Faria’s worst doubts were confirmed the moment her grandmother took out the sarota to slice some particularly large suparis.
Faria knew that Dadi only added supari to her paan and chun when there was good news. For the last two years, good news at their house had translated to finding a match for her youngest uncle, Masoom. He had already met three girls by now, and none had sealed the deal.
“I have a good feeling this time,” said Dadi, which she had also said the last few times. She placed the sarota on the wooden table, expertly gripping the handles between her right thumb and four fingers while grinning at Faria with her betel-stained teeth.
In her few twelve years of life, Faria had seen this white-haired old woman deftly slice stone-hard suparis as if they were as tender as bananas. Faria was forbidden to go near the sarota, a directive she gladly followed, especially since the day she realized her fingers were softer than suparis. She wondered why her Dadi overlooked the possible accidents of using this deadly weapon regularly only to consume something equally detrimental to her health. Faria would silently start praying every time she witnessed the slicing.
“Who is the girl?” asked Faria.
“Oh, Meera is from a very khandani family. Her father’s one of the top barristers of Bangladesh, and she studied economics in Dhaka University with full scholarship.” Dadi took a supari and placed it in the opening, and then—tat tat tat—she cut it in half. Faria wondered why Dadi did not mention the looks of the girl, which was usually the first comment anyone made in such situations.
“Looks beautiful too,” said Dadi, as if reading Faria’s thoughts. “But she has a birthmark near her ears. Would you like to see her picture?”
“No.”
“No? Why not?”
Dadi was now slicing the halves into halves. Around ninety percent of Faria’s concerns lay in imagining a portion of her grandmother’s fragile fingers toppling off onto the cutting board and the subsequent chaos in the house. The remaining ten percent really wanted to see it happen.
“Just like that. I mean, I’ll see her anyway if she becomes my Chachi, won’t I?” Faria shrugged.
“Listen to her logic! Shying away like it’s your groom’s picture. You can do all this dhong when it’s your turn!”
“Uff, Dadi! Fine, where is it?”
“It’s on the top shelf of the wardrobe, in the white envelope.” The old woman winked and began preparing the betel leaf.
“Do you want some paan?”
“No.”
“Have it; it’s for good news.”
THEN WHY DO YOU EVEN ASK? Faria thought.
“All right, but not the chun. I hate the taste.”
“Kids!” chuckled Dadi.
Embarrassed, Faria went toward the wardrobe.
She had a million reasons to not want to see the picture or spend any more time chewing betel leaf and discussing it. It was always the same drill. She was almost glad that her aunts were out wedding shopping, another activity Faria had refused as it seemed ridiculous to celebrate before anything was fixed. Moni Phupi and Toni Phupi were both unmarried university students who lived in the same house with them. Along with their studies, they were also experts in scrutinizing every negative detail about anyone and everyone. Whenever a bride-to-be sent her pictures, these two gossip ladies would ceremoniously open the envelopes and printed bio-datas, and loudly criticize Allah for not putting enough effort behind the poor girl and her family.
“What’s with the cheeks? It’s like she ate two plums and forgot to spit out the seed.”
“Is that her hair? We should send plenty of oil in the wedding dala.”
“Thank Allah she is fair-skinned, but imagine this fatty thumping up the stage. If we pick her, we better save the wedding for later; at least she will get some time to lose weight.”
The cruel commentary would go on and on, as if to say these women were flawless, as if that gave them the right. Her aunts—a year apart and almost identical in appearance—ticked all the boxes of conventional postcolonial standards of Bangladeshi beauty. They had the “fair and lovely” smooth skin, the black voluminous hair that touched their waists, and eyes with lashes that could put a doe to shame. If one looked closely, Moni Phupi had the sharper nose and Toni Phupi the triangular jawline and protruding collarbone. They often compared themselves and pressured everyone to answer, “Who’s prettier?” every other day. Faria wondered if their arrogance and judgment came from knowing they met all societal standards of perfect marriage material, or rather because they knew, like every other girl, they would soon be the victim of such scrutiny themselves, so why not enjoy being in power while they could?
