Write Crimes, Think Crimes

Image: wikipedia

Australian culture is about constantly trying to un-invent the wheel.  That’s a paraphrase of a thought written by Australian author John Hughes.

It was at a time when I used to write a lot; I guess that is the whole of my life so it doesn't say much.  It was mostly writing from overseas and far from being tech-savvy, I used to rely on e-mail: a long list of potential readers and friends.

It was at a time when I had an Australian government job between trips and there was a colleague of mine; we used to regularly go for coffee at the local café during lunchtimes.  It was a pattern that continued for several years though I had changed as many jobs, inevitably in the public sector.

That colleague was on the whole interesting for they had travelled and it was easy to speak of distant places without achieving that puzzled and disbelieving look to be found elsewhere.  That colleague had quite a repugnant side too: that is to say they had rather a hatred for Muslims. 

When I was younger, even now, there was a tendency to tolerate the intolerable to some degree, for we never really know the reasons behind the irrational beliefs people hold; and given that colleague’s background was not Australian and influenced by a part of the world all too recently in turmoil, I could only wonder how I would react if what had happened far away, in their ancestral backyard, was happening instead in mine.  We never really know that do we?

Foolishly I aimed for balance, the redress for psychological scars: in particular by speaking of Bangladesh and all the good, the trivial, the intellectual, the poetic and the inspiring: things that shaped me.  Foolishly I underestimated the extent of hatred I was dealing with or the powers behind it.  When the words became reprehensible I would close my ears in polite stupidity.

Then one day that colleague said words to the effect of: ‘autopsies are not done well in Bangladesh; when they’re finished the body’s a bit of a mess.  In Australia the corpse after an autopsy is well-restored. It makes things easier on the relatives.  You should think of your parents, to make things easier.’ I thought my colleague mad at that point.

It was at a time of writing when they said too, about Mr. John Hughes, the Australian author I had never heard of until then.  My colleague recommended I read him, said my writing had similarities with his.  He had a hard time while writing, my colleague had said, his marriage fell apart and he nearly committed suicide.  I didn’t appreciate it as a warning; I never bothered to research Mr. Hughes or read him.  Just I remembered the name.

In 2004 we met as usual, sporadic and time to time.  Just as I sat at the table my colleague said: ‘I have a friend at ASIO and he says they’re looking for good people.’  ASIO is the Australian version of the CIA and its agenda is the same.  ‘That’s nice,’ I replied dismissively and tried to change the subject.

It was a post-September 11 world and I suppose on the one hand ASIO was trying to scramble together some credible knowledge of fundamentalism, Islam in general.  They currently plan to double in size and it’s fair to say that from Australian stock there is not much to draw from, in terms of knowledge.  There can’t be if they’d thought to ask me.

At my dismissive answer my colleague’s jaw actually dropped: I’ve always found security-related people cannot fathom how that’s not the most important sector in the universe; how there are many ways to contribute as a human being.  Anyway my thoughts were more about how, after all things, I could ever walk into a tea shop in Hatiya, Bangladesh with an agenda other than adda.  That would be obscene.  Anyway, no real traveller could ever consent to approaching the big, wide world with anything other than humility and awe:  the idea is to extend oneself; the goal knowledge not power.  Travel teaches not to take with you a barrow to push.

Recovering, my colleague said, ‘what about the army?’  I made some derogatory statement.  ‘Customs?’  The Australian Customs Service: I’ve always thought they did their job well, but it wasn’t my job.  Nearly I was amused by the list of suggestions: all security-related, because to some there is nothing else.  It was so clichéd.  Then came something puzzling: ‘how about the Australian Electoral Commission?’

What a different kettle of fish that was; a true institution of democracy, at least theoretically. In the list it was the odd man out.

It was years later, 2007, when I really considered that.  Why the Australian Electoral Commission, from the perspective of security?  It certainly couldn’t be any high ideal of democracy, I mean, the Australian security sector had at best stood idly by while Australian citizens were tortured in Guantanamo Bay; they were soon to arrest the Indian, Dr. Haneef, on trivialities potentially designed to increase John Howard’s chances of re-election later that year.  ‘Tough on terror’ could have been the slogan.

So I looked at the Australian Electoral Commission’s website and found an answer.  As that organisation is responsible for elections in Australia, its employees are obliged not to be politically active or express political opinions.  Although it was a time when my then girlfriend was calling me ‘the quiet activist’ it is not something I ever considered; but it seemed to me that it really was the thing.  If I would not work for ASIO then I should be otherwise silenced:  there are many ways to smother voices.  Those were the Howard days.

It was 2007 when I had started a writing course at an Australian university.  It was odd for some of the other students tried to tell me to change courses: as a round-about warning.  One complained one day, telling me quietly in the car park after class that although they had outperformed others in the assignments they were not being allowed to progress to the second part of the course while others were. 

‘Don’t you know about the War on Tolerance?’ I wanted to tell them.  For it was that student who said openly in class they had Muslim friends and had talked with them about the anti-Muslim sentiment then rather rampant in Australian society.  They had planned to write a class paper on Islamophobia.  Like me they were Anglo-Celtic Australian.  ‘If you want to progress you need to write some tripe about colonial Australia and create a few heroes where there are none,’ I would have said.  But facing my own hurdles at the time, I said nought.

Of note, there was a Muslim in that class; and it’s interesting how the approach differs.  In an ‘us’ and ‘them’ world it’s okay for the ‘them’ to take a positive approach to themselves; nobody will listen and they can be managed in other ways.  It’s when the ‘us’ make write-crimes, think-crimes about the ‘them’ that it’s all too challenging, that silence is needed; and in Bangladesh corpses after autopsies are messy, says Australia.

