From my pile of books I pulled out a booklet published during the war. It was called The Motherland. It contained Sheikh Mujib’s entire speech. I separated the relevant pages and glued them to the wall. Nur Hussain began to read immediately.
I could see he was not good at reading. Sometimes he sounded out every syllable of a word but could not connect them together to pronounce it correctly. He even forgot the sentences he had known by heart when he enunciated the words syllable by syllable at my request.
‘Minor problems,’ I said, like an experienced adult education instructor who knew numerous tactics to counter learning disabilities. He should not worry. It was only a few hours’ job. I told him I would read the speech end to end so that he knew it was not intimidating at all as a piece of text. There was nothing to panic about. I took several deep breaths and began. He sat attentively, looking at me. I would show him how Sheikh Mujib spoke it in his own way. Sheikh Mujib did not pronounce all the words correctly, following the standard rules of our language; but he was able to create a beautiful music in the speech that helped people understand his spirit. His commitment appeared heartfelt to them. He had used judicious repetitions, short sentences and striking but easily relatable images to make his content easier to grasp.
When I finished, Nur was delighted. That was the first time he had heard the speech in full.
‘Can you memorize the speech?’ I asked.
‘Absolutely.’
He wanted only three days. Every comma and semicolon would be in the exact place, he said, and began reading.
He did memorize the whole speech in three days, startling me further. I sat before him and heard him several times. I made notes. It was not easy to capture the tone of such a speech in its entirety, especially when there was no audience before us. But he made it, though with some limitations. ‘Here you must pause,’ I said. ‘Give your listeners time to digest your words. It is noisy out there and everyone cannot think quickly. Listen.’ I played the sentence on the cassette player. He spoke and paused. ‘Longer,’ I said, ‘a little bit longer, please. If people do not understand you, they will not respond correctly. If they do not respond correctly, the purpose is lost.’ I reversed the cassette and played it again for him. ‘You see?’ He paused more and asked if that was enough. ‘Not enough,’ I said, and replayed it before saying the sentence myself. He laughed at himself for using shorter pauses. He laughed and then became serious and terrified, as if Sheikh Mujib would not forgive him for misreading his speech. ‘Becoming an orator needs patience and humility,’ I said. ‘Empathy is a great virtue.’
When he had the pauses right, sooner than I had anticipated, I turned my focus to getting him to speak faster or slower, to create a sense of enthusiasm, and adding easily executable dramatic effects where applicable. It was no use explaining to him what adjectives or adverbs or prepositions were, how Mujib had used them in his speech as tools of persuasion and dynamism. He would not be able to analyse the structural components of a piece of writing as a professional grammarian would. It was not necessary either. He did not need to know what complex political or philosophical or psychological or historical or patriotic cause or trauma compelled Mujib to produce his words. The style was already decided. The meaning was already set. I wanted to go through the words with Nur, again and again, so that he received them experientially. He was an audio-kinaesthetic learner, as far as I could estimate; hearing was his best method. We had the cassette player which was helping us greatly; now we needed to maintain some movement, probably walking around the room, or speaking in the dark, standing on the road.
‘Excellent,’ I said in the end. ‘Well done. Today you have accomplished something that will define the rest of your life. Today you are ready to please anyone anywhere in the country with your ingenuity. You are not just a boy any more. You are in contact with the heart and the soul of this land. There is no wall before you. Nothing can slow you down.’ But he must continue practising. He must know where he was guiding his audience. On the one side were the Pakistanis who discriminated against us by imposing their will on us, and on the other side the dream of a free Bangladesh, the right to choose our destiny—Sheikh Mujib utilized this compare-and-contrast system of communication so effectively that seventy million Bangladeshis could not help but start a passionate and immediate struggle for liberation. He gave them a choice. They instantly knew what to do.
One of the aspects of the speech that I thought would be difficult to explain took actually very little time. ‘How many voices do you notice in that speech?’ I asked.
‘Why, one,’ he said. ‘Wasn’t it Sheikh Mujib who gave the whole speech?’
That was not a correct answer but that was also not an unintelligent answer. I was ready to explain.
Sheikh Mujib gave the whole speech, I said, but if he looked carefully, he would see several Sheikh Mujibs in action; one of them was sympathetic, one was analytical, one a rebel, and one a villager who spoke in a local dialect. And I had spoken to him of Sheikh Mujib the poet before, who spoke with infectious enthusiasm. All those voices came together and created an organic whole: Sheikh Mujib the person. To produce the speech successfully, one would need to give careful attention to all those voices. I wanted to give him an example by quoting a specific sentence from the speech, but he interrupted and said: ‘For example—I have come before you today with a heavy heart. Wasn’t Sheikh Mujib sympathizing with the people of Bangladesh in this opening line? Wasn’t he suffering because people in general were suffering under Pakistani rule?’
He practised all day long. His words echoed off the walls and bounced off my ears. I knew he deserved to win the confidence of his audience because of the animation and force with which he spoke. I could visualize people clapping, coins coming out of their pockets.