(I am sketching a character in the partial shadow of Himu, the character created by Humayun Ahmed. By ‘sketching’ I mean I will draw the writing out further. I am giving this brush stroke in the first person. On my beloved writer’s birthday, this is my small offering to him.)
My alarm clock rang itself into silence. I heard it ringing, yet I made no movement. I am still lying in bed. I closed my eyes again. Though I had no plan to do this. Wait, is this even an action? This lying here, perhaps falling asleep again—can this be called an action? Or is it nothing at all? Is this some action I am not doing? Or is this the preliminary warning of avoiding certain obligatory tasks?
It’s not as if I went to bed late. I had no trouble sleeping; I slept quite well. Before going to sleep, I had set the alarm clock. Why did I set it? To wake up at a specific time, surely? I heard the alarm ring too. The alarm rang itself into silence. And I was just waiting for it to stop. The alarm was ringing and I was silently listening. It rang for several minutes at least. I simply kept listening, never got up from bed. I am the greatest proof that one can remain unmoved even while hearing an alarm ring. Meanwhile, light came through the window and fell on my face. Sunshine too. It turned out that even then I wouldn’t get up. When I was hearing the alarm clock’s sound, I had already woken from sleep. Then why didn’t I leave the bed? Actually, this is what I do. I lie there without moving. Like a corpse. Let the alarm ring, let anything happen, I will not get up from bed.
Meanwhile, a person inside me, who looks exactly like me but is somewhat more alert and earnest than I am, does on my behalf all the things I am supposed to do. One after another. I lie there lazily, but he doesn’t lie there. He gets up, washes his face and hands, shaves, gets ready and leaves for work. I watch silently as he goes down the stairs, gets onto the street and runs to catch a moving bus. He reaches on time. He arrives panting, but enters the examination hall exactly on time. He is tired but happy. During exam time, one must take exams. He follows this rule.
And me? I woke up late, as usual. I could have written page after page if I’d wanted to, but I didn’t even go to the examination hall! I’ve simply accepted that my life will pass like this — completely alone, utterly adrift. I’ve separated myself entirely from the world. I’m not among those who work. I’m not among those who spend their leisure time in the manner of modern living. I will never join the ranks of those who work in big offices. I have no desire whatsoever to become wealthy through business. Human knowledge, the use of technology, socialism, capitalism or any ideology, politics, religion, economics, history, cinema, literature — none of these things cause me the slightest headache. Let the world come to an end, I still won’t say anything; I have no opinion on any matter, important or unimportant. Why? Perhaps I simply don’t know enough about these things. Or perhaps I have no desire to think about or discuss them. Why am I like this? Because this is how I am! There’s no other explanation.
Meanwhile, my seat in the examination hall remains empty. No one sits there. That’s where I was supposed to be. But I’m here in my room! My degree won’t be completed. I won’t receive any certificate. Without a certificate, I won’t get any job. Far from being sad about this, I don’t even think about it. Nor will I start studying afresh. I won’t study anymore. I no longer have the desire to study. Everyone else is studying hard, getting good results in exams. Let them! Let them all become important people. I don’t have time to think about such things!
I got up from bed, left my bed. Very slowly. I’m never in a hurry. Then, as I do every day, I made a cup of Nescafé. As always, I added a few drops of thick condensed milk to it. I don’t feel like washing my face, don’t feel like changing clothes. Sipping my coffee, I put three pairs of socks to soak in a pink basin. They need washing. But when I’ll take them out of the basin to wash them, or whether I’ll wash them at all — I haven’t thought about that yet. I often do this. I put clothes to soak. Why I do it, I don’t know. I still haven’t brushed my teeth. I don’t feel like brushing. I stared at the toothbrush for a while.
I’ll just sit here in my room. I won’t go to the examination hall. When those taking the exam come out of the hall, I’ll look at the question paper from them. Then I’ll try to understand how earnestly the professors have tried to confound the candidates. But then again, I might not do any of this either. I don’t feel like doing anything. Whether the questions are easy or difficult makes no difference to me. I have no regrets, I have no fears. I have nothing to lose. I want nothing. I will never enter any competition. Let everyone else win. I’ve forgiven them all. I don’t have time to think about such trivial matters. I slept well. Languor still clings to my body. I am happy.
