My name is Sanjida Ahmed. I completed my BBA from Khulna University. Ever since childhood, I've played and studied alongside boys and girls alike, yet I never found the courage to think about love or affection—I was afraid, though I couldn't say why. I became a woman rather late, I suppose. Mentally, I lagged behind other girls my age.
Still, no one had ever proposed to me, not that it matters. From class two right through college, I served as class representative. I was quick-witted, commanding—the type of girl who got everyone's attention. But the moment someone showed interest, terror seized me. I'd rush home and tell my parents everything. Studies, time spent with our livestock and birds, my father, my mother, my brother—that was my entire world. I was always on my teachers' list of favorites. Then suddenly, out of nowhere, a cyclone came—Aila—and demolished everything. I started building shelters from straw matting on the streets. A life sustained by relief rations of flattened rice, wrapped in blankets. Not just us, but thousands of others. Yet even then, I studied. One thought filled my mind: if I survive, I must continue reading. I must transform my life. And if I die, well, then I die.
Mud covering my entire body, no food in my belly. Yet I studied. I harbored no illusions of survival. But this much I knew: should I live, without education there would be no place for me anywhere. I've studied in the morning, worked the fields in the afternoon with everyone else, and studied again at night. Those who've never lived this life can never understand what it truly means.
From that mud, I brought home the school's first A-plus. ATN Bangla ran a report on me. Two newspapers published stories about me then. The headline in the "Unconquerable Talent" column read: *Aila Could Not Defeat Sanjida*.
After that, I thought perhaps I could do it. Perhaps I could go further. I enrolled in a college in a small town. There too, among all the streams, I came first in my class. The authorities waived my registration fee. In HSC, I scored an A-plus again.
But I still knew nothing of university. My teachers would say, "Sanjida will get admission to a good unit at a university one day." Privately, I'd wonder, "Unit? I know unit from electricity. What does it mean to study in this 'unit'?" But fear of embarrassment kept me silent. What if I asked and learned something that would later upset me? What was the point? When the time came, I'd understand everything.
After the HSC exam, while everyone else enrolled in coaching centers, I still hadn't convinced my family that I wanted to do the same. Many classmates had already started. I explained at home that it was a good thing and that I needed to do it. Even after enrolling, I asked my father and brother, "What's the difference between National University and Dhaka, Chittagong, Khulna, or Rajshahi University? Which one is better? I can't understand." They said, "We don't know either. But National seems to be the best, I suppose. It's countrywide, while the others are regional. What's the point of going to a regional university?"
Days pass. My eyes open. I begin to understand what I'm walking toward and why. Time teaches you everything.
Eventually, I took entrance exams at three universities and got admitted to all three: Dhaka, Khulna, Rajshahi. I enrolled at Khulna University because my home is in Khulna. "Because"—that word really means, "because my family would never let me leave my own district."
Those were the days of text messages. I'd buy a two-taka SMS package and stay in touch with all my friends.
# A Story of Becoming
Some friends of mine used to take coaching classes in Dhaka. Many of them ended up staying there. They would tell stories about me to people—how I studied BBA at university, how I lived a life of constant struggle, how I clawed my way to where I am today fighting against all odds… and so on.
I didn’t believe in relationships back then. But hearing all these stories about me circulating around, this boy got eager. He started reaching out to me, little by little, day after day—he knew one of my friends, and that’s how he got my contact. I was studying hard at the time. I didn’t even want to talk to anyone. So he resorted to all sorts of emotional tricks. By then my phone had become my lifeline. Between my tutoring income and what my father and older brother earned, we’d finally found some breathing room financially.
Then he started contacting me on Facebook and WhatsApp. After much effort, he carved out a place in my heart. And soon enough, we hatched a plan—to get married in secret. By then I was in my final year. He asked me to arrange money. Then one day, out of nowhere, he said: if I didn’t go to his district by evening tomorrow and marry him, there would never be a wedding between us.
By that point I was drowning in love, so I didn’t hold back. On the last day of registration for the final semester, I told my friends I was in trouble. I had no money. I asked them to handle my registration. They did. And I took the registration fees and whatever I’d managed to save from tutoring and gave it all to him to get married.
