Mizan Rahman
The story
was about two girls. One of them was called Mala, the other Jasmine. Mala was
19, likely a village girl. Girls with a name like Mala usually do come from
villages. Perhaps she was a darling to her father when she was a little baby.
Perhaps she was even lucky enough to go to school every morning with her braids
swinging this way and that, happy as a bird. Maybe her cheeks would flush in a
pair of gorgeous dimples when she laughed, like a lotus in the sun. Who knows
if the village boys would line up behind her to curry her favor, just for a
look, a nod, a smile. And then, something went horribly wrong. Something
snapped somewhere. The Malas of the world usually meet the same fate
everywhere. They appear as beams of light, disappear in clouds of mystery.
But how
about Jasmine? Jasmine can’t be from any village! It’s an urban name, name of a
cute little aromatic flower. In middle class Bengali homes it’s called belli or jui or chameli. One
wonders why her parents would call her Jasmine instead of any of those three
names. Perhaps her father was a fan of English books. Or her mother went to the
Holy Cross school for her education. Or both parents used to love the English
poet William Wordsworth. All those ‘maybe’s. All those tantalizing ‘maybes’
together could not save that poor girl from what appened to her in the end.
The
newspapers didn’t say anything about their lives, only about their deaths. And
that they both were ‘murdered savagely’. Murders are always savage, aren’t
they? I haven’t heard of anyone being murdered out of love or kindness. Yet the
news reporters are fond of using the phrase: savage killing. That way perhaps
the act of killing becomes a bit more ‘inhuman’, for otherwise the act of
killing an animal, that is committed everyday by hundreds and thousands, could
also be deemed ‘savage’. Reports of ‘savage killing’ sell better than those of ordinary
‘killing’.
As I read
the news I got the impression that the murders occurred quite a while
back----perhaps a few days before. Rather a stale news, I suppose. Murders are
so commonplace these days that yesterday’s homicides aren’t much of any news
today, because today there are new murders to read about. However, the news of
girls like Mala and Jasmine are always interesting because of not how they
died, but how they lived. Of the two Jasmine is more fresh. Her body is still
in the morgue----perhaps still warm. Her death, in particular, has created
quite a stir. Everyone is ‘ah’ing and ‘ooh’ing----how sad, how awfully
sad! Jasmines of the world usually do
not end up in morgues like that-----unmarked and unwanted. They are accorded
the normal funeral rites with due respect and solemn prayers. After the usual
recital from the holy Quran and other formalities their bodies are put in
graves ready to meet their creator. The bereaved family will mourn the death of
their loved one, some will even wail in grief, then pray for their departed
soul.
But not for
this Jasmine of ours, who was lying in a cold container of the city morgue,
with her eyes closed.
Why they
were killed, who or how, isn’t of much interest to anybody. Not the police, not
the newspaper publisher, not the reader. They all love to read about their
death, but not much interest in the stories behind them----the sordid stories
of their pathetic lives. Some may even be thinking: served them well----they
deserved it. They are dark spots in society that should be removed, anyway.
None will shed a tear for them. All they are concerned about is their
bodies---their dead and filthy bodies. You can’t keep them in the morgue
forever. No funeral home is going to accept their bodies for fear of reprisal
from the pious communities around the area. It’s a prostitute, they will say,
you can’t possibly put her alongside our loved ones! They are fallen girls, for
heaven’s sake.
‘Patita’ is
the Bengali equivalent of ‘fallen girl’. It’s lovely word, especially with the
all-important vowel ‘a’ in the end of patita,that signifies,
unmistakably, a female. Interesting that written in English alphabets you can
pronounce the word ‘Patita’ in any one of the two ways: ‘patitau’, meaning a
fallen male (or it can even mean an inanimate object that has fallen), and
‘patita’,which means the deadly thing----a fallen female. This is one word
where one vowel, one tiny alphabet, rather how you pronounce it, makes the
world of difference. It expresses the misogynistic attitudes of the entire
society. The discrimination, the dominance, the cruelty, everything. Just a
lousy vowel.
