Lajja

by Taslima Nasrin

  Sudhamoy was reading a newspaper. ‘Suronjon,’ he called out as soon as he saw his son.

  ‘Yes, what is it?’ Suronjon said and went to stand by his bed.

  ‘Have you heard that eight people have been arrested in India including Joshi and Advani? More than four hundred people have died there. Kalyan Singh of UP will be tried too. The US and in fact the entire world has condemned the destruction of the Babri Masjid. There’s a curfew at Bhola. The Bangladesh Nationalist Party [BNP], Awami League and many other parties will be taking to the streets to maintain communal harmony. They are making statements too.’

  Sudhamoy’s eyes were like the cat’s eyes, full of enchantment.

  ‘And you know it,’ he continued. ‘Those who are creating the riots are not in tune with their religion. They want to plunder and destroy. Don’t you know why the sweet shops get ravaged? People hanker after sweets. And gold shops too, because of greed for gold. It’s the criminals and hoodlums who are on this spree of loot and plunder. There’s really no conflict between the communities. And look at the surfeit of peace processions! Something good will come of this! In 1990 Ershad fell because of this issue. Suro, Ershad had said that the Hindus would be compensated. Were they?’

  ‘Have you gone mad, Baba?’

  ‘I don’t know. I can’t remember things these days. Do you know that the culprits of the Nidarabad murder case will be hanged?’

  Suronjon realized that Sudhamoy wanted to say that Hindus did get justice in their country. In the Nidarabad village of Brahmonbaria, Birojabala Debnath and her five children—Niyotibala, Subhash Debnath, Minotibala, Sumon Debnath and Sujon Debnath—had been taken to a pond called Dhopjuri Beel and hacked to pieces. The pieces were put in two large drums and sealed with lime paste and salt and flung into the pond. Eventually the drums had floated up. They had been killed because the killers wanted to avoid punishment for taking over more than three acres of Biroja’s husband Shonkor Debnath’s property and then murdering him. The murderers, Tajul Islam and Chora Badshah, had been sentenced to be hanged to death by the Supreme Court. The verdict was now four months old. Was Sudhamoy bringing it up to console himself? He was trying to tell himself that it was possible for Hindus to get justice in this country. He wanted to say that Hindus and Muslims were equally respected and Hindus were not second-class citizens.

  ‘Did you go to the procession for communal harmony yesterday, Suronjon? How many people were there?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘All the parties except the Jamaat had taken to the streets, hadn’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The government is providing police protection, right?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Have you seen the truckloads of police personnel guarding both ends of the Shakhari Bazar area?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘The Hindus have opened their shops again, haven’t they?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘Things in Bhola are very bad, aren’t they? Is that really so, Suronjon? Or are the reports exaggerated?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘They probably beat up Goutom because of personal enmity, didn’t they? Did he smoke hashish and such stuff?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  Suronjon’s air of indifference dampened Sudhamoy’s enthusiasm. He spread out the newspaper in front of him.

  ‘You probably don’t read the newspapers,’ he said. He sounded disappointed.

  ‘What’s the point?’

  ‘There are so many protests all over. So much resistance. I don’t think the Jamaat people will have the gumption to break police barricades and enter temples.’

  ‘What will you do with temples? You want to pray like a Hindu near the end of your life, is it? How does it affect you if temples are ground to dust? Let them break all the temples! I’d be happy.’

  Sudhamoy was taken aback. Suronjon was deliberately hurting his father, the ‘good man’. He could not understand why his father spent so much time on these things. He was a second-class citizen in this country. Why was he, like a complete idiot, taking such pains to prove that he was a citizen with full rights? They had always stayed away from prayers and rituals, always thought of Muslims as brothers and friends, but had any of that helped Sudhamoy, or Suronjon? After all, everyone thought of them as Hindus. Their family had always believed in humanity and humanism, and been committed atheists, but did all of that help them in any way? They had people hurling stones at their house and they lived in constant fear! They continued to live in dread, wondering when the blind anger and fire of communalism would burn them!

