Revenge

by Taslima Nasrin

  “What are you saying?” I was thunderstruck, remembering my conversations with Dolon about how well her husband was doing in business. “Is that the reason Anis is staying on in Chittagong?”

  “Must be.”

  “Does Haroon know about this?”

  “I’m sure he must.” Ranu said.

  “What about Dolon?” She was here visiting us again, but I knew she was hell-bent on getting back to Chittagong.

  “Bhabi, you’re so naive!” Ranu said. “Don’t you know Dolon’s father-in-law caught Anis with another woman the last time he was in Chittagong? It was Haroon who ordered Dolon straight back to Dhaka.”

  So that was the real reason Dolon wept at night. I was speechless. Haroon had kept all of this from me. Ranu went on. “We are so grateful to you, bhabi. Haroon is bearing all our expenses. He is a god! If I were in your place, I would never have allowed it. Doesn’t it make you angry?”

  “It’s complicated,” I replied, trying to sound indifferent.

  “Don’t you want to live in a place of your own? I do.”

  I laughed, taking her hand. I too had such dreams. A dream of life under an open sky. I have forgotten those dreams, I thought, forgotten even what a blue sky looks like!

  Looking intently into my eyes, Ranu said, “Please, please ask Haroon to give him some money.”

  “Which him is that?”

  “Don’t you know? Him. My husband.”

  I started to laugh out loud. She couldn’t speak Hasan’s name because he was her husband! But I swallowed my laughter. Wasn’t I bound by the same rules? I never uttered Haroon’s name in public. What was the difference between Ranu and me, between Amma and me, between Dolon and me? We all lived under the same constraints!

  “Please, please ask Haroon to set him up in some business.”

  “Why doesn’t Hasan talk to Haroon directly?”

  “He’s too timid. He can hardly speak to anyone.” Ranu sighed. “But Haroon should invest in Hasan! My husband is his own brother, and he has already given sixty thousand rupees to Anis, who is related to him only by marriage. My poor husband is so desolate, he can hardly get out of bed. Bhabi, please, please talk to Haroon!”

  “Haroon is deeply concerned about his family. I’m sure I don’t need to remind him.”

  “But he will listen to you. What you say carries weight. Oh bhabi, you have prestige in this house.”

  “It’s not me. The prestige I suddenly have is because I’m with child, and the child to whom I give birth will carry on the family. My words don’t matter. You and I are in the same situation, exactly. We are powerless.”

  “Then how can Dolon throw her weight around so recklessly?”

  I shut my eyes. I was sleepy so much of the time now. Ranu came close and whispered. “Know why Dolon can’t visit her in-laws? She hit her mother-in-law! She threw a dish at her! She’s become a devil, if you ask me!”

  I don’t know when Ranu left, but late that afternoon, Sebati woke me up. She examined my eyes to see if I was anemic, felt my pulse, checked my blood pressure, tapped my lungs, and declared I was one hundred percent fit.

  “Afzal is preparing to leave,” she said.

  “Really? When?”

  “On the twenty-seventh of this month.” She looked pale, as if she wanted to talk about Afzal, but I wouldn’t let her.

  “When are your exams?” I asked.

  “Not for a while, but I’m working very hard. I never get to bed until almost dawn.”

  “Is Afzal still bothering you?”

  “He wouldn’t dare. He’s such a wimp!” Sebati really did look haggard, as if she hadn’t eaten for days. I wondered if she would have been so angry at Afzal if he had come to her rescue. And then she said, “At least he’s stopped painting those female nudes!” I thought the paintings of me were safely hidden, but clearly Sebati didn’t see me in her brother-in-law’s studies of color and light.

  “And what is he painting instead?”

  “I don’t really know, but the other day I saw one of his paintings, the figure of a woman clad in a sari, standing with her back to us, her face out of view, a long staircase rising endlessly in front of her.”

  I felt miserable listening to Sebati tell me the latest news about Afzal. I tried to recall his features, but I could not. I hadn’t seen him in weeks, since I hardly ever stood on the veranda anymore. Does he have a mustache? How long is his hair? It didn’t matter anymore. It wasn’t worth it to me what I’d suffer if I slept with him again. And really, what difference did it make to whom I was married? Haroon or Afzal, Karim, or Rashid? My situation wouldn’t be any different. A wife is like a buffalo circling a mill, her nose to the same grindstone, day in and day out. At least in loving Afzal without marriage, I had escaped that tyranny. Desire led me to him. In the end, I mortgaged my body to Afzal in order to purchase power.

