My mother is a rich man’s encyclopedia and a poor man’s time machine trip to the future. Growing up under her nose meant being weeded and wacked by constant references to musicians, poets, actors, political commentators, authors, and social innovators, with the underlying message that that could be you someday. Begum Rokeya Hossain and her short story, Sultana’s Dream, stands as an early example.

I never learned how to read Bangla, but I will always insist that it is my mother tongue. I say this for two primary reasons:

1) I realized early on that despite Bangladesh’ growing, and even disproportionately large, population, we still make up a relatively elite section of the global population. Meaning, not just anyone can call Bangla their first language.

2) My mother tied Bangladesh so intrinsically to everything upright and righteous in our childhood that despite the country’s inevitable flaws, perhaps our potential cultural shortcomings, I know that this is a home to some of the most brilliant artists, thinkers, and leaders that the world, and I, still have much to learn about.

And the country is beautiful. Bangladesh isn’t just Dhaka, the crowded and now bursting citadel that almost 37 million people call home. I remember taking trips to Sylhet, my family’s original division, and admiring the open fields on the way out of Dhaka.

The wide, thick, outreaching lakes with water that looked like running, crystalized folktales. The dispersed cows grazing, the farmers who moved with a slowness I envied coming out of the city. The wide, open sky, no rough buildings hiding the bright, even white, serpentining clouds. The grand tea gardens that bloomed, I mean really seemed to bloom, in a way objectionably uncharacteristic for its leaves’ species. I’d think, leaves aren’t supposed to bloom. But I suppose Bangladesh didn’t know that.

I’d think about how magical this interim from urban hustle seemed. I’d consider how much more magical the country must have seemed before I was born, back when it was a new country, and even before then.

Bangladesh has seen everything a young country can, from resistance, to violence, stratification, hopeful unity, rapid progression, stagnation, prosperity, and to whatever tomorrow holds. But the truth is, Bangladesh as a concept has long lived in the hearts and minds of the people.

I don’t know what Begum Rokeya thought, felt, or really even experienced as a Bengali Muslim woman living under a strict patriarchy and British mandate in the early 20th century.

But I do know that a hope for the future lived in her, manifesting in stories such as Sultana’s Dream, her school for young women, still running today as Sakhawat Memorial Girls’ High School, and her advocacy in the Muslim Women’s Association.

Begum Rokeya’s dreams for the future were inextricably linked to Bangladesh, and to put it frankly, I believe she was right. Someone like her, remarkably ahead of her time, as effective as she was aspirational, helped make the dream of Bangladesh a reality.

But take a quick glance at Sultana’s Dream today; over 100 years after it was written, it still reads as distant fiction.

Sometimes I wonder if this is how it’s meant to be. With Bangladesh’ legacy of living in the hearts of dreamers, maybe there will always remain a gap to overcome, an aspiration to strive for.

But we are also an incredibly young country with many scars to heal from, some of which are still raw, still bleeding. It takes a certain carrying capacity to pursue one’s dream. Yet, dreaming itself is inexpensive. It often acts as fuel to persist onward. Bangladeshis today are proof of that.

I’d argue that the pure nature of Bangladesh consistently remaining aspirational for our people indicates that the true potential of Bangladesh is yet to be realized. After all, in the past, Bangladesh always meant the future.

A free community with an autonomous relationship with our land, our families, and ourselves, marked by liberation from colonialism, repression, and a command over our own tongues. I don’t know why it would be any different today.

What I do know is, when my mom excitedly references Sultana’s Dream, I see in her eye the sparkle of hope and the stature of pride that, to me, defines Bangladesh.

I never learned how to read Bangla, but after we moved to Bangladesh in 2010, my mother spent a few months sitting me down after exhausting days at work, going over the alphabet. “Bangla,” she’d emphasize, never “Bengali.”

This was a language that people in my very bloodline fought for. It didn’t need any anglicization to be understood. I may not have understood what came after shore-o and shore-a, but I understood that.

I will always be inspired by my Bangladeshi identity and the fact that I believe because I am Bangladeshi, I can dream like a very small percentage of the population can. I can look at a wide array of changemakers and revolutionaries of thought and see myself, and my people, right next to them. Because if Bangladesh is possible, then anything is.

One day, and soon, I’ll fulfill my mother’s wish and learn how to read and write in Bangla. And when I do, I’ll thank her for getting me one step closer to Sultana’s dream.

Deya Nurani is a freelance contributor based in the US.