Beneath a child’s feet, the earth seems to speak — every grain of dust whispers, don’t stop here. The threshold of the house becomes a border line, beyond which the whole world feels incomplete if left uncrossed. I heard that whisper long ago, perhaps even before I had language for it, and all my life that call has pulled me out through doors — sometimes in mere curiosity, sometimes in the reckless courage of love, sometimes in the terrible silence of tearing up certificates in anger. But every later escape carried within it the shadow of the very first one — the five- or six-year-old boy who walked out silently, wanting only to see a village.
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As if a road, with no beginning anywhere,
as if a call, whose source no one knows —
only the feet know they must walk,
where the world begins the moment the yard ends.
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Jolilpur: The First Expedition
The market-day gossip at Bosontopur bazaar was the only news agency our small world had. It was there, one day, that a name reached my ears — Jolilpur — wrapped in a whispered mystery: in that village, right beside the school, lived a teacher whom people carefully called an atheist. The word’s meaning was unknown to me then, but perhaps it is the unknown word that pulls hardest. To a boy of five or six, this scrap of rumor was enough to become a call to discover an entire continent.
Telling the household would mean no one taking me, or worse, being stopped — even a child’s logic grasped that much. So, without telling a soul, I set out along the road that ran past our house from Bashantapur bazaar. In some quiet moment of the afternoon, I crossed a small field and arrived in Jolilpur.
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The village seemed like the mirror opposite of my own. In Bosontopur, the road ran past the village while the houses kept their distance, spread out in an open arrangement. In Jolilpur it was reversed — houses stood shoulder to shoulder with the road, and the trees overhead wove their shade into a green tunnel, as if the village had hidden itself from unfamiliar eyes. Walking through that tunnel, I kept thinking, surely the school lies just past this next bend — but each bend gave way only to more shade, more secluded path.
At last, past one more hamlet, a sliver of field opened up, and beyond it, hugging the village’s edge, stood the school — a lone building curled in on itself like a shy touch-me-not plant. To eyes used to Bosontopur’s two-building school, this single building seemed almost too modest, too ordinary. I did not yet know that most primary schools in Bangladesh stood exactly like this, unapologetically, on a single structure.
I never met that atheist teacher, never exchanged a word with him. The mystery remained a mystery that day — and now I think, perhaps that was for the best. Some curiosities survive only by staying unanswered; the moment they’re answered, they die on the spot. Past the school, I walked a little further along the footpaths between the paddies and turned back toward home before dusk fell — because even a child’s mind understood clearly enough what danger waited past sundown.
As if mystery were a closed door,
whose light goes out the moment it opens —
so the boy turns back from just outside it,
leaving the mystery intact, leaving himself unsatisfied.
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This was my first memory — the first expedition to see a distant village without telling home. A small pilgrimage on foot, yet within it slept the first breath of a lifelong tendency.
Shoktiyar Khola Bazar: In the Guise of a Procession
In our house at the time worked a teenage boy named Abdul Mannan. Father had seen a spark of promise in him, and so, alongside his work, arranged for him to attend school as well. This generosity bound Mannan and his family to father in a kind of blind devotion, and the two households fell into regular visiting. Beneath this relationship, though, ran another current — father was then deep in Jamaat’s organizational expansion, weaving a web of relationships everywhere in his drive to grow the membership, and it was Mannan’s promise that first drew father’s targeted attention. In that aim, father eventually succeeded — Mannan is a Jamaat man today, holding a senior position at Islami Bank Bangladesh. His fuller story can wait for another chapter.
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One day, visiting the Mannans’ house, I caught sight of a blood-red building across a horizon-wide field, as if someone had let fall a single drop of blood into all that green. Asking around, I learned it was the family planning office and rural health center, and that the place was called Shoktiyar Khola Bazar. I kept that curiosity about the red building nursed inside me, waiting for a chance — because curiosity, once born, doesn’t die easily; it only crouches, waiting for its opening.
The chance came in February 1991, on the winds of the national parliamentary election. A procession in support of some candidate was moving down our village road, and the noise and festivity of it pulled me into the crowd. I heard the procession would go as far as Shoktiyar Khola and then turn back. An idea flashed at once — here was my chance, to touch that red building hidden inside the crowd. With the procession, there was no fear of getting lost, no fear of the kidnapper stories either — an organized crowd itself became a kind of shield for one small, solitary boy.
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The procession moved past Bosontopur bazaar, along the road through Ulashnagar — a village I’d long wanted to see for the matbor’s house it held, and that wish, too, was granted a passing glimpse through the procession. Then came a river called Michhakhali, swollen in the monsoon, reduced to a helpless sandbar in winter. Past the river lay Petna, and just beyond it, the long-awaited Shoktiyar Khola. It was winter, and from this side of the Michhakhali the red building came into view for the first time — as blood-red as it had looked from afar, and, up close, every bit as vast, every bit as forbidding.
