Arts & Letters September 7 Thursday,2017

DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
“But instead of crossing over you lie dreaming/
of the woman, and the border:/ perfect knife
that slices through the earth/ without the earth’s
knowing”
Border, Kaiser Haq

Tribute
Before going to the saloon
August 28 marked the poet’s first death anniversary
Editor
Zafar Sobhan
Editor
Arts & Letters
Rifat Munim
Design
Mahbub Alam
Alamgir Hossain
Shahadat Hossain
Cover
Syed Rashad Imam
Tanmoy
Illustration
Syed Rashad Imam
Tanmoy
Priyo
Colour Specialist
Shekhar Mondal
Shaheed Quaderi
(Translated by Shawkat Hussain)
My hungry hair flies wildly in the air
Not easily tamed.
Many times, many times,
Have I tried to feed it well
And put it to sleep. “The monster is coming…sleep my baby,”
But nothing works.
My hair stands sleepless
Like a santal sardar with his lean muscular body, unclad;
Or like some motionless, unblinking rebel
Unbent by storms or bowed down by the rain,
He stands for ages, for ages.
This mad, black horse
Terrifies everyone, threatens to disrupt
Afternoon traffic, injure friends and relatives.
Everybody says the same thing,
“It’s grown too long, cut it down to size,”
It’s grown too long, past the ears,
Down to the shoulders.
There’s nothing to do.
It’s my hair, but not within my control.
It grows on its own, moves and scatters,
Flies like a rasping crow,
Invades someone else’s sky
Like its own, uses it with reckless abandon.
My hair is like some truant schoolboy’s
Covered with dust from head to foot,
Obsessed with the dream of possessing a football;
It is like some maverick player
Dominating the field
Like a stubborn monarch,
Heedless of the referee’s whistle.
So this is my hair, my ruffled, unruly hair,
Somehow sticking to my perplexed skull.
Suddenly, like a traffic signal,
My wild, disorderly hair will be tamed
When the barber’s firm, active scissors
Snip them off—And so I would go to the best saloons,
To discipline my hair.
The arrogance of my hair
Is not acceptable to members of civilized society,
It has to be cut, shortened.
My head has to be like ten other heads,
Like ten other heads in society,
And so it must be cut down,
Trimmed and flattened, silenced over my skull,
It must lie quietly plastered over my head
Like a cold mat.
Still, it is my hair!
Blind, silent, and deaf,
It springs up again
Like an injured horse
Even before the month is past.
Shawkat Hussain is a writer and translator.
to this squalid frontier town:
a one-legged rickshahwallah takes round
to a six-by-eight room, the best in the best hotel.
But instead of crossing over you lie dreaming
of the woman, and the border:
perfect knife that slices through the earth
without the earth’s knowing,
severs and joins at the same instant,
runs inconspicuously through modest households,
creating wry humour – whole families
cat under one flag, shit under another,
humming a different national tune.
The border
Kaisr Haq
You lie down on the fateful line
under a livid moon. You
and your desire and the border are now one.
Let us say you dream of a woman,
and because she isn’t anywhere around,
imagine her across the border.
You raise the universal flag
of flaglessness. Amidst bird anthems
dawn explodes in a lusty salute.
You travel hunched and twisted in a crowded bus,
on a ferry through opaque night
lacerated by searchlights,
[From Published in the Streets of Dhaka, published by University Press
Limited. Reprinted with permission. An enlarged edition of the book will
be launched at this year’s Dhaka Lit Fest.]
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ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

Tribute
India’s Jewish general and the
liberation of Bangladesh
• Bernard-Henri Lévy
It’s quite a story.
This story may seem unlikely in
this era of generalised war between
cultures, civilisations, and religions.
And I am grateful to British journalist
Ben Judah for having brought it to
light in an article that appeared in
the Jewish Chronicle the day after the
visit to Israel of Indian Prime Minister
Narendra Modi.
The time is December 1971.
The place is the territory then
known as East Pakistan.
Separated by 1,600 kilometres
from West Pakistan, this Bengali part
of Pakistan has been in rebellion
since March.
The central government in
Islamabad, rejecting the secession
of what will eventually become
Bangladesh, is engaged in a merciless
repression, the cost of which, in lives, remains unknown even today, almost
a half-century later. Half a million people may have died, or perhaps a million
or two, or more.
On December 3, India decides to enter the conflict, to “interfere,” as one
would put it today, in the domestic affairs of its neighbour so as to stop the
bloodbath.
The fighting rages.
The Bengali freedom fighters, known as the Mukti Bahini, now supported
by India, become increasingly daring.
New Delhi’s strategy is to build up slowly and gradually, a decision. This
strategy seems to many ill-suited to the Bangladesh of the day, a terrain of
few roads, major rivers, and innumerable marshes. Thirteen days into the new
phase of the war, with the Pakistanis having massed 90,000 troops around
Dhaka, the capital, against the Indians’ 3,000,New Delhiappears to be stuck
and has hardly boxed itself into the beginnings of a siege. And it is at this
moment that a high-ranking Indian officer, without notifying his superiors,
takes a plane, lands in Dhaka, presents himself to General Niazi, head of the
Pakistani forces and pulls off one of the most spectacular bluffs in modern
military history: “You have 90,000 men,” the Indian officer tells Niazi. “We
have many more, plus the Mukti Bahini, who are full angry with the loss of
their people and will give no quarter. Under the circumstances, you have
only one choice: To persist in a fight that you cannot win or to sign this letter
of surrender that I have drafted in my own hand, which promises you an
honourable retreat. You have half an hour to decide; I’ll go have a smoke.”
Niazi, falling into the trap, chooses the second option.
To the world’s amazement, three thousand Indian soldiers accept the
surrender of 90,000 Pakistanis.
Tens of thousands—no—hundreds of thousands of lives on both sides are
spared.
And Bangladesh is free!
The story might have ended there.
Except that the general behind the masterly coup that makes him godfather
to a new Muslim country is Jewish.
His name is Jack Jacobs.
He was born in 1924 in Calcutta into a Sephardic family that had arrived
there from Baghdad two centuries
before, leaving behind two
thousand years of history.
In 1942, learning of the ongoing
extermination of Europe’s Jews,
he enlists in the British army in
Iraq, fights in North Africa and
then moves on to Burma and
Sumatra in the campaign against
the Japanese.
And remaining in the military
after the independence of India in
1947, he is the only Jew to rise high
in the country’s military services,
eventually coming to command
the eastern army that, in
December 1971, will be mounting
the offensive against Islamabad’s
legions.
It so happened that I met this
man 46 years ago.
I was in rebellious Bangladesh,
having responded to French
novelist André Malraux’s call for the formation of an International Brigade to
fight for a Bengali land still in limbo but suffering mightily under the hand of
West Pakistan.
I had just entered Dhaka with a unit of the Mukti Bahini.
In the company of Rafiq Hussain—eldest son of the first Bangladeshi family
to welcome me into their home in the Segun Bagicha neighbourhood, and who
later became my friend—I saw Jacob at Race House on December 16, standing
behind (and letting himself eclipsed by) his colleague, General Jagjit Singh
Aurora, signing, in Niazi’s presence, the act of surrender that he had penned.
The next day, I happened to see him again with a handful of journalists and
heard him speak of Malraux, whom he was reading; of Yeats, whose poems he
knew by heart; of his twin Jewish and Indian identity; of Israeli General Moshe
Dayan, whom he worshipped; and of the liberation of Jerusalem, which he
held as an example of military skill. But to my recollection he said nothing
about the intensely dramatic, stirringly romantic, face-to-face encounter with
Niazi in which the war of personality carried a thousand times more weight
than the war between armies - an encounter that determined the fate of the
young Bangladesh.
I can picture his mischievous look.
His rather heavy silhouette, unimposing in itself though emanating an
incontestable authority.
And his strange and reticent way of remaining a step or two behind his
comrades in arms, generals Aurora and Manekshaw, as if reluctant to claim
any credit for a feat of audacity that I now know was his alone.
He appeared to me, that day, like a representative of one of the lost tribes,
spreading the genius of Judaism.
He might have been a Kurtz from Kaifeng, Konkan, Malabar,or Gondar,
newly returned from the heart of darkness but ready to head back up the river.
Or a biblical Lord Jim or Captain Mac Whirr, done for good with typhoons and
ready to forge an alliance with the coolies.
People who save Jews are known in Judaism as righteous. How should one
refer to a Jew who saved, raised to nationhood, and baptized a people who
were not his own? •
(Translated from the French by Olivier Litvine)
Bernard-
Henri Lévy is a
French public
intellectual,
media personality
and renowned
author. In 1971,
Lévy travelled
to the Indian
subcontinent,
and was based
in Bangladesh
covering the
Bangladesh
Liberation War
against Pakistan.
This experience
was the source
of his first book,
Bangladesh,
Nationalisme
dans la révolution
(“Bangladesh,
Nationalism in the
Revolution”, 1973).
The translator is
former director
of Alliance
Fraicaise, Dhaka.
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DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Book review
Romantic melancholy in the
poetry of Nadeem Rahman
Rebecca Haque
is Professor,
Department of
English, University
of Dhaka. A poet,
translator, and
literary critic ,she
has published two
books of literary
criticism, and a
book of creative
writing. She
regularly writes
Op-Ed and nonfiction
essays for
The Daily Star.
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• Rebecca Haque
In my hands I hold a sleek copy of Nadeem Rahman’s new volume of
poetry. The title, One Life Is Not Enough, captivates me with felt echoes
of the labyrinthine travails of the mythic “hero of a thousand faces.” The
deceptively simple title resonates with the passion and complexity of
a Beethoven symphony: It is spoken poetry
incarnate, with its rhythm of a rise and fall of
a lung full of air inhaled and exhaled, sighing
with dreams and yearnings even in ripe
old age. It is suffused with hopes and desires
innate to the mortal human struggle, bound
in time and space, eternally battling the elemental
forces. Allusion to life’s tragicomic
journey evokes a subliminal melancholy, an
elegiac mood. In defining the state of human
existence, it makes me bond with the poet in
universal sympathy.
One Life Is Not Enough, published in November
2016 by the select house of writers.
ink, contains sixteen poems which draw us
into the creative spiral of the poet’s psyche.
The honest confessional mode makes us
identify with Rahman in separate stages of
his mapping of life’s moments of strife and
sweetness. We are led upward and onward
through the developing arcs of his growth
into introspective middle age. Rahman’s
books depict an odyssey spanning thirty
years of a mature man’s journey, and this volume
is the final arc which completes the circle
of poetic self-discovery begun in youthful
exploration of lived experience.
One Life Is Not Enough reveals a man of
charm, wit, and piquancy: Well-read, articulate,
contemplative, often blasé and ironical,
as is the way with men of a philosophical
mind. The poems are self-reflexive, and
formal unity is maintained by adherence
to ritual: Each poem is composed on his birthday. In the prefatory essay, “A
Birthday Ritual,” Rahman provides an account of the process of composition:
“By sheer chance, I happened to write a poem on my forty seventh birthday.
I liked it so much, that I once described it as ‘something of a signature tune,’
and I have included it in all my books of poems so far. It’s the last poem in
this collection. Since then, equally by chance, it has become a birthday ritual.
I have no explanation for this odd occurrence, but it never ceases to surprise
me, every year, and is a source of considerable satisfaction to the creative urge
in my generic composition. Once a year, I am happily reminded that my dwindling
poetic instincts have not yet demised. The candle dims, but the flame
still burns. … “
Rahman’s “signature poem” in One Life Is Not Enough is titled “Our Last
Rendezvous”, and was first composed on 17th May, 1991. It is a passionate
poem, heroic in its melancholy acceptance of flux and finite existence, yet redolent
with the romance of having drunk deep the draught of Life’s immanent
spirit. The title and the sublime metaphysical conceit of this poem bring to
my mind the lyric eloquence of Robert Browning’s “The Last Ride Together”.
Like Browning’s poem, Rahman’s poem is also a dramatic monologue, and
has the same quiet intensity and sacred beauty of the image of two embraced
souls. Like Browning, Rahman also idealises and apotheosises his beloved:
“Let this be our last rendezvous/ when the rivers cease to run/here will you
find me/ in this valley of dying stars/ where my songs have fallen, one by one,
/ and my soul, lies softly crying, …/In my book / of squandered dreams/ and
forfeited schemes/ will I haunt you/from the
shattered/jaws of time, until/ eternity/ here/
in my heartbeat / of wordless speech,/ will I
call you/ to embrace,/ my unrequited/ ghost/
and let my lost hopes/ be the venue, of our
last/ rendezvous.”
The Romantic sensibility has used the motif
of the Wanderer, the questing Traveller to
signify the primordial role of the bard-seer,
be it the quasi-spiritual poetic scop/ minstrel
of Western medieval Courtly tradition, or the
Sufi ‘baul ‘ of Eastern mysticism. Elements of
such mystic self-reflection creep into many
of Nadeem Rahman’s mature poems. For
example, in “When I am Dead and Gone”, he
writes, “When I am dead and gone/ I will have
left one last song,/ …because/ dying is a poem
/ of the undying/heart.” In ”You Who Think”,
Rahman captures the quintessence of mortal
desire: “You, who think, that I in my old
age/ can teach you nothing of love,/ consider
for a moment/ the infant moons that light
my path/ are wrought from the nebula of my
soul/ -- as true a lover’s gift as any, from/ the
black hole of my infernal firmament,/ and the
love that burns your blood, is distilled / from
stars called hope and disappointment,…” In
the 2010 birthday poem, ”Today Is My Birthday”,
Rahman is self-assured and confident,
and mature acceptance of personal failures
makes it a poem of courageous dignity and
not a vehicle for mere braggadocio: “every
birthday is a resurrection,/…I am in no hurry,
for/ fate to shut the door./ I look into the mirror, and I no longer see / the different
faces I have seen before—the curiosity/ the impatience, the anticipation
and the wander lust, / …the flamboyant arrogance of youth have all faded,…”
Rahman’s poetry betrays the influence of major poets in the English and European
Romantic tradition. All writers write under the “anxiety of influence”
to some degree, however, and a poet becomes note-worthy when his unique
“voice” speaks to us directly through his poems. William Wordsworth’s definition
is cogent: “What is a poet?...He is a man speaking to men: a man, it is
true, endued with more lively sensibility, more enthusiasm and tenderness,
who has a greater knowledge of human nature, and a more comprehensive
soul, than are supposed to be common among mankind;…” Nadeem Rahman
is such a man. And even though, in “A Birthday Ritual,” Rahman writes, “I
don’t expect to be read even a quarter century from now….it’s enough that
I have lived. It’s enough that I have loved … It’s enough that I leave my poems,
like the fragrance of my flesh and blood, the essence of my never-ending
dreams”, I am certain that much of his poetry will be read again and again for
their sustained lyric power and sympathetic vision.•
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

