He could have boarded by now, but he is finishing off the last bite of the soft flesh of a dab. While he chews, he watches passengers rush on board with their bundles and bedrolls, the gangplanks straining beneath their feet.

Back on Naodubi island, Moni's mother would have wrapped up her class by now. On any other day she would be eating lunch, but today she goes without. When he parted from her at dawn, there was no food left. He will return in the early evening with rice, dal, cooking oil, a few odds and ends, and if he's lucky enough to get a fish on one of the stops on his journey, they may yet share a satisfying meal tonight. She had insisted that he promise to eat something at midday, but Moni could not see himself eating while his mother went hungry. The heat however forced him to buy a refreshing green coconut.

He hears a man call out to him, "Brother, you should come on board now." It is Ahsan, the boy who assists the pilot of the smaller of the two launches. He remembers Moni from this morning as well as earlier trips Moni has made.

The larger boat, a two-decker, will head upriver to Patuakhali and eventually reach Barisal by midnight. Moni reads its name, the MV Bakerganj. The launch looks ancient, with its peeling paint and a thick crust of rust on its battered hull. It would be simple for Moni to board the larger boat. He has the money for the ticket. At Barisal, he could switch to a different launch back to Dhaka, or perhaps he would only go as far as Chandpur. That would put him closer to the border with Tripura. A bus ride would put him within twenty miles of the border, and he could walk the rest.

His mother had made him promise to return. Why did she think he might not come back? Had he not loyally stood by her side for the last two months? She knows he is unhappy being stuck down there, but how could she possibly think he would leave her? The memory of that distrust makes him angry. It makes him want to take the MV Bakerganj.

Ahsan shouts at him one more time. "We are about to go."

Grabbing his bags, Moni rises to his feet and hurries toward the boats.

The two-story school building, made of brick and concrete, was built to withstand winds of up to 150 miles an hour. In November when the cyclone had smashed across the southern delta, with a tidal wave that washed away the mud-and-bamboo dwellings of the villagers, the school building stood intact. Those lucky enough to live nearby crowded for shelter inside its classrooms. They survived.

Six months later, a room on the second floor would provide shelter to Moni and his mother running from a different storm. Outsiders here, with no family ties connecting them to Naodubi, they ended up here because of a simple bond created in the wake of the storm. If we can return the kindness one day...

Moni had rushed here after the cyclone, a volunteer on the first boat carrying relief supplies from Dhaka. Unable to make sense of what lay before them, one of his comrades began to take snapshots. In a rare fit of rage, Moni ripped the film out of the camera. The images of bodies without a shred of skin on them, many still clutching tree trunks, would forever be etched in his mind. They did not need to hoard the tragedy on photo paper. Their mission here was to signal hope: they had brought food, clothing, and basic medicines. It was hardly enough. Moni returned, with a second, then a third, boatload of volunteers. Mostly high school and college students like him who could not sit still in classrooms at a time like this.

When Moni would arrive later with his mother, they extended the villagers another simple bond: You provided us with shelter. We can teach you and your children how to read and write. Although the government had built the school seven years earlier, just before an election, its support for teachers had never really come through. The last teacher had left more than a year ago.

Within days, mother and son established a daily routine. They taught children in the morning, adults in the late afternoon. Sometimes their classes numbered a dozen or more, but usually it was only a handful. They improvised their syllabus, teaching the alphabet, words and stories, numbers and counting, throwing in a little history and geography whenever they could. His mother now handled arithmetic and science, and both of them shared the language skills.

They made do with one meal a day, two if the villagers shared food with them. One of the men showed Moni where to fish and every few days he added fish to their diet. They had some money, but spent it sparingly: for food, essentials such as soap, and kerosene. The cash would have to last until they decided what to do next.

One possession they brought with them was a short-wave radio and in the evening, they listened to the news from All India Radio or the BBC. They did not bother wasting precious battery power on the lies that emanated from Radio Pakistan. If they had, they would have heard that normalcy had returned all over East Pakistan, that a new provincial administration cleansed of traitors had been installed, that Islam was free of the scourge of Hindu contamination from India, and that the miscreants who dared to disturb peace and security had been vanquished.

