by Abeer Y Hoque

*-*-* Firefly sky, 96°F *-*-*
   I used to be sad
   about not having an identity
   Then I thought it was liberating
   not to have roots
   Now I am envious of you
   with your nation in your voice
   And I am angry
   at Bangladesh for rejecting me
   at the US for taking all kinds
   
   My father and I are hurrying through the damp halls of Zia International Airport. I can feel the heat already. Our flight was three hours late but we know that a barrage of cousins and aunts and uncles have been waiting since morning. The baggage claim area of this airport is little more than a warehouse. An ancient conveyor belt winds through the centre of the room carrying a curiosity shop’s worth of luggage and ware. Our black Samsonites, ordinarily indistinguishable, are starkly prim in the array. The other suitcases are worn and bulging and bound profusely with multicoloured ropes. A row of clear plastic jugs carrying some unknown liquid slides by.
   What catches my breath immediately is the exit. The far wall is made of glass, fogged with the humid air outside, and every inch is crowded with people. There seem to be a thousand desperate faces looking in. Somehow, our relatives emerge from the mash of waving limbs and craning heads as we walk through the heavily secured doorways.
   It’s an even bigger shock to enter the living world that is Dhaka. The air is palpable, the sky achingly blue, and the people... beggars, old and young, immediately catch onto the edges of the dhuparta wrapped around my head, tugging at my free hand. I know that from now until the end of my visit, I won’t have an unobserved moment.
   In about ten days, the country will erupt in Language Day celebrations – one of the main reasons for our visit. I am here with Abbu, on holiday, and in trepidation. This is my first trip to Bangladesh in almost a decade, and the first ever without my mother as she’s teaching this semester.
   Six of us pile into a dilapidated car. I sit on a suitcase, getting my first whiff of the potent air. The pollution here is powerful and the dry edge of winter exacerbates it. Without the rain to tamp them down, shrouds of dust rise two stories in the air, an almost beautiful blued vision. Within a day, my father has a cough and I’m blowing black into my tissues.
   We career through the streets at great speed. Wide as they are, out here by the airport, the roads are jammed with overflowing buses, cycle rickshaws, three-wheeled baby taxis, trucks full of bricks and livestock, and other cars like ours: overstuffed, wheezy, oil-dripping contraptions weaving in and out of the traffic.
   I have my camera out, nose pressed against the window, but it quickly becomes clear that a point-and-shoot is not nearly enough to capture even a fraction of what I’m seeing. I need a full-scale movie crew, aerial cranes, and digital video. What I don’t need is Photoshop. The colours are brighter than real.
   The walls of the buildings are deeply marked with water stains, and through the dust, the lush green of the countryside is startling. Even in the dry season, it’s obvious that this is a land of floods.
   We pull into a small neighbourhood in Uttara, just outside the Dhaka city limits, and into my aunt’s gated compound. I get a glimpse of Simran, my two-year-old niece. She’s chubby and solemn and curious, and her dark eyes and skin enamour me even as the latter draws complaints from her critical elders: “So black! You should wash her with Fair and Lovely. Don’t let her run around in the sun.”
   Abbu’s room has been set up carefully. He’s the first-born son, and since Dada died, he’s also the de facto head of the extended family. This means more than I can imagine. What I see is immediate deference and painstaking attention to his needs. There are toilet paper rolls, napkins, utensils, new sheets and blankets, and a spotless house. His widowed sister, Chhoto Foofoo, lives in this little two-bedroom house in Dhaka with her children, but it is my father’s house. He built it years ago when we thought our family might move from Nigeria back to Bangladesh. We moved instead to America, and the house in Dhaka sat empty for years until Foofoo moved in.
   My first and only disagreement with Abbu takes place within a few hours of our arrival. He suggests that I make this house my home base while I’m here. But I want to stay with my maternal grandmother, Nanu, who has been very ill in recent years. Twice last year, my mother boarded a plane from the states to Dhaka, on twenty-four hours notice when Nanu was diagnosed with heart failure. Miraculously, she recovered each time.
   “I have to make the most of my time with her, Abbu. She was so sick last year.” Although I am trying not to sound strident, I can hear the strain in my voice.