Interesting,
isn’t it, that a male who may be fallen the same way as a female, is never
called a ‘fallen man’. Nobody calls a man ‘fallen’ who may rob others of
everything they had, terrorizes innocent people, becomes ultra-rich by
deliberately defaulting on bank-loans. At best, he may be called a criminal, a
pariah, but never a ‘patitau’. In fact, so warped and crooked are the rules and
norms of the society that it is the very criminals that are often allowed to
become the venerable haji’s (ones who did their obligatory pilgrimage at
Mecca) and honorable members of society. But God forbid, if you are a female,
then you are marked girl, a bad girl, a ‘fallen girl’, forever. No redemption
or rehabilitation for you. Our righteous society will not tolerate the fall of
a girl’s character----her chastity is a nonnegotiable commodity.
To think of
it, it’s a lovely word, after all----‘patita’. Rhymes beautifully with ‘Kabita’
(poetry) or ‘Namita’ (sublime), or ‘Banita’ (a cute girl). Perhaps this is why
the gentlemen prefer to call the ‘fallen girls’ ‘Barbonita’, meaning a girl who
lives outdoors, just to make it sound a bit more polished and poetic. High
society gentlemen really know how to use their language in the most civilized
way.
I’d think
Patita could have been the name of a beautiful flower. Or that of a little bird
with multicolored wings. Couldn’t it be the name of dimly lit star in the
sky? At the very least, like the
melancholy willows by the river Thames in England?
But alas, in
our poor country, ‘patita’ isn’t the name of a flower nor a bird or a pretty
little girl, just a poor little girl who has been cheated out of a decent life
by everyone in the society. A cursed body and a rotten fate combined to send
her off the slippery path of ruin and self-destruction. ‘Patita’ is the name of
a cruel game, a game created by men who forced their unwilling women to be
their partners. Like the muscular slaves in the old Roman prisons who were
forced to fight each other to kill or die-----just as an entertaining spectacle
for the gentry in the high balconies of the big stadium. In this murderous game
the male never loses, and the female never wins. They must fight to the
end----until they breathe their last. Just the way have died our two little
girls in the news-----Mala and Jasmine. The only problem the male will ever
face is how to dispose of the bodies of those poor little girls, the disgusting
nuisance of a problem. Should they let her rot in the morgue or bury her
somewhere covertly?
According to
the rules of religion the dead body must be buried within 24 hours. Rich or
poor makes no difference-----there is no exception. Anyone born in a Muslim
family, no matter who it is, must obey this rule. At least according to the
Sharia (the Islamic law). There isn’t supposed to be any clause in the books
that a sex-worker can’t be put in a grave. The clauses were created by the
society in contravention of their own religion. The same society that nearly
drags a helpless girl or a trapped housewife out of her home and throws her
onto the street, is also the one that forbids the undertaker to bury her in a
grave. Rumor has it that a certain kindhearted cleric in Narayanganj irked the
local community for having the gall to let the body of a sex-worker buried in a
regular cemetery. It is beyond me that we will vouch to give our life to
protect the integrity of Sharia, yet will not bat an eye to show blatant
disregard of it by insisting that the lifeless remains of a wretched sex-worker
cannot be put in a grave.
What is a
so-called ‘red district’, or a ‘whorehouse’? The first time the term was
brought to my consciousness was during the Second World War. There was an army
installation at Kurmitola. Big, burly soldiers of all colors----white, black,
red----used to patrol in military jeeps and trucks all over the city of Dhaka
(formerly spelled Dacca), where I lived with my parents. I suppose it was part
of their daily drills to go around the town at least once. However, I could
never figure out why these alien people would gather every evening in a dark
laneway in one of the filthiest parts of town while there were so many better
places to look around. Sometimes I would go to watch a soccer game with my
father at Paltan soccer fields. After the game we would walk back along the
long Nawabpur Rd., stopping for the Magreb prayer at the big mosque by the Ray
Shahab Bazar bridge. Curiously, the mosque was between a very foul-smelling
Dolai canal and the ‘dark alley’ I just alluded to. I asked my father, quite innocently, once or
twice, what those strange looking soldiers were doing in that dark place.
Obviously it wasn’t easy for him to give me an honest answer, so he would skate
around the question by just saying that soldiers are bad people, and bad people
always look for bad places. Now I understand why it was difficult to give a
clear answer to his 9-yr old son. But this evasive answer would only help
thicken my curiosity. Sometimes I’d try to steal a cautious look in that
direction. I was both fearful and curious. It was quite amazing for me to see some
of our very dark-skinned girls with their betel-red lips giggling and flirting
with those huge muscular men in uniform. Some of them were even puffing away at
cheap home-made biris in their lips. Naively I’d think: how happy these
people must be. On the other hand I was bothered by their shameless
behavior-----does one have to be so openly flirtatious with alien people just
to show how happy they are?
