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Peter R.Kann
Dacca Diary
The Wall Street Journal
14 December 1971
[When the Indo-Pakistan war broke out in December 1971, Peter Kann was stranded in Dacca until Indian troops took over the country. Due to the difficulties of transmission he kept a diary of the events taking place. They were reprinted by the Wall Street Journal at the end of the hostilities and earned Kann a Pulitzer Prize in 1972.]
Dacca, East Pakistan: FRIDAY, DEC. 3: Entering elevator in Intercontinental Hotel when another reporter runs up to ask,’ Have you heard the war is on?’ It’s just before 8 p.m. Happen to notice sign by elevator: Happy Hours 6 to 8 p.m. Except Fridays. Rest of evening spent with other journalists clustered around shortwave radio.
Evidently, fighting broke out along border between West Pakistan and India this afternoon. India says Pakistan started it; Pakistan says India. Who knows? But India has been launching limited attacks on East Pakistan border for past ten days. What are you supposed to do when a war starts and the cable office is closed? Play poker. Go to sleep.
SATURDAY, DEC. 4: Day starts early. About 3 a.m. sky lights up with fantastic fireworks display by Pak antiaircraft batteries out by airport. Indian air raid or jumpy ack-ack gunners? Moot question because by breakfast time, Indian MIG’s making regular rocket runs on airfield. Makes you wish you were a photographer. MIG’s diving through clear blue sky. Little white puffs from the ack-ack. Even couple of inconclusive dogfights above the hotel. Several Indian planes shot down. But every observer has different count. ‘Better than Pearl Harbor,’ one of the television types says. Air strikes continue almost hourly rest of day.
SUNDAY, DEC. 5: Anticlimatic day. Nothing to compare with yesterday’s air spectacular. Lots of rumors circulating. One favourite has Indian army columns only 60 miles from Dacca. Someone consults map and discovers Indian border to the east less than 60 miles away. Western families resident in Dacca congregating at Intercontinental. Rumors of planned United Nations relief flight to Bangkok confirmed by UN officials at evening meeting in the bar. A Gergory Peck scene – distinguished grey-haired UN official talking about women and children first. Some of the men buying out hotel bar’s Scotch supply $35 a bottle. It’s a stockpiling sort of day.
‘Sartre would dig this place,’ one reporter says. Why? ‘No exit.’
MONDAY, DEC. 6: Try a road trip to Sibalay about 50 miles west of Dacca. Impression: Pak army bound to lose East Pakistan if only because of logistics. Small army convoy stalled along roadside. Overheated radiators and other mechanical maladies. When convoy stalls, the Bengali farmers flee from nearby fields. Until now army trucks meant search for Mukti Bahini guerrillas, razed villages, civilian massacres. Army hasn’t much time for that now. Irony: Bengalis probably safer now that general war is on.
Back at the Intercontinental tonight. Evening talk at the hotel is of UN plane turning back ten minutes out of Dacca because of Indian air strike at airport just before a temporary cease-fire scheduled to go into effect. And Gen. Rao Farman Ali Khan gave an afternoon press conference in which he said Pak forces facing some supply problems, are cut off from West Pakistan for the time being, and on the defensive for the time being. He said the best Pak defence is to gradually cede some territory to the advancing Indians. Last week his boss, Gen. Niazi, had said that the best defence is an offensive. But times change.
TUESDAY, DEC. 7: Dacca seems to be learning to live with war-or, rather, threat of war, because Indians so far bombing only few military targets on city outskirts. But people do keep glancing nervously at the sky. UN tried again for mercy flight, but the plane was hit by naval gunfire, presumably Indian, off East Pakistan coast. India not winning very many friends among stranded Westerners here. Some Americans in hotel lobby demanding to know why the Marines don’t come in and evacuate them. ‘We did it in the Congo,’ one says. ‘Yeah, but this ain’t the Congo,’ another says. ‘It will be soon,’ the first says.
I am out near the airport when an air-raid siren goes off. Run across field and spot a foxhole. So do our four Bengali rickshaw peddlers. So we all squat politely around the rim of the foxhole- no one wanting to be the first to hop in. It wouldn’t hold more than three. But the planes pass over, and we share a cigarette.
