The Black Coat

by Neamat Imam

  I imagined he could not sleep either. How could he? Our institutions were not functioning properly. His colleagues in the government did not value his trust. They were supposed to work hard to make the institutions strong so the country eventually became strong. But they took advantage of his dependence on them. It was they who had sold the relief items to the black market, multiplying people’s sufferings. If anyone deserved a bad day today, it was they, not he.

  I wore my Mujib coat every day. I wore it whenever I went out—even if it was for a few minutes, say to buy turmeric powder or a pack of chickpeas, or just to take out the garbage—as a tribute to his heroism. I said hello to people whom I had seen on the street for years now but had never wanted to speak to. I did not care how nasty they were as individuals and neighbours, or how young or old or politically indifferent and inexperienced they appeared. ‘We have already lost over a million people,’ I told them. ‘If Sheikh Mujib is as strict as we would like him to be at this time, to bring the country back to what we call the right track, he will have to kill another million. Is that what you really want? More deaths, mounting anger, madness and mayhem? Who among you can stand before me with your hand upon your heart, your mind free of clouds, and solemnly pronounce that you have put your country before yourself? Who among you can claim you are not tainted by bloodshed or violence of some sort? You may choose not to answer me, but I know the answer right away; it is here, in my own heart. Sheikh Mujib will have to kill our friends, our neighbours, our relatives, siblings, parents, husbands and wives, our children, because every house, every family, every neighbourhood has contributed to the making of this mess. If all us people are not cured, the country cannot be cured. Maybe he does not want to see any more blood on the road after all the blood we had to shed to free the country. If he does not, my belief is he is still the most patient person around here, our wisest and greatest person. He knows blood cannot be washed away with blood.’

  I shook hands with rickshaw-wallahs at street corners where they waited for passengers, began easy and sweet political conversations with them, grabbed their palms until they spoke at least one or two good words about Sheikh Mujib. I asked shopkeepers the price of mustard oil and garlic cloves loudly so that everyone saw I was in a Mujib coat and everyone understood Sheikh Mujib had not lost his voice despite everything: at least one Bengali was standing firm for him.

  At home, I bathed regularly for the sake of the coat. I shaved my beard with the sharpest straight razor available in the market, and smeared coconut oil on my hair so that it did not look unkempt. Working morning and evening, I kept the flat clean and the stairs and the yard shiny and spotless. There were dry weeds in the shadow behind the gate. I removed them with a spade, sprinkled water on the ground so that the dust settled down quickly. I opened all the windows to let in fresh air and light and regularly played the patriotic songs of Dwijendra Lal Roy on my two-in-one stereo, sometimes until late into the evening. If every house is uncluttered like ours, I believed, Sheikh Mujib will be successful. Great leaders too need great public support in critical moments.

  Nur Hussain did not wear his coat when we went out for groceries or to attend burial prayers. He was merely following my suggestions, I remembered. He was improving. He was improving exactly the way I wanted him to. But I wore mine with great passion. He might have found that contradictory. But I did not care. My priority was my leader. It would take me a thousand years to explain to him the worth of a leader like Sheikh Mujib in full, shallow and unimaginative as he was. Sheikh Mujib needed people like me who could evolve with time, who could leave behind their individual vendettas and serve some greater purpose. Appreciating his worth needed generosity and intellect. I understood what Sheikh Mujib was for us and what would make him complete in the new age.

  As I spoke to the people, I gathered most of them genuinely believed the famine would cost Sheikh Mujib dearly. It had already made him somewhat unpopular. Who knew where it was going to lead the Awami League as a party. If the present course of events could not be thwarted, as some predicted, the country would soon fall into the hands of those who opposed independence. They meant the Islamic fundamentalists, who were still living among us like intelligent predators, and wanted to reunite our country with Pakistan at any cost. The defeat of Sheikh Mujib would mean their victory and the eventual extinction of the Bengali nation. That could not be allowed to happen. Not on our soil.

