How to Love a Country: thoughts on Bangladesh’s 50th Independence Day

I thought a lot about writing about this day — or not writing about it — this past month. I negotiated between celebrating in pride and holding a mirror to the mockery that’s been made of our freedom in many ways by the same people who brought it to us. I deliberated between love and disdain, like how one would with a child that didn’t live up to the dreams of everyone that came before it. But isn’t that how one loves a country? Always in between, always in a constant space of questioning and accepting, of loving and pushing back, of being with it and leaving. To love one’s country wholly, fully, in all its entirety is a tightrope. And I don’t plan on winning that walk. I just want to be able to love my country while also holding a mirror to everything she broke for us, all the freedom she still has to give us — all the freedom that we still have to give her.

Yesterday, on the eve of independence, we were, once again, immersed in violence — police attacking those protesting & those documenting protests against the Indian PM’s visit. Oh the irony. The irony of history being repeated: standing up against an oppressor and the state violently attacking in response; the ways they keep putting shackles on our বাক — our speech — over and over again, until there is death, and more death.

My aspirations for telling the story of Bangladesh shuttles between a dream and a fear: that sometimes telling a story means shattering the sharpest of silences, because that many sharp edges will inevitably spill blood.

I wrote “No One Sings Lovesongs for My Countrymen” in anticipation of a land, a lifetime, where freedom can come before bloodshed, not from it. I am so thankful to Nadia Q Ahmed & the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for giving it space in this amazing project with voices from the Bangladeshi diaspora. Give it a read. May you revel in the glory of this independence, but may you never forget to keep fighting for it.