# The Kingdom of Cards The old man arrived on a Tuesday, dragging a suitcase held together with rope. Nobody asked where he came from. In that neighbourhood, questions were considered a luxury, like air-conditioning or hope. He rented the ground-floor apartment—the damp one, where the monsoon seeped through the walls like a persistent guest who wouldn't leave. The landlord, Ramesh Babu, offered it at half the price because of the moisture problem. The old man accepted without haggling. Ramesh Babu found this suspicious and kept the deposit anyway. The old man's name was Bishwanath, though people called him *Tash-wallah*—the card man—because within a week, everyone in the building knew what he did with his days. He built kingdoms out of playing cards. Not simple houses. Not the crude pyramids children made before tiring of them. Bishwanath constructed elaborate worlds—towers with turrets, bridges spanning imaginary chasms, courtyards with delicate archways. He used old decks he bought from pavement vendors for a few rupees, cards dog-eared from a thousand games of rummy and Teen Patti. The faded kings and queens became his architects. The building had six floors. Bishwanath lived on the ground floor, in the damp apartment. His window faced the courtyard, and he kept it open—despite the moisture creeping in like mildew in his lungs—so that his creations could breathe the same air as the neighbourhood. Word spread quickly. First, it was Mrs. Sharma from the first floor who noticed. She came down to borrow turmeric and saw through the open door a glittering, impossible structure rising on his floor. She mentioned it to her husband. He went to look and stayed for twenty minutes, saying nothing, just staring. Then he told others at his office. By Friday, someone from the next building had heard about it. On Saturday, they came. A young boy first—Ravi, ten years old, who lived upstairs and had been listless with the heat. His mother had shouted at him that morning for doing nothing, and he wandered down seeking refuge. He stopped in the doorway of Bishwanath's apartment as if he'd discovered the entrance to another dimension. The card structure was three feet tall. It depicted what looked like a marketplace—rows of small stalls, each with a roof, connected by lanes barely wider than a finger. Every card had been placed with absolute precision. Bishwanath sat cross-legged on the floor beside his creation, adding what appeared to be a minaret to a building on the outer edge. "Can I watch?" Ravi whispered. Bishwanath didn't look up. "You can stand. Don't breathe too hard." Ravi held his breath. The old man worked with the concentrated intensity of a surgeon. His hands were steady despite the tremor of age. Each card was slid into place with the careful deliberation of someone defusing a bomb. He was constructing the minaret—a tower that spiralled impossibly upward, each card overlapping the one below it in a pattern that should not have held, but did. It took him forty minutes to add a single storey to the minaret. When he finally leaned back, Ravi released his breath in a long, shaky exhalation. "It's like a real city," the boy said. "It *is* a real city," Bishwanath replied. "Just smaller. And more honest. Cities this big don't ask you to pay taxes or follow laws that change every election." Over the next week, others came. Mrs. Sharma brought her daughter. The boy from 3B came with his girlfriend. Old Mr. Patel shuffled down with his walking stick. They stood in the doorway or sat on the floor, and they watched Bishwanath add to his kingdom. He was constructing a palace now, beside the marketplace. It was extraordinary—domed, with thin card-towers that rose with a gravity-defying grace. Each window was a perfect rectangle. The doors had tiny handles drawn with pen. There were balconies so delicate they seemed to be held up by air and intention. "How long will it take?" someone asked. "As long as it needs," Bishwanath said. "But... won't it fall down eventually?" "Yes," he said simply. "Everything does." There was something in his tone that made people uncomfortable. Not sad exactly, but final. As if he knew a secret about the world that came with age, the way others accumulated wrinkles and grey hair. By the third week, there was a queue—informal, unspoken, but there nonetheless. Neighbours would come down for thirty minutes, sit in silence, and watch. The old man didn't mind. He barely acknowledged them, but he didn't shoo them away either. Ravi came every day after school. He would sit in the corner and do his homework while Bishwanath worked, looking up occasionally to watch the palace grow. One afternoon, the boy asked: "Why do you build them if they're going to fall?" Bishwanath was working on the palace's grand staircase—an internal structure that would never be seen. He was building it anyway. "When I was young," Bishwanath said, "I had a different dream. I wanted to build real things. Real buildings. I studied engineering. I came to the city with drawings in my pocket, and I built. A shopping complex in Colaba. A hospital in Bandra. Apartment buildings in Powai." He paused, sliding a card into place with perfect pressure. "When