The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  His loyalty to me might come from his helplessness. He was nothing without me. He was one of the millions of lost young boys who would end their lives pushing bullock carts in busy waste management centres. His loyalty might come from the fact that he was sent to me by Raihan Talukder. If Nur Hussain did not respect me, it would mean he had no respect for Raihan Talukder either. As long as Raihan Talukder was alive, and Nur Hussain needed to return to the village, he could not harbour any disregard for me. If he did, he would disobey the conventional system of respect.

  Wouldn’t he be a different person—egocentric, incomprehensible, impertinent—once he knew he was not dependent on me, at least as much as he thought he was? What would happen if someone like me—or smarter—came forward and offered him the services that I offered him in exchange for a more lucrative deal? He did not seem to know what money was; he did not ask how much money he had earned, or how much money I had earned because of him, or even how much his talent was worth. Someone could explain to him what extraordinarily beautiful and momentous things he could do if he were more organized in his life or worked with more self-confidence in his profession. Someone could easily lay out his future—in the flash of an eye. It might also happen that one day he would disappear; just disappear, without a word or message or address. What would I do? I would look for him everywhere: at the market, at the tea stalls, in the refugee camps, throughout the city of Dhaka, in Gangasagar, and still not find him. What would I do then?

  I walked in the street harbouring such deep but silent vexations. I walked for a long time, passing the stinky surroundings of the meat-sellers, the dried-up well in the market, the laundry house with its coal-heated iron. When the tailor, who had made Nur Hussain’s Mujib coat, waved at me from his door, I moved on without waving back. At the corner of the road, where the council had placed a massive garbage bin, two beggars blocked my way and extended their tin plates. They did not speak a word, not even when I pushed them to the ground, and threw their plates aside. No, I did not look back. The beggars would not come after me, I knew that; they were too tired to attack anyone and used to being assaulted and beaten regularly.

  When I felt worn out, and thought I could not take even one more step, and could not speak a word, good or bad, I found myself on the premises of the Mrittunjoyee school. I sat on the veranda, where Abdul Karim had once given me peanuts to eat, looking at the sea of tents before me. I felt disgusted by the human cries coming from the passages criss-crossing the field. There were people everywhere, standing idly or sitting on the ground like corpses, quarrelling, fighting, chasing or cursing one another. At least two dozen children had crowded at the corner of the field where there was a mountain of garbage. This was garbage from the tents, from people who would throw their babies away before throwing away food, but the children turned upside down every piece of dirt, every can, every bottle, looking for treasures.

  Then there was the woman right before me, who fell to the dust in a feverish hallucination to express her sorrow at the loss of her son, drawing a large crowd around her. She looked like a spectre of evil, a creepy amputated monkey jumping to burn itself while loudly cursing its most unavoidable misfortune. I wanted to run there and hit her on the head to relieve her of her unendurable pain. Any person feeling so overwhelmed with hardship had no right to exist. The famine is a time for the able and the strong-willed, I thought. It is a time for the intelligent to reign. They will introduce new ways of life. They will make their own laws to protect themselves from non-existence, the way I have found my own path. They will create a religion of their own, if necessary, which will define success and morality in a completely different language. The famine will set apart the fit from the weak-hearted.

  It is not mandatory, I thought, that a society must have people who are vile and who rear filthiness instead of grit and ambition. What will these people do with themselves, if suddenly this field before me turns into a beautiful mansion, and all the tents beautiful suites, and the heap of garbage a dining table with plenty of delicious food and drinks? I could not imagine a different scenario: they would still find something to condemn in one another, chase one another and cancel one another out. All the able and intelligent men in the country, people who are creative and do not surrender to the demands of hungry stomachs, should rush to this camp at this very moment to burn these tents down, to peel the skin off these shameless human animals. Sheikh Mujib should pass the necessary orders to his militiamen to dig a deep trench to bury all the faint-hearted people alive, thus ushering in a new era for the intelligent to grow up with beautiful minds, and help advance this country. It does not matter how many unfit ones are buried to nurture the fit ones; those who cannot fight for a sustainable existence should perish without mercy.

  Sheikh Mujib was right to turn a blind eye to these people who insulted the human spirit so extravagantly, I said to myself as I walked out of the school premises. He was right to block the images of death from the media. If it were not for him, more people would have died watching those images than from the famine. If they would not be dead, they would be blind or infertile or eternally beyond control and correction.

  As I came closer to the tea stall, I saw a man crawling after a shiny coin thrown two yards away by another man. He had gangrene in both his legs. Repulsed by the stink from his sweaty body, I went inside the stall, and looked back only to find that the second man was engaged in a game with the crawling man. He turned out his pocket to show he had plenty of coins there, and the gangrened man could win them all if he was ready to please him by crawling. The man crawled once again and the crowd around clapped at him.