We opened our course materials one evening, in class, and there he was: Mr. John Hughes.  Australian culture is about un-inventing the wheel, to paraphrase, we read.  ‘I don't hear much of him now,’ the lecturer said, ‘I think now he’s teaching at a college somewhere in the Hunter Valley.’  Online it says he’s at a school in Sydney; thing is though, with due respect for education, either outcome as an author makes him sidelined.  He did win a prize for his work, so not all is wrong with the world, or perhaps it was given from guilt: his writing remains a little too honest, a little too truthful and a little too Australia-critical.  There's not enough goodthink in it.

And what do you think happens when ASIO is refused, when a choice is made to pursue freedom of expression as a citizen of a country without any meaningful protection of the right?

I’d like to take the opportunity, in this country, Bangladesh, one wise enough to have taken steps to include some protection for the voices of its citizens in its Constitution, to commit a few more write-crimes, think-crimes: ‘Bangladesh is not all bad, in fact there are many good things about it;’  ‘Australia is not all good, in fact there are many bad things about it;’  ‘Muslims are not terrorists;’ and ‘better to be a disfigured corpse in Bangladesh than a neat and clean Australian mannequin, for at least one will have lived.’

I take my hat off to you, Mr. Hughes, for your survival.



Indeed, Muslim countries like Iran or Bangladesh make for very nice holidays.

Chinese bamboo book (image from wikipedia)

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Swimming with Osama

Bandar Abbas, Iran (photo:wikipedia)

Does Osama like to swim? Yes he does. If it was more wading and paddling or arms stretched to the front parting the water like morning curtains I can’t recall, but he certainly had no fear of water. There was no hesitation there: that is true, for I swam alongside him some years back, in 1997 by the settled calendar of the west, to be exact, to be precise, in the mountainous wilds of southern Iran.

The water was mineral stained, the blue at its least a mix of cobalt glass, peacock-chest and Swedish-eye. It was other-worldly, a blue that must’ve shamed the sky even in its brightest effort, such that the regular concealment of night would come as an entirely welcome cloak to its failure. The water was warm, Earth-baked and a suitable adversary for the cooling evening air, when we arrived in that furrow of a gully in those rocky and harsh mountainsides.

Marco Polo had been there, so it is said, to the place called Geno outside the Persian Gulf port of Bandar Abbas. It can’t have offered much physical comfort on Polo’s way eastward to China: there were no silkworms there to weave for him some bedding, no emperor’s court on-site to entertain and in all likelihood not a single campfire in wait for the roasting of a meal. Geno is rugged and unsettled, but at the very least it surely brought a certain measure of wonder: the traveller’s treasure. And if it was that, like Osama, in Geno he swam, I couldn’t say.

Fishing the Persian Gulf (photo courtesy Iran)

The stars were sewing their tapestry across the heavens by the time we were drying ourselves in readiness for the drive back to town. The lateness of the hour was Osama’s fault, and Osama’s mother’s: for the Osama family had all the hospitality of that country where the locals say, ‘guest is God.’ The lateness of the return was the lateness of the setting out, after a meal, quite possibly of kebab and that long, delicious flatbread the Iranians also call ‘nan’, quite probably taken while sitting in a circle on a carpet on the floor. There had been so many meals like that so the specific details of that one have become elusive.

To be sure, it wasn’t at all to be considered in Iran, the country of crystal finery and etiquette precision, to be setting out for the springs without the prior satisfaction of food.

1997 by the settled calendar of the west, to be precise, to be exact: it was the days before Bin Laden’s infamy, and this Osama was not him, to be sure, but a young Iranian guy who’d met my school friend Lachlan and I by happenstance on a Bandar Abbas street on our way travelling through Iran. It was the first time I’d heard the name, and I liked it: O-sa-ma. It’s quite pleasant really; in those days when there was no connotation to it, and even now it can hardly be said to be a name of any less fortune than ‘George’, with apologies going to Mr. Harrison, Mr. Washington, Mr. Clooney, Mr. Costanza, Mr. Jetson and the others: sadly, your name has been cooked.

Bandar Abbas has a Portuguese history, with burqa-clad women sporting red or black masks across their noses and around their eyes; a masquerade relic of Portuguese fashion from centuries gone that went native along the Persian Gulf coastline before the colonisers left in their ships. The odd thing was that with the additional facial covering uncustomary in the rest of Iran the local women’s ankles were bare, less covered than in the rest of Iran, so in a sense it evened out.

Persian Gulf fishing trawler (photo courtesy Iran)

And offshore on the island of Hormuz is the shell of a Portuguese fort, rounded and brick, in which a random Kurd from far north-western Iran cooked and shared his lunch with us; partly because his village lay near a remote and ancient Armenian church that we’d visited some moons previously.

Bandar Abbas has an African history: the locals there called Bandaris are of mixed African and Iranian heritage, the complexion darker and culture distinct. In Bangladesh, it need not be said, that the term Bhandari has created its own cartography.

Bandar Abbas is a Russian story, so it was said: such that in the days when the Soviet Union opened and the Russians first ventured beyond they would sometimes stop there on the way to or from the electronics haven of Dubai. So we’d accidentally become Russians too, Lachlan and I, for perhaps half an hour in Bandar Abbas.

For two months or more we’d been in Iran, and our Farsi lessons in Sydney had led us into a little game called ‘trying-to-convince-the-hotel-manager-we-are-locals-at-least-until-the-room-rate-is-fixed.’ It’s not that Iran was expensive; only that the game was fun.

When we’d been wearing local clothes, and with new beards in place (mine rather silly-looking), we could perhaps for a brief moment, with singular short questions and monosyllabic answers, pass as locals. And even my blue eyes were not totally inexplicable, for some Kurds share that blue. We’d try our best to arrive at a price, and then enjoy the hotel manager’s surprise as we handed over Australian passports.

