The sound of steel bangles clanging, almost as if they were in the middle of a sword fight, breaks Shorif out of his trance. His newly found but seemingly inherent guard instincts take over as he grabs the bags off Anika’s hand.

At her observant best, she recognised Shorif from their meeting earlier in the morning as she was leaving the building with her car. Shorif, now burdened by the weight of both their bags, rushes towards Anika’s car. Before the rain can drench her any further, she finds herself in the back of the car. Hesitant, Shorif stands in front of the car, holding his groceries as the rain continues pouring. Anika asks her driver to lower the windows.

The driver gives her a questioning look, which is met by a fierce glare from the lady herself. She tells Shorif to get into the car, and he complies. As the doors close, the car beeps. The driver points towards the seat belts. Shorif pulls at it and tries wrapping it around his waist in a knot. Grabbing the buckle away from his hand, the driver is about to shout, but he remembers the glare he saw a few minutes back. “I’ve never sat in a car before,” says Shorif with a visibly embarrassed face.

The ride is silent for the most part, with the occasional questions from Anika. As alienated as he feels right now, one would not dare say that Icarus would not reach for the clouds as always IF he was warmed up enough.

This, however, was neither the place nor the people, nor the driver he would be too likely to warm up to. The ice breaks when Anika asks Shorif about his family. ‘My Dad and my wife….well, they used to be, I live alone here and back home too. I came here last night…the dogs here stay up every night don’t they?’.

Anika replies with a shake of her head, and goes, ‘no, they’re never like that, but they don’t like visitors mu…’ The driver cuts her off, and goes, ‘Madam, my sister’s husband is an expert at handling ghosts, the dogs must have seen something, let me call him up..’. The driver rolls his eyes when Shorif talks about the man he saw climbing the walls. Before the discussions could brew any further, they reached home.

Shorif gets off as if some ghostly boulder is on his shoulder. He quickly keeps his grocery near his table, and grabs the bags in the car. Despite Anika’s hesitance, he carries the bags all the way up to the 4th floor. He places the bag just inside the door, and runs off. Anika, dismayed at the fact she could not pay anything to the poor guard, decides to offer him some tea later and perhaps the leftover sweets from her birthday two days ago.

That afternoon, a man in a blue uniform with a raging stare surveys the neighbourhood. He asks Atik if he has seen any strangers in the area, or anyone odd. He nods his head, while putting that toothpick between a gap on his lower front teeth, refusing to let the police officer disturb his dental routine. Seeing the audacity, the policeman hits his stick on the guard’s table, and shouts about a lady getting murdered in the neighbourhood last night. Visibly shaken, Atik tells him he is unaware of anything, and that he had been in the market all evening yesterday watching an old Bangla cinema he can’t name. As the officer is about to leave, Shorif arrives at the scene. The officer inquires the same to Shorif, who tells him about that one guy he saw running last night. The police finally have a lead, but one with no face, no clothing cues, just a black shadow being chased by dogs.

A few minutes later, the intercom buzzes loud in the garage, and Atik picks up. “Shorif?”, says the lady. “No, it’s meee,” replies Atik. “If he’s off duty, tell him to show up to 4C”. Atik passes the message on, but not without raising his eyebrows, wondering what magic this lowly poor newbie has done on his first day.

The bell rings, and Anika opens the door. They greet each other, as she asks him to take a seat. Anika turns on the TV and goes inside. He looks around the house, looking at the different portraits and books displayed across the house, quite immaculately. He can’t tell what Anika really is like. One of the pictures is a white mountain that looks painted but, on second glance, looks real too. To the right of the painting was a bookshelf filled to the brim. Shorif couldn’t really tell much what those books were, but of the few titles in Bangla, one of them looked familiar. It was the novel about the old nawab, who before his death sentence was killed by his own adopted cousin. He clearly remembered the cover of the book from how his wife bawled her eyes out.

