তেহরির স্কোয়ার থেকে শাহবাগ

@অর্ফিউস ভাই, আপনি নিজের নাম রাখলেন আর কি! এতো লম্বা গান? আপনার লেখার ধৈর্য আছে!

যাহোক নিচে আকাশ ভাইকে যা বলেছি দেখেন। যাই করবেন শান্তিপূর্ণভাবে করবেন। কারন? আমাদের মনে রাখতে হবে আমাদের আন্তর্জাতিক সম্পর্কগুলোর কথা। আমাদের মনে রাখতে হবে আমাদের দেশের ভবিষ্যতের কথা। আর অনেক দিন পরে আমরা একদল অসাধারণ মানুষ (আপনার মতো নতুনদের) পেয়েছি, যারা দেশ নিয়ে ভাবছে। কাজেই তাদেরকে খুনোখুনির মধ্যে ঠেলে দিয়ে লাভ নেই।

জানি আপনার মতো আরো (আমার ও!) অনেকেরই রক্ত টগবগ করে ফুটছে রাজাকারদের ফাঁসির জন্য। কিন্তু মেজাজ ঠান্ডা রাখতে হবে ভাই আমার, মেজাজ ঠান্ডা রাখতে হবে। ধরে নিচ্ছি আপনার বয়স ২০/২২ মতো। আপনার মতো বয়সে আমিও আপনার মতোই চিন্তা করতাম। বেশ আগে, রাজাকারদের কি করার দরকার ছিলো তা নিয়ে আমি একটি গল্প লিখেছিলাম, যেখানে আমার গল্পের একজন রাজাকারদের একজনের জ্যান্ত চামড়া ছিলেছিলো। এখনও মনে করি তা-ই দরকার। কিন্তু তাতে দেশের লাভ হবে না। ভাই, আপনি-আমি আজ আছি কাল নেই। কিন্তু দেশটাকে তো টিকে থাকতে হবে। যাহোক আমার সেই গল্পটা নিচে দিয়ে দিলাম। ইংরেজিতে লেখা, তাও আবার প্রায় এক দশক আগের। অনেক ভুল-ভাল আছে আর কি!বাঙলা করে দিতে পারলে ভালো হতো। দেখি পরে এক সময় করে দেবো।

ধন্যবাদ।

The Skinning of a Razakar

1.
A few days after the liberation of Bangladesh, freedom fighters caught “Rajakar (traitor) Hasan”. Hasan came home to see his newborn son. It was late, and the baby and the mother went to sleep early in the evening. His wife, Sabina, knew he will be coming home to see them, but didn’t know how late in the night. She had a kerosene lamp out on the verandah like every other day, since she was always afraid of the water snakes getting in the hut. At 19, she looked 30 at least, a round face, with dark circles around here eyes, and those eyes, those eyes were still, not moving much, almost as if she was seeing a life different from this one, far from anywhere near. When Hasan entered the room, she woke up immediately. “Why do you look so pale? It is just about a month…” she asked. “I am fine, it is just that I had to see everywhere with 10 different eyes before I could take each step,” he said. She said, “You are so thin,” touching his face, “your face is so tall and thin, and your eyes are so inside. Are you not eating anything?” By that time Hasan already started to un-wrap the clothes of the baby boy, Jamal, to see him in full light of the lamp. He said, “He has your thick lips, and tiny nose, maybe the forehead is like mine. He is so small!” She laughed and said, “Only two weeks old. But he is getting bigger fast.” He looked into her eyes and said, “How are you? How are you handling all this?” She started to cry and said, “Jamal cannot live here, people will never accept him.” He said, “I know. As soon as I get the money, I will take you both away from here.” While they talked the baby woke up and started to cry, almost screaming. Sabina looked at Hasan and said, “Turn off the lamp, quickly, turn it off.” In the dark, they tried to stop the baby from crying, but nothing worked. Jamal screamed even louder.
