Akhtaruzzaman Elias: Dream Book (1996)

Elias was a major Bengali fiction writer particularly noted for his subtle sense of
humor, realistic use of dialogue and dialect, and for his Marxist commitment to the
lower class in both towns and villages in Bangladesh. His last major novel, called
Khoabnama (Dream Book), is set in rural Bangladesh during a long historical period
spanning several centuries. Some of the major characters in this novel are landless
farmers, who still constitute a large segment of the population in Bangladesh. The
novel weaves together numerous stories and episodes of struggles, frustrations,
hopes, and dreams of these people. What follows is an episode in which the landless
farmer Tameez wants to work on the land owned by a large farmer (Abdul Aziz) in an
arrangement known as "sharecropping," which has a long tradition in many
countries, and used to be common in the Southern United States. The landed farmer
provides the land itself and the landless farmer not only cultivates it and produces
crops but also provides seeds and other necessary means of cultivation. When crops
are finally produced, the landed farmer receives two thirds of the crop and the
landless farmer gets only one. Besides showing how exploitative this system is, the
passage also portrays part of a well-known historical struggle of landless farmers
against sharecropping.

Contrast the way Tameez is living with the way his ancestors lived as explained in the
last paragraph.

Tameez pays a price for his decision. He leaves Khiyar 1 in order to become a
sharecropper in his own village. He stomachs all kinds of criticisms. He does not have
a cow. He does not have a plow or a yoke or a harrow; nor does he have a single
cowrie2 to buy even a handful of seed. So how can anyone possibly trust his ability to
sharecrop? With hands together, however, Tameez desperately prays for a piece of
land. He tries to persuade the landowner, Sharafat Mondol, to lease him at least a bit
of land. He also tells Mondol that he will be reimbursed for the expenses of
cultivation after the harvest.

Tameez's proposal sounds attractive. It is not that such sharecropping arrangements

have not worked in the past. But Sharafat Mondol's eldest son, Abdul Aziz, is a clever
and cautious man. He lives in Joypur where he works as a clerk at an office of land
registration. There is perhaps no one in the entire village of Lathidanga who can
match his knowledge of matters relating to land. So Abdul Aziz pays in advance only
half the prices of cows and other means of production like ploughs, yokes, harrows,
and seeds. He whispers to himself, 'you have nothing yet you want to sharecrop, eh?
Well, then, you should simply follow whatever terms and conditions I dictate now."

But Abdul Kader comments, "These folks have been here for a long time. Even
Tameez's father once worked on our land. . . ."

But landless farmers have meanwhile gone out of bounds. Their agitation 3 has already
begun in town and it seems that the wave of protest may soon reach this eastern part
of the village across the Korotoya River. Farmers in Khiyar are now insisting on two
shares out of three, wanting to give only one to the landowner. Of course you can
always demand whatever you want--you don't have to pay taxes for speaking out. But
the farmers argue that one important fact remains unchanged: the landlord cannot
command the land to walk into his courtyard and deliver the crop. Or does he suppose
that land is a heron that it can fly in a flash from that monstrous Arjun 4in Kamarpara
to the tree overlooking the mansion of the Mondols? What the hell does he know
about the value of land? Does he know that plowing even a tiny piece of land costs at
least a pound of human blood, oozing from the body like salt?

Abdul Aziz of course watches the uprising in Khiyar--a nagging pain in the ass, of
course--while he also wonders if it will soon make the peasants' blood boil in his own
locality. Yet he feels no compulsion to please anyone in particular. All he wants is
simply the full enforcement of the sharecropping rules in his locality. "Follow the
rules or get the hell out of my land"--that's the only policy Abdul Aziz seems to care
for.

How can Tameez soothe these anxieties of Abdul Aziz? Abdul Aziz is simply Abdul
Aziz: one who effortlessly writes his name in English "M. A. Aziz" at one solid
stretch5, one who attends all kinds of meetings and forums, who retails--whenever he
gets a chance to do this--all the horrid stories of oppressions Hindus have inflicted on
Muslims, and who therefore urges all Muslims to unite under the banner of the
Muslim League6 so as to put an end to those oppressions, But now even Abdul Aziz
cannot help scratching his head. Whatever may happen, the fact still remains: Abdul
Aziz holds a position in an office of land registration in Joypur where his both hands
stay equally alive and active. But as he leaves Joypur to spend a few days in his
village, his left hand turns uncomfortably passive, 7 although it daily wipes the shit
from his ass after his inevitable response to the inescapable call of nature. Abdul Aziz,
however, compensates for the momentary inactivity of his left hand by the unleashed
activity of his tongue and teeth.

