Over at her house, all hell was breaking loose. They were calling each other, calling us—everyone scrambling to mount some kind of rescue operation for our reputations. The phone lines were already chaos; now it had multiplied. Five people waiting in queue for each call. The neighbors were watching, what little dignity we had left was gone, so my brother brought us inside the house. Even then she kept calling people one by one, telling them I was being held captive. That I was in captivity. When my brother or mother came by, if someone called, she'd say, she's doing a little better now. But at other times, one after another, she'd insist—he's being held captive. She told some people we'd chained me up. Yet here in the room, it was just the two of us, sleeping or sitting. Many people around us told my brother, 'Don't let them leave tonight. If something happens on the way, she'll say you did it. Let someone from their house come. Let them see with their own eyes that there's no one in this house who beats people or locks them up. Let them see what kind of people we are, and then they can take them back.' My brother thought about it. Then he told her to say this to her family. So she called her house again and said, 'They're holding me captive. Someone come and get me out. If no one comes, they won't let me go. Maybe they'll kill me. Then you won't even find my body. Save me!' Then my brother told them on the phone, let her father-in-law come if no one else will. At least if he sees things with his own eyes, this suspicion will go away, maybe the relationship can be fixed. But Nihal lied then. Said her father was ill. When he was actually fine. Later they wanted to send a boy from the neighboring house—Rocib, his name—he'd just passed his SSC. What would he understand about all this! My brother said, 'What are you saying! Will that help?' Later they called Hassan, a friend of hers from university, but he wasn't available for some reason or other. Then they sent her cousin—or was it her uncle's stepson, some relation like that—to our house, to figure out under what circumstances and how we were holding her captive and beating her. He came. When he arrived, he told us he was a manager at Sonali Bank. Posted in Khulna. Later I found out he actually managed a bus counter at the Sonadanga bus station. But he was an intelligent man, good-hearted—you could tell from how he carried himself. When he came, he brought along the ward member of our area and another man, quite elderly, possibly a former ward member. They came together. Nihal was sitting there spreading lies all over Facebook, telling people God knows what. And I was lying beside her, reading job solutions on my phone.
# Uninvited Visitors
Three men showed up at our house without warning that day. The man in question hadn’t bothered to tell us they were coming. You could see it written all over them—they’d come with a purpose. They arrived and took in everything. My brother called our maternal uncle. He and my brother filled them in on the circumstances, what had happened. After hearing it all, that uncle turned to Nihal and said, “Nihal, what is all this? I came here knowing nothing. But from what little I’ve heard, where’s any of it? You’re not forced into this. Why are you doing it? You two are both educated. You graduated in CSE from Asha University, and Sanjida finished her BBA from Khulna University. Between the two of you, you could do such wonderful things. Build a beautiful future together. Why throw it away? Listen to me—it’s easy to break things, but building them takes real sacrifice. What you two have built over all this time, don’t destroy it like this. You don’t even know what a BBA from Khulna University means. How many people you have to fight just to claim a single position! You can put her to work anywhere, in any capacity. And you too—you have plans. Don’t do this.”
The strange thing was, this uncle was supposedly the maternal uncle of Nihal’s younger brother-in-law’s troubled marriage. But in all his years, he’d never even seen Nihal’s brother-in-law, and he didn’t know Nihal at all. Didn’t even know his name. Yet this man spent a long time trying to convince us both. And to me he said, “Mother, I’m glad to see you’re caught up in all this too. I pray you become someone great in life. Stay together, the two of you.” And to my brother he said, “This whole thing is nothing but a misunderstanding, really. I’ve heard they’re keeping him chained up, beating him. I don’t know what more to say, but both families need to face each other over this. That’s the only way things will get resolved. A third party can’t fix this. I won’t take Nihal with me—that wouldn’t be right. I’ll tell his father to come.” With that, he left his number and went.
