A Golden Age

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Even Rehana could see the logic: what sense did it make to have a country in two halves, posed on either side of India like a pair of horns? As she recited the pickle recipe to herself, Rehana wondered what her sisters would make of her at this very moment.

This is a debut novel set against the Bangladesh War of Independence; it’s not a historical novel, but the story is told through the medium of one family and those in their immediate circle. I enjoyed this first novel, which relates the struggles of the widowed Rehana Haque to support and protect her grown son Sohail and daughter Maya, during the Bangladesh War of Independence in 1971. The central theme here, in the book about Bangladesh, is that all can be sacrificed except her children. Ca poveste, romanul este frumos, vocea Rehanei te atrage intr-o istorisire simpla, o descriere usor naiva a unor evenimente dramatice (cand profesori si intelectuali erau executati la Universitate, personajele noastre mananca byiriani si o casatoresc pe Sylvie). She cannot have children so works to have Rehana seen as unfit after the death of Iqbal so that she have get custody of Sohail and Maya.West enjoyed political and economic supremacy; East was a poor relation, neglected even during the cyclones and floods that plagued its delta planes. It pursued the systematic elimination of nationalist Bengali civilians, students, intelligentsia, religious minorities and armed personnel.

The author makes little attempt to explain the history and ethnic differences (sending me to do some outside reading), and hides key details about the characters lives until later in the story. We then went on to Kathmandu, where we came upon a human chain dredging a river looking for bodies, after a busy but rickety wooden bridge collapsed.

Anam, choosing the zoomed in scenery of an upper middle class family, brilliantly connected the conflict and struggle at familial level to the much bigger story of revolution. Ultimately, even in the darkness of war there is light, as 'in the midst of all this madness,' Rehana realises, 'I found the world seemed right for the first time in a very long time'. However, the inclusion of unexplained vernacular terms does not detract from the enjoyment of a book, which I can strongly recommend, nor its comprehensibility. I just can't get enough of it, especially when it's about something I know nothing about, like the 1971 Bangladeshi struggle for independence from Pakistan. It was to the West that her two small children had been sent in 1959 after she lost a court appeal to keep them.

Rehana struggles with understanding passionate nationalism of her children and finding her own personal identity outside of being a mother and where her sense of nationalism fits into that identity. This story about the separation of Bangladesh from Pakistan takes place from very shortly before the civil war (with a completely unnecessary prologue set 20 years before) until the day before the war is over.

She is a single mother; her children are in their late teens and are part of the struggle for independence. Widow Rehana Haque's daughter Maya and son Sohail are teenagers, both heavily involved in the resistance efforts against West Pakistan.

From all that we see of it in the news over here in Canada, you would think the country is in a perpetual state of flood/disaster/famine.Most of the descriptions of the book compel me to compare it with the book ‘The days of 1971’ by Jahanara Imam.