Tribute
Shankhachil’s Shaheed Quaderi issue:
A fitting tribute to the poet
• Junaidul Haque
Shankhachil, an art and literature magazine, dedicates its January 2017 issue
to poet Shaheed Quaderi, who died in August, the month of his birth, in 2016.
Work had started three months before his death. Mahfuz Pathak and Iqbal
Mahfuz, the editors, had written to the poet in June 2016. The poet’s wife,
Neera Quaderi; his niece, Sadaf Quaderi; poet Rifat Chowdhury, writer Adnan
Syed and artist Rajiv Dutta helped the editors to bring out the issue.
The 350-page magazine has a portrait of
the young poet on its cover. There is a child
Shaheed Quaderi on page 10 and a boy Quaderi
on page 51. There are a few rare and wonderful
photographs. The articles and poems are
divided into eighteen sections. The contents
are certainly rich.
“Smritimegh” (Clouds of Memories) has
thirteen reminiscing articles on the poet.
The writers include Al Mahmud, Alokeranjan
Dasgupta, Abdullah Abu Sayeed and
Nirmalendu Goon. Neera Quaderi, Sadaf and
Simone Quaderi are also there. So are Kabir
Sumon and Helal Hafiz. Quaderi began to write
in his childhood, almost playfully. His father
inspired him and suggested corrections to his
writing. I wonder, though, why Al Mahmud
calls his close friend “Shaheed Quaderi Saheb”
in his short essay. Dasgupta first met him in
Germany’s Cologne in 1978. His essay is short
too. Neera Quaderi’s “Amar Bandhu, Amar
Priyotomo” comes straight from her heart. So
do Sadaf and Simone’s recollections. Simone
almost brought tears to our eyes. Abdullah Abu
Sayeed speaks about Quaderi’s sorrow and wit.
One day Sayeed had asked him about his not
giving importance to academic education. He
could be an international celebrity! Quaderi
sadly replied that as a young man he had
thought he would be a Tagore and wouldn’t need degrees! Yes, friends
confirm that Quaderi was a prodigy. Akhter Hussain’s weeping photo over
Quaderi’s coffin, also, brings tears to our eyes.
“Jolchhaya” (Shades of Water) has twelve essays on him. Humayun
Ahmed the popular novelist attracts our attention with a good one. Rifat
Munim’s English essay is well-written. The “Adda” section wins my heart
with five lovely articles. Shaheed Quaderi’s brilliant friends read a lot and
spent a lot of time together. Adda was necessary for their creativity. “Bish
Minuter Adda” between Syed Shamsul Haq and Shaheed Quaderi on July 07,
2010 wins my heart. Excerpts:
SSH: What literature does … didn’t know own brothers and sisters, knew
…
SQ: Friends.
SSH: Friends. Hahaha, life is gone.
Belal Chowdhury, a famed addabaz himself, gives a lovely account of
Shaheed’s adda. Shihab Sarkar’s tribute is superb. He compares Quaderi to
Sudhin Dutta. He calls him the wonder boy of Bangla poetry. Only four books
and a few scattered poems will keep Quaderi immortal, he feels. Iqbal Hasan
and Neera Quaderi are also quite interesting.
The “interview” section is good. Adnan Syed’s interview of novelist
Mahmudul Huq on Shaheed Quaderi is a nice one. Tamizuddin Lodhi,
Shams Al Momin and Shikha Ahmed’s interviews of the poet are interesting.
The poet calls Kazi Nazrul Islam “our Neruda,” talks of the inspiration he
received from Shamsur Rahman and his brilliant poetry and confesses that
it was suicidal for him to leave Bangladesh, his motherland. Twenty one
poets are included in the “Poems Dedicated” section. I wonder why Abul
Hasan’s name comes ahead of Shamsur Rahman’s. This won’t be liked by
many a reader. Rafiq Azad, Sikder Aminul Huq and a host of younger poets
are there. Shamsur Rahman, in his poem, asks the self-exiled poet if he
“suddenly woke up during sleepy moments
at the smell of Beauty Boarding and Luxmi
Bazar.” Faruk Alamgir and Faruk Foysal
dedicate long poems to him. Two sonnets by
Mohiuddin Mohammad and Rabiul Alam Nabi
are also there. There are eight portraits of the
poet by noted artists like Qaiyum Chowdhury,
Murtaza Baseer, Mashuk Helal, Nazib Tareq
and Rajib Dutta. “Chitrakabya” has a few more
sketches. “Chitrakotha” has sketches in words
by Nirmalendu Goon, Nasir Ali Mamun, Kabir
Sumon and Imdadul Huq Milon. The poet,
who has declared that poetry was his kingdom,
speaks about his Beauty Boarding days.
“Music” talks about songs based on his
poems. “Anugalpa” or seven micro-stories are
based on his poems. Kuloda Roy and Afsana
Begum are impressive. “Translation” has five
very good poems translated nicely by Farida
Majid, Shawkat Hussain and Sayeed Abubakar.
“The Last Descendant” and “My Brother
Answers The Door” are by Farida Majid. “Left
Right Left” and “You Know” are by Shawkat
Hussain. “Poet” and “We Three” are by Sayeed
Abubakar. The “Mulyayan” or Evaluation
section has thirteen essays, ranging from
stalwarts like Abdul Mannan Syed and Kaiser
Haq to young writers. Mannan Syed is thoughtprovoking
as usual. Kaiser Haq’s 1974 review
of Tomake Abhibadan Priyotoma is outstanding. Anu Hossain and Ahmad
Mostofa Kamal have contributed two good essays. “Daakghar” has a few
letters written to Shaheed Quaderi and a few written by him. Letter writers
include Shawkat Osman and Fazal Shahabuddin.
The last section “Kobir Bhubon” or The World of the Poet includes three
lovely essays by Quaderi, a few of his best poems and a life-sketch by Faruk
Mohammad. Quaderi’s essays on Buddhadev Bose and Pablo Neruda are
wonderful pieces. One of our finest modernists was a very erudite man too.
Very scholarly and very witty. The magazine winds up with seven previous
reviews of Sankhachil.
Sankhachil’s Shaheed Quaderi issue will attract many readers. They have
thrown light on every aspect of the gifted poet’s life and works. The poet was
and still is loved by Bangladeshis. This issue will also be loved by them. He
was one of the best poets produced by this land. •
Shankhachil
An art and literature magazine
Shaheed Quaderi issue, Poush-
Magh 1423
Pages 350, price Taka 150
Editors: Mahfuz Pathak and
Iqbal Mahfuz
Junaidul Haque
is a bilingual
writer of fiction
and essays. Born
in 1955, he did
his MA in English
Literature from
the University
of Dhaka. He
has published
two novels
(Asambhaber
Paye and Bishader
Tarunya), four
volumes of
stories and two
volumes of short
essays. Pathak
Samabesh is the
publisher of his
Nirbachito Galpa.
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DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Book review
The Newlyweds:
A pseudo ‘Bangladeshi’ novel
with a real heart
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• Neeman Sobhan
I
have to confess that I picked up Nell Freudenberger’s The Newlyweds
because the protagonist was from my country of birth. With all the
concerns about cultural appropriation raging in recent times, I was
curious about a white American writer dealing with a Bangladeshi
protagonist who meets an American engineer through an online dating
service and marries him to migrate to the USA.
Before I unpack my opinions, I should make it clear that I count Kazuo
Ishiguro’s Remains of the Day as one of the finest books I have ever read. A first
generation British-Japanese writing -- an authentic ventriloquist novel in the
voice of Stevens, an English butler who represents a quintessentially British
institution. So, my position on the debate about who “owns” a culture, and
who might or might not be “allowed” to write about it, should be apparent.
Yet, it’s not easy when it’s your Sacred Cow that’s being milked. My
approach is to use the “Appreciator versus Appropriator” binary. If an
empathetic outsider chooses to represent my culture, I have no objections, as
long as it’s done artistically and accurately. Herein lies my basic problem with
Freudenberger’s book.
Every page of The Newlyweds, however heartfelt in its writing, has
some major or minor discrepancies regarding Bangladeshi culture that is
unlikely to occur at the hands of a native writer. Naturalistic fiction such
as Freudenberger’s novel relies on verisimilitude, which is undermined
by factual errors.*(A partial list is appended at the end of this essay) When
parts of the depicted world and its inhabitants do not feel real or convincing,
how can you take a fiction seriously and focus on its redeeming artistic or
philosophical sides?
None of the past reviewers of the book, I notice, were from Bangladesh.
Not surprisingly, most of them concentrate on the artistic issues, accepting
at face value Bangladesh’s culture as the exotic spice that adds piquancy. “A
marvelous book,” extols Kiran Desai on the cover. Desai is an Indian author
and she does not notice the factual flaws; she only deals with the aesthetics
of the narrative. She found the bouquet pretty. For me, however ardently the
florist wants me to accept the bunch as real, I know that many of the flowers
are fake.
I have not read Freudenberger’s previous novel, The Dissident, which
shot her to acclaim as one of the New Yorker Under 40 writers and Granta’s
Best Young American Novelists. I did, however, read her impressive fictional
debut, a collection of short stories, Lucky Girls, which deserved the literary
accolades it won. But after reading her present novel, I would safely hazard
that Freudenberger’s literary strength lies in the field of short fiction and not
in novel writing; certainly, not a novel about a world she only knows sketchily.
Freudenberger has lived in India but not in Bangladesh. She probably
thought that the fictional leap from Delhi to Dhaka could not be such an
insurmountable distance, aided by some historical research and socio-cultural
observations. Unfortunately, it was a bridge too far.
Freudenberger presumed to tell the story of her Bangladeshi protagonist,
Amina, based on a real life encounter with a Muslim Bengali woman
whose unconventional story inspired the novel. But Amina is a half-baked,
unconvincing creature, not reflecting any real, modern-day woman living in
the Dhaka of 2005. In just the first few chapters of the book, where we get
to know Amina as she tries to create her American life in the suburbia of
Rochester, we trip over many inconsistencies about her past life.
But even as my quarrel with the writer was that she was not getting the
details right, I could sense the sincerity in her portrayal of Amina, and her
sympathetic and respectful treatment of cultural and religious diversity,
and the vulnerabilities of the migrants’ life. What softened my heart was the
realisation that she was fully aware of being on shaky grounds on matters
related to Bangladesh, and in subtle ways, she created grounds for us to look
at her approach differently.
For example, the character of Kim, Amina’s husband George’s bohemian
Yoga instructor-cousin, seems expressly created to represent Freudenberger.
Early in their friendship, Amina is made to think this on behalf of all
potentially critical native readers like me: “There were a lot of things about
village life she thought might surprise her new friend, but she didn’t want to
undermine Kim’s admiration for her culture, which she thought was genuine
if not especially well informed.”
My copy of the book is underlined on every page with a question mark or
comment in the margins. Often I was frowning, but in the end, I burst out
laughing. This novel is an unintentional comedy of errors, and only insiders
like us Bangladeshi readers would know the truth. And that is the unfunny
part involving cultural appropriation. An established writer, with the power
of the publishing world behind her, gets away with telling a flawed story of my
culture, and wins plaudits for her performance.
The redeeming feature, however, is that the errors were mostly innocent,
and even when she does not get the facts right, there are truths aplenty.
“You thought you were the permanent part of your own experience, the net
that held it all together, until you discovered that there were many selves,
dissolving into one another...”
Still, I itch to edit and correct the silly mistakes. But the important question
I ask myself is that even with the errors, is the story something that makes the
world a better place? I think it does. If an outsider reaches out to understand a
nation unrelated to her own world, it brings us all closer. Freudenberger wrote
with genuine compassion and a desire to embrace an unknown world through
her imagination.
In the novel we encounter the notion of adoption. Kim is an adopted child,
and she, in turn, adopts an Eastern ethos that is incongruous with her western
upbringing. Much of her yogic life style is a mixed-up, pseudo-philosophy.
But it is her version of Indian spirituality. She claims ownership by dint of her
genuine ardency and humanity.
The book ends with a winning essay written for a Starbucks writing
competition. The essay, I feel, is the metaphor for the novel. Unbeknownst to
Amina, Kim writes Amina’s story, using her words, images and dreams. She
knows she does not own this borrowed story, but she shapes it lovingly, then
gives it away as a gift.
I think it is unfair of me to call Freudenberger’s creation a “pseudo” novel.
It may not be my Bangladeshi novel. But this is her version of a borrowed
Bangladeshi story, written from her heart.
The last sentence of the Starbucks essay is also the last line of the novel,
the bobbing message-in-a-bottle:“It is only by sharing our stories that we truly
become one community.”
*Some anomalies in The Newlyweds
Historical:
1. Amina’s father was a freedom fighter and he recalls how a fellow guerilla,
towards the end of the war, “got through the awful street battles here in
Dhaka.” We know that there were guerilla operations, but no pitched
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

