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Beloved Rongomala, A Novel
by Shaheen Akhtar
Translated from the Bengali by Shabnam Nadiya

Freedom to Fall Back

The story starts when a man from the village returns from the closest market town with the news of the army’s arrival – a nationwide phenomenon spurred by the events taking place in Dhaka after March 1971 (the year of Bangladesh Liberation War) to suppress or even eliminate the supporters of the liberation of Bangladesh from Pakistani regime. With no visible liberationist leaders in the village, Akmal Pradhan, a village bourgeois tries to strengthen his influence over the villagers outwitting Ramjan Sheikh, another man who has many followers behind his back. Both of them try to prove themselves as a savior in case the army launches its rage against the villagers. Pradhan – though he isn’t sure of his actions or thoughts on how the army may react upon their arrival – arranges to set some nationalistic tone¹ in the village that may reassure the military about the blamelessness of the village, all done to harvest power in his own favor. Pradhan holds grudge against Hares Master, the village leader of liberationist, who didn’t allow him to hoist the Pakistani flag, and is therefore ready to blame him for all the anti-Pakistan movements once the army arrives. 

1. It made no difference if one learned nothing else. He was realizing in his bones right now how important it was for students to learn the national anthem. And everyone should keep a flag at home. It didn’t matter if the house had no rice, or no cooking oil. But to not have a flag, that made a difference. For instance, if they had been able to fly a Pakistani flag right now from every house in the village, how happy that would make the army when they arrived.

Kobej, Pradhan’s ever furious right-hand, is a reliable man but difficult to understand and be appeased who is easily offended and don’t care much about anything happening around him or rather is disgusted by them. Pradhan wants Kobej to finish off Ramjan, luring him with money and land, so that he doesn’t have to struggle for power anymore in the wake of army’s arrival. However, Kobej doesn’t rush into the action, and though he doesn’t understand much of anything, his questions and doubts over the ways the village is prepared for the military’s arrival surprises Pradhan. Kobej is ready to kill Ramjan, but only at the right moment and circumstances. 

The army arrives in the village and sets up a camp. The army officer is not so much pleased by Pradhan and Ramjan’s procession or greeting and makes his intention clear why they are there, showing eternal disdain for Bengalis. Another arrangement by Pradhan to please the army ends up taking a life of assistant headmaster and creates a backlash for himself. In the following days, Ramjan gains praises from the officer and Pradhan presses Kobej to deal with him before things are out of hand. Meanwhile, the army kills all those people in the village suggested by Pradhan and Ramjan who witness and agree to the illogic and savagery of the army officer, who claims every one ever related to liberation as an infidel and Hindu and therefore punishable. However, Kobej is dissatisfied and unsettled by the killings, arson and atrocity² led by the army. Kobej never understood Joy Bangla and about liberated Bangladesh before, but now he looks for answers in this heightened injustice so apparent, which has enraged him further, and motivated too to kill Ramjan, which he finally does following the aftermath of death of two soldiers before fleeing the village and joining mukti bahini, the liberation army. 

2. When the shooting stopped, the noise of weeping reached the officer’s ears. In a somber voice he asked, ”Why are people crying? Are they mourning these dead kafirs?” After a long silence, Akmal Pradhan spoke up. “No, no. They have no grief for those kafirs. No, they’re crying out of fear.”

Towards the culmination of the liberation war and the novel, Kobej returns to the village and wants to take revenge against Pradhan only to find that he has already fled. The surrender of the Pakistani army brings the struggle to an end with the creation of Bangladesh. Following this, Kobej and Hares Master are left in uncertainty without place to live and source of income, meanwhile Kobej’s rage flares up again when he finds himself in the midst of odd outcomes for his contribution. His dream to be a free man looks remote seeing undeserving impostors taking control over the power and properties, again leaving him to his misery and uselessness just as he was in before, and the circumstances therefore lead Kobej to return again as a mercenary to Pradhan, who rises to power. 

Set in the backdrop of Bangladeshi liberation war of 1971, The Mercenary is a novel which dramatizes how politically liberated Bangladesh and its inner roots fell again in the hand of landlords and powerful people, who took advantage of the political upheaval in favor of their own personal revenge and for gaining the authority that yet keeps people away from personal freedom and justice. The crumbling virtuousness, the moral degradation and the hopeless defiance facing the power capable of whimsical persecution is accounted in the story. The novel sheds light on the hidden and forgotten faces, and the scars and sacrifices left behind in the wake of the independence – which was not so easily earned and not so well protected from the opportunists – and satires the nationalistic and religious fanaticism that accounted for death tolls of the ignorant and weak. We’re left with the question – Does politically liberating a country guarantee the freedom to common people?

