I was in no mood to continue this conversation. My thoughts had flown to Afzal, and instead of thinking about Kumud’s ranting, I was watching the play of light and shadow on her cheeks as she strode back and forth across the room. I watched her figure glow in brightness and then turn dim in the shade, and I longed to be able to pluck the light from the sky and dress myself in its radiance.
“Are you a light sleeper?” she asked me.
“Not really . . . ”
Kumud muttered that she was not either, that even the sound of a bomb exploding wouldn’t wake her up. “Women who sleep soundly are in for trouble,” she declared. “On the other hand, those who wake at the buzz of a mosquito or a breeze outdoors are gifted! Such women can rise at once and catch an adulterous husband red-handed!”
At that moment, I sympathized with Kumud’s husband! Anything to be free of this woman’s grasp, of her devilish harangue. “But Auntie, my husband’s a good man!”
“Are you saying that your uncle, my beloved husband, is wicked?”
“I’m not saying anything of the sort. I’m just saying that Haroon loves me and that he wouldn’t do such a thing.”
“Really?”
“Yes. I’m sure he loves me.”
“Are you saying that your uncle doesn’t care for me?”
“Of course he does, but . . . ”
“But what?”
“Oh Auntie, he wouldn’t be sleeping with others if he . . . ”
“Your uncle is extremely fond of me, you know. We don’t have any children, yet he hasn’t remarried, in spite of advice to the contrary from many of his friends. Do you understand?”
“Of course I do, Auntie.”
“What do you understand?”
“That he loves you and that he has refused to take another wife—” I’d barely completed the sentence when Kumud shut me up.
“You talk too much, Jhumur. You run your elders down with your arguments. As a matter of fact, you know nothing at all. Men don’t need love to have sex. They feel free to take as many women to bed as they want,” she added, taking a deep breath.
“Just anyone?” I asked.
“Anyone they want. For example, if Haroon sleeps with Rosuni, it does not mean that he doesn’t love you.” Try as I might, I couldn’t bring myself to imagine Haroon in bed with Rosuni.
“Haroon will go to Rosuni if you can’t give him what she can, and, of course, my dear, she can’t give him what you can.
He’ll have both of you and be pleased as can be. Men like variety. Given the chance, a man will take as many women as he can, just for the taste.”
Kumud was shuddering with rage at her own words, her eyes opening wide. If only Sahedi would come and rescue me! As Kumud continued ranting, I opened the door, pretending I had heard something, but she rushed toward me and barred the door.
“Where are you going? I haven’t finished!” Her eyes were bright with pain and indignation.
“I want some tea, Auntie.”
Outside the door Amma shouted for me. “What are you up to, Bouma? Why have you bolted the door?”
Opening the door a crack, Kumud confronted her sister, “
Bhabi
, don’t you wish that I talk to your daughter-in-law? Jhumur may have gone to college, but she has no knowledge of what a woman’s life is like. She’ll face difficult times, I tell you!” With that, Amma pushed her way in and ushered Auntie Kumud from the room, back into the parlor. Now Rosuni was passing pastries. It had been decided the two sisters would stay for supper.
As the conversation shifted to what we would be eating, I turned to the balcony, hoping to catch a glimpse of Afzal in the garden. I could still feel his presence, his warmth traveling through my body, leading my imagination back to his painting, the mysterious nude woman. Did she exist and was he in love with her, or was she merely a creation of his imagination? Had they played together in the rain? I was surprised by my emotions; was this jealousy? I thought about the way he’d kept looking at me, a living, breathing woman,
when his painting of another woman, naked, dominated the room. Did that woman have something that I didn’t have? I wanted his gaze to turn to me, standing in front of him, disrobed. I felt as wet as the woman in the painting, just like her, in the moist darkness of my imagination.
I don’t know what led me into the bathroom, what compelled me to stand naked under the shower, directing my gaze toward my own body, what brought forth the silver liquid that made its way through the folds of my skin, the tears that streamed down my cheeks. What had enjoined me to compare my own beauty to that of the painted woman, and what, by slow degrees, had allowed the woman to dissolve as I began to feel the force of my own desire, to bring my turmoil relief?
