It was on one of those mornings that Ghadiya hinted at what she had seen on the dangerous journey north.
She and Hasina had been playing hide-and-seek in the long grass beside the road when Ghadiya let out a sharp scream. She seemed transfixed by an old rag lying draped over clumps of grass, and at first Hasina thought her cousin had seen a snake crawl under it.
Hasina bent over to lift it up carefully. ‘It’s just a piece of cloth, see? It’s only an old longyi someone has thrown away.’
‘No!’ Ghadiya screamed and turned away.
‘But there’s nothing here,’ Hasina soothed. ‘Have a look.’
Ghadiya had not wanted to have a look. Instead, she limped ahead as fast as she could, stopping only when she was at the pump. She washed her hands again and again, scrubbing them until they were red. Only then did she offer an explanation in a flat voice.
‘There was a girl I met on the way here. Her name was Rivka. She died. They covered her with a longyi and left her in the field.’
She has never spoken about it again.
Hasina puts her father’s tiffin down on a large flat rock. She is hungry and thirsty, and there is still a long way to walk.
‘Are you ready for a drink, Araf?’
‘Yes! I am very thirsty.’
Hasina leans on the long pump handle with both hands and her whole weight. Slowly, the handle shifts. Then, she hauls the handle hard upwards. Down then up, down then up, she pumps harder and harder until her arms burn and her breath come in gasps. It takes several minutes of pumping before the pressure builds up and the water begins to rise.
‘Let me pump,’ Araf pleads. ‘I am very strong.’
‘Okay, get ready …’
She pumps for a few more strokes. Only when it is easy and the pump is loose does she let Araf place his tiny hands at the bottom of the handle.
‘One, two, three, four …’ Araf counts. Magically, water streams from the nozzle.
Araf squeals his delight and immediately lets go to cup his hands beneath the gush. Hasina is ready for him, holding tightly to the handle so it doesn’t fly upwards. The last thing she wants to do is break the pump. She knows how very lucky they are to have a standpipe on Third Mile Street. Ever since the water supplies were cut at Eight Quarters, four years ago, girls from other parts of Teknadaung have had to walk half an hour one way and then another half-hour back from the river or creek nearest to their home.
Hasina watches as Araf drinks deeply, then braces herself.
‘It’s raining,’ Araf cries, splashing water all over Hasina.
Hasina laughs. ‘It’s pouring,’ she shouts, splashing him back before bending her own head to the pipe to drink. It is an old rhyme Asmah taught them.
The water is cool and tastes of earth. It feels cool on her skin too, especially with the breeze from the river. Ah, that is better. She stands up and eases her shoulders before drinking in the landscape.
‘Long, long ago,’ Asmah would begin another of her stories, ‘before your great-grandmother and even your great-great-great-great-grandmother were born on this very spot, people from all around the Bay of Bengal came to Arakan to trade and see its wonders. They didn’t need roads; the rivers, streams and brooks were the roads, and you could paddle up and down between the villages or sail from settlement to settlement along the bay.’
Hasina loves the lush heart of Rakhine best. Ahead of her, the jade-green hills slope down from the mountains. Water from the frequent rains which fall from April to November drains along these slopes and runs into rivers, tracing Rakhine over and over again with streams and chaungs, smaller waterways. From one season to the next, the whole countryside changes. Hasina loves how one month, you might live in a field; the next, on an island. How you might see a bridge swinging over air and know that the air would become a river during the rains. All those rivers and streams were now full. In November, one could go anywhere by boat. As for fishing, well, as Dadi Asmah says, ‘just dip your fishhook into the water to bring up something tasty for your dinner’.
It is the Farak River that they must cross now to get to the bazaar where her father waits for his lunch. All the talk of helicopters with their neighbours has delayed them. Her father will be hungry. She herself is ravenous.
Three paths open out before her. To the left, a narrow, raised, sandy footpath leads to the Lower Forest, a stand of palms and teak trees. This shady forest, only a few hundred metres away, is where Hasina and Ghadiya gather wood for cooking. The bazaar, on the other hand, is at the centre of Teknadaung, which lies across the river. There are two ways to get there. The long way and the short way.