attles were fought on the streets of Dhaka, especially towards the end
when the city -- the last bastion of the Pakistani forces -- fell under attacks
from advancing mukti-joddhas (freedom fighters) and the Indian Air force.
The mistake is not grave. But it is the responsibility of a writer to verify
all historical facts. When the writer is a foreigner this becomes even more
important.
2. Amina is thinking about her maternal uncles: “The elder, Khokon, had been
Mukti Bahini like her father...” A native writer would say that “he had been
IN the Mukti Bahini or had joined it.” Or, that “He had been a mukti joddha.”
Sociological errors
1. Amina has studied at Maple Leaf International School in Dhaka, tutored
O-level students, and applied to American universities, but is not sure
what “dumbstruck,” “hamster,” or “thank my lucky stars” mean. MLIS
is an English medium school, a reputed one at that, which follows the
Cambridge IGCSE curriculum. Even a mediocre student from that school
would know the meanings of those expressions, not to mention someone
who’s tutored O-level students.
2. She presents her parents with a TV when she is seventeen, so she must have
watched American TV shows, like my generation had. Since the late sixties
when Television started in Dhaka, shows such as Star Trek, Dr Kildare, The
Lucy Show and Dallas were broadcast. Yet America is a totally unfamiliar
territory to her.
3. Unbelievably, even India is unfamiliar to her (despite ZEE TV or all those
other Indian channels offering all the latest and classic Bollywood films!):
“Her own idea of India encompassed the Taj Mahal, the great Saint’s tomb
at Ajmer…the rest of the country was simply coloured shapes on a map, and
she had only the vaguest notion of yoga as a Hindu religious ritual.”
4. A bundle of contradictions is Amina’s mother who helps her pass O-level
exams by underlining unfamiliar words for her to review. She reads the
Lifestyle page on The Daily Star’s website, doesn’t speak any English,
but later “surprises” Amina by asking about her son-in-law’s work:
‘“Engineering job?’ her mother said in English. She hadn’t known her
mother knew those words.”
5. The mother’s ambitions for her daughter do not really resonate with anything
Bangladeshi. She “had always hoped to make her a famous singer, and
when they discovered that Amina hadn’t inherited her mother’s beautiful
voice, they had tried ballet, the Bengali flute, and even ‘Ventriloquism:
History and Techniques.’” Despite all the hegemonic presence of many
European influences, ballet and ventriloquism are way too far-fetched for
any Bangladeshi mother who does not speak English.
6. Amina goes to the British Council in the mornings to check emails from
George “before her tutoring responsibilities began.” Note the logistical
anomalies in these traffic-congested times: Amina lives in Tejgaon (where
internet cafes abound), has to go to Gulshan to tutor her pupil Sharmila
(where she has free use of her student’s computer, having used it to
navigate the dating website), yet she proceeds first to the British Council,
which, again, involves another commute of one or two hours just to use
the computer!
7. Her father studied engineering at Rajshahi University but he does not speak
any English. So much so that Amina is anxious about letting her parents
travel alone and not being able to “find the connecting flight to New York
once they left the Bangla-speaking attendants from the first flight.” Yet he
is the one who helps her with the technical parts of the “administrative
processing” form for the visa given at the American embassy.
8. Freudenberger uses the term “Desh” and “Deshi” with a capital “D” as
if these were officially accepted abbreviations and synonyms for the
name of our country and nationality! The name of the political entity of
Bangladesh cannot be shortened to Desh, just as Pakistan cannot become
Stan. A Pakistani might refer to his land as “mulk,” “watan,” or “des.” But
this term, Desh, can be used even by an Indian Bengali to refer to West
Bengal or India. Furthermore, people inside Bangladesh often say “Desh e
gechhilam” to mean s/he visited their ancestral home to spend time with
family. So, Bangladesh and Desh cannot be used interchangeably. Yet this
happens repeatedly in the novel: (Kim emails Amina) “I’m not allowed to
go anywhere… that might be unsafe. They laughed when Ashok brought
up the idea of a trip to Bangladesh. Of course I know Desh is perfectly
safe...”
9. Amina glances at a bookshelf in an educated middle class home: “She
recognised Tagore, Mukhopadhyay and Nazrul Islam.’ Mukhopadhyay?
There are several Mukhopadhyays in Bengali literature. Perhaps the writer
indicated Sharatchandra Mukhopadhyay. Unlike the American tradition,
in Bengali culture and literature, the first name of a writer is usually picked
up to refer to him/her; it is more so when the last name is common to many.
Names:
In real life people are free to use whatever name they fancy. But a storyteller,
to maintain the illusion of reality must give characters culturally accepted
names to impart a true flavour of a society. In this novel, most names are
strange and un-Bengali, a fact which ruins the credibility of the story. Odd
female names: Ghaniya; Micki, Mokta (Mukta?) Asah (Asha?) Botul (Bokul or
Batul?). Male names: Fariq (Tariq?) Ghoton (Choton?) Shajar. Uncle Noresh,
and great-uncle Sudir (Sudhir?)Haji.
Food:
1. “…she added too much paprika to the rice.”
2. “…the pulao was fragrant with anise…”
3. Amina at her father’s hospital bedside “… fed him three spoonfuls of the
dal…”
4. Bemoaning a less than perfect wedding meal: “…the mutton had been
overcooked…” Imagine a biryani in which the meat was not falling off the
bone but under-done!
5. She is carrying back to Dhaka, among other things, “… six Dole pineapple
juice boxes.”
There, however, are many more instances of such inaccuracies. •
Neeman Sobhan is
a writer, poet and
columnist. She lives
in Italy and teaches
at the University
of Rome. Her
published works
include a collection
of her columns,
An Abiding City:
Ruminations
from Rome (UPL);
an anthology
of short stories,
Piazza Bangladesh
(Bengal
Publications);
a collection of
poems, Calligraphy
of Wet Leaves
(Bengal Lights).
7
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Short story
The imminent, the impending
• Kayes Ahmed
(Translated by Parveen K. Elias)
8
Anwar saw a grayish fox dig its teeth into his shoulders and tear at
his flesh. As he felt the searing pain, he lifted his hand to push the
fox away. At that moment, he awakened.
Just like the hose which lies on the ground and spurts out water
to wet the ground, so too pain spurted from Anwar’s left shoulder and armjoints
and spread across.
In his head, he felt numerous blunt saws hacking through his brain.
And just behind the retina of his eyes a hook now pulled, now slackened.
Anwar turned his head this way and that way as he lay. His eyelids fell
down heavily from under which he watched with burning red eyes. Where
was the fox?
Above him clusters of bamboo hung down on all sides. Crickets chirped
intermittently. In the suffocating grove of pineapples, his body itched, not to
speak of mosquito bites. Anwar lay flat and groped with eyes shut. He felt the
stony coldness of the rifle.
Hafiz and the others must have certainly become stiff by now. Having
become wet in the rain, would the rotting start right away? This soon? Who
knew?
Anwar held his breath in the suffocating heat full of foul stench, the wet
ground, his wet, hot body, the closed confinement of the trees. He believed
that if he didn’t hold his breath, he would be bound to smell the stench coming
from wet corpses of his comrades lying by the bank of the canal.
For a few seconds he remained in a dilemma. Then he closed his eyes and
took a full, deep breath. Somewhere pineapples had ripened. That sweet smell
penetrated his head. Some of it managed to enter his stomach also. It seemed
as if the fox of his dream had now entered his stomach, and was ripping away
at his intestines.
Anwar swallowed and his throat felt absolutely dry. His hot, wet tongue
tasted bitter. His mouth was sticky. Anwar licked his lips. He felt a salty taste
and kept licking over and over to savour this taste. Sand particles gritted at his
teeth. He opened his mouth wide, took a breath, licked his lips again. If only
he could eat something to fill up, then his head would lighten and he could sit
up and look at his surroundings clearheadedly.
Maybe, he should just get up, sling his rifle on his shoulders and look for
the ripe pineapple. This was a large pineapple grove. Surely there was more
than one ripe pineapple!
He would rip off ripe pineapples from the plants, slash and thrash them and
then eat to his heart’s content.
Anwar’s insides yearned for food. Lying with closed eyes, Anwar saw that
he was surrounded by numerous golden pineapples and he was ferociously
snatching and gulping down one after the other. The slightly yellow juice drooled
from the sides of his mouth and fell through his fingers on to the ground.
Anwar could not stand it anymore. With closed eyes he jerked his body and
sat up straight. The wound in his shoulder woke up with a searing pain and he
felt dizzy and suffocating. His heavy head swung like a football on a finger-tip,
numerous yellow bubbles danced before his eyes and darkness set in.
He fell flat on the pineapple plant and the sharp-edged leaves cut through
his cheeks, ears, neck and hands.
Anwar bit his lips as tears flowed from his eyes. His body trembled a little,
then became still.
When Ratan’s head burst open and his skull opened from near his forehead
like the lid of a box, Ratan fell and at once his whitish-brown brain slumped
out on to the ground. You could not see his face, his rifle lay beside, it seemed
a torrent of bullets just stirred his lifeless body and vanished into the mud.
Lying in the pineapple grove, Anwar groaned and rubbed his face. His body
heaved and his face started to turn blue.
With the piercing pain in his shoulder where the bullet had hit, Anwar kept
running on and on. Was there no end to these jute fields that were stretched
out before him?
The track between fields was narrow and at places very muddy. Sometimes
hard sticks of stooping jute-plants had come over the track. Patches of grass
were there on the slopes of the track, weeds of all kinds entangled his feet. In
the darkness, nothing --neither mud nor barrier-- was visible, and the steps
were missed. In addition, there was hardly any air between thickly grown jute
plants nine feet tall. This wall seemed to have choked even the normal space
of breathing.
Anwar scrambled to rise like a man who is drowning under deep water. His
feet wouldn’t move. He fell over in the field. The jute branches scratched at
his face and he opened his eyes. He saw a long shadow and felt the touch of a
hand on his forehead. He was about to shriek in fear but a hand closed over his
mouth. He heard, “Anwar, keep quiet, I’m Hafiz!”
Anwar tried to sit up in great agitation “You . . .you . . .!” Hafiz lay him down
again, “You have a very high fever.”
Anwar shook violently, his heart palpitated fast. He held Hafiz’s hand and
kissed it again and again, his eyes filled with tears.
“You are alive! How amazing!” He got up and touched Hafiz again and again
as if to make sure of his presence. Hafiz laughed silently.
“What about the others - Barkat, Hormuz, Mian?” “I don’t know; they’re
probably gone.” Hafiz spoke between pauses, in a solemn voice.
Somewhere a bird fluttered its wings. The crickets screeched ceaselessly,
the mosquitoes buzzed. In the deep darkness of the last hours of the night,
two war comrades sat silently beside each other. Through the shoots and
leaves of the bamboo grove came the very faint moonlight and the fragmented
shadows of the two friends fell on the pineapple plants. As he looked at the
shadows, Hafiz saw himself standing in the dirty, neck-deep water of the canal
with hyacinth leaves on his head.
Anwar could not keep sitting any longer. If he lay on one side his mouth
filled with salty water. A surge of vomit seemed to push it up. But nothing
came out of his empty stomach, only salty-bitter glutinous saliva. Hafiz
caressed his head. Anwar lay gasping with his mouth wide open. His mouth
got dried up quickly. From his mouth down to his throat and chest persisted
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

