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I first talked to Nawazuddin miyah while walking on a stretch of hot sand in the middle of an immense body of water. When we reached the spot where the river had just left the sand bar our feet sank in the mud with every step we took. I had a laptop bag on my back, a digital camera around the neck and a handbag and camera in either hand; I could just about maintain my balance while walking through the mud. The wind whistled, brought sand from the newly revealed bald spots in the river and settled it between the folds of our clothes. The bloated corpse of a cow or maybe a buffalo bobbed on the water and its sour stench and the sharp grains of sand made the air a dense pudding. The afternoon sun burnt the top of our heads.
A row of women in black burqas passed by, their dried bodies like wood hardened and splintered by the sun. Soon they would board the kerosene fuelled motorboats and journey to the city. Wait; was it the sour smell of their sweat in the air? Under the weight of wave after wave of afternoon sun, their bodies bent under black burqas looked like a procession of storks.
A few days ago I had seen another gathering of storks. They rose from the heart of the char and rested under an abandoned thatched house. Who had left them behind? Did the emptiness of hearths swallowed by the river draw them there? How helpless they looked! Scared of their own shadows! Under the all-encompassing black burqas only their eyes fluttered: eyes drenched in innocence and pain! I dropped my gaze. The hidden lips under the burqa whispered something and I felt as if I was walking through the deathly music of a funeral march. My eyes tore through the dark shrouds and saw the newly blossomed lotuses on their young chests and their wombs, still fresh but not for too long, like a split orange.
‘Come on now, hurry! We are running late!’
The wombs under the burqas were the subjects of our research.
I walked behind the man. The air, the dead burning sand, waves of heat, life bobbing up and down the river, feet dying to immerse in the silt… it seemed as if Nawazuddin miyah had built up his six and a half foot frame as a shield against these elements. Rock steady he was, unshakeable! Ever since we met, I had developed an easy familiarity with Nawazuddin. The familiarity was a feeble thread trembling in the wind, built on feeble lives lived at the mercy of the river. I had lived through river banks falling into the river late at night and though we fasted and though we stayed awake all night, the river couldn’t bear away stories of the kirtanghosa. We listened to the stories and pressed our sighs to our hearts. It was the same with Nawazuddin. We must have walked through the same waters so many times to speak the same language. Was it the river of shared soliloquies that ran in our hearts? We climbed up and down the same boats with the same reed roofs and we both had no lullabies waiting for us. Did the water die? Yes, water dies, and its stink fills the air. Yes, Nizamuddin miyah, rivers die and the thousand graves in their chests come to life.
On my own body worms crawled out of their holes.
In jest Nawazuddin miyah used to say, ‘Óh you H-caste people, you H-caste people!’ For a long time I didn’t know what he was talking about and then it dawned on me. No, no, I protested. Did I have to bear the burden of yet another identity? What, after all, did we wear fresh out of the womb? Listen, when came naked and over time, like the feathers on a heron, identities grew on us. But Nizamuddin Miyah was turning into a frightening mirror. I held in my hands an immense power- an address in this land, a secure religion. What did Nizamuddin miyah have? He was a miyah of the chars- though our own, he had no address in the history of our country. Even if he did have an address, he couldn’t be our own. He laid on my palms old tales and I cupped my hands as they sifted through my fingers. The river abandoned them again and again, like illegitimate children. When the river willed it, Nawazuddin carried his folding house (a wooden frame and tin walls) and went where the river directed them. How many more cruel games would the river play? It took hardly any time for the wooden frames to be loaded on a boat, ferried across the river to a new location and set upright again. Along with the houses went hens, ducks, cows and buffaloes, a solar-powered bulb, a fan and a brand new television set. In the thirty six years of his life he had moved the house eleven times. One by one he placed all the eleven stories in my hands, all eleven stories born from one mother, all jumbled like a ball of thread. His life was like a spindle running from one end of the loom to the other and back again as long as he lived. Histories sank in the water, then bobbed up again. Sunlight draped their dead bodies. A vermillion luminescence fell on the char’s chest and the sun slept on the river. Like two drunks we stood and stared at history- it was time to return. We looked at each other- he held nothing against the river, no revulsion, no hurt pride… just like me. And just like me, he loved the char in the river, the reeds on the sands, the wind in the reeds, and the sky in the wind.
