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the sofa, I went to help him. He broke the silence first.
“You have an interesting library here,” he said, ges- turing at the shelves of historical books behind him.
“Thank you, they are mostly all Haider’s books. I my- self prefer poetry.” This was a fact I felt right sharing with David, though it had been years since I’d last read a verse. I stopped buying books when Rumana was six or seven years old, relying solely on the
“Here are the things I thought about
but dared not vocalize: what sound does a body make when it is thrown into water?”
stories and poems published weekly in the local paper until they became, in recent months, tinged with nationalistic fervor that I couldn’t relate to. More often than not, they were printed in Bengali instead of Urdu, and though I spoke Bangla fluently, I couldn’t read the script.
“Oh, really? Poetry is wonderful. Food for the soul, I call it.” He smiled, dimple and all, as he placed his pillow at one end of the sofa and fluffed it. “Who are some of your favourite poets?”
Though the question startled me, I answered quickly. Without hesitation. Much like everything else I did with David.
“Ted Hughes is wonderful,” I said. “His poem ‘Heat- wave’ feels like it was written about summer in Khulna.” The main thing is the silence. That line stayed with me. Another line, from another Hughes poem came to mind. The floor presses its face into the earth. In time, I would share them with David.
“You’ve got good taste. My sister, Susan, is a big Ted Hughes fan. Have you read Sylvia Plath, by any chance?”
The name was unfamiliar to me. I shook my head. “No, who is he?”
“Not he, but a she,” David corrected gently, and I felt my face turn red. “Sylvia Plath was Ted’s wife and quite a skilled poet herself. In fact, some say she was even better than Ted. Smarter, with more insight into human existence.”
“Oh,” I replied, “I don’t think any of the booksellers here will have Sylvia Plath. I hope I can read her poetry someday.” My response was flat. I felt small, embarrassed for Khulna’s lack of Sylvia Plath, as if somehow, this was a reflection of my own limited worldview.
“I hope so too. They had quite a tumultuous romance, Ted and Sylvia. They married just four months after they first met. She helped put his manuscript togeth- er, and their poems often appeared together in the same publications. They were coupled for seven years up until her suicide.”
“Wow.” I wanted to say more but I was astonished; by David’s nonchalant way of mentioning suicide which was a taboo subject barely talked about in the social circles I frequented—suicide was, after all, a grave sin in Islam, a way of rebelling against the life path Allah had laid out and planned for all His believ- ers—and that he found a four-month courtship to
be short. Haider and I had met just once before we were betrothed, a quick ten-minute meeting under the supervision of my parents and a cup of tea in each our hands as the elders—Haider included, for he was ten years older than me—discussed wedding logis- tics. Perhaps if Haider and I had met for four months, spent time learning about each other, maybe our marriage would look different now. Maybe it would feel less like we were a captor and his prize. Maybe
it would resemble a partnership, like Sylvia and Ted where they worked together, created in tandem. Per- haps without the heartbreaking end.
Because we were done arranging the sofa for David, I moved to Haider’s desk and began tidying it up, something I had never done before. In David’s pres- ence, I felt brazen. In David’s presence, I wanted more. I wanted to stay.
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