1
The tapping in my dream was the watchman knocking on the window. I startled him by flinging open the shutter, groggy and bloodshot-eyed.
Hashim, what is it? I asked, unnecessarily aggressive.
Rahim shaheb is here, he answered with a hint of fear in his tone which I could tell sprang from its own reasons and not my behavior.
Rahim Masood? I asked, even though I knew only one Rahim in the world.
Of course Rahim Masood, the watchman’s expression replied.
Why is it so dark? I asked.
He gave me a frightened look. No current, Shaheb. His voice trembled.
Load shedding? I asked.
Shaheb, no.
Then what? Never mind. Go. I’m coming. Rahim was waiting, and power outages were hardly strangers to our lives.
My friend was pacing the driveway, puffing on one of his Dunhills. The watchman had unlocked the front door, but Rahim had chosen to stay outside.
Rahim? What is it? His shuffling footsteps paused. A shadowy mass was all I could see of him. The burning tip of his cigarette zigzagged and then flew over the boundary wall.
Hashim, bring a light, for God’s sake, a torch, something, I yelled.
Rahim came up the verandah steps and stood in front of me. I could still barely see his face. My yelling, or Hashim, had roused the cook and the driver, both of whom bounded out of the dark carrying lanterns. Rahim took me by the shoulders and led me to a seat.
Were you sleeping already?
My face grew hot. I chuckled nervously. I wore my reputation as a night owl with more pride than it deserved.
I was. Deadline first thing in the morning and I just can’t seem to get it right. Gave myself a terrible headache.
It’s about to get more terrible.
In the short time that I’d been asleep, there’d been a coup. The former army chief of staff had declared martial law and himself the new head of state. He was still giving his address on the radio when Rahim set out for my house, but looking back on it now, so many years later, I’m positive that that wasn’t the only thing he’d come over to talk about. Coups were as familiar to us as the changing of the seasons.
You all go back to sleep, I told the servants. Reluctantly almost, they peeled away. Hashim’s lantern swayed to the front of the driveway and disappeared inside his tiny room adjoining the main gate.
What were you working on? Rahim asked.
Does it matter?
A tremor passed beneath our feet, ushering a low rumble that made its slow approach along the road outside the gate.
We moved to the edge of the verandah as if this would give us a view of the street over the walls of the house.
Give me your matches, I said. I struck one and went inside and lit a candle. Come.
Rahim followed me up to the roof. Once there I blew out the candle, and for the next half hour watched tanks and soldiers take over the city.
I’m still going to finish my article, I said with unnecessary resolve.
Sure, sure, said Rahim, neither sarcastic nor demeaning, which were not in his character. Go ahead. You don’t mind if I sit here for a while?
You know better than to ask.
It’s just that…
I could tell he was looking at me.
Yes?
No, nothing. You go ahead. Get your work done.
I can sit for a while.
No, it’s fine. I’d like to just sit here alone.
Is Sadia bhabi okay?
Besides probably worried out of her mind right now, she’s fine.
And your mother?
Sometimes I think she’s more Sadia’s mother than mine, they’re so alike. Rahim chuckled. The flame of a match lit his profile as he touched it to a cigarette. It’s quite a lovely night, he sighed.
It was. The sky was starry and clear, backlit by the beams of a three-quarter moon.
I could smell Rahim’s cigarettes for a while through my window. It was soothing, despite my revulsion toward smoking. Rahim was, in fact, the only smoker I allowed to smoke in my house.
Reading over what I’d written depressed me. It was bloviating the very cliches Rahim and I had earlier refused to touch. Democracy and Bangladesh. Bengal and the spirit of humanism. Who we are and what we’re not. Hope for the future. Line after line, sentence after sentence, building to a crescendo of nausea. No wonder it gave me a headache.
It was four in the morning. Again, I’d fallen asleep at my desk but I felt more refreshed than if I’d gotten a full night’s sleep in bed.
The smell of Rahim’s cigarettes was gone. I came out to the verandah, calling his name. I called for Hashim. He appeared from the rear of the house, having just used the servants’ latrine. When I asked about Rahim he gave me a stupefied look.
Well? Did he leave?
Shaheb, I only saw him right where you’re standing.
When?
Shaheb, just…
He stood blinking at me as if he’d just been dropped to earth from the sky.
