Hasina: Through My Eyes

by Michelle Aung Thin

  Isak is slowly rebuilding the Brothers & Sons Puppet Stall. Hasina knows it is because he needs something to do with his hands. Nowadays, he is accompanied by princes, magicians or nagars as well as Daamini. The grey and white cat loves to prowl through the alcove, emitting high pitched yowls when she finds something to her taste. Isak brings news too. ‘The school has not yet reopened,’ he tells her. ‘Nobody thinks it ever will.’ And later, ‘The farmers are still not in their paddy fields. They should be fertilising by now. There will be a rice shortage for sure.’

  Hasina doesn’t know how he lives when she doesn’t see him. His eyes are too dark now. At times, he curls deep into himself and far away from her, closer to the dead than the living.

  ‘When are you coming to live with us?’ Araf demands. ‘Dadi Asmah has given permission.’

  But Isak refuses. ‘It would not be proper,’ he says. ‘Besides,’ he confides in Hasina, ‘you have enough to do.’ She wonders if he feels closer to his father and uncle and brother here in the bazaar. If only she could tell him that she needs him. That she aches to have him around, not just to remind her of how life used to be either.

  Her other regular companion is U Ko Yin, his questions as relentless as the rain. He waits until Isak has gone and then pounces.

  ‘Where is your baba? Has he run away?’

  ‘You have so few things to sell on your stall. How will you survive?

  ‘Why doesn’t Araf come work for me?’

  ‘He should mind his own business,’ Isak storms. ‘Nobody here likes U Ko Yin. Haven’t you noticed that nobody is buying his foreigner’s rice?’

  That may be, but still, U Ko Yin’s questions make her worry. How will they survive? She doesn’t know.

  It is on a particularly dull, wet day that U Ko Yin drops by to spy on Hasina just as Isak is testing out his new ogre puppet.

  ‘Oh dear,’ begins U Ko Yin, ‘I see your father is still not here.’

  ‘No,’ growls Isak, ‘but I am here. And so is my friend.’ Then Isak pulls the ogre’s string so that he rises magically into the air, his mouth opening to show rows of scary, sharp teeth. Right then, Daamini emits one of her chilling yowls.

  ‘Urk,’ gulps U Ko Yin, startled by the snapping mouth and realistic fangs. ‘Ah well, must be going.’

  When he is out of sight, Isak and Hasina laugh and laugh – and then stop.

  ‘When was the last time you laughed?’ Isak asks Hasina.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she admits. Isak’s eyes darken, his face falls.

  ‘Me neither. My Uncle Sultan used to say, laugh too hard and you will have to cry.’

  If only she could cry. If only she could feel again. But Hasina’s heart is too broken for feeling.

  One day at the rubbish pile she hears a sharp mwwouch, a sound between a kiss and a whistle. It is the kind Arakanese man who changed the channel on the TV a whole year ago, the day the helicopters came.

  The man is busily breaking up boxes for the rubbish. He seems so engrossed in his tasks that, for a moment, Hasina thinks she’s misheard. But then, again, there’s that smooching sound. She turns. He catches her eye and nods, almost without seeming to nod.

  Hasina feels a prickle of fear along the back of her neck. She is about to scurry away when he walks close, as if to pass her. Under his breath he mutters, ‘You have not run away, like the others.’

  ‘No,’ she replies. To anybody watching, it would look as if the man isn’t speaking to her at all.

  ‘You are not safe. We cannot control our own people and the military wish to destroy yours.’

  His words bring back that old stone-in-her-stomach feeling.

  ‘Bad men are coming in on trucks. Kidnapping girls. Stealing young boys. If you must stay, be careful.’

  Then the man turns and leaves the rubbish mound. Where he was standing is a white bag. Hasina picks it up. It is full of rice.

  That night, while Dadi Asmah is still awake, Hasina tells her about the Arakanese man’s warning.

  ‘Maybe Araf and Ghadiya should stay here with you?’ Hasina frets. Then, all of the things worrying her seem to flow out of her. ‘And the rice he gave us will only last us so long. And we are running out of things to sell at the stall. We need to harvest our paddy field. But how we will manage it, Dadi?’

  ‘We will find a way,’ says Dadi Asmah, her eyes already heavy, ready for sleep. She reminds Hasina of the teachings of the Qur’an. ‘No pain, big or small, is wasted or meaningless. All pain is counted and compensated by Allah.’

