F I V E .

“M Y O W N I M AG I N AT I O N I N M Y O W N B O DY ”
Embodied Transgressions in the Everyday

How have women taken the noxious signs of violation and reoccupied them
through the work of domestication, ritualization and re-narration? The zone of the every
­
­
day had to be recovered by reoccupying the very signs of injury that marked her so that
continuity could be shaped in that very space of devastation. —Das 2000, 205

­
While the women readily talked about their history of ashash, khota, chakhash,
and local politics, they spoke of 1971 more subtly, in a “trickle,” a “telling in frag-
ments” (Das 2006, 65) in response to various contexts. I would find the women
talking to themselves, but within my earshot, as if they also wanted me to hear
what they were saying. They “folded” (Das 2000, 220) stories of violence, en-
­
coding and incorporating them into uneventful, taken-for-granted practices
­
­
and relations, constantly combing (hiding) them. The three women in Enay-
etpur had to engage with the ordinary immediately after the “events.” The focus
on the everyday here is in contrast to the image of the wounded raped woman
­
who is considered to be the lieu (Nora 1989), or site representing the trauma of
wartime rape in 1971.
­
“Trauma” has emerged as an easily invoked master term in the global cultural
traffic of suffering. It is understood either as the “return of the repressed” or as
the sign standing for an injury that itself is not witnessed: its truth as an event
is never grasped in the present but comes into existence belatedly through
recurrent flashbacks.1 According to Freud (1959), trauma is that which is so un-
bearable that it has to be repressed; repression is the consequence of some-
Read
thing too traumatic to be borne; something repressed will not stay hidden,
hence the victim of injury experiences the “return of the repressed.” Scholars
have often evoked trauma as survivors’ mode of witnessing of the past. As a
result, this process seems to predetermine the symptoms and what consti-
­
tutes the injuries of war. Having no equivalent word, Bengalis connote trauma
using the words for illness emerging from wound/injury or emotional shock.
Here, I use the word “trauma” to include pain, suffering, and shock and show
how it is a culturally constructed collective/national narrative rather than an
individual Western/global internalized or psychological effect. Cross-cultural

­
critics of the universalized understanding of trauma have similarly critiqued it
for its individualistic approach, for homogenizing symptoms across different
contexts, and for its failure to take on board the historically constructed nature
of self, individuality, and agency.2 I would agree with Veena Das (2006, 103),
who writes: “The model of trauma that has been bequeathed to us from the
Holocaust studies cannot be simply transported to other contexts in which
violence is embedded into different patterns of sociality.” Instead of following
medical and psychiatric understandings of trauma as a returning and repeti-
tive wound, then, I examine the varied connotations of memory embedded
in everyday sociality, namely, the body, the economy, and the home. I show
how trauma is relational and socially conditioned.
I explore traumatic memory first through the “language” of embodied
transgressions in the everyday lives of the war heroines. By “language” I
mean words that trickle out, showing the impact of violence (Das et al. 2000)
by means of various everyday idioms rather than articulating it explicitly. A
linear, coherent “narrative” of the traumatic memory of sexual violence (as
commonly found in accounts of rape) would make language an end in itself.
In contrast, the women’s process of telling and showing involves fragmented
­
imagery, snippets of talk, and bodily sensations, all of which highlight the
inexpressibility of violence. This chapter shows that instead of traumatic
Use
memory producing emotional and physical signs (Kleinman and Kleinman for
1994), various bodily manifestations of pain trigger memories of the event. Intro
If torture destroys a person’s ability to speak, and, as Das says, bodily muti-
lations mutilate the use of ordinary language, bruise and fracture normality,
(Das 2006: 46–58),3 then it becomes significant to explore how the body carries

108 chapter Five

this violence and becomes the memory. How does the body mediate between
the individual and the society and between past and present?
This chapter deals with the women’s semantics of exposure, and with their
semantics of rape as a secret that is covered. Idioms of exposure show that
the women’s immediate trauma of 1971 is embedded beyond their bodies in
sociomaterial realities. Bodily pains linked to 1971 also show that everyday
triggers become the means through which 1971 is expressed in psychosomatic
embodiments. The processes of combing continue through the interaction of
­
the husbands of the birangonas (who talk of sharing the same trauma) with
the women and their various articulations of masculinity linked to the wom-
en’s traumatic memory. Debates on masculinity help us explore the concrete
constraints that reveal and define the blueprint of “patriarchal bargaining” in
any given society,4 which may exhibit variations according to class, caste, and
ethnicity, here undertaken by the birangonas and their families.
­
The “Language” of Exposure and Sociomaterial Realities of Rape
The women deployed a language of exposure that inscribed their identity as
birangonas. As Rohima would often say, “Words which were in the stomach
­
have been brought to the mouth.” Referring to their exposure in Dhaka, the
women would say that “the old was renewed and held up,” “what had been
covered and a secret has become totally open,” “words of the home have gone
outside,” and “our name has been dragged out in the open.” In these phrases,
the words “old,” “covered,” “words of the home,” and “words of the stomach”
connoted an internal subjectivity and secrecy. In contrast, the words “made
anew,” “open,” and “outside” described how exposure externalized their ac-
counts of rape.
Villagers referred to rape with expressions such as “those words,” “those
stories,” “tales,” and “that work,” while the war heroines themselves referred
to it as “secret words,” “the event,” and “loss.” Everyone referred to the act of
rape as man shomman mara or man ijjot mara (literally the stealing / beating
of honor and status/genitals). The Bengali word for rape—dhorshon—was
­
­
rarely used. The frequent use of the verb mara with jaat and man shomman
indicated that the women thought of rape as a violation in terms of a man as-
saulting / beating, robbing / stealing their sexuality and their position in their
community in terms of their loss of jaat (drawn from jati, it means the com-
mon characteristics of a group, like caste, nationality, culture, and/or politi
­
­
cal affiliation). Women would also describe rapists’ actions with expressions