One of their neighbors, Kabir, woke up hearing the baby crying, and the first thought that came in his mind was that Hasan was home. He said to his wife next to him, “Hasan is home.” She asked, “Why are you breathing so hard?” He was surprised and said, “Do you not think? We can catch this shit now. I am going to get everybody.” She begged him, “You don’t need to get involved, if Allah wants he will get his punishment in due time.” He whispered, “Don’t light any lamp, don’t wake the children, I am going, even Allah needs to hear from people so he knows what to do.” And then he left like a cat, careful not even to touch a leaf. In silence he melted into the dark of the night. He didn’t even bother to verify whether his assumption was right, he went straight to report to Azad. By this time, Azad was a hero, but was a quiet man, staying mostly in his house, seldom seen elsewhere in the village. At that time, Azad went out once in more than three weeks, and that was to tell everyone that he will not be involved in any local politics, and he didn’t think that he was a hero, he did what the war required of him, and nothing more.
While knocking on Azad’s door, Kabir said, “Azad, you home? Azad, ay Azad, you home?”
Azad just went to sleep from his late night readings, and he was startled by the knock on the door and threw his right hand up, which hit the head of the bed hard, so in scream he said, “Who is it? What do you want?”
“This is Kabir, come out, I need to tell you something, something very serious and urgent.”
Azad took his time, and as he opened the door, he asked him to come in.
“What do you want to talk about?”
Kabir was still breathing hard, even more than before, and said, “Hasan is home.”
“Hasan! You sure?”
“Yes.”
“Did you see him?”
“No, but he is home.”
“How do you know?”
“His boy never cries at night, today he is crying like he is dying.”
“So?”
“He is home. Listen, I didn’t have time to go and see him. But if you want to catch him this is your chance. I didn’t want to go myself with no weapons and all that; fearing he might see me and then go away or shoot me.”
“Go home; I don’t want your name to be out there. No one should know you reported him.”
Azad took off immediately, barely put on his pant and a thin towel around his neck. It didn’t take him long to get his boys. Who could be against catching a Rajakar, a Rajakar like Hasan? Hasan was at the top of the food-chain, eating the freedom fighters one after another during the war. Within half an hour, they surrounded Hasan’s house. Two people even climbed the palm tree with guns, in case Hasan tried to run away. Hasan had no chance, against 15 people with guns.
Azad called out, “Hasan, we know you are there. Please come out, otherwise we will be forced to shoot?”
He didn’t get any response, so he said again, “If we are forced to shoot, then others might get hurt. We have nothing against the others.”
Hasan knew he could not get away. He said, standing next to the door, trying to hear and see things through the tiny crack, intermittently looking at his wife in the dark, “I will come out only if you allow me to go with you.”
“I promise, look at my hands, I have no guns, and you should also know I will hand you over to the Police. We will not do what you have done to your fellow country people. Look at my hands, no guns, but I will be forced to pick up a gun, if you don’t cooperate.”
His wife hugged him and cried, in whisper he was begging her to keep quiet, and screamed to Azad, “Why should I believe you?”
“You cannot. And I will also not keep arguing with you. That’s not what I will do. If you know the kind of man I am, you will come out in less than one minute, or you will be taken by force. Your choice Hasan, you choice!”
Pushing his wife away, Hasan came out of his room, hands up, and said, “Look, I have no guns either; you cannot shoot an unarmed man. And do not harm my family.” Without looking back, he said to wife, “Take care of Jamal, never let him know who I was and what I did, if I don’t come back.” Sabina screamed from the house, “It is not only him, why don’t you get the big fish Azad, why not your brother, he helped the Pakistanis too.”
Azad said to Hasan, “You can trust me.”
Hasan said, “Yes, I made a mistake; I was forced by the Pakistani army, those bastards.”
“You will not be killed, as I said, I will take you to the police station.”
Hasan came right in front of Azad and said, “I know your hands are clean, but your thugs’ are not.”
Azad tied Hasan’s hands behind his back around his waist, and then asked one of his boys to take him to his house. He said, “We will take him to the station in the morning, and make sure no one knows about it until them, otherwise there will be a big crowed.” To Hasan he said, “You should say things very carefully now Hasan, very carefully, and only the truth.”
Then Kashem stepped in front of Azad and said, “You have done enough. It is time for you to sit back and relax, and let us do what we want to do with him.”
Azad put his hand on Kashem’s broad soldier and said, “I gave him my words; you cannot do what you want. That’s not the way.”
Kashem bursting in anger calmed his voice said, “This animal should not live.”
“What he is or is not is not for you to decide, and we are not in a war now, he surrendered peacefully. He will face the justice.”
“Only the sufferers could deliver the true justice. What could all those courts and judges do, they have no idea how it feels like to lose a friend or a brother.”
