Seven days of torment
I was intolerably lonely, thirsty and hungry. Because of stricter surveillance, Omar could not bring any food from the division kitchen; the gruesome paste of rice and watery lintel brought from the common kitchen spewed out smells almost similar to those emitting out of the open sewage lying to the north of the cell. Unabated load shedding in the moonless night made time stand still like hatchet
heads hanging overhead,
writes Dr Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir
I
It was the morning of March 26, 2008 in the Kashimpur Jail. Coming out on the verandah, I found all others congratulating each other for the independence that we had achieved 37 years ago. Though we were in chains, our thoughts, though unspoken, centered on a light, a base for life, liberty and individual happiness for all of our citizens. We knew, we had a tryst with the future that we all dreamt of when we were young. Then, with a well-earned belly rising plump under a safari shirt, the jailor along with the leaner deputy jailor came and announced that the inspector general of prisons had decided to punish me for using a mobile phone while I had been in the hospital and I was to be condemned to detention as an ordinary convict in isolation for 3 months forthwith.
Every one of the political prisoners around roared in protest and disgust. They pointed out that the division status granted to me as an ex-state minister was given under the amended Jail Code and the status so given could not be withdrawn by an executive order. They said that before reaching the decision to punish me as such, an enquiry should have been held to find out whether that mobile was actually found on me and whether I had actually used it. Is there any mention about a phone or a mobile in the Jail Code? They wanted to know. The jailor said he was obeying orders and had nothing more to do in this regard. The jailor also said that similar punishments were given to ex-ministers Moudud Ahmed and Najmul Huda by transferring them to the Narayanganj jail from Dhaka. The other inmates threatened to go on hunger strike if I were taken away from them. After a while, in grudging concession to the protests made, the jailor agreed that on the first floor of the same building where other ordinary prisoners were accommodated, I would be given a place to sleep on the floor, without any book or writing materials or a mosquito net.
All through I had kept mum. Only at this point, I asked whether they would take me away to suffer this punishment on Independence Day. Could they not wait till the day after? The jailor did not answer, but went back to arrange accommodation for me on the first floor. After about 30 minutes, he came back and told us that he had discussed the matter with the deputy inspector general of prisons, Major Shamsul Haider Siddiki, and that the latter had been adamant on executing the punishment from that very day and would not under any circumstance permit my staying in the division building for an extra day. So around noon I was taken to the condemned cell attached to the jail infirmary where terrorist Shaikh Abdur Rahman had been interned before his execution a few months earlier. The jailor made one concession: he allowed me to take a few books and my writing materials down to the depths of that hellish refuge.
The refuge was a dark cell of 15x10 with an open toilet located in one corner with a knee high 5 inch wall on 2 sides to keep one’s modesty. There was one window to the east of the toilet, but it was permanently sealed leaving no scope for cross ventilation or the going out of defecative odour coming from of the influshable commodeless toilet. A narrow door served as the entrance from a verandah running the short length of the cell west from east, all grilled up to the ceiling. I was to sleep and sit on the bare floor by the side of the toilet. No mosquito net was provided; fleas and mosquitoes nourished in the dark and on the almost open sewage outside to the north of the cell. Countless cobwebs hanging from the four corners of the ceiling were obviously no match for thousands of singing insects and fleas that inhabited the cell. I would get my food 3 times a day from the kitchen of ordinary prisoners, doled out in battered aluminium pots that very badly needed cleaning. The inmates of the division building wanted to send food from their kitchen but the jailor would not allow it under the indescribable shroud of ‘orders from above’.
My attendant, Omar, loyal as he was, volunteered to come with me to look after me in the isolation cell and found a sleeping space on the floor in the next cell where the guards were placed to keep me under constant vigilance. Since I was no longer given division, I was not entitled to an attendant. I asked Omar to go back and stay in the division building with the other attendants, but he refused. Conniving with an attendant of the infirmary who had borrowed a book from me earlier, Omar procured a dilapidated wooden chair from somewhere, most probably from the doctor’s room, and placed it on the verandah. While I was turbulent in my thoughts and anger shadowed me all the while, Omar arranged sheets for me to sleep on and cover me against insects and mosquitoes, cleaned my clothes and eating pots and managed to bring some ‘bottled’ water from the division building. In that cold dungeon dug out to suppress me in mind and body, Omar’s silent service sustained me against possible insanity. I always felt like thanking him, pausing at artful intervals of his mopping and washing, but never did. It was a flaw of character in me, I thought.
