The following piece was published on August 7, 2024, in Prothom Alo, a Bengali-language daily newspaper in Bangladesh. Read the original here.
August 5th. Around 7.30 pm.
I was in a battery-operated rickshaw at the Green Road intersection in Dhaka. A soft voice requested, “Can I get a lift?” I turned around to see a young face with a bandage over his right eye. A frail, lean boy was holding the red-green flag (the national flag of Bangladesh) tied to a stick.
He told me he was going to the Science Lab area near the Elephant Road of the Dhaka University. I asked him to hop on. The roads bore signs of hundreds of people marching just a few hours ago. I looked on and asked him his name.
He is Shahed – Shahedul Islam – an undergraduate student of economics at a private university.
He had been fighting on the streets as part of the student movement against discrimination since July 17. His protests had been at the Bashundhara Residential Area, at Badda and at Mirpur. Many of his friends had been with him.
On the afternoon of August 4, Shahed was faced with a stun grenade hurled by police in Mirpur. His glasses shattered, injuring his right eye.
I asked him where he was coming from. He said he went to Ganobhaban, the official residence of the prime minister. He witnessed the vandalism and looting. Did he bring anything back, I asked.
With a shy smile, he shook his head. No, he couldn’t. He said, “I could have taken items worth Tk 1 to 2 million if I wanted. There were many things there, laptops, so much more!”
After a pause, he said, “I feel very good now that I didn’t take anything.”
On the dimly lit path, small groups or lone individuals walked haphazardly. Our battery-operated rickshaw sped along.
Why did Shahed take to the streets? He said it was to protest against discrimination, injustice, and oppression. His inner anger did not let him stay at home.
At some point Shahed asked the rickshaw driver if he could drop him off at Mirpur, after dropping me off. The middle-aged driver agreed.
Shahed lived near his university at Bashundhara. Upon hearing that he has been charged by police in two cases, he took refuge at friends’ houses in Mirpur.
Today he is going there again. He is still recovering from the eye injury and looked exhausted.
My house came into view. I paid the full fare. He kept insisting that he would pay his share.
His face was tired, but his eyes were bright, fearless. His courage comes from a sense of justice.
I wanted to photograph him. When I told him, he agreed. He got out of the rickshaw, and I took a photo with my phone.
Shahedul Islam, a student of economics in Bangladesh, injured while protesting. Photo: Qurratulain Tahmina.
On the morning of August 6, I called him to find out that he was going to the doctor to get his eye checked. He thought of going to his mother in Feni, a southeastern district, afterward, but heard about attacks on minorities and other violence. He decided to stay back and join the other students to protest and resist. His mother will have to wait longer for him to return home.
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I had a few images taken on the morning of August 5 on my phone as well. Under the circumstances or due to my lack of courage, I could not save them.
Around 11.30 am, I stepped out into the neighbourhood. In front of an apartment building gate, I saw a young man putting a bandage on another’s head, surrounded by a few boys and girls.
His shirt was soaked in blood. I took his picture and recorded his words on video. He said he worked at a clothing store in Mohammadpur. The day before, his son was brutally beaten by anti-movement people.
That is why he came out on the streets. He found these boys on the way. He had been hit by a pellet at the front of his head.
One of the boys said they were going to Shahbagh, near Dhaka University. The police blocked them at the Science Lab intersection. They fired pellets, rubber bullets, and stun grenades. The group scattered to safety.
The apartment owners opened the gate for them, and I followed them inside. I counted around 60 people. Suddenly, eight to ten police officers entered and gathered whomever they could.
Seeing the phone in my hand, they forcibly took it. After much argument, I got the phone back. But I had to delete every photo from that morning and erase the recycle bin.
Later, I learned that the police had released all the boys and girls. Some had already taken shelter in nearby houses. By noon, I learned they all were going to Shahbagh to protest again.
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Around 3 pm on August 5, I headed towards my workplace, Prothom Alo, at Karwan Bazar (near the Sonargaon hotel) in a battery-operated rickshaw. The elderly driver kept on saying things like, “Hasina has fled,” “she has killed so many children”, and so on.
On Mirpur Road, I saw a stream of people heading towards the Science Laboratory. Most of them were young. Their clothes and body language varied. But the joy of breaking barriers, the excitement, was palpable.
At the Sonargaon intersection, someone came to shake hands and say, “We are free.”
On Airport Road, there was a crowd heading towards Farmgate. I got out of the rickshaw and walked across the procession. I asked a few people, and they all said they were going to Ganobhaban.
The crowd seemed endless. The combined sounds of various slogans drowned out everything else.
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Protest, anger, hatred, and rebellion are born in people’s minds. When it accumulates, can any discipline be expected in its expression? That’s what scares me.
On the evening of August 5, two elderly people I met said they felt united with the people’s anger. But one of them was also apprehensive about what would happen next.
The other one said that the defeated government has reaped what it sowed over the last one and a half decades. But his heart broke when the house on 32 Dhanmondi Road (Bangabandhu’s residence and Memorial Museum), which is part of Bangladesh’s history, was burned down. He said he had fought in the Bangladesh Liberation War.
In the past few days, I have wandered wherever I could and talked to as many people as possible. The most powerful expressions I witnessed were anger, rage, and hatred. Many spoke of the pain, sorrow, and deprivation they felt.
I am in my sixties. I feel an inner urge to understand the young people participating in the movement. From what I have understood, they would not accept anything that is forced upon them.
I personally fear any frenzy, violence, coercion, oppression, and desire for revenge. I cannot accept or tolerate these.
I have spoken to a few coordinators of the anti-discrimination student movement – both at the hospitals and on the road. I have also listened to their words in newspapers and on TV.
Their words give me trust, and confidence. Mature, logical, humane words. That is where I find hope. This is what I lean on.
Qurratul-Ain-Tahmina is a senior journalist based in Bangladesh.
Translated from the Bengali original by Aparna Bhattacharya.
