‘Covering the July uprising meant accepting I might not come home’

On the morning of 5 August, I was glued to my phone, following every update of the "Long March to Ganobhaban." Feverish from antibiotics, I eventually drifted off—only to jolt awake around 1:30pm with a strange, heavy feeling in my chest. Something was different.

I flicked on the TV. And there it was. Bold letters screaming across every screen: "Sheikh Hasina has fled the country."

I didn't believe it at first. I switched channels—one after another—only to see the same thing: a roaring human tide surging towards Ganabhaban. My wife, my rock and fiercest cheerleader, clasped my hands and said, "Allah has accepted your blood. The nation is finally free from the tyrant Hasina."

Despite my fractured arm and fresh head wounds from an attack just the day before, I grabbed my camera. Tarikul, my cousin, joined me. We hopped on a rickshaw through Agargaon, weaving past thousands in the streets. People were crying, shouting, hugging strangers—it was the sound of a nation exhaling after years of suffocation.

Inside Ganabhaban, the air felt electric. Some prayed through tears, others raised their hands skyward in disbelief. Outside, portraits of Mujib and Hasina went up in flames, and smoke curled into the sky.

But none of this could erase what had happened just the day before at Dhanmondi 27.

I'd gone there to cover a protest. It was tense but quiet until, around noon, a procession of 80–100 Awami League men stormed in from Dhanmondi 32, guns blazing. Protesters scattered. I filmed everything: the panic, the beatings.

Then I saw them chasing a cyclist—my heart stopped. It was Miraz, my colleague. I ran forward, yelling, "He's a journalist!" They didn't care. I dragged him away, but that made me their next target.

They demanded to know why I was there. Before I could answer, fists rained down. I ran to a leader for help. His advice? "Run for your life."

I tried. But another group caught me. Then another. A machete's blunt edge crashed against my back. My legs buckled. A final blow to my head, and the world went black.

I woke up later, thanks to Bikash, a fellow journalist who carried me to safety. The doctors counted: fractured arm, five stitches, bruises everywhere.

From 16 July, covering the July Uprising felt like walking a tightrope over gunfire. Tear gas, rubber bullets, live rounds—I faced them all. Each morning, my wife wept as I left. "If I die," I told her, "let the world see it through my lens."

And now, as I stood amidst the jubilant crowds on 5 August, battered but breathing, I realised something: all those wounds, all that fear—it was worth it. Because I had lived to see history.