The book is part of Library of Bangladesh series.

Author: Moinul Ahsan Saber

Translator: Shabnam Nadiya

Editor: Arunava Sinha

Publisher: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

Page Count: 152pp

Price: $11

Author Photo Credit: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moinul_Ahsan_Saber 

Review Copy Courtesy: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

Darkness Within

The novel starts with the daily rituals of the women in brothel of Golapipatti one morning. Amidst the buzzing of curse words, arguments and yells coming from several rooms and those filling the lane, people responsible for bringing the water and supplies are doing their chores, and some customers from the night before still haven’t left. There are women who take in high paying customers, like Jahanara and Bokul, and have money to spend on meals, make-up and liquors, and there are some like Kusum, who are owned by pimps and goons, and go hungry for days if they don’t get enough customers¹. Jealousy and envy among the girls is quite common and sometimes it turns into bloody fight, like between Shanti and Bokul over a customer of the latter. Many of them live in shared rooms and take the customers, in the same room after the evening falls, in turn. The setting of the novel perfectly captures the minutiae of the brothel: drab, dark and dingy rooms getting feeble light, dirty drain running along the lane, the decrepit structures, flaking walls and broken utensils. And the idiosyncratic obscene language exemplifies the moods and mindset of the girls in such a place.

1.       Not getting a customer means heartless humiliation at the owner’s hands On top of which there’s fear and hunger – the same hunger which most of the girls here have fallen victim to and ended up, willingly or unwillingly, as nothing but bodies in the decrepit rooms in this lane where no sunlight or air gets in, eaten away by commercial deals every day, like slaves traded thousands of years ago, amidst cruel, ruthless, inhuman behavior, surviving as creatures of the night.

When a man with inexplicable interests comes to visit Jahanara – who unlike many others don’t have to pose on the lane and lure customers, and has her own pimp and a woman who works for her – and asks how happy she is and presents his doubts about her future, she throws him out; however he leaves a lasting impression which would later unsettle her. Yasmin, an educated girl who was once honored by the government as Birangona after the war of liberation, during which she was raped and her family was murdered, threw herself as a sex-worker, as a revolt against the atrocities which she had to suffer just after the liberation. She takes customers only when she wants and is pensive about the teenage girls and women who trade their bodies for living in the brothel and is revered by some and others are disgusted by her waywardness. In similar way, all the women and girls we come across have their own personal backstories, which led them to the brothel: girls who are castaways of the liberation war of 1971, victim of famine, abduction and Hindu-Muslim riots, sold off by the relatives, those who could find no means to live and support their family in ordinary ways…

There are people who own the girls, to whom they owe their earnings and their life depends on customers – it seems, they have nothing to call their own, certainly not their bodies, except a tormented, unhappy and famished life which they have to sustain somehow. All of them know what they are into and what might come out of this, still they have no option to get out of this entrap. Meanwhile, some ignorant and innocent girls have already started dreaming of becoming an elegant prostitute who would visit the customers in luxury cars. In the brothel, it doesn’t take long for things to settle, whether it is a quarrel, a fight, a girl being beaten by her owner, a girl being whipped by a customer; Mashi, who looks after the business and girls, knows ways of the men who visit the brothel and under what rules the girls must be kept under, so, girls have to take customers after the evening falls, must attract them with vulgar gestures and talks and keep paying the owners, room rent and go on living. Their life is restricted within the rooms and the lane; the shops are close by, from where they can buy daily necessities like birth-control pills which they must be able to afford anyhow if not food. Almost everyone is afraid of the future, when they might not get customers at all, or may die of disease or hunger, and are threatened by the fate of Rohimon and the old Golapjaan – hungry and retired old prostitutes – who roam around the brothel scavenging food and asking for money.

