Asif hated this feeling. The feeling that he was being watched.
Asif was not the kind of boy who had much to hide. Sure, he had sneaked off to Raihan’s house to watch porn a few times when his parents were out, and of course, he had once tried smoking in school behind the large beech tree near the football field. Asif was also, definitely, not stupid enough to ever confess to anyone that his father’s signature on his last history quiz, where he scored 2 out of 10, had been completely forged.
These were mild secrets, harmless sins. Compared to the rest of his turning-teen classmates, Asif was quite the good boy, and for most part, invisible. His roll number was 36 in a class of 80, and he was yet to be blessed with puberty, like some of his classmates already were. Still, his 5’5″ height and light complexion and deep voice ensured he was neither the hunk Sunny and Moshiur and their friends were, and thankfully, also, was not a shortie and did not squeak when he spoke, like Raihan and Polash did, and got bullied for.
All in all, Asif was an average, well-behaved boy. An only child to wonderful middle-class parents living in a small apartment in Dhaka city, navigating life through the 2000s as it came. Asif did not invite or incite trouble, and he was not the sort to be remembered. There was no reason why anyone would want to keep an eye on him.
And yet, he had this uneasy feeling that someone was following him all the time. Watching him, mocking him, keeping notes on everything he did.
No matter how much he refused to let the thought enter his mind, Asif knew the exact moment he had begun to feel this way.
It was when that one-eyed beggar woman had jinxed him near Green Road.
*
That July noon saw one of the craziest monsoon rains that caused waterlogging all over Dhaka city. Asif, who usually took a rickshaw back home from his school in Farmgate, had gotten off two lanes early after sitting on the same spot for almost an hour for the otherwise 15-minute ride. Since he did not own a phone, he was worried that his parents would begin calling the school to check if he had left. The rickshaw-puller had asked Asif to wait some more, the poor man drenching in the rain himself, as were hundreds of other rickshaw-pullers and pedestrians stuck in the area. On any other day, Asif would not have minded the rain, but he had already had a hard day in school and he wanted to get home badly. Paying the rickshaw-puller an additional fare of 5taka for leaving him in the middle of nowhere, Asif placed his messenger bag on top of his head and jostled out of the traffic and over the wet tracks. He first waited at a shop with a few other strangers, hoping the storm would die down. After ten or so minutes of standing, Asif left again, impatiently swinging his bag on one side and entering the left lane that came right after in order to avoid walking on the waterlogged main road.
As he walked through the rain, Asif felt himself fuming over the day’s events. Every day during break time, the bullies Sunny and Moshiur would find excuses to taunt and hit the weaker boys in their class, sometimes snatching their food and money as well. Asif, who received comparatively more pocket money from home, usually saved his friends Raihan and Polash by paying up when things got difficult. The three boys would resort to the quieter corners in the school’s football field to escape from the bullies, which sometimes worked, but only until their spot got discovered again. The worst were always the rainy days, which meant they would all have to spend their break time inside the classroom. In a boys’ school like theirs, this only led to more chaos and fights and calls to the principal’s office.
Today, Sunny had yet again hit Raihan on the head when they had all been sitting in one corner of the class and beginning to eat their tiffin. Raihan had jumped in fright and fallen on the floor, and got laughed at by Sunny and Moshiur and the whole class too. The crowd always took the side of the bullies to spare themselves from facing the same fate.
“And what peasant food did you bring today?” Moshiur snickered, snatching Polash’s box. He displayed the rooti and omelette for the class to see, who took the cue and laughed with them again.
“Ask your poor mother to cook better,” he said now, stuffing the flatbread into his mouth.
Sunny turned to Asif and asked him to hand over whatever money he had on him. Asif, who had recently been saving up some cash to buy his friends pizza and Pepsi from the canteen, had initially objected and said he did not have any cash on him today.
“Oh yeah?” Sunny had replied. “Let me check for you. Moshiur, hold him.”
Moshiur, who was known for his heavy built and strength, had come from behind Asif’s chair. He grabbed Asif’s arms from the back and held them in a cross position over Asif’s chest, pressing himself on the boy so that his head was pinned onto Moshiur’s stomach. Sunny approached from the front and inserted his hands to check both of Asif’s pant pockets and took out a few notes of 10taka from the right before groping Asif’s crotch. Sunny counted the notes, and slapped Asif across his face, saying “you get this for lying.” Moshiur let go of his arms, and the two went off to walk out of the classroom. Asif sat in his chair, not being able to meet anyone’s gaze, his crotch and cheek both stinging. Polash and Raihan sat next to him quietly, as they often did in moments like these, each digesting the humiliations they faced.