  Pain, Hasina thinks, is something I have in abundance. There is the pain of being abandoned, of losing almost everything, of having to carry on despite it all. ‘Maybe we should have run away, like Baba and Mama,’ Hasina growls.

  Dadi Asmah sighs sadly. She puts an arm around Hasina and pulls her close.

  ‘Hasina, it takes strength to stay. Courage too. We will find a way.’

  The next day at the bazaar, Hasina complains to Isak. ‘When Dadi Asmah says we, she means me.’

  ‘I have no we,’ Isak murmurs. ‘I have just me.’

  A tailor opens his stall again in the Rohingya section. A few more customers venture to the back of the bazaar. And then, before Hasina knows it, one month has become two.

  It is as the rains are at their thickest that fever breaks out in Teknadaung. Dadi Asmah develops a nasty cough that wracks her tiny frame. A new fear squeezes Hasina’s chest. What would she do without Dadi?

  U Ko Yin adds white boxes of fever medicine, foreigner’s pills, and many people come to buy them. They even start to buy his foreigner’s rice. Finally he’s selling something. Every few days, a man in a brown longyi tops up the boxes of medicines and the bags of rice with AID stamped on them.

  ‘That rice will sell too,’ U Ko Yin boasts to Hasina. ‘So many people have left that there will be no harvest. All those paddy fields will spoil. The grains will go yellow and then fall. And when that happens’ – U Ko Yin rubs his hands with glee – ‘then even foreigner’s rice will be worth a fortune.’

  Soon, Hasina is facing her own rice shortage. One morning, there is only rice to her knuckles in the bag the Arakanese man gave her. She goes to Dadi Asmah’s bedroom. She runs her fingers along the rows of books. How much would they fetch? she wonders with a pang. What about Aunt Rukiah’s maths book? Is there anything else here they can sell if they have to?

  Dadi Asmah finds her fingering her books. She asks for an explanation.

  ‘I have too many mouths to feed. We need to sell things,’ Hasina retorts sharply.

  Hasina knows it is clear to her grandmother that she means Cat Girl, who eats like a bird and brings food through foraging. Hasina knows she is not being fair.

  ‘One house, many rooms, room for all. That is our Burma. Otherwise we would be as bad as the men with eyes like demons,’ her grandmother reminds her. ‘You will find a way, Hasina.’

  And then her grandmother coughs so hard, Hasina fears she will break into pieces. Later that day, when U Ko Yin comes by to ask his daily questions, Hasina wonders how much those medicines with the red letters stamped on them cost. Is it true that they are meant to be free? That they are meant to help people like her? She would like some help.

  I must find a way, she thinks.

  If there is a bright spot, it is Rashid’s calls on the hand phone. She is familiar now with its metallic chirrup. She has even run her fingers across the keypad, worked out how to use the buttons. At the end of each call, Rashid asks them all to recite the number of the lawyer in Sittwe. The man who can help. ‘Call him if you need him.’

  But the lawyer is far away in Sittwe, the big city. He cannot find them food.

  Late one afternoon, Isak rushes over, his face alight.

  ‘Hanif the tailor has heard people from Teknadaung are at a camp called Kutupalong. Ask your uncle. Maybe he can find out if it is true.’

  When Uncle Rashid calls back a few nights later, his voice is animated. ‘Tara’s mother, Sabika
m Nahor, is in the camp. She thinks she saw Aunt Rukiah.’ Then he calls again. ‘Sabikam Nahor says someone else has reported seeing two women and a man from Third Mile Street. It could be them.’

  The news leaves Hasina full of hope that soon her parents will be found and maybe even return. That they will take care of things as they once did. But hope also hurts. In the night, all that hope drips away. She turns to Ghadiya, sleeping beside her, and whispers, ‘Soon we will have no more rice … We need to harvest, but how will we do that?’ The only reply is Ghadiya’s breathing.

  So Hasina gets up before Fagr. She wakes the others. She leads them to the bank of the river, where they collect water. She sits behind the dwindling goods at the stall. She comes home with their shopping. She lights the evening fire. She makes plans with Asmah and Ghadiya.

  Two months become almost three. The rain begins to ease. The days cool down. The paddy plants begin to droop, heavy with rice grains. In the mornings, fog rises from the river.

  But through it all, the hollow feeling remains. For now it is months since the world as she knew it was burnt to ash. Nothing can ever be the same again.

