Split

by Taslima Nasrin

  ‘Give the driver some food. Not in the kitchen, make him sit at the dining table.’

  Mother had no problems with whatever I wanted. Even when K and I would go inside the bedroom and lock the door in the middle of the day, Mother did not have a problem. From time to time she would leave and go back to Mymensingh. As long as Mother was in the house it felt like home. Everything was usually spic and span; there would be no water on the bathroom floor, no crumpled sheets or dirty clothes. Food would be ready even before someone could ask for it, usually all my favourite dishes. No one had to be told to give me tea at regular intervals in my study and everything in the house would always be effortlessly beautiful. When Mother was at home I could barely sense her presence, but when she was not there I could acutely feel her absence. One day when she was not at home I asked Yasmin about her.

  ‘She was angry so she left.’

  ‘Why was she angry?’

  ‘Apparently you said too much money was being spent on the groceries.’

  ‘Yes, I did. But it was not meant for Ma.’

  ‘She thought it was.’

  Mother had no issues with my independence. The only thing that made her cry was when I behaved badly with her and it made her go back to her nomadic life again. She would get upset about my scolding and move back to Abakash. There, Father behaved the same way and she again came back to me. Mother did not have a stable roof over her head, she had no home. What I never noticed was how I could suddenly turn into Father while speaking to her. I had always respected him irrespective of what a cruel man he could be; perhaps even while I was berating his cruelty I had nursed a secret admiration for his authority, a fascination I had failed to recognize then for what it was.

  When I finally learnt to stand on my own feet, when life became comfortable, quite unconsciously I became like Father, authoritarian and powerful. Mother’s poverty, her wretchedness, her lack of beauty, her inferiority complex, her docile nature, her pain, her foolishness, her religiosity, her superstitions, all these were anathema to me and it ensured the growing distance between us. She tried her best to become a relevant member of my household; I could only think of her as an extra person just like Father did back in Abakash. During Eid I would head over to Abakash laden with gifts for him while completely forgetting her. Then if I had to give her something it would be an old sari from my wardrobe, something I used to wear often but did not fancy any more. Even then Mother would be ecstatic. She would refuse initially. ‘You bought it for yourself, you wear it. Whatever I have is enough.’

  ‘No, I don’t wear this any more.’

  ‘Still! What if you feel like wearing it? Keep it.’

  ‘No. I don’t like this sari any more.’

  She would be forced to take it in the end but she would go around showing it to everyone nonetheless. ‘Nasrin just gave this to me. She loves this sari. Did not wear it even once!’

  ~

  I never asked Mother to save on household expenses but she did it nonetheless. If we were to buy some chicken for one day she would try and make it last for two. I never compromised with my share so she would give me her portion and eat dal and rice with the maid instead. She was far more concerned about my financial troubles than I. She was also perennially afraid whenever Bhalobasha tried to walk, afraid that the toddler would fall and hurt herself. If I went and stood in the balcony Mother would be terrified that some unknown assailant was watching me from the road or from one of the neighbouring buildings. It was horrible to see Mother so afraid all the time. The police posted at my gate were no longer there; one fine day they had simply not turned up. Only when the protest rallies came anywhere near Shantinagar were police posted on the road in front of my house. I could walk out of the house at odd hours whenever fancy struck me and Mother would always try and stop me. ‘Don’t go out now. Anything can happen any time, who knows?’ Most of the time I would not even turn back and she would go on trying. ‘At least take someone with you. Don’t go alone.’

  Quite honestly, after being afraid for days and months on end it was all becoming too intolerable for me. Even if I could abruptly leave the house it’s not as if I could go anywhere. So I usually headed out of the city. Sahabuddin, courteous, reticent and extremely honest, would ask me, ‘Aapa, which way should I go?’

  ‘Whichever, wherever you want to go.’