I arrived at the court at five-thirty in the evening. He was there with seven or eight of his friends. And here I was, alone, nothing but my money. In front of everyone, they made both of us sign a paper. He said he’d keep one lakh taka as the dower because he had this habit of paying back all debts on the wedding night itself. By that point I loved him so much that I would have married him for even a broken paise, let alone one lakh!
The marriage was signed. He kept the paper with him, saying if anyone at my house found out, they’d kill me, so it was better it stayed with him. When we wanted to, we’d live together. After saying all this, he called his friends and took everyone to the ‘Khanabina’ restaurant in Narayanganj on my dime.
After seeing everyone off, he took me to a residential hotel with one of his friends and that friend’s girlfriend. He’d invited me to hotels a hundred times before, but I’d always refused—I was caught up in thinking about sin and virtue. Now that we were married, I had to go. We went. We stayed in room 333, and his friend stayed in the room next door with his girlfriend. That night I told my family there was an emergency on campus—a sudden presentation. I’d have to stay on campus. The next day he, pretending to be sick, put me on a bus going home. It broke my heart to leave him alone like that. But I had to come back. And I did.
Then began everything that had never happened in my life before. Lies at home. Obliging him in everything he did. A month later he came again. We stayed in a hotel in Khulna. The police raided. We got caught. I paid a broker two and a half thousand taka and somehow managed to get us out.
The next month he came again. By then my aunt had been fighting for her life in the hospital for a week, teetering on the edge. He called me and said he was coming today. If he didn’t, he wouldn’t come for months. I said yes. We checked into a hotel in the city.
# The News Came That Evening
I heard it in the evening—my sister was dead. I was lying beside her when I got the news. I fell into a panic. How would I go anywhere? What would I tell everyone? Where had I been all this time? I asked her. She said, “Tell them I’m at the hostel for some urgent work.” That’s what I said. Towards dawn, the police caught us. They grabbed my arms and legs, spoke in angry voices, and I borrowed some money on bKash to give to a middleman so we could slip away.
—
I know nothing of these residential hotels. I’ve never even been to a park in my life. That’s the kind of girl I am. The day I first met him, I cooked shrimp noodles and vermicelli with milk for him and brought it along. That was my first meeting with any boy. I had imagined us sitting under some tree on campus, sharing stories, feeding him my homemade food with my own hands, talking through life’s ups and downs together. And since I don’t understand boys’ things very well, I’d sent a classmate to buy him some things from a nearby shop. He would come by, and then the three of us would sit and chat. But no—he took me straight to some awful park called ‘Sitara’. He’d learned all about where things happened in Khulna from his friends.
I had never been to such a place in my life. The first time, seeing what went on inside, watching what the boys and girls were doing there, I left in disgust and fear and rage. I messaged him: “Thank you for thinking I’m such a cheap girl.” But he begged forgiveness, holding my hands and feet. I melted too. I had fallen in love, after all, and it was easy for me to adapt to anything for him.
—
Anyway, after our secret wedding, I went to a hotel a third time. It was Eid season. When he traveled from Dhaka to his home, he would pass through Khulna. He came that time too. He took me to the ‘Rupsa Hotel’, across from the ‘Rimjhim’ park. I had brought him a tie, a belt, body spray. Eid was coming—these were gifts for him. And he had brought me some hair clips and earrings.
We had just freshened up in the room and were talking when the police raided. They took us outside. Something disgusting was happening—from the rooms nearby, married women were coming out with men who weren’t their husbands. Everyone assumed I was one of them. After much talk and rough treatment, the police took us to the station.
—
It was the 28th of Ramadan that day. They sat me in one room and locked him in a cell. I didn’t even know where he was. Sitting there, I thought they would question me and then bring him to me. For three or four hours I sat alone, crying for him. That’s when I learned—there were no signatures on that marriage certificate. It was a fake marriage. They said this happens all the time.
Now they’re sending him to court. The station told me there was only one way out: if people from both our families came and said, “Yes, they are married, we all know,” then they would release him. Otherwise, they’d send him to court tomorrow morning. Desperate, I told his one friend—the one who knew everything from the start, the one who was with us at the hotel with his girlfriend on the day of the wedding.
