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The historic homecoming

Syed Badrul Ahsan
There was a sadness that enveloped him in the midst of that cheering crowd.
As the truck carrying him and a whole phalanx of politicians and student leaders inched its way out of the old airport in Tejgaon, Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman seemed tired after all those months in solitary confinement in Pakistan. More than that, he was clearly overwhelmed by the ecstatic manner in which his people, the newly freed Bangalees of his Bangladesh, were welcoming him home.
It could have been a scene out of an epic tale. It could have been an image shaped by the imagination. It was neither of those. It was truly happening before us. We had watched history being made in Bangladesh in the nine agonising months of Pakistani repression. And here, right before us, stood the man whose inspirational leadership had finally thrown open the doors of freedom for us.
It was a million-strong crowd that welcomed the Father of the Nation back home that winter afternoon. He spoke of the millions who had been murdered by Pakistan, of the homes and villages and towns ravaged during the war. He bade farewell to Pakistan and wished Zulfikar Ali Bhutto well. He quoted Tagore. And he wept.
For the first time in his public career,
before the world, Bangabandhu shed tears in remembrance of the terrible ravages Bangladesh had gone through in the preceding nine months. And we in the crowd and across the country remembered, at that instant, how seventy five million Bangalees had worried about his safety, how they had prayed for his life and for him to return home. For nine months, we had no way of knowing where he was or whether he was alive or dead.
It was only Pakistan's defeat in Bangladesh and the surrender of its 93,000 soldiers in December 1971 that perhaps saved him. Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, having played a diabolical role throughout the war, nevertheless recognised the folly of keeping the leader of a now free nation imprisoned in alien land.
In the early hours of January 8, 1972, Bhutto bade goodbye to Bangabandhu at Rawalpindi's Chaklala airport. As the aircraft took to the skies, Pakistan's new leader told no one in particular, "The nightingale has flown." Hours later, on a cold dawn in London, Bangladesh's president, for that was what Bangabandhu had been since April 1971, descended at Heathrow. For the first time since
the beginning of the war for Bangladesh's liberation, the world knew that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman was alive. The Bangalee leader cheerfully told a crowded news conference at Claridge's later in the day, "As you can see, gentlemen, I am alive and well." And then he went on to offer a near lyrical account of his sentiments on being a free soul once more:
"Gentlemen of the world press, 1 am happy to share in the unbounded joy of freedom brought about by an epic liberation struggle waged by the people of Bangladesh. No people have had to shed so much blood for freedom as my people have..."
Here at home, in the coldness of a January evening, we laughed and then we wept. Bangabandhu was coming back home. As we leapt and skipped and ran, in that order, all the way home in the twilight glow of January 10, 1972, we knew we now inhabited a land "where the mind is without fear and the head is held high, where knowledge is free ... where tireless striving stretches its arms towards perfection..."
It felt good to belong, with Bangabandhu, in the sovereign republic of Bangladesh.