The Poet of Debidwar

         He was not the brightest of children, but as village children often are, he knew too much for his own good.  I'd seen him a few times before, when he couldn't have been more than ten.  He threw rocks at stray dogs and thus earned the hatred of my brother whenever we would visit.  My brother was a firm defender of all animals.  He once gave the boy a beating upon discovering that Iqlaas had drowned a solitary pup.  Iqlaas never spoke to my brother again.  Tragic as it was, at the time my brother and I didn't even know of our blood relation to him.

            That is, until my brother's second visit to the foggy village five years later.  The years had passed unnoticed and the thatched houses looked the same.  I've often wondered how one could confine oneself to an oasis, knowing the world is out there, waiting to be tread upon.  My grandfather says that is what youth is for.  He'd traveled to tea gardens in Sylhet, to windy Jessore, to the steely shipyards of Chittagong.  He met the British at the shores there.  He says they were a handsome lot and he'd always held them in high regard. 
"Why won't you move to Dhaka?"  I once asked.
He took out a cigarette and reached for his glazed wooden cane.  As he stepped out the door, he draped a gray shawl over his plain garment.  He never did wear anything different.  A paradox; he prided himself in his modesty.
"See what I have here?  The mosque, and my home.  At this age, I have no need for Dhaka."

            When I finally saw Iqlaas again, these five years later, I couldn't say that I recognized him.  His toothy grin was now a distant memory and the childhood had set from his face.  He wore a white cap and traversed the villages in traditional salwar, books in hand.  He didn't give much care to stray animals, nor had he developed a fondness for them. 
"He wants to be a poet," said my brother.
"A poet?  Iqlaas?"
"Like Kazi Nuzrul.  He wants to write about Bangladesh.  He says Bangalis don't even use half the words in our vocabulary, we just use the British terms.  Did you know that?"
I was quite surprised- here was my brother speaking of a revolutionary poet, when he'd never open a history book back home.
"No...I didn't."

            How ironic it was, that I had thought myself to be the sole family member with an admiration for literature.  And that in all my family, I would share this love with Iqlaas- the boy that would run shirtless, shoeless even, in dirt roads.  Iqlaas, who'd never been to university nor Dhaka.  Until then, I'd often wondered--what if I hadn't moved to the States--would I still have fabricated words in air before I set them to paper, to people, to speech, to heart?

            From then on I watched Iqlaas with a deeper curiosity.  On the veranda of our village house, each day he told my brother of his aspirations.  That one day all of Bangladesh would know of his work because he would glorify the land with the fervor of a patriot.  He would write of the color green, of love and mankind's plight.  He would write of his sister, born in the monsoon season, named suitably after the rain and dead at three.  I listened from indoors on some days, as my room overlooked them and I had no companions of my own.  My heart grew heavy at the very possibility that Iqlaas would never have his dream.  Chances are he will go on to some clerical average job.  He will be a class above the laborers he was born from.  It is very likely he will make it to Dhaka.

            He is a storyteller like my grandfather, and remorseful as he is about his predicament, a smile will always embellish his tales.  I never spoke to him personally, and why, I still don't know.  Perhaps I was intimidated by his words.  He certainly did not sound like a sixteen year old.

But when I did hear him speak, I thought Bengali to be the most beautiful language in the world.