Bright Lines

by Tanwi Nandini Islam

  “We’ve been busy,” said Rana. “Anyone hungry?”

  “Hell yes!” yelled Charu.

  “This is great,” said Ella, noting Rana’s thoughtfulness. He’d prepared blankets for them to celebrate Azim’s birthday meal on the beach, which was just a few minutes’ walk on a path behind the house. Crescent moon–shaped fisherman’s sampans dotted the waters. Young women and their children were shrimping in the adjacent cove’s shallow waters.

  Rana, Ella, and a buxom young cook named Malika set the baskets of food, plates, and bottles of soda down on the blankets. As Malika began dishing out food, Stalin hungrily grabbed the serving spoon to get more rice and chicken onto his plate.

  “Let’s give Azim a plate first, yeah?” Rana raised an eyebrow.

  Stalin handed his father a plate. “Here you are. Happy birthday.”

  “Be careful of the tide and the sand,” said Azim, taking the plate from Stalin. “It’s like quicksand in parts. You can get pulled in.”

  “Yes, he’s right,” said Hashi. “Ella can’t swim well.”

  “Girl like you, can’t swim?” Stalin smirked. “It’s a shame. Every Bangladeshi should know how to swim.”

  “Shut up,” said Charu. “What’s a shame is that huge chunk of chicken on your lip.”

  Ella ignored them. They’d been in their own bubble world and she wanted no part of it. She noticed Malika standing around, as if waiting for someone to ask her for help.

  “Malika, please, join us,” said Ella.

  Rana nodded and spoke to her in a fast southern dialect Ella didn’t understand. Malika laughed and nodded. She waved bye to Rana and went back to the cook’s house.

  “What’d you say to her?” asked Ella.

  “That I’d feed her dessert in an hour.”

  “And that’s why she looked so happy.” The last time Ella had been on a beach was last summer, and she’d been pretty damn happy, too. She wondered if her parents had been married on a day like this, with the sun glittering like a path of diamonds on the ocean. “I love these wispy Australian pines. They make the beach look even more epic.” Pine needles swayed in the wind. These trees looked young, no more than fifteen years old.

  “The villagers planted them to guard against the wind. They can’t do much to stop monsoons, but they can build a barrier to buy themselves some time,” said Rana.

  Four young shrimper boys had crowded around Charu, offering her dozens of cowrie and hermit crab shells scored from the beach.

  “Oh, thank you!” Charu smiled at the boys. “I love cowrie shells, thank you.”

  One of the boys waved at Rana. “Hi, sir.”

  “Hi, Nur Alam.”

  “Want to play football?”

  Rana nodded. “Want to play?” he asked Ella.

  “Sure,” Ella said.

  “Shit, I’ll come, too,” said Stalin, wiping the last bits of food off on his shorts.

  Nur Alam kicked the ball toward Rana, and all the other younger boys howled in delight. They dribbled the ball back and forth, between two makeshift goals the boys had constructed from fishing nets and seashells. Ella had never felt quite inside her body. Anwar had never been much for sports, and Ella had always felt gargantuan and shy about trying out for any of the girls’ teams in school. She stole the ball easily away from Stalin, who groaned, “Not fair, man, I’ve just eaten enough to feed the village.”

  The black-and-white sand under her feet was striated in chevron patterns. She kicked the ball hard, and it snapped into the goal.

  “Yaaaaaa!” cheered the boys.

  “What’s your name, brother?” asked Nur Alam, slapping Ella a five.

  “New York Bhaiyya.”

  Rana laughed. “That’s what we’ll call you eh, New York Bhaiyya?”

  “Sure.” Ella recalled last summer, when she and Maya had sat on the beach, watching the shirtless men playing a game of soccer. At the time, she’d watched them, coveting their ease and brotherhood.

  Here, at the edge of the world, she felt right at home.

  * * *

  Back at Azim’s birthday picnic, everyone was munching on a box of handmade fried jalebis. Ella wasn’t a fan of sweets, but took half of the orange twisted pretzel her grandfather offered.

  “You know, I think tonight we should go to the koborstan,” said Azim.

