Rahim Majhi’s husky broken voice filters into my room accompanied by the gentle slapping sounds of waves against the hull of the sampan. I open my eyes to see the walls of the tiny room bathed in the soft red-orange-yellow hues of sunrise. The humidity is climbing already. I sigh and close my eyes for a moment, preparing myself—gathering my resolve—to face the day. I have finally arrived at my destination—perhaps, more accurately, I think I have arrived, since the demarcations of the past have now been erased. I rise from the jute fiber mattress and rummage through my pack to find the metal cylinder with the golden sheen; my father’s name carved in cursive on its side. I grip it tightly in my palm, its cold walls revealing no trace of the warmth he surrounded me with growing up. A muffled sob escapes me; I exhale deeply. I am here to lay him to rest, scatter his ashes in his homeland—or whatever is left of it—and we are finally here. 

On the deck of the sampan, Rahim Majhi sits at his usual spot on the stern. I hear him call out “Aranya!” and I raise a hand in greeting. He flashes his teeth at me. Endless water surrounds us, its surface a mirror reflecting the climbing sun. The phototropic base material of the solar panels angles them continuously towards the sun for maximum energy transfer and Rahim Majhi wastes little time in moving us toward our destination. We must find some shade from the open water before noon when temperatures would hit wet-bulb conditions. The urgency hangs in the air, sticky and humid—a routine part of life in the Bengal Delta in the year 2072. 

The sampan glides effortlessly through the calm gentle waves of the Meghna River, steadily moving upstream towards its confluence with the Padma River—once dying descendants of the mighty Ganges which originated in the Himalayas, now a denuded mountain range devoid of snow. Unmitigated climate change and rising global temperatures melted the glaciers several years ago, and the renewed vigor of the Ganges resurrected its daughters in a vengeful tide that swept away hundreds, thousands of miles of human habitats and farmlands as the rivers reclaimed their ancient trajectories. I close my eyes against the wind and imagine the rushing of an incredible volume of water filling streets, highways, farms, buildings—a purging wave—until it becomes a distant roar in my ears. Or is it more static garble?

I break out of my reverie to see a fellow traveler, Santu Chakma, gesturing and talking at me. My translator implant must not have charged while I was sleeping, I reckon. I shrug at Santu pointing at my ears and shaking my hands as if to say what to do. Santu grins and walks away to continue his jabber with Rahim Majhi. The weight of the day feels heavy, and I retreat into myself as a wave of memories overwhelm me. I decide to put the implants back in their charging case and lay down on the deck under the shade of a jute fiber thatch roof and watch the cloudless sky, no  bird in sight. 

Santu Chakma

I couldn’t believe it when the Jummaland Executive Council called me to their meeting a few days ago to assign me a mission! The Saontals up in the Northwest of the Delta are hosting a Hul in a couple of weeks (these days, it’s less of the hunt of yesteryears and more of a gathering) and the Council wanted me to attend and convene with them. The past decade was extremely hard on them, considering the intense droughts, and they wanted me to accompany a shipment of food and supplies to their camps. I was slightly taken aback—I had never been asked to do anything this important in my fifteen years. This would be my first time taking a trip without any family or tribe members or even outside the Jummaland territory. I have visited the old Kaptai dam site a few times with my mom to pay my respects to my forefathers and to see the havoc my grandmother (and her comrades) had wreaked, but this was on a whole other level! 

And so that’s how I ended up on this sampan with a guy from across the world, a sullen Bengali boatman, and a lady who has the same vibes as my mother—lovingly strict and knows her way with weapons. We have been sailing northwest from the southeast where they picked me up and this morning, I woke up thinking of the stuff I have been telling Aranya over the last five days—how living in the hills surrounded by endless water meant we had to be efficient, resourceful; we didn’t have the luxury of making a mistake. I didn’t live through the hardships that my people had to endure for decades, first at the hands of the Bengali settlers aided by the Bangladeshi military, and later, the genocide against our people continued by the Islamofascist government and their Jundallah paramilitary force, so I recounted it to the best of my memory based on what my grandmother, mother, and other elders told my sisters and me growing up.