“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 109

such as “he stole/beat up my jaat” and “work was done.” The birangonas
blamed themselves for being raped and called themselves “sinners,” “bad,” and
“spoiled.” Kajoli felt she had no worth/price. Each woman felt she had lost her
shotitto (chastity) when a man committed an act on her that is to be engaged
in only with one’s husband. Because this act brought the “hidden” to the fore,
specifically a hidden act that is precious and sacrosanct to conjugality, the raped
woman felt that she had become a duniyar nishsho (loser of the world). Honor
and status, guilt, loss, and shame here are familial and social terms rather than

­
individual ones.
Referring to the event of rape as kori tori (to do), Kajoli said that when the
military left, they took the “life” out of her, and she had no consciousness, no
knowledge. “Life” here refers to the sense of self and bodily integrity. “I do
­
not know who the military were, but they referred to me as he bangali [hey
­
Bengali] to shut me up.” One day as I stood by Kajoli, who was shouting across
the field to tell her ten-year-old son to come home due to an oncoming jhor
­
­
(storm), she suddenly said, “I was also caught in a toofan [cyclone] and apnar
bhai [literally “your brother, referring to her husband, Rafique, in a form of
fictive kinship prevalent in South Asia] wasn’t even at home during the event.”
­
Toofan and its connotative destruction are much feared in Enayetpur. Here,
Kajoli let a reference to the rape and her husband’s absence that day trickle
out through a weather metaphor. Kajoli went on to lament that she had had
­
no buddhi (intelligence; here it meant sexual knowledge), which her daughter
­
now has, as she was anyway fearful of “going near” (connoting having a sexual
relationship with) her husband: “I was changra [young], only sixteen years old,
and was newly married. I did not even wear a blouse as my garfuli [periods]
had not started. I was so afraid of ‘it’ [sexual intercourse]. I didn’t even want
to do it with your brother [again, she is referring to Rafique]. But, mean-
while, look at what happened to me and that too forcefully by other men!
You know the men in our country are small—my husband is a frail, thin man
and these men were so huge. I was so swollen.”
­
On another occasion, while cooking, Kajoli said: “Even as I lay without
any consciousness and knowledge, I was thinking I had just been married and
supposed to stay with my husband, and instead what did I do with someone
else? I was worried that I would not get any bhaat [rice], clothes, and would
­
be thrown out. I had my periods after that, but even then people referred to
my first daughter as ‘the military’s.’ ” Another day, Kajoli talked of hard times
when growing up. Her parents died when she was a child, and she had been
raised at her uncle’s house. Her uncle sought a husband for her when she was
­
still very young, before she could become a burden to him, marrying her off
110 chapter Five
at the first possible chance to Rafique, whose first wife had left him. As Kajoli
explained, “If my parents had been there or if I had had a brother, they would
not have married me to him.” Even worse, she had been raped as a newlywed
bride and was never happy after that.
Like Kajoli, referring to the absence of the husband during the “event”
becomes an important “trickle” through which the women approached and
described their violent experience of 1971. Rohima’s husband’s absence after
the “event” and “loss” aggravated her situation. After the “incident,” Imarot
stopped living in the house and then left for “work” for nearly a year. Ro-
­
hima lamented that with three sisters and no male relative, there was no
one to care for her and her children. After Imarot came back, they “got back
together again” and had children, but “I remember what I went through
without him.”
Moyna said she was cutting fish when the military came: “I had heard
that the military liked younger women, and so to make myself old, I said in
reply to their question that I had eight children. My sister-in-law, being stu-

­
­
pid, said that each of us had only one child, and they immediately caught hold
of us. But since my mother-in-law started to shout to let go of my sister-in-law,
­
­
­
­
they left her, and she managed to flee and I was caught.” Pointing to the role of
her mother-in-law, Moyna said: “A mother tries to save her daughter but did
­
­
not care about the daughter-in-law. Things happen to people, but others do not
­
­
get to know about it. My mother-in-law told people about my event without
­
­
which no one would have known about me today.” Moyna had, however, told
her youngest daughter, Rakhi, that she managed to flee naked and was not
­
raped. Right after the event, “keeping my pain in my own body,” she had to
start tending to her husband, who had been badly beaten up. She talked of her
hardships in trying to bring up her children, marry them off by selling hay,
and saving up to buy cows.
Rashida described the rapist “catching me, pulling and pushing, beating
my honor and status”:
What is there to live for in this world? When I was being raped I felt
my life was over, I would not be able to see my husband and anybody. I
thought that I had been married for just a year, so my husband may not
keep me at home, may not give me rice and clothes. Normally, I would
not allow anybody to touch me, and here someone whom I have never
­
seen, never known, forcefully did what only my husband should do. I
will only be going to dojok [hell] as Allah will not take me because the
hadis does not recognize the loss of man shomman with another man.

