TRANSLATED FROM THE BENGALI BY REBA RANI BANERJEE

 

When Ratna wrote her name in Bengali, she would spell out all the letters that formed her name, the vowel sound in place. However, she ended up saying ‘’atna’. She didn’t even say ‘’atna’ properly; she said ‘’adna’ instead. Like she pronounced ‘rokto’ as ‘’okto’, ‘rosh’ as ‘’osh’, the new Ram temple that was built in the Domkal bazaar as ‘’am Mandir’. But then again, ‘In the month of ’amzan, there’s Roza.’ So, the trouble lay with that first instance of ‘র’ – the letter in the Bengali alphabet that resembles the English ‘r’ in sound. Otherwise, she pronounced ‘Shah Rukh Khan’ as ‘Shah Rukh Khan’, ‘Saurav’ as ‘Saurav’, ‘Karim’ as ‘Karim’. But strangely enough, she could pronounce ‘Rabindranath Thakur’ quite accurately as ‘Rabindranath Thakur’. In school, when reciting poetry at the poet’s birth anniversary, she did, in fact, say, ‘I am reciting a poem by Rabindranath Thakur: “Bhaktibhajan”.’ But then she had begun, ‘’oth jatra lokaronno, maha dhumdham…’, her tongue refusing to rise to pronounce that first consonant.

Ratna had studied till Class 8. She had moved to Class 9 too. She still remembered (a+b)2 by heart. She knew where on the world map were Iran-Iraq, Arab-Mecca. She was capable of reciting away the first eight stanzas of one of Nabin Chandra Sen’s poems even now. But Ratna’s mother did not admit her in Domkal School for Class 9. From Class 9 onwards, boys and girls attended classes together there. Not many girls studied there; the boys, for the most part, were Muslim. Ratna’s mother hadn’t had the courage.

We are calling her Ratna, sure, but actually, she is Adu. That is, Adu derived from ’adna. When she used to be in school, other girls would tease her saying, ‘’adna – paikhanar badna.’ Shit-faced ’adna.

The name of Adu’s village was Dawoodpur. It was at a distance of eight kilometres from Domkal, in the Murshidabad district. Their village was the kind one found in stories. In their village, there was a big banyan tree; under the tree lay Pitai Pir’s Mazar. Red fruits from the banyan tree fell on the tomb. There were black-hooded orioles – they came to eat date syrup; there were koels in spring, there was the mooing of cows and calves, there was the azan of dawn, there was the field of Karbala, there was the breeze making waves over paddy stalks. Earlier, it used to feel as though nowhere could one find such a country! Now, watching TV made one feel like there was so much else in the world. So many grand and beautiful houses, roads, cars, heaven-like gardens, so many beautiful girls – without veils, yet nymph-like.

There were merely five Hindu households in Dawoodpur; the rest were all Muslim. Ratna’s father worked as a blacksmith – a Kamar. There were three Kamar households. Two Tanti households. The Tantis didn’t weave cloth any more. And as a Kamar, there was only Ratna’s father. The other two households were kins of Ratna’s family. One had set up a cycle repair shop at Domkal bazaar; the two brothers from the other were bus conductors. In the month of Srabon, their mother would be possessed by Manasa, the goddess of snakes.

There was no quarrel, no fighting between Hindus and Muslims. Even when trouble broke out in Gujarat, nothing happened here. Adu’s husband had sent over a cassette from Iraq. In that it was said, if, Khoda forbid, any mishap occurred in their homes in Dawoodpur, all of them were welcome to come and reside in their home.

