It went out too soon. The tide just slipped away, like it had better things to do.
In Chattogram, specially at the side of the port, people don't consider it as weird. It has been long since they became immune to it.
Water here is very moody. It does what it wants. Here water obeys no one. Sometime it arrives late, even sometime leaves early, when it pleases it floods entire the shore and even sometime it keeps the shore dry for hours. Old dockworkers often say the sea changes moods like a person.
Still, Rahim noticed it.
He was in Warehouse No. 3 when it happened. He was standing behind a desk which has traces of decade long ink spills and scars of knife cuts.
The ledger was open in front of him. The ledger is full of numbers that only mattered when they didn't add up.
Rahim always wrote slowly and carefully. He liked the ledger which is filled with numbers. He liked fact that numbers didn't lie, even when men did. He rarely makes any mistakes. The foreman liked him for that.
But today the ink felt heavy. Every time he dipped his pen, the silence from the harbor grew louder. The constant slaps of water against wooden hull faded into nothingness, The ropes creaked, then went quiet.
Rahim's pen stopped, right in the middle of a number.
The harbor clock struck once, dull and distant.
Late afternoon already. He had sworn it was still earlier.
For a second, he had the strange feeling that the day was already over. He shook off the feelings and finished the column. The totals just fell into place without effort. The numbers lined up perfectly. No mistakes. Nothing to erase. Nothing marked through.
He stood up.
"Clerk," the foreman called. "Work Done?"
"Yes," Rahim answered but his voice sounded thin, like a ghost's.
"Lock it then."
Rahim closed the ledger. He held the leather cover tightly. Longer than necessary. It became warm and greasy.
He turned toward the door.
That's when the shouting started.
It came from the far end of the doc. Sudden but sharp, the shout disrupted the peaceful afternoon. At first just one voice. Then another. Then the panic spread like spilled oil, , cutting through the salty air.
Rahim ran toward the noise like everyone else. He didn't want to, but his legs carried him anyway.
Moved towards the sound.
They found body lying near the salt crates.
The body was twisted in the planks. His neck bent at an angle that made several people turn away immediately. Blood dripped through the wooden slats, slowly and deliberately, as if the wood itself had been waiting for it.
Someone waited for the bell.
It did not ring.
After a moment, the crowd adjusted itself around that silence, as if the city had already decided this was small enough to endure.
The bells did not ring.
Someone pointed it out, then shrugged. Like the city had already decided this wasn't big enough to fuss over.
Someone whispered the man's name
Kamal, a quiet, married man with two children.
"He slipped," someone muttered but their eyes said otherwise.
Rahim knew, deep down, that Kamal hadn't slipped. He hadn't seen anything, hadn't heard anything, but the thought hit all at once. Heavy. Final.
Kamal had been killed.
The inspector arrived late, as usual, smelling like expensive tobacco.
He didn't look at the body; he looked at the space around the body, like an artist checking the frame of a painting.
His coat was clean but his boots were not. He asked questions in a flat, heavy voice,
"When was the last time he was seen?"
"Was there an argument heard?"
"Any debts?"
People answered. Nothing helpful.
Then the inspector pointed.
"You. Clerk."
Rahim tensed. "Yes, sir?"
"Name."
"Rahim."
"Did you see what happened?"
"No."
"Did you hear anything odd?"
Rahim opened his mouth.
For one moment, he wanted to say- YES. Not because he remembered, but because his body wanted to say it.
"Yes," the word slipped out.
The answer scared him.
"No," he corrected himself.
The inspector looked at him a moment, studied him and then nodded. "Good."
He told his assistant to write down everything. The assistant wrote quickly, ink scratching paper.
Rahim glanced out at the water beyond the docks.
The tide had retreated far more than it should have at this hour. The beach was exposed, its surface was dark and ominous.
No one cared about the water.
That night, Rahim dreamed he was standing on bare sand while the sea kept pulling away, leaving him alone with just the sound of his own breathing.
He woke before dawn.
His mother was already awake.
She sat close to the window, sewing through the faint light of a lamp. She sewed with slow but deliberate movements, placing each stitch carefully. She was bent with age, but her eyes were sharp.
"You're late," she said without looking up.
"There was… an incident at the docks"
Her needle paused. She nodded, as if she had expected this answer. "Did someone die?"
"Yes."
She breathed quietly. "Eat."
They ate in silence.
"You look tired," she said.
"I'm fine."
She clicked her tongue. "You always say that when you're not."
He smiled weakly. "I'll rest tomorrow."
She didn't smile back. "Tomorrow never comes."
The words lingered between them.
When Rahim returned to work the next day, the city felt much better
He could not explain it better than that. The streets were calmer. No arguments could be heard. A cart that usually wobbled past his house rolled smoothly today.
At Warehouse No. 3, shipments arrived early. Crates were lighter than expected. The foreman was in an uncommonly good mood.
"Finally," someone said.
Rahim thought of Kamal's broken neck and said nothing.
By noon, he looked at ledger over and over. Numbers were too perfect. No corrections were needed. Rahim checked his math three times and found no error.
The inspector returned in the afternoon.
"Case closed," he announced.
"So soon?" the foreman asked.
"Accident. Resolved."
"Mark it," he told Rahim.
Rahim hesitated, then wrote the word.
Resolved.
That evening, the tide went out again.
Farther than before.
He walked towards the edge of beach, shoes in hand, standing barefoot, wet sand cold under his feet.
Behind him, footsteps approached.
"You shouldn't stay here alone," a woman said.
He turned.
She stood a short distance away, shawl drawn tight around her shoulders. Her face was unfamiliar, yet the sight of her sent a strange ache through his chest, like pressing on a bruise he didn't remember getting.
She stood a little way off, clutching her shawl tight around her shoulders like armor. He didn't know her face, yet his chest tightened with a weird, old ache, like noticing a scar he doesn't remember earning.
"I'm sorry," Rahim said. "I didn't mean to…"
"It's fine," she replied. "I was worried."
"About me?"
She hesitated. "About everyone."
They watched the sea together.
"My father used to say the tide remembers," she said softly.
"Remembers what?"
She smiled faintly. "Everything people try not to."
"What's your name?"
"Amina."
The name felt too familiar in his mouth, like something he should remember but couldn't. "I feel," he said slowly, searching for the right words, "like I've already lost something important."
Amina's fingers tightened on her shawl. "So do I."
They did not touch.
They did not need to. The bells rang before dawn. Emergency bells.
Rahim ran.
The body lay in a different place this time. A different man. But everything else is same.
The inspector arrived quickly.
Too quickly.
He asked fewer questions.
Rahim caught a glimpse of the assistant's notebook as he wrote. The handwriting was perfect. The word Resolved was already there, waiting.
Rahim staggered back, heart pounding.
The tide pulled away from the shore.
Somewhere, a ledger closed.
And somewhere beyond memory, beyond record, the city balanced itself once more.