Nothing but Facts by Rifat Mahbub

Mrs Nur Jahan died right after reading these lines:  “And when the death struggle begins/ the last thing I wish to see is a ring of human faces hovering over me” from Charles Bukowski’s poem “Mind and Heart’. This is an unusual way to die for a 70-year-old retired school teacher and a mother of four adult children, all living in Dhaka, in their flats in the same apartment building where Mrs Nur Jahan lived. She always thought that hers would be a prolonged death. Her sons and daughters and their spouses would be constantly hovering over her while she would be struggling to breathe under her oxygen mask. Why she thought so is difficult to decide. Her husband had a quick death. Twenty years ago, Mr. Abbas Mullah, a government college teacher, died of a massive cardiac arrest half an hour after eating his dupurer bhaat with ilish mach. But then, he was a man — man dies quickly. God knows between two genders, who can suffer, fight, and survive more. Nur Jahan did all of them through the last twenty years, as countless widows and divorced mothers do. So for the last five years as she earned the luxury of thinking about dying and having an afterlife, she imagined her death as her final battle, where she would have the chance to test her final endurance of prolonged pain. Her adult children would be hovering over her hospital bed, not doing much, not knowing what to wish for.  

Now, I know some careful readers have already formed a number of legitimate questions about what they have just read: first, why on earth Mrs Nur Jahan, a simple Bangladeshi woman of 70, would read Bukowski? Second, where are her children, their spouses, her grandchildren, or the maid? Surely, a middle-class mother and grandmother in Dhaka cannot die on her own. A male intellectual or a hyper-romantic poet can. Not like Mrs Nur Jahan: she is not a persona of Bukowski’s poem who — as it seems–lived with his own shadow on the wall. Nur Jahan only looked at her walls when she had to dust the corners herself, having been frustrated first with the maids and later with her sons’ wives. 

But who can answer these questions? Mrs Nur Jahan is dead now, and a natural one. There won’t be any police investigation, and her children will not linger in their sins by keeping her dead body unburied. Thankfully all her children are in Dhaka; a couple of her grandchildren are in Australia/Canada. Sad as they are, they can’t come. She will be buried after the Esha prayer of the same day. 

Does it mean we can never find answers? Of course, we can — when fact fails, imagination rules. What if Mrs Nur Jahan is not a 70-year-old retired school teacher? What if she is a 17-year-old Dhaka teenager, getting prepared for her O-level exam (In England, they call it GCSE), who, quite oddly, takes an interest in poetry, and aspires to be a poet someday? Aha, more questions! 17-year-old reading about death? Is this a sign of some sort of first-world problem in Dhanmondi? Teenagers these days are entitled and spoiled! Moreover, the first world is a politically wrong term — the world is now divided into two neat parts: Global North and Global South. Brown people, cheap clothes, tacky toys go from South to North; fast food, fast fashion, fast social media, fast fun move from North to South. Our 17-year-old Nur Jahan — who got her name from her grandmother — lives in Global South, and like many around her, takes a keen interest in Global North. 

But an interest in Global North was not the reason why this 17-year-old Nur Jahan was reading Bukowski. She was reading Bukowski because this morning she lost her father. Her father, Mr Hasan Azizul Chowdhury, with a shining career ladder in the country’s top bank, had an intense Zoom meeting for an hour. A month ago,  his bank’s management proposed to launch a quick financial recovery plan for their women clients to build them better after the COVID pandemic. Mr Chowdhury seized the opportunity to lead this corporate social welfare project,  promising the management to turn a corner in 15 days. He worked 16 hours a day sitting in front of his Apple laptop, ate the hot meal that was served to him three times a day, drank countless cups of coffee, promised his wife to buy whatever she was asking for (he never listened), and nodded when Nur Jahan explained her plan to do an IB instead of A-level, for which she would go to England, as all her friends will be doing the same. 

On the big day, Mr Chowdhury started his full-proof presentation at 10:15. It was going great, but at around 11:15 — exactly when the old Mrs Nur Jahan died — he became quiet. He was there; his head was hanging slightly down, but surely it did not bang on the table. His 15 colleagues on the screen thought that his internet was cut off and his screen froze. They waited for 5 minutes, and then they started calling him on his mobile phone. Competition grew to get hold of him ASAP, thus all got the same response: “apnar dialkrito numberti ei muhurte besto ache, onugroho korey ektu por chesta korun . . . sorry the number you dialled is busy now, please try again later. . .”

A new edgy junior software developer working at the bank’s IT section came up with the idea of phoning his landline. Yes, in Nur Jahan’s house there still is a landline. It helps them to fill up foreign visa forms — somehow landline numbers seem quite trustworthy in the eyes of the foreign consulates in Dhaka. When the phone rang, Nur Jahan’s mother, Mrs. Reshma Chowdhury, was talking over her mobile phone, the maid sneaked out to buy vegetables from the street feriwala and to flirt with the new handsome guard. Nur Jahan was just flicking through a Facebook page called, “Dhaka Dead Poets’ Den”. 

Gone are the days when a ringing phone was thought to be something life-changing — the voice of a lover, a prank from an unknown attraction, a nag from an aunty, a plea to have some loan for a poorly planned lavish business. Nur Jahan was duly perturbed by the constant noise (it’s not cring cring and onomatopoeia sadly fails here). She picked up the phone and the conversation went like this: 

Hello? 

Hello, Assalamualiquim, is this Mr Hasan Azizul Chowdhury’s number? (The edgy officer used English to sound smart, even the “hello” made him realize that it was not a maid who picked the phone up. He needs to impress this family member of Chowdhury sir) 

..hmm, yea, I guess. 

Who is it, please? 

(short sigh) I’m his daughter. 

O, junior ma’am, I hope you’re well. I am Arif Anwar from your father’s bank. I just wanted to check if the internet at your house is working fine.

Try your prick somewhere else. (Nur Jahan almost slammed the phone) 

No, no, ma’am please, your dad was not moving, so we thought to check …

Nur Jahan took the receiver back and asked him to repeat his problem. 

Nur Jahan went to his dad’s office room and found his head hanging. All the faces on the screen were hovering over him. Nur Jahan stared at her Facebook poetry page and some lines read like these appeared: “When the death struggle

begins/ the last thing I wish to see Is a ring of human faces

hovering over me–”

I hope this explanation is rational enough to leave the question about Mrs Nur Jahan dying completely alone untouched.  After all, Mrs Nur Jahan, a Bangladeshi school teacher, middle-class wife, and mother of 70, is now dead. 

About the Author:
Rifat Mahbub lives and works in London. She writes when there are too many bugs in her head, and too few people to talk to. She had a PhD in women’s studies and several degrees in English literature.”