The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  Before he died, a few years later, he had advised my mother to grow ginger upon his grave. ‘At least six columns of them. Loosen the soil before watering. Make a fence around to stop goats. Collect the ginger and dry them before they rot in flood water.’

  When the early showers came, and the earth became moist and fine, we saw a dense clump of ginger plants swinging in the evening sun.

  My mother died two years after him. She always said she had suffered in her life with my father. There was a chance that she would finally be free after his death. She would begin again. Surprisingly, she decided not to. She could not resist his loud call from the grave. I saw her thin arms getting thinner, her bloodless face getting ethereal. She walked as slow as an earthworm in her last few days, though her memory worked perfectly.

  She left a basket for me. Wrapped with an embroidered quilt, it was full of dry ginger chunks, some sour, some sweet, some hot and spicy, some as hard as beef strips.

  I threw away her coconut broom, saris, wooden shoes and utensils, and along with them the basket, into the ditch.

  I hated my father, as I grew up. I didn’t know why. Probably I thought he wanted to imprison me to the kind of life he knew while I wanted more. Or because I thought if I did not hate the life that he introduced me to, I could not embrace another life. Whatever, I did not return to the village I had left behind. I stood before my mother’s grave for a few minutes only, and prayed: ‘Let me go, let me go, let me go.’ Then I did what I thought was good for me. I moved on. My education, creativity, writing, communication and negotiation skills—all came through hard work, and at this moment, my life was not where it had been a year ago. It was not even where it was yesterday, full of hesitation and confusion. I was now in a situation which was larger than my normal life would have allowed.

  I stood at the window and looked at the city. It was sleeping under a dark cloud. Small tin sheds looked like deep, bottomless tombs, cursed and silenced to the last heartbeat under the constant torture of time. The old streets lay in darkness, like dry veins in a body, never to wake again, never to be filled with human voices and footsteps. It was noiseless everywhere, except for the howls of some angry cats at the crossroads, and a cricket calling incessantly from the bush.

  It proved to be mysterious, very mysterious, to me, this city. I had lived here for over two decades now. My thoughts were formed here, and my ability to fight for my place in it evolved under its very direction. Day after day I collected the necessary information about it; names of its different areas penetrated my memory not to be lost in a lifetime. I was not sports-minded, but I had gone to the stadium once or twice to watch football matches with forty thousand other spectators who jumped in excitement or cried in frustration with every goal. Then there were the processions, the days of general strikes, throwing stones at government buildings, singing in praise of the motherland on days of historical significance, wearing clothes suited to the mood of the season, soaking in the monsoon. That was the city I knew, not the one that lay before me.

  ‘But I know what to do,’ I thought. I had come to understand that the unknown was not the problem—the problem was the known, the world in memory. The known had changed; it had changed so drastically that I found myself on the street, fighting over an over-chewed bone like a hungry dog. It was ruthless; it shattered my pride as an individual, and placed me under the weight of a life without course.

  In contrast, the unknown stopped before me most compassionately, smiled at me elegantly, cleaned me up, received me into its breast, gave me ambition and dreams, and was ready to walk every step with me.

  I would go with it, I said to myself. I was not my father who would find his future in a small ginger bag. I would walk into the unknown with confidence and hope and create a life without memory, without the sense of loss and anguish. And I would keep walking right up to the end.

  11

  The Eyes of God

  The next day I appeared at Moina Mia’s gate, but not to meet Moina Mia. ‘Take me to that building,’ I said to Abdul Ali, who met me at the gate, and who appeared to have shed some of his lethargy by that time.

  ‘Which building?’ he asked. ‘Are you going for a walk somewhere?’ He had not forgotten our conversation about walking the other day.

  ‘The one they are constructing. The one that is five storeys now. I want to see something.’

  ‘Of course,’ he said. ‘Please follow me.’ We crossed the yard, the fountain, the fence, and took a passage strewn with bricks and wood planks. ‘Where in the house do you want to go exactly?’ he asked.