Jummaland—once called the Hill Tracts—has always had pockets of resistance against the Bengali settlers and Bangladeshi military as early as late 1970s. A supposed Peace Accord was signed in the 1990s, and the Shanti Bahini, our liberation forces primarily made up of Chakmas, laid down their arms in a ceasefire. But it was a one-sided ceasefire. The oppression continued, as my elders pointed out—land grabs, murders, rapes, incarceration for demanding equal rights. After the entire Bawm community languished and died in imprisonment in the late 2030s, the Shanti Bahini was resurrected. My mother said this time it was different—the Marmas, the Tripuras, everyone joined in.

Other elders say the fuse for our liberation was relit because of the violent suppression of Kuki-Chin liberation forces by Bangladeshi military in the early 2040s, aided by Indian intelligence wing RAW. But around that time India was having its own Adivasi rebellions to put down—rebellions sparked from the dying embers of an old Maoist people’s war against mining companies that had begun in the forests of central India in early 2000s. In the meantime, trouble had brewed at yet another Bangladeshi border, this time further south of the Hill Tracts. The mass death of Rohingya refugees in the Kutupalong camp, around the same time, I think, fueled the advance of the Arakan Free Army up the Naf River and into the Hill Tracts in their ambition to build  a free Rakhine State straddling Bangladesh and Myanmar’s borders. The Bangladeshi military held on for a while, especially after its mutation into the Jundallah forces, but their gory, violent zealotry was no match for our guerrilla tactics and our knowledge of the terrain. 

I keep forgetting the specifics, especially why some elders insist on the Kuki-Chin as being the primary instigators of our liberation as opposed to the Shanti Bahini 2.0 (as I liked to call it). I mean, I have heard that us Chakmas get, or used to get, special privileges because we are the dominant tribe, but I have Kuki-Chin friends, and they don’t seem to care. My grandmother had been a member of the Hill Women’s Federation, whose leader Kalpana Chakma had been abducted and killed by Bangladeshi military forces in the 1990s, and the women of the tribes banded together to take up arms under the banner of Daughters of Kalpona. They were the founders of the Jummaland community in 2040. My mother took part in the battles herself—she never fails to remind me how she wielded machetes and automatic rifles at my age while I am “fucking around” all day (she loves to use those old English phrases now and then to show that she is serious).  

Aranya is the first person I have met who isn’t from the Delta or the Hills; I was utterly fascinated by him. His quiet hunger to absorb every detail drove me to blabber incessantly at him, regurgitating more and more of what I had learned growing up. Even as I talked with him, or more like at him, I cursed myself for not having paid more attention to my mother and grandmother. I hope I am getting it right. I am probably the only Chakma person he has met, and I feel an additional responsibility to represent our history to him as accurately as I can. I really should have listened more to my mother, but no use fretting now. Oh well! 

I whistle absent-mindedly as I recount the last five days. They have passed in a blur. I have been bartering my people’s history for the knowledge Aranya has shared with me—technical gadgets, life in the Philadelphia Freedom Commune—tidings from a whole other world. I have been listening to him with rapt attention, absorbing his stories, through broken Bengali and English—thanks to the translator on my wrist. He is not much older than me, yet his demeanor, his sad, longing eyes, make him feel like a member of my mother’s generation. The biracial features on him are reminiscent of the Bengalis I have met, the ones who come to trade and the few whose forefathers fought along with the Jumma Freedom Forces against settlers of their own race. 

On the fifth day, as we enter the confluence of the mighty Padma and Meghna Rivers from below, getting closer to where Dhaka, the capital, used to be, I approach Aranya on the deck. He lies there looking up, and my curiosity is overflowing as to why he has traveled so far to try and visit a city that doesn’t exist anymore. What is there for him, in that deserted metropolis? I call out at him and watch him shrug and point at his ears, the realization dawning on me that his implants aren’t working. Rebuffed, I just grin and go over to Rahim Majhi to bug him instead. He says he will show me the engine he has put together from spare parts. Does he sound exasperated when he says this? He just grunts when I ask him. I really want a bamboo skiff of my own, but my mother is strictly against it. Guess I will have to show I can be responsible after finishing this supply delivery. 

