One evening a few days later, after a long, purposeless walk across the neighbourhood, we took a break at the Shaheed Minar area and Nur Hussain suddenly began to speak from Sheikh Mujib’s speech. His voice was artificial, but deep, loud and passionate. Sitting against the reddish daylight, he spoke slowly, uttering one or two words at a time, like many of our countrymen who attended political campaigns and were so carried away by some grandiose slogans that they repeated them in their sleep. He did it, I believe, to amuse me. It was a joke, as I could tell by looking at his smiling face. When I turned away from him, he stood up.
‘What are you doing?’ I asked out of irritation. ‘Nur!’
It was clear he had no idea why I had played the speech on my cassette player. He thought I had enjoyed it and sought inspiration from it. Now in the absence of the cassette player he became the speaker for me.
He looked away down the street.
I was not used to passing time in the company of the kind of bad-mannered, drunk, reckless and lowly people that loitered at the Shaheed Minar. They smelt of burnt meat and rotten tomatoes. All poor people smelt that way, I thought. It was not because they hadn’t had a bath in weeks. The inside of their heads was rotten. Like the inside of my head was rotten now. My feet were soiled. There was a layer of dust on my cheeks and neck. It was madness to leave the flat, but I was bored. Though I was sure most people would not recognize me, I did not want to broadcast to them that Nur Hussain and I were together, and that at that moment I belonged exactly where he belonged.
‘You are drawing attention,’ I said. ‘Sit down. Sit down right now, or I am leaving.’ My warning had no effect on him.
He was not an introvert after all—at least not as introverted as I had thought. He walked away from me, stood before the columns of the Minar with glimmering eyes and continued to speak. Every word exploded in his mouth and then came out through his lips with an extraordinary vigour. He spoke only the part I had played on the cassette player. Then he sat down beside me, and said it would never happen again. But seeing that I was still gloomy, he got up to speak again, as if he would not stop until I had smiled. Small slum-children sitting on the dusty ground raised their heads to him, and a few rickshaw-wallahs pulled the brakes gently and stopped to listen. Some pedestrians paused to join the crowd and shopkeepers pushed their heads through windows to see what was going on.
He had an extraordinary power—I felt it under my skin. Though he spoke only a few sentences, it seemed he was able to rouse his audience exactly as Sheikh Mujib had done. He ended with Joy Bangla and the crowd shouted back Joy Bangla.
As he came to sit beside me, I pulled myself away slightly. ‘You don’t know me,’ I said to him; ‘don’t pretend that you do. The person you see before you now is not the real person I am. I may also not be the same person I will be in the near future. You want to embarrass yourself, go ahead, do it; nobody will stop you. But don’t you ever do things that I am uncomfortable about. You understand me?’ He wanted to say something but I said we would have the rest of the conversation at home. ‘Try to keep private matters private. It is better that way.’
A woman, whom I had seen collecting empty glass bottles from city drains and drying them on the concrete pavement, slapped her two little boys when they began a fight. ‘Tell us about the liberation struggle,’ she then said to Nur Hussain. ‘Tell us something about our future.’ Though he did not speak, she opened the knot of her sari and threw a coin at his feet, as a token of her respect for him. ‘Take this money, please,’ she said. ‘Protect our motherland.’ Some others in the crowd followed her. They threw whatever little money they had on them. I watched him as he bent down and collected the coins one by one, frequently looking at me with a worried face.
I wished I had never allowed him into my house. Who would steal from a beggar? I sat there hiding my eyes behind my palm, disgust filling my throat. A small line of sweat appeared on my nose. I could imagine people were looking at me instead of at him though he was doing the speaking. Who is this person—they were asking in their minds—is he suffering from a serious mental disorder? What is he doing here with that imbecile? I could not raise my eyes to look at them, to answer their contempt for me.
Then we walked home, silently, I before him, following the narrow neighbourhood street. The street was momentarily lit by the lanterns on the rickshaws passing by. Through that light I looked back. He was pressing the coins to his chest.
At home he poured the coins on the kitchen table and went to his room. He did not count them. Neither did I—until after supper when I was sure he was asleep. I did not know what was happening to me but I found myself closing the kitchen door, cleaning the coins on a wet towel, counting them several times. The coins, many of them with Sheikh Mujib’s portrait on them, shone in the light.
That night, and three more nights after that, I sat at the table up to midnight. My head ached. Too many thoughts had surfaced there. Was it pity in people’s minds that compelled them to throw their money at him when they needed that money more than he did? Though he actually did not extend his hands to people to receive their coins, was he indirectly begging from them in the name of Sheikh Mujib because I was not in a position to help him any more? Did he feel real love for Sheikh Mujib when he recited the speech which helped him imitate his voice so enthusiastically, while I felt nothing as I listened to it on my cassette player?
When I looked at Nur Hussain the following morning, I thought he looked rather like Sheikh Mujib. My heart shook but I quickly gathered myself. After a few hours, I looked at him again in the daylight when he stood at the window. He did have a certain resemblance to Sheikh Mujib, I had to admit. I believed the woman was right. She did what was a very natural thing to do—she admired him. I believed the crowd knew what they were doing when they sacrificed their precious coins.
I played the speech again, not this time to understand the inner meaning of Mujib’s words, but to see if Nur Hussain was present in his voice. I did not have to play it for long. The opening sentences were enough. He was there, in an unbelievably unambiguous way. It would not be easy to separate them by listening to their voices only, I thought. Nur was Sheikh Mujib’s copy, a true, honest, reliable and enviable copy.
‘I am sorry for what I did,’ he said on the fourth day. ‘I did something that was very painful for you. I should have controlled myself. If you want, I can go back to the Shaheed Minar and return the money. Maybe the exact people would not be there, but whoever is there would be grateful to receive one or two coins.’
He rose, as I did not answer. He took his shirt, slowly collected the coins in his pocket and prepared to leave.
‘It is not necessary any more,’ I said. He looked back, surprised. ‘Yes.’ I sat on the sofa, looking for an easy way to communicate with him. ‘I do not know what I am thinking,’ I said, after a long pause, ‘but I am thinking something. I cannot tell even if you as a person would like to be associated with it, though it is about you and involving you. But I will explain it to you in detail so that you know what is what, and you can pull me back if I appear unreasonable and crazy. Come sit.’