a dryness which was worse than the dry pools and puddles in the month of
Chaitra. At least some dust rose from those puddles but nothing emerged
from the dryness within Anwar.
Hafiz looked around and said, “I can smell ripe pineapple, let me go and see
what I can find.” Hafiz got up and left. His footsteps on pineapple leaves made
a rustling sound, and as they became fainter, Anwar began to feel drowsy once
again.
Anwar was being lifted into space slowly, up above the heads of bamboo
trees. From up there he saw the fox pulling out the intestines from Hormuz
Ali’s stomach. Anwar began to come down, and seeing him, the fox fled.
“Look Anwar, look! This way, see how many shaplas there are!” The little
boy Barkat was laughing in his boat as he called out. Shapla flowers filled his
boat to the brim.
Waving his hands like a flag, Barkat rowed his boat further and further
away. Anwar wondered how Barkat had become so little again.
“Listen, Barkat . . .”
“No, I can’t-- I’ll be late for school.”
Anwar opened his eyes and saw Hafiz standing beside him, holding out a
piece of unskinned pineapple.
“There are no houses around here, only jute fields. The condition you are
in, I’m not sure how far I can carry you by myself. If the bullet in your shoulder
is not taken out soon . . .” Hafiz looked very worried. Then he changed his tone
and asked, “Has your nausea disappeared”? Anwar replied, “Huh?”
“Isn’t it strange that there should be a pineapple grove in this place? Does
the owner get anything for his fruit?” Hafiz laughed.
“Thank God for the grove. I never imagined I would find you like this.
I stopped when I heard the sound of someone groaning in pain. I felt
instinctively that it must be one of us. It was such a thrill! You were groaning
and scratching your face. Your shoulder was wet with blood. I felt and saw
that the bleeding was now normal, but you were burning with fever. Anwar,
have you fallen asleep? Listen . . . Anwar!”
“Huh . . .?”
“It might be a good idea to take off your wet shirt. The fever is so high.”
Anwar opened his eyes. The aches and pains in his entire body plus the
heat- it would really help if he could take off the sticking wet shirt. But that
was impossible in his condition. He couldn’t do it.
“Here, eat this,” Hafiz gave him another piece of pineapple.
They sat silently, eating pineapple.
“Ugh! What an awful lot of mosquitoes!” Hafiz slapped another mosquito.
Anwar tried to remove the buzzing gang of mosquitoes away from his face as
if he were trying to scrape the layer of dirt and moss from a pond. His hunger
pangs had vanished, just a blunt leaden weight lay in his stomach. The raging
pain in his shoulder had also decreased somewhat, but his head still felt heavy
as if someone were working an axe through it, and heavy eyelids kept drooping.
Hafiz had stopped eating and was lost in thought. His shoulder-long hair
had not known the touch of oil for a long time. The moustache and beard on
his tanned face, the slight bulge in his belly which lent a look older than his
years.
What is Hafiz thinking of? His comrades?
Anwar realised that he was sweating profusely. This meant that the fever
was coming down. He called, “Hafiz!”
“Huh! What is it?”
“Couldn’t it be that the other two are alive, just like us?”
“I doubt it,” Hafiz’s quiet and calm voice appeared to come from a great
distance. “Even after I had given order for retreat, I saw them climbing up
with grenades in hand. I have no idea what happened afterwards. I had to
crawl to avoid the onrush of bullets, and finally I fell into the canal.”
Hafiz stopped. He was lost in deep thought again. Suddenly he said, “Could
you try a little? Remember Doctor Amanullah-- the one at whose house we
spent the night when we were put on a mission to Narsingdhi?”
Anwar’s head felt a little lighter. He said, “Of course I remember. It’s really
amazing that such an educated person could spend his entire life in a village.”
Hafiz said, “His house is probably not more than three miles from here.”
Hafiz looked at Anwar, but it was difficult to discern his facial expression in
the hazy light. Hafiz’s shadow covered Anwar and extended to the pineapple
plant.
“Moreover, we have not gone very far from our spot. I have a feeling that
this area might be attacked towards dawn. Because we fled through bushes
and woods, we could not see properly, but there must be villages nearby. After
what took place, I’m sure, the bastards will not sit idle, their witch hunting
will begin soon.”
Hafiz placed his hand on Anwar’s forehead. Right then a booming sound
hit and the earth moved. Hafiz sprang to his feet. Anwar sat up, then with
Hafiz’s support, he stood on his feet. His weak body trembled, he felt lightheaded,
and beyond the dense woods he saw intermittent sparks of red. Ta-tata,
thush, thush, thush, drim, drim, tra-ra ra -- a variety of noises kept coming.
Some timid animal fled through the pineapple grove. Strange birds fluttered
wings and flew over the heads of bamboo trees into the darkness. From a great
distance came the collective shrieking of thousands of people. Mingled with
those shrieks was the constant flow of bullets.
Anwar commented, “It seems like thousands of people.”
“Yes, a large radius has come under attack.”
The inside of his chest kept scraping. The pain in the shoulder would not go
away. His eyes became dazed with staring. Hafiz focused his eyes beyond the
jute fields into the vast space and said absent-mindedly, “I guess we will just
have to take position here and wait.”
Anwar whispered, “No way out.” His words could not be heard.
The place was quite high. Hafiz looked in all directions and asked, “Do you
think you can fire a rifle with one hand?”
“I guess I must.”
“It may be that you will not need to fire at all. No one may come this way at
all. We may just have to wait here quietly all day long. By dusk their mission
will have ended and they will return. Then we can leave.”
Was Hafiz trying to console him? Was the group leader giving moral support
to his comrade? He even punched in a little humour, “We do have plenty of
pineapples, so why worry?”
In the midst of bullet shots and the screaming of people, Hafiz’s words
sounded very odd. Shots were being fired, people were dying, and here were two
freedom fighters who had arms but who could do nothing to give the people any
protection. Wasn’t there any pain, any guilt, any shame on their part?
This story was
titled ‘Aashonno’
in Bangla.
Parveen K Elias
has translated
many stories from
Bengali literature.
9
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Short story
10
Anwar knew that in such situations Hafiz could detach himself very easily.
May be he derived his strength from within this wall of detachment. He did
not want his comrades to be affected by the gloom and feel dampened in
spirit. That is why his words were always morally uplifting.
Anwar lay face down behind a bamboo grove and took position with rifle
in one hand.
Hafiz commented, “Good! I’ll be on the other side. I’ll move as the situation
demands.”
Hafiz took his LMG and took position behind a bamboo grove far left of
Anwar.
Near them was a slope, then a small canal. On the other side of the canal
was a wide and high ridge surrounding the pineapple grove and beyond the
ridge were jute fields.
The pain in the shoulder gnawed intermittently, but it wasn’t severe.
Lightheadedness was the same as before. But at least he could open his eyes
wide and look around. His body remained weak but his eyesight was more
important right now.
The sound of bullets seemed to be coming nearer. The cries of people were
also clearer than before. Lying still and listening to the mass wailing, Anwar
began to remember his home. His eyes closed as familiar faces passed by as on
a screen. A flash penetrated his closed eyelids and he was startled.
Anwar opened his eyes. A fire had started sometime ago. From a distance,
at first a black cloud could be seen twisting and turning towards the sky and
absorbing its blue. Then suddenly red flames would burst into the open space
and redden everything.
From so far off, the above sequence was not evident, but now the horizon
was red with flames. The waves of wailing lashed closer and closer. About half
a mile on both left and right and behind these the bone-penetrating sound of
machine-gun fire. Fields which looked like a dense, dark wall cast in stone
were now softening in the emerging light and branches and leaves could be
discerned.
Sprawled flat on his back, Hafiz was
gasping. One side of his chest was bathed
in blood. A confounded Anwar rushed and
put Hafiz’s head on his lap
The darkness was falling off silently from the leaves, from the branches as
if the surrounding trees were sucking in the juice of darkness and transporting
it to their roots.
As the darkness was receding slowly, a single, detached and fearful cry
gradually came nearer and fell over in the fields ahead, shaking the heads of
jute-plants violently.
Behind this was the sound of heavy boots, and crazy, insane male laughter.
Then frenzied shrieks of a woman like that of an animal that had suddenly
been trapped. Then an abraded, hushed groaning. The jute plants over a wide
area kept moving. The whirlpool from under kept them twisting and turning
and they kept bending down. There was a lustful, saliva-drooling male voice
followed by a piercing shriek. The shriek was distinctive. It was as if some
one had lost her core of being and was completely shattered. At intervals
came trembling groans as if some one were being assaulted. The jute-plants
were uprooted as by a severe earthquake in which the earth had burst open.
Suddenly a cyclone seemed to move through the field. A young girl, totally
naked, emerged followed by a pursuer, a big, helmeted man like a lion in
pursuit of a prey which had just escaped him. One could not see their faces,
just their silhouettes.
A loud ringing sound rang through the pineapple grove. The pursuer with
hands held out towards the naked girl in unfulfilled lust, gave out a strange
cry and fell backwards in the field. The alarmed girl looked back at the fallen
soldier for a moment and vanished rapidly into the jute field.
Beyond the wide ridge, at the mouth of the narrow ridge dividing the fields,
one could glimpse those two only for a moment. Within seconds each moved
to one side of the narrow ridge and disappeared into the field, crawling on
their stomach and blending into the earth. They were shielded by the wide
ridge in front of them. Protecting themselves with drawn helmets, they kept
on firing their LMGs.
The entire episode of the two soldiers coming forward, jumping down
to take positions, and their firing of machine-guns all took place with such
unpredictable speed that Hafiz was totally taken aback.
Ah, if only the pineapple grove extended a little further! Then this spot
would be directly in line with the narrow ridge and here would be the ideal
spot to shoot from. It would be easy to shoot them before they reached the
wide ridge.
Now it would not be easy to overcome these two skilled LMG holders
who had clung to the earth and taken positions. These two would be a real
pain. The way they were brush-firing 303 in hand, it could be fatal for injured
Anwar. It would be difficult to do anything from here even with an LMG. The
bullets kept flying near the roots of bamboo trees in front of Anwar.
Hafiz crawled closer to Anwar and said, “You must go back!”
Anwar moved further back into the pineapple grove.
Hafiz took out a grenade from his pocket, started the LMG5 rapidly, took off
the pin, and rising up a little, charged.
The grenade burst with a great noise. The earth near the ridge flew upwards
like a fountain. A shriek could be heard from there.
There was a short interval, but the rounds of reply from below began once
more. The two hiding in the pineapple grove realised that now only one LMG
was functioning. The other one had stopped.
Hafiz took out another grenade from his pocket and prepared to charge
again. But before he could do so, he fell down groaning in pain.
Anwar dragged himself closer and closer. Hafiz bit his lips and said in
gasping voice, “I’m all right! Charge! Hurry!” As Anwar took the grenade from
Hafiz and prepared to charge, he saw the soldier retreating with his arms.
Anwar picked up his rifle. He jumped up behind the bushes, placed the butt
under his arm, bit his lips and pressed the trigger desperately. Resting his back
against a bamboo tree he withstood the jerking and fired another round.
The figure which had almost vanished into the jute-field sprang up,
convulsed like a slaughtered chicken and became still.
The tense alertness now gave way and Anwar felt he would collapse. The
rifle lay heavily laden in his arms. He sat down with the rifle, leaned against
a bamboo tree, closed his eyes and breathed in and out. Then he leapt up
suddenly and came back to Hafiz.
Sprawled flat on his back, Hafiz was gasping. One side of his chest was
bathed in blood. A confounded Anwar rushed and put Hafiz’s head on his lap.
He called, “Hafiz!”
Hafiz looked at him once with hazy eyes, his lips moving, but the words
could not be understood. Anwar put his hands on Hafiz’s chest, bent down
and called again, “Ha fee z!”
Hafiz’ eyelids were closed. He saw a dense wide expanse of greenery. A
large striped tiger waved its tail and walked through with a calm majestic
tread.
A happy serene smile came across Hafiz’s face as he watched the tiger.
When Anwar gently laid Hafiz’s head on the ground, that smile remained on
his face.
Anwar could not bear to look again at that face. He just looked down once
at the sprawled body, then picked up the LMG and threw it deep into the
pineapple grove. With his own rifle hanging by the shoulder, he walked down
the slope into the jute-fields. He ran and threw all three LMGs into the jutefields.
Then he himself vanished into the dense vegetation.
He must make sure to take out the bullet in his shoulder as soon as
possible.•
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

1947
Kitabistan:
A forgotten tale of partition
• Mofidul Hoque
Sometime in 2007, at a seminar at Independent University in Dhaka,
when a paper titled “Kitabistan: Remembering a pre-partition
publisher” was being read, most people in the audience shifted in
their seats. The presenter, Ali A Rehman, an English professor of
Rajshahi University, grabbed all the attention as he read out in palatable prose
the success story of a publishing house, Kitabistan, and its untimely tragic
demise. His personal account left a permanent mark on my mind though I
never got around to knowing more about this. We get carried away by the
tide of life, and we get busy. Ultimately the wonderful story of Kitabistan got
buried in my mind.
Nearly a decade later, while reading The Daily Star sometime in 2016, I came
across a review of a book titled Literature, History and Culture: Writings in
Honour of Professor Ali Arifur Rehman. A photo of the professor was attached
to the review and under the photo was brightly written the dates of his birth
and death: August 29, 1950 – March 13, 2013. I soon realised that the writer
of that paper on Kitabistan and this Mr Ali Rehman were the same person.
How I’d desired to meet with him and talk about Kitabistan in detail! I had
not taken any initiative, though. Now
he’s beyond our reach, so there’s no way
I can fulfil my desire. Even then, I think I
should do my part in recounting the story
of Kitabistan to readers because this is
not just a woeful story of a publishing
house; this is also a story that helps us
understand the price at which partition
came – the pangs and traumas that it
stands for.
Kitabistan was a book publication
house founded in 1930 in Allahabad,
India by Ali A Rehman’s father Mutatz
Obaidur Rehman and Uncle Muktadir
Kolimur Rehman. In ten years, it rose to
fame surprisingly all over India and even
set up an office in London. But the next
decade came with a massive set-back
that ultimately led to its disintegration
and the displacement of Rehman’s
family. In 1949 the Indian government
marked the publication house as
evacuee property, citing as reason that
one of its publishers (Muktadir Kolimur
Rehman) had migrated to West Pakistan.
Obaidur Rehman stayed back with
his family and fought the legal battle
against the government but the house
received another blow in 1955 when the
government auctioned it off. A heartbroken Obaidur Rehman moved to East
Pakistan along with his family for good. Ali A Rehman studied in Rajshahi.
Later he obtained a PhD from British Columbia University in Canada. Upon
his return from Canada, he took up a teaching position at Rajshahi University.
The title page of this book shows Kitabistan’s name as the publisher. The photo was collected from the internet
It was much later in his life that Ali came to know about
his father’s publication house and became involved in
exploring its glorious past. With the death of his father
and without any record of the books, it proved a daunting
task for Ali to assemble the titles published by Kitabistan.
His relentless effort bore fruit and he could come up with
a list of nearly sixty titles. Mostly he recorded the books
published between 1933 and 1949.
From the list, it became evident how fast Kitabistan
attained success and even set up an office in London with
further plans. Kitabistan’s target was to create an Indian
book market in England. To do so, works of Indian writers
needed to be published from Britain and vice versa. The
vision of the publisher-brothers, no doubt, was far ahead
of their time, incomprehensible to the mass people.
The list of publications by Kitabistan would surprise
anyone. It featured unique titles by renowned writers as
well as emerging ones, by social workers and philosophers.
Sarojini Naidu, Jawaharlal Nehru, Subhas Chandra Bose,
historian Ramesh Chandra Dutt and poet Toru Dutt, to
name just a few. The Rehman brothers had a reputation
for encouraging eminent personalities to write on their
respective fields. They took the responsibility of printing
them as well. This type of venture resulted in books like
Prajesh Banerjea’s Folk Dance of India (1944), GAC Pande’s
Art of Kothakoli (1943), and Premkumar’s The Language of
Kothakoli: A Guide to Madraz (1948).
In 1930, Kitabistan gained the right to publish the
second edition of Jawaharlal Nehru’s A Father’s Letters to his Daughter. Later
they published Nehru’s Where are you? (1939), China, Spain and the War:
Essays and Writings, and Glimpses of World History.
See page 13
11
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