Yes, Ratna’s husband was a Muslim. A marriage of pyaar-mohabbat – of love-and-affection. There had indeed been a bit of trouble around it. Ratna had converted to Islam. Her new name was Rabeya. But what if her name was changed to Rabeya? She was Adu, after all. Everyone at her in-laws’ called her Adu. On Thursday evenings, Adu, placing the janamaz on the floor, chanted ‘Lokkhi-Lokkhi’. Everyone at her in-laws’ was aware of that, her chanting of the name of a Hindu goddess, but they wouldn’t say anything. They had taught Adu the Kalimas, but she was unable to learn all of those by heart. She found them extremely weird. She didn’t read the namaz either. Nothing unpleasant ensued around that. She didn’t keep the roza too. Her husband had asked his family not to force her about such things. However, she did, of course, follow a few rules. For water, she didn’t say ‘jol’, she said ‘paani’. She called the bathroom ‘gosol’, tiffin ‘nasta’. Her mother-in-law had instructed, ‘For at least three times a day you could chant “Achchalamu ’Alaikum wa Rahmatullahi”, couldn’t you?’ Adu did just that, loudly, making everyone hear it. Before chanting those words, she performed a bit of wuzu, too, in the holy water. As part of the sacred ablution ritual, she sprinkled on herself water from Zamzam Lake. The Zamzam Lake was quite large. Lotuses bloomed in it. No one knew when someone had brought over a pot of water from the Zamzam well in Ka’ba while on Hajj there and poured it into that pond. Since then, the water of that lake turned holy. On jum‘ah, that is, Fridays of the Muslim week, Adu’s father-in-law went to that lake and performed wuzu before prayer; he brought home holy water from that lake in a polythene packet. In the evening, Adu sprinkled that water on the doorstep and mumbled ‘Ganga-Ganga’ inwardly. Like she used to do at her father’s.

Adu’s father-in-law was a farmer. Owned six bighas of land. He was around fifty years old. He went to the fields even now. He took with him a steel tiffin box, and a transistor. Smallish kind, that could be heard by placing caps on one’s ears. Adu’s father-in-law listened to the Rajshahi and Dhaka stations. After returning home, he put on a lungi and wore the wrist watch. Such extravagances were possible because of his son. The son’s name was Chhalu. ‘Adu’s huzbyan’. He had gone to Iraq. He would send money from there. The extravagances were built upon that money. Chhalu’s good name was Chholaiman. Right since childhood, Roshanara was Adu’s bosom friend. She used to frequent her house a lot. Chholaiman was the son of Roshanara’s paternal aunt, her fufu. They lived in the village of Amudia, three kilometres away. He used to come to Roshanara’s often. Unruly hair, goggles on his eyes, did all sorts of gimmicks with the cigarette smoke, he wore a chain on his neck, had Hindi film songs in his throat, was a Class-10-pass, used to say he’d buy a scooter.

There was a book at Adu’s in-laws’ place, Qisas al-Anbiya, or, as they pronounced it, Kachhachhal Anbiya – stories of the nobis or prophets. It had to be read the other way round. Taking a page out of the book, Adu’s husband had said, ‘Look, they’ve written about me.’ Adu had read: ‘Chholaiman Nobi. Chholaiman understood the language of animals and birds; he used to speak to them. Devils and demons were under his sway. Allah bequeathed on him divine boons. The earth would reveal to him the secrets of its hidden treasures. Morning and evening, he wandered, stationing his throne on air…’

Adu had said, ‘That doesn’t make you a prophet, does it? There are so many by the name of Nimai among us. Does that make all of them Noder Nimai? Is everyone a nobi?’ Adu’s husband had said, ‘But even my name is Chholaiman. Even I follow the language of birds.’ Just then, a koel had cried out. Chholaiman said, ‘Can you tell, daalling, what the koel is saying?’ No sooner had he uttered this than Chhalu himself had offered the response to it – not in words but in a gesture.

‘Did you get any other news about Chhalu Miya?’ someone or another kept asking at Adu’s place, often. Adu was at her father’s place now. Some people asked Adu’s father, ‘Is Saddam alive? What do you think?’ Adu heard the sound of an aeroplane now. She stepped out of her room and looked at the sky. Around her feet, anklets jangled. Iraqi ones. There was some city called Basra there; these were made there. Chhalu had brought these. ’upor jhumur – as in, ‘rupor jhumur’ – silver anklets.

