What are twenty years? Even if she has to live away from her village for the twenty epochs, Noorbanu wouldn’t forget her home address.

Noorbanu stood on the riverbank’s edge, took down her one-and-half-year old baby from her lap, and looked across the river. She was not able to see the other bank. This was the month of Kati, and thus the river was drying up in anticipation of the winter; the sandbanks, riverine islands, were visible. Like the blue veins on the wrists of a person plump with blood, a few narrow streams were flowing across the sandbanks. These small streams of water were not fickle; like a mundane life sans novelty, these streams’ daily lives were also ordinary. Whatever! If the streams didn’t exist, she would have wondered if the river is dead.

Noorbanu searched the sandbanks with her curious eyes and finally fixed her gaze on a specific spot, around a mile or mile a half from where she was standing. The area she stared at was the middle portion of the river. Yet, she said with conviction, “There, on that spot- Yes, our village Majorchar used to exist on that spot.”

She has been storing a dream to be here in her mind’s little trunk since she met Kurbaan Peha in Guwahati while working on a pucca road. Now, as her dreams dash and break, her heart skips a beat.
Eeesh - such pain, such pain! Unable to bear the pain of her dreams breaking, Noorbanu sat with her legs spread towards the front, resigned. She was not able to stand anymore.

Noorbanu didn’t answer Roshid’s question. She does not answer his question because she cannot prepare her mind to answer it honestly. Hoy, how can she say that Kurbaan Peha has lied to them? If she tells him that the information from Kurbaan Peha is wrong, wouldn’t his heart break-up, too?

Right, after Kurbaan Peha’s information, even Roshid had started to dream like Noorbanu: the dream to get out of the scummy world of the city, the dream of getting back to the carefree village life. After the dream started to grow in his mind, he told her one day after the day’s work, “If your Peha’s information is correct, it would be good, o’! We can just leave this place. Is this even a life? We can farm in the village and live with respect and dignity.”

They have been together for so long that when Roshid was hurt, even she felt his pain.

Why wouldn’t this bond be that strong? It is because of Roshid she had had a stable life. Before meeting him, she had been like a clutch of hyacinth, pushed and pulled here and there on the floodwaters. He is like a small twig of support in the middle of this, a twig that she has held on to for many years now.

Noorbanu became terrified, breathless, just thinking about the days before Roshid. She had seen how greedy and predatorial men have exploited women. She had known women who have been disappeared by such men, forever. She had heard that those women have been sold in Siliguri and Dilli’s scandalous lanes by the men the women trusted.

She threw a glance of gratitude to her husband and saw the questions he had been asking for a while: “where is her village?” Yet, she was not able to bring herself to the point of telling him the truth.

She picked up her baby, thrust his face under her blouse, and fed him. The boy became busy with her dry breast that looked like a punctured balloon with many wrinkles.

Noorbanu now unpacked her handkerchief that had areca-nuts, betel-leaves, and limestone. She offered a piece of chopped nut, with a bit of betel leaf to her husband, and pushed another portion of the same thing into her mouth. Roshid did not consume tobacco with nuts and leaves. He lit a bidi for himself to smoke. She searched the folded handkerchief with her fingers and found some tobacco leaves and took them in her mouth.

She was never addicted to tobacco. In Dhemaji, when she worked in a brick-kiln, Korimon’s mother had told her one day, “Oi Noorie! You don’t take tobacco?”
“Uhu…”
“Why?”
“Just like that.”
“Try it out someday.”
“Why? What happens when you chew that?”
“What will happen? You will get some energy in your body and be able to work harder.”
That was the first time she had tobacco. And it was true: she felt a little dizzy after the first few moments, slightly high, but instead of the regular eleven or twelve bricks, she was able to earn more by carrying fifteen or twenty bricks at a time.

Roshid was chewing pan as well as smoking a bidi, with rapt attention. As if he was trying to blow away all the exhaustion of the night’s journey with the smoke! Noorbanu took this opportunity to look out to the middle portion of the river one again. Yes, right there, there, was their Majorchar village! She couldn’t be wrong about this; never! For a moment, she felt as if, if she started digging on the islands of sand, the village that she had left twenty years ago would come up: the tin-roofed houses that her family-owned, the mango, jackfruit, peach, Kadam, silk-cotton tree, and …!
Noorbanu’s eyes swelled up.

With a shed full of cows, two helps hired for twelve whole months, two granaries to store harvested rice rains, her family was pretty wealthy in the village. What is scarcity, hunger, how does it feel to be hungry, - these are things she never wondered during those days, and her Haj-returned father was a generous man with a big heart; her father always tried to keep Noorbanu and her siblings happy. No, not that he only tried. He was successful in it, and they lived in unlimited happiness.

