What’s in a name?

He was 30 minutes too early for the 8am class. There was no one else in the room. He sat in the last column, right in the middle. The other students kept coming in as the glimmering sun rays lit up the room slowly. The first three rows were filled up. Somewhere deep inside his heart, he wished someone sat on the same bench, no, in the same column as he did. His biggest fear wasn't becoming an isolated and antisocial insect, but rather being identified as one. And the biggest camouflage for human beings was humans themselves. Be a part of the crowd and no one will ever notice. Sitting alone in a column certainly didn't help.

"53," said the professor while taking attendance. He slowly lifted his arm up and he could sense a few eyes across the room staring at him. He could just move to a different column where there was plenty of space in the back. But everyone else would notice his movement and he couldn't break character now. He had to act like he didn't care. 

He walked back home, with earbuds blasting some random Spotify playlist. This was the favourite part of his day, with him on the streets and music deafening the noise outside. In this 45-minute window from his university to his house, he didn't belong to any particular domain. In these 45 minutes, he belonged nowhere, and it was the strongest sense of belonging he'd ever felt. 

The food was already kept on the dining table. Cold, stale, and refrigerated—like the humans in this house. He sat in front of his laptop and gobbled up a plate of rice with a fish he couldn't name and curry he couldn't taste. He kept the door to his room open, hoping that when someone passed by, they'd notice him coming back from classes. Maybe someone would ask him how his day went, whether he'd recovered from the fever he had the night before, or tell him to run an errand. Anything that required the barest of human interaction.

He waited until 11pm that night. He kept playing out scenarios in his head of the worst things that could happen if he went to his parents' room and initiated a conversation. He'd get taunted for suddenly seeking attention, or he'd be ignored—humiliating pictures at a million hertz kept striking his head. But there was the glimmering hope that maybe one of those millions of events could be his mother asking him what had happened, or even saying his name out loud.

He could see the pitch dark shadow from under the door in his parents' room. They'd fallen asleep. It was 11:05, he was five minutes too late. He walked back to his room and switched the light off. He locked the door, all three of the locks, and barricaded the entrance with pillows, making sure it was absolutely soundproof. He locked the bathroom door on his way in and shut the bathroom windows. Staring at the mirror, he looked at the blemishes in his reflection. 

"Jamal," he whispered. 

"Jamal, Jamal," he continued, as he raised his voice a tad bit higher, still maintaining secrecy.

It was the first time he'd spoken today. It had been 463 days since someone said his name out loud. He had been practising saying his name out loud every night before going to sleep so that his ears remained accustomed to hearing his own name. Maybe someday he would meet someone who would be interested enough to ask him his name. And he would pull his hand out, and say,

"Hi, I'm Jamal."

He grinned. 

Jamal shook hands with the reflection and stopped grinning. "Maybe don't grin the next time. It makes you look needy," he told himself. He came back to his bed and stared at the ceiling in the dark. Jamal closed his eyes for the 463rd time, hoping things would change before the 464th.

Hasib Ur Rashid Ifti is a writer who is currently studying at Bangladesh University of Engineering and Technology.