1947
Partition in Banglades
Mofidul Hoque is a
co-founder and one
of eight Trustees
of the Liberation
War Museum.
He is a writer,
researcher and
publisher based in
Dhaka. His books
include Deshbagh,
Sampradayikata
Ebong Sampreetir
Sadhana
(University Press
Limited, 2012).
12
The Slaughter by Somnath Hore
• Mofidul Hoque
Many aspects of the partition of Punjab and Bengal cannot be
explained with sound arguments, at least the arguments put
forward by politicians – be they British rulers or leaders of the
Congress and the Muslim League – turned out to be hollow
and absurd with the benefit of hindsight, though they might have appeared
to be substantial during the turbulent days of 1947. Irrespective of how the
politicians viewed or manipulated partition, the way writers have examined
it is illuminating and does not underlie any motive of
gaining some immediate advantage. Which is precisely
why Pakistani poet Fayez Ahmed Fayez thought this
was not the dawn of independence (in 1947) that we had
been waiting for; this dawn was marked with palls of
darkness. Saadat Hasan Manto, with a heart torn apart
by the wounds of communal violence during partition,
had written some formidable short stories on the
subject. In his story “Tobatek Singh,” people suddenly
realise that though they’ve distributed assets of all
kinds between the two countries, they could not decide
on how to divide the inmates of a mental asylum. One of
the inmates is called Tobatek Singh whose inconsistent
utterances do not reveal much about the country he
belongs to. In the end, however, his dirty, insane curses
make sense while the cold arguments of the distributors
sound insane and absurd …
Recently a book has been published from Islamabad,
compiling articles from writers of both parts of Punjab.
The book is called Operation without Anaesthesia; it
is so because the dissection was done even before
anaesthesia could be applied and the terrible pain that it caused was vivid in all
the articles in the book ... The magnitue of violence in the partition of Bengal
was perhaps not as big as it was in Punjab, though it is not justified to compare
riots (involving bloodshed) on a bigger or smaller scale. But the wounds of
Bengal’s partition are still festering and the bleeding has not stopped yet, and
the agony emanating from those wounds still strikes us, assuming new forms
of violence or repeating old ones on the religious minorities in Bangladesh.
After the riot in Kolkata in mid-August, 1946, and the subsequent ones in
Noakhali and Bihar, politicians had thought that partition would put an end to
the bloodletting. They were proved wrong. Furthermore, partition came with
an entirely new phenomenon that none could have predicted: Thousands
and thousands of people were uprooted from their land overnight. A sea of
people had left their homes for unknown destinations. The refugee crisis
overwhelmed and crippled both countries. One of the biggest refugee crises
of the 20th century had thus set in.
Partition of Punjab deeply affected writers in India and Pakistan. Saadat
Hasan Manto, Krishan Chander, Khuswant Singh, Kamleshwar, Ismat
Chughtai, Khaja Ahmed Abbas, Qurratulain Hyder, Ajeet Cour, among others,
have written many famous works of fiction about partition. In spite of her bias
towards the Muslim League, Momtaz Daulatana’s thick novel, The Divided
Heart, becomes an appealing tale of inter-religious relationships that end in
separation. The novel deals not only with key historical figures behind the
partition, it also lends us a sociological perspective in addition to unfurling
the human angles in all their dimensions. A number of other books deserve
mention: Gyanendra Pandey’s Remembering Partition, S Settar and Indira
Batista Gupta’s Pangs of Partition, Robikanto and Tarun Saint’s Translating
Partition, Mushirul Hasan’s Inventing Boundaries, Kamla Bhasin and Ritu
Menon’s Borders and Boundaries, Suvir Kaul’s The Partitions of Memory and
Urvashi Butalia’s The Other Side of the Silence. Not the political history of
Pubjab’s partition but the human aspects of this event have been considered
in these narratives. For example, Butalia dug through many letters culled
from Refugee Rehabilitation Department to bring out accounts of suffering
from women whose voices have so far been silenced.
Compared to Punjab, we are surprised to see that there is a dearth of
writing about the partition of Bengal. This dearth is evident both in West
Bengal of India and Bangladesh, even though massive-scale migration of
Hindu minority communities from erstwhile East Pakistan to Kolkata had
deeply shaken the entire West Bengal.
As the editor of a collection of short stories
(Raktamonir Har) on partition published by Sahitya
Academy in 1999, Debesh Roy was unhappy to notice this
dearth. There were plenty of powerful writers in Bengali.
In Roy’s consideration, writers such as Bibhutibhushon,
Tarashankar, Manik and Satinath – all of them were
productive during or after partition. Tarashankar’s
“Shabari,”
Bibhutibhushon’s “Kushol Pahari,” Manik’s “Apod,”
and Satinath’s “Porichita” were about partition and
they were compiled in that very collection. Even so, Roy
writes,
“None of these four writers, nor those who were
born between the First World War and 1930 -- the young
bunch who had started writing fiction around 1947, have
explored partition as a watershed event in our history.
The writers of the 1920s who wrote in the modernist
vein – have not written about this either. But writers of
these three groups have written about the riot in 1946 or
the famine that had struck four years earlier; they have
written about many other upheavals between 1945 and 1947, such as Rashid
Ali Day, the naval rebellion, etc. But none of them really captured the overarching
realities caused by the partition, especially the refugee crisis that
massively changed the demography of the West Bengal …”
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

h’s fiction
From to page 11
What Niaz Zaman realised as the editor of The Escape and Other Stories of
1947 (University Press Limited, 2000) is not very different from Roy: Writers of
Bangladesh have not been as drawn to 1947 as to 1952 and the political events
leading to the Liberation War in 1971. She believes India and Pakistan are well
ahead of us in revisiting the partition.
There were some fundamental differences in the social-political context
between erstwhile East Pakistan and West Bengal. Refugee crisis became a
huge problem in West Bengal. It is easy to channel the anguish of the refugees
-- who were forced to migrate – into triggering more communal riots. The
Kolkata riots in 1950 were stoked by many groups. Literary reflection on
the events and consequences of 1947 involved not only artistic but also
social and political aspects. The grey areas created by politics might have
stalled writers to write about this. Conversely, from the very beginning in
East Pakistan, there was a conspicuous attempt to attach more importance
to the non-Bengali refugees, especially the Biharis. That’s why though
the then Pakistan government did its part in welcoming the Biharis, the
educated Bengali middle class did not … In the 1960s, when refugees were
rehabilitated in Mohammadpur and Mirpur, most of them were non-Bengali
refugees and Bengali refugees from West Bengal were few and far between.
In the 1960s, the Daily Jugantor (published from Kolkata) opened a section
called “The village that you left behind,” which was edited by Dakkhinaranjan
Basu. Refugees from East Pakistan wrote letters to the editor of this section,
expressing their feeling for their ancestral homes. But to do so in this part of
Bengal was tantamount to sedition in those days. Artistic treatment of 1947
through fiction was thus stalled by non-artistic reasons.
It is impossible to capture in a simple narrative the enormous impact that
partition had and still has on the people India, Pakistan and Bangladesh. But
we have to keep discovering our roots through careful examination of all the
different aspects that there are to partition, because it is only by keeping the
memories of partition fresh that we can grasp the many layers of our current
society and politics. That Bangladeshi writers, in the post-independence era,
have been getting back to the events of partition is caused by the need for
reaching a comprehensive understanding of the partition.
In the post-independence era, quite a number of good novels have been
written about the partition. They are Abu Zafar Shamsudin’s Padma, Meghna,
Jamuna; Shamsuddin Abul Kalam’s Kanchangram, Akhteruzzaman Elias’s
Khoabnama; Rashid Karim’s Mayer Kachhe Jachchhi; Shawkat Ali’s Dalil
and Warish; Syed Shamsul Haq’s Golpo Kolkatar; Makbula Manzoor’s Kaler
Mandira; Selina Hossain’s Katatare Prajapati; Mahmudul Haq’s Kalo Borof;
Taslima Nasrin’s Phera; Rahat Khan’s Phire Asa; Ekhlasuddin Ahmed’s Phire
Dekha; Kayes Ahmed’s Nirbashito Ekjon; Imdadul Haq Milon’s Deshbhager Por;
Anisul Haq’s Cheari Ba Budu Orao Keno Desh Tyag Korechhilo; Salam Azad’s
Deshbhager Golpo. Amitabh Ghosh’s novel, The Circle of Reason, deals with
the riots of 1964 in Dhaka. Very recently Jashodhara Bagchi and Shubhoranjan
Dasgupta have edited a book entitled, The Trauma and the Triumph: Gender
and Partition in Eastern India. Published by Stri from Kolkata, it is an
appealing documentation of the struggles of women affected by partition. In
2002 was published Memories of Genocidial Parition from Sri Lanka, in which
Jharnadhara Chowdhury of Noakhali’s Gandhi Asram was interviewed by
Amena Mohsin.
We believe the subject of partition will receive more in-depth treatment
from both fiction and nonfiction writers. Instead of bypassing it, we must
revisit partition as frequently as possible, to complete our understanding of
1947, and thus of our identity.•
A dispute arose between Nehru and the Kitabistan publishers
regarding the copyright of Glimpses of World History. Addressing
Muktadir Kalimur Rahman, Nehru dispatched a letter expressing his
disappointment with the former’s unwillingness to give up the copyright
to an English publication house. But later both the party arrived at a
mutual understanding. The book was co-published next year by Lindsey
Dramond and Kitabistan.
Some interesting titles, like Muflishuddin Ahmed’s Learn to Hypnotise
and Cure, was published by Kitabistan from London while a few English
writers’ works were published from Allahabad. Diana Fredrix’s Diana: A
Strange Autobiography (first published by Dayal Press in London 1939),
a book written under pseudonym that discusses lesbianism openly was
one of their many unique and daring ventures. Another bold work was
Shila Kagince’s To Beg I am Ashamed. Also written under pseudonym, the
book depicts the life of a prostitute in London, and was first published
in England and America in 1938, and later from Allahabad in 1940. What
the Rehman brothers dared to publish was even incomprehensible to the
British publishers at that time.
A quick look at the publishing history of Kitabistan would show
its special interest in nonfiction. Except a few poems in English by
Sarojini Naidu, Toru Dutt, and some collections of Indian music, most
of Kitabistan’s books were essays in different subjects. Politics, history,
literature and logic were their fields of interest.
Another unique feature of this publishing house was their endeavour
to hunt for new talents. This search led them to people like Alex Aronson
who had fled from Europe to escape the Holocaust and taken refuge in
Tagore’s Shantiniketon where he stayed till 1943. His book, Rabindranath
Tagore: Through Western Eyes, was published by Kitabistan in 1943.
Another debut work based on war by an Australian journalist Wilfrend
Berchant was published as well.
Kitabistan published a book by Margaret Cousins, the Irish-Indian
feminist who led the women empowerment movement in British India.
In 1941 her book, Indian Womanhood Today, came into the market. It
also published a book by Aruna Asaf Ali, a leader of India’s independence
movement. A few other memorable titles were ZA Ahmed’s Philosophy of
Socialism, Bertrand Russell’s Roads to Freedom: Socialism, A Illen and E
Sehgal’s How Man Became Giant etc.
As publishers, the Rehman brothers’ apt choice of books, their pure
professionalism, business success and ultimately their journey from
Allahabad to London surely mark them as one of the finest publishers in
the history of the Indian subcontinent. Sadly, instead of being recognised
for their immense contribution to the publishing industry, they were
driven into oblivion, with a heart-rending displacement of their family.
Like million other deaths, Kitabistan lost its life in the aftermath of
partition. Both the publishers -- one migrated to West Pakistan, and the
other to a small town of erstwhile East Pakistan -- spent the remaining
life in isolation perhaps trying to come to terms with the death of their
publishing house. Ali A Rehman’s main occupation in the latter parts of
his life was in relocating and reclaiming the past glory of Kitabistan, an
irrevocable loss that could not be restored but remained as a forgotten
chapter of the tragedy called partition.
(Abridged from a longer version of the Bengali original)
(Translated by Marzia Rahman. She is a writer and translator based in
Dhaka)
(Translated by Rifat Munim from Mofidul Hoque’s Deshbagh,
Sampradayikata Ebong Sampreetir Sadhana, published by University Press
Limited, Second Edition, 2012)
13
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Feature
The unique
experience of summer
school at BCLT
14
• Marzia Rahman
I
spent a rapt week, July 23 to 29, at the University of East Anglia, attending
the 2017 International Literary Translation and Creative Writing Summer
School. Run by the British Centre for Literary Translation in partnership
with Writer’s Centre Norwich, the intensive one-week workshop brought
together writers and translators from around the world.
It took two hours’ train journey from London to Norwich, and a thirtyminute
taxi drive to reach the university. In ten minutes or so, I found myself
a bit blocked. It was summer here, though much cooler than our winter.
Moreover, it was windy and the whole campus looked like a forsaken place
where I stood inadequately dressed in a deshi summer outfit with two large
suitcases.
One hour of frantic search around the campus resulted in both acquiring
the lodge key and the knowledge that due to summer vacation most of the
students had left the dorm. Since it was a weekend afternoon, there would be
no official attending the reception either. There were two shops, one café, one
campus kitchen in view but all of them were closed. In the quiet, secluded
area, the only residents found to be grazing on the lawns were the rabbits.
They remained the most active and consistent occupants frisking all over the
campus throughout my brief stay.
The author’s presence in translation workshop
was a blessing. The insight Sirsho brought to our
understanding of his story and subsequently to the
translation decisions this understanding involved was
unique
On July 23, the summer school commenced with an afternoon campus
tour. Anne-Sophie, an intern , guided the participants through the labyrinth of
University of East Anglia (UEA), introducing us to the campus kitchen, Lecture
Theatres, library, Enterprise Centre, Sports Park and a few other buildings.
Approaching the library, we were taken aback at the sight of a man about to
jump off. No, not a real person though. It was a life-sized sculpture placed on
top of the UEA library. I was a bit puzzled at what seemed a strange sense of art
choice but the university seemed to take pride in it. Anne informed us there
were two more sculptures by the renowned sculptor Anthony Gormley, part of
a project called ”3X ANOTHER TIME,” with further plans to create a renowned
sculpture park at the university. We wished them good luck.
Later in the evening a reception was held, followed by dinner where the
participants met with their group members. It turned out that the Bengali to
English group had the smallest number of participants. I knew our workshop
leader, Arunava Sinha, who had conducted translation workshops in Dhaka
organised by the Dhaka Translation Centre. He translates into English classic,
modern and contemporary Bengali fiction, non-fiction and poetry from India
and Bangladesh.
Arunava introduced me to the writer, Sirsho Bandopadhyay, a Kolkatabased
writer-journalist. The other two participants of my group were
Suchetana Ghosh, a master’s student of literature from Jadavpur University in
Kolkata, and Amy Parsons who’s doing her master’s in Bengali Language and
Culture at SOAS University, London. Amy is working on her dissertation on
the presentation of women in Banaphul’s short stories. I had a strong feeling
that the workshop would be nothing short of excitement and very different
from my previous experiences.
On July 24, we all headed to Enterprise Centre. After the introductory
speech by Academic Director Duncan Large and Associate Programme
Director of Writer’s Centre Norwich Kate Griffin, there was a short reading by
the writers in their original languages.
Days before the workshop, an information pack consisting of programmes,
summer school faculty, creative writing sessions, timetable, and campus
map was sent through email that helped me to get a prior understanding. I
already knew that the core activity of the week would be a literary translation
workshop with three creative writing sessions and a few plenary discussions.
The workshop would be led by experienced literary translators and the writer
(whose work we were to translate) would be in attendance. Besides the five
language based workshops -- Bengali, Spanish, German, Lithuanian and
Korean -- there would be two multilingual groups, one for poetry led by Fiona
Sampson and the other for prose led by Daniel Hahn. Bengali and Lithuanian
were the two new languages added this year.
Bengali to English workshop team
Sometimes we worked as a group on consensus translation and other times
we approached the text individually. We were assigned to translate some
parts of Sirsho Bandopadhyay’s novel, Shardulshundori. We literally pored
over every word, working on each sentence, bouncing a new idea or approach
and then slowly, gradually coming to some kind of consensus. The pace was
excruciatingly slow and often one paragraph took more than an hour. As it
happened, quite a few untranslatable words, idioms and phrases leapt up,
making us spend hours plumping for their appropriate equivalents in English.
In Shardulshundori, a few words posed serious difficulty. One such word
was “shongshar khaki magi,” which we explained to Amy and she confirmed
there is no equivalent word or expression for it in her entire English vocabulary.
The problem with such words or phrases is that if rendered literally, they’d not
do justice to the original text, nor would they convey the exact meaning to
the English-language audience. The solution was to apply the most suitable
English word or words that would retain the meaning while being faithful to
the source text as much as possible. But the focus, Arunava stressed, should
be to maintain the same pulse as the original has.
The author’s presence in translation workshop was a blessing. The insight
Sirsho brought to our understanding of his story and subsequently to the
translation decisions this understanding involved was unique. When we
tended to interpret too much of the text, he very gently mentioned that that
was not what he meant in the story.
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