The military situations remains, in the words of a Pak communiqué,’ unclear’. An American diplomat says Pakistan is ‘between a rock and a hard place’. Have lunch with a West Pakistani pilot for Pakistan International Airlines who is stranded. ‘What do you plan to do?’ he is asked. ‘Die here,’ he says. Almost everyone thinks there will be another bloodbath soon, with Bengalis taking their revenge on non-Bengali minority (Biharis) and other army collaborators. If it’s an eye for an eye, there will have to be a lot of Bihari eyes lost.
Rumor that food supply at the hotel is running short. Menu is dwindling a bit, but food is still remarkably good and always lots of butter available. The hotel bought out the stock of a Danish dairy project that folded just before the war. ‘But can man live by butter alone?’ one foreigner asks.
More Indian air strikes in the afternoon. High-altitude bombing. Now the hotel roof is full of journalists and photographers. One cameraman just up from the swimming pool is still in his bathing suit. Another reporter brings a chair. A diplomat on the roof says Biharis are looting evacuated homes. ‘Well,’ he adds, ‘they can’t take it with them where they’re going.’ General feeling seems to be that Biharis had fun while it lasted. One talks of mass killing quiet calmly here. A half-million Bengalis massacred by the army in the last nine months or so. East Pakistan is like a sponge that soaks up suffering. ‘You could drop Biafra into East Pakistan and never find it again,’ the diplomat says.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 8: The breakfast rumor is that Gen. Niazi bugged out last night on a small plane to Burma. Last week he said, ‘The more Indians who come, the more Indians to kill, the more I am happy.’ Tend to doubt the bug out report, but he may later wish he had.
Military situation still very vague, but reports have Indian advance units about 35 miles south-east of Dacca. ‘The military situation is deteriorating faster than we anticipated,’ an embassy source says. The Bengalis one encounters seem delighted by the way it’s going. Independent nation of Bangla Desh probably no more than a week away.
UN mercy-flight plans seem to be in limbo. The UN people are always in conference. Curious how much attention we all pay to the plight of several hundred foreign nationals stranded at Intercontinental. A half-million or so Bengalis probably died in last nine months; another ten million or more trapped in misery of border camps. What makes a few hundred Western lives so valuable?
Rooftop air-strike watcher crowd thinning a bit. Rumour has it one cameraman was nicked in the backside by piece of ack-ack shrapnel. Intercontinental filling up with armed West Pakistani civilians, which makes other guests uneasy. Radio news says President Nixon says war broke off sensitive negotiations that could have lead to ‘virtual autonomy’ for East Pakistan. Last March the Bengalis were demanding ‘virtual autonomy’. Bit late for virtuals. Television correspondents have secret information that small Pak plane planning to make a secret night flight to secret Burma airstrip and pilot willing to take some film and newspaper copy. Film packed in a suitcase and ready to go.
One of week’s unlikelier eventualities: in evening we roast marshmallows over a candle on a poker table.
THURSDAY, DEC. 9: ‘Only ten shopping days till Christmas,’ says an American businessman at breakfast. Kind of crisis conviviality continues. Another American goes off to consulate to pick up his income-tax forms. ‘I may be an optimist,’ he says, ‘but it’s something to do.’ But they are a few frayed nerves. A grey toy poodle named Baby, stranded in hotel along with ‘parents’, has been under tranquilizers since war began.
Definite sense that Pak army crumbling. Gen. Niazi rumour still being circulated. Reports have Indian units 20 miles from Dacca. Indian radio says all major East Pakistani towns, except Dacca and port of Chittagong have fallen. Pakistan radio denies this. Pak army elements said to be leaving their cantonment and dispersing to scattered positions around the city. They evidently took over a tuberculosis hospital, evicting patients onto streets. We drive around the city and see few soldiers, but we see a West Pakistani policemen beating a Bengali with a stick. Consistent to the end.
Everyone wonders whether Pak army will try to make last-ditch stand in Dacca. Some UN people talking of plan for conditional surrender of Pakistani troops in East Pakistan. Condition would be safe return to West Pakistan. But who could guarantee that?
Visited residential areas were three bombs fell last night. Used to be an orphanage here, but not it’s just three big craters surrounded by mountains of mud and debris. Watch several small bodies being dug out of the mud. Orphan ‘body count’ later said to total over 200.
