There's something I need to tell you today. I've been thinking about it for so long, wanting to say it, but I couldn't quite gather the courage. And besides, it's a subject I've always deeply disliked. I've never been one to share my personal matters with anyone. Except for myself, I don't really have anyone else I'd call a friend. And with what I'm about to tell you, I don't know how you'll react, whether things between us will stay the way they are, whether you'll be able to love me as much as you did before knowing this. That's why I've kept quiet all this time, thinking about it over and over but saying nothing. I thought: things are fine as they are—if I tell you all this and lose you, if I lose these moments we've shared, what then? Better to wait a few more days, to hold on to this feeling a little longer. But now it feels like if I wait any longer, I may never tell you at all. If you hear distorted versions from someone else and misunderstand me, I won't have time to make things right, because by then I'll have become completely untrustworthy in your eyes. I used to ignore what outsiders said about me, and I still do. But what happened with Rafiq a while back shook me—truly shook me—because I still don't know how many snakes in friends' clothing are coiled around me, ready to strike. My relationship with Rafiq was genuinely close, and I never expected it from him.
I know that no matter what others say about me, you'll never believe it. But that doesn't mean I can just sit here in silence. There's a world of difference between loving someone knowing the whole truth and loving them in ignorance. If I hide my truth from you, or if it comes to light and I lose you because of it—that fear alone won't make the truth disappear or turn into a lie. And if, after knowing about me, your love, your trust, your faith in me diminishes, or slowly fades away, well, that was bound to happen sooner or later anyway. When it did, what could I do but accept it? Whether out of necessity or shame, I'd have to accept it. So let it happen now rather than later. Because there are enemies at my back—unwanted, needless enemies—who are always watching, always looking for ways to hurt me. You often say that the silent have no enemies, yet all these years I've kept quiet and still they continue their work against me. The thing is, one story is always tangled up with so many others, so many events. To tell one, I can't leave the others unsaid. That's why I've said nothing to you all this time. I know that if I don't tell you everything, there will be so many questions left unanswered in your mind, and I never wanted that. I know that someday perhaps you'll want to know things bit by bit, but I wish—I wish you didn't have to ask me for answers at all.
My marriage, you see, happened in the midst of so much drama, and it was forced upon me. At the age I was when I married, I was in no way willing to go through with it.
Before I tell you the rest of my story, I want to tell you something about my family. I come from what you might call a family of some standing. My father’s grandfather, the late Azgar Ali Majumdar, was the founder of Bogra Government Rabia College, and we have three large mosques and two orphanages bearing his name. Many of Bogra’s important public institutions—the Bogra Municipality, the Bogra District Jail, the Bogra Majumdar Ghat, the Bogra Charminar Park, and numerous other landmarks in the Bogra sadar area—are all built on land that came from our family. My grandfather, the late Kaysar Ali Majumdar, fearing his sons might squander their inheritance through carelessness or folly, had all this land formally endowed as waqf property so that at the very least they could not sell it off. For even before his death, he had come to accept a hard truth: he had not been able to raise his children to be decent human beings. This knowledge haunted him right until the end. And yet, despite all his land and wealth, my grandfather spent his final years living in his youngest daughter’s house.
My grandfather’s ancestral home was in Peshawar, Pakistan. He came here and laid the foundation for our family line, and there are reasons for this migration, but I won’t go into all that now. My grandfather left behind no educated, capable son. Among my father’s generation and his cousins, only three of us have pursued higher education—honours and master’s degrees. One is my younger uncle, Rahan Ali Majumdar, who is the General Manager of Asia Group. Then there’s my cousin-uncle Shafiqur Ali Majumdar, who is the CEO of Walton. And the third is Shamsher Ali Majumdar, Shafiqur’s younger brother, who runs a motor parts business. In my generation, only my brother and I are graduates. As for the rest—whether they’ll study further, whether they can, whether they even want to—that’s all very uncertain. Really, the boys in our family don’t need to study much at all. Their fathers have already made sure each one of them has enough wealth set aside, carefully preserved for their future. So they have no worries at all.
