In 1971, I was 22 years old -- a final year student of the Department of English in Dhaka University. On the March 25, 1971, I was living in our paternal house in Dhanmondi. I used to live with my mother, two married brothers, and a sister-in-law. Munier Bhai used to live in his university flat in the campus.
After the Pakistan army crackdown on March 25, Munier Bhai left his university flat and started living with us, with his wife, and three sons, Bhashon, Mishuk, and Tonmoy. I am not sure of the exact date; it was either March 26 or 27. Throughout the nine months from March to December 14, 1971, Munier Bhai and his family lived with us in Central Road.
His son Bhashon had joined the Mukti Bahini. Bhashon and many others had repeatedly advised my brother to leave the Central Road house, but Munier Bhai refused to go. He used to say: “My whole family is here. If they really want to kill me, is there any place that is really safe?” That is what he thought, and he paid for it with his life.
Munier Bhai always had a wonderful sense of humour; he was a great raconteur. We were 14 brothers and sisters in all. He was the second child, and I was the last of 14. If anybody asked him about the difference in age between the two of us, he would say there are 11 other brothers and sisters between us -- he would never specify how much older he was. I remember that sometimes I would make parathas for him and others, and he would compliment me on my culinary skills by referring to the hardness of the parathas: “These are very strong parathas indeed,” he would say.
Even after all these years, we all remember him and miss him terribly. He had this great ability of giving joy to others, a great sense of the sheer joy of living. The al-Badrs took away the best of my brothers, the most talented. Every time he wrote a new play, he had to read it out loud in our first-floor balcony to his first eager audience: Ferdousi, Banu, and I.
Munier Bhai had this special ability of making everyone feel special. I was the youngest, and I used to think that I was his favourite sister, that I was somehow special. But my eldest brother or my eldest sister would think the same; for that matter, every single brother or sister thought he or she was special. He had this terrific capacity for loving others.
He was particularly close to his students, for whom he had very special affection. He not only encouraged his students in academic matters, but was often closely involved in helping and advising them in personal matters as well.
Even today, 44 years after his disappearance, a now retired professor of Sanskrit, a student of Munier Bhai, remembers the day when she was pregnant and was having problems opening her office door because of all the papers and files she had in her hands. She recalls: “He helped me carry the books and opened the door for me. I’ll never forget that kindness.”
Some students remember that he would sometimes invite them home and fry omelettes for them. In those days, in the 60s and 70s, not too many professors had cars. Munier Bhai had one, and it was a pleasure for him to pick up people from the streets, colleagues, students, his son‘s friend, and drop them wherever they wanted to go.
Every Friday, he would pick up my father and drive him to the mosque, wait till the prayers were over, and then drive him back home again.
He did this for years. Ordinary people, many his subordinates, loved him. He was a favourite of office staff and peons, darwans and dhopas. He would help them with money, listen to their troubles, and would always smile at them -- they were all his friends.
He absolutely believed that Bangladesh would be liberated one day. He was not sure whether he would be alive or not, but he hoped that his children, his younger brothers, and sisters would be around to enjoy it. “You are young, you are just starting your lives now,” he would say.
Munier Bhai was an unstoppable prankster. He loved pranking his siblings, all in good humour. One day, I was standing on the ground floor verandah, and he was up on the balcony above, pouring water on my head.
“Why are you pouring water on my head?” I asked him. “Oh, it’s not me. It’s someone doing something from that MIG up above us,” he replied. In the last days of the war, MIG aircrafts were a common sight in the skies of Dhaka. Despite our big difference in age, we were like close friends. In fact, all my brothers and sisters were very close. Munier Bhai, though, stood apart in his special ability to love and be loved by all. The al-Badrs killed the best of my brothers.
I will never forget December 14, 1971
It was around 11:30am. Some young men who looked like students came to our house. They said: “We are students of Munier sir. We have come to interview him. Of course, they were really members of al-Badr.
