The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  ‘Are you sure?’ asked the first man, who now stood up and, in league with the second man, moved towards Nur Hussain.

  ‘He is.’ He was sure.

  I sensed some desperate ferociousness in their attitude. They were plotting something. These hungry people could be really nasty. They did not need a real reason to start a fight.

  I ran at them with a thundering warning, telling them to stay away from him. ‘You hear me,’ I shouted and ran fast, fast, stepping on sleeping refugees, hitting children who played with sticks and plates, undoing corners of several sari tents. I grabbed the two men by their necks just when they were two yards away from him. ‘You ill-begotten bulls,’ I said, ‘you’ll never walk again!’ I squeezed them under my arms, pressed their heads to my stomach, and kicked them in their legs while they tried to get free. I pushed one of them down, and kicked him again and again, until his nose bled and he started crying in loud yelps. As the one under my arm gave in, I pushed him towards the other and breathed hard.

  Nur Hussain watched the whole affair. Though a large crowd had gathered around us he did not move. Neither did he show any interest or concern. Probably it all happened so fast that he did not know what to do. Probably he felt numb in his body; I made him numb with my arrogance, and he could not do anything but sit calmly. He watched as my two victims pulled each other to their feet and nursed each other as I walked away from the scene of a massive embarrassment.

  I was not in my Mujib coat at that time. I was not in my clean, white, neatly pressed punjabi. There had been no time to put them on.

  If I had been wearing my coat, I asked myself that night, would I have done what I did? I knew some refugees in the camp had assaulted an Awami League supporter wearing a Mujib coat when he went there to tell them to join Moina Mia’s meeting, and I knew members of the private militia arrived there that night and set fire to their tents. I saw the ashes the next day. Some refugees had burns. Some had bruises all over their bodies.

  Then I asked why it was that I had not waited until the two men reached him to see what it was they intended to do to him. I could have. I could have waited a little bit, instead of ambushing them. I could have just walked over to them as any reasonable man would, a man who remained composed even in the face of the most serious danger. That way they would have had enough time to reach him before I grabbed them. Then I could have asked them if they had any objections or grievances against him. Thus I would have been able to win their confidence as a mediator. Maybe I would have realized that they had no intention at all. Why didn’t I do that, why had I run towards them when I saw he was not running away from them?

  Nur Hussain did not return home immediately. He returned when it was late and went straight to his room. I heard him close the door behind him. Then everything was quiet.

  Late that night I heard him cough a few times. Then I heard him snore.

  It would not be an endless night, I said to myself. There would be a morning for him, a morning with glaring light, giving shape to things. And a morning would begin for me too, within a few hours. Weren’t we going to see each other and get on with our regular lives, I asked myself, and forget what had happened today?

  16

  His Monster Speech

  I opened my eyes. I must have slept for several hours, for I could see the white sun through the window and hear the bells of rickshaws from the street below.

  I could hear his footsteps. I could hear jumbled sounds of utensils, washing, sweeping. Those small sounds gave me hope. It really was a new day.

  He had washed his clothes and put them on the line to dry. He had swept the sitting room, the kitchen, his own room. This was the man I knew. This was the man who cared for himself and for me and for the place we lived in.

  I brushed my teeth, went to the kitchen, sat at the breakfast table. He had prepared parata roti and potatoes, eaten half of it, and left the other half for me on a plate. From there, I could hear him practise the 7 March speech. I stopped eating and pricked up my ears to be sure the sound came from his room.

  My brothers, he said, then cleared his throat before beginning with My brothers again. I have come before you today with a heavy heart. He started the way he had always started. The pace was slow, but the old determination was there.

  He did not go out for two days. He ate, slept and recited the speech. Sometimes he looked out of the window. But the scenes of the street did not make him desperate to run with bowls of food to the refugee camp, to sell whatever he found near at hand. He did not look absent-minded either. When he kept his mind occupied with the speech, nothing else could enter there. It all depended on what he wanted to do with himself, and how he wanted to deal with the times.

