My country is covered by a Hijab
“Eid”. When I hear the sound, my heart
still softens with love. Growing up in Bangladesh, the advertisement 'we want
new shoes during Puja' was not prevalent in my life. Although I was Hindu,
rather than celebrating Pujas, the festival I looked forward to the most was
Eid.
Celebrating Eid meant eating pulao, korma,
rezala, kebab, semai, zarda pulao... Yes, I'm a little gluttonous. I used to be
eager to eat such delicious foods at my friends’ homes twice a year during Eid.
In my Hindu house, my grandmother, although she was the greatest cook in the
world, could not cook the meat properly. She used to make meat curry with cumin
powder! To eat delicious meat, I had to go to my Muslim friends’ houses.
My grandfather, who always was respectful
of other’s religions, used to keep a ‘zanamaj’- a prayer mat- in our house so
his devout Muslim friends could pray when they came to our home. My grandmother
used to make me and my sister new dresses every Eid, even though we never asked
for them. Today my grandmother and grandfather are no longer around- but I
still have my Bangladesh.
But what should I do when it seems like my
Bangladesh has been covered by a hijab!
The last time I went to visit my home, I
looked around the streets of Dhaka and saw that not many women were wearing
sarees- rather, they were wearing hijabs. The men wore a strange kind of salwar
kameez, the salwars not even reaching their ankles! What Bangladesh was I
looking at?
Bangladesh is not Pakistan or Saudi Arabia,
but my golden Bengal. We bled for a secular country. Four hundred thousand
Bangladeshi women were raped, three million people were killed, ten million
people became refugees, thirty million civilians became internally displaced in
the 1971 Bangladesh genocide, and a planned killing of intellectuals took place
at the dawn of independence, a killing which was one of the most brutal
massacres in history.
So why, when we fought so hard for a
secular nation, are these hijabs and strange salwar kameez appearing from
nowhere? As a child, I always saw women wearing sarees, jasmine garlands
adorning their hair and tips displayed against their foreheads. Now, if you
want to see somebody dressed up like that, you have to look for the women who
sing Tagore songs!
At the age of eighteen, I went to India to
study. Not long after, I moved to America. I have been out of my country for many
years, but every evening and early in the morning, my soul is eager to hear the
tune of ‘azaan’. When I last visited Bangladesh, as I laid awake in the early
hours of the morning due to jetlag, I heard ‘Azan’ after so many years! My eyes
filled with tears.
Yes, ‘Azan’ is mine. ‘Eid’ is mine.
‘Zaynamaj’ – the prayer mat- is mine. Even though I am an atheist, I belong
there. Please don’t cover everything that has been inside my blood since birth
with these ‘hijabs.’
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