In The Quiet Call

Emerging Writer Series

Every two weeks or so I am publishing an essay from an emerging writer. This week, we are publishing “In The Quiet Call” by Leslie-Ann Murray. Leslie-Ann is a fiction writer from Trinidad & Tobago, and a citizen of East Flatbush, Brooklyn. She created Brown Girl Book Lover, a social media platform where she interviews diverse writers and reviews books that should be at the forefront of our imagination. Leslie-Ann is working on her first nonfiction essay collection, This Has Made Us Beautiful about incarceration, race, immigration, education, and the overwhelming impact of these political forces on herself, the boys and men in her life, and the women in her community. She has been published in Poets & Writers, Zone 3, Ploughshares, Blackbird Journal, Adroit Journal, and Salamander Literary Magazine.

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Fajr: My body quivers, and I stand naked in the dark, attempting to push the sound out of my breath and out of my bedroom. The night before, the call to pray was down the street. I heard it faintly in my bedroom, but it occupied the main corner of my neighborhood where the rickshaw drivers, shopkeepers, and vendors spent their days gaping, chain-smoking, and drinking relentless cups of coffee. The sound was with the men and not inside of my skin. I’m a believer in nothing, but I know it’s too early to pray, too early to think, too early to love anything but sleep. Even the Adhan’s voice is husky with sleep. He coughs and then proceeds with his wake-up call. I wait for the ringing in my ear and body to stop and then return to sleep. I twist myself into my sheets, then twist again, and one more time for safe measure—just my face poking out into the expanding morning light. It’s Friday, and I plan to occupy my weekend with sleep, dissonance, and dreams of home.

Dhuhr: It’s a rumor. I know it’s a rumor because there are many versions of the same story, and they are all titillating. I’m soon to be middle-aged, and I have learned that the truth is never that enjoyable. Rumors, on the other hand, are so damn tasty, and after devouring their flesh, their marrow, you are still hungry. The rumor comes to us via a mass text from our colleague, Brian. “Someone from the local mosque moved the loudspeaker from down the street and tied it on the lamppost in front of our building.”

I quickly delete his text just in case. I have heard rumors.

Every Friday, I invite my colleagues to have lunch at my apartment. My colleagues have become my friends due to my limited options of friends in Chittagong; we all live in the same building and teach at the same university, and it’s not surprising that we all dislike spending so much of our free time with each other. But our choices are limited. “It’s an attempt to convert all the non-Muslims living in the building,” Brian says, attempting to make all of us comfortable yet again. “They want all of us to be like them. About once a week someone tries to convert me.”

“Brian, please,” Emma shouts. “They don’t want some pale-ass white boy in their religion.”

We all snicker.

“You are white, too,” Brian sneers.

My colleagues and I are spectators and audience members at the theater of life in Khulshi, a hamlet for rich Bangladeshis and foreigners in Chittagong, Bangladesh. We’ve seen our fair share of the bizarre, we’ve spent most of our waking moments cooped up in the apartment building, the university’s shuttle or inside the university, and we want to be entertained. A few of us decide to believe the rumor.

“I for one don’t mind being converted,” Liz says. “I’ve aged out of the dating pool back home, so maybe I’ll get a husband and a baby within a few months.”

The afternoon call to prayer ascends around us, and we sit still, waiting for the sound to escape. Haram has invaded our lunch table. One colleague has a bacon connection, a weed guy, and Emma is dating a married customs officer who works at the airport. He’s a nephalist who steals all of the confiscated alcohol from the holding room for her. She once said to the group, “This is the healthiest relationship I’ve ever been in.”

“Should we get more wine?” Brian asks as the Adhan’s voice finally empties out.

“Let them have wine,” I shout, standing up to uncork two more bottles. “We have a bottle for every sinner.”

We gossip about Randy, another colleague who never attends our lunch sessions because he’s always sequestered with one of his lovers during the holiest time of the week. He’s out and proud with his American and European colleagues, but to his Bangladeshi coworkers, he’s a regular white dude from a regular white part of America— Maine or Wyoming or Kentucky—who just needs to find a good wife and settle down. Kabita from HR used to force him to meet her single cousins, friends, or divorced aunties, until he started showing her and the rest of HR pictures of his soon-to-be wife back home. They fawn over his girlfriend and ask to be invited to his American wedding. Jodi Foster is not that famous in Bangladesh. Kabita even buys Jodi Foster a sari and tells Randy to give it to her when he visits during his Christmas break.

“He’s so damn lucky,” I shout. The wine has invaded my lips. “I have been here for a year, and not a single soul has even looked in my direction.”

“That’s not true,” Brian remarks. “Remember when that rickshaw driver tried to kiss you?”

Asr: When the afternoon prayer arrives, I’m between many worlds—sleep, daydreaming, and the haze of coming off a pretty decent high. Sarah, my colleague from Wales, met a guy who knew a guy who knew another guy who owned a weed farm on the hill of Chandranath Peak. We each buy two ounces and hide the weed inside our suitcases, far away from the prying eyes of the housekeepers we’d all inherited from various colleagues who’d gone home for summer break or winter break and had never returned. The muezzin belted out the classic prayer as if he were in a singing competition, and this was his last chance to stay in the game. The prayer radiated all over my body, and I stood still inside the cacophony of song.