  I did not go out either. I cooked for us, but I ate alone. I must give him a comfortable space to think, I said to myself. He needed that space to recover. By practising the speech he had already begun the process of healing.

  Sitting on the bed I read some old copies of the Freedom Fighter, which I had read many times before. I read the reports, looked at the pictures, holding the paper up to the light from the window for a better view. Some exaggerations sounded funny. Some details seemed baseless. Some jokes were obscene. Some conclusions appeared extremely hypothetical. They made sense during the war. That was why we wrote them and printed them. But now, looking back, they seemed appalling. They were rubbish. We were not ourselves when we were at war. Something bigger than human reason guided us forward from day to day. It was not always beautiful and adorable.

  On the third day I had to go out. We needed groceries. Our kitchen was empty of food. Only a few onions were left. No dal, no vegetable, no protein whatsoever, no cooking oil. I thought I would buy a hilsa fish today. The appetising smell of fried hilsa right from the hot pan would improve his mood. I would also buy some fine rice. The long, thin rice, washed in wax. It was expensive, but famine or no famine, I would buy some, at least a kilo, for his sake. Beyond that, I planned to buy him a punjabi and a coat.

  On my way back from the market, I hired a rickshaw to carry the groceries. I sat on the seat, with my feet on the sack. I told the rickshaw-wallah to drive carefully. I specifically advised him to avoid the ‘manholes’ that could gobble up a man like me easily and suck me into the dark underground sewer in seconds. Plenty of manholes on the streets remained open. The whole country could disappear through them.

  We left the main street to enter the neighbouring lane and then came closer to the small market where we would turn right for my flat. Before we did that I thought I saw someone like Nur Hussain walking in the crowd. I told the rickshaw-wallah to slow down so that I could get a closer look at him. He stopped in the shadow of a store.

  It was him. He looked around suspiciously as if plotting something, and walked past the confectioner’s, the pharmacy and the rickshaw garage, before crossing the opening where every week amateur sellers sold various household items. He was heading to the Shaheed Minar.

  The Shaheed Minar area was as crowded as always. A woman had hooked an end of her tattered green sari to the columns of the Minar while draping herself with its other end. The sari flew like a giant flag; its flapping produced the sound of rogue waves in the sea. A few more refugees had moved to the cement yard from the school field. They were raising their tents and setting up their ovens in the sun. A small girl cried, holding her empty tin mug; she cried sitting and then lay down on the cement, crying more shrilly. A man wearing a gamchha around his waist came running—probably her father, smacked her in the face, snatched the mug from her, and thrashed it until it was flat under his feet. A little boy came to her rescue. The man smacked him too. The girl stopped crying. She got to her feet quickly and watched with surprise as the man threw the mug into the small bush behind the Shaheed Minar.

  The woman pulled her sari from the columns, and ran to the children. ‘You pig,’ she said to the man, and gathered the two children in her arms. ‘Get lost. Get lost from our lives; or you will see the last of
me.’

  I was still in the rickshaw. As Nur Hussain moved towards the centre of the yard, walking through the scattered crowd, I watched the surroundings more cautiously. I wanted to be sure nobody ran to attack him. He was man enough to protect himself against any surprise attack; still I felt besieged by my usual sense of insecurity. The Shaheed Minar was a ghostly place today, I could feel it; a place taken by a very powerful force. That was why Nur Hussain had to come back here; that was why more refugees were crowding here, why the small girl cried, the sari flew, the cow dung smelt so heavy. I envisioned something coming, something I had suspected for a long time; a wanton destruction was galloping towards us, gathering speed, getting wider and vaster and raising its head to absorb Nur Hussain’s simple mind.

  Joy Bangla, he began. He said it twice, enough to draw everyone’s attention. The second one was longer than the first. Joooooooooy Bangla! Those who recognized him got closer. Among them I saw the two men I had assaulted the other day. They looked meek, like two kids. Those who did not recognize him followed the others. He spoke a few sentences, including: We have given lots of blood; but if it needs more, we are ready to give more. Then he stopped, looked around, giving the crowd time to understand the meaning of those words.

