The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  ‘If the wheels had moved faster,’ he was saying. ‘If my thighs had a little more strength, if time was a little bit slower, if God was not looking away for a moment today, I could have stopped that woman. I could have run and said, “If you want to jump, jump upon me; finish me with you. I’ve seen hunger, and I’ve wanted to jump so many times; but then I didn’t. It’s so great to be alive, even when you can’t stand on your feet, even when you cannot stop the thought of eating someone equally as hungry as you.” I could have stopped her. Now she is no more.’

  I observed the small line of blood that ran from the yard to the road. Someone had covered her with a folded fertilizer bag, which lay like an ornamented winter quilt on her body, the stains of blood serving as a tribute to her savage death.

  While I stood behind the crowd, listening to the rickshaw-wallah, and thinking what might happen at my meeting with Moina Mia, wondering if I would be able to voice my dissatisfaction about our deal, Abdul Ali moved forward. He looked at the body for several minutes, moving around it with slow, small, noiseless steps. At one point he seemed choked and had difficulty in breathing. I was surprised. Wasn’t he cracking a joke with Nur Hussain minutes ago? Hadn’t he taken the death of Basu and Gesu more easily than this? Working with Sheikh Mujib’s militia for such a long time, he could have considered himself a small Angel of Death with a reasonable measure of pride. Did a man’s perception of the destruction of his fellow man, then, change from time to time, without his knowing it? ‘Take my hand,’ I said. ‘This way.’ I pulled him to one side, sat him down on the ground, and took his head on my lap. The elderly woman came quickly. Forgetting her bargain with the house owner, she sat opposite me and began to fan Abdul Ali. Her elbow popped with every swish of the fan, but her face reflected such concern and dedication that nobody dared offer her help.

  ‘What is going on here?’ the house-owner said. She took hardly ten seconds to understand the situation. ‘My God,’ she said with despair, raising her hands in the fashion of praying, ‘Why don’t I go to the roof and throw myself off as well! Why am I still standing on my feet! I wouldn’t have to see two bodies in a single day right at my doorstep.’

  ‘You want trouble?’ I yelled at her. What was she? I could not imagine at that time. A bag of blind and vile selfishness? Living in a two-storeyed house, looking at the world through glitzy curtains, she knew nothing about what went on around her. She thought this famine, this endless line of hungry people, including the one who was now dead, were all conspiring against her to turn her comfortable life upside down. ‘If you want trouble, you’ll have it,’ I said with firmness. ‘I’ll fill your yard with yet another body, you understand me? I don’t care what connections you have and where your relatives come from. Look at him. Not with those hollow, suspicious eyes. Look at him closely with your mind and heart here. Look at him the way you would have looked at yourself. He is my friend, and he is not dying. He only has a temporary nervous trouble. Who wouldn’t be nervous upon seeing a body lying two yards away? He is going to be all right soon. For God’s sake, how can you talk about death so easily? Go back to your little room and scream as much as you like. We need some quiet here.’

  The woman looked around in embarrassment and reluctantly found her way back to the house. From the yard I saw her watching us through the window.

  After a few minutes she came out with a glass of water, which she offered to Abdul Ali. He returned the glass to her after drinking the water and looked at the body in the yard. ‘I work with Moina Mia MP,’ he said. ‘I’ll send someone with a van to clear out your yard. You don’t have to pay anything. Thank you for the water.’

  The woman’s eyes filled with tears. Her lips trembled. She gathered the ends of her sari and covered her mouth.

  8

  Today for Tomorrow

  We had left the crowd only a few yards behind, when a young boy—at best fourteen years old—came running to us. He needed a few seconds to collect himself before speaking. He lived in this neighbourhood, he said, and to be more specific, mentioned the holding number of the house. ‘36A Jagadish Road, just behind the market; the third hoarding from the ditch where they throw remains of animals.’

  ‘I know where it is,’ Abdul Ali said clearly. ‘What can I do for you?’

