A woman who had not seen her father for many years after her marriage saw his face one last time on the zero line of the Bangladesh-India border, after his death.
Ferdousi Khatun married 45 years ago, and the family met only a few times in the years right after. After that, neither her parents nor she saw each other again. She never had the chance to see her father one last time while he was alive. The barbed wire along the border kept father and daughter apart, and the wait only grew longer with time.
That wait ended only after her father’s death, and not in the family courtyard but on the zero line between the two countries. There, seeing her father’s still face, Ferdousi Khatun, wife of Israfil of Sonapur Natunpara village in Mujibnagar upazila of Meherpur, found some small relief for a longing she had carried for decades.
Her father’s home is in Hridaypur village, under Chapra police station in Nadia district of West Bengal, India. Her husband’s home is in Sonapur Natunpara, in the border upazila of Mujibnagar. Between Chapra and Sonapur runs the international border, and it kept them apart for years. When she married, the border was not so tightly controlled and there was no barbed-wire fence. Marriages between families on the two sides of Bengal were common then.
Her elderly father, Monoranjan Sheikh, had a last wish: that after his death his daughter could at least see his face one final time, since they had never managed to meet while he lived. That wish was fulfilled through a humanitarian arrangement by the two border forces, Border Guard Bangladesh (BGB) and India’s Border Security Force (BSF).
Monoranjan Sheikh died of old age at his home in Hridaypur village.
At 11:35am on Thursday (November 5), his body was brought to the zero line at border pillar 109 on Swadhinata Road in Mujibnagar. There, Ferdousi Khatun saw her father’s face for the last time. She was accompanied by her husband Israfil, her children and close relatives.
Her father’s still face lay between the two countries. The face she had waited so long to see while he lived, she now saw for the last time. Father and daughter did meet, but it was a meeting with no words, no answer and no return. On the zero line, it became their final farewell.
Naib Subedar Enayet Hossain of BGB represented Bangladesh and ASI Niloy Kumar of the BSF represented India; ten border guards from the two countries were present in all.
বাংলায় মূল প্রতিবেদন পড়ুন · Read the original Bengali report