All the women in our family are more or less uneducated and troubled. Though I must say, the women of our line have little by way of ego or pride. Their hearts are generous, capacious even. Perhaps that is precisely why none of them has found happiness in married life. When they go to their husband’s house, their in-laws assume right away: this girl won’t stay, girls from such prominent families never settle into domestic life. And so begins a litany of baseless suspicion and cruelty. In the end, these poor women either resign themselves to it all in silence, or—like me—they come back to their father’s house. I was perhaps too modern, and that’s why I couldn’t make the marriage work. Though I have no regrets about it. Most of the time, when I’m out in the world, I don’t introduce myself as a girl from this family, because if I do, my own small identity gets completely overshadowed. I don’t want people to judge me by my family name before they’ve even known me properly. Do you remember when you first came to Bogra? You expressed surprise that nobody seemed to know about Rabia College. I was right there beside you, but I couldn’t say anything about it, because I didn’t want to bring that part of my identity out in front of you.
Anyway, my late grandfather, Kaysar Ali Majumdar, established a school on this very spot in 1929, which he named Bogra Muslim High School. Later, in 1961, my grandparents converted this school building into Rabia College, named after my grandmother. Then in 1980, the government took it over and made it a government college. Until then, we had borne all the expenses of running it ourselves.
# Our Three Mosques and Two Orphanages
My grandfather founded our three mosques and two orphanages all at once, back in 1929. Though the college is government-run now, we still have considerable political influence over it. That’s precisely why the college can’t move forward as it might wish. Long before the government Azizul Haque College became well-known, students from all across Bogura and the surrounding areas studied here—it was the only college of any significance then. Once this college offered honours, masters, and degree courses, but when HSC students became too numerous and space ran short, the decision was made to run only the HSC programme. And why am I telling you all this about my entire family? Because if you don’t know the history behind me, you won’t be able to make sense of what comes next.
The man I married—I’d known him for a full seven years before that. Known him, nothing more than that. Everyone back in Bogura still knows us by the same name. What I gained, being born into this family, was this: I became an unwilling heir to some sins my fathers and grandfathers had left behind, and I lost at birth the freedom to move about as I wished. On top of that, we bear the inevitable fruits of some foolish deeds done by those who came before us. How so? Well, take it this way—not one of my grandfathers was content with a single marriage. My grandfather married three times; his third wife died not long after the wedding. I am the granddaughter of his first wife. From his other marriages, he had many children and grandchildren. It’s the same story in every household—more or less. I’ve heard tales of my maternal grandfather: he would lend money all over the place, and if someone couldn’t repay him, he would marry off one of their daughters as interest and bring her home with him. That’s how he came to marry eleven times, and after I was born, I knew not just my grandmother but seven stepmothers besides. So the old seeds of this marriage obsession were sown by them.
Of course, most of my uncles and my father—save for a few—married only once. From what I can gather, the reason is this: my fathers never had the wealth my grandfathers and great-grandfathers possessed. That’s why they couldn’t afford more than one marriage—though given the means, they would have. So the reputation of our family has become this: these people simply marry, one after another, without restraint. Because of this, when men come to marry the women of our family, they arrive trembling with the fear that perhaps we won’t keep a household. Yet for all that, the moment a girl from our family comes of age—the moment she crosses seventeen or eighteen somehow—people go absolutely mad to marry her off. And the reason has nothing to do with any particular virtue or beauty on our part, I assure you. Men come to marry us for the family name itself. The idea is this: connect with this family however you can, and you’ll gain a name that might grant you some standing in the world, some authority. That’s the lure. We understand it all too well. Why am I telling you all this? Because I told you that many men bother me, pursue me relentlessly, won’t give up no matter what, and when they can’t succeed, they try to harm me or spread vicious rumours about me. I wanted you to understand why.
