Bangladesh’s First Day Was My Grandmother’s Last
A photograph on our family piano was almost all I knew of her. Then I began uncovering her extraordinary life.
I never knew my grandmother. Growing up, I didn’t even know her name. The only vestige of her was a photo, a black-and-white portrait that sat on our piano, hidden in a crowd of other family pictures.
All I knew was that my mother — alongside her father, grandmother, and sister — had emigrated from Bangladesh to the U.S. in the 1970s, growing up in New Jersey. But the life my grandmother belonged to felt far removed. As a kid, I barely thought about this past. But as I grew older and could no longer ignore the woman who resided on our piano, I wanted to fill in what was missing. So this year, I set out to find her.