“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 111

Rashida said she has remained in her husband’s family because he is a good
man. She was nearly dead as a result of the rape, and Sayeed explained to
others that it happened due to force and could have happened to anyone.
Sayeed’s silence and tears expressed his pain for Rashida’s experience.
All the women were compelled to descend into the everyday after the

­
violence of rape. Their immediate concern that their families would deny
them rice and clothes because of the shame of the “activity,” which should be
conducted only with one’s husband, shows that the social institution of mar- Discrimination
riage was a central means of economic and emotional sustenance. Even while of Rape Victims

Rashida was being physically violated, her thoughts were of the possibility

­
that the violence would render her socially untenable in the everyday. This
compelled negotiation with the everyday right after the event of rape also
made the women critical of their close family members and their role in mak-
ing their experience worse. Even though the women narrated that they had
“sinned” as a result of being raped, they blamed their husbands or mothers-

­
in-law for contributing to or exacerbating their experiences after the rapes.
­
Further, the ongoing absence of brothers or fathers meant a lack of support
and affection, and of symbolic capital. The rape during 1971 also had long-

­
term effects not only on their everyday lives but on their life trajectory itself
as is evident in Kajoli’s account: she had learned as a young girl to fear sexual
intercourse. For Rohima, Imarot’s “disappearance” after the event and her
struggles to sustain her children along with her ill health intensely worsened
her situation. Moyna’s account points to the discriminatory behavior of her
mother-in-law in protecting her own daughter while also disclosing Moyna’s
­
­
experience of rape.

“News of the Body”

You are taking news of my body. I cannot tell it to anyone, as they do not want
to listen. It remains my imagination in my own body. —Rohima
­
This section explores Rohima’s formulation of “news of the body” in its psy-
chosomatic embodied terror and violence among women and how everyday
events trigger it. After the “incident,” Kajoli said, she lived in fear that, because
the war was not over, “they” would come back for her again. She continued:
That fear is my fear, my life’s fear. I am always terrified, panic-stricken.
­
I would wait for the dhup dhap sounds of boots, which I remembered
when they entered that house. I always feel somebody is coming after
­
me. I was so young then—if somebody grabs me with a jerk, I feel a

112 chapter Five

 chill in my heart. Everybody told me that I was nearly dead. Often dur-
ing the day I go over the event again and again. I think about it all the
time, whenever I sit down quietly, anytime I have time on my hands, in
my sleep. Inside me I never feel quiet. Hence I try to always work and
do something so that I do not have time to sit and start thinking. I have
nightmares about the rapes, wake up at night and sit through the night.
I never told this to my husband as I knew he did not want to hear about
them. I also did not want to meet a lot of people. When my sister-in-law,

­
­
neighbors bring up the incident during fights, my body starts burning,
my head and ear buzz with a bo bo, and I cannot think straight. Is this in
my fate to carry this burden of pain?
That Kajoli ponders on the violence of rape within herself is evident in her
panic-stricken demeanor. The sounds of boots, the fear of being grabbed,
­
her nightmares, and her psychosomatic responses to her sister-in-law’s khota

­
­
show how everyday events can trigger the experience of 1971. At those mo-
ments she feels that she should have been killed because that would have
made her sinless, and then she would not have had children: no one would
have known about her. Bringing my hand to her side to feel her bony ribcage,
she said that her thinness is due to chinta (worries).
Similarly, Rohima suffers from a severe ulcer and a shrinking of the ali-
mentary canal whereby she has to eat mashed rice and other bland, spiceless
food. She is also acutely anemic due to excessive bleeding from her menstrua-
tion, a problem she has had since the rape. One day when I visited her, I found
that she was bedridden due to menstrual cramps. Describing these cramps as
jhilik (the suddenness of a spark of lightning, here comparable to her stomach
­
cramps), she said that for the last five days they have been very bad, and blood
was flowing like urine and pani (water). She said it was like when a goat or
cow is slaughtered and the blood comes out in a spurt. She said this monthly
nightmare would not let her forget “the incident” even if she wanted to. She
feels a continuous palpitation in her heart, which she attributes to chinta, and
added that her body’s history and worries are linked with Karim. She said
how on “that day,” Karim was three months old and was thrown from the cot,
causing him to have a back problem until today. As he lay frothing from his
mouth, Rohima could hear him crying while “they” were in the hut.
­
Rohima constantly feels chomok (startled), and she cannot stand noises
or sudden shouting. “Even if there is a bird on the tree and it cries out, I feel
alarmed and I startle. My jaan [life/heart] seems to take leave, it cries out
every moment if somebody says something.” Referring to herself as a “loser

“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 113

of the world,” she said that she does not mix socially with people. Rohima’s
embodied pain is highlighted by her “own imagination in her body,” which
arises from the problem of pet (stomach, i.e., food), oshuk (illness), and chinta
about her children.
Similarly, during my first few interactions with Moyna, she showed me the
pain in her left breast by taking my hand to indicate where it has hurt since
the “year of the war.” She recalled, “They pressed me with rifles first on this
breast and I couldn’t escape. Thereafter I couldn’t breast-feed my children
­
­
­
from that side. It would be inflamed, be full of pus, feel heated and hurts
even today.”
Moyna recounted various fragments of her experience in different instances.
As we sat talking one midafternoon, she suddenly said, “It was this time of the
­
day. It happened in the open, at the doorstep.” She continued heaping hay for
the cow with her back turned to me. Another time, as I tried my hand at rice
husking at her place, she started saying: “That day I was carrying this rice-husk

­
­
paddle bar, but I couldn’t use it as I was carrying my one-month-old daughter,
­
­
­
­
who was flung in the mud. I gave a good struggle as I am a very strong woman.
I was telling myself, jaan dibo, to maan dibo na [I will give my life, but not my
honor].” Another day, as we sat talking in the kitchen, Moyna took the cooked
rice off the fire, pointed to the embers, and said: “The fire that was there in the
body had been put out, though the flames stayed under the ashes. That fire has
been fanned, and now it has become a blaze whereby the whole village can see
­
the forest fire from afar though they can’t see the tears that burn inside me.
­
I feel a burning sensation inside when I remember myself running, kicking
and struggling.” She said anxiously, “Sometimes I feel like setting fire to my
body’s stories—how will I do it?”
­
Rohima poignantly said: “I had heard that the military sets fire to empty
houses. So I thought I shall stay at home and then they would not set fire, but
­
then they reduced me to ashes.”
Finally, Sayeed, Rashida’s husband, said she had become like a skeleton
after the event: “She was easily alarmed and afraid of people. As a result I had
to get medication from the local doctor. She would have nightmares and talk
of men coming and holding her.”
The women’s speech here is embodied on their bodies rather than on their
­
tongues (Das 2000). The bodily reiterations among the women include cho-
mok (being startled easily),5 being panic-stricken, feeling paralyzed numbness
­
with being rushed or pushed around, being unable to bear sudden shouting
or the presence of too many people, and experiencing blood loss or jhilik-like
­
stomach cramps.6
114 chapter Five
 These bodily experiences, rather than being the result of “the events,” are
in fact a trigger that causes them to remember the violent encounter of
rape. The women’s metaphoric use of the idioms of fire, storm, and cyclone

