Homecoming

A son is studying eight hours away from his rural home in Bangladesh. He’s at university, building a name for himself, paving a path not trod by his forefathers. He meets peers who have known only cities. He hones his formal Bengali, shedding his informal dialect. In a nationwide civil service exam, he ranks in the top percentile and earns a coveted merit placement. He leaves behind the swampy farmlands of his youth to forge networks in the big city.

The nation is still rebuilding two decades after its Liberation War, infamously referred to as a bottomless basket case. One day, he receives a letter: his father is ill. He drops everything for the rocky seven-hour drive on unfinished roads and marshy soil back to his ancestral village.

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