The writer, second from right, with Arunava Sinha, centre, and other participants in the English to Bengali team
One particular challenge we faced in translating Shardulshundori was to
find a suitable language for the story which is set in 1882. We could neither
use modern English words nor medieval ones as the novel is written in
up-to-date Bengali language. To maintain the balance was a daunting task
and that’s where Arunava came in with his thoughtful suggestions. He
advised us to make choices about which elements of a text to preserve and
foreground, and which to sacrifice. To work with him and watch him handle
the difficulty of translation, teasing out the perfect changes and transforming
the original Bengali with the greatest precision and artistry was a lesson worth
remembering
The Bengali to English workshop was unique on many levels. It was the
smallest group and the three participants came from three different countries.
Suchetana and I are bilingual and Amy, who was a native English speaker,
often came forward to help us find the exact English word or expression while
we reciprocated by helping her to understand the source language.
Creative writing sessions were held from July 25 to 27. The 70 participants
of all eight groups were divided into three groups and over the three days they
had a session of one hour with each of the tutors: Sarah Bower, Andrea Holland
and Iain Robinson. These sessions actually broke the monotony of translation
tasks. Taking a step back, we focused on ourselves as creative writers.
The workshop schedule included plenary discussions as well. On Tuesday
July 25, the Starling Bureau was invited to run a session on how to pitch ideas
of books and authors to English language publishers.
On Wednesday we enjoyed a drinks reception and a book launch event for
the new Han Yujoo novel (The Impossible Fairy Tales) published by Titled Axis
Press and translated by Janet Hong .
On Thursday (July 27), we got a chance to present our pitches to the visiting
publishers at the start of a plenary session. The Bengali pitch was much
applauded and appreciated. Later, the publishers talked about publishing
translated works, about how they selected titles for translation, the challenges
of editing and how they worked with translators.
The week was rounded off Friday afternoon with a presentation
programme. After lunch, we headed towards the Norwich Cathedral, one
of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture in Europe, but little time
was there to marvel at the beauty as each group had to give a 15-minute
presentation of the text they worked during the week.
After the German group, the Bengali group went on stage accompanied
by Arunava Sinha who presented the audience with an image of what India
looked like back in the 1880s. After reading the Bangla version, the three of
us read out parts of our translated work and concluded by discussing the
challenges and difficulties that we had faced during translation.
The other groups also read out from the original text and parts of their
English translations and discussed the difficulties they encountered during
the process. The poetry group presented their translated poems while
the prose group read only the first sentences in the original language and
then the translated ones. They also talked about what they’d learned from
the programme. The Lithuanian group took a different approach. Their
presentation was actually a stage show as guided by their writer, Alvydas
Slepikas who is also a screenwriter, actor and director. The programme ended
with Duncan Large delivering a speech and us receiving certificates from him.
Later there was a farewell dinner.
I am no stranger to group translation, but every time I find the process
fascinating. It was more so at the summer school -- meeting new writers and
translators from across the globe, making new friends, presenting pitches to
publishers—the experience was illuminating.•
Marzia Rahman is a writer and translator. In 2017, her translated story “Helal was on
his Way to Meet Reshma” is featured in the anthology called The Book of Dhaka copublished
by Comma Press UK and Bengal Lights, Dhaka. Currently she is working
on a novel.
.
15
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Short story
There
is no
country
called
America
• Mir Arif
We were doomed at the
station. There was no
inter-city train bound
for our destination.
Slowly, on the horizon, a cloud was
gathering. Going back to where we
had come from was not an option –
it was miles away.
The sun’s descent through a
blanket of grey cloud was majestic.
When it disappeared, the light
fell too, baring almost everything
around. In the absence of light,
some plights cried out to show their
existence. First my eyes caught sight
of the station’s nameplate. The name
was emblazoned by the sudden
fall of light. It yelled into my ear
silently: Bhairab Junction, Bhairab
Junction, Bhairab Junction ... Then
I saw a cadaverous mendicant come
crawling towards us. We did not
notice him earlier. He said, “Sir, give
me something. It might be your last
chance to give alms. You never know
the day you would die. It may be
today.” What a technique of begging
alms! We gave him some money
and he crawled back to his place by
his single arm. The other one was
missing.
The railway station is a place
where you can find many homeless
people--vendors, coolies and
beggars. Benches were almost always
occupied by them. Threadbare quilts
16
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

and bedspreads lay carelessly. Some children lollygagged by the railway
tracks, picked some pebbles and threw them at a school of bickering sparrows
on an electric pole. I was seeing their sport until my brother asked me
unpatronisingly, “Now what, young Humayun?” It was my idea to go by train.
We could have easily taken a bus and head for Mymensing without getting
stuck here. “Let’s see the train schedule once again. There must be a mail train
or something…” I replied semi-confidently.
We pored over the train schedule: My brother through his rimless spectacles
and I with prying eyes. Fortunately we found one! It would arrive in ten
minutes. In my head, I conjured up a huge crowd making their way through
the window, scrambling for a seat and spitting lumps of red, munched betelleaves
the moment I read the train name: Isa Khan Express. It was a mail train
service, which meant it would have to stop at every station it would cross.
The train arrived. But to our puzzle, it carried only a few passengers. We
chose a less crowded compartment. The cadaverous mendicant leapfrogged
towards our compartment, held the door handle firmly by his hand and took
over an entire seat on our opposite row. He put his back against the wall and
splayed his legs on the seat like an insouciant passenger. Then he blinked at
us for a while and lit a cigarette and sent whiffs of smoke through the window.
The compartment gave me a feel of being in a homeopath doctor’s chamber
– it felt small and stuffy yet it was
somewhat comfortable. There
was a kernel of story in the
conversation of other passengers
and also in their eyes, in the
relaxed, ensconced posture and
in the manner of pressing hands
on their chins. We heard them
chattering -- in groups, in twos
and threes. We tried to listen to
them for a while before the train
started moving, and their voice
turned almost indistinct by the clickety-clacks of the rolling wheels.
It started raining heavily. Another train from the opposite direction
streaked past ours, whistling so loudly that we had to cup our ears. When
it disappeared, there was only rain, lightning and indistinct chatter of
passengers. Streaks of lightning seemed to me as a white dressed ballet
performer who was doing a pirouette towards the end of her performance.
I had so many fleeting thoughts. I wanted to perch on one and open a thread
with my brother. So I said conversationally, “Somewhere in the wave of time,
on such a day, perhaps Marquez got on a train to visit his ancestral town and
discovered his own world, Macondo.”
My brother remained silent and kept watching the rainfall. The train
clanged through a small bridge after a while. When it crossed the bridge, he
piped up, “And perhaps Marquez also discovered some wonderful innovations
on that day. He chose to tell his story with fictional names instead of his actual
hometown Aracataca. You know why he did so? The places we live in or visit
regularly become a part of our habit, an essential piece, a shire on the map of
our existence. In writing, it makes a difference. Suppose some people go to
Green Road every day. They may develop a complex set of attitude towards
this place. They may have the best or the worst experience there. The moment
they encounter this place in a piece of writing, a whirlpool of past experience
shrouds their imagination and perhaps their mood, too. Sometimes they
would never be able to come out of their personal experience and concentrate
on your piece. So you have to choose different names that would make a defamiliarized
effect in your story – and this is an essential technique of magic
realist writing.”
My brother is a distinguished critic and also a writer of creative note. He
loves teaching literature. As an aspirant in writing, I wanted to prolong this
discussion. So I made a point here, “I start my story with a lie then? I mean I
want to tell a story of Green Road but I cannot write the exact name?”
He replied, “Of course, you can. But you can still tell your story without
mentioning an exact name. It’s not a lie. It frees up your readers from their
personal prejudice. There is an American writer named…”
“There is no country called America in this world, don’t you know this!”
Somewhere in the wave of time, on such a
day, perhaps Marquez got on a train to visit
his ancestral town and discovered his own
world, Macondo
A voice of a woman sailed through the air to interrupt the mid-dialogue. I
stood and leaned forward to see the face. We did not know some middle-aged
women were eavesdropping on our conversation from behind. There were
four women in two benches – all wearing tattered saris and looking exhausted
by a long journey. I was confused who could be the source of the voice. I asked,
“One of you said something to us. Who is it?”
They spurned my question and looked askance at us. One of them, a
woman past her prime, said, “Why was your man speaking all these lies?
America never exists.”
I was confused about what to say next. “What do you mean?” I simply
asked.
She became softer than before and said, “Come, sit with us. I will tell you
what I mean.”
We complied with her request. My brother was already on his feet. We went
to their seat and they scooted over to make some space for us.
“So you believe that there is no country named America?” I asked her.
She replied shortly, in a singsong voice, “Twenty-five years ago I believed
like you. I used to believe in everything they would say. When the river
Brahmaputra devastated our land and we were made homeless, they
came from all the places with all the promises of the world. They said the
government had opened the door for all
the countries and for all the NGOs. And
they will come with all the help from
the other part of the world and they
will build new house for us, they will
give us job, they will provide us food
and they will make us dream. And they
said they will surely come and they will
come with all the money from America
and they said they never tell a lie. All
we had to do was sit and do nothing
and dream and dream. Of the relief that
would come, of the good days impending, of the dreams we are to weave. And
here you see. We are still homeless and roam about and beg alms from NGOs
and people. And NGOs still give us some relief and they still say everyone is
working with America. And there will be home for us soon because the roofs
of our home are coming from America! We have had enough with all these
tricky men. They look like you. All neat and clean; nails cut; shirts starched;
head straight – perhaps you all are military born. You say about this country
named America in every word and want us to believe in this country? This
country that sells dream to millions of starved, homeless people through their
NGOs and agencies? We have been fooled for a long time but not anymore.
There is no country called America.”
We sat rooted to our seats when she stopped. She kept us rapt in thought
for some moment. My brother looked very pensive. I looked at her closely;
she wore a green flower print sari, the anchal pulled over her head. Her cheeks
were slightly pouchy. The folds on her forehead told me of her age she had
reached and of the plights she had been through. But more than that they also
revealed how different she had turned in her thought. You never know who
you could meet even in a mail train compartment, I thought.
After a while my brother asked her in a much venerated tone, “You have
opened a new door of thinking today. May I ask your name if you wouldn’t
mind?”
Now she replied calmly, “My name is Sofia Banu and I live at Nandail
railway station for the last two decades. These women you see here also live
with me. They are also homeless and had the same experience with NGOs and
all their promises. But we were disillusioned a long ago.”
Her impressive words dogged me all through the entire journey to
Mymensing and also, after returning to Dhaka. I discussed it with one of my
friends who worked at a newspaper. I recounted her enthused words and her
plight of being a homeless woman for two decades. The friend’s eyes gleamed.
With a bright smile he said, “I have found a perfect cover story for the next
week!”
A week later I read a feature on Sofia Banu and her group we met on the
train. There were several pictures; in one of them, she was sitting on a white
17
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ARTS & LETTERS

