Bright Lines (19 page)

“Ah, there was vodka—I learned to love that clear, tasteless stuff. And of course, I met a woman. She was a Russian literature student named Tatiana. I met her while we were both searching a notice board of rooms for rent. I would realize later she’d had her eyes set on meeting a doctor. Her eyes fascinated me—they were unlike any I’d ever seen in person. Blue, but not like the sky or ocean. Blue like the lips of a drowned person. A bruise. It was very sexy for me. Until that moment, I’d only known fish-eyed girls who were not allowed to talk to me.”

Azim laughed. “Tatiana noticed me struggling with the Russian characters. I worked slowly through the notices, first translating into English, then Russian. It always took me a while. And how lucky for me! Her brother Alexei rented flats near Red Square, and
he was happy to rent to foreign exchange students, though most Russians did not want us near.

“Our courtship began over a bowl of ukha fish soup and my first sip of vodka. I became delirious with desire. I let her into the flooded nature of my thoughts. When I professed how much I wanted to marry her, her eyes became warm. Red flags of protest from our families heightened our passions. My telegram to my parents sent a shock wave through our family, though I am certain my father secretly wondered what a blue-eyed child would look like. Tatiana vowed she would convert to Islam. I read Chekhov and Tolstoy, just to have things to talk about with her. Within six months, we were married.

“We had a small wedding. A few of my fellow Bangladeshi nationals, friends from school, and her family. No one noticed my new brother-in-law Alexei glaring at me. He was suspicious of all of the foreign students who’d made their way to Russia, even though they were from homelands sympathetic to the Communist cause.

“One night, in an effort to show Alexei my purest intentions, I asked him over to our flat while Tatiana was in a late evening class. A long-necked vodka bottle emptied between us. We discussed the usual suspects: Trotsky’s exile, whether the KGB was the shield or the sword. I made a drunken, passing comment about how Russia’s cold put a chill in the people’s hearts. In my homeland, people were warm as the land they sprouted from. We had none of this cold, which had made the pogroms possible, which made people drown their misery with a bottle.

“Every word we utter is a matter of life and death, no? Alexei called me a stupid foreigner with a stupid mustache.”

—You talk too much, growled Alexei in Russian.

—Nothing well thought-out, brother; I’m still a newcomer, I replied. I’d learned Russian in order to make surviving the hostile environment easier. Besides, it was good for flirting.

—I am not your
braht
.

“He pinned me against a wall by the throat. He ripped my Swiss Army knife chain from my neck and stabbed through my left hand. Blood spurted onto Alexei’s face. And me, the roar of a Moscow train rushed over me, and my final thought,
I shall never be anything
, pounded in my ears, before I lost consciousness.

“Irreparable ulnar nerve damage, they said. No one could fix me.
No one could steady my hand. Macula, Retina, Sclera, Fovea, and Iris danced away from me; my naughty quintet of sisters playing a game of hide-and-seek that went terribly awry. Tatiana vowed never to see her brother again and tried nurturing me back. But I nursed my ache with pale spirits and solitude. I ignored her for months, barely speaking a full sentence a day. She left me for a baker, when she was four months pregnant with his child.”

“Did she say anything to you before she left?” asked Ella.

“Not a thing. She must have thought it would be easier that way.” Azim laughed. “Sometimes I wonder if she is alive. She smoked a lot of cigarettes. And Russian women’s noses and ears seem to grow bulbous with age. Maybe she is dead now; I don’t know.

“I left Russia, with no degree in hand, and no hand. Things were no quieter when I came back to Bangladesh. Student protests and the inklings of a pending war with West Pakistan welcomed me home. I wanted no part of it. Friends asked what happened, but I offered no details. I met Begum Firoza, a young girl—she was fifteen—innocent and loyal and brilliant though unschooled. We left Dhaka to start a family down south, by the beaches of Chittagong. She bore my three children: Rezwan in 1951, Hashi in 1955, and Stalin, in 1975, after the war had been won. Even if I tried, I wouldn’t be able to forget Russia. My own son is called Stalin.”

“And the story never grows old,” muttered a man who had just entered.

“Speaking of this devil, here is my son, your uncle Stalin,” said Azim. “Your uncle is very sensitive.”

“Sensitive? I’m not the man obsessed with miniatures,” said Stalin. “Anwar, it’s been years—how are things, bhai?”

“
Arré!
” Anwar cried, standing to embrace his young brother-in-law. “Another grown man! Rana and you are both looking good. And you’re a university professor and all!”

