The vegetable vendor

The vegetable vendor
outside my apartment building
is an old man,
lips brinjol purple
in the heat
dark old-potato skin
peeping through
the patches in his shirt
as he bends over to tend
to the greens and reds on
the ragged field of broken baskets
spread out in front of him…
"Damudia" he says in reply
to my query about his bari
"Shariatpur!" A childhood spent half
in water half in the sun I think
before the partition back when
the killing was in full spate,
"The river ate up my hearth and home."
Drifted into town, dug up roads,
plied a rickshaw, fled to India in 1971
came back to a free country, built a lean-to
till he lost all in a slum fire
Once learnt to play the flute.
All these I learn over weeks...
Now he sells vegetables to rich
people like me, smiles a bright white
smile as I try to haggle and banter,
"madam, prices of things keep
going up..." and to prove it he unties the
knot in his lungi where he stores his
cash and shows me eight one-taka notes—
every day is a new day as he sinks all his money
minus food and rent costs
to buy produce that he hauls, an old man,
with a bright white smile, all the way
in front of my house, my rich-people house
this man from Damudia
Shariatpur,
Who now no longer plays his flute…

Rezia Hakeem is a housewife and linguist.