You see, these men don’t do what they do because of my face. You know well enough that I’m no beauty, no great beauty that men would endure such humiliation just to chase after me.
So what these crude boys end up doing when they can’t manage anything else is simply fabricate lies out of thin air. The women of this family are all bad, they say—married a hundred times over, relations with a hundred men, spreading filth and slander everywhere. Never mind that there’s not a shred of proof for any of it. When my wedding was arranged, my ex’s parents came at me the same way. First they spread the rumor that I was in love with their son. But their boy lived in Khulna and came to Bogura only twice a year for Eid—so when exactly was I supposed to have fallen in love with him? When they came to our house with the proposal, I flat out refused. I said I wanted to study. Then they began persuading my parents: we won’t harm your daughter’s education at all, just let her wear the ring, that’s all we need—then we’ll know you’re giving her to us. We want nothing else. Once her honors is finished, we’ll take her away. We won’t do anything before that. My family saw a government doctor, someone with a job at the upazila health complex, and the fact that his house was in our own town, that the family was well-off—so they accepted everything without another word.
Meanwhile, this boy kept threatening me. “If you don’t marry me, I’ll take you away by force.” At that age, it didn’t occur to me that he and his entire family couldn’t possibly do any such thing, that my father and uncles would have destroyed him if he tried. But in that moment, it never crossed my mind to tell my family that he was threatening me. Then the day came when I was supposed to get the ring, and without informing anyone beforehand, he started pressuring everyone in our house for the full marriage contract. Nobody listened to what I had to say. I was in such a state that if I could have run away, I would have. And this boy—he put on another performance, crying in front of everyone. When the qazi saheb arrived that day and was about to register the marriage, he noticed I still had four and a half months before I turned eighteen. I felt a small relief—maybe in those four and a half months I’d find some other excuse not to go through with it. But right then and there, this boy started his next drama. He burst into tears in front of everyone and said, “If this wedding doesn’t happen now, it won’t happen after four and a half months either.” My family liked him even more—what a good boy, crying because he wants to marry our daughter! He’ll be so loving to her, so devoted—so they all convinced me, and four and a half months later, on what was supposed to be just an engagement ceremony, they practically forced the wedding garland around my neck. I had already told my family I wouldn’t marry yet. They had assured me they would only put the ring on me. That was the promise I went along with.
From the time they sent the proposal to my house until my marriage contract four and a half months later, they asked for my biodata at least a hundred times. They kept saying: our house is so close to yours, the boy is educated, we’re all educated—what do we need a biodata for? Asking for a biodata here is nothing but an insult to us.
I’ve explained it to my father over and over, emphasized the importance of looking into their affairs, but my father and uncles just laughed it off. My uncle made a couple of phone calls to the district’s civil surgeon to confirm the boy worked there, and that was the extent of their investigation. I’ve carried a quiet anger toward my family all these years because of their foolishness and neglect—though I blame myself entirely for it. Because if I relinquish my responsibility toward them again, they’ll hang some other mess around my neck without thinking twice.
And by now I’ve understood at least this much: only the person whose life it is truly suffers for it. No one else in the family cares one bit. You cry your own tears alone. If given the chance, my own parents won’t hesitate to wound me with their words. They don’t even see their own faults, let alone admit them, and on top of that they torture me with accusations. That’s why, though it pains me, I’ve decided never to give anyone a second chance at hurting me like this. So now I listen to everyone, swallow everything, endure it all. I used to think that no matter how the world might be, a mother and father could never speak carelessly to their own child. But I was wrong. My understanding was flawed. Still, I respect them, because that’s my duty as a daughter. They can say whatever they please, and I swallow it whole. The truth is, there were many reasons behind my divorce. The man I married was pathologically suspicious, and it had reached a point where I couldn’t bear it anymore. If I’d endured for even a few more months, I would either have taken my own life or lost my mind completely. The day of my wedding ceremony, I couldn’t bring myself to be with him that night—I was so utterly broken inside.
