by Taj63622
Chapter 5
The electricity went out again. A single oil lantern lit his room to cover electricity‘s absence. Occasionally, he would hear the barks of an ownerless dog, echoing from nearby alleyways. When dogs quietened, he could hear the crickets, whose pulsating beats resounded against the empowering darkness. He could not sleep. The noise was not the culprit to his sleepless eyes. The burning wick of the lantern had him helplessly recall certain events of the past. Upsetting images flashed in his mind, taking away his sleep. Yet he had no complaints, knowing that he was not alone struggling to sleep.
He took accommodation at another lodge. Two days have passed since he last saw Nargis, and no two minutes have spared his mind about her. Her helpless state haunted him, and he often wondered if he could have done more to encourage her to speak her mind. He should not have left her so abruptly. He should not have said that he did not care. Now he must suffer knowing that the girl has to marry the old landlord.
The country is in a pitiful state. The men believe improvement will come with independence, and no independence comes before a rebellion. But it marks the beginning of a revolution. Men will rejoice in their victory. The women will have to wait for theirs. The inferior sex will have her due, but the wait is long. The concept was not only true to women in this undeveloped economy. It was a universal truth, for which women cannot refrain from taking blame. Knowingly or unknowingly, they strengthen such truths through their fear of speaking. They oblige towards their duties as a female, honouring the social expectations, which her mother ingrains in her mind from an age where the mind is easily convinced. She does not question the custom, and fulfils her duties as a daughter to become a wife, eventually giving her husband the joys of becoming a father, the whole while praying that her womb bears no daughter. She suffered the consequence of being a female too closely to permit her daughter the same fate.
She has too many relations to please. Here, if a girl is fortunate enough, she leaves her father’s house, and enters her husband’s household. There, she exhausts herself in fulfilling her many various roles, sometimes the wife and sometimes the daughter-in-law. It is her duty. It is the custom. She is obliged to discard any other interest she has that is not for her family’s betterment. But men are not often affronted to the equal expectation. No one will condemn their acts should they question customs. They will bravely announce wars to seek betterment, whereas women console with their loss too easily. What else could they do? If she rebels, she disgraces her and her family. In preserving her honour, she knowingly admits the next generation of women into hardship. For her, life was merely a battle. She has not yet reached the war grounds. Nargis was one such girl amongst many, whose inferior sex has silenced her voice. Men will elevate through many ranks in the country’s newfound freedom, but the girls will continue to sacrifice their will. Sometimes she will obey her father’s command and sometimes she will accord to her brother’s orders.
Tomorrow, he shall return home, knowing that as a journalist he cannot share this reality. It was a truth difficult to capture unless in personal experience of it. There was no difficulty in writing an article on political unrest. There are plentiful words to describe the raging fires of burnt houses that evidence anger and jealousy. But how was he to discuss those quiet fires that burn within the women of the country. How are they to display their unrest?
The last two days has seen him mostly accosted inside, scarcely leaving his room except to use the bathroom, which was kept separate to the house. It was not that he wanted to be in solitude, but he wanted to be away from the bitter reality. The unchanging reports on political unrest, unstable authority, and corrupt policing, were beginning to irritate him. His heart has become somewhat impure on writing on the despairing subject. This was certainly not the first country warring to become an independent nation. The country will rejoice in achieving independence.
There was a sudden knock at the door, making him start. The hour being quite unusual to expect visitors, he looks at his watch to confirm the time. He presumed the late caller to be Jameel, whose calls the lodger cannot forbid however inconvenient the hour. However, the knocks growing impatient, he considered otherwise. He opened the doors to the familiar face of the landlord. A lantern hanging from his hand, the landlord peered at him in evident reproof. ‘You have a visitor,’ he said abruptly. ‘No visitor at night,’ the landlord angrily reminds him.
He wondered in confusion to the visitor the landlord was referring. Jameel certainly was not a visitor. The landlord mutters something in Bengali, before looking to his right to beckon the caller before him.
It was the girl’s brother. He had an unmistakable look of disapprove. ‘Do you know him?’ the landlord asked, having not heard any words of greeting from him. He unknowingly nods to the enquiry. The landlord muttered something else in a grump, instructing him to inform someone on the desk when the visitor leaves.
Mukhtar walked into the room, his expression little unchanged. Having looked here and there searchingly, he abruptly asks a question, which took him by astonishment. ‘Where is my sister?’
He has learnt of everything, but matters would evolve to this disgraceful extent, had passed his estimation. His negligence has seen him desperately trying to locate the Englishman since yesterday. At last, he finds him. Now he can find his sister too.
Nargis appointed the meeting in her apartment to keep her safe amongst strangers, but she neglected to observe the dangers of her own. A neighbour had seen two men leave her apartment, one of them being an Englishman. Being well acquainted with Mukhtar, the neighbour wondered what business had him call an Englishman to his abode. Thus, curiosity compelled him to make inquiries, but to his great surprise, he found Mukhtar’s sister alone in the apartment. He waited for Muktar’s return to home to relate to him the results of his findings. It soon appeared that Mukhtar was just as astonished to learn his sister had been the recipient of two men’s visit. The spark ignited, the neighbour began to add sufficient fuel to keep the fires ongoing. “It is good that I came to see this first,” he claimed, “or else any other person would have spread this news to the whole town. Your sister’s marriage would have been at stake and your honour would certainly have been lost.”
Mukhtar at once made the confrontation with his sister, demanding to learn the purpose of the Englishman’s visit.