But in Bandar Abbas it was assumed we were Russians, so we were, we were! The little stories, the little lies at the hotel reception: our Farsi was imperfect on account of our Russian-ness and we were engineering students studying in Tehran who needed a good rate since the Russian rouble hardly went far, did it? Why engineering? I don’t know, but we were not like their other guests, the moneyed Muscovites wanting to buy a new TV set and a video recorder in Dubai, that was the main thing.

Lady with Bandari mask (photo courtesy Iran)

We used to encourage each other in such endeavours, Lachlan and I, or lead each other astray. But it was Bandar Abbas and if the local women could mask themselves in red or black, then for just some minutes why couldn’t we do so with words?

They knew it was not so, those reception people, of course, of course; but they enjoyed the little performance, especially hearing us speak Farsi, in much the same way Bangladeshis now take muse from my inventive, original Bangla, if it’s to be described politely, which is what the Iranians would do.

‘So where are you really from?’ the reception people asked at the conclusion of the initial exchange. ‘Okay, Australia, but we really are students with no need for rich-country room rates.’

At dinner, a few hours, we got to know the hotel staff properly; for the hotel was hardly bustling and we were at least interesting guests. We relived the Iranian tour completed and re-listed the route ahead.

Persian Gulf (photo courtesy Iran)

Yes it was then: on the evening of slight Russian-ness before the Kurdish lunch in the relic of the Portuguese fort on the Island of Hormuz, on the day before the meeting with Osama and before the swimming in the pools of cobalt glass and peacock chest and Swedish eye. That’s the way, in accordance with the rules of true adventure, that calendars are written. Marco Polo would understand it: the other-worldliness and the wonder.

The Portuguese Fort on the Island of Hormuz, Iran (photo: wikipedia)

More adventure can be had searching for massive beasts or dealing with a non-English speaking travel agent or even just getting to work.

This article also published by Daily Star, here: Swimming with Osama

...meanwhile... back at the mezbankhana...

Mezban Khana sign: 'the rules of the house.'

There are things that really should not be. Statistically speaking, according to probability and surely taking account of an element of chance as well, being born in Sydney it is altogether unlikely I should be living in Dhaka. It should not be I experienced something of Bangladesh; can say things in Bangla. By any prediction I should be as my brother, innocently believing Bangladesh a Hindu country, some version or other of India. In all likelihood I should be wary of it, the poverty, the hygiene and the Islam. Such elements would make me more typically Australian.

But thankfully my life is not that. Yes, I face the Dhaka that we know is part sanely-crazy and part insanely enjoyable. Like the rest of the public I’m in the jams, making the slog home each day, which often involves no less than three rickshaws. I have bills to pay, a household to run and office work which fortunately I love.

And like many Dhakaites I have too that parallel universe called the village: mine is in Hatiya. It’s the highlight of everything: it’s such a privilege when trudging through Farmgate of an evening for example, not to be thinking of whatever tensions the day has thrown at me, but rather, ‘I wonder what’s happening back at the mezbankhana…’

Mezbankhana is the term for ‘guest house’ in the Hatiyan version of Bangla and I use it to describe my Dhaka apartment. There’s a sign I had crafted, just inside the front door, which is a list of ‘rules’ for the place, the Hatiya Mezbankhana in Dhaka. The Hatiyans in particular, also those from greater Noakhali, enjoy that sign because it’s written in Hatiyan Bangla, to the point where some others, from other parts of Bangladesh, can have a little difficulty in understanding all of it at first glance. I had a friend of mine help me write it, and fortunately the craftsman who made the sign was from Noakhali, so when we said, ‘don’t correct the Bangla,’ he understood, amused by its local linguistics.

It was clear from the beginning that the villagers would come, now and then; after all the many years of hospitality they have shown me I’d be offended if they didn’t. It gives great pleasure to reciprocate, which for the first time I can, with an address in the capital. So the Mezbankhana was born.

For the non-Bengali readers, the rules in brief are: don’t spit your betel juice; leave your shoes in front of your room; there is no provision here for food, make your own; no smoking; there are gentlemen in the vicinity, please don’t disturb them; the sick get preference; and the assets of the mezbankhana are for all to enjoy, so please keep that in mind. But it’s the local Hatiyan language that really makes it fun.

It should not be that I have a kind of gramer bari or village home. It should not be there’s a Bengali mother in addition to the original. I should not have Hatiyan brothers, uncles and aunts. And the laws of the universe certainly should have precluded that evening when, rounding the corner of my street, I altogether randomly ran into one of my village uncles. He was lost and slightly bewildered in the ‘big smoke’. Yet the universe allows such anomalies; it’s absurd and wonderful.

He was bringing his son-in-law to Dhaka for treatment, my uncle, and as neither of them was familiar with the city they’d gone to the trouble of hiring a guide who knew Dhaka better. As my uncle is a portly fellow there was no chance of getting away with less than two rickshaws for the three of them. They’d told the drivers the name of the hospital alright. What they didn’t appreciate was that like many hospitals, that one had more than a single location; so while the son-in-law and the guide had been taken to the correct outlet, my uncle was taken to another, the one in my street.

He was scared, if the truth be told, not knowing where he was; and to complicate matters his son’s mobile was switched off from being already in the consulting room. My uncle is resourceful; by the time I met him he was chatting away to a stranger with a car who’d agreed to help him and let him stay if needed while his son-in-law was located. How that would have worked out though, who can say?

