# The Long Wait
And so more days passed. Eventually, perhaps worn down by his persistence, his father was forced to get in touch with us. The truth is, just as our family had held back for one reason after another, so had his father, for reasons of his own. Perhaps it was because I am a girl without parents, a person adrift, worthless. Therefore, I would never receive the care and affection of a son-in-law, in-laws. We don’t have much money, and so on and so forth. But my self-respect is too great. If need be, I would rather starve than bow my head before anyone. Then one day, a date was fixed for my family to visit their house. Both sides agreed, and the marriage discussions were settled. A whole year had passed since the day he first came to our home, with all its ups and downs. Throughout that year, he spoke to me with great refinement and courtesy. We would talk about literature, general knowledge, geography—such things. We addressed each other formally, using *aapni*. He would sometimes, in excessive politeness, call me *jee maharaja*, *jee mahasaya*—and hearing it, I would laugh.
So on the day my family went to his house to fix the wedding date, we were exchanging messages in my inbox all day. But he couldn’t bring himself to tell me, out of shyness, when the date had been decided. In the end, I had to wait until my sister returned to her house to hear it. When they came back at eleven at night, I learned the wedding was set for November 1st, 2019. My sister and brother-in-law looked deeply worried. They wouldn’t be holding a ceremony themselves, but the bride’s side would be bringing three hundred guests. Not a single one could be reduced. My uncles and aunts appealed to them many times, but they wouldn’t budge. The next day, I called the boy and said, “You know everything about me. I don’t want to burden my sister and brother-in-law like this. If you could ask your father to reduce the number of guests, it would be wonderful.”
Hearing this, he suddenly became furious. He said many harsh things to me. He said it was impossible for him to ask his father about this. I should have my elders do it. I told him, “My elders came reluctantly and agreed to this. How can I ask them again?” We argued back and forth for a long time. I became very angry too. In my rage, I blocked him on Facebook. But a day later, when my anger cooled, I unblocked him. Ahead was Eid-ul-Adha. On Eid, no one from his house called—not even him. And I had no guardians left to call me. I cried all day. After that, no one from his family reached out, and no one from mine either.
I fell into deep despair. To forget my own sorrow, I threw myself into the relationship, only to return broken-hearted with double the pain. On one hand, I have no job. On the other, there is no one—neither father nor mother—to offer me comfort or support. If only my mother had been beside me in this life, I would have asked for nothing else. I could have given up all my accomplishments and the future itself, and spent the rest of my days with her alone. Then I wouldn’t have suffered so much over all these things, and I wouldn’t have gone seeking love in so many places.… After that relationship fell apart, every day I would pray, perform extra prayers, and weep before the Creator. There is not a single day I haven’t cried, and still I cry often. Suicide is a great sin, and I don’t even have the courage for that darkness.
I prayed and wept, begging Allah for death again and again. I’d wander the streets recklessly, hoping a car would hit me. But I’m so wretched that even death won’t have me. Some people are so cursed that mortality itself turns away.
I’ve sat for the BCS exam so many times. Still nothing. The truth is, I don’t have the brains for it. That’s hard to admit. A month or two before the test, I can grind away like an ox, all day. My studying is all brute force—like cattle. I don’t have a lion’s cunning. Once I was such an ambitious girl, and now? I feel worthless next to my friends. Though I’ll say this: no one from my department, my entire batch, has made it into the BCS cadre yet. The back-benchers from my batch have mostly gone into banking—government and private both. I’m weak at math, so I don’t even dare sit for bank exams. Meanwhile, some of my front-bench friends—and we had two top girls—they’re teaching at primary schools now. They deserved to be university teachers. Not that it matters. Other batches in our department have produced BCS officers, famous cricketers, Bangladesh’s first female FIFA referee, a Bangladeshi on Forbes’s top thirty under thirty. What’s the use dwelling on them? I’ve got nothing of my own to show for myself. A failed student from the best university, the best department—that’s worse than a successful one from a bad school, a bad program. By the time my honors finished, the prestige of the university and department was spent. Plenty of people who’ve built careers on our university’s name are now loitering the streets.