She was speechless by her brother’s acknowledgement on the matter. His insistence to learn more had given her mouth a voice. She confessed the truth, which she has been repressing in her heart since. She did not want to marry the landlord. She objected to her brother’s decision, adding that if she would rather die than marry an old man. The mute suddenly had a voice, and he began to fear the consequence of it. He has given the landlord his word. The landlord has already invested a great deal of money into the reconstruction of his village home, including living in this lodge rent free for the sake of his bride-to-be. If his sister refuses marriage then he will be liable to make repayments, or worse, become homeless. He tried to make her see sense. This marriage was for improving her position too. She will become the wife of a respectable man of good wealth. She shall have all the amenities that their poverty cannot offer. Yet she remained resolved to her objection. His fear grew, and assessed the likelihood of this news becoming known to the landlord. Thus, he agreed to her decision, hoping this tactic may avert any drastic steps his sister may take in her headstrongness. However, the next day, on coming from mosque after evening prayers, his sister went missing. She left him a note. She had discovered of her wedding day. Her objection remained firm. Worried that his sister’s shameful behaviour will come to the neighbour’s knowledge, he began his search. He searched everywhere, but could not find her. There was no one that she is well acquainted with as to provide her refuge, and neither did she have any money to pay for lodging. However, with a calmer mind, he remembered those words that instigated his sister to object her marriage.
The Englishman.
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nbsp; He strongly suspected the Englishman’s involvement. Perhaps he may have paid her another visit and persuaded her to embark on this act of malignity. He immediately set forth to locate the Englishman. He desperately enquired every lodge. Thankfully, there were not many tourists in this part of town. “The Englishman” became description enough. It so happened, that at a certain lodge, his enquiries resulted with some hope. There were two Englishmen lodging here two days ago, but one of them has since left. Their guide and another Englishman still keep their rooms here. Both have gone out, and so he waited until they returned to the lodge. It was not until after sunset that the guide and Englishman returned. Grasped by anger, he asked the Englishman of his sister’s whereabouts. The Englishman and guide looked confused. They denied any involvement. Mukhtar remained persistent, asking whether it was not them that day that visited his sister. They denied everything, pointing out that there was another Englishman, who was a resident here before he left to take up another accommodation at another lodge. He seemed quite eager to move out. The seed of suspicion sprouted, Mukhtar desired to learn of address of this lodge. Jameel, the tour guide disclosed it quite reluctantly, and at last, he finds the other Englishman.
Francis was at first surprised that the brother could speak English, and then confused at the question the brother asked.
‘Where is she?’ Mukhtar repeated his question, searching the Englishman’s dimly lit room frantically. He looks under the mosquito net, but found no one asleep. His questioning eyes glowered on the Englishman again. ‘Where is my sister? I know you came to talk to her. You are the one who provoked her. She must have come to you. Did you not come the other day?’
‘I did what I felt was right,’ Francis answered determinedly.
There was a certain relief that he caught the right Englishman this time.
‘Who told you to interfere? Because of you, my sister has gone missing?’
The news startled him greatly. He sought confirmation.
‘Don’t act as if you don’t know anything,’ the brother, Mukhtar, accuses. ‘I can’t find her anywhere,’ he says helplessly, desiring to cry, but unwilling to show his weakness. He takes a seat on a nearby chair, no longer able to overlook his exhaustion. ‘God save me from humiliation!’ he pleads, putting a hand on his forehead as if defeated against the circumstance. If the neighbours should come to learn of this, then what face will he show before everyone?
The brother worried about his honour, and Francis feared for the girl’s safety.
‘You must have left her no other choice, but to run away,’ he says to the brother in anger.
‘I made a decision for her betterment,’ Mukhtar fiercely clears himself of the accusation. ‘But you poisoned her mind against me! You English are all the same – divide and rule!’
‘I simply asked your sister a question,’ Francis justifies, angered by the brother’s bitter remarks. ‘She was not happy with this marriage, yet you forced her. You did not have her best interest at heart. You wanted to rebuild your house. You sold your sister for some bricks! Your sister’s suitor was a father of four children - a man old enough to be her father. Yet, even then, if her heart was content with this alliance then I could at least understand. But she was not happy. She was forced. She did not love him -’
‘Girls do not marry for love!’ Mukhtar exclaims, looking shamefully at the Englishman’s ignorance of their customs. ‘Love is a luxury in your country, but here we cannot to afford it. Our daughters and sisters marry for survival.’
‘By pushing them into misery?’ he asks disgustedly at the brother’s explanation.
Mukhtar had the strong intention to justify his decision, but revising the objective he needed to complete before sunrise, he decides to leave. It would be futile to argue with the westerners. Besides, their interference has never done the country any good. It is in their nature to leave matters to another’s distress.
‘Wait,’ Francis suddenly halts him. ‘Did you inform the police? Perhaps they could help find your sister?’
The suggestion had him turn around at the Englishman again. He kept his dark livid gaze fixed with him, noticing the evident concern in the Englishman’s eyes. The Englishman was truly naïve to the sensitivity of the situation. ‘If marriage is survival for our daughters and sisters,’ Mukhtar states, ‘then her sudden disappearance becomes her family’s death.’
He added nothing further, turning away to resume his exit.
Francis could not deny the truth. News of girls’ sudden disappearance, particularly of unmarried ones, would result in her family’s humiliation. He was not a stranger to the uncompromising value of honour here. The authority will not take the matter seriously. His concerns for the Nargis’s safety garnered a tempest in his heart. He began to feel guilty, and so, felt just as responsible for the consequence of her missing whereabouts.
At once, his concerns gathered more strength when he assessed her brother’s failure to recover her. Worrying thoughts struck his mind, suspecting the girl to be suffering one extreme to another. He could not rest.
Thus, he makes immediate preparation to seek Jameel’s advice.
