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A Bangladesh Army Man Writes a Novel

Khademul Islam
In hindsight it seems inevitable that this novel about a Bangladeshi in a United Nations peacekeeping force in Congo would be written. The surprise is. all things considered, how well it has been done.
Over the last two decades Bangladesh has seemingly become indispensable to UN peacekeeping operations. To date about 75,000 Bangladesh army personnel have taken part in operations ranging from demining in Eritrea to transport of refugees in Somalia to school and
hospital rehabilitation efforts in Sierra Leone. At present, it has 9,850 peacekeepers in 14 missions stretching from Liberia to Georgia to Congo. It has not been a hazard-free enterprise: 15 Bangladeshi officers died in a plane crash in Benin in October 2003, while nine more were killed in a ghastly 2005 ambush by militia men in Congo.
Which brings us to the fact that one of the most dangerous regions for peacekeeping is The Democratic Republic of Congo, or DRC, specially its battle-torn, mineral-resource-rich eastern province. A series of civil wars erupted during, and following, Mobuto's rule in which DRC's neighbours also pitched in. The wars bred an astonishing variety of murderous militias that, along with numerous governmental army depredations, has resulted in enormous displacement and murder of local populations.
Shabbir Ahsan's novel The Peacekeeper is about a Bangladeshi peacekeeper s--a milob, or military observer- tour of duty in Congo. The back cover of the book (a publication of iUniverse, Nebraska, USA) informs us that he is a "civil engineer and business graduate” presently serving in the Bangladesh Army. The novel admittedly reads like a thinly-disguised fictional account of real-life experiences. It spans a period of roughly over a year, from 25 December 2003 to 28 February 2005, and is also book-ended by a plane crash in 2003 and an ambush in 2005 in which Bangladeshi peacekeeping personnel lose their lives. In between these two events, the author methodically, and for the most part in an entertaining fashion, recounts the life of a Bangladeshi UN peacekeeper in distant, and at times frighteningly strange and savage, Africa. The details are riveting, from African bazaar vendors to food difficulties, from life with peacekeepers from other countries to the haunting view of the African veldt seen from above. Shabbir in the telling does not shy away from writing about the horrific, about still-existent cannibalism. He also does not sidestep narrating the decidedly African temptations posed to a married man suddenly, if temporarily, single again, about African sexual * mores and strange going-on in Kinshasa discos. In fact, his frankness "widens the novel's ambit, otherwise written in terse military chapters and riven with the army's penchant for acronyms, and lends it an empathic human register.
The author also can tellingly recreate battle scenes, as can be seen in the excerpt published above. Though reportedly the actual ambush of the Bangladeshi troops was carried out by militia men hiding in the tall grass by the roadside, the shock of the event is conveyed well enough in its fictional re-enactment. Various details about the country, such as place, tribal and militia names, conform to real life, and add to the general air of the book’s authenticity of felt experience. The author's use of English is surprisingly good (actually much better, I have to confess, than many a 'civvies' author I have had to read in the line of duty as litcd, or literary editor), with the vocabulary fitted to intent and action. A closer proof-reading and copy editing, though, would have raised it to a singularly high level (for example, women that the narrator is attracted to tend to be unfailingly 'sweet,' and misspellings such as 'phillistines' and mistaken plural endings of words).
If there is one major caveat to be made, I would perhaps point to the American-style jauntincss that at times pervades the writing, and which can be wearying to the older reader. Younger readers may connect with it. This style alone can be reductive, capable of turning a perfectly truthful piece of reportage into colonial pictures of Africa as a dark continent teeming with monsters and ghouls, something which this exuberant first effort at a novelistic portrayal of our difficult peacekeeping missions does not warrant being burdened with.
MMetnul Islam is Horary editor. The Daily Star