­
in the midst of everyday activities is an insight into their sense of chaos and
inner turmoil. The expression such as “burning sensation,” evoke the women’s
otherwise indescribable, numbing pain. The metaphors of everyday activities

­
signal the inexpressibility of the trauma encoded in the body and its conse-
quent social experience. These metaphors maintain their grounding in the

­
body, while at the same time drawing from the everyday social world. The
idiom of heat further embodied the very notion of the transgression against
them. Moyna constantly referred to her painful, hot breast, a point on her
body “first pressed by rifles.” As she said: “If someone forcefully touches the
end of your finger without consent, it would be burned. It is the memory of
that burning that one remembers.”

Answer can be taken from

Triggers of Memory here
Triggers of memory show that the meaning of rape draws from everyday ex-
periences and from outside the body. Various presences and absences reveal
the submerged traumatic memory, through “mnemonic memory” and “habit
memory,”7—the sensory capacity to reproduce a certain performance. The
­
­
­
activation of memories is evident in the varied avoidances undertaken by the
women. Moyna refused to cut fish, a reminder of the time when the “military”
arrived in her house. Instead, Korban conducted this stereotypically female
­
­
­
domestic job, which has been handed over to their adult daughters today. Ro-
hima was husking rice when the military arrived in her house. She said that
­
after the war her mother always husked the rice, and now it is the job of her
daughter and daughter-in-law. As Rohima explained, “If I think of husking
­
­
rice, I can only think of what happened that day.” Similarly, Rohima’s elderly
­
mother said that ever since the military came and asked for anda (Hindi for
eggs), Rohima had refused to cook eggs. Rashida, who had been raped at her
mother’s place, took me to visit her mother, but on our way back she said, “I
do not come to my mother’s house anymore as it reminds me of that day and
­
I feel sick. Today I went there after a very long time.”
The devastating floods of Bangladesh in 1998 reminded the women of the
floods of 1971. Kajoli recalled “that year” when “there was panii, shadaa” (it
was white all over with water). Moyna remembered how in 1971 her cow died
because there was no grass available for the cattle. “There was such food prob-
lem that year. The pressures of the stomach had to be above the pain of the
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 115
body.” Moyna’s mnemonic memory was signposted in her recollections of
the weather and the day: the event is bounded within a midafternoon, “this

­
time of the day,” and the time frame of ashin mash (from mid-September to

­
mid-October according to the Bengali calendar). Having been raped within
­
their homes, they have no respite from such terrible signposts. Kajoli points to
the two houses of her neighbors: one did not allow her to hide and the other
­
did, and she speculates how things would have been had she hidden in the
other neighbor’s house.
­
Apart from the women remembering their experience of rape through
Taunts Society's
various triggers, the poisonousness of khota from others also keeps alive the and Family
memory of rape in this pathological public sphere. During my final week in Members'
Treatment
Enayetpur, an invitation to dinner at Kajoli’s place emphasized the poison-
ousness of these memory triggers. Kajoli, Rafique, his brother Kalam, and
their children wanted to take pictures with me. Rasheeda, Kajoli’s sister-in-

­
­
law, refused to take pictures with her. Kajoli murmured that this was Rasheeda’s
attempt to avoid being categorized as raped by being in the same picture with
her. Kajoli had also asked me to bring my mother’s picture to show them.
Commenting on the fact that my mother is fair-skinned and tall, which is how
­
people believe West Pakistanis look, Rasheeda said that my mother looked
like the military. At this time, Kajoli was cooking. Noticing a change in her
mood, I sat next to her. She whispered that Rasheeda’s comments were part ­
of her continuous efforts to remind her in public of her rape. “Have they seen
the military? I have seen closely what it is to look like a military,” she said,
then continued to cook in silence. At the same time, I felt that Rasheeda’s
comment positioned me as a “military”/West Pakistani person who had be-
friended and duped Kajoli. The women’s negative perception of themselves
is linked to and reinforced by people calling them sinners and scorning them;
someone told Rohima she would not “get any earth when she dies.” Rasheeda
(Kajoli’s sister-in-law) said that the hell fire of dojok awaits Kajoli, re-creating
­
­
­
the common Islamic imagery of hell as a place of scorching fire and heat, the
home of the unrighteous. The women thereby suffer from constant worries
­
that evoke memories of rape. Rashida is continuously worried about what
she has done in her life, this worry exemplified in her fragile health after the
event. Rohima eloquently explained, “My body’s illness is due to chinta [wor-
ries].” The words chinta, kotha (meaning “words,” although in this context it
is riven with malice), deho (body), khota, and shanti (peace) all show various
embodied, lingering remembrances of rape.
Beyond the bodily and mnemonic triggers, the women’s trauma is rela-
tional and hence varied. As we talked about the wartime and postwar activi-
­
116 chapter Five
ties of their husbands, the women kept weighing rape against death, and the
presence of their husbands and children in their lives made a difference in
their calculations. Kajoli said that instead of getting raped, it would have been
better if she had been killed during the war because then she would not have
any children. Rohima, in contrast, felt that it is better that she was raped and
bore the “storm”: otherwise, as a widow, she would have no worth and would
be in a worse condition if she had to bring up her children alone. When one
does not have children, that is, it is better to be dead than raped. But with chil-
dren, the women would prefer their husbands to be alive even if that meant
that they themselves got raped as punishment for their husband’s absence
and activities supporting the liberation fighters. Moyna, true to her outspo-
ken personality, said, “Even if he was dead, and I am raped, both are the same.
I am anyway dead. Only I know what it is about being raped.” The women
called themselves “living corpses.” Rohima felt like the incident happened
only recently, her reverie broken by Karim’s adulthood, which reminds her
that it happened longer ago than she thinks.
The relational nature of the women’s trauma is thereby contingent on the
response of their sons and husbands. Rohima’s bond with Karim was based
on his insistence that she should not think about the rape. Sayeed’s comment
is significant here: that if he remembered or talked about it, then Rashida
­
could remember it, but since he does not think of it, she should also not re-
member, because it hurts him when she does. It is this interrelationship with
the husbands, perceptions of their masculinity, and women’s traumatic mem-
ory that I explore in the following section.

