I am back in Dhaka and the memory is beginning to dim. It was so many years ago, you see. But I remember that night when I first met him. I was fearful that I was too ordinary some how -- that he would overlook me, that he would pick someone else. I remember thinking, please, look here, pick me, and he did. That was how it started.
He took me on a boat ride on the Buriganga river. There were others there but really, there was only him. In the pictures - I still have them somewhere – my hair is blowing and his arm is around me. I look so young, so happy. And I was – the happiness magnified by the loneliness that had come before it. Everything felt more than it was back then; I was like an antenna. The static would only come later.
Days later, days spent with him, I went shopping with a Bangladeshi friend for a sari to wear to a party. They were all so lovely, how to choose? Finally, I chose a silk jamdani sari in a deep red. My friend told me it was a wedding sari, and I just laughed. I had never worn a sari before, and it made me feel so one-of-a-kind. It was then that I understood the magic of saris, about their one-size-fits-all-yet-tailor-made-just-for-you quality.
The night of the party, my friend had to dress me. I didn’t know how to wear a sari – how to wrap it, to tuck it, to pin it. It was a complex origami for which I did not know the secret folds. But she folded and folded, and pleated and pleated, so in the end, I was like a beautiful paper swan.
At the party, I felt like more than myself . It must have been the sari. But he wanted us to leave almost right away, to go back to his place, to be alone. He told me later sitting on his couch that the sari was like the wrapping on a present. I told him no, not yet. That I wouldn’t know how to put it back on. To please stop. He got angry, very angry. He told me I was a foolish, foolish girl. Then he told me to leave. I still remember that he didn’t even get up to walk me to the door.
The next day he didn’t call. Or the day after that or the day after that. I saw him only once again. He was across the room and looked at me, but then looked away. And that was how it ended.
Top image by Mr. Velvet Ear. Bottom image by twinkly persisting stars.
