A Golden Age

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I've had this book since I found it on paperbackswap in 2012, so it's been on my shelf for a while too. The civil conflict is the backdrop to the story of Rehana as she tries to do the best for her family, and to keep her children safe, while acknowledging that her freedom fighter son Sohail and idealistic daughter Maya, young adults now, are determined to live by their own principles, no matter what the cost. That didn’t have a lot about the exact historical events of the Rhodesian War, but I still loved it, so something else must be wrong. That those nine months of the war were like nine generations, brimming with lives and deaths; that Sohail had survived, while his friends had died; and that here was the city, burned and blistered and alive, where she was going to see what remained of the man with the scar across his face who had lived in her house for ninety-six days and passed like a storm through her small life.

This military operation targeted Bengali intellectuals, academics including university students, and Hindus. The behavior of the characters that Tahmima portrayed throughout the book are simply illogical and out of consistency.

But this was a Gulshan-Banani account of the war - the horrors were not impactful enough, and the character lens was so narrow. 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.

When the book opens Reena has just lost her children to her in-laws, and then the book jumps a few years into the future where Reena and her children struggle though Bangladesh birth pains as the country gains its independence from Pakistan. This includes citing the 1963 film Cleopatra before it was released which left some critics questioning some of the liberties that Anam took with the fictional characters and telling of the story. The central character, Rehana Haque, widowed mother of two children, was originally from Lahore in the western half of Pakistan, but has lived in Dhaka, the eastern Bengali capital since her marriage. She is a single mother; her children are in their late teens and are part of the struggle for independence.The struggle to relate intensifies as the tension in East Pakistan increased and then the war starts and their passion for Bengali leads to their involvement and support for the war. Not a revolutionary, Rehana nevertheless agrees with her children's views and, with a mother's mixed feelings borne of fear of the risks they are taking, gets drawn into their guerilla activities herself. The Pak Sena gunned down Shahid Minar, University halls and Madhuda’s canteen, murdered eminent academics and several innocent citizens (Ref. Though the Indian military was already pumping the Bengalis against West Pakistan, the Bengali efforts bore fruit when the Indian Army intervened in December 1971 on the side of the Bengali, Pakistan gave Independence to East Pakistan on 16 December 1971, and thus Bangladesh came into being.

Do not expect to learn a lot about the Bangladesh War, Bangladesh People or its culture from this book, you will have a small idea about those after you read the book, but the book in whole is a novel about Rehana and her family! Then, I did not understand, Why maya, who is a member of communist party and a supporter of Mukti Judha did not want to shelter Major!Anam follows the lives of this one family and their close neighbours, illustrating how the historical events of that year affected people and changed them. At first, I was lulled into thinking that Rehana was an innocent in a sea of turmoil, but as the tale unwinds, I learned that she also harboured secrets, some of which had nothing to do with the invasion of Yahya’s forces.