by Arif Anwar
It is only flesh. Protect the part of me that is real, my Lord.
She wonders about her son. Of the kind of life he will have as a man. She wishes now that he were older, that if she is to perish on this tree under the wrath of the skies that he might at least remember her.
AFTER endless hours of darkness, water and wind, there comes silence and light. She forces her eyes open. The eye of the storm has arrived. But she is in a different land.
She is tied to the tree still, but nothing around her is the same. Seawater spumes beneath her, seething in the storm’s leftover rage. Nothing remains of her house but for a few bamboo stumps like the teeth in a crone’s mouth. She turns a stiffening neck to the horizon. The sky is a corpse-yellow. The monstrous winds have faded to wisps. They gust desultorily, catching at the wet edges of her sari.
Hours of clutching the tree has turned her muscles to ice. Groaning, she undoes her knots with stiff fingers. It is long and tiring work, and when done, she shrieks with surprise as she slips and finds herself hanging upside down. Lacking the strength to pull herself up and undo the knots around her legs, she swings from the palm tree, her long hair come loose, grazing the waters below.
The wind stills. The sun, cowering in the west, billows out a cloak of wan orange, its component rays tenderly exploring the devastation. Hanging like a strange diurnal bat in this new world, Honufa nonetheless can laugh in astonishment, for being upended has righted her world. The storm’s chaos has laid bare the hidden patterns that have ruled her life.
Always a secret fire burned in her—a love of letters, a thirst for learning that was not known to her until that strange, foreign pilot crashed into her life, stoked the flames with his sash marked with the arcane symbols, the leaflets written in Bangla. Rahim had nurtured the fire in her, their serendipitous meeting that day under the palm tree leading her down the path of learning. Siraj threw in faggots of knowledge, showed her a whole new world, made her head spin with the enormity of what she still had left to learn, to master.
Each man had come into her life without warning, and each had left her.
Was that why her rage at Rahim so spiraled out of control? Because he was the last in the series? The last to leave?
Only Jamir remained. Unlettered, unlearned, but no fool. His offerings were for her heart and not her mind.
Did he surmise her secret shame? That despite his betrayal and the passing years a love for Siraj has remained in her like a disease she could not eradicate? Is that who he thinks the letter is from? Is that the reason he has become so glum and withdrawn?
Jamir, my darling. My love for you could fill ten withered oceans.
What was it that he said to her all those years before? That her pride would kill them someday? She scoffed at him then, but has his prediction not come true? Was there a part of her that tarried in the temple not just because the intervening years had eroded her faith in her husband’s religion but because of the pride that her heart retained like so many dark remnants, hoping that she would be too late and Rina would take her son to the zamindar’s and she would not have to show her face to him, seek shelter from the man she had severed herself from out of spite? Did she really want the answer to this question? This question that is more frightening than a storm could ever be? Was the naked force of its answer even something she could withstand?
MORE than anything, the storm feels like spun time, accelerating everything around her to their inevitable future states—houses turned to bamboo stubs, boats smashed to kindling, rice paddies drowned and salted; lofty trees made to prostrate into the sand.
Beneath her, the dead begin to drift by, a grim procession of bodies, twisted and unrecognizable. Her hair caresses the bloated face of one, covering it like a momentary, black caul.
Such is her exhaustion that Honufa does not hear the feet splashing against water, rhythmic and slow at first and then taking on a faster cadence as their owner recognizes her. She does not feel the strong hands that release the knots around her legs with practiced assurance. She only opens her eyes when she is gently lowered into arms that have held her every night for eighteen years.
She opens her eyes. Jamir’s face is battered and bloody from his journey here, but she does not ask him how he arrived or found her. She simply asks him how long she has been asleep.
“I wouldn’t know,” he answers.
“How . . . why . . . did you . . .” Suddenly the sun is blinding. Jamir shields her eyes with his hand. About to answer, he pauses. Where will he begin? Where can he? Even after a full day at sea it all seems a dream—being tossed off the boat, the Boatman’s voice helping him gather his wits, curb his panic and survive.
Will Honufa believe him if he told her that it was Hashim’s boat that found him, the one bearing the eyes and arcane symbols painted on it that his mother was forced to sell years before? Its crew—paddling furiously to flee the storm—fished Jamir out of the water, barely conscious and moments from drowning.
He does not know what happened to Abbas, Manik and the others. The trawler was traveling east, the last he saw, away from the storm’s path. As for him, by the time he reached shore the wind had pushed them miles off course, and he had to travel on foot for half a day before taking shelter in a cave a few miles from his home when the storm arrived full force.
She is not ready for this story, so he asks the obvious question. “Where is our son?”
“I’ve sent him to Rahim’s house, with Rina. Along with the sash and your silver flask that I gave to her for safekeeping.”
Jamir nods. “That was the right thing to do.”
She sits up. Her eyes blaze with conviction as she clutches his hand. “We have to go to him, Jamir. I feel if we don’t, we’ll never see him again.”
But as she speaks, the land dims again. Jamir looks around. “By some miracle we found each other while the eye of the storm was passing, but now the storm is about to return. Let’s give it our best try then. Can you walk?”