One didn’t get to catch sight of aeroplanes that often in the skies here. Whenever she heard the sound of an aeroplane, Adu looked at the sky. Adu’s three-year-old son held his mother’s maxi and asked, ‘Is Abba going to come this time riding on that, Ma?’

Adu merely stroked her son’s head a little. Wordlessly. The aeroplane’s booming sound disappeared into the faraway clouds. Chholaiman, O Prophet Chholaiman, you can, seated on your throne, wander about on air, can you not?

At the hour of Qayamat, archangel Israfil was supposed to blow into a shinga to herald the day of resurrection. Who knew what the sound of that horn would be like? Like that of aeroplanes?

There was no television in Adu’s father’s place. There was one at her in-laws’. Chhalu was the one who’d bought it, two years ago, when he came to the country. Adu had seen many things on TV. Tigers in jungles, nymphs in hotels, Bombay’s paradise, ministers, police, so many things! She had seen aeroplanes too: aeroplanes in which there were bombs – they destroyed homes, raised fire; she had seen cities in flames. She had seen smoke that spiralled upwards. She had not heard crying, she had not heard people’s screams – in those moments, there was music on TV. Black smoke rose, tirring turrung. The building crumbled, turrung tirring. Amidst that tirring turrung was her husband. In Iraq. And here, they were crying.

Chhalu worked near Kirkuk. Chhalu’s letters would arrive on paper with pictures of date palm trees on it. Chhalu’s job was at a date factory. After deseeding the dates, they were soaked in rose water, and then dried in the sun for a short while before being put into packets. Chhalu’s task was to place a fine cut on a date with a sharp knife and then pull the seed out with a tweezer. ‘I do operations, Adu. Seed operation using tools all day long. Dates and dates sitting whole days in a cold room. And the sizes of these dates! So many khastawi dates, yet no flies.’

Chhalu had brought over numerous packets of dates. They had been distributed to many in the village. Whoever arrived, came with dates. Many kept these packets for the month of Roza. Iftar’s special item. Many sent across a fistful or two of dates to relatives and acquaintances. Then, no longer did these remain Kirkuk’s dates; they turned into Amudia’s dates. In Iraq, they called these dates ‘khastawi’. In this Amudia village, there were three men who worked in date factories. Jabbar had been the very first one to go before everyone else. He took along the rest; claimed money in return. Adu was pregnant with Rafiq when Chhalu had set off. Chhalu came nine months after Rafiq was born. He brought along mewa, khurma, surma, silver anklets, clothes made of silk, packets full of dates, and a tape recorder.

Dates themselves were of so many kinds. Balls made from grinding dates; date barfis … He had also brought over a splendid food item, apparently called kulicha: spice-laden stuffing of dates inside wheat flour, then fried in ghee. It was winter then. On a date palm tree in this part of the world was an earthen pot; on a bamboo branch sat a black-hooded oriole. The bird called. Chhalu said, ‘Can you tell what the bird is saying? Khaat-bhaangbi? Khaat-bhaangbi?’ Would you break the bed, would you break the bed? Those were days of pithey-payesh, rice cakes filled with coconut and date palm jaggery cooked in milk. In the sweet patishapta crêpes, Chhalu had mixed Kirkuk’s date stuffing with Amudia’s coconut scrapings. And afterwards, what passed that night! Such episodes could surely happen between husbands and wives; especially if the husband was ‘foreign-return’. But the next morning, taking the tape recorder out from beside the pillow, Chhalu had said, ‘Look Adu, what you did! Eesh, how shameful!’ The sound of Adu’s breath, the array of noises, so many indecorous utterances. Such shamelessness, Adu had said. Bit by bit, Chhalu had decreased the volume. Staring at Chhalu in mock-anger, Adu, placing her ear against the speaker, was listening to the sounds of her own amorous whisperings. ‘How wicked, huh,’ she said. ‘Such naughty ideas! Does anyone record such things on tape? Chhee!’

