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Nabil Rahman

 

I was invited to read at an open mic on 12/12/12 by John Paul Infante. I was  buried in work from the last stretch of my master’s program. I was to graduate the next day. It was 5 p.m. and the event was at 7 p.m. I hadn’t written anything yet. So as I sat outside the fitting room buying clothes for the next day, I typed this up on my phone. Thought I would share:

 

I hate shopping for clothes cuz it always leads to existential questioning. Who am I? How do I want to portray myself? Which box do I put myself into?

I sat down to write last night. And I wrote and wrote. I wrote about this girl I like and how her family is super rich. And how she likes me but she’s with some guy who’s some doctor lawyer type. But then I  concluded that I like being me. and how I’ll forever be a Bronx kid. And keep it real till it hurts.

Whatever that means.

But what does that say about me?

What the hell is writing anyway?

Why decorate my sentences with metaphors or litter my lines with liters of alliteration?

What the hell is liters of alliteration anyway?

I’m just forcing shit now.

I graduate tomorrow.

Masters in journalism.

19 years of schooling and I’ve ended up here on this stage. With no concrete idea of what the hell to talk about.

While out shopping for graduation clothes my dad wanted me to buy cologne. My South-Asian dad calls it perfume. He doesn’t know the difference. I don’t really see the difference either. You don’t call shampoo shamogne.

So he wanted me to pick. Some polo, curve Armani code- you know how many millions of people buy the same perfume, I mean cologne and smell the same way? Can I not even have my own smell at least?

Speaking of which, sometimes I go days without showering and then I smell myself and I like the way I smell.

I’m all about expressing myself. I’m constantly blasting my Facebook friends with updates about what I’m up to. Pictures. An entire tumblr dedicated to my self-portraits.

It’s almost like social media rape. I’m forcing myself on people. And I guess some of them like it. Likes and retweets are like some sort of a validation – that – I -exist. That I actually exist.

I didn’t like the thing about the girl I wrote last night – my mind had changed by the morning when she texted me. I’m slippery. My mind is like a slippery fish. Wet and with pointy bones.

My uncle described girls as slippery fish – some with more bones than others.

He said you gotta grab ‘em with gloves.

So I wrote about memories instead. And how memories are like butter or honey. And how you churn and churn. Or collect nectars with kisses for your honeycomb of memories. And then you get old and sit on your hammock and smile and reflect. But then I ended that poem with how people shit in their pants when they die. And then I talked about how babies shit in their pants too. It’s okay to die and shit on your pants I decided by the end.  It’s just shit.

So anyways, tonight is 12/12/12.  A day before I graduate. It’s a heck of a night to find myself. Specially when I’m standing on stage in front of all of you.

And shaking nervously while you all stare at me. And I’m presenting myself as some kid who’s confident enough to come up here and tell you who I am.

But I’m really not. I have no fuckig idea who I am. I just know that I wanna be here for all those who are out there and don’t know themselves either.

It’s alright. We’ll figure it out. And then we’ll die and shit in our pants.

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I am the web/video producer for a new exciting show for and about New York’s diaspora community. Here are a few videos and bios of featured guests.

Members of the Diaspora/ April 20th

Roohi Choudhry is a writer who has lived on almost every continent.  She was born in Pakistan, grew up in Durban, South Africa, and came to New York via Texas.  Choudhry’s writing has appeared in literary journals and won both the Hopwood and Newman awards.  She currently lives in Sunset Park, Brooklyn.

Jose Antonio Vargas is a journalist and immigration reform advocate. In 2011 he revealed his undocumented status in the New York Times, and that same year he started Define American, an organization dedicated to fostering conversation about current immigration issues. He has worked for the Washington Post, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Huffington Post, and is a Pulitzer prize winner. He lives in Manhattan.

Diego Obregon is a Colombian born musician from the Southwestern town of Guapí. Obregon specializes in the Marimba instrument, which he not only plays like a master, but also builds himself out of the trunk of palm trees.  Nine years ago he came to New York to share his beloved Marimba de Chonta music.  He currently lives in Queens.

