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dHaKa TrIbUne
Victory Day 2013
Monday, december 16, 2013
Escape to Bangladesh Tale of a family stranded in West Pakistan after the Liberation War and their strife to get back home
I
n Barrister Harun ur Rashid
n 1971, I was a mid-level officer at the Pakistan Foreign Office and lived in Islamabad with my family. Little did we realise that the military junta would be so brutal and ruthless in erstwhile East Pakistan, launching a military crackdown on unarmed Bangali civilians on March 25, 1971; constituting genocide and crimes against humanity. We did not know what actually happened on March 25 and 26, as the media in Pakistan provided us with a sanitised version of the horrible events. We began listening to the news broadcasts of All India Radio and the BBC for correct news. I was deeply concerned about the fate of my elder brother, Barrister Kazi Ahmed Kamal, who was very close to Bangabandhu as they were together as undergraduate students at the Baker hostel in Calcutta during 1942-44 (after independence, my brother was the first Bangladesh Ambassador to East Germany in 1972). I found out later that my brother fled Dhaka and went to our village in Vikrampur. The escape started from Peshawar, taking the author and his family on an arduous journey to their freem
We were mentally and physically distressed. We had to spend day and night for almost three days in the donkey-shed. By the time we left the shed we were joined by a few more Bangali couples. On the third day at 9pm, we were advised to get ready to move onwards to Landikotal
When the Pakistan army surrendered in Dhaka on December 16, it erased forever from our mind the ignominy of being ruled by others and brought us the resplendent dawn of freedom. From that day our lives changed forever. Soon, in 1972, we were given an option to serve Pakistan or “so-called Bangladesh.” When we exercised our option to serve Bangladesh, our services were terminated immediately and we became hostages under the Bhutto government. We soon learnt that we would be sent to concentration camps outside Islamabad and would remain there until the issue of the repatriation of Pakistani prisoners of war was resolved.
Escape from Pakistan to Bangladesh During this time of helplessness, some of us decided to escape from Pakistan to return to Bangladesh via Afghanistan and India. The question for me was: how to make it happen with a family of three young children, the eldest child being 6 years and the youngest barely 2? Our main considerations revolved around three factors — how would the children handle the escapade? Would we be able to keep them quiet during
the trip, as the slightest noise from the children (in Bangla rather than Urdu) would involve risking arrest and jail? How safe would we be with the unknown people who would organise the escape? I contacted a group of Peshawar University students who agreed to organise our escape in exchange for cash. We would go to Peshawar on our own from Islamabad, there we would be picked up by a car (the registration number was given to us) at Peshawar railway station, and thereafter we would be transported by trucks and cars to Afghanistan, crossing the border at Torkham via the Khyber Pass. We were dressed in Pakistani style Shalwar Kameez, and we took a third class compartment to avoid meeting any friends or acquaintances on the journey. The police checked our compartment and left us undisturbed. We arrived at the railway station in Peshawar and found the car with the given registration number waiting at the station. After a good 45 minutes’ drive, we were led to a donkey’s mud house, and told to stay there until further notice. The location of the shed was near the entry to the Khyber Pass. We realised we were under the control of tribesmen who had covered their faces with chadors (cloaks), leaving only their eyes uncovered. We almost froze in shock when we learnt that the guard who took care of us was a convicted murderer who had escaped to the tribal areas of Pakistan. We were mentally and physically distressed. We had to spend day and night for almost three days in the donkey-shed. By the time we left the shed we were joined by a few more Bangali couples. On the third day at 9pm, we were advised to get ready to move onwards to Landikotal. The place was well known for its smugglers’ market in the tribal area. Two huge trucks came and we had to climb up a ladder onto the top of one of them. Below us were two lev-
els, they were filled with molasses and boxes of vegetable ghee being transported to Afghanistan. We sat down on the top of the truck, where we were covered by a huge tarpaulin so that no one could see us from outside. Simply put, we became human commodities. We arrived at midnight in Landilkotal and were taken to a house. We sat on a floor covered by a white sheet. We were subjected to a lengthy sermon, the purpose of which was to extract money from us. We handed over some money to them and the final leg of journey began. We administered sleeping medicines to my younger children, to prevent them from making any noise in the truck. The border opens at 6am every day. Our trucks got to the border in the early morning but the men who had been bribed at the check-point were not present and my small children began to wake up. We were worried that the slightest noise from the top of the truck would land us in jail. The driver, sensing a delay at the border, put the music from the truck radio up to its loudest volume. This would minimise the risk of any noise such as a baby crying, or coughing and sneezing being heard. After a delay of an hour and a half at the border, the bribed-men came and our truck was allowed to cross the border into Afghanistan.
At last in Afghanistan Inside the truck, we did not know whether we had actually crossed into Afghanistan. Eventually we noticed the truck was travelling on the right side of the road, instead of the left side as it did in Pakistan. We realised that we were in Afghanistan and soon our tarpaulin was lifted. We were greatly relieved that we were out of Bhutto’s trap in Pakistan.
We waited three weeks in Kabul to get the Afghan Air flight to New Delhi and then to Calcutta. Finally we flew to Dhaka. In hindsight, I think that we took a great risk with our lives because the university students, to whom we gave the money, disappeared. We were transferred from one group to the other in the tribal areas like a relay race; they could have done immense harm to us, in particular to my wife. I will never forget this extraordinary episode of my escape with my wife and children. l The writer is former Bangladesh Ambassador to the UN and Geneva.
We were worried that the slightest noise from the top of the truck would land us in jail. The driver, sensing a delay at the border, put the music from the truck radio up to its loudest volume