Really, a history of failure only means something if you eventually succeed. If you don’t, all this suffering, all this failure—it’s worthless. I used to dismiss primary school teaching as beneath me, thought no one respected it, so I never even applied. Now, for the first time, I took the primary exam. Then something strange happened—something wonderful. Suddenly I started to feel good. I’d forgotten to love myself while loving others. Now I want to forget others and love myself. I discovered: I’m beautiful. I’m happy. I’m strong. I’m free. I have no aging, no sorrow, no shame, no suffering. I’m being burned down to pure gold. Before the gym, I never understood any of this. I’d never thought about myself this way. I started paying attention to making myself more beautiful. Every day I felt prettier. Confidence poured into me. Now I could conquer the world in a heartbeat.
December 24, 2019. A special day in my life. My birthday. The last day of the age limit for government jobs. And on that very last day—I got my first government job. Allah gave me the greatest birthday gift. A job. A support. An identity. Something to fill a life with busyness. The way people, after much digging, manage to pull out a red rose, I managed too. Maybe it wasn’t a rose, just a jasmine flower, but I got it. And I’m so happy with it. I got a job as an assistant teacher at a primary school. The way people cry out in joy, tears streaming, when they get something small after long suffering—that’s how I cried like a child. You want to share such happiness first with those closest to you. By bad luck, my younger sister was at her in-laws’ that day. So I called her first.
I wept for a long time—long, shaking sobs. After that, I called the two closest friends I’d had since school days and wept to them too. Among all the things I’ve gone without, to finally receive even this small something—I cried then with a pure, crystalline joy, the kind that comes from the depths of the soul.
I kept marveling at it: how I had struggled so hard for the BCS exam, how I’d persisted even after failing at the preliminary stage, how each time I failed I’d gathered my patience and begun studying again with fresh determination. And yet here I was, this same person, weeping like a child over this modest job! That’s when I understood for the first time—that when a person has been denied so much, when she keeps trying and trying but cannot reach her goal, then receiving even a little becomes a feast. Contentment arrives in small packages.
As a person, I’m quite easy to read. Easy to understand. I cannot sleep at night. I wake up early many days. Last night too, I wept in long, hiccupping sobs. Recently, time is rushing by in a blur of busyness. And on top of it all, I’ve been studying bits and pieces for the next BCS exam. I’ve taken up a current affairs special issue, and once I finish one more subject I’ll have some peace. And then, just yesterday, at a friend’s urging, I dared to attempt translation for the first time in my life! Elizabeth Barrett Browning’s “How Do I Love Thee.” And now I’ve got this ghost in my head about writing a modern version of Rabindranath’s “Bidday Abhishap.”
So much from the past comes crowding into my mind! There’s moisture in my eyes right now. I’m such an immature girl. My emotions, my sensitivities—so thoughtless, so reckless! I know that everyone’s life carries some sorrow, more or less. Among those sorrows, the great ones are nearly all the same—only their shape and color change. Today is Chaitra Sankranti. I’m remembering one Chaitra Sankranti when I, Father, and my sister arranged something together. Rice made with bamboo flowers, various kinds of vegetable preparations, and our traditional Manikganj vegetable fritter with bottle gourd leaves. A little eating, a little joy. The value of that? Beyond measure!
The dress I’m wearing today—Mother designed it for me in some spring, years ago. I have a cloth bag that hangs from my shoulder; Mother spent such labor making that too. It was the last sari Mother ever gave me. I’m remembering Father now. My elder sister’s face keeps appearing before my eyes. Father wasn’t a rigid man. He was the sharp, brusque type—a bit like the dry, curmudgeonly old man in Humayun Ahmed’s stories. But he had a subtle sense of humor! Being the youngest in the family, I received both affection and discipline in equal measure. Now, of course, I get neither! When Father used to shout and shout while teaching me Arabic, I would scold him! Mother would too. She’d say, if you teach so loudly, everyone around us will be annoyed! But I was very comfortable with Father. I was the one who scolded him most of all. Father never minded my scolding. Ha ha ha… Father respected other religions. If one doesn’t respect other religions, one truly cannot respect one’s own. One cannot properly practice one’s own religion without being tolerant toward others. There is no such thing as a superior or inferior religion in this world. Each person’s religion is great to them. The sooner one accepts this, the sooner one can advance on the path of true religion.
Mutual respect between different faiths creates peaceful coexistence. The religious scholars of earlier times lived alongside people of other faiths, mixing freely with them. Now there is only the spread of hatred. I feel the most anger toward some so-called intellectuals with their half-baked knowledge. Looking at them, it seems as though demeaning one’s own religion has become some kind of art form! I once read an article by Ahmad Shofaque on this very matter. I liked it very much.