  ‘Anywhere,’ I replied, but instantly added, ‘take me to the sitting room, please; I’ve heard a lot about it from workers. I heard that it was exceptionally spacious and gave the house a special character rarely seen in Bengali houses.’ He said it was designed to accommodate at least one hundred guests at its long dining table. ‘One hundred guests?’ I asked. ‘Why so many?’

  ‘Why do you say that, Khaleque bhai?’ he replied. ‘This is a man who knows what he is going to need in the next fifty or sixty years. A very practical man. He knows what a big house can signify when you are a political leader. People want to see you own something as precious so that they are assured that you are not going to steal from them. The richer the leader, the more respected he is.’

  ‘He’s not planning to hold party meetings in his sitting room, is he?’

  ‘This man will grow old gradually, like we all will; when he grows old, he won’t want to go to the party conference room for every little meeting. He would rather bring the party to his home and have the meetings right here. Imagine a day when this yard will be crowded with hundreds of leaders of the country. They will compete with each other, argue with each other, insult each other, throw shoes, leather bags, teacups, microphones and chairs at each other, break each other’s necks and determination, and then, at the end of the day, shamelessly compromise with each other for the sake of the party, and on the order of the leader.’

  ‘This is what he said to you?’ I asked.

  He smiled. ‘No, he did not. This is what I thought would happen. Based on my experience, I can predict some of the developments in the political culture of our country.’

  We entered the sitting-room. The doors and the windows had not been fixed; the floor was littered with blue plastic sheets, cement bags and paint containers. The smell of brick and sand was thick in the air. I went to the corner opposite the door and looked back.

  The way Nur Hussain and I were advancing now, coupled with the opportunities that might come along very soon thanks to the prestige of working for Sheikh Mujib, I thought, it would not be unwise to think that before another election came we would have everything we needed. With my part of the money, I believed I would be able to build myself a multi-storeyed French-style Gothic mansion spanning twenty-five acres right in this city, which would have a much wider lounge than this. I would buy a beautifully crafted Barbadian Heritage mahogany cot to sleep on, a Regency-style revolving dining table and sideboard to eat food, a set of magnificent Four Seasons English Oak Breakfront bookcases for the lounge, and a 680 kg Holstein-Friesian black-and-white cow for milk. In time, and that would be before I turned forty-five, I would find myself a luscious Puerto Rican wife with pretty, plump hips, similar to the one I had seen on the cover of a travel magazine, a woman with youth, mystery, sensuousness and femininity. There would be a white Latvian guard dog at my door and a doorkeeper with a handlebar moustache from Bihar to protect me. These were not unnecessary luxuries. A man with taste and a sense of adventure needed them badly. A man who did not have them could not declare himself successful, happy and free.

  ‘It isn’t as spacious as I believed it would be,’ I said to Abdul Ali. ‘They gave me wrong information, I see.’

  He agreed and walked towards the centre of the room. ‘He wanted to make it more spacious than this,’ he said.

  I looked at the backyard through the window. ‘Why didn’t he? I ca
n see there is still a big plot left.’

  ‘He wanted to go higher as soon as possible.’

  I was confused. ‘What do you mean by higher?’

  ‘You must have noticed in the last one year or two,’ he said, ‘there is a common inertia in the country; there is only destruction. This building, along with some others of the same category, will change that. They will be considered symbols of activity and progress, for wherever in the city you go, you’ll be able to see them from your window.’

  I looked at his eyes. ‘This is what he said to you?’

  ‘Yes, he did,’ he said thoughtfully. ‘This and more.’

  ‘What more? Is he going to construct another building behind it?’

  ‘No, nothing like that. He said this building would go higher as the famine went deeper. It would stop only when the famine was over.’

  I turned myself away from him. Suddenly I did not like the tone of his voice. In fact, I felt quite unprepared for having this conversation with him. He was complaining and I should not have taken him into my confidence. If he was unhappy with his employer, which was obvious at this moment, I thought, he might be unhappy with me as well, for having a good relationship with him. Though he did not show any sign of that, rather he took me as a friend to whom he could reveal the secret plans of his employer, I thought it was better for me to maintain my distance from him.

