(from his autobiography, On the forests of Life, transcribed by Mrs. Nasreen Ahmad & translated by Z. M. Alim). Mr. Nuruddin Ahmad was the Secretary for Forestry, Fisheries, & Livestock, in Bangabandhu’s government.
Besides, there were prayers and reciting the Koran of course.
Badminton was played in the late afternoon. Some of us jogged or did light exercises in the space available.
Talking about passing the time, I am reminded of our preoccupation in the first few days. Bedbugs!
The cell was crawling with them and they made it impossible to sleep the first few nights or during the day.
Finally, we took the bedframes out of the cell and poured buckets of hot water over them to be relieved of the torment.
Our section had its own kitchen with a cook who was a prisoner. We got quite the class A of food in quality and quantity.
We had breakfast and lunch on the verandah but the evening meal was delivered to our cells just before locking up. Janab Khaleque, a Maulana Shaheb imprisoned with us represented the prisoners to the jail authorities regarding our food. He looked after how much of each item had to be obtained and how the contractors had to be paid, according to our allocation.
Utterly unassuming in his manners, this Maulana Shaheb was very probably one of the accused in the ‘Shahidullah Kaiser Murder Case’ of 1971. I couldn’t reconcile his appearance with my mental image of a Razakar. It was hard for me to see this Maulana as a Razakar!
The cell doors were left open during the day, and everyone being together, we managed to pass the time somehow. It was harder after sunset when the cell doors were locked. Then it would be just Imam and I in the cell, but it still felt like being alone. It was at night that I felt more that we were prisoners, going through an abnormal period of time.
One night, a young man named Qureishi, an accused in the Dhaka University Murder Case, suddenly fell ill and there were many problems in getting a doctor and having him taken to hospital. After seeing that situation I prayed constantly, not just for myself, but that no one should fall ill while imprisoned, particularly at night.
The first problem is with how to inform someone outside, to fetch the warden, jailer and doctor. It is also a big hassle to get the patient out from behind locked doors.
The jail environment and our situation kept everyone in a weak mental state. Some jail wardens took advantage of this weakness, talking about this holy man or that. They would say we should sacrifice a cow of a certain color or a goat of a particular breed to get an early release. Or if you paid for religious ceremonies in such and such a place, it would solve your problems. Quite often the jail wardens were able to get fat sums of money with the swindles.
Even being in jail we were quite well informed about the news outside. The main source was secret letters from party workers to the party leaders inside. There were also visits from family members, the jail wardens and the jail doctor. Everyone knows about the corruption of the jail doctors with their unhindered access everywhere.
The doctors’ tyranny and corruption worked around extorting money from prisoners for special food, hospital stays and getting news from outside. I would get all kinds of news through the doctor or wardens, true or false.
It so happened that even sitting in jail I got wind of something going on in Dhaka on the 3rd or 4th of November.
Around October I learned from the jail doctor that Major Dalim and others had entered the jail and collected information of some sort. Around that time one day the warden who was supervising us came and took our papers away. These papers contained detailed information about us, including doctor’s instructions.
The papers were returned by the warden two or three days later. I subsequently learned that Dalim, et al., had gone through our papers. Who knows what they were looking for?
It was 2 November 1975. With the windows of our cell open we could overhear the guards on duty talking. From what drifted in through the open windows after dark that day it seemed they were quite frightened.
Between midnight and 1am the alarm bell went off, and along with that big torches flared up. The alarm goes off if there is some mishap in the jail like a prisoner escaping, to alert everyone, and it creates a scary situation inside the jail. The warden said that some prisoners had escaped.
The alarm bell kept ringing and at the same time, with torches held to light up the whole place, the search for the fugitives went on.
On the 3rd of November 1975 I had just sat down to say the dawn prayer with Taufiq Imam.
Suddenly we both jumped out of our skins, startled by a frightful sound of weaponry. The volume suggested it was coming from our section, very close by, the very next cell.
As soon as we hurriedly concluded our prayer, we heard from the warden that some political prisoners had escaped from the adjoining section. We were glad to hear this, thinking that Mahbub and others had escaped.
In the section next to us on the east were Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Mansur Ali and Kamruzzaman Shaheb. SP Mahbub was there and probably Mofazzal Hossain Maya as well. I didn’t usually see them, just once on Eid day when the gates between the sections were opened up and everyone was able to meet, both ordinary prisoners and political prisoners.
