Chapter 17 / 51 · 3 min

Strawberry Swing

Translated from Bengali

The moment the bullet hits you, it doesn’t hurt right away. There’s an impact. A violent one. Before you can even understand what’s happening, the pain begins to spread out from the wound in widening circles across your whole body.

The bullet caught me in the arm. Though it wouldn’t have mattered if it had hit my chest. The day I first came to the war, I felt no joy. All I wondered was when I’d get back to Shahnaz alive. Even today I feel no joy. After taking so many risks, why am I still not dead?

From April to December, I went through a great many things. At the end of March, I had said goodbye to Shahnaz. It wasn’t out of any great love for the country that I went to war. I didn’t want to go.

Some distance from the house where we lived, there was a wild, overgrown patch of land. If you walked a little way through it, you’d come upon a lake. Clear, bluish water, shimmering. And all around it, green, and more green.

We named the place Strawberry Swing. The name meant nothing. We just gave it that name. Sitting at this Strawberry Swing, we used to have light conversations about light things. Why the water of the lake was blue, that sort of topic, we’d argue about for hours.

Then, after returning home, when I’d lie down to sleep with the certain confidence of a good dream… I had given the feeling of that moment a name. Happiness.

Then one day that happiness ended. I had no option but to go to war. My heart was never in it. How many Bengalis the Pakistanis killed on the other side never made me angry. What did it matter… the only question was when the war would end.

I kept myself out of harm’s way. The moment I sensed a risky operation, I’d fall ill. The soldiers of my platoon came back dead, half-dead, or crippled. And some never came back at all. I felt bad for them then, but I felt better for myself. I had survived. If only for Shahnaz, I needed to stay alive.

Moving from village to village during the war, I saw many lakes, many blue skies… but I felt nothing. Without Shahnaz, everything was faded. Every single moment, I missed that Strawberry Swing. Those perfect days of my life. Then one day I heard that Shahnaz was no more. In the state the country was in, it wasn’t safe for her to be alone. She had found a husband living in America, and left.

After that, I started showing courage in the war. I stayed up front. Strange thing, the bullets hit the man beside me but never me. I’m telling the truth, there was no patriotism in me. The love was for Shahnaz. For that Strawberry Swing with Shahnaz.

Today, at last, a bullet found me. The war is still going on. Blood streams down my arm. It hurts, but it doesn’t matter…

N.B.: It’s not an original story. I wrote this after being inspired by Coldplay’s song Strawberry Swing. I’ve explained the feeling of that song in my own way. I had no intention whatsoever of belittling the Liberation War or its fighters.