II
Unable to sleep, in the dim light spewed by a 30 watt bulb fitted down the ceiling, I wrote a brief for Barrister Rafiqul Huq to challenge the punishment given to me by the inspector general of prisons. In the afternoon, my brother Jahangir along with Ishaq Sikdar came to the jail gate to see me. Before they came, I scrubbed myself very carefully in a bucket of water to erase the biting marks of insects on my body so that they would not see those and be more agitated and anguished. I conversed with them without gloom and handed over the brief to take to Rafiqul Huq. I said, a writ for quashment of the action taken by the inspector general should be preceded by a lawyer’s notice that very evening. My voice, I noticed was mild and companionable. They had brought some fruits and breads for me. After they had left, I trudged back very slowly, step by step from the jail gate to my isolated cell in the remnants of the light of the late afternoon. Deputy jailor Shahadat did not allow me to take the fruits and breads that my visitors had brought. This was an act in exact match with the cruelty of his superiors, I thought.
Late in the night, around midnight I believe, when I lay shrouded in sheets as a protection against singing and biting insects, jailor Saeed came in with 2 additional guards. He asked the guards to wait outside and said very politely,
‘Sir, I want to talk to you’
‘Evidently,’ I said in consonance with as much brevity as possible. By that time at least 5 mosquitoes had bitten him as I could count from the thumps of his one hand on the other.
‘Oh, you don’t have a mosquito net’
‘I had one. You did not allow me to bring it in.’ I restrained myself from flaring up in anger.
‘I will send in the mosquito net right now.’ I did not say anything in reply, looked the other way in disgust, trying to fathom the reason for his generosity.
‘Sir, I have good news for you’ I looked up and at him, did not comment.
‘Your punishment for living in isolation and out of the division has been changed. It will be for just 7 days’
‘Oh,’ I said. I realised, it must have been the outcome of the lawyer’s notice dispatched to the inspector general that evening. He along with his cunning advisors must have realised that their position was not legally tenable and by the time I went to the High Court, 5 more days would have passed. That way, courageous and honourable as they were, they would be able to show courage of their manufacture and save their egoist sense of honour by restoring my status as a division prisoner without incurring the wrath of the High Court. Finding me incommunicable, the jailor gave a salaam, called his guards and left. Ten minutes after he left the havildar along with 2 other guards came with my mosquito net, drove 4 nails into 4 corners of the cell, fitted it and left.
III
Next morning, Omar managed to bring in 2 parathas, an omelette and a mug of tea from the division building. These were sent by Mufti Shahidul Islam in connivance with Salman Rahman. I ate wistfully despite growling of phlegmic coughing from the infirmary of which my cell was a part. A packet of lunch was brought from the division building in the same way. I thought, despite odds, we would be able to shape a new ground on which all of us might stand together with a common resolve and in a renewed fight. I gave a blank rebellious glare toward the black uniformed jail guards gossiping and chewing betel nuts under the cocoanut trees out side the infirmary gate.
In the afternoon I had a pleasant surprise. Brother William Christensen came to visit me at the jail gate. William was an ordained priest, a man of God, dedicated to his service through organising help and support for the poor under the aegis of a non-governmental organisation, the Institute of Integrated Rural Development. My wife Sitara was once chaired the institute. He was persistent in his attempt to visit me and finally the home ministry allowed him to come to Kashimpur. It was refreshing talking to him about our country, the fate and the injustice meted to the poor by man-made laws and customs, and to renew faith in our possibilities. William was willing to stay longer but remembering that he was always busy in his work I bade him good bye. I did not tell him about the brutal solitary confinement I was pushed into. He assured me, God has his own way of doing things for the benefit of every deserving one. Through the Judas gate of the jail, I kept looking at him till he disappeared in his little jeep.
