Fiction
The immigrant
The cold winter night hears the screams of a woman trying to bear the pain of childbirth. She writhes on a hospital bed in West London, her perspiration soaking the white sheet on the bed. Slowly the pain numbs her and the dreary blue walls of the hospital go out of focus.
After nineteen hours of agonizing pain, the frail body of a middle aged Sylheti woman gives birth to its third child in a faraway land, a land whose customs, language and mannerisms are alien to her even after the nine years she has spent in it. Looking at her baby daughter, she wonders how different her offspring's life is going to be from the one she herself has led. And that thought did not sadden her at all. As the daughter of a conservative, 'khandani' Sylheti family she herself had led a mundane, uninteresting life.
It is believed by many that one's personality, one's ambition, determine the quality of life one will lead. But Rukhsana Begum (for that is the name her outdated, backward parents had given her) felt differently. She believed personality was determined by the quality of life one was provided with. That theory she used as an excuse for her own persona, which a lot of westerners would describe as unadventurous. Some might even go so far as to describe her as utterly dull.
Rukhsana looked down at the tiny creature lying in her arms and decided that her life had to be different. She made a mental note to ascertain that her daughter would never be referred to as a foreigner in this land.
She began with the name. She wanted a name that would sound very English. She thought of the limited number of foreign names she knew. As it was, she mostly stayed home, and had never socialized with anyone who wasn't Sylheti or at least Bengali. Her husband would simply not approve. He said it wasn't appropriate for 'decent, Muslim women' to mingle with kafirs. She did not really mind it much, even if she was allowed to. It wasn't as if she could have communicated with them. The little English that she knew might have impressed the women back home. However, here, in reality, it was barely enough to get the grocery shopping done (at a store on the next block that was owned and run by a second generation Sylhetis).
She thought of names that she had heard of in her kindergarten years --- Jill, Mary, Twinkle, Rebecca. After a lot of thinking she decided Jessica sounded the 'smartest' and the most 'English'.
But her husband wouldn't hear of it. He wanted his daughter to be well grounded; he did not want her to lose her roots. Besides, he said, Jessica was a kafir's name. 'Proper Muslim girls' always had names derived from the Quran. Rukhsana gave in. It wasn't appropriate for 'proper Muslim girls' to argue with their husbands. Her mother had always said, "Zamair fayor tole oilo bou or behest" (translated it meant: A woman's heaven lies at her husband's feet)
They (read 'he') ended up naming the baby Nazma Begum, after his late mother. He said it was a fitting name for a modern Muslim woman who was to grow up in London.
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