I don’t go to any café to meet friends. Daily socializing doesn’t suit me. I simply don’t meet my friends. Day after day. There’s no reason why I don’t—I have no philosophy of life. I’m fine. One morning, one of my friends comes to my place. He climbs six floors and knocks at my door. I’m inside the room but I don’t open the door. He keeps knocking. Waits. Still I don’t open it. He knocks again, a bit harder this time. Yet I keep him standing there. Now he knocks a little softer. Calls my name. Getting no response from me, he feels somewhat hesitant. Then he leaves. He probably doesn’t think about whether I’m lying dead inside. Human death is a natural thing. There’s nothing to make such a fuss about. This incident doesn’t affect me at all. I feel sleepy. The only truth of my life is that I feel sleepy.
The next day others come. The same thing happens. They knock, wait, leave. The day after that, the same thing occurs. They slip some notes under my door. What’s written in them—I have no interest in reading. I lie on a narrow bench, my hands folded under my head. Sometimes I lie with my hands under my back or behind my waist. Sometimes on my chest. My knees are bent and raised upward. Sometimes I lie with my right knee over my left knee, pointing toward the ceiling at a right angle.
I don’t want to meet anyone, don’t want to talk to anyone. I don’t want to think about anything, don’t want to go anywhere, sometimes don’t even want to move. This is how my days pass. One day it suddenly occurs to me that something somewhere is going wrong. The way I’m living—people can’t live this way. This means I’m living the wrong way. How to live—I’ve forgotten that. This doesn’t excite or astonish me. Day by day I’m forgetting how to be excited or astonished. Even if I can’t live the way everyone else lives, I have no objection to that. That I’m alive—this never even crosses my mind. Actually nothing crosses my mind. The time that lies before me—I’m living in that. For me, being alive simply means passing time. There’s no such thing as wasting time; time is never wasted, time only passes.
The sun is intensifying on the roof.
Sun like fire. My room too is growing hot. The heat keeps mounting. Even bearing this unbearable heat, I sit in my room. I have no desire to get up. Enduring this heat is easier than rising. I sit on the bed. A book lies open in my lap. I stopped reading long ago. Yet I keep staring at it. Staring, but not seeing. My
gaze is scattered—sometimes toward the white bookshelf, sometimes toward the pink basin where six socks are rotting. Truth is, I don’t even know which direction I’m looking. Perhaps I’m looking nowhere at all, or perhaps what I’m looking at
doesn’t exist in my mind.
There’s nothing in my mind. There’s a certain pleasure in living with a completely empty head. The book in my lap keeps me anchored to the bed. In a little while I’ll take another book from the shelf, place it too in my lap without reading it. Or I’ll read a bit and then forget to read the rest. Forget the book altogether.
Smoke rises from my
half-smoked cigarette. Looking at it, you’d think the ashtray had caught fire, that its wood was burning and smoking. The smoke rises almost straight up, in a single line. Reaching the ceiling, it seems to slip out through cracks in the wall. I think it would be good if I could swallow the smoke. Some things cannot be swallowed. Smoke is one of them. Suddenly I felt something had broken. Inside me. Much had broken, more was breaking. I am
becoming a fragile person. The thought that I am alive, that I have an existence, that I too am someone in this world—these thoughts don’t work in my mind. I don’t want to think about such things. My past, my present, my future—
I have not the slightest interest
in any of it. Everything in my life has come to a stop at a single point, and at that very point I have remained motionless for many days. My body grows heavy, I have no desire even to move. Along with this my
migraine is worsening. Today’s Nescafé turned out more bitter than usual. Too much coffee powder. By the way, does coffee
reduce migraine pain?
My bedroom is
a little over 5 square meters. Such a small room shouldn’t be a bedroom, but it has become one. In this space beside the roof, which
I use as my bedroom, I spend
hour after hour, day after day
without stepping outside even once. You’re wondering how I can! I can, because the thought hasn’t yet come to my mind—the day it does, perhaps I won’t be able to anymore. The bed I sit on
is so small that I can’t even sleep on it. It’s so narrow that lying here, turning from one side to the other without complete caution is impossible. Still, I like staying on this bed.
I am still looking toward the basin. I appear happy to myself. There doesn’t seem to be any particular reason for this happiness of mine. Over there, three pairs of socks are rotting in the basin. I sit in my room. I haven’t eaten, haven’t read a single book. I sit like a sculpture, barely moving at all. My gaze falls on the basin, on the bookshelf, on my knees. From time to time I stare fixedly at the broken mirror, at the coffee cup, at the light switch.
