Bright Lines

by Tanwi Nandini Islam

  “Bablu’s smart enough for all this business,” muttered Stalin. “Let’s try him.”

  Charu watched Stalin haggle with an elderly boatman with paan-stained teeth. After going back and forth on the day’s rate, the man spat at their feet.

  Stalin nodded for her to climb onto the boat. “There’s a hood for us to sit under.” A tin hood was secured with bamboo stalks at the nouka’s center.

  “Spitting is his way of saying he’s down to take us around?”

  Charu climbed in and sat in the sunny side of the boat. Stalin followed her, but retreated to the hooded portion himself. As they set out, Charu caught sight of a family of four—a mother, father, and two daughters—trying to score a boat. The elder girl watched a Chakma woman weaving a bag with repurposed lanyard. The old woman smiled at the child, with her cigarette dangling from her mouth, and skin like crumpled brown paper. The toddler rode high on her father’s shoulders, while their mother meditated toward the lake.

  Charu wondered if the woman wished she were alone.

  Kaptai Lake was stunning, but she kept seeing Kalimaya’s descriptions of displacement everywhere. Tens of thousands of people forced to move because of a damned dam. The Chakma king’s palace was submerged, probably somewhere under the continents of tiny purple flowers that floated on the water’s surface. They drifted past an enormous snag, a skeleton of a great rain tree clawing the air. They rode up to the Shubhalong waterfall, a so-called tourist’s gem.

  Stalin muttered, “It looks like a dusty trickle of piss. Winter’s not the season to see this. Are you certain you want to get out?”

  “Good point. Let’s stay on the boat.”

  Charu turned her attention to the boatman’s son.

  “What’s your name?”

  “Raahil, ma’am.” The young man flashed Charu a bright, white smile.

  “No. Please. Don’t call me ma’am. How old are you?”

  “Twenty.”

  “That makes you older than me!” Charu laughed. Raahil smiled at her, but made no comment.

  While the boatman was sinewy and sun-dried from years of arduous labor, his son was a strong, barrel-chested youth. He and his father massaged ripples into the water. She wondered how on earth the guy kept his teeth so white, when most of the villagers had teeth yellowed from the hard water and chewing paan.

  “Attracted, eh?” Stalin smirked.

  “Shut up. I’m trying to take this all in.”

  “He doesn’t understand a word you say,” said Stalin, lighting a Benson. He handed it to her and lit himself another.

  Charu pulled the cigarette to get it going. “How do you know that? We seemed to be communicating just fine.”

  “He doesn’t need to hear anything you’re saying, the way you’re looking at him.”

  “What is wrong with you? Can we just enjoy this?”

  “I’m terrible. Forgive me. Didn’t mean to offend with my comments, American.”

  “It feels like I just got here. And I’m leaving in a week.”

  “We’ll see each other soon, if I ever decide to come to your awful country—”

  “Would you shut up about how awful it is? I’m the one that has to go back!”

  “You will have a beautiful life. Ahead of you.” He brought her close and pressed his nose to her forehead, his signal that the sparring had ended during their daily repartee. “Come under the hood,” he said, taking her by the elbow.

  They let themselves hug each other. He was hot, he was twenty-eight, and he was her goddamn uncle. Long-lost uncle, but still, Hashi’s brother. His pulse raced against her throbbing chest. She felt him flex his arms as she slowly pulled out of his embrace. This is a case of misdirected love. She realized she loved him in this complex, inexplicable, and completely taboo way. There was no real way this shit could happen. But she did get that she’d never come close to this level of learning and connection with her roots, however tangled a mess they were. Nothing close to this with any of the guys she’d slept with since last summer. Not even Malik. But this shit was too crazy. Even for me.

  “I’m going to go sit back in the sun,” Charu whispered. “You stay here.”

  But Stalin had already moved away from her, distracted by the man waving his arms wildly in the distance. It was Rana, shouting from the bridge.