One day, a journalist named Delwar visits Yasmin, he is the same man who visited Jahanara before. But this time, he has long conversation² with Yasmin, who has many doubts and questions about their plight and unlike Jahanara, she is not offended. Yasmin tries to impart her revolting thoughts to other girls, nevertheless, they are confirmed that brothels aren’t going to close down and believe that they are never going to leave the profession³, for they’ll have no acceptance outside the place. When a heavy rain strikes the brothel, the roofs leak and the rooms are flooded. And in the meantime, it also brings a tragedy in the brothel which is soon forgotten amid the necessity of trading and bargaining the bodies without a moment to pity for personal miseries or dwell upon their collective suffering; even incidents of death are to be forgotten. The range of characters like Jahanara, Moyna, Kanchan, Bokul, Mashi, Zarina, Shanti, Kusum, Kalu, Parul, Piru, Hiru, Marjina, Huree and many others, depict harrowing and horrendous life of sex-workers. And, as the story progresses, we witness how fragile their lives are, with life and death of the girls resting under the choice and tyranny of the owners.

2.       Who are the people in this society? Are those who visit whores to buy their own arousal not part of the society? Are those who pay extra to take away beautiful prostitutes in their cars not part of society? Are those who extort money from us to get us our licenses not part of society either? What happens when that money is converted to government earnings and served on every plate?

3.       But they do not know where to find the unbarred door that will let them stand up for their rights as humans. They do not know how to pass through that door.

Inspired and urged both by the incidents the author witnessed as a child and later through the story featured in a magazine, and written in the time when she couldn’t visit the brothel herself firsthand, Letters of Blood is a daring and genuine work representing the bare and bottom truth behind the woes of the sex-workers in Bangladesh, who are under-represented in the mainstream of rights, acts and talks. The coarse realities of the prostitutes have been sharply portrayed without marring the emotional subtlety and sensitivity of the subject and characters, and some descriptions are visually so much appealing and transporting, as if the brothel has been laid inside out. Deftly translated by Arunava Sinha from the Bengali, Letters of Blood is a bold timeless classic that shows the prowess of Rizia Rahman.

The book is part of Library of Bangladesh series.

Author: Rizia Rahman

Translator: Arunava Sinha

Publisher: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

Page Count: 116pp

Price: $11

Author Photo Credit: https://www.deshebideshe.com/wiw/details/392

Review Copy Courtesy: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

Remembrance of 1971

Blue Venom

In the backdrop of first few days of Bangladeshi liberation war of 1971, a resident of Dacca, Nazrul is apprehended by the soldiers loyal to Pakistani government, on his way to meet his family – away from the violence in the city. And what at first seems to be a decent interrogation soon turns into brutal and inexplicable sequence of questions, which clearly carry the sentiments of religious hatred for Hindus and the violence against Bengalis demanding a free state.

The interrogators question him about his small movements in the city before the declaration of independence on March 26, 1971. Amidst his fear and trembling, he gets the clue that the interrogators are seeking his association¹ with the liberation movement and revolutionaries. He tries to make a way out with simple truths and lies, even exaggerating other people’s activities in the hope of being freed. And he is scared from the way the interrogators with nationalistic virtues are trying to prove that he is guilty for supporting or acting as a liberationist – questioning even his natural instincts – and what his answers might lead him into. Meanwhile, he doesn’t understand why he’s being treated as if he is a poet who has written rebellious poems in support of the independent Bangladeshi nation. Only when a piece of paper that was found in his pocket containing a poem by Kazi Nazrul Islam, the national poet of Bangladesh, is brought upon he does realize that the soldiers have mistaken him with the poet, when in fact he only shares the same name and even doesn’t know how to write a poem.

1.       “… I neither understand nor enjoy politics. I didn’t even vote during the elections, because I was down with fever. I try to steer clear of marches or strikes because I don’t want to get shot. I can’t stand the sight of blood, which is why I did not opt for the medical profession after passing the ISC. I can’t think beyond my family and that’s why I was afraid.”

He is beaten and tortured when he doesn’t accept to identify as the poet and tries to prove his disassociation with politics. Later, a statement is brought to him that addresses the Bengalis and requests them to quit the liberation movement and to be undersigned by the poet Kazi Nazrul Islam, which he refuses to do. In his captivity, he has visions of his first love, his wife and children speaking to him and even the poet Nazrul Islam appears as if in a phantasmagoria, all of which strengthen his courage and true inner motivation for liberation. Nazrul, at first encounters with his interrogators and torturers asks if he will be able to go back to his family, however he transforms into a fervent supporter of liberation movement and sheds all his fear for life which later brings upon him the tragedy.

