A Heart Cleaved in Two
By Ghazala Akbar
London, UK
Originating during the Vietnam War, the term ‘collateral damage’ is a neat euphemism often used to mask the annihilation of nameless, faceless, silent and invisible victims of war. No blame is allocated for no statistics are kept. Their loss is un-mourned for they do not exist. As the open-mouthed figure in ‘The Scream’ by the Norwegian Artist, Edvard Munch, the victim shouts but no sound emanates.
It took Aquila Ismail, four decades to articulate her silent scream into words. The result is a book entitled ‘Of Martyrs and Marigolds’, a thinly-veiled fictionalized account of the degradation and dispossession of an Urdu-speaking family during the political turmoil -- and -- in the aftermath of the 1971 fratricidal conflict that ended with the bloody, messy birth of Bangladesh. This is an obligatory read for those unaware of the personal dimensions of Pakistan’s division and its fatal consequences on a people who became collateral damage, the unrecognized, human debris of war.
In the nine-month conflict marked by extreme violence, the brutal suppression of the Bengalis is the dominant narrative in post-liberation literature, both official and personal. What is often forgotten is that there were other victims too: Bengali loyalists and most significantly the linguistic minority of Urdu-speaking settlers who had made East Pakistan their home. Their persecution remains largely unacknowledged or even admitted. After Dacca fell, they bore the brunt of reprisal and revenge.
As Ismail writes: ‘ The celebrations became immediately, and Dacca resounded with slogans of “Victory...Victory... to Bangladesh’’. But the circle of revenge and counter-revenge was incomplete. For those who did not speak the tongue of this now golden land their time in the cycle was now upon them. Going back the number of months it takes a human foetus to gestate in the womb, the blood of those who did not speak Bengali had been let by those that do; then the marauding Army marauded those who speak Bengali. In the continuum of bending this straight line to a circle it was time for the blood of those who were not Bengali to be let; and once again the streets of Dhaka became rivers of blood.’
Combining elements from her own experiences and that of other survivors, Ismail’s story begins in the ‘misty melancholic month of February’ when the six martyrs of the Bengali language movement are honored every year. It is a ceremony in which Suri, the protagonist, born and bred in East Bengal had participated a year earlier by placing heaps of marigolds on their graves. Then she had eagerly accompanied Rumi, her Bengali-speaking boyfriend and his family. However, in February 1972 the situation is very different.
Forty-nine days after the country is liberated, Suri and her family remain confined to their house in Mirpur, a Dhaka suburb. There are reports of violence and brutality on those termed as ‘collaborators.’ Yet the family is still optimistic that once the dust settles life will resume as normal. The father, a government employee will return to work, Suri will be back with her friends in the University, they will all be equal citizens of the new State. Given a choice, they will opt for Bangladesh as her parents did for Pakistan in 1947.Their equanimity is shattered when soldiers of a new Army burst into their home and order them out into an open field.
Thus begins the process by which Suri’s family and other members of the Urdu-speaking minority became outcasts overnight – from being East Pakistanis to destitute, stranded ‘Biharis’ in a land they loved and considered home. The women are separated from the men, the older men from the younger men. They are roughly herded into buses. In a surreal journey, Suri, her mother and younger sister drive past familiar landmarks in a city where she grew up attending school, college and university unable to fathom where they are going and to what purpose.
As the bus deposits them on a jetty and they wait to board a steamer, a couple of inquisitive foreigners ask about the women. Suri is horrified to overhear her captors describe them as women raped by the Pakistan Army. Hungry and thirsty, they are led under kerosene lights to an ‘internment camp’, a derelict decaying Borstal. Next day men arrive with a large pot and the women line up ‘like beggars’ for their solitary meal, a gooey yellowish blob on a chipped tin plate. ‘ It tasted like the smoky rice and lentils khichri made on the tenth day of martyrdom, the day of Ashura. Ammi did not touch the food and continued to weep silently.’ Suri, still hopeful her father and brothers must be nearby, explores the camp. Her frantic search reveals nothing but room upon room filled with women and infants. Nobody has a clue where the men are.
‘But why would anyone do this tous? They did give us food... so there must be some kind of arrangement. Suri tried to reason with herself. Because we are refugees... Ammi wailed. Suri admonished her mother...we are in our own country...so how can we be refugees? We are not in our homes...and this makes us refugees.’ Slowly it dawns on Suri that this was ‘ revenge for what the soldiers of the Pakistan Army had done to the Bengalis of East Pakistan.’ As illusions fade and all avenues of solace are exhausted, Suri is fearful, recalling an earlier gory incident involving a similar group of women the previous year. Only a child had survived. Was the same fate in store for them?