In my area a good many more people know me than I can name; it’s usual being the odd one out, the bideshi. It’s usual for them to say hello, which my uncle did; and not paying attention I just waved and kept walking. After a few steps it clicked, I did a double-take. ‘What on earth?’

I think the shock was greater for him. Dhaka is after all a big place and what are the chances of getting lost on just my street. Soon enough we were drinking tea at home, back at the mezbankhana. It was such an honour for me that he was there. And suddenly empowered by somewhere to stay, when he did get through to his son-in-law he was able to freely scold him for getting him lost. The following day his son-in-law stayed too.

My uncle’s not the only villager to drop by; normally they arrive in more routine ways: planned. And on the whole Hatiyan people are so polite and sincere, they bring with them such an atmosphere into my home, it’s an altogether better place while they stay. One in three weeks or three in one week, it’s often for medical treatment they come, one of the few reasons Hatiyans will venture to Dhaka, but they also come on crab-business or to attend a cosmetics conference or just for ghuraghuri or tour. My favourite to date was when my Bengali mother stayed over on the way to her familial home in north Bengal. She’ll tell you, in light criticism of her blood-related son my friend, how I remembered to leave a tin of betel leaves with all the trappings by her bed. She’s shown me so much kindness over the years, it’s so rewarding, even for a night or two, to be the host and not the guest.

Once I nearly got in trouble for the mezbankhana; the building secretary was standing in the doorway reading the sign over my shoulder while talking of an administrative matter. His expression went from routine to a frown as he read; he thought I was really running a hotel establishment in the rather nice building! Fortunately my landlords are far more understanding; they know it’s about the more than a decade of Hatiya in my life, of the dear friends and acquaintances with whom those years flew by, even if it was short visits to the island for much of the period.

And so they come, when there’s a little work in Dhaka or passing through… the thing that never changes and though my hospitality cannot possibly match theirs, is that at my place the gramer lok, or villagers from my village, are always, Hatiyan heartfelt, welcome.




And there's always Gilan, if you like hospitality, or staying in a cupboard, free of charge. Or spend some time making pilmeni with Mrs. Val.

This article also published by Star Magazine, here: ...meanwhile, back at the mezbankhana...

Situ and Kaka at the mezbankhana

Hatiyar lok at the mezbankhana

Mezbankhana meeting

Me, Bhabi and the Sahid

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

A Little Update on Siddique the Fisherman...

The other day my friend Situ ran into Siddique the fisherman in the village, and he said to him, ‘your name is going to be in the newspaper’, thinking about my last article which hopefully will be published in print in the next week or so.

Siddique was shocked. ‘What? What for?’ he said, immediately concerned. Hatiyan people are quite shy of such things, I suppose because too often when the poor attract attention it is for a bad reason, such as a court case, often false, or a police something-or-other which also may or may not be of substance. They usually prefer to live under the radar a bit, without attention. ‘What did I do? What happened?’ asked Siddique. ‘Quick, give tea,’ he said, hoping to smooth things over with Situ, assuming there was something that needed smoothing over.

Situ was a bit bad, because he had tea with Siddique and still didn’t tell him why his name may be in the newspaper! ‘You should think it over,’ Situ told him, ‘why your name will be there, and we can talk about it another time.’ Such is the village life! The unfortunate Siddique is still wondering and will, until the thing is published, and we take him a copy. Meanwhile Situ is in Dhaka and we have no mobile number to reach him, so we can’t tell him sooner.

When they know the actual situation, all the tea shop regulars (at that shop) will laugh themselves silly shop about his needless worrying, why his name would be published; he will grin from ear to ear and be a bit proud and happy that his name is there, and all in the immediate vicinity will remember ‘Siddique’s article adventure’ for just about ever. That's how Hatiya goes… how Hatiyan community history is born.



Did you miss the start of this story?

Or perhaps you'd like to know what happens when the villager comes to the city.  Alternatively, head for similar rice paddy scenery in Thailand or the Philippines.



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The Fisherman

Bangladeshis have a greater awareness of local geography than they used to. Years ago it was not uncommon in Dhaka, when I’d say I was headed for Hatiya, for people to reply, ‘Hatiya – Sandwip’, not fully appreciating the two islands are distinct and quite far from each other, notwithstanding that many Hatiyans have Sandwipian ancestry. Years ago in Dhaka my travel plans met with trepidation: people from the islands faced cyclones, those areas were remote. People from the islands were tough and brave.

In Hatiya’s case it might be more accurate to use ‘open-hearted’ in place of ‘tough’, but it’s not altogether incorrect to speak of bravery. Think for a moment of the island’s fishermen.

Imagine spending up to ten days at sea at a time in small locally-constructed wooden trawlers, hoping the wood is strong enough to withstand the pounding of the waves when things get rough; hoping the fuel and supplies have been judged to last. Imagine being mindful of the meagre economic reward that, with luck, the nets will bring: needed to sustain the family. Think of facing waves as high as mountains, with deep valleys between them, so the fishermen describe: when all to be seen ahead is a vast wall of water. The Bay of Bengal is not always kind.

It’s quite an experience to sit in the tea shops along the Hatiyan coast and listen to the sea tales that bring the place such life. There’s a Hemmingway in each of those fishermen, if truth be told; in their daily duties.

In one such tea shop last Eid I was bickering as it happened with the shopkeeper over the size of the cups. He was using those tiny ceramic ones when any condensed-milk-tea connoisseur knows to prefer the glasses with the convenient larger handles. Indeed, the shop had only five cups and as the customers were many we were obliged to take turns: but that’s another matter.

I was explaining to the shopkeeper that while I liked his shop, I’d have to bring along a really good-sized cup to properly enjoy my tea, referencing the several-litre plastic water container nearby. ‘It should be at least that size,’ I said. All the customers laughed, the shopkeeper included, probably thinking it might take half the tea in Sylhet to make the proposed cup of tea.

