On Friday, November18th , two text messages from two fellow Gregorians stunned me with the news that Tariq Shams had expired that morning. I knew that he had been ill but I never suspected and did not know that he had been suffering from kidney cancer for some time. On Saturday, I went to a doa mahfil at his father's house in Eskaton and met some other friends who had studied with him in school, college and university. Mujahidul Islam Selim, Mahfuz Anam, Zaglul Chowdhury, A.F.M. Jamaluddin, Iftekhar Hossain, Iqbal Rahman, Nasima Ferdous and Jishu were some friends who were there to remember and pray for Tariq.
I studied with him in all three institutions: in St Gregory's High School from 1960 to 1965, in Dhaka College from 1965 to 1967 and in Dhaka University from 1967 to 1972, he in Physics and I in English. In 1972 he left for the US for higher studies and had been living and working in the US until his death. Like some other friends writing about Tariq today I was a friend of his for over 50 years. My first memory of Tariq (in class 5 or 6), is that of a tall, gangly kid, loose-limbed flailing his arms in all directions when he talked and laughed that special laugh of his, eating cucumber and other fancy sandwiches during tiffin time. My last memory of Tariq when I saw him two or three years back when he came to Dhaka is also of a tall loose-limbed man, still kiddish in some ways, still throwing his arms around, but now walking with a slight distinctive stoop. He still had his quiet, inimitable humour, talking about his various ailments and loss of sight in one eye.
I could write about Tariq's intelli-gence, his encyclopedic knowledge about things outside the syllabus (as a kid he seemed to know everything), his humour, his warmth, his generosity, his modesty, his humility, his self-effacing nature, but what overwhelms me today as I write these words is simply memories of a childhood school friend with whom I remember spending many hours just talking and laughing and having a good time.
Years after Tariq left Bangladesh in 1972, I met him and his wife several times in the US between 1985 and 1987. He lived in Washington DC and I in Rockville, Maryland. Once on a visit to his apartment in Washington in 1986 or 1987 we were sitting and talking in his study and I remember being very impressed with his collection of books on literature. I had forgotten that though he was a student of Physics he was interested in a variety of subjects ranging from anthropology to zoology (I remember that once when as an undergraduate he tried telling us about black holes). He said I could take home as many literature books as I could carry because he was moving to a new flat.
All the Italo Calvino books that I have with me now are Tariq's. Thank you Tariq for the gift of the books; thank you for the gift of a fifty-year-old friendship that never faltered for a single day even if we did not meet or talk often. May you rest in peace.

The writer is Professor of English, Dhaka University.