I was nowhere near ready for marriage, for a household, for entangling myself in another relationship. I tried to make them understand, but they said everything would work out in time. I couldn’t accept him in my heart, and I didn’t understand how things could be fixed between us based only on physical relations. Their idea was that physical intimacy alone would set everything right. All my dreams, all my ideas about marriage, were soiled in an instant. I couldn’t feel physical desire then, and I didn’t want to—I wasn’t the age to understand or feel such things. I forced myself into everything, only to please my family. I remember saying back then that my parents and my entire family were everything to me. I meant the whole extended family—my uncles and aunts, everyone together. We were more or less like a joint family then. Now that everyone’s children are growing up, now they understand the needs of their own children, yet my father never once set aside his siblings’ concerns to prioritize his own children. My father depended entirely on his brothers and sisters for every decision affecting us children. He never once tried to understand what his own child needed, and my mother—well, they’d all driven her mad long before, so there was no question of relying on her either.
# A Marriage of Silence
Now, of course, I see many things that no one wanted to understand back then. And now many people’s tongues have gone still. Be that as it may—what I was saying was, he and I didn’t spend much time together. After the wedding, he’d come home once every two or three months, and because I didn’t want him to come more often, he didn’t. Every two or three months he’d force his way back. I never asked him to come because I wasn’t comfortable with him—physically, I mean. From the start, really, I couldn’t bear him as a husband, so I was always trying to avoid the matter. When he was in Khulna, I’d find excuses not to talk much on the phone. I’ve always been an open person, and he hated that. So there wasn’t much ease between us, but I wouldn’t answer him unless I had to. I’ve never been one for arguments with anyone.
My not talking to him much—he didn’t like that. And instead of giving me time to come around, he’d force conversation, pick needless fights, keep digging for words. How much money did he spend from home? Where was I spending it? Where did I go? Who did I spend time with? Which professor did I study under? Slowly he started this interrogation about everything. I began to hate it terribly. Because the moment he’d call, the questioning would start. At first, the family at home would say, well, he’s so far away, that’s why he worries about you—don’t let it get to you. But slowly he started forwarding my calls. He’d ring up every friend who called me, asking if they were boys or girls. He’d track me through my girlfriends’ numbers, trying to see if I spoke to other boys, if there were any boys in my professor’s class—all of it. At one point his suspicion, his taste, descended to such depths that he even began to suspect my girlfriends. When he’d searched everywhere and couldn’t find any fault in me, couldn’t dig up some boy in my life, then he became suspicious of me in a different way. He decided I must have physical relations with my girlfriends, that I must be a lesbian.
Then he started humiliating all my friends on the phone, asking them again and again about me. They understood soon enough that things weren’t well between us, that he suspected me of something. Some of my friends just assumed there must be someone else, why else would he suspect me like that? I watched him do all this, belittling me in everyone’s eyes, planting a question about me in every mind. Slowly he became cruder. He started objecting to me talking with anyone except my father and my brother. He grew suspicious of my brother-in-law, of my cousins, my uncles’ and aunts’ children. We grew up in a joint family, and when all the cousins got together we’d have such fun, the lot of us. A boy and girl cousin together—we didn’t even know such things could be improper. But he could never accept it as simple, never.
I didn’t want my siblings to know about this, you see, because the way I look at it, once you’re married, people naturally get caught up in their own households, and after that it’s just not possible to stay in touch the way you used to.