“I lost my family too in the war Kashem.”
“I don’t know how you do it? I don’t understand. How can you not kill him right now?”
“It is an opportunity for this country to show that we are the men of laws.”
“It is an opportunity for Nakkhatrapolli (NP) to kill this beast. It is a NP matter; the nation has nothing to do with it. Nation doesn’t know what happen here.”
Azad approached Kashem, and tried to take Hasan away, but then Bablu, a merely 15 years old boy, hit his head from behind, and he fell on the ground. Azad said, “What are you doing Bablu?” The skinny Bablu didn’t say anything, but looked at Kashem. Azad tried to stand two more times, but two more hits knocked him out, his groaning stopped.
Hasan cried out, “Brothers don’t kill me. I have a wife and a baby.” By this time his wife also came out of the hut, and was screaming, “Oh you cannot kill him. He did everything for food. He had no job, and the army gave him a lot of food. None of you know the hunger the way we know it. You don’t know how it feels not to have anything. Let him go, go kill the Pakistanis if you can.”
Kashem kicked the wife in the stomach, and said, “Bitch go to your home. If you care for your baby, take it and go away from NP. First we will kill all rajakars, then their followers, and then their children.” Sabina was holding her stomach with her one hand, and with another Kashem’s feet, and said, “Let him go. We are innocent.” Kashem squinted his eyes, even in the dark, and said, “Innocent? Then who is the criminal? Did all this just happen without a criminal?” Then he kicked her six more times and said, “Seven is a good number. Remember what I just said. The baby is next.” Sabina couldn’t talk anymore, except moving her hands like a starving person, so weak to breathe even.
Kashem said to Akkas, “Take Azad home, he will be ok in a few hours. And stay there untill he wakes up. Make sure he doesn’t get out of the house when he wakes up.”
Then he said to Badol, Manik and Bodor, “Go tell everyone in the village that we caught Hasan, the beast.”
He said to Pollob, “You go get a strong piece of rope and that big piece of rock that your father has. Meet us in the schoolyard.”
Then he told to everyone, “Listen, this man is not a man, he is an animal, a beast. We have to kill him. But if we kill him, then the fucking law will be on our ass soon, so we must do it together. It is easy for the law to punish one, but when it is many, the many becomes the law. Do you understand? We go up or down together. None of us would ever go against this cause; we have to kill every Rajakar. Are you all with me?”
They all agreed, but Belal asked, “Who is going to shoot him?”
Kashem said, “We are not shooting and wasting bullet on this pig. We are going to skin him alive.”
2.
It was not even a month that the war had ended, horror was not lost from memory, and people’s appetite for blood and savagery was still there. Otherwise why would so many people show up to see the skinning? Was it a time to take blood, after giving it for so long? Even the foggy morning of January couldn’t hold them back in their houses. All they heard was this: “Hasan was caught, and he will be skinned in the schoolyard.” That was more than enough for them to gather around the school house since the dawn. It was a grim and depressing morning, but there was enough excitement (or was it fear?) in their hearts, they were all running toward that one destination with smile and restlessness on their faces. The gravity of the situation probably still didn’t set in. But the mass-hysteria was rising!
Hasan was locked in one of the classrooms, where Azad was kept a few months back, when he was taken by the Pakistani army. While Kashem was getting ready to skin Hasan, Azad woke up from his sleep. The first thing he said was, “Did I get shot?”
Akkas, standing away from his bed, said, “No, but you are ok. You have to stay here for a while.” While he said that he was afraid, he thought Azad will snap the rope and twist his neck. He was so afraid that he was looking at Azad not through his glasses, but over it with huge eyes, his face seemed small, and he was swallowing air frequently.
While Azad was sleeping, Akkas tied his hands and legs with the bed. Azad could barely move. Now that he was wake, Akkas put a towel in his mouth to keep him quite, and said, “Please, I beg you, don’t hold anything against me. Kashem is my brother, I have to listen to him; otherwise he will kill me too. You know him. I know you understand!”
Azad said, “This has brought an opportunity for everyone to become their worst.” Akkas didn’t understand any of it.