  Suronjon remembered the time when he was in Class VII; during lunch hour, what they called ‘the tiffin period’, his classmate Farook had called him aside.

  ‘I’ve got some delicious food from home,’ said Farook, ‘that I don’t want to share with the others. We’ll go up to the terrace and sit on the steps and eat it. All right?’

  It wasn’t like Suronjon was frightfully hungry but he rather liked Farook’s plan. Farook went to the terrace and Suronjon followed. Farook brought out a kebab from his lunch box and gave it to Suronjon. The two friends talked while they ate the kebabs. Suronjon thought that one of these days, he’d bring some of his mother’s delicious narkel naroo as a treat for Farook.

  ‘Who made the kebabs? Your mum?’ he asked Farook. ‘One of these days, I’ll bring some samples of my mother’s cooking for you to taste.’

  ‘Hurrah,’ said Farook, almost as soon as they finished eating and before Suronjon could figure out anything, Farook ran down the stairs.

  Farook told everyone in the class that Suronjon had eaten beef. The others encircled Suronjon and began dancing. Someone pinched him, another slapped him on his head, some pulled at his shirt, while others tried to pull down his trousers, still another stuck his tongue out at him, and some delightedly filled Suronjon’s shirt pocket with dead cockroaches. Suronjon stood with his head lowered, tears rolling down his cheeks. He was not upset because he had eaten beef. He was appalled by the beastliness all around him. He felt disconnected from the boys around him. He felt like he was outside of it all—these ‘friends’ were a certain kind of people and he was another kind of person. He cried his heart out at home and told his father that his friends had conspired to make him eat beef.

  ‘Why’re you crying?’ Sudhamoy had asked, laughing. ‘I’ll get beef from the market tomorrow and we’ll all have fun eating it together.’

  Sudhamoy had bought a cut of beef from the market the next day. Kironmoyee had cooked it too, though reluctantly. Sudhamoy spent almost half the night explaining to her that not eating beef was a silly superstition, many great men had disregarded the ‘don’t eat beef’ cultural norm and the meat, after all, was rather tasty. He suggested that she fry the meat with chillies. Gradually, Suronjon had been able to overcome the shame, fear, anger and prejudices of his childhood. Sudhamoy was the guide and teacher of the family. Suronjon thought his father was a Superman-like person. It was no longer possible for a person to remain alive if he were as honest as Sudhamoy, so innocent, so full of wholesome thoughts, so sensitive and full of love, and so genuinely without any communal feelings.

  Suronjon did not even touch the newspaper. He slipped away quietly from his father’s room. He did not want to bend over the papers, read the critical statements that intellectuals had made about the communal riots, or see photographs of peace marches and feel a comforting peace overcome him. No, Suronjon did not want any of that. He kept searching for the cat. A casteless cat. Cats have no caste or community. How he wished he were a cat!

  Three

  How many days was it before Sudhamoy returned from the camp? Seven days? Six? He was always very thirsty at the camp. So very thirsty that even when his arms and legs were bound and he was blindfolded, he had tried searching for wa
ter by rolling on the floor. There was no chance of finding any water there, although he could hear the sounds of the Brahmaputra River at a distance. At the camp, they did not bother to fill the water pots.

  Sudhamoy felt that his chest and tongue were bone dry all the time. He would moan for water and the soldiers would laugh horribly. One day they did give him water! They took off Sudhamoy’s blindfold, and before his eyes two soldiers urinated into a pot. They tried to pour the urine down Sudhamoy’s throat but he turned his face away in disgust. However, one soldier held his face such that Sudhamoy could not close his mouth. Another poured the pee into his mouth. The other soldiers at the camp laughed as they watched. The warm, salty liquid trickled down his throat and Sudhamoy silently wished for poison.