  Though he won’t walk again, I thought, this man is more transparent than Nur Hussain; more readable and considerate. This man is trying to live; reaching for every coin makes his face brighter and his desire to crawl stronger. He is doing exactly what he needs to do at this moment: exercising his right to degrade himself, and to enter a voluntary madness for the sake of a stable tomorrow. Suffering is not an other-worldly affair; it will never be that a person won’t be able to unearth the mystery of his suffering in his lifetime. This man is not acting like a phantom, accusing metaphysical molesters and creatures of the shadow world of working against him. It is better to be mad than dark. He is doing the impossible, I thought; he is a human jewel in a heap of human rubble.

  By contrast, I thought with utter frustration, Nur Hussain did not say anything about himself; he did not say how engaged or disengaged he was to and from his commitment with me. For the sake of his gratitude to me for everything he now had, he could have opened himself up to me once in a while, and taken it as his solemn responsibility to tell me he had no rage against me and I would not need to growl or bark at him to know his mind. He was killing me with his silence. He was insulting me with his lack of distress, his imperceptible rashness. If I had a prison of my own, I thought, I would surely have locked him up with the Taiwanese lock. I would have brought him out when I needed him to speak for Sheikh Mujib. I would have starved him of food, of sleep, of conversation, of all human contact, if he had refused to deliver his speeches. I would have beaten him up morning and evening until he gave in, until he learnt to refuse to admit he was in pain when in severe pain, until he had licked my shoes more abjectly than Basu and Gesu took the dust of his feet to their chest, until he had served me with the last drop of blood in his body.

  The truth was I did not have any such prison, and he was a citizen of a free country as much as I was. If he decided to create fences around himself, he could do that. I only hoped he would not.

  ‘It’s a gift from me,’ I said, placing the box before him. It seemed my only option was to make an effort to enter his imagination. ‘A simple thing, not very expensive; looked beautiful on the shelf.’ He was going to speak for Sheikh Mujib; nothing could be more delightful for us. ‘We must celebrate the moment. We must celebrate our success.’

  He did not ask what I had in the box. So I sat on the sofa and told him
to open it and see. He opened the box indifferently, put the pair of black shoes on the floor, next to his feet. He thought his old pair was good enough, he said. Weren’t they?

  ‘Try them,’ I said, instead of answering. ‘Don’t be so serious now. See if they fit you.’

  He tried only one shoe, the right one, and took a few steps.

  ‘Any good?’ I asked. ‘If not, we can return them.’

  He looked at me. I could not read exactly what he had in his eyes.

  They were impenetrable.

  14

  Nur Hussain Puts on Rags

  Our first speaking engagement for Sheikh Mujib was yet to be scheduled. We were to look for a new house, well protected with high boundary walls like I had described to Moina Mia, and with enough space and furniture for our new life together, although I still didn’t really know Nur Hussain either as a person or as an accomplice.

  Within a couple of days I no longer saw the new pair of shoes on his feet or anywhere in the flat. I did not see the pair I had bought him when he first started delivering the speech. He was using the ones he had arrived in from Gangasagar—the dark red rubber sandals with blue laces.

  Had he donated the shoes to someone? Everything could be sold at such a time: blood, bones, organs, babies, virginity, honesty, everything. A pair of shoes would be one of the more sophisticated items. They had more market value than the newly printed Constitution of the country. Shoes could be sold and resold, unlike a Constitution.

  I would buy him another pair, I said to myself. It was only a pair of shoes. Not a huge loss. Probably he did not like the colour, and he could not tell me he did not, for the sake of keeping me happy and satisfied. Probably they did not fit him properly. He knew it the moment he opened the box, which was why he hadn’t even tried on both shoes; he had tried on only one. Next time I would take him to the store when I bought his shoes so that he could choose the pair he liked. A man should have the right to choose his own shoes.

  The following day I did not see the bed sheet on his bed. I asked him where it was, if he had soaked it in soapy water to wash later, though I had already checked every corner of the flat, including the toilet. The buckets were empty. The soap was in its place.

  I could be stubborn, but this was a time when I wanted to be stubborn with him the least. It might cost me dearly. My stubbornness could cause him to leave me. It might begin with something as simple as a conversation about a pair of shoes and then take the shape of a yes–no question about the deal. He might say he did not want to be under anybody’s thumb; he did not want to deliver the speech, not even if Sheikh Mujib himself stood before him begging. Was it his problem that the country had fallen into disarray? If Sheikh Mujib suffered for his own faults, nobody could save him.

  I asked if he had thrown the bed sheet away because it was old. He knew we could do lots of things with such a bed sheet; we could use it for darning the quilt, cut it into pieces to create rags, and at the very least, use it as a kitchen curtain. But it was definitely not a big deal, I said; I didn’t mind, and I would buy him a new one when I went to the market next time. In fact, I had not done any shopping except for food in the last few months; I should have walked around the flat and made a list of things we needed. Now that we were doing better financially than when we had started, there was no reason for us to keep dragging our old life along. A new life deserves new elements. I would buy him a pair of those high-lustre, super-soft, wrinkle-free satin bed sheets.