  I laughed at myself. How could I think of such abomination! Force, destruction. The seduction of a simple mind. I must have abandoned my own mind somewhere, without knowing it. ‘I know nothing about this place. I know nothing about him. I know nothing about these people.’

  ‘Move on now, will you? Come on, let’s go home. I’ve fish in my bag, they will rot,’ I said to the rickshaw-wallah. ‘Take the shorter route, if you know any. Let’s get out of here.’ He pushed the rickshaw a few feet backward before dragging it on to the street. Then he rang the bell, seeking a passage through the crowd, and got on the driver’s seat. Before his feet had completed a full circle, I heard Nur Hussain speak again.

  ‘My brothers,’ he said, in the most memorable tone of the 7 March speech, ‘I have stood here many times before. But I have not felt what I am feeling today. Today I can tell you that there is no hope in the words that I have spoken for so long, that they were words unconnected to our lives, to our dreams, our future. Look around you and tell me truthfully: where are all your brothers, your sisters, parents, children and neighbours; where are they, why aren’t they here with you now? They were not as lucky as you were because of the famine? No. We have won our luck in the victory in 1971. We have written our claim on hope forever by winning freedom. This is the mistake of one person and one person alone. I have struggled with myself hard but today I can tell you the truth: Sheikh Mujib has become a monster, and as I speak of my emptiness here, he is coming for you.’

  17

  A Conversation and a Warning

  It was late December. Still 1974: a very long year. A year that did not want to end until everything else did.

  Refugees who had found no hope in the city began to leave. The ones who decided to stay were adjusting to the new sorrows, new difficulties and new riddles of city life.

  I had jumped off the rickshaw, reached Nur Hussain in a few long, swift strides, pushing the crowd aside. I knocked him down immediately by pushing him violently in the chest, and silenced him by shouting louder and shriller than him right in his face. Then I carried him on my back and got him on to the rickshaw. ‘Go, go,’ I said to the rickshaw-wallah, ‘faster, faster. What’re you waiting for, you creature?’ Several refugees ran behind the rickshaw to see where I was taking Nur Hussain. I looked back and yelled at them. I would kill them, I said; I would break their necks with a lethal blow, if they got any closer.

  He was calm. He looked like a small boy, innocent by nature, enriched with an innate ability to overlook danger and threat; a boy who was facing the world for the first time in his life. He had no idea what he had just done. He sat next to me without a fight or an objection or any bitterness, squeezing himself into the corner.

  Later that night I explained to him it was no good blaming Sheikh Mujib for all the starvation and death. Nobody in the country was sadder to see people die than him. ‘One cannot expect a smart government in a country which does not have smart citizens. Citizens have to know clearly what they want. Our people are shameless. How many directions do we have on earth? Ten. But they will move in any direction they want without bothering about decency and meaning. Seventy million people will talk about seventy million solutions to the same problem.’ If Nur Hussain thought he could not respect Sheikh Mujib because of the famine, he should show some restraint; there were millions and millions of people in the country who respected Sheikh Mujib. He had no right to insult those people. Besides, the new harvesting season had already begun; new crops had appeared in the market, and more food aid had entered the distribution system. A new pricing policy had also been declared to beat inflation, and special measures were taken to tackle corruption. Soon the famine would end. The famine was a test for us to see if we fell apart, if we forgot our solemnity, our pledge to future generations. Unfortunately, we failed that test. But life would not stop here. It would go on.

  It was, in fact, my conversation with myself, to speak truthfully, as if I was trying to understand why I was not like him—savage, dangerous, hysterical—why I was frustrated and yet calm, and what strange power occupied my head. Wasn’t I more upset than him just months ago? Didn’t I ridicule him for being silent and emotionless despite seeing death all around? In the guise of unarming him, I knew I was actually satisfying myself with my own arguments.

