One morning in the month of Kartik, the people of Karimullahbagh saw an unfamiliar young man standing under the Koroi tree at the entrance of the alley. Even then, they couldn’t understand that an old score of their neighborhood was tied to this boy. The boy was looking up at the tree, as if he had brought a description of the tree from somewhere and was now comparing it. After it matched, the expression that appeared on his face was interpreted in two ways by those of us who saw him that day. Some said he looked happy, while others said, no, he looked like a frightened man. He didn’t speak to anyone that day. After standing under the tree for a while, he walked towards the railway gate, and we forgot about him. So many unknown people come and go in the alley of Karimullahbagh, looking for a house to rent, for electrical work, to collect installments; we can’t remember everyone.
A week later, he came again. This time he sat at Mobarak’s tea stall, ate a cup of tea and a bun, paid, and left. This time too, he didn’t speak to anyone. The third time he came, he finished his cup of tea, looked at Jummon, and asked, “Which way is Anwar Hossain’s house?”
Jummon was thirteen then, he washed cups and served tea at Mobarak’s stall. Hearing the question, he looked at Mobarak, and Mobarak put the kettle down from the stove and turned towards the boy. Nobody comes to our neighborhood to ask for a dead man’s address, because everyone knows a dead man’s address, Jurain graveyard, and Anwar Hossain had moved to that address two years ago.
Mobarak asked, “Who are you?”
“You won’t recognize me.”
“Did you know Anwar bhai?”
“No.”
“Then?”
The boy then took out his mobile phone from his pants pocket, placed it on the stall’s bench, and said, “This number used to be his.”
Later we came to know the boy’s name was Selim, his home was in the south, some said Bhola, some said Patuakhali, he himself never said clearly. He had come to Dhaka looking for work, like everyone else. He had picked up a SIM card from a counter at the Jatrabari intersection using his fingerprint, because to register with a food delivery company, you need a number in your own name. Nobody told him that the number was not new, but old. The company people said that if a number is closed for fifteen months, it is released to the market again. Thus, Anwar Hossain’s eleven-digit number, which was written on the walls of two hundred houses in Karimullahbagh, in notebooks, on the covers of passbooks, on the bamboo pillar of Mobarak’s stall, was tied to Selim’s fingerprint.
We had known Anwar Hossain for twenty-five years. He was the cashier of the Karimullahbagh Public Welfare Savings Cooperative, although we can no longer remember who the president was or who else was on the committee. To us, the cooperative meant Anwar. Every Wednesday afternoon, he would sit on the veranda of his house with a table, on which there was a tin box and a thick notebook. The neighborhood women, rickshaw pullers’ wives, garments girls, old women would line up and deposit fifty or a hundred taka, and Anwar would write the amount in brown ink on everyone’s yellow-covered passbook and put a continuous signature below it. We all recognized that signature. If it thundered, he would fold up the table so the notebook wouldn’t get wet. When the rain stopped, he would set up the table again. Even when the roads of Jurain were flooded knee-deep for six months of the year, the women would still wade through that water, holding their clothes high, to Anwar’s veranda on Wednesday afternoons, because they knew that money didn’t last if kept at home.
Then, one Srabon month, the table didn’t appear on Anwar’s veranda for two consecutive Wednesdays. The first Wednesday we thought he was unwell; the second Wednesday the women went and stood at his door, found it closed and returned, and on the morning of the third day, Rustam Miah’s tenants started smelling a stench. Anwar Hossain lived in the corner room of Rustam Miah’s semi-pucca house’s courtyard, alone; his wife had left him many years ago, or maybe he had left his wife, this debate in our neighborhood was never settled. The branches of the Koroi tree at the entrance of the alley leaned over the tin roof of that room, and the sound of dry leaves falling could be heard late at night.
