Asma Akhtar and her son have been staying in her mother's Tk 1,200 single-room house with her two brothers and their families since freedom fighter Hanif Miah, 62, was killed in the August mayhem.

"I will spend the last drop of my blood to send you to your husband's place," fish-vendor Hanif used to tell his daughter to cheer her up, who still believes her father would have kept his word if he had not been killed in the grisly attack.

Hanif Miah was killed along with 22 others in the August 21 grenade attack on an Awami League (AL) rally on the Bangabandhu Avenue in the city.

In his youth Hanif joined the Liberation War but his freedom fighter's certificate was burnt in a fire at his home at Bahorkhola of Meghna upazila in Comilla.

He settled in the capital and started selling fish at city's Maniknagar area in Sabujbagh for the living of his family.

"He would rush to Shyambazar, Karwan Bazar or sometimes to Rampura bazar at dawn to buy fish at wholesale rate and ferry them from door to door," Asma narrates her father's daily routine.

"Even after this hard labour, he would sometimes join the meetings, processions and rallies organised by Awami League despite our objection because of his love of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman," she continues.

"My brothers, Amma [mother] and I always tried to restrain him from participating in the processions fearing there might be troubles, but somehow he always escaped us and headed for, God knows, what attractions," Asma says with a deep sigh. "He would go not for money like the street urchins, nor did he gain any profit out of it," she says.

On August 21, when the grenades started blasting, Hanif was trying to rescue someone from the crowd but was himself injured in the legs with numerous splinters and fell to the ground.

An aged Hanif could not pull himself up to save him from being stamped by the panic-stricken mob during the carnage.

Assuming his life was nearing its end, Hanif urged a passer-by boy to send a message to his family at Maniknagar and asked him not to take him to hospital fearing he might lose his earning there.

The boy managed to board him on an ambulance and rushed to Maniknagar to inform Hanif's family.

"It was exactly 7:00pm when we heard the news, and my two brothers along with my husband rushed to the hospital," Asma reminisces. But Hanif had passed away by the time the three reached the hospital. They found his body lying in the verandah of the hospital.

"He [Hanif] was asking for water repeatedly," a nurse told Anwar at the hospital.

Hanif's wife Peyara Begum could not withstand the blow and has taken to bed since then. "She became so sick that we feared we may lose her," says Asma.

Hanif's sons Delwar and Manik even worked as rickshaw-pullers to make some extra money besides selling fish and ironing in a garment factory to save their traumatised mother.

The AL gave the family Tk 1 lakh, and the local ward commissioner gave Tk 5,000 and a sack of rice, Asma says.

"My brothers earn barely enough money to maintain their own families. They cannot support me and my ailing mother," she explains. "My elder brother, who returned from Kuwait some 15 days ago, is also still in debt as he had to loan from his friends and in-laws for going to Kuwait."

Asma's husband Selim works in a garment factory at Tk 2,000 a month. "He also cannot help us. Besides his parents are not willing to take me back to their home," she says indifferently.

Hard pressed under the harsh reality of maintaining the family, Asma does not look more worried about her father's killing.

Her nine-year-old daughter Meem plays her finger on the lone photograph of her grandfather as Asma, staring into the eyes of this correspondent for a hope, asks, "Can you do anything for us so that we can just make a living?"