Stalin gave him a light punch on the shoulder. “Rana’s svelte from all of his hard work. Me, I’ve got the genes, eh? It’s good to see you, too.” He cleared his throat. “Oh, my. Ella? My big brother’s little—girl. Where’s Hashi Apa? Where’s your daughter? Ey! Rana, get me a glass of water before I die of thirst!”

“Or maybe he is not sensitive at all,” said Azim.

S
talin cursed himself for coming home for the weekend. He’d spent two hours in a Friday evening traffic jam just to be here, and already there was a bad taste in his mouth. How taxing was it to come home and deal with his father’s growing ineptitude. His father, in a word, broke his balls. His entire life existed under the grand shadow of the fallen giant, Rezwan, and his big sister, Hashi, who lived in faraway New York. Not to mention Anwar’s suffocating affability, his freakishly mannish niece Ella, and some other idiot niece he hadn’t met yet.

He had no time to serve as a native informant to these Americans. Who did he look like—Rana?

Stalin was the former Dhaka University student chairman of the Communist Party of Bangladesh, with a PhD in chemistry. He’d begun an assistant professorship at Jahangirnagar University. At twenty-eight, he was a man of meager means and verdant heart, though he knew that girls preferred cold-hearted industrialists and doctors.

A sleeping beauty lay in his bed. If she was this gratifying with drool crawling down her chin, then he could only picture her awake. Damn. His breath smelled of the roti and dried anchovy shootki he’d had for lunch. But he was looking good, donning his usual kurta and jeans, Kolhapuri sandals, plaid scarf. As always, he’d sprinkled the cologne of all colognes, Brut 33.

After a couple of cat stretches, the girl opened her eyes. “Hello. Who are—oh. You’re Stalin, right?” she asked, snapping her fingers. “I’m Charu.”

“Yes, yes, how are you?” he said quickly, in English.

“Good. Can you turn on a light?”

“Sure, sure.”

Charu winced. “There’re only a few things I really hate. Babies. Umbrellas. And fluorescent lights. Maybe you should turn it back off.”

She perched herself up on her elbow. Her body was both wide and slender, like a cambering road. “Why is your name Stalin? They actually named you that?”

Stalin wished he had sprayed more of the Brut 33. Charu. A shortened version of Charulata, the starlet immortalized in cinema, a lonely housewife destined to cuckold her man.

“My father has a very ironic sense of humor. He did not like his time in Russia, and perhaps it is a bad metaphor for his feelings for me.” Seeing Charu’s pitiful look, Stalin continued, “I’m just kidding! My name is Shourov—but my classmates named me Stalin because I sprouted a very big mustache at age ten. That’s the truth. But I can’t resist giving my old man a jab.”

“Wow. And I thought kids in New York were assholes.” Charu pointed to a stack of papers spilling out of the sides of his leather briefcase. “What’s all that? You a lawyer or something?”

“A professor, actually—and you? What do you do?”

“I’m in college. I work as a party promoter in New York and I’m already over it, I think. Shit, maybe I’m fired, since my fucking family decided to skip town on New Year’s Eve. I needed a vacation. I was thinking Mexico, Puerto Rico. Instead, I’m here in fucking Bangladesh. Where I have to keep it all covered up.”

Stalin found her sarcasm charming. “Well, if it’s anything like over here, pretty girls don’t get fired that easy. Besides, I do not have enough money for a new briefcase. I’m not American bourgeoisie, where I can just buy a suitcase every week.”

“I think my mom bought you one. You mean you’re not going to take it?”

There was a knock on the door.

“Come in,” they said at the same time.

“Here he is, everyone gets a hello, except for me!” cried Hashi, hugging him. He embraced his big sister. “I want to hear
everything
. I’m here now, and it’s time to find you a wife! Now, come, you two.
Rana’s cooked a fantastic fish dinner.” Hashi left them in the room to call after Anwar and Ella.

“Gross,” whispered Charu.

“What is gross?”

“Fried fish
and
arranged marriages. You won’t find me near that shit.”

“My sentiments exactly.” Stalin laughed.
I’m never marrying some backward-thinking, droll, middle-class slob. Give me a Brit, a German, a Swiss, or—an American
. He glanced sideways at his niece.

 * * * 

Ella was in the guest bedroom next door to Stalin’s room. Both rooms connected to the veranda, where she could hear Charu and Stalin chatting into the night. Ella felt imprisoned in the room—she would have preferred to be outside, but didn’t want to talk to them. Trails from old ghazals and Benson & Hedges cigarette smoke wafted in through the window.