That friend heard everything and hung up. Then he turned off his mobile.
Eventually, his family found out about it all.
They didn’t understand the problem, couldn’t see a way forward, and instead began interrogating me. Their pure-as-milk son, I supposedly seduced and took to a hotel. They were going to take action against me. All the endless fuss and fury. Then he, in desperation, told me to call my mother, to beg her on my hands and knees, cry to her, so that at least she would come and get him out of this.
Whatever he asks, I never refuse. I called my mother. All day I’d been avoiding her calls, terrified of lying repeatedly. It was the 28th of Ramadan that day. Mother had fasted all day and was just sitting down to break her fast. The sun hadn’t even set yet.
Before I could even say anything to her on the phone, the police snatched it away. “Your daughter is at the station now. We caught her red-handed at a hotel with a boy, doing improper things. We’re taking her to court in the morning. If you want to save her, come immediately.” Then they let me speak. I took the phone and just wept and pleaded, “Ma, save me! Please, save me! What they said—it’s not all true. I’ll tell you when you come—we’re married. We have a nikah certificate.” Hearing me, my mother nearly had a stroke.
Here she was, on top of fasting all day with nothing to eat, at iftar time, with her ailing husband at home—a man with high blood pressure—and a daughter-in-law just waiting for an opportunity. My mother was as good as buried that moment. Yet somehow she steadied herself and came to Nandirpur Police Station.
She tried pleading, made so many requests. Nothing worked. She taught me to grab the police’s feet together with her, to beg them. That’s what we did. The police’s hearts wouldn’t soften. Eid was the next day. They needed money too. They demanded a huge sum. Five thousand. Whatever money my mother had with her, whatever was in my pocket—we offered it all, and we gave it.
The Officer-in-Charge said something that day that I’ll remember my whole life. “The look in this boy’s eyes tells me he’ll never build a life with your daughter. You understand? Just using and discarding. This is that kind of boy. Don’t be angry at what I’m saying. We’ve dealt with countless cases. We know by looking. I’m telling you from experience. Write this down today. Check it against what happens later.”
We didn’t say anything. After that, we left. I couldn’t even look at my mother’s face. I felt like I could die right then. Yet somehow I kept thinking—I did all this for my husband. What shame should I feel? I went back home with my mother. Now I’m terrified of what will happen when the family finds out.
And he stayed sitting outside the station. No money left. No fare for transport. I didn’t eat at home. I lay down. Every little while I sent him messages asking where he was, what he was doing. At four in the morning I got up before anyone else, snuck out of the house. I went to him. I brought some money from home and put it in his hand. He went back to his place.
Much later, it hit me. What does “fake marriage” even mean? Why did he do it? I asked some lawyers online and found out that a court marriage without a signature has no legal value. And who holds a wedding after five-thirty in the evening at a courthouse? Apparently such forgeries happen all the time now.
Tear that page out of the account book and the whole game’s over!
When I brought it up with her, she’d deflect. Wouldn’t let me get a word in about it. She’d blame this friend, then that friend. Yet it was for the wedding that she’d asked me to go alone from Khulna to Nadia. I fed seven or eight of her friends at the restaurant. And on the night of the consummation—a dowry of a lakh of taka—she gave me a five-taka coin as a token payment. I still have it. When I ask her about it, she snaps, ‘If I divorce you now, then you’ll know what a marriage was.’ I stay quiet out of fear.
After that, she stopped making time for me. When I call, I’m put on hold. There were plenty of fights. Meanwhile, once I finished my studies, unemployment began. I felt alone all the time. But I couldn’t reach her at all. One day there was a terrible row. She was home then. She wouldn’t come over to my side. That day, some of her family came to know about it. Her eldest brother spoke well of me to the family. He said, ‘A public university student. Not bad-looking at all. Will get a good job ahead. Will be the finest daughter-in-law in our village.’ Eventually they got tempted and agreed to the engagement.
Everything was settled. They were coming. They said, ‘Since they’ve already gone so far on their own, there’s nothing left for us to do. We’ll just come for the formalities. There’ll be a ring exchange. And the wedding feast will be that same day. A few days later we’ll bring the bride home.’ They came to our house. Her younger sister, younger brother-in-law, elder brother-in-law, two other elder brothers, and she herself.
