'My Sister, Life': a translated excerpt from Bangla novel 'Jibon Amar Bon'

A note from the translators: .The following is excerpted from the second chapter of Mahmudul Haque’s Jibon Amar Bon (My Sister, Life) – a tribute to the Russian writer Boris Pasternak’s poem with the same title. Jibon Amar Bon is one of the most significant works of fiction from Bangladesh. Haque wrote it in 1972, right after Bangladesh became independent in December the previous year, and it was first published in the Eid supplement of the magazine Bichitra in 1973. It came out in book form in May 1976 and has remained in print ever since. In 2023, the Bangla Academy in Dhaka included the book in the first volume of a four-volume publication of the complete works of the author, Mahmudul Haque Rochonaboli..Written just after the 1971 Bangladesh Liberation War, the novel’s unsentimental approach to the liberation movement is striking. Jibon Amar Bon alternates between conversational banter and stream-of-consciousness introspection, between indoor and outdoor scenes. This excerpt begins with the protagonist, Khoka, outside his house, observing and reflecting on the political turmoil around him as conditions in Bangladesh (then East Pakistan) become insurrectionary..In the rest of the novel, the turmoil outside grows more and more intense, and we see the evolution of Khoka’s disdain for the movement as well as his conflicted emotions towards his sister Ranju; his love interest, the married woman Nila Bhabi; and his friends, many of whom grow more and more engaged with the movement outside. The novel hurtles towards a climax with the Pakistani army’s crackdown on the liberation movement on the night of 25 March 1971 – a time of fire and bloodshed signalling the full-scale onset of a war that would continue until Bangladesh won its independence..Translators:Mahmud Rahman is a writer and translator currently resident in Philadelphia. His book Killing the Water: Stories, published in 2010 by Penguin Books India, includes stories of migrants and dislocated people, in Bengal, Boston, Detroit, Providence, and imagined territories. His second book, a translation of Bangladeshi writer Mahmudul Haque’s Partition novel Black Ice, was published in 2012 by HarperCollins India. His fiction, nonfiction, and translations have appeared in such magazines and anthologies as Himal Southasian, Scroll India, Dhaka Tribune, Oakland Noir, Papercuts, Brooklyn Magazine, Words Without Borders, World Literature Today, Wasafiri, The Daily Star, and New Age. He completed an MFA in Fiction from Mills College, Oakland CA. .Shabnam Nadiya is a Bangladeshi writer and translator settled in Philadelphia. A graduate of the Iowa Writers’ Workshop, she is the recipient of the 2019 Steinbeck Fellowship at the San Jose State University; a 2020 PEN/Heim Translation Fund Grant; and a 2022 PEN Presents grant. Her translation of Alam’s story “Milk” won the 2019 Himal Southasian Short Story Prize. Nadiya’s published translations include Mashiul Alam's The Meat Market: Ten Stories and a Novella (Westland, 2024), Leesa Gazi's novel Hellfire (Westland 2020, released in 2023 in the US by Amazon Crossing as Good Girls), Moinul Ahsan Saber’s novel The Mercenary (Seagull Books, 2018), and Shaheen Akhtar’s novel Beloved Rongomala (Westland Books, 2022). Her translations and writing have been widely published in journals and anthologies including the W.W. Norton collection Flash Fiction International, The Best Asian Poetry 2021-22, the New York Public Library's Pocket Poems series, The Offing, Joyland Magazine, Amazon’s Day One, Gulf Coast, and Copper Nickel. For more: www.shabnamnadiya.com..Support Southasian literature, become a Himal Patron today!.Chapter 2.Khoka lived with his family in a house nestled against a major street in Dhanmondi. His house could be reached in a few steps after getting off at either the Eidgah or Madhu Bazaar stop on the bus route towards Mohammadpur..Standing at the bus stop now, Khoka could see the crimson riot of bougainvillea sprawled on the roof of their carport. The upright eucalyptus resembled a mast, reminding him of Ulysses’ seafaring ship. All dandied up as a stylish young man in bright white pyjamas and a fluttering silk tunic, Khoka felt buoyant and unburdened while he waited for a three-wheeler baby taxi..Today was the first time he’d come out of the house in four days. By now it was more than likely that a great deal had transpired around the country. To be sure, there was the political crisis, and beyond that, a thousand kinds of hullabaloo. Ships packed with soldiers streamed towards Chittagong; Tikka Khan, the butcher who had dropped bombs on the Eid gathering in Balochistan, had arrived as the new Lord Chieftain; posters and images covered the surface of every wall – but none of that stirred Khoka. To him, politics was, from head to toe, a grandiose titillation, and despite being fully aware of the responsibilities of an educated citizen, he had not registered in the voter rolls. The essence of politics was akin to snaring