The commotion from the street reaches my ears. The tap next to my room has a broken washer, and I can hear the sound of water dripping onto the floor. There’s some kind of uproar in my neighbor’s house about something, and that sound too reaches my ears. Somewhere an old man clears his throat and coughs, and my ears have caught that sound as well. Tea is being made somewhere, the whistling sound of the kettle is coming. There must be the tinkling sound of steel spoons against porcelain teacups there. It would be nice to hear that. I feel like having tea. After a while this desire too will pass. I don’t want to keep any of my desires alive.
Wave-shaped cracks have appeared on the ceiling wall. I am looking in that direction. A fly is flying in a zigzag path, a little below the ceiling. I am watching the trajectory of that fly’s shadow. Actually there is no shadow there. I am imagining a shadow-line moving along. I enjoy thinking like this. I love shadows. This doesn’t mean I hate light.
I am 25 years old, I have 29 teeth, 3 shirts, 8 socks. I have to manage within 7,000 taka per month. I have some books in my collection, not one of which I read anymore. In one corner of my table some CDs are stacked up, not one of which I ever listen to. I don’t want to think about anything, don’t want to recall any memories. I just want to sit here, want to wait for something, and keep waiting until I feel there’s nothing left worth waiting for.
I never meet with friends. Even if someone comes, I don’t open the door to see. I never check the mailbox kept on the ground floor to see if anyone has written me a letter. No one will write me letters, I have no one. The books I’ve brought from the library, I neither read them nor return them. I never call my parents, never write letters. Even when I go outside, like rats, cats and other insects, I too venture out at night. Then I wander through the streets, and when I’m tired I slip into some dirty, grimy cinema hall. Sometimes I walk all night long. The city looks different at night. There are many people on the streets with whom I find much in common. It feels good. Sometimes I sleep all day long. I cling to the bed like a dead person with the blanket. My days pass in lethargy. In my sleepy state I move about slowly like a snail, in that same state I eat and drink, go to the bathroom.
I never have any thoughts about how I will live in the days ahead, what I will do. I have no interest in doing anything new. I have only one desire, and that is to get through today. I keep waiting, and in time I forget what I’m waiting for. I have no objection to anything in this world; there is no such thing as ‘rejection’ in my vocabulary—I can accept everything. I no longer move forward, though I never wanted to move forward anyway. I have nowhere to go; my present position is my destination. I have never found any reason why one must advance further in life. Of course, I never looked for reasons either. This is how I’m spending my life.
The book I started reading and forgot to finish—I can’t recall even the part I read. The Nescafé tastes very bitter, and over there six socks float in pitch-black water in a plastic tub, or perhaps they can’t sink because the tub isn’t deep enough. There’s nothing else worth mentioning. The story of this moment is neither good nor bad. The story is neither complete nor incomplete. The story is simply what it is. The life of such a person is simultaneously laughable and painful. I want nothing from life. I have no desires, no dreams. To stay alive I need only two things—night and my room. I somehow lie down on a narrow bed and stare continuously at the ceiling, conjuring strange things in my imagination. In the night city, amid so many crowds, I am alone; only I am with myself. I need no one else.
Sometimes it happens that I like commotion, I like the flash of lights. I like chatter and noise, and then I like forgetting everything. I am that ocean wave which is one way at high tide, another at low tide. And sometimes the same way at both times. My moments are dead, monotonous. The path I walk remains empty. I wish so much that I could spend life without seeing or hearing anything at all! I don’t like to speak, I don’t like to see new things—in fact, I don’t even like to move. I prefer to live quietly and motionlessly. My dreams are filled entirely with solitude. I often wander in a completely amnesiac state through a land of the blind. The streets are empty and wide, all the burning lights are cold. Some people move around me whose faces have no existence of a mouth. Without looking at them, one can glimpse them for a moment. They all look exactly the same.
Beneath the pages of my tranquil and untroubled history, a small boy runs and races about, where he grows up little by little. Graffiti gets drawn on bathroom doors. The boy abandons his shorts for long trousers. He puffs his first cigarette of life. The wound of his first shave clings to his cheek. He touches a bit of alcohol. During holidays he ventures out to wander at night. He tastes sexuality for the first time, learns to receive the winds and fires of his era. When fire dies on one side, fire catches on the other. When storm subsides on one side, storm rises on the other. Amidst all this, the boy’s self-rediscovery takes place. In the days left behind, he no longer has to live. When truth comes before his eyes, he has learned that the intensity of that truth must be suppressed. When life’s pictures grow blurred at times, one must sit calmly and make the next decision.
