The chasm
When the chasm first opened at Fajr on Friday, it was barely over an inch wide in circumference. In spite of Shahidunnahar's blabbering tirade over this happening just before Eid, Aminul Haque folded his prayer mat and went back to sleep. He could see to it after Jamaat-ul-Wida.
By Sunday, the chasm seemed to have grown a few inches wider. Almost the size of Tuki's hand. At iftar, Shahidun could not shut up about how bad it looked as she transported the piyajus from the kitchen to the dining table. The daughters ate with their heads stooped over their plates. They had some good heads on their shoulders. They were quiet, demure girls: a mark of their belonging from a good family. Not like their mother who keeps drilling chasms into Aminul's head with her incessant jabbering of worry. When Shahidun set down the basket of fritters in front of Aminul, her train of thought still ceaselessly running her mouth, he lifted a hand and struck it across her face.
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All five members of the Aminul Haque residence sat in quietude as they ate the rest of their iftar. Aminul wiped his hands on the napkins his wife had laid out for him beside his plate and excused himself from the table to perform his wudu for the Maghrib prayer.
When he returned home after Taraweeh, he found the main door unlocked as usual. However, unlike the usual, the lights were off, save for the dull yellow glow of the dim light in the dining room. A plate with good proportions of rice and tengra maach er jhol sat on the dining table, covered with a translucent lid. Aminul sniffed in a sharp intake of a lungful of air. He lifted the plate and shoved it into the refrigerator, slamming its door shut.
After changing into his night clothes, rage now simmering at a lower heat, he headed towards the kitchen. He was still hungry after all.
"Rahma, shh–"
He met his daughters' startled eyes huddled by the stove.
"What are you two doing here this late?"
Rahma was the one to answer. "Baba, we just came to warm up Tuki's glass of milk." She said slowly. Cautiously. "Do you need anything?"
He opened his mouth to ask for a cup of tea. But he noticed how Tuki was looking at him, half hidden behind Rahma, and decided against it. Instead, he let out a sigh of resignation and departed with a stern command to go to sleep.
Back in his bedroom, he found Shahidun laying on her side of the bed with her back to him. Aminul stepped carefully towards the bed to avoid stepping on the chasm which seemed to now have expanded over the size of his foot.
At around 2 AM he was awoken by the sound of Shahidun's sniveling cries on her prayer mat. As grating as it might have sounded, he felt grateful for it to have woken him up. It was the night of Qadr and hence, an extremely important night for ibadaat. By the time that Aminul was ready to sit for his Tahajjud, Shahidun was already back on her side of the bed.
The lamp barely illuminated the floor but the chasm was now too big to not notice even in such dull light. Aminul splayed out his prayer mat, its top-half floating over the chasm. He began his salat with the usual incantation of Surah Fatiha. At ruku, he could hear Shahidun's sniveling again. He concentrated on his prayer. By the next tashahud, Shahidun's sniffles had started grating on his ears again.
"You stupid woman!" Aminul cried out, "I'm trying to offer my prayers."
Quiet.
He remained in tashahud for some time, eyes closed, trying to calm the seething of his rage to focus on the prayer again. At shejda, when his forehead met the prayer mat, he could hear something. A whirling. A gyration of something strong and fluid. For a moment, he was confused, but he quickly recovered himself and resolved to focus on the prayer. On the second rakat, this happened again. This time he noticed that this sound was coming from below the mat. From the chasm. He was tempted to lift his mat right then and look into the chasm. But he controlled his urge and completed his dua.
He did not get up from the mat though. Aminul folded a corner from the top, exposing the chasm to the air of his bedroom. The sound was not as pronounced now but it was unmistakably there. Bowing closer down, he peeked into it. Inside, there was nothing but pitch darkness that felt like it was extending for miles ahead. The sound was barely audible, but it was there. And this was the source of it.
Aminul heaved a sigh and stood up. This could be dealt with in daytime.
On Tuesday morning, as Aminul was buttoning his shirt, he took a long, hard look at the expanding chasm, now gaping a human-sized hole by the corner of the bedside table. Even in daylight it looked pitch black. But the churning was getting louder. Subtle, but louder.
Shahidun had left the bazaar list on the bedside table, scribbled roughly onto a page from her notepad and weighted down by her medicine box. Aminul fixed his lungi and put his prayer hat on as he left, pocketing the list into the front of his shirt. Today, he was going to the Mirpur 6 bazaar instead of the neighbourhood vans and ferrywalas because Eid bazaar called for special ingredients.
At the grocery stall in the bazaar, when he took the list to dictate the necessities to the shopkeeper, he hit a sudden roadblock. A splatter of what looked like teardrops had made some of the words illegible. Cursing Shahidun under his breath, he listed off whatever he could remember from last Eid's bazaar.
Heaving the bags on his way back, he was greeted by Moslem bhai.
"Amin bhai, Eid er bazaar done?"
"Eito. Orders from the missus." Gaily he answered to Moslem's teasing attempt at small talk.
While exchanging niceties, Aminul's attention snagged at a couple of young girls and boys at a nearby tong. Moslem noticed Aminul's line of sight.