  He stood at the back window and spoke with an ironworker welding outside. There was small laughter, exchange of information between them. Upon his request, the worker tightened a screw on the window grille with his wrench. Abdul Ali checked the screw to see if it was rightly fixed. ‘Someone must inspect all the screws before the painting job begins.’ He said. ‘We don’t want any hazard to remain unattended. Not a single one.’ The worker agreed.

  ‘Shall we leave?’ I asked after a while.

  He nodded. ‘Sure, if you think you’ve already seen what you wanted to see.’

  ‘I am done. At least for the time being.’

  As we walked towards the door, I said, ‘I hope I get a chance to come to this building again, when the construction work is complete. I would like to look at the city from its topmost window. It must look beautiful from there, very beautiful, especially on a day when there is no dust or fog around and the sky is blue. It would be like looking at the world through the eyes of God.’

  He stopped, stared long at me and then suddenly smiled. ‘You’ll have that chance, Khaleque bhai, I’m sure.’ He passed me and looked back. ‘Just pray that the famine stays here long, so that we have a very tall building. The taller the building, the better the view.’

  12

  The Screw Eater

  As we crossed the door and stepped into the main hall, I heard some laughter coming from a room on the right-hand side. The door of the room was locked. When we came to this building, just minutes ago, I had not heard anyone there, and I had not seen anyone come down the staircase. I would have overlooked the matter if the laughter had not turned into an intensive coughing fit. Someone was choking in there.

  I looked at Abdul Ali enquiringly. ‘You don’t want to see this, Khaleque bhai,’ he said, sadder than he had been before. ‘You really don’t want to see this.’ He came back to me and pulled me by my hand towards the fence. ‘I am surprised that he lingered so long. He was not supposed to, judging by the way he was when I last saw him.’

  I pulled him back. ‘Why don’t you tell me what’s happening here. What’s the problem?’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ he said. ‘He’ll be silent soon. Just give him a few more hours.’

  The coughing became deadlier now, and then stopped, and turned into laughter.

  ‘Who’ll be silent soon?’ I asked him. ‘Who’s there?’ Abdul Ali began to walk away but I said I would not leave until he had opened that door for me.

  ‘You’re very stubborn,’ he said. ‘Very stubborn and sensitive. A handful of trouble. Not like the man I thought you would be.’ He returned and reluctantly opened the door with a key from his key ring. ‘You go in, I’m not coming with you; it isn’t going to be a pretty scene, I can tell you that,’ he said, but followed me slowly when I stepped inside.

  There was a small middle-aged man there, bound to a chair. He had blood coming out of his mouth. There was blood on his naked chest and on the lungi at his waist. He felt shy seeing us and kept looking at the ground.

  ‘Don’t ask me anything,’ Abdul Ali said. ‘I know nothing.’ But when I insisted, he opened his mouth.

  Construction workers had caught this man last evening. They had their building materials in a van parked outside the gate. This man came from nowhere and started eating tiny iron screws from a box. When they chased him he started gobbling those shiny screws faster than before. His throat was jammed; so they brought him within the boundary and hit his jaw to release the screws. Then they used a knife to prise open his teeth. They removed some of the screws while most of them went down his throat. Upon the instruction of Moina Mia, he was bound to a chair and left in the building for the night.

  ‘The end of the world is here,’ said Abdul Ali. ‘When men become too powerful, God stops thinking. What can we do? Look at him. Look at his face. See how he smiles, how he enjoys the last few moments of his life, as if he is his God and he has unearthed the final secret of his life. I don’t think anything human is left in that face.’

  The man raised his head. He quietly observed us. He had no complaint about being bound, I imagined. There was no sign that he would be grateful to us if we volunteered to untie him.

