Cox's Bazaar, Bangladesh

As with most of my life, this post is an ode to my mother. In late December 2025, she swept eleven of us off for a lovely 3-day vacation in Cox’s Bazaar, the longest unbroken beach in the world (I would be remiss as a Bangladeshi if I did not proudly announce this last fact for the bideshis among us).

Dhaka was colder than usual this winter. I know Bangladeshi winters don’t quite compare to the global north - I write this post in January in New York City where we just got blanketed by a massive snowstorm, and are facing sub freezing temperatures all week. However, Bangladesh’s lack of indoor heating and heat-tech thermal layers make for a chilly uncomfortable time, especially indoors and at night. Even my Minnesotan-born and raised partner asked for more blankets at bedtime!

Add in political upheaval (the death of one former prime minister, the return of her exiled son and political scion, the first free election in years), traffic jams, wedding season, sky high pollution…the city can feel like a lot. So escaping to the south of the country with its mild sunny climes was an utter joy.

It was our first time staying at the Mermaid Beach Resort, the super fancy, super private, super beautiful resort an hour south of Cox’s Bazaar town. Our crew of 9 adults and 2 teens took over 6 bedrooms in 5 beachside bungalows. We spent our days drinking our weight in juice (Mermaid’s fresh juice combos are stellar (and expensive!)), eating our hearts out at the stupendous breakfast buffet, and taking long walks at low tide. Simi’s 13yo twins, Esme and Quinn, became avid and expert shell-seekers, and Josh befriended a lovely beach dog he nicknamed Felix.

One of my favourite memories (and I daresay Simi’s too) was when my mom, her 6th grade bestie Ishrat Aunty, Simi, and I went for a long beach walk, trying to catch up with Josh who had gone off an hour earlier with Quinn and Esme. The four of us ladies ended up in a hilarious “quick sand” situation where both Ishrat Aunty and Amma lost their sneakers and sandals in deep sucky mud (ie the exposed seabed). I was cleverly barefoot, but equally mired, while Simi, most cleverly, was at the edge of the mud, filming the whole fiasco, all of us screaming with laughter. All footwear was recovered, miraculously, despite one sandal that was completely sucked under a foot of black mud!

The day we landed up in Cox, Dec. 28, 2025, was my father’s 2-year death anniversary. A dear friend lost her father earlier the same year and was telling me how she missed his phone calls to ask if she was prepared for the storm - his Desi dad way of showing love. It made me realize that our family had spent so many years living with Alzheimer’s, that I had forgotten all the logistical ways my father used to take care of me, back when he was more himself: the $100 bill slipped into my hand on the way to the airport, the annotated article about Wharton or writing, his obsession with having enough light to read (despite the fact that we now all have backlit phones and e-readers).

What a complicated, difficult, inspiring man he was to live with. What a complicated, difficult, inspiring grief. I am often surprised by the times I feel his absence, an out of the blue memory, sometimes out of nowhere.

I love that our family got to spend time, this time in particular, in such a beautiful serene place. I’m sure my father would have approved. After all, he chose his field of geology because it would allow him to roam the wild world. But the beach is perhaps most special to my mother. I have watched her wade into waterbodies from Maine to California, Texas to Hawaii, Valencia to Pondicherry to the Bay of Bengal. It may not surprise you to know that she and Ishrat Aunty are currently touring the Maldives and Sri Lanka, two gorgeous coastal countries (that I’ve never been to). She even went jet skiing (not her first time)!

I’m glad she’s missing these months of snowstorms and icy temperatures on the East Coast. The terrible weather is only the least of our worries as the American project continues to devolve, with federal agents murdering citizens and immigrants alike, on the streets in full public view, and inside detention centers with inhumane conditions. When the US kidnapped the Venezuelan president, I was still in Bangladesh, and my Dhaka friends were like, wtf is wrong with your country? I couldn’t say.

I recognize that my outrage is because my privileged state is coming to an end, allowing me to see more clearly. For centuries, Black and indigenous folks have faced the fascism and state sponsored terrorism that is coming home to roost, even for white citizens, not to mention the tens of thousands of mostly Latinx people in American concentration camps, as we speak. There is a cycle Emily Nagoski talks about in the context of human sexuality and psychology, where we move from woundedness to healing and back again. I see this cycle in George Floyd’s murder, to the tremendous worldwide protests against police brutality during a deadly pandemic, to masked and militarized agents terrorizing our cities in 2026.

For those of you coming out in droves to protest and petition and phone call - especially you heroic Minnesotans - keep going. For those of you who need help figuring out what to do: find and join a neighborhood group - there are so many! Indivisible, Move On, SURJ, ACLU, JVP, Hands-Off, DSA… start a revolutionary bookclub, pass out whistle packs and know-your-rights cards, stand on street corners with signs that remind us that we’re in this together, that we got each other’s backs. These hyper local groups are a powerful way to fight tyranny and dictatorship. They need nothing more than you and your spirit.

You might already know there isn’t one right way to resist. Some of us are educators. Some of us are organizers. All of us are caregivers. Pick one thing. Do it. And as my mother taught me, no matter how small the task, do it well. Do it with love.

Love and revolutionary joy to you all. xoxox Abeer