Hasina: Through My Eyes

by Michelle Aung Thin

  ‘Many of your kind have run away. How do I know you are not stealing someone else’s crop?’

  ‘I want to harvest my rice. You can see the fields are full. You can see that the rice will spoil. If the rice spoils, this land will be no good. Who will do the work? You?’

  The man blinks a little.

  ‘We all have to eat, my friend. I am an old woman. Allow me to feed myself and my grandchildren.’

  The man looks embarrassed. It is not normal for young men to be cruel to old women, to be discourteous. And yet, these are not normal times. He looks down to his clipboard. ‘Many foreigners are stealing the rice from the land,’ he mutters. ‘You cannot harvest until I see proof that the land is yours.’

  Stealing crops? This land – all of this land – has been farmed by the residents of Eight Quarters District since before Hasina’s father was even born. In all the years she’s been to her family’s harvests, no one has ever needed proof of ownership.

  ‘And when I bring proof?’

  ‘Then you may harvest.’

  Dadi Asmah gives the man a shallow shi-kho, then turns, her back straight as she walks along the path. ‘Come, Hasina, Ghadiya. Araf. Cat Girl.’

  The Cat Girl slips her thin arm around Dadi Asmah’s waist. In single file they climb up the bank onto the spit of land, passing the nylon tents. Again, the zip whizzes as Hasina passes. Again, a pair of dark eyes peers out at them.

  ‘What do you want?’ Hasina growls at the eyes, and the zip whizzes closed again.

  As they trudge back past the construction workers setting up their village, Hasina falls into step beside her grandmother. ‘The truck driver told us that the men are here to build houses for people moving in, not moving back.’

  Dadi Asmah sighs. ‘They’re trying to starve us out and drive us away. But we can’t let them, Hasina, can we?’

  Chapter 22

  Now it is always the same questions that run through Hasina’s mind. How will I feed my family? How will I get permission to harvest our rice? How will I prove the land and rice belongs to us? She talks them over with Isak at the bazaar.

  ‘Even if you do get permission, how are you going to harvest a crop with a sick old lady and a bunch of small children? You will need help.’

  Isak is mending a puppet of a horse. The horse is charming. It makes Hasina happy but sad too – it reminds her of all they have lost. Isak spins the horse around on its strings and makes it gallop to Hasina, as if to say, I will help, if you let me. Isak’s shoulder is stronger, but he still limps. She would like to ask him. But a girl asking a boy? What will he think of her if she asks for help? Maybe he won’t think of her as strong and clever anymore. Some things she can’t bring herself to do.

  ‘Dadi Asmah seems to have forgotten all about the land anyway.’

  It was true. Dadi Asmah has taken to her room. She has become sick and old again. That dry cough has returned and she eats even less. The cousins are so concerned that Ghadiya stays home with Asmah while Hasina and Araf go to the bazaar, even though Uncle Rashid has told them to stay together. Asmah just sits in her room, opening her old books and flipping through the pages one by one. She reaches into the drawers of her bureau, taking things out and putting them back in again. It is as if she is trying to reach back into the past. As if she has given up the fight. As if her words at the paddy fields – we can’t let them – meant nothing. As if once again, it is up to Hasina to make sure they eat.

  Meanwhile, the rice grains thicken on the stem. Harvest should have begun by now. The rice will go yellow if they cannot prove to the watchman at the paddy field that the land is theirs. Nobody wins if the crop is lost.

  Hasina too has been examining a book. Specifically, the high school maths textbook in Aunt Rukiah’s room. Hasina has always loved its green covers, the smell of the ink off the pages. Once upon a time, she promised herself that she would learn how to do all the problems in that textbook. Now, she sees it in another way. How much is it worth? How much rice can it buy?

  But the book is not hers to sell. It is Aunt Rukiah’s precious possession. One evening when Hasina picks the book up, weighing it in her hand like a packet of lentils, Ghadiya turns on her. ‘That is my mother’s. Do not touch it.’

  If Ghadiya won’t let her sell it, then what? If she’s honest, Hasina would rather not sell the textbook but keep it, if only for selfish reasons. For Ghadiya, it is her mother’s precious possession. For Hasina, the education she will never have. But what are they to eat? Soon, very soon, they will run out of what the Arakanese man gave them.

