Dear Oronno,
Of all the finest gifts I have received in this life so far, the greatest among them is your love. Don’t think I’m saying this only to you. I say this to the whole world. My world is small, you see! The advantage of having a small world is that you don’t have to remain a stranger even to yourself. I understand this—you love me too. You’re wondering how I know? It’s simple! You indulge my love, don’t you! Isn’t that what love is?
Tell me, will you marry me? Why I’m asking such a direct question—I’ll come to that in a moment. I have this notion that in the vastness of the forest for which I call you ‘Oronno’ in my imagination, there will surely be a place for me in some corner! The word ‘place’ didn’t upset you, did it? Please, don’t misunderstand me! I’m writing to you this way out of so much self-reproach and hesitation. I feel like I’m completely shrinking inside. Can you imagine how helpless it feels when the thought I’ve lived my whole life keeping hidden wants to come out into the open? Once the secret emerges, what’s left to call your own? Sometimes I think, what would happen if I just kept it hidden like everyone else? But I can’t manage that anymore! You know, Oronno, I’ve even chosen a name for our daughter: Aha. Why should I build that sacred treasure of our love on a foundation of false hide-and-seek, tell me! No, I absolutely cannot do this. I will speak! I will drag the truth outside! If not for my sake, then for Aha’s sake I will do it!
The words I have never spoken to anyone—even thinking of saying them takes courage. You know, somehow I’ve become terrifyingly audacious all of a sudden! This has never happened before. Standing naked before a mirror—what agony that is! Those ugly scars and creases of the body that I so carefully conceal with such effort, they too throb before my eyes! What I cannot bear myself, how can I make another bear—even someone as foolish as me cannot imagine such a thing. Please, after hearing everything, tell me what I should do. Am I talking nonsense, I mean, am I going mad? Perhaps! But this is nothing new! I’ve been this way for these eighteen years! Being mad with a madness that cannot be shown to anyone is deeply painful, Oronno! I can’t take it anymore! Believe me, there’s so much ache in my chest, so much!!
I cannot write. I sit down to write and it feels like words somehow don’t want to play in my hands! I can never quite understand what enmity exists between them and me! Before I can figure that out, my thoughts get lost, fly away like soft weightless cotton. Only this one thought remains stuck in my heart like a heavy stone, stuck and stuck. I desperately want it not to stay buried today! I want to think of you as the third person in this world, and if God wills it, the last person who will know this old tale of sorrow.
Will you listen to a story?
Ugh…!! Why do I need to ask permission before I even begin telling it? Am I then treating you like just another one of those ten unfamiliar men? (You know, Aranya, when I wrote the word ‘men,’ I felt such revulsion! Even my fingers trembled with disgust!) How would it be if I began the story like this? Say, there was a girl. Pure as a flower. Only six years old. Wait, why do I say ‘only’? In society’s eyes—in the eyes of men—no age is ever ‘only’ for girls! The little doll’s parents both work. She grows up in the care of a housemaid. At home there’s her younger brother, age two. And an unbearable eighteen-year-old monster. The monster is the girl’s own maternal cousin. He lives at their house while attending college. Every morning the parents leave for work, and four beings remain in the house: the girl, her little brother, the housemaid, and that beast. When the girl is first raped, she is six and a half years old. What happens to her that afternoon, she cannot comprehend at all. In terror, she tells no one anything. From then on, the girl has to become that animal’s plaything every day. No one knows anything about this daily routine. Only on holidays, when her parents stayed home, those days were spared—but almost every other day the savage satisfied his bestial desires. Once the girl, crying in pain, clasped both hands around his legs and said, “Brother, not today.” She received slaps, punches, and kicks in reply. Another day when she said “I’ll tell Mama everything,” he pressed the fruit knife from the dining table to the girl’s throat and said, “Shut up! I’ll kill you!”
In fear, she never told anyone anything again. Until she was eight, instead of spending her days playing with the dolls her parents bought her, the girl’s time was consumed with cleaning her violated body. This is how her grief-stained evenings would descend each day—in her own home! In what should have been the safest refuge on earth, her helpless days passed. A year and a half later, that inhuman creature left his aunt’s house and moved to a hostel.
What happened to the girl during those horrific days, she understood when she was eleven or twelve years old. At that age, new mysteries begin to flow through girls’ bodies. They start to understand and learn everything about their bodies; so did she. From that day until now, not for a single day has the girl been able to forget those terrible moments from her childhood. Now she’s a graduate, pursuing her master’s; she’s about twenty-five. Only she knows what unbearable torment she has endured all this long time. She has never told anyone about her suffering. Even today she hides her tears. The feeling that she desperately wants to cry but must forcibly suppress that weeping with infinite pain—death would be better than this feeling. Day after day she goes through this. Everyone thinks, “The girl never cries! How strange!” Of course they would think that! No one knows why she doesn’t cry! Who will value a smile that hides so much pain!
