Man in immaculate white and the mannequin hand: 27 March 1971
On the morning of 27 March 1971, Shaheed Ahmed, a 17-year-old resident of Dhaka’s Indira Road, ventured out in the shell-shocked city to see for himself the atrocities that were carried out by the Pakistani Army on the night of 25-26 March. He talked with The Business Standard over the course of three days to describe his experience on that day and some events leading up to the massacre of Operation Searchlight, carried out to suppress and silence the Bangalis of this country and quash their final quest for freedom.
From my vantage point on my creaking Phillips bicycle, it looked unreal, weird even. Several earthen mannequins were dumped on the ground it seemed, right at the entrance of the Dhaka university Teacher-Student Centre – TSC to all.
The end-of-March air was hot and humid and the tropical sun beat down mercilessly on my head. My sweat-soaked shirt was sticking to my body and the WWII era bicycle was making those noises old, poorly maintained bicycles made, as it pulled to the left from a bent frame.
But I was not in a state to notice those at a conscious level then. I was like an automaton, pedalling along the strangely traffic-free city roads feeling numb. For what I had witnessed in the last hour had been etched in my mind. Those images are fresh even 52 years later.
The air is sooty and acrid. There are fires burning at several places around the city, and I come across two on my way from home at Indira road. As I take a right-turn at Farmgate, I see the Faruk restaurant on the corner opposite the Holy Cross School, a very busy eatery, burnt to the ground.
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To the left, farther up the airport road to the north, close to the Tejgaon airport, is another huge smouldering heap that used to be the Awlad Hosain market. I don't stop to investigate. I am heading for Rajarbagh police line as my father had told me to do and see what had happened there on the night of 25-26 March.
Now I am at TSC and the mannequins are lying in a pool of muddy water on the road where the snack centre DUS is located at present. Or so I thought. And I am startled to see the hand of a mannequin beckoning at me.
A dark night descends
I lie in my bed next to a large window overlooking Indira Road hoping to sleep, but my mind is racing with all that has happened in the last few hours. The cool night air is pleasant in the late March night. The day has been hectic and the evening even more so, because we hear whispered rumours all day that the Pakistani army is going to come out of the cantonment at night and run amuck.
The day was 25 March and we have been at picketing points at Farmgate all day long. With the rumours getting stronger that something is going to happen tonight, the kids in the neighbourhood fetch a few axes and several large saws from the sawmill located right around the corner at Farmgate.
We are determined to stop the army convoy dead in its tracks and we do what we can at that time. We cut down the huge trees that lined the airport road and Farmgate crossing and barricade it. Some other kids drag seven or eight push carts parked at Tejgaon rail station and pile those up on the road.
We have no idea yet what a well-trained army with tanks can do to such puny obstacles. We work in the half-shadow of the night and disperse when done.
Sleep comes eventually as I lie in my bed. Tomorrow waits for more actions. At that moment, I had no idea how different a day I'll be seeing.
I jump up in my bed, wide-eyed. The ear-piercing sound of a burst of machine gun fire so close is terrifying. I have no idea of the time or how long I slept. I glance out of my second-floor window and see the olive drab military jeep standing hardly 20 metres away on the road.
In the dim light, I can see the heavy machine gun mounted on its rear bed and the four soldiers manning it. Their helmets shine under the tungsten lamps hanging from the lamp posts. The raised gun barrel points at our modest two-storied home, somewhat obscure from street view, surrounded by several guava, jackfruit and bell trees.
Then the gun starts its devilish staccato again, foot-long blue flames illuminating the faces of the soldiers. Bullets crash into our home and the surrounding trees, making strange swishing sounds among the leaves. The thuds of the steel-clad lead bullets shake the home. I jump off the bed to the floor hoping to avoid getting hit. My parents and younger brothers and sisters are all huddled on the floor in the next room.
There are incessant reports of gunshots and heavy explosions from all around the city. Angry crimson flames lick the skyline. A muffled boom comes from the direction of the Rajarbag police line and I see an extremely bright light appear over the police headquarters there. It floats almost motionless about a hundred feet high, illuminating everything around.