Short story
18
bench on a station platform. Behind her, the other three women looking at the
camera with the same spurn they had given me the first time I asked them a
question. And there was a relatively small interview interspersed with high
definition (HD) photos. Yet on a shorter scale, she told all the extremities she
had faced in all these years and all the uncertainties she and the group had
endured.”
The journalist asked at one point, “Do you sometimes turn to prostitution
for want of food?”
She shot back, “No, we do it all the time! We do it for fun!”Iqbal Mahfuj
Sofia Banu’s interview supplied a demand to every newspaper and TV
channels – for more stories and more works on her. So more features were
written; documentaries were made with traditional folk music in the
background that hummed very sadly. Millions of viewers watched the plight
of these homeless people; large amount of advertisement revenues were
collected by the internet giants, but only a tiny amount was shared among
those who uploaded them; and column after column were also written in
newspapers. One left-leaning columnist wrote, “Sofia Banu is the avatar of
the twenty-first century. Believing America doesn’t exist is the first step to
solving the problems of humanity. She is a proletariat of exemplary note who
knows how to fight back a juggernaut…”
From a homeless woman she turned into a
discovery of the media – of newspapers and
TV channels. She became a name that was
enough to draw people’s attention and to
get some readership and viewership
Another columnist of the right-wing politics opened his column with the
following lines:
“In 1842 Walt Whitman was declared a public lazy for not fulfilling his duty
properly. Now we have a public mad who is nothing but a piece of chess for the
opposition party. They are trying to draw people’s attention by highlighting a
mad like her who continues to say America doesn’t exist. When the country is
moving forward with a steady GDP in the last two decades…”
A young journalist popularised her as “Lady Bangladesh” and the name
stuck in all discourses and documentaries. Everyone called her by this
name. From a homeless woman she turned into a discovery of the media – of
newspapers and TV channels. She became a name that was enough to draw
people’s attention and to get some readership and viewership. Her troubles
and plights were long buried under countless clicks of high definition cameras.
I read another piece of news a week later that said necessary steps were
taken by the government for relocation of Sofia Banu’s homeless group, and
not only that – an NGO offered her a trip to America so that she could see the
country on the opposite side of the North Atlantic. They wanted her to return
with happy memories and live happily ever after with a belief that America
does exist on the face of earth.
One of my friends said, “It hurt the ego of the imperial bastard and they are
doing it as part of their diabolical generosity. We know all of this; we are not
grass-eating creatures!”
***
We – me and my brother – headed for the airport on the day of her return
from America. It was the end of June. A huge crowd gathered at the airport.
The Bangla month Ashar had just set in with hints of precipitous rain. I
remembered how we had met her on the train in this same month almost a
year ago.
The journalists brought umbrellas with them. The light also fell today,
baring everything around. One black umbrella had a cursive handwriting on
its bulged belly. I did not notice it earlier. But now, after the fall of light, it
was the only thing that caught my attention more than anything else. It read:
Parapluie. Poor French word, I thought; it would not have any chance to live
when the sun would blaze all around.
Sofia Banu’s plane landed. The mike screeched, announcing her safe
return, and the crowd clapped on end. There were some gunmen on the
raised platform where she would give a speech. The gunmen’s eyes could not
be seen, for they were covered with black sunglasses that kept scanning for
hidden weapons in private parts of the crowd.
Sofia Banu came on the platform, her face beaming with a new light and
her eyes glimmering. So it was true that everybody comes back from America
with warm memories and a beaming face? I was thinking at the back of my
head. My brother looked otherwise; he was rather equanimous as if he was
aware of what Sofia Banu was goingIqbal Mahfuj to say.
Sofia Banu looked at the crowd with much admiration. Then she took the
mike and said:
My beloved countrymen, I have been taken to a wrong place by this NGO.
My belief has become stronger than before. I want to tell you once again that
there is no country called America. It never existed and it will never exist. The
place I was taken was full of people living in misery. There too I saw homeless
people. I asked them: How do you feel when others call you Americans but
you don’t have a roof over your head?
They said they were not Americans any more. I want to ask this question
to countless other people around the world, who have been made homeless
for so many reasons – river erosion, war, political violence and state policies.
I want to say, the moment you are born a country steals your identity and
makes you a citizen without securing your wellbeing. Today we have achieved
our right to deny. Don’t you ever believe whatever you see. They will come
with impressive ideas to deceive your imagination. Guard it and use it as a
resistance. You can resist neither with weapons, nor with clash nor fight but
only with your imagination. It is the first thing you need to learn…
Some gunmen took her away from the mike. The local MP cried into the
mike, “Balderdash! We have the biggest impostor in our country. Don’t believe
a single word of hers.”
My brother looked very elated. He said almost in a shrill, “I knew she was
going to say something like this!” Then he looked up at the sky; it would rain
soon. He pressed my shoulder very enthusiastically and continued, “Don’t
you see a new day has come? We know the Empire is there because our reason
affirms that. But it is the power of our text and imagination that we let it stand
where it stands now. The way you can imagine and discover a new world,
such as Macondo, Malgudi or Kanthapura, you can also deny an existing one,
which disturbs your sleep and instills bizarre dreams in your head and steals
your peace of mind. Sofia Banu taught us how to deny a sleep-disturber in a
conscious manner, only with our imagination …”
I could not listen to the words of my brother anymore. The crowd was
already booing the local MP. Sofia Banu was taken into a police van. The crowd
made threatening gestures and rolled back after the MP had left the place in
another police van. We headed back home. From that day onward Sofia Banu
was not heard anymore. People kept talking of her though; column after
column were still written; talk showers lost their voice complaining about the
state’s treatment of a homeless woman. Some years later, people would forget
her and she would be living in stories, columns and documentaries only. Then
there would be a great silence. Light would fall again on many a rainy day.
Other creatures and other plights with fancy names and adjectives would
come to surface after prolonged dormancy and cry out their existence. And
in the meantime, Sofia Banu would be the sole owner of a red file in a police
station. A short profile on its first page would read:
Case no: 551
Birth name: Sofia Banu
Alias: Lady Bangladesh
Address: N/A (Homeless)
Short description: She was a woman of 45, a public mad. She tried to
sloganeer: America does not exist.
Current status: Disappeared.
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

Travel
Don’t go to Sohra
Photos: Courtesy
• Shegufta Hasnine Surur
On the first day, I looked out of the window of our taxi as it moved out of a
cloud and onto the edge of a green valley with bright sunlight beaming down
on it. Meghalaya really is the abode of the clouds. The clouds there were as
busy as the taxis and Tata Sumos moving on the winding Dawki Highway.
Some were crossing the highway, some were racing across the valley like
scurrying little rabbits.
Meghalaya is a gift from the gods, but the people are still poorer than us. I
remember the shock on the face of our Shillong taxi driver Uttam da, a Sylheti,
when he learned that we wanted to have lunch at Sao Aiom, one of the more
expensive eateries in the state. He warned us several times that “Ohano to
onok khoros.” We got a little worried too. Ultimately though, we found it very
affordable. Any nondescript Dhaka restaurant would be costlier. Altogether
our entire trip cost much less than our estimates.
But this is a story about Sohra, not Meghalaya. The Khasis of Meghalaya say
that in all of Ri Khasi, which means Khasi land, there is no place as beautiful
as Sohra.
Now don’t be disappointed, but I am not unveiling some unknown,
unexplored wonder. Sohra is known to all of us by its British name of
Cherrapunji. Many will recognise it as “the wettest place on earth” -- thus
called because of highest annual rainfall in the world.
Sohra is 13km from our northeastern border, and 90 by road. At Dawki, we
met Masko the taxi driver, who gave us many useful tips about travelling in the
state, and let us borrow an Airtel SIM. The road was a little rough at first, but
past Dowki town, the highway was pristine. Temperature dropped steadily as
the taxi climbed the hills and I had to pull out warm clothes from my luggage.
It was peak tourist season, and we were lucky to find a room in a place
called Sohra Plaza. The duplex building sat on a large rock, with a creek
flowing around it. Locals told me the limestone and rocky hills of Sohra had
undergone violent changes in an earthquake in the early 19th century, creating
many astonishing and beautiful features.
The spell of Sohra caught me after I woke up the next morning. Walking
along the wide sloping road next to the resort, I only met two puppies who
wagged their tails and ran around me, and saw a handful of people in the
distance, getting to work or school. For someone from Dhaka, whose lungs are
layered with black sludge, the cold wind smelled fragrant and alive.
But it was the green and the dark grey tones of the land that calmed my
soul. The clouds hanging like mist everywhere and the kinds of homes people
build there, brightly coloured and decorated with potted flower plants, lent to
the magic of Sohra and the other small towns and villages in East Khasi Hills.
Travelling through the clouds you see tranquil greenery for miles, and then
suddenly a pretty yellow cottage with bright red roof pops out of the mist.
The Khasis of Sohra were nice and welcoming people. They smiled at us,
laughed with us, shared with us and guided us, took photos with us and talked
lovingly about their land.
I came back from there with a strong feeling that it was a grave error on my
part to have gone to Sohra. I am from Dhaka, the hell on earth. And I dared
to go to heaven. A moment of calm, a bit of cold wind, a dark cloud on the
horizon, and I am painfully reminded of that place.
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ARTS & LETTERS

Travel
proper noun, they tend to gravitate towards place names and historic figures,
like New Yorks, Jupiters, Napoleons and Hitlers as well.
Commander drove us to Tyrna village, the starting point of a trek. This
would be a 5,000-step climb down the hills. At the end of the road was
Nongriat, a village famous for the double-decker living root bridge. It was a
hard trek. There were two bridges made of only steel wires hung over raging
rivers, and many terrifying steep stairs that never seemed to end. There were
many points when I felt like I could die. Halfway through, we stopped at the
hamlet of Ryttimmen to see another root bridge.
The root bridges are a Khasi traditional technology, where they connect
two rubber trees with ropes and planks across a gap and let their roots grow
and intertwine until a solid structure is formed that can support the weight
of people.
We crossed the bridge at Ryttimmen, navigated over some slippery stones
and rested on the bank of the river, dipping our sore feet in the cool flowing
water.
The next half of the path was even scarier. When I reached Nongriat at last
my head was spinning. I had to sit down and drink saline water.
We arranged with a local woman to rent us three beds and three meals till
the next morning. Then we went and took a bath in the fall
under the double-decker root bridge, enjoying a free foot spa
from tiny fish.
At Santina’s hut that night, we sat on the old and tattered
but clean beds and ate a wonderful meal of chicken, rice and
banana flower.
Later, as I stood in the dark outside a latrine, a man talking
intently on the phone passed me by. A strong whiff of alcohol
smell hit me. He slipped and fell on the stairs once, but
immediately got up again and kept walking and talking as if
nothing had happened. He must have walked from Tyrna in this
complete darkness, covering this same path on which I had to
use walking sticks on both my hands and still feared losing my
balance at times.
Did I forget to say, the Khasis are a matrilineal people?
Children are known by their mother’s names, and women
own property. Men move to their wives’ homes after
marriage
20
Upon our return, I had a car arranged to take us to Sylhet city from Tamabil.
We packed our luggage into the boot and started off. And then an acrid smell,
like burning plastic and firewood mixed together, hit me in the face. These
were the smells of furnaces, chimneys and things being made in great big
factories.
On the way to Dhaka the smell alternated between this burning smell or the
smell of something rotting. I could not breathe. We cannot blame ourselves.
This tiny nation is a massive, impressive enterprise. Cramped into these
56,000 square miles, we are trying to feed, clothe and house 200 million
people, meet all their needs. It is a task that has broken the land that nurtures
us.
The living root bridge
Our driver and guide in Sohra was called Commander. That is his actual
Christian name. Khasis and Jaintias, who are mostly Catholic and Presbyterian,
have this peculiar practice of picking English common nouns as first names
for their sons, for example Scientist, Captain, even Kilometer. When picking a
Oh the matriarchy!
Did I forget to say, the Khasis are a matrilineal people? Children
are known by their mother’s names, and women own property.
Men move to their wives’ homes after marriage. Men traditionally
control one aspect of the society -- politics -– but most businesses,
establishments and homes are headed by women. Women come
first, and while Indian societies elsewhere struggle with issues of sexual
violence, in Meghalaya women travel alone without fear and everywhere they
are treated with respect.
But there are downsides, perhaps. As we chatted with our host, Santina,
she revealed with some pride that her eldest, a girl, was now going to college
in Sohra. She had five children. After her daughter there was a boy, whom she
had married to a good girl. What does he do? I could not find out, because
Santina’s limited English, though robust for practical purposes, failed to
explain what the son did. But it did not seem like he had a job.
The journey back from Nongriat seemed easier, even though our legs hurt
like hell. Once at Tyrna, we met up with Commander, picked up our luggage
from Sohra Plaza and went to see the Noh Ka Likai, the tallest fall in India.
On our way back from Noh Ka Likai, we saw the thing that had led the
British to name Meghalaya the Scotland of the East. Rolling hills, deep
greenery and stretching to the horizon in all directions. We stopped the taxi
and stepped out. Winds swept our faces and whistled in our ears, but there
was utter silence otherwise. There were no grazing animals. If I lived here I
would never leave this place, I thought. I would pack lunch on weekends and
bring it here, sit on the soft grass and eat and listen to the winds sweeping the
hills.
Many people who have been to Meghalaya, or Sylhet, lament that the
borders were divided this way. I say god bless the British for not letting
us march and settle on these hills. Meghalaya has a law that even non-
Meghalayan Indians cannot own property there. Khasis, Garos and Jaintias
are very different not only from us but also from the conservative Hindu
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

