Short Story: The Spool by Rifat Mahbub

In this short story, Rifat Mahbub weaves a poignant tale of love and understanding that will leave the reader with warm and fuzzy feelings.

December brings its own host of festivities like Victory Day, weddings, birthdays, end-of-year parties, musical festivals, and then winter holidays. ‘How money creates festivals,’ Azizul Huq thought as he opened another wedding invitation card–this one would be in mid-January, but the card came in late December. ‘Mr and Mrs. Azizul Huq’–the mat-golden envelope scented cotton candy. The card, a giant pink and golden paper cut, was heart-shaped. Inside, in silver modern calligraphic font, it wrote, ‘Bismillahir Rahmanir Raheem,’ underneath, the bride and the groom, not their parents, invited the guests to their post-wedding reception on January 10, at a place that Azizul Huq never heard of. Not unusual. Dhaka is no longer the city of the knowns–it now has more unknowns than knowns. Azizul Huq even did not recognise the names of the bride and the groom, not unusual either, although it addressed him. ‘Must be a son or a daughter of any of Farzana’s colleagues’–he thought.