The novella captures small movements, acts and language of the characters that renders the ambience and tension surrounding the liberation movement, and exemplifies the brutality and defiance in the face of Bangladeshi war of independence. Blue Venom is not only a remembrance to the liberation war but also to poet Nazrul Islam who backed up the rebellion through his poems. Simple but dark and honest account of ordinary citizens suffering the brutality of regime, Blue Venom is a poignant reminder that liberation was attained not at ordinary cost.

Forbidden Incense

The story starts with a train coming to a halt before reaching Jaleswari at Nabagram station. Boarded in the train is Bilkis, who has come from Dacca to meet her mother and siblings in Jaleswari. In almost a godforsaken station, Bilkis tries to find out if the train will ever go to Jaleswari, but soon witnesses it returning back to another station marring her last hope. Then after having a conversation with the stationmaster about the tension in the area between the people and soldiers, Bilkis starts her journey on foot for Jaleswari. Soon she finds out that a teenage boy whom she had seen before at the station is following her. As they progress on their journey, the conversation with the boy leads her to discover that the family of the boy had been killed by the Biharis and that he knows her family well. The boy had escaped from the village when the Hindus were slaughtered and doesn’t exactly know what’s happening in the village and the apprehension of Bilkis grows and so is the urgency to reach her village having already lost (?) her husband in one of the violent attacks raging nationwide.

After reaching Jaleswari Bilkis and Siraj (the boy) find that Bilkis’ house – where everything looks like as if things were left in a hurry – and the neighborhood too is empty. Bilkis searches for traces of any killings while Siraj ventures outside to search for any news, both wary of their movements and taking care to avoid any attention. Siraj brings the news that all of her family is safe and have crossed a river to a safe place, and shortly they leave the house. They come to a house of an old blind man, who has been left by all and now is at the mercy of Biharis. When the old man finally speaks to Bilkis, a truth yet kept secret by Siraj surfaces – Bilkis’ brother was killed among many young boys. The story progresses as both of them venture out again and decide to give proper burial to the victim of genocide until they face the infiltrators themselves.

Like Blue Venom, Forbidden Incense too is a story woven around the Bangladeshi war of independence, when mass killings, displacement, torture and rape were among the atrocities suffered by the common people. The novella delves deep into the psyche of people facing the violence and their struggle for life and safety and foremost the never-ending connection between those who are living and those lost forever. The heartbreaking scenes of killings, dead bodies and tortures make us surprised to feel and understand to what extent human beings can become evil, corrupt and animalistic in the face of war. Combined, the novellas give a true account of humane and inhuman stories resting in the shadow of Bangladeshi war of independence.

The book is part of Library of Bangladesh series.

Author: Syed Shamsul Haq

Translated by: Saugata Ghosh

Edited by: Arunava Sinha

Publisher: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

Page Count: 124pp

Price: $11

Author Photo Credit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Syed_Shamsul_Haque

Review Copy Courtesy: Bengal Lights Books (Library of Bangladesh series)

(Coming Soon…)

Coming Soon...

Twelve Stories
by Hasan Azizul Huq
Translated from the Bengali by Bhaskar Chattopadhyay

Coming Soon...

Depeche Mode
by Serhiy Zhadan
Translated from the Ukrainian by Myroslav Shkandrij

... But Not Defeated

Ahmet Altan was arrested during Turkey's media crackdown after the failed July 2016 coup d'état and he was expecting that sooner or later he would be arrested just like his father was many years ago¹. Just after his arrest, he realized how he would miss the things that he loves, routine he enjoyed as a writer and most importantly his freedom to decide. Nevertheless, he didn't submit to hopelessness and continued his observation of prison details with eyes of a novelist. He yearned freedom which he couldn't ask loud, instead motivated himself to bear the harsh prison reality and terror. In a prison cell devoid of mirrors, Ahmet realized how it feels to be distanced from one's reality and as he got to know the background of other cellmates, slowly the prison life took new form for him, where he was able to uncover the shades of experiences never touched or thought of before. Ahmet tried hard to look normal, so that his loving ones could take it easy and he himself could stand to the burden of captivity, even when knowing that the possibility of a reasonable trial was almost none.

1.       What I was experiencing was not déjà vu. Reality was repeating itself. This country moves through history too slowly for time to go forward, so it folds back on itself instead.

Ahmet got to listen to a story²—and later fabricating it himself— of a young teacher who couldn't bring himself to give out names of his friends to earn liberty, and also of other prisoners with the attentiveness of a writer, blazing his imagination and taking pleasure in the stories he absorbed from them, when he tried to relive someone else's experience when he was not able to live his own³ – which only proves how hungry Ahmet was to get back his creative space.

