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Have you ever wanted to ride in an ambulance … for more than 5 hours? I mean gone out of your way, done everything in your power to lie on that gurney in the back. Have you ever wanted to sit on death’s doorstep — or pretend to — in the middle of the night, beneath the blaring sirens, surrounded by flashing lights? Would you ever pay big bucks to do it, and consider it not only a privilege, but a mission?
Rashid Shahriar did. He had a conference to get to, and nothing was going to stop him; not a curfew in his native Bangladesh; not a government-imposed outage of the country’s internet and cellphone networks; not a “shoot-on-sight” order for the military at anyone so bold as to break curfew.
But the story of Rashid’s escape from Bangladesh in an ambulance begins not at sundown on July 19th, 2024 when he set out from his hometown of Jamalpur in that ambulance. It doesn’t begin earlier that day, when the curfew was imposed. Nor does it begin the day before, the 18th, when he booked a cab ride to the airport that was canceled when all the cabbies in town decided it was too dangerous to drive to the capital city of Dhaka.
It doesn’t even begin on July 1, when protests over quotas for government jobs — quotas which stack the deck against new graduates — began on the country’s four main university campuses.
Rashid’s story starts in 2007. That’s the year his mother died; the year the household tasks most 9-year-olds shirk fell to him.
“I had to mature very quickly,” Rashid said. “I had to cook and do the dishes when all my friends were playing cricket and football.”
2007 also brought the previous round of military-imposed curfews in Bangladesh, amid waves of student-led protests. And it was in 2007 when Rashid developed a bad case of Hepatitis B, the same disease that had taken his mother’s life.
Maybe it was his newfound maturity; maybe it was an inborn skill for observance; but even as a 9-year-old, Rashid noticed something about the ambulance ride after he was released, 72 injections later, from the hospital.
“I just remembered how it took me right home,” he said. “It navigated around everything … and there was a lot going on.”
So, on July 19th, 2024, Rashid, now 26 years old, sat looking at his plane ticket to Nairobi for the Prometheus Fellowship retreat. It was to depart at 9 p.m. the next night, the 20th.
He looked at his welcome letter from the University of North Texas, where he had earned a scholarship to study Documentary Research and Studies, beginning in August.
He looked at the news reports of almost 200 students killed during the protests in less than a month. And he looked at the announcement from the government: A strict, nationwide, 8 p.m. curfew — for every citizen — was now in effect. The military was empowered to “shoot-on-sight” anyone caught defying that curfew.
He thought, “When it seems like there is no way, there must be a way. What can skip all the protests, the police … everything?
His wife, Sumaiya Nur, could see his mind at work. “Are you sure you want to take this risk?” she asked. She saw the answer in his eyes. Well, she said, “If we live together, we live together. If we die together, we die together. But we do it together.”
Rashid then spoke to his father, the principal of an elementary school and a popular man about town. Being a good person, Rashid thought of his father, even if it’s out of your own self-interest, comes in handy; his father had friends at a hospital.
“Can we arrange an ambulance?” Rashid asked him. “If someone finds out, they might kill you,” his father said. “But if I go, I can share my story with the world. I must go. Out of passion … out of love … out of gratitude. I owe so much to Students For Liberty. It’s my first priority, always.”
Rashid’s father made some calls and found an undaunted ambulance driver who wanted to make a few bucks. They agreed on a price: 15,000 taka; about $130 USD.
The ambulance arrived, Rashid climbed in the back, and tried to look ill. His wife was ill — ill with fright, enough for the both of them.
They drove to a nearby hospital. There, Rashid explained what he needed to a doctor: a reason to travel 192 kilometers to Dhaka. The doctor wrote him a prescription — a prescription that made clear it could only be filled at a medical college in the capital.
And so, as night fell on July 19th, Rashid, his wife, and the ambulance driver, a man named Sohag, set out on the dark roads to the capital. In the best of circumstances, it’s a 4-and-a-half-hour drive. These were not the best of circumstances. Between Jamalpur and Dhaka, they were stopped four separate times by police. With their flashlights blaring, each time the cops looked inside silently, menacingly. They saw a man lying on the gurney, his loving wife by his side. Four times the police stopped them. Four times they let the ambulance through their roadblocks. Not once did they ask to see his prescription.