10
A
s the days passed, my friendship with Sebati deepened. Sitting around talking to her in her flat, I often exchanged glances with Afzal—we communicated quite well with our eyes. One day, I kept thinking, I would model for a painting. One day, he would paint my face changing as day passed and light fell to darkness. One day my body would adorn his walls, replacing my rival.
I came to feel as if I’d known Sebati all my life. I knew when she was at the hospital and when she was at home; I knew what she liked to eat, when she slept, or when she went out. We tasted each other’s cooking. She came upstairs with fish curry, and I went below with a portion of whatever I prepared. We saw each other every day, exhausting ourselves telling our stories. We talked about our childhoods, our adolescences, and there was always more to tell. Sebati told me that as a child, she had always stayed inside, watching through the window as other children played, never wanting to join the game. “And now,” she said, her eyes bright, “I’m never at home. But look at you! You were such a tomboy
once, romping through rice fields—and now you spend all your days confined to the house!”
I wasn’t sure if she felt sorry for me, her unfortunate friend. Maybe she did, and that’s why she unfurled the spectacle of the wide world in front of my willing eyes, a world I had once relished but now believed I would never know again. In no time, she stopped calling me
bhabi
and addressed me as Jhumur, and I followed suit, calling her Sebati. Soon we even dropped the formal “you.”
I became so used to her stories about her patients that I found myself anxiously asking after them. “How’s Aisha?” “Have Rubina’s stitches healed?” Her patients were becoming my new sisters. Aisha had given birth to a girl, her first baby, and her husband had stormed out of the hospital. Poor Aisha had cried the whole night, heartbroken and full of fear, holding the baby in her arms. Rubina had a tumor in her fallopian tubes, Fulera’s uterus had become flaccid, and Jyotsana suffered from eclampsia and could give birth only to stillborns. Sebati’s detailed descriptions of her patients’ conditions began to invade my sleep. I dreamed a mass was growing in my belly, that my own fallopian tubes were twisted into knots.
But unlike me, at least so far, these young women were in danger of being cast out if their husbands came to suspect they were barren or could give birth only to girls. How would Aisha manage by herself? Sebati attended these abandoned girls with no less passion than she did a fertile mother giving birth to her third son. The health of every patient absorbed her. I couldn’t get the young women out of my mind. What
happened to the mothers of stillborns or girls when they got home to their families in disgrace? I could well imagine the slaps and kicks they would suffer, the dependency from which there was no respite.
I had a friend, Parul, whose husband had divorced her. To her parents, it mattered not at all that she had been tortured day and night by the husband who had released her, against her will, from their marriage. He had taken a new, younger wife, and they believed, that, of course, his infidelity was all Parul’s fault. If she had given him what he wanted, he would never have subjected her to the disgrace of sudden divorce at the hands of a mullah. To make herself welcome in her parent’s house, Parul was compelled to take the position of a servant. She aged overnight, doing all the housework, her mother never ceasing to remind her that no decent man would ever take a divorceé for a wife. Poor Parul—she had lived not two but three lives as a woman—daughter, wife, and now, the worst, divorceé.
In Sebati, I found a woman who didn’t depend on her husband—a situation I had never seen before, even in my own home. Sebati’s husband shared the housework, a rare arrangement. My friend Nadira’s elder sister and her husband both had jobs in the bank, yet Nadira’s sister was the one who disappeared into the kitchen the minute she got home, while her husband sat on the sofa and watched television. They earned the same salary and equally shared the household expenses, but it was always Nadira’s sister who looked after the children and washed and cooked, in addition to holding down a job as demanding as her husband’s. Sebati and Anwar’s household ran according to a
different set of rules. I couldn’t believe my eyes one afternoon when I got to their flat and found Sebati sound asleep! When she got up, she explained that she simply had nothing left for housework after a night at the hospital. Anwar and she both lived in the house, didn’t they? Why should she bear all the responsibility? Anwar had worked in Germany for two years and learned to cook for himself—he actually enjoyed it, he said.