The Pakistani army is using a parachute flare to light up the ground to make it easy for them to pick up their targets. They are actually using battlefield techniques to kill us.
My father laments loudly. He has been in the police service all his life until retiring the year before and he understands very well what is happening to the police personnel at Rajarbag.
We crouch on the floor in the room farthest from the road with pounding hearts. Our mouths dry. Our minds racing. We whisper among ourselves. If and when the army breaks down our door and enters, what our best course of action would be.
We can jump down the backyard from our second-floor roof and clamber over the six-foot wall to the neighbour's house and find our way to the wooded area in the fallow parcel of land one house over and hide among the bushes there, I offer. Father is not so optimistic. "We stick together and face whatever may come," he declares.
And we wait, hoping to see the sunrise as if that would magically make us safe.
And a day
The Fazr azan from the mosque floated out even among the incessant firing. The muezzin had not left his station and duty. A male doel is whistling his mating song for hours in the murky morning.
My parents offer their salaat silently in the dark. We do not switch on the lights. We pretend not to exist on the face of the earth. I lie still on the floor drained of any strength, full of fear. I know what awaits me, a 17-year-old, when the Pakistanis come and find me. Mother prepares a meagre breakfast for us even at that time. I eat silently, or try to, as I can't swallow the food.
With daylight, army trucks patrol the street with blaring loudspeakers declaring an indefinite-time curfew. All flags on poles are to be taken down immediately. I am jolted up by that order. There is not a home in the city that is not flying the flag of Bangladesh. We too have the red and green flag with the yellow Bangladesh map in the middle flying on a pole.
There is a black flag too to protest the killings during the month of March around the country. I send my six-year-old brother up the roof to take down the flags. He could barely manage it, as an army jeep appears with a soldier manning a mounted gun. The soldier keeps shooting indiscriminately and my kid brother scampers down with the flags, barely surviving.
Mother hides the flags in her pot of rice and it stays there until December, when it flies again in the air of a liberated Bangladesh.
All day, we are in a sombre mood. Dark smoke rises from all around the city. Dhaka University student dormitories are set on fire and pages from books, burnt to carbon but still in one piece, float down lazily, carried by the smoke. A page from a geology book lands on our roof. We can read the text. Father fiddles with the ivory-coloured knobs of his two-band skyblue Philips radio hoping to catch some news, or just to distract himself. The radio only offers the stern orders of the regime. We can hardly breathe.
On my creaky, old phillips bicycle
A radio bulletin on the morning of 27th informs the city that the curfew will be lifted for two hours. From 10 am to 12pm. Father tells me to go out and look around the city, especially the Rajarbagh police line where his compatriots came under attack mere hours back. I do not hesitate.
My 30-year-old, creaky British made Phillips bicycle is there to take me wherever I want. Its tyres are bald with use, the frame is bent from myriad brushes with disasters or near disasters, the drive chain is past its prime, but it picks up speed and takes me past the smouldering ruins of Faruk hotel at Farmgate.
The air hangs heavy with the smell of burnt ember and other nameless stuff. The roads are curiously empty of military patrol or checkposts now. There are no buses, or rickshaws or any other vehicles in this normally busy intersection.
The Rajarbagh police line
Approaching Rajarbag, I see the still smoking single-story tin-roofed police dormitories. The buildings are pockmarked with bullets. There are a few large holes on them indicating large bore guns have been used. Possibly howitzers, or even tanks. At the main entrance, there are several bodies of some policemen piled in a place. I have seen enough.
The dead old bookbinder and his wife
I make a left turn at Shanti Nagar and travel by Kakrail to Dhaka University. There is this tall narrow building at Kakrail intersection named Faridpur Bhaban. An old man, a bookbinder by profession, lives in a bamboo shanty in the compound in the building.
