KARACHI: Shah Alam travelled from his home in Bangladesh to Pakistan for a brief visit nearly three decades ago, but flaring hostility between the two countries and financial woes left him stranded in Karachi.

Now the 60-year-old, who makes a modest living selling dried seafood, is determined to return to his birthplace, having already missed the deaths of his parents and first wife in Bangladesh.

Direct flights between Pakistan and Bangladesh finally resumed last month after a 14-year pause, reflecting a warming of ties.

Shah Alam has already started planning his trip to be reunited with remaining family.

“I will go,” he told AFP with teary eyes. “I am facing some financial issues but will certainly go with my son after Eid al-Azha,” referring to the festival expected in late May.

Shah Alam, who married again in Pakistan, still owns agricultural land and his family home in Bangladesh.

“Everything is there. I was stuck here,” he told AFP in Karachi, near the well-known Bengali market where he sells desiccated fish and prawns.

“I wanted to go back, but there was no way. The relationship [between Pakistan and Bangladesh] was not good. I had no money as well to go back home,” he said.

“Now, I want to see my elder brother and my married daughter who live in Bangladesh,” he added.

Hussain Ahmed, 20, whose family lives in Machhar Colony does not have Pakistani nationality or an identity card.

“How can I go [to Bangladesh]? I want to go there,” the fish factory worker told AFP. “Even my father doesn’t have an identity card. How can I get it then?” he added.

Most Bengalis rarely venture outside their home areas owing to fear of being interrogated by law enforcement agencies to prove their “identities” as Pakistani citizens.

Local politician Muhammad Rafiqul Hussain, who was born in Karachi, told AFP that Bengalis like him live across Pakistan and contribute to the economy like other Pakistanis.

He is one of the seven elected leaders from the Bengali community in Karachi’s municipal government.

For Hussain, the “cordial relationship” between Pakistan and Bangladesh has made a big difference for Pakistani Bengalis.

However, community activist and lawyer Hafiz Zainulabdin Shah said Bengalis living in Pakistan have lost some of their identity by adopting local languages.

But despite Pakistan-based Bengalis living “with a sense of deprivation”, Shah said “they feel content with the newly developed relationship between the two countries”.

Published in Dawn, February 24th, 2026