A light shines amid darkness
Most of us would go the mile for our friends, but sometimes the question becomes -- how long is that mile?
What if the mile meant giving up your life? What if you were given an easy way out, an easy way to walk out, abandoning your friends? Perhaps your friends are also asking you to walk away, they are saying they will be okay?
Let us complicate matters further -- what if your mother was waiting for you outside, as you know in your heart that she surely must be?
One can never know if these were the questions hounding Faraaz Ayaaz Hossain on that fateful night in 2016 when militants stormed the Holey Artisan Bakery in Gulshan and killed everyone in sight. Their main targets were foreigners and non-Muslims.
Faraaz, 20, son of Simeen Hossain and Waquer Hossain, and a student of Emory University in Atlanta, USA, was given the option of walking out because he was a Bangladeshi Muslim but he had to leave his friends Abinta Kabir and Tarishi Jain behind.
How long is the mile you ask? Faraaz answered it in that moment -- for our friends, there is no mile that is too long to traverse.
When the terrorists refused to let his friends go, Faraaz chose to stay by their side till the end, according to witnesses who were inside the café during the siege.
After nearly 12 hours of the standoff, special forces of the army succeeded in breaking the siege. The bodies of 20 victims, including Faraaz, Tarishi and Abinta, were found inside the café.
Faraaz was a junior at Emory, slated to graduate in 2018. At the 2018 commencement ceremony, Emory University paid tribute to him by naming an award after him that recognised core values in students.
"This award has been renamed to honor Faraaz Hossain, who would have been a member of your class but died tragically and heroically, defending his friends in a terrorist attack in Bangladesh," the university announced during the ceremonies, as reported by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. "The Core Values award is therefore particularly poignant to us and is presented to a senior who embodies our most noble principles."
After the tragedy, PepsiCo Inc in 2016 launched the annual "Faraaz Hossain Courage Award" to be given out for the next 20 years with a cash endowment of $200,000. The award recognises bravery in the face of adversity , and encourages youth under 35 to take on courageous roles in their everyday lives.
The Harmony Foundation of India in November 2016 posthumously conferred on Faraaz the Mother Teresa Memorial International Award for Social Justice. Others who had received this award include the Dalai Lama and Dr Mahathir Mohamad.
"Let us cross borders with the courage they showed in their lives," said President of Emory University Claire Sterk at a programme organised by the university's Oxford College community following the tragic deaths of Faraaz and Abinta.
As the massacre is remembered today, so is the story of Faraaz, whose courage and loyalty in the face of death shows promise of becoming an urban tale that will be told about this city for decades to come.