I come to him occasionally to repair my books. As I pass, I glance at the building out of habit and am shocked by what I see. A woman is sitting in the front of the building holding the lifeless body of the book binder. He bears a bullet mark through his left knee. I stop.
"What are you going to do now?", I ask the woman. "I don't know baba," she replies with a helpless look on her face. I don't know what more to say and continue on my way to the High Court.
Man in brilliant white pyjama- panjabi and a bullet through the stomach
I come across an incongruous sight in front of the High Court. An white-beared older man wearing immaculate white pyjama and panjabi lies dead right at the main gate. A bullet has pierced his stomach. The congealed blood had turned dark on the ground.
Halt! Idhar aou!
The road towards the present Shikkha Bhaban is barricaded with felled trees. As I ride my bike toward the obstruction, a truck load of army personnel appears out of nowhere. The commanding officer sitting in a jeep. He comes out and screams, "Halt!"
There are few people on the road. They stop. I try to sneak past the tree barricade but the officer notices my move and screams at the top of his voice, "Idhar Aou!" I drop my bike and comply.
He orders us to move the trees and clear the road for his convoy to pass. We work for about 15 minutes and clear the road. Sweat drips down into the eyes. They sting. The officer orders us to leave the area as quickly as we can. We don't need his order.
Silent exodus and moving mannequins
Time is running out as the curfew break is almost over. The city seems eerily quiet or so it seems to me. I feel my mind has shut off to all feelings by now. And then I notice the ominous spectacle that sends a chill down my spine.
Streams of people of all ages trekking down the roads, all heading south. Some are carrying bundles on their heads, some have toddlers in tow. Some women are carrying their babies on the waist. I stop and stare at them to make sense of this exodus.
Where are they going? To somewhere safe? Where is that safe place now? Should I take my parents, young brothers and sisters and hit the road in search of safety?
So I ask an approaching man, "Where are you going, Mr?"
"Keraniganj," he answers.
He doesn't slow down or look me in the eye. I understand they intend to cross the Buriganga and take shelter in that locality. Will the river be enough of a barrier against the Pakistani marauders, I wonder.
But I must hurry as the time is running out for me. I push on and come upon the scene in front of TSC. The scene that appears to be of some beckoning mannequins to me at first, on closer look turns out to be a few bodies and some stray dogs. All were males devoid of any clothing, their bodies smeared with mud, their hands bent at the elbows, angling slightly upwards as if in silent supplication.
Two or three stray dogs are moving around. The hands are jerking occasionally because the dogs are tearing at the bodies, giving the impression that they are beckoning me closer to speak of their pain.
I feel strangely detached and drained of any strength.
The ground couldn't keep them hidden
I notice a few people gathered at the gate of Jagannath Hall next to the TSC. They are staring at something in there intently. I feel strangely drawn to them even though I feel I know what I'll see.
I walk my bike along the road between Rokeya Hall and Jagannath Hall towards the entrance. Inside the main gate of the dormitory, on the playground, there is some disturbed earth. An earthen mound of sorts. I notice a hand sticking out of the soil, then another, a foot. I am jolted into the realisation that it is a mass grave.
It dawns on me that the Pakistani army has interred here the bodies of those they had killed on the night of the massacre. Here they had attempted to hide their atrocities but the ground does not want to keep it hidden.
Teachers' quarter: Blood trickles down the stairs
I make my way to Fuller Road and notice a few people standing mutely in front of the quarters next to the British Council.
At the foot of the stairwell lies the body of an apparently distinguished person. He has a shawl wrapped around him. He has been shot several times and blood trickled down the stairs to form a pool. He must have been a university professor but I didn't have the courage to ask anyone about his identity.
A heavy burden
Meanwhile, the time for curfew approaches fast and I hurry towards home at Indira Road pedalling my bike. My father, mother, sister and two younger brothers are waiting for me. What do I tell them? Am I going to tell them all, in full gory detail? I myself cannot process all that I have seen today. Can they take it? I decide to be careful for now. The details can wait for another day.