"Tauba. Girls and boys mingle so freely these days. That too in the days of roza-ramzan."
Aminul nodded half-heartedly to Moslem's comment. His mind and worries were engaged elsewhere. He bade goodbye to Moslem and boarded a rickshaw for home. All the while thanking Allah for Moslem not noticing Rafat amidst the group at the tong.
At home, he remained restless during the Zuhr and Asr prayers. When Rafat entered through the main door, Aminul was watching Qafila on the TV.
"Assalam Alaikum."
"Walaikum Assalam, abba." Rafat replied curtly, avoiding Aminul's gaze. He was adjusting the strap of his backpack on his shoulder while closing the door. As he stooped to untie his shoes, something heavy almost slipped out from the backpack. Rafat quickly balanced the bag on his arms and closed the zippers shut before swinging the other strap to wear it too. He did not know though that he was too late.
Aminul's eyes followed as Rafat swiftly slipped through the living room and headed towards his room, adjusting the straps of the backpack on his shoulders.
On the iftar table, Aminul could not tear his eyes off his son. He could not stop thinking about the glinting bottle of alcohol. When Shahidun served more chola bhuna onto their son's plate, he knew at once who was to blame for such upbringing of their prodigal son.
Aminul wiped his hands on the napkin and kicked off from his seat. He slammed the door of his bedroom shut behind him and performed his wudu in the attached washroom. Just as he was stepping out to grab his prayer mat from the shelves, he was stopped in his tracks by the enormity of the chasm on the floor of the bedroom.
It covered the expanse from the bed to the door now—more than six feet wide. In the dimness of the room, illuminated only by the light from the washroom, he could see something moving inside. He could hear the churning, getting louder with each passing second. Carefully, Aminul edged close to it. He crouched down to peer inside. It was an abyss that looked like the darkness was folding in on itself in a constant motion. Aminul positioned himself into a crawl on all fours and pushed his head into the chasm.
A clawing darkness pierced through his ears. He threw himself back, panting as he landed on his behind. But his ears still felt like they were being clawed from the inside. He tried to clear it from the outer canal by shoving his fingers in one at a time. It wouldn't budge. He could hear the churning inside his own ears now, pulsing behind something. A faulty vein?
"Ya Allah, save me! Ya Raheem!" he cried out.
Light flooded into the room as Shahidun and the daughters rushed in.
"Abba!" He could hear them shriek.
When he woke up, he found himself on his back on the bed. Shahidun sitting beside him. The lights were off yet her face seemed to be glowing as she murmured duas with her eyes closed, tasbeeh in hand. Aminul pushed himself upright.
She remained completely still except for her murmuring lips and two fingers keeping the beads on the tasbeeh in motion. Aminul touched his ears. They felt fine now.
He stood up, slightly unsteady but balanced himself with support from the bedpost. The chasm was still there. It spread the same expanse. But something about it was different. It wasn't as dark anymore. As Aminul dared to peer in, he could see a subtle shimmering inside. They were blinking and floating in circles. He felt a strong urge to be on all fours again. This time he kept his head floating over the chasm. As he stared into it, he found what looked like about a thousand eyes staring back, blinking in stretched out intervals. He stared in fascination.
Outside the room, he could hear faint whispers of loud cackling.
Aminul skipped over the parts of the floor that were still intact to reach the bedroom door. He watched a haze floating towards him from the living room and he followed it to find Rafat populating the living room with a crowd of boys and girls his age. Smoke filled the air here from their mouths, from the electronic devices they were slipping between the cracks of their lips. There were girls sitting on some of the boys' laps. Rafat had his hand winded into the hair of some girl. She looked like she was in pain.
"Rafat!" Aminul yelled in disbelief. But no one responded. Music blared from the speakers beside the TV and the boys laughed boisterously, especially Rafat, while the girl seemed to be wincing in pain. No one acknowledged his presence.
Aminul stared in horror, frozen in place. He could hear the churning again. From the back of his head. Pulsating loudly in his eardrums.
Suddenly, the girl whose hair Rafat was pulling at looked at Aminul. Her breath was heaving. They both stared at each other in wordless horror. A single tear escaped her right eye and flowed down the cheek.
Silence.
When Aminul woke up in the morning, it was bright outside. He had missed Fajr. Mechanically, he showered and dressed himself in the Eid panjabi.
When he sat down for Eid breakfast after returning from the jamaat, he saw Shahidun busy in the kitchen.
"Assalam Alaikum abba," the girls greeted him at the table.
He smiled at them. "Eid Mubarak, ammu."
Tuki smiled back, the intensity of it illuminating her eyes. "Eid Mubarak abba!"
Rahma's eyebrows were wrinkling together. "Eid Mubarak. Are you feeling better?"
He nodded. "What's amma doing?"
"She's almost done. We're going to go and bring the polao now."
"It's okay. Sit." He said and headed for the kitchen.
Shahidun was spreading the beresta on the korma and polao when Aminul walked in. The back of her neck tensed up. "I'm sorry. Almost done." She said.
"Oh that's alright. Let me help."
Tashfia Ahmed is an educator, poet and contributor for Star Books and Literature. She teaches English at Scholastica school.
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