International Red Cross (Geneva) succeeded in having Intercontinental and one hospital designated ‘neutral zones’. This evening group of Red Cross officials and journalists moved from room to room confiscating weapons, mainly from West Pakistani guests. Several packets of explosives were found in the women’s lavatory. They are moved out to hotel lawn and surrounded by sandbags. Swimming pool consequently closed.
FRIDAY, DEC. 10: The talk at breakfast is about the 3 a.m. air raid during which several bombs landed close to hotel. I slept through it. More Bengalis seem to be leaving the city today for relative safety of villages. Bengali friend, in tears, tells me about continuing army massacres of Bengalis in several suburbs. ‘So many children,’ he says-and begins to sob. Non-Bengali minority (Biharis) fleeing villages for relative safety of Dacca.
Bengalis in Dacca all seem convinced that bombs that landed on civilian areas in the past two nights, including the one that hit the orphanage, were dropped by Pakistani planes so civilian causalities could be blamed on India. Reliable foreign sources note that that bombs were dropped by propeller planes, not MIG’s, and that makeshift bomb rack fell from plane along with bombs. Evidence still circumstantial. All seems incredibly cold-blooded. But one diplomat says ‘Anyone who has been here since March wouldn’t blink an eye at the Paks doing something like that.
’One rumour is squelched. Gen. Niazi shows up at hotel gate and is very definitely not in Burma. Under new Red Cross rules he is told he cannot enter the hotel with his weapon.
UN still negotiating with Paks and Indians to bring in evacuation planes. Apparent success. Twenty-four-hour cease-fire in air activity in Calcutta-to-Dacca corridor goes into effect 6 p.m. Evacuation planes, at least for women and children, scheduled to fly into Dacca tomorrow morning. But then: they’ve been scheduled before.
It’s now exactly one week since general war began.
SATURDAY, DEC. 11: Midmorning blast United States Information Service library. Debris scattered 100 yards around. Books lying all over the road, including The Nuclear Years and The Role of Popular Participation in Development. This is land of popular participation in destruction. Did the Mukti Bahini do it? Librarian says man who blasted it spoke Urdu, language of West Pakistan. Who knows? Within minutes books being looted from rubble. Old man goes by with tome called Religion and Ethics under his arm.
Big rumour of the day is that Gen. Rao Farman Ali Khan, deputy martial-law administrator and the ‘gentleman general’ of Pak forces here, was involved in secret negotiations, apparently with UN, to make conditional surrender of Pak forces in East Pakistan. But-the rumour goes-the commander here, Gen. Niazi, and President Agha Muhammed Yahya Khan in Islamabad found out. All this said to have affected evacuation planes, which don’t come in again today. Part of problems with planes is that India, for political reasons, insists they fly to Dacca from Calcutta. Pakistan, for political reasons, won’t accept that.
Stranded foreigners sense they may have become political pawns. Looks more and more likely that Pak army will make a last-ditch stand in Dacca. Diplomatic sources say troops being brought into city-or simply falling back here on their own. Gen. Niazi reported to have told a journalist at the airport: ‘You will be here to see me die.’
Mood at American consulate very low. Realization America backed losing side and will suffer diplomatic and perhaps other consequences from it. ‘The US mucked up this situation perfectly,’ a Western diplomat says. This afternoon a curfew is clamped on the city. The streets are deserted. One estimate is that fewer than half the city’s 1.3 million people are still here.
Red Cross calls meeting at hotel. Meeting is presided over by retired British colonel, now Red Cross official. Very David Niven. Tells hotel residents to disregard the ‘quiet extraordinary rumours floating around’ but adds that hotel guests on higher floors might want to move down a ‘wee bit’. Says hotel security man, Mr Beg, did ‘jolly good job’ of defusing those bombs in the toilet and says that they have since been buried in slit trench so that pool is open again. Dive at your own risk.
Journalists try telephoning various towns around East Pakistan to see whether Pakistani or Indian Army answers the call. Most phone line are down, but we get through to Khulna, town in south-west that supposedly fell to Indian Army days ago. Some sergeant answers phone. ‘Where are the Indians?’ we ask. Good cowboy-movie line. ‘Not here,’ he says.
SUNDAT, DEC. 12: A full-day curfew is in effect. City completely still as if some epidemic had suddenly wiped out all living things except the black crows hovering everywhere. Of course, the only epidemic in the city now is fear.
Dacca Diary 2: covering the rest of the war to follow shortly.