The girl doesn’t hate her parents, though. Still, she burns with anger, resentment, and hurt toward them. Why couldn’t her mother and father protect such a small child? Why didn’t she have a beautiful childhood like ten other girls? What crime had she committed? When parents can’t take responsibility for their child’s safety, what is bringing that child into the world but a moment’s biological gratification? How different is this from the irresponsible pleasure-seeking in that forbidden quarter, the realm of red and blue fairies? Aranya, you know, the family worries about the girl’s safety now. She can’t work at this place, can’t go to that place, must return home before evening, can’t mix with any boys, mustn’t appear before anyone without proper covering, and so much more! The girl desperately wants to scream out, “Why do you care so much now?? Whatever damage was to be done has already been done. Where were you when I was dying? Why didn’t you save me?” Oh! If only she could say it like that! If only she could! How many words pile up in her chest, only to die there again!
You know, she’s even afraid to love anyone now. She won’t be able to hide anything! The world doesn’t suddenly change just by closing your eyes; truth doesn’t become false at a snap from even the world’s greatest magician. When she can’t even escape from herself, how can she avoid being caught by others? While everyone her age drowns in dreams of the future with their beloved, weaving colorful nets, she survives by selling her pain. She can’t even think beyond this. She’s grown accustomed to thinking that getting involved in someone’s life means deceiving them. Before understanding what deception is, one who is deceived by life considers deception innocent. Gradually, she forgets the pleasure of deception found in ten other innocent acts, and lets her thoughts revolve around the allure of even greater happiness.
Even if death becomes an alternative path, she still won’t be able to tell anyone about what happened to her. Let some sorrows remain buried. In this world, sorrows are the most precious things. Everyone leaves, everyone hurts. Only they remain like truest friends. Only sorrows never cause pain. She thinks and thinks—why should she deceive another person? What’s their fault? Who would she drag into this cursed life? Even if someone enters her life, will they understand her? Why should they understand? What burden is there for people in one small life? Thinking these thoughts, her eyes grow cloudy, and her lips are repeatedly moistened by a few drops of warm, salty water.
And yet, after all this, words remain. Ironically, like any other girl, she too is human! She too dreams suddenly, impulsively. Sometimes, in utter amazement, she hears herself crying out from within, “Let someone love me at least. Anyone at all! Please!” Absent-mindedly, she dares to love someone by mistake. She wants to believe with great faith that someone, somewhere, will understand her unspoken pain! When the girl remembers her childhood, a fierce ache begins in the left side of her chest. That pain slowly spreads through her entire left arm. Blood clots in the veins of her hand. The palm of her left hand crumples, her fingers crack and break with snapping sounds. Even in that childhood, she learned the habit of staying silent, and like the girl in the movie Amélie, without telling anyone anything, she learned to know the strange world around her little by little through all her unspoken words. The girl thinks that someday someone will be beside her. That day, like Hannah in The Great Dictator, someone will sit devastated beside her, spreading the shelter of absolute trust, and say, “Never mind. We can start again.” That person will truly love her so much that she’ll never be able to remember her terrible days again. But even then, if sometimes the old, faded pain makes her left palm unconsciously crumple, that beloved person will hold her hand with infinite tenderness and say, “You silly girl! What’s all this pain for? I’m here, aren’t I!” Aronno, is this asking too much? Tell me, you tell me! If one can’t even ask for this little bit, how does a person live at all?
Do you remember, that evening while walking along the Padma river, you shook my shoulder and asked, “Hey, you rotten girl! What did you accomplish at BUET, huh? Don’t apply anywhere else, we’ll use the application money to eat fuchka together, how’s that?” You tapped my head and said, “Madam’s head is completely empty. Nothing there at all! Hahaha…” I just looked away and smiled. You thought I wasn’t listening to you at all. I know that in that moment, I couldn’t think of any better way to hide the language of my eyes. Don’t you often say, “I know you’re deliberately not getting jobs. Well, if you’re going to be a housewife anyway, why did you study so much?” I never answered that. Today I’m answering. “Why must studying mean working? The more qualified I become, the more qualified my husband will be too. That’s good! When my child’s father grows greater, my child will grow greater too. My child will learn by watching their father. I’ll keep my child safe in my heart and raise them with eye-to-eye love.”
I’ve told you everything. I feel so light today. I feel like I’m floating like a bird’s feather, and watching your smiling face, I’m raising my child into a human being. Aronno, won’t you accept me? Today I have faced the most carefully hidden ultimate truth and emptied myself in surrender to you! Accept me, enrich me! If you tell me to go back today, what a re-death of faith that would be! Killing faith is such a great sin! How can I commit the same sin again after so many years, tell me? I want so much to free all the imprisoned words of my heart, lose myself at your feet, and see myself victorious! This Aronno! This!! Are you listening…??? Aronno! Aronno…!!!
Your Ratri