Clothing trader Muhammad Zan Sharif will never anymore call his eight-year-old daughter Zara ‘my princess’ as a bullet took his life during the student movement for quota reforms in government jobs.
Fondly named after his daughter, Zara Fashion Wear owner Sharif used to tell her, ‘Zara, you are my princess.’
He, the only male member of the family, dreamed a better future for his only daughter Mahabi Sharif Zara and the three-member family. But that dream shattered on July 19 with his death by a bullet he received in the chest during a clash between protesters and law enforcers on the road leading to his store at Banasree in the capital.
Doctors declared him dead after had been taken to nearby Advance Hospital.
‘I told him to leave Dhaka city many times. He was happy for our daughter’s admission in Ideal School and College at Banasree. He decided to stay here for Zara’s future,’ said Sharif’s widow Rohedun Sajba Banu.
On that day, Zara and Sajba told Sharif not to go outside amid the ongoing unrest, but he was off to the neighbourhood mosque for Jumma prayers of Friday grabbing his prayer mat.
Sajba phoned him at about 2:30pm, asking him to return home. Zara also insisted her father to come back home. In reply, Sharif asked his daughter what she wanted him to bring for her.
In response, she said, ‘I need my father.’ He did not reply to the child, however, which never happened before, said his wife. The mother and the daughter waited for his coming back soon.
At 4:56pm, someone from Advance Hospital called Sajba on her mobile, asking her to send a male member of the family to the hospital, refusing to share the news of her husband’s passing with her.
As there were no other male members in the family, the wife and the child went to the hospital amid the violent unrest and found Sharif’s body lying there covered with the prayer mat he carried that afternoon.
Sharif wanted to live independently with a strong feeling to stand beside any people under any circumstances, said Sajba. He distributed water, bread and banana among the protesters in Banasree area just a day before his death.
‘At night, he showed me some photographs of that day,’ said the wife, recalling Sharif saying, ‘I tried to reduce pain of the protesters, a bit… People do not live forever but their deeds remain.’
Sharif’s story is one of simple dreams and an untimely death at a time now marked as a pivotal moment in the country’s history—the fall of the Sheikh Hasina government on August 5 brought upon by a mass uprising led by students.
The movement left more than 1,000 people killed, according to interim government’s health adviser Nurjahan Begum.
The sudden death of Sharif, who came to Dhaka from Goalchamot in Faridpur to build an independent life, forced his wife to leave the city shutting down the shop in absence of any male member in the family.
Sajba, however, is now planning to return to Dhaka so that their daughter, now in class II, can continue her studies in the same school and build her future to fulfil her father’s dream.Â