Shaheb, he’s not inside?
I didn’t know. I hadn’t checked.
Come with me, I said. With the lantern’s feeble light in Hashim’s hand trying to lead us we walked toward the guestroom near the back of the floor, where Rahim slept when he spent the night. There was no sign that he’d stepped inside the room, the first of which would have been the immediate smell of his cigarettes.
The cook was in the kitchen, getting tea and breakfast started. He hadn’t seen Rahim either.
We went to the roof. It was still dark enough that we checked it from end to end by the lantern’s light.
Are you sure he didn’t leave while you were in the bathroom?
Shaheb, not unless he jumped over the gate or the boundary wall. Rahim didn’t jump gates or climb walls.
The phone was dead. God knew when it would be working again.
I had hot water brought in, took a quick bath, put on fresh clothes, and set out for Rahim’s house. My driver said I should not go on foot, even though Rahim lived a short fifteen-minute walk away. What, I asked him, did he fear. What about what was happening was new. He said he’d follow me with the car, but I said no.
The sun was up and I’d worked up a sweat as I approached Rahim’s gate. It was a while before his watchman answered, and I realized belatedly how unmindful it was of me to bang on the gate like a lunatic.
It’s me Ahmed, Sobur Mia, I said softening my voice. He made a small opening, gave me a thorough once-over. He was a relic of Rahim’s father’s time and known me since the day Rahim and I became friends. Sorry for startling you. How are you? I asked, stepping into the courtyard. Instead of replying he kept staring at me. Is Rahim home? He came over late last night and then left without telling me.
Sobur Mia, is it Shaheb? I heard from inside the house. Sobur Mia glanced over his shoulder and back at me, his expression creeping toward horror.
Bhabi, it’s me, Ahmed.
Ahmed bhai? Is Rahim with you? I exchanged another look with the watchman and said, I came here looking for him.
I thought he was at your house. I couldn’t call because the phones are dead. I was just about to send Sobur Mia.
I stood in the middle of the courtyard with nothing I could think to say.
He never came to see you? she asked.
He did. We talked, and then I went to finish some work and he said he wanted to sit out on my verandah for a while…and then…I came out later and he was…gone…
Gone? said Rahim’s wife, as though I’d spoken gibberish.
Bhabi…I felt like a child with not even the feeblest most ridiculous excuse at my command. I checked the whole house, I swear. He was nowhere. Even my watchman didn’t see him leave.
Bouma? Is he home? It was Rahim’s mother, making her way out. Oh, you’re here. How are you, son? Is Rahim with you? I think he went to your house last night, no?
He did, auntie.
So, where is he? She looked past me. Did he already go in? Sobur Mia was no longer out front and the gate had been padlocked again. Where is he?
No, Ma, her daughter-in-law told her. He’s not here.
Not here? Small, bony, and frail, she reminded me of my mother in the months before she died. Where else would he be? Beta, she looked to me, where is he?
Auntie, he probably went to the office after he left my house.
Oh. But he never goes to the office without his morning bath and tea. Never. Not since his school days does he leave the house without his bath and tea. Did he do that at your house?
Ma, don’t get yourself worked up, it’s not good for you.
I’m sure he’s at his desk right now, I said. You know how single-minded he can be about work. And on a day like today…I’m sure he has a lot to say. I will tell him to come home immediately.
I don’t understand, Rahim’s mother mumbled. What is happening?
Ma, go inside, I’ll be right there. Ma, please, go.
Once she was out of earshot, Sadia bhabi came closer to me, her eyes wide as a child’s, shining with something I couldn’t name.
He’s left, hasn’t he, she whispered. Her breath smelled of old betel leaf.
Left? What do you mean?
I mean, she moved in closer. Another inch and her chest would touch my stomach.
Left, bhai. Left. Gone.
Mr. Romen Basu, the editor of my paper, was at his desk, smoking and reading, his signature red fountain pen in hand.
Come in, Ahmed, come in, he said sensing my presence. He’d already gone through a cup of tea and called for more.
What a night, he exhaled, setting the stapled pages on his desk. He dropped his glasses next to them and rubbed his eyes.
I’m still trying to get a grasp, I said.