  Hashi frowned. “You’re right, Baba. I haven’t been in almost twenty years. I can’t imagine how I will feel.”

  “What’s that?” asked Ella.

  “Your parents’ graves,” said Anwar.

  * * *

  Since the local mullahs did not allow women to enter graveyards or masjids in these parts, Azim told them it was best to go to the graveyard at night, after evening prayers.

  “Are you going to come?” Ella tied her shoelaces slowly, to see if Charu would answer the way she hoped.

  “I think I’m going to stay behind,” said Charu.

  “Yes, me, too. I’ve been there many times,” said Stalin.

  “You’ve been in your own world this whole trip,” muttered Ella. “This is important to me.”

  “El, babe, I know this is huge. But I think you need to do this for yourself. I’ll go before I leave. Promise.”

  “Whatever.”

  Ella left them to watch whatever stupid television program they planned to watch. Anwar, Hashi, Azim, and Rana were waiting for her outside. They held hurricane lanterns, and Rana handed Ella her own. He led them away from the house and down the dirt path, motioning for them to hurry to cross to the other side of Marine Drive.

  “Buses fly past very quickly,” Rana said. “So we have to run.”

  Ella could hear drumming in the distance and passersby took on the outlines of aliens, nearly invisible in the darkness. They walked for several minutes on Marine Drive, and then turned right, down another dirt path.

  Row after row of gravestones stood indistinguishable from one another.

  “These here are all unmarked graves. Your parents are here,” said Azim.

  “Allah,” Hashi groaned, leaning against Anwar.

  Anwar squeezed Ella’s hand, and whispered, “It’s okay, my love.”

  “Why are they in an unmarked grave? How can you remember where they are?” Ella asked.

  “Each year, the site is flooded. Waters form a temporary lake.”

  “Do—remains get washed up?”

  “They haven’t yet. Bodies decompose quickly here. Bones are heavy enough.”

  “So, we’ll never know where they are?”

  “No, we won’t.” Azim sighed. “We tried. When we buried them, I made three scratch lines on their gravestone with a chisel. But each year, floods would render the scratches invisible. When I used to paint three lines, same thing happened—water dissolved the paint. I tried remembering by counting where the grave stood. But after counting twenty graves, I started to feel I was going mad. So I knelt in front of someone’s grave in this checkerboard of graves. I wept for whoever this person was. How could I know? Maybe they were Rezwan or Laila.”

  “We should have buried them on higher ground,” said Hashi.

  “No use worrying about what we can’t change, girl,” replied Azim.

  They stopped in the center of the cemetery. One of the gravestones shimmered in the moonlight.

  “Can we go there?” asked Ella.

  “Yes, sure. Why this one?”

  “I—I don’t know.”

  “Then, for this trip, these will be their graves. You know, Rezu and Laila would say there’s no difference between them or these other men and women buried here.”

  Anwar bowed his head, and brought his hands to cover his face. He seemed to be murmuring prayers. Hashi cried softly beside him.

  Ella and Rana knelt beside the graves, but her grandfather remained sta
nding. She clasped her hands together, as she had the night at the masjid with Maya, and like that night, she had no idea what to say. The grave rose into a statue, until Laila’s face crystallized in the stone. Laila began dancing about, sweeping the other graves with the bottom of her sari.

  Ella wanted to dance with her. She raised her hand to Laila, and her grandfather raised his. Rana looked uncertain as to what they were doing.

  “What was my mother like?”

  Azim shook his head. “I can only try to do the girl’s memory justice. Laila Ali was the only child of my medical school colleague Dr. Mir Ali, and his wife, Noor. Laila was a brilliant, autodidactic girl. She learned French, Russian, Hindi, Assamese, and Oriya fluently, for the family had a history of working in imperial offices. The only lamentable thing about your mother was that she was very tall. Just as tall as you, but out here, it made her susceptible to teasing.”

  “Out there, too.”

  “Ah, well. I suppose nothing is a completely original idea, including teasing. She blossomed, eventually. She wore belled anklets to remind the world—I am here. But from what I heard from colleagues in the arts department, Laila was a disastrous student. Impossible to track down. Missing loads of classes and then showing up the day of her examinations. I had my eye on her, not for myself, of course, but for my son, who was also very tall. Rezwan first saw Laila at the Alliance Française—isn’t that right, Anwar?”

