The next day when I saw Shah Abdul Karim at our door, I almost cried. Although he had grown extraordinarily thin and old and did not have his bag on his shoulder, I had no problem recognizing him. His tired face broke into a smile as he embraced me.
Immediately I called Nur Hussain to come out of his room to meet our dear visitor. ‘Where are you? Are you listening? See who’s here,’ I said. ‘Isn’t this day a blessing for us?’
He slowly appeared at the door, and then ran into Abdul Karim’s wide embrace.
‘Good God,’ he uttered, painfully, in whispers, as though his heart was breaking with joy. ‘God the Generous. My God.’
Shah Abdul Karim was not one to eat a lot, or to be happy to see lots of dishes on the dining table. I had observed that during his last stay. Still I cooked up a storm that evening: rice, chilli fish, chilli eggs, tomato, dal and cucumber salad—an array of food that would have been called inappropriate in those days. Nur Hussain helped me. He chopped onions, turned the eggs over in the pan, washed glasses in warm water before drying them with a kitchen towel. From time to time I looked at him, engaged him by asking if he thought the dal needed more salt, if the chillies were too hot for us. No, he said, they are perfect; and then—no, not that hot, we can digest them. He asked me if he should remove the water from the rice or was I planning to do it myself. ‘Go ahead,’ I answered, ‘please, just be careful.’
He grabbed a chair from his room, and placed it at the kitchen door. ‘This is for you,’ he said to Abdul Karim, and stood holding the back of the chair until Abdul sat on it.
Asking Nur Hussain to serve dinner, I went to the toilet where I washed my face and hands several times. Several times I grabbed the handle of the door to come out but did not. I sat in the corner as my body shook with emotion, something I had not allowed to happen before them in the clear light of the kitchen. I opened my palms before my eyes and found them shaking. My eyes filled with tears; they became heavy and painful. I let a few drops flow down my cheek.
It had been a long time since I had felt such comfort in my heart. It had been a long time since I had cried. I saw people cry standing at burial prayers and when volunteers came with trucks to carry the bodies away. But I did not cry. My eyes were made of sand. No tears could form there. No hardship was hard enough to melt me. But now I cried shamelessly, pressing my mouth with both hands, biting my fingers and the back of my hands. Then I washed my face again and took several deep breaths before leaving the bathroom.
Abdul Karim tasted every item of food at our insistence. Every item was exceptionally delicious. The smell was hugely appetising. The colour was good. Nur Hussain ate more than he usually would. ‘That is fabulous,’ he said about the tomato. ‘Excellent!’ His hunger was awakened. He enjoyed a plate of dal and with relish raised the almost-empty plate to his lips.
As evening fell, we asked Abdul Karim the same questions again and again, as if we were afraid to be alone with ourselves, and he gave us the same answers, but every time with new enthusiasm and sadness. His stories concerned the same topics: starvation, disease, death, burial; then, again, starvation, disease, death, burial. Sometimes starvation was so vivid and penetrating that the human subjects died before moving to the next point in the cycle: disease. They went straight to the phase of death.
He told us about his travels through Narayanganj, Dhamrai, Tongi, Comilla, Chandpur and Mymensingh, where he had stayed quite a few weeks before moving back to Dhaka. A picture of any city could be a picture of all other cities; under the famine all the localities looked the same. He sang in every place, made friends, many of whom he also buried, saw many births and saw the news of the birth turn into news of grief to the parents.
Within the hour he grew sleepy. I thanked him for remembering us, for being our guest again. Nur Hussain made his bed on the sofa. ‘Good night,’ he said. ‘Sleep well.’
He must stay with us, I said to myself as I went to bed. Abdul Karim must stay here at least for a few days to keep us company and give us a sense of purpose, which we appeared to have lost.
I was a much happier man at the end of the day than I had been at its beginning. The mood of the flat had changed, and it had changed forever. I was thankful for that. God bless Abdul Karim, I said; he could not have chosen a better time to come back to us.
Abdul Karim woke up with a fever. I touched his forehead. It was burning. It could be the symptom of a serious illness, I thought. Maybe he had caught something by starving day after day. He needed immediate medical attention. I knew that many diseases started off with a high temperature before escalating into something worse.
But I kept silent. I did not express my concern. I was happy when he said it was nothing, because he had seen worse, and that it would disappear after he had slept for a few more hours. ‘You’ll see,’ he said.
That was his usual reaction, I knew. He did not believe that minor illness or diseases should overtake our mental strength; I remembered this from one of his songs. For a body to be ill, it had to have its mind ill or dead first, the song said, and once the physical illness was recognized there was no use looking for an unadulterated mind or spirituality in a person.
An illness might compel him to reconsider his decision to be on the road immediately, I thought, thus prolonging his stay with us, giving us a chance to heal. It would be good for him to stay, I said to him after breakfast. ‘Most people in the city are suffering from one or more incurable illnesses,’ I added, ‘it won’t be wise to let a simple fever become a more complicated illness by getting something else from them.’ I wanted to stop him from going to a hospital. I explained why hospitals could not be called institutions for health care any more. They were ghostly places where death slept on the floor, on the surgery table, inside the coffins in dark rooms, on the veranda. Death manifested itself in the doctors’ eyes. Doctors prescribed cholera medicines to smallpox patients, typhoid medicines to cholera patients, diabetes medicines to typhoid patients. Sometimes they gave the same round 500 mg yellow tablets to all patients suffering from cholera, smallpox, and typhoid, because that was the only medicine they had. Did he want that kind of treatment? ‘The best solution,’ I stated finally, ‘is to stay indoors, eat well, sleep well, wipe your face with wet cloths, things that one traditionally does for fevers.’
He accepted my suggestions and stayed in bed the whole day and the whole night. Nur Hussain and I cooked barley, carried it to the sofa, fed him spoon by spoon. He moved his head a little when he did not want anything, and pointed at the toilet when he wanted to use it. We carried him on our shoulders, and stood by the door, leaving him inside, before carrying him back to the sofa after a few minutes. We washed his head three times—in the afternoon, evening, and at night—and dried his hair well so that he would not catch cold. We ate together, whispering to each other to eat more, because unfed or insufficiently fed bodies were more prone to illness, and also because we had an ill person in our flat who had walked through many diseased places and crossed many garbage-strewn streets and neighbourhoods before arriving at our door. Then we sat together by Abdul Karim’s side, ready to help him immediately if he needed anything.
I could not remember when our flat had been so quiet. I could not remember when Nur Hussain had spoken his mind so clearly, if ever. He responded to every question, expressed his likes and dislikes, did not leave things for me to decide, and did not prove his existence with only a dull, hateful, unreadable and strenuous silence. I could not remember a moment when he had shown he was capable of showing such extraordinary care. I left him with Abdul Karim because he seemed to suggest he would not go to bed until I did.
By afternoon the next day, Abdul Karim felt better. His temperature fell. The dry skin of his lips became soft again, after a bath in lukewarm water. He walked little by little to the window to look outside, to the kitchen to drink water, to Nur Hussain’s room to start a conversation about simple things like a button, the nail clippers, or a razor, and sat with his guitar to mend the string. He had seen enough, he said, enough for a lifetime; now he was tired. He wanted to return home, get prepared for something new. ‘It is time,’ he said.
Since he was not going to any new places, I asked him if he would consider living with us for some time before moving to his village. Even if it was for a few days, until he felt totally cured. ‘Please,’ I said.
Surprisingly, he agreed. ‘Maybe two weeks,’ he said.
Two weeks? Did he say two weeks? ‘That would be so great,’ I said, ‘wonderful.’ I embraced him and looked at Nur Hussain.
He agreed.