Rahim Majhi

I squint my eyes and look afar at the horizon. I feel my brows furrow in concentration and my face contort, creating lines against the burn scars that constrict my skin. The water feels restless, the sampan unstable. Is one of the guidance sensors broken? An exasperated sigh escapes me; today, of all days. I grimace and try to think which one it could be. We need to get to Tongi Bazaar before noon so we can find some shade, but at this rate, I feel uncertain. I think about asking Kankon Bibi to take a look. She could probably fix it; hell, she can probably fix anything. She fixed me, I smile wryly and shake my head. 

I am about to leave the stern to auto steering and find Kankon Nibi below deck when I see Santu Chakma skipping over towards me. Oh boy, I sigh inwardly. I don’t have time to entertain the kid’s banter. I really don’t have much to say about anything, while Santu won’t give it a rest until he has learned everything he can. When Santu first came on the boat along with Kankon Bibi at the Sangu River port, I saw the usual expression people have when they see my disfigured face. Santu’s eyes went wide, and his face went through the rapid succession of repulsion, fear, disgust, and wonder followed by an aversion of eye contact and shame. It was alright, I was used to seeing these expressions; I had made peace with my appearance a long time ago. Ever since Kankon Bibi had held my hand while I looked at my reflection in the hospital. 

Santu’s bristling energy makes me uneasy. The restlessness, the sinewy vigor of youth belongs to the land. On water, you must be steady. You must contain your own energy and match that of the waves, the tides, the currents. Or that’s what my father used to say when he would show me how to build the big fishing boats that would foray into the Bay of Bengal. Big, black, sickle half-moons with multi-colored flags running up the mast, slicing through the waves till they became dots on the horizon. All that had burned to ash a long time ago. 

Santu senses the unease in Rahim Majhi’s mood. He was a reticent man to begin with, but his frowning face gives Santu pause. I give him a tight smile to reassure him and call out to Kankon Bibi: “oi Kankon Bibi, can you check the sensors on the bow? The boat doesn’t feel right.” And I walk back to my position on the stern. Something doesn’t feel right, I can feel it in my bones. I look up at the sky, wipe my brow, and continue to scan the horizon. 

Kankon Bibi

How long have I known Rahim Majhi? I have lost count of the years. We have spent hours, days, weeks, months together, on this boat, traveling all over the Delta and sometimes into the bay, yet time seems to have stopped. I still remember as clear as daylight the first time I saw his face, floating in the water. A lifetime ago, Rahim Majhi came into being when I pulled him out. 

It was right after I had joined the Rokeya Brigade. I was twelve and had just run away from home; the brigade was a ragtag group of what people called “fallen women.” The village chief had his eyes, almost blind from repeated cataract surgeries, set on me as his fourth wife. He could barely move given his age and physical condition, yet his lust burned bright in those beady eyes, hooded by his white eyebrows. When he showed up to our mud-walled hut with his entourage, Abba stood silently by the door, his face unreadable and his head bowed. Amma pulled the niqab on her face out of respect, or fear, mostly fear. The chief’s right-hand guy, Dewan, who was said to break in the girls for him, made a casual threat to Abba, a sharecropper, under the veil of what an honor it would be for me to be married to him. A straight road to Jannat, he had said, while chewing his betel leaf, the red juice salaciously dripping onto his beard. I didn’t cry; I had resolved not to. I didn’t speak a single word. I just smiled at all of them, and none of them. I left that night and never looked back. 

Rahim Majhi’s call brings me out of my reverie. I have been with him long enough to sense his unease even from a distance; I hurry to the deck where I see Santu standing in the middle of the boat, somewhat confused and purposeless. My sisters-in-arms from the Rokeya Brigade had asked me to pick up Santu in Jummaland as a favor. I direct him to help me check the sensors. I glance at Aranya on the roof of the living space and my heart tightens. Ya Allah, I murmur, please make his wishes come true. I suit up in a practiced manner—oxygen mask, cylinder on my back, equipment in my left arm. I break the surface tension with a clean dive and feel the world muffle around me. 

