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Malek abandons school and takes to business. He falls in love with a beautiful older woman despite his family's disapproval. Priya, a singer and an academic, faces opposition from her husband at every step. Malek and Priya are brother and sister, very different from each other except for their determination. They are part of a Bengali joint family founded by their father, the rational but trusting Shams. Spanning four decades when their homeland changes from Bengal to East Pakistan and through the Liberation War to Bangladesh, they struggle to build their lives.The shift of people from village to provincial town to capital city as the country develops is depicted as a process through which the joint family structure splits into nuclear families. Shams sees education as the medium his family can prosper by, which notion seems to be born out until the warped and cruel character of his son-in-law undermines his belief. The mother and the eldest daughter-in-law in the family are traditional souls, who are contrasted with daughter Priya and other daughter-in-laws who would like more education, respect and jobs outside the home. While overall the setting is of a middle class Muslim South Asian family with none of the religious angst of the current Middle East, we do have a glimpse of the sectarian violence post-partition with a brother nearly a victim in the notorious train massacres, which is in fact a light hearted moment in the book. Dictatorships and unequal power distribution in the two wings of Pakistan, are touched on, while the fear and disruption of the 1971 Liberation War are dealt with in more detail.From comments by a professional reader through Indepenpress:"...The story is written in an understated, straightforward, yet lyrical style, creating a strong sense of a Bengali Muslim community through its vivid descriptions of the local landscape of Rajshahi, of food and cooking, homes and transport. The writer clearly has a good feel for language and the work has been well translated, reading easily in English whilst maintaining the language patterns of the original Bengali. The writer succeeds in creating a strong sense of people and places, with vivid descriptions such as: 'There the silvery moon was crumpled on the ripples. A whole net of illusion was created'.... 'It was like dropping wet vegetables into hot fat' (to describe the effect of Malek telling his mother about his proposed business venture with Anisa)..."From a review by Eshanul Haque, ex-lecturer of English in Dhaka University, ex-defence secretary of Bangladesh, now working as a translator in the USA."...flashes of excitement when the children go on bird hunting expeditions or have a game of carrom at a forbidden hour and the grim consequences that follow, or the pranks they play upon unsuspecting street vendors. ......Characters are deftly drawn. Surprisingly one of the least likeable characters, Barek, Priya's jealous and possessive husband comes out as a truly authentic figure. Malek....... is pugnacious and bit of a bully but honest and hardworking....."

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Publié par	eBookPartnership.com
Date de parution	28 octobre 2014
Nombre de lectures	0
EAN13	9781783015511
Langue	English
Poids de l'ouvrage	1 Mo

