by Arif Anwar
“She was offering it to me. I wouldn’t know why until later—to relieve her of guilt for having sent my father to his death.
“At home, my mother weighed the flask on a scale. A half pound of pure silver. It was more than my father could earn in a year from the seas.
“That night I lay awake, holding the flask. I was worried that my mother would sell it. I woke very early the next day and while she slept, I walked far up one of the hills, and in an abandoned temple to Kali, hid it under a loose brick.
“When my mother awoke and couldn’t find it, she thought we’d been robbed, but one look at my face and she knew what had happened. She beat me, but nothing could make me give up the hiding place. So for the second time in a matter of days, my mother’s heart was broken.
“My father was no longer there, but it was as though he’d jumped off the world and entered me. When I would go up to the temple and examine the flask, I felt that it connected us. I would sit in that lightless temple and speak to him for hours, and when I opened the cork-stoppered mouth and set its dark opening against my ear, I could hear him whisper back to me.
“I’d turn it over and over in my hand, run my fingers over the carved design on its face.”
Jamir casts about for a drawing implement. Finding a thin wedge of coal, he sketches on the ground, his hands moving assuredly. A shape emerges before the two men.
“What is it?”
“I drew it for years without knowing. My father had a dream, that I would receive schooling, so that I could avoid having my fate tied to the water. But that dream ended with his life. Without a man in the house, without older siblings, my mother could not afford to have me attend school. I’d barely begun learning Bangla letters. But word was spreading around the village that the new zamindar had taken under his wing a gifted young girl—Rakhi Jaladas—and was teaching her to read and write, back when there were few in the village who could.
“One day, a few years after my father’s death, I approached the girl in the hopes that she would know the meaning of these letters. We had known of each other, but were not close because she was Hindu and I Muslim. I showed her the flask, told her my story. And she told me hers—how her path had crossed with that of the Japanese soldier whom she found lying half-conscious by the wreckage of his burning plane.
“She and I had seen the same plane that day. It arrived shortly after we said good-bye to the red-haired woman, but where it had frightened me, Rakhi had chased it as it flew over her, scattering leaflets printed in Bangla—meant to get us to support the Japanese against the British. When she found him, she dragged him as far away from the flames as she could. She told me he tried to give her a sash—as a gift or for safekeeping; she was not sure. She soaked it in the pail of water she carried and wrung the drops onto his mouth. Only when she heard the sirens of the British military arriving did she run away, not realizing that she had accidentally taken the strange cloth with her. All those years she wondered about the fate of the soldier, and I had come to her with the answers. The flask was half the story of our lives, the sash the other.
“We’d never be sure, but she thought the letters might have something to do with the woman’s name. Rakhi was not confident enough in English letters, you see, and didn’t know enough about the woman or the ways of foreigners to know what they would put on their possessions.
“We became friends, very close ones, and although we drifted away from each other for a while, we found each other again years later and married. She took on a new name then, a new identity. For her wedding gift, I gave her the silver flask that first connected us.”
“And your father’s boat?”
“My mother no longer had the flask to sell. So it had to be the boat. Another fisherman—a prospering one—bought it because he liked the eyes the Japanese soldier had drawn on it, those strange characters. But they were the reason I was glad to see it go. For those eyes, they frightened me. And those characters—even though I did not know their meaning—looked as though they contained a world within themselves. The boat had changed, left us, as though it was given wings rather than eyes. It belonged to the world of spirits and fairies.
“But I’d realize later that my fear went further. It had spread from the boat to the bay. Ever since that day I held my father’s head in my lap and his blood ran out to mix with the sand and foam, under the prow of that boat with the all-knowing eyes, I’ve been afraid of the sea.”
“Yet you’re a fisherman out in the bay. Why is that?”
Jamir holds his head in his hands for a long time, relives those days for the ten thousandth time. He finally looks up with red eyes.
“A man must provide.”