It took me a
while to get the true story. It was when one of the girls’ half-naked and
blood-splattered body was lying unattended on the Nawabpur street. By word of
mouth I found out that a white soldier, in a fit of drunken rage, gave her a
good beating and left her on the road in a senseless state. After the incident
he and his buddies rushed away from the scene on a truck, but not before
running its wheels over the skull of that poor girl, thus bringing a merciful
end to her miserable life. Her face was completely smashed, thus exposing her
gums and teeth. Also the yellow of her brain. Not a very pleasant sight, to say
the least. One kind-hearted man found a sheet to spread on her body to give a
bit of cover to the child and a modicum of decency. By then the crowd became a
sea of onlookers jostling for space to have a better look. Yet there was not a
single person who would think of taking her to a hospital or call for medical
help----none. Usually one is not supposed to let a dead body stay on the ground
for too long-----somebody always comes from somewhere to pick it up. They’d try
to locate her relatives. If the body happens to be that of a Hindu then proper
cremation processes would be under way. And burial procedures for the
Christians and Muslims. But in this case no one put a hand on her. As if she
was a deadly virus, an infectious disease. You will be sick, may be, if you
touch her.
With me was
my friend Nizam. He was quite a bit older than me, and hence wiser, even though
we were in the same class. He was much more knowledgeable in worldly affairs
than I was. Basically I was just a village boy, pretty naïve in most matters of
life. Nizam , on the other hand, was a city boy, a native, son of a local
alderman. Hence a grown man almost since his childhood. I learned quite a few
things about birds and bees from this friend -----things that your elders would
blush to utter. So he threw some light on what really happened to that poor
girl and for what possible reasons. She was a ‘fallen girl’-----a synonym for a
sex-worker. One is given to believe that even a simple touch on her body would
soil your hands that would need full ablution to wash off the impurity. When
they die their bodies are not supposed to have proper burials, nor funeral
services of any kind. Shocked out of my wits I would ask: then what is going to
happen to her body? His answer: most of
the times the professional grave-diggers would come to pick up the bodies.
Don’t ask me what they would do with them. It’s anybody’s guess. Most likely
they make a few rupees by selling them to the medical colleges for the students
to do their studies. With the little money they earn, rather cheaply, they
would celebrate getting drunk on cheap local beer.
It was more
than 55 years ago. But the girl’s mauled and mangled face still haunts me at
times. The very thought of it gives me a chill, a jolt of horror. Initially the
horror was at the brutality of the act, but the shock and dismay originates
from the callous inhumanity of the hidden story behind the story. There is
nothing wrong in speculating that once upon a time a beautiful girl was born to
cheer up an otherwise mirthless home in a remote village of Bangladesh. Maybe
she went to school every morning, happy as a bird, with not a thing on earth to
worry about, then come home to play hide-and-seek with her siblings and
friends, giggling and singing with complete abandon. May be she, too, would
melt away at a simple touch of love from someone near and dear to her, and sulk
away like a withering dahlia when someone would utter a harsh word at her.
And then,
suddenly, from out of nowhere, the clouds came to wipe out
everything-----completely. The endearing touch, the giggle, the silly songs,
the sulks, and all. Evaporated. The only that remained was the body. The
wretched body. The worst enemy of a woman. Who knows if it was her own husband
who sold her body away to a miserable creature at a high price. Or it could be
that some shady lover of hers tricked her into accompanying him to a happy and
care-free life in the city, used her as long as he needed, then left her like a
used goods in that dark alley. This body, this miserable body of hers----could
it be used like this if it were the body of a man, or even an animal? Could the
military truck then run over her body in such a callous manner? They all had a
feast over her body----the men in uniform, openly; the men in gentlemen’s attire,
under the cover of night and dark laneway, in disguise. And then, when the
light went out the poor girl’s life they all stepped back, for fear of sin in
touching her skin or her hair, for fear of fire in hell that would result from
getting close to the corpse. What an irony it is that the bodies of the
so-called ‘straight’ people will mingle with dust in their graves to morph into
useless bones, while the fallen girls’ bodies go to the medical schools for the
ultimate purpose of saving lives of other ‘straight’ people. And yet, for a
male-dominated society the body of a ‘fallen girl’ is as deadly as the dreadful
syphilis. More importantly, it is a sin, a cardinal sin. What a strange creature
we are, this male species of mine.
