The Third Dimension (2023) #Wattys2024

5-1980

Jawad walked out from the house. No buildings, only two storied houses and small marketplaces which was at least, noisy. He felt the sprink of utmost enjoyment. Smile became his new word in his previously jaded time's dictionary, while in that new time, the smile there was always the beginning, as, his father used to describe him that Sohail was quite cheerful and also optimistic. Most of the time, Rahat constantly used to say that he was quite a resemblance to his uncle, which was quite true because of the vintage posters plus the interesting articles on each cases that were fascinated from the previous timeline-1999.

Between the streets, some were seen, wearing colorful shirts, tucked in with heavy trousers and the retro faces with vintage cars and different shoes. Except the fact that some very decent people were still under wearing a kurta- the long cloak and a long, Arab styled loin clothes with sandals. Co-incidentally, Jawad was one of 'those valuable people', as was wearing those outfits, mentioned. The roads were clean and had less traffic, on the contrary, in some places, the traffic had more but of a classy nature, where it seemed sugarcoated or less corrupted.

Internal dirt could be really new to his world because he only saw the high-middle class world but the world outside was far dangerous than what else it could have been. Now as Sohail, he had to live as a journalist due to the classiest, yet corrupted world that has ever faced. Some of the sellers were greeting 'hello' to him. It was the fisherman who actually became the regular seller to Sabeda's family in 1999 on where Jawad used to spin money on cream rolls and chocolates, as well as street foods of Bengals such as samosa, bhelpuri, fuchka, paratha and so on.

"Well, hello, Sohail, sonny boy!" greeted the fisherman.

"Hello, bro! What's new with you? Any fishes?" said Sohail.

"Yes, a dozen of Pomfrets, straight from Cox's Bazar" replied the fisherman by indirectly offering him the whole.

"How much? Kader Bro?" asked Sohail.

"1 dozen, nearly one fish 800 bucks, which means 96,000 bucks" said the humble fisherman.

"Ok, 9 fishes" said Jawad.

"9 fishes? I remember you being extremely calculative, at least, you supposed to get 4 at this moment" explained the fisherman.

"I think, it's for a special occassion" said Jawad.

"Yeah, your face says that. Welcome back from the land of the dead" said the fisherman who pointed at Jawad, or else, Sohail's scarred face.

Jawad searched the money on his pockets and what he found out was not expected- a half an amount of the money. That actually relieved his feelings.

"48,000 bucks, I think that's all I have. Take it, I will have six fishes" he said.

The shopkeeper was surprised of his attitude towards the spendings. Furthermore, Sohail took the fish to the house. When he tipped inside, he saw a thin and tall looking young lady, talking to aunt Haleema with a genuine smile-'sisterly like'. The round glasses, curly hair and the pale, fair face might make every man fall into her knees, on the contrary to, Jawad's because of a familiar substance that makes it more different, maybe a sister and a mom.

"Sabeda" he called.

Jawad's eyes were wide open with shock with mouth open, while the fishes were packed inside the polythene. Unfortunately, the underwear was seen as if a cacophony song, that made Sabeda and Haleema burst out laughing.

"Bro, where's your loin cloth? You even lost half your memory, even that loin cloth?" Sabeda burst out laughing.

Jawad, after seeing his mom smile for the first time after seventeen years. The last time she smiled was, when he was born and it was 1982, two years after his death was about to come. But little did he knew, that happiness won't last longer. On the contrary, he had an idea in store, that might change the course of the event. Jawad was also bursting out laughing at himself along with the two.