AFTER Gauranga departs, he continues to sit in the engine room, wishing he were on a ship that could sail back in time instead of over water, before all of this.
He has looked at the letter so many times since discovering it, recognizing only the odd letters, his eyes returning to them repeatedly in a gesture of comfort, as one does to familiar faces at a gathering.
It seems a cruel joke that the three letters he is most familiar with, that he can reproduce with the greatest proficiency, are not Bangla but English, letters that spell the name of the woman who killed his father.
The power of the written word, the idea that one could trap sound, thought, names and concepts by inscribing them onto a surface, that was the world of intangible magic his father’s death pulled him away from, to one of tangibles: two hands to work with, two legs to take you to your place of work, two eyes full of the blue of the sea, two ears overflowing with the wind; a nose and tongue salted from seawater.
And when he married Honufa, saw how her mind bloomed under Rahim’s tutelage, he had to practice weeding the envy from his thoughts as assiduously as a gardener does a flower bed.
But then, since her break with the zamindar, with no books to feed her quicksilver mind, no surfaces on which to practice her penmanship other than rock, stone and sand, he watched her fold into herself, realized the vulnerability of the literate mind—its inability to produce its own sustenance the way his could: by finding patterns in the clouds, faces in the waves; the hints of secret language in the calls of birds and animals.
And he is shamed now to recall the pleasure he allowed himself to see Honufa that way.
He stands to leave and is shocked when a violent lurch of the boat almost returns him to the floor. He balances with a fist on the ground and waits for the ship to right itself. But no other turbulences arrive, and he realizes that it was not the ship that moved, rather his alcohol-addled legs that betrayed him.
With a hand on the wall for support, he makes his way back to his bedroll in the galley. His head heavy from the palm liquor, and with the gentle lapping of the waves to lull him, he sinks into a clammy slumber.
His dreams are steeped in terror. In them, he finds himself running through endless metal corridors while something monstrous pursues him. Hands reach through the walls to snatch at him and impede his progress, slow him down. In panic, he veers too close and is seized by a pair of ethereal limbs that solidify once they capture him, crawling from shoulder to neck to mouth, over which they clamp down with demonic strength to cut off his screams.
“Mmmph!” The chains of nightmare snapped, he tries to sit up but is unable. Something holds him down. A hand. Real this time. Its thick, hard fingers pry his mouth open and shove in a cloth acrid with the scent of diesel. He gags.
Cold sharp metal touches his neck.
“Make a sound and I’ll draw this razor across your throat,” Abbas says.
The bohoddar looms over him, rummaging through his bedroll and belongings with his free hand. “Where’s the letter? Where is it, you fucking illiterate oaf?”
His body slack with terror, his eyes swivel from Abbas to Manik, who sits on his legs, immobilizing them. He flashes Jamir a grin.
“Tie his legs,” Abbas instructs his son without taking his eyes off Jamir, and within moments
a thick length of nylon rope is wrapped around them, crowned with a tight knot. His hands are secured next, joined at the wrists so tightly that he can barely move his fingers. With his limbs restrained, his eyes run about in their sockets like caged animals, taking in everything, trying to meet Abbas’s eyes and plead. I’ve harmed no one. Let me go and I’ll tell no one, he wants to scream at them. For the sake of seeing his family again, he is willing to be a coward.
Abbas shoves his hands under Jamir’s armpits while Manik takes his legs. Together they lift him up and head to the stairs. He realizes what is about to happen. Shaken out of his terror-induced lethargy, he flails and tries to scream through the rag in his mouth. The sounds emerge as groans.
Dawn has arrived outside, and the world as observed from the deck is painted in topaz shades—the sea a serene but sickly green. The trawler started moving at some point in the night. It now cuts steadily through calm glassy waters.
The boat’s railings are the lowest at the aft, and that is where they take him.
“Get ready,” Abbas instructs when they are parallel to the railing. Jamir looks down. The sea that has long fed his family has turned on him. It licks the sides of the boat with hunger.