  When Rashid phones, Hasina tells him of their plight. ‘Uncle, we have no money and little food. Can you help us?’

  Rashid promises to send them money. The question is, how? He will have to find someone with a bank account who is willing to help. Even if he offers a fee, right now no one feels safe helping a Rohingya. ‘It will take a little bit of time,’ he apologises.

  Time is what they do not have. Time is how much rice is left in the bottom of a bag. Time is the pinching of hunger in the belly.

  One good thing is that Aunt Rukiah has phoned Rashid. ‘She is in the Kutapalong camp,’ he tells Ghadiya. ‘She misses you and loves you very much.’

  Ghadiya’s eyes shine with tears of pure joy. She is so ecstatic she hugs the nearest person, which just happens to be Araf. ‘Mama is alive and well!’ she sings.

  ‘Mmmhmmmm!’ Araf shouts grouchily.

  Hasina too feels a rare moment of joy. She loves her Aunt Rukiah. And besides, if Aunt Rukiah has been found, does that mean there is word of her parents too?

  ‘Sorry, Hasina, there is no firm news of your parents. They were separated at the crossing of the River Naf. But she has heard that there are more people from Eight Quarters in another part of the camp. She will find them. We must be patient.’

  Hasina feels she has been nothing but patient.

  One afternoon at the bazaar Araf announces that he has seen Zaw Gyi, the too-friendly truck driver, helping U Ko Yin. ‘He is outside U Ko Yin’s teashop right now.’

  ‘You want to be careful of U Ko Yin,’ Isak warns. Today, he has a puppet nagar, which he has been making dance for Araf. ‘You better show me this Zaw Gyi, so I can see him for myself.’

  Isak creeps over with Araf. ‘There he was,’ Isak reports back to Hasina, ‘just like you described him, sticky-out ears and rumpled hair, and couch potato longyi – crumpled at the hem. We watched him deliver bags of rice and boxes of medicines marked AID –foreigners’ gifts to help our people – to U Ko Yin’s teashop.’

  ‘So, the driver and U Ko Yin know each other,’ Hasina murmurs.

  ‘Yes, they do. And if the driver knows U Ko Yin, then you can bet he is up to no good. Araf,’ Isak says, his voice serious, ‘you keep away from U Ko Yin’s teashop. And that driver too.’

  ‘But he has such a lovely truck!’ Araf wails.

  It is a few weeks after the trip to the paddy fields when Hasina returns home from the bazaar to find Dadi Asmah waiting for her, a wide smile on her face. ‘I’ve got them,’ she says.

  Asmah opens up a faded photograph album. At the front of the album are papers with English writing on them – Hasina recognises the letters, though she cannot read them. Dadi Asmah keeps turning pages until she comes to pictures of a girl. A girl with long braided hair and a hawk-like nose. The girl is Asmah.

  There are many pictures of Dadi Asmah as a girl. There’s one in which the brick house, the one they are in now, is being built. There she is at school, the Anglican Girls School. Hasina recognises the building as the Basic Education School, where she so wished she could study. But it is the picture of the paddy field that has got her grandmother excited. Here is Dadi Asmah as a young girl during the harvest.

  ‘These photographs are proof that this is my land. Tomorrow we go back. Tomorrow we harvest our rice.’

  The next day Dadi Asmah is ready early. They eat the last of their rice cooked into a thin gruel. It is barely enough
to take the edge off the morning hunger, but it must do for breakfast, lunch and dinner. Hasina hopes against hope that Dadi Asmah is right and that they will be able to begin the harvest today.

  Asmah marches them past the trucks, where the bulldozers are flattening out the piles of ash that were once houses. Men in hard hats read from plans, gesticulating here and there. Workmen in singlets and longyis position blue pipes in long rows. She marches them past the nylon tents, with their occupants zipping open the flaps to spy on them. She marches them right up to the watchman.

  ‘Mingalar bar,’ she says in perfect Burmese, bowing her head.

  ‘Mingalar bar,’ the watchman returns nervously, his clipboard at the ready.

