“Well-behaved women rarely make history,” says a
sticker pasted on Taslima Nasreen’s refrigerator
door. But then, rarely do they have to make up
their minds about what they are going to do and
where they are going to go each time they get
shunted out of a country either. That is
something that the exiled Bangladeshi author and
firebrand feminist is having to do on a regular
basis - every six months or so. In fact, the
six-month extension of her permission to stay on
in India, which she received in August last year,
is about to expire. And as D-day - February 17 -
closes in on her, the woman who held her head
high in spite of several fatwas against her
openly tells you that it’s not a nice feeling.

“The uncertainty is very disturbing,” she says.
“It’s like standing at a bus stop all your life.”
When you are always at the bus stop, you are
never home. And, after all these years of
standing and waiting, Nasreen wants to go home.
But home, for her, is not just Bangladesh. She
doesn’t see the two Bengals - East and West - as
separate. "It is a forced division, created
artificially," she tells you and says that she
doesn’t accept it. "Ideally, I would like to be a
part of an undivided Bengal," she adds wistfully.
But at the moment, for all practical purposes, if
her “beloved Motherland” - or what the rest of
the world knows as Bangladesh - won’t have her,
she would like to be a part of India. But New
Delhi is not as keen on that. Nasreen has been
hoping to get Indian citizenship - but going by
past experience she is not too optimistic about
that. Right now, she would settle for an
extension of her resident permit for a longer
period. "I don’t know why I can’t be granted a 10
or even a five-year extension," she asks,
sounding both hurt and exasperated.

She finds the short-term extensions frustrating,
having to constantly worry about when the visa
will expire. "I seem to be always writing out
applications requesting permission for me to stay
on somewhere,“she sighs, smiling sadly.”And
then waiting."

Evidently no one is inured to the insecurity and
uncertainty of a wait. Not even Taslima Nasreen,
who has had years of practice. She has been
waiting for over a dozen years. Waiting to return
to something that she can call home. It was way
back in 1994 that Nasreen first had to flee from
her homeland. A gynaecologist and newspaper
columnist, she was already in the black book of
Islamic fundamentalists for her open criticism of
the oppression of women in the name of religion.
But it was her book Lajja (Shame), which dealt
not only with the injustices against women in her
community but also the plight of minority Hindus,
that had the hardliners baying for her blood.

Fatwas were announced against her, unleashing a
mob fury that forced her to go into hiding in her
own country. "I used to be shifted from one
hideout to another by friends, sometimes cramped
into the back seat of cars, wrapped in blankets
held down by suitcases," she recalls. She didn’t
know where she was being taken, what she would do
next or whether or not she would be alive the
next moment. One day she found herself being
bundled up in an aeroplane, heading for an
unknown destination with virtually no personal
belongings. “I had no idea,” she says today,
“that I would never again return to my country.”

The rest, of course, is history. Nasreen, now 44,
has been living in exile since, with only a
secret visit in 1988 to Bangladesh to be with her
sick mother, who was on her death bed. "A lot of
people had feared for my life during that trip,“Nasreen says.”But I loved her and nothing could
keep me from going and meeting her. I was not
afraid to die. But there was a lot of
international pressure on the government to
ensure that I was safe."

Letter after letter went to the Bangladesh Prime
Minister - penned both by eminent personalities
and ordinary citizens of the world - urging
Nasreen a safe journey back, ironically enough,
from home. "I write on behalf of the
International Academy of Humanism to express our
concern for the safety of Dr Taslima Nasreen,"
wrote Professor Paul Kurtz, president,
International Academy of Humanism. And Hermann
Bondi, former master, Churchill College,
Cambrige, wrote, "I am writing to you out of
concern for Dr Taslima Nasreen. Many of us hope
and indeed trust that your government will
protect this distinguished person from the crude
violence that threatens her and abstain from
prosecuting her for her alleged views.“In a letter to her, author Salman Rushdie wrote,”Great writers have agreed to lend their weight
to the campaign on your behalf." They included
Czeslaw Milosz, Mario Vargas Llosa and Milan
Kundera. And not that Nasreen is not aware of it.

No, Nasreen doesn’t deny that she found "love and
acceptance from total strangers" outside of her
country. "European countries quarrelled among
each other to give asylum to me," she says.
Sweden - where she was first taken to in 1994 -
and Germany, in particular, were keen to host
her. But when you point out to her that France
had once issued her only a 24-hour visa, she
immediately reminds you of the flak Paris
received for that, including a demand for the
resignation of the then President. You can’t miss
the urgency in Nasreen’s voice. She wants to make
sure that you recognise that when her own people
abandoned her, strangers picked her up and gave
her shelter.

Yet Nasreen craves the love of her own people.
“Everyone needs to come back to a home,” she
sighs. At the moment home for her is her plush
apartment on Calcutta’s Rowden Street. "It
doesn’t necessarily have to be a home full of
people. It is a space where you feel independent.
A place where you belong." Her only family member
is a cat by the name of Minoo. Nasreen had picked
her up from the Gariahat fishmarket when she was
only a kitten, abandoned and alone.

Minoo is a fearless and independent creature -
more like a tigress or a Baghini, which is what
Nasreen calls her. And, yes, she has a home.
Nasreen gave her one. The question is, who will
give Nasreen a home?