Sexuality

You know this dainty monster, too, it seems-

Hypocrite reader!-You!-My twin!-my brother.

To the Reader: Baudelaire

"....I'd grown up with kids who taught me that sex was disgusting. It was smells, smut, embarrassment and horse laughs. But love was too powerful for me. Love swam right into the body, into the valves, muscles and bloodstream, while sex, the prick, was always outside. I did want, in a part of myself, to dirty the love I felt, or, somehow, to extract it from the body......"

"......Then she got this thing about wanting to be Simone de Beauvoir, which is when she and I started having sex every couple of weeks or so, when we could find somewhere to go-usually a bus shelter, a bomb- site or a derelict hose. Those books must have been dynamite or something, because we even did it in public toilets. Jammie wasn't afraid of just strolling straight into the Men's and locking the cubicle behind us. Very Parisian, she thought, and wore feathers, for God's sake......"

Hanif Kureshi: The Buddha of Suburbia

My Girlhood

Taslima Nasreen

Dad

".......That night  dad returns home at 2 a.m. in the morning. Mom stayed awake all night. Dad said he was busy seeing a patient. The patient was in a critical condition, was taken to hospital. Awful lot of troubles.

The following night also grows darker. Dad hasn't returned home. Mom waked my younger brother up and  said let's go. Move as you are, don't bother to get dressed. 

Mom marches on in the dead of night, holding my brother's hand, towards the  pond-steps. Luckily she gets a rickshaw on the main road and takes it to house no 15 at Pancha Pukur Par around mid night. A hoary old man, bare-chested, wearing lungi, relaxing in the verandah, yells at her in husky voice: ' who the hell is it in the dead of night?'

'Is it Chakladar's residence?' asked Mom with stony voice.

'I'm Chakladar. Who are you?' repeated the hoarse  voice.

Mom, walking up the verandah, asked-'Brother, has my husband come to your place?'. ' Dr Razab Ali?'

The thin ribs of Chakladar's chest started shivering. Blocking the doorway he said,-' No. He hasn't'. 

Pushing Chakladar with a snap Mom enters the house. The bedroom is just past the living room. The lights are off. In the slanting street light, spilled through the window, Mom finds that the mosquito net is down. Mom lifts the mosquito net and lights the torch. Dad is on the bed, lying next to Rabia Begum. The huge pair of rock melons on Rabia Begum's bust are flashed out. As in electric shock, dad jumps out of bed. quickly does his clothes, then shoes. Mom said: 'let's go.'

Mubashwera

" ....I never had much intimacy with children of auntie Fazli. They are seemingly far away creatures. They do not speak with the same accents and tones. They speak like non-Bengalis, with an Urdu accent. At age  five, they start saying prayers and fasting. At nine or ten, they wear veil. They don't go to school, don't play, don't go out because they are told, by their guardian, that those things displease Allah.

By the time Mubashwera turned fifteen, Abu Bakar's steel factory went into the Pir's possession. In the name of Allah, Abu Bakar signed the factory off to the Pir. Thousands of people swarm, like ants, into Pir's chamber. The Pir himself carefully picks up the zealous followers of Allah for work in the factory. My uncles, Tutu and Sharaf, leaving school, became Pir's recruit. Auntie Fazli was very happy as two of her brothers chose Allah's way deserting the way of the world. Instead of pants and shirts, they started wearing Islamic attires with round caps and stopped  shaving as dictated by the  religion. Furthermore, in order to  eradicate the remaining roots of worldly temptations from their uninitiated minds, Humaira, Sufara, Mubashwera started to initiate them in the tiny preaching rooms in Pir's compound. Once I was bullied out by uncle Tulu as I was entering their chamber for spiritual initiation. Uncle Tulu was lying on the bed and Humayra was initiating him sitting tightly closed to his half naked body and stroking his bare chest. 

'This is the proper way of initiation - Mom told me once- in a dark, locked up room, gently stroking chest and body'. Mubashwera was assigned to initiate uncle Sharaf. After all she wasn't initiating an outsider, it was her own uncle. In course of this initiation Mubashwara was struck by a genie. But her genie was very different from other genies. She cried alone under trees. Didn't say why she was crying, couldn't stand food, often suffered from nausea, couldn't even stand prayers and fasting, always yearned for isolation under trees. Her interest in spiritual initiation waned. Mubashwera, once a lively girl, fond of playing  war-games in our childhood, took bed. Before her parents arranged remedies against genie's strike, she had blazing fever. She was given consecrated water, Koranic spells were blasted on her, but the temperature did not go down. Auntie Fazli sat all day comforting her daughter on her bosom. She put wet clothes on her burning forehead, fumes, due to overheat, seemed to come out of wet clothes. Later  Mubashewra had breathing difficulties. "No more  consecrated water" - said auntie Fazli. "It's time to call a doctor.'

