Meyebela My Bengali Girlhood p. 44
When everyone was asleep, Khairunnisa lowered the wick of her lamp and sat in its dim light, waiting for her husband. When he returned, she endured his unrestrained passion, hoping that this untamed bird would be captured and held by the lure of prosperity, physical pleasure, and affection for his children. Being a woman, Khairunnisa could not go out and look after the business. All she could do was save money in her bamboo pole. Every night, as she lay beside hеr husband's satisfied body, her thick black hair spread ovеr her pillow, she tried to make him see that he had to be careful with his money. But Maniruddin had never learned to count money; he had only learned to grab fistfuls of it. Whatever else he might try to be in his life, he would never be thrifty.

In 1943 the famine started. Maniruddin saw people dying. They begged at his door for a bowlful of the starchy water that remained after the rice was cooked. He closed his restaurant and began cooking by himself — a simple meal of rice and dal and vegetables, all thrown in together — to feed the hundreds of starving. With the money he had he bought rice to keep his free kitchen going. But now rice had disappeared from the shops. Desperate, Maniruddin ran from one mosque to another, raising his hands in prayer, begging for mercy.

"We have no one but you to help us, Allah. La ilaha illallah — there is but one God, one Allah." Maniruddin wept like a child, his tears drenching his chest. He cried that whole year, until rice and milk powder began to fall from airplanes. Only then did anyone see him smile.

Khairunnisa did not let the famine affect her family. She had already stored some rice in her loft in case they ran short. Now she measured it out carefully every day. Her youngest child, still a babe-in-arms, lived purely on breast milk. If she had not taken charge, Maniruddin’s household would have been destroyed long ago. She could not tame her husband completely, but she did make him feel attached enough to his family to return to them. Khairunnisa lived, however, in perpetual fear that the bird might fly away forever.