Fiction
Ghost in the dream
I was sitting bolt upright on the mattress, barely registering my own voice mumbling, but becoming increasingly aware of the fellow next to me yelling out in pain:
"What are you doing? Let go of my hair."
By the end of his howling, and probably because of it, I came out of my daze, and became aware of my surroundings. I watched in stupefaction at both my hands still strongly clutching his rather longish black hair, then quickly letting go, and heard the third member of our group shouting at me:
"Are you out of your mind? Have you seen a ghost?"
I thought I had, in my dreams, but let me begin the story at the beginning.
Three of us were visiting and staying for a few days with a close relative of one of the group. We were lodged in the top floor of the compact two-story building in the suburb of a northern Bangladesh district. Our prime objective was to take in some historical sites, explore a couple of tales of the supernatural, and generally have a good relaxing few days away from the glitzy mega-slum called Dhaka city. That night, after an exhausting day of sightseeing and an evening lasting almost till midnight talking about historical and old sites we had visited, and spinning yarns about the supernatural, including a few set in and around the locality, we decided to turn in for the night. Another long day awaited us the next morning. I think we all went to sleep almost as soon as we hit the comfortable spacious mattress placed on the floor.
And then dream engulfed me. Or, rather, the face hove into view. Even then, I could not recall most of the details about the dream. But, to this day, I can clearly remember every detail of the face. At some point during the dream, the face appeared. Why, and in what context, I cannot recall, but it was a face that I could not envision would materialize in my dream in a district in northern Bangladesh. It was that of a white man. I pride myself on having a pretty sharp recall memory, and in my long years of living abroad in the United States and Great Britain, do not recall ever having seen anyone matching that of the face of the man in my dream. Or even during my short visits to a number of other countries. Unless, unknowingly, the man with the face had left its imprint on my brain by way of my peripheral vision. Oh, I have never seen any picture of that face in any of the books, magazines, newspapers and journals I have gone through, or in any movie, TV show or the internet. And they have been considerable.
The face was that of a young man, in his early twenties, and, in retrospect, I first thought it to have been that of a German. It appeared so proverbially Teutonic. For some reason I thought it was that of a German prisoner of war who had been captured by the British and brought to India during World War II. He might have been incarcerated somewhere in the area I was in, had died, and now his apparition had hove into my dream. The prisoner image was solidified because the figure of the man was manifested up to just below his shoulder blades, and taking in the entire upper part of his bare chest. He had no clothes covering his upper body, reinforcing my belief that he was a prisoner on labour duty in or around the prison where he was being held. Straight blonde hair, cut neatly around the temples, framed a square face with high cheekbones accentuating two sharp lines coming down the middle of the cheeks and tapering off into the lower jawbones. The face was clean shaven. Blonde eyebrows arched over what appeared to be blue eyes that looked straight at me with an absolutely blank expression.
That is when I must have sensed some evil in my proximity. Don't ask me why, because I cannot give you any satisfactory answer. It was just a feeling. The man was just looking at me without attempting to cause me any harm. Maybe it was just those deadpan eyes staring at me, but I clearly recall mouthing choice invectives at him, and then stretching out my hands to grab his throat and choke him to death. Until I discovered myself sitting upright on the mattress with my hands firmly gripping my friend's longish hair, and he screaming for me to let go. And the other friend questioning my sanity and asking if I had seen a ghost. I had, in my dreams, but a dose of eerie occurrence soon afterwards placed an exclamation point on the night's proceedings. No sooner than I had woken up completely and checked my watch to find out that it was a few minutes after two, than an insistent loud banging on the door of the room began. I must admit that I was just a bit scared. Instinctively, almost in unison, three voices yelled out, "Who's there?" The persistent knocking stopped, did not reappear, and, without saying another word, we all flopped back on our pillows, each lost in thought, until we drifted off to sleep, and woke up next morning to talk about last night's event at breakfast.
It was amazing how daylight banished last night's entire terrifying ordeal from our minds, and we engaged in an animated conversation that was joined in by my friend's aging mother and her elder brother. After hearing our story, the two elderly persons disclosed that they had never heard of any German prisoner incarcerated in that part of Bangladesh, but there were many English missionaries who had arrived there in the early twentieth century to propagate the Protestant faith. They had succeeded in converting a number of lower caste Hindus, but, in general, did not make much headway in their quest. They had heard that most of them were young and full of missionary zeal. Many had died there, and were buried in Christian cemeteries.
Acting on a hunch, I asked if there existed any photographs of these missionaries. I drew a blank from my friends who really were not interested in old photographs. The local fellow could not even say if such things existed in the district or mission records. And neither could his elderly relatives. They were born in the late 1920s, and had occasionally run into some of the missionaries going about their business. But they were very young, and by the time World War II had come around, a few of the missionaries had died, while their parents had taken the two to their village home for the entire duration of the global conflict. By the time they had come back to town, the British raj was about to pack up from India for good, and they could not be bothered to look for the missionaries. They had other things to think about and do, including my friend's mother getting married and giving birth to his eldest sister. In any case, they did not even accidentally run into any preacher.
I asked my friend if he knew the cemetery's location. He did, and yes, he could take me there. If I wanted to, he could take me to the district records office, too. Of course, I would not pass up on that opportunity. We still had three more days of vacation time left, and could squeeze in a visit to the records office and cemetery on one of them. Acting on the belief that I would get more work done at the records office before noon, I went there at around 11, and looked at the documents for a couple of hours. I was particularly interested in looking at old photographs taken during the British period, if any such things existed in the first place. I was disappointed. There were a lot of British names, but they meant nothing to me. I could find no photograph of any missionary.
I was a bit crestfallen, believing that I had been cheated of finding a link to the face in my dream due to the absence of old pictures. Maybe I would not have found any connection, but I could have had the satisfaction of having eliminated that possibility. I cheered up when my friend suggested that we go take a look at the cemetery. I was both elated and disappointed when I saw it. Buoyant because it appeared to be really old, discouraged because of its rundown condition. In fact, unless you know of its exact location, the chances are that you could easily miss it. It is located by the side of a narrow byway over which two rickshaws could just about cross each other. It stands between two small buildings, sad, forlorn, and unkempt. No wall or gate keeps anyone out, and the place is run over by thick uncut grass, weeds, and shrubs.
We entered the small final resting place for some. While my rather disinterested friend stood to one side, busy with his smart phone, I began exploring. There were only about fifteen graves, as far as I could tell from a count of the few headstones and brick-and-mortar covered graves that were discernible. They were decrepit, at the mercy of years and years of rain, sunshine, and total neglect. None of the headstones had any name, or, at least, any that could be deciphered, except one, the largest in the compound. This was obviously also the last to occupy the small piece of land, and it recorded the name of what could be discerned from it, a Bengali Christian, probably converted by the missionaries. He was born in 1913, and departed this world in 1972. One grave was so old that only a very old iron cross marked the final resting place of a departed soul. No records existed about the other occupants, and none in the vicinity could enlighten me. They probably thought me odd to be even asking about such things. So, another failed attempt at finding a clue to the face. But I was told by the locals that the cemetery contained the bodies of white men. They just did not know whose. I returned to Dhaka the following day. The face did not invade my dreams again; nor did he manifest as an apparition. I guess he was just that --- a dream.
Shahid Alam is an educationist, actor and former diplomat
For all latest news, follow The Daily Star's Google News channel.
Comments