The next day, the father of Nihal’s younger brother-in-law arrived. This uncle had once told me he wouldn’t hesitate a second to throw a girl like me into the garbage. He’s done terrible things in his life—bloodshed, murders. But he saw there’s no happiness in that kind of life, so now he searches for peace. Though if it comes to it, he’d take up arms again. That’s the kind of things he talks about. This uncle got our address from that other uncle and showed up unannounced, making a great show of importance when he spoke. When my uncle laid out what the situation was, he had no answer. He said, “That’s true! What is all this! He should come and see for himself. Alright, I’ll go tell them to come.” And he left.
Meanwhile, Nihal was calling his office, saying, “Sir, I came to Khulna. I’m actually married—I’ve been going around single all this time, I suppose—and my in-laws are here in Khulna. They’ve locked me up here. If they keep me alive and they ever let me go, the very day they do, I’ll come straight to the office, sir.” Watching him carry on like this, I lost the strength to say anything. But I understood one thing clearly: if I want to survive, I have to study. There are no guarantees in my life. I have to stand on my own two feet! So whenever I get even a moment free, I read. Little by little.
# August 18, 2019
Her father came to our house. So did the uncle from next door—a former member once, now scraping by on whatever Rokib earns from working other people’s fields, the kind with an SSC certificate. The current area member came. An ex-chairman came. Rokib came. Her elder brother-in-law came. The younger one has stopped showing his face because he keeps making trouble, keeps spreading the word that we’re keeping her locked away.
They arrived early in the morning. Our door was open. They walked straight in without ceremony. We were still in bed, talking. She was still telling everyone we had imprisoned her.
They came into the room. My brother wasn’t home—he’d gone to pick up the shirts and pants we’d had made for Nihal. I seated everyone, served them sherbet, sweets, vermicelli. I called my brother to come home. He arrived with the clothes. My uncle and brother explained everything to them, A to Z.
After hearing it all, the chairman said, “If my daughter were in Sanjida’s place, I wouldn’t send my own daughter to such a place either. So let’s take fifteen days. Let them live apart. If Nihal’s family phones during this time, we’ll know they want a bride. Then Sanjida can go with them. But if they don’t phone, we’ll know they don’t want a bride. No girl can stay with people who don’t want her. So there’ll be a divorce then. September fifteenth will make it a month, and whatever happens will happen by then. But we want to hear from both the boy and the girl themselves.”
My distant uncle took me aside and said, “A man who can beat his bride on the third day of marriage won’t hesitate to kill her. Don’t go to him now, blinded by love. If you go, you’ll die. You go there in front of everyone and tell him: ‘I’m afraid. If my aunt and mother-in-law hadn’t saved me that day, how would you have explained things to my family? What if they had killed me and hanged me and said Sanjida committed suicide?’”
He went on: “Listen, my child. The man you love and give yourself to—ninety-nine times out of a hundred he lies. He does whatever comes into his head and then covers it up with lies. Your father got your brother through tenth grade and sent your sister to university. How would I ever comfort them if he killed you?” He explained all these things to me.
They all asked Nihal if he had anything to say. He mumbled some confused words. They cut him off and turned to me. I said, “Uncle, perhaps you’ll take responsibility for me. But if something like that day happens again, how am I supposed to get my voice to your ears? And given how much Nihal lies, if he beats me to death and covers it all up, what exactly will you do then, Uncle? Could you just explain that to me?”
He couldn’t answer.
Not a single person from Nihal’s family said they would take me with them. Even Rokib, just a boy, didn’t spare us his scorn. When we offered them food, none of them ate. The way they looked at it—such contempt in their eyes. And whenever I tried to ask Nihal something or speak to him, they’d all swarm around us, closing in like that. Before they arrived, Nihal had told me, ‘When Father comes, it’ll become impossible for us to stay together. We’ll have to get divorced. But when they arrive, I’ll still try to convince them that we want to stay together.’ Yet the moment his father walked through the door, Nihal went and sat behind him and said, ‘Father, these people keep dragging up old family troubles from ages past. They’ve been poisoning my mind these past few days. They said they wouldn’t let me leave unless you came. What can I even say about Sanjida! That Sanjida from before—she’s gone. Ever since coming to this house, she’s turned into a princess. When I want to eat something, she lectures me endlessly before finally letting me. She and her brother—they do nothing but threaten me.’ Nihal said all this. I just stood there with my mouth open, staring at his face.
