Two Muktijoddha Letters of 1971
(Abdur Rouf alias Bobin from Sector 6 wrote this letter to his mother Rafia Khatun on 16 July 1971. At that time he was on the Indian border near Panchagarh, Bangladesh.) 16.7.71 I am writing from the Freedom Fighters' camp. It is raining very heavily outside now. I can see it through the opening of the tent that the whole horizon is overcast with clouds. Every so often thunderbolts flash. Since it's been raining all morning, I haven't been feeling well. Listen, Ma, have you noticed how, when the scarlet sun rises in the eastern sky after heavy showers the whole night, its fresh light is so iridescent, isn't it? Right now my thoughts are going back to my childhood. You would not allow me to go out in the rain; one day I sneaked out without telling you and slipped and fell down and hurt my leg, at which you screamed out and shed tears. Our table was covered with medicines I can clearly remember it. After that I wouldn't dare to go out alone, I would feel scared of falling down again. But today, today I am fairly courageous!. I have learnt to how to handle rifles. I have to spend night after night in bunkers, and yet I do not feel at all frightened. In the face of enemy attacks and in the midst of our counterattacks my veins and arteries throb with rising blood pressure. Ma, I really can't make you understand. When I recall my childhood days I find it impossible to express how I feel. But I feel an amazing change in me, this love I feel for my motherland, this love for my Bangla language. Ma, when I was a teenager Father one day took me to Syedpur, to show me a special train. There I got lost. Then, all alone, by myself, I wandered around a long time. Slowly the evening darkness began to descend, and for unknown reasons somehow I felt like crying. I felt I was lost. I thought I would perhaps never return to you. Then, crying, wet with tears, I began to walk towards to the station. That day, finding me on the street, Hye from Hazari Belpukur took me to his home. Sometime later I saw Father coming there. The next day no sooner had you listened to the whole story that you cuddled me in your lap and wept. But you didn't cry the day, Ma, that I left for the battlefield. My life is spent with bullets, shells, mortars. We have taken oaths to resolutely stand up against the heinous genocidal atrocities of Yahya. Now we have to pass sleepless nights in bunker after bunker. Or from time to time in the dead of night launch fierce attacks against enemy camps. This war is a war for justice, Ma, and victorious we will be. Oh, Mother, I remember very well that evening. It was not cloudy and overcast like it is today. The whole sky was full with stars. You were sitting in the kitchen slicing vegetables. I told you, "Ma, I am going." You looked up at my face. I said, "Ma, I am going to join the Muktijoddhas." By the light of the stove's fire I could see plainly see your face. Your two eyes shone. You stood up and looked at me in a gesture of benediction. A few leaves of the wood-apple tree behind my room frolicked in the breeze for a while before stopping. Ma, that very evening you bade me goodbye with a smiling face. Ma, it seems as if ages have gone by; each day seems to be a page from history. So many hopes, so many wishes have been turned into ashes by the fires of injustice. But Ma, at the end of an exhausting day won't that evening return again? Yours with affection
Bobin
(ABM Mahbubur Rahman of Chand Bualmari, Faridpur, dated 5 April, wrote this letter from Bashirhat Subdivision, the headquarters of Sector 8 in 24 Parganas. He returned home alive from the war to a free and independent Bangladesh.) 5 April 1971 Dear Ma,
By the time you get this letter, I will be very, very far away from you. Ma, I know you wouldn't have allowed me to go and so I left surreptitiously without telling you. But the day when I have avenged fully the disgrace visited on my mothers and sisters, when I have freed my motherland Golden Bengal from its enemies, that day will your son return to your lap. Pray for me, Ma, that my wish be fulfilled. Sincerely
Your luckless son
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