They broke down the door and found him on the bed. Up to this point everyone agrees, but beyond this, no one agrees. Some say the door was locked from the inside, the chain was drawn, some say the chain wasn’t drawn, the door was merely closed, it didn’t even have to be broken. Some say his face was peaceful like a sleeping man’s, some say his eyes were open and he was staring at the roof, where the shadow of the Koroi tree’s branches fell. The body was autopsied at Mitford, nobody in our neighborhood saw what was written on the report paper. The police had said it was a heart issue, and those of us who heard it nodded our heads, because a fifty-two-year-old lonely man could definitely have a heart issue. Only Kashem of the cigarette shop at the railway gate said a long time later that the night before he died, he had seen Anwar standing there at the railway gate, not alone, someone else was there, couldn’t be recognized in the dark. Kashem said this only once, then never again.
The tin box was found empty. The thick notebook was not found. According to the neighborhood’s calculation, there were three lakh seventy-two thousand taka deposited in the cooperative, according to some five lakhs, and Haji Mokbul went around saying nine lakh sixty, because his claim was that Anwar had borrowed money from him on interest to cover the cooperative’s deficit. The women went to the police station with their yellow passbooks, the inspector flipped through the passbook and asked, “Does the cooperative have a registration?” The women said, “We don’t know.” The inspector said, “Then nothing will come of this book, this book is just trust, and we don’t take cases of trust.” Few people attended Anwar’s funeral prayer. Some deliberately didn’t go, even if they did, some didn’t stand in the row, they stood at the back and watched. We can no longer find the place inside Jurain graveyard where he was lowered, because in that graveyard a grave doesn’t remain in anyone’s name for long, every few years old graves are dug up to make room for new dead bodies.
The room was locked for two years. Rustam Miah had brought in tenants twice, one was a tailor, he left on the eleventh day, when asked why he left, he said, “The room is cold.” Another was two brothers, they stayed for a month, then they also left, they didn’t give any reason. After that Rustam Miah didn’t try anymore, the room rent came down and stuck at twenty-two hundred taka, yet no one took it, and the leaves of the Koroi tree accumulated on the tin roof, turned black and rotted.
When Selim sat at Mobarak’s stall and said that the number used to be Anwar Hossain’s, we didn’t believe him at first. We thought the boy was Haji Mokbul’s man, or some NGO scammer, or Anwar’s heir, come sniffing after two years, if there was anything left. But he didn’t want anything. He just asked if the room was vacant, and Rustam Miah, who hadn’t received a single taka in rent for two years, gave him the room for twenty-two hundred taka. Some in the neighborhood said to Rustam, “Some unknown guy, didn’t you inquire?” Rustam said, “What’s the use of my inquiring, if the room is empty ghosts catch it, if people are there people catch it.”
Selim’s belongings consisted of a bag, and his pink square box-bag for work, which he carried on his back and delivered rice, biryani, and burgers from one end of the city to the other on a bicycle from morning till night. The people of the neighborhood initially watched him from afar. He kept to himself, left before dawn, returned at eleven or twelve at night, hung the pink bag on a nail on the wall of the room, and sat at Mobarak’s stall eating a bun with tea. Delivering hot food to people’s doors all day, what did he eat himself, this question didn’t come to our minds then, it came much later.
His phone rang all day. The daytime calls were delivery calls, customers, addresses, which alley, which house. The night calls were different. We learned these things from Jummon, because even if Selim didn’t mingle with anyone else, he mingled with Jummon, the two of them would sit on the bench before closing the stall at night, and Selim would tell him bits and pieces, and Jummon would tell us. We don’t know if Jummon exaggerated, thirteen-year-old boys exaggerate, but then again, only thirteen-year-old boys listen properly.
According to Jummon, the first call came three days after buying the SIM. A man lowered his voice and said, “Anwar saab, as-salamu alaykum, you remember about the installment, right?” Selim said, “Wrong number.” The man hung up. The next day another person, then another. Some asked for money, some wanted to give money, an old man cried and said, “Anwar bhai, how could you do this to me?” Selim initially told everyone, “Wrong number, this number is mine now, the person you are looking for is not here.” Some believed, some didn’t, some hung up with abuses, and Haji Mokbul, who didn’t say his name but Selim recognized him later by his voice, would just call and state the date and amount. Two lakhs in such-and-such month of such-and-such year, one lakh sixty in such-and-such month, with interest it is this much till today. Selim would say, “Wrong number.” Haji would say, “The number is right, the person is wrong.”