When their chairman—or my uncle, rather—asked Nihal something, Rokib arrogantly pointed his finger at me and said, ‘Why ask him? Ask that woman instead.’ In every way they could think of, they humiliated us. Of course, Rokib had already disrespected me over the phone even before the wedding, before they took me to their house. But Nihal didn’t say a word to him. Not once did he scold him, saying, ‘Sanjida is older than you in age and in relation. Why are you behaving like this? It’s not right.’ Instead, he turned to me and said, ‘You must surely deserve such treatment, that’s why he spoke to you that way. He’s never said anything like that to me!’
Eventually it was decided—they would keep me for the remaining days of August, fifteen days, and if they inquired about me or made contact, I could stay. Otherwise, after another fifteen days, on September 18th, whatever had to happen would happen. Meaning divorce. When I heard this, I wrapped my arms tightly around Nihal and wept and wept. Because from the moment this relationship began, from the moment I started to love him, I’ve loved him so much that I’ve only ever wanted to be with him. My affection runs so deep that I cannot bear to be without him. Nihal held me and wept too. We both wept bitterly.
The night before, Nihal had asked for my diary. When I was upset, he wanted to see what I wrote about him. I brought it for him. But there wasn’t much written in it. From school days until now, all the people I’ve ever known—I’d only written down their phone numbers. My father’s and mother’s birthdays and wedding dates, my aunts’ and uncles’—people close to me. And on one page I’d written out my plan: think about my career for five years, and during that time spend it only with the people closest to my heart. The list of those people—1) Mother, 2) Father, 3) Nihal, 4) My brother’s daughter Samina.
# The Diary
Nihal shows me that diary and says, “Bhabu, I won’t stay up at night anymore. And if I ever do by mistake, who’s going to scold me? I won’t watch serials or movies. Who’ll get angry with me then? Who’ll rub my body when I bathe? Who’ll feed me by hand? When I come home in the evening, who will I send that ‘homecoming’ message to? And when I bring jhal-puri on the way back, who will eat it and feel that kind of bliss—like tasting heavenly fruit? Look, I’ll do everything on time, exactly.” Then she’s written a routine in there. Asking me what time she should wake up, what to do after that, what to do before going to the office—all of it.
I’m holding her neck, crying, saying, “Why are you doing this? Why do we have to separate? I can’t live without you.”
Then I straighten myself, compose myself, and tell her, “Listen, our time for tears is coming—if we let go of each other’s hands. I’ll cry myself to death, believe me. Please, think about what we’ll do. How we’ll find a way. I can’t be fine without you. I don’t want to live without you.”
She calls Cynthia, a friend from my college, and tells her to come and tell everyone that we want to stay together. That no one should separate us. But Cynthia’s mother was terribly ill then. She was running from hospital to hospital. The next day—the 18th—Cynthia comes to our house. She talks to both of them. And since she’s a guest and I’m her friend, she speaks to me a bit more forcefully, as if she’s pulling her friend—something Nihal can’t say. After watching us cry, Nihal’s older brother-in-law comes and gets angry at us. He scolds us and says, “What good will crying do now! Let her go!” And to me: “Sanjida, go to another room for a bit.”
They send me to another room and start getting ready to leave. But Nihal doesn’t say once, not even once, “I want my wife. I’ll build a life with Sanjida.” Nothing like that. And his older brother-in-law or his father doesn’t say, “What’s done is done. It’s fine, we’ll take our daughter-in-law. Sanjida, get ready.”…As they’re getting ready to leave, I feel like I’m losing my mind. It feels like my very soul is being torn out, like I’m losing something, like someone’s stealing something from me.