What’s to get. It’s done. We elected a president, so, clearly, he wouldn’t be allowed to stay in office. I don’t know why we keep lying to ourselves. This country was never meant to be free or democratic. Maybe it’s just better we accept that and let it be.
The peon brought our teas.
I finished this, I said, bringing my article out of my satchel and adding it to his pile, but I don’t know…well, you can tell me if you think it’s still relevant.
He looked over his teacup and gave it a once-over. If he wasn’t in the mood to bother with it, I didn’t blame him. I wasn’t sure I wanted it published.
It will go front page.
Front page?
A miniscule smile played around his mouth. I can’t think of a more fitting front page story for today. He read aloud the opening lines. See? he said. It’s perfect. It’s critical without being political, it’s hopeful without offering solutions, it has an eye on history.
We finished our teas and behind us there were sounds of the rest of the office arriving.
Rahim’s dire prediction came to mind, and with it Rahim himself. Mr. Basu hadn’t shown a moment’s concern about being shut down. If he had them, he didn’t need me telling him how pointless they would be. I went to my desk, chatted with a few colleagues, each one sunk in his own private dejection, and for the next half hour fell into a stupor of my own.
Who died? We turned in the direction of Mr. Basu’s office. Did someone die? Gentlemen, I’m asking you a question? Did someone die? Will someone answer me? Has there been a death in here? No? Then why does it feel like I’m standing at a funeral?
Mr. Basu was not a disciplinarian. As a rule he left us to our work and preferred not to interfere. If there was an issue that required his attention he let us bring it to him. Unless there were problems that had to involve him, which there seldom were, we saw Mr. Basu twice in the course of our day, for the morning and the afternoon editorial meetings. We never saw him arrive, never saw him leave, leading to our firm belief that because he never left he never needed to return. The paper was his home, it was his life.
We didn’t say so out loud but we appreciated the kick in the pants, and went to work as we would any other day, shaken out of self-pity, resignation, and hopelessness. Endless cups of tea, cigarette fumes, crosstalk across the floor, weaving around each other, the non-stop clatter of typewriters, all the normal commotion kept us busy until the morning edition was ready. The headline to my piece was Mr. Basu’s brainchild: TODAY WE WEEP, TOMORROW…HOPE? It was a little incongruent with the substance of the article but I knew better than to question Romen Basu.
We huddled around his desk over the proof as though it were a baby we’d given collective birth.
So? said Mr. Basu. Any thoughts?
We had none.
Mr. Basu, is it alright if I stepped out for an hour or so? I asked.
Okay. Ahmed, is everything all right? One more thing Mr. Basu kept clear of as a habit was asking questions that had nothing to do with work. His care for his staff showed in other ways, tangible ones in the form of unexpectedly large bonuses on Eid, Durga Puja, Christmas, New Years’, a surprise lunch for the whole office with biriyani catered from Purbani Hotel, practical gifts when an employee welcomed a child.
I hesitated, then said, Just a few things I need to do. I’ll be back before the afternoon meeting.
On the walk to Rahim’s office I found the streets back to their usual clamor. The general sense, I guessed, was that no one knew what to think, what to feel, what to expect, or do, besides going on with their lives. No more than we did in the in the tumult of the sixties and the months from December 1970 to the start of the war the following March. The government had made its decision and would proceed accordingly. Citizens either continued living or rejected what was happening. Many of us did both.
The metal gate was closed and locked. I couldn’t see past the first five steps up the dark stairwell. Other shops along the street were open, and I took solace in the thought that it was just a precaution, a very smart decision. I called the guard’s name. My voice trailed off into the void like I’d shouted into a cave.
The guard appeared, making his cautious descent, but stopped short of opening the gate.
Altaf, it’s me, Ahmed Qureshi, Rahim Masood shaheb’s friend.
Altaf had been there as long as I could remember and he’d seen me come and go a thousand times, with Rahim and without him. I’d given him tips on Eid and other random times for tea and snacks. He wasn’t that old, maybe in his sixties, and brought his face up close with the telltale effort of eyes hindered by cataracts.
Oh, Ahmed shaheb, forgive me. He undid the padlock and pushed the gate aside.
Is Shoma madam here? I asked.
She is, shaheb, he said, hastily locking up again. But not Rahim shaheb.
He’s not? He didn’t come today at all?
He shook his head, no.
