Nowhere Anyone

 'Baker Bhai, could you give me your hand? Let me hold it for a while?'
  
 Baker Bhai extended his hand. Muna cupped that outstretched hand in both her palms and began kissing it. Muna's tears wet Baker Bhai's hand. Between them stood the prison bars like a wall. That wall gazed silently toward all the wallless spaces of this world and hurled the victor's silent smile.
  
 Baker Bhai never cries. Today he too is crying. These are not the tears of a condemned man walking toward death. These are tears of receiving. The man who believed he lived in the love of countless people—today he knows he is dying with just one Muna's love by his side. The person who cannot be introduced before society—in truth, apart from that person, he has never truly known anyone else. Except for this one relationship, all his other relationships were merely masks concealing an eternal unfamiliarity! The source of Baker Bhai's tears is not attachment to life, but surrender to love. People cannot bear intense love before their eyes—they break down and weep. The celebration of love has always been in tears.
  
 : How are you, Baker Saheb?
 : Well.
 : Will you eat something?
 : Give me a very cold glass of water. Nothing else.
 : Very well.
 : Jailer Saheb...
 : Yes?
 : I had a favorite song. Could you play it?
 : Of course I can. What song, tell me?
  
 Baker Bhai looked to the right with distant eyes. Perhaps his gaze was toward approaching death. Except for this one death, wherever a person looks, it eventually disappears from sight. Who is a more honest friend than death!
  
 The call to prayer is sounding. The sweet melody of the azan floats through the air. Muna is pacing in front of Dhaka Central Jail. This pacing is called waiting. Almost all waiting in this world is for people; Muna's waiting is for a corpse. Where love exists, all waiting is for the beloved person. The beloved never truly dies. That person never disappears from before one's eyes. Muna is waiting for Baker Bhai. Everyone else will see that Baker Bhai hasn't come—his corpse has come. Muna will see that the only close person of her entire life has come before her eyes.
  
 Baker Bhai has been executed. Muna entered the prison. Her eyes and face are calm, still, detached. Today Muna has no more obstacles. She will take Baker Bhai with her for this lifetime.
  
  
 : Will you receive the dead body?
 (Muna nodded silently in agreement.)
 : Have you brought the papers?
 (Muna handed over the papers. A tear appeared at the corner of her right eye. She wiped the tear with her bent index finger.)
 : What relation are you to Baker?
 : I...! I am nobody.
  
 Baker Bhai's body was brought out from inside the prison. In the background, his favorite song plays in a melancholy tune: Hawa mein udta jaye...
  
 The man around whom well-wishers had circled all his life—after his death, he was accompanied by someone who was nobody to him. Except for that one person, he found no one else beside him after death. During life, people refuse to understand that their death doesn't really matter to anyone in this world either. If they could grasp this, living would be much easier for them.
  
 Muna looked once at Baker Bhai's face. Then she kept gazing at the dawn sky. Through the dim darkness of that sky, Baker Bhai is perhaps telling Muna, 'Muna, your waiting ends today. From today, I am yours.' We see Muna crying again. The person who was nobody to her has now become everything to her for the rest of her life. Some achievements make people weep.
  
 In the final scene, Muna is walking away. She walks slowly forward. In this life she has received almost nothing, only Baker Bhai. No one else will ever have that man. Love never came into Muna's life—Baker Bhai came. Many people came into Baker Bhai's life; after death, only Muna came. This is called destiny. Baker Bhai's death proved that humans cannot escape destiny. Those whose happiness we live to maintain—not one of them truly cares about our lifespan.
  
 The man who spent his entire life helping countless people—after his death, beside him was someone who was nobody to him. No one else was anywhere nearby. This person who was nobody was Muna's entire life; in every drop of blood flowing through Muna's body lived that man's constant presence. Muna and Baker Bhai never had a household together. After death, Baker Bhai became the household of Muna's entire remaining life.
  
 In this world there are also relationships that have no name. Yet that very relationship becomes one that spans lifetimes. No purer bond can be found in all of history than such relationships. Before such namelessness, all the names in the world seem so pale!
  
 The person who is everything to the Munas of the world—standing before society, the Munas must say about that person: that person is nobody to me! That's what society wants to hear. Society still hasn't learned to accept anything more than that. The relationship that must be bought with the price of an entire life—that very relationship has no name! Some relationships are beyond even love; some love is beyond even relationships! The love that no one can see—that love shows the entire life!
  
 The hand that requires permission to hold, suppressing an ocean of sighs in the chest—that very hand becomes the only support for living. The Munas can never ask for their Baker Bhais. Yet after the Baker Bhais' deaths, the Munas can ask for nothing else but them for the rest of their lives. Some relationships survive merely out of life's obligation; some relationships don't die even in death's dispassionate cold reckoning. There are relationships that people accept; there are relationships that people adjust to; there are relationships that rise far above all external and internal walls of acceptance or adjustment and survive as the only excuse for living.