Tahmima Anam’s new novel: Women begin a rebellion that will upend the very order of things

Kusum and Pyara were 18 months apart and the only two children of a fruit seller and his wife. Pyarawas considered the prettier one because her skin was lighter, but Kusum had a voice so unusual that people stopped on the street to listen. The neighbours, whenever it rained or when they were planning a wedding or on Victory Day, would ask her parents if they might borrow Kusum and her voice, and her parents always said yes. One morning, when she accompanied her father to the wholesaler in New Market to pick up his load for the day, the owner of the warehouse said he had heard that Kusum had an unusual talent. Would she sing for him?

Kusum did not want to sing for this man, but her father owed him some money, so he instructed her to do as she was told. As soon as she opened her mouth, the man began to cry. He sobbed through her rendition of a folk tune, andthen he requested a love song, and then he asked if sheknew a particular poem from his village – she did – and by the time she was finished, he had forgiven her father’s debt,and a young accountant who had been buying paper at thestationery shop next door had fallen in love with her andoffered to take Kusum out of the two rooms she shared withher parents and move her to his apartment on the otherside of town, and her father agreed.

The fruit seller and his wife had sent their daughters to school. Kusum had made it to Class 5 and Pyara to Class 7, until they could no longer afford it, and both girls began to work as cleaners at a small garment factory that made underwear for foreign women.

The sisters were inseparable. Kusum was practical, sturdy, and smart. She had always been at the top of her class, and after her factory job, she ran home, did the day’s groceries, cooked dinner, swept the floors, and sat up reading under the light of a solar-powered lamp. Pyara was beautiful, with perfectly oval eyes and a full mouth that broke into a smile at the slightest encouragement. She was sweet and obeyed her parents and stayed out of the sun, but she was also fragile and dreamy, and so, though Kusum was younger, she was tasked with looking after Pyara. When the accountant proposed to marry Kusum, it was agreed that Pyara would be allowed to live with them. She would soon find a match for herself, and the fruit seller and his wife could live out their years in peace, knowing that they had fulfilled their duties as parents.

One day in July, the fruit seller was pulling his cart along Manik Mia Avenue, past the Sangsad Bhaban, not pausing to admire the grey, lily-shaped building because he had already seen it a thousand times. Usually, he would cross over to Dhanmondi and set up his cart on the corner of Shatmosjid and road number 6, but today a crowd approached, so thick it filled the wide street and so long he couldn’t see the end. He manoeuvred his cart to the pavement and decided to wait until the crowd passed. All afternoon, he waited while the young men and women marched with their banners and megaphones. The fruit ripened in the sun. He turned the mangoes around and tried to put the papayas in the shade, and all day he fanned the cart so the flies wouldn’t settle, but by the evening he knew it had mostly gone soft; he could smell the beginning of rot.

He gifted the soft, overripe fruit to the protestors on their way home, and they descended on his cart and gobbled it down as quickly as he could offer it.

The city came to a standstill and so he stayed at home. He knocked around the two rooms they rented and veered between complaining about the protests and cheering for the students.

One day he said: They’re standing up for us all. Getting rid of the dictator.

Another day he said: The roads are blocked and the factory is closed. How are we supposed to put food on the table?

No more corrupt cops, he said the next day.

If this keeps going, I’ll have to sell the cart, he said the day after.

Kusum was curious. What do the people want?

Jobs, her father told her, they want jobs.

Kusum wanted to see for herself. She told Pyara she was going to Shaheed Minar, where the students gathered every morning.

Why would you do that?

I want to taste freedom, Kusum said.

Pyara reminded Kusum that because of the accountant, she was about to taste whatever freedom she wanted. Freedom from the fruit seller and his wife. Freedom from the weather. She would be warm when it was cold outside, and cool when it was hot. Free to eat meat and free to raise fat, spoiled children. What did she need with the freedom to be beaten on the streets?

You go, Pyara said. Tell me about it later. And she returned to rinsing the rice for their dinner.

Before the protests started, Kusum and Pyara had always walked to the factory in Mohakhali. It was one of the older buildings along Airport Road, with small, barred windows and ceiling fans that circulated the hot, close air. They had heard that there were bigger factories outside of town with air-conditioning and elevators, but this one was cramped, each row of machines so close together that the girls worked with their backs touching.

The factory girls spoke to Kusum and Pyara only to tell them when something was dirty. The toilet had overflowed. Someone had thrown a bag of garbage over the stairwell. Kusum and Pyara worked silently all day, and when there was a break for lunch, they sat apart from the factory girls, munching on a few slices of stale bread they had saved from last night’s dinner.

The accountant had instructed Kusum to quit before they got married, and it was curious to her that even though she hated the job, she didn’t want to leave it.

The moment Kusum entered the protest, she felt she was becoming a small organ in a living, breathing being. When her body collided with the other bodies on the street, when her voice became a note in the chorus of chants, when her fist rose up and joined an accordion of fists, when she cried ut in surprise as a policeman’s stick beat her ankles, it was as if she had not been born until that very moment.

Kusum’s voice rang out, loud and clear, above the crowd. The students wanted to know her name, asked her where she had learned to sing like that, and in turn they told her why they were protesting. Born in villages and small towns, they had made it to the top of their classes to earn a coveted place at the university. They had been told that, once they graduated, their whole life would be waiting for them. But it was all a lie: the country was corrupt, it was impossible for anyone but the dictator’s cronies to get ahead. There would be no jobs for them, no beautiful life on the other side.

Excerpted with permission from Uprising, Tahmima Anam, Penguin India.