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Deena Forkan's 'Fire on the Hills': Revisiting us within

Reviewed by Faheem Hasan Shahed
As readers, we sometimes come across writings that force us to stand in front of some strange, discerning mirror in which we view ourselves in dual identities: one in angelic luminosity and the other in devilish dimness. We feel rickety as we watch our senses of morality taking contradictory topsy-turvy turns. And much to our discomfort, we discover how the devils within us can make us pay immeasurable price. Deena Forkan, a distinguished professor of English Literature and Language at the North South University, has come up with a book of short stories Fire on the Hills that persistently reminds us what it feels like being a traveler across the wobbly passage of right and wrong, triumph and loss, love and revulsion.
To term Deena Forkan only as a successful English writer wouldn't do her any justice. Wandering through the pages, one will feel how she has established her credentials as a sensitive story-teller who treats the human mind absolutely from a humane panorama. For Deena, life and living are inextricably linked with wide range of sodo-psychological functions and dysfunctions. The occurrences that corrupt human bonding, as well as the traumas that result from sudden, unexpected realities, do hurt her as a narrator. And she doesn't hide it from her readers. Interestingly, though she gets disturbed by the consequences which wreck the spirit of relationships, she allows the readers to feel the same agony expecting them to be better humans who would rise above their limitations.
I find Fire in the Hills as a book of exceptionally brilliant short stories. While I don't intend to dampen down readers' interest by discussing everything, let me talk a bit about one story that must touch any soulful reader. It is the first story Fire in the Hills where the writer deals with the lead character Asifs inner scuffle of coping with an adultery he committed with an attractive lady Sylvie. Asif, a married young man from Chittagong, was a struggling salesman of a hardware shop in Dhaka while his wife Nafisa and little daughter Tutli were waiting in Chittagong for his gradual change of fortune in the succeeding days. It was during such a period when Sylvie came to his life as a mere acquaintance in a restaurant near his office. Suddenly, things got different as Asif started to drop Sylvie at her home and subsequently, spend his nights there. By the way, the writer's narration of events
was pregnant with his child. Right since that moment, Asifs journey with self-inflicted trauma and unmanageable remorse starts in which readers have to get involved too. Here is where Deena Forkan manipulates her descriptions in wizardly skill. We get to know all these from Asifs friend with whom Asif shared his feelings, and this passive listener friend subtly epitomizes the readers' feelings of helplessness, shock and sympathy. Anyway, in the subsequent events we find quite a complex scenario. Sylvie met a tragic death due to abortion attempts by her unskilled friends which left her mother grief-stricken.
Consequently, she started repeatedly calling Asif to verify if he was the man responsible for all the mess.
This is where we get saddened on the one hand by Sylvie's despairing mother's yearning to find out the truth, and on the other by Asifs long-lasting trepidation that came to him through these calls. We see him pretending innocence with herculean effort every time she called him.
without a wee bit of explicit mention of Asifs illegitimate moments with Sylvie proves her command over the language.
Eventually Asif gets withered by guilt, manages to cut off from Sylvie, and return to his family in Chittagong where he joins a school as a Math teacher. When things were supposedly tranquil, a shocking call from Sylvie reveals to Asif that she
However, at last when she eventually stopped calling him, Asifs sufferings furthered as we realize in writer's words: 'In the silence of no calls, in painful waiting, and fearful fantasizing of what might happen next, Asif grew sick again.'
Finally, things took its usual path as Tudi grew up to be a talented girl working in Singapore and
Asif, separated from Nafisa for reasons unknown, lived a solitary life after being hit by a stroke The story ends here but the reverberation stays. Did Asif really become free? Did Cod just let him go? The writer feels:'.. .sometimes young men whose guilt overwhelm them and drive them too long for punishment into death are instead set free, condemned to liberty, sentenced to suffer with memories and ghosts and even with life itself.' Therefore, the issue of a physical fire gains metaphorical significance in the story. We would learn from Asifs friend about a fire at the foot of the Batali Hills regularly lit by the local slum people for cleansing the area from foul insects, and this fire could be seen from the window of the house where he stayed. When Asif used to share his agonies with his friend sitting near the window, the latter could realize Asifs mind looking at the burning Batali Hills. And at times when Asif would remain speechless by emotion, the fire would do the talking on his part. Now that Asif has become aged leaving his past behind, and there is no more fire in the Batali Hills after that area had been made restricted, how would the fire stay back among us? The writer has the answer: 'For some of us... the fires still burn. They burn bright in fearful memories and awe, and in the astonishing sense of wonder that resides in those of us who once were witnesses to their radiance and glory and the power to cleanse.' This is the philosophy that will leave readers rethink about life as they would continue reading the subsequent stories.
'Papa’s Choice', "The Red Tin Can', The Day I Lost My Life', 'Shame', 'Grand Finale' and 'Home' are some other stories that will captivate the readers by the writer's inimitable aptitude of dealing with the complexities in romance and kinship in relation to the dilemma and predicament that her characters endure. Striking is her ability of using the first person viewpoint in all the stories giving readers a feel of cinematic entirety (we call it the third person omniscient viewpoint). I heartily recommend Fire in the Hills as a must-read-at-one-go book of insightfully ingenious stories. For its sheer repeat value, it can be read many times in many moods.
(Dr. Faheem Hasan Shahed is an academic, author and singer. He is an Associate Professor at the English Department in American International University-Bangladesh.)