Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  ‘Some are asking why the publishers of Lajja are not challenging the ban in a court of law.’

  ‘A court case?’ Minu’s face fell and he looked around him in discomfort. It was clear to me he did not possess the guts required to challenge such a draconian law in court. ‘Will a court case make a difference?’ he wondered in a barely audible whine.

  ‘It might. And even if it does not, it will still show them that we have not given in to the government’s bullying. What they are trying to do is against the freedom of speech and expression.’

  Minu stayed quiet for a long while. He sipped his tea with an audible slurp and pushed it aside; it had gone cold. Then in a soft voice he said, ‘Write a new book for me.’

  ‘New book? Now? I am busy with the corrections of Lajja. It’ll be done in a couple of days.’

  ‘How much time does it even take to write a book? Sit, finish and get up, in one go. Humayun Ahmed has written so many books overnight.’

  ‘Minu bhai, I can’t write like Humayun Ahmed. How can one write a book overnight? Besides, the corrections of Lajja should be done very soon. I’ll think about a new book after that.’

  ‘How many times will you write the same book? That too a banned one! You are rewriting it, but I can’t print it any more. You must know that I am leaving the import and export of books and opening my own publishing house. Don’t leave me high and dry now!’

  I did not wish to do that to him, so I gave him my word that I was going to write a new book for him. And it was not just Minu who was after me with such a request! Things were so stressed that even the sight of a publisher was enough to terrify me. Moinul Ahsan Saber, a good writer, had started a publishing house called Divyaprakash and had also come over to my place on a number of occasions to ask for a book. ‘Nasrin, if you don’t write a novel for me in a few days I am going to die.’

  How was I supposed to watch out for so many people? The line of publishers wanting to work with me was increasing daily. Writing was not my only vocation. I had a full-time job, myriad issues pertaining to the household to take care of, a number of magazine columns to write, besides our weekly meetings. This last bit was not technically strictly weekly; it could be called on any day and any time. These meetings were open for everyone irrespective of gender, age, profession; neither did it matter if the attendee was a writer or not. Allegiance to a particular political creed was not an issue for us either, or faith in a particular religion, although none of those who attended our meetings were religious in any way. The only thing we ensured was that everyone in attendance was on the same page regarding certain fundamental issues that concerned all of us—establishment of social democracy, secularism, freedom of speech and expression, freedom of thought, a free press, equal opportunities for all vis-à-vis food, education and health care, a secular pedagogy, ensuring women’s rights and equity between the sexes, equality of law, eradication of poverty, strict actions against criminal and terrorist activities, security for all, preservation of Bengali culture and identity, a just political and socio-economic system, purging superstitions, fundamentalism and bigotry from the social body and the complete obliteration of communal politics.

  We discussed everything: politics, the economy, society, religion and sometimes literature and culture. We never fixed a prior date for a meeting, neither did we ever fix an agenda of what we wished to discuss. Anyone could call a meeting on any issue they wished to discuss with the group. There was no fixed place where the meetings were held either. Since I did not have a husband or children my house was usually the most ideal place. There was no dearth of enthusiasm and dreams on our part and we were all equally perturbed by the growing tide of fundamentalist ideology around us. We were aware that these reprehensible elements were mustering their forces to launch an all-out attack on us and we had to be prepared to withstand the assault.

  Purabi Basu had left her high-profile job in the US to come back to Bangladesh to join Beximco as a scientist. In her free time she was also writing short stories. In such a time of anarchy when everyone, be it a poet, a novelist or a writer of short stories, was writing political columns, she too was not far behind. Since our Bengali identity was in jeopardy she brought out an edited volume of essays called Bengali, along with journalist Haroon Habib. Then she began work on editing a huge book titled Ekhono Gelona Adhar (The Darkness Hasn’t Left) with Professor Safi Ahmed of Jahangirnagar University, a collection of news reports and essays on the communal violence in the aftermath of the demolition of the Babri Masjid.

