The Common and Invisible

Iffat Nawaz
 

It was right outside of Dhaka stadium half and hour before an India/Pakistan cricket game when an eight-year-old girl just losing grip of her father's hand also lost her innocence. The stadium was crowded from inside and out. Even to get to the less crowded spot one would have to travel through a hoard of people, people like you and me…she was lost just for a few minutes, or was it few seconds... she doesn't remember. She couldn't see faces, she only felt them. They were much higher up all around looking down, in front, behind and beside her. And the pair of hands which roamed around her chest, her hips… an unknown unwanted touch that made her want to cry out but something inside her kept her quite, and later she knew she did the right thing, as that's the norm, to be groped and walk away… no one needs to know, although it always seems like everyone does…it's like a forbidden reoccurring bad dream, we just don't talk about it, but we know it will come back over and over again.

When she found her father who immediately held her tight so that he wouldn't lose her to the crowd again, she wanted to break away, as though something impure had happened to her putting an invisible line between her father and her, something that made her unworthy of being the sweet innocent daughter that she is. But she couldn't let go, she silently walked into the stadium holding her father's hands, while a cruel smile and a mocking stare burnt her from the back.

That's how it starts…not just to her but to most, the natural steps of growing up in Bangladesh. The introduction to invisible hands that will violate you in all the ways your young mind and body never imagined and walk away leaving you with a befuddled sense of life, living, sexuality and reality.

So it starts at stadiums or gausia market and travels to the airport, rail station, crowded streets, boi mela…does it ever stop? I am sure it does, but by then one doesn't care anymore, by then one takes groping like they take Dhaka traffic jam{ or weekly strikes. Just another hurdle to get through life, just another unmemorable embarrassment to remind one that they are born a woman, and therefore will take these direct insults delivered indirectly, to speak out is to show a kind of bravery that perhaps the "innocent" "right" kind of girl will never be consumed with. So to prove our virtue we walk away with dirt, looking forward to be shielded by walls and shut windows…

The eight| year old girl does grow up. Maybe she travels away from the land that was once home to make another home…. Under this sky maybe of Blue red and white. Where the fear of invisible hands still gropes her neck in twisted night mares… but it all eventually s|ops. And it doesn't happen again. She hears of terrible things, rapes, pedophiles and murders. But at the same time for the first time ever she learns to walk a block without protecting her front and back and looking down yet staying alert simultaneously. She learns |hat a "no" can mean a "no," and unwanted touches can be reported as abuse. She wonders how far has the land that she left behind has come since she was eight. Has the definition of abuse made it beyond rapes and torture? Has anyone tried to bring light to the shady corners and invisible red lines that kept her and all around her alert of their femininity? Not to be all Taslima-Nasreen-like but she still wonders how many women have spoken up and how many were heard.

And she also wonders if things are the same as when she left, will she have to again get use to the infectious touches crawling around during her visits to Dhaka, she wonders if she will be able to catch one of those infringing hands or two and yell out or will she like before look away without once shedding a tear over something so "minute."

The western world has taught her to over analyze, the eastern values have given her power to over look. Living in permanent contradiction she still struggles to figure out the rights of unsolicited hands on her eight year old body, but she gets lost over and over again, between speaking up, keeping down, her visible confidence always losing to her invisible meek intensity.

First Published at The Daily Star