A death on the road

The road has grown busier over the years, more cars plying on it than before and more people crossing it from one side to another. He sat on the concrete block and counted that at least two hundred people must have crossed the road in the past half an hour. His son died in this concourse of life like a drop spilled from a bucket of water.

The words of the village Imam rang in his ears like the sound of a distant bell. It was God's wish to send his son to this world and it was God's wish to take him back. Why would God have the cruel wish to take away the jewel of a man's eye? It was easy for others to comfort him, because there is no pain for someone who doesn't get hurt. He took his eyes off the road for a moment and looked at the gray sunny sky, as if to see if God was paying attention to his thoughts. The concrete block wobbled in the force of distraction before he quickly regained his balance.

Tap here to add The Daily Star as a trusted source

He wondered if the monstrous bus, which ran over his son, was still running on the road. Was the driver still alive after so many years? The boy would have been forty today, if he were living, a stout pillar, who could support the dwindling world of his aging father. The concrete block trembled again as his body jolted in the gust of tears.

His son returned from college one afternoon and told him he had learned something funny in the class. The teacher said that sons buried their fathers in peacetime, while fathers buried sons during war. As he sat on the shoulder of the road where his son died like a crushed pumpkin, his head cracked open like smashed porcelain, he realised that his life had been nothing but a war. He has lived in the minefield of memories, bruised by explosions that crippled him every day. There is no prosthetics for a man, who is torn by his memories, haunted by the ghost of a fond wish that was not going to happen.

How much he has wished that his son were alive! Every time he saw a young man, every time he saw a father with his son, every time he went to a wedding, he wished his son were alive. Every time he saw a man playing with his grandchildren, he thought of his son. Every time he thought of the future, fell sick, rode a bus, walked on a carpeted road, he thought of him. Every time he heard the screeching sound of a car coming to a halt, a shriek of pain, or news of an accident, he remembered the face of his son where the vigour of youth shone like the calm light of the morning sun.

Ever since he received the wrecked body of his son from the hospital morgue, he has lived in the desolation of a tree that has lost its fruits. The shroud, which covered the body, had patches of red on it, looking as if it was a gift, which was wrapped by the clumsy hands of a paint worker. He thought every inch of the way to the village that the soul of his son had gone home in a hurry, and he needed to take the body to his son so that he could live again. He repeatedly asked the driver of the minibus to drive slowly, so that jerks and bumps wouldn't take it apart.

Until the body was lowered in the grave and covered with earth, he was convinced that the soul would come back to it any moment and his son was going to spring up on his feet again, asking his mother to serve dinner. It was a night of the new moon, when he returned from the graveyard and the entire village had slipped under a dense layer of darkness. He thought of his son throughout the night, the broken body buried under the earth like a hidden treasure. His wife fainted many times, insisting, whenever she regained her senses, to dig out the body from the grave so that she could look at her son for one last time.

He picked up the hem of his shirt and wiped his tears, which blinded his eyes with the vapours of sorrow that rose from the secret chambers of his heart. The concrete block quavered again, and he tightened his grip on the umbrella to keep him from rolling down the slope. The sun was now hanging over his head and the road was steaming in the scorching heat as its surface started to melt.

Why did his life have to turn out like this, having the resounding void of a midday spell? He remembered what was gone and pined for it for a number of years, arriving at the end of his own life. Old age was meant for reconciliation, for coming to terms with life when at long last man learned to accept his fate and prepared to die. But he has spent a good part of life looking for what was missing, a sense of loss etched in his bones by an accident right here in the middle of this road.

Every time he comes to visit this place, he goes back with the fear that he might not return again. His son came here once and never went home, and the reverse might happen to him. One day he would go back home, and not come back. Will anybody think of him like he has been thinking of his son? Will anybody miss him after he was gone?

He looked at the road, and thought all his hopes were crushed here. His wife was never the same after that shock and she died five years later. He has lived alone since then, facing each day as it came. He never wanted to marry again, never had the courage to covet and love because he was afraid to lose again.

A bus pulled in on the other side of the road as a scuffle broke out at one of its doors, choked by people who were struggling to get in as well as to get out. The concrete block moved again as he felt a little tension inside him. What was the big rush for those people, he asked himself. Where do they think they are going after all? Hasn't his son gone there already?

Life was an accident every minute, he thought before he fell down from the concrete block.

Mohammad Badrul Ahsan is a banker.