It is peaceful to be able to let go of some memories. But a mother of a deceased son never finds that bliss. ‘Sadness engraves its mark’ in her every little gestures; the way she sits, the way she her voice sounds so mild, the way she absentmindedly strokes on the sofa. The poet Shamsur Rahman once wrote “in our verandas and our doorframes, in our chairs, tables, and mattresses, sadness has imprinted its melancholy.” 7 months ago when Tauki’s battered dead body was found in the muddy water of Shitalakkha River this house became engulfed in sorrow from that day. Tauki’s house is still a dark place. Narayanganj is a dark place. Tauki’s father Rafiur Rabbi is rresponsible for this. He never let anyone, from the Prime Minister to the people of Naraynganj, forget that an innocent boy was murdered. Tauki would have been 18 on last Saturday. Many people would have come to the house like today. But today I, Kaiyum Chowdhury, Ashok Karmokar, Jahid Mostafa, and the rest of us were there with profound sadness. Suddenly a boy entered the room with a tray in his hand. I was startled. For a moment I thought I was seeing Tauki; the same adorable face, the same innocent look in his eyes! The boy was Tauki’s younger brother Saki. There was a painting competition to be held at the Shahid Minar in memory of Tauki. “Why don’t you come too?” Tauki’s father was saying to his wife. “I don’t want to” she replied. Tauki’s mother Rownak Rehana’s voice sounded soft, pure and there was a calm that people get from weeping so much. “I can feel him standing beside me if I go” She said. She continued in an undertone “he used to go with me everywhere…” She absentmindedly swept her hand back and forth on the sofa as if her son was lying there and she was ruffling his hair fondly. Saki was sitting beside her. No one could say anything in reply. At one corner in the room Tauki’s old computer sat lifeless and mute. Only the flowers his friends left in the morning seemed to be talking with Tauki’s picture. The Czech novelist Milan Kundera once wrote that ‘people struggle against power, memory struggle against oblivion.’ Memory is like a candle, when the light extinguishes it leaves behind wax. The memory burns things like that. Tauki’s father is fighting against oblivion. He wants the country to remember the assailant of his son. He wants justice. He is putting him against extremely powerful people. He is putting himself against his own instinct too. People naturally want to move out of the mourning period and move on. But Rafiur Rabbi and Rownak Rehana are keeping the fight alive even if that means reopening the wound every day. They are doing it in the hope that one day the government will respond, in the hope that one day, may be one day, the whispers and mutters will explode into screams and roars of protest. They are doing it in the hope that the mafia Godfathers of Narayanganj will fall one day. In the Hollywood movie Desperado the hero avenged the death of his lover by destroying the killer godfathers. Rafiur Rabbi wants justice for his son. He is now desperate. He is standing against a powerful adversary, who has enormous wealth, power, and most of all the blessings of the highest people of the state. Rabbi is an ordinary man but he is putting up an extraordinary fight. What did Rabbi do? He built up a movement against the corruption and crimes in the city. He was also an organizer and leader of the National Resources Preservation Committee, the Ganajagaran Mancha, and Narayanganj Shangskritik Jot. The ‘renowned’ Osman family felt threatened by his activities. Rabbi says they killed his son to punish him. But he could not be beaten. Whoever can stand longer in the battlefield wins the battle. Let’s see who remains standing at the end of the day. Desperado means desperate in Spanish. Rafiur is now desperate. Since the day they found the distorted body of Tauki in the river he became the grief of all mothers, the fire of vengeance in all fathers and inspiration for protest for many brothers. Rabbi brought his strife to the forefront and made this a national issue. Kaiyum Choudhury was saying this, in a fruitless consolation to Tauki’s mother “we share your burden too”. A young school teacher told us that all students in his school know who killed Tauki. Rabbi told us that “People wanted to destroy the torture camp of the alleged murderer Shamim Osman’s nephew Ajmeri Osman. But we want justice, not vengeance.” Shamim Osman’s brother Nasim Osman MP wants to stamp people like Rabbi under his feet like insects. Last Sunday he warned in a public meeting “No one has survived going against us. We will have more power in the future. The insects, the ants and cockroaches that are still running around thinking they can do something to us, will get stamped under our feet. None of them will win against us.” (Prothom Alo, 7 October). In the country of 12 Bhuiyas many new Bhuiyas have sprouted recently. They think they own the state and they are the kings. If we cannot stop these people now we have very dark time ahead of us. Many other godfathers like the Osmans have the hidden desire of treading down on the ‘insects’. They think people are insects that you can obliterate when needed. But it is important what the Prime Minister thinks. The Prime Minister replied to the allegations about Osman put to her by saying “Shamim is important for the party too.” (Prothom Alo, 12 September, 2013). The movement against Tauki’s murderers is also the movement against other murderous godfathers. The country is being smothered by these criminals. The Mafias are sucking the country dry. These people took the life of bright young boy who was an artist, a poet, who thought “What I will be, no one has ever thought of.” This fight of monsters against humans is the most relevant human struggle right now. But much of it gets lost in the cacophony of fight for the power. The big political parties have become a sanctuary for these monsters. The people must help themselves and not look to these corrupt powers for solution. In 1955 an African America woman created a huge movement by protesting against his son’s murder. We are all supporting Rafiur Rabbi. But if the culprits are not brought to justice they will destroy Rafiur’s whole family, who they think as bugs that can be trodden upon without consequences. If Rabbi loses this battle against the monsters then it will be the defeat of Bangladesh itself. It will be the defeat of humanity. And if he does lose will we still have hope for our country?
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