  “Yes, sir.” Anwar nodded.

  “The Alliance Française had been around in Dhanmondi since the late fifties, still intact after my return from Moscow. We were all there to see a screening of Godard’s delightful À Bout de Souffle. Laila soaked up all the films, read any articles or books she could get her hands on, before and after the war. She translated an essay—‘The Laugh of Medusa,’ I believe it’s called—for the Bangla feminist journal, Joya.”

  “But Anwar said they met on their wedding day?”

  “Ah, yes. Rezwan saw Laila at the screening. But he didn’t talk to her. Rezwan had some—strings to tie up.”

  “He was in love with someone else?”

  “Love, or infatuation—I don’t know. There had been some girl, a Khasi girl from the north, whom he’d met during the war. I’ve only seen her by way of photo. She was pretty.”

  “You saw her picture?” Hashi asked. “I’ve never seen the girl’s picture.”

  “It was such a long time ago,” said Anwar. “Who knows where the picture is?”

  “We should’ve held on to Rezwan Bhai’s things.” Hashi’s voice quivered. “I would have liked to see the woman my brother loved.” She steadied herself on Ella’s shoulder. “Of course, he loved Laila. . . .”

  “I understand,” said Ella, her voice cracking.

  “Hashi’s mother was much more conservative than I,” said Azim. “I don’t care anything for tribal mentalities. I mean, I married a Russian in 1950. But Begum would become hysterical when she heard Rezwan mention marrying a Hindu or Christian, like this Khasi girl. Anyway, he and Laila got to know each other the night before their wedding. And it seemed as though they really liked one another.”

  “Doesn’t seem like a long enough time to get to know someone.”

  “To say the least. But the war wasn’t exactly a joyous time to wed. To reap the benefits of romance you had to be married. At least back in those days. Dr. Ali and I joked that the match was genetically sound. And we were right.” Azim smiled.

  “Did they love each other?”

  “Very much,” whispered Hashi.

  “What about the other girl?”

  “Her family moved,” said Azim.

  At the same time Rana said, “She died.”

  “Oh, my,” whispered Anwar. He squinted and peered ahead, as if he’d seen someone.

  “What is it, Anwar?” asked Hashi.

  “Well,” said Azim, patting Ella’s hand. He brought her up to stand next to him. “The one thing I do know is that Rezwan never saw her again.”

  They made their way through the cemetery of unmarked graves, back to the main road. After all of these years, Ella realized that she would never know where her parents were buried, what they looked like, who they had been or whom they’d loved. She looked upward at what seemed like a million stars, blinking and turning colors.

  This was enough.

  * * *

  Anwar lasted three days in Cox’s Bazar before he and Hashi decided it was time to return to Dhaka. Two weeks in their homeland had flown by. He wanted time to explore his old stomping grounds, and Hashi had lots of shopping to do. They’d grown listless with the carefree beach life—they were New Yorkers, after all. By the end of the week, the girls would take a trip to Rangamati. Afterward, they would all meet again in Dhaka.

  23

  Charu settled into the backseat on their drive to Rangamati, which cut through gorgeous rural back roads. After a week in Cox’s Bazar, going to the Chittagong Hill Tracts would certainly change things up. Stalin had told her the history of the disputed lands—Khagrachari, Bandarban, and Rangamati—home to the Buddhist tribes, with the Chakma as the majority. In the seventies, after the war, scores of Bangladeshis resettled the land, angering the indigenous tribes, who formed the Shanti Bahini in resistance. After decades of violence, they had signed a peace accord with the government six years ago. The Hill Tracts remained tenuous territory, and foreigners weren’t allowed to enter without special visas. Charu and Ella would have to speak as little English as possible. Not exactly the easiest thing to do.

  Every few minutes, Charu rolled down the window to try and snap a photograph, but the moment had passed.

  “Rana, can you please slow down when I’m trying to take a picture?” she asked.