  Then one day I saw him wash his punjabi and the Mujib coat, dry them and wrap them in paper. I followed him as he left the flat and walked towards the refugee camp, raising dust under his sandals. I walked fast because he walked fast. I stopped when he stopped. Then I saw him handing over the package to an old, dejected refugee. The refugee unpacked the coat and the punjabi and immediately sat at the street corner to sell them while he stood a little apart from him. In a few minutes a customer bought them. The refugee ran towards the nearby grocery with the bills in his hand, and Nur Hussain took the road home. Now he walked slowly—he had all the time in the world. He was satisfied. He had accomplished the most glorious thing humankind could ever think of with his disgustingly small mind.

  Within a couple of days he was in his rags—the clothes he had worn when he came from Gangasagar. He looked impoverished. He looked as if he had never spoken in public; never had that loud, inspiring voice; had never been to Sheikh Mujib’s residence as his guest. He went out at any time, walked without direction, stood or sat anywhere hour after hour watching and thinking. A few times I had seen him actually go into the refugee camp, to talk to people he did not know, and to listen to them attentively. A few times I had seen him come back home late, very late, and then lie down in the dark with his soiled feet. He did not ask if there was any progress in terms of our schedules with Sheikh Mujib. He did not bother to check if I was home, if I was well, if I needed anything. When he cooked, he cooked a lot, but did not sit with me to eat. ‘I’m not hungry now,’ he would say, when I insisted. ‘Maybe later.’ Then immediately after I had eaten, he would go to the kitchen, take food in a bowl, much more than he could eat, and cover it with a plate. The next thing I knew he was out in the street with the bowl, walking fast, moving towards the refugee camp.

  I knew to some extent how he felt. Of course, I did. Anyone who had a human heart knew for sure the inglorious hell we were living in. But, I guess, I did not know how deeply he felt it; how seriously the demoralizing scenes of death had affected him. Had he reached the point of delirium? Would he fail to calm his nerves?

  I thought it would be wise for me to participate in some humanitarian activities with him, to go among people to talk about their sufferings instead of preaching in Sheikh Mujib’s favour. Just to let him know I was on the same page. These were very unfortunate days for a man with a beautiful mind; I understood that, even though he might notice that I resisted my sense of compassion and refused to encumber myself with other people’s burdens.

  In the afternoon I took him to the local market. He walked like an apparition; the wind could sweep him away, he was so thin and weightless. I told him he could buy anything he liked to donate. He only had to consider if it was within our means. What our means were, he had to decide for himself. There was no pressure from my side.

  We stood on the pavement, next to the electricity pole, and looked. The market was full of food items, fresh and clean, colourful and expensive, exquisite and exclusive; food from local producers and from abroad, from dealers and black marketeers. But what food to choose, I asked. Choosing the right food was one of the most essential matters in this case. Here I briefly spoke about the eating habits of the starving generation. Did they wait for expensive, delicious food, like those red, succulent strawberries? Did they have any question about where the food came from? In both cases I answered ‘no’ so that he knew we were not there to spend money for the sake of spending it. We were looking to help as many people as possible—something he wanted, something he badly wanted—while staying within our limited means. We must be more tactical and useful than simply charitable in our effort. We would count every bill as if we were buying something for ourselves.

  Finally I said it was not up to us to consider if we were generous or miserly. Individuals like he and I were too insignificant; we would not be able to stop people from dying. The famine was of such a massive scale that without proper administrative intervention the situation could only get aggravated. What was required was an enhancement of security and order. That could not be ensured by leaving people to starve. We could feed people one or two meals. We could feed only a few families, if we spent all the money we had earned. That would not be anything in the midst of such endless desperation. We would buy whatever we could, but if we could not do a lot, we should not be unhappy.

  He did not buy anything. He had no money on him. I had the money in my wallet. He followed me as I moved from the grocery to the vegetable market to the restaurant. I bought ten kil
os of rice packed in half-kilo paper bags, five kilos of beaten rice, cabbages, potatoes, onions, green chillies, bottles of mustard oil and some samosas. I gave him a bag to carry so that he felt involved. Then we hired a rickshaw to the refugee camp. We did not have to distribute the items; refugees of all ages stumbled upon them as soon as we said they were free. They grabbed the rice, tore at the packages, fought over them, hit each other, and yelled at each other. Cabbages rolled on the ground.

  Nur Hussain sat on the rickshaw; saying nothing, touching nothing. His eyes were lowered and moist.

  That day he did not go out again. But the next day he did.

  15

  The Frightening Me

  This time he went straight to the Shaheed Minar where he had first delivered the 7 March speech, where Shah Abdul Karim had sung his songs and where starving refugees gathered day and night for nothing. He walked the cement courtyard from end to end watching the undemonstrative crowd in silence. Some refugees had made the place their permanent home. It was better than the camp at the school field. At least the floor was hard and dry, and rainwater did not pool there.

  He saw me standing at the corner, ten or so yards away from him, but said nothing. With an uncertain look, he sat down on the cement and hid his face in his palms.

  Though he was in his rags, some refugees recognized him. I could clearly hear one of them loudly asking the man sitting next to him if Nur Hussain was the person who used to deliver Sheikh Mujib’s speech; if he was the man in the fine punjabi and the Mujib coat they had seen the other day at Moina Mia’s meeting. The man took a few steps towards him and watched him, raising his right hand over his eyes, and then looked back. ‘He is,’ he said.