What wonder filled a child’s eyes! That a house could be so red, and so large! But sadly, there was no stepping into its courtyard — bound as I was to the procession, and the yard itself fenced in barbed wire, the first barbed wire I had ever seen. In our village, houses had no fences at all, only the soft screen of betel-nut leaves or bramble, and a simple gateway for entry. Yet here, at the boundary of this building, stood a massive iron gate, and around it a weave of sharp wire — as if, for the first time, I understood that the thing called the state was far harder, far more distance-loving, than any mud gateway.
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As if a fence stood alone and said —
stop here, no further —
yet to the boy’s eyes the fence itself was another mystery,
another border of some undiscovered country.
I returned with the procession to Bosontopur bazaar, where at the end they handed out puffed rice and jaggery in little polythene packets. Still chewing that muri-gur, I stepped into the school just as I heard an exam was underway! I ran to my teacher. Latif Sir handed me a question paper, told me to write my name, a few other things, and to work out the sum of two and two. Once I’d finished, he handed the paper back and said, ‘Tell your mother — you’ve passed.’ No words can hold that joy — I ran and leapt all the way home, showed mother the paper, shouting, I passed, I passed.
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But joy is short-lived. Days later, when school began, I sat in class disappointed — when the roll was called, my name did not come first. First came a boy named Shohid Miah, then me — roll number two. In that instant, a quiet but unshakable resolve took root — I must be first. From the next year on, I was never second again in that primary school. Just as the barbed wire of the red building had taught that a boundary is not an ending but the start of a new question, that small wound of being roll two taught, in its own way, that being first is never the last word — only the first seed of a new hunger.
Bishwambhorpur: First Sighting of the Tower
Talk of our thana town, Bishwambhorpur, reached me almost like a fairy tale — that it had a paved road, a high school, countless government offices, and something called an officers’ quarters, a phrase whose meaning stayed just out of reach — and it was exactly that unreached meaning that doubled the curiosity. There was only one question: how does one see a town three and a half kilometers away?
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It’s worth saying here that I was born in a village so remote that even today, in 2026, it has no paved connection to the district town. The road within the village itself remains unpaved, dirt. To reach a distant town, one relied on footpaths, on foot or bicycle, and in the monsoon, only by boat. Time itself seems to have slowed at this village’s edge, even now.
The chance came through a school announcement — students were being chosen to fetch textbooks from the thana education office. Custom held that the older Class Five boys would carry the books back on their heads, to be distributed later among the younger students. It was January 1993, and I had just entered Class Three. Too young, the teacher said at first, refusing to include me — this was Class Five’s work. But my pleading wore him down a little, and he finally said: bring permission from home.
I knew well enough that permission would never come — by then, the fence of the household’s strictness had already dug itself deep into a child’s mind. So on the day the students set off, I joined them without a word. They resisted at first, said the teacher’s permission was needed. I answered with a small, carefully woven lie — both the teacher and home had given permission. Luck was on my side; the teacher had already left earlier on official business, and the students were going on ahead, alone. In that mobile-less age, there was no way to verify anything on the spot — the lie survived unchallenged.
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Part of the path lay under knee-deep mud, perhaps from recent rain. Wading through it, I walked alongside the older boys, eyes full of new fields, new villages, a thrill of discovery at every bend. It was on this very path that I first saw a hand-cart pulled by a buffalo, loaded with bamboo, moving toward Bishwambhorpur bazaar — slow, heavy-footed, as if carrying some century-old rhythm down the muddy road.
Crossing two fields, another wonder rose on the horizon — a vast tower standing far off against the sky. I asked my companions, and learned it belonged to the T&T office, used for telephone calls. On that same muddy path, that same afternoon, on one side moved the ancient rhythm of the buffalo cart, and on the other stood the sky-reaching, future-pointing signal of the telephone tower — two ages seemed to walk hand in hand down the same muddy road, and even to a child’s eye it registered as some strange, nameless contradiction. That tower became, for the rest of my life, my private landmark for Bishwambhorpur — every time I headed toward that town, glimpsing it from some distant village always meant: there it is, Bishwambhorpur, there is the future’s signal.
As if a tower pierced the sky and said —
come, sound can be caged within me,
yet beside it the buffalo cart passes in silence,
as though two edges of time walked the same road, without speaking.
What exactly I did with the other students that whole day, I no longer remember clearly. What survives in memory is only the wonder-filled gaze — the paved road, and beside it, row upon row of government quarters, solid brick buildings. I heard that a government job alone earned you a place in such buildings, and that a government job required an education — a simple equation that lodged itself in a child’s mind that very day, though its full meaning would take many more years to understand. I never went inside the high school, set back as it was from the main road, but I saw from a distance its enormous building and its wide field.
Sunamganj Town: Crossing the Surma
Talk of Sunamganj town reached me too, as an even greater fable — the district town, far bigger than Bishwambhorpur, countless paved roads, buildings on every side, narrow lanes, the din of endless vehicles. Father sometimes went to that town for Jamaat’s work, for office business. I would beg to go along, but perhaps the worry of where to keep such a small child all day kept father from agreeing. Still, I searched in silence, patiently, for my chance — curiosity, after all, knows how to wait; it just doesn’t know how to forget.