The newsroom was empty and dark. The only light was on the other end of the floor, in Shoma Tajuddin’s office. I cleared my throat several times to announce my approach, but when I reached her door and knocked lightly on the frame, and issued one more courtesy cough, she looked up with a start.
She was a handsome woman in her early forties, divorced and childless. Naturally this opened her personal life to vicious rumors. She’d ran off her husband. She was barren. She was bad-charactered. Her work was an excuse for a nefarious hidden life, one in which she slept around with powerful men and plotted the downfall of society ladies while angling to steal their husbands. No doubt Shoma Tajuddin found great pleasure in allowing their delusions to harm them more than they could ever affect her. Not once did she fire back, and, in fact, had expressed pity toward these lonely women, resigned to second-class ranking in their married life, there as a showpiece next to their husband’s public profile, their resentment, their spite, a compounded natural consequence of having no life. Shoma did remark, however, how awful it was that women would treat other women, women they didn’t know personally at that, with such animus. But so it went in this city. Whereas men wouldn’t be half as resilient in her place. They’d lash out, make scenes, spit out challenges that in another age would lead to duels and deaths. They’d wave the greatest of all flags of status: Do you know who I am?
Shoma listened to me recount Rahim’s visit and disappearance with no apparent alarm. She was preoccupied to the point of being distracted. It was presumptuous of me to show up without notice, but the circumstances were irregular. In her place I would want to know if one of my employees had vanished without explanation.
He stopped in around, I think maybe, six? she said with a detached air. I don’t remember what it was for. You know him. Fifty things buzzing in his brain at the same time. It wasn’t urgent, or he’d tell me. And then he left.
I couldn’t press her for more. I thanked her and started to leave.
Has he said something to you? she asked.
About what?
She held me in a gaze that quickly became unsettling. As an unmarried man with no woman in my life I’m acutely unused to being in female company, much less being looked at the way Shoma Tajuddin was looking at me. I knew her well enough but only as Rahim’s boss. Every exchange we’d had before this one was with him and others present.
About…what was on his mind…?
I could positively say that that was not the follow-up she’d intended. It was anticlimactic to the force with which she’d stopped me with the first question.
Nothing other than…you know, what’s on everyone’s mind, I said.
Yes, okay.
Was there something else? I didn’t ask. I didn’t even know what had happened until he told me.
What does Romenda have to say? Shoma asked.
Mr. Basu is the most cool-headed man alive, I said.
Yes he is, Shoma nodded fondly. She’d worked for my paper before my time, and ranked among the countless of us fortunate ones that had been graced by Mr. Basu’s mentorship and guidance.
And you? she asked.
You’ll get to see it in our morning edition soon, I said.
The morning edition was ready and on its way to the newsstands when I got back to the office. My copy stared up at me on my desk, the large, bold-lettered headline embarrassingly flaunting, shamelessly pleased with itself. I was glad, though no one would know it, that they were Mr. Basu’s words and not mine.
Congratulations, a colleague passing by thumped my back.
I don’t read my work once it’s in print. The pressure, the fear, of finding something I’d want to change is too much. That afternoon, though, I sat down and began reading. Mr. Basu hadn’t edited a single word. It was a first for him and for me, and it was true of the rest of my colleagues as well. He wanted what we had to say that day to be ours, down to every comma and every period. How prescient of him. Had anyone told us then that that would be the last time for almost another decade that we would have that right, we would have, despite perhaps knowing better, scoffed it off. Fortunately, I didn’t come across anything that made me cringe.
Finding Sobur Mia waiting for me when I came out I felt a split-second’s relief, and joy. Rahim was back. Phone lines must still be down and so Sobur Mia was sent over with the news, and to maybe bring me over to see him. My delight was swiftly expelled by that same haunted expression he’d had earlier.
Is everything okay?
Choto memshaheb wants you to come, he replied, relaying Sadia bhabi’s message. We climbed onto the rickshaw he had waiting.
Sadia bhabi was out on the verandah.
Bhai, I’m sorry to drag you back after your long day, but I can’t hold this in any longer.
2
Their marriage was a “love marriage” and it was troubled from the start. Sadia bhabi’s family on both sides were landed gentry. They saw Rahim’s working-class background as low on the pedigree scale as it could go. After he and Sadia had made their intentions known, as it were, and made it clear they weren’t backing down, that nothing would change their minds or alter their hearts, Rahim’s parents agreed to bringing his proposal to Sadia’s family.
