Let us go back to Holey Artisan Bakery on Road 79 at Gulshan, Dhaka at 8pm, July 1. A fashionable, up-market eatery for the young elite of Dhaka, the favourite coffee place for expatriate Bangladeshis, a place also frequented by sojourners and foreigners who are seen in Bangladesh more commonly these days than at any time in the past.
The three young friends, Faraaz, Abinta, Tarishi, the former two undergrads from Emory University, Atlanta on holiday, and the latter an Indian student from the University of California, Berkeley are having a coffee or a meal together.
The Italian businesswomen and men are discussing some business deals with their Bangladeshi counterparts or friends, consolidating the integration of Bangladesh into the global economy.
Japanese consultants to the newly launched metro rail project, a step into progress, are checking out this eatery as they always do when in a new city.
The clientele, the ambience, and the mood were clearly cosmopolitan, befitting the new century.
The eatery, ensconced by the lake on a bucolic road in a posh residential area, was a cosmopolitan space. The eatery could be in Paris, Madrid, or New York, a public space -- surely, not for everyone -- but a public space, nevertheless.
The space also provided a peep into the 21st century, a taste of the future to come. In fact, the future was already there. Bangladesh has silently sneaked into a new century, with young men and women speaking confidently, dressing smartly, chatting away, sharing their dreams in a cosmopolitan space of hope.
The transition has been silent, yet to be announced to the world, because the news presenters of the CNN coverage of a terror attack that followed, kept introducing Bangladesh as one of the poorest countries in the world; one reporter even doubted whether Bangladesh police, who may not have been paid regularly, are up to the task of handling the crisis.
I am sure many of these reporters and news presenters need some education on Bangladesh and the region, but that is a separate matter.
Bangladesh was not born with the sacrifices of tens of thousands of lives, sweat, and blood of a people to become a place where people would be afraid to go out to eat
One of the expert commentators, a former US ambassador from one of the Middle Eastern countries used a new phrase, (new to me, for sure) while discussing terrorism; he used the phrase “the greater Middle East,” conferring a new geographical identity to Bangladesh.
Has Bangladesh in a space of few hours been transported from South Asia to the Middle East, a term that was coined by an American Naval Officer, Captain Alfred T Mahan in 1902 as a space of geo-strategic interest to the US?
Maybe the former American diplomat was not thinking of geography, but of geopolitics, or a deadly ideological battle that is spreading in Bangladesh. Suddenly international media began to mention Bangladesh alongside Syria, Iraq, Istanbul, and other cities of Europe that came under terror attacks recently.
Not that Bangladesh was a stranger to terror attacks -- in recent years, individual writers, thinkers, religious leaders of other faiths have been assassinated in targeted attacks.
But the attack at 8:45 pm on July 1 was qualitatively different. It was not a hit and run. It was a suicide mission. Those who came to kill apparently did not make any attempt to escape. In a matter of hours, as they carried out their terror, slaughtering nearly 20 men and women, they transported Bangladesh back several centuries. It was a dramatic u-turn from her tryst with destiny.
July 1 is going to be remembered as a watershed in Bangladesh’s history. It is not the number of casualties but the big picture that matters.
As some number crunchers would tell us, more people died in US in road accidents in a typical year in the 1970s than the total US deaths in the Vietnam War. Last time I checked, the war toll was something like 58,000. That does not diminish the historical importance of the Vietnam War.
What happened on July 1 was the death of an idea; the idea of Bangladesh as conceived by the founders of this nation and the Bangladesh that Faraaz and Abanti dreamed of.
Maybe the handsome young lad was discussing his future, maybe Abanti was outlining her dreams and the dreams of her generation, casting their lot with the new Bangladesh -- a dream Bangladesh that they thought was achievable.
They are part of a new generation who look at their motherland in a different light. Bangladesh was not born with the sacrifices of tens of thousands of lives, sweat, and blood of a people to become a place where people would be afraid to go out to eat.
I am sure people will still go out to eat, shop, and live their normal lives, albeit under greater protection of security. Securitisation will follow; it will be the new normal in Bangladesh.
One of my friends, a prominent civil society activist is optimistic. In a Facebook status, she expressed hope, and she talked about resilience. I only wish she is right. July 1 was not a cyclone or flooding, which Bangladeshis now face with great resilience.
In a span of few hours, a space of hope has been unmistakably transformed in to a space of despair.