Faria took the envelope and walked back to Dadi. In it was just one photo, not multiple copies of passport-sized headshots and standing-pose pictures the others usually sent. This seemed like a candid where a lady, probably in her early twenties, sat on a rope swing on her porch. She had her feet propped up on the seat and held a red mug. Her navy-blue salwar kameez was wrapped with a golden-brown shawl around her shoulders, where the loose curls of her untied black hair fell. There was red nail polish on her toes. There was a hint of kajal in her eyes. Her lips were pink and her skin the shade of milk tea—neither dark nor fair. Her lifelike print image seemed to be in deep thought, staring at something Faria suddenly longed to see too, for this lady, this photo, and this moment, was the most beautiful thing she had seen in her life.
“Isn’t she a jaan?” Dadi asked.
“Yes,” Faria half-whispered.
“Told you! We are all very excited to bring her home. You’ll finally have someone to talk to as well.”
Faria knew Dadi was implying much more than that. Her mother, the first bouma of the family, had passed away from typhoid when Faria was only two. She hardly had any memories of her mother and didn’t know what it felt like to have one, or lose what she never had. Being raised by her grandmother and her aunts also did not allow her much room to feel the absence of any more adult females, and her father was her favorite person in the world.
“How will she come home? Is the marriage fixed already?”
“Everything is fixed by Allah. It is all written. Their marriage will take place wherever and whenever He wills. Now have this and say Alhamdulillah!”
Dadi stuffed the supari wrapped in betel into Faria’s mouth, through which she uttered the muffled gratefulness for Allah’s blessings, and as the acrid taste of the paan’s juice spread in her mouth, she added a silent prayer for everything to go well.
✶
With the arrival of the new proposal, the Rahman house that day began to blow the wedding trumpets before anyone even said kobul. The mid-December chilly weather, nicknamed the wedding season, only added to their excitement, for they wished to hold the engagement ceremony as soon as possible. Faria’s father, Shamser, an ENT specialist who worked till late evening, returned home with the largest hilsa fish in the market to be cooked with the traditional mustard paste and accompanied with polao and chicken korma. Her aunts bought samples of glittery fabric and paper roses for décor, especially for when they would prepare the dala of sweets. The landline was suddenly very busy, it was either in use or ringing, mostly for and by Faria’s father who had taken charge to call everybody he knew in town to find out more about the girl’s family. He ended each conversation with a broad smile, meaning he had failed to track down any criminal history, divorce, or terminal illness in their bloodline.
Faria wondered if the brides’ families did the same. The Rahmans had a longstanding reputation in the upper middle–class area of Dhanmondi. On paper, their bio-data would stand out over any others in line—her grandfather, having been the much-revered local commissioner, bought their house in the late ‘60s, and it was now worth tens of crores in just thirty years. On top of that, her father was a doctor, her uncle in banking, her two aunts stellar students at the top university—factors automatically earning their family the adjectives of well-to-do, respected, highly-educated and, most importantly, untainted. All of this meant their family could easily go by the umbrella term of a “good family,” and as it became obvious when this girl’s family came with a date, too, they were all just two shy yeses away.
✶
The meeting date was set for the upcoming Friday, and the preparations for the probable follow-up engagement already in motion. With the ongoing winter vacation, Faria had no option but to spend all her time at home, listening to the gossip and plans and complaints of how when the new bride came there would be fights over the rooms. At present, Dadi and her two daughters lived in the bedrooms on the ground floor, where Masoom Chacha had turned the living room into his bedroom plus study. On the top floor, with Shamser in the master bedroom, Faria had a room of her own, a privilege she only received because her father had the final say in all household decisions. Faria knew her aunts deserved their own space much more than she did. She feared further splitting when the new bride came. She wasn’t ready to give up her room.
She wasn’t ready for any of these changes.