  He listened attentively, but did not give the faintest sign that he actually accepted anything I had said. It seemed he could stay in the same pose for ages, without moving his feet or hands, without raising his head, without blinking. I stayed with him, softly repeating myself, waiting for his response. There was none.

  So it was time I became strict and gave him an either–or choice. He was to speak only what I had taught him to speak, I said clearly; that was the speech, the words of the 7 March speech, with Joy Bangla at the end—Joy Bangla only once, not twice, to not confuse anyone in the audience. Personal observations and emotions could not come between him and his work. There was a deal and that deal must be honoured as expected.

  If he did not do as advised, I warned him distinctly in the end, if he spoke more than what I had allowed him, and dropped something that the speech writers considered important for reinvigorating Sheikh Mujib’s personal heroism and the Awami League’s image, I would not be able to protect him any longer. Any unforeseen consequences would not be my responsibility.

  18

  A Reaction, an Overreaction

  The next day I was called in for a meeting with Moina Mia.

  The news had reached him. It had reached him in its entirety. He knew more than I did. It seemed that Moina Mia had people to inform him exactly what had happened at the Shaheed Minar. Perhaps people like the two militia members with rifles, sitting on two small stools on both sides of the door. I had never seen them before.

  In addition to calling Sheikh Mujib a monster, Nur Hussain had called him a disgrace, Moina Mia told me. Nur Hussain had said Sheikh Mujib was worse than all the Pakistani rulers in our history, because none of them had cost us so many lives. Bangladeshis must gather against him, put him on trial, and sentence him to what he deserved for clinging on to power while the country sank into chaos. Perhaps lifelong imprisonment. That would be his minimum punishment.

  Moina Mia asked if I found those words distasteful and if I was aware that Nur Hussain was going to speak like that. Had I noticed any sign or signal that might suggest he was changing from being a supporter of Sheikh Mujib to becoming his brutal critic?

  I said no. I had not seen or heard anything objectionable. Whoever had reported the matter to him must have had a pre-planned agenda to condemn Nur Hussain in his eyes. Even the day before the incident I had heard him practise Sheikh Mujib’s speech with profound dedication and passion.

  Then M
oina Mia asked if there wasn’t another day, just a few days ago, when I had injured two refugees as they approached Nur Hussain in the same Shaheed Minar. I had hit one of the refugees on the nose, and kicked the other in the stomach. What had made me do so, if I had not thought some danger was approaching, if I had not believed Nur Hussain was capable of doing or saying something that might turn a whole lot of people into his enemies, including those two refugees? I must have known something about him; I must have observed he was passing through some kind of bizarre delusional period. What was it?

  ‘An overreaction on my part,’ I replied. ‘Simply a proof of my lack of judgement.’ I was mistaken, I told him. I had not thought properly before attacking the refugees. I just wanted to protect Nur Hussain from any harm because I loved Sheikh Mujib and I did not want Nur Hussain harmed just because some refugees had lost their minds. By attacking the two refugees before they harmed Nur Hussain, I was making sure he was available to serve Sheikh Mujib faithfully and completely when the opportunity came.

  It was disconcerting, Moina Mia said, very disconcerting indeed, to learn that, first, I believed some refugees had lost their minds and, then, I associated that matter with Sheikh Mujib’s leadership. He did not understand why I had brought the two things together to describe a problem, when there was no problem with any of them. Refugees were being regularly fed full meals at various relief centres across the city. Hadn’t I seen this? Didn’t I watch TV broadcasts which opened and ended with bulletins about how the government was helping the destitute? There were deaths, Sheikh Mujib had acknowledged that. Those deaths were caused by natural calamities. Sheikh Mujib had admitted that too. It was expected that some people would die in the new country because some people always died in a new country. If it was expected, it should not come as a shock. If it was not a shock, why would anyone lose his mind? Why would anyone be so violent as to attack Nur Hussain for delivering Sheikh Mujib’s speech?