Tahmima Anam

The novel is set in Bangladesh during the brief yet bloody war of liberation from Pakistan, from March to December 1971. The author traces the events from the perspective of Rehana: a woman who wishes merely to be a wife and mother: > she had married a man she did not expect to love; she lived a life of composure, a life with few surprises. She had asked her father to find her a husband with few ambitions. Someone whose wealth would not suddenly dissolve . And yet the woman finds herself widowed, without an income. Fragile and defenseless, she lacks the strength to prevent her brother-in-law from taking away her two children, Sohail and Maya. The desperate longing to have them back leads her to commit an act inconceivable for her, a religious woman observant of traditional norms: she steals jewels from a blind man and manages to reclaim her children by proving she has sufficient income to raise them. Having allowed her children to be taken from her, even if only briefly, leaves a deep wound; it fosters a sense of guilt in Rehana that shapes her relationship with them. She is a widow; she has left the children fatherless, having chosen not to give them a new parent. When the people in revolt declare the independence of Bangladesh, Rehana > felt certain that everything would resolve itself: (...) the country would become her home, and the children would continue to be her babies. Suddenly the world would be righteous on its own, and they would go on living ordinary, unexceptional lives . Yet, > a war had come to find them. Whatever was going to happen had already happened; now they would have to live in its shadow. We might wish to live in peace, leading an existence made up of small things (cooking, tidying the house, tending the garden, raising children, delighting in their love), but war arrives, and nothing is ever the same again. The novel does not grapple with the grand theme of war and peace; rather, it chronicles the inner journey that leads a slight, thirty-five-year-old woman to take an active role in her people's struggle for freedom, against a cruel and ruthless repression. At first, Rehana does so for her son, who has joined the Resistance; later, she acts out of a commitment to fight for the independence of Bangladesh. Rehana allows the partisans to hide ammunition and dynamite in her garden, shelters an officer of the liberation army critically wounded in an attack, and finally, courageously frees a prisoner by showing up alone at the prison and bribing the guards. Why does she risk her life? > I want to do my part. Maybe it isn't for my son, maybe it is something else. You don't think I can love anything other than my children? I can, I can love other things. Along this journey there are two pivotal moments in which a sort of stripping away of her innermost essence takes place. At her daughter's request, she decides to use her most precious fabrics to make blankets for the partisans: > the saris lay before Rehana like images in a photo album, evocative, a little accusatory Yet why not do it, if Maya dressed in white (the color of widowhood) to signify her contempt for luxury, and perhaps also an everlasting mourning for her father? > We are at war, (...) To prove that I belong here. That is why I am doing something . She severs ancestral ties as well. At the war's end, she visits her brother-in-law in prison—he who had fought and tortured partisans, and who now appeals to family ties in asking her to secure his release. > She is about to utter the obvious, expected words—“out of respect for my husband”—but then the sight of all of them, Joy and Aref and Mrs Sengupta, appeared before her. Yet even so, she might have forgiven him, but then she remembered the look on Maya's face when she learned of Sharmeen (her daughter's best friend, raped and slaughtered), and those first days of the war when she realized she would not emerge from it with her entire world intact And she said: > I cannot forgive you, brother. For my daughter's sake, I cannot forgive you. It is an intense book, in certain passages rich in action, which lends pace and suspense to the narrative. The author skillfully navigates two planes: family relationships and grand History, which, as is often the case, is compressed into a few months. The pivot around which the tale revolves is the mother-daughter relationship. For Rehana, it is taken for granted that Sohail will commit to the struggle, even if she is overwhelmed by fear for his life. She does not accept Maya's behavior. Toward her daughter, social prejudices and difficulties in communication and mutual understanding converge. When Maya leaves her mother to cross the border, intending to fight from there for the revolutionary cause, Rehana expresses her anguish and urges her to be careful. Yet her daughter tells her that it is she who is always worried about her mother. > Rehana was surprised to hear these words, but she understood that it had to be true, (...) a small window into her daughter's sealed heart. It was not that she was distrustful; she was burdened. Burdened by her beloved father, by the one who was gone, by her own widowed mother . It is a pity that this splendid book falters in its ending, which is muddled, rushed, and in certain respects implausible. The book is sustained by an elegant style, simple and effective syntax, and vocabulary that is refined in English while simultaneously enriched by words and idioms native to Bengali. Here we encounter that long-awaited blending of English with the local tongue, rare among writers of the Indian subcontinent. Why read it? A magnificent read, which transcends the specific history of Bangladesh to become a tale of all wars of liberation.