Between Two Lives is a collection of short stories by Mojaffor Hossain, a notable fiction writer of Bengali literature. The stories of the collection are translated into English by Haroonuzzaman, who has rendered quite a few important literary works from Bangladesh. Besides being a translator, he is also an academic. Between Two Lives contains 11 short stories, well-chosen and adroitly translated by Haroonuzzaman.
The collection explores a diverse range of themes and subject matters, which mesmerise the readers to a great extent. Among the most prominent issues that the author deals with in the stories, memory and trauma are noteworthy. They give an account of the human condition in general and the deplorable state of Bangladeshi people in particular. Bonnie Chau, a Chinese-American fiction writer based in New York, comments on Mojaffor Hossain’s stories: “Hossain has the ability to conjure worlds that exist somewhere in the shadows of the uncanny valley—somehow both defamiliarized and explicit about contemporary horrors. Bangladesh and its modern history may be at their core, but the stories point broadly to the larger systems of dehumanization recognizable as pervasive in all of our everyday lives.”
“The Spy” is a story of extreme injustice, deprivation, and exploitation. It is a story which depicts the real picture of Bangladesh, where dishonesty, misuse of power, tyranny, and occupation of others’ resources are common.
Mojaffor Hossain is an extraordinary storyteller, who has already earned fame for his distinctive style and out-of-the-box themes. Among the established and new or emerging fiction writers of Bangladesh, he is well-known. He employs surrealism and magical realism in his stories and novels.
Reading the stories in Between Two Lives, a reader is launched on a captivating journey that ends in awe and sometimes shock. Like famous fiction writers of the world, Mojaffor Hossain writes his stories with twists and turns, at times keeping the readers in a trance of magical spellbinding. His narratives are not aloof from what we encounter in our everyday life, but the author weaves the everyday experience of the people, especially the people of Bangladesh, into a tapestry of a wide range of elements, such as satire, humour, and wit. The stories finally turn extraordinary and unique because of the narrative style. The readers go through something familiar, but then they experience something bizarre—and this makes the narratives unearthly. As a writer of surrealist and magical realist fiction, Mojaffor Hossain must have already earned a signature name.
One can in no way spell out the psyche or the mind of people, which are replete with weird, unidentifiable, and unfamiliar kinds of violence, destructive acts, strange behaviours, and so on. It seems that the crimes and violence have become normal, the victims sometimes internalise the destiny of persecution. People seem to have started believing that this is how society has reformed and that they are destined to suffer. Mojaffor Hossain subtly sketches out these pictures in the landscape of his fictional world.
In Between Two Lives, the writer portrays the reality of Bangladesh in relation to how the people of the country have resorted to violence, depravity, greed, lust, corruption, extortion, killing, and so on. They are also taking all measures to achieve whatever they want at any cost, no matter the means, whether illegal or if it costs someone else’s life. Greed and gluttony of the people have reached such a stage that they seem to be worse than animals.
Readers must be flabbergasted at the very first line of one of Mojaffor Hossain’s stories, in which he talks about someone dead talking to a stranger, someone rising up from the grave or a dead person drinking tea with other people in a tea stall. The story “The Flautist,” thus, begins, “I stumble upon Mozzel, today. To the best of my recollection, he had passed from this world some 15 years ago, either in May or June.” The narrator of the story meets Mozzel who died 15 years back, but they’re walking together, talking about several subjects such as the sea, family, flute, etc. They talk as if it were a normal everyday conversation between two living persons. This is how the storyteller keeps readers awe-struck and at some point the readers begin to internalise the matters as mundane happening in their routine. And in between such bizarre incidents occurring in the story, the writer also adds some truths which turn out to be universal, consequently becoming valuable quotes, “We cannot always expect to find clear reasons for death; it’s not so straightforward.”
“The Spy” is a story of extreme injustice, deprivation, and exploitation. It is a story which depicts the real picture of Bangladesh, where dishonesty, misuse of power, tyranny, and occupation of others’ resources are common. “The Spy” indeed represents, to some extent, the Liberation War, since the man who is doubted as a spy lost everything and everyone in the war. Now alone, the main character of the story wanders as if he were a lunatic or the people have made him a lunatic.
“Between Two Lives,” the story after which the collection is titled, feels like watching a short film about memory, trauma, illness, family, and dilemma. Rahman, the central character of the story, goes through a state of delirium on the hospital bed, while his wife, sons, daughters-in-law plan on minimising the cost of his burial. The story can also be studied through the lens of psychoanalysis. “So Near, Yet So Far” is about dislocation during the Partition, when the subcontinent witnessed unprecedented riots, killings, burnings, and migration. It is the story of Hari, Mira, Shubir, Haradhon, and several others who were the victims of the division based on religion. While going down the memory lane, the characters also talk about politics, sports, and films of the two countries.
“Farewell to Poetry” is a wonderful story replete with wonder, magic, and twists. Vyada, who is known as a poet in the village, has a deep connection to land and river. Coming from a poor family, he sits by the river and composes poetry, but the way of his writing is not common—he rarely writes using words; he composes poetry in his imagination using sound, smell, and scenes. The villagers sometimes chide him and his wife for his strange way of leading his life and writing poetry. One evening, he goes out to the river to write poetry but never returns. But the interesting part of the story is that the narrator meets Vyada at his home, talks to him and seeks his poems for his magazine, although he was no more. Misri, the poet’s wife, acknowledges that he has gone to God but she also says that he’s around. The story ends with two notes: “Note-1: Once Misri Shundori shared her heart with Vyada to deliver poems. She herself became his poetry today. Note-2: Most probably, Vyada’s passing was the best poetry he could ever create.”
The other stories in the collection such as “A River Story” and “Bonsai Baba,” among a few others, move readers in a variety of ways. Between Two Lives, to justifiably comment, is a collection of well crafted stories, which have a lot of qualities to both entertain and enlighten readers. Moreover, the stories also evoke thoughts as the contemporary society enmeshed with the normal and paranormal reality is depicted in the stories.
The translation has a good flow of reading as the translator has attempted to keep to the essence of the original, and at the same time, he has tried to maintain readability in the target language. Just a few glitches are noticeable, especially in the cases of word selection, spellings, and structures. They’re maybe typos, but still a more serious and sincere copyediting could have made the collection better. But Between Two Lives is doubtless a commendable piece of literary work, which merits wider readership.
Mohammad Shafiqul Islam, a poet, translator, and academic, is Professor in the Department of English, Shahjalal University of Science and Technology, Sylhet. His latest collection of poetry On the Other Side of Silence has appeared from Red River, India. He may be communicated at [email protected].
