Company of Two

Illustration: TBS

The raindrops fell like pins on my head and shoulders as if they were specially designed to leave tiny prick marks all over my skin. I emerged from the Airport Terminal and my driver ran towards me from his privileged parking spot, actually just anywhere convenient as befitted the big black SUV of a senior police officer, to relieve me of my travel bag. 

The recent construction works had left potholes everywhere which had by now been filled with rainwater. Trailing behind my driver I took perverse delight in plunking down with my black boots right into the pools, making no effort to avoid them. 

Splash, splash, with every dashing of my boots I tried to wash clean the grime in my being.

Pulling out into the evening traffic he said cheerily, "Did you have a good trip boss?"

"Why don't you just concentrate on driving?" I said harshly.

I regretted my curtness instantly but what was done was done and I didn't have the energy to try and rectify every imperfection of my life. The racket of the streets penetrated the vehicle. Even though my SUV had a large interior, the noise, smells and rough behaviour from outside was suffocating. I started to feel a headache developing.

I tapped my driver on his shoulder. He leaned into the glove compartment and handed over my service pistol in its belt and holster. I put it on wordlessly. It made me feel complete.

After an eternity the driver turned off the main airport road but, before I could protest, he headed into Banani. I shouted at him, "Not this way! Where do you think you're going?"

"But sir, I thought…"

"Who the hell are you to think? I want to go home. And now because you turned here it will take an extra hour to reach."

The SUV was indeed hemmed in on all sides as far as the eye could see by the detritus of the Dhaka streets, broken buses, honking cars, rickshaws straying this way and that. I felt trapped.

Once again though I felt sorry for having been so mean. There was no reason my poor driver could have known that, for the first time in years and years, I was not going straight from the airport to Dina's place. She had made it very clear that this night I was not welcome.

I got home and took a hot shower. Feeling better, I meditated and tried to snuff out all traces of my headache. By degrees I started to appreciate the continuing rainfall now that I was inside, snug in my well appointed home. But then I felt even more strongly the pain of being by myself, companionless.

That's of course why Dina and I had made it a habit to meet up immediately after I returned from a long trip, because that was when I felt pathologically unsettled, unable to bear feeling lonely, even for a second. She had always responded with an open door. And yet today when I had called her from the Dubai Emirates lounge she had brutally turned me away. 

"Don't bother," she had said. "I don't need you." How pathetic of her, I thought. As if everything should be about her. I felt self-pity welling up inside me.

I stumbled to the hifi and put on a vinyl record, a Mozart piano concerto. The glorious music, amplified by my sensitive state, got me back to grips with myself. I began to enjoy every moment of spreading pleasure.

Suddenly like an arrow spiking into my heart I recalled the thing that I had buried under layers of indolent fat, what it was that Dina had really said to me, "How long, Arif, are we going to continue keeping two separate households?''

This story is part of a collection developed in a creative writing workshop run by Shazia Omar. If you would like to join the next workshop, please email her: [email protected]