Umme Hani Anika

Lily released a shaky breath looking at the drab sky as her breath formed a small misty cloud and became one with the foggy evening wind blowing outside. Peeking at her left hand from where something glittered, she thought to herself, “Should I take it?” And she got up from the sidewalk of the Dhanmondi lake with her left hand in a fist, the other holding yellow roses and white jasmine ready to be sold. Lily moved towards the stagnant mass of cars waiting for the signal and knocked on a random tinted window, chanting thrice, “Sir, please buy these flowers; they only cost five takas each,” Lily got no response. She moved on to another car and knocked there, chanting once more; the window slid down, out came a hand with a ten taka note and a voice that wanted two roses. Lily’s face lit up as she accepted the money and gave two roses and an extra piece of jasmine. When she sensed the cars moving using her agility she crossed the street and stood on the road divider as cars zoomed past her. While pocketing the money she heard a distant cry of a woman. She whipped her head in the direction she came from and saw a crowd of people gathering around the wailing woman. She peeked again at the shiny article in her left hand.

That day, Lily’s evening went on like any other evening. She was smaller than most 8-year-olds her age, so the view of people’s wallets and bags would often be in her line of vision and she would often absent-mindedly stare at the crowd passing by. This was her way of taking a break. On one of her breaks, as she sat down on one corner of the sidewalk, she noticed a shiny metal string fall off from a woman’s hand on the street. Her legs sprang forward to grab that. When she had it in her custody she engulfed it with both hands as if protecting a feathery baby chick. She looked at it- it was a gold bracelet and it would be ignorant of her if she did not know its value in the harsh reality she lived in. This could be her ticket to freeing her and her younger brother from their relatives’ clutches. But then she remembered her mother’s words, “Live your life with integrity and always be kind to those in need.”

The cries of the woman shouting, “My bracelet,” were getting louder as Lily made her way towards the crowd. When she moved closer to the woman, “Apa,” said Lily after tapping lightly on the woman’s back and offered her left hand which opened to reveal the bracelet. “Here, I found it lying on this sidewalk,” the woman stopped wailing, took her bracelet, and in an instant Lily was engulfed in the arms of the woman. Lily allowed herself to bask in the warmth. When the woman released her, she took a good look at the woman and inwardly thanked her mother. Since the woman wore a saree with faded patterns and a thin red shawl that barely kept the cold out. “My son bought it for me yesterday and today he passed away,” said the woman with tears refilling her swollen eyes.

Lily was new to this, she did not know how to react. So she rubbed the tears trickling down the woman’s face and bid goodbye to her as she headed home. No sooner had she taken a few steps, she was stopped in her tracks as she felt a shawl being wrapped around her. She turned her head around to see the woman again. “I do not have much on me right now, but please take this shawl and this money as my gratitude towards you,” as the woman opened her small purse and handed her two fifty-taka notes. Lily’s eyes widened, she looked at the woman who smiled at her, Lily refused multiple times, but gave up upon the woman’s insistence and accepted the red shawl and the money. At that moment, Lily took it as a gift from God, for listening to her mother’s advice, which served as the only memory of her mother in her mind. As Lily began walking away from the woman’s sight, a tiny speck of red in the distance, she began to devise plans on how to sneak some of the money she earned in her secret stash before handing the rest to her aunt and uncle. Lily also wanted to go to school like her cousins whom she lived with, and she wanted the same for her younger brother. The only way she felt she could do this was by selling more flowers and getting into selling more items in the future. With hopes that she might one day be free Lily moved her feet faster until she disappeared completely from the woman’s line of vision and became one with the crowd of people, each striving for their own form of freedom.