This photograph of Farid Miah in the arms of his wife Nowshin Akhtar in front of their house in Mirpur, Dhaka, was taken in 1998. It is from one of my ongoing projects, Freedom Fighters: Veterans of the Bangladesh Liberation War 1971. One of the main reasons for doing the project was to introduce the veterans to the younger generation. The history of liberation has been told in many different ways, but all of them to suit people in power. So it is difficult to understand the truth from any textbook or formal publication. The younger generation has no notion of what happened in 1971.

I work at the Drik Picture Library in Bangladesh as a photojournalist. I will shortly be going to Tanzania to work as a photojournalist and trainer in a photography school we are starting there.

Abir Abdullah [[email protected]](mailto:[email protected]?Subject=Your%20Southern%20Exposure%20piece%20in%20NI%20352)

This article is from the December 2002 issue of New Internationalist.

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