“Not well. But I can try.”
They have minutes at most. He lifts her to her feet. They hobble past the beach, the disintegrated remains of their village, but only manage to reach a cliff-face not far from their hut when the first spatters of the returning rain splash and spit at their feet, and the wind again rises.
They take shelter, for Honufa has no strength left. When she begins to weep, he asks her why.
“I don’t think we will see our son again.”
“Perhaps. But at least he is safe, breathing and fed.”
“How can you know that?”
He takes her hand and places it on his heart. “I feel him here. And I know you do too. Rahim Sahib will take good care of him. He was so kind to you as a child, ever since that day he found you under the palm tree. I know that he will love our son as his own. And that he will have a good life. Grow to greatness.”
“There is something you should know.” She steels herself to confess, about the letter, about what she has done, her deception, everything. If upon hearing it he chooses to hate her, she will understand. At this, the end of times, she is ready to lay out her sins for the storm to wash away to far-forgotten gyres.
But he places a gentle finger on her lips. “You have nothing to explain.”
Jamir and Honufa look south to face what is coming without fear, her hand slipping into his. The wind strengthens. The sun disappears behind thickets of clouds that rise like colossi, bristling with lightning. A great wave rises in the bay and rushes to shore, giving her only seconds to utter her final words.
“You’re my ballast.”
Shahryar & Anna
Bangladesh
OCTOBER 2004
HIS plane lands at Zia International Airport at eight in the morning, His mother and father await him in the lounge. When they rise to greet him, he notes that their steps are a bit slower, their legs less steady than he remembers. The time he has left with them is not long. He walks over and embraces them without a word.
&nb
sp; “No Anna this time, eh?” Rahim deposits his rhetorical questions directly into Shar’s ear.
He smiles, hoping the pain does not bleed through. “Not this time. But soon, hopefully. She sends her love by the way.”
“When do we see her?” Zahira wants to know. Two years before, they visited her in America for the first time, and they have been waiting for a second meeting ever since.
“As soon as tonight. I brought my laptop. You two should be able to Skype with her if we have a broadband connection at home.”
His adoptive parents look at each other, then him.
“I have no idea what any of that means,” Rahim says.
THEY spend two weeks in Dhaka before taking a train to Chittagong, all four of them, as Rahim, Zahira and Rina refuse to let him out of their sights so soon after his return.
Their former seaside mansion has become a government museum, so they arrange temporary accommodations in the city—a flat near the commercial center. It is small but neat, with three bedrooms and a narrow strip of balcony that faces the bay.
Once settled in, Rahim suggests that he visit the TNO’s office at the village. The Thana Nirbahi Officer is a village-level administrator, part of the civil service cadre first put in place by the Ershad Regime in the 1980s. Given their power and influence, it is always a good idea to make the TNO the first port of call when new in town, his father explains.
The office is in a small bungalow featuring a trim lawn and a porch. When Shar arrives, he is offered a seat on a rickety wooden bench. He is called into the TNO’s room after ten minutes.
Sunil Das is in his late forties. His mustache gives him the appearance of a Bengali Clark Gable. He gestures to the empty chair before him, as Val once did, many years before.
“Can I get you a tea or coffee? Perhaps a cold drink?”
“Just water, thank you,” Shar says, taken aback. Government offices do not have the best reputations in Bangladesh, being places where one is either neglected or asked for bribes for the most basic of services.
When he begins to introduce himself, Das raises his hand and smiles. “I know who you are. We all remember Rahim and Zahira Choudhury well, at least, my parents spoke quite fondly of them. Even though it has been many years since they lived here.”
“Thank you.” The Bangladesh War of Liberation began five months after the storm that killed his parents. Rahim and Zahira were in Chittagong in that time, stretched to their limits with not only helping the community rebuild from the storm, but protecting the populace from the depredations of the invading West Pakistani soldiers. As a new nation emerged in December of that year, in a second bloody birth for East Bengal, Rahim and Zahira were overwhelmed by just how wearying responsibility could be, and how much those shores echoed with memories of all those lost in the storm and the war. So a quarter century following their exodus from India, they prepared for another. They disposed of their assets, set aside a portion from the sales as an emergency fund for the villagers to access in need, and moved to Dhaka, taking Shar and Rina with them.
“So, what can I do for you, Choudhury Sahib?”
“I’ve come to stay here for some time.”
“Why?”
“To um . . . to see what I can do for the community.”
“And what would that be?”
Shar stammers. In his head, he pictured himself eloquently explaining why he was needed here, the value of his Western sensibilities and knowledge to the people of the village. Now, before this government officer, those assumptions seem patronizing, uninformed.
Sunil Das smiles kindly. “Sorry, Mr. Choudhury. I didn’t mean to . . . how do they say in English? ‘Put you in the spotlight.’ We can go over those things later. Why don’t you tell me a bit about yourself first?”
“Where do you want me to start?”
“How about the very beginning?”
Shar considers. “In that case, maybe I’ll have some tea after all.”
SIX months pass.