Kashem brought Hasan out under the mango tree around 8 am. Hasan was a tiny man. During the war he gained a reputation to be a giant through his ruthless savagery, but now everyone could see how messed up and scared and tiny he was. How could a normal-looking man do such things? That was the question most people who didn’t know him before the war asked. Kashem said to everyone, “We will skin him alive, if anyone stays here and sees this, they are with me. And only stay here if your stomach is strong; otherwise leave now, later I will make you see this all the way to the end. This is something you have never seen, and I have never done, but I will do it. Keep the kids here, they need to see this. They need to know what happens when you betray your country. Maybe Allah will send me to hell, but it is not Allah who is living here on earth, it is us, we have to make sure, no one ever dares here to betray their country and people ever again.” With or without him saying, a few fathers wanted their sons to see this; but most people sent their kids away. With no direction at all, people stood there in a circle, as if that is what you do in a skinning event, a circle approximately thirty feet away.
In the meantime, the Mullah from the mosque came by. He had been living in NP for the past several years, originally from Rasulpur. He was no taller than five feet and three inches tall. He had a face of seventeen years old boy, but his eldest son was almost twenty. People in NP area listened to him; he did gain certain authority because of his soft spoken and practical advices over the years. He was afraid to approach Kashem for he was sure that whatever he could say will not be heard. Youth will make the mistake, in every age, in every country, he said to himself. But it is his duty to try. He said to Kashem, “Can I talk to you for a few minutes?”
Kashem, without moving his head, rolled his eyes toward him, and said, “What are you doing here old man? You were a member of the Shanti Committee just a few days ago. You could be next! I know you helped us, but don’t forget your origin, whatever you say, you must say it carefully.”
Mullah said, “Son, you cannot do that. Just shoot him. You cannot become worst than him.”
“I am here not to take lecture from you, but to skin him and make my shoe out of it.”
“You still believe in Allah, don’t you?”
“No, I do not.”
“Then I have nothing to say. You are living in a lawless universe. I cannot stop you from making this mistake. But we still have human laws. We have sympathies. We have love. We have fear.”
Kashem turned around and over Mullah’s head looked at the crowed behind him and said, “It is not a mistake; this is what we should have done to all Pakistani soldiers. We failed, but this is my chance. Allah is much more savage than I am. He knew I will skin him, why did he still give birth to Hasan’s child. Can you imagine the kind of life that boy going to have? Do you understand that? Does your Allah understand that? I do not. ”
The mullah left the schoolyard, and didn’t look back. A few people from the crowed followed him as well; they could take anything, but not blasphemy. But most people still stayed behind to see their expectations realized.
Kashem didn’t cover Hasan’s eyes or block his moth, he wanted him to see and scream, as needed. He wanted everyone to look at his eyes, and hear him screaming. Hasan kept saying, “I am not the only one, don’t kill me, don’t kill me, I am not the only one. Killing me will not bring anything back.” His voice wasn’t loud or even strong, it was more like the voice of a man dying and saying his few last words in a voice that doesn’t belong to him. Then he said, “Just shoot me. Chop my head off. Hang me. But don’t skin me. Kill me, but don’t skin me alive.”
Then he looked straight into Kashem’s eyes and said, “Kashem, remember when we played marbles as kids? You don’t have to forgive this Hasan, but remember that Hasan, your friend. Forgive that Hasan. Don’t skin me, kill me.”
Kashem said nothing.
Again Hasan said, “You cannot do that. You cannot do that. I didn’t skin anyone. I did because of hunger. What are you doing this for? I was never as rich as you. You will never know what it feels like to be poor, very poor.”
Kashem placed the rock under a tree branch, in a shallow hole that he made, and said, “What do you want to eat motherfucker before the skinning begins?”
Hasan Said, gasping, “Don’t kill me. Don’t skin me. Kill me. Don’t kill me.”
“Shit, yes, shit you will eat.” Kashem asked Bulu to bring a bowl of shit. Bulu looked at the crowed behind him, and then went to get it.
Then he asked, “What do you want to drink?”
Hasan said, “Just think what you are doing? You were never like this.”
“Piss, piss it is.” Kashem unzipped and kicked Hasan to fall on the ground, and pissed on his face, and said, “I am holding it since the moment we caught you. Is it warm enough, salty enough, smelly enough for you?” The crowed kept on talking among themselves, but at that moment, an old lady said, “Kashem have you no shame, what gotten into you, have you gone mad. Can anyone not stop him?” Kashem didn’t pay attention to any of that, and the crowed behaved the way it always does, no one knew what to do, thoughts lost in the cacophony.