For several years even after my own marriage, we’d have forty, forty-five guests at our place during every Eid. Father would do whatever he could within his means. I’d seen it that way since childhood. Now many of my brothers and sisters are married themselves, they still want to come together, but managing forty, fifty people on my own has become impossible, so I’ve never asked them to come on my own initiative. I know they would come if I asked. Besides, Father doesn’t work anymore, and we have so many people in the house as it is. Whenever a guest arrives, Father wants to take everyone out to eat together, and it puts such enormous pressure on me alone. I fall ill. So I don’t invite guests anymore. If someone does come, I deliberately leave the house. I simply can’t manage these things anymore. Because if I end up sick and bedridden, there’s no one to even take me to the hospital—so why should I put myself through all that suffering for anyone?
Anyway, when his suspicions about me started growing even more, if a call came to my mobile, I’d have to keep him on the line and talk to everyone else with him listening. My older brother and my two uncles in Dhaka would call me once every day. We had a good relationship with my uncles, so there would be long conversations. But he had this idea that I was talking to someone else. Sometimes he’d keep the phone line occupied for hours, just leave it going. He’d tell me, “You keep the line open and go about your work.” I couldn’t even really talk to anyone at home anymore. If my phone was always tied up, how could I move around the house doing things? At that time, my cousins, aunts, and uncles were constantly coming over. I had good relations with everyone, so they all doted on me and looked after me. At least, it was like that until the divorce. I never went out alone—either with an aunt or with one of the other aunts. If I went shopping or anywhere, I had to leave the phone line open. If someone nearby said anything to me during this time, he’d think I was talking to someone else, and then when I got home he’d start screaming about it. It was becoming unbearable for me. I was always living in fear—what should I do, what else might happen?
When I told my family about all this, they’d say, “Stop going out. Cut ties with your friends and relatives, and everything will be fine.” I couldn’t understand why my own family didn’t see what was happening! They kept telling me, “When you’re with him, when you’re in his company, everything will work out.” He wanted me to wear a burqa, not talk to anyone, give up my studies—things like that—but he wouldn’t say it directly back then, just keep pressing me on it. I was never a conservative girl or especially religious. For me, religion meant doing good work, not lying, not deceiving anyone, living honestly, saying my prayers—that’s all. I used to think, if your heart is clean, nothing else can hurt you.
# From the very beginning, my family raised me like a boy—dressed me in pants and shirts, kept my hair short. So how could I suddenly start wearing those clothes? Whatever they told me to do, I complied, but I couldn’t do it anymore.
The way they brought me up, they should have married me to a boy like themselves. Now, according to their wishes, I was suddenly supposed to wear a straight burka—it felt like outright cruelty. I wouldn’t accept it, not because I was defiant, but because I wasn’t. I conducted myself with perfect propriety. After growing up, I never stepped outside in anything but a salwar-kameez. And yes, when I went to Dhaka I wore pants and shirts sometimes, but never in Bogra. Everyone tormented me over my clothes, over my appearance—something I couldn’t reconcile with myself at all. Because I hadn’t been raised that way. How could I suddenly walk down the opposite path? Besides, I never liked those clothes. The odhni was always troublesome—several times it got tangled in the rickshaw wheel or pedal, my clothes tore, and I’d come home in pieces. Yet they kept forcing these things on me. And fingers kept pointing at me from all sides. The whole world seemed to be pointing fingers, and I felt sure that all the problems lay hidden between my appearance and myself.
Yes, I’ll admit one thing: I wasn’t paying him the attention he wanted, I wasn’t giving him what he expected from me. But no one ever stopped to think about my level of emotional maturity, or that he kept trying to confine me in ways that didn’t fit. He wanted me to be something I wasn’t, something I could never be. My mind was always elsewhere—thinking about when I could go out, when I could have fun with friends, or caught up in a hundred other things. They married me off and tried to lock me away, but my pull toward the outside world was irresistible. I couldn’t turn my heart toward him no matter how hard I tried. I wanted a friend, and instead he became even more controlling than my parents. I’d never lived the kind of life he was suddenly forcing on me without warning. I had no idea what I could do to escape it. And all the while, I was enduring his constant emotional abuse.
