Twenty-two-year-old Ponir grew up in the narrow, dust-choked lanes of Mirpur’s Pallabi neighbourhood, where politics was not an abstract idea but a force that reached straight into his family’s home. His father, a vegetable seller at the local bazaar, fought each day to keep food on the table, only to see part of his meagre earnings vanish into the hands of men who arrived without warning but with clear intent.

“They’re here again,” Ponir remembered thinking as he watched his father’s weathered hands count out the notes, his eyes fixed on the ground.

“Baba, who are they?” he once asked.

For a moment, silence. Then, in a voice drained of hope: “They’re local politicians.”

Ponir protested — why give them anything? — but his father’s answer was final, heavy as stone: “That’s the way, my son. If you want to do business, you pay them.”

It was a lesson Ponir never forgot. In the humid air of that market, he understood that survival in their corner of Dhaka came at a price, and that the poorest always paid it first.

Doctors took one look and told the truth: Ponir needed Dhaka Medical College Hospital (DMC).

The journey there was a nightmare — blocked roads, panicked crowds, the city vibrating with unrest. Army personnel found him and hoisted his limp body into a military vehicle. But even the army was stuck in the chokehold of Dhaka’s traffic. They veered instead to Square Hospital, where the verdict came cold: “We have no specialists for gunshot wounds.”

By then, Ponir’s breathing was shallow. His blood pressure spiked. Only after desperate pleading did the hospital’s managing director agree to send him to DMC by ambulance.

Four hours after being shot, Ponir was finally wheeled into the overcrowded medical centre, past rows of bloodied bodies. He thought these were his final moments. “I only spoke to Allah,” he said later. “I said, please, let me live. Just this once.”

The bullet blurred his vision. He whispered the kalimah, unable to cry out.

On 15 August, they cut into his chest to find the bullet, but it was too deep. He was moved to the BGB Hospital in Pilkhana. Doctors told him to live with it — “Even war veterans keep their bullets.”

After 25 days, he left the hospital still carrying the metal inside him, and a weight in his chest far heavier than the lead.

Back in Mirpur, Ponir searched for help. Student leader Sarjis Alam came and went. A BNP spokesman advised filing a case against a local ruling party leader. None of it was about healing.

Weeks later, hope arrived in the form of Naimur, whose brother had undergone surgery with Dr Mahbubur Rahman. In late October, Ponir met the doctor, who advised bringing media to witness the operation. Ponir — exhausted by months of pain, politics, and spectacle — could barely manage the thought.

Still, he went under the knife again. This time, the bullet came out.

For the first time since that August afternoon, Ponir woke without it inside him — the metal gone, but the memories unshakable.

While he lay in BGB Hospital, the July Foundation was born — a new symbol of the movement that had upended Bangladesh’s politics. Through an online form, his name was entered into its rolls, marked as a Category C case. But no one came. No phone calls. No visits.  

Only silence. Weeks later, an envelope arrived with a cheque for 100,000 taka — a token gesture that felt more like a dismissal than aid.

A year has passed since the fall of Sheikh Hasina — a victory built, in part, on sacrifices like Ponir’s. Across Bangladesh, political parties now trade in the language of “the July spirit”, invoking it at rallies and in speeches. Yet for Ponir, the spirit is hollow. 

He is still stuck between offices, between promises, between the man he was and the man he has become.

“I wish I had listened to my mother on 5 August,” he said quietly. “A year later, I still don’t know how to get back to the morning of 18 July 2024 — before the bullet, before the pain, before everything changed.”