Assamis just next door, from whom they separated in 1972.
******
Unlike Sohra, life is rushed in the Meghalayan capital of Shillong. The
people are more diverse; along with the Khasis there were local Bangalis from
West Bengal or Sylhet, Garos and tourists from all over India.
In retrospect, perhaps because I had just come from heaven, Shillong felt
unpleasant and commercial. The city was actually nice. Police Bazar, where
we stayed, is a busy area. Had I known, I would have stayed near Laitumkhrah,
a road lined with restaurants that offer cuisines from Naga to Manipuri.
Shillong’s popular tourist spots are not that nice, and I imagine taking the
time to simply walk around the city would have been much more fruitful.
He said the tourist places we had gone
to were nothing compared to the places
he knew about. I extracted his card and
a promise that he would be showing me
those places when I return
Like Dhaka’s Krishnachura, which is a native of Madagascar, Shillong too
has an alien infestation that gives a lovely colour to its streets. We were lucky
enough to see the jacarandas, a tree of purple-blue flowers from Central
America, in full bloom.
A word of advice. If you think that learning a few Khasi words will score
you points, you are probably right. Asking Kumno (How are you), saying
Khublei (Thank you), addressing women as Kung (Mrs or ma’am) and men
as Bah (Mr or sir) in Sohra always got me a smile. But then, don’t do that in
Shillong, where people will think you are a native Bangali who knows the
language, and start rapid-firing Khasi at you.
At the end of our trip, we met a very interesting man. Taxi-driver Tourist
Kharkonogor, who brought us to the border was a Sohra native. We chatted in
Hindi, Bangla and English.
As he drove us to Dawki, I asked him about myriad little things about the
Khasi way of life. He was a man who enjoyed talking, and told me about his
children, his home in Sohra, his political involvement, his mixed ethnicity.
Tourist explained to me that many Khasi families had taken to dividing
their property equally among children so as not to deprive the sons.
When I told him how beautiful his country was, he told me that the
resources under the soil made it hard for them to keep the land this way.
The state exports limestone which has to be dug out. People in Ri Khasi were
concerned about the rumours that there would be uranium mining here,
wondering if it might poison their land.
What he said in the end was the worst, however. As a local of Sohra, he
said the tourist places we had gone to were nothing compared to the places he
knew about. I extracted his card and a promise that he would be showing me
those places when I return. •
21
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ARTS & LETTERS

Short story
The City
• Ornob Alam
22
Hell was invented on a day like this. Or perhaps it was heaven. I
have been told I have a negative bias. In all fairness, when faced
with such unbearable heat, people probably took the escapist
approach, and came up with the idea of heaven.
The late morning sun shines brightly on the beautiful city of Dhaka.
Beautiful because it must be. The city of dreams pushes forward with
a broken grace, its brokenness endlessly pulling on romantic hearts. It
functions while being oblivious to its own intricate apparatus, its lack of selfconsciousness
a break in the monotony of a post-modernist world. It attracts
millions that do not have to be here. Or perhaps they do. In the real world,
it is the industrial and commercial centre of the country with thousands of
rungs for people to latch on to as they try to climb up the economic ladder.
Still, I did not have to be here.
I see the girl walking towards me through a cloud of dust. Dhaka’s natural
sepia filter. Today is the day we decide. Leave or stay? Not just the city, but
potentially each other. I am taken back to where I think it all began.
I was still a hateful little teenager when I first really met her. She was
smarter than me, with her dreams of technological innovation and a fulfilling
life. What we shared was a desire for freedom. Which means something quite
mundane in a place like Dhaka. All of that was not immediately apparent,
though.
“Don’t you go to my school?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“What were you chasing around?”
“I am collecting butterflies to put them in a jar.”
“Why?”
“I don’t know.”
My parents often told me about how Dhaka used to be a safer
place, a quieter place. They had grown up playing outdoors, visiting
neighbourhood friends, and going to bazaar on their own. Was it
nostalgia that motivated these fond remembrances? Or were they
deriving some kind of perverse pleasure from recounting them to
a child who was being raised in an incubator. I am aware this is
quite universal in my generation. While safety concerns here are
often not ill-founded, there are other things that compromise
movement and growth in this otherwise wonderful city.
Conservative culture perpetuates several monstrosities.
In Dhaka, it is, among other things, a constant source of
reinforcing the gender barrier. I suppose women are kept
safe from my lustful eyes during those partitioned milads,
and me from my own lustful nature. But growing up in a setting
that emphasises difference more than our common humanity,
we understand each other less, and are therefore more hostile.
Furthermore, people not adhering to strictly conservative
standards are thought of as lesser humans, leading to the
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017

popular custom of blaming sexual harassment on the victim’s clothes or
character. A culture built on the shaming of victims, a lack of trust in men’s
sense of compassion, and a lot of trust in their capacity to turn into rapists
-- makes it very difficult to find and hold on to love. Not because girls do
not trust me, but because it largely creates the unsafe environment that it
apparently warns of. In such a context, people are never free, and dreams
die.
By the time we were in the final year of high school, we had become
good friends. She had decided on biomedical research as her calling, and
was applying to biology programmes in universities in the US and Canada.
Through a combination of her influence and some vague interest in viruses,
I was also doing the same. I mainly wanted to leave Dhaka, but even then, I
was, albeit obliviously, in love with the city. Inexplicably, but inextricably,
I was part of the chaos. But for now, I would be separated from it, if only to
gain more perspective.
“I am never coming back to this hellhole,” I smirked. “Will you?”
“I probably shouldn’t. Not much goes on in our field here. But it’s hard to
say. I will miss the little habits I have developed in all these years of growing
up here, the places I go to, the people I know.”
“All very replaceable.”
“You think so?”
We were together all through our undergraduate years. It was the best
time. All the freedom and spontaneity I had ever dreamed of. We could stay
out as late as we wanted, and on the spur of the moment would decide on
The transformation had been gradual.
Aspects of my childhood to which I had
never given much thought were revealed
to be important to me. I wanted to sing
Tagore songs again, to people who knew
him
driving out to distant cities, grades and deadlines be damned. But it never
affected her grades, to be honest. In our junior year, she was working in a lab
that studied HIV in a mouse model. I have not forgotten to this day how HIV
virions replicate after she explained it to me the night before our virology
final. She had grown into an amazingly intelligent academician, even at that
young age. She won research fellowships left and right, and was headed
down a path of academic superstardom. I was doing something in some
lab too, mostly because I felt like I had to. I had grown into a sort of culture
junkie. I enjoyed the humanities more than cell biology, and was quite adept
at synthesising arguments for why religion is secretly nihilistic, how Basic
Instinct was a feminist take on film noir, and why the history of theatrical
traditions is more reflective of a society than its chronology of leaders. All
very pointless.
We went to different universities for our master’s degrees. Somehow, my
lack of ambition had not caught up with me yet, and I was able to breeze
through a prestigious programme and immediately get a job in the city she
was studying in. Her Master’s work had been so impressive that she was
staying on to get a PhD at the same lab. Everything had come together nicely.
But by this point I was desperate to come back to live in Dhaka.
The transformation had been gradual. Aspects of my childhood to which
I had never given much thought were revealed to be important to me. I
wanted to sing Tagore songs again, to people who knew him. I wanted to
sit idly in the periphery of all my grandaunts and their adult children as
they had serious conversations I did not need to be a part of. My interest in
cultures had slowly morphed into a renewed interest in my own culture. I
felt a sense of responsibility to my people. I came up with noble, but perhaps
half-baked ideas and aspirations of improving public health and education in
Bangladesh, and yanking the country up from its death spiral. To confound
the issue, she actually understood and sympathised. I did not ask her to
come back with me.
She deferred the beginning of her PhD, and we came back to Bangladesh
in June last year. The idea was to spend the year here, and reevaluate at the
end. She found work as a lecturer at a private university, and I got a job at an
NGO. Now it is time to decide, and I am no closer to having a clear answer.
I have loved living here for the first time since I was a teenager. There is
so much to do for entertainment and learning in the cultural sphere now,
especially for someone interested in somewhat academic aspects of art,
folk history, and traditional music. Last November, we were able to watch a
Santali play, listen to Scottish folk musicians perform, and attend a solemn
Russian piano recital, among numerous others. These were interspersed with
visits to open mics where one could always expect to hear white men and
women attempt Bengali songs with unabashed enthusiasm. Dhaka has truly
arrived. Alongside such pointlessness, I have even found work to be quite
fulfilling. More importantly, I suppose, the work feels necessary.
But Dhaka is still Dhaka. Chaos gives birth to chaos. The same inhibiting
environment still pervades the city and its residents. Always vaguely
violent, it now directly threatens and interferes with our daily lifestyles.
Our naïve brand of Arab worship has probably facilitated this degeneration
into a society that produces educated militants. Further degeneration, I
should say. Marriage is now a pressing need in my life, if everyone I know
is to be believed. I cannot even go on overnight trips with someone I have
lived with, which is an ultimately minor but strangely persistent thorn in
my side. The familiar two-fingered claw of safety concerns and acceptable
bhodro behaviour creeps up behind me, and pulls me back by the collar at
every step. Traveling in a CNG has probably negated the positive effects of
quitting cigarettes. More often than I care to think about, the boot of political
influence kicks through all the rungs of the economic ladder like a great
equaliser as the entire city is brought to a standstill to let one individual pass.
Equal in our collective insignificance.But if chaos gives birth to chaos, what
am I? What right do I have to leave?
But what right do I have to stay and complicate things for someone who
has been beside me for so long? In the real world, I am an individual. I owe
nothing to a place or a society, but I owe something to her and myself. Should
I rot in the increasingly acidic vomit of a civilisation, or move elsewhere
and build a fulfilling life, whatever that may be? How bad could racial
microaggressions in the US ever be? How bad could singing Tagore songs just
for myself be?How bad could it be to not contribute to stopping the brain
drain to the West? Quite bad. But not as bad as letting her leave without me.
Not even as bad as living here.
I smile at the girl as she emerges from the cloud like rain. The city of death
relaxes its chokehold, and I breathe in some more dust. •
Ornob Alam is a fiction writer.
.
23
DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017
ARTS & LETTERS

Tribute
Selim Al Deen:
The playwright
beyond theatre
• Abdullah Al Muktadir
Selim Al Deen’s journey as a prolific writer, which spans over
four decades, has two major turning points. In the early years
of his life, Deen had always wanted to be a vibrant poet like
Kazi Nazrul Islam. But soon he discovered that he could become
anything but a poet. So he gradually stepped into the world of
drama, of theatre to be particular. His writings, since then, were basically
for the stage, meant to be acted out. He also started writing extensively
for television and radio.But soon he re-discovered himself
as a poet.
Deen turned into a poetic playwright as he consciously rejected
the European style of writing plays with Kittonkhola in the late 1970s.
He completely turned his back to the western theatrical conventions
returning to the indigenous non-generic literary form. He wrote
Chaka in the early 1990s which was no more a typical act-scene-dialogue-based
play. A long epic narrative, Chaka, is essentially poetic
as it exposes an unexpected and seemingly never-ending journey of
an anonymous dead body across villages. Thus he introduced “kathanatya”
(narrative play), merging traditional form of storytelling with
age-old theatrical performance.
Abdullah Al
Muktadir is a
lecturer of English
at Jatiya Kabi
Kazi Nazrul Islam
University. His
debut poetry
collection was
published in last
year’s Ekushey
Book Fair.
24
Deen’s re-discovery of his own poetic
self coincides with the failure of his
readers and audience to locate him in the
mainstream Bangla literature
Deen’s re-discovery of his own poetic self coincides with the failure of his
readers and audience to locate him in the mainstream Bangla literature. Unfortunately
most of the people, both who have read his works and who haven’t,
are more or less blinded with a number of prejudices and assumptions.
They, somehow, like to believe that Deen has written only for theatre people
as he is widely regarded as “Natyacharya” (Great teacher of the theatre). He is
also respected as one of the most prominent playwrights after Rabindranath
Tagore. But an attentive reading of his later works, from Chaka(1991) to
Dhabaman(2008),would transform his image from a successful theatre-based
playwright into a multi-dimensional genre-free writer. While writing a single
text like Joiboti Konyar Mon (1992), Deen appears as a poet, a storyteller, a cultural
theorist, a futurist, a historian, a playwright and a lyricist. A very poetic
opening of its tripartite story presents a mysterious setting where a woman
from the medieval Bengal, Kalindi, who has just killed herself is carried all the
way to the God’s abode. She repents for the mistakes she has committed in
her lived life and applies for another opportunity. The rest of the story goes on
like a mythological epic. A Bengali woman lives two different lives in two different
centuries. However, her psyche does not change and it eventually leads
her to the same ending , twice. The author here sounds like a seer, a fatalist,
and also a historian. He succeeds in depicting both a medieval rural Bengal
and a colonial Bengali town. Joiboti Konyar Mon proves that while writing for
the stage Deen did never want to reduce his authorship to a dialogue-writer.
He rather started exploring the shared areas of different literary genres like
music, dance, epic, fiction and poetry.
My interest in Selim Al Deen began when I came across the film adaptation
of Chaka by Morshedul Islam in 2007. Then I started reading his books beginning
with Kittonkhola. The last book I read was Nimojjon(2004). I also had an
opportunity to explore his works onstage as a member of audience, a good
number of times since 2008.
Though he has gradually emerged as a famous “writer of the theatre,” to
me, Deen is, until now, one of the most underrated authors of Bangla literature.
His plays (as I would love to label them) are not mere plays. What we
experience onstage, as both performers and audience, are only adaptations of
the stories, poems, music, myths, memories and amnesias already included in
his written text. There is always possibility of different sorts of adaptations on
different levels. Even as an individual reader, one can independently interpret
Deen’s texts in his/her own way. So a text as Dhabaman(2008), Putra(2008)
or Prachya(1998) can be read as anything: Long narrative poems, fictions or
plays. Selim Al Deen, if successfully re-discovered, would appear as a re-incarnation
of the kobis (poets) of pre-colonial Bengal where the word “kobi” used
to mean everything: An author, a storyteller, a musician, a historian, even a
philosopher. So, until we can dive into his works to find him as a modern reincarnation
of a pre-colonial Bengali poet, he will remain in darkness as one of
the most under-appreciated literary figures of our culture. •
ARTS & LETTERS DHAKA TRIBUNE | THURSDAY, September 7, 2017