Few Bangla writers smell of the soil the way Syed Waliullah does. I knew it when I read his book for the first time.
Ekti Tulsi Gachher Kahini pulled me in so deep that I read one Waliullah book after another and looked nowhere else. In college, Lalsalu turned up on the supplementary reading list, but it never felt like homework. It was uncomfortably familiar, as if someone had pointed at the things society kept quiet about and refused to look away. Then the Bishwo Sahitya Kendra mobile library rolled into my life and handed me Nayanchara and Kando Nadi Kando.
By the time I closed them, I wasn’t only curious about the books anymore. I wanted to know the man.
One image of Waliullah has stayed with me. It comes from Amar Swami Wali, written by his wife, Anne-Marie Waliullah. Picture him on the balcony of their apartment in Meudon, near Paris. Waliullah would gaze at the distant, mist-covered Seine and yearn for his golden Bengal. Perhaps, as he moved through the streets of Karachi, Delhi, Sydney, and Paris, he was quietly weaving stories about some unfamiliar village on the far edges of Bengal.
He even sold his expensive Fiat and bought land in Dhaka. He was ready to go home. But fate did not allow him to return.
How Waliullah became a lifelong expatriate
At twelve, Waliullah dreamed of becoming a pilot, of rising above the borders of his country altogether. The dream never took off, but the leaving did. He went abroad, made a life there, and fell in love with a foreign woman. In the end, it was that love that kept him from coming home.
His life abroad began in 1951, when he joined the Pakistan government as a press attaché. Postings followed: Delhi, Sydney, Jakarta, London, and finally Paris.
Between 1952 and 1954, Waliullah served as press attaché at the Pakistan embassy in Sydney. There he met Anne-Marie, who worked at the French consulate.
It was, by all accounts, a love that began at first sight.
What began in Sydney grew into something deeper. After a long courtship, Anne-Marie and Waliullah were married in Karachi in October 1955.
That Waliullah had chosen the right partner became clear in Anne-Marie’s own work. She translated his Lalsalu into French as L’Arbre sans racines. She later translated Chander Amaboshya as Black Moon.
Perhaps Waliullah would have gone home had he not fallen in love with Anne-Marie. But maybe staying abroad was not such a loss. Their love built a bond between Bengal and the French language.
Through that bond, Bangla literature found roots in another language and another culture.
An ordinary Bengali life on foreign soil
Waliullah was deeply immersed in his own private world. Cinema and concerts with his children were part of his routine. In their elegant apartment in Meudon, on the outskirts of Paris, he and Anne-Marie built a quiet, artistic life with their two children, Simin and Iraj.
I often compare Waliullah’s life to that of filmmaker Tareque Masud. Both married foreign women. Both found partners who backed their work and ideas. Catherine Masud was a source of inspiration for Tareque, including his lifelong engagement with Kagojer Phool. In the same way, Anne-Marie became an important source of inspiration for Waliullah’s literary work and, later, his efforts during the Liberation War.
Waliullah did not express himself only through writing. He was just as passionate about designing furniture with his own hands, painting, designing book covers, and working as a carpenter.
According to his son Iraj, Waliullah came home at night with small gifts for his children. Sometimes there were sarees for Anne-Marie. He loved to cook, especially shami kebabs and chapatis. At home, he wore the traditional Bengali lungi.
Even on foreign soil, Syed Waliullah lived an unmistakably Bengali life.
What fascinated me most was learning about the circle of friends he built in exile.
Bengalis regularly gathered at his Paris home. The apartment gave Waliullah a small breathing space of Bangladesh. The doors stayed open to any Bengali arriving in France. Waliullah himself would take visitors to the Louvre or the Palace of Versailles. Over conversations with friends, Bengali food and musical gatherings, a little piece of Bangladesh was recreated in the heart of Paris.
The home welcomed people such as sculptor Novera Ahmed, artist Rashid Choudhury, Nazmuddin Hashim, and Humayun Rashid Chowdhury. Waliullah would even cook for his guests.
Waliullah’s circle was not limited to Bengalis. Friends from Karachi also visited his Paris apartment. Among them was the celebrated Urdu novelist Qurratul-ain Hyder, along with several progressive non-Bengali intellectuals and writers.
Then came 1971, and everything changed.
How 1971 changed Syed Waliullah’s life
The Liberation War came closer, step by step. From Paris, Waliullah and Anne-Marie worked tirelessly to build international support for Bangladesh. A second war had begun, this time on foreign soil.
Long before the war, Waliullah had planted the seeds of the struggle for self-determination in Ekti Tulsi Gachher Kahini. When it began, he joined the cause on his own initiative.
Two months after Waliullah’s death, in December 1971, French citizen Jean Kay became widely known for hijacking an aircraft in support of Bangladesh’s independence. Away from the limelight, Anne-Marie Thibault had quietly worked alongside Waliullah for the same cause.
Then the pressure came from Pakistan. His contract with UNESCO in Paris was nearing its end, and the Pakistan government ordered him to return to Karachi or Islamabad.
But how could he obey a state whose forces were killing his own people? He resigned. His secure income vanished. Severe financial hardship followed. Yet he did not move an inch from his decision to fight for the independence of his homeland.
Jobless and uncertain about money, Waliullah became one of the voices of the Liberation War abroad. He worked alongside his friend, Justice Abu Sayeed Chowdhury, and threw himself into building support across Europe.
He went from door to door among leading French intellectuals such as Pierre Emmanuel and André Malraux, trying to turn French public opinion towards Bangladesh. He pledged his allegiance to the provisional government of Bangladesh and raised funds tirelessly.
Anne-Marie stood beside him, carrying the message of the Liberation War to the French media.
Uncertainty about his homeland. Anxiety over its future. Exhaustion of body and mind. Slowly, all of it wore down Waliullah’s health. He longed to return to an independent Bangladesh and had already bought property in Dhaka.
But he never got to see the red sun of an independent Bangladesh.
A short life of just 49 years
He died on October 10, 1971, just two months before the emergence of an independent and sovereign Bangladesh. A cerebral hemorrhage took the legendary Bangla writer at his home in Meudon, near Paris.
Today he lies peacefully in a quiet cemetery in a village of Meudon, near Paris.
If he had a grave in Dhaka, I would visit it at least once.
The man who wrote about the soil of Bengal, whose writing was so deeply rooted in its people, may have gone years without hearing Bangla. And now he is not here to hear it.
Perhaps once exile pulls someone away, they lose the freedom to answer the call of their mother’s embrace.
Sherrif Faruqi is a short story writer and journalist at Dhaka Tribune.