The river bridged our hearts. Which typed application on my laptop could truly contain this feeling, which frame in my digital camera could trap this moment? How far would the internet carry this news? Damn it! Come Nawazuddin miyah, let’s walk this bridge. Let’s cast these entrapments aside and face each other naked. They announced the death of truth, didn’t they? And here was I searching for a time before truth died. See how they who announced the death of truth have made things easier. ‘Fucking Bangladeshi sympathizer, did you think that they would build you a pedestal in the sky? A river of blood will run through this river of water. They will cut you open and let you float. All your crawling, fasting, grasping for your M.Phil, PhD will come to nothing… this blog that you run, even this will be a dead truth. The river will be dead and its body will stink’.
A strain of remorse entered my voice. The grotesque lightheartedness made the river rise. A tree fell in the water breaking the silence. ‘But did they succeed in declaring the death of the river, the chars in its heart, the moon rising in the heart of the char?’ he said and I was lively again. The moon hung over us like a sharpened sickle, like the crescent announcing Ramzan. The moon in the sky wriggled: it was alive. Then why would history, this geography forget us?
He wanted to laugh a hearty laugh. His eyes turned red. I know, I know you son of a Miyah, I know the depth of your smile, your smile that hides the salt of its tears in the river.
A forest rose before us and its trees, leaves, creepers surrounded us. Flowers sprouted and their smell made us go crazy. ‘Ahcha’, he said, ‘let’s play a game. Pass me a story’. I held out my palm but a young banana leaf sprouted in my hands. It was filled with jaggery, gram, ginger, lentils, bananas and coconut slices- prasad from the prayer meeting. Earlier in the day the floor of the village naamghar trembled with the sounds of cymbals, bells, drums and clapping hands. After years of wandering, searching for a place to call our own we had finally decided to settle in the village. On that auspicious day father’s salary which had been held up for many months was released at once. He made a large offering at the naamghar. ‘This is a new place’, he said, ‘we have to settle in as fish settles in water’. In the evening the head priest himself came with the prasad.
Now comes the fun bit! It was the month of Bhadh, the prasad was still scented with oil and burnt wick and father decided to send it back. The lower castes had no right to join the rest of the village and sing naams at the naamghar. Although they took our money, they didn’t invite us to the prayer meeting. It was an unspoken agreement, an invisible chain! ‘Give a fellow from the lower castes some space and he will lunge at your throat’, as the saying goes! The head priest was not comfortable with this arrangement. Although the villagers were not in favour, he thought of us (we were children then) and brought us a hidden leaf filled with the offerings.
I crawled through the evening like a snake on its belly and stood between my uncle and father who were in the middle of an argument. My eyes were fixed on the banana leaf and the prasad on it. I was like a prisoner in a wooden barricade. My mind was restless. Once the discussion was over and uncle returned home, I would pounce on the prasad.
We didn’t go to see the bhaona at the naamghar, nor did we drink water from its well. And yet I knew that from within the web of narrow thought, tearing through the shroud of caste and creed, the head priest had emerged shining. I remembered him walking through the dusk with a young banana leaf, its contents still smelling of oil and burnt wick. In the deepest corner of my heart I found this light, a light my father had helped me recognize. Oi Nawazuddin miyah, in our hearts hatred and love tied their boats on the same shore. Religious rigidity and love drank the waters of the same shore.
I laughed and turned the story over to him.
My eyes had turned red.
I know, I know you child of the lower caste, I know how you bury the salt from your tears in the river and draw out your smiles. I know its depth.
Nawazuddin miyah wouldn’t stop gloating over his boat. ‘No matter how low the water is my boat sails on the river as your car on the road’. His eyes danced with pride as if he were the master of this land.
His smile had just buried the salt from his eyes in the river.
This river, this is the river that bridges us. Come Nawazuddin miyah, lets climb this bridge. Come, let’s touch the moon.
About the author
Shalim M Hussain is a poet, writer and translator. He received the R.L. Poetry Award 2017(Editor’s Choice) for Betelnut City-the first collection of his English poems. He has translated poet Kamal Kumar Tanti’s Post Colonial Poems into English from the Assamese.
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