Some intellectuals these days are afflicted with a strange inferiority complex. Of late, Bengali Muslim intellectuals have been suffering from a loss of self-respect. They light the mangal-deepam to inaugurate any ceremony, yet they hesitate to begin with “Bismillah.” They feel uncomfortable even going to a Milad gathering! It’s a kind of hypocrisy, isn’t it? This is our national crisis.
I’ve always wanted to believe in religion through logic. But faith and logic aren’t the same thing! My problem is that when I can’t find logic in something, I don’t feel like performing those rituals. My heart doesn’t consent. Doubt creeps in. Once I asked my mother bluntly, “There are so many religions in the world—which one is true? What’s its credibility?” She replied, “Read the Quran, the Bible, the Gita and think it over.” I haven’t really read any of them properly. Still, I’ve noticed something: among Muslims, Jews, and Christians, there’s much in common. Once I heard something from one of Zakir Naik’s lectures—though I don’t listen to his talks often—that struck me deeply. He said, “It’s better to be an atheist after thinking it through than to blindly accept the religion handed down by your parents’ faith.” But it’s not that I want to become some great intellectual atheist. I’m a typical Muslim. I just want to clear away my doubts and strengthen my faith.
I believe most of us Bangladeshis are racists. For instance, when India and Pakistan play, most orthodox Muslims support Pakistan, while others rise above racism and support India. To this day, I haven’t met a single Hindu who’s supported Pakistan in an India-Pakistan match. Yet I’ve seen many Hindus break religious taboos and eat beef. On the other hand, very few moderate Muslims have the audacity to eat pork. These are the musings of my fertile mind—utterly meaningless. Even if they meant something, they’re worthless. We could talk about these things our whole lives and never finish. What cannot be finished shouldn’t be started. So I usually stay away from all discussions about religion and politics.
Let me drop all this thinking. I have a list of things to do. I want to get them done before Ramadan. On top of that, my sister’s given me a book to read—Maitreyee Devi’s “Na Hanyate.” I’m restless until I finish everything. Besides, these days I sometimes feel like a worshipper of Satan! When Ramadan begins, God willing, I want to find discipline. Just study and spiritual practice! I can’t hide my emotions. I’m comfortable expressing them openly—it eases my pain. So I write out of necessity, I have to write. If I couldn’t write, I’d die! I wrote a lot of poems from college onwards. I’ve written three or four in English too. I’ve tried my hand at every genre—stories, novels, science fiction, detective tales, horror. I want to publish them all as books someday.
Now I can’t write poetry anymore. It’s such difficult work, this poetry-writing. You need love in your heart to write poetry. Writing on Facebook, I get direct reactions from people—I like that. I try to keep things short and simple, in easy, flowing language. Today’s busy people get annoyed by long pieces. I don’t want to write sad things. I try to write with humor and flavor. After my mother died, this has been my world. Whenever something occurs to me, I write it down. I love reading it again and again. Then I post it on the wall. I can’t type.
# A Desktop That Died, and Other Confessions
There was a desktop PC once. Saw no point keeping it, so I sold the hard drive and handed the rest over to the scrap dealer. Now I type these words on an old mobile phone. Doesn’t trouble me in the slightest.
I haven’t read many storybooks in my life. My mother used to say, what good will all that reading do? It didn’t help me any! Now I’m paying the price for not reading enough! Without my mother’s guidance to lean on, I stumble through life, I get cheated, I fall short! I understand nothing of life’s complications. Sometimes I think death would be a mercy. I can’t articulate anything properly, can’t mix well with people. There’s only one thing I can do—take any piece of writing and somehow arrange it so that my heart’s feeling comes through. Perhaps I set out to sculpt Shiva and ended up with a monkey, but still, I can raise some kind of structure. The relationship between reading and writing isn’t linear or inevitable. I know plenty of people who read voraciously but can’t write. And I know no shortage of people who don’t read much but write beautifully—people like myself. But yes, to write you have to awaken the person inside you, and to do that you need to have read at least something. The chief ingredient of writing is sorrow. A person without suffering cannot write. Not just writing—such a person cannot create anything at all. So it seems to me that the person without sorrow is the saddest person of all. Anyway, what does it matter if someone like me—failed, tormented—writes well or writes poorly? I am trying—trying to sweep away all of life’s pain and send it packing!
