Life

DACCA

Make sure you have a Bengali driver,"
we were advised when we began our search for the
Mukti Bahini, the East Pakistan guerrillas. Out
past the airport, where stripped-out PIA Boeing
707s bring in uniformed replacements from Karachi
and take out wounded soldiers with the civilian
passengers, we pass two checkpoints with curt
nods from Pakistani soldiers and a third after a
cursory search. "They are so rude," says our guide
Ishaque, ignoring the fact that we are after all
off to meet their enemy. The country loosens his
tongue and he talks about the inevitability of
Bangla Desh, Free Bengal.

"All the people are for it now. And they are
ready to pay the price. People do not speak
about how their homes were burned, they only
say how many West Pakistanis were killed. My
15-year-old son Daud joined the guerrillas. We
told him not to but he went, and when I asked
him, `Aren't you afraid?' he said, `No, my gun
will speak for me.' "

Four hours in a boat , a pointed wooden sliv
er powered by a tireless with whipcord
arms, through an idyllic waterscape alive with
fish and fowl. There is smoke on the horizon
and the reason is gradually picked up in shouted
exchanges with passing boats. "They burned
those four villages yesterday because they were
sheltering Mukti Bahini." More news from a
man mending a fish trap and Ishaque says, "There
are Mukti in that boat over there." As we approach
they start to paddle furiously but Ishaque
persuades them to wait and we talk to them. They
have been traveling for I I days and nights,
from the Indian border to the East Pakistani
interior. They produce automatic rifles and
submachine guns of British design and explain
they were trained to use them by Indian army
and Mukti Bahini instructors. Up until now guerrilla
activity has been concentrated close to the
sources of sanctuary and resupply along the Indian
borders. Ishaque is concerned about the
possibility of internal fighting among the Mukti
Bahini. There are three groups represented in
the independence forces: the pro-Bangla Desh,
the independents and the Communist extremists.
"They have an agreement now to fight the common
enemy but I do not know what will happen in the
future."

The boat trip is of staggering beauty: minnows
skipping along the surface flash as momentary
diamonds, and porpoises plunge and frolic as the
sun sets. Yet there is discord and unease. Distant
shots startle wild duck to flight and set a flock of
cranes wheeling and swooping like papers before
a fan. In the twilight people are on the move, yelling
to one another in alarm, carrying their possessions to
their boats, leaving their villages for safety. Only
who knows where safety lies? Unlike the battlewise
Vietnamese, these people are helpless, bewildered,
unable to sense the answer to a threat.

The darkness leads to a village and the home
of a schoolteacher who delivers an eloquent and
ordered disquisition on the differences of language,
race, culture and climate separating the
two Pakistans. That a successful man of middle
years with family position and security to lose
should wholeheartedly ally himself with the guerrillas
seems impressive. He sends for the young
men and in minutes they stand behind him shoulder
to shoulder, a crescent of strong faces, teeth
and protuberant cheekbones gleaming in the dim
glow of a hurricane lamp. The words stumble out
in faltering English but nothing can destroy the
strength and passion of the message. "We don't
want the Indians to help us. We will win our own
country," one of the group says, raising his
clenched fists, "with our own hands."

The next morning we set off before dawn to
walk to a village where, we were told, 300 Mukti
were holed up getting ready for an operation
against a major target. We were still three miles
away when over the noises of a waking hamlet
-the pounding of rice and the crackling of kindling-
we hear the machine guns. The metronome bursts of
automatic fire seep through the dawn mist like
muffled drums and we know it for what it is, a
thoroughly professional half-light attack by the
Pakistani army. For the first time Ishaque tells
us that his son is in the village, and
lapses into worried distraction. We keep moving
through well-kept hamlets with rich grain fields
and tethered goats and cows. Outside each highly
combustible home stand stricken family groups
staring in the direction of the firing. A cyclist races
past, wheels bouncing recklessly off the tree roots,
and then four hurrying Mukti openly carrying
their weapons. They explain that the Pakistani
army has surrounded the village, killed the guards
and brought in mortar fire. They were all too surprised
to fight back, they say, and everyone had
tried to run. Ishaque asks after his son. They have
no news and he turns away.

The firing is coming steadily closer and the
Mukti advise retreating to another village where
more of their comrades are to meet. There, in a
motley group of 30 or so, badly shaken and carrying
little more than their ammunition, Ishaque
finds his missing son.

On the long way back Ishaque tells how his
son is hard hit by the loss of three good friends.
"I asked him to come home, but he didn't want
to. I said, `Come home and when you have some
ammunition and the leader reorganizes, then you
can go back.' "