All this talk about beauty and marriage and being “suitable” had made Faria extra conscious over the past year. She now spent considerable time checking her reflection in the mirror, inspecting every inch of her body in the shower, disgusted at the thought of lying next to a man in a few years’ time. How did all these women agree to this by meeting someone just once? Unlike the rest of the girls in her school who giggled over “dirty” terms in the dictionary, pulled at each other’s bra straps from behind, and dabbed lip gloss when the teachers were not looking, Faria despised her growing female body. She felt ashamed of the two bulges on her chest, angry that it was time for her to switch to wearing salwar-kameez-orna, that she was not allowed to pluck the thin hairs on her upper lips. The face she saw in the mirror was a heart-shaped one, her small eyes and mouth too childlike to be called pretty, and yet, she knew, there was something about her broad lips and sharp nose Moni Phupi claimed to have contributed that made her quite attractive.
She had learnt of her attractiveness the hard way. Earlier in the year, she had visited the annual Banijjo Mela with her father. The Trade Fair drew an insane crowd from all over the country, hosting stalls of every item from electronics to fabric to home décor to toys to books as well as 3D-cinema halls that were first-of-its-kind in ‘90s Dhaka. Before they left the house, her father had asked her to choose a number from 0 to 443, which was the total number of stalls.
“123!” she had said excitedly.
“All right. So once we go there, we will find stall number 123, and I promise to buy you anything you want from it.”
“Really?! What if it’s expensive?”
“That’s not a problem. The sky is your limit today, but the condition is that you have to pick from the stall or else you get nothing.”
Faria loved this new game. She wore her favorite white T-shirt and red skirt and sat in the front seat of their car, deliberately mentioning that a girl in her school had brought a whole set of colorful stationery from the fair the day before. She hoped that they would end up in a bookshop or chocolate store or one with DIY beads—that would make one great story to tell her classmates!
The walk from the parking lot to the gates of the fair was a mile or two. As soon as they hit the streets, Faria was suddenly aware of the stares. This was the first time in years that she had walked through a crowded Dhaka street, and she could sense all the men glancing at her chest. She tightly held onto her father’s hand and scampered on, looking down. As they neared the gates, it was clear that there was no single line for entrance and exit. Waves of people were coming in and going out, shoving past each other to get their way.
“Don’t leave my hand. We might have to push in,” said her father, and before Faria could protest, they barged into the crowd.
Faria could not remember how long it had taken them to cross that sea of men at the entrance, which was a matter of a few feet. To her, it seemed like an eternity—an eternity of hands repeatedly grabbing her breasts from all sides, pinching her bottom, and one even pulled on her skirt. She whirled around shocked, trying to figure out which hand belonged to whom, if she should scream, and why the hell was her father so damn blind, so busy trying to fight his way ahead that he did not realize what was going on next to him. The force of the opposing mob kept slowing her down as she clung to her father’s hand, and after what seemed like a thousand shoves and grabs, they were out in the open field surrounded by stalls.
“Did you get hurt?” her father asked, looking at her now.
“No,” she replied firmly, her entire body stinging in humiliation and rage.
“The crowds can be dangerous sometimes. This is why I ask you to be careful when you go out,” he said.
As they continued exploring the fair, Faria could not pay attention to any of the shops and responded half-heartedly to Shamser’s questions. Stall 123 turned out to be a jute goods store, which hardly had anything to Faria’s liking.
“It’s all right, we were just playing a game here. We will go to other fun stores as well. You can pick something else,” her father said as he noticed her silence.
“I want that bag,” Faria pointed to a square tote.
“Are you sure? I was just joking about the store number.” “Yes, I am. I want that,” she said firmly.
After they bought it, Faria insisted they go home as she was not feeling too well. When they neared the exit again, she let go of her father’s hand and hugged the bag tightly to her chest. He pulled her by the shoulders and let her stand in front of him, shielding her from behind. She could not believe he had not thought of doing this before.