   And so apparently does my father, because he ends the conversation quickly with a noncommittal shrug, “Ok, do what you want.” And then more gently, “Why don’t you get some rest before we go out?”
   I nod, and we retire to our separate rooms for a nap.
   Valentine’s Day has invaded Bangladesh with a vengeance. Today is also the beginning of a siege of strikes that will keep me in house arrest for many days. The BNP has called a country-wide hortal in protest of the Awami League run government. From 6 a.m. to 6 p.m., there are no cars on the road, and all businesses and schools are shut down for fear of violence or retaliation of any kind. Everyone just sits at home and waits for evening. Only the rickshawallas dare to ply their trade and ferry a few brave or foolhardy people around.
   The strikes are terrible for the country’s economy and they are scheduled arbitrarily: someone from one of the parties declares a hortal; it gets printed in the newspaper; everyone follows suit. Who wants to take the chance of being assaulted on the streets, or getting a fire bomb thrown at your car, or having your store set upon by vandals? The violence is frequent enough to be a real threat. Abbu jokes that the parties should just take four days of the week for hortal, guaranteed, and let the city have three working days in peace.
   Kids in Dhaka are upset only because they cannot go to school and exchange their valentines. My lively seventeen year old cousin, Shamayla, tells me that the teachers aren’t very happy about the western holiday, but her classmates don’t care and are eager to trade their cards and gifts happily in the name of love.
   Shamayla has also opened my eyes to another aspect of Bangladeshi youth life: rampant drug use. Among the circles of the wealthy, there are many teenagers who “dope and binge.” Many attend parties in which kids hang out in rooms smoking up, drinking, and talking. They call them orgies although I’m not sure how much sexual activity actually goes on. Heroin is also popular, and of course, cigarette smoking is de rigeur. “Everyone” smokes, anywhere from five “cigs” to three or four packs a day. I want to tell my father that he has no idea how good his children are compared to the Bangladeshis who grow up here.
   Shamayla’s vibrant active parents introduce me to night life in Dhaka. One evening, I accompany them, sans Abbu, to a private party of some high commissioner’s daughter. I am happily ignorant of the intricacies of hierarchy in the city. The venue is an enormous maze-like garden surrounding the host’s mansion. Oil candles line the cobblestone footpaths, and the bushes and trees are adorned with tiny blue and green lights. Every so often, I come across a candle-lit clearing with silk cushions and plush couches, complete with reclining couples who flirt and chitchat in flawless English. The DJ is playing Western dance music and the dance floor is never empty. The only sign that we might be in Bangladesh are the mosquito coils under every tree. The open bar catches me by surprise. Bangladesh’s government is secular, but eighty five percent of its people are Muslim, and Islam strictly forbids the consumption of intoxicants. While I’ve guessed that some people drink, I’ve never actually seen anyone do it, until now. Most of my family, on both my mother’s and father’s sides are fairly conservative, and there is no question of drinking in the open. Thinking of my father back home, I drink five glasses of sodas and dance with my energetic aunt and uncle, but mostly, I watch.
   We’re at an import-export mela today. Stall after stall of bangles, textiles, kitchenware, furniture, and leather goods, curve along a giant figure eight path through the square. Abbu and I are on a mission to find carved wood side tables for my mother, and I have a little agenda of my own - to buy bangles for myself.
   I have decided to wear a long skirt and a long-sleeved blouse instead of my usual traditional dress. My father didn’t blink an eye when I came out of my room. To tell the truth, he may not have noticed. He’s fairly indifferent about clothes as long as they’re neat and “modest.” Shamayla tells me that lots of people in Dhaka wear western clothes, but so far, I’ve only seen one girl over the age of twelve who was not wearing a sari or shalwar kamis. Maybe non-traditional wear is common only around Shamayla’s modern private school. Well, I get stared at so much already that perhaps the extra staring won’t matter. Then I realise that my father has put on a white surgical mask, to protect himself from the dust. We look like freaks as we walk through the mela.
   “Six, don’t speak in English in front of the store owners,” my father warns me. I laugh out loud, drawing even more glances. I could break out in a full blown Noakhali dialect, and it would still be clear that I was foreign.