  Safi Ahmed was like her shadow and seeing them together reminded me of Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir—a truly remarkable philosophical camaraderie. When someone like MF, who was known as an intellectual, refused to call whatever had been done to the Hindu minorities as violence and went on to claim that the culture of Bangladesh was fundamentally Islamic in nature and needed to be preserved, it alarmed us no end. We were not as apprehensive of the stupid as we were of the cunning and it only intensified our desire to unite and protest and marshal our forces to fight a common enemy. One day I received urgent summons from Purabi Basu to discuss our plan of action, the programme for the protest, the work we had to do, who was going to write and when. None of us had any time to waste and we went ahead as we planned, but despite everything I could not get rid of the feeling that not enough was being done. All of us could see that our country was beginning to decay but no was doing anything to prevent it. There were not too many of us and the ones who were willing to stay silent and let things be were far too many in number compared to us.

  ~

  The work on Lajja got over rather fast. I had to finish the entire edit lying down, not on the bed but on the floor. I had been suffering from a terrible backache and the orthopaedic took an X-ray of my spine and asked me to stay off my feet entirely; I was not allowed to go to the bathroom by myself either and was asked to spend three months lying on the floor on my back, without turning on my side. This was the prescription, and when I inquired about the disease I was informed that my spine was too straight. It was something I had been born with, a too-straight spine, which meant that whenever I tried lying face down or tried to bend over there was a risk of dislodging the vertebrae.

  The spinal column is not straight; it bends in a wave near the lower back. But my spine did not possess that undulating shape, hence all the trouble. There was a treatment for it but it could never be turned into a spine like what most others had. The best course of action was to lie down on one’s back to realign the vertebrae. Even after three months of this treatment I was told never to lie face down again. I was also asked to not carry anything heavy and always sleep on a hard bed for the rest of my life if I wanted to keep my straight spine intact.

  I knew three months of bed rest was never going to work for me, but I did take a two-week leave from the hospital to rest and lie on my back on the bedroom floor. I had the computer moved to the floor too and, switching between lying face down while working and lying on my back otherwise, I typed in the comfort of the knowledge that my spine was being taken care of in the way the doctors had asked me to.

  Once the work was done I took a printout of the new version of Lajja from my computer, this one nearly twice the size of the previous version. I never read any of my books after finishing them because invariably a hundred errors popped up, especially in the construction of sentences, and it made me want to rewrite the entire thing all over again. I knew that way I was never going to finish a book in my lifetime. The one good thing in reworking Lajja was that it helped me flesh out some of the information.

  However, the next big hurdle was to figure out how to get the manuscript to Calcutta. Officers from the Special Branch were always posted in front of my house and if I attempted to go to the post office with it they were surely going to follow me and arrest me for smuggling contraband. Since I could not leave the country—my passport had still not been returned to me—the only recourse was to have someone who was going to Ca
lcutta take it along with them. However, none of the people who I found out were scheduled to go to Calcutta around the time were brave enough to attempt such a daring mission.

  At such a moment of crisis Mostafa Kamal came to my rescue. A straightforward but garrulous man, Kamal was the brother of renowned singer Firdaus Wahid. While the latter had made quite a name for himself, Kamal had never attained that level of success. The first time I met Kamal was in Calcutta during a post-event dinner organized by Abrittilok at Kenilworth Hotel. Sunil Gangopadhyay had introduced us. The man I had met in a suit had suddenly turned up at my place one day in a T-shirt and sandals and immediately launched into a boisterous conversation without even bothering to pause for formalities. ‘I came to see how you are. Tell me, how is everything! I arrived from Calcutta the day before. I usually stay at Sunil’s whenever I’m in Calcutta, you know; Sunil and Swati don’t let me stay anywhere else. Sunil was telling me about you. So I said to him, I’ll visit Taslima one day. Do you know Nabanita? Nabanita Dev Sen! Of course you know her! She asked me to go see her but I couldn’t manage this time. Tell me all about you. When are you going to Calcutta? Everyone knows you by name there! I had thought I would pick up one of your books from Badal but I didn’t get the time.’