Chhalu had said, ‘I will take this along. This cassette is you, after all; and you will be mine. I will play it every night and listen.’

After this, during whatever number of days Chhalu was around, Adu had scrabbled under the pillows to see whether the tape recorder was kept there. One day, she had found it under the mattress. She had removed it. However, the day before the one on which Chhalu was supposed to leave, it was Adu who had asked that they sleep with the machine. That night, though, Adu could offer no other sound but that of her sobs.

Chhalu had said, ‘I will come, I will come again. I will come as soon as I save up some money for the aeroplane. I will get so many things for Rafiq. But you are coming along with me. I will play it whenever I want to.’ Tapping on the surface of the cassette gently, Chhalu had put it inside his bag.

Once the aeroplane blended into the thick clouds, Adu stepped inside her room. Pulling at Adu’s maxi, Rafiq said, ‘Is Abba not there even inside that one?’

Rafiq did not remember his Abba. He was nine months old when his Abba had said he would come again, but he had not turned up yet. He had heard stories about his Abba, seen his photograph; heard sobs when speaking about his Abba. He had seen his Ma, Bu, Khala, Khalu sitting in front of the TV, looking at aeroplanes, and his Bu sobbing while saying, ‘Chhalu, Chhalu’. Rafiq had heard his father speak too – on a cassette. ‘My golden boy Rafu, I am your Abba. Lots of love and cuddles to you. I think of you. Tell me what you want. I will bring it.’

This was how Rafiq knew Abba. That was because Chhalu used to send cassettes through parcels from Kirkuk. Not many times, though – he’d sent cassettes merely two to three times in the last two years. While playing them on the tape recorder, they heard things said to his brother, things said for his Abba-Amma, and for Adu. The things that were said for Adu were, as though, read from Masle Masail, or as they said, Macchla-Macchhael: caring for the son, serving Abba-Amma, all such things. After all, Chhalu knew that the cassette would be heard by everyone. So, there were no hush-hush things said for his wife.

Now, Adu didn’t know how to send off a parcel. Adu didn’t even possess an empty cassette. If she did, she would have spoken a few words addressing Chhalu, in secret; it wouldn’t have mattered if it wasn’t sent off – she would have played it and listened to it herself. Adu would write letters; she would write the address in English, in a legible hand, slowly –

Solaiman Hossain Mondol. C/O Ibrahim Kafista, Post-Jiriam. Kirkuk. Iraq.

Now, she no longer wrote letters. It had been eight months since there was any news of Chholaiman.

*

It was spring then. There were the koels’ endless calls. It was then that a bomb fell on Iraq. Word that America would be bombing Iraq had been doing the rounds for several days now. They didn’t get Laden; they wanted Saddam. If Saddam surrendered, bombs wouldn’t rain. At Adu’s in-laws’ at the time, uncles and aunts were saying to one another: ‘Why is Saddam Miya so stubborn? So many will die because of one?’

When bombs fell on Baghdad, there were red flowers on the simul trees in Amudia. People from Jabbar, Khairul and Chholaiman’s families went to the Imam of the village masjid and said, ‘What’s the way out now? What kind of a justice is this of Allah’s?’ The Imam said, ‘Trust in Allah. Allah is compassionate. Pray to Him.’

Basrah, Baghdad, then Kirkuk.  The homes of Jabbar, Khairul and Chholaiman had television. All of them worked in date factories. Barring theirs, there were TVs in three or four other households. Crowds gathered in these houses. Many would arrive at the hour of the evening news. They would stare at the fallen buildings and houses on the TV screens. Their eyes trained on the busy ambulances, on the people laid out on stretchers. An arm of a person buried under the rubble of bricks and stones, sticking out. Someone said, ‘It’s not Khairul’s, is it?’ A leg peeking out from under a shroud covering a corpse. ‘Whose leg is it, dear?’ Seeing a person run out from amid the smoke, hand covering his mouth, someone said, ‘Isn’t he somewhat like our Chhalu?’ An old woman sat, her hand on her head, in front of a pile of wreckage where, only a short while ago, was her home.