  I hugged people again and again, patted their backs, and whispered to them in consolation. ‘Let us not doubt it,’ I said, ‘that the bad days will end. They will end because we still have people like Sheikh Mujib among us who can see beyond the present. He knows what is going to happen to us next year or ten, twenty years after that. It is not the first time in our history that we have faced hardship, and the problem now is not sovereignty: it is something as mundane, and essential, as food. We will get over it; after all, we have already attained precious sovereignty. We will kill all the fish in our thousands of rivers to feed our hungry people. We will collect all the leaves from the jungle and all the grass from the fields to fill our stomachs. We will live on simple rainwater, if nothing else is available. But we won’t have to do that because Sheikh Mujib will soon be victorious. Sheikh Mujib has always been victorious, hasn’t he? People of this country have known one leader alone: that’s him. He is a legend in our land. People will not desert him simply because we happen to have a temporary shortage of food that has brought us to our knees. The Bengali nation is not so fickle. Joy Bangla.’

  BOOK TWO

  1

  The Dishonourable Demise of Two Burglars

  Abdul Ali visited our flat one afternoon. He was in his punjabi and Mujib coat. The clothes were still new, but it seemed he had already lost interest in them. He had no interest in talking either. He just sat on the sofa, silently drank the tea that Nur Hussain had made him, and looked around. After a few sips, he pushed the cup away.

  ‘Is the tea not good?’ I asked. ‘Do you want some more sugar? Perhaps a few more drops of milk.’

  That was not it.

  Ruhul Amin the gatekeeper had shot two people dead the previous night, he said.

  They were burglars. They came in the dark, grabbed two sacks of rice, hurled them over their shoulders, and then tried to leave the premises over the boundary wall. Surprisingly, they came wearing Mujib coats and seemed to know exactly where the rice was. It was not immediately known if they had accomplices or acted alone out of sheer desperation. Moina Mia had advised local militia members to look into the matter.

  Though it was an unfortunate event, I told him, it was actually the fault of the dead. True, we were passing through a famine, but that did not give us the right to break into people’s houses to steal from them! ‘Where is morality? Where are social values, common sense and our desire to protect each other? Are we all turning into animals because we have not had a meal last night and we do not have any rice left for tomorrow?’ I told him the matter was not too complicated for someone with a stable mind to understand. Ruhul Amin was only doing his job. ‘Like the police. Will the police allow someone to leave with bags of banknotes from the vault of a bank just because the criminal needs the money? Not at all. Gatekeepers have to be gatekeepers.’

  I waited for his approval. His concern was sincere, I could see that. I was sure his confusion would soon fade away.

  Nur Hussain had followed neither Abdul Ali nor me. Standing at the window he must have thought we were talking about professional matters that he need not concern himself with. He moved to the kitchen and stayed there, leaving us alone.

  Abdul Ali sat motionless. He looked at me for such a long time that I felt uncomfortable under his gaze. So I thought an elaboration might help. I had seen many dumb people working at the party offices. The dumb became dumber there within a short while. The party sucked the intelligence out of them. It diluted their personality. Besides, he was not a properly educated person; probably he had no idea that there was a huge
conflict between individual choice and collective good. Individual choices must be set aside to allow the collective to prosper; even if that meant dealing with death.

  ‘There is no place for burglars in our society,’ I said. ‘Today’s burglars will be tomorrow’s robbers, witches and demons. They will eat us up. Today they will steal our rice, tomorrow our sanity, the next day our country. The day after that we will look behind us and find that our thousand-year-old history has disappeared. We have no tradition, no moment of sacrifice to take inspiration from. Those burglars were enemies of us all. We are better off without them.’

  Abdul Ali got up quickly, as if electrified, and then walked a few quick steps, then took a few slow steps, and then stood still, before saying he was not here to talk about the shooting, but to inform us we had more good luck in store for us. He gave me a forced smile. It was probably better than our previous good luck, he said. Knowing that he would not explain what this good luck was, I asked when Moina Mia expected us.

  He was expecting me, not us—he corrected me, with one eye on the kitchen door, and then said he was expecting me right away. I must go with him.

