By Israt Jahan Aurni

The cockroach becomes still after a few seconds. You sigh and pick it up with your fingers. The dead cockroach rests on your palm. Disgusting. Yet you don’t throw it away. You look at it. A few minutes ago, it flew into your room and landed on your arm. You screamed. Now it’s dead. You killed it. You didn’t use your slippers. Or a roll of newspaper. Or a book. Of course not a book. That would have been way out of your character. Wait. As if smashing it with your bare hand fit into your character. What were you trying to prove by killing a lowly insect with your bare hand? That you can take care of yourself? That you can destroy anything that makes you crawl into the corner of your room? Was the cockroach that frightening? You know it was not. What is it then? Oh no. Don’t tell me… Please, don’t be so dramatic. Those touches were not always intentional. It is hard to walk by the streets of Dhaka without brushing against anyone. You know that. But what about the intentional ones? The ones that give you the ick. Like this one did. But what makes this cockroach so much easier to kill than the people who made you want to rip off your own skin? Will smashing them feel as disgustingly satisfying as holding the cockroach in your palm? Why don’t you find it out? But first, you should throw this roach away. You unlock your bedroom door and glance at the locked door of your parents’ room. You hope you don’t wake them up. Barefoot, you reach the other end of the apartment without making any sound. At the end of the hallway, his door is slightly open. The room is dark except for the faint orange glow spilling in through the window from the street below. He might be awake. You hesitate but step inside anyway. Your cousin is sleeping peacefully. Uh oh. You forgot to dump the cockroach. It’s still on your palm. You look at it. You look at him. You look at it. Poor insect. Wrong place, wrong time. You almost feel bad for it. Only if it were a bit bigger. A bit older. A bit stronger. A bit more loved by your family. Then it could have touched you more. Your neck. Your hand. Your breast. Your waist. Your hips. Then it could have smiled as if it didn’t notice where its hands had wandered. It could have been going on for a long time. A year. Then, it could have come to your room when no one’s at home. You would have screamed. “Don’t act like you didn’t want it,” it would have said. Why else had you kept quiet for so long? Makes sense, you would think. You are equally to blame, if not more. The devouring guilt would drive you to the verge of insanity. You would stay awake the whole night with your lights on. Not again, you would promise yourself. Never again. Finally, the rage growing inside would make you smash its head in one night. Wait, the last part would happen if only it were a cockroach. But it isn’t. So, you leave his room. You go back to yours. You lock the door. You shut the window. You close the blinds.

Your hand smells like a cockroach. So does your body.