November gives rise to a flood of memories. For Ishmael, in Melville’s Moby Dick, November made him yearn for the sea. He took to the sea. In November, as the trees shed their pale yellow leaves even as the cold winds blow and the equally cold rains pelt the earth with their insistence, I let the mind wander back to the Novembers I recall from the very young days of my life.
It was in November 1963, indeed on the first day of the month, that we who were in school learnt of a country called South Vietnam. And we did that through the news which came in of the assassination of two brothers in what the newspapers informed us was a coup d’etat by the country’s army. The brothers were Ngo Dinh Diem, the President of South Vietnam, and his powerful brother Ngo Dinh Nhu. They were corrupt and treated the country as their fiefdom. On November 1, 1963, they were brutally murdered by the soldiers who had ousted them from power.
But that was not the end of the story in November that year. On November 22, US President John F Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas. For days after that, the newspapers were filled with reports of the murder, of the events leading up to the arrival of the president and his wife Jacqueline in Dallas. To this day, no one knows for certain who shot Kennedy. For me, the images of that horrific happening have always stood out, of Kennedy slumping into his wife’s arms once a bullet had torn through his head, of a secret service agent taking position at the rear of the presidential vehicle, of the funeral and burial at Arlington national cemetery in the presence of a wide range of global leaders.
In this late autumn on earth and also in my life, the mind throws up images of all those attending the JFK burial ceremonies. All of them have over the years passed into the grave --- Charles de Gaulle, Ludwig Erhard, Haile Selassie, Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, Anastas Mikoyan and so many others. Jacqueline Kennedy lit the eternal flame on her husband’s grave, where it remains alight. Back in June 1999 and February 2000, I stood before President Kennedy’s grave, said a little prayer and remembered the documentary show on his presidency, Years of Lightning, Day of Drums, arranged for us at our school in 1965. The eternal flame burned in its sad glory.
In November the heart in me grows heavy with undiluted sorrow. Remembrance of the murder of the four pioneering leaders whose patriotism, dedication and political acumen in leading Bangladesh to freedom in December 1971 keeps November under heavy clouds for my generation. We woke up on a November morning in 1975 to yet another spell of darkness, the other being the August 15 assassinations of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman and his family.
Syed Nazrul Islam, Tajuddin Ahmad, M Mansoor Ali, and AHM Quamruzzaman, whose leadership had guided the nation to liberty had been murdered in the putative security of prison. Even before we could emerge free of the shock, November hurled newer pain at the country: On the seventh day of the month, Khaled Musharraf, Najmul Huda, and ATM Haider, valiant freedom fighters in our War of Liberation, had been done to death by soldiers at the very army camp where they had sought refuge.
My memories of November are history I relate, whenever I can, to those Bengalis who 50 years ago were either unborn or too young to recall those dark days in national life. Abroad, when I speak of Bangladesh’s history pre- and post-1971, I do my bit to enlighten non-Bengalis on these tragic chapters of our political heritage. Meanwhile, on descending November evenings, I travel back to November 1967 to recall the formation of the Pakistan People’s Party by ZA Bhutto in Lahore on the last day of the month.
The party was formed at the home of Dr Mubashir Hasan, a socialist who would later serve as finance minister in Bhutto’s government. Meeting him at a South Asian media seminar in Lahore in 1995, I asked him if, since he had been part of the PPP delegation at the ultimately abortive political negotiations in Dhaka in March 1971, he planned to pen his record of those days. He looked at me sadly and plaintively said, “Itna sub kuch ho giya, hum kya likkhein (so much has happened; what should I write?).”
November reminds me of the time when in 1968 --- I was a student of class eight --- reports appeared in the newspapers of shots fired at Pakistan’s President Ayub Khan in Peshawar. That anyone could attempt to kill the mighty field marshal was beyond imagination. But, then, public discontent had been brewing against him in both wings of the country. In the aftermath of the assassination attempt, the regime placed Bhutto and Khan Abdul Wali Khan, leader of the National Awami Party, under arrest.
The government’s move prompted Air Marshal Asghar Khan in West Pakistan and the former Chief Justice of the East Pakistan High Court, Justice Syed Mahbub Murshed, to make an entry into politics as part of the growing anti-Ayub movement. Both men were to take part at the round table conference convened by the regime in February-March 1969.
Memories of November rekindle in me images of Charles de Gaulle, the French president who has been the repository of my abiding respect since the first time I read of him in newspapers and journals. De Gaulle was born in November 1890. 80 years later, in November 1970, his life came to an end at his country home Colombey-les-Deux-Eglises outside Paris.
Charles de Gaulle was a tall man, physically and figuratively. His statesmanship has always fascinated me. He was the embodiment of purposeful leadership. I recall my sadness when he quit the presidency of France in April 1969 and retreated into seclusion. My sadness deepened when I read of his death in the newspapers, of the instructions he had left with his family, of his funeral being nothing ostentatious, of being a simple affair.
In November the days are enveloped in darkness deepening by the passing moments. On the streets, as the cold rains drop to earth, sad music rises from the winds. The heart sinks at remembrance of much of what used to be, at thoughts of what might yet be. November pierces the soul.