   We pass by a group of Bangladeshi policewomen – the first I’ve ever seen. They are laughing and walking around in their supremely stylish uniforms: starched dhupartas, crisp long sleeve blouses, and close fitting saris – all in different shades of blue. Add sunglasses and swept-up hair, and I’m in love.
   The bangle stores have floor-to-ceiling shelves with thousands of bangles in every colour you can paint on metal, glass, and plastic. The bright metal ones are less than a dollar a dozen, and soon I’m the happy owner of more than a hundred bangles.
   “They’re good gifts,” I reason to my father who shakes his head bemusedly.
   We’re not as lucky with the furniture quest. Two days before, a fire wiped out two of the biggest Pakistani furniture store inventories, and what was left was quickly snapped up. After wandering in the heat for a few hours, Abbu asks me if I’d like a drink. I nod gratefully, and we duck into a food stall for a cold coke in a thick glass bottle with a straw.
   We walk a mile to get to the Language Day Memorial on the 21st of February. All roads to Shahid Minar are blocked to non-pedestrian traffic. The path winds through the enormous campus of Dhaka University where the students first defied the West Pakistani government. In 1952, there were two edicts causing unrest in East Pakistan, now Bangladesh. The first mandated that the official language of Urdu be the only spoken language across East and West Pakistan. The second, law 144, stated that people not move in groups of four or more, which was meant to suppress protests against the language edict.
   On February 21, 1952, law 144 was broken by the students, thus igniting the revolution that would culminate in the war of independence for Bangladesh. In that first clash, four students were killed and hundreds more injured. Three years later, my father was among the Dhaka University protesters, in the ongoing marches against West Pakistani rule. He was arrested and spent the next two months in jail. He was to take his bachelor’s exams from prison.
   In honour of Bangladesh’s fight for the right to speak Bangla, the United Nations has declared February 21st to be “International Mother Language Day.” Notices are sent to embassies around the world on this occasion. On this day in Bangladesh, the tradition is to visit Shahid Minar, the memorial to those who died in the name of language. My father and I are in Bangladesh, in part, to celebrate his role in Ekushay February, the Language Day.
   As we walk towards the memorial, Abbu recounts memory after memory. “Here are the gates I marched through with my friends. This is the wall I scaled to escape the police. And there, Six-bibi, is the spot where I was arrested, almost 50 years ago to the day.”
   But I am distracted. Handcuffed pickpockets are begging for release from the security guards. Impossibly crippled beggars lie on the dirt with tin cups for change. Dust grey palm trees line the wide avenues. Crowds in blinding colour jostle past me to get to the memorial. And the vendors unceasingly peddle their wares.
   I didn’t know they had cotton candy in Bangladesh. It translates from Bangla as “air candy” – hawar mittha – quite appropriate. The fruit carts are stacked with bite sized apples, sliced cucumbers and carrots with spicy dipping sauce, star fruit, and french fries dyed red and green and neon yellow. Other vendors have little flags and tin can drums, apple-seed necklaces and bright plastic toys, balloons and carved wood knick-knacks.
   A constant commotion issues from the loudspeakers and gatherings on every block: choruses singing national songs; poets reading fervently; lecturers and comedians and magicians. As we get closer, we are absorbed by a solid moving mass of people. Suddenly we’re there, and the flowers fill my vision. A sea of orange, red, and yellow marigolds covers every last inch of the ground in front of the white towers. As I take photograph after photograph, a beautiful little girl tries to sell me a single ripe rose. I demur and then finally give her the five taka she asks (about eight cents). Apparently, I’ve paid too much, because she quickly returns and hands me another bloom for free.
   Later, we visit the Liberation War Museum. It is in an old house, itself a part of history as it belonged to one of the hundreds of intellectuals who were murdered during the war. It’s not uncommon for an attacking state to assassinate leading figures in government, the arts, and science in order to leave a fledging nation without a ruling class or an intellectual foundation.
   Many of the exhibits are of clothes worn by generals and guerrillas and freedom fighters. Letters and newspaper clippings and photographs have been painstakingly photocopied, laminated, and framed on the walls. A glass case in one room showcases skulls and bones stacked indiscriminately on each other. It’s not like American museums with their gradual spotlights, flawless text, and haunting soundtracks. These displays are like the memories they represent, recent and raw.