  ‘If you do not let us harvest this land, these children will die. This child,’ – Dadi Asmah gestures to Araf – ‘will not eat again until the harvest is in. We want only what is ours. The rice is ready to be harvested. The grains are bursting. It is a sin to let this food go to waste.’

  Hasina watches her grandmother, with her straight back and her head held up, show first one photograph and then the next. The watchman shakes his head, scribbling notes on his clipboard. But it is when Dadi Asmah produces the notes in English that he takes notice. Meekly, he copies down the words that he does not know. And then, he lets them pass.

  Dadi Asmah turns and shoots Hasina a sparkling smile. ‘The crop, my children, is ready for harvest.’

  Hasina stands up and stretches. Her back aches. The sun is burning hot. Already she needs a drink. Ahead of her, Dadi Asmah, Araf and Ghadiya are plodding slowly through the paddy. Hasina looks across the field. There are so many more rice plants to go.

  They have been harvesting the rice for three days. It is not as easy as Hasina had hoped. It is tiring to bend over all day long and cut the paddy into bunches. Too much for Dadi Asmah, who is fading after the effort of standing up to the watchman. The heat too is sapping her grandmother’s strength. Ghadiya is finding it difficult with her limp to keep going in the water. Only the Cat Girl can almost keep up with Hasina – she is as quick with her hands, and lithe as well.

  By Dhurh on the first day, they are all done in, and must spend the hottest part of the day resting in a shaded spot. It doesn’t help that they are working on empty stomachs. Hasina hoped to have a harvest in three days, but now, she knows it will take so much longer. How they will do it without food, she doesn’t know.

  It doesn’t help either that the watchman keeps his beady gaze on them, pretending to note when they come and go on his clipboard. Or that the people of the tent keep watching them as well, the whizz of their tent flap zipping open now a familiar sound.

  Over the next three days they trudge along the spit of land where the construction workers have set up their village. Each day the workers erase more of what were once homes. Each day the bulldozers push the ash into the soil, and along with it the pots and pans and clothes and posters and spectacles and shoes and toys, those things that remain from those burnt-out houses. When the soil is brown again, the men wrap string around bamboo sticks wedged into the soil, measuring out squares and rectangles that will be new houses.

  Hasina feels unbearably sad to see those little sticks with their twists of string rise so quickly. It is as if all those families, all those children, never existed. Never felt hunger or love or warmth or anger or happiness. As if their lives were nothing.

  It makes her feel so hopeless. It doesn’t help that the harvest is taking so much longer than she’d expected. Each day they seem to get less done than the day before.

  Hunger is part of it. Today, all that any of them has eaten is tea made from the last twists of wild ginger and a bit of fish they caught yesterday. Araf has already complained that he is hungry, and Hasina snapped at him and sent him on ahead with Dadi. Ghadiya too has quarrelled with her. They have all been working so hard that at night they have no strength to gather any food. Hunger gnaws at her insides.

  On the fourth morning, as Hasina stretches her aching back, a familiar figure lopes along the path.

  ‘Isak!’ Araf shouts.

  ‘I heard you could do with some help,’ Isak calls to Asmah, smiling his crinkly smile.

  ‘Yes, we can,’ she smiles back.

  ‘Isak,’ Hasina chides, her face pink with embarrassment, ‘I didn’t ask you to come.’

  ‘No,’ Isak admits, ‘Araf did.’ The two boys wink at each other.

  The first thing Isak does is find a shady spot for Dadi Asmah to rest. Then he joins Hasina, standing tall beside her.

  ‘What can I do?’ he asks. But even with Isak, the going is slow. Hunger isn’t the only thing holding them back. Hasina cannot help but remember the harvest of old. Painful memories of her mother taking gifts of rice and blue ducks eggs to her neighbours in Third Mile and the bazaar. Even if they do succeed in bringing in their crop, who will they share it with? Mama and Baba are still only shadows in a faraway camp. And their friends, their neighbours, are all gone.

  Early on the fifth morning, they file past the construction village before dropping down into the paddy field. An old woman, a small boy, a limping girl, a wounded teenager, Cat Girl and Hasina bringing up the rear.

  Five days already, Hasina thinks, and still so much to go. They are surviving on wild guavas now. She pauses by the blue tents to calculate how much longer, watching as the others pick their way through the field. Cat Girl waits by her side.