I run back to Nihal’s room. This time I grab his feet and cry. I’m wailing, just saying over and over, “Don’t leave me, don’t leave me.” But there’s no word from him. At that moment, Nihal cries too. He cries in front of me, and when I step away, he says all sorts of things to them. Oh yes, Nihal told me several times, “Forgive me.”
I kept saying, “Forgive you for what? You’re my husband. You haven’t done me any wrong, and you never will.”
# If He Gives Me a Divorce
If he divorces me outright, it’ll cost him the dower money. But if he stays with me and marries someone else, or drives me mad through manipulation, or kills me and passes it off as suicide—then maybe greasing the right palms with fifty thousand will settle everything. They had it all planned out. I came to know about Nihal’s family’s scheme through other means. But I never dwelt on it. I’d think: well, everyone dies someday. Why not at the hands of someone I love? And still, I loved him.
But when there was that talk between my place and their chairman about buying time, I thought surely everything would be resolved in that window. We’d go back to a good life together. I just had to endure these few days. That’s why Nihal asked me several times back then to leave with him, but I said nothing—neither yes nor no. I told him, ‘Say this in front of everyone, please. Everyone wants you to stand tall and tell them you’re taking your wife away.’ But he wouldn’t agree to it.
Nihal told me, ‘A divorce needs grounds—it doesn’t happen for nothing. You have to pay the dower, plus three or four months’ maintenance. And if the wife is pregnant, you pay for the child too. If we divorce because of family pressure, it won’t be a real divorce. Because we love each other; we don’t want to part. We’ll stay husband and wife. I’ll look after you. And even if we do get divorced, we’ll have three months to fix things—even after the divorce is finalized, you’ll be my wife for three months. We’ll sort everything out by then. Don’t be sad, you crazy girl. I’m only yours. Where would I go? Who would I turn to? I’ll find chances to call you. I love you!’
Saying all this, he broke down crying, and when I see him sad, I can’t bear it. Listening to him, I too started wailing, ‘Oh God, Mother, oh God,’ my mind spinning. Nothing made sense. Every few moments I’d just say, ‘God, show me the way. Please God, just appear once, or send me a mentor. I don’t know what to do, where to go, I don’t know anything.’
I went mad then, did things all wrong. I called my discipline instructor. His wife—our aunt—picked up. Sobbing, I choked out, ‘Aunty, my Nihal is leaving. He’s saying such terrible things, like he’ll never come back.’ She’d known about my relationship and marriage from before. She’d always told me to come back home. I couldn’t. She said to me then, ‘Calm down. Wait and see what happens. This isn’t new—I’ve told you many times it would come to this. Why are you crying like this?’ Without another word to her, I hung up and called a few friends, crying to them. Everyone said the same things. Nothing stuck in my head. I cut their calls short and went back to Nihal, grabbing his feet, weeping.
# At Last
When they finally left, I couldn’t bear it anymore—the shame of not managing anything, the rage and sorrow and spite—so I returned everything they had given me from their house. I don’t know if it was wrong or right. But it seemed to me that people with such small hearts shouldn’t have their things kept by me. After they took me to their home, Nihal’s mother once mentioned a divorce in the neighboring house and told me, ‘My son won’t lack for a bride, and you might find a husband too. But the shame will be yours, and we’ll lose some jewelry—that’s all!’
What I heard from them was that there’d been a new wedding in that neighboring house. The bride came, stayed three or four days, and then went to her father’s place—or her natal home, as they said. But that first time she went, she never came back. The bride supposedly didn’t want to build a life with that boy at all. The boy’s family had given seven or eight tolas of jewelry. The bride divorced him but never returned the jewelry or the clothes. Remembering that story, it struck me: perhaps they wouldn’t keep me either, which is why they hadn’t spent much on me—afraid I might not return things. So I filled a bag with whatever I had and gave it to her. “Take these,” I said. “It was fear that kept you from giving much, but whatever you did give, take it back. Give it to your younger sister when you get home. She’s spent so much on me. When you bring me again to your house, I can wear these then.”