“My Man Is Lost but I Still Have My Iman”:

Sexual Violence and Articulations of Masculinity
The husbands of the birangonas talked of sharing the same trauma with the
women. They variously articulated their masculinity, linked to the women’s
traumatic experiences. In the model of masculinity that is hegemonic in
Enayetpur—those ways defining successful ways of “being a man” and si-
­
multaneously defining other masculine styles as inadequate or inferior—a
­
real man has sole sexual access to his wife within the conjugality of marriage
(Lindisfarne 1994, 3). This hegemonic norm of masculinity was partly articu-
lated and made known through contested and contradictory masculinities. If
a husband adhered to the idea that rape is akin to a sexual relationship, then
others could taunt and demasculinize him for being cuckolded. The husbands
of raped women in Enayetpur were demasculinized through the khota of
­
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 117
substitution of their sexual act by the violent activities of the rapist. At the
same time, such notions of demasculinization of the husbands can also work
positively for the women.
Marilyn Strathern (1988, 65) argues that “idealised masculinity is not nec-
essarily just about men; it is not necessarily about relations between the sexes
either.” Her emphasis on differentiation—the oppositions and exclusions—

­
­
points us to the birangonas’ constructions of their husbands’ masculinity, the
undercurrents of their interpersonal relationships, and the husbands’ varied at-
tempts to retrieve and reassert their masculinity. In this context, the comment
made by Imarot, Rohima’s husband (quoted in the heading to this section),
that his man (honor) is lost, but he still has his iman (principle), articulates
shifting idioms of the husbands’ gendered and moral identities.8 Rather than
identifying masculinity as an inherent essence, in the following section, I
explore the construction of competing, contradictory, and mutually under-
mining masculinities of the husbands through a variety of social and personal
interactions. Through social exchanges, and using body parts as metonymic of
gendered positions and metaphors of gendered power, the husbands negotiated
­
plural masculinities.9

contested and contradictory masculinities

Imarot, Korban, and Rafique reiterated that they “accepted” all three women
after their wartime rapes. Rafique said he felt no anger toward his wife be-
­
cause she had been forcefully raped. Kajoli added that, because she was
young, Rafique had said nothing negative. But a few days before Eid, I visited
Kajoli to find her very upset. Her daughter had chicken pox, and they did not
have money to buy her medicines or prepare the firni (rice pudding made
with vermicelli) for Eid. Kajoli complained that Rafique did not work and had
become lazy. Her opinion in the family was not considered, and she had to
hide money from Rafique to buy everyday provisions of rice and vegetables
(and to prevent him from buying cigarettes). In a fit of rage, Rafique had re-
minded her that she would have been thrown out of the house long ago if he
­
had not allowed her to stay on. This “long ago” is none other than the event
of rape. Kajoli said that in 1971 Rafique had to be told repeatedly that she
was a victim of rape, that she had not voluntarily had sex with someone else.
­
Even so, he stopped eating rice from her, rice being a significant symbol of
well-being, contentment, and connection. Kajoli felt her world had crashed
­
and that it was dark all around. That this issue remains unresolved between
them is evident from Rafique’s reference to his “favor” toward her in domes-
tic fights, which triggered Kajoli to talk of his response in 1971. And Rafique
118 chapter Five
has beaten Kajoli several times for defying him or arguing with him about
domestic matters.
Rohima said that Imarot accepted her. He did not say anything about the
rape to her but just sat and cried. But he did not return home after he heard of Read
the rape and instead stayed next door at the home of Shajeeda Bibi (an elderly

­
woman) for a month and a half, eating his rice there. Shajeeda remembered
Imarot crying while eating his rice, and she recalled trying to explain that what
happened to his wife was due to force. Imarot ate rice from Rohima only after
spending this period at his neighbor’s house. However, soon after, in anger

­
and sadness, he disappeared for eight months to do “business” selling wheat and
rice. Rohima agonized about not getting any news from him, thinking that he
was dead. She was already suffering from bleeding and the effects of rape soon
after having given birth, and with three children to look after, including three-

