Seam

Interview with a Birangona: 3. Would you consider yourself a survivor or a victim?

28 Interview with a Birangona 3. Would you consider yourself a survivor or a victim? Each week I pull hard the water from the well, bathe in my sari, wring it out, beat it against the flattest rocks—Are you Muslim or Bengali, they asked again and again. Both, I said, both—then rocks were broken along my spine, my hair a black fist in their hands, pulled down into the river again and again. Each day, each night: river, rock, fist— the river wanders this way, breaks that way, that is always the river’s play. ...