Tanveer's Shirt

January 8 1971, Faujdarhat Cadet College, Bangladesh

And his hands, would point, and tremble; he moved them at some random synchronization that only he understood, some “struggle with God,” and his trembling hands curled into a finger, and then the tiger – or man – stepped off his podium, and kicked it such that the plies of the wood would fly into themselves, and he began to walk towards a woman, a woman with her scarf hanging off her head.

And he threw a dish off the table that stood between them, in a home that seemed, again, too familiar. And the woman scurried to her bed, and opened her mouth but no noise came from it. And the man’s growls became faster and towards, and the woman leaped unto a bed of firm hay backing, under a weak, polluted mattress.

And the man slid his hand slyly against the table’s top walking unto the bed, slowly letting a knife smoothly be caught in his hand, with the blade held by his palm, slowly creasing blood out of the man. And he knew the woman, too well.

And her mouth opened again, and she, again, could make no noise, and he lowered his gaze, and let his eyes decease as the knife entered her stomach once, and she screamed, and again, a pierce, and she screamed and...

.. And Tanveer screamed, but with only the slightest of roars such that none of the students asleep in the room could awaken, and breathed like any human would, in heavy pants. He stared at the place the man and woman had stood, and felt their shadows still hovering there, in the corner of the communal room, with eyes almost large enough to compare to the bags that surrounded them. He rigidly shook his head and body back unto his bed, with a sliver of shiver across the chamber that cased his lungs. For the next fifteen minutes, he attempted to fall back asleep but reckoned that useless.

Tanveer’s shirt was moist of morning dew from his own self. He stripped his shirt off, in stoic fashion, and rushed to the shower, without a single pant more. Leaving the communal room, he walked out into the railed outdoor balcony overlooking the front, now with a slight morning shiver against the tropical, windy January day. After this outdoor corridor, he entered the communal bathroom, to which he was introduced to the rhythmic bounces of flesh. Tanveer hadn’t a clue what it was, but in its foreground, he heard a shower head running. Resuming to then wash his face before morning prayer, he discovered that the school had not turned the water heater on yet, was brilliantly surprised by how quickly he could come awake against an ice splash. At the exit of the shower, the other boy exited, and both lined at their respective sinks, barefoot, wrapped in their towels.

“By Allah’s grace, believe me if you tell anyone about this,” the boy began angrily.

Tanveer’s intrusive talents had no reckoning of what was happening: “are we not to shower before the water heater is turned on?”

“Oh,” the older boy smirked, and continued his work in silence, with a cheery breath, startled at Tanveer’s novice.

And Allah’s grace inducted the call for the morning prayer, Fajr, for which the rounds of Faujdarhat Cadet College students began the sound of rising, and Tanveer combed his hair just as students began entering showers and brushing their teeth and flooding with noises of piss, smells of grunts, and the few many, poised with great posture and routine from their waking second.

In just a few months my two-year date at Faujdarhat was to come, if only I was to make it, thought Tanveer, while heading for the mosque for Fajr prayer. At the completion of everyone’s prayer, there was a fifteen-minute timeframe for returning to students’ quarters and replacing their attire with shorts and a vest.

Tanveer tripped himself into line while all students awaited the salute’s end by the commanding students.

At the head of the class, sat the taller, athletic bunch: Hassan, Mufti, Ramesh, Charles. The athletic always assimilated with the active minded, too, in this unnaturally active-minded cadet college.

Faujdarhat Cadet College had their insightful young men read their academics subliminally trace past: "Deeds Not Words," at every break past every few hallways. These words, planted throughout the school, had the young men enforced to force action into their daily rituals.