Bulu brought a bowl of fresh shit, probably his own, it must be, it was fresh, it still steamed. Kashem, picked up a dry branch, and using it put the shit in Hasan’s mouth. “Eat, fucker eat, your last meal. Don’t complain to me, this is what your Allah and your Pakistan wants you to eat. It is written. Eat dog, eat.”
Then Hasan said again, this time looking at the ground, weeping, “Just kill me. Use a bullet, or use that cutter to cut my head off.”
Kashem didn’t pay attention to it, and said, “I want to see every inch of your body. I want to see under your skin. I want to know what you are made off. You fucking beast.”
Then Hasan said, “I am a dog, a beast, an animal, a pig, I am all that and more, whatever you want me to be. Give a simple death, an easy death, don’t skin me. Allah will forgive you.”
Kashem said, “You are a prophet now? Do you think I need your Allah’s forgiveness? Today it is that motherfucker’s time too to see what men could do.”

3.
Then Kashem hanged Hasan from a mango tree branch by tying a rope around his wrist, and his legs were tied to the rock below. He could move a bit, but he couldn’t wobble too far. It is a secure and safe position for skinning, just like the goats during the Bakri Eid slaughtering. Kashem never skinned a goat or a cow, but he had seen it many times during the Bakri Eid, and for some reason he always liked it. He remembered how his mother used to call for him, when the slaughtering and skinning time came during the festival. Suddenly he remembered his mother’s face after all this years, and tears rolled down his chicks, he felt a deep love for his mother, and thought to himself, “How did she know that I will have to prepare to skin the beast of all beasts? How did she know this all those years ago? I will not fail her; I will skin this monster and then chop him into pieces, which I will throw to the dogs.”
“Kill me and then skin me, I beg you. Why don’t you people stop him? What are you waiting for? You cannot let that happen. Can someone else kill me? Just get a machete and chop my head off.”
“No one will touch you. They are here to see the color of your blood. Is it red, or pitch dark?”
“It is red. I beg you Kashem, my brother. You know it is red.”
“I am not your brother. Have you no shame! Have you no self-worth at all!”
“Where is Azad? People listen to me, believe me, he killed Azad and put him in his house.”
“Even now you are lying motherfucker? Even now? What are you bustard? What are you?”
An old man from the crowed said, “Kashem, don’t skin him, let me slit his throat. I am telling you to do the right thing. You will remember it when you are old. Now you are too young with all the power in the world. You have the power so you can help the powerless. You have the power so you can act responsibly. You have the power so you can learn to see the truth. There is no pride in killing him. No pride at all. It is a matter of justice. We cannot say that killing is bad, and then kill someone lawfully, I don’t understand it. I think every killing is bad. I don’t want you to kill him. It is a sin, not in the eyes of God, but in the eyes of humanity. Like you I too don’t believe in Allah, but I know if we fail to act like human, then what could happen, you’ve seen it, just a few days ago. I will kill him. Let me take the sin on my soldier. You are the new generation, you will lead this nation to its greatness, and you are my future, our future, future of this nation. You must not kill him. You are the light for which we fought. We have not fought for this! Mothers, sisters and daughters have been raped all over this country. You must remember that. Not for this. Have courage to look at your sanity and your good judgment. You went to the war, that was a good judgment, but this is not the right thing to do. I am old, but I beg you.” Abbas, the old man, was on his knee, holding Kashem’s hand and begging; but Kashem simply said, “I have to kill this animal. This is the judgment. His killing will show everyone what not do in the future.”
“You are wrong. In Saudi Arabia, they cut people’s hands for stealing. Are people not stealing there anymore? Did it fix the problem once and for all? No, it did not. They cut people’s heads off for killing. Are there no more killing in the world? There is still killing going on. They lock their women in a black dress. Are those women happy? All of them happy? Do you believe that? Punishment doesn’t solve any problem. Education does. Forgiveness does. This is not self-defense anymore, this is murder.”
“This is education, real education, as you say.”
“You are mistaken. The criminal is not learning anything, and the bystanders will not learn anything either. If this new nation does this, then the future of this nation dies here, with your act of today. You are the new Yahya Khan. You are the founder of a new Pakistan. You may not believe it, but that is where this nation will head to with your act here, right now.”