There’s a quality to my writing. I don’t hide things. Everything I’m telling you here is truth, not lies. I haven’t exaggerated a single thing to you. I haven’t concealed anything. I’ve tried to speak frankly, without hesitation or awkwardness. I wanted to lay myself bare before you completely, so you might understand me easily. In bringing my feelings alive, in making you feel them, I have been sincere throughout this whole story. My mother used to say something always—truth exists, nothing is destroyed. In my life’s philosophy I have never betrayed this, and I never will until death. I keep another of my mother’s sayings in mind—just performing religious rites doesn’t make someone virtuous. A person whose soul is pure—their spirit too is sanctified!
Now I’ll begin my final story. But I don’t know where to start!
Around the time of Eid last year, during the Qurbani festival, this doctor friend of mine from the virtual world kept tagging me, sending me all sorts of videos and pictures. Like he’d tag me with some heroine from an old film and say, look, there’s our veiled lady, the model! And on his own posts, he’d always share pictures of Bengali movies or photos of some controversial religious scholar—this was my childhood teacher, if anyone speaks ill of him you’ll be blocked. Then he’d post all sorts of things about women. If his wife didn’t listen, didn’t cook him rice, he’d beat her. Keep a stick hanging in the kitchen and by the door. All these bizarre posts, one after another! Whether he did it to catch the girls’ attention, I don’t know. Everyone wants to look good and attract people, but he chose a different path. Whenever some idea gripped his mind, he’d start flooding posts about it. During that time, he kept posting about some imaginary girl named Rihana.
Like, “Landlord’s daughter Rihana, there are clouds in the sky, bring my clothes inside.” “Landlord’s daughter Rihana, make me some tea.” “Landlord’s daughter Rihana, feed my goat some grass.” That sort of post.
So on Eid al-Adha, she knocked me up. I was getting ready to go visit the cemetery. She said her older brother had sent me a friend request. He’s a heart specialist. A really funny guy. He wanted to read my writing, wanted me to accept his request. This doctor Rumi had apparently told her older brother about me—that I’m a blogger! Anyway, I accepted his request that night. His name was Jaman. So Jaman bhaiya messaged me right away asking, are you Rumi’s Rihana? I shot back that we’d made a terrible mistake renting our place to that lunatic doctor! He said, What? You’re calling Rumi crazy? You know how much he admires you! You don’t have a mother, and you’re trying so hard to get a good job. Ask Allah with all your heart and keep trying, Allah won’t deny you. So that Jaman bhaiya would message me quite often after that.
Let me say something here. I’m very rough and tough on Facebook. If some stranger knocks on my inbox, I unfriend or block them straightaway if I sense they’re wasting my time or have some ulterior motive. Because of my own vulnerabilities and insecurities, I present myself very harshly on Facebook so no one dares say anything to me. Besides, I never write anything directly personal, especially—until not long ago—I wouldn’t even write about my father’s death. So even old friends of many years don’t know about it. When you’re an unmarried girl without a father or mother, without a guardian, society can disturb you in all sorts of ways. That’s why I feel insecure and talk a big game on Facebook, make myself out to be very brave. Even so, plenty of people would approach me directly. This breast surgeon doctor from Mount Elizabeth—at first I thought it was fake! Why would such a big doctor send me a friend request?—he’d send a request and message me, say hi. When I asked him if his ID was real or fake, he showed me his hospital ID card. So he’d message from time to time. I never message people first. One day, out of nowhere, he proposes marriage! I get frightened. I suspect this man must be of bad character! I try to brush him off with excuses. Then suddenly, without permission, he calls me on audio. I don’t answer. In fact, I don’t talk to strangers like that. It makes me uncomfortable. He gets furious that I won’t pick up. Says he doesn’t want some proud, arrogant girl like me! And blocks me right then! For the first time in my life, someone blocked me. Till then, I’d always been the one doing the blocking! Really, everything in life has a first time. That was my first time being blocked by someone!
Anyway, from the start, Jaman bhaiya called me little sister. I felt comfortable enough to call him big brother. He was very intelligent and a good man. His place was in Rauzan, in Chattogram. Meanwhile, our neighbor, Doctor Hema Auntie, she holds a very high government position. She’s around sixty. I call her Auntie because she used to call my mother Sister-in-law. I noticed she was mutual friends with Rumi. Hema Auntie is the kind of person with a sharp tongue. Nothing stops her mouth. Very witty. And me, I never speak ugly words.