In my eyes all these memories lie old and dead, living colorlessly. I am alive with the fossils of memory. On the deserted street of a sleeping city, all the shop shutters are down. The shadows are faded. Some bees are buzzing beside the lamppost. Some termites lie dead on the pavement a little distance away. On the floor of a room, a thick layer of dust has accumulated. Some particles of dust are dancing and floating in the light. The villages lie empty, everyone has moved to the cities. Every holiday the cemetery grows more crowded. Some people are praying, some are prayer-soaked. There people are going somewhere in groups, as if on an excursion.
Some Tuesday afternoon. I sit on a narrow old bed. A book on my knees, half-open. What book it is, I don’t remember. I had taken a book from the shelf long ago, only this much I remember. I am gazing with a fly’s vision. Which direction I’m looking, I don’t know. I appear like a melancholy shadow, and if someone could somehow look inside my hard shell, they would see nothing but indifference. Others are looking at me, and in such a moment, to keep one’s eyes open without looking toward any of them, one must trap a certain kind of gaze inside the eyes. My gaze is now like that. There are no words on my lips, no life in my eyes.
I am looking toward the wet street, where some people are running this way and that. Some shops are visible beside the road, where various things seem to be sold. The cars are gleaming—new or like new. This is the reflection of this moment in my stagnant life. Water is falling noisily from the tap beside me onto the floor, it hasn’t been fixed yet. My neighbor has fallen asleep. Breaking the silence of the street, the faint sound of a taxi’s horn floats to my ears through the mist. In the chamber of my memory, forgetfulness is making room for itself. The map of cracks in the ceiling has created an incomprehensible mysterious labyrinth. What it signifies, I cannot understand. Perhaps it signifies nothing at all.
The temperature in the room is unbearably high. As if water is boiling in a cauldron. As if coal burns in a furnace. Six socks are rotting. Somewhere, some sharks drift about with lethargy smeared all over their bodies, some whales sleep it away. At such a time, black water in a pink plastic basin. The alarm clock didn’t ring today. It doesn’t ring anymore, it will never ring again. It will never wake me from sleep again. I lie sprawled, arms and legs flung wide. I am indulging my own mistakes. I slip suddenly into half-sleep. My room is situated at the very center of this world. From here I can see everything, understand everything.
This room has a certain scent. Perhaps it’s my scent, or the room’s own. I know it well. Every room in the world has its own particular scent. That scent lingers, never disappears. Each room smells different from the next. I live on this bed making one mistake after another. Making mistakes all alone. There’s a certain pleasure in this. That bookshelf over there. Dust accumulated on the shelf. Greasy stains caked on the bedsheets. The hairline cracks in the ceiling, which I’ve counted countless times. Here and there on the room’s walls, plaster that has crumbled and fallen, scattered stains. Zigzag crack lines on the rough floor. The washbasin, so small it looks like dollhouse furniture. The old faithful coffee cup. The room’s single closed window. The calendar hanging on the wall, whose twelve pages I’ve turned so many times that I’ve memorized the names of all the flowers on them. Old newspapers from long ago, each of which I’ve read at least twenty times, and will read many times more in the future. Three pieces of broken mirror divided into unequal parts, which I continue to use as a mirror. In those fragments, no face but my own has ever been reflected. The useless books on the bookshelf. All this marks the beginning and end of my kingdom.
In that kingdom I remain perpetually absorbed in certain associations. Some clamor reaches my ears, some sounds. The sound of water on the floor. Sounds from the neighboring house. Someone coughing, clearing their throat. The city’s incessant hum and murmur. With this, the sound of speeding cars. Some cars are braking, some cars are stopping, some cars are picking up speed. I hear all this. Water still keeps dripping from the tap. The sound of water on the floor, the sound of cars on the street. The call to prayer, the sound of bells floating from the church, at the same moment the temple and pagoda sending forth their chorus of prayers. The alarm clock rang at quarter past five and never rang again. Quarter past five of which day, I don’t remember. In this room’s silence, day, moment, or time holds no claim. Time has stood still here, the room’s atmosphere has been like this for a long while. Nothing changes here. Here childhood and old age are the same. In every particle of the room’s ceiling, walls and floor is mixed absorption, wrapped around with some hesitation and indifference. Time passes, I never know what time it is. I never want to know.
Is it ten o’clock?
Or has it struck eleven?
So what if it has! Am I running late?
Or is there still plenty of time?
Or is everything just fine?
The sun rises, night falls. Sound never completely stops. Even
when nothing else can be heard, the sound of water dripping from a broken tap onto the floor
drifts through. No one bothers to fix that tap. Perhaps the tap doesn’t need fixing. Time moves
forward. Almost everything—
like a hairline crack in the wall of silence,
a soft humming,
some slowly forgotten
memory, a pulse fainter
than a heartbeat, and many other
such things—even if they slip beyond perception, still get caught in fragments in the snare of feeling.
