Remembering the Bangladeshi dream

In 1968, my father, who had joined the prestigious Foreign Service of Pakistan in 1966, was posted to New Delhi as third secretary at the Pakistan High Commission. Entering the Foreign Service of Pakistan in 1966 was a significant achievement for a young Bengali from Muhammadpur, a small village in Chittagong, with no connections to elite circles.

In 1967, he had married Khaleda Khan (or Bulbul) and embarked on a magnificent partnership of political discussions, love of Uttam-Suchitra movies, and tireless sightseeing. My sister Elora was born in Islamabad, and my sister Farah in New Delhi. Life was good.

In March 1971, however, when my parents heard of the mass murders of Bengali civilians by the Pakistani army during Operation Searchlight and the ensuing crackdown, their blood curdled.

On April 6, 1971, horrified that the government they worked for and represented was killing the past, present, and future architects of Bangladesh, my father and his colleague Amjadul Huq defected from the Pakistan Foreign Service and pledged allegiance to Bangladesh. News of their defection inspired other Bengali diplomats and youths to join the Liberation War, raised the international profile of the struggle for freedom, and bolstered the confidence of freedom fighters.

What will always amaze me is that my parents (and Mr Huq) defected into nothingness — the Mujibnagar government would not be formed until April 17. By acting on their visceral reaction to the horrors underway in their homeland, my parents ignited the wrath of the Pakistani government, lost their livelihood, and assumed a state of statelessness.

Fortunately for my parents, the Bangladesh they dreamed of became a reality on December 16, 1971, and as the very first diplomat to pledge allegiance to his beloved country, my father proudly transitioned into the Foreign Service of Bangladesh. From New Delhi, they were transferred to Paris.

Trouble, however, never quite stopped following my parents. In April 1975, they were sent to Lebanon where they were greeted within days with civil war. After stints in Dhaka and London (where my third sister Sarah was born), they were sent to Warsaw, and I appeared on the scene (and ensured that their personal lives would be far more turbulent henceforth!).

The war I remember is the (first) Gulf War. In 1987, my father was posted to Kuwait as ambassador. On August 2, 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait and ruined plans I had made to eat shawarma at the beach that same evening.

As in New Delhi 20 years earlier, my parents once again jeopardised our family’s security to help others.

When Saddam Hussein announced he would kill anyone sheltering Westerners, my parents decided to give shelter to a French woman and her two teenage children.

When the Iraqi government set August 24 as the deadline for diplomats to leave Kuwait, we watched the day come and go, taking our diplomatic immunity with it, and leaving us under the threat of reprisal from the Iraqi government for defying its order to leave.

While diplomats from other countries scrambled to leave Kuwait long before the deadline, my parents quietly explained to us that they could not leave until all the Bangladeshis who wanted to leave had been evacuated. There were about 95,000 Bangadeshi workers in Kuwait at the time. I shudder to think what went through the minds of the other officers at the embassy and their families as they felt compelled to stay behind with our family.

Finally, in mid-September, we travelled to Baghdad with other embassy staff. My father and Osmany uncle, then the Bangladesh Ambassador to Iraq, had to stay behind in Baghdad while their families traveled to Dhaka via Amman. I was overjoyed when my father finally arrived in Dhaka a few weeks later. I had been worried that I would never see my father again and found it difficult to breathe. Now, once again, I’m finding it difficult to breathe.

On April 15, 2015, my father passed away quite suddenly. After a lifetime of miraculously surviving life-threatening situations in conflict zones, his heart stopped at a hospital in Dhaka and doctors were unable to revive him.

I don’t know how or why his heart suddenly stopped, but I miss the man who loved his country and family unconditionally, stubbornly insisted on seeing the best in us, and chose to dream of what we could become and support us rather than focusing on shortcomings and imperfections.

Abbu’s sense of justice and fairness transcended his professional life into how he treated his daughters, particularly me, the youngest one — the only one to ever get into trouble at school or come home with anything lower than an A-. My father was obsessed with his daughters’ education, and my three older sisters turned out to be nerds par excellence, so my father must have been at a loss as to how to handle me, but bless him for trying. He loved me despite my refusal to conform to social norms and do well in school. Against the backdrop of my three multiple-graduate-degree-endowed, Harvard-Princeton-Sorbonne-Oxford-Mount Holyoke-educated older sisters, I’ve always been grateful to my parents for not disowning me even though I have yet to apply to graduate school.

As I was the only child of his to constantly get into trouble at school for the most idiotic reasons imaginable, my father had more than enough reason to wash his hands of me. Case in point: I once accidentally set off a stink bomb in the middle of my 12th grade biology class because I couldn’t stop myself from poking and prodding the package out of curiosity. I will leave it to you to imagine the conversation that ensued between my parents and the principal.

When we moved to Paris in 1991, I was seven and didn’t know French. People who do not know French annoy French people and people who are annoyed with me annoyed my father. When a teacher complained that in spite of having lived in France for three whole months I was not yet fluent in French, my father rolled up his sleeves and decided to teach me French over spring break.

The Abbu Method consisted of making me read random French articles and poems with a bilingual dictionary. It worked. I went from struggling with pronunciation to fluency in two weeks. After the break, my teachers couldn’t stop gushing about how excellent my French had become.

The first time I got straight As was in third grade. This was a huge deal for the family. Abbu was so happy that he bought me a video game I had wanted. Jealous and infuriated, my sister Sarah, whose straight As everyone took for granted, immediately demanded a puzzle. No one cared.

In high school, I tried to minimise my interactions with Abbu because I was terrified he’d ask me how school was going or why my hair was yellow.

When he retired in 2001, after serving as Bangladesh’s ambassador to Washington DC for five years, we moved to Dhaka and he began working on his memoirs, which UPL published in 2006 as There and Back Again: A Diplomat’s Tale.

This book has taught me a lot — about history, politics, and courage. Time after time, my father demonstrated a deep commitment to fairness in both his personal and professional life and stood up for the rights and security of others from the early days of his career at great risk to himself and his loved ones.

On April 17, my family travelled to Muhammadpur to lay my father to rest. He had always referred to himself as a graamer chhele, a village boy, and had said he wanted to be buried in his village, next to his parents.

Our parents have always taught us to be grateful for the incredible opportunities our family has enjoyed. My father had, after all, lived the Bangladeshi dream. He was a graamer chhele who had dreamt of an independent country over which the Bangladeshi flag could fly freely, travelled around the world as the representative of the country he loved, served as ambassador to Poland, Kuwait, France, and the United States, had an incredible and inspiring life partner, and given his daughters the courage and freedom to pursue their dreams. He was able to see promise and potential beyond stink bombs and petrol bombs.

May his story inspire others to live the Bangladeshi dream, to be passionate and selfless advocates for education, their children, their compatriots, and their country.