Remembrance
The call will not come any more
Khadija Shahjahan should have lived long, for there was a poetic soul in her. The heart breaks when poets die. When I first met her at the offices of the Morning Sun sometime in the later part of 1990, she spoke to me about her daughter Mithun's poetry she wanted published in the newspaper. Khadija was smart, beautiful with that charming smile lighting up her features and spoke well. I suggested that she go into writing too, for it was obvious she had ideas she could disseminate to people. She said she had arrived from Britain and would be staying with her children, a son and a daughter, in Bangladesh for sometime. She said she would like to keep in touch with me. I gave her my telephone number and was pleasantly surprised when she called a few days later to let me know she had indeed written a small article for the Morning Sun. I asked her to have it sent to me. She brought it over herself. In the days and weeks following those initial meetings, Khadija and I became very good friends especially since we found we had this enormous desire to talk about books and reflect on poetry. Her poems, which she began to show me, were a strong hint of the intellectual that resided in her. A sudden fury appeared to have come over her. She began to spend what seemed to me her waking hours composing poetry and reading them out to me on the phone. And there was diversity in her poetry, for she covered a wide range of themes. I wondered, as I sipped tea with her at her home, if she would publish her poems in the form of a book. She laughed loudly. When the laughter stopped, I told her I was serious. My happiness certainly knew no bounds when one day Khadija Shahjahan informed me, excitedly and passionately, that her collection of poems was finally out. As she gave me a copy, I looked into her big, sparkling eyes and told her softly that poetry was the path she ought to traverse thenceforth. And she did. Khadija's was a beautiful soul. She spoke lovingly of her husband, a doctor in the United Kingdom; and it was clear her children were her world. She was proud of her brother, then serving as defence attaché at the Bangladesh embassy in Moscow. The brother, the future Air Vice Marshal Altaf Hossain Chowdhury, would eventually rise to the position of a minister in Begum Khaleda Zia's government. Khadija often would ask me to go to London (and this was when she was planning to go back there after her stint in Dhaka) and work there. I appreciated her sentiment, but since at that point there was hardly any way for me to travel to London, I told her it could not be done. I can still see the disappointment that quickly spread over her bright features. Do a doctorate there, she suggested. My silence made her go morose. A few days later, Khadija flew off to London. But then, she did come back, to arrange the launch of her new poetry. We spoke on the phone. It was warming, this feeling that she was into writing with a passion. In early 1997, in one of those fortuitous moments that sometimes light up life, I found myself in a diplomatic position at our high commission in London. A few days after I had taken charge as minister press, my assistant came into my room to let me know that a Bengali lady wished to speak to me on the phone. I jumped for joy when I discovered it was Khadija at the other end of the line. She said she had called just like that and had wanted to know from the people in the press wing if a new minister press had arrived from Dhaka. When she was informed about me, she was so happy she could not believe her ears. We both laughed. I knew that for the next three years (that was my contract with the government) I would once more be in touch with my friend, Khadija Shahjahan the poet. She was calling from Doncaster, where she lived. In a couple of weeks, I was there to see her and her family. She took me around the town and outside it. She drove marvelously. We talked of poetry. It rained. A whole world of aesthetics shone in brilliance in that shower mist. My friend Khadija Shahjahan, my friend Beauty, lies buried in her village here in Bangladesh. I did not see her as she lay in death, for news of her death had already taken away something from me. I will not hear her speak again, recite poetry again. When I am in London once more, I shall expect the phone to ring, to hear Khadija welcome me back to the city, wanting to know when I would see her. Come to Southgate station, she will say in that state of good cheer, and we will pick you up from there and bring you to our home in Chaseside. That call will not come any more. She belongs to time. The cosmic configurations of space have claimed her being. And the heavens are today the landscape where she sings of her poetry.
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