Munier Bhai had taken a bath, and was coming out of the bathroom. He was wearing a lungi and was putting on a punjabi. He said: “Okay, let’s go.” My mother was laying out the dishes for Munier Bhai’s lunch. I told my mother that some students had come to take Munier Bhai out for an interview, and that he would be back very soon.
My brother walked out with the young men. I stood behind a window and saw one of the young men sticking a gun to my brother’s back and nudging him into a jeep.
I was absolutely terrified, and I started calling out to my mother. I remember Munier Bhai telling me: “Move away from the window.”
I moved away from the window in fear. Now, I regret having moved away -- I could have seen him for two more minutes if I had stayed there.
They then took him away in the jeep, and we never saw him again. Bangladesh was liberated two days later on the 16th. The nation was free, but my brother never came back. My brothers and others desperately looked for his body in Rayer Bazaar and Mirpur, where the bodies of intellectuals were found, but there was no trace of Munier Bhai or his clothes.
Torn pieces of a lungi and a ring were shown to me, because I was the last to see him, but I could not identify them with any certainty. One of my brothers searched for Munier Bhai for days in all possible places, but there was absolutely no trace of him.
Days of anxiety
During the nine months that Munier Bhai stayed with us, we would see cars parked in front of our house, sometimes patrolling military vehicles. We would be scared to look outside.
My sister Ferdousi and her husband Ramendu lived with us in the same house for a few weeks after March 25. We were scared for our Hindu brother-in-law living with us.
Eventually, they left Bangladesh, stayed a few weeks in Kolkata, and then went to Delhi on a fellowship.
They somehow survived on a meagre stipend. They came back home soon after Bangladesh was liberated.
All in the family
Although my father was a very religious man, we grew up with liberal values: Differences in race, colour, religion, or language did not concern us much.
Two of my brothers married Pakistani women, one from Punjab and another from Jodhpur. One of my sisters-in-law lived with us during those nine months.
I could sense the helplessness of my Pakistani bhabi, and the agony she felt when her own brother-in-law (Munier Chowdhury) was picked up at the orders of the Pakistani army. Two of my brothers were in the army, and one of them used to live in Pakistan at the time. Soon after the crackdown in March, one resigned from the army, studied geopolitics, and took up a career in teaching.
Another brother spent months in a military camp in Pakistan, and was eventually repatriated to Bangladesh.
How my mother coped
My mother died in 2000. She did not see her son when al-Badr took him away. She waited for him every day, for many years, hoping against hope that her son would come home one day. He never did. My mother would say: “Your father was lucky, he did not have to go through the pain of losing a son.”
My father had died just the year before, in 1970. My mother was a God-fearing woman; she was very pious. She had absolute faith in the will of Allah, and that was how she consoled herself for almost three decades after Munier Bhai was killed.
She would say: “I have lost only one son. The lady in the house across the street has lost three. How does she live?” This is how she gained the strength to go on living. From time to time, she would sigh deeply and say: “Allah, this is all your will. I do not have the arrogance to question your wish. I only ask you to grant me the strength to bear my pain.”
She would sigh and tears would roll down her cheeks. I never saw her crying out loud. Today, I am the mother of two sons. When I think of my mother’s face, I find it difficult not to cry.
Did my mother ever really think that her son would come back one day? As long as I live, I will treasure the thousands of memories that I have of Munier Bhai, the memories that all my brothers and sisters have of him. As I have said before, the al-Badrs took away the best of the lot; they knew that the future of the new Bangladesh depended on people like him.
Recently, we have seen trials of war criminals -- trials of people who were responsible for the rape, torture, and murder of so many Bangladeshis. This trial should have taken place much earlier. The people responsible for such unspeakable crimes need to be brought to book. As for the ones we have lost -- they will never come back again. But justice for 1971 must happen. There is no other way to move forward.
A version of this piece was published in the book The Land of Two Partitions and Beyond.
