‘People don’t get what they want; they don’t want what they get’.
On one hand, Halima was waiting to sneak up on the kitchen door, while Nabila had already been taught how to get her mother out of the television room as soon as the wedding sanaai scene started. As soon as Halima threw the stone along the ceiling above the kitchen door, she said, ‘Auntie, did the sanaai come to eat meat? Or the cat? Who knows what’s making noise in the kitchen!’
With these words, her mother jumped up and ran towards the kitchen. Meanwhile, the sanaai rang, the wedding guests ate, and by then the bride, weeping, arrived at the residence in a car decorated with marigolds and roses. In the midst of tense tension in the ballroom, Halima and her group kept their eyes glued to the television screen, suffocating. And Halima again crossed the hanging bed sheet and went under the bed. It had been decided beforehand that even if for some reason the mother returned before the desired scene, and let them out, at least the special scene would be captured in Halima’s eye-camera, and she would definitely show it to the rest of them like a Xerox copy. As soon as she said that, the mother quickly checked the kitchen, returned with the chain on the door, and kept coughing until she was out of breath. What else could she do, the group of girls left the room with great mental anguish. Halima remained under the bed, holding her breath as if dying. She looked from there in surprise, what a strange business! What does this mean? As soon as the hero lifted the heroine’s veil, what happened to the heroine? She was not tickled at all! But? Why did she start shaking like an epileptic? Did she have a fever? That too on this wedding night? Oh my! I don’t think I’ll see anything else today! She gave up feeling sad.
After a few days, she got the chance to see that scene in reality, not just in a movie. Their elder sister, Sufia, got married. It had been decided before the wedding that Halima and the three girls from the neighborhood would go to her in-laws’ house with Sufia to celebrate their wedding. Halima had no interest in it. But, in reality, when Sufia and Latif, holding hands like statues, went to the bar like a statue, and her mother and aunts started calling her brazen and shameless, her interest grew to the peak of the Himalayas. Today, Halima feels lucky to have reached the peak of the Himalayas by being one of those three. The story that followed was just a honey-colored one! What a romance! Halima just watches and counts the days in her mind, like the lines of Ravi Thakur’s song ‘Sakhi Bahe Gel Bela’, ‘…when will life last, the meeting of wine in eyes, the sweetest delight, the sweetest burning, the ever-newest love…’. Today, Halima sows rice in the fields, and regardless of the scolding of the elders, she weaves dreams, thinking about the coming moments of her life, sitting on the bank of the river, she paints a picture of a small world. Where every morning her dream boy will wake up and kiss her on the cheek, the two of them will bathe together in water, she will cook and that man will hug her from behind and kiss her on the back, when she gets a fever – she will mix rice and feed it to her mouth, after finishing her work, she will quickly return to her. Since marrying Sufia, Latif doesn’t stay at work for long, he just looks for opportunities to return home quickly through various means. Whenever he gets five minutes of free time, he runs home, hugs his wife for a while, and then goes back to work if necessary. Halima starts dreaming of having a partner like that in her life too.
One day, that time approached. She got married, her husband Harun was quite handsome. In the light of the twilight bride, Harun and his family came to see Halima. As soon as she looked at Harun, her dark-black eyes, which were covered in mascara, opened, and immediately upon seeing Harun’s fascinated eyes and smiling face, electricity flowed through Halima’s entire body that day. When Dadi asked in her ear, “Do you like Pola?” She could not say anything, only her cheeks turned red in embarrassment in the last rays of twilight. The sides of her trembling lips melted, a smile like an apsara’s. She had been imagining since then, that she would dance on the seashore in her blue saree, that Harun would play with the hem of her sari that was ruffled in the wind, that she would carefully arrange her flying hair, that she would place her face on her hands and sing, “I have tied my life to you…” But, does a person get what he wants?
On the wedding night, Harun looked quite handsome. Sitting on the bed in the guest house decorated with marigolds at night, he did not lift his head veil like a movie hero, tossing and turning with emotion. Instead, he said in a serious voice, in a tone of command, ‘Remove those troubles, do it quickly!’ Suddenly, Halima felt a little embarrassed by the command of that serious masculine voice. She stared at him for a while, her chest heaving. Harun said, ‘Can’t you hear? Take off those gaudy sarees and bangles of yours and lie down, I don’t like such gaudy things.’ As Halima got scared and hurriedly went to remove her bangles, Harun roared, ‘Why do you have to make such a jingling noise? You’ve completely hit your head!’ Tears welled up in Halima’s eyes. In the movies she had heard the heroes say many times, ‘I find the sound of your tinkling bangles quite romantic.’ But why was Harun saying this? What happened next was more terrifying than Halima’s nightmare. As soon as the bangles were untied, without any exchange of words or phrases, without any romantic exchange of feelings, a ferocious hyena pounced on Halima. Tearing and licking, when it left her, Halima was unconscious. After all the mental shock, the physical shock, not a word came out of fifteen-year-old Halima’s mouth for the next four days, and only when evening came would she get a fever from her fear. Every night, all she could think was, why does night come? The day Bubli, Moni, and Lipi came to see her, they said, ‘Let’s go to the seashore, play with oysters?’ She just stared blankly. She couldn’t even tell me how gray her dreams were today, how her dreams had been shattered, how she had finally fallen prey to a hyena after dreaming of a romantic man she had seen in movies her whole life.
When Harun came home at night, his eyes were always bright red. A strange smell came out of his mouth as he snorted. The hyena, who was intoxicated, kept attacking her all night long and finally fell asleep, snoring. Halima slowly went to the window and stood. Her body had taken everything these days, no pain or sorrow touched her anymore, all feelings had become numb. There were only wounds and bleeding on the frozen body. Halima, staring at the throne, could not recognize the woman standing in front of her. A devastated, dream-broken, robbed woman. Her eyes wandered out the window towards the distant, illuminated path, where the light was playing in the sea of dust, she did not know how or when she came out of the house without her knowledge, to the roar of the sea in the distance. As she walked barefoot on the sandy path, she filled her mind with light, the hem of her blue sari rolled down on the dust of the path, she walked alone, suddenly startled a little by the touch of water, but she did not stop. She moved forward. Just as she had imagined the scene of her husband warmly embracing her in her living room, in the same way she embraced the bosom, turbulent, fierce, insatiable, but still loving sea. The sea also lovingly embraced Halima, exposing her breasts. Halima is swept away, and Halima continues to drift without turning back, to the loving call of the sea. After a broken dream, this departure brings some happiness or peace to Halima’s mind, but she does not return. When she returns to the shore the next day, dead, by the pull of the tide, there is still a smile of satisfaction on her face, a smile of freedom, peace, and the attainment of eternal love.
Scarborough, Canada