And there was that woman.
She would call after eleven at night, when Selim returned home, hung his wet towel on the rope, and sat on the bed. The first day she answered and said, “Hello,” there was no sound on the other side for a long time, only the sound of breathing, then a woman’s low voice asked, “Are you listening?” Selim had said, “The person who owned this number died, two years ago.” Again there was silence for a long time on the other side. Then she said, “I know.”
“I know.”
Every time Jummon repeated this one word to us, our neighborhood’s calculations were overturned. If one knows a person is dead, what do they want to hear by calling a dead man’s number? And if one knows the person on the other side of the phone isn’t the real person, why don’t they hang up? No one hung up that night. According to Jummon, after a long time the woman had asked, “Have you eaten?” Selim, who hadn’t eaten anything all day except a bun, said unknowingly, “Hmm.”
Since then, the woman called almost every night. We know this, because Selim’s room’s walls were made of tin, and tin walls cannot keep secrets. At midnight, from that corner of the courtyard, we, meaning the tenants of Rustam Miah’s house, could hear Selim’s voice, only one side of the voice, “Hmm. I’ve eaten. Have you eaten? Why haven’t you slept?” We never heard what the woman said, we only heard Selim’s ‘hmms’, and in the silences between those ‘hmms’, the whistle of the night train floating in from afar towards Postagola.
Who the woman was, some in our neighborhood said it was a nurse from Munshiganj Hospital. They met when Anwar’s mother was admitted for her final illness. Anwar reportedly went to Munshiganj by launch once a month; the neighborhood people thought he went for cooperative work. Some say it was Anwar’s wife, who had left twenty-seven years ago, and wanted her voice back in her old age. And some say, there was actually no woman, Selim was a lonely man, a lonely man talks to himself at night, there’s nothing wrong in that.
One day at the beginning of winter, Selim went to look for Anwar’s grave. The graveyard attendant looked at the register and said, “The grave of Srabon of that year is in the row in that direction. But brother, that row was dug anew last year, now there are other people there.” Selim still stood at the end of that row for a while, he doesn’t know whose grave he stood in front of, then returned. This too was heard from Jummon. Jummon said, Selim bhai just said one thing, “Just as numbers come around, graves also come around.” We didn’t understand the meaning of this statement, neither did Jummon, but the statement remained in our neighborhood.
As winter increased, the yellow passbooks began to appear.
First came Asiya’s mother. Her age was then over seventy, she had deposited fifty taka every Wednesday for seven years, the last figure in her passbook was eleven thousand five hundred, and below it was Anwar’s continuous signature. One evening she went and stood at Selim’s door; Selim had just returned, hanging the pink bag on the nail. Asiya’s mother extended the passbook towards him and said, “Son, keep the book.”
Selim said, “Auntie, I am not Anwar.”
“I know. You are not him, I know. Even so, keep it. Who else will I keep it with.”
Selim didn’t take the book that day, but Asiya’s mother had left the book on the bed and gone, and Selim didn’t return it either. It took three days for this news to spread in the neighborhood, and then more passbooks started coming. Some came themselves, some sent it through their sons, some said nothing, just dropped the book through the gap in the door. Selim didn’t give anyone his word, nor did he ask for anything from anyone, but he didn’t return any books either. Jummon had peeked inside the room one day while giving tea, he says the yellow books were arranged near the head of the bed, like bricks placed on top of each other, and on the wall he saw writing.
