As Suleman moved in his wheelchair through the lanes and alleys of Mohammedpur, he must have frightened many children with his wild, dirty, disheveled looks and foul words spewing from his mouth. Few were as abusive as he was. Those who knew him accepted this.

If he found me near my various rented homes in that part of town, he would come close and grab my shirt in a fierce grip. He would work up to the collar and hold it tight and ask for a pack of foreign cigarettes. This was a regular routine and I had even come to expect and ultimately welcome it as an encounter between two people who were never friends but still close to each other. He had been seriously injured in 1971 war and disabled. He was a paraplegic and after his injury never walked again.

On December 16, 1996, as Bangladesh celebrated its 25 years of birth, I was in a neighborhood shop when I heard someone call me. I turned around and saw Suleman. "I have lost my hands as well. Aren't you happy now? Isn't it complete now?" For the first time he neither abused nor smiled. I had never expected him not to grab my shirt and ask for smokes.

I bought him two packets of cigarette and moved away in a daze as he was pushed away towards his home in some NGO office. He lived in a downstairs room of that outfit and its chief, a fine man, let him live there and be looked after by a foreigner woman who had come to this place to work as a volunteer. Suleman had been run out of official hospitality a long time back and survived on other people's charity.

That night, when I went to bed, the city night was being startled by the sounds of celebrations. As I listened, I kept thinking of Suleman and what this victory ceremony would mean to him. And then my own hands began to twitch. I am a long-term diabetic and my ailment has overrun my nervous system. My state of neuropathy had become serious and my hands tremble and twitch quite on their own. That night his dead hands and my decaying nerves and twitching seemed to be joined by a bridge. After all these years we seemed to have become one through our failed and failing hands.

Later, in the middle of 2001, when I returned to Dhaka after staying in Nepal I was told that Suleman had died in his village.

1.
In that war without questions,
so many lined up to kill or die,
not knowing how but only why.

Suleman lost his hands
when the Paki trucks rolled down,
and hands went up in surrender,
but he rolled and rolled on the ground
and kept firing from his gun
as if they were the endless chants
of the fiery street which had lit
bonfires of his paper shackles and chains
cradling his furious fists.

Hands were busy that watery monsoon
as drifting winds cut down
delinquent hyacinths,
and we sailed away
to a far away frightened sanctuary,
where ants were gathering to attend,
the weeping chehlum of
their own crushed ant homes.

There we would hide under
the umbrella of swaying grass blades,
holding funeral rites of dead weeds
in crumbling and dusty cemeteries.

With one hand I hung on
to the hyacinth boat,
with the other hand
I held the hand of the silent girl.

But she wished for hiding places
hiding from tall fair-complexioned arms,
who rang coins in their hand,
paying homages and making offerings
to their fair skinned crescents,
hanging in the rude blind sky.

So,
much better to fade away
when you were still swimming
with these alleged warriors,
as their wet hands shook and shivered,
as their hearts beat them
with thuds of seamless fear,
as their land's thousand hands,
million more miles of freedom and blood.

2.
"F*** you, man, why must you remember the war,
who asked you to join the regulars, man?
Leftist hand are unpatriotic, it is official.
Only our hands are clean,
only we can love Bangladesh.
Now light me a cigarette
and wheel me down the road,
I am forty four and unmarried,
I live on foreign charity, no less.
You may smell me.
I stink of the past
and patriotism
and tobacco trash.
I only smoke the best of cigarettes,
and they will give me,
the best physiotherapy in town,
--I swear they promised--
till I die."

"Were you frigging with your filthy hands
when I rolled down and fired and fired ?"
Where were you?
Yes, where were you?

Faster, faster, my f***** Ferrari,
I am a crippled Freedom Fighter.
Crippled. Freedom. Fighter."

"Doesn't World Bank lend fingers and hands
at low interest rates anymore?
What is Grameen Bank doing
about useless, landless hands?
Call OXFAM.
Ask BRAC
Beg Golam Azam the Lord,
for my two shrunken hands."

3.
It's twenty-five years of bang-bang
Sounds of muri bhaja
and gun salutes bursting the dawn,
you can choose either, no problem.

Or the glowing end of a feeble cigarette
screaming for blue chip shares,
as it drips ashes on helpless chins,
as Parkinson's greedily tremors the hands.

The night bays like a trapped animal
as the rain begins to descend in furious strides
and men hide in caves,
mourning greedy children and deserted fathers,
lashed together by the same noisy pain.

Howl. Howl. Howl.
Thunder. Storm. Lightning.

In a distant tea shop
still open for phantom clients,
they play an old song of an old war.

Oh, yes, I was there,
and I knew Suleman couldn't sleep
on such nights of dreadful rains,
descending in endless shifting lines,
like a line of scared novice irregular troops,
moving in a night march in a marvelous monsoon.

I now lie wounded with no sleep in my bag,
running bets on deluge and gurgling drains,
as tree leaves shiver in a frightened dance.

I urge my chemical steeds on and on
to sleep and to good-bye,
in the final sweepstake
of just one last losing run,
as the charging horses of rescue tumble
on the dead grassed racing tracks,
cheered by peaceful AK-47s
and the perforated sun.

My Lord, close my eyes just this once,
for I have never begged for mercy before,
not even from your beloved fleeing angels,
but tonight I can bear wakefulness no more.

I don't sleep,
Therefore I am.

Afsan Chowdhury director, human rights, at BRAC. The above are excerpts from a long poem.