On their way back in the car, she looked at her father with a hatred she had never before felt. The one man she thought would protect her from all evil, did not even blink an eye while she was wading through hell inches away. She had never felt the need for a mother figure more.
That night Faria had trouble sleeping, and the night after, and the one after that. On the fourth night, she had a vivid nightmare of returning to the mela and making all those men stand in a line. And then one by one, she used her Dadi’s sarota to chop off each of their fingers.
✶
The “boy” and the “girl” were to first meet publicly at the new book café in Eastern Plaza, owned by a friend of Shamser. If all went well, Masoom and Meera would meet a second time at their homes to finalize the engagement. The meet-up spot in such situations could be a make-or-break factor, given that the couples-to-be were made to see each other for the first time in the most unusual locations. Faria had heard her friends’ relatives had met at crowded street markets, random yet convenient jewelry stores, and even “caught a glimpse” while crossing the street and had to base their answer on whatever they saw in that fleeting moment. Her own parents, according to a story Shamser loved to share proudly, had seen each other as strangers at a wedding. Shamser had told Dadi to “do something” before the girl in the white kameez slipped away, and by the time the couple on stage had said their kobuls, the two families had also introduced themselves over the biryani and sealed their futures.
It was all so absurd.
What was even more absurd was Masoom Chacha’s nonchalant attitude about the whole matter. He mostly kept in his room, not partaking in any of the celebrations besides smiling foolishly at dinner whenever the others teased him about Meera. Everybody assumed he was upset from the previous rejections and thus left him alone after a while.
Faria was not particularly close to her uncle, who worked for customer service at a bank from nine to five and spent the rest of the day watching TV in his room. Sometimes he would go upstairs to give her a chocolate or new stationery and exchange brief conversations about her school and studies.
At other times, though, he would ask her to pretend to be older and call a girl’s home number for him, given Faria’s voice was convincingly husky.
“Assalamualaikum, may I speak to Dahlia?” Faria’s heart would be beating fast as she spoke into the landline speaker.
“Who is calling?” The call receiver, usually the parent of the girl, would sound super strict on phone.
“I’m Sadia, her classmate, from City College,” Faria would read off the note her uncle held in front of her.
“What are you calling about?”
“Uh, she said she needed help for tomorrow’s midterm.”
“Oh! Is that so?! Okay dear, hold on…” Any word about studies worked like magic.
A few seconds and then a girl would receive. “Dahlia here.”
“Hello. I am studying chapter 13.” Uttering the code sentence, Faria would hand the phone over to Masoom Chacha
She did not have to call the same name for more than a few weeks before it was replaced by another. When Masoom Chacha met his first match, Leena, he would come up regularly to make Faria call the woman. But the meeting and rejection happened, which kept him quiet for some time, before starting on new names again.
Faria was highly tempted to ask Uncle why he was getting married at all—unlike those girls, he was a twenty-eight-year-old man being encouraged to take part in the ordeal and not at all forced, plus he seemed to have so many girlfriends anyway She wondered if any of the prospective brides found out about this too soon. But that would not be reason enough; in the eyes of society, Masoom Chacha would always be a catch, a tall banker with a charming smile that ran in a family that held such high status in their neighborhood.
This was sufficient to make any prospective bride’s family weak in their knees, and yet something did not seem to add up.
✶
On the auspicious Friday morning, the golden rays of the winter sun peeped into their house, as if hinting of the pleasantness that lay ahead. Masoom Chacha was sent to the local salon to get the special groom haircut. He returned a little too clean-shaven and a little too red in the cheeks, matching with the maroon panjabi Dadi made him wear.
Everybody including Dadi made extra preparations this time. The women dressed as if Eid had come early, draped in their silk sarees and pashmina shawls and hair steamed into curls with plastic rollers. Faria’s father, who liked to wear suits for important occasions, did just that and spent the whole day polishing his black shoes till they shone.