The writing on the wall needs to be mentioned separately. Anwar Hossain’s thick notebook was never found, but on the west wall of his room, with a pencil over the lime wash, there was a long list of names and numbers, half erased, half readable. The tailor had fled in eleven days seeing this very wall, some say. Rustam Miah had wanted to get it whitewashed twice, even after hiring a mason, for some reason he didn’t get it done. Selim used to read the writing on that wall at night holding the phone’s light, he told this to Jummon himself, and by the month of Magh we noticed that he knew the names of the people in the neighborhood with whom he had never spoken. He greeted Rahim’s mother and said, “Auntie, has your knee pain lessened?” He said to Idrish the mechanic, “I heard your younger daughter got married.” All these things were not written on the wall, someone used to tell him all these things on the phone at night. We were in a dilemma then. Was the neighborhood entering Selim through the number, or was he entering the neighborhood through the number?
Then he started giving money.
The first to receive money was Asiya’s mother. Handing her a five-hundred-taka note, Selim had said, “Anwar’s money, keep it.” Asiya’s mother stared at the note for a long time, then asked, “Has the money been found?” Selim had replied to this, “It comes little by little.” This is what he later told everyone. A hundred in someone’s hand, two hundred in someone’s, once a month, once in two months, whatever he could manage on that day. He kept his accounts on that same wall, below Anwar’s accounts, with his own pencil, and Jummon says the handwriting of the two was matching so much day by day that it was impossible to tell whose was whose. We calculated, he made at most five or six hundred taka a day from food delivery, his room rent was twenty-two hundred, he ate buns, he had two shirts, and yet two to three thousand taka went into the hands of the old women of the neighborhood every month. He would say, “Anwar’s money, keep it, it comes little by little.”
It was easier to believe the story of seven lakh taka than to believe that a poor delivery boy pays off a dead man’s debt with his own earnings. Who first said it, we cannot remember today, but by the month of Falgun, word had reached every house in Karimullahbagh that Selim had found the money. Some said under the floor, in that corner of the room where the bed is. Some said inside the wall, and that’s why Anwar wrote accounts on the wall, the wall was his notebook, his safe. Some said in the hollow of the Koroi tree, and that’s why the boy had looked at the tree like that on the first day. As the days went by, the amount increased, from seven lakhs to ten, ten to twelve, and at one point the meaning of every action of Selim began to change in the eyes of the people of our neighborhood. He gives money to the old women, because he needs to keep their mouths shut before he embezzles the whole amount. He eats buns, because one who has twelve lakhs in his house needs to be careful. He whispers on the phone at night, because he is negotiating the share of the money with someone.
One night the lock of his room was broken. Selim was out on delivery then; he returned to find the door wide open, the bed overturned, the floor dug up in two places, the yellow passbooks scattered. He told no one, didn’t go to the police station, not even to Rustam Miah. He tidied up the room all night, arranged the passbooks again like bricks, filled the holes in the floor with earth with his own hands, and the next morning went out as usual with the pink bag on his back. Those of us who heard about the filled-in floor in the morning didn’t ask who had broken in, because we feared that if we asked, our own names might come up in the share of the answer. How this news reached Haji Mokbul’s ears we don’t know, but it went from our neighborhood, that we know.
The threatening calls came frequently since then. According to Jummon, they would just call and say, “Where is the money?” Selim would say, “Wrong number.” Someone on the other side would laugh and say, “The number is absolutely right.” One night they said, “Give up the number, otherwise you will meet Anwar.” Hearing this, that old doubt returned to some of us. Was the door actually locked from the inside, or merely closed? And Kashem, who had said that the night before he died, someone else was standing next to Anwar at the railway gate, couldn’t be recognized in the dark. If anyone asked Rustam Miah about that night, he would say, “I haven’t seen anything,” and he would say it in such a way that one wouldn’t want to ask a second time.
In the month of Chaitra, the woman’s calls changed. From this side of the tin fence, we could sense that Selim’s ‘hmms’ were decreasing, the silences were growing longer. Then one night we heard him saying, “Don’t come.” He stopped, and said again, “No, don’t come.” Again silence for a long time, then his voice dropped so low that nothing more could be understood, only at the end it was heard once, “Thursday.”