  Chapter 21

  It is on a crisp, fresh morning that the trucks return to town.

  They are on their way to their paddy field – Dadi Asmah, Ghadiya, Araf and Cat Girl as well. Harvest time is coming, and nobody has checked the rice crop for pests, or checked the rice heads.

  Hasina’s heart jumps when she first sees the trucks. The day at the bazaar flashes through her mind – the young soldier, the terrifying voice.

  ‘Hide!’ she hisses to the others, as she drags Araf towards an oleander bush.

  Only Ghadiya stands her ground. She points out that these are not the olive-green or brown Sit Tat trucks. They do not have long rows of facing bench seats for soldiers to sit. These are trucks of all different sorts. Some have shiny new materials piled up on flat beds behind the cab. Some are dump trucks with massive tippers on the back, full of grey gravel. Others are cargo trucks, carrying woven bamboo sheets, aluminium posts, rolls and rolls of thick blue plastic sheeting and rolls and rolls of wire. One massive truck is carrying two yellow bulldozers chained to the deck.

  ‘What are they here for, Dadi?’ Hasina asks.

  ‘Nothing good,’ Dadi Asmah replies, and walks on ahead, leaning on Ghadiya.

  It is impossible not to feel impressed at the arrival of so many shiny trucks, with their big wheels and brightly painted sides. Araf, hand in hand with Cat Girl, lingers, gazing at them all. ‘I do like trucks,’ he sighs longingly.

  ‘Come on, we’d better catch up with Dadi.’ But Araf won’t budge. He’s enthralled by the trucks. Cat Girl waits patiently by his side.

  The trucks are lined up past the open field where Hasina once played soccer, at the edge of Eight Quarters District. Only a few months ago, this was a busy place, full of houses and kids and animals and gardens, separated from the flooded paddy fields by an empty spit of land. Now, grey ash marks where those houses and families were, and it is the spit of land that is busy with people.

  For along with the trucks and their drivers come construction workers, men wearing hard hats. Truck drivers sleep in the big cabins of their vehicles – Hasina sees them emerging with sleep-filled eyes, yawning and stretching and adjusting their longyis. These men in hard hats are building themselves a village. They are unloading woven bamboo mats, setting up sleeping huts, running a hose down to the river.

  How long are these people planning to stay? What are they here for? Hasina hopes that Dadi is wrong, and that they are here to help those who left when they return. With a pang, she thinks of her parents and her aunt. She can’t wait for the day when they come home. If only there was some more news of them.

  Hasina’s thoughts are interrupted by Araf tugging on her hand. He’s pointing to a red truck with a blue peacock and the words Sittwe Transport painted on the side. A man, the driver, with rumpled black hair and ears that stick out, has just tumbled out of the cab. Not only is the truck memorable, but so is the brown longyi he is wearing. It is crumpled at the hem, which shows he doesn’t care if he ties it at the top or at the bottom.

  This is what Hasina notices about him, anyway. Araf notices the truck. While Cat Girl notices Araf noticing the truck.

  ‘Cool,’ says Araf. ‘Whoa. I would like to drive a truck like that man. I would drive in the morning to my teashop. At lunch, I would work in a teashop. We would be rich.’

  At the sound of Araf’s voice, the man looks up. ‘So you like my truck, do you?’

  Hasina stares at the man in astonishment. Few Burmese or even Arakanese know how to speak the Rohingya language. Araf drops Hasina’s hand and takes a step closer to Brown Longyi. The man continues, ‘You would make a very good teashop boy.’ Then he grins, exposing teeth red with betel nut.

  Hasina moves closer to Araf on one side, Cat Girl on the other.

  ‘Hey, what is your name?’ asks the truck driver.

  ‘Araf. What is your name?’

  The man laughs at Araf’s cheekiness. ‘Zaw Gyi.’ He turns back to his truck and opens the cab door. ‘Would you like to see inside, Araf?’

  ‘Yes, please!’ Araf scrambles up the steps.

  With a lurch of fear, Hasina remembers the warning of the kind Arakanese. She remembers her mother’s stories too, about the boys taken to work as teashop slaves, though Hasina never believed them. Were the stories true? Is this the sort of man who kidnaps boys like Araf ? Araf is already scrambling up into the cabin. How easy it would be for Zaw Gyi to just drive away.