I lived in fear back then, and started hiding the smallest things. Like, he told me not to go on the veranda. One day I forgot and went out to hang some clothes. If he called and asked whether I’d been on the veranda, my heart would start pounding. I’d stammer and say no. Then he’d lash out and tell me his friend had passed by our house that day and seen me on the veranda. So how could his friend have seen me? Meanwhile, I’d forgotten whether I’d actually been on the veranda or not—it wasn’t the kind of thing you’d remember. That’s how he’d interrogate me over everything, big and small, dragging each detail out. But now, whenever I think back on it, the first thought that strikes me is: why did I endure all this, day after day?
Why didn’t I just kick it all away right then and there? I had no other real problems. My parents could have dragged me along forever—so why did I keep torturing myself like this?
And then, slowly, it all spiraled worse. Everyone kept saying, go stay with him, it’ll all work out. But that was never the plan. I was just in my first year of honors. I’d barely started stepping out alone, getting to know the world beyond my door. And at that moment, a free-spirited girl like me—someone who’d just tasted that joy—could never accept trading it all for a locked-up, housewife’s life. Then his entire family started pushing for the wedding, pressuring me to move in. Even though I didn’t want this, everyone rallied around “saving the relationship,” insisting I be handed over to his house. Meanwhile, all these months of psychological pressure, all these bizarre situations crushing down on me—I never really opened a single first-year book properly. I’d show up at his teacher’s place now and then. That wasn’t studying. And all my first-year subjects were theoretical. How was I supposed to write anything in the exams without having touched them? I knew—*knew*—I wasn’t going to do well. That’s why I got a 3.17 in my first year.
I remember—my year-end exam was scheduled just fifteen days after my wedding. I’d asked them to postpone the wedding date, but they said no one would get leave any other time. It was Eid vacation, so everyone had come then. Because I was the youngest in my family, because everyone had always loved me, my wedding became this joyful thing for the whole household. But in all of that, no one even paused to see where they were actually sending me! And all this time, he’d never asked me for anything. The moment we married, demands came pouring in. He needed furniture, a fridge, an air conditioner in the room, and oh, the gold—so much gold they’d drowned me in, and now it was all tallied and expected. I watched it, amazed. Before the wedding, everyone was all sweetness; after, silence. Everyone slunk away like wet cats. I understood then: I was going to have to carry this burden alone.
Not even a week into the marriage, his father announced I couldn’t go to college anymore—only to exams. The sky fell on my head. Ten days until my exam, and they wouldn’t let me leave the house. I panicked. Would they even let me sit for it? Or would they trap me? I was terrified they’d stop me from taking the exam altogether, that they’d strangle my education completely. My whole family is uneducated. They started saying, what’s the point of all this studying? His mother told me, you’re not doing anything special—you’re not going to be a doctor or engineer. Just focus on running the household. For women, that’s everything. I called my father, told him about the exam, begged him to take me home right then. He did, but during those exam days, he tortured me relentlessly over the phone, wearing me down mentally. I remember only crying and studying, understanding nothing. How did I end up in this mess?
I felt that if I could just end it all—somehow, anyhow—then perhaps I would finally live. There was no other way out for me.
There was one thing I never did: I never hid anything from my family. Because if I had, they would have blamed me for it. And yet, every single day, I had to listen to all manner of accusations and criticism. For eleven long months I endured it all alone. I had no one beside me—not even emotionally. I had stopped wanting a marriage. I only wanted to survive. I knew that if I got a divorce, nothing would be the same as before. My life would become unbearably difficult. I would never have anyone’s support. Never. Instead, I would have to live alone, going against everyone else’s wishes. But at the same time, I kept thinking that these circumstances might ease a little with time. This blow might take four or five years to get through, but by then I could at least finish my studies. The rest could be faced later. For now, I just had to stay alive.