After I wore Nihal’s sister-in-law’s sari at their place, I wore my pre-wedding clothes. People from around would come and see me and say, why didn’t they give me anything? They could have given me at least one outfit. So to save face, they brought me two three-piece sets. But I never got to wear them. The first time they had them made, and then I went to Dhaka. They handed them to me on Eid after Qurbani. I brought them to Khulna but never wore them. Though it turned out his younger sister had bought them. If anyone from their house brought me even a two-taka shampoo, they’d say, “Nihal’s younger sister bought this for you.”
And after I left, on the first Eid after Ramadan, Nihal’s friend Komal alone gave me a sari, and on Qurbani Eid six friends together gave me a bright red sari. I loved that sari so much. But I never even got to unfold it and look at it properly. The sari Nihal bought me on Eid—since my beloved had bought it for me—I only held that one close to my heart. The rest I returned and said, “Auntie has suffered so much for me. Give these to her.”
They left and I cried out loud that day—”Oh Allah, oh Mother”—and wept bitterly. His younger brother-in-law works at an Apex shoe showroom in Banasree, Dhaka. His monthly salary is fifteen thousand taka. His younger sister’s household runs on rice and lentils and oil from her father’s house. Nihal had told me that before. The neighbors said it too. Yet they acted cheap and small-minded all the time.
An hour later, Nihal texted me. When I got that text, I screamed and cried like a madwoman. Seeing all this, the neighbors would get annoyed. After that, for a month and a half, there was nothing in my life but pain. Just intense, raw feelings! Remembering it all, my heart burns.
# The Waiting
She left on the eighteenth for Narayanganj—to their house. Not to Dhaka. Once she got there, she stopped calling me. Wouldn’t pick up my calls either. And here I am, crying myself to death every second. Three days later, my brother-in-law and sister-in-law started needling me about being a divorcée for no reason. Bringing it up constantly, hurling abuse. I sent Nihal countless messages. She didn’t reply. When I finally managed to get her on the phone—hands clasped in supplication through my texts—she said things so cruel, so calculated to wound, that I only wept harder.
I blamed myself. I called out to Allah. I cursed my fate. I beat my head against the wall like a madwoman, so hard that one of my front teeth broke. I punched my own chest. I wanted to die. My brother-in-law said I must be on drugs—that’s why I’m crying so much. A normal, healthy person wouldn’t cry this hard over a boy. Every time I cried, he’d call the neighbors over, point at me, and tell them how my brother had sacrificed his life for me, and I’d gone to university and ended up a drug addict, mixing with the wrong kinds of boys and girls. I didn’t fully understand then what a small-town family and society could be like.
They all went to the police. They told me, “Why don’t you just die? It’s a sin to have given birth to a girl like you. You’ve brought nothing but shame on us for some boy! You say you love him so much, but you couldn’t keep a husband—why?” Listening to my brother and uncle, I thought many times that I should wait. That I shouldn’t go back then. But they’d threatened me: if I tried to leave at that moment, they’d kill me for revenge. None of them would even visit my grave. Street dogs would eat my corpse. Everyone in the house would change their phone numbers. They’d move to a different house. I’d never find any of them again.
The same people who fed me those words—they’re the ones asking me now why I listened to them. If my love was so great, why didn’t I force my way back to him, come what may? That’s what they’re saying. I tell Nihal, “I’m coming back to Dhaka. Whatever happens, happens.” Nihal says, “Don’t you dare. Let time speak now. Let time tell everything.” Nihal calls my friend Cynthia and tells her she can’t be alone anymore. She thinks of me all the time. She just cries. When Cynthia offers to take responsibility and send me to her, Nihal says again, “No, no. Whatever you do, don’t let Sanjida come!” I can’t understand any of Nihal’s games. I cry. I go mad. I get cursed at.
Nihal was so afraid I’d leave that she moved out of our old place and found another flat somewhere else. Komal finished his studies at Islamic University and came to Dhaka for job coaching. Not that I ever found out which coaching center he’d go to or what books he’d read—Komal got all that information just by listening to me talk. The three of us were supposed to live together like that. And now, without me, the two of them have rented a place together.
