Book Review: Refugee: Unsettled as I Roam: My Endless Search for a Home by Azmat Ashraf

Last night, I came across the book, Unsettled as I Roam: My Endless Search for a Home. It is written by Azmat Ashraf whom I had the pleasure of knowing as a fellow cadet at Ayub (later renamed Rajshahi) Cadet College for four years (1966-1970) before he graduated in 1970, a year before the birth of Bangladesh in an ocean of blood, mostly of the innocents on all the sides of the divide. He was a year senior to me. His two younger brothers Hasnat and Hannan were also students there whom I had known. But we came from two different divides of the 1971 tragedy. He came from the minority Bihari background, and I was a Bangladeshi (whose parents did not have to be a refugee from India). Soon after the liberation of Bangladesh, when the classes resumed in early 1972, and I reported back to the cadet college campus to complete my last year of the pre-college/university academic (HSC) program, I learnt of the tragedy suffered by many of our cadets, including those of our (so-called) Bihari (Urdu-speaking) friends, seniors and juniors. Hasnat miraculously survived, but his younger brother Hannan was mercilessly killed by the Bengalis during the 1971 liberation war. I met Hasnat many years later in the USA in the early 1990s when he visited NY to meet some of our old common friends of the ORCA. I had also come there to meet him. But I did not have the strength to ask Hasnat about his tragedy in the then East Pakistan, as if the least said the better. Azmat Ashraf, in his book, has detailed the tragedy of the Ashraf family in a superb, captivating way. I could not stop reading the book until it was too late at night. And even then I did not have a good sleep last night, haunted by the trauma that his family went through. He details his personal tragedy and provides info that are important for all of us to know so that we are prepared to avoid a repeat of such a tragedy. As a human rights activist, I am well aware of the fact that all the refugees have their own stories about why and how they became refugees. It is often the tragic circumstances back home, which have forced them to migrate. But I don't know too many of the refugees that had to change their home countries six times, hoping to be safe. And this is what has happened to Azmat Ashraf. I wish I could meet him and personally say that "I am sorry" for the crimes of my (Bengali-speaking) people against his family, who spoke Bengali, by the way, fluently. His family members need not die for the conspiracies and crimes concocted at the top! As our world sees the influx of refugees, I hope we all empathize with them and do the needful to help. There is surely nothing better than prevention. I recommend this book strongly for all our readers. Link: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1525563831?pf_rd_r=QGNTFCCMWHA7ZVFF6G16&pf_rd_p=8fe9b1d0-f378-4356-8bb8-cada7525eadd&pd_rd_r=779021ab-b0ba-4bde-8b88-196cf84551ff&pd_rd_w=jQl5E&pd_rd_wg=uY26c&ref_=pd_gw_unk