  I told Nur Hussain I would return soon, would inform him in detail what our meeting was about, he should not worry. This was the first time I was going to such a meeting without him.

  He nodded.

  Was the meeting about the two dead men? Was Abdul Ali trying to tell me something by only giving me the barest of information? He paced all over the room. If he was concerned, I consoled myself, it was only natural to conclude that he himself was associated with the burglary, not I. I was not a close enough friend he would be worried for if I were in danger. I must take note, I thought. If I’m asked if I’ve noticed any change in his behaviour, I could mention it. I could also mention the half-finished tea and his indifference. I must not forget anything.

  As I put on my Mujib coat over my punjabi, he watched me closely. ‘In case I stay out late,’ I said. ‘So many things can happen.’ He did not respond. ‘In case it gets cold,’ I said, louder. He still did not respond.

  Ruhul Amin opened the small door of the gate and stood aside for us to enter. If he could, I thought, he would have run away from us. Having shot two people, he was now a victim of his own guilt. He could not raise his eyes to meet mine.

  ‘Salaam,’ I said, finding him silent. ‘How are we doing today? Are we all happy in this beautiful weather?’ I noticed the .303 rifle on his back. Not a technically advanced killing machine. It was old, and had a rusty trigger, barrel and muzzle, as if it had been buried under the ground for a decade or more. But it had done its job.

  He must have guessed that I knew about the shooting, especially as I had been with Abdul Ali. Ruhul Amin must now think I was watching him minutely and wondering how he had hidden that killer instinct every time we had met and he had said salaam to me. He noticed me looking at him, and realized I could not have looked at him without looking at the rifle, without associating it with the act of killing, and without concluding that the rifle was only an extension of his unstable and repulsive inner self. ‘Sometimes it is hard for a man carrying a rifle to dissociate himself from the rifle,’ I said to myself. ‘They become one. The ego of the person makes the rifle powerful, and the rifle makes a beast of the person acting as a crude replacement for his spine.’

  It was better to further clarify what was already clear. Instead of condemning him, I thought I would sympathize with him. The dead were dead, I would say. It did not matter if they were two or two thousand. Whatever the reason, and however brutal it might appear to him, the truth was they were no more, and, therefore, any regret was unnecessary. And I could say what I had already said to Abdul Ali: it was not his fault. If they had not gone to steal, they would not have been dead now—provided they were not already victims of the famine. See, I am not dead, I would argue. My head is working fine, and I am not screaming for mercy for myself. He could see Abdul Ali was not dead either. That was because we had been able to control our most sinister thoughts the moment they raised their heads. We did not let them out, make us weaker individuals, and endanger our lives. We were not involved in silly crimes. ‘One does not need to work hard to see the truth in such a matter,’ I said to myself. If the burglars were so desperate for rice, they could choose a house without a gatekeeper or a house without a gatekeeper with a weapon on his shoulder. I could have pointed out lots of ifs like this, which would have led to one logical conclusion: Ruhul Amin was not guilty of murder.

  Then, on second thoughts, I stopped myself. What would my sympathy mean to him? Wouldn’t he have to kill again tonight if he came across burglars crossing the boundary wall with sacks of rice on their shoulders? What if they came in their hundreds, in league with all the people that went hungry in the neighbourhood? What if they were from his family, people to whom he owed something? They might say they needed his cooperation now more than ever, and they wanted rice, only rice—to feed their starving bellies, not money or animals or houses or plots of land in return.

  I could not decide the destiny of men, I thought, not even when they were burglars. Ruhul Amin must know what he had to do at a given moment in his given role. If he had killed someone it was entirely his responsibility. He would have to work through his anxiety and guilt. If the burglars proved too many and if they came every night, still it would be he who would have to decide what to do.

  Standing at the small door I noticed Abdul Ali step towards Ruhul Amin, take him in a hearty embrace, and pat him on the back. ‘Brother Ruhul,’ he said, in an equally hearty tone, ‘… my brother … O my brother!’