The other stations broadcast news of villages being burned, of refugees swarming into camps across the border, and of a growing guerilla struggle the occupying army. These reports could have been the story of their own recent lives. Within days of the massacre on March 25, 1971 soldiers invaded their flat and dragged away Moni's father. He had not come back. They had come looking for Moni's older brother, a university student activist, but Belal had not been home. By now, he could be anywhere.

On the day the curfew was lifted for a few hours, his mother gathered some of their belongings and the two of them fled to her father's ancestral village, a day's journey from the city. The refuge there turned out to be brief. When little boys came running shouting about soldiers, he rushed home and once again he and his mother fled. They joined a group of Hindu refugees headed for India, but they had no family across the border and his mother did not want to end up in a refugee camp. She suggested another relative's village, further south. That place was not as welcoming and they stayed only for one week until soldiers were reported nearby. Their relatives said they had to leave. This time Moni recalled the words of the villagers on Naodubi. The monsoons would soon come and the island would be cut off from the mainland for at least two or three months. Such a tiny, isolated place could not possibly interest the military; they would be safe there.

So far their luck was holding and while their life was simple, it was also busy and could often be exhausting. When they first arrived, mother and son would talk for hours until weariness quieted him. Then he would hear her weeping into her pillow, while all he could do was stare at the darkness with his hands clasped behind his head. He had no words to offer her. Sleep began to come easier, but the conversation between them took on more silences.

One night, Moni could not sleep. It was the stifling heat, he thought. He rose and walked out the door. Leaning against the balcony railing, he looked at the stars shining in the cloudless sky. Unlike the other villages, there was a total silence here. Not even the barking of a dog. The cyclone had not spared anyone this island.

Earlier the news from Calcutta had informed them of the launching of Free Bengal Radio. He rotated the dial until he found the signal, and they listened to the last ten minutes of a news program. A squad of young freedom fighters had destroyed an assault force of Pakistani soldiers in the northeast. A woman from the village was visiting with her son Hameed, one of Moni's pupils, and she exclaimed, "How brave our brothers are turning out to be! Who could have believed it?" Her face glowed golden brown in the light of the hurricane lamp. When she glanced in his direction, Moni was surprised to find that instead of sharing her sense of pride, he felt only the sting of shame.

All through his childhood and even into his teenage years, Moni had been called a coward. Doura, bhitu, kapurush. He knew every Bangla word for it. Even some English synonyms: spineless, crybaby, 'fraidy cat. Moni had long come to accept the label. How could he possibly contest it?

When the family doctor showed up to vaccinate the household with the TABC injection for typhoid and cholera, Moni darted out the door. But Belal was faster and dragged him back. The way Moni screamed and struggled, he made it sound like he was being taken to the gallows. Even when it became clear that he would be sacrificed to the needle, he tried to delay the inevitable by bargaining for a thinner one. While everyone got stuck with a No. 20, he held out for a No. 22.

The next day, feverish, Moni groaned as if near death. He demanded his mother's constant presence. She too was fevered, but he never thought of her condition, nor that of his brother or father. No one else could possibly be suffering as much as him!

Once when he was moaning about dying, there was a visitor in the drawing room Moni's uncle Zia, a captain in the army. Sporting a carefully groomed mustache, he held his body erect and even sitting on a sofa he looked like he was going to spring up at any moment. While he drank his tea, he lectured Moni, "Cowards die a thousand times before their death." His mother laughed. Moni pulled closer to her, even though he looked up at her in disgust. Could she not see that her brother was a tormenter of children? Years later when Moni discovered that his uncle's words came from a character in a Shakespeare play, he conceded the man a sliver of grudging respect. He was not simply a mindless soldier given to worshipping physical strength and warrior prowess. The man also read books.

Mahmud Rahman is at work on his first novel.