A slight fog of memory comes over me: I’m 15 and sitting in church listening to the praise singers warm up their voices before Sunday service. They are harmonizing, carefully pulling each note from their bellies into their rib cages, into their chest, into their throat, and finally into the sanctuary. During practice, their voices feel and sound more heavenly, and I’m transported into that world of faith and belief for the first time. It’s broken when the pews are packed and the basket filled with money moves up and down the aisle.

When the adhan is over, I slip on my jeans and my cotton salwar kameez, which I bought from one of the local shops to look more modest, and walk outside. It’s a dry monsoon season. The dust is everywhere, and the earth is cracked and ashy, like my ankles, like my aunt Edna’s face after her fifth surgery and tenth chemotherapy session.

Instead of jumping over pools of expired water, I’m jumping over dust dunes and trash.

A mosquito buzzes in my ears, and an emaciated dog follows me as I walk along the labyrinth-like streets. All of a sudden, they both stop following me. I’m sure the oven-like conditions have gotten to them, like they have gotten to everyone, and the streets are empty for jummah, and from the heat.

This silence is a gift. I pull up my sleeves and make a few cuffs in my jeans so my hidden flesh can finally get some sun. I wish other women could join me outside. Do they know about this delicious three hours of freedom? Should I get a loudspeaker to announce it? “Calling all ladies, Fridays at 2:30 p.m. is our time to be alone but together.” I discovered this still moment by coincidence. Last week Friday, I was tired of being cooped up in the apartment, and against the university’s security protocols, I escaped into the mid-afternoon quiet, alone. I rarely see women walking alone here; they are with their mahrams. At the university, there are a few androgynous-looking students who lean into their masculinity-presenting identity and reap the rewards of being part of this world. These young women become their own mahram, and they become mahram for other women on campus.

In April, in May, and in June, foreign university staff were allowed to roam the streets. With caution of course, but we were allowed to roam. But in July things changed. Five young Bangladeshi men walked into a bakery—this is not the beginning of a joke. Right after the last call to pray, five young men walked into Holey Artisan, an upmarket bakery and hangout spot for foreigners and affluent Bangladeshis in Dhaka carrying machetes, guns, and homemade bombs. They looked like sons of rickshaw drivers and farmers and not parvenu customers who knew the difference between a latte and a cappuccino. I’m sure when these men entered the bakery, some customers briefly looked up, snickered at their rube fashion and attitude, and continued their conversations in ignorance.

The men announced their arrival with indiscriminate shooting. The customers finally looked at these men—they were the sons of security guards, sons of maids, sons of street vendors, and taxi drivers—and immediately started flinging themselves under their tables and chairs. Workers at Holey Artisan Bakery knew an escape route— there are some perks of low-wage and long hours—and fled to the bathroom upstairs. They packed themselves into a toilet stall like sardines and held their breath, under the siege. Some workers, including the Italian chef, ran to the roof and jumped from building to building until they found freedom. A local newspaper reported that these vigilante men believed that foreigners' lifestyle “is encouraging local people to do the same thing.”

The same thing: revealing clothing, drinking, eating pork, lying, stealing, cheating, and anything that is deemed haram by them.

29 people died that day—locals and foreigners. Sinners and non-sinners.

I’m enthralled by devotion. It’s a practice that I’ve never embodied, even when I was an adolescent. Back in the days, way back in the days, when my sister was in her 20s, she worked two jobs, attended college, helped my parents with rent, paid for her college tuition, gave ten percent of her income in tithes, and also donated money for the pastor’s new car. I thought he should have taken the bus like everyone else in the church. But his faithful congregation donated their hard-earned money to pay off his brand-new car. Every Sunday, my mother would give me five dollars to give to the church, and I’d offer the money to my stomach. I’d buy cakes, beef patties, soda, chips, and cookies and eat them in the church basement with the youth pastor as he rolled blunts that he was planning to sell to our friends in the youth ministry. “I be selling to some deacons, too,” he once told me. “But that’s on the hush, hush.” As soon as I turned 18, I left the church and became a registered sinner.

In Chittagong, the earth is dry. The trees and plants are shriveled, and it seems as if they are one day away from laying their soul down. The trenches are filled with garbage, mostly plastic containers and bottles. When the rain eventually comes, that means the floods will eventually come, and the roads will be filled with sewage and plastic. Israt, my Bangladeshi coworker and only local friend, translates the local news for me. She has lived abroad and understands my need to feel connected to my community. She told me that the local meteorologist said if it doesn’t rain soon, the country will turn on its head. “There will be more food insecurity, more economic disparities, more air pollution, and more health issues,” she said. I scoured the international newspapers for more information, but their reports were about the incident that happened in July and nothing else.

