The 1971 Dhaka University massacre forms the backdrop for this novel about life in violent times

The American M-24 tanks nosed out of the cantonment at eleven-twenty-five, in hushed progress over the smooth roads that kept their silence intact. Foot soldiers, ordered to keep their feet from marching too loudly, obeyed as they flanked the tanks. Pedestrians, beggars, rickshaw pullers, shopkeepers, and late- night vagabonds thought nothing of it.

Captain Fazal Shaukat watched the figures in the streets watching his jeep, the tanks up ahead, the soldiers crowding around like a protective blanket covering the moving caravan from external dangers, ghosts under the starlit night. Next to him sat Major Pervez Shahbaz, munching thoughtfully on a wad of chewing tobacco. Its terse odour was oddly soothing.

The journey lasted forever until Shaukat saw the grounds of the Dhaka University campus. Leafy and shaded, even at night, there was a serenity about the place that was unnerving. There was, Shaukat felt, too much comfort. Too much comfort in the way the dormitory buildings loomed over the grounds, like saviours. Too much comfort in the windows from which a light here and there still shone. Too much comfort in sleep.

The four tanks took the two dormitories in pairs. The students inside were suspected of being Awami League dissidents, Muslim and Hindu alike.

Their activities had been endured long enough. Before they caused more damage, there had to be a final act had to disable them. So went the assessment as Shaukat had heard it, and none of it sounded to him as revelations. It did not take five general officers, including the president and the Chief Martial Law Administrator of the country, to slap reasoning like that onto a plan. Shaukat wedged a finger between his neck and collar to ease the tightness.

He first felt the seat under him tremble, the vibration scaling up his spine. In seconds, the night was altered. Strobes of light flashed from the mouths of the tanks, igniting the dorms in brilliant snapshots before the shell ripped off another piece of the building. The shelling suppressed the shrieking of the students. Shaukat saw ant-like scrambling around windows and doors where students were trying to get out, most of them standing no chance. The tanks kept their aim steady for an amount of time that seemed endless. The blasts created a filter over Shaukat’s hearing, as he had not remembered to plug his ears.

Major Shahbaz’s lips were moving at Shaukat, the sound of his voice fluctuating, like a volume knob was being turned up and down at whim.

When the shelling finally ceased, Shaukat muttered a “Thank God”. And then the shouted orders of Shahbaz and the other officers to the foot soldiers perforated the thin, shelling-induced gauze over his hearing. Shahbaz climbed out and waited for Shaukat to follow suit. As his ears gradually cleared, Shaukat’s own voice reached him like a disjointed ow of sound. His throat was burning from the fire and smoke. He saw his company file in with the others as they entered the dorms, ring their machine guns.

Shaukat’s ears cleared suddenly, as if the volume of a roomful of loudspeakers had been raised to maximum, inviting in the explosions, screams, and wails.

Besides the university, the East Pakistan Rifles constabulary was also shelled and partially set ablaze. Punjabi and Baluchi soldiers marched in to finish killing the remaining Bengali officers. The Rajarbagh Police Line was defended in the face of tanks, bazookas, and automatic rifles, leaving even the attacking soldiers talking about the standoff for days afterwards. Captain Shaukat, as he commanded his company to enter the dormitories of Jagannath Hall and Iqbal Hall, and shoot their occupants where they found them alive, including those still, astonishingly, asleep, heard the reports of the EPR and Rajarbagh incidents in the following days, and wished he had been at one of those. A real fight was one where fire was returned for fire. The students at the dorms had old bolt-action rifles, which they had used. But to take them as a match for the firepower they were facing was a joke. Shaukat saw their feeble efforts blasted through with machine guns and semi- automatics, before being marched outside to face ring squads.

House number 34 was where many of the noted faculty members lived. Shaukat learned this from one of the officers who produced a handwritten list of names that were barely discernible. A quick inventory followed, of which Shaukat made little sense, and the orders were given to enter the premises, find the people that corresponded to the names, and kill them. Shaukat entered the house for a few seconds before the close quarters trapped the echoing gun fire too tightly within the walls and left him momentarily deaf. As he staggered back out with ears ringing, soldiers were dragging out professors and herding them, one of whom he saw from the corner of his eye lurch forward, stumble a few steps, and buckle at the knees before a screaming soldier jerked him up by his T-shirt. The man’s round face had the permanent touch of a smile, as though nothing could fluster him, let alone stoke anger. His glasses were crooked, his bowl haircut pasted to his forehead, the touch of a moustache dabbed below his nose. He was an old, harmless man, Shaukat could not help but take account, driven out of sleep in the middle of the night. He should have been allowed to go back to bed.

Major Shahbaz bounded up to the professor and the soldiers handling him. When asked, the professor said his name was Dev. Shahbaz sprung his list into view like a magician, and smacked open the folded and crumpled sheet. Dev, he looked for the name. Finding it, he called it out in full. Gobindo Chandra Dev, and the professor confirmed. Shahbaz ordered the soldiers to carry on, which they did by marching the disoriented professor to a nearby field, with Shaukat following. They shoved GC Dev out into the dark. Shaukat saw the first shot startle the man. He was still smiling. He asked what he had done. A second bullet pierced him. He wondered out loud again, asking the young officer and his men how he had offended them. And then a third shot was red.

The corpses were piling up, the stench of blood, sweat, soiled bodies already unbearable. Shaukat could not tell where one company ended and the next began in the scurrying, screaming mass of soldiers.

His own company could be anyone’s guess. He looked for Shahbaz and listened for his distinct bark. Orders could not leave Shahbaz’s body without becoming one. After leaving where professor Dev had been shot, Shaukat tracked his way back towards Jagannath Hall. There he found Shahbaz not shouting, but telling his soldiers as calmly as he would compliment them for a job well done to leave the corpses of the Hindu students on the roof of the dorm. The Muslim ones of Iqbal Hall were to be collected on the campus grounds and buried in mass graves.

The corpses were in a mound like branches and sticks stacked for a bonfire. Shaukat held his nose, gagged, and shouted at the soldier who had a flashlight beam caressing the mound. Faces stopped in mid-terror, mouths agape, eyes glazed over and half shut, a foot over a forehead, one sandal dangling from an inert heel, he wanted to see none of it. Below them, on the grounds, the ring squads reported their first rounds.

Excerpted with permission from In The Time Of The Others, Nadeem Zaman, Picador India.