Ahmet recalls the episodes when he was released before being arrested again and an encounter with a policeman who has read his novel and discovers in prison how the concept of time is rooted in our lives and what happens when it is distorted. In the process he finds a way to measure time in solitude of prison without clocks, when he wasn't able to envision⁴ things, the only creative fodder the writer can live with. Ahmet has taken realistic, philosophical and imaginative route and wiseness to share his experience in a way of an essayist, a novelist and a victim and at times we forget that he is inside a prison writing this.

2.       The only way to move was with the voice – by talking and telling. Anyone on earth who finds a listener has a story to tell. What is difficult to find is not the story, but the listener. I was the listener in that cage.

3.       In a cage that objectified unhappiness, I was thinking about what happiness was. Like a blind alchemist searching for the spell that turns copper into gold, I was trying to find the secret that turned “frozen seaweed” and “coffin lids” into joy.

4.       I was not able to imagine. I could not imagine a single thing. My mind was petrified. Not even an image moved inside it. The magical images of the land of my imagination were glued on the walls of my mind like discolored frescos. They were not coming to life.

Ahmet can see how the shape of truth has changed for him and what it means to write and to be free; he comes across paradoxes or lessons⁵ between the voids and silences of the prison walls and spaces in which he makes his voyages. Struggling with his longing and witnessing that of others Ahmet tries to understand his dreams too – unrelated to his prison life. In a thirteen-foot-long cell the people of different faith and culture has merged into one another, and despite the personal views of Ahmet differs to those of his cellmates, he finds it easy and satisfying to show respect for their faith, and realizes that our primordial connectedness unfurls under the dire situations when human emotions become the only religion we can perform.

As Ahmet is sentenced to life in prison without parole, he is reminded of one of his own characters in a novel, who faced the similar fate as his, and he feels like it was he himself who wrote his destiny or at least he could write his fate⁶. He feels the final flicker of hope dying when he is sentenced for life nevertheless collects himself to keep his fighting spirit⁷ alive though the impact he has suffered internally is not something that he can ignore. When he is able to get a book to read in the prison, he dwells on literature and writing and finally is relieved to find solace in something he loves utmost, meanwhile he encounters the nature of evil and tries to understand it, as he becomes its victim. In the final chapter The Writer's Paradox, Ahmet uses a famous paradox to show his position, while still being a victim inside a prison, and challenges Turkish government and those who imprisoned him that they've failed⁸; they cannot capture a writer's mind.

5.       Forgetting is the greatest source of freedom a person can have. The prison, the cell, the walls, the doors, the locks, the problems and the people – everything and everyone placing limits on my life and telling me “you cannot go beyond” is erased and gone.

6.       I will never see the world again; I will never see a sky unframed by the walls of a courtyard. I am descending to Hades. I walk into the darkness like a god who wrote his own destiny. My hero and I disappear into the darkness together.

7.       I will fight. I will be brave and I will despise myself for it. I will be injured by my inner conflicts. I will write my own Odyssey, write it with my life in this narrowest of cells. Like Odysseus, I will act with heroism and cowardice, with honesty and craftiness, I will know defeat and victory, my adventure will end only in death. I will have the Penelope of my dreams. I will write in order to be able to live, to endure, to fight, to like myself and to forgive my own failings.

8.       I am writing this in a prison cell. But I am not in prison. I am a writer. I am neither where I am nor where I am not. You can imprison me but you cannot keep me here. Because, like all writers, I have magic. I can pass through your walls with ease.

I Will Never See the World Again is a thought-provoking and clear picture of not just Ahmet's case but of all those who are incarcerated, unjustly accused and whose freedom to speak, write and live has been compromised. This prison memoir heralds the endurance in the face of adversity born out of politics corrupt with power which treats every citizen as a threat and puts trial of courts – run by corrupt judges – only as a formality. We see senseless and evil authorities running the prison system and one man struggling, building block by block an internal shield to keep being motivated and preserve his creative spirit and repose to fight so as to be heard – a voice both tender and sharp which speaks to us all.

Author: Ahmet Altan

Translator: Yasemin Çongar

Publisher: Other Press

Page Count: 224pp

Price: $15.99

Author Photo Credit: https://www.otherpress.com/authors/ahmet-altan/

Review Copy Courtesy: Other Press