I.
The char had not existed ten years ago. Rafiq remembered
this clearly, because he had been the one to first walk its silt when it broke
the surface of the Meghna like a wound healing over. A new island, born from
sediment and stubbornness, the way all chars in Bangladesh are born:
reluctantly, and never for long.
He was forty three now, a boatman by trade and a farmer by
necessity, and he had built his home on Notun Char with his wife Amena and
their daughter Rupa, who was seven and afraid of...