   Dozens of men received the medal of valour, Bir Protik, as well as two women: Dr. Capt. Sitara Begum and Tara Mom Bibi, although thousands of women marched in protest and sometimes in arms. I am horrified to learn that the West Pakistani army used rape as a weapon of war against hundreds of thousands of Bangladeshi women and girls. But again, this is nothing new.
   A plaque about upholding cultural identity irrespective of religious belief catches my eye. I have no real sense of nationalism and am even more wary of religion. In my eyes, either is as likely a harbinger of violence. Six rooms, three hallways, one stairwell in an old dark house. I have a strange pain in my stomach the whole time, and I can’t tell if it’s indigestion or emotion. My father waits outside for me as I scrawl an inscription from the last exhibit into my journal:
   Ashun, prithibir book thikay moochhay fehli shokol prokar ghreena, o bidbesh bong ami hothay shuru hoq ay kaj.
   Let us remove hatred and prejudice from the world, and let it begin with me.
   The largest open air market in Dhaka is just outside Shamayla’s parents’ offices. I ask if it’s OK to take a walk through the market, and neither of them is concerned. But Aunty sends along her assistant to trail behind me in case someone tries to harass me.
   The market is made up of stalls crammed with CDs, cigarettes, baskets full of live chickens, fruits of every colour, jerry cans of water, brilliant bolts of cloth, yards of mosquito netting, and much more. I want to take photographs of everything but I manage to stop only twice. I think that at any given moment, there are fifty people watching me, and watching so intensely that my skin is crawling. I’ve been a foreigner for much of my life but I’ve never felt as out of place as I feel here, in a country where everyone looks like me. I’ve walked through crowds of African men, unhurried. I’ve danced with abandon among raver Asian kids. I’ve chatted easily with white suburban housewives. It seems I should fit in, finally, but I don’t.
   This is the photograph I don’t take as I walk along the dirty concrete path through the market: on one side, a narrow gutter of slow green water cuts into the earth. On the other side, skinny dark eyed men peddle their wares, “Apa – ashen!” The sunlight filters through the tin roofs, and then suddenly blooms on a fruit stall ahead. Everything in the stall looks like it’s glowing. Oranges sit in ochre pyramids. Bananas hang on brown twine in voluptuous yellow bunches from ceiling to floor. Pineapples poke their spiky green heads among the limes and lemons. There are two little boys huddled around a rusted metal object, staring at me open-mouthed. I should stop. I almost slow. And then I walk into the sunlight away from the stall.
   Back in my room, I lie on my bed and write. I describe myself moving in slow motion through the market, and then back into real time as I walk away. Soon it’s too hot to think. Under a slowly whirring fan, it’s a sticky eighty degrees. I’m inside a blue mosquito net with little bloodstains all over it, mosquitoes caught in the act. A tiny roach crawls across my blue ceiling. None of this fazes me anymore. The light blazes through rough cotton curtains, and my caftan is stale from last night’s sweat. I turn on my side. My arms are lined with gold bangles, the curve of my palm stained with mehndi, dark auburn carvings along my fingers. My heart beats in time with the fan. I am almost asleep.
   We are in Barahipur, my father’s village in the district of Noakhali. Without traffic, it’s a three hour drive from Dhaka. But of course, it takes us closer to five hours. My father’s family owns ponds full of fish, water logged paddies growing different varieties of rice, a chicken farm, lentil and vegetable gardens, and fruit trees – pears, guavas, mangos, oranges, and bananas. We have a beautiful house in the village – four buildings set up in a square with a courtyard in the centre. There are spiraling designs painted on the walls, floors, and steps left over from my cousin’s wedding. Most of my cousin brothers are here with their sharp, funny, beautiful wives, and two of my aunts – so it’s a grand reunion.
   Each day, I go on a long walk through the village. I always end up with an entourage of children following me: nieces, nephews, servant children, neighbourhood kids. They offer running commentaries without request. I need this because I don’t have much information about this world, so I am more than happy to learn which flowers are good to eat, where a snake was found among the water lilies, whose 3 legged goat that used to be, and so on. In return, I sing them songs – nursery rhymes, Michael Jackson lyrics, hymns from my childhood in a Christian Nigeria. They listen, spellbound, to the English words and beg for more.