Noorbanu wiped off her tear, making sure Roshid did not notice her and grumbled because Allah couldn’t be happy with their happiness, as if their joy burned Allah with the fire of envy! Why was she using the word “as if”? He had burnt down their happiness just now. Otherwise, why would Allah take them out of their happy lives and throw them into a world of unhappiness? Hawai was exiled from heaven after eating the forbidden fruit, but why were they expelled from their happy land? They were innocent, isn’t it? What sin had they committed that Allah had to take away all their happiness in this way? Ha? What sin had they committed, the people of Majorchar, who spent day and night doing physical labor to earn a living and did nothing else against a soul? She had never heard that someone in the village had done something sinful. Her father a bit too much: he was madly devoted to Allah and chanted his name as he did his work for the day, read the namaaz for five times, and at the end, he had gone and had a look at Allah’s home, touched it.

Two years after her father’s return from Haj -she had turned thirteen years old. Just how the small tributaries become lush soon after the month of Bohag, her body had matured in a way that attracted others’ glances. She had started to look at the world in a new, colorful way. She hadn’t even realized that the world could be so beautiful, so bright.

But Noorbanu did not have the good fortune of living in that beautiful world for too long. That year, the river roared and grumbled, and like a giant python that swallows goat kids, it engulfed the entire Majorchar village in its belly. Ah! In just two months, Shaon and Bhado, the people in this wealthy village, were reduced to paupers to search for a new address.

Noorbanu’s family moved to the national highway with some other villagers and found shelter next to it.

And in a world full of scarcities, needs, people became crueler, more selfish, so much that even loved ones did not pause to think about each other, Noorbanu had realized.

After around six or seven months of moving next to the national highway in search of land to live, Noorbanu’s family started seeing days when it was hard to imagine that they would be able to eat any adequate food the next day. Often, they didn’t have food and had no option but to pick up daily labor to bring in money and food. But who could do that? Her Haj-returned father? It was not his age to do hard labor! Her two elder brothers were not prepared to do such work.

But after remaining hungry for two consecutive days, her eldest brother went out in search of manual labor. In the evening, he returned home with half a kg of rice. Too little, and as a result, it led to a huge quarrel between them: who would eat how much, because there were thirteen people in the family to eat that rice. Everyone wanted to eat well.

“You earn your food,” her eldest brother grumbled, staring at others, after demanding more rice than his siblings.

“Ah,” her father had sighed. In his mind, he must have wondered how his son was able to say such a thing. It must have pierced his heart with the force of a spear.

After that, even though both her elder brothers started working and earning through daily manual labor, similar quarrels around food continued to happen. Who ate how much, who ate secretly, ate more, and didn’t have enough rice to eat, were the reasons. Some cried, some cribbed, some grumbled, and her brothers hollered at each other one day. In the end, as if they were ending the matter, they told everyone in the family, “Work and earn your share of food.”

In hunger, in hurt, her father left for the other world. Her mother became mentally and physically ill.

A week after her father passed away, her brothers left the family with their wives and children; Noorbanu only saw darkness in front of her eyes, darker than the days of the dark moon. What would she do now for a living? What would she feed her sick mother?

Unable to find a way to earn a living, one day, when she was weeping next to her mother’s bed, sitting next to her head, her sister-in-law Karimon’s mother entered their hut. Korimon’s mother didn’t need to know why she was weeping. She had said, “Oi Noorie, will you get to eat if you weep? Come out with me tomorrow. You can work with us at the brick kiln in Dheerghat. Some of them who work there are younger than you. What do you say?”

She was relieved at her words. Actually, for about two or more days, she had been wondering if she would go with Korimon’s mother and the other women to work at the brick kiln. But she hadn’t asked them out of hesitation.

“Alright, be ready then. You haven’t done so much manual labor before. The first two days will be difficult. Things will be okay after a while.”

Korimon’s mother was right. It took her about a week to get used to working at the brick kiln. She was able to make bricks and carry bricks, along with her new girlfriends there with laughter, by cracking jokes, and as the days passed, she was becoming stronger and healthier both mentally and physically. She stopped indulging in any stray emotions. Nothing, no work was hard for her any longer. Her mother had started feeling better, and after Noorbanu went to work, her mother had started to go to the nearby villages to beg. Noorbanu was aware of it, even though her mother hadn’t mentioned it to her. They maintained a silence around it.

After about one and a half years of working at Dheerghat’s brick kilns, two strange men arrived at Noorbanu’s hut one evening.

“Would you like to go to Dhemaji with us? To work in brick kilns there. You will earn double the amount.” They said as soon as they arrived.
“Double?” Noorbanu was instantly delighted.
“But how far is Dhemaji?”
“Well, a bit far.” One of the men said, “As far as Guwahati is from here.”
“Would you go to work there?” The other man asked.

How far is Guwahati? Noorbanu had no idea and was worried, but after thinking for a while, they both decided that it didn’t matter how far Dhemaji or Guwahati was, but they would go. They needed more money to survive. They needed more money to eat full meals two times a day. And for people like them, displaced and homeless, what is far, what is close, what is distance! They don’t even have an address right here, where they were born.