  The boy hesitated a moment, then said there was no need to send a van to remove the woman’s body, he would do it himself.

  ‘I will clear up the area, scrub the floor and the walls, disperse the crowd, make it like nothing has happened there; give me only two hours.’

  Abdul Ali looked at me with concern before saying: ‘Why do you want to do that?’

  The answer was ready on the boy’s lips. ‘Because I live here and it is my right. Before you send someone to work in this neighbourhood you may want to enquire if we are available. Pay me what you would have paid the van driver.’

  I wanted to reach Moina Mia’s house as soon as possible and so did not want to be bothered. The woman’s suicide had already delayed our meeting considerably. I pulled Abdul Ali by the shoulder, but he did not move even an inch. On the other hand, I noticed, the boy sounded very tough and determined.

  ‘You are too young for this job,’ Abdul Ali said.

  ‘But I have experience,’ the boy replied. ‘Since the beginning of the famine I have removed thirty-four bodies. Women, children, grownups, I don’t care. Bodies are bodies, aren’t they? I am strong and I love the famine.’

  ‘It may be a homicide,’ I said to Abdul Ali. I wanted to scare him. I wanted him to come with me and come quickly. I could not wait. ‘Who knows who was with the woman on the roof. A body may not be as simple as it looks. We need someone who is mature and who understands how sensitive the situation is. Besides, if you think about the law of the country, the body may also have to be taken to the police station for an autopsy and investigation.’

  The boy continued talking with Abdul Ali in the same manner, as if he had not heard me. When he asked Abdul Ali how much he was planning to pay the van driver for the job, I spoke again, louder this time: ‘Don’t you listen to the little devil, Ali bhai; this can be a never-ending issue and can even damage your relations with Moina Mia, making you lose your job in the end. I don’t know why you are wasting your time with him.’

  ‘Who is this man?’ the boy said resentfully, with his eyes on me. ‘Is he a newcomer in this country? Does he know there is no homicide, slaughter or disappearance here at the moment, only death, very ordinary, raw, uncomplicated death? Does he know I have come to seek your permission only out of courtesy and I will do whatever I find suitable in this case to help myself?’

  Abdul Ali wanted to say something, but I pulled him aside saying I would deal with the matter and stood with the boy face to face. The boy was thin and undersized, and I believed it would not need more than a blow to shut him up for the day. ‘And what do you think is suitable?’ I asked instantly. ‘Give me an example, please. I want to enlighten myself with your experience.’ He looked up at me with the same anger. ‘Say honestly how many bodies you have buried—one, two, three, none?’

  Finding him silent, I kicked him in the leg, to which he reacted only by taking a step back, bending to touch his knee, his face squeezing in pain. He was terrified. I asked him again if he was still willing to remove the woman’s body from the yard. ‘My darling, my little darling, speak up. Don’t limp, raise your head, close your fist and smack me in the face.’ When he did not respond, I grabbed his hair, swung him from side to side a few times and then let him go. Abdul Ali did not have much strength in his legs, but he came to rescue the boy. ‘Khaleque sahib!’ he said and tried to cover the boy with his body. I followed him, ran around him and kicked the boy again. ‘Please,’ the boy cried into the dust, ‘don’t hit me. Don’t hit me. I just wanted to do something to earn money. It did not matter if it involved burying a body. I have half of my family dead and the other half starving.’ Though I had controlled myself to some extent by that time, I still y
elled at him. ‘Tell me, have you carried any bodies before,’ I said, ‘or I’ll break your spine. Tell me the truth.’

  ‘O God!’ he said, while collecting himself under my gaze. ‘I have not. O God!’

  Soon his cries became louder. His body shook as he drew in every breath with visible difficulty.

  Abdul Ali squeezed a one-taka note into his pocket and pushed me towards the road.

  ‘What is this world, Khaleque bhai?’ Abdul Ali asked as we proceeded through the neighbourhood.