  I had nowhere to go so Sahabuddin usually drove south. There was no destination southward; it was simply quieter, far from the noisy city, towards the villages, forests and rivers. I liked the speed, the sense of escape and I adored my hair getting all mussed up by the rushing wind. All I wanted was to walk alone through the forest, perhaps find a tiny earthen hut surrounded by a fence of banana leaves, bathe in a pond or swim in the river, go fishing or play gollachhut with the girls in the village. But I quashed such feelings deep down, acutely aware that with my urban style of draping the sari, my car, my shoe-clad feet and my short hair, I would stick out like a sore thumb there and be ogled at like a circus clown. So I would simply ask him to stop the car at a quiet spot and sit inside.

  Occasionally I asked Sahabuddin about his home, his wife, his children and he bashfully and hesitantly answered my questions. When I asked if the salary I paid him was enough he usually said it was. When I asked if there was anything he wanted he usually said there was nothing as such. Other drivers usually got around 1500 to 2000 taka per month but I paid Sahabuddin 2500. It was my choice to pay him that much and not something he had demanded. Besides, he had lunch at my place every day. Even though he had the usual ten-to-five hours, on most days he had to stay back till eight or nine and sometimes even as late as two in the night; he never complained. When I tried giving him money for the extra hours he would shrink in embarrassment and I had to force him to accept it. Altogether he earned around 3000 taka per month.

  My previous driver had been young and used to drive very fast; when sent to pick someone up he would usually stop midway and sell fuel from the car. After replacing the young man with Sahabuddin I never had to worry about a driver again. He would wash the car and keep it sparkling clean. The other drivers used to park their cars in the garage of Eastern Housing to chat and play cards there but I never saw Sahabuddin with them. He usually sat inside the car and read booklets on the namaz and such things. Once he informed me fearfully that some men were coming around to the garage every day to look for him. He was afraid the strangers were going to try to harm me and they were looking for him to warn him not to drive my car any more or perhaps to hide bombs inside. Sahabuddin would not step out of the car at all and he also informed the guards that he did not know the men so under no circumstances were they to be allowed inside the garage. A lanky, clean-shaven, pyjama kurta–clad sixty-five-year-old man was my protector without my knowledge.

  I had never told him what was happening in the country around me but he knew regardless, although he never let on that he knew. If he were to notice individuals or a rally advancing towards my car he automatically sped up without my prompting him to do so and I did not have to tell him to avoid roads where anti-Taslima rallies or meetings were being held. On one such occasion I asked him, ‘Why are you taking a detour?’

  ‘There’s a rally that way today.’

  ‘What rally?’

  Sahabuddin was quiet. He was not aware that I knew what the demonstration was about.

  ‘Who all are marching?’

  ‘They are not nice people.’

  It was the briefest answer he could have given—bad people were marching that side so I had no reason to go there.

  ‘Do you need to refuel?’

  ‘No.’

  The car did not need too much fuel. Given what little use it was put to, not much fuel was consumed.

  ‘Sahabuddin, do you need money?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘You had spoken to me about your son’s matric exam. Do let me know if you ever need anything.’

  ‘No, I don’t need anything.’

 
Sahabuddin got awkward whenever it came to money. There were limits to how polite and devoid of greed one could be and Sahabuddin time and again tested such limits. Often it seemed to me he was not a human being at all but an extraterrestrial who had somehow ended up on our dirty planet and I could not help but wonder how different our country would have been if everyone was as honest as him. A handful of rich men had taken enormous loans from banks and were showing no signs of returning the money. They were also friends with those in high places and the government usually forgave their defaulter friends. In fact no matter who was in power this arrangement remained the same and there was no space for honesty in any sphere of life.

  Teachers used to be honest but seeds of deceit were growing among them too. They were demanding heavy tuition fees from students and assuring them success in examinations in exchange. Police personnel, engineers, civil servants—everyone was taking bribes. Roads were being constructed one day and showing wear and tear in a matter of weeks. Everything was being adulterated. Greedy doctors were recommending patients to private clinics for operations to perform surgeries that were not required simply for the sake of money. It was the same with ministers and bureaucrats. The ones who already had enough to eat wanted more to consume, the ones who had nothing were going hungry and being forced to watch. If there was even an iota of honesty left it was among the poor. But why were they all silent? Why were they not demanding what was rightfully theirs?