  “I’m trying, sister, but you have to give me a warning.”

  There’d already been so much to absorb. Charu hadn’t been keeping up with her journal, something she’d started doing for her Intro to Feminism and Gender Studies class. Everything was so vivid here, colors turned up a thousand percent. In Cox’s Bazar, while walking miles of beach with Stalin, she’d met a few Chakma women villagers. They lamented the real estate developments that threatened their fragile fisheries. Happy to meet Charu, one woman, Kalimaya, invited her to her family’s hut for tea and biscuits. Kalimaya’s hut was composed of woven dried bamboo lattice, dyed indigo blue. She and Charu smoked cigarettes, as the woman recounted her childhood. Her first home had been destroyed by the creation of Kaptai Lake in Rangamati.

  “When they built the dam on the Karnaphuli River, they flooded our homes. All of our animals drowned. There used to be tigers there. Now there’re only people, no animals. Actually, there are crows. Because the crows will eat anything,” said Kalimaya, lighting another cigarette.

  “Where did you get that?” Charu asked, pointing to a world map on the walls of the hut.

  “In the book market.”

  “I love it.”

  “Me, too, didi. Everything is vast. Even if we have no evidence it exists.”

  * * *

  They all lauded Rana’s impressive driving. Every two minutes a huge bus blasted its horn, driving straight toward them before swerving back into the proper lane. As they drove higher and higher into the hill tracts, jungle green rice paddies turned into dense, untouched swaths of sal forest. Rana pointed out the different trees, some of which they’d never seen before. Shegun trees, or Burma teak, were used for ornate wooden furniture sold by the road. Mile after mile, Sufi mazars appeared. Their archways were painted sidewalk chalk colors not usually associated with mausoleums.

  Charu rolled down the window to snap a picture of a young bearded Muslim man, who rode a motorcycle wearing a surgical mask to avoid the dust. He wore a helmet, while his wife rode sidesaddle and helmetless. Charu shook her head at the brazen disregard for his wife’s life. The man held eye contact with Charu as she snapped the p
hoto. It was remarkable, the look in his eyes, which treaded desire and disgust.

  “The people are quite religious here. At least the Muslims,” said Stalin. “So you’ll have to cover up those arms.”

  “Why does it matter? You’re here to protect us, aren’t you?” said Charu.

  “I’m not saying you have to cover everything. Just mind your arms and legs.”

  “That might as well be everything.” Charu didn’t mind the performance of piety, though. She’d brought a few of her haute hijabi creations to Bangladesh, just in case she wanted to try them out. Part of her felt it was wrong to appropriate them for experimental purposes. But Maya had always done it because she liked to do it, not because anyone forced her. The Bengali women out and about in the rural hill towns all wore hijabs, it seemed. Charu much preferred the striped Chakma skirts. But in this man’s world, where a bare arm would welcome the evil eye, who wouldn’t want to be covered up? Hijabs were like a protective and beautiful room, built just for one.

  * * *

  Once they arrived in Rangamati, Azim Nana told them he felt dizzy from the winding roads, and would need to rest. They were staying at the Parjatan Hostel, the town’s only decent accommodations provided by the government. Tired from the drive, Rana wanted to hang around the hostel, get a bite to eat and drink. Ella told Charu she’d rather just stay with them.

  “All right. I guess we drove out here to be the only ones down for an adventure?”

  “Never mind these boring people,” Stalin said. “We’ll do what everyone else does here—a boat ride on Kaptai Lake. We’ll even explore a local Chakma village. It should take up the entire day.”

  Charu had been looking forward to this. Her uncle had talked about the tensions between Bengalis and Chakmas. The religious and landholding customs were incompatible, to say the least, Stalin had told her.

  They walked down the sandstone steps behind the Parjatan, to the red suspension footbridge that stood over the tranquil lake. Huge rain trees spread their thick branches, perfectly open for a swing or tree house. They made their way across the bridge and walked down the hillside, where boatsmen sold rides. They saw a signboard that read: BABLU’S CHITTAGONG—COX’S BAZAR—CHITTAGONG HILL TRACTS TAXI AND BOAT SERVICES.