  24

  In Dhaka, Anwar and Hashi rediscovered their city. They carved out a simple routine: morning toast, biscuits, and tea (a shame how there was no decent coffee to be found), afternoons spent wandering their old haunts. Dhaka was a developing city. But they had no interest in discovering what was modern, sleek, shiny, or huge. They wanted the tarnished and hidden, everything they’d left behind. It was a week to forget their responsibilities. They avoided the guest room that Ella had stayed in. It was an eerie simulation of Rezwan Bhai’s old room, with the same too-short bed, armoire, and full-length mirror. Though he wasn’t trying to snoop, Anwar discovered a photograph of seven-year-old Rezwan at the beach. Hashi the toddler was perched on his shoulders, covering her brother’s eyes with her tiny hands.

  “I’d almost forgotten what he looked like,” she whispered.

  * * *

  Hashi had been too young when Anwar lived in Dhaka to enjoy any of the romantic trails common for young lovers. On Monday, they visited Lalbagh Fort, the poor man’s Red Fort, Anwar joked. The joke was lost on Hashi, as she’d never visited India. Manicured hedges and water fountains surrounded the massive unfinished Mughal palace. Prince Muhammad Azam ditched his fort when summoned back to Delhi by the Emperor Aurangzeb. Shaista Khan, his successor, failed to finish, too distraught by the deaths of his son and daughter. Anwar and Hashi walked the muddy pathway around Bibi Pari’s tomb, hand in hand.

  “It’s strange to see ancient things in the city,” said Hashi.

  “It’s strange to see so many people interested in ancient things.” Anwar gestured at the crowded pockets of people scattered around the monument. A young couple took photographs of one another by the water fountain. The girl posed with an impish sweetness by the fountain, while her husband snapped a photo.

  “Lovely sari, no?” said Hashi. “A jamdani. Rare you see girls wearing them on the street.”

  “Mughals loved jamdani,” said Anwar. “Their weavers drew and dyed the designs with insects and flowers. Even good ol’ Queen Vic loved it, until the East India Company drove down the price.”

  “So much in just one garment, na?”

  “Value is arbitrary. Once it became available to us, Englishwomen didn’t want it. But this young girl is looking quite lovely.”

  Hashi narrowed her eyes. “Oh you. And your appreciation for all the girls.” She pulled her hand out of his.

  “Now, come here, let’s snap some photos.”

  “I’m not in the mood.”

  “Well, then, let’s sit down. My feet are hurting,” said Anwar.

  They sat at the edge of the fountain. Anwar looked at Hashi, but she kept her gaze lowered. A horde of elementary school girls rushed around them, to drop coins for wishes. Hashi gasped in delight. The girls wore the standard salwar kameez and a shawl draped in a neat V across the front, hair plaited with ribbons. With closed eyes, the children muttered their wishes. Anwar wondered what their tiny wishes could be. (A copy of the latest Harry Potter? A vacation? A new father?) Dozens of small hands let go of the coins.

  “Caught in a crossfire of wishes,” said Anwar.

  “Ha,” said Hashi. “I wonder sometimes, about the places we sit.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “What happened here once, long ago? Where we sit, perhaps in this very spot is where Shaista Khan’s daughter Bibi Pari died.”

  “And tell me, history prof, who the hell is Shaista Khan?”

  “Governor of Bengal, m’dear. Sixteen hundreds. Mystery how his girl died. No record fro
m what I have read. He believed this place to be full of bad luck and never finished it before he went back to Delhi. In this very spot, it could have happened,” muttered Hashi. She shook her head and gestured to the tiny red flowers on the ground. “Did she eat raktakarabi, unaware of its deathly effects?

  “Oleander flowers are never a good idea, for sure. But it would take a lot to kill a girl.” Here they were, so far from Brooklyn, but Anwar remembered Maya eating his flowers to escape. Was this what had set everything in motion? Now he was forced to rebuild his damaged home, a project that required more time and money than he wanted to sacrifice. No fault of the girl. But the foolish father who drove her to it in the first place.

  “And in this very spot, Shaista Khan grew consumed with building Bibi Pari’s tomb, leaving the fort almost-finished forever,” said Anwar.

  * * *

  The next day, they ventured to Shakhari Bazaar, in Old Dhaka. Along the narrow lane of centuries-old colonial redbrick buildings and twenty Hindu temples, people sold conch shell shakhas to newlyweds, sipped tea, and read the paper.