­
month-old Karim, her physical health suffered. She sold everything to sustain
­
her family. She and her children worked as domestic servants at Bhulen’s, for
which they received just “stomach payment” (i.e., food). Moyna, poignantly
reflecting on Rohima’s condition, said that she struggled a lot. In her outspo-
ken style, Moyna also reasoned that Imarot left due to scorn by neighbors and
only came back because of the talk of compensation for women raped during
Muktijuddho.
One afternoon, when all of us, including Moyna and Kajoli, were joking
­
and chatting at Rohima’s house, Moyna mentioned that Imarot had left his
­
wife after the war because of her “event.” Imarot, usually very articulate, stut-
tered that he had gone away for business. Rohima and Moyna laughed to-
gether at his answer, and Rohima and I exchanged a long look. I also learned
later that Rohima’s house was actually her mother’s, as her father was mod-
­
estly well-off and had some property, most of which had been frittered away
­
by Imarot. Visiting Rohima’s house on another occasion, I found Rohima and
­
Imarot embroiled in an argument. Sensing the enormous tension between
them, I decided to leave. Rohima, usually a very quiet, unassuming woman,
instead asked me to stay and said that because this was her father’s land, she
had a place to stay or Imarot would have thrown her out. When Imarot rudely
asked her to shut up, she retorted, “You have kept everything covered. Un-
cover everything.” Rohima was referring to Imarot’s contradictory behavior.
After Rohima was raped, he had left her alone; today he has built up his image
as that of a loving, caring, and open-minded husband demanding rehabilita-
­
tion through a lifetime allegiance with the Awami League.
Korban, Moyna’s husband, did not talk to her for a long time after the rape.
He slept in the field and other people’s houses and did not return home. Only
­
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 119
on her mother-in-law’s insistence that Moyna was forcefully raped did he

­
­
resume his role as Moyna’s husband. Moyna talks of “getting back together”
with him after two months and having children due to the duties of marriage,
as she felt he could not afford to marry again, nor was he the sort of man to go
to other women. In the case of partition, many men similarly married some
of the recovered abducted women due to economic factors. The need for a
wife to do housework meant they accepted these women “out of helplessness
­
­
not out of broadmindedness” (Menon and Bhasin 1998, 77).
Moyna felt that Korban’s love had definitely lessened: whether she left
with another man or whether she was raped, both acts were equally insult-

­
ing to him. Korban continued to ask her to leave the home and go away after
the war, but she stayed on, thinking that her young children might be sub-
jected to scorn on the grounds that their mother had left with another man,
a euphemism for rape. After the war, she endured hardship by selling hay and
saving up to buy cows in order to sustain her children. Now, Moyna said,
Korban always shouts at her and never talks to her nicely. Her daughter Rakhi
said that Korban is often physically abusive to Moyna. One day when I vis-
ited, they were in the midst of a fight. I realized this and decided to retreat,
­
but Rakhi stopped me, suggesting that my presence would dilute the tension.
Moyna complained that Korban hates her decisiveness and decision making
and prefers to order her around. She spoke of violent altercations between son
and father over this issue, and of how her son leaves the house when any fight
­
starts.10 Korban, hearing Moyna talking to me, shouted back that women have
become too headstrong and are going astray because the head of the state— ­
“Hasina”—is also a woman.
In turn, all three women blamed their husbands through various motifs of
trouble and sought to reduce the men’s stature. According to Kajoli, Rafique
was unsuitable as a husband because his first wife had left him for a rich man,
and then he was unable to prevent Kajoli’s rape. She definitely did not respect
Rafique and considered him weak. His laziness also made him a poor earner;
feeling frustrated with it, and in a fit of rage, she asked him to leave. She tried
to assert control over the money, telling him that she is the only one who
has access to the state money because her thumbprint is needed to cash the
check. Rohima considered Imarot unable to support her and told him that
it was only because of her father’s property that she has managed to sustain
herself. His irresponsibility was also evident in his waste of this property. She
blamed the rape on Imarot, as he used to be with the muktijoddhas. It was ap-
parent that she had not forgiven him for leaving her after the war, and Moyna’s
joke to highlight this had Rohima’s support.
120 chapter Five
 Moyna’s blame, directed at Korban and her mother-in-law, was even more

­
­
ambiguous and complicated. She blamed her mother-in-law for protecting

­
­
her own daughter at the cost of her daughter-in-law getting raped. While

­
­
Korban emphasized that he was not present in the house during the rape,

­
Moyna’s narrative in other accounts (Begum 2001, 99) blamed the rape on
both Korban and his mother. Moyna had locked herself in the house, so the

­
army was mercilessly beating up Korban. Panic-stricken that her son would

­
die, Moyna’s mother-in-law called Moyna names and asked her to come out
­
­
of the house. When she did, the soldiers raped her in front of her husband,
­
and then she had to tend to his wounds right after her own violation. But her
mother-in-law was also the person who made her son understand that the
­
­
rape was forced on Moyna and that he should continue his conjugal relation-
ship with her.
Moyna’s comment that Korban had to accept her because he could not af-
ford to remarry and would not go to other women could be seen as a way
through which she used the very poverty of men to disqualify Korban from
“manly” promiscuity. Similarly, Kajoli’s reference to Rafique’s loss of his first
wife to a rich and powerful man and Rohima’s reiteration that her family de-
pended economically on her father’s property both seem to indicate their be-
­
­
lief that poverty demasculinized their husbands to the extent that they had to
accept their raped wives. Indeed, the women would repeat that because their
husbands were poor and unable to remarry, it was easier for them to accept
­
their raped wives back into the household.
­
­
Hence, demasculinization in the eyes of the birangonas seems to have
worked in their favor and ensured their continuation within the folds of mar-
riage. The women demasculinized their husbands for their inability to gar-
ner the support of the structures of promiscuous masculinity—and thus the
­
women could continue as wives. When they blamed the rape and postrape
situation on their husbands and on the men’s inability to protect, comfort,
sustain, and be supportive, all this could mean that they rely more heavily on
their adult sons, as in the case of Rohima and Moyna, and thus reassert their
feminine status as mothers.
Rafique was talking in the idiom of demasculinization when he mentioned
his “bad fate” regarding wives. In spite of being angry, he was unable to do any-
thing about his first wife because the man for whom she left Rafique is power-
ful and rich. Rafique was the laughingstock of his family and village because
of this, and Imarot and Korban would jokingly suggest that he should apply to
Hasina for rehabilitation through nikaah (marriage). Similarly, he was unable
to do anything to Kajoli’s rapists. He was sad and angry and felt like killing
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 121
those who raped her, as well as those who took the women to Dhaka. Rafique
attributed his inability to retaliate physically during public arguments to his
small frame. He could only be humiliated, become tongue-tied, and exit from

