The midday sun was blazing right above my head.
I walked slowly, with only one goal—to go home and eat rice.
It was around 2:30 PM, and my stomach felt like an empty drum beating from the inside.
Just then, a hand grabbed the back of my neck from behind—
"Come on, son! Let's go home. Your aunt cooked rupchanda fish today."
I turned around and saw an old man.
A name floated beside him—Karim.
The moment you looked at him, a gentle warmth rose in your chest.
His tired body and time-worn face told a long story of hardship.
He looked somewhere between sixty and seventy, yet even that age seemed too heavy for him.
A thin, fragile body…
Shoulders slightly bent…
Breathing slow and weary—
It was clear that years of suffering had hollowed him from the inside.
His face was long and angular, with wrinkles so deep they looked like scars of forgotten memories.
His pale skin and calm but sorrow-filled eyes silently spoke everything—
He had seen much.
His hair was short, thin, and gray—looking so delicate it might break in the wind.
He had no beard, but the dull tone of his skin and the sharpness of his jaw made him appear even more withered.
He wore a long, loose robe—gray-brown in color, torn and patched in several places, as if every rip carried a story of the many miles he had walked.
The old shawl wrapped around his shoulders wasn't for the cold—
It was more like a shield to hide himself from the harshness of the world.
Around his waist, only a thin rope served as a belt.
His hands were politely folded in front of him, a quiet symbol of fragility, silent pain, and the strange resilience of humanity.
Before I could say a word, he held my wrist and gently pulled me inside.
Karim uncle's tiny hut was painfully simple—
bamboo walls, tin roof, and an old wooden table in one corner.
His wife, the old auntie, walked with difficulty, yet she smiled as she set down plates of rice and rupchanda fish.
While eating, the two of them spoke of their suffering—
"Rahim went abroad and married some foreign woman." the aunt said, wiping her eyes.
The uncle sighed.
"He doesn't even call us anymore, not even once. Maybe he thinks we're already dead."
I kept eating silently, staring at their faces.
A strange, heavy pain settled in my chest.
It felt like… I was their son Rahim.
After we finished eating, uncle said,
"Come on, son. Let's go to the riverside for a while."
Without thinking much, I agreed.
We rode an old rickshaw toward the Chuadanga River.
The rickshaw shook so much on the way that I felt it might fall apart any second.
When we reached the riverbank, we saw an elderly man casting a fishing net.
Karim uncle said,
"That's my old friend, Neil the fisherman. We used to catch fish together back in the day."
Neil's eyes were burnt by the sun, and his face carried a deep sadness.
He looked at us and said,
"This river once kept people alive.
Now the military throws bodies into it.
The river is rotting.
Fish float dead, and people still eat them… then die of sickness.
This river is no longer a river—
It flows with blood."
I stood silently, listening.
The smell of fish mixed with a strange rotting stench—
the smell of war.
We three rowed a small boat toward the middle of the river and cast our fishing lines.
Neil—he was a man of the sea.
His muscular build and sunburned skin told stories of years spent battling waves.
Though in his early forties, the deep lines on his face showed hardship, yet his faint smile held a quiet pride—
the pride of earning everything through honest labor.
Sitting in the wooden boat, he pulled the net with strong hands.
His posture—firm, focused—
as if he understood the language of the water,
and the water, in return, rewarded him generously.
He wore a wide straw hat to block the sunlight.
A loose, dark blue-gray striped, kimono-like top with short sleeves,
and knee-length trousers below—
simple, traditional fisherman clothing.
A faded cloth belt wrapped around his waist,
and light sandals covered his feet.
His eyes stayed fixed on the net—
or perhaps deeper, toward the silver fish that awaited his patience.
Respect for nature, belief in hard work—
these two things made Neil a humble yet indomitable son of the river.
After nearly thirty minutes of waiting, I finally caught a fish.
I planned to take it home.
Karim uncle continued speaking softly with Neil,
as if trying to fill some empty space inside both of them.
I could feel it—
In this world, Karim uncle wasn't just lonely.
He was too lonely.
As we rode back on the rickshaw, uncle said in a gentle tone,
"You're a good boy, Riven…
Good people are rare in this rotten world."
I said nothing.
In my mind I whispered,
How is Riven a good person? He was nothing but a pervert.
I couldn't say it out loud.
All I felt was that people like them…
were the only shelter I had left in this world.
It was time to go home.
We bid farewell to Neil and took another rickshaw.
The rickshaw rolled slowly toward the market.
Karim uncle sat beside me with a faint smile on his face,
a sack in his hand, filled with the fish he caught.
I knew he sold those fish to survive.
He was old, yet he still went to the river every day.
A hardworking, gentle man… one who smiled even through a lifetime of sorrow.
As we approached the market, we noticed thick black smoke rising in the distance.
The rickshaw puller said in a trembling voice—
"Uncle… I think the market is on fire!"