Dacca Diary
The Wall Street Journal
14 December 1971
[When the Indo-Pakistan war broke out in December 1971, Peter Kann was stranded in Dacca until Indian troops took over the country. Due to the difficulties of transmission he kept a diary of the events taking place. They were reprinted by the Wall Street Journal at the end of the hostilities and earned Kann a Pulitzer Prize in 1972.]
Dacca, East Pakistan: FRIDAY, DEC. 3: Entering elevator in Intercontinental Hotel when another reporter runs up to ask,’ Have you heard the war is on?’ It’s just before 8 p.m. Happen to notice sign by elevator: Happy Hours 6 to 8 p.m. Except Fridays. Rest of evening spent with other journalists clustered around shortwave radio.
Evidently, fighting broke out along border between West Pakistan and India this afternoon. India says Pakistan started it; Pakistan says India. Who knows? But India has been launching limited attacks on East Pakistan border for past ten days. What are you supposed to do when a war starts and the cable office is closed? Play poker. Go to sleep.
SATURDAY, DEC. 4: Day starts early. About 3 a.m. sky lights up with fantastic fireworks display by Pak antiaircraft batteries out by airport. Indian air raid or jumpy ack-ack gunners? Moot question because by breakfast time, Indian MIG’s making regular rocket runs on airfield. Makes you wish you were a photographer. MIG’s diving through clear blue sky. Little white puffs from the ack-ack. Even couple of inconclusive dogfights above the hotel. Several Indian planes shot down. But every observer has different count. ‘Better than Pearl Harbor,’ one of the television types says. Air strikes continue almost hourly rest of day.
SUNDAY, DEC. 5: Anticlimatic day. Nothing to compare with yesterday’s air spectacular. Lots of rumors circulating. One favourite has Indian army columns only 60 miles from Dacca. Someone consults map and discovers Indian border to the east less than 60 miles away. Western families resident in Dacca congregating at Intercontinental. Rumors of planned United Nations relief flight to Bangkok confirmed by UN officials at evening meeting in the bar. A Gergory Peck scene – distinguished grey-haired UN official talking about women and children first. Some of the men buying out hotel bar’s Scotch supply $35 a bottle. It’s a stockpiling sort of day.
‘Sartre would dig this place,’ one reporter says. Why? ‘No exit.’
MONDAY, DEC. 6: Try a road trip to Sibalay about 50 miles west of Dacca. Impression: Pak army bound to lose East Pakistan if only because of logistics. Small army convoy stalled along roadside. Overheated radiators and other mechanical maladies. When convoy stalls, the Bengali farmers flee from nearby fields. Until now army trucks meant search for Mukti Bahini guerrillas, razed villages, civilian massacres. Army hasn’t much time for that now. Irony: Bengalis probably safer now that general war is on.
Back at the Intercontinental tonight. Evening talk at the hotel is of UN plane turning back ten minutes out of Dacca because of Indian air strike at airport just before a temporary cease-fire scheduled to go into effect. And Gen. Rao Farman Ali Khan gave an afternoon press conference in which he said Pak forces facing some supply problems, are cut off from West Pakistan for the time being, and on the defensive for the time being. He said the best Pak defence is to gradually cede some territory to the advancing Indians. Last week his boss, Gen. Niazi, had said that the best defence is an offensive. But times change.
TUESDAY, DEC. 7: Dacca seems to be learning to live with war-or, rather, threat of war, because Indians so far bombing only few military targets on city outskirts. But people do keep glancing nervously at the sky. UN tried again for mercy flight, but the plane was hit by naval gunfire, presumably Indian, off East Pakistan coast. India not winning very many friends among stranded Westerners here. Some Americans in hotel lobby demanding to know why the Marines don’t come in and evacuate them. ‘We did it in the Congo,’ one says. ‘Yeah, but this ain’t the Congo,’ another says. ‘It will be soon,’ the first says.
I am out near the airport when an air-raid siren goes off. Run across field and spot a foxhole. So do our four Bengali rickshaw peddlers. So we all squat politely around the rim of the foxhole- no one wanting to be the first to hop in. It wouldn’t hold more than three. But the planes pass over, and we share a cigarette.