I swallowed every harsh word, every taunt, and lived through each day as it came. I could have abandoned my studies then and devoted myself to the marriage, but again and again I found myself thinking: whoever wants to stop my education and trap me at home will never truly care for me. Toward the end, when there was nothing left to hold the relationship together, he tried to force a child on me. During those days he pressured me constantly for physical relations, but I refused in every way I could. Because the mentality of using a child to prop up a dying marriage was something I never had, and never will. I have always wanted children to come into my home through the sincere will and profound love of two people—never through force. How could I bring a child into this world to be shaped by a man I didn’t love, didn’t respect? I couldn’t. Back then, I still felt that not everything was lost, that there was still hope for my own life.
Undoubtedly, I am infinitely better now than I was then. The day after our wedding, he told my brother-in-law about our intimate relations. He told my brother-in-law that I had a problem, that there was no desire in me. Yes, it’s true—I didn’t want him, so when he came to me I felt repulsion, and I would lie in bed like a corpse. That much is true. But there was nothing more I could have done. He had bred in me a deep, bitter hatred toward himself through his behavior; he was reaping what he had sown. No matter how hard I tried, I could never accept him from my heart. I was doing only what duty demanded of me, just going through the motions, dying inside all the while. Only I know how each night crawled by. I felt violated. When my brother-in-law heard what he had said, he immediately complained to my sister-in-law and called him mad. Who tells such intimate, personal things about his own wife to someone else? My brother-in-law gave him a piece of his mind right then and there, and told him never to call about such things again.
# A New Beginning
Later, when everyone in my house gradually came to know about it, the shame I felt—I cannot put it into words.
I didn’t have to hide anything from him. Within days of the wedding, he had unveiled his true nature all by himself. When I finally came back home, I was still hoping—let a few days pass, let a few months go by, then we’ll see if he changes at all. People do change. But a week after arriving at my parents’ house, he told me: bring the jewelry your family gave you and come stay at my place for a while. I’ll divorce you myself. I felt as though the sky had fallen on me. If I wanted to divorce him, I could do it whenever I pleased—what compensation did I owe him? He thought he could intimidate me into complete obedience. That’s when it struck me: I couldn’t let my emotions lead me through a fool’s paradise any longer. I had no love for him, no real commitment to this marriage. And whatever little remained of my heart for him shattered entirely in that moment.
During those days at his place, they tormented me in countless ways. He wasn’t even in Bogura then. Blind to everything, knowing nothing, he would simply interrogate me over the phone, again and again. I made the decision to divorce him entirely on my own. I told everyone at home: I won’t stay here anymore—make whatever arrangements you need to make. I declared to my family: I want nothing from him—not his jewelry, not my dower money, nothing. I won’t even lodge a complaint against him anywhere. I sent a unilateral divorce letter, releasing myself of all obligations. They had no choice but to accept it.
In the midst of all this, he found my middle uncle to be a fool and told him that if I divorced him unilaterally, I would have to pay him fifteen lakh taka in compensation. But my dower money wasn’t even half of that! My other uncle, a commissioner in a nearby district, took his complaint and wanted to press charges. I made it clear to everyone: I won’t go to court, I won’t even hear of a trial. A lawyer will come to the house and get my signature. Everything had to happen as I said it would. That’s how I speak in my family—when I do speak. Because I had been silent for so long, letting everyone else have their say. I know they were unreasonably afraid of me, but without being this firm, I couldn’t have done anything at all. No one ever found out when my divorce was finalized—because I didn’t let anyone know except my immediate family. I was deeply frustrated with everyone because the very people I had trusted as my guardians couldn’t even speak what was right to anyone else.
After that began another terrifying chapter of my new life. My family started treating me badly without reason, began blaming me for all sorts of things without cause. My life had fallen into another pit. I understood then: I had no one. I was utterly alone. Proposals for marriage started arriving from various quarters, and various boys began making advances. And from my house came relentless pressure—marriage, marriage, marriage.