# A Matter of Distance
Hema Auntie was very active on Facebook. She didn’t hesitate to post all sorts of things—rants, curses, whatever came to mind. We’d chat in the inbox now and then. I asked her how she knew Rumi Bhai. She said they were virtual friends. One day she’d messaged him asking what diabetics could eat instead of sugar, and after that she’d sent him a friend request. I had always liked Rumi Bhai quite a lot in my mind. And now it seemed Rumi Bhai was taking quite a liking to Hema Auntie.
By then, Rumi Bhai and I had accumulated many mutual friends. I’d ask Hema Auntie about them. When I asked about Rumi Bhai, she said, “He’s a good boy.” In passing conversation, I praised Jaman Bhai to her. Hema Auntie said, “Oh, he’s a scoundrel! You know, I post a lot of curse-filled things on Facebook—I have a sharp tongue. So one day Jaman messages me asking if I’d have sex chat with him. I blocked him right away. What a pig! My age is close to his mother’s age, and here he is trying that with me! The bastard pervert!” When I heard what Hema Auntie said, I was stunned. Jaman Bhai saying something like that? How was it possible? Nothing made sense! I realized then that people truly are the most complicated creatures. The human heart is the most incomprehensible thing. I had no idea who was really who. That’s when it hit me—judging anyone without truly knowing them isn’t right. I felt foolish.
Rumi Bhai deactivated his account for a while after that. Nearly three months. I became restless. I missed him terribly. It felt like I’d lost something precious. What if I never got him back? All these years we’d done nothing but quarrel and annoy each other on Facebook. Yet he was my friend of so many years, and he felt so close to me, so dear. More than love, what I felt for him was dependence, trust. I’d message Hema Auntie constantly, bothering her, asking if she had any news about Rumi Bhai. She couldn’t tell me much. Meanwhile, marriage proposals started coming for me at home. I felt terribly helpless. I thought the only thing that would give me peace was getting Rumi back. He felt like someone I truly knew, someone dear to me. A proposal came through my sister. The boy had graduated from BUET and had a government job. I had no say in it. He emailed his biodata and a Facebook profile link. My sister asked me to look at it. I didn’t like what I saw. He looked old! Even though I’m getting on in years myself, I won’t marry someone who looks ancient. Ha ha ha.
But what bothered me most—what really got under my skin—was a caption he’d written under one of his photos. *Shamsed vaier sathe dekha.* A boy who writes like that—mixing Bangla and English so carelessly—even if he were from Harvard, I wouldn’t marry him! He could have written it properly: “শামসেদ ভাইয়ের সাথে দেখা” or “Meeting with Shamsed Bhai.” But what did he write? Not proper Bangla, not proper English. Complete nonsense! That night, I decided I’d refuse. I told my sister the next morning. She was furious with me. We argued. I cried. She didn’t speak to me for three days. My brother-in-law was upset too, always reminding me how he was kind enough to let me stay in their house. For three days I cried in secret. I felt utterly helpless.
If my parents were still alive today—either both or just one of them—perhaps they wouldn’t try to force anything on me. At least I’d have some mental support. I feel like driftwood, cast adrift. If only I could find shelter somewhere! Some sense of belonging! To lay my head on someone’s chest, cradled in their love! How can I marry if my heart won’t agree to it? You can’t force affection, and while a wedding might be forced, a marriage born of force will never be a union of two willing minds. In this house with my brother and sister-in-law, I feel like a burden. Even in my own home, I’ve begun to feel like a dependent.
Undoubtedly, I’m not worthy of that BUET-graduate engineer. So I have no right to refuse him, either! If I’m unworthy, how can I refuse him? Why should I? That’s what they say. How can I make them understand that affection must come from the heart, no matter how qualified a man is! When I like someone, I’ll only look at their basic qualities—nothing more. I’ll care only about the feeling itself. I know that boy deserves, or could marry, someone far more accomplished than me. The truth is, merit is relative. A professor at university once told the class, ‘Women fall in love with poets; they marry businessmen. Ha ha ha!’ I’m willing to marry a businessman, if I can find a poet’s heart in him. Of course, experience teaches that poets and priests—they’re capable of being as good as they are bad. Whether qualified or overqualified, there’s still this matter of genuine affection, of overall connection. Society worries we’re running out of time, but is that reason enough to rush to the marriage platform with just anyone? It’s absurd!
(To be continued…)