by Tahmima Anam
My head goes so low I think it might fall off and roll around on the ground. Naveed puts his hand on my shoulder. ‘We tried,’ he says.
We shuffle over to where the rickshaws are waiting. Naveed helps his wife get in and I wave them away. ‘I’ll walk,’ I say, my feet as heavy as ships.
VI The Shipyard
All the time I dream of my kid, dark hair like her mother’s. She has my nose and Megna’s little eyes. And maybe my lips. Nice lips I’ve got, at least that’s what Megna used to tell me. Who knows what’s left, I haven’t looked in the mirror in a long time.
The building on Chowrasta is finished. Carpenters coming in to do the doors, kitchen marble going in. Foreman pays me my last week’s wages and I’m out again in the street.
I wander from one building to another but there are no jobs. Or maybe there are, but when they look at my face and see the life stamped out of me, they say no. My money runs out quick. Naveed says I can sleep in the shop, so I make my bed there for a few days. I want to ask Naveed’s wife if she’ll teach me a few letters, but I haven’t seen her since that day at the hospital. Can’t believe I went this long without learning a single damn thing. She called me a worm, and she was right – a stringy little insect that crawls through the dirt and eats everyone’s shit.
I’m hungry but when Naveed offers me his rice, I say no. My stomach goes soft and achy when I’m alone in the shop at night with the smell of soap and the little hairs Naveed can’t catch with his broom.
In the day, when I’m not looking for work, I look into the shops along the highway, and I see strange things. In one, giant metal lanterns, long lengths of chain. Clocks and brass instruments. Shopkeeper tells me it’s all from the ships that get broken further down the beach. They sell all the bits and pieces here, the cheap stuff. Everything else goes to Dhaka. He’s is a nice guy, old, he has a lot of time on his hands. Tells me there used to be nothing here, then a storm and ship that got washed up and stuck in the sand. There was a foreigner, a Captain, he started the whole thing. I don’t believe him, just let the old man talk – what’s left when you’re old except the ears of the young? I can’t call myself young any more but I do, I do because I messed up so bad I still have so much I haven’t finished, like bringing a kid into this world and raising him right, teaching him to respect his elders and listening to their stories, no matter how long or made up.
‘You looking for work?’ he asks me.
‘You know anyone?’
‘Always something in shipbreaking. I could put in a word. Guy’s coming to sell, I’ll ask him. Come back tomorrow.’
I tell him I’m grateful.
‘It’s hard work,’ he says, ‘dangerous too.’
‘I don’t mind,’ I say.
Next day I scrub up as best I can and wear the trousers I bought for the hospital. When I show up at the shop, shopkeeper tells me to wait at the back. There’s a guy with a van on the street, piled high with junk. All I can see are metal legs, cables, things that used to work but now they’re just broken parts.
At the back of the shop there’s a bunk bed with metal bars, reminds me of our dormitory in Dubai. Wonder where those boys are now, who’s building and who’s gone home.
I sit down on the bed and wait a long time, then I hear steps coming in my direction and I sit up, straighten out my shirt.
Shopkeeper comes in. ‘Here’s the one I was telling you about.’
The guy is squat and has a nose like a dog, all squashed up against his face. He’s breathing hard and sweating like fat people do. He looks at me like I’m a chicken he’s thinking of buying. ‘You done construction work?’
‘He’s used to working hard,’ the shopkeeper tells him.
‘I worked in foreign, in Dubai,’ I say, hoping that will sway him. People are always impressed with talk of foreign.
‘You got any schooling?’
‘No, sir.’
‘Pity. I could use an assistant. But never mind. You come tomorrow, I’ll put you on the ship. We got some tankers that need finishing up. Give this to the man at the gate, he’ll let you pass.’
He gives me his card. Before I can ask him about the pay, he’s out the door, his doggy breaths getting faster as he walks away.
When I was a kid my father made me dig out the latrine. It was supposed to run to the river, but two, three times a year it got stuck, all the shit clogged and flowing up to the ground. He sent me in with a shovel, said nothing, just pointed to the river. The stink was so strong I gagged for weeks after just thinking about it. I hated my father for making me to do it, but I see now that I should’ve waited, because I’m hanging off the side of a ship with a flimsy rope around my waist, and I realise, this is hell, not the latrine, not the desert, not even up there against the glass with Pahari. But this is what I deserve after all the bad I’ve done. This work at the end of the world.