I retired, I asked someone—a boy like you, but taller, older—what he saw when he looked at the buildings I'd made. And he said: 'Flats. Expensive ones.' He didn't see my work. He didn't see the hours, the precision, the love. He just saw a product. Something to be bought and sold." Bishwanath looked at the marketplace below the palace. Traders and customers, frozen in their daily commerce, rendered in card and air. "With these," he said, gesturing at his kingdom, "I know that what matters is the building itself. The doing of it. The time spent. Not what it becomes or what it's worth. When this falls—and it will, perhaps this week, perhaps in two years—it will have still mattered that I built it." Ravi didn't fully understand. But he sensed something true in the words, the way children sometimes do. On the twenty-eighth day of Bishwanath's residence in the building, the palace was complete. It stood three and a half feet tall, a masterpiece of cards and geometry. The marketplace sprawled beside it. There were bridges, gardens, a temple with a dome so delicate it looked like it had been made of breath instead of playing cards. Bishwanath declared the city finished on a Wednesday evening. He sat back, wiped his hands on his lungi, and announced to the gathering of twenty-three people crowded in his apartment: "It's done." They celebrated with tea and biscuits that Mrs. Sharma brought down. Ravi's mother sent samosas. Old Mr. Patel brought a bottle of sweet wine. They toasted Bishwanath and his impossible city, and for a few hours, the ground-floor apartment filled with laughter and the sound of voices raised in genuine joy. By Thursday morning, they had all returned to their lives. Mrs. Sharma went back to complaining about the building superintendent. Ravi's father yelled at him for failing mathematics. The boy from 3B and his girlfriend broke up. Mr. Patel was taken to the hospital with chest pains. The building returned to the ordinary machinery of human unhappiness and preoccupation. But on Friday, when a crack appeared in one of the palace's outer walls—a card finally surrendering to the absolute laws of physics—it was Ravi who noticed. He ran down to Bishwanath's apartment with concern written across his face. He found the old man standing before his creation, looking at the same crack. "It's falling," Ravi said, as if this were a tragedy. "Yes," said Bishwanath. "I would say it lasted well. Twenty-nine days. That's longer than some marriages." "Can't you fix it?" "I could. But then it would fall again next week. Or the week after. Eventually, I would tire, and it would wait for a moment when I wasn't watching." Bishwanath sat down on the floor, his back against the wall. "It's better to let it go when it's ready." Over the next ten days, the card city deteriorated. A wind came through the open window and toppled the marketplace's eastern wall. Then the palace's dome collapsed inward. The bridges surrendered. The intricate staircases folded into themselves. Bishwanath did nothing to stop it. He sat on the floor beside the slow dissolution of his world and watched with the patient expression of someone witnessing something he had long expected. Ravi came less frequently now. When he did, he found the old man sitting amid the ruins, sorting the fallen cards, stacking them into neat piles by suit. By the forty-third day, nothing remained. The apartment was empty except for the carefully organized piles of cards—all the spades stacked together, all the hearts, all the clubs and diamonds. Bishwanath sat among these stacks like an archivist in a library of failure. Or perhaps completion. The distinction, he seemed to suggest, was not as clear as most people believed. Ravi found him there on a Tuesday—exactly one month after his first visit. The boy didn't say anything. He sat down across from the old man, and together they began to sort the remaining cards. "Will you build again?" Ravi asked. Bishwanath looked at his hands—liver-spotted, trembling slightly—and smiled. "Perhaps," he said. "I have plenty of time. And plenty of cards." He held up a jack of hearts, examined it thoughtfully, and added it to the appropriate pile. Outside, the city hummed with its usual indifference. Cars moved through the streets. People rushed toward futures they could barely imagine. The building stood firm and ordinary, demanding rent and harbouring secrets in its walls. But on the ground floor, in a damp room that smelled of monsoon and time, an old man and a young boy sat together among the scattered remnants of a kingdom, and they began, silently and with absolute concentration, to build again. The first card leaned against the second. The second against the third. Slowly, impossibly, something new began to take shape. In the courtyard beyond the open window, a breeze stirred and moved on, unaware that it had just passed through the space where kingdoms rose and fell, where the meaning of building itself was being quietly, persistently redefined. By those who understood that the point was not the destination, but the precise, delicate act of placing one card carefully beside another, and trusting that, for a moment at least, they would stand.

