Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  Had she not said anything because she had been afraid that I would judge her or accuse her, or demand to know why such things happened only to her? Had she been anxious or ashamed that saying anything would only make people point out that she was not as beautiful or talented as me? Had she just been too humiliated by the man’s uncouth behaviour to ever mention the event to anyone? Or perhaps she had not said anything because she knew I had put her on a pedestal and she had hesitated to jeopardize my foolish fancies. She had been aware of the dreams I was nurturing for her, she had not wanted to shatter them and cause me hurt. She had chosen to play the part of the sister I was familiar with and loved, continued singing my favourite songs and reading the same old poems. She had chosen to spare my shitty fragile pride and avoided revealing her own pain lest it hurt me too. She had nurtured my dreams with music and poetry, given my desires wings and herself receded into the shadows to lick her wounds.

  Months went by and life at Abakash plodded on by a series of fine negotiations with happiness, discontent and age. The people of the house were used to spreading their joys around and nurturing their hurts in isolation. The pomegranate tree grew heavy with fruit and Mother, absolutely delighted, gave us some of the fruit and also took some to my grandmother’s. Everyone there was all praises for the beautiful fruit her tree had borne and she was so inspired that she brought home two more saplings to join the one in the courtyard. Everyone saw her joy; no one noticed her agony. Yasmin’s honours examination results had been declared and she had done very well, so much so that the professors were sure that if she worked hard she would get first class marks in her master’s. Yasmin came home and relayed the happy news to us for all of us to share in her joy, and we sat together and rejoiced in her success. No one noticed her despair; that burden was for her to bear alone.

  And then that day arrived, that terrifying day. I had gone to Dhaka two days before to inquire about my book and I came back home to find Yasmin missing. She had left the night before without telling anyone. There was a piece of paper lying on my table.

  Bubu, I’m leaving. I will not stay in this house any more. Don’t try to look for me.

  Mother was sitting quietly.

  ‘Where has she gone? Why? What happened?’ I screamed.

  She did not respond. An icy wave passed over my skin. Sufi—Father’s sister’s daughter, our cousin and basically the resident domestic help—informed us that Yasmin had left at dawn wearing a black sari. Suddenly, Mother spoke. ‘Your father beat her so much! Of course she left! She has finally escaped this house.’ Weeping softly, she told me about the unimaginably cruel act that the house had witnessed the night before—Father had whipped Yasmin, his own daughter, like an animal. Not an inch on her body had been spared from the assault of the whip. Clumps of hair had come off, so hard had he pulled at them. He had dragged her so roughly that her clothes had ripped off, revealing angry red welts on her body. What had she done to deserve such violence? She had returned home at midnight. Father had been waiting for her impatiently, pacing up and down the veranda. Seeing the car he had run up to the front gate to see two boys sitting inside the car that had dropped Yasmin off. If he had waited he would have found out that those two boys were Prabir and Shakeel. To them Yasmin was like an older sister; she used to attend all their religious occasions and was a friend to them. Years younger than her, they had hired a car from somewhere and implored her to join them on a day trip to Dhaka. Prabir had never seen Dhaka before and they had meant to come back by the afternoon anyway. They would have too, had the car not broken down midway. Hence, the late return, the whipping and her subsequent disappearance.

  I sat and listened, my blood having long frozen in my veins. When we—Mother and I—set out to look for her, it was afternoon already. At our first stop, Nani’s house, we found out that Yasmin had indeed stayed there the night before. She had been glum but she had not said a word to anyone about what had transpired at Abakash. No one at Nani’s house had suspected anything either; they had simply assumed she wanted to spend the night at her grandmother’s. That afternoon she had taken the black sari off, borrowed clothes from Hasem mama’s daughter and left. We went to many other relatives, to her friends, but did not find any clue regarding her whereabouts. We went back home hoping she would eventually return. The next day we went out in search again and made telephone calls to a bunch of places asking about her. Amidst mounting anxiety, we searched for her by asking our relatives and friends in Dhaka over the next few days. Sleepless, not having had a morsel of food or a drop of water, I was beginning to feel like a fish being tossed about in a stormy sea.