  When night fell, Haroon again lay beside me, rubbing his face on my stomach, inspecting my bosom to see if there were any more red marks. “You’re not allowed to eat hilsa fish, or else my child will break out in rashes,” he repeated. Every day now, he arranged for me to have chicken soup, four eggs and half a pint of milk. He wouldn’t let me refuse, insisting it was doctor’s orders. Now I ate first, finishing my meal before the men sat down. Haroon wanted to be sure I got the best.

  I knew all the food was doing my figure no good. In my own eyes, I was gross, but nourishment was necessary for the healthy development of the child in my womb, and Haroon knew that. He had never before shown any interest in what I ate, but now he was like a mother hen. At night he fondled me with so much feeling, it continually took me by surprise. I had no idea he could be such a sensitive lover. I felt engulfed in the intensity of his emotion. “Tell me,” I asked one night. “Tell me, what do you want? A boy or a girl?”

  “I’ll accept your gift with gratitude,” he said solemnly, holding me in his arms. “A boy or a girl. It does not matter.”

  I was not convinced. I knew Haroon, like nearly every other man I knew, hoped for a boy. Who could ignore the advantages of being born male? As an oldest son, Haroon enjoyed unlimited freedom and opportunity, while Dolon lived under the limitations imposed on women—the limitations that still bound me. I had allowed this fetus to be conceived in a flash of anger. Yes, there was pleasure too, but not in the spirit of my girlhood dreams. I was not at peace. This child was a protest, a way of taking revenge, and its being was infused with the pain and suffering of all the women I knew.

  16

  Haroon was missing work with alarming frequency. “Oh darling,” he would say, “I’ve taken the afternoon off. Shall we drive out into the country? To the river bank?” We went out at night; we dined at Aunt Sahedi’s. And we took long walks in the early evening. The doctor had advised plenty of activity, and exercise to keep my muscles toned. And of course I had to rest. Haroon made me lie down so he could press his ear against my belly and listen for the tiny heartbeat. He was thrilled when the baby began to move. He’d kiss my stomach and sing out to the creature within, “Oh, my little darling, it’s your daddy!” This made me laugh and laugh.

  “Why are you so amused?” he asked me one day.

  “Because you are such an eager father!”

  Haroon had begun to count the months until the child’s arrival, and pretty soon he was computing weeks and days and even hours. He filled the house with baby clothes and bottles, stuffed animals and baby powders and creams.

  “Tell me what you want, darling!” he would say impatiently. I told him I wanted to go home to see my parents, but instead, he invited them over, setting Amma to prepare a feast, driving to Wari himself to pick them up. Of course I was happy when Mama and Baba and Nupur arrived and happy that Haroon insisted we have time alone together, but I was going mad sitting in the house all day. The pregnancy only emphasized the narrow limits of my life.

  I wished I could have gone to them, but I was happy to see my family and embraced them all, breathing in my mother’
s wonderful smell as I had when I was a little girl.

  “Do I look like myself?” I asked as they stared at my belly.

  “Of course you don’t,” Nupur said.

  “But I never said I wouldn’t become pregnant!”

  Nupur smiled weakly, and I could see that Mama was struggling to keep from weeping. My father just looked glum. I had left them a lithe young girl, and now I was grossly overweight even for a pregnant woman, out of breath at the slightest exertion. I had become a cartoon of the bou of the house. It was bad enough that marriage had taken me away from them, but they had not expected it would so deeply change me. One minute I was glad to see them, the next I was filled with rage.

  “What’s the matter?” I snapped. “Why do you look so unhappy? I am pregnant and my husband is a rich man who looks after me well and will take care of my child!”

  “Stop pretending,” Nupur retorted.