I surface periodically to pass on readings to Santu who relays them to Rahim Majhi. I hear Rahim Majhi grunt and nod—cryptic replies that Santu passes back to me with a confused face. I pull myself onto the stern and shed my equipment. I feel it too. A certain unease that comes when your familiar surroundings are subtly distorted, signaling a much bigger oncoming shift. The water is warm, the air too hot even for the time of day. I wipe my brow and watch Rahim Majhi’s face twist in concentration. Suddenly, I see it. It’s coming from behind us. 

A thick curtain of black clouds seems to have appeared out of nowhere. The water starts to feel choppier; this doesn’t bode well. Kalboishakhis had once been the heralder of the Bengali New Year in the past, and a cause for celebration. But these days, they mean imminent danger. The summer storm with hail and lightning and turbulent waters have become as unpredictable and wild as the weather with the keyamat we have been living through. They show up from nowhere with the ferocity of nature seeking vengeance for what humans have wrought upon the world. Allah Mabud, I whisper, let us get to the Tongi Bazaar soon. Ya Allah, forgive us. 

Rahim Majhi has already engaged the secondary engine, and the sampan glides fast, cutting through the yet manageable waters. I yell at Santu and Aranya to help me tie things down just in case the storm hits before we find shelter. Santu springs into action, but Aranya takes a bit longer to realize what’s transpiring; they both work efficiently under my direction. Rahim Majhi remains resolute on the stern, a lone figure in the backdrop of a massive storm. 

Aranya

We barely make it to Tongi Bazaar, a massive cylindrical concrete structure erected as a cyclone shelter in the early 2040s. I have seen images of these structures, albeit smaller ones, in history texts and files. Bangladesh built a series of them in coastal areas where entire villages would shelter during a cyclone. This massive one, however, seems to have been erected as a last resort to adapt to the rising water levels and cyclones that moved further inland. We climb the stairs hurriedly once we dock and check in at the Sarbahara regional office. Originating as an occupation of industrial and readymade garment workers in the Specialized Export Zones, it became a mass movement when throngs of landless peasants joined in, finally overthrowing the Islamofascist government. They now run outposts at major nodes in the Delta for coordinating and meeting people’s needs. We enter the office to find a couple of elderly women and a person, seemingly non-binary, working at their desks. One of the women, wearing a full head-covering with only her face visible, turns her head towards us and a radiant smile appears on her face, the kind one reserves for their loved ones. 

Kankon Bibi exclaims “Shefali! Lal salam!” and embraces the woman as she hurriedly stands and rushes over to us. Shefali hugs her back with a reciprocal joy; and with misty eyes teases Kankon Bibi for having forgotten her. Kankon Bibi laughs. “Oh you know how it goes when you go southwest. Once you land in the hills of Jummaland, it’s hard to leave. Sometimes the ground beneath your feet—it reminds you where you come from,” she says, her smile turning wistful. She changes the subject quickly and introduces us to Shefali; I shake her hand and Santu does too, although he seems a little wary. “Shefali is a sister from my time in the Rokeya Brigade,” Kankon Bibi explains, her eyes brimming with nostalgia.

The first drops of rain are innocent, splattering harmlessly against the dull, grey concrete. Soon, the full fury of the storm hits the shelter, thunderous rage flickering in frequent lightning flashes and hail the size of an adult fist ricocheting off the walls and skittering inside. The dock at the lowest level of the structure remains covered under the concentric balconies, and I peer down through the hollow central column and glance as the boats rock wildly on the choppy waters. I am amazed at the variety of the boats that are present—from the large budgerows and houseboats for entire families, to the slicker dingis and sampans, barges carrying cargo, the Malar boats with their huge sails of woven photovoltaic material and fiber, long skinny boats with elliptical hulls, modernized row boats, and so many more. There is quite a crowd of travelers taking cover; but the din of the storm makes it impossible to have a conversation. Shefali guides us further up into the core of the shelter—a huge empty hall partitioned using bamboo walls to create separate spaces and provide privacy to those who need it. We settle into the cafeteria section for some lunch—daal, rice, smashed eggplant with mustard oil; food grown on the floating farms in the area.

