My father was
a believer in Islam, but secular. He didn't pray five times a day,
but he still
believed in Allah
strongly.
He was born
when it was British India, Calcutta was part of British India at that
time.
He was very much involved in supporting the creation of a Muslim nation,
the creation of Pakistan,
he felt he and I think most Muslims felt that
they would have better life chances in a Muslim country rather than a Hindu
dominated country. Your family came to the US in 1970, is that right?
In 1970. And 1971 was the war, and then the independent no longer
East Pakistan now Bangladesh. What were your father's perspectives on that
transition? Did he want to be independent or was he hoping to stay
a unified Pakistan? He came as a diplomat from Pakistan, he was the
educational and cultural attache, and the Civil War started.
The next year in 1971,
it was a bloody civil war, and the Pakistanis slaughtered Bengalis. There
was no... It was very hard to have any sense of Muslims, brothers
and sisters in that context, but nevertheless it was not easy for him, because
he really believed in the idea
of a country for Muslims. But once the Civil War started,
even though it was a hard decision for him,
he did not want to be part of Pakistan, and it was a
traumatic time for us. There were a number of diplomats at the Pakistani
embassy who were from
what was then East Pakistan and now it's Bangladesh, they all abdicated
on the same day.
At that time there was no Bangladesh, the Civil War was still raging, they
became the representative of the government in exile.
Actually, in terms of legal status, I don't know, I think the US
government had to figure out what to label them.
Ultimately, I think they were called foreign agents.
So it was a very exciting time, and a hard time.
Not only because
you are giving up a citizenship of a country you really believed in,
but
you're experiencing
the horror that was... Well, I'll change that a little bit.
We weren't personally experiencing the horror, because we were here, we
were safe.
But many of our friends and relatives and our country people were getting
butchered, so it was a very hard time.
As a young person, did you know anyone personally who was affected by
the war, or who was killed? The death that really stands out is
the brother of a friend. He was very idealistic, and
I had a crush on him when I was growing up,
he was handsome, he was an actor.
He was killed when he went to join the freedom fighters,
and his body was never found, and
I still think about that death. And he was...
And it's not clear whether the... How he was killed and who killed
him,
but that death just stands out for me, and I still feel it.
Because he was such this young man with so much life,
with so much vision, and then dead and a body that was never
recovered. Can you imagine what his mother feels like?
I can't imagine, anyway.
You were in the US when you got that news,
how did you
relate to other students around you, who have no experiences like that?
It's so interesting because at that time, my focus wasn't so much on
my contemporaries at school, my focus was at going to the meetings where
people were discussing what to do in the context of the Civil War.
There was a lot of drama in terms of getting ready to abdicate,
and then there was a lot of drama afterwards. So I was so
involved with that process, that it doesn't really matter to me that I
wasn't sharing my experience with
my contemporaries here in this country. How were you involved, what did
you do, what was that like? I was a little kid,
but I would go to the meetings, I would go with my father,
when he met with the other diplomats. I wasn't privy to all their
conversation. But I was hovering
near them, and
so I was getting
not only a sense of what they were going through, but I was
also getting news of what was happening
back home, through that process, and it was such an exciting time.
It's thinking about a new country, thinking about Sheikh Mujib, who was
the Bengali leader. He was such an amazing
speaker, he would just get us so riled up, I would just get
goose bumps listening to his speeches.