Our Many Longings: Contemporary Short Fiction from Bangladesh is published on the 50th Anniversary of the nation’s independence. It is a collection of twelve short stories written in English and seven stories translated from Bangla. Edited by Sohana Manzoor, the anthology focuses on Bangladeshi literature from the 1970s to the present. It is published by Dhauli Books, India, in November 2021.
The first story of the book, “Beauty and the Jinn” by Rahad Abir, is about a twelve-year-old village girl who is sexually assaulted by Imam Shaheb. The story is especially interesting because it is told from the perspective of the perpetrator. The story ends with the flame of a lamp glaring at him.
I could connect this lamp to Dilruba Z Ara’s story “Light” which shows how the protagonist Pradip (meaning lamp) undergoes suffering in Bahrain Dubai as one among many “imported hands from South Asia,” Pradip loses his individuality. He earns money, but every night after returning from work, he lights the oil lamp to worship the deities with a ray of hope to reunite with his wife and child.
Translated by Rifat Munim, “Without a Name, without a Tribe” by Hasan Azizul Huq tells the story of a man whose name is lost. He is a freedom fighter whom the Pakistani soldiers label as a “Bangal dog… a worshipper of Sheikh Mujib.” Staggering along with the locality he once belonged to, he reaches home and calls out his wife and children. Taking an old rusty spade, he starts digging the yard in a mad, wild fury to recover the remains of his dear ones.
Atrocities drive people mad; but the insane, bare-bodied people seen on the streets of Dhaka, are they all victims of atrocities? ‘No’, answers Kaiser Haq in his version of Andersen’s tale “The Emperor’s New Clothes”. He describes the king’s desire for good clothes as longings for spiritual refinement that are met by two fake holy men or Digambar Naga sadhus whose “ancestral home is in Bengal, by the sparkling Sitalakhya river.”
Manzu Islam’s story “Catching Pheasants” is a story of two immigrant Bangladeshi workers spending their days preparing and serving curries in a provincial town of England. One day, they plan to hunt pheasants: “[T]he most English of all birds” with radiant, golden wings. The breath-taking hunt is successful, but the question that comes up is: are human beings inherently violent, hunting, ever-hungry creatures?
In “The Bird Keeper,” Nasreen Jahan attempts to answer similar questions. Translated by Noora Shamsie Bahar, the story brings up a snow-white pet bird kept by an old man who accumulated wealth by unfair means. A hungry beggar comes regularly at the door of his huge mansion and stares at the bird in utter amazement. He recalls the taste of a little bird and its crunchy bones he once had. On his deathbed, the old man asks his attendants to give his precious, dear bird to the beggar, hoping that he will treat it well.
Modern life often makes us consider its values and meanings from different perspectives. Translated by Nishat Atiya, Mojaffor Hossain’s “After Breaking News” focuses on a ridiculous situation where a renowned professor and poet discovers himself as dead because the media says so. He takes part in his own funeral and consoles his own family members, friends and colleagues, and yet fails to prove that he is alive.
A considerable portion of the book is dedicated to the depressed and abandoned old men of the country who have once led an affluent and successful life. “Alter Ego” by Syed Manzoorul Islam introduces to such an old man. The translation done by Fakrul Alam is mellifluous and full of alliteration, for example, “however, he had hurt his feet” or “a slight, sneering smile.” In this story, Dawood Mia threatens to brutally murder Khondoker Afzal over the phone, but their conversation often sounds more ludicrous than threatening. The narrator explores the cases of crime and punishment, as well as revenge and justification of violence by saying: “[V]iolence creates its own narrative, a narrative whose beginning and ending can’t be viewed in the light of reason at all.”
Afsan Chowdhury’s short story “Torso” is a powerful tale of violence committed during the war. I felt numbed by the atrocity explored in the story translated by Shamsad Mortuza. It records the harrowing details of a Hindu mother and her children during the liberation war, as they venture into the search of the body of the dead husband and father. In contrast, “Cyclone” by Khademul Islam speaks of non-violent resistance and protest against the powerful authority, and how years before the Liberation War, Bangladeshis learnt to stand united against the Pakistani forces through their unruffled awareness of the rights to be free.
