Harsh Kapoor
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Taslima's Pilgrimage by MEREDITH TAX
«on:
11/04/02 at 06:46:09 » |
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The Nation (New York)
November 18, 2002
Review
http://www.thenation.com/doc.mhtml?i=20021118&s=tax
Taslima's Pilgrimage
by MEREDITH TAX
Meyebela, My Bengali Girlhood: A Memoir of Growing Up Female in a Muslim
World
by Taslima Nasrin; Gopa Majumdar, trans.
"A war was about to start. Knots of wide-eyed people gathered in
courtyards, in open fields, on street corners.... Others were
running...clutching bundles under their arms and children on their
shoulders. Running, they were running away from cities to villages.... The
sound of bullets echoed against the restless fluttering of pigeons' wings."
So begins Taslima Nasrin's memoir of her childhood. It is 1971 and
Bangladesh is fighting for its independence from Pakistan. Nine-year-old
Taslima is bundled into a carriage with her mother, grandmother and other
children to hide out with relatives in the countryside. But soon terrified
women refugees appear: The "Punjabis" are coming, and the family must flee
further into the countryside to another relative, then another. Finally a
truck rolls into the village full of young men with rifles, crying, "Joy
Bangla!" Bangladesh is free! The family heads back to their home in
Mymensingh, only to be greeted with fury by Baba, Taslima's father: "Why did
you return? The war is not over!" But it is too late to go back that night,
and then the soldiers come.
Chhotku, as always, was fast asleep.... It was a good thing, for on that
fateful night had he awakened and cried they would have shot not only him
but also Yasmin and me, who were sleeping in the same bed. Not that I was
asleep. I was simply pretending to be asleep, traveling the land of dreams,
playing with fairies, swinging on a high swing, no longer a part of this
world. Pretending that I did not know that men wearing heavy boots had
entered the room and were walking about, a rifle dangling from every
shoulder.... little girl, never mind what those heavy boots do in your room.
You must continue to sleep. Make sure your eyelids do not flutter, your
limbs do not move, your fingers remain still. Your heart must not
tremble--if it does, hide that tremor from these men when they lift the
mosquito net and look at you, lust and desire pouring from their eyes,
flames shooting out of their mouths as they speak in a language you cannot
understand. Keep absolutely still when they flash a light on your face, your
chest, your thighs. They must see that you are not yet fully grown, you are
not even an adolescent, your breasts have not yet appeared!
Thus we are plunged into the drama of a large extended family living in
close quarters, seen through the candid eyes of a little girl whose memory
records everything, even if she can't make sense of it at the time. There is
no adult consciousness in Meyebela; the voice is that of the child Taslima,
and while we see what she sees, we know that her fears and imagination may
be coloring events. Sometimes this is clear, as above, sometimes not. Since
her household is in a constant state of turmoil, Taslima finds it hard to
get her bearings, and the reader has the same problem: The narrative voice
and time frame seem to tremble from time to time, like a lantern flickering
in a room where a child is being beaten--for it soon becomes clear that
soldiers will not be the main source of violence in this story. We see it
all, every beating and injustice, every thwarted love and forced marriage,
every hysterical fit and religious excess, in a household so dysfunctional
no soap opera could do it justice, a household that is like a funhouse
mirror, reflecting the features of society in a way that emphasizes the
distortions: religious repression, female illiteracy, cruelty toward
servants and the sexual abuse that descends without warning upon children,
so that home is no refuge but a place of fear, and the ground is constantly
shifting under their feet. And thus we begin to understand the anger that
drives the author.
I kept thinking, as I read the first few chapters of Meyebela, what does
this book remind me of? Then I realized: In reading Maxim Gorky's My
Childhood, or watching the movie version by Mark Donskoi, one experiences
the same violence, the same illiteracy and emotional underdevelopment, the
same brutality toward children, the same lack of solid ground under one's
feet so that, because of the capricious actions of unreliable adults, a
child can lose everything in a moment. I believe that like Gorky's memoirs,
Meyebela will become a classic and a school text in many countries. This
will enable discussion of important issues, because Nasrin's memoir is about
the dark things that happen in families in every part of the world, like
other disturbing texts now taught in US schools: The Bluest Eye, Oranges Are
Not the Only Fruit, Bastard Out of Carolina. But, because it is such a
powerful child's-eye presentation of a particular, rural Bangladeshi
variation of Islam, Meyebela will be problematic as an educational tool in
the United States today, where people are constantly being told that Muslims
are evil. In a society that knows little about any variety of Islam, the
dark picture painted by Nasrin may be universalized, and welcomed all too
eagerly.
(The full text of this write-up could be accessed at the site mentioned above.)
Bye
Cheers
Harsh Kapoor |
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e-pula
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Re: Taslima's Pilgrimage by MEREDITH TAX
«on:
11/04/02 at 20:54:39 » |
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Jato shob namunar topic...bore korar kita manush pairai nani...tumi usenet o giya eai shob borig topic post koriyo...tumar attitude dekhle mono hoy,june masho monkey cap poriya baranda t boi thako....
Silchar related topic deo teo janatay khaibo...naile juta peta khaite der hoito naay |
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