Rahim Majhi stayed with the boat. As we are eating, I bring it up with Kankon Bibi who is immersed in her conversation with Shefali, exchanging practical news about weather patterns and political shifts. To my surprise, Kankon Bibi hand-waves it away. “He will be fine,” she says as she eats with relish, the fingers on her right hand forming little balls of rice mixed in with daal, expertly lifting them to her mouth followed by a bite of green chili. “Allah will take care of him,” she smiles to reassure me, but it belies a hint of tragedy. I nod in understanding and don’t pursue it further. But Santu is insistent; he keeps glancing in the direction of the central column through which one can peer into the dock, his young face betraying his fear despite his bravado. As if on cue, Kankon Bibi grasps his hand and turns him to face her. “Rahim Majhi will be ok, trust me,” she says with a rare display of authority. Softening a bit, she continues, “he doesn’t do well on land. He says his body burns whenever he steps foot on it.” Shefali looks away, perhaps to suppress a sudden tear in the corner of her eye. 

Rahim Majhi

I deftly maneuver the boat to the dock even before the first raindrops hit. I snake my body down to the hull under the ribs of the deck and find my bunk. I ensnare myself to the bunk with thick jute ropes in practiced fashion—countless storms on this water world have taught me the tricks of survival, just like my father taught me all those years ago. Kankon Bibi will protect our fellow travelers; she has taken quite a liking to Aranya, the traveler from across the world. I close my eyes and let my body relax and sway with the water’s rhythm, slowly building its cadence. 

I dream the same dream I have had for all these years. The fire. All-consuming fire that I watch submerged under water, the orange and red glow a hazy fireball, a sunset at night. The screams muffled by the water. Am I drowning? I wonder, yet I keep floating right under the rippling surface of the water as I see the faces of my father, my mother, and my brother floating by. I want to call out to them, yet no words, no sounds emerge from my mouth, just air bubbles. Panicking, I look around, yet I feel no shortage of breath. I open my mouth again but all that comes is silence. I try to rise to the surface and thrust my hands up, yet I see myself sinking further. I want to shout, my body flailing. I search frantically, but only hear intensifying screams. Is that gunfire? Artillery shells? I scream and thrust my hands up with all my might.

I wake up to the battering hail and roaring thunder, finding myself covered in sweat. I pant and catch my breath, gripping the ropes tightly as my heart slowly calms. It’s been more than forty years, yet still the same dream haunts me. I run my fingers on my scarred face, the rough tissue throbbing as if responding to phantom fires. I sigh and try to relax again. The boat continues to rock on the choppy waters, and I think of my dead family, burned in front of my eyes. My mother’s screams—Antu! Antu!—a name long stowed away in the dark recesses of my mind. The Jamatul Mujahideen had locked the doors before setting fire to every house in the village. They said Hindus needed to be purified if they were to survive Allah’s judgement. They demanded a hundred Hindu lives for every Muslim killed in India. I don’t quite remember how, but I had ended up in the pond near our house. I was pretty sure I was dead as I watched my family burn in front of me in a loop till I thrust my hands out. Finally, another hand pulled me out of that water. Kankon Bibi’s eyes still have the same glow, and at night, my hand grips hers to stave off the nightmares. 

I take a deep breath to settle myself. I sometimes forget there was life before her, but the dreams remind me that I existed in another form before Kankon Bibi brought me back from the dead. Before I spent months recovering on the Rokeya Brigade’s hospital barge, a donation from a NGO when those used to exist. I was lucky to be in a protective group in those months—food started disappearing from the markets as droughts became hotter and longer; fertile land disappeared under floods of biblical proportions. The right-wing Islamists grew in power, promising salvation in the hatred they peddled; their zealotry reaching a fever pitch as they took control of the government through a murderous coup. They didn’t care about elections anymore. They just took what they deemed to be theirs, provided by divine mandate. The populace—hungry, thirsty, landless, crammed into ever shrinking lands—had no choice but to fall in line. But the embers of resistance were never fully extinguished.

