by Naseem Ahmed

I WAS recently speaking to a friend about the hierarchy of grief while talking about personal losses we faced in the 1971 war. Mothers lost their sons, wives lost their husbands, daughters lost their fathers, sisters lost their brothers. The entire nation empathised with this collective grief. Later, some spoke and wrote about their unbearable loss, some accepted posthumous awards on behalf of their heroic dear ones, others were called to speak at meetings and anniversaries. Somewhere lower in this hierarchy of entitled grief, in the audience or outside of it, were a group of women who were neither wives nor mothers of the fallen, nor sisters nor daughters. They were young women who loved the young men who went to war but never returned. Like myself.
   I was seventeen when I met him. I was nineteen when he died. What is it like to carry grief in one’s heart for thirty seven years when society offers you no straightforward channel to express that grief? How does one cope with hidden grief? How does it transform the young woman as she matures in the journey of life?
   I recall our days of activism against the Pakistani regime. Along with a group of young nationalists, we pioneered the protests within the otherwise apolitical isolation of Holy Cross College. I recall, frantic and tear-gassed, seeking shelter in a men’s hall on Dhaka University campus. Boundaries were being tested, barriers were shattered, a nationalistic surge swept us up and 1971 ripped our lives apart. I recall those extra prayers that I prayed each night pleading with God for his safety, the prayer mat the only witness to my silent tears. Months later, on a November morning, less than a month before independence, I froze while listening to Swadhin Bangla Betar. They mentioned him by name. They talked about the heroism of our soldiers. They pinpointed the place where he died the night before in northern Bangladesh. Someone called me to come down for breakfast. No one at the table noticed if anything was wrong with me and if they had, they didn’t say a word. It was only when I was alone a few hours later that I shed those first repressed tears.
   Since my immediate family was of no consolation to me, I sought comfort in his family. We sat together for endless hours and commiserated over our respective losses. They pampered me immensely and his mother loved me like the daughter-in-law who was never to be. I was her link to the son who was gone forever. This, I thought, was a good place to rest my grief.
   And what about the God of my teenage years? The one who listened to my prayers each night for eight months and still took him away? Am I less angry today for that first major betrayal? I am never comfortable talking about it but I know I have not prayed to that God ever since.
   I have been living abroad for the past 33 years. Overall, I have few regrets about my life which seems to be filled with a loving daughter, work which has given me much satisfaction, and good friends all over the world. When my daughter turned twenty, I told her of my first love and showed her one of my most valuable treasures: a bead necklace that he had once given me almost forty years ago. He had bought it from a beach vendor while vacationing with friends in Cox’s Bazar on his stringent student budget. The necklace has been with me all these years in a ceramic trinket box in the deepest drawers of my life. Recently, while visiting Muktijuddho Jadughar, I showed my daughter his picture behind the glass frame. Amidst his personal belongings on display is a pen very similar to the one I had once given him years ago. Ironically, our mutual gifts have withstood our separation in completely different ways: one, a tenderly cared secret whose story I can share at my discretion while the other, an encased national specimen for all to see but with no powers to tell any story.
   Though I visit Bangladesh frequently, I have not quite forgiven myself for leaving the land. Periodically I make efforts to cleanse my soul by being involved in projects and research in Bangladesh. I carry Bangladesh in my heart, and it manifests in my foreign home and environment. Yet, my relationship with motherland remains uneasy. Each time I come to Bangladesh, I search endlessly for what has been lost. I search for secularism and democracy, I search for sound and just economic policies, I search for a political independence that every sovereign nation deserves. Instead, I see fundamentalist religiosity, military obesity, and a brand of greed, corruption, and vanity to which I cannot relate. With each missed encounter, I recall his cold body lying all night long on that cold November night… a bullet pierced through his forehead… sinking… blood and flesh into the soil of this land… with one last dream: an independent and vibrant Bangladesh.
   Now in my mid-fifties, I yearn to make peace with my conflicted self. I no longer want to dwell on things that are not there for me anymore. Bangladesh, the land, is still what it was to me since my birth; Bangladesh, the system, is what I am alienated from and feel betrayed by. There is still that certain green of the rice fields that I can see with my eyes closed… raindrops dripping from papaya leaves in my mother’s garden amidst the symphony of the monsoon rains… the calming fragrance of dry soil after a light shower – these will remain the gems I will treasure from the remnants of my tumultuous relationship with motherland. As for the bead necklace, who will treasure it after I am gone? Who will tell its story?
   (The writer urges women who have experienced similar losses to express themselves and share their stories…)