  Another day passed without any sign of her. Her good friend Sobur from Agricultural University came to ask about her and accompanied us in our search. Father had never liked Sobur before but we saw him softening towards the boy and going up to him to ask about Yasmin. Unable to locate a single clue anywhere Sobur even went to the hospitals to check. Three days later we finally received word from Milan’s house that Yasmin was in Phoolpur with him, in her classmate Jaman’s house. Milan had called to inform us that Yasmin and he were married. The news arrived late and I spent the rest of the night pacing the room impatiently, trying to calm myself down, trying to convince myself that this was all another act, another dramatic scene that she wanted to stage like before. I prayed again and again to let the news be wrong. Since Hasina was from Phoolpur and taking her would make it easier to find the house, she accompanied me early the next morning as we set out to bring Yasmin back home.

  Crossing the Brahmaputra, we took a rickety tin bus to the Phoolpur bus station, jostling for space and trying to save our heads from being bashed against the tin roof as the bus bounced over rough terrain, all the while battling a toxic cocktail of human sweat and the combined smells of spit–piss–shit from children. At Phoolpur bazaar we asked after Jaman and followed the directions we were given, over a long walking trail that was partly built and partly a rough track, to a tin house. Hasina went inside and came back to confirm that Yasmin was in the house and that she had indeed married Milan the day before. I could not—rather, I did not—want to believe it. Convinced it was all a lie, I helplessly glanced around to find someone who could reassure me so.

  We entered the house to find ourselves facing two unmade beds, two pillows lying side by side and Yasmin’s hairclip beside one. I was shocked to realize that this was the bed on which she had slept with Milan the night before. So was it really true? Had she truly gotten married? Still not wanting to believe what was staring back at me all I could do was pray for the sky to fall on our heads or a massive flood from the Brahmaputra to wash Phoolpur away. I began to babble. ‘Yasmin, come with me. Let’s go. Quickly! It’s me! You were angry with him, that’s fine. Now let’s go home.’ No one paid any heed to my rant. I saw her from across the courtyard, wearing a different sari, her face and head covered. For a moment something swept across my soul, as if I had been trying to protect something soft and fragile for a long time from a pack of ravenous hyenas and the feral beasts had finally won.

  Hasina and Jaman tried to intervene. ‘If they are already married . . .’ What did that even mean! Married?! In my head all I knew was that I had come to take her away and she had to come back with me. Hasina went to tell her I was asking her to come out so we could leave; she came back with an unequivocal reply: No. My lost sister was right in front of me but I had to leave without her and this harsh realization broke my heart. I could not bear it—she did not want to come out in front of me, let alone talk to me or go anywhere with me.

  That day, till the last ounce of energy was left in my body, I begged her, even ordered her to come with me. It was fine that they had married, let Milan go back to his house and let Yasmin come home, I suggested. Let them finish their studies and then we could arrange a grand public ceremony and confirm the union. However, Yasmin was unwilling to listen to any of my arguments. If she did not wish to finish her degree that was fine, but they were young so we co
uld take some time at least to figure out how to set them up in a home of their own. When that failed to elicit a response, I suggested we arrange a wedding the day after but she had to come home first. No matter what I said Yasmin refused to listen to anything, steadfast as she was in her decision to stay with Milan, her new husband. I realized that her relatives, her parents, her siblings, no one meant anything to Yasmin more than her husband any more.