The festive mood lightened up Faria for the day, too. She wore the traditional salwar kameez, her green one with the chiffon orna which was the easiest to pull down to her chest and maintain there. She longed to meet Meera and wondered if her side of the family had any kids her age. Her excitement over the meeting was, however, not limited to what she might discover but more so over the book café they were going to. During the past three meetings, Faria had seized the opportunity to read a collection of love stories by Humayun Ahmed, the writer whose books she was not “mature enough” to read or understand and hence was forbidden to touch without permission. She had finished ten stories already, each one more beautiful and heartbreaking than the other, and looked forward to reading the last two.
The afternoon saw the family fit into the car, with Shamser driving and Masoom in the front seat and all the women cramped happily in the back. Toni and Moni began teasing their brother again, this time asking if he would give his children names that began with the letter M. Dadi brought her box of paan and kept whispering prayers under her breath. The aunts complained that the sweet shop of Eastern Plaza was not good enough, so if the girl said yes they should take a detour to the Bikrampur mishti shop at the other end of town. The déjà vu of it all was almost comical to Faria now. How long did they plan on making similar trips and jokes? Would it end when her uncle found a match, or would it then start for her aunts? Would it end after everyone hit a certain number of almost-matches? Would it ever end?
Once inside the plaza, the family found Boi Bichitra, the corner book café, in front of which stood Meera and her parents. Meera’s father quickly walked towards them, offering a hearty handshake to the men and a resounding salaam to all the women. Her mother came up, too, and dragged Meera with her. They raised their right hands toward their forehead in salaams, and again everyone followed. Faria noticed that Meera was dressed in a saree today, the green katan anchol pinned onto her shoulders and around her waist, ensuring modesty and that no skin shown. She wore a full-sleeved white blouse with it, and had her hair tied into a bun. She had boldly lined her eyelids and put on maroon lipstick. She did not have the rawness of the girl in the picture, but today she was painted perfectly. She smiled at Faria, who returned it awkwardly, and they strode into the bookshop together. The “boy” and the “girl” maintained a noticeable distance, as no one had yet asked them to speak.
The L-shaped shop had a neat arrangement of shelves stacked with Bengali books of all genres. At the rear of the longer side of the wall were a few tables with a coffee counter at the very back. After Shamser bought the first round of coffees for everybody, (“Please, it’s my pleasure to treat.”) Masoom and Meera sat at one table, the two men at another, and the women at another. Faria took her chocolate milkshake and picked the Humayun Ahmed book from the shelf when no one was checking. At the opposite end of the shop, she sat on a stool that the shopkeeper used to reach the higher shelves. From the corner of her eye, she saw that everybody was engrossed in conversation, the couple-to-be especially, averting each other’s gaze with shy smiles and bobbing nods.
They took around fifteen minutes to make the decision. Within this time, Faria already finished reading one story and had started on the last one. This was about a man who visits a psychiatrist to discuss his recent nightmares where an unknown voice asks him to run, the twist being that when he wakes up in real time, he finds his feet to be swollen from excessive running. Faria never got to know how a tale that sounded like a thriller made it into the collection of love stories, because in that moment she was suddenly interrupted by a soft voice.
“So, you’re the family princess Faria! What are you reading, dear?” Faria looked up to see the painted face of Meera looming next to hers.
“Salaam—yeah—this is just a book I found here,” she quickly replied, making sure the cover of the book did not show.
“Is that the love story collection by Humayun Ahmed?” Meera asked. “Umm yeah, I just found it—”
“Oh, I absolutely love his work!” Meera exclaimed. “I have collected everything he ever wrote, even cut off newspaper clippings of all his essays and articles that mentioned him even once. When you come to our house, I’ll show you my Humayun Ahmed ‘special shelf.’”
“Really?”
Faria was not asking about the shelves. She was surprised to get the casual invite, which meant the meeting must have gone well. Her heart began to thump loudly.
“Of course! Tell you what, let me buy this for you today. This will be my first little gift to my niece-to-be!”