  “Do you think I don’t love you, just because I haven’t come to see you?” Now I was trying to keep from crying, but I could not. I threw myself into my mother’s arms and wept uncontrollably. I was so ashamed. Baba and Ma had made sacrifices to send me to school and university and they had always encouraged me. And here I was, my brain turning idle. I had no life of my own. I remembered the many times I heard Baba and Ma say with pride, “She will become a brilliant scientist. She will take care of us when we are old.” Just like a son would. I couldn’t stop weeping, looking at Baba, his proud and dignified face. I remembered how he’d sold our land in Bikrampur for a song rather than ask for a penny from his relatives. How he had always remained true to his beliefs, never straying from his true self. Now he and Ma lived on his pension. It was a modest life, but I had a father who would never acknowledge even the most difficult hardship.

  “I wasn’t educated like you. I did not have your opportunities.” Ma said. She was stroking my hair as she had when I was little. “But my darling, I don’t understand why you stay at home so much.”

  “I’m pregnant, Mama.” She let me go and smiled sadly.

  “Pregnancy is no excuse,” she said gently.

  We were sitting in the elegant front parlor, and though my family was polite, I could tell they weren’t impressed, even though our house in Wari was almost shabby in comparison. In Wari, when I was a child, we had a rich next door neighbor, and, once when I saw him leave in his great big car, I commented to Baba that he must be a very important man. Baba immediately corrected me. “Not important, just rich.” I, of course, envied the clothes the rich man’s daughters wore and said so, but Baba did not soften. “Who says expensive clothes make one pretty? Your distinction lies within yourself. You will have wisdom and someday you will have learning. Beauty will come when you become beautiful in your attitude and behavior.”

  Another time when I was thirteen, I came home crying because some boys had pulled at my dress, and Baba took me aside and said, “Don’t think that just because you’re a girl, you’re a lesser being. Walk with your head high, keep your backbone straight, and stand up for yourself.”

  With all his urging, Nupur and I had become spirited young women. But what had happened? Now we were both incarcerated in marriages, and Baba, in spite of his progressive ideas, had encouraged me to marry Haroon. I supposed that he could be forgiven for underestimating the barbarity of marriage—he never treated Ma badly. I had grown up knowing that a woman took her husband’s name in marriage, but I did not imagine that my independence of spirit would disappear as well. Sebati was not Doctor Sebati at the clinic, but Mrs. Anwar. My obstetrician had no idea I had a degree in physics, though she knew very well that I was the wife of Haroon Ur Rashid, that my husband had an office in Motijheel, and she was well informed about the business he ran. As for the woman called Jhumur, she didn’t know her at all!

  Amma summoned us to dinner and Haroon himself served the rice. At the table, instead of being amused when Amma encouraged me to eat more, I was embarrassed. When Amma declared to my mother that she and Abba loved me like a daughter, Ma smiled, but I could see she was just playing along. Haroon glanced at me from time to time to see if I was suitably impressed by the delicious korma his mother had cooked, but I felt awkward. My in-laws were putting themselves out to honor my family, but I was sure they weren’t planning to invite them back any time soon. How I longed for the kitchen in Wari and my mother’s simple cooking—rice with kajali fish and dried red chillies.

  It was decided that the family car and driver would take my family home. Leaning against the door, as I watched Ma and Baba and Nupur leave, my thoughts drifted again to the days when Baba had insisted I stand on my own two feet, when he declared money was not the key to a good life. In spite of having grown up in such an enlightened atmosphere, I now seemed helpless in the face of old superstitions and attitudes about women. Baba had told me to marry Haroon or stop seeing him, but he certainly hadn’t expected that I would turn into the bloated pregnant bou who now disappeared into darkness as she waved goodbye.

  After they left, Haroon gave me an accounting of how much the dinner had cost—the shops where he’d bought the fish and meat, the most excellent fish and meat that could be found anywhere. I was stunned to be reminded how much money meant to him. I recalled that when we first discussed marriage, it was Haroon who wanted to know how much money my family would ask that he pay. I remember he had been shocked when I said, “Not a penny!” Haroon had been stunned. “But the woman’s family always gets money!”

  “But we aren’t marrying for money, are we?” I was laughing. “We’re marrying because we love each other. Think about it. Do you think I’d ask for a refund if our relationship broke down?” Needless to say, Haroon was very happy when I said these things. He took my hand and rubbed it against his cheek.