Listening to Sebati, I wished Haroon and I had a place of our own so we could run a house together and share expenses and housework. Then I could take a job! I was certainly tired of cooking every day, of having to look after the entire family. I wanted time to relax; I loved the idea of sitting down to a dinner that Haroon had cooked, but when I told him about Anwar’s culinary expertise, he sneered. “He must be gay.” I wondered how it was that cooking took away one’s heterosexuality. “Tell your friend’s husband he should wear bangles on his wrists!”
Haroon was not aware of the extent of my intimacy with Sebati; he barely noticed when I stopped telling him about myself. In Sebati I now confided my discontent and loneliness, the distance I felt between Haroon and myself. She was sympathetic. Taking my hands in hers, she declared she would always stand by me. I might no longer have my parents and my wonderful friends, but I had Sebati, a friend whom the family tolerated. More than tolerated! They welcomed her because she was a doctor. Because she looked after them when they became ill. Because she wrote them prescriptions. Her importance grew exponentially overnight when Hasan was hit by a truck one day as he cycled to
Sarvar—both his legs were broken, and several ribs. In no time, Sebati arranged for a Sarvar colleague of hers to operate, sparing no effort to get Hasan the best possible treatment.
I visited Hasan in the hospital once, with Amma. There I found Ranu weeping copiously for her husband, sitting at his feet. She stayed at the hospital most of the time since Amma didn’t think it proper for me, a
bou
of the house, to do hospital duty. “Stay at home and read the Koran so Hasan gets well,” she said. I wanted Hasan to recover too! Didn’t she think I would read the Koran and say my prayers without her direction? But I doubted just reading the Koran would help. Amma began to visit the hospital every day, carrying a thermos of hot soup and a tiffin box full of food. Dolon went with her—after all, Hasan was her little brother. Since Ranu was never at home either, the house was empty most of the time.
And so every night in my dreams I descended to the realm of my temptation. I knew that down the steps lay my desired object, concealed within a golden casket, as in a fairy tale. All I had to do was unfasten the latch. This was a secret I shared with no one, not even Sebati.
It was an afternoon when everyone was out—Baba had gone to Noakhai, Anis was in Chittagong, Haroon at the office, all the others at the hospital. Only Rosuni and I were in the house. After lunch, I found her stretched out on the floor, watching television. I was going down to see Sebati, I told her, even though I knew Sebati wouldn’t be at home. Rosuni, of course, was delighted. My absence gave her freedom—she could do all the things forbidden her: sit
on the sofa with her feet up, take a rest on any of the beds in the house, watch whatever she wanted on TV. She was, like anyone in her position, grateful for small blessings like snatching a few hours alone in an empty house.
The front door of Sebati’s flat came ajar at the touch of my hand, and I tiptoed in to find Afzal sitting on the veranda reading a book, bare chested, wearing nothing but loose white pajama trousers. Quietly, I moved behind him, not wishing to disturb his concentration, engrossed as he was. And then, a breeze stirred in the room and the end of my sari fluttered. Startled, he looked up.
“Ah, who but the upstairs
bou
! How long have you been here?” I stood there awkwardly, saying something about wanting to see Sebati.
“I don’t believe you for a second!” he declared.
“Why else would I be here?”
“You’ve come because she’s out,” he replied, smiling like a cat as I lowered my eyes and turned to leave. He took one of my hands, and as he drew me to him, I breathed in the warmth of his chest, not feeling the least inclined to pull away.
“Why do you wear so much jewelry?”
“Because I am the
bou
.”
“So you do what they like?”
“It is expected.”
“See if they expect this!” With that, he planted a kiss full on my mouth. Flabbergasted, I pulled slightly away, but he ignored my hesitation, lifted me in his arms and carried me straight into his bedroom. As I made a feeble attempt to withdraw, an image came to me of Dipu dancing in the
clouds, and with that, I went weak, entwining my arms around Afzal’s neck. As Afzal laid me on his bed, he was no longer Sebati’s brother-in-law or the man downstairs. In our sweep across the room, my sari had loosened, and my hair had fallen from its pins. I kept my eyes closed—I was Shipra, bashful in her bridal chamber—but at the brush of Afzal’s lips, my eyes opened like flowers, the woman on the wall coming into focus.