  Momentarily, I was confused. Was all this show of affection for killing the burglars and keeping his employer safe, or to express his sympathy with Ruhul Amin so that he did not feel bad for what he had done? I did not know.

  Ruhul Amin wiped his nose on the sleeve of his punjabi and freed himself from Abdul Ali’s embrace almost forcefully before going back into his gatekeeper’s cell. From the gate I saw him standing against the wall with his eyes closed.

  ‘He is in agony,’ I whispered to Abdul Ali. ‘Not every killer will feel the same way. Some will not look back, not for a moment. There is nothing called remorse in their book. Some will eat their clothes because they are not aware of what they are doing; the killing and its aftermath do not exist for them. Some will collapse in extreme fear. Will they kill themselves one day, like they killed their victims? Some will be so startled by their own action, they will behave as though they are deaf and dumb. But this one here is different. He will be scared of the slightest things now. Don’t talk to him. Whatever you say—good or bad—will embarrass him. Leave him alone. He will have to rip through his tormented soul before he is ready for a normal conversation. It is not easy. Give him time.’

  2

  Sold

  I sat down on the sofa, beside the bundles of leaflets which covered almost half the floor, and waited for Moina Mia. There was a door on the right which opened on to another room where I could see a huge pile of boxes. Two workers were unloading a van in the yard and making another huge pile at the rear corner.

  Moina Mia came through the door and handed me a leaflet which had two items on it: Sheikh Mujib’s face and ‘OUR LIBERATOR’ in bold letters. I looked at it once and then left it on the tea table.

  ‘So what do you think?’ Moina Mia asked, sitting opposite me.

  He had not told me anything about what Abdul Ali had referred to as ‘my good luck’, so I didn’t immediately understand what exactly he wanted to know from me.

  ‘What do you think of the leaflets?’ he asked. ‘Would they make people curious about the message?’

  Though the leaflets looked like promotional material of some remedial and therapeutic massage centre, I said I thought they looked good. I wanted to concentrate on our deal; maybe after the deal, if it went well, I would feel more enthusiastic about the leaflets.

  ‘Only good?’ he said. He was disappointed. ‘The
n see this one.’ He extended a new page to me, which was smaller in size but heavier. ‘Peel n’ Stick. Water-resistant, safe for any surface and restickable. Just came from the supplier. By the weekend, every bus stop, electricity pole, hospital door, school gate, restaurant counter, and public library desk in the city will be covered with these. Thousands of boxes have already been dispatched to carefully chosen Awami League representatives.’

  I held the sticker up. It had the same picture, though not the same wording. The new wording, printed in the same bold letters, was: ‘OUR PROTECTOR’.

  ‘We have to be innovative,’ he said, sticking one on the tea table. ‘The target audience of this campaign is the new generation, more specifically, those who did not go to the war because they were too young at the time. For future political stability in the country it is necessary that they know who Sheikh Mujib is.’

  It was an honour that he had let me see these materials before the target public saw them, I said, instead of commenting on their artistic quality. They had inspired me. I now felt more involved in the campaign than ever. If there was anything I could do other than what I was already doing, he should tell me. ‘Maybe I can take a box of leaflets with me and distribute them in the market,’ I said. ‘I can stand at the crossroads and campaign among young people who come there looking to steal food. There are so many of them and if they are not brought into the party soon, they may get involved with drugs and addiction. It won’t be a burden for me at all. I have to go to the market anyway.’

  ‘Distributing one box of leaflets at a local market won’t have much of an effect,’ he said. ‘It won’t have the kind of significant impact we’re thinking of. We’ve gathered together fifty-five different types of leaflets, twenty-eight types of Peel n’ Sticks, sixteen types of banners, fourteen types of billboards, and twenty different ads to go on TV and radio, as part of our nationwide informational campaign. We have arranged twelve hundred exhibitions and forty-two thousand discussion programmes across the nation, all to be executed in the next twelve months. For our seventy million people we have printed a mass of three hundred and fifty million leaflets so that each person receives five copies. We do not want to see a single mind in the country to go against Sheikh Mujib and the Awami League.’