For the last 50 years, Kulsum Begum has been leaving the front door open for her son to come home.

Omar Faruk left the house in Pirojpur town after the Liberation War broke out. Before stepping out of the home one night, the 21-year-old asked his mother to keep the door open and cook extra food, promising to come back soon with his fellow freedom fighters for dinner.

Faruk never returned home. But Kulsum never forgot her son's request to keep the door open.

In a tin-roofed house near Government Women's College in the city, she still waits for her son.

"My mother never shuts the door or lets any of us do so as she thinks he [Faruk] would return someday. She felt that he might go away if he finds the door closed," Salma Rahman Happy, younger sister of Faruk, told The Daily Star.

Kulsum, now in her mid-90s, fell seriously ill three years ago. Ever since, she sometimes loses her normal sense, and utters Faruk's name, said Salma.

"After she fell ill, our family is following what she has done all these years… We keep the door open," she said.

Second among eight siblings, Faruk was a valiant freedom fighter, who joined Chhatra League in 1966. The following year, he was elected president of Pirojpur Chhatra League.

On March 23, 1971, Faruk raised the national flag on behalf of Chhatra Sangram Parishad at the Shaheed Minar ground. He led the group who looted arms and ammunition from government Malkhana (storeroom) on April 24, according to his family members.

As the war proceeded, the Pakistan occupational army entered Pirojpur on May 3 and started mass killing in Hular Hat, Machimpur and Krishnanagar villages. Soon they issued an arrest warrant for Faruk, said Moniruzzaman Monir, a freedom fighter from the district.

Faruk tried to go to India for training. On June 29, a local collaborator named Hanif identified him on a launch dock when he was on his way to Kuriana from Barishal.

The collaborator informed the Pakistan army, who captured him. The next day, Faruk was taken to the Wapda complex in Barishal city where they tortured him to death, said Monir.

The marauding army set up a torture cell and a mass killing ground at the complex.

Abdul Haque, a freedom fighter who was in Wapda and managed to survive, told Faruk's family members after the war ended about the torture Faruk had endured.

"The Pakistan army found a national flag in my brother's pocket. They tied the flag to an iron rod and asked him to say 'Pakistan Zindabad'. My brother shouted 'Joy Bangla' instead," said Salma.

The army then pierced the iron rod in his head and charged him with bayonets. After killing him, they hung the body from a tree for three days, she said.

When Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman went to Pirojpur in 1973, he spoke about Faruk's bravery and the brutal killing, said Salma.

Bangabandhu also took off his coat and put it on their father, she added.

Faruk's bravery and sacrifice is a legend in the district, but that hardly had any effect on his mother.

"My mother has been holding a firm belief that my brother would return one day and so she had been keeping the door open. We will continue to do so as long as she is with us," said Salma.