That Eid I took the circuitous way to the adjacent section on the east to visit Tajuddin Shaheb. That was the only day I spoke with them. Among various things said, Tajuddin Shaheb said, “Once we are free, we’ll remove the inconvenience of the circuitous route and put both sections together behind the same gated wall.”
After the gunfire incident in the small hours our cell door was not unlocked as usual at 6 a.m. and remained as it had been, locked since the previous evening. A little later the warden came with a bucket of kedgeree and offered breakfast from behind the locked door. We declined the festival style breakfast in protest of the door not being opened. In reply he raised his hand to show four fingers and left. Four political prisoners on our east had escaped, we thought.
Around 11 a.m. we learned what really happened! The news of what happened so close by in the small hours was slow to come to us. When the news of this atrocity was whispered from ear to ear and finally to us, we were all stunned. I couldn’t believe my ears.
We were dumbfounded at this medieval barbarity. It was unbelievable! Even a caged tiger should never be killed, no matter how savage he may be. Here it was four of our national leaders who were murdered while they were imprisoned - Tajuddin Ahmed, Syed Nazrul Islam, Capt. Mansur Ali and A.H.M Kamruzzaman – who, just the other day, had directed the great struggle for freedom so successfully.
They had taken the helm in the absence of Bangabandhu, and we had been looking up to them.
After November 3 we felt very insecure in the jail, constantly in fear and on edge.
The government of the time was up and at it to bring a corruption case against me after bringing me to jail. To the best of my recollection the investigating officer in my case was changed three times. I was interrogated in jail. Friends and acquaintances, family and relatives and office colleagues were questioned outside.
I conveyed instructions through my children who visited me. During the visits some SB man or other would always be sitting right in front, so there was a lot that couldn’t be said. So, I would write on chits that I slipped into their hand without letting the SB man notice.
I have a lifelong habit of preserving all papers that seem important to me, carefully organized and filed, be it an educational certificate or receipts for cement bought to build a house. So whatever papers were asked for by the investigation I could produce them.
My being in jail made my Gorjon (second son, Nawaz Ahmad) grow up beyond his years in responsibility and maturity. He maintained communications with the jail as well as outside and completed all kinds of tasks efficiently, be it obtaining a visitor’s pass for the Interior Ministry, arranging legal advice, providing information for police investigations, keeping our wardens ‘happy,’ even who and how to slip the
‘baksheesh’ envelope to at the jail gate to have my ‘iftar’ delivered to the right place. Gorjon learned to do it all at that age, when he was going to university.
On November 3 and 7, there were coup and counter-coup! That first week of November there was a ‘fall-out’ within the jail due to the events that rapidly changed the scene. A few twigs and straws fell into our section from the blast of stormy winds in the political arena. New faces appeared amongst us.
I recall this is when Col. Shafat Jamil came to our section, as did Professor Akhlasur Rahman.
Joynal Abedin left, and Imam and I settled into our seats.
I recall one thing from Col. Shafat Jamil about August 15th. He was close to Ziaur Rahman.
Hearing the news of the horrendous massacre that morning he rushed to Zia’s house on the strength of their relationship. Zia came out, shaving. Being told that Bangabandhu had been killed, Zia replied very calmly,
“So what? The others are still there”!
After 7th November the pro-JSD (Jatiyo Samajtantra Dal, a left-leaning student group) Retired Major Joynal Abedin was released from jail. On his departure he assured us he would arrange for us to be freed very soon by Ziaur Rahman. We did get freed, but not ‘very soon.’ Days turned into weeks and months.
Almost four and a half months after Joynal Abedin’s assurance I was finally freed on 31st March 1976.
I had been taking a nap after lunch that day. I dreamed I was home, and it woke me up. There was a warden at the door, who said, “You’re off!”
I didn’t understand at first. What did that mean?
Then the supervisor came. He said, “You’ve been freed. You are released!”
Just like that?
Why had I been jailed and why indeed was I let out, I couldn’t understand. I did know that for all their efforts the government of the time had not been able to bring any case against me to court. They couldn’t show that I was involved in any corruption. The only reason for which I, as well as others, was jailed was political. We were the hunted in the repulsive politics of the time period following the assassination of Bangabandhu.
