In the one-room family home, his brand new computer sits on a tiny table. Inside the drawer of the table is his personal diary, where he wrote of his love and dreams.
But he will never more use the computer. Nor will he write for his love, whom he named “Priya” (beloved) in his diary. For Enamul is no more: His life was cut short by unknown assailants in front of an ATM booth yesterday. He was just 18.
He was the apple of his parents’ eyes. After all, he was their only child born nearly 18 years into their marriage, according to relatives.
For his poor parents — Abdur Rashid and Nehara Begum — he was also the only ray of hope.
“Both of us are day labourers. We spent our lives digging earth. Enamul promised to pull us out of poverty one day,” a sobbing Nehara told The Daily Star.
To keep his promise, Enamul worked twice as hard as the others, taking double shifts a day. At 10:00pm every day he joined his station in front of the Dutch-Bangla Bank ATM booth at Mohammadpur, and came home at 2:00pm the next day, she added.
Yesterday, for her son’s lunch Nehara cooked an egg curry and kept the rice simmering on the stove at low heat.
“My son liked to have his rice hot…. He bought us a television. He wanted to make life better for us.”
The parents wanted to send him to school, but poverty came in the way. So he dropped out after studying up to class six in a local NGO-run school.
“He had to work. To make up for it, we saved Tk 20,000 and bought him a computer three months ago. We wanted him to learn to use a computer so he could get a better job,” Nehara said, sobbing.
The brand new computer and the television are the only signs of wealth in the family at Nabadoa in Mohammadpur. The corrugated tin-house was flooded with ankle-deep sewerage water when this correspondent went to visit the family yesterday.
The trauma has turned the father incoherent. Yet trauma may not be the word that can aptly describe his distress — his laments took tune, his words tragic lyrics, blurring the lines between wailing and a heartbreaking melody that touched every soul present there.
“Oh God, my son is gone/ Who shall I live for now?/ Oh God, here is his favourite watch, stained with his blood/ Who will wear this watch now?”
Enamul left behind, too, a teenaged girl with a broken heart, at least one would guess so from the entries in his diary.
The two were in a long-distance relationship, with Rima (whom he called Priya in his diary) having moved away from Dhaka. The pages of his diary held poignant entries about how much he missed her.
In a fit of fanciful dreaming, the two had once gone to a studio, dressed up as bride and groom, and had their picture taken. The picture was pasted fondly in his diary.
Rima, however, was unaware of his death as of last night.
“Will the killers get caught?” his mother asked this correspondent. The question echoed around the room.
Courtesy of The Daily Star
