9:50

art work by apurba kanti das

The mercury coating had chipped off from the bathroom mirror - fifteen years ago it would have sufficed to say this much. Today there was absolutely no use making such a statement, since the notion of a flawlessly mercury-coated mirror had departed from the heart of Zaman Sahib a good while back. But then the departure had not been total, since the parting mercury had dutifully left marks of its prior presence at various places, so that even today our nearly eighty-year-old Zaman Sahib could recognize this four-cornered, ghostly object as a mirror in the bathroom of his two-storied house in Maghbazar. It wasn't that he shaved staring at the mirror, where both eyes and mirror were nearly incorporeal, but it was a necessity for him to stand at least once a day in front of the legendary object in the dim bathroom. And standing here every day he pondered on the unimaginable dialogues, those that appeared in life without any provocation, thoughts that forcibly dragged the disciplined man outside the normal frame, made him completely dizzy.
When Zaman Sahib cut his cheek in two places today while shaving in the morning, the first thing that came into his mind were those unthinkable future conversations. The first vendor had not yet started to yell in the lane, and here he was taking long breaths, rubbing potash alum to the two bruises by turn. He could very well understand that it was not the vendor but the cutting of his cheeks that would dominate the rest of his day. It was burning; it must be a deep cut. Zaman Sahib felt distressed; Zareena would come exactly at 10:00.
Zareena would take the tour of the house immediately after coming. Her first task of the day was to specifically point out last night's disorderliness, and ask for explanations. Zaman Sahib would mumble for the newspaper, which she fetched from the landing of the bottom staircase. But she would yield the paper at least an hour after furnishing irrelevant excuses. All this while he convulsively followed Zareena from room to room like a chicken with a slit throat.
Why didn't you turn off the verandah light? It has been on the whole night!
(Does your father pay the electric bill?)
Why did you enter the bedroom with bathroom slippers?
(What's that to you? What have I kept you for?)
How did the candle on the table break? Do you eat candles at night?
(No, I shove it in my ass, you bitch!)
These were incidental conversations. Those in parentheses remain locked inside Zaman Sahib's heart. What did get expressed was an apologetic smile. But there would be no such approximation today: "Sir…let me see, let me see, ohhhh!!! You have caused your face to split apart!"
Inevitably, she would begin this way, with the trap of sympathy tautly spread. Did a lonely, eighty-year-old man have the strength to ignore such a potent trap? Zareena knew better: "I keep telling you…why do you need to shave your beard? You're an old man - a man of your son's age too has beard till his knees!"
Zareena would chatter incessantly in this manner while sweeping the room. As if all this was said as part of her normal conversation, an innocent gesture. Thus she would weave tight the web of words. Zaman Sahib would keep on muttering something - talk about his trembling hands, or the chipped mirror.
"Why do you have so much desire to keep it shaved, you want to marry again? I tell you to keep your beard, take the name of Allah every morning and evening, but he does not like the advice. No wonder your wife and son left you! An old bastard!"
An intense fear gripped Zaman Sahib's heart. With shaky legs he went to see the clock in his bedroom: 8: 25. In the entire house this was the only clock that worked. The clock in the drawing room has stopped since 4th November 1976. When it had stopped it had been 9:50, and it was still showing the same time. And he himself had stopped the clock that caught the eye when the main door was opened - one day in 1997- coincidentally was also stopped at 9:50. That day the woman leader had told him, "Uncle, everyone at the Presidium wants young people. You have done so much for the party. Why not give them an opportunity now?"
Zaman Sahib, however, did not remember any of those things today. For the last five years he had been suffering from long-term amnesia. Thus his present terror had no comparative basis in the long trajectory of his past memory. Which meant it wouldn't go away too. Whenever nowadays he stood under the photograph of the divinely radiant man, he only felt a little something. It was like walking down pitch-black steps into an endless underworld. Yet, he felt stirred when a political procession went past his house. Zareena would drag him onto the verandah. He would look out: a blurred throng of people, with a spring in their steps. All very thin, but voicing fiery slogans.
"Members of your party," she would say, "they're calling for a strike tomorrow - a strike. I am not coming tomorrow. You have to keep a fast."
The doorbell rang. Zaman Sahib's heart jumped as if it would leap out of his mouth. He craned his neck to check the time on his bedroom watch from the open door. It was only 9:00 o'clock. Strange, Zareena had come so early? Every day when Zareena left she locked the door from the outside. Even then Zaman Sahib fastened the bolt from the inside. Zareena disliked it very much. Each day's chiding took off from this point: "I lock the door, but then you fasten the door. So much restlessness. The poor state you are in, where will I find anyone if you die?"
But who had come today at 9:00 in the morning? It must be Zareena, a terror-stricken Zaman Sahib thought, since anybody else would have turned back on seeing the door locked. Trembling, he unfastened the door. But there was no more noise. The door too would not open. Then it was not Zareena? May be some truant kids or beggar.