“I could have kicked him today,” Asif said after a few minutes.
“Leave it dost.” Polash said. “We will just make it worse if we try to fight.”
Raihan nodded quietly in agreement.
“Well, at least he did not check my bag. I have a bit of money there too, for emergencies. But I really wanted to treat you guys at some point.” Asif added to lighten the situation.
“No problem dost.” Polash, known for being the politest boy in the group, had consoled again.
“Yes, we will have fun when you come over to my house again!” Raihan said too. Asif felt slightly better at this, thinking of Raihan’s sister, Rusma, who he had developed a crush on. The three boys went back to being silent, each trying to forget about what just happened and shift their thoughts to other things. They were extremely grateful when the break time was over before Sunny and Moshiur returned with more canteen-food in their hands.
Although Asif realized things could have been worse, he could not shake off the fact that Sunny actually slapped him in the face. The jerk had groped him two other times ever since the beginning of Class 5, even punched Asif in the stomach the first time he had protested when his pockets were searched. Almost every other day, they hit or shoved his two friends, or hurled insults for everyone to hear. But to be slapped in the face like that, in front of the whole class? To not even have the guts to kick them back even though his legs were not tied? Why did he not fight back? Why was he such a loser?
A tear trickled down Asif’s face now, and he quickly looked around the street to check if anybody known had spotted him crying. He blinked a few times so that the tears went away and began to walk faster. Up ahead, he noticed the usual cluster of beggars huddled under the tree that sheltered them only so slightly. He knew most of these homeless faces for frequenting in their area. Although Asif tried to help them occasionally, he also followed his parents’ advice and made sure he did not always fall for their emotional blackmail, so that they did not start taking Asif for an easy target. Today especially, Asif ignored their pleas for “just a little money” as he walked past and said the usual response of “sorry, forgive me” before turning at the end of the lane.
Here, on the corner of the street and right under another beech tree, sat an old woman who Asif had not seen in the Green Road area before. The woman, wrapped in a black blanket with a small plastic box in front of her for collecting money, seemed to be shivering in the cold storm. She looked up at the sounds of Asif’s footsteps.
The face Asif saw made him instantly stop short in his tracks. The woman was blind in one eye. Not blind with a closed eyelid or a cataract-stricken eye like he had seen on people before. In the place of her left eye was an empty socket – a petal-shaped black hollow that immediately gave him the chills. The woman stared back at him with the blank left eye and the normal right eye for a few seconds. She then broke into a smirk, revealing her stained, crooked teeth, and extended one hand from under her shawl, a hand worn and scarred in multiple areas.
“Leave something for this poor blind woman!” she said in a raspy voice.
Asif took a step back at first, appalled by the sight of the beggar. He decided that the woman could be dangerous, and that to give her any money, he would have to get closer to her. He shook his head no, and said the usual “forgive me” to her too, and began to walk past in hurried steps.
“Oi boy! Don’t go. Leave something for this poor blind woman.” She said again in her hoarse voice.
Against his better judgement, Asif, who had moved a few paces away from the woman, turned to look at her again. The woman still had on the smirk, as if she could sense his fear. She pointed to her box.
“Come, come. Leave something here.”
“Forgive me, please.” Asif said again. “I don’t have any money today.”
“Lies!” The old woman shouted now. “Lies! I know you have money in your bag!” She pointed at his messenger bag.
Asif’s heart began to beat loudly. This was the second time today that the location of his money and him hiding it had come up, although under different circumstances. He knew she had probably just said it assuming that’s where anyone would tuck their money safely during the rain, but Asif felt uneasy all the same.
“I am right, am I not?” The woman sneered. “Give, give, don’t be harsh on this poor blind woman!”
Asif hesitated for some time, then walked a few steps closer to the old woman. He unzipped his bag and carefully took out his remaining 10taka.
“Believe me, this is all I have.” Asif said.
The old woman grabbed it from his hand and tucked it inside her shawl.
“I know that’s all you have today. I know everything. I see everything.” The woman said now, with a slight cackle.
“H-how?” Asif asked, taking a few steps back.
“How? With this eye! The good one!” She pointed at her empty socket and laughed manically.
Asif gulped and nodded, and took another step back, meaning to turn.
“Wait, don’t go. You really want to know how I see things?”
“Umm, na Khala, I’m fine. I have to go home.” Asif said to escape.