  He walked beside me, holding my arm. He wiped his nose with a handkerchief I had given him.

  ‘What is this time, this circle of seasons, this turn of years, this vanishing light and this insignificant but inviolable conflict between life and death? What is this that we see and cannot react to, that we perceive and cannot explain, that we repeat and yet cannot recollect? Tell me, if you know; tell me today; tell me when this is coming to an end. I do not believe in premonitions but I’ll believe today. Tell me anything; I’ll believe you.’

  I was now at least two hours late for my meeting with Moina Mia. What excuse would I give him? That someone fell asleep on the sofa and I saw a death on the road? Those would only prove that I was not sufficiently careful about my responsibility.

  ‘If you hold on to me like this,’ I said to Abdul Ali, ‘I cannot walk. You’re too heavy for me to carry all the way; you’re too dejected; too preoccupied to let me speak; and too immature to understand anything.’ I pulled my hand away. ‘Walk by yourself, please. This day says nothing more different to me than to you. This day says: look ahead; this suicide did not happen; this blood you saw was only the juice of the earth; this woman was a mirage; this boy was a ghost. Walk straight, go home, sleep, wake up, walk straight, look ahead.’

  ‘Why wasn’t walking yesterday enough for today? Why won’t walking today be enough for tomorrow? Why walk then, if walking doesn’t count?’

  ‘Walking is always for tomorrow; yesterday’s walk, today’s walk, tomorrow’s walk—all for tomorrow. That is what this world is. Such are the times. Don’t come close to me; walk apart; behind me or before me. Walk fast, like the wind. I am walking now, for tomorrow; I am thinking now, for tomorrow. I am now going to stun myself, for tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow.’

  He stopped talking. He stopped walking, pressed his chest and fell to the ground. ‘Come, hit me,’ he said. ‘You hit the boy, hit me.’

  ‘Not now,’ I said, as I ran towards him. ‘Not now. Kill me if you want to kill me. But we have no time for this. We have to go.’ I shook him by the shoulder, by the head, slapped him.

  ‘I am tired,’ he managed to say.

  ‘On your feet!’ I screamed. ‘On your feet!’ I dragged him a few steps in the dust, a pain growing in my armpit, my legs feeling heavy, like the legs of an elephant; then raised him on to my shoulder and ran towards Moina Mia’s mansion.

  9

  A Long Talk, a Win

  Moina Mia said he had new information for us; it was about our pre-programme orientation. We would have to stay with the militia for a couple of days at a campsite where we would be taught how to handle small arms. There might be someone who would want to kidnap us to embarrass Sheikh Mujib. If we were trained in arms, we would be able to protect ourselves.

  ‘The price,’ I said to him. ‘Before we begin discussing subsidiary matters like unseen terror lurking in the dark and effective use of handguns, the price has to be reviewed.’ Though the nature of our work had not changed, I argued, its conditions had changed fundamentally. To give an example, Nur Hussain would have to memorize new passages for every new assignment. So far he had delivered only what he had already learnt. Now, suddenly, he would have to deliver something different. If learning were easy for him, he would not have been a speaker. He would have found a job with a bank or insurance company, many of them sprouting up after the war. He would have been a bus conductor or a mechanic, a weaver, at least. Therefore, learning new passages would not be easy for him.

  I also explained that every time new passages would be written they would be written in a style different from Sheikh Mujib’s, because they would not be written by him but by someone else for him; most probably by a tricky speechwriter who used words as weapons. Those words would not be simple either. The language of rebellion is simple whereas the language of governance is very intricate. Rebellion needs one small sentence—a slogan. But being the government, Sheikh Mujib would have to find a language that would highlight his achievements and conceal his limitations as an administrator.

