It seems like yesterday but it’s been already a year. I still remember clearly.
Friday night, the last Friday of Ramadan 2016. I was watching a movie on my computer, as I did almost every night to relax after the day. It would be followed by a hard working day as usual. The film was almost over, the bottle of Chakma distillate too. It was almost midnight.
I get a message on Viber (yes, in Bangladesh we used Viber): “Are you watching the news?”, my employer was writing. I was answering, No, why?, when Viber closed and I received a phone call from a friend businessman, also living in Bangladesh: “Do you know something? They took hostage the Italians at the bakery!”
Simply “bakery” was the nickname of the pastryshop-bakery-restaurant “Holey Artisan Bakery”, located in Gulshan-2, very close to my house and to the few foreigners I knew in Bangladesh. I had been there a lot of times, it was practically the only restaurant that cooked decently and made good bread and pastries. Virtually all western residents in Bangladesh attended that place.
A target even too much easy and obvious for the wannabe Terrorists of Allah. But Bangladesh still did not know the grip of the Jihad Terror.
I turn on the local TV, where I only find shit on Ramadan and no interesting news.
Someone knocked at the door, he was the gatekeeper: “Do not leave home, they are killing off outside.” Pretty drunk and with still unclear ideas, I reply it’s past midnight and I certainly won’t leave home now, never did so indeed.
Viber continues to vibrate, even the people I think less, whose existence I did not even remember, just write and write; at a point I stopped reading.
I open Twitter, writing “Dhaka”, and it gives me the suggestion “#DhakaShooting”, trending in that moment.
From there begins the tweets stream: Holey Artisan Bakery besieged. Police surrounding the terrorists. 20 foreigners seized in the “westerns” restaurant.
I decide to turn off everything and go to bed. During the sleep I hear distant sounds of shots and explosions for the whole night. In the morning I wake up as usual and read an SMS from the office’s admin by which he says that today the office does not open because there is still ongoing the police operation.
I finally open online newspapers, press agencies and Twitter and start reading clearer news, though still confusing and contradictory: The Caliphate claims the attack in the night. The police operation was launched at 8.30 am, to date. Everyone dead. Everyone dead. Then began arriving photos of known persons, friends, and a name I know likely since 2005: “Gianni” Boschetti, who would have been able to hide in the garden and save himself.
I talk again over phone with my employer, who tells me that inside the bakery there were nine Italians, and they all died. She also tells me some names, all more or less well known.
Local newspapers give a first late-morning report: 18 hostages released and 5 dead, of which 2 confirmed Italians. Seven terrorists died.
In the early afternoon the data is revised: 20 dead hostages found inside the restaurant, all western. 13 hostages saved, including 2 Italians. Of the 7 attackers, 6 were killed and about 1 of them there is no clear news from the media.
Finally, there is clearer and definitive data: seven Japanese, one Indian, one American and two Bengali were killed. Nine, however, the Italians executed:
Adele Puglisi
Marco Tondat
Claudia Maria D’Antona (wife of the survived Gian Galeazzo Boschetti)
Nadia Benedetti
Vincenzo D’Allestro
Maria Rivoli
Cristian Rossi
Claudio Cappelli
Simona Monti
The seven bengali boys affiliated to the Islamic State ideology had entered the restaurant suddenly, when the largest number of Western customers was present. They took hostage everybody through the night. The police quickly besieged the restaurant, trying to negotiate. Meanwhile the Jihadists were questioning the people present: who could recite verses of the Quran was released, one at a time (slowing so the police from launching the raid). The 20 hostages who had not been able to recite the Quran had been killed, slashed slowly, tortured, burnt, fired. One of the Italian hostages had tried to offer money to the attackers asking to be spared, but on her very body were found the major signs of heinous violence and devastation.
When police finally broke the entrance, they found only corpses everywhere.
After the story, the country has not come back as before. I was no longer able to come back as before. Something inside changes forever, when you come in front of the true face of the Religion of Peace.