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Extrait

Old Road New Crossings
Old Road New Crossings
a novel
by Shelley Rahman
Translated from Bengali by
Anna Rahman
The English translation is published by CompletelyNovel.com Brighton
Original Bengali publication by Mazharul Islam, Anyaprokash, Dhaka. 2014 Anyadin Group, 69/f Green Road Panthopath, Dhaka -1205 Bangladesh e-mail: anyaprokash38@gmail.com web: www.e-anyaprokash.com Copyright Shelley Rahman 2014
The English edition is published by CompletelyNovel.com Brighton, UK. Translation copyright Shelley Rahman and Anna Rahman 2014
ISBN 9781849144759 (Printed Edition) ISBN 9781783015511(eBook)
Cover design by Dhruba Esh for Anyaprokash, Dhaka, Bangladesh
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the author, translator and publishers.
First published in eBook Format in 2014 by eBookPartnership.com
Author s Acknowledgement
I am grateful to my wife Anna Rahman for her encouragement throughout the period of writing and translating, and for constructive comments. I am also grateful to Begum Jahanara, ex-professor of Dhaka University and a distinguished novelist, for her editorial help, and her continuous support and advice. My gratitude also goes to Gaye Hicyilmaz, novelist and friend, for suggestions after an early reading of the translation, and to Tisa Muhaddes for a valuable suggestion.
I thank Dipa Chowdhury, Mohammad Muhaddes, Mahmuda Akhter, Dr Fazley Hossain, Khadem Ali, Nilufar Karim for encouragement, and M Mokleshur Rahman for proof reading the Bengali typescript. I am ever grateful to Mazharul Islam and Abdullah Naser of Anyaprokash for their help with the Bengali edition.
I thank my family, Leo Rahman, Janet Strickland, Eva Rahman, Dale Shockness, friends and writers Tufail and Raana Haider, Claudia Gould, and Miriam Victor-Beza for further support, and Janet and Leo particularly for practical proof reading of the English translation.
I thank Fabia Claridge for inspiring me to write this book in the first place.
Shelley Rahman To help with the Bengali terms, there is a glossary at the end of the book.
Chapter 1 Anisa Alone
The long pond stretched away in front of the east-facing house. Almost all of its surrounding roads could be seen from the balcony of that house. Even so, when Anisa, a widow of two years standing, watched the world from there, she could not easily be seen by anyone else. While the three eldest children were at school, she sat and enjoyed the activity of the locality as entertainment. Sometimes she imagined herself as a detective and laughed. She knew which neighbour went to whose house when, who walked back from the bazaar with a coolie carrying a load on his head, or who came by rickshaw. Or she noticed who came home with a coolie s basket on the footplate of a rickshaw and the coolie squatting beside it. She had also noticed in the past that her neighbour, Shams Rahman, always had the coolie not at his feet but sitting next to him coming back from the market. She had therefore concluded that Shams was a liberal-minded person. But these days Shams didn t go to the bazaar so often; his third son, Malek, usually did the shopping.
Today as on most mornings, Anisa was sitting on the balcony, spreading her long thick hair over her back to dry in the sun and enjoying the breeze off the water. She watched the street vendors. A knife-grinder was pedalling away at his wheel outside the house of Hamid Mian. A man with a basket on his head was shouting, Fish, fresh fish in front of another house. Then in her line of sight there came two bullock carts loaded with sacks. These stopped outside Sham s house on the north side of the pond. In a moment Malek came out, wearing a lungi and a white sleeveless vest, which revealed his chest and shoulders as broad as a warrior s. Only a little while ago, she had seen Malek return home on his bicycle with a bag suspended from the handlebars. She had presumed the bag was full of shopping. He usually came back from the market at that time. Then, he had been wearing a white shirt and a pair of trousers. Poor lad, cycling must have made him sweaty and he had needed to change. Now Malek seemed to be talking to the drivers of the carts. They and their helpers began to unload the sacks. Anisa was unable to take her eyes away from these goings-on. The drivers helped to lift sack after sack onto the backs of the helpers who were bent over carrying them. They must have been heavy, she thought. If she had been closer, she would have been able to hear the thumping tread of the men as they followed Malek into the compound. She couldn t understand what the sacks contained. When the helpers climbed exhausted into the back of the carts, Malek gave the drivers something. Must be what he owed them. She had noticed that there were dark patches on the sacks, which made her more inquisitive about their content. When Malek next went past her house, as he often did in the afternoon, she thought she would ask about that. But should she show so much interest?
Anisa spent a lot of time on this kind of surveillance and was reluctant to leave the balcony. At some stage that morning she had been musing over the fact that it was rather difficult to manage her family on her own. Her children were growing up; they had various demands. The two little ones, playing with the aya in their room, had not even started school yet. She wasn t uncomfortably off but she had no excess. After Azad s death, she had to limit her spending on luxuries. Whatever had been left after the funeral expenses and the debts had been paid, was divided between his four brothers. Anisa and the five children had inherited this two-storied house and a piece of land in Laxmipur. Immediately after her marriage, Azad had given her quite a few thousand rupees for her personal use, for panshupari, in the old tradition. That she had kept separate for a rainy day and had never touched it. Neither did she tell anyone about it.
She let out the lower floor of the house, so the rent covered the groceries and the children s expenses. However, if the children became ill, she faced some difficulty. The second son, Sajib, had caught poliomyelitis when he was very young, and as a result he limped. Sometimes she had to pay for his rickshaw to school. She always had to have provision for that. Buying new clothes before Eid was another extra expense. Anyway, didn t she have her own needs? Anisa from her childhood had a weakness for makeup. She only remained solvent through the sale of some of the crop of rice and lentils sent from Laxmipur. But for that, she wouldn t now have had any of the minimal items she hankered after. She might otherwise have had to touch that special fund she had put away.
Apart from the money, in the absence of the man of the house, she didn t feel that she could fulfil the emotional needs of the children. They missed their father. When they quarrelled and fought, and she was unable to tolerate that noise; then, even she missed her husband.
There were days, Anisa thought, when she had no one to talk to, let alone discuss anything deeply with a companion. Of course, when her husband was alive, she didn t have much conversation either. Living and interacting with the children gave her endless pleasure but sometimes, she lacked the company of adults so much that it almost suffocated her. In these lonely moments she thought it was not possible to spend the rest of her life like this. In her life she needed a man. She was not so old. Plenty of women her age could be pregnant. Besides, wasn t there a question of security? She hadn t liked going out here and there alone. When she had been forced to go out, the way men had looked at her, pierced her through, making her very uncomfortable. For this reason she didn t go out much at all and when she had to, to maintain neighbourly relations, she felt comfortable with a black burkha but she didn t want to spend the rest of her life like this.
Bhabi, a lady has come to see you, the maid announced. She came to see you the other day.
Anisa breathed a sigh of relief. Even someone unnamed would be welcome. Show her in. Anisa saw that it was Masuma, a neighbour. The two of them talked and joked about a few locals and drank tea.
Later Masuma said, It s been two years since your husband died, isn t that right? How much longer are you going to live like this? There must be a need for a master of the house. Are you thinking about that?
Not much.
My younger brother lives in Horogram. His next-door neighbour is a lawyer, Hassan Ali. His wife passed away a year ago.
Oh dear, how did she die?
Of cholera.
Really? Cholera? One can avoid getting it if one is a little bit careful
It was their bad luck. Anyway, Mr Ali wants to get married again. He is very handsome, and very cordial.
Did she have any children?
Yes. They have four children, three boys and a girl. The girl is the oldest, of marriageable age and they are looking for a husband.
Apa, I have five children myself. On the top of that another four? Don t you think that is a bit too many? How old is he?
He would be about fifty to fifty-five. But looking at him, you wouldn t think he s that old. More like forty.
I see. But fifteen or twenty years older than me, a father of four children, no, I don t need a man like that. I ve spent a good part of my life with someone of that age. This time I want to arrange my life differently. Let s see what providence brings me.
The gentleman is very attractive, faultless in his behaviour, cultured and rich.
That s as maybe. He ll make a very good husband for someone else.
I see. But think a little bit more about it. It s not safe to live alone with such an attractive figure, Masuma said, poking her gently. So, I ll be going.
All right, Apa. I enjoyed