You Say Roti; I Say Ruti
by Sumaiya Aftab Ahmed
for Abdul Latif Joarder
Jessore, East Pakistan, 1971
The Pakistani soldiers joke among themselves, and Iftekar cannot trace the indefinite shapes of their words. He knows only scraps of Urdu, all from his wife Bipasha who sings Bollywood songs while rinsing rice, stringing jasmine, embroidering frocks for their daughters. Iftekar prefers Nazrul geeti. But Bangali poetry can’t unbind Iftekar’s hands. It’s a radiant day. Sunshine douses the courtyard. Iftekar’s nose itches from smoke. Without tilting his head from the wall that the soldiers demanded he face, Iftekar rolls his eyes as far up as they will go, straining his sockets. A dark plume is drifting from the direction of his home. A soldier approaches. The long, pointed shadow stretching across the wall belongs to his rifle. Iftekar smells something specific, wheat warming over a fire.
“Look here,” the soldier says in English, a language Iftekar knows well from four decades as a court clerk, first in Kolkata during the British era, before “borders descended like a guillotine,” as Bipasha likes to say. Iftekar follows the lead of Ansari Bhai and his son, also captive. They turn around slowly.
The soldier looks so young. He has fair, lychee-satin skin. As another solider unties their hands, the satin-skinned one offers them three cones of newsprint holding thin, brown bread, like roses. Iftekar hesitates to accept the bouquet.
“I made you roti.” The satin-skinned soldier winks.
That very morning, Iftekar had declined even Bipasha’s ruti. It’s food for others. Unsophisticated. Bangalis eat rice.
Ansari Bhai munches. His son takes a bite. In nine hours, all Iftekar has eaten is a bowl of chira. He swallows his saliva. Ruti crumbs coat the headlines. Even though East Pakistan’s representatives had won a majority in that winter’s general election, West Pakistani leaders blocked the transfer of power.
Have this ruti? As Bipasha says, “Over my jasmine-scented grave.”
***
That morning in the Ansaris’ kitchen, Bipasha had said, “Those Pakistani leaders will perfume their bodies with fish oil before letting Bangalis govern.” Crouching on the ground over a round wooden board, she punched a mound of flour, threw water into its concave center, and tossed in a dash of salt.
“We need an independent state.” Iftekar sat down beside her.
“That won’t recover what we had.” Bipasha swirled everything together, as if recombining Kolkata, Dhaka, and Khulna for a seamless Bengal.
Iftekar did not mourn what they had; he wanted more. In court, he saw Hindus get plum positions. A Latif, Siddiqui, or Yusuf could never catch up to a Lahiri, Sen, or Bose. He gripped the narrow red edge to Bipasha’s white shari.
With poise and a grooved rolling pin, Bipasha flattened knobs of dough into sheets and draped them onto a hot pan. The pin left striations, not unlike how British rule had left close cultures crossing each other. Ever resourceful, Bipasha had learned how to make ruti last week, when they moved in with the Ansaris, their neighbors. Families fleeing for the countryside left stores of flour. Moreover, in this Bihari household, ruti was routine. The Urdu-speaking Ansaris took them in as curfews sounded, rice stock depleted, and Bangla spelled danger. Bipasha often suggested practicing Urdu phrases, just in case. Iftekar refused.
“For you.” She offered him a ruti, fine as a cotton kerchief.
“Do I look like someone who eats that?”
Bipasha twisted her mouth. “When did flour, water, and salt cause you any harm?”
Iftekar raised his palm. “There’s still chira at home.”
The Ansaris had only a well, so every morning, Iftekar took the girls home to use their tiled bathroom with a spigot, just for an hour. It was a small risk for some convenience and comfort.
That day, underneath the threshold’s arch, Iftekar touched their home’s blue cement facade. Their daughters flitted about. The eldest brought Iftekar his chira. Making a spout with his fingers, Iftekar poured pressed grains of rice into his mouth. Toasted notes soared from jaggery and shavings of coconut. The depth in flavor overwhelmed him, and he leaned his head against the door jamb. Sunlight was coursing through the windows. Sweetness dissolved like opportunity in his mouth. Bipasha had been right about Urdu.
Pellets started raining on the roof. Iftekar lifted his head and rushed to close a shutter, and a bullet sped past his arm. He gathered the girls. Back at the Ansaris’, he handed Bipasha the keys right before soldiers knocked.
***
The sun is dipping behind the courtyard, casting the satin-skinned soldier’s hazel eyes aglow. Smoke, pungent, thicker now, muffles the azan.
“Quick,” says the soldier, “before prayer time runs out.”
Iftekar tugs at the ruti, a jute mat. He chews. The more he recollects details from that morning, the more the soldier’s ruti softens. He almost smiles at how Bipasha rolled out disks of dough with the timing of a tabla player, stretching and rotating the ruti, inviting Iftekar to get in on the rhythm, her swift movements asking, why so rigid? He swallows.
The soldier notes a special spice, “Soot.”
Before Iftekar registers the implication, the soldier says something in Urdu. Based on how the Ansaris answer, Iftekar gives his full name, and it catches in his throat.
The soldier continues in Urdu, jutting his chin at Iftekar.
Iftekar searches the back of his teeth with his tongue and finds only grit. From one of Bipasha’s Bollywood favorites, he utters a lyric.
The soldier laughs. The Ansaris can go. Those words are close enough to Bangla.
Spinning his rifle, humming the tune, the soldier gestures to Iftekar for more.
Ink from the newsprint bleeds and mixes with Iftekar’s sweat. He sings, the Urdu uneven, his voice faltering underneath the azan and haze. The soldier fires on him.
Clouds of dust rise from Iftekar’s impact on the ground. The sky has turned a shade bluer than their house. Six daughters, their strings of jasmine, the record player they’d circle around—life went fast. His lips part. On Bipasha’s hands, he tastes flour, water, and salt.
Sumaiya Aftab Ahmed is a writer and lawyer in New York. Her work has appeared in The Washington Post, The Metropolitan Review, Electric Literature, and elsewhere. She is a 2025 Queens Arts Fund grantee and has received recognition from Poets & Writers, the Tin House Workshop, and the Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing Poet & Author Fellowship.