Banker to the Poor Read Online Free PDF

calls were local, others from far-flung Pakistani embassies or from Bengali officials searching for policy guidelines. Thrown into the midst of this excitement, I felt like part of an already-independent Bangladesh. There was no trace of Pakistan in the minds of those in the Karim household.
    While enjoying this intoxicating scene, I noticed a serious-looking man busy writing. He was Mr. S. A. Karim, the deputy permanent representative of Pakistan at the United Nations, who had arrived from New York that morning. Eventually, he wanted to read aloud what he had written. Everyone gathered around him. He had just finished drafting an appeal to all heads of governments to put pressure on Pakistan to stop the genocide in Bangladesh.
    I did not want the demonstration to be a poor show and kept trying to find out who was in charge of the next day's activities on the Hill. What preparations were being made? Was somebody preparing posters to hold up in front of the TV cameras? Nobody in Enayet Karim's house seemed to know. I thought I should take some initiative. I went to a department store and bought stacks of colored paper, paint, and brushes. Immediately I set to work making festoons, a skill I had acquired while a student at Chittagong College.
    Shamsul Bari arrived. He was teaching Bangla at the University of Chicago. I had known him from a distance during our university days in Dhaka. The War of Liberation brought us close. We worked together during the entire period of the war.
    By evening more people had assembled at Enayet Karim's house. Some worried about their families in Bangladesh; others wanted more information about the situation in Dhaka and what needed to be done. The night was spent analyzing the situation and deciding on the strategy for the following day: First, delivering an appeal to all embassies and heads of government, and second, organizing the demonstration on Capitol Hill. Mrs. Karim treated us as if we were her dearest friends, feeding us steaming plates of food while alternately cursing the Pakistani army and reciting Tagore poems.
    The next morning, March 29, I woke up to shouting. I threw on some clothes and ran down to the anteroom, where a short, skinny person with a beard was lecturing Karim in a loud voice. The small room was packed with five or six people.
    The tiny man was behaving very rudely. He kept accusing Karim and the other embassy officials of being traitors. The rest of the people in the room wore buttons printed with "BANGLADESH" in bold letters.
    These visitors had driven from Harvard and other institutions in Boston to join the demonstration on Capitol Hill, and they were furious when they discovered that Bengali embassy officials had decided not to participate. The tiny man—Dr. Mohiuddin Alamgir, a fresh Ph.D. from Harvard, who became one of my closest friends—spared no harsh words in attacking Karim. I tried to defend my host, explaining that embassy officials had contacts with the high officials in the U.S. State Department who could brief them on the real situation. It was a good strategy to keep our high positions in the government so that the Pakistanis would not freely wield the power of the government against the Bengalis in East Pakistan.
    Alamgir disagreed. This was only "sweet talk" by cowards who did not want to join the cause of liberation but protect their cushy lifestyle. The meeting ended in a stalemate. Only on August 4 did Bengali diplomats of the Pakistan embassy finally defect and join the Bangladesh government-in-exile.
    That afternoon we all gathered at the steps of the U.S. Congress to demonstrate. Bengalis came from distant places. Washington, New York, and Detroit had the biggest contingents. I was particularly surprised to see so many Detroit factory workers who were from Sylhet District in Bangladesh.
    Nobody knew quite what to do or where to go. We could not begin because we did not have official permission to demonstrate. We were still wondering how to