There was a fisherman among us, Siddique. He’s an ordinary looking villager with nothing about his appearance to distinguish him. What was far from ordinary, at least outside the Bangladeshi coastal fishing communities, was the experience he relayed.

Siddique had been out at sea on one occasion, he told, when, as happens all too regularly in the waters of the Bay, his vessel was attacked by pirates. The problem was they didn’t just steal the catch but the trawler as well. Siddique found himself along with his crew mates thrown overboard into the sea. He was lucky. While most of the others drowned, Siddique along with two of his friends managed to find a bamboo pole that the pirates had discarded from the trawler. The three of them clung onto it as a buoy, somewhere far from the shore.

Day turned into night and still they hung on, facing down each and every wave that came by. Night turned into day, and again to night… for six days it lasted, the floating and not knowing if anyone would ever come. For six days they’d had nought but their belief in Allah to sustain them; for six days only each other to give encouragement. It was then a boat, perchance, spotted them in the water. They were transported to the safety of the Chittagong port.

In the west there is sometimes a misconception that the poor are out to get every penny they can, which comes about from trying to imagine but not having experienced that level of need. In Bangladesh it is commonly understood that more often it’s the reverse: that it’s the least financially well-endowed that can harbour extraordinary generosity towards their fellow man. The crew of the random rescue trawler, hardly rich themselves, fed Siddique and his friends. They donated the fares for the ship ride home to Hatiya. They set them right to rejoin their families.

Siddique was fortunate. He returned, that time. And then in the course of life, but of course, he set about finding a new trawler to take him back to sea to face again the mountain-waves and valley-troughs, the strenuous labour and possibly pirates. In Australia someone who’d survived such an ordeal would be championed in the newspapers. In Bangladesh newspapers could feature a ‘Siddique’ story every day for a year and not be done with the fishermen of Hatiya. And then there’s Bholans and Sandwipians and Monpurans; all the fishing districts along the entire Bangladeshi coast. In Australia people have been called ‘heroes’ for surviving such things; in Hatiya it’s that usual bravery of necessity the islanders call ‘life’.

Then I come in, in the tea shop, with all the stupid questions only somebody who hasn’t any experience with such matters could conjure. ‘Weren’t you scared?’ I asked: the answer obvious. ‘Were there sharks?’ and ‘What did you do for water?’ I was thinking in particular that drinking salt water can dehydrate and lead to an earlier death. Siddique didn’t know how to respond; they’d been surrounded by water, and I understood from his facial expression that I’d missed a point somewhere. I didn’t know what made the question redundant.

The next day I understood. I was wandering outside the embankment that lines the Hatiyan coast, in the area the locals refer to as ‘the garden’. There I saw rice fields, the most common element to the local scenery and unremarkable; but suddenly I realised, quite incredibly, that those rice plants were growing in the tidal zone. They were being watered by the sea!

Though the southern shore of the island faces the Bay of Bengal, Hatiya sits at the mouth of the Meghna Mega-River, and incredibly, the amount of water discharged during the monsoon period overwhelms the immediate vicinity of the Bay to the point where the level of salt in the solution is diminished enough to grow rice, but only of the rajashail rice variety so I learnt, and only in the monsoon months. It was the answer to the question: for water Siddique had needed only to open his mouth.

What’d been most startling about Siddique’s account was the way he’d delivered it. Like the other fishermen I’ve heard speak of such events, and though it was clear his experience was significant to him, there was far much too much normality about his narration. Then too he thought of others: he told of an occasion when his crew had come across a woman floating in the Bay. She’d been washed out to sea during a cyclone and, Siddique made a point of this, ‘she’d been out there for eight days.’ It was almost as though his six wasn’t enough. Worse things have happened…

Imagine that lady, probably busying herself these days, quietly back at home, making roti, cutting vegetables, feeding straw into her clay oven to cook rice … common activities of many a Hatiyan lady’s life. Sometimes, now and then, she’d probably remember the eight days she floated on the sea; but mostly she’d be attending the daily chores. She’d be leading a straightforward life, thinking of others.

A few days later I returned to the tea shop; I sat with my friends as usual and ordered tea. The shopkeeper went about making it, as usual, and soon put in front of my friends the regular offering. Then he returned with mine. Guess what, he’d found the largest cup available, the plastic lid of his thermos flask, and filled it almost to the brim with piping tea. It took a good half an hour to wade through it; like a bowl it was, hard to lift. Everybody took humour from my wish fulfilled.

Note to self: remember Siddique the fisherman’s survival when clinging onto the bamboo pole that in one of its innumerable forms presents itself to all of us at some time in life. Note to self: it’s best to take Hatiyan tea cups as they come.


Need a little update on Siddique the fisherman?

Here's a bit more village life and something else about tea.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Braving the Waters

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The Estonian Incident

Angla Windmills

It’s fair to say I never left Estonia, at least not technically. According to whatever records there are I’m still there, continuously since 1997. It’s not really a problem as such, and Estonia is certainly a pleasant enough country to be in, except that when it comes right down to it, when it comes to the actual being there, I’m clearly not.

In northern Europe and the smallest of the Baltic States, with a population not much beyond 1.3 million, Estonia is mostly flat, with pine forests, bogs, fields and numerous lakes to satisfy the eye; not to mention the rustic islands along its rocky Baltic Sea coastline. In winter it’s considerably cold but in that part of the world one of the joys is the changing seasons: the longer days, the shorter days, the noticeable difference every day. By summer, when I was there, the country is green, warm and all that is hospitable.