  Very often, they would hang him from the roof beams and beat him. As they beat him they said that he should become a Muslim. They wanted him to recite the kalma and convert. This was like in Alex Haley’s Roots, where the black boy Kunta Kinte was whipped by men who wanted him to say that his name was Toby but he kept telling them that he was Kunta Kinte. One day, after Sudhamoy had steadfastly refused to become a Muslim, they lifted his lungi and said that since he hadn’t agreed to becoming a Muslim, they were going to circumcise him—they sliced off his penis. Then they held up his organ and laughed. They laughed like they had when they’d made him drink urine. Sudhamoy

  then lost consciousness. He had no hope of getting out alive. The other Hindus who were tied up there, in that camp,

  were frightened into converting to Islam. Even then they were not allowed to live. They probably let Sudhamoy live because they had kindly ‘circumcised’ him. Since he came back alive in such a state, he could not possibly go to Nalitabari.

  His body had been lain next to the drain near the government guest house. He was alert, therefore he realized that he was bleeding but not dead. Even to this day Sudhamoy was amazed to recall that he had actually made it to his Brahmopolli house with those broken ribs. It was probably that internal strength that still left him unmoved. He had come home and fallen flat on his face before Kironmoyee. She had shaken like a leaf.

  Kironmoyee had then decided to take Sudhamoy away. They left their home and took the ferry across the Brahmaputra. The two naive children with them would often burst into tears. Kironmoyee could not cry. Her tears were gathering deep within her.

  ‘Let me call a maulvi. Recite the kalma and become Muslims. This’ll make things easier. Please explain all this to Maya’s father,’ Faijul’s mother would often tell her.

  Kironmoyee had not cried even then. She had bottled up her deep, intimate pain. Once everyone in the house was asleep, she would cut up saris and bandage Sudhamoy’s wound. She did not cry. She had cried when the whole village began to celebrate, when they were happy with the birth of Bangladesh—Joy Bangla! She did not bother to think about what the villagers might think. She flung herself on Sudhamoy’s chest and wept all the tears she had collected. She cried out loud, like a baby.

  And now, every time Sudhamoy looked at Kironmoyee he thought that she was storing tears like she had during those nine months in 1971. Suddenly one day, she would cry and her unbearable silence would end. But now, she was storing sadness inside her like dark clouds. One fine day, there would be rains and all of it would flow out. There would be some good news, news of the Liberation, like Joy Bangla. Some day, maybe, they would get news of complete freedom—a freedom that allows women to wear conch-shell bangles and sindoor and men to wear dhotis. When would they be rid of the suffocating and fearful long nights like those in 1971? Sudhamoy found that there were no patients coming to him any more. He used to get around six or seven patients even on stormy, rainy days. He did not like sitting at home all day. Sometimes processions passed by shouting slogans like ‘naraye takbeer allahu akbar’ and ‘Hindus, if you wish to live, this land of ours, you must quit’. The house could be bombed any moment, the fundamentalists could set everything on fire; the house could be plundered or someone in the household could get murdered. Were the Hindus leaving? Sudhamoy knew that since 1990 many had left the country. The new census did not enumerate the Hindus and Muslims separately. If that had been done, there would have been specific information about the number of Hindus who had left the country.

