It was once considered the destination of the crème de la crème in Dhaka’s sprawling upscale bakery and restaurant precinct. Tucked away at the end of Road 79, facing Gulshan Lake, Holey Artisan was not just a mere Mediterranean-style café selling flour-dusted rye-breads and artisan pastas. Rather, it was a kind of Shangri-la for a number of people who did not mind thinning their thick wallets for the “slow, beautiful and precise” delicacies that it offered along with an unrivalled elegance of ambience.
But everything there changed within a span of eventful 10 hours on July 1 last year, when a group of five militants took around 30 people hostage in the café. The militants killed 20 hostages, including 17 foreigners, before Army commandos stormed the café early next morning and freed the remaining hostages, killing five militants in the process.
Following that unprecedented terrorist attack on Bangladesh’s soil, the restaurant—and to a larger extent, the whole area of Gulshan-Banani-Baridhara, popularly known as the Tri-State area—wore a spooked look for months.
There was a barricade, guarded by armed guards at the entrance of Road 79, and another one in front of the gate of the property that housed the café. The name Holey Artisan itself came to symbolise horror and tragedy.
Meanwhile, the building complex that housed the bakery during the attack will remain open to people for four hours from 10am to 2pm today. There will be a dais covered in white for the anniversary, so that people can lay flowers on front to honour the victims.
The owners are currently refurbishing the building in order to convert it into a residential home.
The owners—Sadat Mehdi, Ali Arsalan, Nasirul Alam Porag and his wife Lillian—were devastated by what had happened to their passion project. But they decided to re-open, though not at the same place, as, following the gory militant attack, the government undertook a frenzied drive to evict commercial establishments from residential areas.
So, when the owners of Gourmet Bazar, an upscale supermarket chain, opened its first branch near Gulshan-2 Circle and offered the owners of Holey to use a part of their space to reopen the bakery, they did not take much time to respond positively to the offer.
“The owners of Gourmet Bazar were our friends, and like true friends, they approached us a few weeks after the incident with the offer of reopening Holey at their place. All we were asked to do was to produce and sell the products,” explained Ali Arsalan, one of the co-owners of Holey Artisan.
Arsalan said, “At that point, our main concern was security. We were assured of the security as the building that houses Gourmet Bazar is on the main road. Most importantly, there was a police check-post right in front of the building.”
The staffers of the original Holey café also played a role in prompting the owners to reopen the restaurant within six months of the terrorist attack. The
Holey owners offered the staff members full two months’ pay without work, but most insisted to work rather than sit idle.
Inspired by their resilience, and the support and love that the customers and well-wishers of Holey had shown, the owners reopened it on January 10 this year. The new Holey—smaller, not surrounded by walls of its own, yet niftier, and having the look and feel of an artisan bakery—is obviously not the same as the two-storied lakeside café it used to be.
“There will be no place like that,” said Arsalan, recalling the painful memory. When asked whether they have any future plan to relocate Holey to a bigger place, Arsalan replied, “Unlikely! Once bitten, twice shy.”
He did say, however, “But in future, if possible, we might open it as a rooftop café. No matter wherever we open it, our main concern would be to ensure security.”
Sadat Mehdi, another co-owner of Holey Artisan, told The Independent that they have thought of reopening Holey in a larger spacer in the near future. “Next time we might open it in Dhanmondi, but nothing has been fixed yet.”
Sadat’s wife Samira Ahmed is the owner of the beautiful lakeside property which used to house the original Holey. Following a court order in November last year, the police handed over the property to its owner after barricading it for four months for their investigation.
Plot No. 5 at Road No. 79 in Gulshan-2 was originally allotted to Dr Suraiya Zabin for use as a residential building-cum-clinic in 1979. In 1982, Lakeview Clinic was built on one side of the plot adjacent to Gulshan Lake.
After Suraiya’s death, her daughters Samira and Sara Ahmed became the owners of the plot. Later, Samira’s husband Sadat started the restaurant there, along with his friend Nasimul Alam Porag, his wife, and Ali Arsalan in 2014.
Now the house—albeit wearing a haunted look—has once again been occupied by Sadat and Samira and their family. “We have started living here for the past two weeks,” said Sadat, “This was our residence before it was transformed into a café, and it has again become our residence now.”
When asked how they feel living inside a house where a tragedy of such magnitude had occurred, Sadat said, “It’s hard to describe it, but life goes on. We, too, are moving on.”
Meanwhile, those staffers of Holey Bakery who were inside the café when the militants attacked it are also trying to move on with their lives. But the traumatic experience they underwent is hard to stave off even though a year has passed.
“I will never be able to forget that,” said Shahriar Ahmed, a barista at the Holey. “Whenever I am alone, or sit idle for a few minutes, somehow the memory of that horrible night comes back to haunt me.”
Shahriar said he is happy to start working in Holey again, but misses the old place. “It was like a dream place to work at. Not only was I well paid, but I also worked in a magical place by the lakeside. There were regular customers who used to spend the whole day on the premises of the restaurant. They used to compliment my coffees. That gave me immense job satisfaction.”
He added that the regular customers—a motley group of foreigners and local residents of the Tri-State area—still visit the bakery and empty the shelves within a short span of time. But they obviously miss the charm of the old place. “Holey’s food is obviously great, and it’s still the best in town. But I miss the joy of enjoying a cup of coffee with an almond croissant on a lazy Friday afternoon on the green lawn of the old Holey. I wish we could go back to those good old days,” said Arif Adnan, a resident of Gulshan-2 and a regular patron of both the old and new Holeys.