Kashem directed Ayub with his eyes, and Ayub took the old man away. Abbas kept on pushing, but then others joined the mission, and he was taken away.
Kashem fired a bullet in the air, and asked everyone “Is there anyone else, who objects to what I am about to do?”
No one spoke. A lot of people started to leave, mostly people with kids. But Kashem ordered them, raising his voice and hands, to stay, “No one leaves this place. We are all in it together. Everyone needs to watch, old and young and children. They didn’t even let children to live when it was their time to kill us. Have you forgotten it already? The grave of your loved ones are not dry yet. And you have forgotten it already!”
Kashem then went into one of the classrooms, where Atel and Batel, two brothers, who owned a slaughterhouse, were waiting. He asked, “I will do it, you will just have to let me know if I am doing it wrong.”
Batel, the younger brother said, “Are you really going to do it?”
“Yes. You think I am joking?”
“It will be a lot of blood, and he will scream.”
“That is the idea.”
Atel said, looking at the crowed outside, “You better be strong. Remember this; if you start it, then you will have to finish it. You cannot leave it half way.”
Kashem went quite for a few seconds, and then said, “Don’t worry. I will go all the way. I am thinking about a shocking finale to this shocking act.”
Atel asked, “What are you thinking?”
“I don’t have anything yet. But I have to have something.”
“Pull his eyes out?”
“I want him to see his own skinning.”
“Cut his tongue?”
“I am thinking about that, but then he will not be able to speak, he would just make a lot of noise like a mute.”
Then Batel said, “Take his guts out. And let it hang from the inside of his body.”
“Now, that is an idea. That is good! But people have seen cow and goat guts before. Do you think it will have much shock?”
“I think it will, since no one ever seen a human gut like this. Not even Pakistanis did this. They cut heads off, but didn’t spill the guts out while the person was alive. At least not in our area! So I think it will work.”
Atel asked, “Do you have any idea?”
“Yes, I have one.”
“What is it?”
“I cannot tell you now.”
“Why not?”
“Then you will not be shocked anymore.”
Batel asked, “When will you tell us?”
“I will show you.”
Then Kashem came out of the room, and asked Atel and Batel to sit below Hasan’s body, and sharpen their skinning equipments. The brothers didn’t look good. They looked as dead as Hasan. They didn’t look anywhere but to their sharpening act. Kashem said, “Don’t make it too sharp, then he wouldn’t feel anything. Just make it sharp enough for the job.”
Hasan screamed, “Yah Allah, why don’t you kill me? Just kill me, you are all powerful, you can do anything, just take my life. You gave this life without my permission, but I am asking you to take it away now. Don’t be as cruel as men? You cannot be like us? You are good and pure. I believe in you. I am a believer. I beg for your forgiveness. You cannot let an atheist do what he wants. People listen to me, Kashem is an atheist, but he calls me a criminal. I did it for hunger; he is doing it because he hates Allah.”
Kashem hit the side of Hasan’s mouth with the butt of his gun. Hasan’s lips split and started to bleed. Kashem said, “Don’t bleed too much, then you will have nothing left for me.”

4.
Kashem took a small knife, and held it up against the sun, looked at it from many different angels, moved it like he was trying to buy something mysterious. “See this knife, people of NP, this will skin him alive, this came from a slaughterhouse of NP. NP will not forgive her son, who went mad during the war, killed his own brothers. Now it is time to pay back. Other Rajakars that are out there, leave NP immediately and never come back. If you do stay here, you will be skinned as well.”
Using the knife, he made a small cut on Hasan’s butt. He was hanging naked from the branch. He screamed like a man who stepped on a hot burning nail. “You still have time to kill me. Kill me, and then skin me. Cut me into pieces after. Believe me you will have the pleasure even in that. Put my body to fire. Feed it to the dogs. Throw it into the shit, but do not skin me alive. I cannot take it. Give me a quick death, I beg you.”
Kashem said, “Slow you will get, quick never. You fucked all those young girls, remember? You didn’t do it so quick. You took your time, now it is mine. I will do to your body what a patient painter does to a canvas. Remember those freedom fighters that your people caught at the border? Did you give them a quick death? Did you? No, you did not; you made them kill each other, and then put hot coals in the ass of the last one living. Remember that?”
“Not me. It was the army.”
“It is the same, it was you. Your job was to help your people. And you failed”
“But it was the same country at that time. Why them and us? We were all the same. I was fighting for a country that gave me a job. It was a civil war. I happen to be on the other side.”