I was wrung out by the third night, twisted down to a most miserable condition. I was intolerably lonely, thirsty and hungry. Because of stricter surveillance, Omar could not bring any food from the division kitchen; the gruesome paste of rice and watery lintel brought from the common kitchen spewed out smells almost similar to those emitting out of the open sewage lying to the north of the cell. Unabated load shedding in the moonless night made time stand still like hatchet heads hanging overhead. The biting and singing of the insects seemed to force me to fall away in history. What was the meaning of life if it could not stand against one’s own misery or contribute to the well-being of others? In the wakeful nights, I questioned and thought in the grim aftermath of the brutal treatment that I reckoned I might not live through. To me death that way had no meaning; I could die without realising how death looked or sounded, whether it was senseless or heroic or one could die without knowing that one was dead.
When the fourth day of the isolated confinement dawned, I did not find enough strength to get up from the bundle of sheets on the floor that was my bed. Around 9, Omar sneaked in with a mug of tea and 2 toasts that he smuggled in from the ‘division’ kitchen. I gratefully drank the tea and ate the toasts and then with blister like bite-marks of insects walked bowed out into the verandah and sat on the dilapidated chair. Mufti Shahidul Islam was at that time walking to the jail gate on his way to the court. Ignoring the raised eye brows of the jail guards, he veered towards me. Seeing me smiling with blister like marks on my hands, neck, throat and face, he sighed and said he would bring it to the notice of the superintendent.
‘What matters is that I am alive and, Inshallah, I will survive’, I tried to comfort Mufti.
‘These are not humans-beings — these people administering the jails. They will meet their own fate in time’ growled Mufti, flapping his flowing robes.
‘I will myself bring you food this evening’, he said and left me at the prodding of the guards. I sat on the verandah looking at the green and fresh leaves and dark smoothing shadows of trees stretched long across the grey concrete walk ways of the jail. And then I drew out Anne Enright’s ‘The Gathering’ and flipped through its pages. The book was sent to me by Sitara from Boston. In the book, Enright portrayed an evocative and touching tale of a large Irish family haunted by the past. Did the memory of the past help people to get into a future of their liking, a fate they would cherish? It was long into the afternoon when I found myself on the floor of the verandah where most of the flurry of life did not mean much to me.
In the light felling at a low angle over the coconut grove outside the western walls of the infirmary, I found Omar with another mug of tea and one toast which I accepted gratefully. He told me I did not have anything for lunch and he did not wake me out of my once-on-once-off sleep on the bare floor. I asked for a bucket of water for a bath. He brought a dented bucket full of cool but brackish water and I used the tea-mug to pour water on my head and body. And then drying my body with a sheet, I sat once again in the deeper darkness falling throughout the jail.
The deep darkness made me reminisce about a still darker event that I tried to erase out of my memory for a long time. When I was about 8 and living in our village home, one of my childless aunts, Anu, liked me a lot. She was the wife of Anwar uncle who worked in a sea-going vessel as a sailor. He had 3 brothers. They used to live together as a joint family with their wives, children and mother. Anwar uncle sent them money for their subsistence, constructing tin roofed houses and buying sizable cultivable lands. Infected with tuberculosis, Anwar uncle came home and after a few months and died. Anu auntie was quite close to my mother and used to visit us almost everyday. She looked towards my father as a guardian. After her husband’s death, one day when my father was absent from home, the other bothers, forced Anu auntie into a palanquin and made her leave her dead husband’s house to find shelter if she could with her brothers living in Kalachor, a far off village. This was done by the 3 brothers to occupy all the lands belonging to her late husband, who had bought them all. Wailing and with tears falling down her cheeks our auntie left our home and village. This was done, I was told, in accordance with the Muslim law of inheritance. Later, I found such interpretation of the Muslim law of inheritance false, morally wrong and legally untenable in such a case. The three beneficiaries, the brothers, prayed five times a day as devout Muslims. I found their mother sullen but not able or willing to utter a single word against such an inhuman treatment meted to her daughter-in-law. Reminiscing, I felt a crushing guilt about the material winners of our society. Watching late in the night the stars transit through the tree limbs in cloud breaks, I wondered whether my auntie had received the same treatment from her own brothers, or she survived beyond this societal homicide. Things did not change much since then. In the silence of the night I spat at social leaders of our society purporting to maintain peace, order and fairness.
