Bangabandhu: more than just a stadium

On Tuesday, England begin their inaugural Test match against Bangladesh, at the Bangabandhu Stadium in Dhaka. Some people prefer to shorten the name of the venue, and describe it simply as the National Stadium - "Bangabandhu" is one of those words that can't help but trip up tongue-tied foreign commentators.

It needn't be so, as the sentiments expressed in the name could hardly be simpler. The literal translation of "Bangabandhu" is "friend of Bengal" - a moniker that anyone who has spent any time in the country would be proud to carry, I am sure. But in these parts, that title is reserved for one man, and one man only. Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, the father of the nation, and the leader of the independence movement during Bangladesh's war of liberation from Pakistan.

His portrait is one of three images that adorn the otherwise bleak concrete stands at the eastern end of the stadium. Thick-set, with stiff horn-rimmed glasses and a tidy moustache, it was Sheikh Mujib who declared Bangla Desh (which literally means "homeland of the Bengalis") independent in March 1971, and who led the country for four years until his assassination on August 15, 1975.

His house - where he was gunned down along with all but two of his daughters (one of whom, Hasina, later became prime minister herself) - lies opposite a large Serpentine of a lake, in the pleasant district of Dhanmondi, about a mile and a half to the west of England's team hotel. From the outside, it seems a desirable but unremarkable two-storey townhouse, one of three or four in the street. On the first floor, a brick-and-steel verandah overlooks a concrete yard, and were it not for a large mosaic of Mujib on the wall outside (and a steady stream of curious visitors, mainly students), one would be forgiven for missing its significance entirely.

Step past the patio bookstall and through the front door, however, and it is immediately apparent that the house has become a shrine. The hall is a homily to the Sheikh's rise to power - every inch of wall space is used to exhibit his career in photos, a sequence broken only by the entrance to his study, which is visible through a dusty glass panel; untouched, like every other room in the house, for almost three decades.

At the end of the hall, there is a doorway to the left, which leads down a dark corridor to the well of an incongruously modern staircase. It is the only alteration that has been permitted in the house - for reasons that become abundantly clear later on the tour. By the base of the banister, opposite one of the many portraits of those household members who lost their lives, there is the first of several perspex tiles that have been screwed to the wall. Beneath it is the unmistakable puncture of a bullet-hole.

After you go up the stairs, the first-floor landing gives a choice of three more glass-panelled rooms. The first peers through to the grey walls of the Sheikh's bedroom, which are daubed with a rash of machine-gun fire. His bed and dressing-table have been covered in plastic sheeting, while the wall by the window is protected with another - bathroom-mirror-sized - slab of perspex. Closer inspection would reveal splatters of blood behind it, but distance and poor lighting lend the exhibition an air of mystery.

The most poignant room in the house is that of Sheikh Russel, Mujib's nine-year-old son and the youngest of the victims. His bed and toy cabinet are exactly as he would have left them, with collection of dolls sat in a row on his shelf, and a cricket bat propped up next to a hockey stick by the wall. Nearer the verandah is the household's living room, where the dinner table has remained set for 28 years and where a still-unopened bottle of Coca-Cola stands fermenting by the window.

The centrepiece of the tour, however, is the main staircase of the house - the very place where the Sheikh himself was slain. The site receives a simple recognition: a Bangladeshi flag hangs on the wall, next to a modest floral tribute and a melancholy poem ("Shed your tears, for here on this hallowed spot ..."). Alongside all this hangs an evocative painting of the grisly moment.

It is a temple that I have entered into, not a debating chamber, so it is wholly inappropriate to ponder the reasons for such a violent end to Bangabandhu's life and leadership. But at the exit to the house, where visitors have an opportunity to leave their own thoughts, it is clear from the swollen volumes of comments that Sheikh Mujibur Rahman remains, to this day, a much revered man.