In other words, it was above beyond the norms and rules of government, administration without law, doing whatever and whenever. Flouting the law of the land and completely ignoring it has now gradually become the rule.
Anyway, once freed from jail and out through the gate, it is not permitted to go back in. So I packed my bag in a rush, just keeping my clothes and medication. I gave away the milk and biscuits I had in the cell, and came out by the jail gate with Asaduzzaman, who was freed along with me that day. The moment of freedom would have been even more joyful if Taufik, my cell-mate of all these days had been freed the same day.
I took everyone by surprise at my home in Road number 32 after the unexpected, unsolicited and unimaginable experience of spending almost seven and a half months in Dhaka Central Jail. The familiar area of Road number 32 in Dhanmandi had become unrecognizable. The atmosphere of a constant hubbub was gone, replaced by an eerie silence.
And what about the so familiar House number 677 on Road 32 (Bangabandhu’s house)? The once crowded house was empty and abandoned. It stood silent and lifeless, all the doors and windows shut, witness to the most reprehensible event in the history of Bangladesh.
The next day I learned by asking at the office that my contract, based on which I had been doing governmental work since 1972, had been canceled. Now I was really a retired government officer.
I, Nuruddin Ahmad, appointed to a government job in distant 1944 and having arrived at the year of 1976, joined the crowd of all the other retired government officers in Bangladesh.
How did religion emanate from a once-secular Bangladeshi? What explains Bangladesh’s more multifaceted profile today than before? Why is democracy still a “work in progress” pursuit?
Critical as those questions are today, their seeds could have been sown at the time of our independence. At least reviewing a muktijoddha’s memoir of that “seminal” year, 1971, suggests so. In a honest recapitulation of “everything that is good and bad about the liberation war” (p. xiii), A. Qayyum Khan also helps us at this half-century juncture to reasonably conjecture about Bangladesh’s next half century.
We get a microscopic interpretation (of how one newly recruited individual soldier reminisces the war) being dwarfed today by macroscopic dynamics (the sum of all other contributions, on and off the battlefield, which produced Bangladesh). Khan is not unaware of those macroscopic views (evident, for example, in him moving outside his own experiences in positioning 1971 historically and referencing a post-1971 sequel publication), yet something about those trenches just won’t let him go (or conversely, he let them go). This is fully understandable: no other task demands as much attention as putting one’s life at stake for a worthy cause; and besides, not everyone is a freedom-fighter. The end-product cuts both ways:
we get a sincere and much-needed portrayal of how Bangladesh’s independence resulted from the blood, sweat, tears, and lives of its own citizens, rather than commonly-held external perceptions/interpretations that Indian soldiers did the job for us. Seen as a cog in the Bangladesh wheel (the micro in a macro embrace), Khan’s work cannot fully grasp how, where, and when that wheel will spin: no trench is big enough to carry more than that one expectation, of victory. Bitterness, sweetness, or bitter-sweetness are all post-trench macro-stirred sentiments interpreting or just remembering their micro counterparts. After our blood was pumped up by all the gripping prior battlefield narrations, Khan’s final chapter is uncharacteristically anti-climatic: it exposes, as 50-years of experiences must, post-trench realities.
Linkages like this feed the “continuity” history is built upon. Not unsurprisingly, then, why Khan’s anti-climactic final chapter uncharacteristically opens yet another reality.
Eight chapters chronicle the passage from East Pakistan (title of Chapter 1) to Bangladesh (title of Chapter 8). The central theme, of course, is bitter-sweetness, itself the subject and title of Chapter 7. Yet, every other chapter carries its strains, wittingly or not.
Elucidating his father’s Karachi posting in Chapter 1, the author found that the city “never became a home for us” (p. 5), generating perhaps an ambivalent life-long ghost. “Impending Storm”, as the second chapter is entitled, depicts how, after the Awami League won a free and fair Pakistani election, East Pakistanis “sensed that something sinister was afoot” (p. 25), thereby reinforcing their unanchored identity, which, by now, had extended from individual families to the entire East Pakistani population. In Chapter 4, called “Genocide”, the author (like many other Bangladeshis) juxtaposes “the emotion of seeing . . . Bengali soldiers, tall and strong, armed and ready” for a war, with the reality of that war being not only imposed upon them by erstwhile compatriots, but also brutally at that (48).