   On the second day, we attend the wedding of a cousin’s cousin. The bride is resplendent in red silk and heavy petaled flowers, mehndi adorning her perfectly sculpted face. The bridegroom, well... He lucked out. As part of an ancient wedding tradition, her family has set up a “gate” to prevent the groom’s party from entering the building. It’s basically a ribbon held up by a wall of people. The bridal party asks for money in return for passage. In true form, an enthusiastic bargaining commences. Finally, an amount is decided upon, the ribbon is cut, and the groom is allowed to enter. In another ritual, one of his shoes is stolen and he must pay to get that back as well.
   But my father having to eat with his hands proves the most interesting of all events. Abbu’s fastidiousness is legendary, and the entire extended family is well aware of his habits. We always make sure that the food is not too spicy (he has ulcers) and that there is a fork somewhere. But there are no utensils at the community hall, so Abbu picks awkwardly at his kebabs and rice, avoiding the messier lamb and chicken dishes. I have to take a picture to prove to my siblings and mother that he ate with his hands, and Abbu is gracious enough to smile at himself and my camera.
   Back at our house, we find an old trunk under Dada’s bed. It turns out to be full of books that Abbu had bought in his youth, while “preparing for a career in literature.” No wonder he has been so supportive of my writing career. The books are brilliant – works by Nobel prize winners, world renowned sociologists, scientists, politicians, psychologists, philosophers, and critics.
   “I couldn’t be indiscriminate with my purchases, you see. I had very little money to spend,” he tells me, picking up a dusty copy of The Grapes of Wrath. “Each one had to be a gem. A classic.”
   I page through the tattered leaves of the Kama Sutra, and set it aside to take back home with me. It feels nice to own and read my father’s old books. Rousseau’s Confessions, Emile Zola, Camus, Maupassant, Moravia, and Steinbeck all find their way into my growing pile, along with poetry by Omar Khayyam, T.S. Eliot, and Zeb-un-Nissa. The prize is a 1958 first edition copy of Dr. Zhivago. As he sorts through the wormed tomes, he tells me about each author and how he or she tried to change the world. I listen, and I am seven years old again, in awe of my father’s brain and heart.
   A few days later, some of Abbu’s old friends come to visit. He falls silent as they begin to argue about politics, religion, and government. The thread of conversation is getting narrower and more conservative, and he can see that I’m becoming incensed. He winks to keep me still, but when Uncle Molla starts criticising the NGOs, the non-governmental organizations, even he can’t resist any longer. He lights into his friends about social welfare, the power of secular and democratic governments, and compromising for the sake of greater good. He goes on to defend Taslima Nasreen, who wrote a hugely controversial book - she was exiled from Bangladesh for exposing (or making up, as the story goes) ugly truths about the state of women’s rights throughout the Indian subcontinent.
   Dr. Yunus’ Grameen Bank project comes up. Its world famous micro-credit lending program offers low interest loans to women so they can start up small businesses. Dr. Yunus discovered that village women were less likely to default on these loans than were men, and the failures of the program were often due to interfering husbands. “It’s true Grameen has its problems,” Abbu agrees, “but let me ask you this. Have you read his book? No? Well, read his book, and then we’ll talk.”
   Abbu also blasts the existence of a religious right that has any influence on courts of law. His voice rises in that professorial tone I remember from my childhood, “Just as Muslims were marginalised in India, so are we marginalising the Hindus, Buddhists, and Christians in Bangladesh. We are not learning from our own misfortunes. For example, instead of honouring only one religion’s holidays, the government should ban all religious holidays!”
   Uncle Molla sputters, “You cannot just eliminate these holidays!”
   “Just give everyone a set number of day, say twenty. You choose to take off whichever twenty days you wish according to your religious desires.”
   This suggestion doesn’t sit well with his friends, but by then, they are cowed by the force of his words. They dare not argue even when he goes so far as to say that the electronic calls to prayer that flood the country five times a day amount to little more than noise pollution, as blasphemous as that statement might seem. I want to applaud when he’s done. I happily bid goodbye to Uncle Molla and his friends and go to my room to find my notebook.