“We are Bengalis. They were Vindeshi, aliens from somewhere else. Pakistanis had no to rule us just because we share the same religion.”
“I was hungry. You were never hungry like me.”
“I am trying to do something that will never make you hungry again. Isn’t that great?”
Then he took the knife, and slowly cut Hasan’s skin from where the neck touches the shoulder. He made an inch long cut, and blood poured out. A line of blood went down his spine and then down to his feet, and dripped on the mud. Hasan kept screaming at the top of his lungs, and the bystanders moved away a little bit, but they didn’t leave. Then while Hasan cried and begged, Kashem cut his skin very slowly, he exposed his back like the fresh cow meat in the market. Blood was all over Kashem’s face, hand, and body. It was unbearable to hear Hasan’s scream. One young girl collapsed, and a few people run away, not afraid of Kashems threat any longer. The crowed was thinning fast, but still many stayed.
There was one man who collected a bamboo stick from the schoolyard, and came up to Hasan’s body, and hit his head hard, and said, “You motherfucker, why do you scream now, why do you beg for mercy?” Kashem stopped him, and said, “What are you doing? You think I don’t know. Do not give him a clean death, do not. We cannot do that. So many had died. It is just one. One day, they will deny all this, if we do not stick together. Hitler killed so many people, but there are people in the world who denies it today. These people should never be forgiven. We are here to create examples, so the history cannot deny it.”
“Let me kill him. Then we will skin him together,” the man said. Kashem disagreed, pushed the man away. By this time, Hasan was making loud noises, more from the other side of life than this. Kashem kept skinning him, much faster now. Still it took him another hour. The whole body was exposed. Blood still dripping, but Hasan was still breathing a little. Kashem took a stick and poked his eyes, and said, “Wake up rat, wake up. You cannot die, death cannot be that easy. And it should be extra hard for a shit like you. Wake up. Still pretending? You can escape a many things, but not me.”
Hasan’s whole body skin was now hanging from his penis-base; only this part is remaining to be skinned. There were people in the audience crying. Many more fainted, and taken away by the others. The same old lady from the crowed said, “Kashem, baba, forgive him. Let him die. Just shoot him. We cannot see it anymore.” Kashem said to her, “Why did you stay to see it then?”
The old lady said, “You have become a monster.”
Someone else said, “He only helped to kill during the war, but you are a killer in the peacetime.”
Another young girl said, “This cannot be the law.”
Kashem asked, “Why not? Koran says take life for life.”
A young man said, “Who cares about Koran, we are talking about what you are doing here. Stop it.”
Another young man said, “You will be arrested for this.”
Someone else said, “You should go into hiding.”
In a roar, Kashem said, “This is my country. I made it free.”
The same man said, “Yes, you did, but you are raping her now.”
Kashem turned around and said, “Now I will show you what you have never expected. I cannot end it just like that. You want to see what else I can do? A play such as this must end with bang. Don’t you agree?”
He took a stick and shoved it into Hasan’s ass, and then twisted it hard. “How does it feel animal, how does it feel?” By now Hasan is gone, he didn’t make any noise.
Then Kashem cut off the skin and threw it in the ground. It looked like a red tattered clothe of a beggar. Then cut his penis with the testicles still attached to it, and shoved it in Hasan’s mouth, and said, “That is for the raping of women you and your brothers carried out.”
Then he said to the crowed, “You see this people, you see this? This is the penis of Hasan the Rajakar in his own mouth. The man we feared the most during the war, the rat. This is the end of him. And I did this, while you all scolded me. Let Pakistan know, that we will do this to them, if they ever try to take us back. There will be no mercy the next time. This is the skinning of Pakistan. This is the penis of Pakistan.”
He said again, “Go call the police, and take the pictures. Let it be published it all newspapers in the country. Let the people of Bangladesh see it. This is what we should have done to all Pakistanis when we had the time. They went away too easy. It is a shame that we let them go like that. The president of Pakistan, I want your skin. I want you to hang like this, and cut every inch of your body a thousand times. I want to skin you a thousand times. Let what I said to be published in the newspapers. We must not forget this. We must never allow The History to deny what Pakistan did to us.”
Hasan’s body hanged there for a week after that. No one dared, not even the police, to cut it off and bury.