I do what they say. Tell me to climb to the top of a broken ship and hang there like a tree-snake, I do it. Tell me to tie a rope around my waist and cut the flesh of a metal beast, that’s me. No word, no talkback. Pahari, if he was here, he’d be ashamed of me. What he wouldn’t say about the pathetic road I chose, all coward and no brave. What could I do, Pahari? After you died and scared the shit out of me for ever the only thing I could think was, I just want to hide in Megna’s sari, and my kid, just want to protect my kid. All coward and no brave. In my head Pahari says, I died for nothing, and I tell him, people like us always die for nothing. And he’s shaking his head, loose, like he used to, as if he didn’t get his bones ground to dust, as if every wish he ever had hadn’t disappeared into the desert like a drop of water on a leaf.
Now every day is latrine day. Every day I fall to sleep with poison in my blood. I get one day’s teaching from a guy who hands me a blowtorch and says, ‘When I tell you to cut, you cut.’ Today I’m up on the east side of the ship. Rope’s around my waist, goggles for my eyes that’s getting cut from my pay. Sparks come out of the blowtorch and land on my legs like a line of ants, sun burning my back, and all for a scrap of money. For that little scrap I’m all cut up from the metal, arms about to fall off from carrying it, and so hungry I’ll eat anything, sleep anywhere, thirsty like I’ve never known, not even in jail.
There’s a row of shacks behind the yard and they offer me a bed for a sum I guess is about half my pay. I don’t have a choice so I take my things and sign up. Mostly I decide to keep to myself, but after a few days I let myself make one friend. His character is black and he’s a real bastard of a guy, which tells me at least he’s honest, no tricks at the last minute thinking he’s a winner and then realising he’s out to cut my throat.
We share the hut with four others. The first day, he points me to the pallet by the door, says, ‘That one’s for you. It’ll break your back but nobody gives a shit about the new guy.’
He’s from the north, where there’s never enough food. ‘You’ll die on this beach,’ he says. ‘Something will fall on your head and you’ll crack open like an egg. Or fire. Or poison.’
‘Thanks,’ I say. ‘No one will miss me, so.’
‘Yah, another miserable son-of-a-bitch with no one to love him. Plenty of us around here, na?’
The others ignore him.
‘You’ll die alone like the rest of us. But at least we won’t be happier than you.’
He climbs onto his bed, farts in my direction, and goes to sleep.
My bed isn’t broken, it’s slanted. I sleep with my feet a few inches lower than my head. Next day, I find a piece of wood and I fix it. My friend, Dulal, is impressed. Tells everyone what a useful guy I am, soon I’m fixing all kinds of things. The leaky tap at the end of the row of huts where we line up to brush our teeth; a broken ladder. I’m not an expert but I know my way around. All this I do at night. During the day, I’m on the shitty little rope, the blowtorch, giant squares of metal dragged down the beach. We chant as we heave, ‘Hei-yo, hei-yo, hei-yo.’ Look, we’re taking out the trash. Feet sink in
to the sand, grey and oily. ‘Hei-yo, listen up, nobody in this world for me.’
I think about going home, but no way I can do that. Shathi’s not going to open the door for me, not now. And there’s the fingernail of hope I’ll still find Megna and the kid. But how? I’m so tired from the ship I can hardly move my legs at the end of the day. I haven’t even seen Naveed since I went to tell him I wasn’t going to sleep at the shop any more.
It’s going to be Eid next week and they’re giving us a day off.
I go back to the beach. I’m hollowed out now, I’m done. Thought when I started, I could look for them for years, my hair would turn grey and still I’d be on the hunt. But my bones are dead. I’m stupid and my luck is over. I have to give up. I’m an even bigger fool if I don’t see that my girl and my kid are never going to be found, that the world swallowed them up and I’ll never see them again.
The hut is quiet. Everyone else has somewhere to go. No one’s going back to their village – too far for most. But they’re not here. I crawl onto my pallet. Now I wish it was still slanted, because I can’t stand the sound of blood pumping to my heart.
