Far From Home (standard:drama, 3672 words)
Author: Bobby Zaman	Added: Oct 12 2002	Views/Reads: 3310/2358	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
An excerpt from a novel in progress. A socio-political-alternative historical experiment. Write back! Eager for your comments!

FAR FROM HOME 

An excerpt 

The young girl, Hamida Khatun, dropped out of the bus like an elf, flung
the ball of clothes wrapped in a large bed sheet over her shoulder and 
looked at the city.  The city danced in front of her like a forest 
fire.  Cars, trucks, scooters, rickshaws, all in an incestuous orgy, 
zipping by like scrambling insects, blaring mad shrieks out of metal 
domes and rickety handlebars capped with tingling bells, thumbs 
breaking cartilage just to push the rusted lever down and up to make a 
sound of presence.  Bulging eyes, genitals pronging out of them ogled 
Hamida’s lithe figure under a hot August sun, the bus pulled away the 
faces carrying the eyes, Hamida blissfully clueless about the thousand 
volts of blood her form has sent to the loins of the backed up 
passengers that didn’t dare talk to her during the trip, for her lovely 
autumnal face was besmirched in a frown that could prologue the dashing 
out of a suckling baby’s brains, they stayed away from her, and fondled 
her with their drooling eyes when the distance was safe. 

The thrashbang conundrum of the city was different from the sound of her
mother’s lifeless body, the echo of it still fresh in her ears but not 
near strong enough to pull out a tear.  Her father was back there in 
the village where people died every night after toiling only to stalk 
back home with broken backs and empty stomachs, burn energy the only 
way accessible to them, humping illiterately, and shedding foolish 
tears when nature kicked them in the gut with another stomach to 
starve. 

Her father would make it much better now.  Alone.  Solitude around him
like a blanket and he grinning ecstatically, embracing it with the 
power of love.  He didn’t like the city, never wanted to relocate no 
matter how many opportunities may have shown promise.  He didn’t stand 
in his daughter’s way when she upped and left.  He was through with 
people, through with living with them, through with having his solitude 
cut in mid-stream each time someone opened her mouth, wife, daughter, 
so he bid goodbye to both with the laugh of a vaudeville spectator, and 
looked forward to the rest of his days and to greet the end without 
distractions, concentrated, alone. 

Hamida pushed all that to the back of her thoughts and began taking in
Dhaka not in slow and measured inhales, but in large gasping, devouring 
breaths as if it was evading her and threatening to run away.  
Rejuvenation had birthed within her and it needed evolution, it needed 
all of her spirit behind it, every ounce, none of it could be shared, 
wasted, forsaken on trivialities.  The city had beckoned her and she 
answered the call.  Now her own self had had the urge passed on to it 
and it was courting her attention with all its might and it needed her 
to run to it without a glance elsewhere without blinking without 
thinking without contemplating with nothing but emancipation, of which 
she now had plenty, like her father. 

The bus eyes had left.  New ones filled their void.  They filled the
world around her, their bodies sliding into invisible capsules like 
pawns, and yes eyes, eyes enlarging in their faces like tumors and 
devouring her like unfed sharks.  She had never been so devoid of her 
surrounding as she was at that moment.  The village with its contagion 
of reputation kept her parents on their toes, and subsequently her, no 
matter how cavalier was her attitude, and in spite of all vehemence she 
feigned responsibility.  Looking into her father’s face helped.  He 
seldom gave her orders and never expected her to change.  It was the 
cantankerous venomous disposition of her mother that made the old man 
raise his voice at Hamida when she was younger.  When he did, Hamida 
heard the reluctance in his voice, saw the pain in his eyes, felt the 
disgust he had of his own existence. 

Dhaka had the promise of change.  To change that.  Pull her out of the
stagnant cesspool of village etiquette and false pride.  She saw none 
of the equilibrium she had already upset with her appearance.  Her 
unconventionally hazel eyes stalwart against their white backdrop like 
precious stones, her grandmother’s sari snaking up her body like vines 
around a Roman column, long undulating tresses falling down her back 
like a stroke of black paint with a wide brush.  Her arms came out of 
her shoulders like marble sculptures, the feet protruded out form under 
the helm of the sari like little white mice caught in the straps of her 


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