  “Third world or Third Avenue, hustlers rule the sidewalks. Why did we come here again?” Anwar stood behind Hashi as she haggled for a pack of the bazaar’s namesake bracelets.

  “I’m not paying four hundred taka for shakhas!”

  “Dear, it’s five dollars, let me—”

  “That’s not the point. I will not pay—”

  “Inflation, Apa,” said the shopkeeper, his teeth stained from the trifecta of tea, cigarettes, paan. “You’re not from here. I can hear it in your voice.”

  “Arré, take fifty; give her the bangles, man,” said Anwar, pulling Hashi aside and handing the shopkeeper a bunch of coins, which he accepted in disgust. “Let’s go somewhere a bit less crowded.”

  Hashi pointed across the street. “I remember going to this temple with Rezwan Bhai and Amma as a child for Durga Puja.”

  “You want to go in?” Anwar asked, incredulous at her sudden syncretism.

  They held hands and crossed the narrow lane. It was three o’clock in the afternoon. A dreadlocked sadhu welcomed them and offered them a look at his bangles and Kali statuettes. Apparently, everyone sold bangles. Anwar rang the bronze bell at the temple’s entrance. Hashi followed suit, placing twenty taka into the man’s hand.

  The sadhu nodded for them to enter.

  Orange and pink bougainvillea grew wild around the temple courtyard. Anwar marveled at how symbology shifted from East to West—a repeating pattern of satkonas and swastikas were carved into the temple’s walls. He realized he’d been away too long; seeing the Star of David beside the Nazis’ hate mark rattled him. In the center of the courtyard, a havan of Burma teak logs burned. The incense pit where devotees lit their alms cloaked worshippers in a perfumed smoke.

  “My god. There’re three weddings going on in this place!” All around the courtyard, wedding ceremonies commenced. Pujaris performed the rites to seated couples, while their friends, families, and strangers stood around them in a circle. Anwar and Hashi walked to a porcelain statue of Kali, which stood at the back of the temple. They took a seat on the jute-matted floor in front of the statue.

  “Do you feel anything?” asked Hashi.

  “My knees hurt. I have not sat in this so-called Indian style in years.”

  “No, I mean, do you feel . . . Allah here?”

  “I—I don’t think so,” said Anwar.

  “Hm.”

  “Do you feel—anything?”

  “I don’t think so either.”

  “I’m not sure I ever do.”

  “But there is something . . .” Hashi let the sentence trail off, and arose from the floor to kneel closer to the Kali figure. There was a small basket of flowers and sweets, and she offered another coin and grabbed a piece of sandesh. She nibbled on it, grabbed a larger piece, and went back to sit next to Anwar.

  “Eat this. It tastes exactly the same as it did in the sixties.”

  Anwar popped the tiny sweet into his mouth. “It does. Incredible.”

  “My brother and I came here for Durga Puja. I was little, must have been three or four. I remember there were shakharis selling their wares in the very spot where that sadhu welcomed us. They laid out their conch shell bracelets for new brides. But I didn’t care about that. I wanted a conch trumpet. Rezwan bought me one. Once we got inside the temple, I started blowing it. Everyone’s heads turned, hearing the sounds of mangal dhoni, all the omens of the new, the forgotten, breaking through the chatter of the crowd like a ferry horn cutting through the fog. When they saw me, a toddler perched on Rezwan’s head, the crowd laughed at the culprit. Scared out of my mind, I pissed on Rezwan’s head! And the crowd laughed even more. We never showed our face here again. And now I’m back.”

  “In this very spot,” said Anwar. He stood up on his feet, feeling nimbler than he had in ages. He offered Hashi his hand to help her up. They lit two sticks of incense and circled the smoke around each other. He closed his eyes for a moment. When he reopened them, he saw Hashi smiling.

  * * *

  On Wednesday, Anwar and Hashi went to see the sunset by the Sadarghat River Front. They sat on the concrete harbor, legs hanging over the edge. Anwar curled his toes, scared to lose his sandals. Hawkers sold lozenges and cigarettes. Anwar suddenly wanted to smoke ganja badly. He’d held out during these day trips, not wanting to hear it from Hashi. He’d even scored some low-grade hashish from Rana. Hash was the only thing of quality out here. Anwar had forgotten the shitty highs of his youth. But in Dhaka it was either hash or weed that smelled like a skunk sprayed your face. He supposed he had become spoiled.

