Young Writers Society

Karim Khan presses the bell. The tune that rings is the chirping of a cuckoo. He had to go through a lot of trouble to get that door-bell, but he wanted it. Nothing in the world is as peaceful as a cuckoo’s chirping.

Barna, Karim Khan’s eleven-year-old son, opens the door with a spray in his hand. He’s giggling, because this is the first time he’s going to spray his dad.

“Arms up, daddy.”

Karim Khan lifts his arm and Barna begins spraying. On the hair, the face, the neck, the shoulders, the armpits, the arms, the back, the shirt, the trousers.

“Don’t forget the shoes.”

“Oh, yes.” Barna giggles again and starts spraying the shoes. First he sprays the upper surface, then Karim Khan lifts his legs before Barna sprays the soles.

Barna asks as Karim makes his way inside, “Dad, why the shoes?”

“Well, we can’t take any chances. I just came home walking at least half a kilo. I’ve walked on roads. I might be carrying the virus under those shoes. Who knows?”

“Come on, dad. Under the shoes?”

“Yes.” Karim Khan walks over and grabs his son’s shoulders. “Under the shoes. Like I said, we can’t take any chances. And it’s not a joke. You need to take this seriously, okay?”

This is one of those moments when Barna can’t understand his dad. Karim Khan is naturally a very amiable person, but when he gets serious, there’s an air of severity about him that almost frightens Barna.

“Okay.”

Karim Khan pats Barna on the shoulders. “Good boy.”

Karim Khan takes his shirt off and dips it into the large bowl full of bubbles of soap. He watches as the soapy water takes in the shirt, as it slowly creases and wets.

Will that be enough? Soap water?

Karim Khan has been very cautious lately. The spraying was his idea. He was the one who decided that every time someone leaves the house and comes back, Soap Water will be sprayed on them. The Soap Water is actually four teaspoonfuls of detergent in one and a half liter of water. That’s the formula IEDCR—Institute of Epidemiology, Disease Control, and Research—came up with.

Since the lockdown, a weekly supply of foods has been allocated for the campus. On Sundays, a blue pickup-van goes all round the campus, stopping by each of the buildings to give away supplies as per demand. Vegetables like bottle gourd, pumpkin, potato, papaya, ladies’ finger, bitter gourd, pepper, capsicum, carrot and Malabar spinach, and also non-vegetables like chicken, beef, Rohu fish, Catla fish, and a dozen packets of biscuits—you can find an entire market in the van. 

Karim Khan is particularly careful about the supply since it’s the only thing that comes from the outside into the campus. First, he washes his own hands before touching anything in the supply. Second, he takes the all the supply from the ground floor to his apartment in the second floor by himself and doesn’t let anybody come anywhere close. Third, he takes the supply to the kitchen, drops it all on a massive black bowl filled with Soap Water. Fourth, after exactly five minutes, he takes everything out of the bowl and washes it all with water. Only after that does he allow his maid to touch the supply. The maid, Rahima, discouraged Karim Khan to wash the supplies with Soap Water since it could make the food smell like detergent. Kamrul Khan didn’t listen to her, and it turned out he was right; the food hasn’t smelled at all so far.

He has kept a sanitizer in his car, just beside the gears so it doesn’t escape his eyes. He always washes his hands first before touching anything in the car.

In his apartment, he washes his hands at least ten times a day, and makes his children and wife do the same.

He thought about closing all the windows in the house. Keeping the lights on all the time in the day, he considered, would definitely be enough to inhibit darkness. But his wife, Tamanna Sultana, didn’t agree on this. She thought shutting all the windows would only create a dreadful atmosphere in the house. The children would be nervous. Karim Khan wouldn’t mind the dreadfulness, but it was the concern of his children’s state of mind that made him keep the windows open.

He has a son and a daughter: Barna and Mala. Now, Barna and Mala are actually two different Bangla words which together form the compound word Barnamala, meaning Alphabet. You see, Karim Khan is a teacher of Bangla literature, and such exceptionally creative naming wasn’t odd at all on his part. Mala is younger than by Barna by three years, but they get along so well that the difference of age is hardly perceptible. They are cheerful kids. They love to play outside, ride bicycles around the campus, rock back and forth in the swings of the park. It’s been difficult for them since the lockdown. Barna has learnt to listen to and understand his mom and dad, but Mala is stubborn. Every afternoon she brings down hell in Karim Khan’s house, yelling, swinging her arms and legs. She wants to go outside and play.

Karim Khan took Barna, Mala, and Tamanna to the building’s rooftop last week despite himself, especially to calm Mala down. They walked for thirty minutes. The sky was white. The breeze was pleasant. The comfort was deep.

Maybe I shouldn’t have taken them there, Karim Khan thinks now. It was a bad idea.

That has been the trouble for Karim Khan. No matter how meticulous he is, the anxiety is always there. There’s always something that keeps biting at his mind.

When he took the polythene bag of Dhal from the supply van yesterday, he held at the bag at the body, not at the tip of the bag where it was tied with a small elastic. He thought that tip is where many hands had already touched the bag at, so he avoided it.

Hand gloves, Karim Khan suddenly remembers. I should’ve used gloves. I have some gloves in the wardrobe. Shit! How did I forget them?

Just like that, apprehension takes over his mind again.

***

“It’s too bad we’re not getting any games.”

Shamsul says, “Dude, don’t say that. It fucking hurts.”

“Hurts? It’s killing me!” Mahdi barks. “No games. Man, the one thing that keeps us alive in this shithole is the games. Can’t believe we’re not playing football for five days. Five days, man!”

Shamsul finds nothing to say.

“They took away the one thing we loved so much.”

“You can’t blame the authority, dude,” Shamsul says. “They had to do this. It’s a lockdown, remember?”

“Fuck the authority! Will it kill us if we had games for just forty minutes?”

“If they allow us to do that, it won’t be a lockdown at all.”

“Why not?”

“God, are you nuts?” Now Shamsul was barking. “If you play football, you’ll be running into people. You’ll be tackling, pushing, sliding, fighting for the ball. All that contact will kill you, man!”

“Oh, now you’re talking about contact. I’ll tell you what, we’re staying in the fucking House, we’re watching movies in that crammed common room, we’re having meals in the dining hall together. Where’s your contact then, huh? Where’s all that distancing shit?”

Shamsul wants to counterattack, but he doesn’t find any logic. He’s defeated.

Mahdi spits out the window. “Fuck, man. Fuck. Fuck everything.”

Right then, Ishraq runs into the room. He pants, “Guys…. Good news!”

“What?”

“We have games today.”

“WHAT?”

Ishraq screams happily, “WE HAVE GAMES, MAN!”

Mahdi and Shamsul get up from their beds and start dancing with Ishraq. Soon many of their batchmates join them. The room that was quiet and soulless not too long comes entirely alive.

The school authority, after a long meeting of thorough discussion, has decided in the morning today that the Games time of the Cadets will be resumed once again. The Games time usually lasted fifty minutes, but now it’ll continue for thirty minutes. The authority wants the Cadets to enjoy themselves as much as possible and not get bored.

Because boredom invites anxiety, and the last thing the school authority would want is the Cadets having some kind of panic attack.