Photo: Liina Guiter

Estonia used to be a part of the Soviet Union until the bloodless Singing Revolution led to independence in 1991. The country joined the European Union in 2004.

There was certainly no plan to remain in Estonia. Rather I was to spend a week’s holiday before continuing south for a second week in Latvia; then home to Australia. Circumstances took over: blame it on the friendly relations between Estonia and Latvia, blame it on that Latvian cowboy or the Swedish pensioners’ bus; there was little opportunity for a graceful exit.

It was easy to assume Estonia a safe country, since a common means of getting around was to hitch-hike, standing along the road somewhere waving down passing traffic. Even single girls did it so it can’t have been entirely dangerous.

In the short week of my Estonian tour, I’d gotten a lift from the ‘Master-Road-Builder’ of the island of Saaremaa; several times with a brother and sister from Finland who happened to be plotting a roughly similar vacation chart to mine, and even though their car had a suspension problem which meant if I sat in the back it occasionally scraped along the road; I’d once found myself in a plush Mercedes with a driver who looked slightly like a Russian mafia don; and there were those lovely Lithuanian lawyers who’d required my Australian Driver’s Licence as evidence that it was really possible someone could be from somewhere so far away. Meeting many people, it was a good way to get around.

On the day of the incident I was heading to the Latvian border at Valga, with hopes of reaching the Latvian capital of Riga by day’s end. The Baltic States are small, so even though Riga is in the centre of Latvia, more or less, it’s still only a few hours’ drive south of the Estonian border.

Farmhouse

The car that’d stopped was a nondescript Eastern European model; in it were a couple: he was Russian and she Estonian. As neither spoke English all I could communicate was ‘Latvia’ which meant ‘please if you wouldn’t mind dropping me somewhere by the border I’d be most appreciative.’ They seemed to understand. I was laughing to myself that there were three people in the car with three languages when we stopped to pick up the fourth language: Latvian.

I can’t say it’s ever been on my life’s priority list to meet a Latvian acoustic folk guitarist, but I’m glad I did. Equipped with guitar, a small bag for luggage and a straw hat in the cowboy mould, he was on his way home to Riga from a folk festival in Finland. His hair was straggling; it matched the straw of his hat.

Anyway the guitarist gentleman had stood on the verge of the road as I had done, and waved down the same car. From that point on there was speech: he could not only speak Estonian, since his wife was Estonian too, but also a little Russian and a little English. I was able to make the couple in the front understand I was from Sydney with the help of his translation.

Better still, he organised for us to be dropped off closer to the border rather than in the town, and since from where we did get out there was no border in sight, he was able to ask directions. It was countryside without much sign that a new country was nearby. I relied on Latvian assistance as my new friend chatted with farmers, took directions from old ladies and confirmed them with kids on bikes. He did all the talking.

After a short while we left the main road, on instruction, and walked down a dirt lane which can’t have been more than a few hundred metres in length. Although the area was rural there were a few cottages on that road with well-kept gardens. About halfway along I noticed a small barbed-wire fence, no higher than the knee and almost decorative if barbed-wire can ever be considered so; and conveniently was a little purpose-built gap road centre, person-sized, so we were able to continue along the road on the other side. ‘It’s a short-cut,’ he’d told me. ‘That fence wasn’t by any chance the border was it?’ I asked. ‘Welcome to Latvia,’ he said.

Photo: Jaanus Järva

Now what do you do when you’ve just crossed a border technically illegally? The problem: I needed my Latvian visa stamped or there would be problems at Riga Airport for the flight home. I explained the matter and my interpreter said not to worry. We came to another main road and about fifty metres to the right was the Latvian entry post; even if we approached it from the wrong side.

Now speaking his mother tongue, Latvian, he explained the situation and the border guards were obliging: they stamped me in. It left me technically still in Estonia with no exit stamp, but to exit properly I now would have had to leave Latvia, re-enter Estonia, re-leave and re-enter; which would have meant the cancellation of my Latvian visa since it allowed only a single entry. More pressing, we were in the countryside without transport.

‘Try that bus over there,’ the border guard had told my guitarist friend. There was a lone tourist bus, as it turned out, stocked with a Swedish pensioners’ group. We found the tour leader, a middle-aged lady, and my Latvian friend proceeded to ask for a ride in Latvian, of which she understood not a single word. I’d been feeling linguistically useless all afternoon. I tapped my friend on the shoulder, ‘now it’s my turn,’ I said.

I could have asked in English, but having spent a year in Norway I can speak reasonable Norwegian, which is mutually-intelligible with Swedish. ‘Can we possibly get a lift to Riga?’ I asked. ‘Are you Swedish?’ she said excitedly. ‘No, I’m Australian and I’m speaking Norwegian!’ Sure enough we had our ride.

And so in a single moment I chose both to stay in Estonia eternally and take the Swedish bus to Riga immediately, if you get my drift.

Photo: Lembit Michelson

On the way to Riga two things happened: the Swedish tour leader explained that her daughter was a week away from departing for Australia for a year. Amazingly, she was to stay in a suburb of Sydney about five minutes drive from my family home. Within the month, in Sydney, there was a phone call. ‘Excuse me,’ I said, ‘we’ve never met but I believe I met your mother on the Latvian border.’ There’s a sentence I’ll never use again! Within the month my very accommodating mother was fussing over what to make for dinner for our new Swedish guest. ‘What do the Swedish eat?’

The second thing was that my Latvian guitarist friend mentioned to me that since him and his wife lived in a Soviet-built apartment block, and since those apartments are small, he’d bought a second one. ‘Whenever you are in Riga it’s yours,’ he’d said. So on my first night in Latvia I had my own apartment, and I could well have stayed there subsequently, had I not perchance met my Latvian friends the following day.

