by Syed Manzoorul Islam

When Shekool Arefin got up at nine in the morning he didn’t know that his photograph had appeared in two daily newspapers in Dhaka. Not that this was something to be pleased about. The Great World Trading Company, for which he used to work till a month back, had placed adverts in those two newspapers appealing to readers to help apprehend him. Because Shekool had disappeared with 700,000 taka belonging to the company—he had defalcated the amount. But the Dhaka dailies don’t reach Cox’s Bazzar by 9 a.m., and so neither Shekool nor the townspeople were yet aware of the terrible stigma that had become attached to his name. Instead, as he lay on his filthy bed with several cockroaches and a hundred bugs in the stuffy confines of Room No. 206 of Hotel Urmila, he sighed at the thought that another day had arrived. He’d have to live through it somehow.
   The Great World Trading Company had its head office in Dhaka, and a branch office in Chittagong that took care of business dealings at the port. There were four smart young men who spent all their time at the port, lobbied the port officials and by greasing the right palms got the Company’s work done without a hitch. The Company’s owner Kazem Ali Mandal had two sons, one of whom was in charge of the Chittagong office. He had a cunning head for business and a lot of daring. But when it came to travel he had a fear of flying. But on the safe highway his jeep overturned near Chandina and he had to be hospitalized. That’s when Shekool was called upon by Kazem Mandal and instructed to carry some money to Chittagong. But by air. The land route had proved to be treacherous.
   Some money amounted to 725,000 taka. Shekool had no idea why the need for so much cash had suddenly arisen.
   Turning the pages of the Daily Ittefaq as he waited for his lunch to be served, Shekool started at the sight of the advert with his photograph and the announcement of a 25,000 taka reward for information leading to his arrest. He knew that he might fall into the hands of the Police at any moment.
   He had come to Cox’s Bazaar a week ago, hoping it would provide a safe hideaway. For fear of the Police he seldom ventured out of his hotel. But after all these days the newspaper advert and the large reward offered meant that he had to be wary of everyone, not just the Police.
   Since birth Shekool had been timid by nature, but when his fear was greatest his head would become surprisingly clear. His limbs trembled, no doubt, but a cool brain presided over them. As he sat at the dhal-and-gravy soiled table at the Restaurant Burma Queen he was gripped by intense fear, as if death were imminent. But within moments he realized that though his insides had gone numb with fear his brain functioned normally. It told him to see if there were any other newspapers in the restaurant.
   Shekool’s sidelong glances told him there weren’t any. His brain now coolly told him to cautiously tear out the advert and secrete it into his pocket.
   He did as his brain commanded, then ate his lunch and returned to his hotel.
   The hotelier was sitting with The Daily Dinkal open before him. A supporter of the Nationalist Party, whose organ it was, he was carefully perusing the post-editorial. It said that Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman had no role in the independence war of 1971. This put the hotelier in a fix, for as a young man of 30 in that fateful year he had shouted many a thunderous slogan in praise of Bangabandhu. He asked Shekool for his opinion on the controversy.
   Shekool’s calm brain advised him to say, “Uncle, I wasn’t even born in 1971, so I can’t say anything. Why don’t you tell me what you know?”
   The hotelier let out a profound sigh. “What is there to say?” Shekool asked to see the paper.
   His photograph wasn’t in it. That was a little reassuring. The photograph printed in The Ittefaq was five years old. He sported a moustache in those days. It was gone now. In these five years his hair had thinned somewhat, and he had grown a trim beard. It was unlikely that anyone would recognize him at once as Shekool Arefin. In the hotel register he had signed his name as Deen Mohammad Khan. Occupation: NGO worker.
   What was he doing in Cox’s Bazaar? Well, he was surveying the adverse effects of organic and chemical waste on biodiversity. In the morning and again in the afternoon he went down to the beach with a notebook. He sat quietly for a while before turning back to his hotel. The hotelier was pleased with him because he would be a long-term guest. Besides, his work might restore the biodiversity of the place and help improve the town and its tourist industry.
   