Tameez himself watched farmers make a great commotion to the West. 8 But does he
like all this fuss himself? No, he doesn't. He still believes the landowner should
dictate the terms of sharecropping arrangement simply because he is the owner of
land. Yet these landless farmers, armed with weapons, have tried to claim the larger
share of the crop. To halt this move, however, some landowners have hired a group of
workers to harvest the fields. Although Tameez comes from the eastern part of the
country, he has easily gotten one of these jobs. The landowners have, it seems, also
informed and bribed the police. And how many places can be policed at once?

That day Tameez had begun harvesting in a cheerful mood because he had been
offered a wage-rate better than usual. He was working enthusiastically, thinking that
the sooner he finished harvesting the paddy, the better. But as soon as the sun had
reached the middle of the sky, he heard the angry demonstrating farmers swooping in.
But God-the-Great saved him: he broke into a run before they could catch him by the
scruff of his neck. Even the thin wives and daughters of the angry farmers joined in
with brooms, large knives, potatoes, and sticks. Had not he run through the field or
had not he quickly leapt over the harvest lying scattered in the field, he would have
surely received at least a mighty blow from a broom or even a whacking blow of a
cooking potato or two. Who knew?

Perhaps he did receive one or two. If a woman beats a man, it is unlikely that he will
spread word of it. By the time Tameez reachedf the landowner's courtyard, he felt
their fuss was absolutely pointless and disgusting. Land is after all Lakshmi 9 and
crops are her offspring. If the crops are caught in a tug of war, the very body of the
land gets hurt!10 Crops are the soul of the soul of the landowner. Tameez was
anguished by the mob's sheer insensitivity to the sufferings of the land. True, his
father and grandfather and great grandfather had all lived on fishing; they were not
traditional land-farmers. Yet Tameez empathized with the pain of the land. A long time
ago, long before Tameez was born, the legendary largest type of fish--the Baghar fish,
as it was called--used to add to the spectacle of the famous Poradaha 11 fair, simply
because none but Tameez's great grandfather--Baghar-the-boatman--could catch it.
This is why Tameez's father later adopted the name of his own grandfather, the name
of the famous fish-catcher, to keep the glory of his family alive. This ancestral glory,
however, ended with Tameez's father, who had been known more as Baghar's
grandson than as anything else. And Tameez today is known as simply as Tameez.

Translated by Azfar Hussain

1
The name of a village in northern Bangladesh.
2
"Cowrie" means "penny."
3
This is a historical reference to the uprising of landless peasants against large farmers
in Bengal in the nineetenth century during British colonial rule (1757-1947). The
protesting farmers demanded larger shares of the crops.
4
The name of a tree.
5
The language of the majority of people in Bangladesh today is Bengali. During the
British colonial rule (1757-1947), people who could read, write, or use English--the
language of the colonizer--were held in great esteem and benefited from certain social
and economic privileges which others without knowledge of English simply could not
share.
6
The leading sectarian political party led by middle-and upper-class Muslim activists.
The other sectarian political party led by middle-and upper-class Hindu activists is
known as Congress. During the British colonial rule in India (1757-1947), when
Bangladesh was part of India, these two parties, which came into being in the
twentieth century, were not only involved in anti-colonial struggles against the British
rulers but were also responsible for much of the tension between Hindus and Muslims
on the Indian subcontinent.
7
The activity of the left hand has a specific local meaning in Bangladesh: while the
right hand does the assigned job, the left hand takes the money as a bribe. The fact
that Tameez is a corrupt and dishonest man is indicated by the activity of his left hand.
8
The western part of the country.
9
Lakshmi is the Hindu goddess of prosperity.
10
Land is often personified in Bengali literature.
11
The name of a semi-urban area in the northern part of Bangladesh.