The military situations remains, in the words of a Pak communiqué,’ unclear’. An American diplomat says Pakistan is ‘between a rock and a hard place’. Have lunch with a West Pakistani pilot for Pakistan International Airlines who is stranded. ‘What do you plan to do?’ he is asked. ‘Die here,’ he says. Almost everyone thinks there will be another bloodbath soon, with Bengalis taking their revenge on non-Bengali minority (Biharis) and other army collaborators. If it’s an eye for an eye, there will have to be a lot of Bihari eyes lost.
Rumor that food supply at the hotel is running short. Menu is dwindling a bit, but food is still remarkably good and always lots of butter available. The hotel bought out the stock of a Danish dairy project that folded just before the war. ‘But can man live by butter alone?’ one foreigner asks.
More Indian air strikes in the afternoon. High-altitude bombing. Now the hotel roof is full of journalists and photographers. One cameraman just up from the swimming pool is still in his bathing suit. Another reporter brings a chair. A diplomat on the roof says Biharis are looting evacuated homes. ‘Well,’ he adds, ‘they can’t take it with them where they’re going.’ General feeling seems to be that Biharis had fun while it lasted. One talks of mass killing quiet calmly here. A half-million Bengalis massacred by the army in the last nine months or so. East Pakistan is like a sponge that soaks up suffering. ‘You could drop Biafra into East Pakistan and never find it again,’ the diplomat says.
WEDNESDAY, DEC. 8: The breakfast rumor is that Gen. Niazi bugged out last night on a small plane to Burma. Last week he said, ‘The more Indians who come, the more Indians to kill, the more I am happy.’ Tend to doubt the bug out report, but he may later wish he had.
Military situation still very vague, but reports have Indian advance units about 35 miles south-east of Dacca. ‘The military situation is deteriorating faster than we anticipated,’ an embassy source says. The Bengalis one encounters seem delighted by the way it’s going. Independent nation of Bangla Desh probably no more than a week away.
UN mercy-flight plans seem to be in limbo. The UN people are always in conference. Curious how much attention we all pay to the plight of several hundred foreign nationals stranded at Intercontinental. A half-million or so Bengalis probably died in last nine months; another ten million or more trapped in misery of border camps. What makes a few hundred Western lives so valuable?
Rooftop air-strike watcher crowd thinning a bit. Rumour has it one cameraman was nicked in the backside by piece of ack-ack shrapnel. Intercontinental filling up with armed West Pakistani civilians, which makes other guests uneasy. Radio news says President Nixon says war broke off sensitive negotiations that could have lead to ‘virtual autonomy’ for East Pakistan. Last March the Bengalis were demanding ‘virtual autonomy’. Bit late for virtuals. Television correspondents have secret information that small Pak plane planning to make a secret night flight to secret Burma airstrip and pilot willing to take some film and newspaper copy. Film packed in a suitcase and ready to go.
One of week’s unlikelier eventualities: in evening we roast marshmallows over a candle on a poker table.
THURSDAY, DEC. 9: ‘Only ten shopping days till Christmas,’ says an American businessman at breakfast. Kind of crisis conviviality continues. Another American goes off to consulate to pick up his income-tax forms. ‘I may be an optimist,’ he says, ‘but it’s something to do.’ But they are a few frayed nerves. A grey toy poodle named Baby, stranded in hotel along with ‘parents’, has been under tranquilizers since war began.
Definite sense that Pak army crumbling. Gen. Niazi rumour still being circulated. Reports have Indian units 20 miles from Dacca. Indian radio says all major East Pakistani towns, except Dacca and port of Chittagong have fallen. Pakistan radio denies this. Pak army elements said to be leaving their cantonment and dispersing to scattered positions around the city. They evidently took over a tuberculosis hospital, evicting patients onto streets. We drive around the city and see few soldiers, but we see a West Pakistani policemen beating a Bengali with a stick. Consistent to the end.
Everyone wonders whether Pak army will try to make last-ditch stand in Dacca. Some UN people talking of plan for conditional surrender of Pakistani troops in East Pakistan. Condition would be safe return to West Pakistan. But who could guarantee that?
Visited residential areas were three bombs fell last night. Used to be an orphanage here, but not it’s just three big craters surrounded by mountains of mud and debris. Watch several small bodies being dug out of the mud. Orphan ‘body count’ later said to total over 200.