“Even the Indians banned Taslima Nasrin’s latest book. Poor girl can’t catch a break,” said Stalin.

“Dude. Hasn’t she deserved enough respect to be called a woman? She survived some crazy fundamentalist bullshit,” said Charu.

“After all those failed marriages—they say she is gay.”

“You sound ignorant as fuck. We need to get you
straightened
out!”

Giggles ensued.

“Ella’s a burly girl, no?”

“Aw, shut up.”

“Why, shut up? Are you close? I barely know my siblings, so I don’t understand.”

“Right now, we aren’t close. We used to be. But things happened.”

“What things?”

“Oh, you know. I fell in and out of love. My best friend left and never called or wrote.”

“Sounds tragic. You know, on the bright side, Ella looks like you, even if you are not actual sisters.”

“Ew! Shut up!”

Ella dumped the contents of her backpack to find her Discman. She didn’t want to hear any more. She unfolded three white
button-down shirts, two pairs of jeans—one black, one blue—a pair of leather Kolhapuri sandals, and a pair of black Timberland hiking boots. She put on her headphones. She hadn’t had time to get her music sorted—all she had time to burn onto CDs: Debussy, Marvin Gaye, Augustus Pablo, and Sam Cooke. Marvin Gaye’s voice did the trick—the others made her feel depressed. She let her head sink into the pillow and laid a palm on her crotch. She pictured Maya.

 * * * 

The call of two azans awoke Ella at dawn. She went out to the veranda to peek into Stalin’s room through the window. He snored loudly. Charu wasn’t there. Ella went upstairs to the roof. Men hammered on development projects with bamboo scaffolding and brick foundations that seemed like they might crumble to dust in the near future. The multicolored buildings resembled ancient movable type. A rickshaw driver rang his bicycle bell to shoo away a stray dog and a group of street children who warmed themselves by a fire. The scent of burning trash comforted her, fitting her mood. The flames swallowed street debris, while providing unwanted children a bit of warmth.

If Maya had made the trip, they could explore Dhaka’s streets on their bicycles. She was sure they could figure out how to navigate traffic. She leaned over the edge of the roof, remembering a night in late November. She had sat close to the Cascadilla’s edge, fifty feet above a plunge pool, teetering between hallucination and hopelessness. As much as she tried to conjure up the darkness she’d grown used to, she couldn’t. Up here, everything was new. Ella realized she felt all right.

 * * * 

A couple of hours later, Ella went downstairs to join Rana and Azim at the dining table for breakfast.

“Come, child. Your Rana Bhai has made us some paratha and roast chicken. Where is Charu? Will she not take breakfast?”

“She stayed up late, I think. So—”

“She will eat later, then. When she wakes up.”

“No, actually,” said Rana, “Charu is already gone, with Stalin Bhai. I drove them this morning to Aziz Market for a book fair.”

“Well, Anwar and Hashi have gone to visit their old university grounds. If you would like, feel free to go in the car with Rana, explore the city.”

 * * * 

Shahbag Aziz Market was overrun with men, books, and tea. Charu and Stalin sat at a makeshift café bookstore. He said, “I’ll be right back—please do not move. Someone may eat you.”

Some were brilliant men; others, simple men, all of them artsy and socialist types. Books and tea suited them all. And Charu suited them all, too, apparently. She’d made the mistake of wearing her tightest pair of jeans. She’d never really given desi brothers love, even though NYU was littered with them. She liked her men brown as coffee, bearded, Black or Latino. These guys mostly fit that description. But they stared at her with their huge brown eyes. She was an oasis in the vast desert of girls who wouldn’t give it up without marriage. Sure enough, one man at the next table was drinking her in along with his tea.

Stalin returned with snacks. He scowled at the staring man, who fumbled to the next page in his paper.

“The owner told me there’s a citywide hartal,” Stalin said.

“Huh?”

“A worker and student strike. All the shops will be closed tomorrow,” he huffed. “Hate not being part of the university actions.”

“You’re a professor now, huh? Not down with us undergrad minions?”

He didn’t seem amused.

“What’s up with you?” Charu asked.

He shook his head. “You won’t understand, American.”

“You know, that little catchphrase is like your checkmate. It’s annoying.” His cocky smile infuriated her, but she sort of liked the old-school flirting.
Stalin is attractive.
“I understand more than you think.”

