During the quota reform movement, all the educational institutions were suddenly closed. On the morning of July 18, I was scrolling through my colleagues’ messages and found that a Brac University ambulance driver was shot dead while carrying a wounded student to medical care. Some of our colleagues were present at the university premise to help out the injured students and informed the rest of us about what was happening. My heart sank upon realizing that the atrocities being committed were worse than all we had learnt about February 21, 1952.
My husband and I work in East West University (Department of Business Administration) and Brac University (Department of English and Humanities) respectively. The private messages from our official networks made us anxious about the security of our students and also guilty that we did not have the courage to go with them on the streets. Both of us were concerned about our children aged 10 and five years and chose to stay at home. A small step that we could take from home was to ask one of our known pharmacy owners at Banasree not to charge any money from the students for medicines and bandages. We paid the bills later to contribute indirectly in the smallest possible way.
If you have heard about the term “survivor’s guilt” that is exactly what had been brewing inside me while the quota reformation revolt was going on. I live in DOHS Baridhara which is well protected by the army guards. We could hear the shootouts outside but were protected inside the premises which made us feel safe but guilty that we were the lucky ones.
This guilt gnaws inside you, leaving you unable to sleep, thinking that you could have contributed more for your country. The very thought of the young students being on the streets rather than in the classrooms, makes one ask the question, “Could I do more for them?” Alas, the faces of the minors sleeping beside you makes the mother in you be prominent and overpower that feeling of patriotism.
My husband and I had a pre-scheduled conference trip to Malaysia from August 9 to August 16. When we arrived at the airport, another Bangladeshi scholar was standing there to receive his colleague arriving from Bangladesh. While waiting for his guest, he looked at us and inquired about our workplaces.
On hearing the details, he smiled, “Tomra desh shadhin kore ascho”? Right at that moment, the guilt that I felt inside transformed into a moment of pride, “Yes, the students with whom we work have made our country free.” During our stay in Malaysia, the Grab taxi drivers and local people we came across were asking about the current situation of Bangladesh as they had been following the world news of internet blackouts and revolts.
I must say that I feel proud to be a part of Brac university as the current Pro-vice chancellor and acting Vice Chancellor, Professor Dr Syed Mahfuzul Aziz and his team of staff at the registrar and proctor office helped our students wholeheartedly during the movement.
After returning to Bangladesh, it was time to resume our semester. Students informed us that they were not ready yet as they had gone through a great psychological turmoil. Professor Aziz requested us, the teachers, to talk to all the students in our courses individually if anyone is having any problem. Our psycho-counselling unit had been working on various student cases relentlessly to help them out.
Also, the central administration had arranged a meeting with the general students to pay a tribute to the martyrs with one minute silence and heard all the demands students had regarding semester fee waiver and 100% refund for this semester if any student was injured during the revolt and wanted to drop the semester. After giving our students some time of their own, we began our in-person classes from August 31.
I asked everyone to think about all the incidents hat they had gone through during the July-August period and write whatever came up in their minds. The prominent word that the students pronounced was ‘GUILT’
The very first class that I had was of master’s level where I asked everyone to think about all the incidents that they had gone through during the July-August period and write whatever came up in their minds. The prominent word that the students pronounced was “GUILT.” It was a catharsis that we shared in the class where we found it difficult to carry forward with this guilt of being the survivor.
Shahadat, one of my students from that course mentioned that he lived in Banasree students’ mess. There were seven to 10 dead bodies of students lying for 24 hours downstairs, right at the gate of their building. Then people of the area called out for volunteers to find out the identity of the students and Shahadat went down along with other friends.
Most of the martyrs had ID cards of their schools and they were handed over to their families. Two of the students did not have ID cards and were sent to the nearby hospital mortuary. Shahadat mentioned that he could not sleep for days after seeing some students like him lying in the pool of blood.
My students, while writing about their feelings, also mentioned that they had contributed to the latest flood and tried to find a solace in doing something for the country as they could not stand on the streets like the brave martyrs. They wrote that they were still anxious about our country because there was no guarantee who would be the next government. It was clear that none of them wanted to see the previous political teams taking charge of the country again.
I would like to end this piece by drawing an analogy of musafir or traveller. I am a musafir in a way because I play the roles of a writer, a researcher, a teacher, and a mother, travelling from one role to another. A musafir’s guilt of choosing the role of a mother over the role of a conscious teacher (who should have been with her students), requires a confession to my students, my country’s peoples through my writing on this platform. In the religion of Islam, it is said that your prayers are always answered when you are a musafir.
That is why, right after the movement, when I was a musafir in Malaysia, my only prayer was “Amar desh jeno bhalo thake, she bhalo na thakle amrao bhalo thakbo na.” Let a musafir’s prayers compensate for the guilt of not being able to be a part of the students’ movement.
Dr Sabreena Ahmed is an Associate Professor at the Department of English and Humanities, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Brac University.
