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Merry Time (continued from preceding page)
Take my fear of tomorrow. Inhale it, so it is absorbed
into you. So it becomes you, becomes your fear too.
Touch me. Pinch my thighs, bruise my belly, whisper into the ends of my braid.
Ask me for a story. The one about my Nana’s sister and the ruler she spanked me with when I bled for the first time.
Dig a finger into your dimple, then put that finger inside me.
Wait for me in the garden at dawn, until the sky is a mix of sunflower and sapphire.
Be wary of what he tells you about me.
Know this: you are an oscillation in the flat line of my life, a gasp of breath for a Tara who almost drowned.
Look for me at the bottom of your teacup, in the sole of every new shoe.
Cry for me after you leave, after I leave too.
Touch me again.
These were the instructions I gave David. One for each time we met alone. From December 1969 until Decem- ber 1970. Winter to winter. Twelve lines for twelve times over twelve months. These were the keepsakes of our love. Not the crimson mass of tissue and clots that poured out of me after the third time. Not even the copy of Ariel he left under my pillow after the sixth time. Only these lines which I scribbled on scraps of paper and stuffed into his pocket the last time. These were the lines I thought of as they killed me.
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How it Began
June, 1969
In the early days of our marriage, Haider had told me to never ask prying questions about his business. So I wasn’t aware of the exact nature of David’s work beyond the snippets of conversations I overheard in passing:
“Shipment into Dhaka will not be feasible...” “Local on-ground support can be arranged...” “There are plenty of palms to grease...”
I tried to make sense of what I heard. David was a mover, it seemed, someone through whom Haider arranged the consignment of packages in and out of East Pakistan. What these packages contained, I have no way of knowing for sure but I suspected there was a degree of illegality involved. After all, if their work was lawful, wouldn’t they talk about it freely in front of me instead of in secrecy, behind the closed doors of Haider’s study?
The first time David touched me was when he spent the night in Haider’s study. The two of them had to drive to Jessore early the next morning, and stayed awake till midnight, which was when Haider stum- bled upstairs into our bed, reeking of whiskey and cigarettes. It was June, just a few months after David first entered our lives, and humid enough inside the house to feel like you were walking through soup.
It was a time of transition at our home: Rumana’s summer holidays from school had just started and she was staying with her friend Meena for a few days. Aziz was away too, visiting his family in Sylhet, and his temporary replacement was due to arrive in another day. So it was up to me to ensure David was comfortable sleeping on the sofa in Haider’s study.
When I entered the room with my arms full of pil- lows and a blanket, David was standing in front of the bookshelf, trailing a finger across book spines. He turned, smiled at me and walked over to help. I tried to say a quick hello, but my voice did not cooperate, as if refusing to participate in illicit behaviour. As I transferred the bundle of blanket and pillows into his arms, my forearms briefly rested on his. The contact caused my bangles—the two gold ones Ami gave me on my wedding day, to wear every day of my married life—to clink. That sound was evidence of my infidel- ity. My stomach was in knots, but I wanted that cur- sory touch to last longer. I felt ashamed by this desire and couldn’t look up at him even as he said, in a soft voice, “Thank you, Tara, this will do just fine.”
That was what Haider called me: Tara, a shortened version of my first name, Tarannum. To hear this pet name from another man’s mouth felt like a violation, and yet, when he began laying out the blanket across
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