Jahanara Imam Passage for class seven
On the day when Bangamata Begum Fazilatunnessa Mujib was released from house
arrest, another woman was sitting in another part of Dhaka city writing a diary.
The lady’s name is Jahanara Imam, a teacher by profession. Another identity of her is that
she is the mother of Shafi Imam Rumi. She lost her husband four days ago, and her eldest son Rumi has been missing since August of 1971.
No one could tell where he was. If wanted, her son could have become a reputed engineer, he could have been sent to the Illinois Institute of Technology. But Rumi gave up the chance of admission to one of the best universities in the world; instead, he joined the liberation war for our country.
That mother is sitting with her little son, Jami. The country has become independent.
Mother keeps writing in the diary “In the afternoon, the news of Rayerbazar’s slaughterhouse also reached my ears. I feel very restless.
What should I do? Where should I go, I can’t understand anything. Rumi! Is Rumi alive? How can I get news? From whom can I get news? Sharif left at that time. Both of us were suffering for Rumi, waiting for Rumi.
Now I have to do everything alone, bear all the pain alone. Phone and electric lines are still not fixed. Who will decide?
All over Dhaka people laugh and cry at the same time. Smile for freedom. But so much blood had to be shed that laughter of joy drowned in tears.
Later, in the 1990s, Jahanara Imama formed Ekattorer Ghatak Dalal Nirmul Committee
along with 101 Bangladeshi activists to seek justice for the genocide carried out during
the Bangladesh liberation war.
Until her death, she was vocal about the punishment of the war crime and crime against humanity in 1971 by Pakistani allied Razakar and Al-Badr.