It was also in those months that I learned to push my old life into dreams that could haunt me only at night. In daylight, I forged myself anew. I learned how to fight back, to wield a weapon, not for revenge, but for liberation. I erased my identity to infiltrate the Jundallah militias with Kankon Bibi, years we spent posing as the most devoted soldiers of God in the late 2040s.  The assassinations, the covert operations, the coordination with the Sarbaharas in building the mass protest movement across villages in those early days when there was still a government to speak of. I spent the 2050s when we linked with the Assamiya Freedom Forces up in the haors of the Northeast, the Seven Sister states in India in full rebellion; we trekked up to the source of the Teesta River where we blew the dams one after another to let the river finally roar downstream. When things started calming down in the 2060s I did the only thing I knew how to do besides fight: steer my boat across endless water, providing security for supply corridors across emerging communities. 

Through all this, Kankon Bibi and I remained together. We survived LARS together. When Kankon Bibi caught the endemic hemorrhagic strain of Dengue fever, I stayed up day and night giving her cold compresses and herbal medication; antibiotics had long stopped working. She claims it was my dedication that saved her. I don’t correct her, but in my heart I know it’s because Kankon Bibi is a fereshta. 

Kankon Bibi

The strength of the storm dissipates as quickly as it had come. The waves ebb and the rain peters out, and the blinding hot sun pierces through the black clouds announcing the afternoon, creating rainbows in the pools of water at the edges of the shelter. I return the lunch dishes and grab four cups of tea. I settle beside Aranya and offer the three of them the steaming cups. “Drink—it will help with digestion. It has ginger in it,” I say in a motherly tone. I glance at Santu from the corner of my eyes—the youthful face, his vitality, his unending curiosity. Our son would have been the same age if he had survived. Would he have been the same way, restless and carefree? 

Shefali’s exclamation clears the wispy yearnings in my mind. “Would you look at the time, I was about to miss Asr prayers,” she stands up. Flashing us an apologetic smile, she strides across the room to enter a smaller prayer room where a number of folks are already gathered. I watch Aranya and Santu follow her with their curious stares. Shefali takes her position at the front of neatly ordered rows of men, women, and hijras. Slowly, she begins to incantate the call to prayer, her lilting voice a sharp contrast to the memories when Allahu Akbar was the war cry of executioners, a lusty roar drowning out the screams of thousands. 

I push away the haunting memories from my mind, and instead follow Shefali’s voice, now resonating across the hall towards us as she closes the azaan with a perfectly pitched crescendo. I smile fondly remembering the times at camps when she would sing to us the songs of the past—songs of yearning, songs of love, songs of liberation. The conclusion of her harmony initiates an orchestrated fluid motion of bodies as she and the others move through the prayer, facing westward. Hands clasped at the front while murmurs of suras float in the air, followed by bending halfway, rising tall, and then flowing down to prostrate themselves. The small crowd moves as one, until Shefali, kneeling, turns her face first right, and then left, and cups her hand and holds them up in the final act of devotion. 

Afterwards, the small crowd leaves the prayer room and mingles in the large hall. I watch the wonder in Aranya’s face, evident by how intently he has been looking at the prayer room this whole time. Santu, however, has gotten up and is standing idly by, looking around impatiently. I catch sight of a trio wearing white robes and rudraksha beads—an older man with a young couple, carrying the traditional drone lute ektara and finger cymbals. A smile breaks out on my face—it’s rare to see members of the Tamaddun-e-Mazlum these days in public spaces. They had once been the vanguard of change, singing songs to flame the revolutionary fire in common folk, but they retreated to their ascetic ways once things calmed down during the last decade. I turn to my companions, “Do you know about those folks over there in white robes?” 