   My last night in Barahipur, I decide to take a night walk to see the stars. Everyone is absorbed in a terrible natok on TV, and I can’t stand to watch the overdramatic acting that characterises Bangladeshi theatre.
   It’s a cloudy night, and I can see the moon only occasionally. I walk to a wide open space where the rice paddies stretch to the horizon on both sides of the narrow dirt road. Since I can’t see much, I stand with my eyes closed so I can hear better. A million frogs croak in the water logged paddies. Ducks and wild dogs cry in the distance and the crickets are ubiquitous. The hum of a rice mill down the road filters through.
   When I open my eyes, I see fireflies everywhere. This last night is perfect: cloudy, moonlit, and immersed in underlying light and sound. What I don’t realise as I walk contentedly back to the house, is that my disappearance has caused pandemonium. At least twenty people are outside scouring the darkness for me. I have only been gone fifteen minutes or so, but it is long enough to raise an alarm. No one, especially a woman, goes walking at night alone. There’s no danger, everyone confirms, but it’s just not done. And anyway, had I considered what would have happened if I had fallen in the darkness, or gotten lost, or by some freak chance, been kidnapped? And wasn’t I frightened? No, I tell them, I wasn’t frightened. I just wanted to take a walk alone and I’m very sorry for all their worry.
   Abbu is in a grand state of shock and looks like he’s about to pass out. I apologise again, even more contritely now, and this time I tell him about the rice fields and the cloudy moonlight and the frogs and the fireflies. My cousin, Ali Bhaiya, hears the last bit about the fireflies, and of course, it becomes a big joke about how I went walking to see the jonaki. Of course, that’s not quite it, but even if it were, it’s a good enough reason for me. And as it turns out, it’s a good enough reason for Abbu too. He has the heart of a poet after all.
   In the days before the Muslim festival, Kurbani Eid, numerous open air markets selling cows and goats have sprung up. Kurbani Eid is one of the two major Muslim festivals and is marked by a lunar calendar. The story goes: God asks Prophet Abraham to sacrifice his only son to prove his faith. Abraham is about to do it, in a paroxysm of grief and loyalty, when God stops him at the last moment, commends him for his faith, and places a ram under his knife for sacrifice. In celebration of Abraham’s supreme act of piety, Muslims sacrifice an animal and share it with family, friends, and the poor.
   My uncle has bought a large black cow, which is sitting outside Nanu’s apartment building. It sits idly, ridiculously decorated with red and pink ribbons, swishing flies with its tail. Other goats and cows wait listlessly nearby. Meanwhile, a crowd gathers around a large camel being led down the street by its proud owner. Supposedly, the Prophet Muhammed sacrificed a camel when he celebrated Kurbani Eid, although it seems unlikely to me.
   I’ve returned from the village to celebrate this holiday in Dhaka with my grandmother. Nanu says there will blood everywhere on Eid Day. And that if it falls in the summer, the stench of flesh and blood could drive you out of the city, maybe even out of this religion. Many people do leave the city and go to the villages for Eid. But there are many villagers who come to the city to beg meat from city dwellers. They dry what they procure in the sun, half-rotting by the road sides. If it doesn’t rain soon after, the smell will linger for days. But for many, it’s the only time of the year when they are able to eat meat.
   Two of my cousins bought massive cows in the village, although they don’t even like meat that much. It’s just another religious tradition, wordlessly followed. I can’t help but feel that it’s wasteful to kill all these animals when there is such poverty across the country. A goat or cow could provide milk for years and baby kids and calves to sell. And does anyone realise how good the Bangladeshi staple food – fish – is for health and sustenance? Still, I want to be a good sport, so I peel myself off my bed to get ready.
   I put on my new red and orange shalwar kamis. My cousins, Firoz and Reza, emerge, freshly showered and resplendent in silk kurtas. We go downstairs and take photos of our cow. The parking lot in the first floor of our building has been cleared of cars, and each family’s parking spot is its sacrifice area. Butchers have been brought in, and the lot is filled with bleats and moos. I don’t want to watch this part, so I go back upstairs and wait.
   Mrs. Hussain, who lives next door to Nanu, comes to wish my father and me Eid Mubarak. She’s worked up as she’s just gotten off the phone with her son who lives in America. They had their usual fight about marriage. He says he’ll get married but he’d like to meet the girl first and get to know her before saying yes or no. But the girls’ families don’t think this is necessary. One or two conversations or “dates” within the space of a week should be more than enough.
