At the mouth of the Meghna, where river and sea stand facing
each other with clasped hands, the land is never permanent. It is a beggar’s
bowl, filled today and broken tomorrow. The river snatches from one bank and
returns the gift on another, and in the middle people drive the posts of their
houses into a promise nobody can guarantee.
Dr. Tahmina Rahman had been keeping the accounts of that
promise for twenty-two years. At the Water Resources Research Centre in Dhaka,
her desk held a hea...