Libre Magazine

Furnace smoke, dirty clothes and a stinking breath littered with the smell of cheap cigarettes was all her days were filled with.

“God damn your soul, you little useless woman, whatever you cook tastes like meal from hell” it was a trademark compliment she would often get from her husband who couldn’t tell the difference between the taste of his rotten cigarette and the meal she cooked for him. In the beginning she tried to cook better, but later she only added more silence to her response.

He worked as a mason in the city of Dhaka along with thousands of other construction laborers; while she took care of the house. That’s how she knew her life now. He always thought she didn’t have much to do, what she did wasn’t hard work. “I lift bricks all day long and all you have to do is to cook a decent meal and God dammit you can’t even do that”, she would quite often sarcastically lip-sync his ever so repeated taunts.

When she was young, she loved wearing fragrances of all kinds. There were times when she couldn’t afford to buy even a cheap perfume worth only a few Takkas, but then there were flowers that she would pluck and settle them into her thick dark locks. In some peculiar way it made her feel good about herself.

He only smelled good on the day of their wedding and after that it was all so unbearable. There were times when she thought her brain would suffocate to extinction but it didn’t happen. Ten years and seven child-births later, she had learnt how to live amidst all the unbearably stinking days.

“I am sick and tired of my God dammed work; I can’t pay for all of you. From tomorrow you will have to come and work with me” she knew she would have to treat this order with a silent affirmation.

Before going to bed that night, she had asked her mother to take care of her children while she was away. Lying on her bed, wide awake, a wandering thought of fragrant days visited her again. It had been so many years that she couldn’t even recall the memory of how those stale jasmine flowers smelled. A thick stinking smell of cigarettes coming from her pillow gave her waking company to the other end of the night.

Next morning she joined a couple of dozens more women carrying piles of bricks on their heads moving up and down that haunting skeleton of an under construction skyscraper. Her supervisor briefed her about her work and she was on it.

As she approached that pile of bricks, a warm wave of smell stemming from the wet pile of bricks welcomed her. She suddenly stopped and tried to inhale that thick grainy fragrance coming from a clumsy pile of bricks; this was better. This was much better than the smell coming from piles of dirty clothes and sweaty presence of an abusive man. A smile scrolled onto her face.

She stepped forward, picked up a pile of bricks and rested it on her head. While moving towards the steps, she thought, “and that’s what he considered hard work.”

Her smile kept her a fragrant company all day.

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(Fiction based on the Photo)

Image Source: The News: Islamabad/Rawalpindi Edition. July 25, 2005.