Chapter 16 / 51 · 7 min

A Little Oxygen

There is no clock on the prison wall. None on my wrist either.

Still, my eyes kept wandering back and forth, to the wall, to my wrist. No matter how hard I tried, I couldn’t push the thought of time out of my head.

In front of me, thick black iron bars. This is a cage.

Suddenly I remembered Tupur’s parrot. That one was in a cage too. How is the bird doing now? Is Tupur feeding it properly? She isn’t forgetting it, is she?

When I looked at the guard standing outside, the iron bars blurred. I asked him, “What time is it?”

He smiled sweetly. “Five more hours, sir.”

Something inside my chest began to hollow out. In exactly five hours, everyone on earth would still be here, but I would not. I would be officially killed.

Everyone would see tomorrow’s sun, but I would not. I had never really looked at the sun. But if I had known today’s sun was the last sun of my life, I would have looked at it until my heart was full. Suddenly I felt a strange tenderness for that star, millions of kilometers away.

They had confirmed it to me after sunset. The jailer came himself. He exchanged pleasantries, then said abruptly, “Your sentence will be carried out tonight.”

A cold current ran down my spine.

“Tonight, sir?”

“Yes.”

“When, sir?”

“Eight hours from now. At one in the morning.”

I stared at him without blinking. The jailer hesitated over what to say next, but I had no hesitation at all about the fact that eight hours from now I would no longer be able to draw the earth’s oxygen.

My crime: I raped a little girl, then murdered her in cold blood.

The girl’s name was Phuli. She worked in my house. She was very fond of me. Whenever she saw me, she’d touch her hand to her forehead and say, “Salaam, sahib.” Twelve, maybe thirteen years old. A sweet face. I can still see it before my eyes.

At first Phuli and Tupur got along well.

Tupur is my wife’s name. The name of the girl who entered my life after my mother.

I was a plain, good student. St. Joseph’s. Notre Dame. BUET. Then I became an engineer. I worked nine to five at a company, came home, slept. Salary at the end of the month.

That was how the days passed. In the beginning Tupur used to say, “This is boring. Why are you so dull?”

I would only smile. Eventually she gave up. It was just as well. I am a cold man. I prefer a cold kind of love. I loved Tupur tremendously. Even after everything, I still do.

“Sir, what will you eat tonight?” The constable’s words brought me back. I wanted a cup of tea from Tupur’s hands, but that was not possible. I said, “Mashed potato and steaming hot rice.”

The constable left. Tupur hated mashed potato. Disgusting food, she’d say. Really, slowly, everything about me had started to disgust her.

She had become close friends with a boy on Facebook. He had even come to the house once. His name was Shubhro. He studied BBA at Tupur’s university. All day long Tupur told me stories about Shubhro.

I listened. I thought it was good. The girl had found a friend. But that she would do all this over that friend, I never imagined, not even in my wildest dreams.

It was a Thursday. I was coming home from the office, just stepping inside, when I heard a commotion. I followed the sound, and my eyes went wide. Phuli was screaming and crying. Through her tears she was saying, “I’ll tell sahib everything.”

Tupur’s face was like an old witch’s. Her eyes bulging from their sockets. She hissed, “What will you tell?”

“You cheated on sahib. Every day in that room with that man—” Phuli couldn’t finish. Before she could, Tupur took the cleaver in front of her and swung it into Phuli’s neck.

Phuli’s scream echoed back. I rushed forward to stop Tupur. Until I stopped her, Tupur kept hacking at Phuli with the cleaver.

Cleaver blows to the neck and throat. Blood spraying from the throat. A blow to the head, and much of the brain had come out. Looking at the mutilated body, I understood there was no longer any need to take her to a hospital.

Within moments Tupur’s savage face went pale. She shoved past me and left. In the suddenness of it all, I stood stunned before Phuli’s bloody corpse.

I sit quietly after finishing my meal.

The food wouldn’t go down my throat. Food that would no longer need to be digested before it digested in my stomach… this food is truly meaningless. A joke.

A little later another constable came. “Sir, come, take a bath.”

“Now? How much longer?”

“One more hour. Hurry. Lots of work left.”

I go to the bathroom. I bathe in hot water. Something feels strange. I can’t think properly. Everything is jumbling together.

I try to summon the feeling that nothing matters, that nothing touches me.

That feeling had worked in the dock. I watched the people around me in astonishment. No relatives, no kin, no friends. A lonely man, me. No one fought for me.

In a strange laziness I had let myself drift with the current. Let’s see what happens. On the other side Tupur went on, “…this man who is my husband… whom it disgusts me to call my husband, he is a beast. He is savage toward women. He’s a sadist. …Then he mutilated and killed that lovely little girl.”

How beautifully my Tupur can act. I held the ache in my chest at the corner of my lips. Seeing this, would Tupur not feel even a little pain?

She felt none. I still don’t understand how signs of rape were found on Phuli’s body. How the post-mortem report changed. How my fingerprints came to be on the cleaver.

I am walking down the corridor. The gallows stand in the field in front of the prison. My legs are going numb. I can’t go forward anymore. My feet have grown very heavy.

No… I cannot walk toward that platform. I didn’t rape anyone. I didn’t kill anyone. I want to live. Tomorrow my colleagues will go to the office. They’ll work nine to five. Children will go to school. Flowers will bloom, birds will sing, and yet I will see none of it. They won’t let me see it.

Suddenly flowers, birds, school, sun, dawn, all these ordinary things seem precious to me. The world seems incomprehensible, complicated, and utterly merciless.

So much arrangement for a single death. So many people. This is the executioner? He’s the one who will kill me? This ambulance is to carry away my corpse? Thinking of my own corpse, my feelings begin to dull.

The magistrate said, “Five more minutes. What is your last wish?”

In the final moment a strange longing took hold of me. I would send Tupur a message on Facebook. I would ask, “Why did you do this?

I am dying. You won’t even come to see my body. Still, know that I love you.” Reading this, Tupur would surely cry. She would feel remorse. Even in this state, the thought brought me peace.

I logged in for the last time from the magistrate’s phone. So many notifications. I would never check them in this life.

Tupur had sent a message. She had written, “SORRY.”

That was all. Then she had blocked me. My last wish went unfulfilled.

I returned the phone and made myself ready. I am terribly afraid. To stand at the boundary between life and death is a very cruel and terrifying feeling. It seems to me this must be a nightmare. Any moment now I will wake and find myself in my familiar bed. There is no one! None of them are here!

I looked at the world for the last time. The black cloth of the black hood will cut me off from the earth. I am afraid… terribly afraid… any moment now the magistrate will drop the handkerchief in his hand.

Taut tension. I keep waiting for destruction. And right then, a violent jolt. The entire weight of my body falls onto my throat. The manila rope tightens around my neck. My breath is choked off. My chest cries out for just a little oxygen. I don’t want to die… I want to live. Will you give me a little oxygen, Allah? Just this little bit of oxygen? …Please! Just a little…?