   2.
   Shekool was not dishonest, nor had anyone in his family ever done anything underhand, not to mention embezzle funds. His grandfather, father and uncles had been well-to-do farmers. But their home and all their land stood on the River Meghna. There is a wise saw that for those who live by a river kinsfolk and stranger are all one. As if in appreciation of such an otherworldly philosophy, the river one day devoured everything belonging to Shekool’s family. For good measure it carried away his father as well. Overnight, the river encircled two entire villages, one of which was Shekool’s village, and half of another. Everyone ran towards the safety of the highway in the distance—everyone but Shekool’s father. Like one in a trance he went back to retrieve his matriculation certificate and some gold ornaments he had given to his wife at their wedding. The river of course could hardly appreciate the achievement behind one or the distinctiveness in the other.
   With his mother, two brothers and two sisters to look after, Shekool was in dire straits. Their ruined extended family was scattered. Shekool’s family drifted to Dhaka about nine years ago. Their history since then isn’t worth recounting in detail. But despite a hundred deprivations Shekool never lost his integrity, never stooped to underhand dealings. For this reason, when he was an M. Com. student in the evening shift at Jagannath College, he attracted the admiration of Farzana Afroze, a student of Bengali literature.
   Of course Farzana wasn’t able to show her admiration for long. Her parents arranged a match for her with an engineer. At first she had demurred, for she had a soft corner for Shekool. But she fell in line when she heard that the engineer was emigrating to Canada. To Shekool she said, “I’ll pray for your welfare. My heart will always cry for you.”
   Shekool and Farzana were then sitting on a bench in Bahadur Shah Park. Not far from them a limbless beggar intoned, “O sing the praise of Allah and his Prophet!”
   Tears welled up in Shekool’s eyes. But he was inured to sorrow. He only thought, in the endless void of my existence can’t I hope even for a hint of fulfillment? Ever?
   “O sing in praise of Allah and his Prophet!”
   Shekool cast a forlorn glance towards the wretch. Then he put his hand in his pocket and took out all the money he had—which was a single 5 taka banknote—and gave it to the beggar. He’d walk home today—home to a tin-roofed three-room house in the dark underbelly of Doniya. The house didn’t have a bathroom. It only had a stinking triangular latrine. Shekool’s sisters had to go nextdoor to bathe at the tubewell there, somehow preserving their modesty as they sloshed water over their sari-clad bodies.
   For Farzana it had been sheer agony to tell Shekool about their impending parting of the ways. But she was helpless. She was a young woman after all. She felt so awful that she went without food for four days. At night she sobbed into her pillow till it was quite sodden. Then her two brothers’ wives took her shopping to choose her wedding sari and all the varied items of her trousseau. That day she felt her sorrow lighten a little. Even then, when she went to bed at night she wrote in the diary of her inner world, in invisible ink: Shekool, losing you I’ve lost my cool forever.
   Well, who knows, maybe she had.
   
   3.
   One of Shekool’s sisters was quite shrewd. She got a job at Gazi Garments in Doniya, and within a year had a romantic marriage with the manager, Abul Hossein. Now she was expecting her first child.
   The younger sister was simple-minded by comparison. Nicknamed Tuktuki, she was beautiful and, according to Shekool, quite intelligent. She had got her Higher Secondary Certificate and taken a job as a supervisor at a garments factory. But she had told Shekool that she intended to study for the B.A. as an external candidate. Shekool was pleased to hear it.
   “I’ll get a first, I promise you,” Tuktuki told her brother.
   “I’m sure you will,” Shekool replied affectionately.
   “Then I’ll get a good job and relieve you of some of the pressure.”
   Shekool hugged his sister and said, “After you get your degree you don’t have to do anything else for me, Tukumoni” . . . (Tukumoni was his affectionate sobriquet for her) . . . “That you wish to do something is enough.”
   But Tukumoni’s plans went no further.
   One day, as she was coming home from work, Tukumoni was abducted in a microbus by Earless Mursalin, the terror of Doniya, the right-hand man of the local MP and sidekick of a certain minister. His lustful gaze had fallen on Tukumoni.
   When Tuktuki was set free after five days she came home a changed person. It was as if she had turned into stone. There were no tears in her eyes and her voice seemed to have disappeared into a well of loneliness.
   Tuktuki never repeated her resolutions to Shekool. Rather it was he who made a resolution to bring her back to normal life. He remembered the orphaned Alfaz from their non-existent village, who had once said, “Shekool Bhai, if I could get a job abroad it would ease my anguish somewhat.”
   Shekool looked up Alfaz and suggested that he get married in order to assuage his anguish.
   “But who?”
   “Tuktuki.”
   Alfaz sat stunned for a while. It was unbelievable. Was Shekool kidding? He and Tuktuki? The Light of Doniya, the Beauty Queen of the Meghna?
   “Yes, Tuktuki.”
   “You aren’t kidding?”
   “No.”
   “Will she accept me?”
   “I’ll take care of that.”
   “Shouldn’t Tuktuki decide for herself?”
   “Yes, but she has been through a difficult time. She’s in a bad way.”
   “It’s my responsibility to ease her sorrow,” Alfaz declared in firm tones. Then he said other things. How much it would take to arrange for a job abroad. 700,000 taka all told. That would enable both husband and wife to go wherever they wished. The Middle East. Cyprus. Hong Kong. Bandarsri Bagwan.
   It was then that the thought of getting hold of the money—of becoming a crook, of defalcating funds—entered his head. What else was there to do?
   
