Published in 1971 and After: Selected Stories (ed. Niaz Zaman, Pub. University Press Ltd. Dhaka), 2001.

 

He tried to remember why he had come here. There was some unfinished business. It seemed to him as if he owed someone money or perhaps he was owed something by someone. Small memories glinted inside his head, like fitful lightning in a stormy sky, such as getting up in the morning and shaving or reading the papers. He had cried when he had read that-Patrick Lumumba had been murdered. One afternoon he had read poetry by Ho Chi Minh, “The bells ring ding dong at the foot of the mountains/ Robust young women come down from the valley with small steps.” In his childhood he had dug the earth with his long fingers and found large potatoes-the seed potato in the middle had rotted and dried up.