A family’s trials with war
By: Nuha Fariha (Philadelphia, USA)
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I remember being on a beach along the Jersey shore when my Nanu piped up and said: “I was once hiding under a boat for three hours.” When I asked her why, she continued, “I was about six or seven years old, holding hands with my five other siblings. We lived in the countryside, near Noakhali. I was scared, I did not know where my parents were or if they would return. Every few minutes we heard gunfire. We did not know where they were coming from or when they would stop. We were too young to understand what war was, why the school was always closing, why we had so little left to eat, why our mother was always crying or why our father never smiled anymore. The air around us smelled funny like something was burning for a long time on the outside stove. The air around us vibrated with death. All we had was each other, all we could do was hold each other through the cold night. Even to this day, we do not know what happened to our parents. We raised each other, my brothers, sisters, and I. And that was life.”
We sat down, shared our cha and watched the blood red sunset fade behind the sea.
When I was 16, I asked my father why we never went camping. He says it’s because of the insects; the risk of getting a lifelong illness like Lyme disease. He says it’s because of the expense; the sheer impracticality of buying a tent, sleeping bag, and all the other materials. He says it’s because of the animals; of being attacked while sleeping or having his food stolen. He doesn’t say that it’s because of the War. He doesn’t say that it’s because he spent five long days hiding in the forests in rural Bangladesh, uncertain if he was going to live to see another day. He doesn’t say that when he was five years old, he was hunted like an animal by the Pakistani Army; that his family fled their village because of the ongoing war, that he was surrounded by death before he knew how to live life. He doesn’t talk about what they had to do to survive. All he will say is, “I don’t like to go camping.”
My uncle was known throughout Noakhali for his appetite, his voracious love of life, laughter and the pursuit of the best home-cooked biryani. He could eat 14 porotas for breakfast only to turn around and ask for a whole chicken for lunch and then five plates of daal-bhaath for dinner. He was a big man, his appetite only surpassed by his charm and graciousness. He had an unerring love for his community, for his family, for his country. When he heard about the Pakistani army, heard about the war, the invasion through his very backyard, he enlisted in the growing mukti bahini, filled with young, passionate men like himself. Every evening, they would meet to talk about strategy, full of the kind of idealism and zeal youth has. For them, it was not just a war about language or power, but a war about their right to existence. When he left, he took just his planting syke with him.
Six months later, my uncle was returned to his mother in a black body bag, dismembered beyond recognition. They still have no words to describe the grief that resonated in the small village on the day my grandmother cried over the body of her fallen son. While her son had once been so full, my grandmother stopped eating. Until her death bed, she would only have a small piece of bread and some water, her brittle bones and gaunt figure looking at the horizon, still praying for her beloved son.
Glossary:
Biryani — seasoned rice with meat, seafood or vegetables
Daal-bhaath — rice with pureed and spiced lentils
Mukti bahini — freedom fighters
Nanu — maternal grandmother
Porota — flatbread
