Abu Bakkar Siddique, aged 59, felt happy when he could put his only son, Abdullah Siddique, in charge in his business of automobile spares in July.
The son was willing too. And, it all made the transition easy. The 21-year-old Abdullah, who had always dreamt of becoming independent, even rolled out an online venture a year ago.
His dream died when two bullets hit Abdullah, a second-year bachelor鈥檚 student of marketing at Habibullah Bahar College, in the chest at Jigatala in Dhaka about 3:30pm on August 4.
鈥楬e first joined the protests at Shahbagh and then he, perhaps, marched in a procession to Jigatala,鈥� Abdullah鈥檚 father said on October 31,
He heard the news of his son鈥檚 death on his way back home from Moulavibazar to Dhaka.
Abu Bakkar reached Dhaka about 10:00pm that night, riding motorcycles and auto-rickshaws as unrest kept public transpots off the road.
Protesters carried the body from Dhaka Medical College Hospital to Shaheed Minar. The body was later taken to his neighborhood at Ray Saheb Bazar in Old Town. He was buried in a local graveyard the next day.
The student protests, which began on July 1, peaked into a mass uprising later that month, finally toppling the Awami League government on August 5.
The death left the family in distress as much as it left, Nurunnahar, the girl he had courted for two years and planned to marry, in trauma.
鈥楢 day before he died, he had told me that his family would visit mine on August 20 with the formal proposal. It鈥檒l never happen,鈥� said Nurunnahar, who lost her father six months ago.
Abu Bakkar 鈥� who has two daughters, one married off and the other a Class IV student 鈥� wants to build a mosque in Abdullah鈥檚 name.
鈥業 feel like I鈥檝e gone mad these days,鈥� said Abu Bakkar, a resident of 63, Nasiruddin Sardar Lane, who has no plans to resume the business.
Habibullah Bahar College renamed one of its buildings after Abdullah鈥檚 name. The Lalbagh Government Model School and College dedicated its library to him, he added.
The Directorate General of Health Services on September 24 said that after a preliminary investigation, it had listed 708 people having died in the protests and uprising.
