Short Story: Amina Aunty by Nawar Fairooz

Nawar Fairooz shares a poignant story featuring women’s quiet rebellions and suffocations in Bangladesh, weaving between Dhaka’s urban sprawl and the lingering traditions of village life.

I have this recurring dream where a large, dark figure made of shadows drapes its arms around me and holds me in a spooning position. It’s nice; my head is cradled in a large, warm nook. Then the air gets heavy, and my neck begins to sweat. The familiar limbs transform into something giant, and its weight restrains me. I am crushed under the weight, and the warmth turns into heat that begins to boil my skin and scalp. I struggle for breath, trying to break free of the non-death grip, in need of air but not attempting to find any. Dream-me gives in and starts to sink. I try to consciously snap out of sleep, a futile attempt at escape. I’m stuck. And I can’t seem to remember how I finally escape, every time. But I somehow do. 

It stopped for a few years. The last time I had this dream, I’d gone to visit my village home, which had gone through drastic transformation over the decades. When I was a child, we had a two-story house with its tin roof and wooden second floor; the first floor was designated for my uncle’s family and the second floor for ours. I was always excited to visit for the various fruits and pithas Dadi would gather and prepare for the large cohort of cousins and their friends. I only ever complained about the long walk to the latrine (an unusual word used by my grandmother) in the middle of the night, which is literally how all djinn stories start, and I would like to avoid that fate, thank you very much. The house became a large, white bungalow with numerous rooms and indoor plumbing, and the white-tiled steps leading up to the main gate are ruined every year during the flood season. The winters are too cold because it’s a concrete building in the middle of nowhere, and the summers are too hot because they had to cut down the old trees to build the house, since my uncle wanted the extra space to build a swimming pool.