This time he went straight to the Shaheed Minar where he had first delivered the 7 March speech, where Shah Abdul Karim had sung his songs and where starving refugees gathered day and night for nothing. He walked the cement courtyard from end to end watching the undemonstrative crowd in silence. Some refugees had made the place their permanent home. It was better than the camp at the school field. At least the floor was hard and dry, and rainwater did not pool there.
He saw me standing at the corner, ten or so yards away from him, but said nothing. With an uncertain look, he sat down on the cement and hid his face in his palms.
Though he was in his rags, some refugees recognized him. I could clearly hear one of them loudly asking the man sitting next to him if Nur Hussain was the person who used to deliver Sheikh Mujib’s speech; if he was the man in the fine punjabi and the Mujib coat they had seen the other day at Moina Mia’s meeting. The man took a few steps towards him and watched him, raising his right hand over his eyes, and then looked back. ‘He is,’ he said.
‘Are you sure?’ asked the first man, who now stood up and, in league with the second man, moved towards Nur Hussain.
‘He is.’ He was sure.
I sensed some desperate ferociousness in their attitude. They were plotting something. These hungry people could be really nasty. They did not need a real reason to start a fight.
I ran at them with a thundering warning, telling them to stay away from him. ‘You hear me,’ I shouted and ran fast, fast, stepping on sleeping refugees, hitting children who played with sticks and plates, undoing corners of several sari tents. I grabbed the two men by their necks just when they were two yards away from him. ‘You ill-begotten bulls,’ I said, ‘you’ll never walk again!’ I squeezed them under my arms, pressed their heads to my stomach, and kicked them in their legs while they tried to get free. I pushed one of them down, and kicked him again and again, until his nose bled and he started crying in loud yelps. As the one under my arm gave in, I pushed him towards the other and breathed hard.
Nur Hussain watched the whole affair. Though a large crowd had gathered around us he did not move. Neither did he show any interest or concern. Probably it all happened so fast that he did not know what to do. Probably he felt numb in his body; I made him numb with my arrogance, and he could not do anything but sit calmly. He watched as my two victims pulled each other to their feet and nursed each other as I walked away from the scene of a massive embarrassment.
I was not in my Mujib coat at that time. I was not in my clean, white, neatly pressed punjabi. There had been no time to put them on.
If I had been wearing my coat, I asked myself that night, would I have done what I did? I knew some refugees in the camp had assaulted an Awami League supporter wearing a Mujib coat when he went there to tell them to join Moina Mia’s meeting, and I knew members of the private militia arrived there that night and set fire to their tents. I saw the ashes the next day. Some refugees had burns. Some had bruises all over their bodies.
Then I asked why it was that I had not waited until the two men reached him to see what it was they intended to do to him. I could have. I could have waited a little bit, instead of ambushing them. I could have just walked over to them as any reasonable man would, a man who remained composed even in the face of the most serious danger. That way they would have had enough time to reach him before I grabbed them. Then I could have asked them if they had any objections or grievances against him. Thus I would have been able to win their confidence as a mediator. Maybe I would have realized that they had no intention at all. Why didn’t I do that, why had I run towards them when I saw he was not running away from them?
Nur Hussain did not return home immediately. He returned when it was late and went straight to his room. I heard him close the door behind him. Then everything was quiet.
Late that night I heard him cough a few times. Then I heard him snore.
It would not be an endless night, I said to myself. There would be a morning for him, a morning with glaring light, giving shape to things. And a morning would begin for me too, within a few hours. Weren’t we going to see each other and get on with our regular lives, I asked myself, and forget what had happened today?