  Rickshaw-pullers braved the rain and the sun for the meagre amount of money they made, silently tolerating abuse and even violence from their customers. Along the periphery of five-star hotels and tall apartments of Baridhara there were numerous people living in rundown slums who were not protesting the injustices being meted out to them. Hungry beggars were watching rich men stuffing themselves with food in restaurants and then burping in contentment but despite that they were not ready to snatch food away from them.

  Once I had gone to the Kawran market at night when trucks laden with fresh vegetables and greens would be parked there for the workers to unload things. On my way back after buying some vegetables I had chanced upon workers sleeping on the pavements. None of them had homes of their own or even a roof to sleep under, no fans during summer, no nets to ward off mosquitos. After a day of back-breaking work they were happy as long as they got a sliver of place to sleep in at night; they did not know how to protest.

  Although my first reaction at such stark differences between the rich and the poor was anger, I had to stop to ask myself what right I had to be angry. To anyone who was homeless and destitute was I not just the same, a rich person with privileges? I had an expensive apartment and a car, so I was rich. I told myself I had done nothing dishonest to earn my wealth—I did not have an illegal business, neither was I a conman nor did I dabble in the black market. However, the self-loathing was not that easy to shake off. Was I supposed to renounce everything and become a pavement dweller, or go and live in a slum? Was I supposed to give away all my wealth, live on one square meal or none at times, like most people did? Would that address the inequalities between the rich and the poor? Perhaps not. Would I be able to address these inequalities through my writing? No, I would not. Corruption had seeped into society’s veins. No politician was interested in thinking about changing the living conditions of the poor, let alone doing something about it. Whichever party came to power through the democratic machinery had but one objective: to abuse their power as much as possible to serve their personal gains. Concerns like the good of the country and its citizens or rectifying social inequalities were farthest from their mind.

  I had once asked a poor man from the slums adjoining Baridhara how he felt about all these rich people around him and their endless wealth. Why were they willing to accept such inequalities that ensured happiness for the rich and absolutely nothing for them? Why did they not protest against the rich? The man had replied, ‘Allah has given them, He hasn’t given us. If we suffer in this world Allah will make sure we have everything we want in the hereafter. Thus, one must have integrity. That’s what Allah is testing, our integrity, through all this suffering. If we can pass this test Allah will come to our aid.’ I was convinced these were not his words. He had parroted what our politicians had taught him.

  Our politicians used religion to keep the poor at bay. Otherwise if even 80 per cent of the suffering masses were to take to the streets in protest, the rich would not have been able to go on with their lives of privilege and luxury. Religion was effectively a weapon used by the rich to perpetuate their privileges, just as it was a weapon for politicians to keep the poor quiet and to win elections. Religion could be used to stoke religious sentiments, it could be used to hide the death of thousands of people in the hurricane at Uri Char and make the homeless live under the open sky. Religion could be used to explain to the people who lost their houses and their possessions to the floods every year that Allah was testing their integrity. The question no one had the gumption to ask was why only the poor had to repeatedly prove their honesty. It was the upper and middle classes that reaped the benefits; the middle class harboured aspirations of becoming the upper class and conveniently adopted all the latter’s practices. At the same time all movements against social injustices invariably arose from among the educated and conscious middle class, which was why perhaps most such movements failed to solidify into anything larger and significant in the long run.

  Despite being socially conscious, despite their keenness to fight for the betterment of society, the middle class was not a victim of this systematic inequality. When victims fought, they fought for their lives. Obviously, movements by victims fighting for justice were disrupted all the time. None of the factories in the country adhered to international labour laws. Workers were made to work well past their hours, they were paid less and not given any of the benefits due to them. Whenever they threatened to organize and fight for their rights their leaders were poached away by the owners and bribed with a lot of money to sabotage the movement. That is how the country was running.