prey, like a woman making herself look younger and more attractive by using Mademoiselle blush..But where exactly should he go now? He’d managed to leave the house using the pretext of an errand, now he had to come up with a possible destination – what a hassle. Already high noon, it would be easy to join an adda at Rex restaurant, or there might also be a conversation going on at Yasin’s in Gopibagh. Yasin’s college in Icchapura was closed now and the fellow was hot-footing around town attending every meeting he could find. If Khoka could find someone to talk to, it would take care of his afternoon. Khoka could visit Rajib Bhai’s place, though it would be hard to find him at this hour; he was probably out wandering somewhere with that crocodile-skin bag tucked under his arm. There was always Nila Bhabi: Khoka had not made it over there since the upheaval started..How would it be if he dropped in at Murad’s? He could coax him to come along and they could even pop in at Yasin’s..Khoka finally understood that he had fallen under Nila Bhabi’s sway, and there was nothing to do except hang loose and let himself drift with the flow. It astonished him that these days his heart no longer fluttered willy-nilly over Nila Bhabi; it was like how you read the first few pages of a book you didn’t expect much from only to discover that you can no longer control your frenzied curiosity and you’ve devoured the final pages like an impatient reader..Khoka discovered again what he’d once known, that if it wasn’t for this distasteful inclination he had for feeling bad over someone, the world would be quite bland and dull. He felt awful right now about Ranju. When he was leaving the house, her face had clouded over in gloom..No, the adda circle at Rex wouldn’t work out. The teacups there swirled with storms over a mishmash of topics like the sitting of the National Assembly, the future constitution, the Legal Framework Order promulgated by the military regime for the recent elections, and the trickery of China’s wind-up doll Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. They had also gone gaga over their discovery of this writer Gore Vidal, with so many arguments tossed this way and that. Each one of those wranglers a bloody numbskull. Nila Bhabi was far more appealing than that motley crew. At her place, there were no attempts to tie one’s words into knots, no ugly effort to harass one another without rhyme or reason. When his friends, under the pretence of conversation and debate, took refuge in dirty habits and began slinging mud at each other, descending into dirty competitiveness where they blabbed out each other’s private affairs, Khoka got a bitter taste in his mouth. At Nila Bhabi’s, no matter what else might happen, he didn’t have to face such nasty aggravation; no one beat a tin drum like the hunchback dwarf Oscar. Instead, time passed without notice, much like the line from that poet about “a young boy effortlessly peeing in his sleep.”.Follow all things books in Southasia. Sign up for our monthly Southasia Review of Books newsletter!.Tumult – yes indeed, a mighty tumult was gathering force and crashing ceaselessly against the wind. Khoka perked up his ears and could hear a low thunderous roar. Like an angry python, a march snaking up from Rayer Bazaar had reached the main road and was now headed towards the headquarters of the East Pakistan Rifles. How rapidly the city of Dacca was changing, how rapidly people were being transformed. Everyone had seized whatever they could grab. Someone held a baton, another an iron rod, while others hoisted black flags, spears, swords, oars, hoes, crowbars. Ordinary landscapes were being transformed so fast and the expressions on people’s faces were changing, fast, furious, and flowing, flowing like a glacier, as unstoppable as death. People! There were so many people out and about! What you could describe as teeming masses of humanity. “Who are the ones journeying unnoticed with the pole star visible in the sky” – Khoka could feel an unearthly sensation coursing through his body. One old line from a poem – but for some reason his entire body thrilled to it, a sudden rush charging through him. A mass of humanity moving relentlessly, like the powerful currents released by an overflowing dam: crop fields, farms, anthills, bamboo groves, bridges, towns and ports, brothels, everything was swept along by that unstoppable gush of flowing water. Was this a flood like Noah’s? Khoka felt torn asunder, and his head throbbed..Before he came out, Ranju’s face had darkened. She’d said, “Would it be so awful if you didn’t go out?”.“Why does it bother you?”.“I’m scared. There’s a dreadful gloom around the neighbourhood.”