  Mostafa Kamal was quite an old hand at talking all by himself for a length of time. ‘Sunil has written a book about me, do you know? Have you read it? He recorded everything I said. And then he wrote an entire book out of it . . . Firdaus and I don’t talk any more. So what if he’s my brother, I don’t care.’ Kamal would turn up at my place suddenly and as long as he stayed the house reverberated with his liveliness. He would tell me all about his relatives, his neighbours and his friends, almost as if we had known each other for ages and I knew everyone around him.

  Similarly, he would tell me about his own misadventures and the ensuing repercussions. ‘I got married, took my wife to Canada, and then Dora left me. It’s all my rotten luck I tell you. Every business I try, it fails. Right now I’m thinking of another one. Supplying maids to Malaysia. It’s in high demand . . . I don’t have a house or a car. Even money, there’s some today and there won’t be any tomorrow . . . All my brothers are doing well. That’s fine, let them. You know what, no one likes me, it’s because I’m a little crazy.’ On the one hand he would casually drop names of famous people he was well acquainted with while on the other he also freely admitted that he was nobody.

  Mostafa Kamal came to my rescue at such a trying time and boldly offered, ‘You want to send the manuscript to Calcutta? Fine, I’ll take it.’

  ‘Really?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘It won’t be a problem?’

  ‘Why? What can happen? Who will do what?’

  Dr Rashid was there and he pointed out that the Special Branch officers usually followed anyone who entered or left this house. If he was to get caught with the manuscript it would be a disaster. Not just sale, even the possession and conservation of Lajja was forbidden. Kamal’s face went pale in an instant. He had magnanimously declared he was going to get the manuscript to Badal Basu in Calcutta so he could not back out of his promise. But he put in a condition that he was not going to leave with the manuscript. Someone was going to have to hand it over to him on the way to the airport. Who was going to take the responsibility of taking the manuscript out of the house? Dr Rashid volunteered and the two of them worked out the logistics of the exchange in a furtive conversation—which road, which turn, in what clothes, which car, left or right, black briefcase, dark shades, so on and so forth. All in whispers since even walls had ears. The title page with the name of the book and the author was expunged from the manuscript.

  In the middle of the night—with pounding heart and trembling legs, soaked in nervous sweat and the incriminating manuscript in his possession—Dr Rashid left my house. If he had been religious he would have perhaps prayed to Allah too. With the manuscript under his pillow he spent a sleepless night and left home at five in the morning. At the previously designated spot just past the Mahakali seven-point crossing a man in dark shades suddenly materialized in front of him as if by magic, or like an alien from another planet. Almost on the same beat a brown packet from his sling bag made its way to the other man’s black briefcase like a packet of toast biscuits or a new garment sample. Silently the man with the sling bag turned and headed south while the one in the dark shades headed north. Perhaps keeping each other in mind both walked away as swiftly as possible to disappear before anyone could even catch a whiff of them.

  Lajja managed to cross the border and reach West Bengal.

  ~

  I did not write Lajja because I wanted to have it published from West Bengal. I wrote Lajja for Bangladesh. The book had caught the attention of Ananda Publishers only after the pirated copies reached West Bengal. The authorities at the publishing house took the help of the police and got some of the counterfeiters jailed eventually. I did not ask them what had dictated their actions—ethics or business. The manuscript taken by Mostafa Kamal was the first official manuscript I sent to Calcutta and Ananda Publishers published Lajja in West Bengal.

  A ban was perhaps a contagious thing. News arrived that Lajja had also been banned in Sri Lanka though there was not one reason I could think of why the book should be banned there. There was no end to the debate over the book either. The conversations went on everywhere, on the road, in trains and buses, at homes and offices, courts and markets and public grounds . . .

  One day Shamsur Rahman, Nirmalendu Goon and Bilal Chowdhury were at my house when the talk invariably veered towards Lajja.

  Pushing a copy of Inquilab in my direction Chowdhury said, ‘The BJP has apparently published Lajja. They have gotten it translated too.’

  ‘The mullahs are blaming Taslima for the fact that the BJP has published or translated the book,’ Goon interjected, ‘but how is this her fault? If Golam Azam loves my poetry will that be my fault too?’

