Leaving Home To Go Home

I deliberated a lot before writing this essay, because the blogs that I have read on the Kee Khobor page are from Bengalis in diaspora and people who were familiar since childhood about the incidents related to 1971. I on the other hand am a Pakistani and many may view me as one from the enemy camp

Having been informed by state fed one sided narratives about the 1971 debacle, I found out only recently the magnitude of what had transpired then. My delayed research now informs my artistic practice which has changed quite a bit since 2019.

There are no winners in war, only casualties and collateral damage. The most damaging aspect of strife is the loss of innocence. People who you had one thought of as your own, suspecting your every move and a reciprocal sentiment from the opposite side.

When I was growing up in Karachi I had learnt from school textbooks and by hearing people talk, that we had to be wary of Bengalis. Living a 1000 miles apart, seeing East Pakistan turn into Bangladesh, most West Pakistanis only had state fed narrative to go by. ‘The Bengalis colluded with our enemy India, and turned against us. Bengalis have stabbed us in the back’ was how the general storyline went. Coming from a family which had business concerns in Bangladesh before 1971, I was not so biased; however, I do admit I used to view Bengali’s with a slight bit of skepticism.

Come 2019, I had the opportunity to visit Birmingham as part of a research grant by Transforming Narratives (TN). My trip coincided with the launch of TN and so there were a lot of people from Bangladesh and Pakistan visiting at the time and interacting with one another as part of the group activities that had been arranged by TN. I noticed that some of the Bangladeshis seemed a bit stiff and unfriendly towards the Pakistanis. Around the end of the trip when we made our presentations, two Pakistanis started their talk by apologizing to the Bangladeshis. After this one of the organisers who was of Bangladeshi origin expressed his happiness at the elephant in the room having been addressed. He then went on to say that growing up as a small boy in Birmingham, he had been told by his elders to never trust a Pakistani, even for a small job such as plumbing. If the plumber was of Pakistani origin then it would be best to not have the job done. This simple statement rang an alarm bell in my head. This was exactly what I had been told, except about Bengalis. On my return I went into overdrive and started researching about the 1971 debacle. The books I read first were written by Pakistanis who had to flee Dhaka and Sylhet to come to Pakistan and so contained all the trauma faced by them and what they had to go through at the hands of the Mukti Bahini. All of them however did mention the atrocities meted out by the Pakistani government towards the Bengali citizens and how the Mukti Bahini acted in retaliation not as an attack. I then managed to find books written about 1971 by Bangladeshis and understood the level of oppression and the tragedy they had faced. The book that put facts in order and connected all the dots for me was a book titled ‘1971’by Anam Zakaria. My next step was to take narratives of my family members who had experienced 1971.

My chacha (fathers brother) and chachi (fathers sister in law) lived in Dhaka where chacha managed our family business of importing Burma Teak and supplying it to East and West Pakistan and supplying iron and wood products made in our factory in Karachi. They lived at 32 Dhan Mondi, next door to poet and political activist Sufia Kamal’s house and four houses away from Mujib-ur Rahman’s house. The stories of how the neighbours cared for one another and helped in times of need putting their own lives in danger are endearing. They did not know Sheikh Mujib well personally but mention the family as very good people.

During any war, all sorts of atrocities are committed towards unsuspecting citizens and this was no exception. The Mukti came to my chacha’s shop in Moti Jheel and questioned him. My chacha told them that unlike the West Pakistani’s they were unhappy with, his business did not include taking raw material or finished products from the east and selling them in the west or earning money here and sending it to the west. He employed local people at his shop and at his house, spoke in Bengali and supplied products made in our factories to the East, the same as they sold in the west. The activists were not fully satisfied so he offered to let them sit at the office, manage the accounts, give him a stipend to cover his expenses and keep the profits.

My chacha was kidnapped thrice by the Mukti Bahini. Twice he was taken to different villages on the outskirts of Dhaka and kept in a small hut along with other Pakistanis who were tortured and then killed, and once he was taken by boat to Comilla and kept there for an extended period till he managed to escape. Being fluent in Bengali, having a gregarious personality and a great sense of humour he always managed to be on the good side of his captors who spared him the physical atrocities that were meted out to the others. However, to this day chacha cannot talk about what he saw and witnessed.

The times when chacha was kidnapped, Sufia Kamal would be sure to look out for chachi. Even when she was not based in Dhaka, her husband said she would ask about the family, and ask him to look out for them as she had promised my grandmother that she would take care of her. Chachi too felt very close to her and hid Mrs. Kamal’s son in her home for a few days when the Pakistani army was looking for him.

Mrs Kamal tried time and again to convince my chachi to move back to Karachi but chachi would refuse as she didn’t want to leave her husband behind. In the end, Sufia Kamal told her to take a rickshaw ride to the market. The scenes Chachi witnessed she cannot manage to put into words but she mentions dead bodies lying in the street like trash. That is when she decided to leave her home in Dhaka with her baby and get on one of the cargo planes transporting women and children to Karachi.

Chacha managed to escape captivity with the help of one of the Mukti fighters he had befriended. The man put him on a boat to Dhaka. Chacha handed over his shop in Moti Jheel to the landlord of the house he lived in. The gentleman helped him escape to India in 1973. From there he managed to make his way to Nepal. My elder chacha went to Nepal and got him home.

Another one of my close relatives also experienced 1971, and though he spent three years on the streets running and hiding from the Mukti Bahini, he speaks very highly of Sheikh Mujib. He too finds it extremely difficult to think about those times.

The reasons for Bengalis being unhappy with their countrymen in the west are definitely justified and as a Pakistani even though 50 years have passed and I had nothing to do with it, I feel a sense of shame and remorse. The offence carried out by the armed forces and the human rights violations that took place in East Pakistan were unforgivable and I’m sure people cannot forget or forgive. The scale of loss and destruction experienced in East Pakistan/Bangladesh was massive. The majority of the people who suffered, -and there were many Pakistanis in the count too- came under the category of collateral damage in this war for power and supremacy.

I recently collaborated with a Bangladeshi cultural practitioner over a digital grant she had managed to secure. Our aim was to connect creatives from Bangladesh, Pakistan and their respective diaspora communities in Birmingham through a series of podcasts.

Though we cannot speak for our state, many Pakistani’s are trying to reach out and make amends. Hopefully, someday the small ripples of effort will turn into big waves.