  Then I spoke about myself. The new schedule would place extra pressure on me too, I said. How? I was the one who would have to read the passages to him, since Nur Hussain’s capacity to read was limited and his understanding was extremely erratic. Moina Mia or Sheikh Mujib or the militia would not sit with him in the dim circuit house room to observe what part of the speech he had missed or improvised. I did not mind doing something for Sheikh Mujib; in fact, I would enjoy doing it. But it would help me explain things to Nur Hussain logically if I could say that his payment demanded that kind of hard work or even a superior level of commitment, and he could not give up just because he felt annoyed or he did not understand something. Nur Hussain depended on my capacity to explain things to him, I said, which, in turn, effectively depended on how comfortable I felt about performing my part of the job.

  That was not all, I said, as I began the second part of my argument. Now that we would be working for Sheikh Mujib, I told Moina Mia most dutifully, we would not be able to avoid people—people of all kinds, especially from the media—who would follow us virtually everywhere.

  They might also want to write a photo-essay on his daily life, I argued; after all, he was the only person who Sheikh Mujib had selected to deliver his speech. It would not be an advantage for Moina Mia or for Sheikh Mujib to let people know we lived in a small flat. Important people live in important places: I made it clear to him. If we wanted to move to a place of average importance, we would have to pay a rent higher than we now paid. Even if we moved to an important house, I said, we would need to keep a gatekeeper who would keep trouble away. We would have to employ someone like Ruhul Amin who was brave enough to shoot trespassers.

  If earning money required talking, I was ready to talk. I wanted to push our deal as hard as possible. Being an MP was not easy. Being a speaker for a troubled prime minister was not easy either. Moina Mia had to know it.

  His eyes became small. He stared at me as if he had never seen me before. The creases on of his forehead became deeper.

  I managed to clear a generous advance from him, in cash. And it came directly from the bank. Newly printed bills—they smelt wonderful.

  The advance was a token of our trust for each other, I said to him as a concluding statement. By taking that money I had given him my word. I was not going to do another deal with another person. Not even if I were offered a better deal and the deal came from an Awami League leader, as every leader needed to do some propaganda during such a deep crisis. Money was not everything, I told him, but my word was my word, and he and I were both gentlemen with our honour to protect.

  I did not care what ideas he had of me. Was he concerned about what ideas I had formed about him? Did he know I knew exactly who the two burglars were that Ruhul Amin had shot the other night? Did he know that I knew they were Basu and Gesu—the two servants who had served us tea in his house—and that I did not speak about their unfortunate death with him simply because he did not speak about them with me? Two men just disappeared, two men wearing Mujib coats. They disappeared while stealing from their employer. They disappeared even though they did not steal jewellery, money, legal documents, state secrets or any valuable items, but only two sacks of rice. He had his way of exploiting a situation, I had my own.

  I felt good about myself. In fact, I was extremely delighted to see my plan actually work the way I had hoped it would. Now I would not have to go to the editors looking for a jo
b. Now they would not be able to look down upon me any more and dismiss me as a trivial subject even after I had knocked them with an interesting point like transformational leadership and how it applied to our nation. My feet were stable now, and my grip firm. I had Moina Mia in my pocket. I had Sheikh Mujib under my control. Because of the Mujib coat I wore, I had the entire Awami League carrying out my wishes.

  10

  The Sweet Taste of the Unknown

  That night, I remembered my father.

  He was a small trader dealing in ginger. ‘You will be a seller like me,’ he had told me one day, as we sat on a mat in the crowded village market, spreading his little inventory next to our feet. ‘How old are you—six, seven? I want you to know the twelve different tastes of ginger before you cross fifteen, so that when I am no more, you can carry on without trouble.’

  He gave me a piece of ginger to taste. It was dry but very strong, and I had tears in my eyes within seconds.

  He laughed and showed my tearful face to his friends. ‘This is how you know ginger,’ he then said. ‘By mingling it with your life. There is no other way.’ He gave me another piece to chew, this time a fresh root. ‘But don’t worry, soon you will feel better. Before you have gone to bed tonight, you will think you know a part of the Big Secret of the World. You will say: I have seen it—I know how awful it can taste. A piece of ginger is not an object of fear for you any more.’