Norrbanu had met Roshid in Dhemaji; he was from Morigaon, and just like them, even he had lost everything to the river’s chest one day and had started working at brick kilns. She liked him from the moment she saw him and later, she learned, he too liked her. During work, they started to talk with each other through their eyes, and one day, their eye exchanges were detected by their friends’ eyes. What else! They started teasing the two of them, and the constant teasing only brought them closer mentally. One day, so that they could be close to each other physically, their friends conducted their wedding at the brick factory’s location.

Dissatisfied with the monotony of the brick kiln’s work, Noorbanu and Roshid moved to Guwahati after six months of their marriage. There was a variety of work to do in Guwahati. Build buildings and roads, ride a rickshaw, pushing a cart, and whatnot! br> True that!

For the last eighteen years, they have been doing these odd jobs and living in a hut made of woven bamboo.

Around two months ago, the Dwarakapur road by-lane was under construction. An intense, hot sun could crack the harvested paddy fields like just the way a muskmelon would break when ripe. Burned in that sun, Noorbanu and the other laborers had turned into pieces of hot steel, but they hadn’t stopped cleaning the road with steel brushes. At that time, she saw an old beggar walking on the road and felt as if she had seen him elsewhere, before; but she couldn't remember where she had seen him before. As she was staring at the beggar, he came towards her and was soon standing in front of her, and she noticed that perpendicular to his right eye, there was a large tumor on his forehead. Pretty big, she thought. She left the metal brush and jumped in joy.
“Kurban Peha!”
The beggar was speechless by her address and as if his expression was asking her: Who are you? Why are you calling me, uncle?
“Me! Me!” Noorbanu, able to read the beggar’s question in his eyes, says. “I am Majed Haji’s daughter, from Majorchar? Noorbanu, Noorbanu Khatun!”
“Oh, I remember!” Kurban Peha had said, “But why are you here?”
“After the village was swept away by the river, we have been here for a while. I do manual labor.”
“Oh!” Kurban Peha was now speaking too loudly at the prospect of meeting her. “The river has abandoned your village, don’t you know? Why don’t you guys just go back?”
“What? Really?” Noorbanu shouted in joy at that news. “How did you know, Peha?
“Me…?”
“Oye maiki, who are you speaking to? I will give you half a day's work if you don’t go back to work! You don’t know this father!”
The Junior Thikadar’s voice suppressed whatever Kurban Peha wanted to say; his mouth remained open, but he couldn't say anything.

Afraid of losing her daily salary, she sat down immediately and got to work and soon turned into steel heating up in the sun. Yet, towards the end of the day, she started to feel excited. If her Kurban Peha were right, it would be so good. Was this even life? Right in front of her eyes, images of a rural family life started to float around. When she told Roshid about it, he had screamed in joy, “Really?”
“Why would Kurban Peha lie?”

Noorbanu did not know why Kurban Peha would lie to her, but honestly, he had told her a lie. She sighed. It was the sigh of dreams dashed. She cursed in her mind and felt angry at the old man who said to her that her village had been restored, “I wish I hadn't met that old man that day. We wasted our money for no reason. Ah, we will waste more money now while going back. This is our hard-earned money! This is the money that we saved by eating less!”

“KI o’?-- What happened? Why are you staring at the sandbanks?” Roshid threw away the cigarette stub to the edge of the steep river bank. “And I was asking you, why don’t you say something?”

At Roshid’s words, Noorbanu returned to the present. She lifted her eyes from the sandbanks in the middle of the river and fixed her gaze on his eyes. She wondered if Roshid could see the sorrow of dreams dashed; that she wasn’t able to prepare herself mentally. As in, how, how would she be able to tell him that …!

Noorbanu thought for a few moments and then decided that she would tell her husband the truth right now.

She said, “You know - Kurban Peha misled me. He lied to us.” She braced herself to face the expression of her husband’s disappointment, the expression of broken dreams.
“Yes, Kurban Peha lied to us,” Noorbanu repeated.
“That’s okay, no problem. What to do?” It was hard to say whether Roshid was trying to console himself or Noorbanu. In any way, he seemed to be composed. “Khuda hasn’t written comfort on our foreheads.”
“Let it be, but you are right.”
“And your uncle hasn’t lied to you.” Roshid said thoughtfully, “He must have heard it from someone else.”
“Maybe,” Noorbanu thought and remembered that Kurban Peha had rushed away at the Junior Thikadar’s holler without telling her where he had heard the news.
Roshid lit another bidi, and once he finished smoking, as got up from his sitting position, he suggested, “Get up, let’s go.”
Noorbanu stood up too, holding the baby that had fallen asleep after being fed.
With a heavy heart, Noorbanu and Roshid started walking towards Tilapara, and when they reached Tilapara, it was evening.

They sat in front of a kiosk in Tilapara. A little later, the bus towards Guwahati would arrive. They will get up on the bus as soon as it arrives. They will reach Guwahati after that. That Guwahati, where they have spent half their lives, and now it seems, their last breaths would also be consumed by Guwahati even though they don’t have a permanent address in that city. They would never have a permanent address.