­
the scene of any altercation.
Imarot was morally and socially obligated to accept Rohima back because
she was forcibly attacked. At the same time, however, he cannot express his
inner anger and sadness since Rohima was raped. His pain was evident when
he blamed himself and his links with muktijoddhas for Rohima’s rape. Simi-
larly, Korban had violent altercations with his son over his mistreatment of
Moyna. Their son soon came to assume the role of the head of the family,
thereby undermining Korban’s masculine authority. Korban attributed his
powerlessness and lack of control over Moyna’s outspoken personality (the
power he thought a husband should have) to the presence of Sheikh Hasina
as the head of state (the power he thought a woman should not have).
The semantics of khota and its connotative idiom of powerlessness (dis-
cussed in chapter 3) further demasculinize all the men. In fact, these public
arguments and verbally violent altercations are intrinsically gendered and
sexualized and contribute to the negotiation of masculine identities on the
part of the husbands, which I address next.

retrieval and reenactment of masculinity Read

Even as the husbands reconciled themselves to demasculinization and power-
lessness, they attempted to retrieve their masculinity in the same contexts and
interaction through what I refer to as normalizing discourses. They peppered
gendered accounts of the war (see chapter 2) with anecdotes of valor: Rafique
said that when the “military” attacked his home, he was by the river with muk-
tijoddhas and felt like coming “back with the wind” and shooting them. Ima-
rot was away from the house because he was “watching for the military” for
­
muktijoddhas. The trope of valor is evident in Imarot’s reference to the rape
in his house as an “operation,” a term used for ambushes during Muktijud-
­
dho. Korban showed me the gap in his spine resulting from the beatings by the
military, who caught him when he was returning from giving food to the muk-
tijoddhas while the “event” was happening in his house. The husbands em-
­
ployed this idiom of valor—the fact of their being with muktijoddhas when
­
their wives were raped—to navigate their powerlessness to protect their wives.
­
For Imarot, going away for “business” for the purpose of sustaining his
family drew a veil on his difficulty in accepting Rohima in the period just
after the rape. He said his man (honor) had been lost, but he still had his iman
(principle). He cited the rumor of Khaleda Zia’s rape to justify his later accep
­
­
122 chapter Five
tance of her: because Sheikh Mujib had instructed General Zia to take back
his wife, Khaleda Zia, how could Imarot not accept Rohima? This located him
within a heroic, national mold and reinforced his image as an open-minded

­
husband. Again, linking a gendered masculine account of valor and pain to a
national language of heroism and suffering serves to provide a moral, normal-
izing discourse among the husbands, in contrast to the women’s recalcitrant,
ambiguous character of lived experience.
The men also used normalizing discourse to retrieve masculinity by articu-
lating feminine social codes for their wives. Korban clung to patriarchal straws
in his attempt to keep Moyna quiet, saying that women were outspoken due

­
to the presence of a female head of state. Similarly, Imarot and Rafique con-
sidered Moyna’s conduct improper, since she would travel to Bhashkhal on
her own to talk to government officers. They criticized Moyna for being too
decisive. In attempting to determine and publicly uphold and police women’s
conduct, they also positioned themselves as “normal” men.
I would argue that it is their demasculinized helplessness that makes it
necessary for the men to retrieve their masculinity by showing anger and
refusing rice from the women after their rapes. Instances of domestic violence
(notwithstanding reasons of frustration, anger, or shame) enable Rafique,
Korban, and Imarot (who are generous, pleasant men usually) to reestablish
at home the perception of masculinity they lost outside the home.11 So while
Rafique says that, being a small man, he is unable to engage in a physical fight
in the village, he comes home and physically abuses Kajoli. The husbands
thus responded physically toward their wives in response to personal insult
from their community.12
Apart from the wider social insult, the husbands might also have been
aware of their wives’ judgment of their failed masculinity. Hence, violence
can be seen to enhance masculinity in the face of a decisive, noncomplying
wife like Moyna and may provide Korban a feeling, for the moment at least,
of being a “real man.”13 A certain level of social as well as domestic impotence
leads to violence.14 In fact, the very role of social insult ensures that a man
should beat a woman in spite of proof of her innocence, in order to reply to
“people’s gossip.” According to Lindisfarne (1994, 87), the cause of men’s vio-
lence toward women is twofold: a man’s commitment to ideals of honor, as
judged by neighbors and others, and his dishonor, which lies not only in the
actions of women but also in those of men who have challenged his authority as
a surrogate father, brother, and neighbor and rendered him socially impotent.
The husbands and sons set themselves up as gatekeepers of the women’s
accounts to enact their manhood. Imarot restrained Rohima from “giving her
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 123
words” to me, and she reiterated that she would speak only with the consent
of her husband and son. But on a day when Imarot had gone to the nearby
town for a daylong Awami League national meeting in order to campaign for
Bhulen, Rohima asked me to visit her. She started by saying, “My husband
told me that my words should not be caught, but I shall say them and tell him
I did so when he is back.” Thereafter she attempted to narrate 1971 through
fragments. Thus, in a situation “where no one wants to hear about the body’s
news,” these everyday articulations became a means for the women to harshly
remind their husbands of their “failed” masculinity.
The women would joke that on their way to Dhaka for chakhash, their
husbands were getting upset because everyone was more concerned with the
­
women than with them, and that Imarot could not come in but had to stay in
the car. Imarot’s discerning of the process of combing inherent in chakhash in
­
referring to the women as muktijoddhas rather than birangonas (see chapter 7),
and his assertion that the husbands are the muktijoddhas while the wives are
war heroines, were ways that the men could restore their own importance.
­
Rafique eloquently said: “The women alone do not have pain. The husbands
have taken the trouble of running around for signatures, photocopying, typ-
ing, and computerizing the letters, approaching people for sending our ap- Read
plications, going to Dhaka, and then being scorned and shamed. Hence we
should have been taken for chakhash.” While articulating their own Mukti-
juddho credentials publicly, the men would construct the sorrow of 1971 as
the women’s “thing.” But they demanded chakhash based on their own history
of sorrow of the 1990s. Here sorrow becomes an idiom for seeking justice,
grasping agency, expressing masculinity, and drawing attention to themselves
by means of their wives’ experiences.
A subtext of “withdrawal” emerges as a motif of masculinity through these
varied articulations and positionings. When villagers pointed out the hus-
bands’ demasculinization, the husbands’ withdrawal from the scene of con-
flict, and their humiliated refusal to take wages and harvest were also their
­
retrieval and reassertion of masculinity in a different framework. A nonde-
pendent, yet passive, honorable, and nonviolent self emerges through these
withdrawals. Yet this is distinct from the motifs of withdrawal between the
husbands and the birangonas. The men’s refusal to eat rice or stay home was a
normalizing discourse through which they sought to assert themselves within
the framework of hegemonic masculinity. These conflicting tactics and prac-
tices of withdrawal enabled them to construct gendered difference within
social transactions and discourse (M. Strathern 1988) and included loss and
retrieval of different elements of masculinity among the husbands and the
124 chapter Five
birangonas. For the husbands, this demasculinization involved a loss of their
status as “normal” men with sole sexual access to their wives and also loss of
honor encoded through the exposure of their wives as raped women. They at-
tempted to offset this loss by reasserting themselves as honorable selves, allow-
ing them to demand support of local patrons. The birangonas were not only