“No, no, no!” Faria shook her head frantically and glanced past Meera to see if anyone was looking in their direction. The adults seem to still be talking amongst themselves, where Masoom Chacha had joined too.
“Why not? Are you feeling shy to receive gifts from me now?”
“No, it’s not that—I mean yes I shouldn’t but also—I am not, you know, allowed to read romances yet.”
“Oh!” Meera broke into a laugh. “Is that so?”
“Yes, don’t laugh—this is serious! They’ll kill me if they know!” Faria whispered.
“Oh okay, okay, my lips are sealed.” Meera whispered back.
“And you have to promise you won’t tell anyone about this,” Faria pleaded. She had never had such a trusting conversation with a stranger in such a short period of time.
“Of course, I won’t.” Meera put on a grave face and patted the girl’s head.
“Okay.”
“Okay.”
They exchanged an awkwardly long pause, which Meera finally broke.
“Okay then how about: I buy this book for myself, and then when you visit, you can finish the story and nobody will know. Does that work?”
In that instant, Faria looked full into the face of this lady and wished very much that this would happen. Out of all the girls they had met, Meera was the one she instantly wanted to call Chachi in a matter of few minutes as these things go, and that’s how she knew this was the perfect match. She wondered if her family had been right all along, that marriages were written in heaven, that there was an angel somewhere who would fix her Chacha’s life, that if and when the new Chachi came, Faria would have a friend and a mother figure in the house who she could share all her secrets with, that this beautiful and friendly lady standing in front of her could be the answer to all of her prayers, too.
“That would be perfect.”
Faria handed over the book to Meera, who walked towards the counter to buy it.
She returned with it in a packet, and together they joined the families at the table.
As everybody chatted excitedly, Dadi pulled Faria closer and asked her how much she liked her new Chachi.
“A lot. When’s the wedding?”
Her response was met with loud laughter as the two families got up to shake hands and exchange salaams again. Both Masoom and Meera touched Dadi’s feet for blessings. Outside the shop, they separated ways, and Meera quickly cupped Faria’s face in goodbye.
The ride back home was jollier than ever. As Dadi munched on a new paan from her box, Faria’s aunts were now certain that the couple would have one son and one daughter called Mansur and Mariam. Masoom, too red in the face to turn and talk to his sisters in the back seat, looked out of the window while Shamser could not stop mentioning what a gentleman Meera’s father had been. The engagement would likely take place in two weeks, he said, as they were pressed for time that winter, and if they pushed, the wedding could take place by January.
✶
The call from Meera’s family came at 10 that night. All the bulbs in every room of the two-story Rahman house lit up in unison as Shamser picked up the phone with a jolly “Hello, Assamulalaikum Bhai!” It quickly turned into a few heated minutes of “But why? At least give us an explanation!” before ending in a loud slam. He summoned everybody to the living room—there had been a very unexpected fourth “no.” The whole family was crestfallen again.
The only person who was not shocked was Faria. She silently cried into her pillow, crumbling in her hand the small note she had displayed earlier to Meera, right on top of the sentence in the story where the voice in the man’s nightmares asks him to run. The note she had shown the other girls, too, the note that said in the scribbles of a helpless tween, “Please say no. He hurts me when nobody’s home.”
✶✶✶✶
Maisha H. was born and raised in Dhaka, Bangladesh. She is currently a PhD candidate of Creative Writing at Florida State University. She completed her MA in Creative Writing from Queen’s University Belfast, Northern Ireland in 2018. Her writing has appeared in QUB’s Blackbird Anthology of 2018, Panjeree Publications, Poet’s Choice, The Offending Adam and NPR’s Freshly Picked Prose. Her interest lies in postcolonial literature, South Asian Studies and women’s writing. As a part of her dissertation, she is working on a collection of short stories on Bangladeshi women, for which she has recently won the Adam M. Johnson Fellowship from Florida State University.
✶
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