A city of ruins

 
Dhaka was described, in 1824, by a visiting Anglican bishop, as a city of “magnificent ruins.”
What he saw were the ruins of what had been, during the first half of the 18th century, a wealthy, cosmopolitan and attractive city. It was a centre (as it is again today) of the international garment trade, and exported fine cloth [...]

Abdul Bari had run out of luck

My research for a recent article on the campaign to try the perpetrators of atrocities committed during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, took me to the second-hand book section of New Market – dozens of tiny stalls, each with a random collection of discarded and damp books and magazines, piled up to their metal sheet [...]