Anna Halberstadt is a social worker and psychologist who has worked with immigrant populations in New York City for over 25 years.  Born in Lithuania, Halberstadt earned her Master’s in Psychology from Moscow State University before moving to New York. Halberstadt is also a poet, and her work touches on themes of immigration, displacement, and identity.  Halberstadt lives in the East Village of Manhattan

Isaac Katalay is a Congolese musician originally from Kinshasa. He’s spent more than half of his 32 years in New York, exploring music and culture.  He leads the Life Long Project band and is the founder of several related organizations that promote socially conscious artists and entrepreneurs. Katalay lives in Harlem. 

Saba Hocek was born in Turkey and currently lives on the Upper East Side.  She and her mother practice the Turkish tradition of reading futures in coffee grounds.  Hocek read her first coffee cup at a Ray’s Pizza in Tehran, Iran, when she was only 16. She’s been reading cups ever since.  Hocek lives on the Upper East Side of Manhattan.

Photographer Annie Ling is a Canadian citizen, born in Taipei, Taiwan. Ling’s work has appeared in New York Magazine, The New York Times Lensblog, FADER Magazine, and Germany’s GEO Magazine. Her work has been exhibited internationally in Europe, Southeast Asia, and North America. Ling’s project 81 Bowery documents the life and recent eviction of one of New York’s oldest Chinese tenements.  She lives in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn.

For tickets: http://www.eventbrite.com/event/6105623083#

For more information: http://www.whereimfromshow.com/

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Photo: Barbi Reed

Poet Billy Collins is the author of several book of poems including, “She Was Just Seventeen,” “The Trouble with Poetry,” and “Nine Horses.” His most recent work, “Ballistics,” was published in September, 2008. Collins served as Poet Laureate of the United States from 2001-2003. His works have appeared in a variety of anthologies, textbooks, and periodicals, including, Paris Review, American Poetry Review, American Scholar, and The New Yorker.

Nabil Rahman: What inspired you to start writing?

Billy Collins: My mother had memorized hundreds of lines of poetry when she was a schoolgirl in rural Canada, so as a child I would hear poetry in the house. It seemed like it was a part of everyday experience, and not something exotic. My father played a part in this too. He knew I was interested in poetry and he would bring home copies of Poetry magazine, the oldest and probably the most prestigious poetry publication in the country. There, I heard the voices of contemporary poets which I found compelling, especially compared to the diet of poetry that was being fed to me in the classroom–mostly written by dead white males with beards and three names.

NR: As a student, I realized that we do not read many contemporary poems in our courses. We read poems that are harder to decipher because of the change that happens to language over time. Do you think this intimidates and ultimately takes away potential readers of poetry?

BC: Yes, a lot of young people have their poetry switches turned off early because teachers tend to teach only poems that require their intervention. If a poem is perfectly clear, there’s not much to write on the board, is there? That’s the reason I started the Poetry 180 Program when I was U.S. poet laureate. It began as a website, and that led to two anthologies. I gathered together lots of poems that were clear and contemporary, poems that deliver their pleasures directly, without the need for footnotes or explanation. The idea was to have one poem read every day of the school year–thus, 180–so that high school students would see that poetry could be a part of everyday life as well as an academic subject. One poem of mine called “Introduction to Poetry” cautions teachers and students against tying the poem to a chair and beating a confession out of it.

NR: What has been your experience teaching poetry at Lehman?

BC: Lehman has been my academic home for many years. It has been a marvel and a challenge to watch the student body change with the changing demographics of New York City and to adjust one’s teaching to those changes. My students have said many ingenious things over the years. One young woman came up to me after class to share her discovery that “poetry is harder than writing.” I wish I had come up with that on my own. I was hired at Lehman not as a poet, but as a teacher with a Ph. D in English. My poetry evolved slowly over time, and as it did, I began teaching fewer literature courses and more creative writing workshops. One of my colleagues neatly summed up my academic and literary career when she said that when she first met me I was a professor who happened to write poetry then I turned into a poet who happened to be a professor. It would be a bit of self-dramatizing to say it was like changing from a chrysalis into a butterfly…but it looks like I said it anyway!