  Cat Girl doesn’t seem to like Zaw Gyi either. Or maybe she doesn’t like to see Araf out of her reach. She leaps forward and grips Araf’s leg, refusing to let him climb in any further.

  Zaw Gyi laughs. Cat Girl emits a low growl.

  ‘Woah!’ exclaims Zaw Gyi, taking a step back. ‘Maybe you’d better come back later, Araf. Alone.’

  ‘Humph,’ Araf protests.

  Even Hasina can’t help but smile. ‘Come out of the truck, Araf. Dadi is waiting.’

  Dadi Asmah and Ghadiya are far ahead now, already at the edge of the construction village.

  Araf climbs down reluctantly.

  ‘Never mind, Araf. I will be here for a few weeks before I go back to Sittwe. We’ve got all these new houses to build.’

  New houses! Does this mean the people of Eight Quarters District are on their way home? Could she ask the truck driver? But before she can decide, Araf does it for her.

  ‘Who are you building new houses for?’

  ‘The people coming to live here, of course.’ Zaw Gyi smiles again. ‘Hey, please wait,’ he says, before climbing into his cab and returning with a box of tamarind jaggery. ‘Here you are.’ He offers Araf one of the sweet-sour drops, and then holds the box out to Cat Girl and finally Hasina. Should she take one? He seems so nice – why does she feel uncertain about him?

  ‘I have a friend with a teashop. He could use a boy like you. You could make enough money to buy your own truck.’

  Hasina shudders on the inside. But outside, she pulls Araf closer to her and then bows low, giving Zaw Gyi a respectful shi-kho. ‘Thank you for the jaggery. We must go now.’

  ‘Okay. Bye, Araf.’

  Hasina hauls Araf and Cat Girl away. The men in hard hats were building new houses, not for those who used to live here, but for new people. If someone built a new house on your old land, how would you get it back? She doesn’t know the answer. And right now, she has other worries.

  This harvest, there is no Nurzamal to work out when the crop is ready. No neighbours to help. Only a sick old lady, a little kid, a girl with a limp and Hasina. Still, she hopes that if they can bring in even a small harvest, then they will have food for the months to come. Rice, oil, salt: the basics of any home in Myanmar.

  Hasina hurries Araf and Cat Girl along. Dadi and Ghadiya are far in the distance, just past the construction village where the land dips away to the paddy fields. Hasina can
see them, two small figures passing a couple of battered blue nylon tents.

  ‘Come on, you two.’

  The closer Hasina gets to the paddy field, the more suspicious those blue tents look to her. They are close enough to the construction village to be part of it, yet they look like they don’t belong with those shiny trucks and busy men in hard hats. Did these tents belong to the kidnappers the kind Arakanese man has warned her about?

  Hasina takes a good look at the tents as she approaches them, Araf and the Cat Girl close behind her.

  Someone inside unzips a flap. Hasina can see a dark eye watching them through the mesh.

  ‘Hello?’ she calls out in Rohingya, her voice firm rather than friendly, then ‘Mingalar bar.’ The person inside zips the flap up fast.

  ‘Come on,’ Hasina says to Araf and Cat Girl, hurrying the others past this strange behaviour.

  They drop down onto one of the sandy paths that crisscross the paddy fields. The rice plants are deep green, the tops golden in colour and bending over with their own weight. Anyone can see that it is time to harvest. But these fields are farmed by the people of Eight Quarters and they are all gone.

  Up ahead at the edge of the paddy fields, Hasina can see a little knot of people. Dadi Asmah, Ghadiya and a man. Is this another driver? As she draws closer, she sees the man is in uniform. He is thickset, his longyi tied up tight. He has a clipboard and a smirk on his face.

  ‘What’s happening?’ she whispers to Ghadiya when they join them.

  ‘The watchman won’t let us go to our land,’ Ghadiya replies.

  ‘What are they saying?’ Araf asks, for his grandmother and the watchman are speaking rapid Burmese.

  Hasina translates. ‘This is my land, Dadi Asmah is telling the man. The crop will go to waste.’

  ‘Can you prove this is your land? You look like a foreigner.’ Except the watchman uses the word ‘kalama’.

  ‘This is my land. It has been my land for generations.’

  Dadi Asmah’s back is straight. Her voice is clear and low. Gone is the sick body, racked by hunger and all those days walking through the woods. Gone is the croaky voice that so frightened Hasina when her grandmother first returned. Instead, Dadi Asmah is a determined woman using all her strength to stand up to this man.