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Cat Girl says in her broken Burmese. And then, she says something in Mro which sounds like ‘hom, tui.’

  There’s the familiar whizz of the zip. But instead of an eye peeking out, this time the front flap of the tent itself opens and a tiny woman emerges.

  The woman is not interested in Hasina. Instead, she speaks directly to the Cat Girl, who drops Hasina’s hand and cries out, then speaks back rapidly in the same language.

  Then the tiny woman addresses Hasina in faltering Burmese. ‘This girl,’ she says, ‘she is Mro-cha. She is from our people, the humans, or Mro.’

  The woman beckons Hasina to her tent. She pulls back the flap and calls into the tent. Inside is a man, another woman and three children. ‘Mro-cha,’ she says. ‘Husband. Older sister. Children.’

  All the way through the paddy field Cat Girl chatters happily with the woman. When they catch up with the others, it is the older sister who speaks in Mro while the woman, who introduces herself as Lama, translates. ‘We have seen you with this Mro-cha. You saved her. You are kind to her. We wanted to speak to you because you are kind.’

  Lama purses her lips in sorrow. ‘Many of my people have been killed. Some by ARSA. Others by the AA.’

  Then Lama turns to Cat Girl and asks her a few questions. ‘She says that they left the village because men came, men with guns. But when they were at the river, different men came. These had knives. She says there were many people in the forest, not just Mro-cha. Others, walking. She says that you,’ – here Lama looks at Dadi Asmah – ‘are kind and helped her. For that, we Mro-cha thank you.

  ‘We too have had to leave our village. Bad men came to punish us. They thought we were Buddhists who had killed their Muslim friends. There is no one left in our village now.’

  Dadi Asmah tuts. ‘Always, the story is the same. Bad men come, and who suffers?’

  But Lama isn’t done. ‘We are hungry.’

  ‘We have no food to offer,’ Dadi Asmah apologises.

  ‘No,’ says Lama. ‘But you have rice to harvest. And we can help.’

  They begin soon afterwards. Lama insists that Dadi Asmah rest in the shade. Hasina is glad of this. The harvest has taken a serious toll on her grandmother, who is moving painfully slowly and often has to stop what she is doing because of a coughing fit.

  So, the paddy is cut. It is beaten against the wooden frames, the grains falling like rain on the plastic sheet spread to catch them. And then the rice is winnowed, thrown up in the air in a swirling motion so that the light husk blows away but the heavy rice falls
back onto the tray. In two days, the field is cleared and rice is spread on cloths to dry in the sun. After four days, a dozen plump bags of rice sit ready. Some for the Mro-cha to store in their nylon tent, some for Hasina to put away. Some for Isak to keep in his room behind the Brothers & Sons Puppet Stall.

  Hasina cannot help but grin. Satisfaction flows through her. No more starvation! How proud she feels, with the crop harvested and two families fed. Three if you count Isak. If only her mother were here to see it. Tonight, they will all sleep well, knowing that breakfast will be substantial. The only worry is that Dadi Asmah’s skin is tighter across her face. But rest and good food will make her grandmother look less drawn. It will make all of them feel good. Hasina could not be more satisfied.

  It is at the edge of the paddy field that Lama stops and takes Cat Girl by the hand. She bends and whispers to the girl, who nods.

  Lama turns to Hasina. ‘She will stay with us now.’ And then Lama turns and gives Asmah a deep shi-kho. ‘We will take care of her.’

  Cat Girl hugs Hasina, Ghadiya and Asmah. She bows to Isak. But it is only when she comes to Araf that she cries. Poor Araf goes quite red and looks like he might cry too. And then with a zip of the nylon flap, Cat Girl is with her own people again.

  ‘I miss Cat Girl.’ Araf sighs, to everyone’s surprise.

  ‘Cat Girl has Lama’s family now,’ Ghadiya murmurs, ‘she will be happy.’

  ‘Yes,’ says Isak, ‘But how much she must long for her own mother and father. And they are gone forever.’

  Poor Isak, Hasina thinks. How she misses her baba and mama. Food is one thing, but love is another. All it would take to make Hasina’s happiness complete would be to hear from Rashid that her parents have been found.