***Writing about the war thus became a vicarious celebration of its power — which somehow did not flow beyond the printed pages into the spheres of hard reality. Throughout the seventies and eighties, this reliving the great moment of history by proxy became the dominant exercise. As a result, most writing about the war tended to be mnemonic reconstructions of those moments at a remove of time — and not a record of actual encounters with history itself. There was an undue emphasis on the fictionality of experience, at the cost of the truth of feeling, which often melodra-matized the hardcore experience.

IN reviewing a selection of short stories that have the war of liberation as their focus, it is important to step out of the. familiar paradigms of the war as a historical main event, or a culmination of the struggle for Bengali nationalism, and consider, for a moment, that the war was also a rearticulation of our emergent discourse of power and resistance that clearly defined our visions of culture and the way our history would henceforth he narrated. The war of liberation created its own emancipatory discourses but many of these ran dry and were devoid of meaning by the time the country slipped under presidential rule and subsequently, martial law regimes. Like post-colonial literatures elsewhere in the world, the post-1971 literary productions in Bangladesh began by describing and investigating the nation and its new found spaces, but this effort was also accompanied by a major unsettling of the terms of investigation. Borrowing words from Homi Bhabha, we may say that the dominant meanings of the time appeared partial' because "they [were] in medias res . . . and the image of cultural authority [was] ambivalent because it (was) caught, uncertainly, in the act of compromising" its powerful image" (Nation and Narration, London: Routeledge, 1990:3). One of the main reasons for this shift in perspective and the disorientation of liberatory discourses was the re-emergence of the old order. That order -- reflected in the structures of power and politics -- was never dismantled, it quickly readjusted to the new realities, sacrificing only its expendable members and components, and completely usurped the new clusters of authority (the disbanded guerrilla groups, the freedom fighters, youth activists). In the process, the form of the order underwent some minor changes but the substance remained the same, and its edifice became all the more entrenched, Notwithstanding the provisions of a remarkably modern Constitution the state resumed its repressive, often totalising functions.

However, the discourses that survived and carried out their liberatory functions were those that reinterpreted

the nexus between power (the positive and formative) and knowledge as the nation searched for a new textuality. The media, for example began questioning the predominance of power as it preempted any critique of its operation, judicial literatures challenged the state's repressive apparatus, and protests mounted by various radical groups (may of them operating from the underground) unsettled the technicalities of power. But the salvage operation was largely left to literature, as it had the capacity to transform power into knowledge. But literature, too, had to face its own challenges: in a situation where the post-colonial nation was embarking on its uneasy and tenuous journey towards the future while clinging, regrettably, to earlier forms of repression as means of authority, literature was handicapped by these inherent ironies and contradictions. Instead of taking up a fight against the entrenched forces that resisted historical change, and re-embedded the old repressive order in all our political, social and cultural structures, literature became involved with its own fictionality. Its interior was filled up with imagined, instead of real, spaces. It became inclusive. brooding and preoccupied with its own forms.

Writing about the war thus became a vicarious celebration of its power — which somehow did not flow beyond the printed pages into the spheres of hard reality. Throughout the seventies and eighties, this reliving the great moment of history by proxy became the dominant exercise. As a result, most writing about the war tended to be mnemonic reconstructions of those moments at a remove of time - and not a record of actual encounters with history itself. There was an undue emphasis on the fictionality of experience, at the cost of the truth of feeling, which often melo-dramatized the hardcore experience.

However, there have been good works of fiction about our liberation war that did not temporalize history in that narrow sense. There is rather an immediacy of felt experience, and an expression of power transforming our present, in those works. Syed Shamsul Haque’s The Story of the Second Day is a striking example of how feelings can be activated and worked up even at a remove of time, and how history can be made coterminus with our reality of living. Many stories from Muktijuddher Galpo (ed. Abul Hasnat, Dhaka: Abosar. 1997) also perform such a function, although there are a few that cannot avoid the rut of sentimentality and the blood-and-thunder narration that is so common in stories about actual wars.