-'Doctor?'

-'If consecrated water doesn't work. Can medicine cure her?' skeptically asked Musa, auntie Fazli's husband from Medinipur.

-'May be not, but it isn't an offence to try. Praise be to Allah. Allah is the lord for all cure, medicine is a mere excuse'

On call Dr Rajab Ali, doctor's bag in hand, went to Pir's house to treat the patient at half past midnight. The patient was lying on a white bed. The patient, alarmingly emaciated due to seven day's fever. Gray tongue, gray eyes, gray nails. Pale. Discolored.

Dr checked her pulse, blood pressure and heart beat. Then he asked everyone to empty the room for 10 minutes. After 10 minutes Dr told the family members to come in. Then he gave an injection, the wrinkles on his face deepened. With wrinkled face Dr said-" see,  what happens.' He refused to take any fees. He visits his relatives free of charge.

The following morning Mubashwara was found frozen dead on her bed. Auntie Fazli was sobbing. Deaths are  not mourned with wailings in auntie Fazli's house. She was fated to die, so she did. Death is nothing but return to Allah.

Mum was shedding tears for Mubashewara. When Dad returned home Mum said ' Mubashwera passed away'.

-'She could have survived if treated earlier. When I saw her, she was almost finished', said Dad. Mum, wiping tears from her eyes and nose with her left had, said with a heavy breath- how would she live against Allah's will? Allah did not sanction her longer life ? She will positively go to heaven. She was uttering Allah's name before she passed away.'

Dad undid his shoes and put them under the bed. Then put the socks into the shoes. Wrinkles on his face deepened. 'she had baby in her womb'-said dad as he started unbuttoning his shirt.

-'Whose womb?'

- A wave of heat ran through my ears as I overheard them from the adjacent room.

- 'Who else? your niece, what was her name, Muba, Mubashwera said dad while putting his sweaty shirt on the hanger.

'She wasn't married, how come she had a baby in her womb? How dare you scandalize such a pious woman? Your tongue will shed off.' Cursed Mom sobbing heavily.

'Most possibly the fetus was killed with herbs. But it caused infection. Septomania, said dad with a stern voice.'   

The Wrong Miracle

 ".........Bilquis is lying wide awake in the dark of a cavernous bedroom, her hands crossed upon her breasts. When she sleeps alone her hands habitually find their way into this position, even though her in-laws disapprove. She can't help it, this hugging of herself to herself, as though she were afraid of losing something.

All around her in the darkness are the dim outlines of other beds, old charpoys with thin mattresses, on which other women lie under single white sheets; a grand total of forty females clustered around the majestically tiny form of the matriarch Bariamma, who snores lustily. Bilquis already knows enough about this chamber to be sure that most of the shapes tossing vaguely in the dark are no more asleep than she. Even Baru\iamma's snores might be a deception. The women are waiting for the men to come.

The turning door-knob rattles like a drum. At once there is a change in the quality of the night. A delicious wickedness is in the air. A cool breeze stirs, as if the entry of the first man has succeeded in dispelling some of the intense treacly heat of the hot season, enabling the ceiling fans to move a little more efficiently through the soupy atmosphere. Forty women, one of them Bilquis, stir damply under their sheets....more men enter. They are tiptoeing along the midnight avenues of the dormitory and the women have become very still, except for Bariamma. The matriarch is snoring more energetically than ever. Her snores are sirens, sounding the all-clear and giving necessary courage to the men.

And now there are tiny noises in the dark: charpoy ropes yielding fractionally beneath the extra weight of a second body, the rustle of clothing, the heavier exhalations of the invading husbands. Gradually the darkness acquires a kind of rhythm, which accelerates, peaks, subsides. Then there is a multiple padding towards the door, several times the drum-roll of the turning door-knob and at last silence, because Bariamma, now that it is polite to do so, has quite ceased to snore.

" Imagine, in that darkness,' Rani giggles while the two of them grind the daily spices, 'who would know if her real husband had come to her? And who could complain? I tell you Billoo, these married men and ladies are having a pretty good time in this joint family set-up. I swear, maybe uncles with nieces, brothers with their brother's wives, we'll never know who the children's daddies really are!' Bilquis blushes gracefully and covers Rani's mouth with a coriander-scented hand. ' Stop, darling, what a dirty filthy mind!'

Salman Rushdie: Shame

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