“Areh, wait, wait, let me show you something.” The woman now picked up the box, which seemed to have some money notes and a small polythene in it. She removed the money and put the notes inside her shawl to protect them from getting drenched in the rain. She opened the mouth of the bag inside the box and gestured Asif to come closer.
“Here, see it for yourself.” She extended the box.
Breathing heavily, Asif took a few steps closer again and peeked in.
Inside the bag was an eyeball, resting in a watery, red liquid. The eyeball looked like it had just been scooped out from a real human – with red visible veins on the white portion, the black pupil dilated and glossy.
Asif screamed out loud and staggered a few steps back, balancing himself on the wall behind him.
“This, this is you. Not mine, yours! Your eye!” The old woman, who had been grinning at Asif the whole time, pointed at him and burst into a loud screech of laughter after saying this. She closed the lid of the box and kept it to one side. Asif turned and began running, still being able to hear the woman’s echoing laugh, and as he reached the end of the lane to go the next, he was sure he heard the woman shout, “FROM NOW ON I WILL BE WATCHING YOU TOOOO!”
*
Since that day, almost three weeks now, Asif had not been able to concentrate on anything. He kept thinking about the woman, about the eye in the box, about her words about watching him, about the eye being his. What did she mean? How was it fair that he, and not horrible people like Sunny or Moshiur, had to go through a scary encounter like that?
While his friends asked him many times why he seemed so aloof, Asif did not share this incident with them. They assumed Asif’s change in behaviour had something to do with that slap from Sunny and asked him to try forgetting about it. Asif’s academic performance also deteriorated by the day, and he began to leave the school premises right when the bell rang, so that he could take the usual main road before traffic got busy and avoid having to go into that lane. At night, he started having regular nightmares about the woman with the missing eye. Every time he woke in the dark, he would sit up horrified, panting, looking around in panic to check if the eyeball was staring at him from any corner.
He would then struggle to go back to sleep, and show up for school looking exhausted.
Raihan’s birthday was coming up next week, and he had invited his two friends along with some other boys in the class to his house the next Saturday. Earlier this week, when the three of them had been sitting in the corner of the football field during break time, Sunny and Moshiur had attacked them again, this time dangling Raihan by the arms and threatening to pull off his pants for everyone to see. While Polash kept pleading from the side asking them to let go of Raihan, Asif had, very quietly, paid the boys ten notes of 10taka and asked them to stop bothering them for good. Moshiur, who happily took the money as he let go of Raihan, laughed it off and slapped Asif and Polash’s head from behind, calling them cowards. Sunny, however, had paused for a bit when he saw the look in Asif’s eyes. Up until now, the timid, weakling of a boy never had the guts to even meet Sunny in the eye, and today, Asif had been straight up glaring. Sunny had felt a strange fear in his chest which he quickly brushed away. When they both left, Polash asked again what had come over Asif, and why he gave away the money they had planned to use to buy a DVD gift for Raihan.
“I just don’t want any more trouble,” Asif had said looking down, and then remained silent. The next day, when he received a 3 out of 10 in his science test, Asif knew he would not be able to forge his way through this time, not with the eye watching him.
He walked to his parents’ room that evening, already looking thinner than usual, his face aghast in fear.
“What happened, dear?” His mother asked.
“I just cannot – cannot study anymore.” Asif said, as he sat on their bed and handed the quiz paper to them. Before his father could even get angry, Asif broke down into tears, rolling on the bed.
“It’s all right, I will not scold you!” His father, extremely shocked to see his son in this state, held Asif immediately, asking him what went wrong.
“I can’t concentrate.” Asif said in a hollow voice.
“Is everything okay with your friends in school?” His mother asked.
“Yes. It’s me, the problem is me.” Asif said and began crying again.
The parents decided that Asif would be given additional home tutoring from the following month to help him cope better with his studies. This only made Asif feel even more guilty for being a disappointment and causing his parents to pay extra for his studies as well.
That night in his room, Asif woke up from yet another nightmare. In the dream, Asif saw his parents had summoned him to their room to introduce him to his new tutor. It turned out to be the woman with the one eye, smirking the same smirk, telling him that she was watching him. He woke up with a jolt. He had already been sleeping with the lights on, and as he turned to one side, Asif saw the bloodshot eyeball on his pillow rolling over to the floor. He screamed till his parents came into his room to check on him, and of course there was no sign of the eyeball or anything resembling it when they searched all over the room.