Lost in thoughts, Shorif doesn’t realise Anika’s presence until the tray clanks on the table. ‘Is that a painting?’, he points to the snowy mountains. “This is Kazakhstan, half the country looks like a painting up there,” says Anika. “And…who’s that lady beside you in the painting?…no! the photo”. Anika smiles as she remembers her sister, who she hasn’t met for ages. It wasn’t all that while back when things were fine between them, but then things went downhill when Anika left both her sister and mother to pursue a literature degree abroad. Her dream, translated as abandonment, meant that they never wanted her back again.

“That’s my… sister! In fact, these sweets were for her birthday yesterday. She doesn’t visit me anymore but I still buy sweets every year.” Shorif, being the absolute genius he is at being an idiot, goes for the ultimate “I’m so sorry for your loss”. Anika takes a moment, but bursts into laughter at the man’s face. ‘She lives in Khulna with her mom, our mom. I wanted to wish her yesterday, but I guess the wishes turn into sweets when you don’t send them out. Sometimes not sending out one is the best thing you can do.’ She keeps twirling the spoon harder as she speaks and as the whirlwinds inside the tea almost spill over the cup’s edges. ‘I always keep a notebook for her, one that I journal into. Sometimes the best gift one can offer is simply their absence, and as much as you yearn for your presence in someone’s memories, it never really warrants the same in return.’ She passes the cup to Shorif, with her sigh hiding behind the clinking cup.

The first sip of the tea gives him a taste of home. A cup not made by him felt like home because the wait for the brewing tea when he made it himself always felt like a slap of loneliness. A metaphorical bridge in time takes Shorif back to the days when his wife would make him tea, and the tea would lightly resemble her eyes. The black rind around the eye gave it a more fierce look, but the softness would peek through the hazel windows of her heart. ‘I had a habit of journaling too, but I never really needed to write anything anymore after I got married. I’d come home and my wife would expect me to speak but I couldn’t really figure what things to tell a woman, especially one as full of class as her. I’ve spent all my childhood in the fields, skipping school to help my dad who never really bothered much as long as his crops were well taken care of. It was when I got married that my wife took the effort to teach me the alphabet. My journaling habits started from then…it really was a way I had never thought of before, how I could bond with her despite our differences. Then one day I figured she was the journal herself for me, so writing it down was pointless. I could simply close my eyes, speak my mind..and somehow she’d remember every bit of it. I’ve never gone back to it since she passed away.’ Anika listens to him eagerly with glistening eyes as he monologues his way through the interaction, which was also the first time he really spoke up.

It’s not until he finally goes silent that she talks again, but there is a calming silence in the air. ‘I feel you, my sister was my journal too..’. Anika gets off her seat and walks over to the bookshelf. Beside the shelf is a pile of ‘things’. The things reveal themselves, one by one. Half of them are old books of poetry, a few cassettes, and rubber bands of all things. She suddenly gasps with a black album in her hand. ‘MAN I HAD BEEN LOOKING FOR THIS THING FOR AGES!’, and then she realises how weird that scream was, slowly putting the Warfaze cassette back in place. At the end of the pile was a notebook. She takes it and hands it to Shorif.

‘Here’s a gift for you!’ says Anika. ‘I-.. I can’t take this, the tea is already enough…I guess I’ll take your leave now..’. As he stands up, Anika pushes that notebook into his hand and tells him how ‘The universe is a cruel, uncaring void. The key to being happy isn’t the search for meaning; it is to just keep yourself busy with unimportant nonsense, and eventually, you will be dead.’ as she quoted her favourite TV show. Not that Shorif has ever seen one. A puzzled Shorif goes ‘….I’ll take the notebook yes’. Inspired by the events, Shorif walks out the door with a newly found inspiration to write his journals again. Maybe now, one more time, he’d feel his wife again. Despite her absence, his writing could perhaps find her Hazel Rinds, one more time.

(Finale in the Next Part…or maybe not)

Read part 1: https://tbsgraduates.net/writeup/fiction/hazel-rinds-part-1/

Read part 2: https://tbsgraduates.net/writeup/fiction/hazel-rinds-part-2/