by Nayan Sayed Jibon

At noon, suddenly, the April sky darkened and the concrete jungle of Hazaribagh had turned neuter gray as far as the eye could see.

A thirsty van puller in a narrow lane, who was pulling a heavier load of rotten skulls, legs, and tails than he was actually capable of, is pulled by the much stronger wind. He looked up and tried to look into the eye of the storm but could not keep his myopic eyes open. His eyes were blinded by dust from the nearby under-constructed buildings and by the smoke from the burning scraps of leather beside the road.

But as his eyes were closed, now he could smell strongly, the fumes of the chemicals from hundreds of tanneries in Hazaribagh besieging him and could feel more strongly the cold wind coming touching the cold black river of Buriganga on his sweating sunburned forehead.

Paddling          Ringing          Paddling         Ringing             paddling         ringing

A small woman wearing a long charcoal black burkha along with a niqab is also exposed to the early dusty wind of the storm. The dust made her black burkha sparkle gray which made her invisible to the eyes of the people and perhaps to the eye of the storm. She is on her way to the Sardar house carrying the germs of tuberculosis in her lungs, to work.

To sweep, to clean, to wash, to cook, to care…

A clap of thunder rumbled and shook the soft body of the soft-spoken Maolana Nizamuddin in his soft bed from his afternoon nap. He rose in panic with his tasbih in hand and prayed to his God. ‘La hawla wa la quwwata illa billah‘(There is no change of a condition nor power except by Allah).

Then he slowly moved the curtain beside his bed and looked up from the mosque’s window and saw through the dust the lightning, shrouded by the black thunderheads, glowing like welding. As if repairs had begun at some flawed place in the absence of a burning sun.

A wind snatched the last open window out of Aziz’s hand and slammed it against the wall. He had to put great strength with his tender arms to penetrate into the storm and close it against the pressure of the boisterous gale. But, no sooner had he closed it, the rain came in a pounding downpour, beating noisily against the chest of the metal windows as if trying to catch him in. And within seconds the noise became so loud that he could not hear the school bell of the school after tiffin period.

He missed biology class.

It is his favorite subject as it studies LIFE. As it tries to explain why and how we are into existence, what continues our generation, and why different people have different moods, thoughts, behaviors, BODIES, sex, and hormones. He always thought biology can give him some of his answers. Answers related to his BODY, related to his MIND, related to a mismatch between his BODY and MIND, answers that could dispel a class of zombies coming near to tear him up and turn him into one.

Some words of science he thought, will stop blind zombies to whisper to each other about his walk, giggling after hearing his talk, shouting saying “half ladies”, asking questions like “tui ki Hijra”, singing mocking songs in the corridor, writing slangs on his back, drawing sketches on walls and squeezing his pointy puffy breast tissues. Tap tap!

Breathlessly, he attended the classes as those zombies released more toxins than hundreds of tanneries around his home. Toxins that made him angry and cry, sob and sigh and often silently fall on the school floor like a tree, as tall trees fall in the Islands of Solomon due to the encircled islander’s relentless curse.

Whisperingwritinggigglingsqeezingshoutingquestioningsingingdrawing…

Answers are not found in the pages of the biology book but he didn’t die either as he’s immune to toxins. Alas!

2.

Another thunder roared. The rain became heavier. Aziz breathed a sigh of thankfulness as he found himself alone without zombies.

It’s been raining heavily for one hour now and the water stands and doesn’t know where to go. The drain beside his window which is like all the other drains in his area was not cleared for many months and got clogged. It got choked and can’t inhale the storm’s water anymore and can’t exhale the secret of a 16-year boy thinking to wear his mother’s sari. Things began to overflow in the narrow lanes of Hazaribag: good, bad, and ugly.

Rotten flesh, fat, blood, leather trimmings, Plastic bags, bottles, etc…

The electricity came back and Azeez switched on the TV and started to change channels. Flashes come as he is jumping from one to another: reporters standing in knee-deep water in the middle of the road, environmentalists at round tables shouting and blaming the Mayor, and a presenter in a suit pointing with a stick to the eye of the storm in the Bay of Bengal.

He didn’t lose track though and came to his favorite Hindi music channel and stood in front of his uneven frameless mirror which is reflecting a wavy image of him, an image, fluid and confusing. The old music with a new remix:

Parde Mein Rehne Do Parda Na Uthao

(let me be under my veil)

Parde Mein Rehne Do Parda Na Uthao

 (Let me be under my veil)

Parda Jo Uth Gaya To Bhedh Khul Jayega

(Lifting it, you will be mesmerized)

Allah Meri…

The song made his sunken body straight and like the stormwater outside his front door, the invisible serpent (devil) rises along his spine and starts to entice him to eat the forbidden fruit. Being possessed by the devil he then stood straight and firm and his chakras began to clean and everything came to sync: his lip with the lyrics, his hip with the rhythm, and his heart with the beat except his body with the mind.

He unbuttoned his faded school shirt, unbelted and unzipped his piling pants. The boy self fell to the floor like an ancient curse but revealing another ancient mystery, his bare body. He touched the mystery’s dark neck, and chest and scratched the darker areola, puffy nipple, and widened hip bone and tried to comprehend it. But he failed. Neither he could read his body nor solve the mystery because the mystery is beyond culture and nature, male and female, and question and answer.