# Long After
Much later, with utmost rudeness toward almost everyone, I declared that no one was to say anything about my marriage. Even now, whenever my mother gets the chance, she tells me I won’t be able to manage a household. The moment she sees me sit down to study, she finds ways to harass me. When my father gives me pocket money, my mother starts creating trouble. She says, why am I being given money, what’s the need for all this. I’ve stopped taking any expenses from home altogether. I don’t want anything from anyone. I don’t need anything. I buy nothing except the bare essentials. If they see me buying something nice, they cause a fuss. Their argument: why should I buy nice things? Why should I do well for myself? Why should I dress up? I’m forbidden from everything. I never protest, but I don’t know where this ends. Perhaps one day I simply won’t be able to bear it anymore, and then, even if I wanted to, I won’t be able to stay with them, to be with them anymore.
I am a very patient girl, but when I get angry, I become terrifying. I’m no longer in control of myself then. Some invisible force takes over and directs me. I’m truly not often angry. The angers you see me display in conversation are temporary and trivial. Some of them might carry hurt—that you know how alone I am, yet you don’t give me your time. But these aren’t serious things. I go through countless difficult situations every day, and sometimes I feel so terribly alone that I don’t want to live anymore. I bury myself in various tasks because, even if I wanted to, I can’t just die. Before you, another boy came into my life. He works at the Bangladesh Atomic Energy Commission as a researcher. He was studying in Germany on scholarship—a master’s degree and a PhD. His house is in Bogura. He’s a friend of one of my relatives. During my time alone, we started talking. Gradually, I developed some feelings for him, because there was a deep emptiness inside me. He proposed to me. I would talk to him on the phone, on Skype. We talked almost every day. He came to the country in March 2016 with the intention of getting married, but he never told me any of this.
Once he arrived, he became very busy. He stopped talking to me as much. He reduced contact. Then, after a while, I wanted to know his decision from him, because he wasn’t telling me anything clearly, nor was he saying a definite no. Later, under my pressure, he told me he couldn’t marry me. His family would never accept a divorced woman, so I shouldn’t bother him anymore. He also said I was the one who had dragged him into this relationship, that he never had any intention of being with me. His family is quite well-established in Bogura too. After hearing this from him, I made several requests that he at least not end things. I told him I would become so very alone. He didn’t listen to anything I said. From that day until now, I have never contacted him again. He came to the country and suddenly married some girl. He never even inquired about me after that.
That day, it felt as though someone had reached inside me and torn me out from the core! That day I vomited five times in a row, from the overwhelming headache.
I can’t cry much. When I do, I become terribly ill, so I couldn’t let myself cry more than I already had. But neither could I swallow the pain. Because there was no one I could talk to about it. Then I left Bogra for two months and went to Dhaka, to my brother’s place. I thought that if I stayed with my brother’s children, maybe those thoughts wouldn’t haunt me so much. After two months, when I’d become somewhat normal again, I came back to Bogra. And I want to tell you something else—after my divorce, the boy I got involved with, seven months ago he got divorced from his wife, along with their son. They’re completely apart now. After the divorce, he called me so many times, wanting me back in his life, but I refused him outright.
I never kept in touch with him after that. He still calls sometimes. I’ve told him countless times not to, but he does anyway. I don’t really talk to him. He says at least I should keep our friendship. I’ve told him straight up that I can’t have any kind of relationship with him anymore. Even if he calls me ten times, I’ll pick up once, and even then I barely say anything. I don’t volunteer a word. I manage only a sentence or two when it’s absolutely necessary. I have no love for him, no weakness toward him—and it will never happen. These things have been weighing on my mind until I told you about them. That’s why I’ve said it all now. Yes, I know I have many flaws, but I’m not fake. I never will be. And one more thing—from the day of my divorce until today, until you came, I haven’t been with anyone else in any kind of relationship. What will happen going forward, I don’t know. I don’t know anything. But I love you. I have nothing more to say.