That Thursday morning Selim didn’t go to work. Jummon had seen him drinking tea at the stall, wearing a cleaner shirt than other days. He had told Jummon, “I will go to Sadarghat.” Jummon had asked, “Delivery?” Selim had said, “No.” He said nothing more. He didn’t take the pink bag, Jummon noticed this, and later through the gap in the window of the room he saw another thing, the phone was lying on the bed. Leaving the phone without which Selim didn’t have half a day’s earnings, the phone for which there was so much trouble, he walked towards Sadarghat, under the Koroi tree, where he had stood on the first day, and he didn’t stop once under the tree.
He didn’t return.
That night and the next night we heard the phone ringing inside the closed room. The ringtone would play on the other side of the tin door, stop, play again, until one or two in the night, and standing in the courtyard some of us heard it, but the door was locked, and none of us had the courage or the right to break the lock. Who called those two nights, the woman, or Haji’s men, or the creditors, we don’t know. On the third day Rustam Miah broke the lock. Everything inside the room was as before, the pink bag on the nail, the row of yellow passbooks at the head of the bed, the accounts in two hands on the wall, and the phone on the bed, by then the charge was gone, it had turned black. Rustam Miah took the phone with him. Whether he later charged the phone and looked, if he looked what he saw, whose numbers, what words, he never told, and seeing his face no one had the courage to ask either.
What happened to Selim, three stories are current in Karimullahbagh about this, and we believe all three, a different one each day. Some say that Thursday evening a dead body was found on the tracks towards Postagola, it couldn’t be identified, there was no phone in the pocket, no papers, and the one who has no phone in his pocket has no name, the body went unclaimed, in the Anjuman vehicle, to which graveyard who knows. Some say he was seen at Sadarghat, on the deck of the Chandpur launch, next to him a person in a green-bordered sari, age couldn’t be guessed, the launch had left. And Kashem, that Kashem of the cigarette shop, he says a white Hiace was standing near the railway gate at eleven that night, who was inside couldn’t be seen, and the vehicle left just before the gate dropped. We heard Kashem’s words only once this time too, then he didn’t say it again.
The matter didn’t go to the police station. Who would take it, there was no one in Karimullahbagh who could be called Selim’s heir, and Karimullahbagh itself is not anyone’s heir. Rustam Miah locked the room again. He didn’t return the yellow passbooks to anyone, they remained inside the room. The following monsoon, when the roads of Jurain were chest-deep in water, and when the drain water entered the house through Rustam Miah’s courtyard, a few days later we saw a couple of yellow covers floating in the mud of the alley, swollen like drums, the writing washed white. Asiya’s mother had picked up a cover from the mud, washed it and put it out to dry on her tin roof, whose book she doesn’t know, no numbers, no signature, yet.
Did the woman ever call again? There was no phone left in Karimullahbagh to answer this question.
Then the months passed. The number lay closed, just as it had lain after Anwar. A night in the month of Magh the following year, Jummon, who was fifteen by then, who could still recite the number from memory, sat alone after closing the stall and dialed the number. Until now, dialing it, a mechanical voice would say connection is not possible. That night it rang. Jummon’s heart had leaped inside his chest, he told us, it’s ringing, twice, three times, then a man answered on the other side, a sleep-drenched annoyed voice, “Who is it?”
Jummon said, “Selim bhai?”
The man said, “Wrong number.”
It disconnected.
Jummon didn’t call again, but he didn’t delete the number from his phone either, it’s saved, without any name, just eleven digits, and somewhere in the city someone now wanders around with those digits in his pocket, eats, sleeps, and doesn’t know.
The number is still written on the bamboo pillar of Mobarak’s stall, Selim had written it with a marker with his own hands, above it is written ‘For delivery’, below the number. The ink is fading in the sun and rain, the first digits can no longer be read, the last three still can, four three zero. When new tenants come to the neighborhood, some ask, “Whose number is this?” We take a sip from the teacup and say, “Nobody’s.”