  “You’re different from other girls—that’s why I love you so much!” He was practically in tears, moved I now realize, because he didn’t have to dole out any money. “I want you for myself,” he kept repeating. “Just for myself.”

  “We are two different people, my darling.” I’d corrected him then. “Each with an independent mind. I am not your property, any more than you are mine.”

  Memory of those days, when my back was firm and straight and my mind as free as the air, brightened my spirits like fragments of light from a full moon.

  17

  Haroon had me admitted to a birth clinic in the Gulshan district, and not in Dhanmundi. “The care is better there,” he said. He took unlimited leave from the office and stayed at my bedside. It started to seem as if he himself was about to give birth. He kept busy making me eat, sit, walk, and sleep. He bought linens for the bassinet, bottles for feeding, and summoned specialists and nurses to my bedside. Relatives paraded through my room and Aunt Sahedi lectured me on how to cope with labor. Amma tied a good luck charm around my arm and wrote out a prayer for me to recite. She looked terribly anxious—but the amulet and prayer were not for my health, but for the well-being of Haroon’s child.

  Like my husband and his family, I became enchanted by the promise of this child; all I could think of was a baby lying on my belly, the smell of it, the softness of its skin. I would no longer need to beg for love, I would have my child.

  Haroon was always agitated when the doctor came in the evening. “Are mother and child all right?” he would ask over and over. “Is everything OK? Will she need a caesarean?” The doctor confronted this buffoonery deadpan, not knowing what to say. Haroon would follow him to the door, and stop chattering only when the doctor, fed up, turned and scolded him. “How many times must I repeat that everything is fine?” Nevertheless Haroon ran for him at my slightest sigh. This compulsive attention made me furious. “Why are you so anxious?” I felt like asking. “This isn’t your child I’m carrying. You destroyed what was yours with your own hands—now you are showering your love on a creature who has no relation to you, in whose conception you played no part!”

  I did require a caesarean. I gave birth to a male child at three
o’clock in the morning, after an excruciating labor. Haroon was ecstatic. He all but tore the infant from the nurse’s arms and then held him wrapped in an embroidered kantha close to his chest. It gave me pleasure to see this, but sleep pulled at me, and dreams, reminding me I had forgotten nothing. Not the scooping out in bits and pieces of the fetus, not the pain afterward, not my sorrow. Nor had I forgotten how I had implored my supposedly devoted husband not to destroy what was ours, or how he had turned his eyes toward me, cold and expressionless as marble. “The child is yours!” I’d shouted over and over. I can still hear the sound of the sharp metal instruments invading my womb, though it’s not the doctor I see, but Haroon. He is wet with sweat, bleary-eyed, wearing a garish, toothy smile as he pokes with grim determination at the walls of my uterus. I ask him to stop. I tell him I am in pain, but he carries on. He’s not only yanking at the fetus, but at my uterus and vagina. Sharp contraptions dig into my belly and slice through my face, my eyes, and my brain. I can’t prevent it. My head throbs with excruciating pain and I cry out for tranquilizers.

  When I wake up, I find myself in a new room on a bed with fresh sheets. Haroon is sitting on another bed holding the newborn. Amma, Dolon, Ranu, and the aunts surround him. “He has Haroon’s nose and forehead!” Aunt Sahedi exclaims.

  “Not only that,” Amma adds, “but also his arms and legs!”

  “But what about his lips?” Dolon asks, and Ranu quickly answers.

  “Haroon’s lips were plucked from his face and set right here!” Somaiya is so thrilled to have a baby cousin, she can hardly keep still. She wants to touch him, but her mother won’t let her. Amma claims the baby will, of course, have legs as long as his father’s, and Haroon lifts the quilt to take a look.

  My eyes are now wide open. Haroon brings my son to me, his face beaming with fatherly pride. He holds him close to my face, and I catch a flash of a miniature Afzal in the child’s expression. I’d blocked Afzal’s face from my mind, but the baby’s face brings him back. I want to take the infant in my arms, but Haroon tells me that I should be careful. I have to sit up, wash my hands with warm water and soap, place a fresh kantha on my lap. I’ve never held a child so small and I’m afraid he will slip through my fingers. The baby cries, draws his lips into a thin line, reminding me of Afzal’s mouth ready for a kiss! Haroon presses close to me, staring at the baby with captive eyes.