Photo: Sven Zacek

I don’t suppose the Estonians really mind that their paperwork says I am still there. On the one hand, all the Estonians I met were nice enough not to fuss over such a thing, and on the other, that border post is no longer even there: as of 1 January 2009 crossing points were removed between the two countries in line with the European Union standard.

Photos courtesy of http://www.visitestonia.com/

Photo: Sven Zacek

You could also read what happened the day after the Estonian incident or just more generally travel south to Latvia, perhaps to find out if they have wolves there.

This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Estonian Incident

The Comings and Goings of Hong Kong

Bamboo and Glass, Hong Kong

Work, shop, eat and sleep Hong Kong. I met you like a distant cousin, a little standoffish but polite, busy with your life and unwilling to entangle in mine; and I didn’t want it either. The first time I said no: I didn’t want to meet you. I was a little scared to see your streets through nothing you were responsible for, so I stood at your edge and turned my back: there were other things to do and you said nothing.

You’re the world’s transit lounge, Hong Kong, the city in the middle, the place of comings and goings, so you could wait. It’s not that you don’t have your own character, but I had to look for it, and let it settle like a custard tart. Why shouldn’t you be part of my life? I took time to think that through. Things have their proper time, don’t they?

The second time I was terrified; alone. For the first time, even with the fortune of many homes I had none. I walked Mongkok and learnt a few Chinese characters, scribbled on a placemat from that waitress at my favourite place. I contemplated a life of noodles. With the waitress I barely talked and yet she was about the only contact you gave. Everyone else seemed busy, and though I liked your bustle and the neon mish-mash of your streets; though I saw the Peak and wandered the waterfront: I was thinking too much, distracted by far away places and wondering how safe I was in your arms.

You wondered too: how safe you were with me in your arms.

The Peak Tram, Hong Kong

You gave that snake, the one with a frog in its mouth. It swung out onto the bushy path on the walk down from the Peak, and dropped its catch at the surprise of finding me there. The frog, lucky, hopped away to the side: it survived. Perhaps I could too. The snake went in the other direction and the three lives that’d suddenly and briefly converged in transit, were once again, each to their own. That’s your story, Hong Kong, and I wondered of the snake and the frog, about your Cantonese culture and what such an event might mean. Was it my fortune to have saved a frog or me disturbing you: the nature of your frog and snake, leaving the snake hungry?

‘I saw a snake, is it poisonous?’ I’d asked, but your people didn’t understand. ‘It’s delicious,’ they said.

I waited, trying to find a new start. You let me stay for that while, and became my door to the next part. I was entirely ungrateful. ‘Hong Kong is boring,’ I thought and said and wrote. Then you waited too.

Finally from a homeless lifeless pause, terrified and terrorised, I found my way south to a new beginning in China: into somebody else’s dream. Of course China on my own terms, though, would have been okay.

The third time I was worried but less than before. I’d come seven hours to post a letter and settle my Chinese visa. Still an ungrateful guest, I didn’t stay, barely wanting to say hello. I came by boat and left the same day. There was that stranger you gave, who encouraged me to stay and know you better. ‘Hong Kong is not boring,’ they’d said. But with my bits and bobs of business done, a communiqué bound homeward to a new management; fingers crossed and slight hope where there was none, I turned my back again and left by boat. It was but a few hours and yet something had changed: I like Hong Kong, I’d thought.

To the Peak, Hong Kong

On the fourth occasion I held my breath for Bangladesh. I learnt your waterfront and the dodgy, pokey innards of Kowloon that for me gave you a history. I got used to the tailoring-hawkers and being offered fake watches at each crossroad, often by Bangalees. I saw the multicoloured faces of the wider community, though being Australian I am only supposed to like the white ones. I heard the complete orchestra of your accents, which are supposed to repel.

I lived up a dingy stairwell then, in a room not big enough for a full-sized bed, and I liked that you were not entirely shiny. You sent messages from east and west, the world’s then tallest apartment building, on Australia’s Gold Coast, and a thatched hut village in India where people hunted cobras; okay, on a TV set, but a fitting gesture for a crossroad city of the world and in life.

Bauhinia Flower, the symbol of Hong Kong

You told my fortune by a metro station entrance. I pushed my palms together in Taoist prayer.

And did you send those bodyguards or assassins, in that Jackie Chan scene in which I found myself quite incidentally, in that South Asian restaurant tucked away at the back of one of those dilapidated rabbit’s warren complexes you call mansions? I didn’t know whether I should be scared again; but I wasn’t. I had to laugh as the Middle Eastern guy you put beside me ordered soup and watched in disgust as I ate with my hands: South Asia he took no comfort in. Be they benign or sinister, I saw in the eyes of the Indian with the deep facial scars a glint of respect. It must have been, since he sat opposite and not with his friends who’d invited him as he’d walked in. It made me laugh because the tricky sinister Bangladesh at the centre of so many things has always been a sanctuary. Those who don’t know are many; they don’t want to know. I was encouraged to wait but did not.

It was probably nothing. Everything is nothing for Australians.

View of Hong Kong from the Peak

I found your San Francisco-steep island streets so full of character I finally wanted to stay. Your streets of urchins and incense and Chinese screens are enchanting. I discovered your splintery ferries that said you had charm and a reminiscent sentiment beneath the skyscrapers in glass.

You filled my stomach and made ready my dream of again-Bangladesh, cleared after all too many days of nagging suspense. I left for a better future, another turn, and you watched that too.

On the fifth and final occasion, I stole to you secretly from China, telling none but the Chinese Red Army apparently.