NR: What advice would you give to students who aspire to be poets?

BC: Read, read, and read. Read as many poets as you can until you find one (or more) who make you jealous. Then try to imitate his or her voice. One of the paradoxes of the writing life is that the only way to originality is through imitation. If you don’t imitate others, you will sound clichéd and flat. You find your voice by trying on the voices of others. Almost every poet can teach you something about writing.

NR: What did you learn from the poets that inspired you?

BC: From Emily Dickinson, I learned how to use the dash. From Walt Whitman, I learned intimacy. A lot of young writers find this hard to believe because they are convinced they have something new to say. There is nothing new to say, only new ways to say it, and you learn how to do this through reading. The real teachers of poetry are not the ones conducting workshops. They are waiting silently on the shelves of the library.

NR: How does a young poet know if his or her poems are ready to be sent to a publication?

BC: There is no need to hurry. I was first published in school literary magazines, then literary magazines, but it took a long time for me to hit my stride. I was over 40 when I had my first significant book of poems published. That was The Apple That Astonished Paris. The world can wait. Plus, good work will always rise to the top. It’s also very important to know the market, to know which magazines to send to. Don’t aim to high at first, but don’t aim too low either. The sad thing is that with so many magazines around these days and so many on-line magazines, anyone can get published as long as you don’t care where you’re published. I was lucky enough to have a lot of poems taken by Rolling Stone. They published a couple of poems in each issue in those days. And they paid! That was a first. With that said, the best guide to
publication is the trade magazine Poets & Writers.

NR: A lot of people associate poetry with struggle and loneliness. Mohammed in general admired poets, but he was recorded to have said, “It is better for one of you to fill his belly with pus than to fill it with poetry.” Do you have to suffer in order to write poems?

BC: The links between misery and poetry derive from a romantic notion of the poet as an alienated sufferer, and there are plenty of those around. One contemporary poet even defines poetry as “the release of accumulated misery.” I assume that no one is really interested in my unhappiness, so I don’t bother my readers with it. In order to write poems you don’t need to have had an unhappy life. It’s enough that you went to high school. That alone provides a reservoir of sadness to draw on.

NR: What would happen if you were unable to write poetry?

BC: The world would end and I would feel miserable! Writing poems gives me a kind of endorphin rush, a mental excitement like no other. You enter a world that you are in the process of creating, so there is a sense of newness and strangeness. Also, writing a poem places you in intimate contact with the language. Like most poets, I don’t think before I write. I think while I am writing. I discover what I have to say by writing, not by thinking about it. The poem is a little imaginative journey to a destination I cannot foresee, but I recognize it immediately when the poem finds a way to end itself.

Originally published here.
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I never really finished writing this. And I left after only 2-3 days in Paris. But here is what I had written along with the pictures.

I

He stood in the Gare du Nord station in Paris with bags full of vegetables, chewing on supari. The kama-sutra advises men to chew on supari to keep a pleasant mouth and red lips. He’s from Bangladesh. He doesn’t read or write English, but speaks Arabic fluently, a little bit of Greek and just enough French to get by.

I asked him about buying a SIM card. He led me upstairs, looking over his shoulders outside the station. There should be a Bangladeshi man here, he said. Three men speaking Bangla passed us, but I couldn’t make out what they said. My guide said, wait here, and then disappeared into the crowd.

There were brown people walking by me, some who looked like family members, but some of them saw right through me and knew I wasn’t one of them. Their gazes made me feel American. There were two white Parisian policemen walking around the corner.

My guide was taking longer than I thought and I began questioning my trust in him. He spent two weeks in Italy before taking a train to Paris on Christmas day two years ago, so he didn’t get the chance to pick up any Italian. Perhaps, he was too weak from the ride in the bottom layer of the small ship where he went a week without eating.