The long way is south, along the river towards the Rohingya paddy fields, and the paved road leading to the metal bridge over the Farak. This is also the way to the wide piece of open ground where Hasina used to play soccer. With a pang she realises it has been over a year since she last ran up and down, dribbling the ball past her friends. None of her girlfriends are allowed to play soccer anymore. Hasina misses those games, standing with her back to the river and looking out across the paddy fields, sometimes even seeing her mother at work.
But there is a shorter way to the centre of Teknadaung. The bazaar is actually directly ahead, in a straight line from the standpipe. If you cross the river right here, you could be there in fifteen minutes. Problem is the Farak River. It rises, it falls. There are dangerous currents.
The short way means crossing the Children’s Bridge, a floating bridge made of three pontoons tied together with big ropes that loop around wooden posts rammed low into both river banks. The bridge rises when the rivers and creeks fill up at the end of the monsoon. If you didn’t know where it was, you wouldn’t know it was there. But every kid in Eight Mile knows the bridge. Dadi Asmah remembers the same bridge from when she was a child. Just like in her day, there is only a rope handrail.
The Children’s Bridge is fun; the pontoons tilt crazily under your weight. That tilting makes it dangerous for adults. Anyone weighing more than a child risks being dumped into the deep, fast water. Children too have been swept away. Nurzamal has forbidden Hasina and Araf from using the bridge under any circumstances. At fourteen, Hasina is almost too big for the bridge. As for Ghadiya, she hates the Children’s Bridge. Her limp makes the pontoons feel too unstable and the rushing water terrifies her.
But sometimes, Hasina tells herself, you need to take a risk, break the rules a little.
‘Araf, can you keep a secret?’
‘I am very good at keeping secrets.’
‘We are going to cross the Children’s Bridge. But you have to promise not to tell Mama. Or she will be angry.’ ‘Promise.’ Then, as if to prove it, Araf runs ahead of Hasina, scampering down the steep bank to the pontoons.
‘Araf!’ Hasina calls. ‘Wait!’ She scrambles down the riverbank after him.
Araf may be too short for the hand rope, but he is agile. He holds onto a stake as he lowers himself onto the first pontoon, which barely shifts beneath his weight. He is across it in a flash.
‘Whoa, Araf!’ Hasina shouts. ‘Be careful!’
‘Be quick,’ he grins back, jumping onto the next pontoon and the one after that. In a moment, he is at the top of the other bank.
Hasina casts a glance upstream as she crosses the bridge. Beneath the pontoons, she can feel the current of the river. The banks rise high, so high she cannot see above them. What she can see, looming over her from the north, is the High Forest, a dark and sinister tangle of palms and teak and banyan trees on top of rocky hills that rise above the Arakanese paddy fields on one side and end in cliffs on the other. Ogres and tigers lurk in these knotted woods.
‘If you are naughty,’ Nurzamal and every other parent in Teknadaung say, ‘I will take you to the High Forest and leave you there.’
Hasina has never been in the High Forest. Even though it is broad daylight, and she is too old for tales of ogres, looking up into those trees still makes her shudder. She forces herself to turn
away and follows Araf up the riverbank and into town.
Chapter 5
On the other side of the river, Teknadaung changes. The Farak divides Muslim on one side from Buddhist on the other.
‘It wasn’t always that way,’ Dadi Asmah has told Hasina. ‘Once, Muslim and Buddhist, Rohingya and Arakanese lived side by side with all the others too. That’s why the old mosque is just a few blocks from the bazaar.’
Hasina still misses the azan floating across the fields, marking the moments that made up your day.
Hasina hurries Araf up the hill through the Arakanese paddy fields and towards the bazaar. As they rush up the main street, she is careful not to catch the eyes of the officers in blue and grey as they pass the police station. She keeps her face to the ground as they pass the old Portuguese fort walls, where Arakanese men sit and spit betel juice at the ground. She glances to see if the foreigners have opened the International Aid office. When she and Araf come to the Basic Education School, the government school where she used to learn, she cannot help but stop.
