier to grasp.
When I finished, Nur was delighted. That was the first time he had heard the speech in full.
‘Can you memorize the speech?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely.’
He wanted only three days. Every comma and semicolon would be in the exact place, he said, and began reading.
He did memorize the whole speech in three days, startling me further. I sat before him and heard him several times. I made notes. It was not easy to capture the tone of such a speech in its entirety, especially when there was no audience before us. But he made it, though with some limitations. ‘Here you must pause,’ I said. ‘Give your listeners time to digest your words. It is noisy out there and everyone cannot think quickly. Listen.’ I played the sentence on the cassette player. He spoke and paused. ‘Longer,’ I said, ‘a little bit longer, please. If people do not understand you, they will not respond correctly. If they do not respond correctly, the purpose is lost.’ I reversed the cassette and played it again for him. ‘You see?’ He paused more and asked if that was enough. ‘Not enough,’ I said, and replayed it before saying the sentence myself. He laughed at himself for using shorter pauses. He laughed and then became serious and terrified, as if Sheikh Mujib would not forgive him for misreading his speech. ‘Becoming an orator needs patience and humility,’ I said. ‘Empathy is a great virtue.’
When he had the pauses right, sooner than I had anticipated, I turned my focus to getting him to speak faster or slower, to create a sense of enthusiasm, and adding easily executable dramatic effects where applicable. It was no use explaining to him what adjectives or adverbs or prepositions were, how Mujib had used them in his speech as tools of persuasion and dynamism. He would not be able to analyse the structural components of a piece of writing as a professional grammarian would. It was not necessary either. He did not need to know what complex political or philosophical or psychological or historical or patriotic cause or trauma compelled Mujib to produce his words. The style was already decided. The meaning was already set. I wanted to go through the words with Nur, again and again, so that he received them experientially. He was an audio-kinaesthetic learner, as far as I could estimate; hearing was his best method. We had the cassette player which was helping us greatly; now we needed to maintain some movement, probably walking around the room, or speaking in the dark, standing on the road.
‘Excellent,’ I said in the end. ‘Well done. Today you have accomplished something that will define the rest of your life. Today you are ready to please anyone anywhere in the country with your ingenuity. You are not just a boy any more. You are in contact with the heart and the soul of this land. There is no wall before you. Nothing can slow you down.’ But he must continue practising. He must know where he was guiding his audience. On the one side were the Pakistanis who discriminated against us by imposing their will on us, and on the other side the dream of a free Bangladesh, the right to choose our destiny—Sheikh Mujib utilized this compare-and-contrast system of communication so effectively that seventy million Bangladeshis could not help but start a passionate and immediate struggle for liberation. He gave them a choice. They instantly knew what to do.
One of the aspects of the speech that I thought would be difficult to explain took actually very little time. ‘How many voices do you notice in that speech?’ I asked.
‘Why, one,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it Sheikh Mujib who gave the whole speech?’
That was not a correct answer but that was also not an unintelligent answer. I was ready to explain.
Sheikh Mujib gave the whole speech, I said, but if he looked carefully, he would see several Sheikh Mujibs in action; one of them was sympathetic, one was analytical, one a rebel, and one a villager who spoke in a local dialect. And I had spoken to him of Sheikh Mujib the poet before, who spoke with infectious enthusiasm. All those voices came together and created an organic whole: Sheikh Mujib the person. To produce the speech successfully, one would need to give careful attention to all those voices. I wanted to give him an example by quoting a specific sentence from the speech, but he interrupted and said: ‘For example—I have come before you today with a heavy heart. Wasn’t Sheikh Mujib sympathizing with the people of Bangladesh in this opening line? Wasn’t he suffering because people in general were suffering under Pakistani rule?’
He practised all day long. His words echoed off the walls and bounced off my ears. I knew he deserved to win the confidence of his audience because of the animation and force with which he spoke. I could visualize people clapping, coins coming out of their pockets.
9
At the Barber’s
My objective was to present Nur Hussain in the most effective manner possible before the target audience, so that at the end of the day even the most destitute felt they were taking something home in exchange for their coins. As far as I could understand, he had completed only one major requirement by memorizing Sheikh Mujib’s speech. Though he had exceeded my expectations, it would really not amount to anything until other requirements were also duly fulfilled. If people wanted to hear Sheikh Mujib speak, they could play cassettes of his speeches. They were available in every electronics shop and convenience store. Even vegetable sellers sold them. If people did not own a cassette player, they could sit at a restaurant, order a cup of tea, and enjoy the speech for a few minutes. There would not be a restaurant manager in the country who would dare to refuse to play that speech for his customers. That was not what we were planning. We were planning to arrange a live presentation. A life-size Sheikh Mujib would stand on the podium, walk, move his arms, automatically raise his voice, empathize, and speak from his heart.
Therefore, the second requirement: attending to his look.
That included changing his hairstyle. One must not think it was someone speaking like him; he must be present through Nur Hussain. After all, we were talking about a man whom everyone knew, who was agreeable, ardent, confident and calm. Imitating his speaking style would not be easy. It would not be like singing for people’s entertainment in a noisy, crowded market under a gloomy sky to sell poisonous pesticides or stinky aphrodisiacs. There would be no instrumental aid, no unconnected add-ons from Lata Mangeshkar, no monkey dance, no snake charmer in action, no jokes from Gopal Bhar, no commonly used display of pity-evoking, shockingly deformed, bizarre human faces. Nur Hussain would have to please people all by himself.
I took him to the barbershop down the street. I told him not to be nervous; it would be done before he knew it. We were not shaving his head. ‘Relax. We only need some minor adjustments.’
Then I explained to the barber what type of cut we wanted. ‘Look at that picture,’ I said, pointing at the portrait of Sheikh Mujib over the looking glass. ‘Look at every line, every curve, and every shade minutely.’ Did he see how Sheikh Mujib had his hair pushed back in the front clearing his forehead? And the sideburns, those stuffily Victorian ultra-conservative sideburns, which balanced his facial features? ‘That is what we want. Lik
e the hair of Sheikh Mujib; nothing more, nothing less.’
The barber, confused and hesitant, looked at me and then at Nur Hussain and finally at the portrait. If anyone ever requested a particular hairstyle in this neighbourhood, he said, it was the hairstyle of a movie actor, for example, Razzak’s or Raj Kapoor’s, or someone from the English catalogues, say, the ducktail style with the high pompadour of Elvis Presley. He could not believe a stoic Sheikh Mujib could occupy someone’s imagination because of his hairstyle.
Sheikh Mujib had no hairstyle, he said, with a certain irritation. Were we joking? He had been a hairdresser all his life—no less than twenty years now—but in that long time there had not been a single moment when Mujib’s hairstyle had drawn his attention. Then he explained. Sheikh Mujib had no ears, no cheeks, no jaw, no nose, no mouth, no brows and no forehead. He was just a face, a face without features. When he looked at Sheikh Mujib, he saw himself. That happened to every citizen in the country. It was the person inside the heap of flesh that mattered. Besides, he elucidated, if Sheikh Mujib had a hairstyle, his hairstylist would have been famous by now, considering his extraordinary rise through the years. Had anyone ever heard of any such hairstylist?
He was a rogue. A rogue with a quiet, gentle face. I had seen many such in my life. ‘You do whatever we ask you to do. We are aware that Sheikh Mujib is not a fashion-conscious man, but we want his low-maintenance style.’