The Year of Return -- Part I

artwork by shavyashachi hazra

The reasons for my return were not unheard-of either: My father had passed away, and my mother--though still diligent about her ladies' lunches and Mah-jongg--was getting on in years. Additionally, my wife left me for a Cuban musician in Los Angeles, taking our four-year-old daughter, and a big chunk of my assets with her. I got laid off twice, and found out it took ever longer to get placed. The kind of work I did--financial analysis--people did for a lot cheaper in the part of world I had come from.

I didn't visit much while I was away. I thought I was coming back to the city of my childhood, only bigger, busier, more congested and polluted. Through all my sojourns, I was comforted by the knowledge that there was a place I could always go back to. Even if I did not think of Dhaka as a whole as home, certainly Dhanmondi existed in my mind as my very own place. I had no idea what I was getting back to.

Six months after I had come home, one day a letter arrived in my name. The envelope was a bit dirty. The letter was anonymous. The message simple: "Give us 5 million takas within three days, or we will blow your brains out." I had never received an extortion letter before, let alone a death threat. I felt no fear or urgency reading this message; it felt quite remote. It didn't seem like it could have anything to do with me.

I did not tell my mother about this letter. Nor did I think about it much for the next two days. On the third day, I got a phone call.

"Is this Andalib Khan?"

"Yes, speaking."

"Have you done anything to organize the money?"

"Who is this?"

"You know very well who this is. It's the Angel of Death, you pussy-faced little shit. Have the money ready tomorrow."

"Where am I supposed to get so much money suddenly? I think you've got the wrong person."

"I'll give you till the end of the week," said the person before hanging up.

There was nothing here at first: a four hundred year old mosque, and paddy fields. Then my grandfather arrived after the Partition in his Jeep, with a double-barrel shotgun. The area was so pristine back then, you had to arrange your own protection. One by one came the others. The neighborhood filled up with lovely one- or two-storey houses with wide verandahs, coconut trees and Krishnachuras lining the boundaries.

Today most of the old houses are gone. Now and then, one spots a relic, abandoned by the original settlers of Dhanmondi, wedged between the towering new apartment blocks with their shiny steel and glass facades, and ridiculous names--Millennium Housing, Phoenix Towers, Greenview Apartments. What green view? All the beautiful trees have been cut.

Our house is one of the relics. I stand on my verandah every morning with a cup of steaming tea, in my shirt and tie, before heading out to the bank where I am a vice-president. I watch the people go by and wonder where they have come from. Not one of them looks like they belong here.

The city is full of neighborhoods and people that didn't exist when I was growing up. I hear strange new names--Paikpara, Bhasantek, Kuril, Merul--and have no idea where these places are. I imagine vast, sprawling slums. The condemned spill into neighborhoods like mine. They envy what we have, and become filled with a desire to seize it or destroy it. I can't blame them.

In the one year that I have been back, I have counted at least a half-dozen violent incidents within close proximity. Soon after I arrived, a client was shot by hijackers trying to snatch a bag of cash right outside our bank. Few months later robbers threw a bomb at a chasing mob, disemboweling one vigilante. One night a man was shot dead by the lake, right in front of my house, while we were at dinner. I didn't know a gunshot could sound so small.

In the face of the rising crimes, and anarchy, I was always calm, until that day I received the letter. I worried that the thugs might call when my mother was home alone. I did what people do in a situation like this. I called a friend.

Shamim was one of the few friends from my schooldays with whom I still had a connection. He too had gone abroad, to become a Barrister from London, but he had returned long before I did. He dabbled on the fringes of party politics. He knew his way around the city. At first, Shamim said that prank calls like this were quite common. Then he paused and asked me, "Aren't you planning to sell the old house? Who else knows that you are selling the house?"

"Anyone who knows me could know; it's not a secret."

"It should have been. It was a mistake. See, if you had been back at least a year now, you would have known better. You would not have made such an elementary mistake. Anyway, what's done is done. You haven't sold it already, have you?"

"No, but I might be close to selling."

"Whoever called knows what's happening. You better talk to someone who can deal with such things."

This was how I got back in touch with Badshah.

The first time I met Badshah again, after all these years, I was truly surprised at how easy it was to talk with him. It is easier to overcome disparate backgrounds when you are a child, and again as you get older. Youth is very discriminating; superficialities take over. But now, we talked again just like old friends.

Badshah's life had not gone the way I had imagined it might. He had not entered government service, or tried to scrape through a medical college in a provincial town. He had become an enterprising success--a few lines of buses, road works, a cable service. All of these in partnership, mostly with mid-ranking politicians. He exuded the confidence of a successful man. He had married a TV starlet and confined her to the house with serial pregnancies. The city was full of men like him these days.

"So, Shamim tells me you're in trouble," said Badshah, flicking some ash into a tea cup in my non-smoking office. We were past the catching up.

"I can't even tell if it's just a hoax," I said, feeling suddenly shy; not knowing what kind of help to ask for.

"I've already investigated the matter a little. It's not a hoax. I have leads. Don't worry, I'll sort it out for you," he said matter-of-factly.

When we were in school, we were the same height, and both on the thin side. I was quite a bit taller than Badshah now; having grown a few late inches in college. But, Badshah had a kind of gravity that was elusive yet palpable. Neither fat, nor thin, he was simply full. He filled the clothes he wore, the chair he occupied, and any room he walked into. He had narrow, unforgiving eyes that could sparkle with sudden affability. He had the thick wrists of someone who could manhandle his opponents. Badshah took me into a side of Dhaka that was not known to me. We met at a hotel I'd never heard of, in a part of town I never visited, but they served whiskey and vodka--all genuine imports, though limited in range. The people who came to his table talked of everything--people, places, guns, drugs--in nicknames. They laughed at the grotesque inaccuracy of the stories in the papers. They knew the story behind the stories.

While Badshah's world fascinated me, I could stand be around his cronies only so much. But Badshah had not lost his sense of subtlety, and before I had to say anything, he moved our rendezvous to the Emerald Lodge, a low-key rest house in Gulshan, where we were served in private rooms, by girls of surprising sophistication. I was never a drinking or whoring man; but somehow in Badshah's company I could not refuse these diversions.

When Shamim heard of my escapades with Badshah, he said grimly, "Don't get too close to him. He's not like us you know."

"I know he isn't like us. That's why he could solve my problem so easily," I said with a laugh.

"Don't say I didn't warn you," said Shamim.

Badshah did not strike me as dangerous, not for me. He was just an old friend, who had turned out to be more interesting and useful than anyone might have predicted. It was always he who called me. He came always to my office, not to my house. In its second life, our friendship had settled into that plateau. Badshah had his hands on the gears and pullies that run a big city below the surface. There was a thrill in catching glimpses of it. Besides, I had not been able to re-establish any of the old friendships. I had been away too long. Even Shamim I saw once every few months.

Kazi Anis Ahmed is director of academic affaires, University of Liberal Arts, Bangladesh.