'I will go': Bengalis in Pakistan hope for family reunions in Bangladesh after 14-year pause in relations

This photograph taken on Feb 6, 2026 shows sixty-year-old Pakistani-Bengali, Shah Alam working at his dried-seafood store in Karachi. 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 the megacity of Karachi. - AFP

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 the megacity of 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.