On the porch of their house, with her hand placed on her head in exactly the same manner, Chholaiman’s mother kept sitting. ‘Call upon Allah, Chhalu’s Ma,’ said the neighbours. ‘He is the One who saves; the One who kills too.’

Chhalu’s Ma had called Allah, thrown coins at the Ram Mandir at Domkal bazaar. Joining her palms in front of the Shiva-stone at the foot of the banyan tree, she had prayed in secret, ‘Stop the war, I beg you.’ She had pleaded with the banyan tree, appealed even to the gaping maw of the boundless wilderness. The war didn’t stop.

And Adu? Adu kept chanting Durga’s name. ‘Hey Dugga, slayer of all suffering! Bring him to me.’ Adu continued to put a little sindoor on the parting of her hair. In the goodness of the pious wife lay the good of the husband. One day, heading to the dargah of Pitai Pir, she struck the grave a good many times, as fiercely as she could. Pitai Pir had some other name. Now everyone had forgotten that. There was a story about him. Once, that Pir himself had done a bad deed. What one would call committing a zinaa, what else? Involving a woman. Later, when his conscience awoke, he urged his disciples himself, ‘Flog me a hundred times. I have committed a crime. As per the Al Quran, the punishment for this is a hundred floggings from the cane.’ At first, no one agreed to hit him. Then he issued an order. When there’s an order, it has to be followed. But that Pir didn’t live through all of the hundred floggings. Just a few floggings from the cane, and he died. But before he died, he commanded that on his corpse too, the flogging must continue. That was what happened. A grave was dug. On his grave, too, people hit with a cane. Even now. A Pir’s hukum. Good came from carrying out that hukum. One acquired virtue. In the goodness of the pious wife lay the good of the husband. While flogging the Pir’s grave, Adu said, ‘O Pitai Pir, will you keep sleeping? Your conscience awakened. Who will stir their conscience?’

Then, the war stopped. America’s soldiers marched into Baghdad. Rumsfeld gave a speech, said everything was over. Sleep didn’t come in three households of the Amudia village. Nobody knew about those three boys of the date factory. So many letters were written; they were just put into red boxes, that was it. Imam Saheb said, ‘How can it be known? No one even knows whether Saddam is alive or not, and these are mere labourers…’

There were comings and goings among those three households. Inquiries about whether one had any news of the other. Those three wives spoke among themselves; never through words. They stared at each other’s eyes; conversed through eyes. They talked about the dreams they saw at night. Look, a motorcycle stopped, was honking a lot, I saw it’s my man, bandage on his head…

Monsoons descended. Men alighted on farming fields. Fish snares, and so many fish trapped in them. Lyata, koi, punti, mourola, bhyada … Should she eat fish, Adu wondered. She was, after all, still a shodhoba, a married woman whose husband was alive, wasn’t she?

She read in newspapers that things in Iraq were normal. There were pictures printed of school-going girls and boys. Yet again, Adu began writing letters to that address in Kirkuk. And waited, hoping for a reply. One day, in what appeared to be an act of great wisdom, she wrote a letter to Bush Saheb. On the envelope, she wrote in English itself: George Bush. President, America. Inside, she wrote in Bengali:

‘Mahashoy, apni shobi paren. Amar shaamir shondhan dyan. Amar shaami kaaj korito Kirkuker…’ (Sir, there is nothing you cannot do. Please tell me where my husband is. He used to work in Kirkuk’s…)

Bush Saheb would surely be able to read Bengali. There was nothing he could not do.

Sticking a stamp on it, she posted it at the Domkal Post Office. The man at the post office said, ‘Still not received any news, have you, sister?’

