announced press censorship and ordering all government employees to report back to work. All privately owned weapons were ordered to be turned into the authorities.
Magically, the city returned to life, and panic set in. By 10 a.m. with palls of black smoke still hanging over large areas of the old town and out in the distance toward the industrial areas, the streets were packed with people leaving town. By car and in rickshaws, but mostly on foot, carrying their possessions with them, the people of Dacca were fleeing. By noon the refugees numbered in the tens of thousands.
“Please give me lift, I am old man”-“In the name of Allah., help me”-"Take my children with you5',
Silent and unsmiling they passed and saw what the army has done. They looked the other way and kept on walking. Down near one of the markets a shot was heard. Within seconds, 2,000 people were running; but it had only been someone going to join the lines already forming to turn in weapons.
Government offices remained almost empty. Most employees were leaving for their villages ignoring the call to go back to work, Those who were not fleeing wandered aimlessly around, the smoking debris, lifting blackened and twisted sheets of corrugated iron (used in most shanty areas for roofing) to savage from the ashes what they could.
Nearly every other car was either taking people out into the countryside or flying a red cross and conveying dead and wounded to the hospitals.
In the middle of it all occasional convoys of troops would appear, the soldiers peering- equally unsmiling- down the muzzles of their guns at the silent crowds. On Friday night as they pulled back to their barracks they shouted “Narai Takbir”. an old Persian war cry meaning “We have won the war". On Saturday when they spoke it was to shout “Pakistan Zindabad-Long live Pakistan”.
Fast-selling Flags
Most people took the hint. Before the curfew was reimposed the two hottest-selling items on the market were gasoline and the national flag of Pakistan. As if to protect their property in their absence, the last thing a family would do before they locked up their house would be to raise the flag.
At 4 o'clock Saturday afternoon, the streets emptied again. The troops reappeared and silence fell once more over Dacca. But firing broke out again almost immediately. “Anybody out after four will be shot”, the radio had announced earlier in the day.
A small boy running across the street outside the Intercontinental Hotel two minutes after the curfew fell was stopped, slapped four times in the face by an officer and taken away in a jeep.
The night watchman at the Dacca Club, a bar left over from the colonial days, was shot when he went to shut the gale of the club. A group of Hindu Pakistanis living around