One morning, following a knock on the door of his seaside cottage, Shar opens it to find Sunil Das holding up a battered thermos. “I brought tea. Care for a walk?”
They follow the shore, headed vaguely east. The men walk side by side in comfortable silence, passing the thermos of tea back and forth. Since that day in Sunil’s office a half year before, they have become friends.
“I was just thinking,” Sunil says eventually, “that you’ve done good work so far.”
“Thank you.”
Shar allows himself a moment of quiet satisfaction and no more, realizing how much remains to be done. Being far to the south, the village is yet to be visited by the great NGOs that have risen up in Bangladesh and become internationally renowned—understandable, as fishermen see little need for their agriculture-focused offerings of livestock and seeds. Shar has nonetheless shuttled back and forth between Dhaka and the village, writing grant applications for schoolhouses, latrines and communal fisheries to potential donors. One proposal he made for a sustainable shrimp hatchery is nearing approval; a forward detachment of experts from Australia is scheduled to touch down in Chittagong in a week. In addition, he has persuaded a large NGO to open a brace of primary schools, and another to build cement latrines in a number of homes. His parents are looking into reviving the emergency fund they set up years before. He sighs. This may mean another grant application to apply for seed money.
“Something the matter?”
“Just that there’s a lot left to do.”
“There’s a union council election coming up for the village,” Sunil says. “The outgoing chairman’s already declared that he’s not seeking reelection; he’s got a Parliament seat in mind.”
“And why are you telling me this?”
“You should run.”
“I think I’m doing what I’m best at.”
Sunil shakes his head. “We need good people. We face big problems, Shar. The Burmese are running pogroms against the Rohingyas, pushing them across the border, and our government’s pushing them back saying that these refugees are not our problem, all the while they wallow in neglect at best, or face abuse in camps. On our side of the border, the Hindus are increasingly frightened of the militant Islamists, so there’s a steady flight of them leaving for India just like during the war. All this is happening while we’re plucking the bay empty of fish and coring out the hills to build homes. These issues won’t be solved by a few schoolhouses or cement toilets, as welcome as they are.”
He stops and puts a hand on Shar’s shoulder. “As council chairman you’ll report directly to me. You’ll have the power and resources to make a real difference. That day you walked into my office all those months ago, I didn’t yet have the measure of you. I do now. The people of the village look up to you. You can make this a better place, as Rahim and Zahira Choudhury once did.”
“What I’m doing right now gives me options. Being chairman will tie my hands.”
“Well, you haven’t won the election yet, but I think it’s not your hands being tied you’re worried about, it’s your feet. You’re afraid that you won’t be able to leave.”
“You doubt my commitment to the community?”
“No, rather I respect the one you made to your daughter. I know you wish to see Anna again.”
“I do,” Shar says.
“She’ll always be your little girl, and you’ll always be her father. You carry your love for her in you. I can see it. It lights you from within, like a lantern in a hut. Ten years, twenty, however many pass, you won’t lose her. I know this in my heart. But the people here, they’re fragile. If you leave again, you might not be able to find a way back.”
Shar looks down at the ground. The prerogative of orphans is to be able to amortize their grief—dole out the pain of loss across the years and make it bearable. He was never allowed that.
This, perhaps, is a way.
“I have to think about this.”
“I’ll do you one better,” Sunil says,
looking at his wristwatch. “Go to the village haat and see who you might be running against. If that doesn’t give you enough incentive, nothing will.”
“Who?” Shar’s heart beats faster.
The wind strengthens, whips Sunil’s hair around his grim face. “Go see for yourself. I’ll stay behind. If you’re running, it’s best we’re not seen together.”
SHAR follows the shore east to the village, to the haat from which his mother was excluded once she left her religion, the haat to which his father brought his catches. There is a crowd gathered there today, facing a makeshift dais of canvas and bamboo. Shar freezes as he recognizes the man atop it.
The last Shar heard of Manik, he was running a cement business in Dhaka, having moved away from trawlers following his father’s death. But now he has returned to the village of his birth, and his ambitions have grown. Old, but possessing a leonine grace, he paces the length of the stage, shouting into a mike, promising to return prosperity to the village through the tourist trade, build more mosques for the devout Muslims who are too often ignored in favor of minorities, and, of course, drive back across the border the Rohingya refugees who are taking food from the mouths of hardworking people. All they have to do, he exhorts the crowd, is to elect him.
A smile breaks out across his face as he notices Shar. “Look who has decided to join us, brothers and sisters,” Manik says. “A great salaam to you, Shahryar Choudhury—most educated and honored benefactor.”
The crowd’s attention turns to Shar, the expressions ranging from friendly to serious to guarded.
“I hear that you may run for council chairman this year, against me.”
Without a mike, Shar must shout to be heard above the rising winds. “You hear wrong.”
He walks away, already sick of the man. The crowd parts to let him pass.
Manik tosses a parting sally his way. “Good. It’s best for you to leave. It seems you take after your father, Rahim, the zamindar. Fancy foreign degrees and being the son of a rich man won’t get you the votes of the people here. You have to be one of us.”