“First Love, Second Chances” by Farah Guznabi is a story of breaking free of exploitative love. The protagonist ultimately finds the one who values her and helps her recognize her self-worth and wellbeing. “Mother’s Milk” by Tahmima Anam recounts the guilt and self-hatred of a mother who has smothered her own child while sleeping. She finally learns to bid farewell to the accident and to look at life again.
Love, therefore, cannot always ensure our wellbeing. It can be awfully destructive at times and fill us with disgust, stress and anxiety. Nadeem Zaman narrates a story of marriage and adultery and interrogates the meaning of love within marriages in his “Next Door.” “Frank and Frida” by Fayeza Hasanat can hardly be called a love story. The unreliable narrator of the story diabolically snatches the story of another and owns it as her own. However, the story remains remarkable through her portrayal of Frida or Farida, a mysterious Bangladeshi woman with unusual non-Bangladeshi physical features: “brown hair and olive-green eyes.”
A similar character is found in Rizia Rahman’s “Petrea”. Translated by Sohana Manzoor, this story unfolds the real social status of Bindi, an illegitimate daughter of an English sahib. She works as a maid amidst the tea-gardens, but her superior notions of herself get punctured as she meets a real memsahib. She painfully acquires self-knowledge as she steps into reality.
“Decoy” by Razia Sultana Khan also deals with a girl’s self-awareness and destruction of her innocence as she embarks on the world of experience through pain. The story starts with a Bangla word: Chao, or do you want it? Mukul wants it, neglecting her mothers’ warning, and falls into the trap of a paedophile.
Shaheen Akhter’s “The Green Passport,” translated by Arifa Ghani Rahmani is another story of transition. Set inside the Bihari camp of Dhaka, it focuses on the lives of the Biharis in Bangladesh. Considered traitors for their role in 1971, they can neither get back to their homeland Bihar nor move to Pakistan. With a strong will to establish his identity, Ahmed leaves the camp.
Assertion of one’s identity is also a theme of Hasan Al Zayed’s story “Nuru.” US Secretary of State Henry Kissinger once called Bangladesh a bottomless basket. Upon arriving in the US, the narrator realizes that Kissinger’s country is not devoid of the hazards he has blamed Bangladesh for. He also talks about violence committed by his Nuru bhai upon a hungry, destitute woman, and the transformation he goes through afterwards. His story becomes remarkable through his pleasant and fond descriptions of middle-class household customs in Dhaka during his boyhood.
The city of Dhaka is the main topic of “Ramkamal’s Gift” by Kazi Anis Ahmed. This anthology is populated by characters who are not admirable; they are either oppressors or oppressed. Among these, Ramkamal stands out. He plans to write an encyclopaedia of the city, its inhabitants and its neighbourhoods. Capturing the vastness and diversities of Dhaka is a mammoth task, and Ramkamal disappears in the middle of the project, leaving his associates in despair and debt. The story provides glimpses of the addas on Dhaka streets, addas that bring no fruitful outcome but engage one with the other around the lifeless walls of concrete.
The anthology primarily focuses on the nation’s individual and collective struggles to overcome the horrors of the past. I found it a little disappointing that it does not contain any folklore or fairy tale. One story of the book echoes another story, and the characters seem to belong to the same nation through their actions, thoughts and gestures. They carry their past wherever they go, with a longing to move towards the future. Therefore, this attempt of collecting all their stories together make them hear each other.
The cover of the book itself connotes release and escape: amidst patches of yellow and light brown, there is a hanging cage that has a heart engraved in its key, and thirty-three blackbirds coming out of it—I found the image to be an apt one for such a collection.
Sanjeeda Hossain is an Assistant Professor at the Department of English, University of Dhaka.