 
I am Rehana. Just a girl from a middle-class family, nothing more. We got by with difficulty, truth be told, but my parents never let me feel the weight of it. They love me dearly. If I told them my story, it would surely break them. And yet, keeping it all locked inside is unbearable. So I'm telling you. They say grief shared is grief halved—at least, that's what I've heard.


I'm married now. Since childhood, I've carried a dream: to see suffering people smile, and to be the reason for that smile. When I see an old man or a child pulling a rickshaw on the street, doing manual labor, it tears at me. When I see a disabled person begging, I feel this desperate urge to do something for them. I studied hard, driven by this thought—that I had to do something for people like that.


My plan was to build my own identity first, then marry. In my third year of honors, I fell in love with a boy. He was in my HSC batch. We began as classmates, and over time, love just bloomed between us.


I was living in a hostel. Watching my roommates, some of my friends, and acquaintances fall in and out of love was repulsive to me. They flirted with multiple people at once, switched affections without a second thought. I found it disgusting. Because of this, it took me a long time to trust Jamil. Only when I became certain he wasn't deceiving me, that he genuinely loved me, did I agree to be with him. He sent a marriage proposal to my family. After the customary visits, we were married on September 4th, 2019. I come from a very conservative family. We saw each other only once before the wedding—just me, my friend, and Jamil.


I fell deeply in love with him. The best thing about him was that he never spoke to me in a way that might hurt me or make me ashamed. Jamil is a gentle soul, really kind-hearted. Last year, during Eid-ul-Fitr, he came to our house with his mother, older brother, and younger brother, so his family could see me properly. After they left, they sent word that I had won their approval. During Eid-ul-Adha, they called and asked that my family visit their home. My father, my maternal uncle, and cousins went to see their place. Everyone liked the boy too. Their household seemed well-off enough. When my father came home, he said the boy seemed very polite and devout. In the end, everyone approved of his family.


They have three sons, no daughters. We have two daughters, no sons. My older sister married within our village—our father had no son, so he was willing to marry us off locally. They're doing well. As for my relationship with Jamil before marriage, only my uncle and sister know. I deliberately didn't tell my parents. They're so proud of me. They say, "My daughter isn't like other girls. She could never have a relationship with a boy." My parents have always treated me like a friend. They believe, with absolute certainty, that I'm incapable of love.

So I said nothing either, ashamed as I was.

My parents knew nothing of our love, so when Jamil called my house one day, my mother told him over the phone, “Listen, son, my girl—she’s dark-skinned, not especially pretty to look at. Think it over carefully, won’t you? Later you mustn’t mistreat my daughter. There’s still time. Think about it. If you don’t really want to marry her, then don’t. She’s my precious child!” Jamil replied, “Aunty, I’ve liked Rehana for a long time now, and I’ve looked into everything about her. I want to marry her. I have no objections.”

I didn’t study much through fifth grade. But when I entered sixth class, I began facing so many family troubles and hardships, and gradually—bit by bit—I came to understand that I had to do something with my life, something through which I could do some good for my father, my mother, my family, my relatives, the poor and helpless, and for myself too. I loved seeing their smiles. I wanted to be the reason for their happiness. I don’t have a job yet, but from the money I make tutoring and from whatever pocket money I save, and sometimes by stopping tuition for a month or so, I try to help those who need it—or at least I try. I’ve never even told my parents about this. If I did and they didn’t understand my heart, if they forbade me from helping others, it would hurt me.

Anyway, what I was saying. When it finally took hold in my young mind that to fulfill this dream of mine I had to study properly, I became serious about my books. Let me tell you a couple of incidents from those days. When I was in the lower classes of primary school taking exams, I’d copy from the girl sitting in front of me, looking at her notebook. If she crossed something out after writing it wrong, I didn’t understand much of anything, so looking at her notebook I’d think, oh, I have to do that too—write it and cross it out. So I’d do exactly what she did, write it down and cross it out. That was the extent of my studies!