  I intervened. ‘How can the BJP translate the entire book? There are many things in the book against them.’

  The only criticism Shamsur Rahman had against Lajja was that despite everything the book failed to provide a complete picture of the movements that were continuously battling the forces of communalism and the fact that there were secular individuals too in the country. I accepted his point and told him that my wish had been to narrate the story from the point of view of an angry Hindu boy to whom none of the secular and non-communal movements were of any help. On the BJP, Rahman remarked, ‘Just see how they are trying to turn something completely non-communal into a communal issue. Debesh Roy of Calcutta has written a novel from the point of view of their Muslim minorities, does no one here notice that?’

  Goon burst out laughing. ‘The mullahs are saying the BJP has paid Taslima Rs 45 lakh to write Lajja. So, Taslima, aren’t we getting a cut too? Or do you want it all?’ Laughing, I replied, ‘Inquilab is writing this, isn’t it? Now even the common people believe that the BJP has actually paid me money!’

  Shamsur Rahman was having none of it. ‘It’s so easy, is it? Just saying you’ve been paid off? Why aren’t they proving it then? Before the elections the BNP had accused India of paying Rs 500 crore to Sheikh Hasina. The Awami League had shot back with a 600 crore offer from Pakistan for Khaleda Zia. Neither has been able to prove these accusations yet.’

  I could not help but agree with him. ‘And they will not be able to prove their accusations against me either, that I was paid to write Lajja. But what I am wondering is why are they out trying to slander me? Have the political parties paid them off?’

  Throwing the copy of Inquilab aside with a curse Chowdhury burst out, ‘More than the Hindus it is the Muslims who have benefited from Taslima’s Lajja. The book is an example of how compassionate Muslims can be. To speak on behalf of the minority despite belonging to the majority, that too so boldly and insistently, is not something you get to see too often. Muslims can probably use this when the time is right, to show how ope
n-minded they can be.’

  Laughing at his suggestion I countered, ‘Bilal bhai, so easily you have turned an atheist like me into a Muslim!’

  ‘Aren’t we all atheists? Since you have a Muslim name they will slot you as a Muslim. That way no one is an atheist here. You’re a Muslim or a Hindu, a Christian or a Buddhist. Religion is a must.’

  I turned to Shamsur Rahman. ‘Religion is the culture of the uneducated, and for the educated culture is religion. Isn’t that so, Rahman bhai?’

  ‘Who do we call educated?’ Rahman replied. ‘Golam Azam is an educated man, so is MF. Both have university degrees.’

  ‘No, no, I’m not talking about academic education,’ I hastily added. ‘Even a person who has never gone to school can be educated. Take for instance Araj Ali Matubbar.’ Chowdhury, who was a great admirer of the self-taught philosopher and rationalist, excitedly joined in at once. ‘Araj Ali was a poor farmer. But look at the beautiful books he wrote. His books should be taught at school.’ Shamsur Rahman nodded at the suggestion and added, ‘Not just schools, they should be part of the syllabus in colleges and universities too. Reading his books will help people raise pertinent questions about religion and many will find inspiration in them to embrace atheism.’

  Kulsum came in with tea and everyone picked up a cup. Meanwhile, Dr Rashid had come in and silently taken a seat. He used to be an active member of the JASAD35 but recently his role had taken a more passive turn. A sharp and rational individual, Dr Rashid was staunchly against any form of communalism, superstitions and religious dogma. While sipping tea I pondered on a more immediate question: Were all our problems going to disappear if the Muslims were to turn atheists? Somehow I was not convinced by such a quick fix. I was convinced that someone like Golam Azam was an atheist too and the same went for all the leaders of the Jamaat. It was their followers, the foolish gullible disciples, who were the true believers. These were the people who were being led by the noose of religion around their necks, for people like Golam Azam to play their political games. Keeping the tea aside I turned to Shamsur Rahman. ‘I believe Golam Azam is an atheist. Take Ershad for instance. Do you think he believed in religion? The way he suddenly amended the constitution and made Islam the state religion, do you think he did it out of his love for Islam? Of course not. It was a clever use of religion to serve the needs of power.’