Maghrib: The Adhan’s pitch in this part of town is more dramatic. He curls the last words of his sentences and then blasts them high into space. He’s laying his soul out on those speakers. The sun is drawing its blinds, and my world is splitting in two. Inadvertently, my mother will call me at three in the morning because time zones are still a concept to her, and I’ll answer as if I was waiting for her call.

The Adhan’s voice crescendos, and I stand still, assessing my environment. I am only 20 minutes from my apartment where large multicolored apartment buildings lean into each other with just an akimbo of space. Then the neighborhood disintegrates into tiny mismatching wooden shacks that seem as if they are held together with strings, a few nails, prayers, and hope. On my side of town, the impenetrable buildings feel like a fortress. The Adhan’s voice thunders and hits my spine. I recite the words that I know: “Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah.”

I move with ease for the first time in a year, and the people inside these beautiful ramshackle houses tumble out, as the sun makes its final exit, and the heat extinguishes for the night. Boney older men pull their rickshaws as young men, probably in their 20s, stand next at the local tea stand, sipping and gaping. Boys, drowning in clothes that once belonged to their older brothers or fathers, hike up their pants to properly kick the battered football approaching their feet. Women and girls sit in front of their houses watching the scene play out, like a movie. They are cleaned and powdered, and the girls' hair is oiled and braided into pigtails while their mothers' and aunties’ dupatta are slightly draped over their heads.

A woman around my age waves at me, and I wave back. The snickering from the gallery starts. I’m black, just like them. I hold the earth, just like them. I fight for belonging, just like them. But at the same time, I’m different. The snickering is not sinister, like the menacing looks I’ve received at cafes, museums, and fancy clothing stores in Anytown U.S.A., but I wave a tuk-tuk driver down and jump inside.

Isha: The apartment building next door is being renovated, and it’s unoccupied by the tenants but occupied by the construction workers who are from podunk towns throughout the region. They move to large cities to find work with value, work that would put food on the table for their wives and children, parents, and family members they only see at weddings and funerals. Twenty-two years ago, my family moved from Trinidad and Tobago to New York City to put food on our table. These days, I’m full. Satiated in fact, and I have the privilege to move for adventure and to find myself that was never lost. These men are living in the house until they’ve completed the project. That can be a few weeks, months, or years, depending on the owner’s finances. As the Adhan sings, I hear the men in the adjacent building performing their ablutions. On the outside, these buildings appear fortified, but they will fall like cards during an earthquake. “Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah,” I sing along, disremembering that the speaker has entered my home, uninvited.

I fear the evenings. They drop loneliness into your lap like a cat dragging a dead mouse to its owner. If I die here, who will collect my body? Who will know that I’ve died? Who will call my mother to inform her that I’ve died?

“At least I have a man,” my friend Rhonda once said to me when I confessed my night time loneliness. She is one of those friends who brings every story back to her. Rhonda and her boyfriend have both destroyed their lives with cheating, lies, and manipulation, but “at least” they have each other. If one of them dies in their sleep, one of them will know what to do.

In Islam, Judaism, and Hinduism, the dead must be buried within 24 hours. Death is fresh on the dead’s body, but they must be rushed into the earth or into the fire. In Christianity, burying the dead can take a week or two weeks, if you want all of your family and friends to attend. It took us about one month to bury my Aunty Edna who died from hyperviscosity due to lymphoma cancer. Aunty Edna died five days before my cousin's destination wedding, so my family decided to keep her body on ice, save up our tears for the funeral, and spill our happy tears for the wedding. “At least she did not die on my wedding day,“ my cousin said when we were sitting in the living room trading stories about Aunty Edna. When we all returned from the Dominican Republic rested and happy, we buried her. Everyone pulled their sad tears out. “At least she’s being buried on a beautiful day,” my newly-married cousin remarked. Newlyweds, born-agains, people in abusive relationships, and devotees of any faith decide on their realities.

“Ashhadu anna Muhammadan Rasool Allah,” I sing again without the assistance of the Adhan. The silence in my room is dull, matching the silence outside. I could chance it and walk outside into the darkness to taste freedom again, but I remember my body and its fragility in the hands of men. This takes me back to another memory: the tuk-tuk ride I took alone after a night of partying with a bunch of foreigners in Otres Beach, Cambodia. I was the only person staying at the hostel on the edge of town, so when the music finished, I bought a bottle of water for the road and hailed a tuk-tuk. The ocean was to the east of me, and the dense forest was to the west. The darkness made me feel trapped, and then I looked up—a million-dollar view of stars. That moment made me feign for God, not the God who will banish you to eternal hell for your sins, but the God who shares your breath and reminds you to trust your intuition. I thought about speaking to the driver, but I was fearful of him recognizing my accent and demanding more money. I wondered if he had made enough money for the night. Suppose he’s planning to tell me about his sick wife or relatives to try and get more money.

Who would call my mother? Would they speak enough English to communicate how I died and where did they find my body? I smiled at the driver, and he scowled; it was too late in the night for all those fake tourist pleasantries. I hummed to block out my rumination and with each thrum, the trees, the rocks, the insects, the wind, and the ocean spoke back to me. My body rose and fell to the same beat as the earth tilts, and I hummed some more into the darkness.