Muktijuddher Galpo is a well edited selection of short stories of three

decades about the liberation war. Out of hundreds of stories about the war, the editor has selected only 70. It was a difficult job. no doubt, as any selection obviously implies following a criterion or a set of them, which can be easily subverted by a too rigid application of any predetermined value judgement (or an ideological, political or literary bias). There have been other selections of such stories — in one, new' or "experimental writers were kept out; in another. stories were chosen to conform to a party ideology. Abul Hasnat has gone for the "truth of experience," and an "objectivity of vision" - as he informs us in the brief introductory write up. "The storytellers of our time," he tells us, "have been looking at our war of liberation with an objective and unbiased eye, that expresses their genuine feeling and love for their countrymen. There is passion, but it does not distort our commitment to truth." The stories in Muktijuddher Galpo turn history into fiction, but does not fictionalize history. There is hardly any attempt by any of the writers to turn the war of liberation into anything more than what it was - a war we fought for our survival. This emphasis on fact is important. since it gives them a wide field of vision and enough material to work into their fiction. The war — the historical war, was as It would Inspire us through all our lifetimes without the need of fictionalizing or symbolizing any of Its contents. The 70 stories have been chosen for the variety of their experience and their 'rich and diverse artistry'. Many of the writers either participated in the war. or looked at it from close quarters, some felt its power at a remove of time and place, while some were too young to participate in the war, but all had made tremendous emotional Investments in the war. The stories however, record this Intense personal Involvement only within the framework of the fiction. Therefore, the stories develop Independently of their "creators’ involvement. This is perhaps, what Abul Hasnat called objectivity'. It is not a blocking of personal emotions and feelings, but a rechannelling of them in energizing the stories' content and their vision, without in any significant way altering their truth content.

Abul Hasnat has brought together three generation of writers -- from Satyen Sen and Shawkat Osman to Akhtaruzzaman Ilyas and Kayes Ahmed to Sudhamoy Kar. The list of writers reads like a veritable who's who of fiction writers of the country, but instead of going for the known, and widely read, pieces, the editor has picked up stories that explore the 'many dimension of the war,' as well as the psychological depth' of characters and events.

It will be beyond the scope of this review to introduce all the stories of the volume - it Is Indeed the prerogative of the reader to discover for himself or herself the intricate world of the stories, their passion, patriotism and polish, their narrative strategies and their portrayal of some unforgettable characters (e.g. Bhubhan of "One day in the life of Bhushan" by Hasan Azlzul Haque or Amina and Madina of Selina Hossain's "The Story of Amina and MaJina"). Still a few stories need to be pointed out (apart from the two mentioned above) as among the best that have been written about the war. or any war for that matter. "Two Brigadiers," by Shawkat Osman; "As nothing can be seen clearly," Syed Shamsul Haque; "Bayonet - once again," Shawkat All; "Gold under the corpse," Bashir Al-Helal; "Maupassant in 1971," Hasnat Abdul Hye; "Sandbank In the Middle," Rahat Khan; "Dear ones," Rashid Halder; "Black out," Abdul Mannan Syed; "Raincoat," Akhteruazzman Ilyas; "Mr. Jalil’s Petition," Humayun Ahmed; "The Headless Body," Afsan Chowdhury: "Twentyfive years," Was! Ahmed: "Razakar's Ghost," Manju Sarkar, "The other background." Ahmed Bashir; "The Man was a Ra-jakar," Imadadul Haque Milon; "Nurul and his Notes," Muhammad Zafar Iqbal; "Thorn," Shahidul Jaheer, "The Faith Killer," Nasreen Jahan; "Soil — Pre-anclent," Imtiar Shamim; "A Sister named Chandrabhanu, "Hamid Kaiser, "The Translation of Silence," Parvez Hossain, "Non-fighter," by Mashiul Alam etc. These stories together bring the eventful days of 1971 to life again, and the readers, including those who were bom after the war. are drawn into its powerful world.

As if to etch the pictures of 1971 into the conscience of the readers, paintings by the country's leading artists are included as headpieces to all the stories. The 70 paintings are also about the war, although their Images do not always conform to the leading thought or idea of the stories. They finally converge on the wider planes of emotion and passion. In that sense the paintings complement the stories, adding their own interpretation and reconstruction of the experience of the war. ■