The chance came through a tragic turn. A murder occurred in our village, and in its wake twelve men were named as accused and taken to the town jail. Their wives, mothers, and relatives decided to travel to town on the day of the court hearing, to visit them. I too begged to go along. In that group was Shahedar Ma, a woman close to our household, someone my parents trusted and considered responsible. I understood that going with her meant even if home found out, the scolding would be lighter.
I told the household, and pleaded, but was mostly ignored. On the morning they were to leave, I appeared at Shahedar Ma’s door at first light — I’m coming too. She refused at first, so I dressed myself in a clever lie — I’d already told them at home, and I’d return from town with father anyway, since father too was going for the case; he was, after all, something like a guardian to those twelve accused, the one who had hired their lawyer, the one keeping track of the court proceedings.
The three-and-a-half-hour walk began along a rural rhythm, brushing past the villages neighboring Bishwambhorpur — Gondamara, Chandergaon, Boalia, Karenter Bazar, Palash. Here and there along the way lay the skeleton of a British-era paved road, broken apart — the tar peeled away, leaving only scattered stone chips, and here and there, abandoned tar drums and the marks of some heavy roller once used to level the surface. Machinery, science, the craft of engineering — another flash of a child’s wonder, though this time the wonder stood on the body of a ruin, atop the discarded skeleton of an empire.
After two and a half hours of walking, the group rested in a field. It was an all-women group, ten or twelve strong. From the folds of their saris, from bundles, food emerged — some had brought cooked rice and curry, others dry flatbread. Everyone shared and ate, then the walk resumed. The simple wisdom of carrying food for a journey lodged itself in my mind that day for the first time — and yet, because I myself had made that journey without bringing any food at all, perhaps that is why, even now, I rarely think to pack food before setting out anywhere. Some habits are born precisely from an absence.
Past Bishwambhorpur, from the very next village, another tower rose into Sunamganj’s sky, far larger than the last, far more imposing. Bishwambhorpur’s had been a plain, humble line running straight from base to tip; this one was wide at the base, tapering upward, crowned with drum-like antennas vast enough to seem to be speaking with the sky itself. Wonder flashed again in a child’s eyes, but this time mixed with a quiet unease — such a large town, and already, such a large sign of it.
Reaching the bank of the Surma river, Sunamganj town came into view on the far side — hundreds of rickshaws racing along the riverside road, the noise of the crowd and the hum of traffic audible even from this bank. We crossed the Surma in a hand-rowed boat, and it was in that crossing that I met real fear for the first time — the boat packed with passengers, water lapping at the very rim, and the thought rising unbidden: what if it sinks? That fear took root in the chest, and yet the boat reached the far shore safely, as if the fear itself had been a test to be crossed in silence.
As if a river carried fear upon its back,
and only by crossing that fear does one grow up —
water brimming at the rim, yet the boat does not sink,
only the chest trembles, silently, telling no one.
Stepping into the town, the ear filled at once with the cawing of countless crows — so many crows live in a town! Litter scattered everywhere, and some faint, foul smell I can no longer recall exactly. Crossing the river, walking the town’s streets, we arrived before the jail, along whose wall stood a row of shops, most of them open-air, and among them, mostly betel-leaf and areca-nut stalls.
Somewhere along the road, a little after the food break, I ran into father — he was arriving by bicycle. Word of the journey had reached home, so he had brought, in a bag, a pair of his elder son’s trousers — whether I owned any long trousers of my own, I no longer recall clearly. What I do remember clearly is father scolding me even as he dressed me in them, folding the legs up from the bottom so my feet could show — the scolding and the care seemed to come from the same hand, indistinguishable fingers. The rest of the way passed sitting on the front rod of father’s bicycle, and I stayed with him the whole day, though once, briefly, I was left again with the women’s group.
In Sunamganj town, I saw a four-wheeled, modern vehicle for the first time — jeeps, in particular, caught the eye. All around, a flood of people, noise, shops, rickshaws, bicycles, children running about. That was the first time I saw a girl riding a small bicycle of her own, with such ease, as if the whole town were her own courtyard — an entire kingdom of wonder descended on a child’s eyes. So this is a town, then — this is what a town is like!
From that first, innocent walk to Jolilpur to this long, eventful expedition to Sunamganj town — with every journey, the strategy grew one step more intricate, one step more daring. The first time, walking alone; the second, folding myself into a procession’s crowd; the third, wearing the disguise of a false permission; the fourth, leaning on a trusted person’s shoulder to manufacture social legitimacy. At the heart of every expedition lay the same hunger — an intense curiosity to see what had never been seen, and an instinctive skill for slipping past whatever obstacle stood in that curiosity’s way. That skill, perhaps, had already laid the foundation, long before, for so many more escapes, so many more acts of reckless courage still to come.
As if a boy walks again and again toward the border,
each time with a little more courage, a little less fear —
and after crossing every border, comes to understand,
there was never any border at all, only a line the mind had drawn.
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