Review from Syed Badrul Ahsan
From the pastoral to the cosmopolitan . . .
Those who have had occasion to read Nirad C. Chaudhuri's defining autobiography will have some sense of how feelings shoot straight from the heart. And that precisely is what Mahfuzur Rahman gives you in From Naogaon to New York. The title says it all. From a very rural background to a very cosmopolitan ambience is how the writer encapsulates his experience. Strangely and yet in a familiar way, Rahman's tale is essentially our own, given that we have all sprung from pastoral roots, have grown to adulthood on the basis of certain values we have through the years tried upholding despite creeping ultra modernity. Rahman's memoirs, originally written in Bengali before he decided to go for an English version, are a Bengali's narration of the winding, sometimes tortuous journey he has gone through in his pursuit of dreams, or their realization.
Mahfuzur Rahman's forte has been economics. His career was rounded off through working for the United Nations, a link that was strong enough for him to make the United States his home. And yet, in the manner of so many of his generation, with roots in the old Bengal, he returns home every now and then, to be reminded of the past, to inform others of the traditions they are heir to. There are the stories of his early education in a madrassa, of certain human factors which often came with such education. Rahman speaks with feeling about a teacher who once gave one of two poverty-stricken siblings an anna to buy some food. The boy pleads with the teacher to give the coin to his younger brother, for the latter has not eaten all day.
The narrative is partly about lost times, a truth which manifests itself through the students of the madrassa trekking long distances to their classes barefoot and washing their feet at a well before entering the classroom. That said, there is the political aspect of the memoirs that the writer brings into focus, through a detailed description of his experience in prison following a students' demonstration on the third anniversary of the Ekushey February shootings of 1952. Rahman is among a large body of university students carted off to jail. There is the sense that he rather enjoyed this spate of heroism, until of course the time came for him to be freed through his Boro Khala's intervention. A particularly happy aspect of the memoirs is Rahman's unwillingness to be selective in his narration of incidents and events. His aunt upbraids him over his role in the demonstration and reminds him of the poor economic condition of his parents, who had certainly not sent him to university to do politics. The upshot of it all is that he signs a bond before the prison authorities and walks out of prison, his head bowed in the realization that he has caved in to power where his peers have not. Sometime later, when every other student is freed, Rahman watches them being welcomed back as heroes from the sidelines. He knows his heroism is not there.
An especially appealing feature of the work is the certain literary quality --- through descriptions of the human character and the scene as well as through instances of introspection --- Mahfuzur Rahman brings into his telling of the tale. Dynamism is what his use of the English language is all about. Be it a recalling of the old roads he once traversed day after day, be it a survey of the homestead (A stray dog has been around for the past few days. It might sneak into the kitchen. We the two brothers do not need to be called. We arrive at the mat), Rahman demonstrates his keen powers of memory and observation as he relives his boyhood and youth.
And then come the other stories, those of his early employment and constant trekking through mud and slush and dirt in the villages around Rajbari. There is then the call of Manchester and Rotterdam and eventually New York. The rural Bengali boy is beginning to see his horizons expand as he flies out to foreign land. In more ways than one, Rahman is representative of his generation, one powered by ambition which again rests on intellectual excellence. In From Naogaon to New York, you come by glimpses of individuals who were one day to play significant roles in East Pakistan and then the new state of Bangladesh, in various capacities. Observe Rahman's notes on a few of them:
". . . S.M. Ali, the budding journalist, came to our office to take a look at the typed version. Sharp and witty, fair-complexioned and with eyes like a cat's, Ali chain-smoked while he read the report";
"Professor M.N. Huda takes over as director of the Board. Dr. Nurul Islam joins the team. Medium built, light brown, he walks fast, carries a fat briefcase, and works at great speed. He smells Harvard and is held in some awe by colleagues";
"Mr. Sanaul Huq, a batch-mate of Mr. Quddus in the civil service, joined. Mr. Huq was a poet and fairly well-known in literary circles. A short, corpulent man, his gait was slow. He was also often absent-minded."
It is in Rotterdam in 1971 that Mahfuzur Rahman hears of the genocide launched in East Pakistan by the Pakistan army. Listen to his sad narration of the unfolding tragedy:
"Post has stopped arriving from Dacca. Colleagues at the School give me news from Dutch newspapers, sometimes translating them. The situation in Dacca gets prominence on the television."
Rahman is worried about his wife Farida and their children. The tragedy of 1971 is followed, in slightly over three years, by the calamity of 1975. This time, Rahman is in New York working for the United Nations. Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman has been assassinated and now it is his aide Farash Uddin who turns up in New York. As Mahfuzur Rahman relates the story, "He extends his hand to me. 'My name is Farash Uddin,' he began in Bengali. He is an ex-CSP, now a member of Bangladesh civil service. He was deputy secretary to Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. He was a student of economics at Dhaka University and is now working for his Ph.D. in Boston. He wants to work as an intern at the UN."
There is inherent charm in Mahfuzur Rahman's depiction of the times he has lived through, of the personalities he has encountered in life, of the values and experiences he has imbibed in his dealings with the world around him. The tale is a portrait, in large measure, of the Bengali middle class struggling its way to the top, without letting go of its roots. Which is why From Naogaon to New York resonates with the reader. It is Mahfuzur Rahman's unique story. And yet it is a life that is every other Bengali's. The writer's urbanity only adds substance to the landscape he recreates for his readers.
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