A new song appeared and he turned his eyes asquint and saw through the mirror his favorite heroine dancing in the rainwater, wearing a red sari and weaving the achal hanging off her shoulder as if fanning his deepest feminine desires. The song hit him like a revelation.

He opened his mother’s drawer to choose a sari to wear. The drawer is full of old saris with smells of the past: smells of his mother’s sweat, dried tears, and talcum powder. He chose the less used, most smelly, and the brightest one, his mother’s wedding sari, a red Banarasi.

The storm became more stubborn and started shouting more loudly, rudely, and one-sidedly. But Aziz is in his clearest of moments, moments unaware of the cloud, rain, and thunder, moments oblivious of his maid mother coming home pushing through the black water in the lane with her charcoal Burkha, moments heedless to his father coming paddling his smelly van and most shockingly, ignorant to the nauseating smells of the sewage sludge of the whole Hazaribag that seeping under his door. He is in a complete trance of draping and folding his mother’s six-yard-long wedding sari and today there are no zippers, no buttons, no hooks, and no belt that could bind him in the REALITY.

3.

He started to live the dream that he planted years before in the heart of his childhood fabric doll. Silently that dream grew its soft branches over hundreds of pages of his books, in the shape of a beautiful girl. Today it stood as a full horizontal tree no matter how hard, dry or toxic the environment was.

He is ready after all the wrapping, pleating, draping, and positioning the glitzy anchal across his chest and over the left shoulder, pushing his small hair away behind his ears. Only one thing is missing, he thought, a bindi which he drew with a marker pen bought last Friday when Maolana Alauddin handed him a new note of 50 takas after being happy in the dark stairs. Hush!

Finally, the parda (veil) has disappeared and the bhed (mystery) has been revealed but he didn’t say tauba (repent) this time because he was feeling his TRUTH. He felt yet couldn’t express his experience because he has been given no words, no images, no songs, and no paragraphs in the biology book as he was neither a male nor a female but a very STRANGE creature.

The creature then went closer to its wavy image and started to have many strange thoughts and perhaps the strangest thought of all: the thought of a man.

He thought of Rahat who lives in the next house, whistles with his fingers at his pigeon to make them dance in the air, and often flies kites on their terrace exhibiting his brown shirtless sturdy body. Often when they pass each other, he smiles back at him with his deep black eyes as if he knows everything about him. He wished him to knock on his door at this moment.

But immediately he told his wish to go back to its source as he realized he is not looking like any other GIRLs rather one of those girls who often appear in TV and films (and everybody laughs at them), the girls who dance in the marriages (and everybody laughs at them), the girls who begin the road (and everybody laughs at them) and the girls who stand in the highway side bushes in the evening (and everybody laughs at them). He wanted to be anything but a joke to him.

He gave up looking at himself from other people’s eyes and started to fly his anchal in rhythmic patterns, with his own eyes wide open, but unfocused. His whirling is fueled by the music from the Hindi music channel. Everything came to sync: His lip with the lyrics, his hip with the rhythm and his heart with the beat, and his body with the mind.

Knock! Knock! Knock! Knock! (On the metallic door), Azeez. “Open the gate! Can’t you see the whole house is sinking with the drain water? What the hell are you doing inside?” his mother cried out. Her voice immediately brought him to the reality he wasn’t part of. He tried undoing all of his desires at once: lyrics the with lip his, rhythm the with hip his, beat the with heart his and, mind the with body his and. And quickly removed the saree, whirling in the opposite direction he was doing a few moments back.

Knock!! Knock!! Knock!! Knock!! “Azeez? What are you doing inside? Open the gate quickly! The water entering the room!”, her mother shouted. At a lightning speed, he hid the saree in his school bag, jumped into the pants and shirt, and opened the gate. His mother threw herself into the room without looking at him and when she lifted her niqab the first thing he saw was a red bindi on his son’s forehead.

A hard slap hit his cheek like thunder.

A sudden loud ringing sensation in his eardrum traveled across his whole body to the other end. He tried but couldn’t recover the balance he lost as his firmly positioned body was shaken with the force of his mother’s afraid+angry+frustrated+paniced+anxious+ hand. He felt his face burning, turning red and bruised.

After sweeping the drain water from the floor Aziz came out of the room but not with lies this time. He looked upward ignoring the filthy water around his feet and saw the last traces of the disappearing cloud as if it was his win and the storm had finally decided to surrender to this strange creature. He inhaled a deep breath and while exhaling closed his eyes to feel the water of the soft drizzling, falling and rolling down over his face accompanying his tears. But something made him open his eyes and see the brightest rainbow of his life. He smiled with a rainbow in his eyes.

He heard people shouting in the lane, calling his father’s name. His hungry father who had just arrived paddling and ringing his empty van at their flooded lane is asked by his landlord to remove the debris from the drain. He had to do it. He is the chosen one who couldn’t disappoint the people looking from their barandahs, waiting to attend the Jumma prayer in the mosque following the soft-spoken Maolana Nizamuddin. But the clogged point of the drain is very low and he had to dive in at least for the sake of everyone.

He disappeared in the drain, the rainbow vanished in the rain and they remained standing in the flood.

About the Author:

Nayan Sayed Jibon has completed his BA and MA in English Literature. As a researcher and writer, he is highly interested to know the therapeutic value of literature. Currently, he is researching on how literary narratives enable readers to cope with emotional insecurities, internal conflicts, and traumatic experiences.