Very late in the night, a jail officer pushed a packet of dinner through the grill of the cell. True to his words, Mufti Shahidul Islam sent me two parathas and few pieces of well cooked kebab, which I presumed came from his home.
IV
In the morning of the sixth day, I jostled myself out of the cell around 9 with a splitting headache. A mug of tea brought in by Omar made me wheeze in my efforts to be steady. Living was a suffering for me. My whole body revolted against sitting or lying on the bare floor. And anxiety coupled with anguish streaked through me. Way out, I could hear cackling conversation of the jail guards. I seemed to have developed temperature. My forehead burnt as if I was facing a fire of straw and dried wood. I tried to walk the length of the verandah and I felt no better. Later I found myself wrapped in a sheet on the bare floor. I was told by Omar that I had fainted, and then I said something in a guttural voice which he did not understand. I remembered I had a dream of falling and gave out a yell for help. I asked Omar not to tell anybody that I had fainted. My tormentors, in that case would think that they had weakened and subdued me. And then I lied down on the bare floor of the verandah once again. Omar tried to shoo crows off from the nearby mango tree to let me sleep. I let out a low and guttural moan before darkness swallowed me again.
In the late evening an employee of the hospital came with a dinner packet from the division kitchen, made me sit reclining on the wall of the verandah, took my blood pressure, felt my pulse and then urged me to eat some food that he had brought. I ate a few morsels, a full glass of water and retreated to the cell behind. The stench of the sewage coupled with free biting of the insects cast a tired mustard halo around me. Around 12, I started belching and burping followed by almost incessant vomiting. Omar was locked up in the next cell along with the snoring guards. I could not call for any help. Living a few more hours till the dawn became most gruesome. While the mango tree outside glistened in a mild drizzle, I felt a hysterical urge to leave and run out forgetting that the cell was locked from outside. I collided with the hard grills and then collapsed. In the morning when as sun light broke over the horizon and the guards unlocked the cell, I found Omar hovering over me in pained anxiety.
That was the morning of the seventh day of my confinement in that solitary cell as an ordinary prisoner under unlawful punishment. I thought my ordeal would be over by 10, when I would be taken back to the ‘division’ building and my status as a division prisoner would be restored. I asked the in-charge havildar to inform the jailor about the expiry of my time of confinement. After 2 hours he came back and told me with a cryptic smile that I would have to be confined in the cell till sundown. This was nothing but an extended persecution by a sadist bereft of anything called conscience. Fortunately for me, around 2 in the afternoon, Mufti broke through the barricade, found me in that miserable plight and then went to the jailor and the superintendent. He made them count 7 days in terms of 24 hours each, proved that I should have been sent to the division earlier at 12 noon and said that everyone else in the division was waiting for me for taking lunch together. He made it clear that he would not leave their office unless I was released and none in the division would take their food till I reached their table to partake the same.
At about 3, the superintendent and the jailor relented and I walked back in agony and fatigue holding the Mufti’s extended hand to the division building. Washing my hands, I took two morsels of rice and curry and fell sick. I was helped to my cell upstairs of the division building by Lotus Kamal and Omar. I threw up in the bathroom, blacked out and fell on the wet floor with a big thump. After about 30 minutes, I found myself lying on the bed with bleeding head injuries. The jail doctor was called, the superintendent and the jailor came running, and my head began to spin with the thought of things that might have been different with a little sympathetic treatment by the animals around. Salman, through the superintendent, called for his company’s ambulance and at about sunset, with a note on my illness shoved into my pocket, I was put on a stretcher and carried to the ambulance for my journey to the Bangabandu Sheikh Mujib Medical University Hospital. That was the night of April 5, 2008.
