Moina Mia said he had new information for us; it was about our pre-programme orientation. We would have to stay with the militia for a couple of days at a campsite where we would be taught how to handle small arms. There might be someone who would want to kidnap us to embarrass Sheikh Mujib. If we were trained in arms, we would be able to protect ourselves.
‘The price,’ I said to him. ‘Before we begin discussing subsidiary matters like unseen terror lurking in the dark and effective use of handguns, the price has to be reviewed.’ Though the nature of our work had not changed, I argued, its conditions had changed fundamentally. To give an example, Nur Hussain would have to memorize new passages for every new assignment. So far he had delivered only what he had already learnt. Now, suddenly, he would have to deliver something different. If learning were easy for him, he would not have been a speaker. He would have found a job with a bank or insurance company, many of them sprouting up after the war. He would have been a bus conductor or a mechanic, a weaver, at least. Therefore, learning new passages would not be easy for him.
I also explained that every time new passages would be written they would be written in a style different from Sheikh Mujib’s, because they would not be written by him but by someone else for him; most probably by a tricky speechwriter who used words as weapons. Those words would not be simple either. The language of rebellion is simple whereas the language of governance is very intricate. Rebellion needs one small sentence—a slogan. But being the government, Sheikh Mujib would have to find a language that would highlight his achievements and conceal his limitations as an administrator.
Then I spoke about myself. The new schedule would place extra pressure on me too, I said. How? I was the one who would have to read the passages to him, since Nur Hussain’s capacity to read was limited and his understanding was extremely erratic. Moina Mia or Sheikh Mujib or the militia would not sit with him in the dim circuit house room to observe what part of the speech he had missed or improvised. I did not mind doing something for Sheikh Mujib; in fact, I would enjoy doing it. But it would help me explain things to Nur Hussain logically if I could say that his payment demanded that kind of hard work or even a superior level of commitment, and he could not give up just because he felt annoyed or he did not understand something. Nur Hussain depended on my capacity to explain things to him, I said, which, in turn, effectively depended on how comfortable I felt about performing my part of the job.
That was not all, I said, as I began the second part of my argument. Now that we would be working for Sheikh Mujib, I told Moina Mia most dutifully, we would not be able to avoid people—people of all kinds, especially from the media—who would follow us virtually everywhere.
They might also want to write a photo-essay on his daily life, I argued; after all, he was the only person who Sheikh Mujib had selected to deliver his speech. It would not be an advantage for Moina Mia or for Sheikh Mujib to let people know we lived in a small flat. Important people live in important places: I made it clear to him. If we wanted to move to a place of average importance, we would have to pay a rent higher than we now paid. Even if we moved to an important house, I said, we would need to keep a gatekeeper who would keep trouble away. We would have to employ someone like Ruhul Amin who was brave enough to shoot trespassers.
If earning money required talking, I was ready to talk. I wanted to push our deal as hard as possible. Being an MP was not easy. Being a speaker for a troubled prime minister was not easy either. Moina Mia had to know it.
His eyes became small. He stared at me as if he had never seen me before. The creases on of his forehead became deeper.
I managed to clear a generous advance from him, in cash. And it came directly from the bank. Newly printed bills—they smelt wonderful.
The advance was a token of our trust for each other, I said to him as a concluding statement. By taking that money I had given him my word. I was not going to do another deal with another person. Not even if I were offered a better deal and the deal came from an Awami League leader, as every leader needed to do some propaganda during such a deep crisis. Money was not everything, I told him, but my word was my word, and he and I were both gentlemen with our honour to protect.
I did not care what ideas he had of me. Was he concerned about what ideas I had formed about him? Did he know I knew exactly who the two burglars were that Ruhul Amin had shot the other night? Did he know that I knew they were Basu and Gesu—the two servants who had served us tea in his house—and that I did not speak about their unfortunate death with him simply because he did not speak about them with me? Two men just disappeared, two men wearing Mujib coats. They disappeared while stealing from their employer. They disappeared even though they did not steal jewellery, money, legal documents, state secrets or any valuable items, but only two sacks of rice. He had his way of exploiting a situation, I had my own.
I felt good about myself. In fact, I was extremely delighted to see my plan actually work the way I had hoped it would. Now I would not have to go to the editors looking for a job. Now they would not be able to look down upon me any more and dismiss me as a trivial subject even after I had knocked them with an interesting point like transformational leadership and how it applied to our nation. My feet were stable now, and my grip firm. I had Moina Mia in my pocket. I had Sheikh Mujib under my control. Because of the Mujib coat I wore, I had the entire Awami League carrying out my wishes.