If I hadn’t been there, hadn’t seen what happened with my own eyes, I would think any retelling of it an exaggeration, or a scene from a Bengali melodrama. Sadia’s mother opened with chastising Rahim’s parents for failing to teach their son to know his place. If Sadia hadn’t been a girl of character, God only knew what calamity they’d be staring in the face. People should stick to their kind. They were not equals, they never would be. A slew of sayings tripped off her tongue. Proverb-sounding mantras meant to stress her stance that the classes should never mingle. She was accepting this marriage because Sadia was her only daughter. She was not going to cut her out of her life. If at any point Sadia was dissatisfied, her mother would see to it that she was freed from the marriage with her reputation intact. Any children they had would be taken care of. If Rahim or his family caused problems, they’d regret it.
Rahim was so crestfallen he didn’t speak for a week. He couldn’t look his parents in the eye. He walked around like the opposite of a lover getting his wish – spurned, disheveled, wild-haired, unshaven. If I didn’t know better I’d think he had been rejected by Sadia.
Then, one day, a few weeks later, he was fine, back to being himself. He told me he’d had a talk with his parents. If he knew the kind of people Sadia’s mother and father were, he’d have broken things off between them long ago. If they wanted him to forget Sadia, he would. I took him at his word. Rahim was…is…a good son. He didn’t force them into a position of having to be cordial to his in-laws. He made it known through Sadia that after the wedding they would not set foot in their home again. Sadia bhabi had no objections.
We were on the verandah, the power still out, a candle lighting the darkness between us.
Bhai, she said, I know he wasn’t happy. He hadn’t been for a long time. The candle lit one side of her face. A wavy strand of hair came loose and brushed her cheek. He hasn’t desired me in so long I’ve forgotten…what it is to be married.
My face grew hot. I was definitely not used to women talking this way, to me, or at all, and Sadia bhabi I saw as a sister.
Bhai, I know there was another woman, she continued. There has been, for a while. He never lied to me, and I believe he was going to tell me. I don’t think he knew how to. How could he? How does someone bring something up like that? I wouldn’t be able to. I saw the restlessness, the way he started saying things then trailed off. Him, who was never at a loss for words. Sometimes he would look at me and just keep looking, his eyes so full of things to say that I had to turn away. Then last night I was certain he was going to do it. We were sitting out here after dinner. I was ready. I was as prepared as I would be for whatever he had to say. Then the power went out. Sobur Mia was listening to his radio and he ran over with it. Before the address on the radio was over he was saying he had to go see you.
I don’t know how long we were silent. Sometime during her story I’d turned around almost completely so that most of the time she was talking to my back. I repositioned myself. The candle was burnt down to a waxy stump, the flame swaying as if to a breeze. If only there’d been one. It was oppressively hot. Or it could be the embarrassment I was feeling on Rahim’s behalf, as if he were a son that had let the family down. By contrast Sadia bhabi was remarkably composed. While she told it, it felt as though she was relating someone else’s troubles, and now that she was done, I didn’t have a single word to offer in return.
Bhai, I know this is not your concern, and I would never put you in an uncomfortable situation.
Do you have any idea who…?
No, she was quick to reply. She turned to me. The candle picked up more of her face. Do you?
In all my years of knowing him, bhabi, you are the only woman he ever spoke of. Even to my own ears this sounded maudlin, which was farthest from what Rahim was, but it was also true.
But what if that was it? she said. Just because he doesn’t talk about her doesn’t mean she doesn’t exist, no?
It was possible. It was unlike the Rahim I knew, but people changed. Sometimes right before us without us catching on until we do. Rahim would have to show some obvious signs for me to notice. Sadia bhabi’s phrasing, however, landed my mind on Shoma Tajuddin, the way she’d stopped me as I was leaving her office. If that was her attempt at an opening, the same as Rahim was planning with his wife and possibly me, I’d completely missed the hint. Why wouldn’t I. The last thing on earth I’d expect out of my friend’s boss’ mouth was a revelation the she was having an affair with him. It was ludicrous. Unthinkable. Insane.
I’m sorry, bhabi, but I feel responsible.
You? Why?