It reminds
me of another story from my childhood, somewhat similar to this one. It’s not
something I witnessed myself, but an uncle of mine did. And this is how he
narrated the story:
There was a
river two villages across our own. On the other side there was this cute little
hamlet which didn’t exist before, but the tides seem to have dredged up the
silt to create a whole landscape. At the far end of that village lived a 25-yr
old girl called Bilikis with her 4-yr old son. Her husband had passed away two
years before, out of malaria. Her parents were so poor that they could neither
afford, nor desire, to have their widowed daughter back in their charge, with
the additional burden of having to feed her child. On the other hand, the husband’s
side was unwilling to continue supporting her with their son taken away by
Almighty Allah as He wished. To make it worse for her the older brother of the
deceased husband cleverly maneuvered to grab the property that she and her child
were supposed to inherit. All she was
allowed was this one-room hut by the river, at the edge of the village, plus a
tiny morsel of land, apparently an act of great kindness and compassion by the
family. This little act of ‘great kindness and compassion’, however, became a
partial life-saver for Bilkis and her child. She could build a small shed on it
for all kinds of plants-----gourd, beans, cucumber, eggplants and spinach. All
by herself, with playful help from her 4-yr old boy. It was not easy for a young
mother with a small child to survive on her own in a remote village. To add to
the misery she was such a trusting girl, so naïve and so hopelessly gullible.
Never could tell a trick from an honest offer of help.
Once it so
happened that a salesman arrived in the village hoping to sell some saris, that
he claimed were of high quality and low price-----saris that had the brand name
of Modhupuri. Very well-known brand, and hence highly attractive to women. The
good merchant somehow got word of the poor widow by the river. It might be a
good idea to pay a curtsy visit to that young lady with a child, he thought. She
might even be interested in buying a sari or two, especially if he offered her
a hefty discount. On the pretext of giving her a varied choice he cleverly
stuck up a friendly conversation with her. He told her about the sad death of
his young wife last year at childbirth and how his life was completely devastated
by that. Now he has no one to go back to in this world. A married younger
sister was there for a while to give him some comfort, look after his
day-to-day needs. But she too had to leave in a few days to be back with her
in-laws. Poor man nearly came to tears telling her the sad story. Which touched
Bilkis, exactly where he expected to-----her heart. She felt too moved to stay
behind the curtain any longer, and in a spontaneous rush of empathy, came out
to console the poor man out of his unspeakable grief. His loss brought back the
fresh memory of her own loss two years before. She fully understood what he was
going through. Poor man! She wanted to do something for him. At the moment all
she could think of was a bowl of puffed rice with sugar cubes. Then she sent
her little boy to fetch some fresh spinach from the field, so she can cook a
modest meal for the man. How could she let him go without something solid in
his mouth? She can’t do that to such a
heart-broken man.
After a hearty
meal the man got the courage to blurt out what he really had in mind. He
confessed that his coming to the village for the purpose of selling saris was
just an excuse----a cover-up for his real intention. Which was to obey a
command from the heavens: go and rescue that poor woman in that remote island.
If you help her out of her misery she will help you out of yours. So he has
come here with a proposal-----to marry her. Bilkis didn’t have to think too
long. It was indeed becoming extremely difficult for her to lead a lonely life
having to make a living by working long hours in other people’s homes husking
rice and pasting onions and garlics, chilies and turmeric. So without thinking
things out coolly, she said yes. She didn’t hesitate much mainly because it was
God Himself who seems to have ordained their union. So why object to his next
proposal that the man gingerly put forward. It made her blush a bit, but felt
no compunction to reject his advances.
Unfortunately,
next morning, as she woke up she found the man in her bed had disappeared with
his bag of saris.
You’d think
she learned her lesson by having been burned once. But no, she didn’t. She was
a classic sucker for being taken advantage of. After the sari trader came a few
more merchants with all kinds of sob-stories to melt her heart away. And she
fell for them the same way, again and again. She was so naïve, so utterly
trusting, that she just couldn’t understand how anyone could be so deceitful.