Let me tell you another incident. One day I went to class without preparing my lesson, and the teacher—as punishment—made me stand on the high bench with my ears held, bent over the way you bend in prayer. Here’s what happened next: our school was near the fields, so my father could see through the classroom window. He saw me standing on that bench in that position. When I came home that day, my father sat me on his lap and asked, “Well, my dear, aren’t you studying at all?” I said, “I am, Papa. Why?” Then he told me what he’d seen. I was devastated that day. But instead of scolding me, my father showed me only affection and gently, patiently explained to me the importance of studying with real attention. That moment left a deep mark on my heart. After that, I began to study with true focus. In seventh grade my rank was 27 out of 76 students in the class. For me, that was an unbelievable result.

That day, seeing Papa’s sorrow, I felt so bad that I threw myself into my studies even harder. In eighth grade my rank was 4. In ninth grade, 2. In tenth grade, 1. This is how I kept moving forward.

# Extract from a Life

I had to study much harder than others. It seemed my mind wasn’t as quick. I’d understand as I read, but there was so much I’d memorize without grasping it at all. The sleepless nights I spent committing things to memory—there was no counting them. The number of times my mother fed me rice mixed with salt and raw chili while I studied through the night—there was no reckoning it. I enrolled in Arts in class nine. I got a 4.0 in my SSC exams, then got into Kushtia Government College for my HSC. I failed English in the test exam, but managed a 4.8 in the final. After that, I got into Kushtia Government College again—this time for Economics. My first year result came to 2.9.

My studies were going well enough. But another life was beginning alongside it. I’ve already mentioned—my wedding was on September 4th. From that very day began a chapter of mental suffering and torment in my life. The boy I’d trusted so completely, loved so deeply, gave me quite a gift on our wedding night—something that felt like the sky itself was caving in. I was so stunned I couldn’t speak. My hands and feet began to tremble. Tears streamed down my face.

That night, while we were talking, I joked with him: “Hey, what are you doing on your phone? Who are you in love with? Delete whatever chat you’re doing, or I might end up seeing it.” I saw something like a smile cross his face then—the kind that makes a sound! He was laughing loudly, ha ha, ho ho, and he was still on the messenger. I tried to playfully snatch the phone from his hand. He resisted, I pulled—and in the struggle, I finally got it. Then I started looking through his chats.

There was a girl named Rupa, she turned out to be his relative. I saw he was in a relationship with her. He called her “I love you,” “baby,” “darling,” “my bird”—terms like that. And I saw he called her “wife,” “my dear Rupa,” and all sorts of other names. There was more written there: “I can’t feel right unless I talk to you. You don’t know that?”

To a girl named Nazia, he’d written that he’d made the biggest mistake of his life. Marrying Rupa was his greatest error. He’d marry many more girls like this, he was waiting for that, he couldn’t leave her alone, she was on his mind all the time—an endless chat history of this sort. I can’t describe what I felt then. After his HSC exams, Jamil had gotten a job. He told me then that he’d gotten into some trouble in Dhaka and had to ask Rupa for help, so now Rupa was trying to blackmail him. He said he was pretending with her to save himself. A thousand excuses like this. I accepted it all silently. What else could I do after marrying him? I was an extremely devout girl, and in my religion, a husband holds a very high place in a woman’s life.

He said sorry. He asked for forgiveness. I forgave him. Five or seven days later, a message came to his phone around half past one at night. He had two phones—a smartphone and a regular one. A text came to the regular phone. He was about to reply when I noticed it. The moment he saw me, he quickly hid the phone.

I say to him, ‘What’s the problem with me looking?’

He says, ‘Yes, there is a problem.’

I say, ‘All right, fine then.’ But even as those words leave my mouth, I snatch the phone right out of his hands.

I see another girl’s message. Her name is Lily. She lives in Dhaka. The only pampered child of wealthy parents. I tell him, ‘Don’t reply to her. What business does she have messaging you at this hour?’ This becomes a fight between us. He says, ‘I’ve been playing at love with her for a while now. Lily’s much younger. She’s emotional, so I have to keep talking to her. Otherwise she’ll suffer terribly.’ I said, ‘She’s young, fine. But you’re a mature man. You’re married. Whatever you did before, you did. But I’m here now—can’t you stop all this? So she’s young, she doesn’t understand much. But you understand. You know yourself that you’re wrong. Don’t talk to her anymore. Is talking to someone without feeling even love? No. Weeds must be pulled out while they’re small, or they’ll grow into something that destroys everything. And remember this—mountains are made of tiny grains of sand, and oceans are born from drops of water. So let it all go.’ He listened to me with full attention.

