Autism: I Actually Know Nothing About It

Shihab is a 15 year old boy with his own thoughts, solitude, love, anger, and laughter, among which solitude predominates. When Shihab was two years old, his parents learned that he had autism. Leo Kanner of the Johns Hopkins Hospital used the term autism in 1943 for the people who are suffering from a developmental disability that results from a disorder of the human central nervous system.

I used to see Shihab in 2005 whenever I visited his sister Tumpa who was my student. When I met Shihab’s brother Shanto a year later he told me about Shihab, that Shihab can immediately tell the day-of-week of a particular date. Whenever he is given a new calender he converts it into the Bangla and Hejira calender. That was the first time I heard the term autism and started to think about Shihab.

To me Shihab belongs to two different worlds. One is his very own: at times he loves to be alone in it and nobody else is allowed inside, even his parents. But whenever he is with his family, he also belongs to our world, a world in which we demand normalcy. But sometimes he loses himself and goes back to his own world although physically he remains within his surroundings. So there is always a transition between two worlds. Shihab’s two worlds were my main focus point whenever I was taking photographs.

When I remember Einstein and Newton, the two greatest scientists who were also suffering from autisim, then I feel Shihab will be an Einstein one day.