“I didn’t have any strength to even go to the deck to smoke a cigarette,” he says.

In Dubai, he worked as a painter and did other odd jobs in the households of wealthy Emiratis. The lady he worked for liked him a lot. But he wasn’t allowed to fall in love. Love in Dubai for migrant workers is forbidden.

He returned within a few minutes with another Bangladeshi man who reminded me of a pot dealer from New York City. The policemen were now standing in the corner looking in our direction.

“Not 5 taka, how about 4.50?”

“Come on, I buy them for 75 poisha.”

“Ok. 5 then.”

“Not here, follow me downstairs.”

I handed 5 Euros to him and he passed it to the SIM dealer.

“You can talk for 100 minutes with this.”

We walked towards the RER. He nodded and made small talk with other Bangladeshis selling DVDs out of bedsheets on the sidewalk. The short brown men looked dishevelled and out on the watch for “Civil Mamus.”

He made me buy a ticket for zone 3, but when the ticket didn’t let me out at our station in zone 4, he asked if I could jump over the turnstile. Other people were doing it too. So I jumped.

He had two cards for transportation, one with his passport sized photo to show if anyone asked, and another ticket in between the cards in his wallet which actually got him around. It belonged to a Bangladeshi child, who didn’t need it as she lived walking distance to her school.

II

When they would beat me at home for skipping school, I would go to my nanabari (maternal grandparent’s house), which was only four houses away.You could see my nanabari from my house. And when they beat me at nanabari, I would come back home.

One time my uncle grabbed me by the back of my shirt to take me to the pond by the mosque to make me perform ablutions, and as we were walking, I started slowly unbuttoning my shirt. As soon as we reached the pond, I was in the pond and he was just holding on to my shirt.

Do you smoke? Mama and Mami don’t know I smoke. They think I’m such a good kid. But sometimes I steal a cigarette before I leave.

One time Mama and I went to the park at night. There’s only a few kids there who mind their own business and smoke weed, otherwise it’s pretty empty. In the summertime, there’s families and children that come play and walk around.

I told them to bring me back a fishing net from bangladesh. We tied one end to a water bottle filled with water and threw it across the pond.

Only for an hour or so.

Want to see the pictures?

Look, the whole bathtub was full of fish. All kinds of fish.

III

He spent his life until his early twenties in a small village in Sylhet, Bangladesh. It wasn’t even in the main part of Sylhet filled with crowded streets and new markets and beggars who knew little english phrases like “May I have one pound please?” They stalk and trail bideshis and can tell right away from the gelled hair and nice clothes who’s deshi and who’s bideshi.

He grew up an hour or so away surrounded by water and green fields. He didn’t make his way into town much but went through it to go to the outskirts on the other end where he had a distant cousin his age whom he got along well with.

But his absolute best friend lived in his village. When his grandmother would come visit from America, she would slip him a $100 note, which he would then exchange from a neighbor who stood by the bank with bundles of money to exchange from dollars, pounds, saudi riyals and dubai dirhams.

“She would say take this and spend it. I would take all my friends to the cinemas. They would all call me ‘boss’. I would even take them to eat afterwards. Everything was on me. One time we got into a fight in the theater. It was us three against two others. We beat them bad and never went back to that place again.

Instead, I would rent cassette tapes and wouldn’t let anyone fast forward the song and dance sequences. I paid for it. We watch it my way.”

He would make a hut out on the rice fields and cook snacks on a clay stove. They would steal electricity from the live wire for a lighbulb and tape player.

IV

I’ve never been in love. Why bother? I’d rather wait and get married. She doesn’t have to be pretty. She can even have children from previous marriages, as long as she and I have an understanding.

My best friend back home liked a girl. She lived a few houses down. It all started out as a joke. We would all gather up to play, but he would make sure that we were hanging around somewhere near where she was. And slowly it turned to something else.