Dr Muhiuddin Khan Alamgir is a presidium member of the Bangladesh Awami League
US presidential elections – is
there a lesson to be learnt?
Can we hope that our political parties and leaders will learn from this? Can there not be unity among all as Bangladeshis first rather than divisiveness based on partisan differences? writes Nasreen Zaman from Toronto
Yes, Barack Obama has made history! It was a defining moment in US history when Obama became the 44th president-elect. It was a historic moment indeed not only for the American people but also for people around the globe as Obama, the 47-year old African-American, addressed the crowd at his victory rally at Chicago’s Grant Park. Over 100,000 supporters cheered Obama as they witnessed history in the making. As Obama’s victory was announced on the jumbo television screen relaying a CNN feed to the more than 100,000 democratic faithful—a broad coalition of young and old, white and black leapt in applause. To those who have wondered how the US could elect George W Bush eight years ago, this election demonstrated that the American people took the opportunity to learn and change. Obama’s win capped a remarkable two-year political odyssey; from an inexperienced first-term Illinois senator and distant long shot into the most powerful person in the world.
Obama’s story is America’s story. However, this election was not about race or gender or youth but about the issues affecting the American people and their country. And, the ‘American people have spoken and they have spoken clearly’. This is why there were so many records set during this election – record number of registration for first time voters, record voter turnout, and record number of early voters. In record numbers, Americans, including an unprecedented number of young voters turned out and voted. Massive turnout delivered the most votes ever cast for a US presidential candidate. Obama was judged by the content of his character, not by the colour of his skin.
Albeit Obama’s intelligence and eloquence had a large role to play in his success. At the same time, the brilliant and spectacular campaign that he had run and the never-before-seen grass roots organisation that he had inspired also had a tremendous role in his success. Above all, throughout his campaign Obama was consistent in focusing on issues and promises of sweeping ‘Change’, and he laid out an aggressive agenda.
Is there a lesson for us to be learnt from this US election? Of course, the issues, the context and the process are very different but what about the true essence of democracy? Putting country first, putting the interest of the nation and the people first before one’s self-interest and the interest of one’s political party should be the focus of any leader. Conceding defeat graciously is another very important lesson that our leaders can and should learn. There was no name-calling or finger pointing in John McCain’s concession speech. Instead, he pledged his support to his former opponent and his new president to help him lead the country. He paid tribute to his former opponent for inspiring ‘hope in so many millions of Americans’. He urged his supporters to put aside partisan differences and work to get ‘the country moving again’. Can we hope that our political parties and leaders will learn from this? Can there not be unity among all as Bangladeshis first rather than divisiveness based on partisan differences? Can the political parties and leaders look beyond their party interests and work for what is best for the country?
We can only hope that their involuntary seclusion from political and public life brought about by their recent imprisonment on corruption charges has given the leaders of our two major political parties, AL and BNP, the opportunity to look back and acknowledge the mistakes they made, both individually and collectively as a party. We know that the possibility of correcting all the wrongs of the past is limited but we can only hope that they have found redemption.
Our country has also gone through unprecedented changes since the transition to an interim government on January 11, 2007. Bangladeshis saw for the first time that rampant corruption, abuse of power, and misdeeds will not always go unpunished. Our politicians should remember that those in power cannot exempt themselves from being held accountable for their actions and that they can be brought to justice. Let us hope that the fabric of our polity will change forever. Politicians should embrace the idea that being in power means having been blessed with the opportunity to serve one’s country and rise above all partisan differences to put country first. The party in power should seek the support of the opposition in leading the country, in facing daunting challenges, and welcome feedback on decisions, issues, etc. instead of shunning them. What should be shunned is corruption and abuse of power irrespective of party affiliation and connections. It is not ‘me first’ or ‘we first’ but ‘country first’.
Let us acknowledge the need for us to change. Let us hope that we can make sweeping changes too to rid our government of greed and corruption and let us put our country first. Let us embrace Barack Obama’s slogan, ‘Yes, we can!’
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