She scans the yard, looking for a familiar face. A group of boys hit a woven rattan ball up into the air with their knees, feet or elbows. They twist and turn, doing whatever they have to do to keep the chinlone ball off the ground. They would make great soccer players, Hasina thinks. On a shaded bench, two girls sit with an open textbook, talking over some problem. Hasina wonders if it is a maths book. In another part of the yard, four girls run after a soccer ball, their plaits flying behind them. But she doesn’t see anyone she knows.
Araf pulls at her arm. ‘Let’s go.’
Still, she lingers.
It has been four years since Hasina was forced to leave government school. How she wishes she could wear one of those green and white school uniforms again. Green is the colour for learning, and teachers in Myanmar and all students wear crisp white shirts with a green longyi.
Hasina sighs. She is lucky, she knows that. When she was little, Dadi Asmah insisted she go to school and paid for it as long as possible too. She has Aunt Rukiah, a real teacher. But still. To have conversations about what is in the textbook. To have a textbook. To fly around the paved yard like those girls, chasing a soccer ball. These girls have nice faces. They might have been her friends, even though she is a Rohingya.
Suddenly, Hasina feels very old. Fourteen is old. Fourteen is thinking about getting married. Fourteen is thinking about a husband. And children.
‘Come on!’ Araf tugs at her hand.
Just then, the girl with the longest plait swipes the soccer ball too hard and it flies out the gate. Instinctively Hasina lunges, catching it with her right foot before flicking it back in a perfect arc. The girl scoops it up and gives her a thumbs up, then drops the ball and plays on as if nothing has happened.
‘Come on, Hasina! TV!’
‘Coming.’ She grins at Araf.
Hasina and Araf thread their way through the clutch of bicycles and motorbikes that crowd the front of the bazaar. They dodge the country women, their vegetables and fish laid out for sale on old longyis at the entrance.
The bazaar is at the top of a hill in a direct line from the riverside docks. Her father once told her that the British built the bazaar in exactly this spot so that they could roll barrels of toddy rum and rice down the hill and straight into the hull of the ships that used to sail up the river.
Old as the bazaar is, there were older things in Teknadaung. The golden stupa, for example, that gleams high up against the dark green of the forest and marks an age-old Buddhist shrine. Or the wall of blue painted stones, remains of a forgotten palace. Near the river, a Christian cross marks the ruins of a Portuguese church. Dadi Asmah used to point these things out to Hasina when she was little, saying that in these buildings you could read the whole history of not just Rakhine, but of Burma too.
Suddenly Araf drops her hand. ‘Catch me!’ he shouts, hurtling off as fast as his six-year-old legs allow, ducking past bicycles, leaping over an elderly woman selling mustard greens.
Hasina laughs. Araf is annoying, Araf is noisy, but he is also predictable. She knows he is heading straight for the television at the front of the bazaar, where the Arakanese stalls are. Nurzamal would have stopped him with tales of small boys being kidnapped to be sold as slaves to highway teashops, where the big trucks pass. Hasina isn’t sure if these stories are true or just for scaring children. Besides, if there is one place where she feels most comfortable in all of Teknadaung, it is the bazaar.
People still mix here as they did in the old days. Something about entering that building makes her forget what is going on outside. This is where people come for news as well as shopping. Hasina loves the smells – spices, delicious things frying, fabrics and thanaka, perfumes from places like Arabia and America. She loves threading her way through the narrow little laneways to her family stall, which is at the other side of the building in the Rohingya section.
But when Hasina arrives at the front of the bazaar, it is to find a knot of people staring up at the TV. Araf is standing by himself, off to one side, also watching.
It seems like all the Arakanese men and women of the bazaar are here. Hasina can’t see any of the Rohingya stallholders who normally stop to watch. A news program is on the screen, the announcer speaking in Myanmar. Thanks to Aunt Rukiah’s lessons and Dadi Asmah’s bookshelves, Hasina knows fluent Burmese. The announcer’s voice is quick and excited, and she is talking about Muslims: specifically, Chittagonian Bengali Muslims.