­
humiliated through khota. They also lost their feminine status (as wives), which
they blamed on the actions of their husbands during and after the rape. The
social ramifications of khota and their poverty allowed them to highlight their
honorable and victimized selves.

Conclusion Read
The characterization of trauma through its repetition and as only a bodily ex-
perience in predominant psychiatric and medical literature limits the under-
standing of the women’s experience in Enayetpur. Traumatic memory here

­
is expressed as encoded not only in the body but also in social and everyday
relations with objects and with the world around them, in which violence is
folded away from sight. Fragmented imagery in the oral and visual accounts
of the women shows the inadequacy of linear narrative theories in exploring
experiences of violence. The minutiae of the women’s everyday lives allow us
to explore how violence is shown rather than talked about. This is explicated
in Kajoli’s showing me her ribcage and Moyna’s showing me her breast. One
can resist the need to medicalize social distress by exploring how the vari-
ous bodily manifestations like Rohima’s jhilik (sparks of cramp pains com-
parable to lightning), Moyna’s painful breast, and Kajoli’s palpitation, rather
than being consequences of the event, instead trigger memories of rape in
forms that let the women address the experience. Their metaphors of fire and
­
cyclone, and their other daily encounters and avoidance strategies encode
not only their chaos and turmoil but also the inexpressibility of the trauma.
These metaphors maintain their grounding in the bodily experiences, while
­
drawing from outside the body and the social world of the everyday through
sensory capacities and “habit memory.”
The women also show how traumatic memory is not just a bodily experi-
ence but also is relational. Their social signification of trauma and memory of
rape are conditioned by the husbands’ and sons’ memory and agency, the role
of the husbands after the war, and their perception of the husbands’ inade-
quate masculinity. These “patriarchal bargainings”15—the negotiations one has
­
to undertake to seek out agency but within the parameters of patriarchy—
­
­
­
­
help the women to negotiate the chaos of rape and the subsequent response
“ My Own Imagination in My Own Body ” 125
of their family members; they also enable the husbands to retrieve their
masculinity.
The articulations of masculinity also differ based on varied social inter-
actions. In Enayetpur, the husbands of raped women were demasculinized

­
through the khota of substitution of their sexual act by the violent activities
of the rapist. The women considered their husbands to be demasculinized
for their inability to pursue promiscuous masculinity, a stance that eventually
works positively for the women and lets them stay married. And they blamed
the rape and the postrape situation on their husbands, specifically on their
inability to protect, comfort, sustain, and be supportive, which also makes a
husband “less of a man,” according to the women.
That the husbands were in a contradictory position of reconciling them-
­
selves to demasculinization and powerlessness from khota and yet attempt-
ing to retrieve their masculinity in the same contexts and interactions is evident
through what I refer to as the varied normalizing discourses. This highlights
the moral, honorable, and nonviolent selves of the men. Attempts to determine
women’s correct codes of conduct and expressions of domestic violence also
ensured their “normality.” Hence the idioms of what constitutes masculinity for
the husbands varied according to different social interactions. Masculinities
here were located within the incessant everyday struggle and frustrations ex-
­
­
perienced by the birangonas and their husbands in their efforts to reclaim their
social place in Enayetpur, as well as their place in the national history, defined
by Sheikher Beti’s presence. These claims were possible through a retrieval of
­
their symbolic capital of victimhood and honorable and moral selves.
The following chapter locates this ethnographic account of the war hero-
ines within the discursive politics of rehabilitation policies; sexual violence of
men; representations through visual, literary, and human rights narratives; and
­
­
­
multiple subjectivities of war heroines.

126 chapter Five