I close my eyes, wishing for sleep. Maybe I drop off for a minute, because someone’s beside me, breathing on my face. I smell booze. I open my eyes and it’s Dulal, drunk, his face inches from mine and grinning like a fool. I’m so fed up with my life it’s like I’m drunk too, so I say, ‘I don’t even know if it’s a son or a daughter.’
He nods, serious, not like he’s laughing at me, and then he shows me what’s in his hand and it’s a bottle. I take a swig, it goes down hot and burning, right to my stomach. In five minutes I’m drunk. Thank God. My tongue is loose and he’s not listening anyway, so I tell him the whole stupid story. He comes in sometimes, saying things like ‘You fool’ or ‘Shit, brother, you had that coming’, but mostly he’s quiet, and when I’m finished he repeats some of the stuff I’ve just said, like ‘poor bastard Pahari’ or ‘Policemen, they’re all crooks’.
After I’m done, he stays quiet for a long time and I think he’s asleep. I think I should sleep too, it’s getting late, and I’m about to head to the toilet when he sits up in his bed and shouts, ‘I’m a genius!’ And then: ‘There’s one place open on Eid day.’
He jumps up, pulling my arm so hard I have to give his hand a good slap.
We go downstairs and throw ourselves into the empty street, not a rickshaw or a cigarette-wallah to see us as we walk crooked. Everything is quiet, all the shops closed, everyone at home with their fathers and children. ‘The street is sadder than the hut,’ I tell Dulal. I want to go back, but he’s saying, ‘Don’t worry brother, you’re going to thank me,’ and he’s passing the bottle back into my hands, and it’s going to my blood, so I just follow him. Who cares anyway, I think. I carry the sad inside me, one place is the same as the next.
We go around a corner and walk for what feels like a long time, though I’m not sure, everything is moving around. Dulal’s talking the whole time about Eid, and there’s blood on the street from the cows they’ve just slaughtered. Shathi had to sell her bull, maybe it came here, nice fat one for a rich guy’s table. He’s eating its liver now, the bastard.
Finally we get there. I see a broken-down building, two floors with a veranda upstairs, saris hanging on the washing line. We go inside and there’s a chair with a few women sitting around, wearing clothes like they might be going to a wedding, except if you look close, it’s all cheap. Eid Mubarak, they say.
I know what it is. I’ve been to one when I was a kid, before Megna, brother and me and a couple of boys from the village. I told them all I’d done it, pretended I was a real man, but I couldn’t. I was shit scared of the woman, her sex staring at me like a little cat. I can’t remember what she looked like, except I know she laughed at me, in a bored sort of way, like she sees that sort of shit all the time. Probably a lot of guys couldn’t make it happen at the last minute. It’s harder than it looks.
Even through my drink I can smell perfume. Dulal slaps me on the back. ‘What I said! Only place open on Eid day!’
The madam, bloated arms with paint all over her face, looks us up and down and says, ‘Money first.’
Dulal makes me pay. After I get my cash out, the madam is all smiles. There’s a line of girls and she says to choose one. Last time I can’t remember them being so young. Maybe it’s the drink but the whole thing’s making me gag – kids, perfume, madam and her fat arms. But this time I’m not going back. You’d think I was Jesus for all the sex I haven’t had. I look at Dulal. I look at the madam, laughing now, teeth at the back all orange from chewing her Eid paan. I’m not going back. I stare up at the girls, find one who doesn’t remind me of anyone. Dulal’s already picked his, a tall girl, skinny, they’re arm in arm like he’s known her since his village days. I’m getting mine and he pokes me with his elbow. ‘Just like your Megna, eh brother? Arre, Megna, your hero’s coming! Megna! Megna!’ He says her name like she might appear if he says it loud enough. If only. He takes another swig from his bottle and he’s gone behind one of the curtains.