Both Aranya and Santu shake their heads; Aranya says he has seen pictures of such or similar folk; he thought they were called Sufis. I nod and reply, “Yes, that’s where their belief once stemmed from, but in these parts of the world, they are called Bauls. Or at least once upon a time, that’s what they were called. But you see, their music was banned; in fact, all music was banned after the Jamatul Mujahideen formed their Khilafat. The Aamir decreed that all music was haram, including Sufi and spiritual music. Bauls were initially left alone so long as they didn’t practice, but eventually they were hunted and killed to purify the Ummah.” I smile wryly. “So what choice did they have? They erased their profession, buried their songs and crafted new ones in secret till the day came when they lit the fire of revolution under us. Their new songs were those of the oppressed overthrowing their yokes, slaves rebelling against masters—for what else did we have to lose? Nothing. We had nothing to lose,” my voice tightening. “We called them Tamaddun-e-Mazlum—the civilization of the oppressed. When we felt that we were being hunted like animals, they made us feel civilized. They reminded us of our humanity.” 

The late afternoon light slants through the shelter’s openings illuminating the café in a soft warm glow. The young woman in the white robe tunes her ektara by twisting the knob on the top while plucking the string. Her younger companion tests the cymbals by gently crashing them against each other. She plucks the single string tentatively and then with more certainty, building a steady melody as the young man joins in with the cymbals. The older man clears his throat and his deep baritone reverbs against the concrete walls:

আমি অপার হয়ে বসে আছি
I sit here stranded, shoreless
ও হে দয়াময়
O most merciful
পারে লয়ে যাও আমায়
Please carry me home

Santu Chakma

The intense longing in the old man’s voice shatters my heart. Tears roll down my cheeks as memories of home flood my mind—my sisters in their playful spats; my mother setting out at dawn for jhum, the morning mist rising on the hilltops. I have never felt so far away from home—how I miss them at this very moment. I wipe my tears on my sleeve, sniff, and look at Aranya. He is making no attempts to hide his tears. Kankon Bibi’s eyes are soft, her smile tender. The entire hall is silent except for the three white clad folks, their voices harmonizing in a plea to a larger power to take us all home. 

I sit there motionless once the last note has been sung, the silence condensing around us till the hall erupts in applause, several folks wiping their eyes. The musicians smile, put their palms together and bow. Shefali stands up from somewhere in the crowd and asks if anyone is willing to transport these musicians northeast to the haor areas. A few people raise their hands and approach them to figure out details. The earlier melancholy evaporates with applause, and I begin to feel restless for our next move. Kankon Bibi’s transponder beeps—Rahim Majhi calling us back. Kankon Bibi finds Shefali in a hurry and squeezes her hand, conveying what  words fail to express. 

It turns out that this is a good time to move forward. The temperature is cooling slightly with the setting sun. Rahim Majhi estimates that we have a solid few hours of travel and we should be within the old city limits in an hour or so. The boat moves silently, the power generator switching between the diminishing solar power and the charged batteries. I stare at the changing colors in the sky—oranges turning deeper into red and crimson, with shades of purple and violet peeking at the horizon. 

My enchantment is broken by Aranya’s soft voice beside me. He is staring up at the sky too, taking in the visual magic unfolding above. “It’s because of the SRM particles India sprayed in the atmosphere—Solar Radiation Management,” he explains. “Sulfur dioxide particles mainly, to cool the sun, in 2045, after a heat wave killed a million people in central India.” His voice is tinged with a sadness that I have come to associate with him—familiar, nostalgic almost. “I learned about it in tech history back at the Commune. The particles reflect the light and when there’s enough of them, they can prolong the sunsets.” A million more questions bubble up in me, but I am interrupted when I hear Kankon Bibi shout greetings from starboard. 

We both look to see that we are passing through the outskirts of an amphibious village. Men and women are returning home after a day of working on floating farms, little islands of green and yellow buoyed by a weave of water hyacinth, jute, bamboo and other organic matter. The hexagonal clusters on stilts atop sparse land have kids running in and out of them, climbing down the bamboo poles, laughing and rolling over each other as their parents shout after them. Several of them wave at us and their lithe brown bodies leap into the air, arms flailing and mouths curved into wide smiles as they cannonball perfectly into the water. They swim to get closer to us, eyes wide with wonder. We smile and wave back as we pass, the scene lifting our hearts. 