I said more: ‘Look, the way we love each other—very few people love like this. You yourself often say that in all these years of loving, we’ve only met once. Till now, I haven’t even been able to say anything in reply to “I love you”—I’m too shy. You’ve never given me a chance to say anything foolish. It never happened. I’ve always known you as a very reserved man. That’s what I’ve loved most about you. There have been weeks when we didn’t talk, seven days even. And yet we’ve never had a single fight. Let me tell you something. I trust you as much as I trust myself. So what are you doing!’ He apologized profusely that day too. And I forgave him.

Actually, love is like this, I think. The meaning of love is only one. It means sacrifice, but love has many colors—love for God, for parents, for friends, for relatives, for the helpless, for nature. I explain to him, ‘Listen, I’m still like soft clay right now. Whatever shape you give me, I’ll take that shape. I’m asking you—don’t harden me by burning me again and again, or no matter how much water you pour, it will only stay hard. Then a wall will grow between us. So you decide what you want. This is your second mistake. Please, don’t make the same mistake a third time.’ He touches me and promises that he’ll never make such a mistake again. But alas…

He does it again. He exchanges love letters with Rupa. But Rupa knows that Jamil is married. Lily knows too. I wonder—what do I even say to anyone now? Lily, fine, she’s an SSC exam student. But Rupa is in her second year of honors. She’s hardly a child.

# [Untitled]

Everyone knows what’s good and bad for themselves, so why do such things?

A few days later, I see Rupa chatting on his phone. There had been so much conversation with Rupa. That day I had another big fight with him. I said, “I want to ask you something.” He said, “Yes, go ahead.” I said, “I’m telling you this with a clear head, and I want you to think it through carefully before you answer.” He said, “Yes, tell me.” I said, “If you love someone else, or if you want someone else in your life, then tell me clearly. I’ll leave. I don’t like ambiguity or vagueness. I prefer to say what I have to say plainly. If you don’t like me, tell me. If you want to be happy with someone else, then do that.”

Then he said, “No, I want to spend my whole life happy with you. I married you because I love you. If I wanted to marry Rupa, I would have married her, not you. I’ve never felt the kind of emotion toward Rupa that I’ve felt toward you. And I love you so much.” I told him then, “Then why do you say all this to her? Rupa blocked you, and now you’re sending her a request saying, ‘Rupa, unblock me. If you don’t unblock me by today, I’ll post those pictures you gave me on Facebook.’ Why are you threatening her? I can see now that you’re actually more eager to talk to Rupa than anything else. Look, I’m telling you again—what’s done is done. But now that we’re married, stop all this.” He just said, “Okay, fine.”

After that, one day his uncle’s daughter came to me and said, “Sister-in-law, I need to talk to you about something.” His uncle’s daughter had given her SSC exam last year. She’s taking it again because of some problem. She’s older than she should be for her class. I said to her, “Yes, what is it? Tell me.” She said, “It’s about Jamil brother.” I said, “I’m working right now, let me hear it later?” But she came again. She came and asked me, “Will you watch a video about Jamil brother?” When she said she’d show me a video and it was about Jamil, I thought she must have some video that could cause trouble if I watched it. So to avoid complications, I said, “No, I won’t watch it.” Later, when I told Jamil about this, he was very pleased with what I’d done. But when his cousin was saying in front of him, “Should I tell Sister-in-law everything? Should I show her that video? Play her the recording?”, I saw him go silent.

That incident passed. A few days later, that girl came to me again. She said, “Sister-in-law, Jamil brother took my phone. Can you tell him to give it back?” I asked, “Why did he take it?” She said, “Brother called me, got me on waiting, so he took the phone.” When Jamil came home, I asked, “Why did you take Binti’s phone?” He said, “What? No! I didn’t take Binti’s phone.” I said to him then, “So you called Binti and got her on waiting, and that’s why you took her phone?” He said then, “No way! Binti lied to you.” The truth was, Jamil had indeed taken Binti’s phone. He had bought that phone for Binti himself. I later took it from Jamil and gave it back to Binti.

A few days after that.