  Sudhamoy’s bookshelf was dusty. He tried to blow the dust away. That was not easy! So he used one end of his kurta, and chanced upon the annual report of the Census Bureau of the Government of Bangladesh. It was the census report of 1986 with figures from 1974 and 1981. The total population of the Chittagong Hill Tracts in 1974 was 508,000 and in 1981 it became 580,000. In 1974 there were 96,000 Muslims and 188,000 in 1981. In 1974 there were 53,000 Hindus and 66,000 in 1981. The rate of increase in the number of Muslims was 95.83 per cent and in the number of Hindus, 24.53 per cent. In Comilla in 1974 the number of Muslims was 5,250,000 and in 1981 it became 6,600,000. Hindus were 564,000 in 1974 and 565,000 in 1981. The growth rate among Muslims was 20.13 per cent, and for the Hindus, 0.18 per cent. The population in Foridpur had increased by 17.34 per cent between 1974 and 1981. The number of Muslims was 3,100,000 in 1974 and in 1981, it was 3,852,000, with a growth rate of 24.26 per cent. In 1974 the number of Hindus was 942,000 and in 1981 it was 894,000, with a rate of growth of −5.30 per cent. The population of Pabna increased by 21.13 per cent from 1974 to 1981. There were 2,546,000 Muslims in 1974; in 1981 the number increased to 3,167,000. The Hindus, on the other hand, numbered 260,000 and in 1981 they were 251,000. The growth rate of Muslims was 24.39 per cent and of Hindus, −3.46 per cent. In Rajshahi district, the population increased by 23.78 per cent. The Muslim population increased by 27.20 per cent while the Hindu population dropped by −9.68 per cent. In 1974 there were 558,000 Hindus, and in 1981 there were 503,000. Sudhamoy found some figures on page 112 of this book of statistics. In 1974 the Hindus were 13.5 per cent of the total population; in 1981, they were 12.1 per cent.

  Where were the missing Hindus? Sudhamoy rubbed his spectacles on his sleeve. Were they leaving? Why? Did freedom lie in going away? Should they not have stayed and fought? Sudhamoy wanted to berate the Hindus who had gone away—they were cowards. Sudhamoy was not feeling well. While trying to put back the census report on the shelf, he felt his arm lacked its usual strength. When he called out to Kironmoyee, he noticed that his tongue felt heavy. He felt almost as if a wolf were at his door. A persistent wolf. When he tried to take a few steps, he noticed that his right leg was not as strong either.

  ‘Kiron! Kiron!’ he called out.

  Kironmoyee had been cooking dal in the kitchen. She left it and went to Sudhamoy. He tried to stretch his right arm towards her but it flopped and fell.

  ‘Kiron, can you take me to our bed, please?’

  She could not really figure out what had happened. He was trembling so! And why was his speech slurred? ‘What’s the matter with you?’ she asked, as she helped Sudhamoy to their bed.

  ‘Where’s Suronjon?’ he asked.

  ‘He’s gone out. He didn’t listen to me.’

  ‘I’m not feeling good, Kiron. Do something, please.’

  ‘Why is your speech slurred? What’s the matter?’

  ‘My right hand is weak. And my right leg. Kironmoyee, am I getting paralysed?’

  Kironmoyee hugged Sudhamoy tight. ‘Heaven forbid!’ she said. ‘You’re weak, dear, because you’re not sleeping well. That must be it. You’re not eating properly either.’

  Sudhamoy was restless and could not stay still. ‘Kiron, am I dying? Oh, this is awful!’

  ‘What shall I do? Shall I call Horipodo?’ she asked.

  Sudhamoy gripped Kironmoyee’s hand. ‘Kiron, please don’t go. Stay with me,’ he pleaded. ‘Where is Maya?’

  ‘She’s there at Parul’s. She hasn’t come back.’

  ‘Where’s my son, Kiron? My son?’

  ‘Why’re you babbling so?’

  ‘Kiron, open the doors and
windows, please.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘I need some air. Some light.’

  ‘Let me call Horipodo babu. You lie down quietly, please.’

  ‘Those Hindus have left home. Call Maya.’

  ‘There’s no one I can send to call her.’

  ‘Kiron, don’t leave me even for a second. Call Suronjon.’

  Sudhamoy murmured something else but Kironmoyee could not understand him. She shivered. Should she call out to her neighbours? Someone she had lived in close contact with for so many years? She stopped to think. Who was her neighbour? Whom could she possibly call? Hyder? Goutom? Someone from Shafiq sahib’s house? She felt helpless. The dal began to burn and the house was overrun with smoke and the acrid smell of burning.