The moment they saw our rented place, all their decisions reversed. They wouldn’t do anything here! My father was ill. My brother was the only earner. So none of this would happen! When they refused us and left, my brother, my brother-in-law, the neighbors all spoke up: why did they say then that they’d do everything? In the midst of the arguing, her younger sister thought: if we beat them up now, who will stop us, since we’re from another district!
Finally they agreed. Yes, they would have the wedding feast. But for only twenty to thirty thousand taka. If we didn’t accept these terms, they’d leave, and once they left, they wouldn’t return. Call them and they’d divorce me on the spot, that’s all! After much negotiation, the wedding feast happened for three lakh taka. And they laid down conditions for me—
One: no meeting for one or two years.
Two: no talking for more than four or five minutes a week.
Three: they won’t take me with them within two years.
Four: I have to get a job within two years and prove my worth.
Five: if I get a job today, they’ll take me tomorrow. If not, then it entirely depends on her wishes. And everyone in that family listens to her.
I said, ‘All right, I agree.’ She kept messaging me, saying, ‘Just agree. Agree to whatever they say. I’m here.’ We’ll see how it goes later. They left. And in the village, they didn’t spare a single bit of slander about us in front of everyone.
The wedding feast was on the 3rd of October. After that, I started passing small job exams here and there. They thought that if I suddenly landed a job, it would be better if I got it while staying at their place—it would bring them honor in everyone’s eyes. Meanwhile, people in the village were talking constantly: the boy got married, so when is he bringing the bride?
# How Much Longer Will They Keep Her There?
I go to Dhaka to sit for exams. I stay with him. No one at his place knows. Everyone knows we don’t see each other.
On the night of June 7th, 2019, at 9 p.m., they called to say they’d come for me. By 8 a.m. the next morning, his two brothers-in-law arrived, empty-handed, and took me away.
When these thoughts come, I can’t hold myself still. I tried to kill myself just the other day. I realized I couldn’t even do that right. I came into this world with the life of a donkey! I’ve written this much and barely reached the beginning of the real story. The main event is coming now. But I don’t have the courage to go any further with this tale.
My father is ill. He had an accident on Father’s Day in 2017. Since then, he can’t do anything. My father has stared death in the face. He had to stay at Dhaka Medical for 22 days. The doctor said from now on, there must be absolutely no stress for my father’s mind.
And here I am, that ungrateful daughter, leaving my parents behind, moving from Khulna to Narayail. I wore the Eid sari my aunt-in-law had made, and put on the jewelry my parents had made for me, and left. In front of my mother and father, I laughed and laughed as if to show them I was happy, as if nothing was wrong with me, so they wouldn’t suffer too.
When they came to take me, empty-handed like that, my parents and the neighbors were quite upset that they hadn’t brought anything with their hands. There was no memory of my wedding left. Even if it was cheap, a simple red thread would have been something—I would have looked at it and thought, this is my wedding gift!
I convinced my parents that money, gifts—none of that mattered. There was no point being sad about not receiving a sari or bangles. God gave us hands, feet, and minds. If we want to, we can build everything ourselves one day. Explaining all this, laughing, I set off with them.
When they came for me, they rented a microbus. When they took me away, they walked me some distance on foot, then a local bus, then a nosimon, and then another 30 minutes of walking. By the time we reached their house, it was past 10 p.m.
When I arrived, it was a village, so people started coming in waves from that very night. They looked at me, and everyone had the same thing to say. “What did you tell us? This bride isn’t like that at all. She looks fine! We were worried for nothing—we actually like her!” I was bewildered hearing them say such things.
That same night, Nihal’s younger brother-in-law beat his sister, and has his brother’s wife call from Nihal’s house to say he did it. His sister obeys her husband and makes the call. Hearing about the beating, Nihal and his family make a huge noise. They say they’ll go first thing in the morning and sort out Nihal’s younger brother-in-law once and for all. They’ll take his wife, get her a divorce. I watched silently as they went on and on with such thoughts.
The next morning, Nihal’s father tells him, “Don’t do all that. We should invite them over.” The next day, Nihal goes and brings his sister back. I’m the new bride, cooking, wearing a sari, surrounded by my husband’s family, pots and pans—it all feels like a dream to me.