Fortunately, deliverance arrives in the shape of her beloved Rumi and his friend Major Hiru, a Liberation hero. They have ‘permission’ to remove only three women because they came here in error. The others must remain. We have been made destitute... why?’ asks a perplexed Suri. Bewilderment turns to anger when Hiru explains the reason for their forced removal. Those that migrated from India to East Pakistan had sided with Pakistan and joined the auxiliary ‘Razakars’. They have been removed to ‘control them’. When Suri argues that many innocent non-Bengalis had also been killed during the political upheavals and not all were ‘Razakars’, Hiru is silent.
At great personal risk, Rumi’s family provides shelter and help in the search for the male members of her family. They locate her father in a crowded jail, mentally disturbed and incoherent. Rumi is increasingly under threat for helping collaborators and when he is beaten up, the women seek refuge in the house of an acquaintance. Suri’s mother offers to cook and the sisters ‘help’ with household chores. Rumi is furious at the slight, but it is too risky for Suri to apply for a job, as her certificates will betray her. Urdu was one of her subjects. Suri recalls it had also been a problem when she had applied for university admission in 1970.
As their situation becomes increasingly desperate, they are advised to leave the country whichever way they can. Destitute and homeless they raise some much-needed cash through a distress sale of jewelry retrieved from a bank account they can no longer operate. However, they cannot contemplate leaving until her brothers are found. Agonizingly, Suri pieces together the mystery of their disappearance. When she learns the terrifying truth, it forces Suri to make a choice: between the man she loves and leaving a land, that no longer loves her. Like the separation of East and West Pakistan, her heart is bloodily cleaved into two.
In spite of her own personal ordeal, Ismail’s attachment for the land of her birth is still visibly apparent-- in descriptions of the natural beauty and the sights and sounds of her childhood. And when it comes to apportioning blame, she does some plain speaking. Almost distracting from the main narrative, vast segments of the book refer to the political and economic injustices against Bengalis and the racist attitudes that aggravated tensions. She is scathing about the military action and the excesses of their proxies, the Al Shams and Al Badar Brigades. The painful realization that soldiers of the newly–liberated country behaved no better than their predecessors is perhaps the final denouement. ‘Both were capable of atrocities when the circumstances permitted…,’ she writes bitterly.
Indeed, some of the hair-raising atrocities committed by both sides make for very painful reading. It wasn’t just necessary to kill; victims were often tortured as well. One man’s freedom fighter became the other man’s traitor. The divisions cut across communities, neighbors, friends and even families -- raising some very troubling questions: how was it that compatriots who had come together with hope and expectations twenty-four years before degenerated into such bitter foes, losing all sense of humanity or the religious values they claimed to espouse? Depending on one’s viewpoint, it was a mandatory struggle for preserving the ‘Unity’ of the State or its ‘Liberation’. However, can so much wanton killing or collective punishment ever be justified?
And in the wider South Asian context, why is it that people of the Sub-continent lapse so readily into murderous frenzy? Is there a primeval, grouping instinct in human beings that drives us to co-operation within but justifies hostility and violence towards other groups perceived as outsiders? There has to be. Our plunges into carnage and bestiality towards the ‘other’ defy rational explanation. Consider the Partition riots of 1947, Pakistan-Bangladesh 1971-72, Delhi 1984, Bombay 1992 and Gujarat 2002. (Not forgetting Pakistan’s in-house outrages against minorities, ethnicities and religious sects.) The frequency is alarming and belies our claims of a 5,000 year-old-civilization.
Ismail’s book also painfully reminds us that forty-one years on, time has moved on for everyone except a wretched group of people verbally camouflaged as ‘Stranded Pakistanis’. Unwanted in Bangladesh or Pakistan, they are the forgotten human debris of the 1971 conflict. Ironic that in 2012 there are three proud Nation-States in the sub-continent, two of which are predominantly ‘Muslim’ and one with a substantial Muslim majority. They have cordial diplomatic relations and links. Yet, a group of people with ties of religion, language, ethnicity and culture to all three remain ‘stateless’ and ‘stranded’ unable to call anyone of them home. Like Suri’s fictional brothers, it is only through death that they become sons of the soil.
Of Martyrs and Marigolds by Aquila Ismail is available through Amazon Books. ISBN -10:1463694822; Library of Congress Control number: 2011911858 (296 pages)