These very words were monsoons. They soaked her.

The monsoons stopped. ‘Esheche shorot, himer porosh…’ Autumn had come, a whiff of cold touched the air. In the sky, in the breeze, the floating clouds wandered. There was sunlight on the porch in front of the house. O there’s no sight of you, no sight of you. 

At such a time arrived a farishta, an angel: the postman. An unfamiliar stamp on the envelope. The peon said, ‘Letter from Iraq.’ Adu saw that Iraq was indeed written out in English. There was some other photo, not Saddam’s. A rose. Black-hooded orioles called out; paddy fields swayed. She tore the envelope. O ma! Whose handwriting was this? This wasn’t Chhalu’s, it wasn’t. At the end of the letter, she saw written, ‘Your Chhalu’. Adu read from the start again.

Holy greetings to respected Ammajaan, a thousand adaab. 

Dear Amma, I am alive. Our factory no longer exists. Razed by a bomb. I was in the factory at the time. The roof above fell. Don’t have my right hand any more. They cut it off at the hospital. Khairul is dead. I am somehow writing with my left hand. I am looking for Jabbar. Don’t know where he is. I am trying to return home. America has taken the hand, yes, but it is providing food and water. Pray. They’ve given an address. Erbil Red Cross Camp. Iraq.

There was one more letter.

My dear Adu, you heard it all from Amma’s letter. The right sleeve of the shirt from the grant is hanging. All has gone. I am trying to return home. Will feel relieved once I am with you all. But what will we eat? What work will I do with a single arm? Rather, it would perhaps have been better to die like Khairul. What’ll you do by worrying? You’d rather go and live at your father’s. I am coming, Inshallah.

*

Ever since that moment, Adu watched aeroplanes in the sky. Ran upon the sound of the fence-gates opening. When the breeze moved trees, she felt he was coming, he was coming.

Monsoons were past. ‘Esheche shorot, himer porosh…’ Autumn had come yet again, a whiff of cold touched the air. In the sky, in the breeze, the floating clouds wandered. Adu came away to her father’s. She was waiting. In the mornings, she applied turmeric paste on her face. She had worn anklets around her feet again. In the tinkling of the anklets chimed, ‘Come, O come!’

It was heard that a letter had arrived at Jabbar’s too. Even Jabbar had written he was coming.

Adu had written a letter. Erbil Red Cross Camp. There had been no response. No other letter from Chholaiman arrived either. Was that letter really from Chhalu, Adu wondered every now and then.

There was no TV in Adu’s father’s house. Adu didn’t have any news. She had seen Iraq only on TV. The picture of the Iraq that was drawn in her heart from listening to the stories from her husband was unlike the picture of the Iraq on TV. She had heard of the Furat and Diyala rivers. The names of the rivers which in her school textbooks were Euphrates and Tigris. She had heard of Basrahi roses, she had heard of khurma trees, of walnut trees, and stories of the many varieties of kebabs. But what was the Iraq they saw on TV? Fire, smoke and broken buildings. Bridges fallen on their faces. They had seen a whole tree ablaze, and anxious birds flying. Had the fire in Iraq ceased now? Were pictures of khurma trees shown on TV now? Did roses bloom? Did waves come in the Furat river? Did kingfishers swoop down over those waters to snatch fish? Adu saw a picture in her heart – in front of the Furat river, under a pair of date palm trees, stood Chhalu, beard on his face, the shirtsleeve of his severed right arm flapping in the breeze.

Let him come, let him come, she would kiss his severed hand. She would reap the caresses of the severed hand. Why, why should she be scared?

One evening, Jabbar arrived riding a bicycle. It wasn’t a cycle’s bell, it wasn’t; it was the sacred drum playing at the homecoming of Goddess Durga. Everyone crowded around Jabbar. Jabbar was as if Allah’s messenger, or an angel. In that moment, the front yard of Adu’s household in Dawoodpur seemed like beheshat – paradise. Tell us, what’s happening?