I was on the phone with Jamil. He was in Dhaka then, and I was at their place. Suddenly he says to me, ‘Look, just put the phone down for now, I’ll call you back.’ But for some reason I didn’t hang up that day. God alone knows why I didn’t. On his end, he thought I’d disconnected. Thinking that, he put the phone aside and started talking to his roommates, and there I was, listening in. One of them was saying, ‘Even now my pillow gets wet at night because of her.’ Another said, ‘Yes, that’s true love.’ Then Jamil said, ‘And what about me—my heart aches for everyone. What’s that then?’ Someone else asked, ‘You still talk to Rupa, doesn’t your wife know?’ And another said, ‘Hey, that’s infidelity!’

Then Jamil says, ‘My wife knows about Rupa, but she doesn’t know I still talk to her.’ After that, rambling on about various things, Jamil said again, ‘The girl I was involved with at Eden—she still doesn’t even know I’m married. She’s been pestering me several times to take her to the book fair, but I haven’t yet. I’m thinking I’ll take her sometime soon. I need to keep that relationship going.’ Going on like this, suddenly Jamil blurts out, ‘Oh God, oh God, is my wife still on the line? I didn’t even look and just put the phone down. If she heard me, then I’m done for!’ Saying this, he checks the phone and goes completely pale! I send him a couple of messages and then turn off the internet connection.

After that he calls me many times, but I don’t answer. Then when I finally pick up, he cries a lot. I tell him, ‘Do you still love Rupa? You have to tell me today—do you want me, or do you want one of them? You have to choose one side. You can’t be with me while straddling so many boats at once.’ He says, ‘I’m begging you, don’t say such things. I only want you, I don’t want any of them.’ After that he pleads with me and promises that from that day on, he won’t talk to any other girl. I forgave him again that day.

Then a few days later when he came home, I looked at his phone and saw—not a single chat history with any girl. Everything was deleted. The truth was, he was still talking to them all along, but he’d delete everything before coming home with his phone. I figured this out when I saw one of his screenshots. In it, Rupa had written, ‘The call to prayer is sounding, I’m going to pray, you pray too.’ And he’d written, ‘You go ahead. I’ll start from tomorrow, sweetheart.’ Then, ‘My phone’s out of battery.’ Writing this, he sent her a screenshot to convince her that his phone really was dead. But by mistake, he didn’t delete the screenshot itself, so it stayed there in the phone’s gallery—which I found while I was going through his phone.

I checked the date on the screenshot and told him, ‘This is proof that you talked to her even after you promised me.’ I also said, ‘Look Jamil, tell me—what do you actually want? I gave up everything for what you wanted. Whatever you want, that’s what I’ll accept.

# The Breaking Point

“I don’t like fighting with you about this every time you come home,” she says again, beseeching, just as before. “I only want you.”

Then she places her hand on my head and says, “I swear to you, I love only you, and I want to spend my whole life with you.” She begs and pleads as always, grasping at my feet, and I forgive her once more.

—

But I was coming undone, bit by bit. On top of everything, my studies were falling apart completely. How it feels when your peace of mind is shattered, when you are deceived again and again by your own husband—no one but someone who has lived through it could ever truly understand. I don’t know what to do or where to go. The mental anguish was becoming unbearable. And with each of his actions, my trust in him eroded a little more, my doubts grew. Love cannot survive without trust—everyone knows that. But when one person breaks another’s trust repeatedly, and that person is the one you trusted as much as you trust yourself, the one you believed in from the very wedding night—how does one survive such a thing? I began calling out to Allah with all my heart. “Allah, Jamil himself doesn’t know what he’s doing. Please give him wisdom. Please set him on the right path.”

—

December 2nd is his birthday. He was in Dhaka that day. I thought I would call him early and spend a long time talking to him. I waited for twelve o’clock. The moment it struck, I sent him a message and called. That’s when I saw he had blacklisted my number. He was busy all night. When I called him the next day, I asked, “Why did you blacklist my number?” He said, “I must have pressed it by mistake.”

I thought: *If it was truly a mistake, wouldn’t he have noticed at some point? Didn’t it occur to him once during the night that he should talk to me? Not once since our wedding has he gone to sleep without talking to me first, without saying goodnight. And on of all days—my birthday—he forgot about me?*

That day was unbearable. I closed the door to my room and even hung a scarf with the fan, thinking I would end it all. But then a voice whispered: *Stay. See what happens.* Yet fear of Allah held me back from that forbidden thing. So I wiped my tears and said nothing to him.

