I too, had a home.
Nasir Molla drags the last of these wooden crates out into the yard. The stars peek between the lilypads in the dark. The Eastern sky is ablaze - it will remain orange for two more weeks, and then everything will go quiet. The bells in the Hanuman mandir. The bellows in the flour mill. The sound of kirtan at the crack of dawn. In the creek some of our kin will sleep, their bloated bellies rising out of the mud like buffaloes sleeping the balmy afternoons off. Nasir Molla will have sold off most of our jewelry, keeping only the antique designs safely inside his mahogany chest.
That was the first thing he dragged out from underneath my grandfather's stiff body, his arms still tight around its ornate edges that now carried a dark amber tint. My grandfather's blood, dried and caked in the unforgiving summer when we lost our way home.
I don't blame Nasir Molla. He did what everyone else had already done. His moral dilemma had only delayed the inevitable. He stood right here under our guava tree, staring at this open yard that was splattered with pools of blood. Bright red pools, crimson at the edges and drooling off into the sand like a rabid dog's saliva.
And his eyes lingered on those of "Bhatt Mastar" - my grandfather - still open, staring back at his soul. Or so he thought. These dead eyes had smiled back at him from the school yard last Tuesday. Still brown, still as deep as they were now. Except now, they carried a mute question instead of their smile:
"Amare o chharle na, Nasir?" [You didn't even leave me, Nasir?]
A puff of air like smoke oozed out of his gaping lips and faded into the cool evening air. The birds had left their burning perches. The fields stood silent, still reeking of buffalo hooves and fresh blood.
I was there too, curled up with my head in a tiny pool of muddy water. I was still warm, my hands still grabbing my father's cold left ankle. Bidyadhar Bhatt, renowned lawyer at Sylhet High Court, slept between the ripe stalks of rice with his youngest son at his feet. I hadn't touched his feet in two days, and each morning I had waited at the yard for a sign of his shiny fiat.
It did come. I ran for its door. My father emerged with bloodshot eyes and his usual black coat torn at the seams. I stopped dead on my tracks and before I could form a question in my head, his arms carried me off the yard into our house in a breathless dash. That was the last time I saw his eyes, still brown, still as deep as his father, and his fathers who lived and died in these lush green fields of buffaloes and rain.
Nasir Molla watched from the ravaged ramparts of our Durga Bari, almost hiding from the frenzied sea of white caps and glistening blades that flowed into each house that still carried a Tulsi bedi. Nasir Molla then found his courage and joined the cries of "Naara-e-Takbir" that now roared over our muddy roads and startled buffaloes.
I think I saw Reza, Shamshul and some of my friends between the waves of machetes and sticks. I think I saw them joining the war cries too. I think they saw me, hiding under my father's shredded black coat, trying to look for them again. I think they too searched for an excuse to spare us. I was supposed to open for our cricket team with Shamshul this Sunday, maybe they tried convincing the elders around and failed. I think... Nah, I can't think anymore. My head hurts, just enough to remind me of the gaping wound on my neck. A crow stares down at me from the jamun tree, waiting patiently. My head feels heavier, almost as if the mud is pulling me in. It is warm, it is wet. I remember my mother, I try and remember those long months when I was inside her belly.
Was it as warm as now?
I want to see her face, but she has been dead two years now, thank god. She would've called out for me, day and night through the guns and the smoke. She would've found me here, inside the tall stalks of our rice. No, not ours anymore. Nasir Molla will own these fields now, his deed passed quickly by Advocate Mustafizur on the same teakwood desk that belonged to one Advocate Bidyadhar Bhattacharjee, deceased.
They say this is not our land anymore. They say we don't have any place in this country. I ask my father again, he just sits quietly and stares at our Guava tree. He hasn't spoken a word since we slept in the mud. He scratches his left ankle every now and then, staring absent-minded at what remains of our house. I think he tries to remember who touched him last. He cries a lot too, but quietly, when the kids have all left for the madrasa and Nasir Molla lies sleeping in my grandfather's cot under our Guava tree. I think he doesn't want anybody to know that we never left.
I think a lot these days.
My head doesn't hurt anymore. My neck is clean, no scars. I and my father live under this jamun tree, and we pick off the ripe fruits at midnight when the owls hunt field mice. I can't remember anything anymore, and I keep forgetting more and more these days.
My yellow tricycle, now sold off to a happy kid in Mymensingh. My blue notebooks and Ganesh murti, now ripped and burnt off somewhere in these grey horizons. Our Shivlinga, our harmonium, our old brass utensils for the gods. I don't remember the smell of dhoop anymore.
I only remember the stench of rotten blood and guts. My grandfather's stiff body two feet away in the creek from us. We kept floating, I kept trying to remember.
All of my tiny life disappearing into the reeds. I try and catch them, but they slip right through. I try and remember Benimadhab, the taste of our Guavas, the scent of my mother's hair.
The scent of her hair.
She will never find me again. I don't remember her face. Baba used to say, we must never forget our roots, or else the rising waters will carry us off and we can never find our way back home.
Why didn't you hold on to our roots, Baba?
Why did we drown in these fields? Why did you forget our home?
Baba stays silent, his deep, brown eyes watching our home in the East. I don't remember how it looked from the inside anymore. Our kin are all here too, but they don't speak to me anymore.
We all sit staring at the house, staring at each other. Minu mashi, Deep, Babai kaka, all of our cousins. Some of us had left for Cachar before the bells went silent. Tarok jethu and his family. Bolai kaka and his family. They said they'd be back once the troubles died down. They kept calling us too. My dadu sat smiling through his cheroot-smoke in the cold January air.
"Tumra oto doraiya kemne thakbay re? Ita samainyo dorbar ey doraile hoibo ni?" [How will you live with such fear? Getting scared at these tiny scuffles won't work, will it?]
Dadu doesn't smile anymore. I heard Nasir Molla speak about some war coming for them. I heard something about Pakistan, something about our language. He looked pretty angry about something, waving his hands and addressing the villagers that they would drive away the murderous Urdu-speakers and establish a Bangla country.
I hope there is an end to all this. I hope they create a Bangla country, for us too. I don't want to sleep under this Jamun tree anymore. I want to see my bedroom again. I want to sleep in my own bed again. I want to see our wooden beams, our brass pots, our old books again.
I want to remember it all before I forget. I want to see Maa in her framed portrait again. I want to forget the stench of blood.
I want to smell dhoop again. I want to steal Guavas again. I want to run through our own ricefields again. I want to hear Baba, Dadu and all my kin to stop their silent nonsense and speak again. Laugh again. Cry, if they want to. I want to hear khol-kartal in our morning kirtan again.
I want to remember that I too, had a home. I want to remember it all, before the waters carry me too far to turn back. Before I forget, before I forget.