They lower Jamir’s body to the ground.
Abbas extracts the rag from his mouth but immediately covers it again with his hand. Jamir gasps for a clean breath.
“I’ll move my hand,” Abbas says. “You’ll get one more chance to tell me where the letter is. If you scream, I’ll kill you. If you don’t tell me, I’ll kill you. Do you understand?”
Jamir nods, but does not speak when Abbas removes his hand, only stares at the man looming over him.
“Fine then. Don’t say I didn’t give you a chance to live.”
While Abbas fumbles for his razor, Manik’s grip around his ankles slackens ever so slightly. Jamir uses this opportunity to draw his legs back and kick them out with all his strength.
More shocked than hurt, the bohoddar’s son is driven back at least a foot by the blow, his long legs tangling and collapsing under him. Thrashing on the deck like a fish, Jamir wiggles across and under the lower gap in the railing. His body flips in the air. The blue-green sea rushes to his face.
He slams on the water with a slapping cold shock. The belly-first crash drives salt water into his nose. As he opens his mouth to cough, the sea shoves its frigid, salty fists into his throat. He flounders on the surface of the water and quickly begins to sink.
Even as his mind spins and threatens to black out in panic, he hears a voice cut through. Authoritative and wise.
Stop. You know how to do this. Hold your breath. Shimmy up like an eel.
Fathom-lengths below the water by then, Jamir orients himself to the voice so that he stares up at the diffusely lit heavens above. He kicks his feet and wiggles his torso upward. In a way, he is aided by his restrained hands and feet, which streamline his body. Stars explode before his eyes as he desperately squirms, finally bursting out of the water, sucking air in huge grateful gulps.
The trawler has not moved far. Abbas and Manik still stand in the aft. They say nothing to him, only stand and watch as the boat slowly moves away.
Drink the air deep, says the voice. Fill your lungs and keep your head above the water. Don’t worry about those two. They think you’re done.
He spins around. There is nothing but vast stretches of ocean all around.
“I am done!” He rebels against this entity, this watery desolation. But again he obeys, takes in a deep lungful of air and lays his head back the way he would as a child in bed, when he was with fever and his mother watered his brows to lower his heat.
“Honufa. My son. I’ll never see them again.”
You will if you keep your head. What are you forgetting?
“I don’t know.”
Look in front of you.
He does. The violence of his actions has shaken loose Gauranga’s pendant from his shirt, and the stinger now floats in the water before him, still attached to his neck by the string.
He grips it with his teeth, needing several tries before he can get a firm hold. It is the size of a large comb. Hard as ivory. Its feathered edges knife-sharp. He raises his hands to his face. Manik has tied him securely, but it is just one coil to cut through. He brings his wrists to his mouth and rubs the serrated edge of the stinger against the rope. It is difficult work. He stops and fills his lungs with air whenever his head threatens to sink below the water.
Jaws numb from biting so hard, lips bleeding from the sharp edges of the stinger, he persists. After rubbing for what seems a lifetime, he studies the rope and screams with frustration to find it has barely frayed.
You must keep going.
“I can’t,” he sobs.
You must. Your wife and son, they are still back there on the shore. They will need you before long.
“Are you him? Are you the Boatman?”
This time the voice waits before speaking, and when it does, Jamir knows. He knows.
Weeping, knowing now who has been watching over him for decades, he resumes his efforts.
When the final stubborn bits of rope surrender, he is too drained to exult. He reaches down to undo the knots around his feet and finds that he has no strength left. The world fades and shrinks, a jade marble spinning away from him even as the Boatman tells him that help is on its way. That it is very close.
The last thing he remembers seeing before falling into darkness are eyes approaching him over the water—great, tilted, inhuman—those strange symbols that he saw all those years before inscribed beneath.
The last thing he remembers hearing is the splash of oars.