—

Now, because of the coronavirus, everyone is home. He’s home, I’m home. There’s something in his drawer. A diary. One day I was sitting in the next room, reading. Suddenly, I saw him open the drawer, take out the diary, and read it. I didn’t try to look then, because I knew if I did, he would never let me see it. He would hide the key somewhere I could never find it. So I stayed quiet. When he went to bathe, I quietly opened his drawer, took the diary, photographed the pages, locked the drawer, and put the diary back.

—

That’s when I found out: he had been married twice before. And one of those marriages was fraudulent.

# The Phone

And the names of the girls he’d loved were in that diary too. I asked him then, “What are these?” He just fell silent. I pressed further. “Jamil, I’ve never asked you for anything until now. If I ask for one thing today, will you give it to me?” He said, “What?” I told him, “First say yes or no. If you won’t give it, then I promise never to ask you for anything again as long as I live.” He said, “Yes, tell me. I’ll give it to you.”

Then I said, “You have seven lockers on your phone. I want to see all the pictures and videos you’ve saved on it.” He said, “No, I can’t give you the password.” I reminded him again, “Then I’m telling you right now—I’ll never ask you for anything ever again in my whole life. Remember that.” He said, “Fine, don’t ask. But I still can’t give you the password.” And I said to him, “But I’m your wife. After Allah, if I must prostrate before anyone, it’s before your feet. I am half of your body. So why can’t you give it to me? What is it on there that you can’t show your own wife?” There was so much trouble between us over this. He apologized many times, made excuses, but he absolutely refused to give me the password.

He’s always messaging someone on that little keypad phone of his. He won’t tell me the password. One day, I managed to sneak a look and see it, but the moment I tried to open the phone, he’d already changed it. The second time, after struggling for days, I finally figured it out. When he went to shower, I picked up his phone and tried it—it opened! I was so happy. But right then he came out of the bathroom, done with his shower. I quickly put the phone back. He picked it up immediately and changed the password right there and then. After that, he started taking the keypad phone with him into the bathroom. Now even when he goes to shower, he takes it along. He even sleeps with it in his pocket.

When he wakes up for sehri, he sends messages. After eating, he sends messages. An hour, an hour and a half after sehri, he comes to the room. When he goes to the bathroom, he locks the door from the outside so I can’t follow. An hour and a half after finishing sehri, he comes to the room and writes a message—in Bengali. He tries to hide the phone from me, but that day I saw from a distance. He’d written, “Going to sleep.” I didn’t even know he could type Bengali that fast. I was stunned. Jamil has only ever sent me four messages in Bengali in all this time. When I asked him about it, he said his office doesn’t require him to write in Bengali either. He presses the phone buttons so much all day that the letters on the keys have started to wear off!

Who is he messaging all the time like this? Twenty-four hours a day, non-stop? Whether I’m there with him or not, he messages. All day long it goes on—the phone held just far enough from my sight. He’s always careful, always watchful, making sure I can’t see anything. He keeps that phone at a distance like it’s something precious he’s protecting.

I suddenly caught sight of him, and right away he pressed the cancel button on his phone, shoving it into his pocket without a moment’s hesitation.

I often tell him, ‘Jamil, if you have something going on with someone, you should tell me.’ He says, ‘There’s nothing going on.’ When I mention anything about him being glued to that phone, he starts screaming at the top of his lungs and clamps his hand over my mouth. After a fight, he fiddles with his mobile for a bit and falls asleep, while I can neither study nor rest. I lie awake crying through the night. I’ve spent so many nights just lying there, eyes open. Meanwhile, he couldn’t care less. I used to catch him red-handed before, but not anymore. He’s become much more careful now, more cautious than he used to be. But I understand everything.

He had a run-in with his older brother the other day. The older brother spoke to him slowly, saying, ‘You spent thirty-six times with Binti, didn’t you? What if I tell your wife about that now? How did you manage to get into Sadia’s room? Sadia herself told me about it. If you’re smart, you’ll keep quiet. Don’t say another word.’ That’s when Jamil fell silent, not uttering a sound. I was listening from the next room, my ear pressed to the wall.

Two or three days later, I noticed he was in a foul mood. I asked him, ‘What’s wrong with you? Are you sad?’ He said, ‘No. Nothing’s wrong.’ I went back to my studies. Then I heard him talking to himself: ‘My locked photos have been deleted. What am I supposed to do! I’m completely broken!’ A while after that, he took both his phones and left the room. It must have been around eight or nine at night. Around eleven, I heard a knock on the door. I called out, ‘Hold on, I’m coming.’ I went and opened it, then sat back down to study. But I saw that no one had come in. I looked toward the door. Standing there wasn’t Jamil—it was Binti.