.For a moment, Khoka had thought, fine, let it be, there was no sense in going anywhere. But now it was impossible to turn back. The whole scene struck him as sheer impulsive fancy; he read signs of chronic illness in the faces of the people in the march. Khoka explained himself away – I have no relationship with people at any level, I’m just shaped by a different temperament, I don’t give a damn whether anything happens or doesn’t, while even the betel vendor on the footpath or an earth-digging labourer is capable of giving some kind of opinion. The times change people, or the people themselves poke and prod and manage to enliven inanimate, lifeless times, and I am not involved with anything at all. The nation, the welfare of the nation, the future of the nation, patriotism, none of that penetrated his brain. It was far better to drown oneself in sluggish idleness than to waste oneself without reason in such quagmires. For sure, it was safer that way. Letting the air out from rickshaw tires, setting buses aflame, tossing brickbats at policemen – even though there were countless intense and fascinating ways of displaying one’s ardent affection for the nation, Khoka could never arrive at any sure decision, his hands and feet stayed shackled. During the 1965 war, even thieves, pickpockets and con men had sat idle and broke, their hands and feet tucked in, showing off the dizzying heights of their patriotism. What a time it was when no one picked anyone’s pockets, and burglary and crime came to a total stop. Was political crisis anything new? When were people easily able to shed wickedness and devilry? Humans – in other words, Satan’s worthy opponents – would never treat you as a kiddy and feed you a roshogolla made from pure curds; if they wanted you to swallow, you’d have to be on your guard from the outset..A vast sense of desolation surfaced inside Khoka, strewn with the decrepit graves of wrinkled-skin moralists. Perhaps it wasn’t that: maybe he just found comfort in being a contrarian, a self-absorbed habit whose mystery he would never uncover. Khoka understood well that, unlike half a dozen others, it was simply not possible for him to drift behind a flock of sheep. What did tannery workers understand about politics, every one of them merely a guinea pig? Even half-pant-wearing schoolboys with pinchable cheeks, kids who wiped their snot on their elbows and still had piss running down their legs, were standing on street corners spouting wisdom. These fresh-faced boys of Faizuddin Byapari Primary School – as if they had any notion of far-off places like America or China, as if they had any clue about who was sitting in the dark, moving chess pieces like the Supreme Being. By the time they comprehended that the big fish who traded in religion and politics were more contemptible than dealers of adulterated medicine or vendors of rotten fish, their lifetime in revolutionary student politics would have come to an end. And if they did not jump into the Civil Service exams then, there would be no further chances for absolution. Many of the big-name progressive or leftist personalities, more cautious than the blind who tap to seek their way, were now sitting in greedy stealth at the Intercontinental Hotel saluting distant Scotland for the greatness of her Cutty Sark or Ballantine’s. Dialectical materialism, capital, profit, class struggle, reality, the ups and downs of democracy, neo-hodge, ultra-podge: all this predictably twisted itself into place, and women’s silk undergarments were peeled off just as easily as onion skins. When the night deepened or when the day became mistaken for the deeper province of night-time, being left-wing was the be-all and end-all of everything. Sparring over Eisenstein’s films, pawing through a hash of Pablo Neruda’s poetry, or scrabbling about Picasso’s murals, none of it sank roots any longer in quite the same way; everything felt morbid, muddy, mouldy, and instead, weightless dreams blossomed about Vanessa Redgrave, taking over everything. Amid news about the hackneyed factional infighting within organisations, the shape of Elsa Martinelli’s legs emerging through a hole in a thick wall acted like a gust of wind and rain; the heft of Sophia Loren’s breasts, like a miraculous whip of lightning, taught the ringmaster how to wag the tail right on the tip of his nose. Indeed, if such breasts came to a boy’s destructive hands like a red rubber balloon, the revolution could be packed and stored away in a warehouse for sixty years. .Why am I standing still like a dolt in the blazing sun, fretting about all this – Khoka emerged from a bout of wallowing in the mud. A foolish excitement managed to overwhelm his nervous system. He grew annoyed with himself – with what anticipation am I standing here, rooted, as if Noah’s ark was coming to rescue me like a crop seed from some catastrophic, horizon-overflowing flood headed this way. Not being able to process everything easily was a strange mental distress, it was an uncomfortable complication: there was no structure to this depraved randomness. Khoka lifted his hand, reached into a pocket in his brain to yank out a crumpled, doodled-over piece of paper and tossed it into the street. .Seeing his raised hand, a baby-taxi stopped and Khoka climbed in. He still had no clear destination. As long as the wind puffed out the sails, he would no doubt moor up somewhere.