Girl takes me up to her room. I try to get turned on by the look of her ass swaying in my face as she climbs the stairs. We go behind a curtain and the bed’s narrow and bare, just a sheet and a few long pillows. There’s a calendar and a mirror with a broken corner. We lie down. She pulls down my zip and takes my dick out of my trousers. I put my hand on her head. She puts it in her mouth. I look up, I see lizards hiding in the tin roof. I feel good. I pull the girl’s hair and she climbs on top of me. Her face isn’t pretty but it’s not mean. I’m sliding into her, easy, like it hasn’t been ten years I’ve been hating my own cock. When it’s going to be over, I grab her and pull her face close to mine, so I can’t see anything, only eat the lipstick off her face and taste the sex in her mouth, and I hang on to her like I’m falling out of the ship and she’s going to save me, a little dinghy in the hard boil of a river.
After, she says, ‘I had a friend called Megna.’
Madam comes in, says, ‘Your time is up.’ I take out the last of my money and buy another hour. Girl keeps talking. It’s her. Megna was her friend, a good friend. Always sharing her rice. I’m patient, I don’t try to rush her. The men didn’t always like her, she had a mouth. But she never complained, always said this was her fate.
Girl says, ‘We all took a little bit, here and there. Sent some home. But Megna, she was paying off a big debt. Everything eaten, never had a paisa put aside.’
‘By who?’
‘Madam, who else?’
The debt meant that Megna had to do whatever. The perverts. Old men. Policemen who got freebies so they left madam alone.
I want to tear the skin off my face. Sun’s rising through the door. I don’t have long, so I finally ask, ‘Did she say anything about a kid?’
Girl looks around at the broken mirror like it’s going to tell her something. ‘I don’t know what happened to the kid. But kid’s why she owed madam all that money.’
Madam comes in again. ‘Out,’ she says. ‘Come back when you have more money. And get your friend out too.’ She stands there till I drag myself out. Girl comes down with me. Dulal made a mess. I clean him up, throw a handful of water on his face. ‘What happened to her?’ I say again, heaving Dulal up, putting his arm over my neck. ‘What happened to Megna?’
Girl keeps talking while we drag Dulal to the door. ‘The sickness took her,’ she says. ‘Died last year.’
My arms go limp and Dulal slips to the floor.
‘Ei,’ says madam, ‘I said get out.’
Girl helps me get Dulal up again. ‘Did you bury her?’ I whisper.
Madam is watching, hand splayed across her hip. We drag Dulal out on the street.
‘We took her out and put her in the water,’ girl says.
‘Which water?’
She points in the direction of the sea. ‘We borrowed a dinghy. We all went, every girl.’ And she runs back inside, her footsteps as light
as a rat’s.
I call Shathi. ‘She’s dead,’ I cry. Shathi listens, quiet. ‘Come home,’ she says. She’s right. That I still have a home is a miracle. I should go, start all over, pay my penance somewhere else. Is my kid dead, too? I’ll never know. If I could just see Megna’s face one more time. There’s no face like hers in the world, no eyes dancing like that, hair like she rode with her head out of a car window. Just one more time. I think about the time I thought I saw her, that woman with the fancy clothes who played tricks on my mind. All this time, she was dead, fish-eaten, not even a grave to rot into.
Dulal and me, we have the morning shift. No way he’s going to make it, so I go to the Boss and make an excuse. Diarrhoea. Boss gives me words on cutting Dulal’s pay and then I’m back in my harness. My eyes are cloudy, I can’t see through the goggles. My torch burns through the metal. I’m remembering my Qur’an, saying a prayer for Megna. Died of the sickness. The sickness of paying off a big debt. She was a whore after all, but only because I made her one. All the stories I had dreamed up for her life, new start in the city, kid going to school – none of that was ever going to happen. Shit like that doesn’t happen to people like us. Any chance she had of a life, I took from her.
Sun beats down hard on me. No wind, everything so still, and me baking in the hot, now with a dead girl around my neck.
I don’t know how the day passes. Later, we’re eating a few scraps together. Dulal’s up, he gives me a wink when I sit down next to him. He’s telling me about the girl he did, how luscious she was, best Eid he ever had. ‘They should make it part of the day,’ he says. ‘You kill a few cows, roast their livers, then go fuck a few cheerful women – everyone’s happy. I should be Prime Minister.’
I stare down at my food. ‘Want it?’ I say. ‘Have.’
He grabs my plate. ‘What happened to you? Whisky got you?’
‘Megna’s dead,’ I say.
He keeps eating. ‘Shit.’