He did come to see me. We got so caught up in what happened last night that we didn’t talk about anything else. And then I went in to finish my article. I didn’t…give him the chance…
Bhai, no. How would you know. You talked about what was important.
I was his best friend, I thought to myself, and said out loud, If there’s anything you need, please just send for me.
Humans are by nature seekers. Our minds require explanations to things we discover or uncover that fall outside our comprehension. Miracles and mysteries entertain us but ultimately, we crave, we demand, logic.
Every day for the next week, I searched the house like a madman, going into rooms over and over, convinced I’d missed something. Something as large as a grown man that I and a team of people somehow missed! It made no sense, and yet I was relentless. It was crazy, and I was blindly, completely, swept up in my insanity. I had storage rooms cleared out, furniture moved, carpets rolled up. I yelled at the servants to search the grounds multiple times a day, barking orders from the verandah like some deranged colonial master bent upon working them to death.
I went to Rahim’s house every day after work. His absence had created a void that his wife and mother filled by growing closer. It was natural for two people sharing a loss to find comfort in each other, but by the end of the second week I sensed their connection had grown so strong that I was intruding on it. They welcomed me with tea and food and warmth evening after evening. They asked about my day, what I was working on, what developments were taking shape in politics or the national state of affairs. They never brought up Rahim. I wanted to, every visit, but held my tongue. I even had a moment of that irrationality that had sent me on the search of my house and wanted to ask if he was hiding somewhere inside, if the three of them were playing a prolonged prank on me after all. At the start of the third week, I phoned from the office and told Sadia bhabi I wouldn’t be coming over, not every day, using work as an excuse. She thanked me for the time I’d spent with them.
Rahim’s disappearance – there was no other way to describe it – was overshadowed by all else that was going on. Besides his wife and mother and I, everyone seemed satisfied accepting any number of explanations, from the mundane to the violent: he’d run off, he’d left his wife because of marital troubles, changed his identity; the army had abducted and killed him; he’d killed himself. I remember, through all the pain, laughing at such idiotic notions. We’d become such a simple-minded people. No wonder we produced the leaders that we did.
3
I left Bangladesh near the end of the military years, about a year before the president was forced out of office in disgrace and fled the country. I heard the news one morning from a neighbor in my building in Chicago, a Bangladeshi widower, an engineer, once a staunch Awami League supporter. He was waving a rolled up newspaper above his head when I opened the door. He bounded in without waiting to be invited and proceeded to spread out the paper on my kitchen table, causing memories, not good ones, to come gushing out of a long-dormant fount. The Bangladesh Observer, the now-defunct national English daily, recounted, with pictures, the ousted president’s years. My neighbor was elated as if it was a story of personal triumph. In a way I guess it was. For him, for so many Bangladeshis everywhere. I couldn’t help being consumed by a sadness I hadn’t felt in years.
I stayed in regular touch with Sadia bhabi after moving to the States. I’d left without telling anyone, not even her. I sold my house with everything that was in it – I was never one for the sentimental value of things – and landed in Chicago with a suitcase and the money from the sale in a bank draft in my pocket. Once I settled in, I wrote Sadia bhabi, and our correspondence happened on a monthly basis for almost two years.
Rahim’s mother died my second year here and in the same letter in which I received this news, Sadia bhabi told me she was remarrying. She went into explanations. She apologized. I would tell her, had it been in person, that she owed me neither. I was glad to hear she was moving on. It gave me the permission I’d been looking for to do the same. Having gotten it, however, it was my guilt that grew worse.
Years later, on a lark while doing some research on the internet, I looked up Shoma Tajuddin. She lived in Canada where she was dean of journalism and at a university. Her faculty profile included her email address. I clicked on it, but when I tried to write, nothing but one question came to mind: Was it you? It sounded so lame, so rudely inappropriate, that for a second I feared I’d written it and sent it off.
Cigarette smoke makes me frantic. I become an animal on the scent of prey. One part of me is fully aware it isn’t possible, that it can’t be Rahim. Another slips back to that night. Rahim is out there on my driveway, and then he’s on the verandah sitting next to me. But when he starts speaking it isn’t about the coup or the fate of the country. I can’t make out what he’s saying. All I see is him staring, not at me but through me, his mouth moving, and it’s only his cigarette smoke that overpowers everything else.