My room
is one of the most beautiful deserts. No one has ever come here to visit. No one is allowed to come here. I don’t want anyone to come here. What I want is sleep, silence, stillness. Along with the rise and fall of my ribcage. That I am still alive,
that I have held onto my existence—
keeping proof of just this much
is quite enough for me to get by. I need nothing else. Watching those who need so many things to stay alive, I look at them and
think, well, all right. They’ll need all that. Let them
take all that……. I keep waiting, but only as long as
the waiting
doesn’t feel meaningless. I have no one to wait for, nothing to wait for. Yet I keep waiting. For what?
I don’t know. I live to wander some nights
and sleep whenever I feel like it on the remaining nights. My life has no noble
purpose. To live, no nobility is needed—one can live wonderfully without it. The pull of the street and the crowd of the street, these two have
kept me alive, because it’s precisely because these two exist
that I live by fleeing from them.
The water’s edge,
the garden’s fragrance, life’s grooves……. understanding some of this and not understanding some of it, I live on. To walk along a riverbank, you don’t need the river. To live clinging to the city’s walls, you can forget the city. From studying
your grammar, what I’ve understood is that my time
is never wasted, because my time
has no value at all! I live in a time where there is no desire, no resentment, no anger or rebellion. From time to time my life
comes and stands before my eyes—a motionless life. There’s no crisis there,
no possibility.
No order, no disorder.
Day after day, season after season.
What begins there never ends.
What ends there never begins
again. In biology this is called survival. In your learning this is called nullification.
In my learning this is called nothing at all. It has never occurred to me that to live, one must give a name
to everything in the world.
I merely survive. Sometimes it seems to me that there is no greater happiness anywhere than to endure this way, governing time itself, becoming the master of one’s own world. At the center of my thoughts’ vast web, a whimsical spider glares with fierce intensity at every particle of life in this city. All the city’s labors and idle pursuits, its decline and growth, its light and darkness—my self-earned childishness pierces through everything, or in my language, freedom. I have learned and continue to learn many things that cannot be learned, that people know should not be learned. Silence, solitude, impassivity, steadfastness. There are no schools for learning such things! I am alone, and because I am alone I never need to know what time it is! Those who can live without caring about “what time it is”—no one is happier than they. Wherever I wish to go, I go there. Because I allow myself to go wherever I please, at will, according to my fancy, returning becomes very easy for me. They cannot return. They only go away. They truly do not know how to return. One must know how to return. There is no greater relief than knowing how to return. Time must not be held back; it must be allowed to flow on. If time is held back, time’s people are held back too. To live, one must know how to forget memories. Some faces must be forgotten, some addresses must be forgotten, some phone numbers must be forgotten, some laughter must be forgotten, some eyes must be forgotten, some voices must be forgotten, some afternoons must be forgotten. Without the ability to forget, living becomes terribly difficult. Much of their daily existence is filled only with memories. They actually live in the past. They feel like crying every day. They cannot cry in front of anyone. They are truly not well.
That I have learned to forget—sometimes I forget even this. One twilight, holding my gaze with another’s, I forced myself to forget myself, by sheer force of will. This too is rarely remembered. I no longer enter cafés. I no longer wander past café tables with anxiety written all over my face. Walking along the street, I can no longer recognize anyone, I don’t try to understand. I no longer search for familiar faces among the people standing in line at movie ticket counters. I am alone. I have learned how to walk like a human being on solitary streets. I have learned to walk without thinking too much, in my own rhythm, on my own path. I know how to look at everything without seeing, I know how to see without looking in any direction. I know how to live transparently, I know how to live by becoming still beyond existence itself. I have learned to live either sitting quietly like a bud or with swift uprightness.
When I look at a painting, I keep my gaze such that I might be seeing some portion of a wall or certain lines of a ceiling. Sometimes I look at a wall as though I were seeing a painting—one whose very thought, whose shown path I follow to stay alive. Some cruel labyrinths, some languages forever incomprehensible, some eroding faces. These have kept me alive. Whenever I wish, I dive in wherever I please, however I please. Throughout this world I move freely and easily. Slowly, very slowly, without placing any extra pressure, I can walk, I can return by the same path I came, I can walk very carefully past shop fronts, brushing against the glass forms in front without touching them. Sitting with invisible body atop the high walls of prayer halls, watching the breaking and mending of hopes and futile longings of some restless people around the curved arches—this I rather enjoy.