  ‘Bhaijan, mone kichhu koiren na; boro bhok lagchhilo, ja paichhi khaichhi,’ he said, without any visible distress. My brother, don’t take it too hard; I was very hungry and I ate whatever I found. ‘It was not meant to be dramatic. I’m not a thief. I’m not mean. You see, I couldn’t stand on my feet only because my stomach was empty. It had been dry and light for quite some time. I ate from the workers’ lunch but soon realized I needed to have something heavy in my stomach, something heavier than regular rice and egg and potato and milk. I did not want to go to bed only to wake up a hungry man in the morning.’ He coughed and spat blood on the floor. Then he smiled. ‘I can tell you this: those screws were really delicious. They were exactly what I needed. You can imagine, if I don’t have anything to eat for the rest of my life, I will still be able to stand straight and walk tall and pass a beautiful evening watching a sunset over the Buriganga.’ He lowered his head to get a view of his stomach. ‘God knows I’m feeling so good now; I’m feeling wonderful since last evening. This is blood, I know, and I am coughing, I know that too, which may sound terrible to you, but believe me when I say there’s no pain in my stomach. It is all quiet now; I’ve satisfied it for a long time to come.’ He blushed for a brief moment; but then the coughing began again, twisting his thin body, and more blood came.

  ‘I can’t believe this is happening,’ I said. ‘I can’t believe you have bound him to a chair instead of cleaning his stomach.’ I took a step forward to release the man, but Abdul Ali stopped me. ‘Don’t, don’t,’ he cried. ‘You can’t help him. Nobody can help him. He is not any more in the land of men. Those screws were sharp. I guess they’ve already cut through his stomach. They’ll cut everything as far as they go and as deep as they go, unravelling all his mysteries. Relax now; he’s done; no sympathy is necessary. He’s done and he knows it. That’s why he doesn’t care, don’t you see it? Let him enjoy his peace.’

  Hearing this, the man smiled at us before lowering his eyes once again.

  That was his last smile that day and forever.

  Abdul Ali released the rope. The body fell from the chair with barely any noise.

  ‘So this is what famine does to a person,’ I thought as I walked back home. ‘It does not bring one to his knees only; it eats one alive. It is hungrier than a hungry man.’

  My confidence was shaken. I could not stop staring at people on the way. Most men and children were not wearing shirts
. Their scrawny stomachs, determined to expose their ribs, looked ugly in the beginning, but then when I thought about a stomach with dozens of sharp screws in it, they appeared beautiful. They were real; beyond enigma. They shone in the daylight, every one of them, though I knew they were empty or half-empty, or dry, as the man had so compulsively said.

  ‘Images are everywhere,’ I said to myself, as I entered the gravel yard. ‘Live, concrete images that cannot be misinterpreted or denied or eliminated or undermined. They are dancing and lustfully winking at you. They do not believe in a man’s capacity for idling. They are sharp. They love blood. There is no good or evil in the world. Only images. Learn, Khaleque Biswas, learn; learn and face the truth. Do a necessary service to yourself. Or this is your fate, this sickening trap, this absolute dark, this moment of never coming back, this irrational game of unconditional, slow but certain disappearance. You will break. Choose before it is too late; choose. Set a goal. Set another goal beyond that goal. It isn’t time to be gentle and contemplative or likeable or to wander without purpose. It isn’t time to be innocent. The famine has shot a dart aimed at you. Learn and live.’

  13

  My Fear

  For obvious reasons, I was compelled to be more attentive to what I was doing. I needed to evaluate and re-evaluate my present position in terms of the deal. I needed to identify my weaknesses before they broke me down. I was doing fine, I thought, except for one fundamental problem. And I needed to attend to it more seriously.

  I must recognize that I had fears about Nur Hussain. True, he had consistently maintained his silence when it came to our business; he had not argued or contradicted me over payment; and I had enjoyed his loyalty throughout; but at this critical point I really needed to know who he was, what he was thinking, what his plans were for the future, so that I could trust him or suspect him or at least keep him within reason. I wanted to know how I must adjust to him for the sake of survival or make him understand why he must adjust to me for the sake of a meaningful future. Considering all our previous conversations, our meals together, our experiences of working together, and considering every thread of communication we had had, I found that I still did not know him.