This Innocent Corner

“The war in East Pakistan ended just before Christmas 1971.  By that time, Graham and I were married and tenants at a drafty Baldwin Street rooming house in Toronto, the unofficial ghetto for draft dodgers and other war objectors.  After nine cruel months, independent Bangladesh was born.”

- Robin Rowe in This Innocent Corner, p. 228

Forty years ago today, the Pakistani forces surrendered to the Indians.  They signed an historic agreement that ended both their brief 13-day conflict and the nine-month long civil war.  The process of recognition of Bangladesh as an independent state had begun.  India was the first – on the 6th December 1971 – and once the war was over, other nations followed suit like dominoes.  Canada finally recognized Bangladesh on the 14th February 1972.

Writer and activist Jahanara Imam, by Ragib at bn.wikipedia

But they were indeed nine cruel months.  Bangladeshi author and political activist Jahanara Imam who wrote the war diary Of Blood and Fire entered this into her journal on the day after the surrender:  “The entire city [Dhaka] is laughing and crying at the same time.  People are happy because at last they are free but the price that had to be paid in blood was immense.”

Standing on the rooftop of her home in Dhaka at the side of her only remaining son Jami as they raised the flag of independent Bangladesh, she thought to herself the words that are the title of this blog entry:  “Everybody wept but there were no tears in my eyes.”  On a personal level, she had lost so much in the conflict.  Who could not understand the breadth of her emotions?

Ever since my personal interest was drawn to Bangladesh, I have watched as the country has struggled in the aftermath of the conflict.  Forty years later, so much remains to be resolved.  Steps are being taken right now to heal some of the deep wounds through a war tribunal which is examining cases of people accused of war crimes and genocide.  However, it’s slow, perhaps necessarily, even though with each passing year, the memories become more indistinct as the people involved in the conflict pass away.  There are efforts made to keep the memories alive in the younger generation, including some rather disquieting and unorthodox methods.

I began this blog in order to delve more deeply into some aspects of my novel This Innocent Corner in the hope that it would widen the experience of readers whose curiosity had been sparked by the book.  It’s been a year since the book came out, a year that has followed the parallel track of the 40th anniversary of the conflict.  And so with the end of this 40th anniversary year, it is time also to draw this blog to a close in order that I move on to my next writing project.

It’s been a wonderful opportunity to follow this evolving history and to connect with both the people who are making it, and with the people reading about it in my novel and elsewhere.  For a modest novel entered into the infinite world of cyberspace, and only 21 entries, I’m pleased to say that 400 of you are visiting this blog every month which makes it, in my books, a great success.  I will continue to follow the news out of Bangladesh, and keep an eye on the blog to make sure the links continue to work.  Please get in touch with me through the blog if you have any questions or comments.  For writers, this is the one unparalleled advantage of the Internet – direct contact with readers.

What’s next for me?  I am writing about another stranger in a new land though her adaptation is quite different from Robin Rowe’s.  She’s a teenage refugee from Russia whose family lands in rural southern Ontario in Canada in the 1950s.  She’ll deal with her own growing self-awareness in a world beset with the Cold War, urbanization and migration.  There’s a thread of biography to the story, as it is the skeleton of the story of my mother’s family’s arrival in Canada.  But it is a work of fiction.  I hope you get to read it one day.