*
For Raihan’s 12th birthday, his family arranged a small party for his close friends and family at their house in Dhanmondi. The event was organized at their backyard which they shared with the neighbours. A big table laden with food and the birthday cake stood in one corner. A few children, mostly Raihan’s cousins and kids from the neighbourhood, were also seen to be running about. Raihan’s younger sister, Rusma, was sitting with two of her female cousins on one corner of the backyard. Raihan and his friends, including Asif, Polash, and also Wajid, Rifat and Bilu sat in his room.
Wajid, who noticed how frail and exhausted Asif appeared, extended his hand for a shake.
“Listen, man. I’m sorry – I know I laugh with those jerks when they attack you guys, but just know that I don’t mean it at all.” Wajid smiled a little as he said this.
Asif, whose mood lifted immediately, embraced the handshake and assured that he knew what peer pressure felt like. Together, the boys tried to come up with a plan on what to do to bring the bullying to a stop, and regretted how, in spite of being more in number, they were unable to fight off just two scumbugs. Soon, they began to play a game of Street Fighter on the computer, bonding over superpower hacks and debating which players were their favourite.
The familiar relaxed environment of Raihan’s house, who was known to have the coolest set of parents, and the presence of friends dissing Sunny and Moshiur helped Asif temporarily forget about the old woman and the eye. He was seen to be smiling broadly again, and even cheering Wajid when his player began to strike back powerfully. At around 8pm, Raihan’s mother came in and asked them to go out for the cake cutting ceremony followed by dinner. The boys all left the room one by one to gather outside. Asif, who desperately needed a pee break, excused himself for a few minutes.
He went into the family bathroom and closed the door behind him. He stood in front of the toilet and unzipped his pants. He had just about finished peeing when he felt the strange fear of being watched again. He quickly washed himself and zipped up his pants, looking around in fear, the mirror returning nothing but his scared reflection. He then checked the commode before flushing, and there was nothing. He hastily washed his hands over the sink, patting them dry on his pants. And then, as if realizing suddenly, he moved towards the door and stood near the hinge. Taking a step closer, he crouched on the floor, and peered through the small crack in the door he had discovered long ago in this house.
The bloodshot eye stared back at him.
It was not possible to tell if it was hanging midair, or if it belonged to a person. Horrified, Asif tried to move too fast and fell backwards on the bathroom floor. He lay there for some time, breathing heavily, trying to collect his thoughts. So that was what this had all been about, he understood finally, choking in the realization. Standing up soundlessly, he opened the door and peeked outside. There was no one behind it, and no eyeballs on the floor. He swallowed once, and then ran towards the spot where everybody had gathered.
At the backyard, Raihan was now cutting the cake, as the rest of his friends and family stood around in front of the table, singing the birthday song. They all paused together as they spotted a distressed Asif running towards them. He scanned all the guests’ faces, and then, spotting Rusma standing on one side of the table, he walked up to her.
“Forgive me,” Asif said.
“Huh? Why?” Rusma asked, shocked. Everyone around the table had gone completely quiet. Leaving the cake knife on the table, Raihan walked up close, followed by Polash.
“What’s going on?” Raihan asked now.
“Forgive me. I know you know.” Asif said again to Rusma. Taking one step closer, he knelt down on the ground and began to cry into his hands.
“Please forgive me. I’ll never do it again.” Asif begged now.
“I don’t understand…” Rusma began.
Raihan came closer and glanced between his sister and his friend.
Asif looked at Raihan and folded his hands, asking for forgiveness, still knelt on the ground. He turned to face Rusma with the same folded hands.
“Please. I will never, never, watch you in the bathroom again.” He uttered through muffled tears.
A few gasps were heard among Raihan’s family members who were standing close. Rusma, stupefied by the revelation, immediately ran inside the house. Her parents, who were too far to hear the exact words, followed their daughter inside, to understand what the commotion was about.
Raihan stood staring at Asif, who was now shaking through fits of tears. He pulled his friend by the hair and asked Polash to hold both of Asif’s arms from the back. Polash, who was on the verge of crying himself, obeyed, standing behind Asif and removing his hands from his face and bringing them firmly to the back. As the tear-streamed face of Asif looked at Raihan, it was met by multiple punches and slaps.
Their friends came up and separated Raihan, who was still screaming, “You filthy piece of shit. The good boy who saves us, huh?! Haramjada! Get out of my house right now!”
Polash, now letting go of Asif’s arms, threw one look of disgust at him, and said, “You’re even worse than those horrible jerks we know.” He turned to follow Raihan.
Asif stood up with a bruised face and mumbled “forgive me” one last time. He hung his head in shame and turned to slowly walk out of Raihan’s house, knowing that the eye would follow him forever.