 * * * 

Ella spent the day doing errands with Rana. Besides working for her grandfather, he was a freelance photographer, and had even been in a few art shows in Dhaka. He drove her to the Sadarghat River
Front, so that she could take in her parents’ city. The Buriganga River was teeming with the traffic of riverboats, as if Azim’s miniature boats had escaped into the river. A passing barge’s wave drenched the small dinghies. As Ella took in the new sights, Rana snapped photos.

“How long have you been working—” Ella caught herself. Working for her grandfather was a sad summation of Rana’s role. “Living with my grandfather?”

“I was actually brought to their house as a baby. By your father.”

“From the village?”

Rana half-smiled. “If you can call it that.”

“What do you mean?”

“Your father and Anwar found me in the woods during the war.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Everyone’s always sorry. But I found a good family.”

Ella imagined Rana as a feral child, alone and crying, discovered by her father. Seeing no alternative, he must have decided to raise him as his own. “Do you remember him and my mother?” asked Ella. “Did I know you as a child? I remember a boy who told me my parents were killed.”

“I remember your mother and father. But I didn’t tell you that. I wouldn’t have had the heart to. Besides, I was already a teenager. That must have been a houseboy, whoever the houseboy was at the time.” Rana’s voice cracked. He set down his camera. “Rezwan was like a father to me. We were a family—you were my baby sister. We were going to move down to Rangamati. Then Laila and Rezwan were killed. Begum Nani went mad. She couldn’t sleep, couldn’t bear to look at photos of her son. Azim Nana withdrew into himself. Stalin and I were young, but getting older, starting to understand things. We could not afford to falter. We had to move on.”

“I don’t . . . like Stalin,” said Ella.

“He is someone who doesn’t care if he is liked. We have an uneasy alliance. You know, I am a few years older than him.” Rana stood up, and offered Ella his hand. “Let’s go to one more place. You’ll get to see how another side of the city lives.”

As they rode toward Banani, the crowded alleyways of Old Dhaka opened up into wider roads, just as crowded with people. The car zipped past roadside markets displaying enormous bunches
of black grapes freshly plucked from the vine. A cycle wagon carrying a hundred watermelons milled past. Ella wondered how the scrawny driver packed enough energy in his calves to move such a load. Men were everywhere. There was hardly a woman on the street. Ella had never been in a place full of brown-skinned people that she felt—kinship with. Some men wore pants; others, lungis paired with funky floral shirts. Everyone was hustling something, selling Nokias or produce, laying bricks or pitching bamboo ladders, or driving baby taxis and rickshaws, trying to evade aggressive drivers.

“This is the most ironic two-minute detour one could take,” Rana said, nodding out the window. He pulled over to park his car beside a lake, where tin and bamboo houses stood on stilts.

“Why’s that?”

“Korail slum—the largest in Dhaka—is right beside the posh neighborhoods Banani and Gulshan. People in the slum are always being blamed for drugs, organized crime, pollution. But they are the ones without running water or sewage systems.” Rana beckoned Ella to follow him as he hopped over the guardrail to walk down a hill into the slum. Garbage and wet marshy grasses squished under their feet as they entered the mouth of the slum. Dust clung to the mangy dogs. They walked past homes of tin, cardboard, and brick, where half-naked children and their mothers cooked lunch. Men stared.

Ella saw a transsexual woman, a hijra, pass by holding a garland of flowers. The woman seemed the least nefarious of all the characters.

“Ey, Tina!” Rana called.

“What do you want?” The woman turned and scowled. As soon as she recognized Rana, she smiled. “Rana Bhai, what’s happening? When are we taking the photos?”

“Let’s schedule for after my sisters leave. This is Ella. She lives in America.”

“Your brother is a good man,” said Tina, nodding shyly.

Ella heard the thick bass of Tina’s voice, but her lips were painted red, like her fingers. She was flirting with Rana, for sure.

“And you’re a good woman,” said Rana. He laughed. “Tina is the main subject for my next portrait series,
Korailer Nari.
I’ll be taking photos of women and hijras that live here.”

“I should go. See you soon.” Tina patted Ella’s shoulder.

“Nice to meet you,” said Ella.

They watched her stride easily down the muddy lane, gracefully hopping over puddles of dirty water.

Ella felt a tug on her arm. A young girl, no older than eight or nine, stared up at her. She held out her little hand and said, “Kola dao.”
Give me a banana.

“Here, child,” said Rana.

He pulled out three ten-taka bills. “Buy a bunch of bananas.” He turned to Ella. “And that’s how it is here. Brilliant characters everywhere you go. But the price you pay is guilt and too much traffic. Come. It’s three o’clock. Let’s go pick up Charu and Stalin Bhai from the market.”