   4.
   Shekool lay low in his hotel for another couple of days. Of course he had to go to the beach morning and afternoon to maintain his cover. No misgivings on that account. But for how long? Someone must have noticed the newspaper photos. 25,000 taka was not to be sneezed at. Besides, the Police and the Detective Branch were active.
   There was another problem. The hotelier, Nurul Absar, would accost Shekool whenever he passed by, especially in the afternoons, and bring up the subject of that post-editorial in The Daily Dinkal. Yesterday he had asked Shekool if it was proper for a Bangladeshi to refer to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman as the Bangabandhu.
   “Haven’t thought about it,” Shekool said evasively.
   “No, no, but you should think about it. This controversy over the appropriateness of appellations like ‘Bangabandhu’ or ‘Father of the Nation’ should be settled once and for all.”
   Nurul Absar sighed behind Shekool’s retreating back. In his hand he held a 100 taka note. He gazed at the portrait of the Bangabandhu printed on the note. Then he put it back in the drawer and busied himself trying to kill a cockroach that was skittering all over the table.
   
   5.
   The sky was overcast, the air stagnant, the beach deserted. The tide was retreating, leaving behind crabs and other tiny submarine creatures on the wet sand. Shekool sat under an acacia tree and gazed at the sea. There was a mixture of anxiety and unconcern in that gaze. The dead creatures left behind by the tide would soon start decomposing. Shekool reflected sadly that if had really been an NGO worker he might have been able to do something about it.
   As he scanned the sand Shekool’s eyes fell on a place a little further than the waterline. A hand was waving over the water. A lovely, fair hand. It seemed to be beckoning to someone. Shekool was completely mystified. Whose hand was it? Who was it beckoning to? He stood up to see things more clearly. At once a face also became visible over the water. Both hand and face seemed to belong to the same person. What an indescribably beautiful face! And it belonged—it now became clear—to an indescribably beautiful maiden. The face was framed by wet jet-black hair. Shekool felt a little scared as well. For the maiden was beckoning to him. He had looked around and there was no one else. But even if he was scared he was from a riverside village (now of course at the river bottom) and the water held no terrors for him. He advanced gingerly. The maiden kept beckoning to him. He stepped into the water. What if she was some preternatural creature, a water sprite or ghost who might pounce on him and drag him into the sea?
   His feet stopped moving, out of fear. The maiden suddenly substituted speech for gestures: “Don’t be afraid, I’m not some horrible monster. I’m only a mermaid.”
   “Mermaid?”
   “Yes. Now, don’t keep standing, please sit down.”
   Shekool had overcome his fear and risen to another mental plane, where wonder mingled with uncertainty and enchantment. One moment he was thinking it was his last day on earth. Then he thought that in any case he would rot in jail and perhaps die there. It would be far better to meet his end at the hands of the lovely maiden. He even thought that he was perhaps dreaming, but when he cut himself on the broken shell of a snail he dismissed the notion.
   “Let’s go and sit under that acacia tree,” Shekool suggested to the mermaid. “It’s a nice place.”
   She laughed. “I have to remain in the water. I don’t have legs, I can’t walk.” Shekool’s face fell.
   “My lower half is like a fishtail,” the mermaid explained.
   Shekool felt sad for the mermaid. “Then sit up at least,” he urged.
   “That isn’t possible either,” said the mermaid, and after a moment’s hesitation explained why. “My upper half is like a woman’s torso, but I don’t have any clothes on.”
   Yes, of course. Shekool remembered something he had seen in a photograph. “I’ve seen a photograph of mermaids,” he said. “They cover their breasts completely with their hair.”
   “Say they used to,” she corrected him. “Once they had enough hair to do that, but now there’s so much chemical pollution in the sea! You won’t believe it, but just the other day a foreign ship dumped nuclear waste in this sea.”
   “Nuclear waste?” Shekool’s hair bristled.
   “Yes, that’s why mermaids are losing their lush hair. Just look.” The mermaid showed him her hair. It saddened him to see that the hair just reached down to the neck. It wasn’t thick either, but rather sparse and wispy. The parting in the middle showed nakedly prominent.
   Shekool’s sadness touched the mermaid, who began to show him fistfuls of her hair in different parts of her head, oblivious that in the process her torso was raised a little, baring her breasts that lay on the water like a pair of exquisite lotus blossoms.
   The sight at once sent Shekool into a fainting fit. Not that he was particularly weak-nerved. Anyone else would have reacted in the same way, for the sight was utterly other-worldly.
   