When I saw her, I said, ‘What is it? So late at night?’ She came into the room. She placed the back cover and the rear panel of that phone on my bed. I saw the cover was fine, but the back panel was broken. I asked, ‘What happened?’ She said, ‘I was standing near the bathroom talking on the phone, and Jamil brother called me. He came up to me and snatched the phone from my hand. Then the two of us started fighting over the phone, my hand got cut, and he went off with it.’

According to Binti’s account, the place where she was standing was overgrown with shrubs, surrounded by the kind of darkness that makes your skin crawl, and right next to it was a deep gorge. I couldn’t fathom how a girl could stand there talking at eleven at night. And why would Jamil need to snatch the phone from Binti like that in a struggle? I didn’t understand it. Everything seemed like a mystery to me.

That night, I secretly recorded everything Binti told me on my mobile. No one else knew—only I did. Binti asked me, ‘Do you know why the glass in your showcase is broken?’ I said, ‘No, I don’t. Why?’ She said, ‘A few days before your wedding, Jamil brother was sitting in my room around twelve-thirty or one in the morning.

I stifled my little sister’s screams when she saw my brother. That’s why Father got so angry—smashed the glass on this room’s cabinet, tore the electrical wires. The rest you can imagine.’

When Jamil entered the room, Binti was still sitting there. She brought up the phone. Jamil said, ‘The phone isn’t with me—you know that yourself.’ I’d always seen Jamil speak to Binti with the casual intimacy of ‘thou,’ but that day was the first time I watched him shift to the formal ‘you.’ Something about his discomfort was suddenly visible in her presence. Then Binti said, ‘Today I’m going to call everyone. Gather them all. I’m going to tell them everything today. Maybe my wedding won’t happen then. So be it—today I’m laying it all bare.’ That day, for the first time in my life, I understood how helpless even a man becomes when cornered, how easily he bends before a foolish girl like Binti, how readily ‘thou’ becomes ‘you’—and if needed, even ‘sir.’

I watched Jamil say to her, ‘Binti, speak quietly.’ And Binti replied with such a tone of possession, ‘Then I need a new phone if mine isn’t found.’ Jamil said, ‘Alright, dear, I’ll buy you a new phone.’ Binti insisted again, ‘I need a brand new one, though.’ Jamil said, ‘Yes, yes, I’ll buy you a brand new phone. Now please, stop.’

I said then, ‘I won’t let you buy Binti a phone.’ Jamil turned to me and said, ‘You shut up!’ I was hurt and said to him, ‘You’re saying “you” to Binti and “thou” to me? Fine!’ At that moment, Binti looked at me with a sneering victor’s smile. I couldn’t say anything—just sat there, staring helplessly.

Jamil somehow managed that night’s chaos. Meanwhile, the button-phone’s messages just keep coming… I sit there, helpless, calling out to God. It hurts so much. Even if I cry, that becomes his problem—I have to answer for my tears to him. I don’t know what to do anymore. I’ve written suicide notes several times and torn them up. There’s no one I can share this pain with, no way to lighten the load a little.

He knows my Facebook password. He checks my messages, my phone—everything. Constantly. He finds nothing, yet keeps checking. And me? I can’t touch anything of his. I’m not allowed to touch his phone. I don’t know a single one of his passwords. I’d set his email address on my phone. He knows my entire contact list. Somehow he’s added codes on Imo and linked himself there. He regularly checks who I’m connected with on Imo. But before marriage, he said, ‘After the wedding, do as you please.’ And now? I’ve caught so many of his faults with my own eyes, yet to this day he hasn’t found a single small flaw in me.

It’s becoming impossible to live—truly impossible. What will become of my dreams? I can’t even take care of myself—how am I supposed to care for the world? I don’t understand what’s happening to my life anymore! What was my fault? What wrong did I commit? I’ve never disobeyed God’s commands, so why has He put me through such a trial?

What should I do, where should I go, what comes next—I understand none of it. Nothing feels right anymore. How does a person hide themselves so completely before marriage! Why am I such an unbearable fool, such a wretch?