They had some old saris in their wardrobe from long ago. Because of what the neighbors were saying, they let me wear two of them.
# The Sari
After washing the sari, the water turned the color of what the canal looks like when they slaughter cattle on its bank—a muddy, murky blend of everything at once. I loved it all. Even that old, dyed sari seemed impossibly beautiful to me then.
It was June. The tin-roofed room was unbearably hot, and I’ve always felt heat more than most. I’d worn the sari the whole day while working. What strange, inexplicable joy had seized me then, I cannot say now.
When neighbors asked, Nihal’s mother would tell them, “The bride is still a student. She’ll go to Dhaka with the boy soon. She has exams coming up. Once she gets a job, she’ll come back to the village on posting. Until then, she’ll visit once a month or once every few months.” Everyone would say, “How wonderful!” Village people say that about everything, really—”How wonderful!”—you just have to explain things properly to them. They rarely have opinions of their own. They think what everyone else thinks.
The ninth or tenth of June. His younger brother-in-law came to visit. He came and said right away, “What studies? It was a whim, so she studied. She doesn’t need to study or work anymore. What does a woman need a job for? Seven or eight thousand taka—does she need to go all the way to Dhaka for that? She’ll cook at home, eat rice if there’s rice, go hungry if there isn’t. What studies? What job? A wife stays at home. That’s final.”
His words changed everything. Nihal’s mind, his family’s mind—all of it shifted. Nihal had been to the ticket counter several times, planning to go to Dhaka alone, so he’d only bought one ticket. He never told me. When I asked, “When are you going to Dhaka?” he’d hedge and say he wasn’t sure yet—maybe he’d take a week’s leave. Meanwhile, after several attempts, he couldn’t even find a ticket. That was the real story.
I forgot to mention something. Before they brought me to their house, the village people used to say to his family, “You’ve married off your son—why haven’t you brought the bride? It’s because of your youngest son-in-law’s cruelty that the bride isn’t being brought. If she comes, she’ll see all these goings-on.” Things like that. Because of all that talk, one day his father called me. Everyone was sitting together. His father said to me over the phone, “Sanjida, I’m going to tell you something today, and you need to listen to it.”
“Yes,” I said.
He said, “You were married to our son because you wanted to be. Now I want you, the first time you come to our house, to come from Khulna to Narayail alone, in your own way, if you want to run this household. You cannot bring any relative or acquaintance with you, and no one from my house will come to fetch you either. If you want to come here, you have to do this. You can speak if you have something to say. But the decision I’ve made is final.”
I said, “Father, you are my father, and without doubt I will do exactly as you say. But if you think of me as your own daughter, I ask you—if it were one of your two daughters in my place, and her in-laws spoke to her this way, how would you feel? Could you really send your daughter alone all that distance from Khulna to Narayail the first time? Have you thought what my own mother and father would feel?”
He said, “I am helpless. I know it’s impossible. But I can do nothing.”
He didn’t say it to my face, but I learned later—it was his youngest brother-in-law’s decision.
But it didn’t happen that way.
Let me return now to where I was. Later, when she couldn’t get a ticket again, I found out and asked her about it. She gave me twisted answers, evasive ones. Never anything straight. I realized then—they were playing me like a puppet, each one pulling a different string.
On June 12, 2019, during her rest in the afternoon, I asked again. This time she started acting like a complete stranger. Through my tears, I said, Who did I trust to come all this way? Where is that person I knew?
She got angry. “What do you want, huh? What? A divorce?” In that moment, I just said it: “Yes. I want one.” And that’s when she came at me. “Wait—I’ll teach you a lesson! I’m calling people!” And she called her two sisters in. They’d been waiting for an excuse, any excuse, to come for me. They burst through the door without asking a single question and started beating me—ordering him to hit me too. Screaming, “What kind of whore is this? Still standing in our house! Beat her! Let’s kill this whore today!” Then they locked the doors and windows. The three of them—brothers and sisters—beat me as they pleased. Kicks, punches, slaps, fists, jumping on me, slamming my head against the walls. Nothing was spared.
(To be continued…)