“We must be getting close,” I hear Kankon Bibi say. These farms were all on the outskirts of the city when people started leaving. They built these khudi baris after the land was mostly eroded by the monsoon, a season that stretched for six months at times. Kankon Bibi points at some of the A-frame triangular units, “That’s the old design. The new hexagons allow for stacking and building a nest—a whole village.”

Silence follows the passing of the village, the cries and shouts of children vanish. We feel a certain uneasiness settle among us as other concrete structures haunt from a distance. We are moving towards the heart of a ghost city, once a bustling metropolis. Dhaka. The capital of Bangladesh, and the world’s largest city before its rapid annihilation. Its skeleton looms large in the horizon. The skyline is dotted with minarets and tall buildings, hollowed out. “A minaret in every neighborhood, a fortress in every house. The Aamir’s famous words,” Kankon Bibi says with a contemptuous smile. We slow down as the flow of water narrows into a channel. We disembark and step on the ground as Rahim Majhi looks on pensively from the boat. I had heard about The Schism before from my elders, but looking at it with my own eyes, the only phrase that comes out of my mouth is one of my mother’s: “Holy shit,” I whisper in English. 

Aranya

I stare at it dumbstruck. The sheer magnitude of what lies in front of my eyes baffles me. The ground has been forcefully torn asunder by some divine force, and a rift has grown out of it. Tall skyscrapers and mosque minarets lean on each other barely preventing each other’s falls. Jutting against each other, the buildings’glass facades are shattered. Jagged remnants with dark interiors resemble the maw of a monster. The earth has cracked open in a zigzagging line, gorging out rocks, boulders, and soil. Patches of grass and cattails along the rift sway in the evening breeze, the devastation framed by a backdrop of vermillion and purple streaks above. An alien sky for an alien landscape.

I feel myself kneeling on the ground upon soft grass. I had heard of the earthquake that ruptured Dhaka. I have even seen photos and videos. Yet nothing comes close to what lies before me. With a magnitude of 9.0 on the Richter Scale, the earthquake had originated in the Madhupur fault line that ran right under the megalopolis. The year was 2050, right when Dhaka achieved the status of the largest city in the world. The most densely populated, too. Millions died instantly. Even in the flood of misinformation that was prevalent in those days, bad news like this always turned out to be true. Looking at the scale of devastation, I finally understand why Baba had crumpled on the floor. Sobbing. All gone. That was all he could say. The aftershocks shattered his heart; he never recovered from the melancholia. And now he is finally here. I caress the small airtight cylinder in my palm that carries his remains. 

A soft hand on my shoulder reminds me of the presence of others around me. Kankon Bibi stands beside me, her face grave yet soft in the dying light. Her hand tightens on my shoulder, “it’s going to be nightfall soon, baba, we should find some shelter,” She’s right. There’s nothing for me here. I don’t know why I have  traveled so far on some fantasy that I would find my ancestral home, that I could put Baba to rest. I look up at the sky again; the sun has dipped into the endless water behind us. I stand up, but am unable to move. The urge to do something, anything—to somehow return Baba to the place he always talked about as his roots, his home, overflows in me. I dig a little hole with my hand and empty the cylinder’s contents in it. Santu and Kankon Bibi help me cover it up. I take out a small beacon from my sack and place it on top as his epitaph—a small, soft, white glow in the dark. 

We sail back to the village we passed earlier in the day on the outskirts of the haunted city. The villagers welcome us graciously, offering us shelter and food. I plead no appetite and instead go for a walk, the paths illuminated in a golden hue from the battery powered LEDs at each door of the hive cluster. I stumble upon a group of kids with triangular and cylindrical shadows in their hands. They beckon me to join them and as I get closer, I recognize they are holding kites and spools. The kids smile at me and then scatter in opposite directions, one group holding the kites, the other the spools. The kites take off and suddenly, they illuminate with soft, glowing, white lights—LED strips attached to their boundaries—floating higher and higher up in the night’s breeze. I follow their flight up into the night sky, where new glows mingle with those of familiar constellations—the ones Baba would point out to me.