The Kite and the Ant – Second Part

 

Bangladesh, February 2020

 

I met Duronto about twenty years after that first time. I actually went looking for him.

One afternoon I found myself running errands not far from Sutrapur and took the opportunity to go for a walk.

Old Dhaka is not just a name but a category of the spirit of this city. Her being old is a perennial condition, like those elderly women whose face is similar to the bark of a tree: it's impossible to give them an age, having now passed the limit of change, which makes them perennially ancient.

This area was like this fifty years ago. It will be like this in fifty years.

Some students came out smoking from the gap that opened onto the decadent and painted building.

I turned the corner to the left side.

Doronto's mother no longer lived there.

Nobody seemed to remember them, until a woman sitting with legs apart on a square stone on the ground, with two very thin brown ankles over the edge of her flowered skirt and her bony feet planted in the earth, called me to her.

“Why are you looking for Duronto? What has he done?”

She asked me while chewing some betel leaves which she passed from one cheek to the other, her teeth were small pointed black stubs.

“Assalamualaykum khala-amma. Nothing. I met him many years ago. He was still a child. I wanted to know what happened to him.” I replied looking around.

“He got married. He works as a doorman in a building in Sukrabad.”

“Well!” I exclaimed, pleasantly surprised. “Do you know the address?”

She twisted her head and looked at me menacingly from below, as some birds do: “Are you sure he didn't do anything wrong?”

“I'm not Special Branch. Do not worry.”

I had a bag of bakarkhani in my hand. Without thinking too much I handed it to her.

She opened it. She looked inside and told me the address.

“Tell him Rokeya says hello!”

The old lady shouted after me.

 

I took an auto-rickshaw and stood watching the traffic.

The driver drove in leaps and bounds, making me swing in the little green cage. A tasbir and a large round metal plaque with the letters of Allah in Arabic dangled above the windshield.

It took more than an hour: as long as a yawn in the congested streets of Dhaka.

I walked for a long time through the streets of Sukrabad; I've come here a couple of times in total. As soon as I could I asked someone.

It was strange how I didn't feel any particular emotion. Then again, I wasn't visiting a teenage crush from college.

In fact, I was starting to think he wouldn't even remember me.

Why then?

We had talked for an hour. He was ten years old, more or less.

In his eyes I will have had the same value as the dogs he threw stones at on the banks of the Buriganga.

I hadn't even offered him cigarettes.

This thought made me smile.

I arrived in front of a modest building that stood three stories tall, with red and gray bricks. The windows had grates.

The door was open.

I looked out.

“Assalamalaykum…? Is anybody there?"

There was a cot with a dark flowered sheet leaning against a wall under the stairwell leading to the first floor.

A little girl was sitting on it drawing on a white sheet of paper with a small television on in front of the short side of the cot.

She looked at me for a moment and went back to drawing.

A woman appeared from an opening in the corner of the cot and raised the orna on her wet hair.

She wore a yellow and green salwar kamiz. She returned my greeting and asked me who I was looking for.

“Excuse me, I'm looking for Duronto. Someone told me that he works here as a doorman.”

She nodded. “Why are you looking for my husband?”

I looked at her surprised, then turned my gaze to the little girl.

“Nothing. I'm an old friend of hers. I was passing by here... I was happy to say hello to him.”

She thought about it for a moment.

“He's on the terrace fixing an antenna. If you want I'll call him. May I know his name, sir?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Do not bother. I'm going.”

I patted the little girl's head.

“What is your name?”

“Rupali.” The little girl replied without taking her eyes off a bird with a huge beak and asymmetrical wings that she was creating.

I climbed the steps to all three floors.

At the end there was a further flight of stairs that disappeared into the edge of the ceiling.

I went out onto the large terrace.

A man from behind was busy with a crooked antenna.

He was wearing a red t-shirt and a gray and amaranth striped lungi.

“Duronto...”

He turned to me, quickly rubbed the hands on his lungi, the gaze down.

“Assalamualaykum, sir. What can I do for you? Why did you come up here? My wife had to come and call me.”

He was already walking towards the stairs but I stopped him.

“No, no. I'm the one who told her to leave it. I wanted to go up; in fact, sorry if I interrupted you.”

He stopped and looked at me as if trying to find any hint of familiarity in my face. I also did the same: but all that remained of the boy with the kite was the black tuft of hair covering his eyebrows.