   “A week!” I exclaim. I am sensitive to the issue of marriage as much of the conversation around me has centred around my spinster state. Any age after one’s early twenties is quite old for a woman to be unmarried, perhaps too old for hope.
   “Listen, my dear,” she says patiently, “A week is being generous. Not all of them will even give this much. His next visit to Bangladesh is not until next month and these girls, they cannot wait that long. They want to know his decision because they have other offers. And I cannot tell them anything because he refuses to commit without more conversations.”
   She says this word, conversations, with some distrust, as if it’s not entirely sane, certainly not proper, to want this thing.
   “All he keeps saying is he wants a girl with a good personality. Personality!” She pauses and looks at us for sympathy, and continues, “Where am I going to find a girl like that? A good family, nice looking, modest behaviour – what else can you ask for? Personality? I remember when I was to be married, my uncle poked my back and I said what I should, and that was all the personality needed for the match.”
   My father is smiling at this point. He has said nothing so far. He’s waiting for my usual protest, and I oblige, “But you can’t expect someone who doesn’t believe in arranged marriages to just accept this. There are generation gaps and culture gaps you must consider.”
   She sighs, “I understand all this. I am not unsympathetic. But things just don’t work that way here. He must get married soon.”
   Firoz interrupts our conversation as he bursts into the room excitedly, “Six, come and see – it’s done!” His beautiful white kurta has a prominent bloodstain on the front. When I point this out, he tells me that it’s a good sign, lucky in fact, to have your Kurbani Eid clothes stained thus. The elevator is packed with people carrying plastic bowls filled with chunks of meat. A man carries a large bloody leg of a cow, hoof and all, into the elevator and leans it against the wall. I jerk away from the wall promising myself never to touch it again if I can help it.
   The parking lot is running in blood. I step over the streams gingerly and go to our parking spot. Our cow is unrecognizable, but Reza happily points out its various parts, hanging from rope tied between the walls. I leave and go back upstairs. I don’t want to go back inside so I pace outside the flat as it’s cool on the landing. Presently, the man who had brought up the cow leg brings it out of Mrs. Hussain’s flat.
   There’s a servant woman close on his heels, and she’s yelling, “Why didn’t you cut it up before bringing it here? You think we eat hooves here?” She hands him a cleaver, “Make sure you do it right before bringing it back in.”
   He sighs and props the cow leg up on an empty paint can. The hoof seems to watch him and me in reproach. He attempts to saw it off, and I am unable to stop watching. Finally he gives up and takes the leg back into the elevator. I decide to go back to bed.
   Ali Bhaiya, has a flat in Mirpur, in the North Western sector of Dhaka. He’s on the fifth floor and his balconies have lovely views of the city. The living room balcony overlooks a lake nearby. Every major body of water in the city is banked by ever-expanding slums. The makeshift, one-room shacks push to the edge of the lake, and sometimes end up perched on stilts above the water. They are barely a few feet apart, with just enough room for a person, maybe two, to walk between. I stand on Bhaiya’s balcony for hours watching the narrow paths between bamboo walls and tin roofs. Some of the inhabitants have split electrical lines from the streets and stretched the wires to their houses to power TVs and refrigerators. Two little girls wearing bright rags of dresses are running after each other, their lanky hair shining in the sun.
   Ali Bhaiya comes out and asks me why I’m taking photographs of the bosti.
   Without looking away from my camera, I answer, “It’s another part of life, Bhaiya, isn’t it?”
   “It is. They have their own lives down there. They give birth, they celebrate, they grieve, they die. What will you do with your pictures?”
   “I’ll write about them,” I say. The shutter clicks.
   “Now we have two writers in our family,” he says proudly.
   I’m startled and I lower the camera. Before I remember who he’s talking about, I ask, “Who else?”
   “Jettha. Your father. He is also a writer.”
   I smile, raising the camera back to my eye. One girl has stopped to look at a brilliant green kite. The other follows her pointing finger to the sky.
   “But what you see here is not pretty,” he continues, “Will you write the good stories too, then?”
   Of course.