Jabbar didn’t bring packets of dates this time. He got along with him a camel. Made of clay. Yellowish in colour. While sipping tea, Jabbar said, ‘They were flying aeroplanes. So, what could we do? We were working with dates. A few days earlier, the Iraq military came and said they wanted so many thousands of packets. So, the work was on. We heard the American military wouldn’t come this side. They had taken Baghdad, their task was over. Just then, one night, there came a very loud sound. Many bombs fell on Saddam’s place. We saw it from the barracks. The next morning, bombs fell on our rooms. I had stepped outside to get water, so was saved. The roofs are made of stone, you see. It fell on Khairul’s head. Chhalu Bhai’s hand was badly injured. The right hand. The vehicle to remove the stones came the next day. By then, a few of us had moved the bricks and stones, one by one. Chhalu Bhai was stuck in a groove. Made him drink water seeping over my finger, sip by sip, the whole night. The following afternoon, the Red Cross car came. In the midst of it all, so many died. Chhalu got his life back because of his willpower.’

Some brought Jabbar biscuits on a plastic plate; some brought him sugar-cakes; air, even – some fanned him.

‘Khairul got a grave; Chhalu went to the hospital. What would I do? The company was no more, after all. Dates scattered over broken rocks. There weren’t even birds to eat them. I ate only dates for two days. On many of the dates was a burnt smell. That was the first time I tasted burnt dates.

‘Then they set up camp. There was a Pakistani. That chap understood Hindi. He said, you are an Indian, a man from the land of water; all your hands and legs are intact, I see. I will give you another job. He fed us bread and tin-meat for some days. Then sent us off to Buksas. A city by the Zab river. A city of soft soil. The earth’s colour is yellow. A variety of things are made from that soil. Flower vases, ashtrays, vessels for drinking tea-coffee, animals, birds. The method to burn that soil is different. I’ve brought along that camel.

‘I couldn’t figure out where, to which hospital they had taken Chhalu. At last, I found a trace. He is with me now. In the “maati” locality. The work involves legs. He softens the earth with his feet.’

Jabbar handed over a cassette.

Adu brought her palms together. Like one did, curling the fingers inwards, when about to drink thirst-quenching water. Opening the envelope, Adu saw written in English on the cassette: ‘Only for you’. Adu could no longer wait. No sooner did Jabbar leave than Adu took out the machine. Thank god she had brought it over from that house. She inserted the cassette and played it:

‘Adu, ei Adu, my Adu, Adu my love. It’s me speaking. I am alive. Khoda has kept me alive. Not Khoda, I was wrong. America … There’s a lot to say, Adu, private things. No one must hear. Only you.’

Adu turned it off. Her mother, her younger brother had already gathered in the meanwhile.

Holding the machine in the crook of her arms, she ran out. The sun was about to drown then. There was a slight drizzle too. Leaving the banks of the pond behind, she crossed the culvert and climbed down to the field. In it, the paddy stalks had grown tall. Water reached her ankles. Adu went inside the paddy field. Dusk was on its way down over the paddy stalks all around. Adu turned the machine on. In that moment, the breeze, like waves, combed over the paddy plants, like one heard in the paean for the motherland to be found nowhere else, one that’s made of dreams and embraced by memories…

‘Adu, while in hospital, I’ve written so many letters to you in my head. I was discharged after several days. I don’t have an arm. The shirtsleeve keeps flapping. Ahead, I saw the flag of America flapping. They took me to a rescue camp. I didn’t have papers, my passport – nothing. They said they would enquire at the consulate. I wrote a letter to you from the Red Cross Camp. Of course, there are so many things to tell of what happened afterwards. I feel pained to speak of them, Adu. So much blood, staying up at night, hungry. We used to only pack dates, after all, nothing else. To whom did we cause what harm, tell? Gone. I will never be able to do that work any more, ever. Listen, let me tell you – having found out where I was, Jabbar came over. Took me by a riverbank. The river is called Zab. Soft yellow soil on either side. A variety of things are made from that soil there. If you burn that soil, it appears yellow. It is not good to carve idols in our religion. This religion originated in the land of sand. Can idols be carved from sand?