And then he had to go to Qatar to work. She ended up marrying someone else.

I saw what happened with them and I didn’t want something like that.

I remember he didn’t want to go. He said if he left, he would’ve lost her and that what he had with her was worth more than anything else. He said just being near her made the whole world heavenly.

I tried to make him understand. I told him that he should go and then come back in two years and marry her and if he didn’t like it he could come back.

So then he decided it was okay to go. But on the day he was supposed to go, everyone was looking for him. He wanted to run away.

They spent their last night together. She told him that she would leave a little string hanging outside her window. Her parents were sleeping in the next room. And the girl’s little sister stayed with her.

So we went at night. People go to sleep early in the villages; like around 9 or 10. So we went in the dark. And we were feeling around under the windows for the string and then I found it. And then we slowly pulled on it.

She quietly opened the window and I jumped and hid. He told me to go home and that he would see me tomorrow.

They stayed up all night, and he sneaked out early morning before anyone woke up.

In the morning, everyone was looking for him. I asked him what had happened, and he was in a rush because the car and everything was waiting to take him to the airport. So he told me that he would tell me after he showered and got ready, on the way to the airport.

They laid the blanket on the floor and stayed really quiet to not wake the sister. He wanted to run away. He was like let’s get in the car and go somewhere else and hide for a while.

I told him no girl will be with a man with no money. Love isn’t enough to keep a girl. I told him to go and I would look after her until he came back.

He even sent her letters. There was a little kid who would go deliver the letters to her for 20 takas. She never responded. She got caught by her mother the first time she sat down to write. He would send her money and gifts and everything.

She got married to someone else but I didn’t want them to get married. I didn’t want my best friend marrying some girl next door.

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The city of Dhaka is so busy and on the move, its momentum wouldn’t allow it to notice if the world ended. In Dhaka, when walking on the sidewalk, you’ll bump shoulders with at least ten people. No one waits for anyone here. Car horns are a must in navigating through this city where traffic lights never work. Everyone is hustling, climbing social ladders with missing rungs, and bribing. Corruption is obvious here; even the fruits being sold on the street are sprayed with all sorts of unregulated preservatives.

Probably the only thing remotely close to being pure is the weed. And from adolescents with free time to working professionals with gray beards to rickshaw drivers making $6 a day, everyone seems to be smoking weed. You get a whiff of it every once in a while as you roll by on a rickshaw. There are some parks where people smoke weed and the passing police officer doesn’t bother. But God forbid you make out with a girl by the lake at the park. This same police officer will embarrass you and your girlfriend in public.

There are a lot of double standards in this city. Alcohol is illegal. One can go to jail for two months or more for having a few cans of beer. Meanwhile, underage prostitution runs rampant. Because of the high rate of poverty, poorer Bangladeshi men prefer chubbier women so brothels give fourteen-year-old girls Oradexon, a pill given to cows to make them meatier.

I was born in Sylhet, a smaller city five hours away from the capital city of Dhaka, but migrated to New York at the age of 10. This was my first time in Dhaka and I was there for an internship with a photo agency.

While roaming the Dhaka streets or looking out an apartment window, one can’t shake off the feeling that someone is watching. Someone’s watching, either through your window or peepholes as you leave or enter your apartment. These watchers keep tabs on who comes, who goes and who stays the night in your apartment. They keep tabs on what kind of smell seeps from under your door and what noise is heard on the other side of the wall. You’ll never see these watchers; they’ll hide behind their curtains and stare from their balconies across the street. And if they feel you’ve offended their moral code, they’ll mutter under their breath to companions as you pass by, and you’ll never hear these watchers but you’ll somehow feel their judgment.

One day, bored out of my mind, I started running laps around my flat. After running for a while I noticed an old lady watching from a balcony across the street but continued anyway. A few laps later a young man, her grandson I imagine, was next to her. By the tenth lap, the whole family was watching me.