I took out the pack of cigarettes and handed it to him. He took a cigarette; me too and I turned them both on.

 

“You definitely won't remember me.”

I said puffing the smoke out of my lips.

He looked at me again and seemed resigned.

“No. I am sorry.”

I went towards the edge of the terrace, he followed me and both of us, with our elbows pointed on the smooth surface, stared at the profiles of the buildings.

“Normal. It was many years ago. You were a child.”

“I don't understand…” Duronto said, with a nervous glance at the antenna behind him.

“I won't take up much of your time. I just wanted to say hello. We met more than twenty years ago. I entered the square in front of the student dormitory. You were playing with a kite. You asked me for a cigarette, then we went to the football field and to the banks of the Buriganga.”

I watched him out of the corner of my eye.

He inhaled smoke and stared at the sky.

“The crazy old man died a few years later. Heart attack. In our opinion he died singing.” He said smiling.

“So do you remember?”

“Well, many years have passed. I still remember something. How did you find me?”

“I happened to be in that area by chance and asked for you. Only one old lady knew you. In fact, she says hello to you. Rokeya.”

“Another crazy woman!” He sighed.

“In your opinion they were all crazy anyway.”

He laughed, nodding.

“I haven't seen your mother.”

“My father fell ill and they returned to Bhairab.”

“And you got married. Your daughter Rupali is very cute.”

“Yes, for four years. Thank you.”

It felt like I had to take the words out of his mouth.

After all, as we grow up, we retain the traits we had when we were children: they disguise themselves, but they remain, if we know how to glimpse them.

“Okay, sorry if I disturbed you in your work. I go now...”

The man didn't turn around. He looked at the clouds the same color as the asphalt below us.

“In the end my family is the best thing I have had in life. And I did it! With my hands. I never thought I would do something good...”

I returned with my elbows to the terrace, to his left.

“Well, not just you. I think each of us is not able to predict what good or bad he will do when he is still a child.”

He nodded.

“I don't know about others, I speak for myself. You saw where I grew up. I toiled every day, without accomplishing anything. In the end, it may seem stupid, but when I watched that kite go up in the air I felt good. Only that made me feel good. I never heard from any of the children I played with again. I won't even go back to that place anymore. I fix antennas, hang out the clothes, sort the mail, run some errands for the tenants. I solve any problem in the houses and, sometimes, they hand me a banknote. I'm a plumber, electrician, postman, sometimes even a psychologist! Hahaha... Not bad for a little thug, right?”

He said to me smiling with his lips reddened by betel.

“Yeah, not bad.” I replied without understanding what emotions were going through me.

“It's so strange. I never knew anything about the people of that time but you came looking for me and we only saw each other for one morning.”

He almost made me blush.

In fact, I couldn't even explain to myself the reason for all this.

To be ruthlessly honest, I specifically went to Khalangar to look for Duronto. But now that he is next to me I can't interpret what I feel or think.

It's not disappointment, it's not excitement, it's not happiness.

It's like a slight melancholy.

But I absolutely don't know why.

“Do you still have the kite?”

I decided that this had to be the last question. That's all.

He smiled at me and turned towards the antennas.

“Yes. Another madness. Maybe I should throw it away.”

“Maybe your daughter will play with it.”

“But it's going! It's all full of holes! It wouldn't fly even if the monsoon wind blew behind it! ”

 

We had reached the first step of the stairs when Duronto suddenly hugged me tightly with two pats on the back.

I looked at him surprised.

He smiled at me.

“Thank you for stopping by. It's nice to know that there is someone who cares about me in this anthill.”

I could only smile.

“I accompany you.” He told me leading the way up the stairs.

On the door there were plates with the usual surnames of Dhaka: it seemed that a single family of millions of relatives lived in this city.

When we reached the ground floor Rupali stopped drawing and looked at us.

Duronto walked toward her, bent down, and picked her up in one fluid motion like a bear catching a salmon.

“Say hello to chachu*!”

The little girl raised her hand and waved it with eyes as big as dates.

I walked through the door.

In the doorway was Duronto with the daughter in his arms and his wife at his side with her black hair veiled by the orna.

“Come visit us again when you pass by.”

He told me. I nodded.

Even though I lived on the opposite side of Dhaka and it wasn't at all easy to end up in that area.

I walked down the street that led to the main road.

I realized that I knew his name but had never told him mine.

