By Abrar Farhan Zaman
The sun fractured through the slats of the blinds, slicing the room into golden bars. Shadows stretched long and thin, like ghostly fingers reaching for the edges of my desk. The blank page before me stared back, not as an invitation but as an accusation, a yawning silence that swallowed every attempt at thought. The light danced across its surface, but the page remained a void—a desert of purpose.
“You’re a Zaman,” my father’s voice lingered in the corners of the room, not spoken aloud but breathed into memory. The syllables hung heavy, iron chains wrapped in silk. Not a reprimand, not a command, but an inheritance too vast for one man to carry. The name was not merely a word—it was a weight, a shadow that grew as I stood beneath it.
The stories of my lineage were carved into the air of our home, recited like mantras, repeated until they etched themselves into my skin. My paternal grandfather, Professor Mohammad Moniruzzaman was a constellation of accomplishments: Poet, Scholar, Rotary Governor, and the Chair of the Bangla Department at Dhaka University. His Ekushey Padak gleamed like an eternal flame in the annals of our family history. “His words moved mountains,” my father often said, his voice soft with reverence.
And then there was my maternal grandfather, Sultan Ahmed Khan, whose journey to Cambridge stood as a testament to intellect unfettered by borders. His policies in agriculture reshaped the fields of Bangladesh. My paternal grandmother, Rashida Zaman, whose voice commanded classrooms as the head teacher of ULAB School, and my mother, Farhana Ahmed, whose leadership as the Head of TOT at the Bangladesh Institute of Management left indelible marks. Even my father, who rose from the ranks of a trainer to a CHRO, carried the banner of service and impact.
Their stories clung to me like mist, dense and inescapable. And here I was, at my desk, the blank page mocking my hesitation.
“Take a break,” my mother’s voice drifted through the doorway, soft as the light filtering in. She stepped into the room, her shadow stretching beside her, merging with mine. Her face, lined with wisdom, seemed to reflect the quiet strength of the women who had come before her. “You’ve been staring at that page for hours.”
“I’m fine,” I said, though the tremor in my voice betrayed me. She moved closer, her footsteps barely breaking the stillness, and placed a gentle hand on my shoulder.
“Do you remember what your grandfather used to say?” she asked, her voice laced with the rhythm of memory. “Impact isn’t measured by titles or awards. It’s measured by the lives you touch.”
The words hung in the air, a feather caught in a current. I nodded, but the weight inside me remained unmoved. “It’s hard, Ma,” I confessed, the words slipping out unbidden. “I look at everything they’ve done, and it feels like I’ll never be enough.”
She smiled, the kind of smile that carried lifetimes of understanding. “You are enough, Abrar. You’re already making your mark, even if you can’t see it yet.”
Her hand tightened on mine, grounding me. I thought of the moments that felt real—the triumph of my students winning the national debate championship, the memorial lecture I had sponsored for Shahid Abu Sayed in Rangpur, and the workshops where young minds found their voices. Small acts, perhaps, but they were my acts.
“Do you remember what Grandfather said when he accepted the Ekushey Padak?” I asked, the memory flickering in my mind like an ember.
Her laughter was soft, a song in the dusk. “He said, ‘This is not for me. It’s for the countless people who inspired me, taught me, and walked this path before me.’”
The words settled over me, not as a burden but as a balm. It wasn’t about eclipsing their legacy; it was about extending it, carrying the flame forward into the unknown, charting a path for those who would follow and blaze a trail for others to tread.
That night, I returned to my desk. The page no longer felt like a void—it was a canvas waiting for its first stroke. I began to write, the words flowing like a river freed from its dam. I wrote of legacies and expectations, of shadows and light, of the small victories that ripple into larger change. The stories I smithed on my forge, like Hephaestus wielding words instead of flame, were not monumental, but they bore my essence. They were enough
Outside, the last light of day surrendered to the velvet of night, but in the quiet of my room, a new light flickered to life. It was faint but steady, illuminating the path I was carving for myself, one word at a time.