‘People create idols wherever they find soft earth. Those who destroy, create too. Such beautiful camels, horses, birds are made that it seems the moment you will blow souls into them, they will come to life. I dance on lumps of earth there now. I dance whole days. Make the earth soft. There’s earth all over my legs, my body. While dancing on the soil, I think of my land, I think of you, Adu.

‘Now, how do I head home leaving an arm behind? What will I eat if I returned home? Who will feed me? The one who has no arm, has no food.

‘The war has stopped. The military boot prints which had fallen on the soft yellow soil around Zab River dried in the sun. The grooves made by the boot marks, hardened and stayed on. One day, a few young boys stomped on the marks and smashed the grooves; they swore in their language.

‘That meant, the war hasn’t stopped.

‘I won’t stay here. I will come home. To your arms. To your breasts. Don’t feel scared seeing the armless Chhalu. I will come. A few days later. Once some money is saved.

‘My Adu, chhunumunu – something private. Jabbar will return once again. A month later. Will you give him something? That cassette is no more. The one that had etched within it the love between you and me. The one I used to listen to at night – war has destroyed it. That is no more. Will you again fill a few words of love in a new cassette, sweetheart? Sounds of your kisses, and sounds of…? Please. Close the envelope in which you send the cassette. I won’t be able to live without it. Many kisses to you.’

In the dark field, Adu heard the sound of the kisses sent from Iraq. Stars shivered.

Adu stepped out again today. Afternoon. The month of Bhadro. In her hand, that tape machine. She couldn’t insert a new cassette; there wasn’t one. She inserted the cassette of Manna Dey’s songs. Manna Dey’s hits. The first song itself was ‘Ei kuley aami aar oi kuley tumi, maajhkhaaney nodi oi boye choley jaaye…’ On this shore, I; on that shore, you, between us flows that river… It was over these songs that Adu would float her new words. Wiping out the songs, Adu’s words would stay.

Adu walked on a red path, Adu walked on a ridged path. On her way, in an empty field, a lone tree! Under the tree, dry leaves. Adu sat on the dry leaves. There was not a soul around. Cows grazed, the breeze blew briskly, Adu shivered.

Adu pressed the tape recorder with her finger. ‘O go, it’s me speaking, ’adna, your Adu. My dearest, my precious…’ There was a catch in her voice.

There was so much she wanted to say. Words wanted to spill from all over her body. But Adu was not able to say a thing. The cassette kept running. The breeze blew briskly. Birds called.

‘O go, you are Chholaiman, aren’t you? You follow the language of birds…’

Like mourners gathered to condole the felling of those who did not want war and yet, were killed by it, stood the tree. The magnetic ribbon kept turning, soundlessly.

‘Here, take what you wanted.’ Having said this, alone under the lone tree, Adu made the gesture of planting a kiss for a beloved of miles and miles afar. But the tape recorder accepted merely the sound of sobbing. Adu crumbled in tears over the dry leaves. In her eyes were the Euphrates-Tigris.

‘Chholaiman, O Chholaiman, you follow the language of tears too, don’t you!’

The breeze blew briskly. Leaves shivered.

*

 

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 This English translation is of the Bangla original story titled ‘Jhorer Pata’ (Leaves of the Storm) published in Panchasti Galpa. Swapnamoy Chakraborti (2006; Kolkata: Ananda Publishers, 2014), pp. 61–68. This story was first published in Saradiya Bartaman (2003). Copyright Swapnamoy Chakraborti. Translated with the author’s permission.

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Also, Read Any Day Now, Syeda by Abhijit Sen, translated from The Bengali by Sarban Bandyopadhyay and published in The Antonym:

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