  “In this very spot, an old widower prepared himself a fujka every afternoon, watching the boats dock ashore,” said Hashi. She did the same, preparing a small dried puri pocket with tamarind chickpeas. “Open wide.” Hashi stuffed the whole thing into Anwar’s mouth.

  The snack was cold but as delicious as Anwar remembered. He hoped he wouldn’t get Dhaka kaka because of these few bites. Well, that’s what the weed is for, right? “You know, in this very spot,” said Anwar, “a nawab jumped into the early morning high tide to fetch the court singer’s slipper, after he made love to her by the banks. But two riverbed pebbles became lodged in his ears, and he could no longer hear her sing.”

  “In this very spot—” Hashi stopped to swallow. “Agh, I’m no good with our little stories today. You’re too good at it. I can’t think of anything.”

  “It’s quite all right,” said Anwar, wiping a drop of tamarind sauce off her chin. “In this very spot, I realize we’ve only been hanging out in Old Dhaka. We need to change it up, na?”

  * * *

  The next day, they went to the Liberation War Museum. At first, Anwar felt it was sterile and generated the same detachment as any museum. He supposed distance and time allowed him to behold the artful mound of human bones and skulls. After a half hour, the scenes started churning his stomach. Faded black-and-white photographs of raped girls, bald-headed, stripped, some younger than Charu or older than Hashi. His heart clutched with memory.

  “Rezwan and I—we had saved a few girls from a farmhouse where they were being raped.”

  Hashi winced, aghast. “You never told me that story.”

  “It’s not easy to talk about, my love. Not easy to remember it either.” Anwar traced his finger along the photograph of two women whose eyes looked hollow and defiant at the same time. Birangona, the nation decided to call them. War heroines. As a people, their capacity to euphemize astonished him. There was no recourse. Even the children they bore after being raped by the Pakistanis were abandoned. Shunned by their families, with nowhere to shout how they’d been broken.

  His mind drifted to the second time he and Rezwan went back to the farmhouse, to try and capture the Rajakar twins. Their enemy was not at the house, once again. But they found a p
air of sisters and their two buas, locked in the kitchen. Anwar and Rezwan had busted the door open, to find all four women huddled, crying.

  One of the young girls shrieked when she saw them in the shadows, but was immediately shushed by one of the elderly women.

  —Don’t worry, sisters. We’re Muktis. We won’t hurt you, said Rezwan gently. —We’re here to kill the men who have been hurting you.

  —They’re going to kill us, whispered the youngest-looking girl. She pointed at the elderly woman moaning into her hands. —They beat Bua nearly to death.

  Anwar’s throat tightened. He averted his eyes from their torture, feeling ashamed that they hadn’t come sooner. Cigarette burns festered on their arms, broken bottle neck tributaries carved into their emaciated legs. Eyes blackened, wounds split open. They smelled like infected animals, Anwar remembered thinking, ashamed. Shit and piss and sex. How on earth did men summon enough evil to treat a woman this way?

  In the darkness, Anwar and Rezwan led the four women through the fields of watermelon and spinach, until they reached their motorcycle. Rezwan plucked a watermelon and hacked it open with his machete. The women ate the fruit hungrily.

  —You won’t be able to take all of us, whispered one of the buas.

  —We will make as many trips as we need, insisted Anwar. —We’ll take you to our friends’ village so a doctor can help you.

  —Take the girls first, murmured the bua. —I don’t care if I live.

  —Go, Anwar, said Rezwan. —I will stay with the buas.

  Anwar hopped on the motorcycle, and Rezwan helped the two sisters onto the bike. The girl directly behind Anwar clawed her fingers into his ribs. As they rode, the stagnant air picked up a breeze. One of the girls started laughing witlessly, and in the rearview mirror he saw her sway her head from side to side. He rode his bike as fast as he could to the riverfront, where he paid a young boatman to take them across to the Khasi village where Hawa’s family lived.