So she kept on trusting. The last player was the son of a prominent member of
the village. He too came with some cock-and-bull- story to bring down her wall
of resistance that she might have put on otherwise. She figured: well, he is
the son of a prominent member of the community, so he can’t possibly vanish in
thin air like others. So why not? She didn’t have a good reputation in the
village, anyway. People have started calling her a ‘night-ferry’ -----referring
to her one-night affairs with strangers in her cottage. Poor girl didn’t even
understand what this epithet really meant, except that it wasn’t very
complimentary. So she reasoned this way: well if she gets married to the son of
a prominent member of the community then wouldn’t he be obliged to stay married
at least for the sake of his father’s honor? So she gave in. Just as she gave
in to the others. So the boy kept paying the nightly visits-----then leaving
before daybreak. And she kept pressing him for a wedding date. And he kept
pushing it off----just a few more days. Let the rains stop, the water recede,
he’d say .
The water
did recede one day, and so did the boy’s nightly visits, leaving her having to
defend herself against the taunts and innuendos.
Then, out of
nowhere, there came a big storm one day. High winds, pouring rains and
incessant lightning bolts. Bilkis kept her son as tightly pressed to her body
as she could for fear of him being blown away. Her little hut was shaking like
crazy, on the verge of collapsing any moment. She kept uttering all the suras
from the holy Quran that she could remember, trembling like a sailor alone in a
sinking boat.
Suddenly,
she heard a knock----a frantic knock on the door. Could it be the wind? That’s
what she thought at first. But the knock was so persistent that it had to be
someone at the door trying to get in. Curious, yet frightened out of her wits,
she went to unhook the door slightly, just to have a look. She hoped,
desperately hoped, that it was the goddamn son of that prominent member of the
community. But no, it wasn’t. It was the prominent member himself! She couldn’t
believe her eyes.
It is such a
stormy night, Moni’s mom (Moni is her son’s name), that I thought it would be
wrong to leave you alone in your flimsy little hut that can be blown away
anytime. So I came to see how you are doing. With that he tried to push his way
in. But this time, at long last, for once, Moni’s mom found her strength. As
well as her wits. This time she didn’t let herself be sweet-talked into yet
another blunder. This time she forcefully jammed the door in and closed it up
on his face.
An act of
great courage and defiance? Yes, but not without a consequence, which she had
no clue as to what it could be.
Next day,
when the weather was all quiet and sunny, the mood in the village was anything
but. What’s the commotion about, she wondered. Poor girl didn’t know that
nobody, but nobody, ever gets away shutting the door on the face of the
prominent member of the community. It’s not a minor offence that you could
atone for by just asking for mercy or forgiveness. The prominent member called
an emergency meeting in his front yard with the elders of the village. There
was a just one item on the agenda: the fallen girl’s trying to entice his
innocent son to commit sin through an illicit affair. She has spoiled the good
name of the village. She is a whore-----a disgrace for the whole community. She
deserves nothing less than 40 strikes of the leather whip. First she will be
tied to a couple of indoor poles, followed by a big muscular man carrying out
the sentence.
Perhaps an
appropriate sentence for the grievous crime of robbing the virginity of an
innocent young man. At least according
to the scriptures.
But Bilkis
really showed her guts this time----didn’t give them the satisfaction of having
their way to the end. She used her own sari and fastened it tight on a high
branch of a grapefruit tree, then hung herself. Village girls like her have
long known their saris and tall trees as their greatest allies in times of
trouble. Especially for the ‘fallen girls’.
Her lifeless
body, as usual, didn’t receive the formal rites. They put her on an empty
country boat and let it float away along the tides. No one knew where the boat
went----nobody cared, if the waves docked it at some remote village or was just gobbled up by the mighty river. There was
a rumor that the vultures had a feast on her. Others claimed that a lightning
bolt struck the boat burning it to cinders-----which the good villagers
attributed to Allah’s own punishment for her sinful life. Who knows which
version is true, or none at all. Everybody believes, however, that even though
she was able to evade the whip she could not evade the wrath of God.
That, too,
was a long time ago. Have things changed somewhat today? I do not think so. Jasmine
is still in the morgue. The vultures aren’t going to get her, of course, but no
one tell for sure if the lightning will not strike her, either.
Staten
Island, NY,
Sept.14,’12
( Translated
by the author from his Aug. 3, 1999, Bengali piece “Patita”)
মীজান রহমান, Mizan Rahman,