On Shab-e-barat, a woman from the apartment across from mine called my house phone and invited me over for dinner. “A Muslim has to look out for another Muslim,” she said. She knew all about how I lived alone with no family in the city. She probably got the information about me from another watcher, the nosey guard downstairs. I politely declined.

Growing up in New York City, where my neighbors were never as curious, the experience was a little unnerving. The guard at the front gate had been instructed by my neighbors not to allow me to bring any woman in the building. Apparently, he wasn’t only protecting me from intruders but also from immoral decisions.

I met unmarried couples living together, but they had to lie and say that they were married. And yet with all these moral codes, everything happens. People find their way to alcohol, married women cheat and crazy sex parties take place. But the eyes are always watching. Someone is bound to know your business.

Towards the middle of my two-month stay in Dhaka, I became increasingly introspective. I thought twice about whatever I did. I thought about the eyes I couldn’t see watching me. But ultimately, I learned to ignore these eyes and found ways to get whoever I wanted inside my apartment. I never put up curtains on my windows and did whatever I wanted for all to see. I became sort of an exhibitionist for lack of a better word and learned to be comfortable with myself and in my own skin.

Growing up in a Bangladeshi community in the Bronx, I always watched my steps so as to not make a bad name for my family. But the two months in Dhaka made me want to yell out and tell the world that yes I do what I do and I’m not ashamed. I don’t have to tell you exactly what I do, but if you find out then good for you.

I returned to New York with this intense desire to reveal all my characteristics and habits that might be considered immoral or shameful. So that if I appear naked in front of the world there will be nothing for anyone to judge. There will be nothing for anyone to find out because I put it out there by myself.

I felt free. Liberated.

Transparent.

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Mullahs running. Police marching. Sirens wailing. Streets barren. Smoke in the distance. Gunshots. I’m watching from the rooftop of a hospital.

“Look what they’re doing to this beautiful country,” says a man next to me. He just came from performing the Jummah prayer. It’s Friday.

After the prayer, men gathered outside of the Nayasharak mosque in Sylhet, Bangladesh  speaking of a rally.

“The Motolli is a member of the Awami-league. That’s why he didn’t say anything and the imam said the munazat in Arabic.”

They looked down the street towards Kumarpara waiting and expecting. And then they came.

Police with their helmets and bulletproof vests waited around under the shade of a tree in the corner of the street.

I had left my DSLR at home and only snapped a few pictures with my iPhone. All the while tweeting what was happening around me on my cheap Nokia.

Hundreds with their caps on marched down the street towards the Shahid Minar, a monument built to honor the martyrs of the language movement of 1952. A mullah sat in a rickshaw with his mic and speakers in the middle of the march and yelled out, “Find the atheists one by one! Slaughter them! Slaughter them!” And the people repeated the chant. Some were more passionate than others. The banner in the front of the march claimed that this was not a political rally but only Muslims protesting against the blasphemers and atheists in Shahbag Square. The mosque they were coming from asked its followers to stand up for Islam.

Groups marched from all sides of town towards the monuments and soon the violence erupted. A car was set on fire inside a bank. Shots were fired. Homemade bombs exploded.

Police shot rubber bullets at the picketers who were destroying panels and stages built by those who gather at Chouhatta in solidarity with Shahbag protesters in Dhaka.

A young man with no political affiliations was shot and killed.

Either Jamaat-Shibir tricked the worshippers into picketing with them by claiming to just be concerned Muslims with no political agendas, or Jamaat-Shibir activists found their way in to the crowd and used them as their shield in attacking Shahid Minar.


I came down to the lobby from the roof to watch the news and found that they had lowered the shutters in the front. Hospital workers gathered around the tv.

“Can you believe he’s napping away while we are at war?”, said one who looked to have the most senior position in the group. A man walked in with droopy eyes. Then they turned off the TV and walked away in different directions to perform the Asr prayers.

Someone politically connected had told me the previous day that this hospital my aunt is in was owned by jamaat-shibir.

