“Farming just wasn’t the life for me. My parents couldn’t afford to send me to college, and I didn’t want to waste away working at the Bean and Feed Store. I signed up without telling them and left right after I graduated from high school.”
She wanted to ask him how he made peace with taking human life, but she didn’t want to offend him. “Have you ever regretted it?”
“Never.” He took a drink of his wine. “My first big action was a hostage rescue. When it was over and the hostages were safe, I knew I was doing exactly what I was meant to do.”
Shanti didn’t know what to say to that. “Do you have someone waiting for you at home—a girlfriend, a wife, kids?”
He didn’t wear a wedding band, but Shanti had read somewhere that military men often didn’t wear them in the field.
He grinned as if something about the question was funny. Okay, so, it was a little transparent. She could admit that. “No. No wife. Never married. No kids, either.”
Shanti would be lying if she said that didn’t feel like good news.
He changed the subject. “Why did you become a human-rights attorney?”
“Oh, that’s a long story.” It wasn’t a happy story, either.
“I’m not going anywhere.”
Shanti steeled herself with another sip of wine. “Okay.”
She told him how, during Bangladesh’s war of independence in 1971, Pakistani troops had moved through the country targeting Bengali intellectuals, killing men and women, dumping their bodies in mass graves. Her grandfather was the owner of a newspaper chain and had advocated for independence. He was high on their list.
“My father was twenty-two and studying at Oxford at the time, but the rest of my family was here. Soldiers forced their way into the newspaper’s offices, looking for my grandfather and killing his staff. With the help of friends, he managed to escape with my grandmother to India. But my father’s older brother, Abani, and his younger sister, Chakori…” Shanti swallowed—hard. “They were dragged into the streets with their kids and spouses and shot. Their bodies were dumped in a mass grave and never found. My grandmother almost died from grief.”
“God. I’m sorry.” Connor pressed his hand over hers, his gaze warm with concern, his touch sending frissons of awareness up her arm. “That’s what you mentioned to Dr. Khan today, isn’t it?”
“Yes. It’s also why my parents named me Shanti. My name means ‘peace.’” She gave him a sad smile. “After I was born, when the pogroms against Hindus began, my father decided to leave Bangladesh for good.”
“I can’t blame him.”
“I grew up hearing my family’s story, seeing the grief in my grandparents’ eyes, wondering about the aunt, uncle, and cousins I never met. I decided when I was a teenager that I would dedicate my life to nonviolence and helping victims of genocide.”
He drew his hand away. “I can see why you’re uncomfortable with soldiers and firearms. But what happens when those who dedicate themselves to violence like General Naing gain the upper hand?”
Shanti met his gaze. “We have to learn to prevent those situations, to stop conflict through peaceful means before it turns to violence.”
“For good people like you to build a better world, Shanti, there have to be people like me willing to back you up with force. Otherwise, the bad guys win.”