Dedication: In memory of our matriarchs, their lovers, and their poetry
Written Friday, 9 May 2014 // 9 Rajab 1435
Seven summers had passed when I returned to Bangladesh with my family as a new bride of one winter and spring.
The Nanu we encountered during that Dhaka visit was entirely different from the one I had known previously. Over long phone conversations, during the years I was away studying in Egypt, I learned a terrible trauma had silenced her for months -- but this Nanu, the matriarch of my maternal line, had much to say.
This Nanu -- who had awakened from her long comatose silence -- awakened a poet.
Hundreds of verses she memorized as a child poured out. At times, she composed her own free verse. Other times, she gave the verses of her childhood schoolbooks her own personal touch. When she was in a good mood, she had couplets, longer poems, and rhymed stories ready in response to everyone and every thing. Although on the surface her selected poetic choices appeared deceptively flippant, I like to believe they were precise. She could be playfully mischievous; and at any moment -- when Nanu was filled with sadness by a memory or thought -- she would simply recite,
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| Things one sees on long spring walks |
ভেঙ্গে গেল আমার স্বপ্নের ফুল
ছিড়ে গেল আমার বিনার তার
মর্ম উঠিয়া আমার হাহাকার
The flower of my dream is broken
My instrument's string is torn
Such is the depth of my sorrow
So when I returned six months newly-wed to Nanu the poet, she shared with me for the first time of the great love between her and Nur Miah--the grandfather I never met--who had passed almost twenty-five years before in Dharmapur on the bed he had made for them.
She dreamt of him often, and her dreams would leave her in a particular mood for the entire day.
One morning, in a bout of anger, she stubbornly refused to eat breakfast. When my aunt gently coaxed her to eat, she said Nur Miah would not share his bowl of rice with her AGAIN and had THE NERVE to wink and smile the entire time. I realized she had awakened from a vision of him--and we all began to imagine that we knew him.
Drawn into her world, we missed him more than ever before. We imagined this man whom she first saw approaching her parent's home in Baraipur on a white horse must have been incredibly charming.
"What did you think when you first saw him, Nanu?" I'd ask her.
She'd smile, "I liked the horse very much."
"Was he handsome?" I'd ask her.
"Oh, I was stunning."
Once, when I was lying down beside her, she recounted a conversation she had with him. They considered where they would like to be buried after they had passed on. When she cried that she didn't want to be alone, he told her he would find her even in the grave. Then she said Nur Miah would recite:
তুমি যদি হইতা চাঁদ
আমি হইতাম সুর্য
প্রথম প্রভাতে উঠিয়ে
নয়ন খুলিয়ে
আমরা একী সাথে থাক্থাম *
If you were the moon
I would be the sunlight
At the first break of dawn
As open eyes perceive
We would be as one.
That summer, Nanu determined that my signature poem--the poem she loved most for me to recite to her again and again (and again)--would be the one she recited to Nur Miah when he would return home after a long trip. Each time, the conversation would go like this,
"Do you know what I'd tell him when he would come home?"
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| After the night she passed |
"No, Nanu. What would you say?"
"I would say --
সামনে আসার যতক্ষণ
ভালবাসা ততক্ষণ
সামনে আইলে পুড়ে মন
দুরে গেলে ঠনঠন
When you are before me
Love lasts the duration
When you are before me
The heart burns
But go far away
Nothing.
She would shake her right fist in front of my face on the rhythm of ṭhanṭhan - the sound of nothing. Then she would conclude happily, with a sly, mischievous smile,
"Oh, he would become so furious! He would say, 'Thanṭhan? Thanṭhan?!? I crossed rivers for you, roads for you, walked through the rain and mud to return to you...and you say thanthan?!"
She then commanded me to recite this very poem to my new partner.
So I committed the lines to memory, archived as "love's arsenal" and prayed it would make her happy to drive a lover of my own as crazy.
Al-Fatihah.
