The Search

A quarter-century after the war that was meant to bring liberation to Bangaldesh, Mukti, a young researcher, comes into Mariam’s life, armed with a set of questions that have no easy answers. How did Mariam, and women like her biranganas, the raped women, touted as the new nation’s ‘honour’ but treated quite otherwise by their families and society survive the war? Why did Mariam send her young brother away but stay on herself in Dhaka as the city became increasingly unsafe? How did the Pakistani army deal with the women they found in homes, in offices, in colleges? Did the Muktijoddhas, the freedom fighters, protect ‘their’ women? For Mariam, these questions can have no simple answers. Instead, she is haunted by the loss of Montu, whom she tried to save from the war. But the war swallows all and before he could even grasp its meaning, Montu was forever lost to it. She remembers Major Ishtiaque, the sensitive, caring officer and seeks him everywhere, as she does Abed, the one-time fiery revolutionary... Shaheen Akhtar’s mesmerizing and moving novel is set against the backdrop of the Bangladesh war of liberation and in her skilful hands, the war becomes a way to explore the violence done to women, and their courage, their tenderness, their heartbreak and betrayal and their search for love. Akhtar’s is one of the younger voices to explore this hitherto hidden dimension of the history of Bangladesh. The Search (Taalash) was awarded the Prothom Alo Literary Prize in Bangladesh in 2004.