International Red Cross (Geneva) succeeded in having Intercontinental and one hospital designated ‘neutral zones’. This evening group of Red Cross officials and journalists moved from room to room confiscating weapons, mainly from West Pakistani guests. Several packets of explosives were found in the women’s lavatory. They are moved out to hotel lawn and surrounded by sandbags. Swimming pool consequently closed.
FRIDAY, DEC. 10: The talk at breakfast is about the 3 a.m. air raid during which several bombs landed close to hotel. I slept through it. More Bengalis seem to be leaving the city today for relative safety of villages. Bengali friend, in tears, tells me about continuing army massacres of Bengalis in several suburbs. ‘So many children,’ he says-and begins to sob. Non-Bengali minority (Biharis) fleeing villages for relative safety of Dacca.
Bengalis in Dacca all seem convinced that bombs that landed on civilian areas in the past two nights, including the one that hit the orphanage, were dropped by Pakistani planes so civilian causalities could be blamed on India. Reliable foreign sources note that that bombs were dropped by propeller planes, not MIG’s, and that makeshift bomb rack fell from plane along with bombs. Evidence still circumstantial. All seems incredibly cold-blooded. But one diplomat says ‘Anyone who has been here since March wouldn’t blink an eye at the Paks doing something like that.
’One rumour is squelched. Gen. Niazi shows up at hotel gate and is very definitely not in Burma. Under new Red Cross rules he is told he cannot enter the hotel with his weapon.
UN still negotiating with Paks and Indians to bring in evacuation planes. Apparent success. Twenty-four-hour cease-fire in air activity in Calcutta-to-Dacca corridor goes into effect 6 p.m. Evacuation planes, at least for women and children, scheduled to fly into Dacca tomorrow morning. But then: they’ve been scheduled before.
It’s now exactly one week since general war began.
SATURDAY, DEC. 11: Midmorning blast United States Information Service library. Debris scattered 100 yards around. Books lying all over the road, including The Nuclear Years and The Role of Popular Participation in Development. This is land of popular participation in destruction. Did the Mukti Bahini do it? Librarian says man who blasted it spoke Urdu, language of West Pakistan. Who knows? Within minutes books being looted from rubble. Old man goes by with tome called Religion and Ethics under his arm.
Big rumour of the day is that Gen. Rao Farman Ali Khan, deputy martial-law administrator and the ‘gentleman general’ of Pak forces here, was involved in secret negotiations, apparently with UN, to make conditional surrender of Pak forces in East Pakistan. But-the rumour goes-the commander here, Gen. Niazi, and President Agha Muhammed Yahya Khan in Islamabad found out. All this said to have affected evacuation planes, which don’t come in again today. Part of problems with planes is that India, for political reasons, insists they fly to Dacca from Calcutta. Pakistan, for political reasons, won’t accept that.
Stranded foreigners sense they may have become political pawns. Looks more and more likely that Pak army will make a last-ditch stand in Dacca. Diplomatic sources say troops being brought into city-or simply falling back here on their own. Gen. Niazi reported to have told a journalist at the airport: ‘You will be here to see me die.’
Mood at American consulate very low. Realization America backed losing side and will suffer diplomatic and perhaps other consequences from it. ‘The US mucked up this situation perfectly,’ a Western diplomat says. This afternoon a curfew is clamped on the city. The streets are deserted. One estimate is that fewer than half the city’s 1.3 million people are still here.
Red Cross calls meeting at hotel. Meeting is presided over by retired British colonel, now Red Cross official. Very David Niven. Tells hotel residents to disregard the ‘quiet extraordinary rumours floating around’ but adds that hotel guests on higher floors might want to move down a ‘wee bit’. Says hotel security man, Mr Beg, did ‘jolly good job’ of defusing those bombs in the toilet and says that they have since been buried in slit trench so that pool is open again. Dive at your own risk.
Journalists try telephoning various towns around East Pakistan to see whether Pakistani or Indian Army answers the call. Most phone line are down, but we get through to Khulna, town in south-west that supposedly fell to Indian Army days ago. Some sergeant answers phone. ‘Where are the Indians?’ we ask. Good cowboy-movie line. ‘Not here,’ he says.
SUNDAT, DEC. 12: A full-day curfew is in effect. City completely still as if some epidemic had suddenly wiped out all living things except the black crows hovering everywhere. Of course, the only epidemic in the city now is fear.
Dacca Diary 2: covering the rest of the war to follow shortly.
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