  And so, in the end I walked away from her and left Phoolpur in tears. She had turned me back, and in the process unleashed a storm in my world that was bent on sweeping away all the dreams I had carefully nurtured for so long: a life with Yasmin filled with music and poetry. It felt as if the earth had been snatched away from under my feet and the aftershocks were tearing down the few remaining edifices that were my life’s work. Feeling utterly impoverished, I boarded the bus headed for Mymensingh and returned home enveloped in the gloom of the bus horn and the grease, the loud yells and the quiet sighs. The house was empty. It had never seemed so empty before. Father, Mother, Dada, everyone was there, but still it seemed there was not a single soul left in the house. I was alone and I could hear myself crying. I had always actively distanced myself from the various ailments in the house: Father was afflicted with masculinity, Mother suffered from religion and Dada was obsessed with his wife Mumu. The only person I had been close to was Yasmin. The girl who had been gradually blossoming into a poet, an artist, much more beautiful and gifted than many of her peers, such a talented girl, had chosen a boy to whom neither poems nor songs meant anything more than a mere jumble of letters. I was racked with despair and anxiety about how she was going to cope. She was just beginning to sense what it meant to be independent, just learning its ropes, but she was bent on turning her back to that and deliberately choosing a life of servitude.

  The courtyard was white with the light of the moon. I sat alone in one corner. There was no one to sing a song to the full moon, no one to call me ‘Bubu’. Mother was weeping softly. Father was sitting with his fingers pressed against the veins on his temple. Pain, immense and mute, was perched heavily on the spine of Abakash.

  Many, many years later, Yasmin told me how hurt she had been when she had left Abakash that dawn in a black sari she had taken from my cupboard. Father’s mercilessness had manifested in terrible self-loathing that had forced her to leave the house. She had gone to college instead, attended her classes and spent a long time in Prabir’s house after class before making her way back to Abakash eventually. She had stood there in front of the black gate for a long time wondering whether she ought to go in. Her hurt and outrage had returned in full force and she had turned back, hailed a rickshaw and spent the night at Nani’s, hoping someone from Abakash would turn up in search of her to take her back home. No one had come.

  She had considered going to Dhaka but she had no money and had been too ashamed to borrow. She had gone back to college the next day and then back to Abakash in the evening to stand immobile in front of the black gate before turning away yet again. Unable to think of a place where she could seek refuge she had finally gone to her classmate Jaman, who had a small rented place on College Street. She had gone there and sat for a long time without telling him anything about what was wrong. She had finally come to the realization that if she did not wish to return home, if she wished to avenge the violence that Father had unfairly brought down upon her, then the only course open for her was to get married. She had considered suicide but had been too afraid; besides, it would have been too much work to procure poison. So the only course had been the one available to most women if they wished to escape their father’s house—exchange it for their husband’s.

  However, this resolution had an immediate snag. Whom was she to marry? Whom could she so shamelessly propose marriage to? She had been afraid that whoever she had thought of initially would reject her if she were to ask. It was then that she had thought of the long-forgotten Milan. She had instantly set out to look for him. She had not wasted a moment after finding him, telling him in no uncertain terms that she wished to get married immediately and he had to make up his mind quickly if he wished to marry her too, or lose the chance forever. An astonished Milan had asked her about the prospective groom of her parents’ choice she had told him about. Unwilling to dig up past hurts she had evaded the question and that very night they had left with Jaman for the latter’s house in Phoolpur. The next day, afraid of getting married at Phoolpur lest someone recognize Yasmin as Dr Rajab Ali’s daughter, they had accompanied Jaman to Haluaghat to the marriage registrar’s office there to sign the relevant documents. That had not been easy either. The officer had been suspicious that Yasmin had been abducted under false pretences by Milan and Jaman; they had had to bribe the man to get their work done.

  After returning home I cried and asked Mother why none of them had gone to look for Yasmin at Nani’s the night before. Tortured by guilt Mother keened like a madwoman and replied, ‘If only I knew! I did not know she had gone there.’

  ‘If you had gone and brought her back none of this would have happened.’

