Blogger Tareq’s wife pleads for help

Tareq Rahim and Monika Mistry were married on May 30. Three months later, Rahim was stabbed multiple times and shot in the stomach, when religious extremists attacked the office of a publisher of secular books. Photo: Monika Mistry via Centre for Inquiry Canada

Star Online Report

Wife of blogger Tareq Rahim says she fears for the life of her husband after he was seriously injured last week in the latest attack by religious extremists on secular bloggers and writers in Bangladesh.
Monika Mistry, a Canadian woman, said her husband, Tareq, was hacked multiple times in the head, hands and torso and was shot in the stomach. His condition has improved but he remains in critical condition, with a bullet still inside his body. Mistry’s afraid he could be attacked again, reports Global News Canada.
Rahim, she said, was meeting with writer friends Saturday afternoon in the office of Shuddhoswar publishing house, in Dhaka, when unknown assailants stormed in and began hacking them with machetes and cleavers. “They didn’t even talk. They just started stabbing them,” she said.
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Mistry said it’s hard for her to even look at photos of her husband’s wounds, but she agreed to share the images with Global News Canada.
Shuddhoswar owner Ahmedur Rashid Tutul and writer Ranadipam Basu were also injured in the attack.

Tareq Rahim remains in hospital in Dhaka after being injured in an attack on Saturday. Photo: Courtesy of Monika Mistry

Mistry had spoken with her husband just four hours before a friend in London, England called her in the middle of the night to let her know about the attack.

She said she feels powerless to be on the other side of the world while her husband is fighting for his life. Mistry, a Bangladeshi who went to Canada in 2006 and now lives in Montreal with her daughter from a previous marriage, said she can’t afford to go back to Bangladesh to be with Rahim.
“I can’t be there. I can’t see him, I can’t touch him, I can’t hear from him,” the 37-year-old woman said, struggling to keep her composure.
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Mistry said she wants her 32-year-old husband to be in Canada, where interfaith marriage is more accepted; she’s from a Hindu family, he’s from a Muslim one, reports Global News Canada.
This attack and another one just hours later are the most recent in a series of violent assaults since February when Bangladeshi-American writer and blogger Avijit Roy was murdered.
Roy was hacked to death while walking with wife outside a book fair on the Dhaka University campus. His wife, Rafida Bonya Ahmed also suffered wounds and reportedly lost a thumb in the attack.
In a separate attack on Saturday, just hours after Rahim was seriously wounded, 43-year-old Faisal Arefin Dipan was killed in the office of his Jagriti Prokashoni publishing house.

Tareq Rahim’s condition has improved, a Bangladeshi website reported Tuesday. Physicians, the reports said, determined they would not have to amputate Rahim’s injured left hand. Photo: Courtesy of Monika Mistry

Both Jagriti Prokashoni and Shuddhoswar publishing houses had published Roy’s works.
More attacks to come?
Mistry fears Rahim’s life will continue to be at risk because he survived the attack and the assailants are waiting to finish the job.
“These killers, they’re on the street. You don’t know, maybe they’re walking around the hospitals because they couldn’t fulfill their mission. They wanted these people dead, but they’re not dead,” she said.
There aren’t a lot of options for the government to step in to help Rahim because he’s still in Bangladesh, according to Halifax Refugee Clinic executive director Julie Chamagne.
She said what likely needs to happen is for a letter to be written to the minister of citizenship, refugees and immigration (Markham-Thornhill MP John McCallum) to expedite the processing of Mistry’s application for her husband to be granted residency, or for him to request a temporary resident permit while applying to live here permanently.
The Centre for Inquiry (CFI) Canada, a non-profit education organisation, is leading calls for the newly elected Trudeau government to intervene in the case, reports Global News Canada.
“CFI Canada is making an appeal to the Canadian government, and certainly Justin Trudeau, to ask for some compassionate support for someone who would have likely been coming to Canada if they hadn’t been attacked by terrorists before getting a chance to do that,” said Executive Director Eric Adriaans.
Mistry just hopes anyone who has the power will do what they can to help ensure her husband’s to safety.
“This is the most difficult thing that one can go through,” she said.

14kg gold seized at Dhaka airport

Star Online Report

Customs officials today seized 120 gold bars weighing around 14 kilogrammes from under a seat of a flight at Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport in Dhaka.
Acting on a tip-off, a smuggling prevention team of Dhaka Customs House conducted a search at the flight this morning and seized the gold bars from under a seat, Shahiduzaman Sarkar, assistant commissioner of Dhaka Customs House, told The Daily Star.
The flight no-RX783 landed at the airport from Kualalampur around 8:16am, the customs official said.
The market value of the gold bars is estimated around Tk 7.5 crore, he added.
No arrest was made in this connection, he said.

Adolphe Sax’s 201st Birthday

• Adolphe Sax’s 201st Birthday

• If you were alive in the mid-nineteenth century and had a particularly keen ear for music, you might have noticed a void somewhere between the brass and woodwind sections. Adolphe Sax certainly did, and being both a talented musician and the enterprising man that he was, he started tinkering and endeavored to fill it. The result was the iconic, honey-toned instrument still bearing his name: the saxophone.

  The son of an instrument-maker, Sax was highly creative and had a deep understanding of brass and woodwinds. He started tinkering with instruments of his own, and upon bringing together the body of a brass and the mechanics of a woodwind created a hybrid that would revolutionize music. His eponymous saxophone had a sound all its own, a wonderfully smoky middle ground between the two.

  The Saxophones that were popularized by the likes of John Coltrane, Lisa Simpson, and Kenny G constitute only a fraction of his impressive body of work. From the whimsical looking 7-bell trombone to the large and swooping saxtuba, Sax never tired of exploring, experimenting, and creating new—and sometimes unusual—instruments. To properly highlight his inventiveness we couldn’t possibly make just one Doodle. Which is why you can find five unique Doodles today, each celebrating a different instrument created at the hands of Mr. Sax. There is one notable exception—what we affectionately call The Googlehorn. Inspired by the intricate tubing Sax employed to alter and manipulate sound, this is Doodler Lydia Nichols' attempt to fashion an instrument as unique and quirky as both Adolphe Sax and Google.

  Learn more about the family of musical inventors behind today's Doodle on Google Cultural Institute.

  

  Initial sketches with some errors in hand-placement. From left to right: Saxtuba, Alto Sax, 7-Bell Trombone, Soprano Sax, 'Googlehorn.' The background treatment was changed in the final to mimic the plates and engraving typically found on instruments of that era.