  Despite wide-ranging advancements in agricultural technology across the world, in a primarily agrarian country like Bangladesh ploughs were still the main tool for tilling land. Farmers who were producing crops did not get the returns they deserved because middlemen between the farmers and the buyers took away nearly half the profit. Was it not possible to institute a system where this chasm between the rich and the poor could be bridged? Where the rich would not be able to keep on increasing their wealth at the expense of the poor and the latter would not be forced to live under inhuman conditions?

  There was hardly anyone in the country who could hope to become rich through honest means anyway. The ones who were very rich had mostly earned their wealth through dishonest means, by swindling other people; most did not pay their taxes either. The honesty and dedication required to work towards true equity between the rich and the poor was not something most people had in them. Even if individuals wished to walk the path of honesty, institutionalized dishonesty on the part of the government made sure no one remained honest for long. If the upper echelons were corrupt was it any wonder that it would trickle down below too?

  Ours was a poor country. We did not possess wealth below our earth with which all of us could become rich overnight. The population was expanding at a rapid rate; numerous people were dying every year because of natural disasters; buses, trucks, cars and trains were overturning every other day while ships and boats were getting lost at sea—calamities that were claiming hundreds of lives in a matter of minutes. Despite everything, the population numbers showed no signs of slowing down. Children were dying of malnutrition every other day but even as their mortality rate went up, so did their birth rate. Uncertainties were on the rise and so was the lack of proper education, both contributing to fostering misconceptions, superstitions, poverty and blindness. As anxiety and despair increased, so did the reliance on religion. Even in an urban space like Dhaka there was more than one Islamic gathe
ring organized every day. Religion was a booming industry and the ones investing in it were earning well too. In fact, anyone whose livelihood was all about conning other people was bound to flourish in such a system—the more the number of gullible victims the more their income. There was not a single honest leader in the country for the people to place their trust in and neither were any of the political leaders interested in thinking about the good of the people. Everyone was busy watching over their own stockpiles instead.

  Dr Kamal Hossain started his own political party called Gono Forum (People’s Forum). Once a trusted aide to Sheikh Mujib, he was the one who had drafted the secular constitution of Bangladesh. Having fallen out with Sheikh Hasina over a difference of opinion he had left the Awami League. The forum did not have too many members and most of the affiliates were highly educated scholars and legal professionals, including a few hardened leftist leaders. If the forum could ever lay claim to power then there was a possibility of real change in the country, but Dr Kamal was yet to find much success in making the forum popular among the people. Neither was it possible, since to be a popular political outfit one had to employ political agents, maintain goons on the roster and be ready to cheat people. All this was hardly possible for someone who wished to be an idealistic politician. In the last election Dr Hossain had lost by a significant margin to Haroon Molla, an uneducated businessman dealing in trucks. A celebrated jurist, an adviser to the United Nations, highly educated, honest, secular, and yet such a candidate had lost to a politically inexperienced man—this could hardly be the sign of a properly functioning democracy. One had to only give false assurances to 80 per cent of the populace as well as give them some money, and it ensured votes no matter what manner of criminal the candidate was. The more the money, the bigger the lies, the more the votes!

  Often, while out on one of my long drives I would be so immersed in thought, with my head resting on the window pensively, that I would fail to notice when we reached home. The sound of Sahabuddin’s voice would wake me out of my reverie; he would be there holding the car door open for me. Time and again I asked him not to open the door for me but Sahabuddin would only lower his head in response. On my way to my apartment I often wondered if the courtesy I was showing Sahabuddin was for his sake or for mine. Probably it was for myself to make myself feel as if I was generous. For Sahabuddin, holding the door open was not a chore. He did it to keep me satisfied, so that one day I would not be able to casually tell him that his services were no longer required. Sahabuddin needed the job. He was not stealing fuel from the car or trying to hoodwink me into giving him money because he was an innately honest man who as a child had perhaps been taught aphorisms like ‘never do evil’, ‘never hurt anyone’ or ‘never be dishonest’. He was old but he was still living his life based on lessons learnt in childhood that most others had forgotten. Even if they remembered they had no interest in adhering to such tired maxims, with the corruption around them not making things any easier.