Farihah Ahmed

Shapuree Island

Excerpt

July 1970

Let’s say his name is Mirza. His fate will be that of nameless, faceless men, but even they had names once, often before they had faces, at least to their mothers. Mirza would have been a name given to him by his parents before the uprooting started. No, it is not possible to say that Mirza’s life could be separated from the uprooting of Burma; it would be better to say he was named and birthed and loved by his two parents, until their untimely deaths, despite the uprooting of Burma. 

O

Paul leaves Mirza at the edge of the Naf River. He recounts Mirza’s money with him to ensure that the full amount, compounded by what his uncle left him, is still there. His uncle is now the only family he has left at the age of seventeen. His father, beneath the ground in Maungdaw, is a vesicle punctured and drawn lifeless. His mother, beside him, an exploding star, the plumbing undone and collapsed within itself. He feels the pull towards them, a gravitational force born from a black hole, bending Mirza’s space in the world, distorting his sense of time. 

O

Paul ensures that the extra water is with Mirza as well. He had told him, on their journey to the water’s edge, that swallowing sea water would be the most miserable way for Mirza to die. Dehydration dizzied you, he said, it was capable of turning a strong mind to pulp. He tells him he will send correspondence from his uncle once Mirza contacts Paul to say that he has made it safely to Karachi. Paul ushers him onto the small fisherman’s boat after paying a fee. He stands looking on as the boat leaves the shore, neither sadness nor happiness on his face. 

O

Mirza winds the leather bag tighter around his wrist. Alongside him, squatting on the boat, are two families, none with young children. One woman is there by herself, near the back of the small boat. Swan eyes and a long curtain of hair. She is rubbing perfume over her wrists and ankles like last rites. The sun has begun to lower in the sky. The fisherman who commands the boat—perhaps it is his—sings loudly in the front, rearranging the ropes by his feet and stopping occasionally to point at them, in turn, like he is serenading them. Amake bhalo bhasho! He sings to the woman who is alone. Love me! but she continues to stare in front of her at Mirza. 

He sits, stones in his stomach, trying to ignore the rocking of the boat as they start. He tries not to think of Paul or his uncle or his dead parents. It is difficult to remember the long prayers he had memorized when he was younger but forgot as he grew older. He hopes remembering them will undo the terrible thoughts he had of God abandoning him in his mother’s room. It is because of that same Muslim God, though, that the Burmese government forced him into this position. The gun he had used to kill a man would not have been in the drawer if his parents were alive. And his parents would be alive if they were not Muslim. Perhaps God was the wisest because he forced these migrations in people’s lives so that they would never know a home except within Him. It seemed like a selfish thing to Mirza, something expected of a king or a demigod like the Greeks believed, but not a God who had come from nothing and relied on no one and would exist after time itself. He thinks briefly of doing away with God, of murdering him in his psyche. He becomes immediately fearful of the boat tipping as soon as this thought surfaces. He mutters repentances under his breath. He decides that it is a trial, all of these thoughts, and he cannot be buried with them.

O

Hours pass. He sees the water, its face different as the sun travels its course by the hour. Just then, it was a prism, letting through a spectrum of light. Sometimes the water is playful, tossing its head, chasing gulls which he imagines bank on the land on the other side. 

Other times it is desperate, sucking in the things which touch its scintillating surface. The water is constantly moving, never tired. Mirza imagines this is a travel which takes it to every place but never exhausts it. Part of it has been everywhere, has touched everything—its Arctic fingers have felt the pole of the world, the tributary children have been ushered around every civilization. He wonders: if he could live forever, floating, could he circumvolve the earth? 

If the boat were to be overtaken by the waves, he would not think worse of God. It would be an end deserving of him. It would make him think that yes, God was indeed true. The swan-eyed woman begins to cry. The fisherman has not stopped his singing. 

O

When Mirza was young, his father would take him on the docks and try to teach him how to swim. He would hold Mirza’s abdomen for hours, patiently waiting for Mirza to paddle his arms and legs. Mirza had refused to learn; he does not remember if there was any reason why. He screamed until his father silently brought him back home. His father never forced him to go swimming again. It makes him sad now, to think of all the hours that his parents had poured into forming him. They had constructed him, cell by cell, had nudged him forward with experience, with praise, and in the end, all there was left was cowardice, huddled in a boat, spine contorted like in the womb. He thinks badly of God again, but the boat does not tip over. It stays upright in the water and no winds harm them. 

His mind shows him shapes which his eyes, dusted with salt, will not: let’s say, on a bank that he feels he will never reach, there is a figure. His mother, a tall column of silver. She will know of his arrival, although she sees neither the boat nor his face.

About the Author

Farihah Ahmed is an MFA candidate in Fiction at Columbia University, where she was a Felipe de Alba Fellow. She is also a graduate of Columbia University’s College of Dental Medicine. She is working on a novel about Burmese migrants, Sufi mystics, and Parisian dentists in the 1950s.