Every day, foreign conflicts with complicated origins reach us dressed with appealing simplicity

[Pro-independence militia in training during the 1971 Bangladesh war. Photograph: Begart Institute]
Ignorance is an easy thing to live with and, perhaps for that reason, common.
Reading a disturbing book this week, I remembered a cheerful scene from my own life: a Chinese restaurant more than 30 years ago, a plate of chicken fried rice, the Bee Gees singing Stayin’ Alive on the tape machine.
It was my birthday lunch in Khulna, a town in Bangladesh that we’d reached that morning …