  She kept crying and saying the same thing over and over, ‘If only I knew. I thought she would come back after her anger subsided. I’ve lost her for good—’

  Yasmin’s life had changed; she was not the same old girl any more. She was not going to roam around Abakash singing her favourite song ‘Amra emni eshe bheshe jai’ (Thus we are swept away), she was not going to recite poems like before, she was not going to go to college and then come back home in the afternoon, she was no longer going to accompany me on our afternoon rickshaw rides through the city. She had willingly given up on the endless possibilities in her future and her chance to live independently. She had left Abakash and married a classmate who could not string together a single sentence properly; this to me was as good as receiving news of her death. The girl who used to be my shadow was no longer by my side and the pain of losing her was akin to feeling as if she were dead. Everything around me was crumbling and I had never felt so alone in my life. Abakash, the entire city, everything seemed desolate and lifeless.

  I took a few days off and escaped to Dhaka. Quashing all her pain and sorrow deep within, Mother went to see Yasmin at Milan’s house after they returned to the city. HSS came down to Mymensingh on hearing about Yasmin’s disappearance. He stayed for a day at the Circuit House and spoke to Yasmin over the phone from there. He requested her to reconsider, to go back home and not destroy her own life, but his pleas fell on deaf ears. I had nursed the hope that she would return eventually. It often happens, people realize they have made a mistake and come back after things have cooled down. So many people return, Yasmin never did.

  ~

  After returning from Calcutta I found myself completely alone in Abakash. There was no one there to listen to my stories of the places I had visited and the things I had done. There was no one with whom I could sit and listen to the music and poetry cassettes bought from Calcutta. My suitcase lay abandoned; there was no one to grab it from me with a ‘Show me what you have got from there’, or, ‘I want this . . . no . . . give me that!’ One afternoon as I lay on my bed listening to Shantideb Ghosh’s rendition of ‘Ami kaan pete roi’ (I wait to hear from you), the only thing I could think of was how much Yasmin would have been moved by the song. On a sudden impulse I made a telephone call to Milan’s house. On recognizing her voice at the other end I lowered the receiver and turned it towards the song playing in my room. After the song was over when I put the receiver back up to my ear again, hoping to hear someone breathe if only to reassure myself that someone indeed had been listening, I heard her choked sobs from the other end. Was it any wonder that a natural-born singer like her would be moved by such a plaintive tune?

  Since she was married, since she was not going to come back home, everyone at Abakash eventually re-established communication with Yasmin—everyone except me. Yasmin too began visiting Abakash, often accompanied by Milan dressed in a kurta pyjama. She would usual
ly stay for half an hour to an hour at the most, chatting over tea and biscuits like any other visiting acquaintance. While she was at home I usually stayed in my room behind closed doors. The day Father finally relented to Mother’s tireless requests with a series of heavy sighs and decided to accept their alliance, so much so that they bought Yasmin a red Benarasi sari and jewellery and arranged for a private dinner with some of Milan’s relatives, even that day my door remained firmly shut. She was a different Yasmin and I could not pretend that everything was fine in front of her; neither could she. She was married and she was someone else’s wife and daughter-in-law.

  I occasionally got news about the strict regime she had to maintain at her in-laws’, how she was managing to forge bonds with her mother-in-law, with her older brother-in-law and his wife, with her husband and even with the other relatives. She had become party to their joys and sorrows and they were of the utmost concern to her. People she had barely known for twenty-two days were suddenly more important to her than someone she had lived with for twenty-two years. She was learning how to be a dutiful housewife, how to pull the drape of her sari over her head in front of elders, how to carry out their every order and wait on them hand and foot. She was training in the kitchen with her mother-in-law, learning how to cook and feed her husband meat and fish. She was learning how to wait for him quietly in her room, how to pull the drape lower over her head at the sight of her brother-in-law and how to speak softly and demurely to everyone in her new family. She was being trained to keep the house pretty and dream of home and hearth and furniture. She was being taught how to forget her ambitions, aspirations, music and poetry so she could easily let go of the last strains of melody left in her life once and for all.