Once I emerged onto the road I was awakened by the commotion of traffic.

It was truly an anthill, where each person bumped and brushed against each other without caring about the other.

Seen from above we were not so different from those holes in the ground where hundreds of ants follow their lines ready to resume their course when an obstacle gets in their way.

A form of survival that becomes daily practice – we don't even notice it anymore. Men are the beings with the deepest capacity for adaptation, and we in Dhaka are the best example of this.

In the end, being called “uncle” was worth all the effort I had put in to find Duronto.

I could have put a full stop on it.

 

Sutrapur, Old Dhaka, Bangladesh, February 2020

Instead, it happened that many years later, when I was an old man unable to walk without my cane, I returned to those streets.

Like a magnet my feet took me towards that building.

Maybe it was the suggestion but I was sure that my bad heart was beating faster.

I looked out the door.

The cot and the television were still there.

“Is anybody there?”

I went towards the gap that opened at the foot of the cot where Rupali once drew.

A lady from behind was busy cutting vegetables sitting on the boti.

As soon as she noticed me she almost screamed.

“Sorry, sir, I didn't hear you come in!”

She stood up and wiped her hands on dress.

Her face was still the same, but the skin on her cheeks was tighter and her lips redder. A few white hairs shone on the head.

“Sorry if I scared you. I don't know if you remember me. I came years ago to look for your husband. I went to the terrace...”

She looked at me intensely as if composing a mental drawing that had faded over time.

She shook her head with regret in her eyes.

“It's okay...” I told her, tilting my face with a smile.

“Isn't your husband here? Still on the terrace?” I joked with a smile.

She didn't smile back.

“No. My husband died two years ago. A heart attack.”

My blood ran cold.

Damn heart and damn this city that takes us all like this: with tumors and heart attacks. Fatigue kills more than old age.

I was petrified.

“I'm very sorry... Rupali?”

The woman smiled slightly which revealed her teeth completely corroded by betel.

“She's in school.”

“Well.”

A good news.

Suddenly my visit was emptied of all meaning. Furthermore, I decided to stop at that first bitter sensation because I feared that the emptiness was not limited to the moment I was experiencing.

I felt like a dead weight on an existence that didn't belong to me.

Before leaving, my eye fell on a shelf full of pots and pans from which a corner of white paper peeked out.

I asked the woman what it was. She turned to look at it and shook her head as if she didn't know it existed.

She went to take it down: it was the kite.

Duronto had told the truth, he still held it.

“I can see it?” I asked.

She handed it to me.

“Your husband was playing with this when I first met him – he was a boy.”

The woman nodded without particular interest.

“Maybe Rupali still plays it…”

She shook her head again: “She's grown up now. Then it's all full of holes. In fact, it's better to throw it away.”

“Please, can I keep it?”

She nodded again.

She certainly had more important memories of her husband.

I thanked and said goodbye as I left her.

 

An old man with a stick and a punctured kite.

So it was that, as soon as I reached the main road, I took an auto-rickshaw and gave an address: Sutrapur.

It took an hour and a half to arrive.

Who knows what the driver must have thought when he looked at this old man with his stick and a broken kite in his hand.

Perhaps what little Duronto thought of all humanity.

I walked slowly through the streets of the market.

Everything was unchanged. As if time never passed through those streets.

The old dormitory was also still standing. Even the trash on the sides of the walls looked the same.

I stopped in the same spot as when I observed Duronto fighting with the kite. A lifetime ago.

Suddenly I heard footsteps behind me.

I turned myself. A little boy in a shirt and shorts stared at me with disheveled hair.

“Grandpa, do you have a cigarette?”

“No.” I replied to him.

He made an annoyed face and looked at the kite.

“Then give me the kite!”

He said in a firm voice.

I put it in front of him to show it.

“It's useless. What are you doing? It's all full of holes. It will never fly...”

With a sudden move he snatched it from my hands.

“And where does it have to go!”

He said with a leap and a mocking smile, running away along the street where Duronto's family lived.

He disappeared around the time-worn corner of the dormitory.

I remained for an indefinite time staring at that empty corner.

“And yes... Where should it go...”

I grabbed the knob of the stick well and became an ant among ants again.

 

This story never existed.

Or maybe it begins and ends every day. Acrid like the exhaust of a bus, ocher like the earth, shrill like the voice of a crazy old man singing and light like a kite.

 

 

*Chachu, uncle.

Italian version