| It was 27 March 1974, four days after the Pakistan Day celebration of that year. Still dressed in the khaki POW uniform with a faded but still discernible broad X striped across the chest, he raised himself slowly from the chair. He had not yet shaved off the bushy, sand-coloured beard he had grown during the period of his captivity. His eyes were dull, almost colourless. The last time his family has seen them they had been a crystalline blue, sparkling as he spoke before leaving for East Pakistan in August 1971. He knew even then the turmoil and the mortal risks that lay ahead, for as a soldier he had fought in the 1965 War, with distinction, being awarded the Sitara-i-Jurat for valour on the Chawinda front. |
| But being a soldier it was his first duty to obey. In East Pakistan he fought again as bravely at Comilla, and when the time came in December 1971, he surrendered obediently, remaining incarcerated in a POW camp near Ranchi in India until he was repatriated twenty-seven months later. He looked weary, and spoke with a measured economy of words, as if still having to ration whatever he needed to say carefully and cautiously. “May I have an egg?” He asked quietly. “It will be my first since 1971.”[EXTRACT] |
Published in THE NATION 13 Aug. 1992, and reprinted in THE ARMLESS QUEEN (1994). |
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