This is the name the government insists on using instead of ‘Rohingya’, which is not allowed. Using ‘Rohingya’ is to admit that Hasina’s people are at home in Myanmar, and are one of the original groups, or what the government calls ‘taing-yin-thar’. ‘Bengali’ implies they are foreigners, from Bangladesh – strangers who do not belong here. Those words, ‘Chittagonian Bengali Muslims’, always make Hasina feel uneasy. She knows that she is Rohingya. It hurts her to think of herself as nameless in the same way it hurts that she can’t go to school.
But then the announcer uses a word that makes Hasina’s blood run cold. Terrorist. Muslim terrorist. There are other words that the announcer shortens to ARSA. This is new to Hasina, but instantly she knows it must be even worse than being called Bengali. ‘Terrorist’ means someone who is dangerous rather than simply unwanted.
Again and again the announcer repeats two words. Always together. Terrorist and Muslim. Muslim and terrorist. Muslim terrorist.
Muslim, like her and Araf.
Does that mean that everyone here, watching the TV, will think they are also terrorists?
Chapter 6
Hasina feels like she has swallowed a stone. Suddenly, her numal doesn’t feel dignified or modest or even polite. Instead, it feels like something that marks her out, that draws attention to her. Muslim.
Hasina watches as flames from a burning building flicker across the television screen, followed by a picture of soldiers running, their guns pointed. Then there is a picture of women sitting on the ground crying. Then police in blue and grey uniforms walk along a street just like Third Mile Street. The voice in Burmese goes on and on. The newsreader sounds serious and angry. She talks about Sit Tat, the Myanmar Army. She talks about terrorists. She uses the term ARSA again and again.
But even though the announcer is talking about people and groups Hasina’s never heard of, or even met, she feels as if the announcer is speaking directly to her. As if all this is Hasina’s fault. As is Hasina herself is a terrorist.
Lucky none of the men have noticed her. They are all watching the screen, arms crossed tight against their bodies. She can see their fear rising, their anger too. The women are putting hands on hips. Hasina feels the stone in her stomach getting bigger and bigger. She reaches for her brother’s hand, holds it tight. If they’re quiet and quick, maybe they can retrace their steps and circle the building. They could enter the bazaar from another door, the door nearer the Rohingya stalls. They must avoid these angry people who are
now scared of Muslims who are also terrorists. She’s gently pulling Araf away when the image on the TV screen changes.
Suddenly, there are helicopters just like the ones they saw this morning. The men and women beneath the screen murmur and gasp their recognition. Araf pulls his hand from hers and points a stubby finger at the screen and in loud, piercing Rohingya language, cries, ‘Look, Hasina! Look!’
All the Arakanese stallholders turn to face Hasina and Araf.
A dozen angry men and women who have just been hearing all about Muslim terrorists now turn to find a Muslim – a Rohingya Muslim – in front of them.
Hasina feels their eyes burning into her as they take in her numal. The stone in her stomach gets heavier. Will she have to run from these people? Isn’t that what Ghadiya said happened down south – that angry Buddhists started to attack her people? If she has to run, where is there to go? How will she take Araf with her? The stone in her stomach will slow them both down.
And then Araf does it again.
‘Heliwopter,’ he calls out, as loud as anything.
‘Heliwopters?’ a man beneath the TV says out loud.
‘Wop wop wop,’ Araf replies.
Hasina holds her breath. The whole of the bazaar seems to hold its breath. They are waiting to see what the Arakanese man will do, deciding if they’re going to be angry or not.
The man’s round Arakanese face is kind; his eyes twinkle as if to ask, What does this wop wop wop mean? He looks the same age as her father. Maybe he has children himself. Maybe he has a little boy like Araf. He looks puzzled, not angry. But puzzled can so quickly become angry.
Hasina tightens her grip on Araf’s hand. If they need to run, which way? Right or left? Are they small enough to wriggle through the tiny passageway between the stalls and evade capture?
Then the man starts to laugh. ‘Wop, wop, wop, wop?’ He smiles and nods at Araf.
‘Wop wop wop,’ Araf says back.
Hasina: Through My Eyes Page 3