In the meantime, the inevitable had happened. There was no end to the troubles of an old man. On hearing the calling bell, Zaman Sahib had a sudden pressure in his lower abdomen, which he had neither the strength nor the will to withstand. With the dirty underwear on he rushed to the bathroom; holding it aside he relieved himself for the second time.
Coming back, he stretched himself out on the bed, breathing heavily. How would it feel to commit suicide - the thought occurred within Zaman Sahib's heart for the first time. Eight years ago when his wife Rokeya had divorced him and left to stay with her sister in Canada, he had not thought about it at all. Not even when a year back his only son instructed Zareena - within his earshot - that in the event of his father's death there was no need to call him immediately since the Dhaka-Washington connection was very expensive; that Zareena was to inform the party office, and give the house keys to ShellTech who were to start the high-rise project immediately.
Lying down, Zaman Sahib thought. No extra sleeping pills in the house. There was a rope (but not thick enough), and a ceiling fan. There was also the razor, he thought, rubbing his wrist. Both methods seemed overly laborious to him. There were chances of failure. Oh, only if there was someone who could lovingly guide failed attempts to peaceful death!
9:50 a.m.!
Our story of Zaman Sahib actually began from here. Because after 9:50 it never turned 9:51 on the bedroom clock, and not only that, the clock did not remain at 9:50 but strangely it began to turn backwards. After 9:50 it became 9:49; :48; :47; :46...in front of Zaman Sahib's wide, startled eyes. And he, strangely enough, kept on standing in the room of 9:50. Standing, he became the viewer of the unbelievable retreat of the clock's hands and the following incidents.
Exactly at 9:15 he came back wearing the lungi left in the bathroom. Now he was stepping back into this and that room; then he was standing in front of the bathroom's vague mirror. Suddenly his anxiety about Zareena vanished, then the cut marks on his face disappeared. The hands of the clock were now running very fast towards 6:00 o'clock.
The unperturbed Zaman Sahib running towards 6:00 am made the standing Zaman Sahib of 9:50 very distressed. What could he do now, before sleep came at 6:00? When the cycle of life was racing backwards towards a familiar and spent life, what could be thought of during the interval…what could be thought of? Suddenly it struck Zaman Sahib that besides death, there was nothing else left worth imagining about.
It was at 6:50 am that he had taken the razor in hand to shave. When the hands of the regressing clock was almost touching 6:50, Zaman Sahib ended up doing another foolish thing. Since the thoughts of the 9:50 Zaman sahib was lagging behind the shaving Zaman Sahib of 6:50, he desperately snatched away the razor from the hands of 6:50. He was literally basking in the self-confidence of 1969. When he lay down to the sleep of 6:00 o'clock, he was clutching the razor. Surely time would regress back much faster in the sleeping state. This too was possible, that the retreating Zaman Sahib would participate in the meetings and processions of the '80s with a razor in hand. The mirror would get back its brilliant coating, the clocks would start functioning, the skin around his crooked cheeks tighten, his ex-wife Rokeya come back to their marriage, his son land from Washington directly in his lap. Perhaps farther back in the past, when he had changed loyalties to the Mushtaq regime, or even before that when in 1975 his chief had been murdered with his family.
However, the opposite movement of time could also unhinge the relation between cause and effect. He might think that his joining the Mushtaq Cabinet in 1976 had resulted in the 1975 killings. Or, because of the '72 general amnesty, Bangladesh had gained its freedom in 1971. Farther back, he could select any one of those 1971 war days he had spent on the border in a mix of fear and comfort. Or even farther back, when he had flung to the winds the arrest warrant issued in his name - during this period too the decisive moment could arrive. In the final inauguration of dreams.
In this way, standing at 9:50, our octogenarian Zaman Sahib, removing a blunt razor from the hands of 6:50 a.m., would keep on regressing, until that magnificent death surrendered in front of the razor; until by his vague notion the razor shone brightly, the sharpness returning to it. With that thin edge, he could softly cut off his remaining wasteful life. With great relief.
Finally Zareena's prediction came true - people had to be summoned to break the door in the presence of police. The doctor said, "The veteran politician had a heart attack." However, the police interrogation continued for some more time, especially about the razor in Zaman Sahib's hands. The investigating SI was young, so everybody was keen to smell the scent of a potential homicide. The SI could not comprehend how all the three clocks could stop exactly at 9:50 am. He questioned Zareena quite a few times, and discussed with the older, visibly annoyed constable the possibility of taking her into remand. Constable Sudhir had no bent for mystery. His habit was to map out things faster. Chewing paan he said, "Never mind the clocks, sir. The old man went to shave without the lungi, do you understand? Write only that. I have a family to feed."
When a young ShellTech executive arrived, it was 12:00 in the afternoon. Perhaps he had been briefed to express mourning; it seemed anamolous in the jovial atmosphere. People from the party office had not arrived yet.
Sumon Rahman is a young Bengali short story writer/critic who writes regularly for Bangla newspapers and journals. Sabreena Ahmed is a student in the English department at Dhaka University.