A city in prayer: Witnessing Khaleda Zia’s final journey

This was not a crowd defined by age or class. It was a cross-section of Bangladesh, compressed into streets not built to hold such emotion. Photo: Ahasanul Rajib

How do you define a person's life? 

The works? The achievements? The love received after death? 

Khaleda Zia received all. And beyond. In her death, she transcended all. 

The country was grief-stricken when the news of the former prime minister and chairperson of Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP) Khaleda Zia's death broke out. The public sorrow was immense; and so it was expected that the crowd in her funeral the next day would be uncountable. 

I walked down the stairs of the Farmgate metro station into a city that no longer felt like its usual self. The loud and fast capital had slowed into a city shrouded in a heavy, dense and almost reverent atmosphere. 

From the moment my feet touched the pavement, it was clear that this was not simply a funeral. It was a collective moment, a convergence of grief, memory and politics that had pulled the city toward one centre of gravity. An era of Bangladeshi history was over, and millions had come to witness it. 

I walked toward Indira Road, carried more by the current of people than by my own intention. The crowd was already vast, stretching beyond what the eye could comfortably hold. From the elevated expressway to the National Parliament complex, from Farmgate to the arteries feeding Manik Mia Avenue, people poured in from every direction. They came on foot. They came with children, with parents, with spouses. They came because Khaleda Zia mattered to Bangladeshis from every generation. 

What struck me first was the banners or slogans, or the lack thereof. Nobody chanted any slogans. This was not a crowd defined by age or class. It was a cross-section of Bangladesh, compressed into streets not built to hold such emotion. 

As I moved forward, the crowd thickened until movement became negotiation. At one point, the pressure grew unbearable. People surged, stumbled. Someone shouted for space. Another voice yelled, "Don't push." 

For a few terrifying moments, I was inside a stampede — feet losing rhythm, bodies pressed too close, breath turning shallow. I do not remember making a conscious decision to survive; instinct took over. Hands grabbed shoulders, and the desperate gasps for air filled the space. 

Somehow, I was pushed out to the side. I pushed people out of the way to take shelter on the pavement. When I finally caught my breath, my panjabi was soaked despite the chilly weather, my legs trembling. Others were not so lucky. Later I got to know a man died in the stampede. 

For many in attendance, Khaleda was the woman who stood firm through imprisonment, illness and political exile of her family. She was the widow of Ziaur Rahman, the mother who endured losses that were both personal and political. Her supporters saw resilience where her critics saw rigidity. Her name shone like a lighthouse through the dark days of fascism. Now, the light has finally gone out.

The rush was heavy. Yet even then, people did not leave.

They waited. They stood. They prayed.

From where I stood, I could hear the speeches carried by loudspeakers, sometimes clear, sometimes dissolving into static. And then came Tarique Rahman's voice. It lasted only 58 seconds. But it felt longer, heavier. His words were simple, restrained, almost fragile. 

He asked for prayers for his mother. He spoke not as a political heir but as a common Bangali Muslim son. Around me, grown men wiped their eyes. I felt my own vision blur. The simple grief in his voice shook my heart. It did not demand emotion; it just sank in. 

When the time came for the janaza, the crowd pressed closer again. There was barely room to lift an arm. I tried to raise my hands for the takbir and found my elbows pinned. People murmured the words anyway, lips moving even when bodies could not. I even saw some members of ethnic minorities standing nearby while others offered prayers. 

As the funeral prayer ended and the coffin was taken away, the crowd did not dissolve. It lingered, as if unwilling to accept that this chapter had closed. I began walking back, the long way — because there was no other way. 

The city had surrendered its roads to grief. Along the route, I saw faces I will not forget: a woman sitting on the pavement, eyes red, whispering prayers; a group of young men helping an elderly stranger drink water; a father lifting his child onto his shoulders so she could see, perhaps so that she could remember.

It was during this walk that I noticed the old man. He stood slightly apart, supported by younger relatives. His back was bent, his face a map of years. Someone told me, almost in awe, that he was allegedly 110 years old. 

Later, I learned that he had attended Ziaur Rahman's funeral decades ago. He had come again, to bid farewell to Khaleda Zia. True or not, the story carried its own truth: for some, this was not just the end of a leader but the closing of a life-long political journey.

People were not only mourning Khaleda Zia the individual, or even Khaleda Zia the three-time prime minister. They were mourning an era in which politics still felt personal, where loyalty was built over decades, not election cycles. And they came regardless of who they would vote for. 

Khaleda Zia's political life was strewn with attacks from the Awami League. She was criticised, resisted, vilified by her opponents. But love won in the end. 

For many here, she was the woman who stood firm through imprisonment, illness, and political exile of her family. She was the widow of Ziaur Rahman, the mother who endured losses that were both personal and political. Her supporters saw resilience where her critics saw rigidity. Her name shone like a lighthouse through the dark days of fascism. Now, the light has finally gone out. 

From rooftops, flyovers, balconies, people watched, prayed, waved. The city was not functioning; it was participating actively to bid farewell to the leader loved and respected to the highest degree. 

As I finally neared Farmgate again, exhaustion settled in. My legs ached. My throat was dry. But my mind was restless. Funerals often reveal truths that speeches conceal. This one revealed the depth of Khaleda Zia's connection with ordinary people — connections forged not through policy briefs but through shared history, suffering, and symbolism. I saw common people the most. And that speaks a lot about the legacy of Khaleda Zia. 

This was not an endorsement of everything she stood for. It was something more elemental. It was a collective acknowledgement that she had occupied a central place in Bangladesh's political imagination for decades. That her absence leaves a vacuum not easily filled. That love, once earned, can outlast power.

As evening fell, the crowd slowly thinned, but the feeling did not. Dhaka returned to itself, inch by inch. Traffic resumed. Shops reopened. But something lingered in the air — a quiet heaviness, a sense that the city had witnessed something rare.

Perhaps the largest funeral in the country's history is not measured only by numbers. It is measured by how far people are willing to walk, how long they are willing to stand, how much discomfort they are willing to endure, just to say goodbye.

On this day, Dhaka walked together. And in doing so, it told a story about Khaleda Zia that no headline alone ever could. That the city said goodbye to the regal lady of Bangladeshi politics. There was no one like her before, and no one like her will ever be. May she rest in peace.