   6.
   Here’s some news to share. Shekool’s sister Tuktuki got married to Alfaz, the boy from the washed-away village. At first Tuktuki had expressed unwillingness to marry, but then the only alternative she had was to bid farewell to life. And so, when Alfaz said to her, “I want to make you mine and remove all your sorrow,” she assented. Her heart wasn’t in it, but she accepted the stern guidance of realism.
   Shekool gave Alfaz 500,000 taka. Alfaz was stunned for a moment, then took the money. It was incredible, but he didn’t ask where the money had come from. He just took it and ran off. Photos of Tuktuki and himself had to be taken, passports applied for. They’d also have a photo of the two of them taken at Lima Studio, against the painted backdrop with the picture of a fountain on it.
   More good news: Alfaz got the passports. He decided to take Tuktuki to Karachi. Four of the elders from their vanished village were now fish traders there. One of them had written asking Alfaz to go without delay. He would easily find work. Tuktuki too could earn something as a cook in a boarding house.
   Alfaz laughed on reading the letter. Tuktuki working in a boarding house? Crazy! Who lived in boarding houses? Bachelors. Crazy to think Tuktuki could go to work for them.
   
   7.
   The mermaid startled Shekool with the announcement that her name was Rehana Akhter.
   “Who gave you the name?” Shekool asked when he regained composure.
   “Mother. Father liked another one, Urmila Akhter. But Mother said that since Urmi or Urmila meant ‘billow,’ they were too obvious as names for mermaids.”
   “Do you come here often?” asked Shekool.
   The mermaid riposted in some surprise, “Why should I come to these polluted waters?”
   Quite, thought Shekool.
   “These waters are so polluted that Mother doesn’t want me to come. Last week I came after a long time and saw you. Now I come every day.”
   Shekool was thrilled to hear this. “Will you come after I leave?” he asked.
   “Will you go away?” she asked in pained surprise.
   “No, no,” Shekool rejoined reassuringly. “I didn’t mean it.”
   After a while the mermaid asked, “Do you love me?”
   The excitement Shekool felt on hearing this is impossible to describe. “Don’t you?” he asked in return.
   “Isn’t it natural to love oneself?” the mermaid said listlessly.
   Shekool was a trifle put out by his mistake. He asked again in a complete sentence, “Don’t you love me?”
   “If I didn’t would I come here every day?”
   But of course.
   