Shahryar & Anna
Washington, DC
OCTOBER 2004
A CAR horn honks downstairs. He looks out the window and sees Anna leaning through the open window of Niten’s Range Rover. “Hurry, Baba!”
It is nine in the morning, Thursday. Five days following the fateful call from Niten. His flight is not until one, but they agreed that going to the airport earlier would be preferable. Faisal Ahmed’s fate hangs over them like a dark cloud.
His walls bear the ghostly squares where pictures and diplomas used to hang, the closets inhabited only by the odd hanger. His floors are spotless, the cupboards emptied and scrubbed. The sum of his last six years in America are now contained in a medium-sized suitcase and a leather duffle bag. He retrieves them from the hallway closet, locks the door and heads to the elevator.
He sits with Valerie and Anna in the back of the car. Jeremy is in the front passenger seat while Niten drives. The weekend traffic is light on the I-66; they make swift progress, the distance to Dulles unraveling beneath the Rover’s smooth, insistent tread.
The morning dawned overcast, battered by wet winds. But the sun breaks free as they drive, painting the cloud edges with gold. He closes his eyes and leans his head against the window’s cool glass. A small, warm hand burrows into his. Anna has been somber and distant with him ever since he told her that he has to leave. Certainty, he knows, is what children prize above all else. Certainty was what Rahim and Zahira took from him nearly ten years ago, and in the vicious cycle of life, it is what he is now taking from his daughter.
Val sits on the other side, looking out the window as well. He has orbited her world for a decade now, his life charting an elliptical path around hers. And now instead of finally landing, the matter with Ahmed is threatening to catapult him out.
“I miss him,” Val says suddenly, and it takes him several seconds to understand the reference. He thinks back to that day a decade before. Another car. Another drive to the airport to return to Bangladesh. He was not there for Karl’s funeral. One of the many things he missed during those years of chasing his past.
“I miss him too,” he says and takes her hand in the one that already holds Anna’s. They stay that way until they reach Dulles.
“WHAT will you do in Bangladesh?” Jeremy asks over breakfast after Shar has check
ed in.
“I’ll spend some time in Dhaka with my parents. Then we’ll probably go down to Chittagong. I’ve fences to mend there.”
“When are you coming back?” Anna asks, her tone sullen, challenging.
He looks her in the eyes. “I don’t know, but I really hope it won’t be more than a few months, six at the most.”
He looks to Niten for corroboration, and receives a nearly imperceptible nod in return. Niten has inquired with a friend in the Justice Department, who informed him that Ahmed’s arraignment is to be the following Monday. The question of whether he enters into a plea bargain will be settled within the week.
“Don’t worry,” Niten told him then. “America doesn’t have an extradition treaty with Bangladesh. Even if you’re snared up in all this, as long as you don’t set foot in the States you’ll be safe.”
At the time, neither man addressed the implications of that scenario—that he may not see Anna again for a very long time.
“I’ve a small favor to ask,” he says to Val and Jeremy.
“Shoot,” Jeremy says.
“Do you know where the DC Bangla School is?”
Val smiles. “Anna told us yesterday that she wants to keep going there. I think I still have my old Bangla books. I’ll dust them off and do my best to help her practice.”
“Thank you.”
Anna is still fiddling with her pancakes. Shar thinks of the piece of paper that he carries in a plastic folder in his carry-on, the one bearing Anna’s name in Bangla that he plans on framing as soon as he reaches home.
“Thank you,” he says again.
Honufa
Chittagong, East Bengal (Bangladesh)
NOVEMBER 1970
She reaches the hut to find it empty. Rina has taken her son to safety. She has little time to be relieved, as the wind is now strong enough to sweep her off her feet. She scans the surroundings. The choices left to her are few and fraught with risk. With her damaged ankle, outrunning the storm is out of the question. She must seek shelter nearby, but where? Remaining on low ground means drowning when the tidal waves arrive. She has moments to decide, for the storm has arrived and brought the ocean as its dancing partner.