A friend of Rashid’s — the Bangladeshi National Coordinator of Students For Liberty, Tamim — sent updates throughout the night on WhatsApp, advising which roads were most likely to be safe. Then WhatsApp went down as if a plug had been pulled; the internet was cut off throughout Bangladesh. That also meant Rashid’s prepaid Visa card — his only access to money — was useless.
Here, it’s worth setting the scene once more: Rashid Shahriar was in the back of an ambulance, clutching a year’s worth of luggage and a scrap of paper — the prescription — that was his only defense from a murderous military roaming the streets. He had no money and no internet. But he had his wife, and he had a mission.
“People have always told me that this is a wild world, and that I could end up in any situation at any time. I guess this is proof,” he said. “I studied sociology … that was how I got interested in behavioral economics, and from there, economics itself. They go hand in hand. So I knew that I was taking a risk, but I also knew: I valued getting to Nairobi more than I valued my safety. That conference … I’m passionate about it. This is something I’ve always worked for. It’s something I’ve achieved. That’s why I went.”
Rashid, his wife, and the ambulance driver drove largely in silence, knowing each second could be their last spent with any semblance of freedom.
“I was crying most of the way,” Rashid said, “because … I’m leaving my family behind. And I knew I could die.”
After the 5-hour journey, these Three Musketeers of Bangladesh pulled into a hotel near the airport that had a vacancy. It was 1:00 a.m. Three became two: Sohag did not want to stick around. Rashid paid him the 15,000 taka, added a tip, and collapsed with his wife onto the bed in their room.
They awoke to a trickle of a phone signal and a trickle of information. Rashid got ahold of his father; he was relieved his hospital connection had worked. Rashid learned from his friend, Tamim, that the railway system had been shut down, so Sumaiya Nur would have to fly home.
Rashid’s 9:00 p.m. flight required a check-in at 5:00 p.m. Without internet, he would also have to book, in person at the airport, a flight home for his wife. So he arranged with the hotel manager a shuttle to the airport around 3:00. He was told that police would allow people with valid plane tickets to pass through the roadblocks. Shortly after 3:00 p.m., Rashid and Sumaiya Nur walked into the airport, booked her flight, and checked in.
His flight would kick off a year-long journey; with luck, determination, and an easing of the authoritarianism in Bangladesh, he will visit home next summer. Hers would take less than an hour.
“I …” he told me at a rooftop bar in Nairobi on the first night of the summit, with a hard swallow and a look off into the middle distance, “in that moment, just wanted to spend some more time with my wife.”
He sat down on the plane a few minutes before 9:00 — 24 hours after he had strapped in for the ambulance ride of his life.
“I reclined the seat and just started crying again,” he said.
Rashid arrived in Nairobi with no money, one hell of a story, and with plenty of freeze-dried noodles. Nine containers of Cup Noodles, to be exact.
“I want you to have one with me sometime,” he told me. “They’re really good.”
I did not take him up on that offer; instead, I got him a small jar of peanut butter for his journey. I told him it’s a portable, shelf-stable, high-protein food. Welcome to America, Rashid: As everyone knows, the issue that most divides our country here in 2024 is: creamy or crunchy?
From Nairobi, he’ll fly to Dallas, then commute somehow to Denton, Texas and the campus of the University of North Texas. Wouldn’t you know it: Their mascot is the Mean Green, and the Prometheus Fellowship summit’s swag bags included dark green hoodies. They read: “Bringing Reason to the Future.”
For Rashid Shahriar, that future is measured day by day and dollar by dollar. But he has already done more than bring reason to the future; he brought it to the present. He lived it, in deadly circumstances.
“I don’t want to die,” he remembered thinking during those four police stops, those five long hours, that fitful sleep in an airport hotel. “I love my life … that’s something the Prometheus Program taught me: that it’s ok — that it’s good, actually, to love your life. But sometimes, it is rational to risk it when the reward is greater.”
Rashid is a talented video producer and an exceptional event organizer; look no further than the video he made about the Bangladesh Classical Liberal Conference, which won Students For Liberty’s prestigious Event of the Year Award in 2023. His YouTube channel is HERE. You can reach him at: [email protected]