Already I knew your shortcuts and something of your ways. You were easier with me, and I with you. Just one among your millions, and a visitor at that, others still busy with their own struggles: but I knew your convenience and cosmopolitan collage. I was the guide then, meeting my father after around a year. He was surprised how much I could show in just a few hours: but you made it straightforward. We saw the urchins and fake watch sellers and efficiently navigated your metro, cut from Kowloon to Island and back again; ventured further too. I knew where to eat, Knutsford-style. I had a little work, easily completed while my father finished his shopping.

Don’t worry Hong Kong, with the worst of everything insh’allah far from us now; I have the rickshaw wisdom, in the city that breathes a tabla and car horn beat, so be content. I have too something of you: for you aren’t afraid to be yourself and it’s a quality that’s rare indeed.

Work, shop, eat and sleep Hong Kong. Wave me on my way again some time, for you’ve seen bits, snippets of a process driven by the utter worst and best of humanity, in me from without. And I’ve seen snippets of you. These little moments can only connect, Hong Kong. You’re alright by me.



Feel like heading into mainland China?  Would you prefer Taiwan?  Or totally different, like out of Africa?


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: The Comings and Goings of Hong Kong

Hong Kong suburbs from the Peak

The Life in Traffic Jams

Dhaka traffic (photo: Star Magazine)

Dhaka street, 1999

The other day in my English class I asked the students to tell me what was bad about living in Dhaka. At the top of the list was traffic jams. One particular evening, when on my way to dinner, I found myself sitting in a rickshaw in the midst of the turmoil of a jam on Satmasjid Road and I thought, "yes, there really is a lot of traffic to complain about." But strangely enough, I like it.

In the city of my birth, Sydney, things are much more orderly. There are sometimes traffic jams too but cars wait, for the most part patiently, in long neat queues demarcated by lane lines. People obey traffic lights there.

The contrast with Satmasjid Road couldn't be greater: rickshaws squeezed like citrus fruit filling every tiny crevice of roadway, weaving slowly amongst the battered buses and cars, turning left from the right side of the road or right from the left and sometimes trundling along in the wrong direction altogether. It's a familiar scene.



Dhaka jam in 1999 (now is worse)

 There was a street kid who must have done something mischievous because a young man had caught him by the arm and in the middle of the vehicle clutter he was busily uttering harsh words, the detail of which could not be heard over the sound of car horns. Some passengers in a tempo got out to mediate, or to find out what the kid had done for all important adda purposes, while all the rickshaw passengers and drivers around watched with interest. The young man raised his hand as if to hit the street kid, but the street kid knew it was never going to happen. The mediators from the tempo and the spectators on the other rickshaws knew it was never going to happen too. It was not a serious situation.

The little life scene concluded a few minutes later with the street kid pulling his earlobes and repeatedly squatting as a form of apology, which to western eyes looks so unusual. And then he was on his way. The young man wandered off, the not-required mediators got back into their tempo and the several rickshaw passengers switched their attention to something else as we all inched forward slightly along the road. It's the sort of life encounter that's so commonplace in this city, but for a Sydneysider there's something remarkable about it: to see a young man censure a street kid as though he was his older brother; to see strangers act a little like family members. Bangladeshis, I think, take it for granted.

The news from Sydney the other day included a gruesome story about a woman who'd died alone in her apartment and hadn't been discovered for a number of weeks. The news story reported her neighbours had noticed the stench of rotting flesh but had not called the police because they did not want to be involved. In Australia it happens that sometimes people lay dead for weeks or even months in their homes unnoticed, because they live alone and nobody comes to visit. It's difficult to imagine such a situation occurring here.

A few minutes later my rickshaw nearly scraped the bumper of a nearby car. The driver yelled a few words as my rickshaw driver kept silent, but it was the car which was parked askew from the curb. Evidence of scrapes and bumps is to be seen on any car or bus in this city that has spent more than a day out of the showroom, and what has always impressed me is even when such situations get heated, the drivers of each vehicle are usually able to sort it out themselves and get on their way without too much delay. It seems assumed that a car in Dhaka will have a few dents on it. In Sydney where such scrapes are much rarer, drivers usually swap insurance details, fill in claim forms for compensation and sometimes even small incidents involve the police or a court case.

Dhaka tailback (photo: Star Magazine)

Another few metres and a good ten minutes further along, I noticed a rickshaw driver at road's edge resting with his feet up on the handlebars. Having given up the hope of moving anywhere, he was playing a bamboo flute instead. It was the very definition of playing in the traffic. Undoubtedly he was somewhere far away, entirely oblivious to the hubbub of the road drowning out his song; I imagined in his village sitting on a setu, or little bridge, somewhere among the rice fields, relaxing in the tranquility of the countryside, enjoying a breeze. Every single commuter stuck there in the jam must have wanted to join him. I know I did.

It's inevitable that sometimes when stuck in a jam, when it takes three times longer to arrive somewhere than it should, we curse this city. It's an easy matter to long for a few more freeways, orderly traffic flow and convenience. And while I must confess I am saved the worst of it for I live close enough to work to walk, I think that as well as being annoyed about Dhaka's traffic jams it's worthwhile to keep aside a small smile for those intimate, personal moments in other people's lives that traffic jams make us witness to, what makes a Dhaka traffic jam an organism of humanity and an expression of this city's life, while in Sydney, when jams occur, they're just a row of cars.

And if you still doubt you can enjoy Dhaka's traffic then think of this: when we complain of the huge number of rickshaws that add to the congestion we make ourselves, most of us, hypocrites, for we're never including the one we're sitting on.

You can learn a lot on a rickshaw too, especially if you've got a driver from the north.  Or, you can just chill out in the 'hood!


This article was also published in Star Magazine, here: Another Way of Looking at Jams and in Rising Stars supplement, here: Dhaka Jams from a Different Perspective





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