I got a call from my uncle who told me to stay indoors and that student league, associated with Awami league was breaking Al Hamra and setting it on fire. Al Hamra, a shopping mall, was supposedly Jamaat owned. Soon there were reports of other institutions, buildings and even hospitals being attacked.

A nervous doctor talked on the phone to his superior asking for advice. He was afraid that this place would be attacked as well.

I called a source who is politically tied to Awami League, the same person who had told me of this hospital’s connection with Jamaat the previous day. I asked him whether this place would be attacked as well; he replied that several people wanted to but then he directed them towards another place because he knew I was here. I believe him but it wouldn’t be unreasonable to think that politicians are quick to take credit for favors.


He said that whatever was to be done had been done for the day. Later on, on the TV,  I heard a journalist declare that there would be an even bigger showdown between the two groups on the following day. Jamaat-Shibir called a strike and the people returned to Shahbag and grew even more in numbers.

It turns out that dozens of journalists were attacked across the country by jamaat-shibir; and I would’ve been in grave danger if I had been holding a DSLR instead of an iPhone in front of the rally. I even have to hold myself back a bit when writing this post because a blogger was killed just a few days ago.

Back at home, my aunt’s mother won’t let me wash the dishes because its not a man’s job to do. She covers herself head to toe and prays 5 times a day and more. Wakes up every morning at sunrise, prays Fajr and then recites the Quran; a habit she’s had for decades. A habit she picked up from her mother in law after she was married at the age of 13.

She’s more concerned with living as the prophet did and the after-life than the political situation of the country. She is concerned for her children and grandchildren. She says that her prophet didn’t go around killing people in the name of Islam; why are these mullahs being so violent? She says that they should hold civilized discussions instead.

Jamaat-shibir and Islam has become almost synonymous here to many. Supporting Islam means to support jamaat-shibir. But there are also those who blame jamaat-shibir of manipulating the masses and using religion as a shield to hide behind and throw grenades from for political purposes.

The reason all of this is happening is that war criminals on trial for murdering and raping hundreds during the war of 1971, are also key figures of Jamaat-Shibir. There was a general amnesty offered to the public by Sheikh Mujibur Rahman after the war. And Jamaat-Shibir who supported West Pakistan in order to keep the Muslims of both sides together, were even allowed to return to politics.

Now that the war crimes tribunal has been set up by Sheikh Mujibur’s daughter Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina, Jamaat-Shibir are accusing the tribunal of being unfair and accusing Sheikh Hasina of using this as a political move to ban Jamaat-Shibir ahead of the upcoming elections to secure a win for herself and her party.


Meanwhile, Facebook friends in New York are putting up statuses accusing Awami league and the bloggers of trying to rid Bangladesh of Islam. Some are calling Bangladesh an Islamic nation. Others raised and educated in New York are claiming that these are signs that “judgement day is coming.”

Friends from Dhaka on Facebook are putting up angry statuses against the rajakars or the war criminals. Others are telling each other to calm down and use their heads instead of passions.

As I’m writing this on my iPhone, there are reports of even more violence in Zindabazaar a day after the initial violence yesterday. My uncle is calling from the hospital saying that they’ve pulled down the shutters yet again. I’m forbidden by all to even leave home. The only place I know of to send this out through WiFi is close to where all the violence is taking place. Excuse the typos. Tried to remain objective despite being angered by the call to kill all atheists by Shibir.

These are defining moments in this country’s history. The struggle going on will either lead Bangladesh toward a more liberal and “progressive” era or make it more into a religious state; the latter seems unlikely judging by the way things are going.

But on a personal level, and this is maybe because I grew up in New York, I would like a Bangladesh where people are free to be whoever they want without anyone forcing any sort of ideology down other’s throats. A Bangladesh where all are free to practice whatever they wish.

What angers me most though are those in New York with the comforts of a free-state showing support for an extremist political party.

But then again the constitution of Bangladesh says that it’s a secular state and then also says that Islam is its official religion.

 

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