   8.
   The story of Shekool and Rehana becomes a little slack and directionless at this point. At midnight, when the tide reaches the acacia tree, Rehana rests her head in Alfaz’s lap as he sits corsslegged on the sand and spreads her tail in the water. Alfaz caresses and kisses her. Etcetera, etcetera.
   “Make sure you never make me cry,” Rehana Akhter warned Alfaz. “When they cry mermaids don’t shed tears, because you can’t tell tears apart from seawater. Since they can’t shed tears mermaids do terrible things.”
   “Like?”
   “No point hearing that, but don’t ever make me cry.”
   Shekool Arefin pressed Rehana’s hands to his heart and promised, “No, my dear, I’ll never make you cry.” Then he softly crooned one of the two songs of Tagore that he knew by heart: “Oh, you’ve made me cry.” In case the reader is interested to know, he had learnt both the songs from Farzana Afroze. The other one was, “Between the heart’s two banks flows away . . ..”
    . . . Shekool of course.
   9.
   Nurul Absar called Shekool as soon as he saw him. He rose from behind the counter and advanced towards Shekool. There was a purposiveness in his movements that set off a nervous hammering in Shekool’s heart.
   “Anything the matter?” Shekool asked.
   Nurul Absar placed a hand on his back and guided him to the space beside Room No. 101. Absar stood him by the dried-up potted fern and said, “The Police came asking about you.”
   Shekool’s knee joints at once came loose and he collapsed on the dried-up potted fern.
   “Why are you so scared, Din Mohammad?” Nurul Absar gently asked as he pulled Shekool to his feet. “There’s no reason to be scared. The Police come regularly to my hotel. It’s routine. But today they wanted to know what you do on the beach at midnight. At that hour decent folk don’t go there, only smugglers. The Police thought you were a smuggler.”
   “Me, a smuggler!” Shekool exclaimed in pained tones. Nurul Absar burst into laughter. “Come on, why should you be a smuggler? You are an NGO worker. I explained to the Police that you’ve come on a project to improve the environment and need to go to the beach even at midnight. Am I right?”
   Shekool kept quiet for a few moments, then said, “There’s another reason why I go there at midnight.”
   “Really?”
   “I go there to meet a mermaid.”
   Nurul Absar gazed sceptically at Shekool. Shekool had no idea why he had blurted out his secret to Nurul Absar—without meaning to, suddenly. He regretted it. Nurul Absar’s expression showed that he would either burst out laughing or his scepticism would grow so strong that he would turn Shekool out of the hotel by the scruff of his neck.
   But Nurul Absar did neither. He slapped Shekool on his back and said, “Amazing! No mermaid has been sighted here these past forty years. Are you sure you saw her, Deen Mohammad Khan?”
   “I’ve even talked to her. I go at midnight to talk to her.”
   “Lucky man!”
   Shekool was intrigued to hear that a mermaid had been seen here forty years ago and wanted to know more about the matter.
   Propping up Shekool against the dried-up potted fern, Nurul Absar began his story. “Forty years ago the forest around here was dense, the water was clean, and there weren’t any smugglers at midnight. That’s when I used to have long chats with a mermaid.”
   “What did they look like?”
   “Not they, she. You should know the answer. A woman’s torso above a fishtail.”
   “And the hair—was it long?”
   “Indeed. Jet-black and long. A mermaid’s hair is her attire.”
   “True. Did she have a name?”
   Nurul Absar let out a sigh. “Didn’t she? It was such a lovely name too, Urmila Akhter.”
   “Then?”
   Nurul Absar became annoyed. “Am I telling a story that you will keep asking, Then? Then? Then? Well, one day I dragged her up on the beach and said, ‘Let me carry you on my shoulder and show you the land and the forest.’ I had the strength to do it, you see. Besides, desire had also begun to stir within me, I must admit.”
   Shekool remained silent.
   Nurul Asar sighed again. “Then Urmila went away and never returned. I hadn’t realized that my friend Jamal Khan Bachhu had tailed me and lay hidden behind some bushes. Just when I had set off through the sand carrying Urmila on my shoulder he jumped on her.”
   “Terrible!”
   “Urmila fell off my shoulder and thrashed her way through the sand. She gave me a tearful look before she disappeared into the water.”
   “Urmila Akhter cried?”
   “No, mermaids can’t cry. They do terrible things because they can’t cry. Bachhu began throwing up blood and died that night. My left arm became paralyzed. You see, Urmila was on my left shoulder.”
   For the first time Shekool noticed that Nurul Absar’s left arm hung limply from the shoulder.
   
   10.
   Shekool knew that since it was full moon tonight and the shadow cast by the acacia tree was so dark that it seemed to be daylight and the moon seemed to be not the moon but the sun, the Police would tail him. He had two choices: leave the town and beyond the reach of the Police, or go once again to the acacia tree at midnight. Whether he left after telling Rahana Akhter or not amounted to the same thing. But he received no encouragement from his inner self for this course of action.
   Rehana was waiting for him. He told her about the Police. This worried her. The Police getting nosy meant she wouldn’t ever again be able to see him in peace. Yet she didn’t want to lose him. “Losing you will mean losing everything,” she said.
   Shekool got the feeling that his life was like a scratched gramophone record that kept repeating the same phrase. He had to get out of that groove.
   “Tell me what I should do.”
   “There’s another way out,” Rehana said after a moment’s thought. “But it’s a difficult choice.”
   “Okay.”
   “You will take me in your arms and enter the sea. As you do so you must pray with all your heart that you want to become a merman.”
   “Then?”
   “Then you will be transformed into a merman and we will swim towards St. Martin’s. Of course there’s a problem. Ships coming from Singapore sail close to the western part of the island, raising the pollution level.”
   “Then we’ll stick to the island’s eastern part,” Shekool declared, and with eyes shut murmured the prayer that he wanted to become a merman. Rehana said with a merry laugh, “Not now, wait till you take me in your arms and enter the water.”
   At once Shekool put his arms around Rehana Akhter.
   
   11.
   The Assistant Sub-Inspector of Police, Nitai Burman, was extremely annoyed with himself. He had got so close, yet the quarry had given him the slip. But why did the smuggler go towards the sea? And then why did he hug a shadowy figure and enter the sea? Where did he disappear? Who was that shadowy form? At first sight it seemed to be a mermaid, but this wasn’t a place for mermaids to appear. Maybe further down, near Teknaf, they were sighted once in a blue moon. Nitai came from Hatiya and there too a mermaid hadn’t been sighted in ages. A diver must have come for the smuggler, thought Nitai. There’s a boat somewhere out there.
   Alas!
   
   Translated by Kaiser Haq