My mind wasn’t working right, so I made some mistakes in what I wrote, sorry. My brother and sister-in-law started calling me “divorcee,” taunting me with it from three days after the divorce, not during that time itself. Anyway, one night at three in the morning she calls and tells me she saw me in a dream. The moment she says this, she starts wailing. And listening to all this, I cry even harder. There’s no such thing as day or night anymore. I go to that uncle and ask him to get in touch with them. On their end, even the chairman doesn’t pick up. If he picks up after I’ve called a thousand times, and I ask what’s the news, the chairman says, “Who’s going to make a boy marry when he doesn’t want to himself!” Hearing this, I can’t even believe it—never mind crying. When I talk to Nihal, it feels to me like he wants me, but he can’t do anything because of his family. He loves me.
I go out to the middle of the field, call him, and cry until my voice breaks. I beg, I swear oaths, I rage, I cry again. I hit my own face, I pound my chest, I throw whatever’s in my hands. People gather hearing the commotion. Word reaches home. Mother comes and takes me back to the house. After that she gives me sleeping pills and keeps me asleep. For six straight days I didn’t eat anything, didn’t bathe. Even in sleep I dream and wake up crying, and when I’m awake it all comes back even worse. If I cry at home, my brother wants to hand me over to RAB, to the police. There’s nowhere, not a corner anywhere, where I can find peace.
I leave to survive by going to the coaching center, where I’d studied for two months to prepare for the BCS exam. Confidence, the Boyra branch. There were about ten or eleven of us studying together at the big table in the library. They know I went to my in-laws’ place. When they suddenly see me in the library, they’re all so happy. But looking at my face, none of them can recognize me. They ask me, “When girls get married, their faces light up—why do you look like this? It seems like you’re not even you. Your age has jumped up by twelve years, and your body has shrunk by twelve years. Has something happened?” I say, “No! Nothing’s happened!” And then I just break down wailing. That day they took me outside and sat with me in an empty place and listened to everything. To cheer me up, none of them studied that day. They just wandered around with me.
But where can my inner pain go? Every five minutes I burst out crying for no reason. I spend the whole day with them. They study, I watch. If I go home, my brother and sister-in-law’s mental torture starts all over again. Every two days my brother kicks me out of the house. Then I take my books and notebooks and stay at Cynthia’s place. They supported me like family during all this. In the meantime, results came out for the bank’s senior officer position—I made the shortlist, the viva is in November. I made it in the general insurance exam too, viva on November 2nd. I made it in the primary exam, viva on October 23rd I think. There’s no one around me to even tell about all this. I tell my friend. And she’s happy for me.
On his side, he’s even told my mother not to be in touch with me. I stay at my friend’s place and go to the library. But I can’t study. I go to the library only to learn how to dream. I’d think about how beautifully I used to study those two months before. There was this senior from Rajshahi University—Titu bhai. To test me, he’d dig up these fiendishly difficult math problems. I never failed a single one. I’d crack them in three or four minutes using shortcuts. He was always amazed. Later he’d beat me at general knowledge. But I’d only studied for two months by then. I hadn’t read general knowledge well enough. And honestly, I didn’t enjoy it anyway. English and math were my strengths. When I started going to the library, he began giving me math problems again. I thought I wouldn’t manage. But somehow I did. Yet besides the basics of math and English, there’s nothing else in me. I thought I should quit studying altogether. This just won’t work for me.
There I was at my friend’s place, crying all day long. My phone broke too. No contact with anyone. Whenever I get someone’s phone, I call Nehal with it, and he says things to hurt me. In the midst of all this, the prelims date for the NSA ADI exam came and went. August ended. September came. That fifteen days they mentioned—gone. None of us can reach them. They don’t call either. The September date they gave us came too. They said they’d give me the divorce on September 18th. That date came, but still they won’t get in touch. They won’t even let us speak.
(To be continued…)