A Place to Stand

Village near Mongla, 1996

with guest writer Reja Ali Mobarak.

Bangladesh has changed, but we remember 1996.  Reja Ali Mobarak wrote his part in Bangla and the writers together translated it.

It was of cottage and mansion dripping with subtropical weathering, Khulna Town.  Soil and earth, the old buildings brought charm.

A simple archway on the footpath read ‘Hotel Sun King’ in metallic letters.  Before entering, I invited the guy from the bus to share tea and samosa, behind a curtained doorway across the street.  It was Ramadan.  We had endured his constant chatter for many hours; from the long, unbroken journey from Chittagong we were unshaven and exhausted.  He reclined and talked as I went to the counter to deliver up the few-taka bill.

***

I used to transport live baby chingri from my home in Hatiya to Foila.  We are lower middle class although my father was the union chairman.  The chingri business used to see out the winter months.  It was seventeen years ago.

I bore the yoke of village politics that caused my father’s strokes and the burden of maintaining the family that belongs to the eldest son was weightier than my age.  Sometimes life must run against the current.  While waiting for the commission agent in Foila to pay me, I came to Khulna.  My business partner Nazmul, from Khulna, had invited me many times; yet I chose the independence of a cheap hotel called Sun King.

In the mornings Nazmul would come.  By night, at his house, his mother would feed us.  I’d seen the pens of his chicken establishment.

The Sun King manager was old with thin, grey hair and gaps in his teeth.  We’d found the habit of sharing iftar together, the evening meal to break the fast.  It was still a few hours but I was counting, relaxing on the sofa under the window at the top of the stairs, in the small space that was barely a reception area.  The manager sat on a stool behind his pint-sized bench in the corner.  

I was sitting, with nothing to do, when I saw two fair-skinned foreigners and one Bangladeshi come up the stairs with too much baggage.  They asked the manager for a room and I stood, moved a few paces closer.  I was curious.

***

Language was a frustration.  I wanted to bargain with the manager directly but the non-stop-talker had the advantage.  I didn’t trust him much so after a few sentences I did what I wanted to do all day.  I told him to be silent.  I asked for a room, the koto, the how much, we’d already learnt.  The manager wrote a figure on a paper scrap: 150 taka for a double.  It was cheap; but we nonetheless went into auto-bargain.  It was South Asia and we believed that’s what one did.

As usual we turned to walk away in faux outrage.  But the old man didn’t shower our retreat with better offers.  We didn’t proceed beyond the first landing on the way to the ground floor.

***

It was strange: the manager told them the price and they walked away!  We always thought bideshis stay five-star, like at the Sonargaon in Dhaka.  I hadn’t had much experience with bideshis but because my father was Chairman they used to come to the house sometimes from the Red Cross.  I remember they’d sit at the table on the veranda and chat in English.  From a young age I was expected to serve their tea and my father would encourage me to speak English.  But I felt shame so mostly I was silent.

I remember how awkwardly they sat, straight-backed and serious, their faces tense.  It was nothing like when the neighbours would visit.  But these two, there was something different about them: they’d come to such a standard hotel, they were unshaven with messy hair.  I wanted them to stay there.  Fortunately they came back and I looked one of them in the eyes and in poor English said the room rate was okay.

***

That guy who’d been hanging out in reception said the room rate was okay.  I took a brief moment to study his face: he had very green eyes. 

But I was looking for honesty and we couldn’t rely on the non-stop-talker.  It’s really very odd but examining his face it wasn’t only that I thought he was probably honest: in some way I recognised it.  I told myself not to be stupid.  But we took the room.

***

I don’t know why he believed me and didn’t bargain further, but as they filled in the book at the counter I couldn’t help it, I read over their shoulders to know where they were from.  In the ‘Citizenship’ column he wrote ‘Australian.’

***

He read over my shoulder as I filled out the Register.  It was a bit rude.

***

When we talked to foreigners we felt as citizens of a poor country and because of the language problem in communicating, shame; but when he was bargaining with the manager I did not feel like that. When I saw him at first I felt as though I already knew him. I don’t know why.  He finished the work around taking the room and wanted to go there.  I don’t know much English but I asked him to share iftar with us.  He understood my offer easily, without even trying.

It was astonishing.  After about an hour he came from his room wearing lungi!  My eyes fell open at the sight: inside I was thinking, ‘maybe this foreigner doesn’t hate Bengalis.’  He sat on the sofa as the adhan sounded for iftar to begin.  The manager had chopped onions and chilli, mixing oil with muri.  I’d brought a few sweet jilabis and some piazu.

It was all laid out on a sheet of the day’s news. Nazmul was late and the bideshi’s friend was still sleeping.  He didn’t know how to eat with his hands and bits of the muri mix were sticking to the sides of his fingers and falling on the floor; although he didn’t understand Bangla he helped me to communicate.  He spoke slowly and understood my meaning when I knew the English words were wrong.  It made me so happy!  I wished to speak to him more after iftar but I didn’t know what he felt.

***

It was the only day in Bangladesh when I had a strong desire never to speak to another Bengali: a product of the non-stop-talker and the long journey.  Sleep was made complicated by the mosquitoes that came in through the big hole in the wall.  I decided to fight them no longer and got up, still with zero desire to connect with locals.  I didn’t want to start with the ‘country?’ and work our way up to the amount of my father’s salary.  Yet the idea of travelling was to meet people and learn something; and if I’d always maintained such a negative attitude we would have missed out on so much.  So when I saw him sitting on the sofa under the window and there being nothing else to do, my objections softened.  I decided not to judge him solely on the rudeness of having looked over my shoulder as I’d signed in. 

It wasn’t my first iftar. I saw him watching how I ate with my hands and was embarrassed for my lack of skill.  Afterwards we heard shouting from the street below.  Through the window we watched a really angry mob pass.  They were punching the air with fists clenched, chanting slogans, holding banners I couldn’t read.  It must’ve been related to the upcoming election.  Many Bangladeshis had spoken about politics. 

***

BNP was attempting to hold an election but Awami League was set to boycott. We watched an opposition protest march down the street.  I did my best to explain things from my perspective. He shared his experiences of Bangladesh, good and bad.  I felt so much shame when he said some Bangladeshis asked him for a visa, or tried to cheat him, that I could not look him in the eye. But it was great to hear that despite his young age he had visited many countries and it was rare how hospitable Bangladeshis were. On average he had quite a good idea about Bangladesh. What was stranger was that some ideas coincided between us.

Near Mongla, 1996

***

He told me about his family, his village in Hatiya and his business.  I’d seen Hatiya from the ship.  It was an island lit by dim kerosene light in the darkness.

We spoke of Australia but his questions came like a river, naturally and without being boring.  When he spoke about local politics without invitation water rose in my eyes and I only hoped he wouldn’t notice.  It wasn’t that he said anything new but as we were nearing the end of our stay in Bangladesh I suppose I had already started processing and there was this insurmountable disjunct between what seemed to be the suffering of poverty, and on top of it the political tensions, with the hospitality, even happiness that seemed in Bangladesh to be as common as earth.  In Sydney it is rarer.

The strangest part was that although his English wasn’t great, to comprehend his meaning was without strain.  In some things we thought similarly.  It made an impression: how could two people with entirely different backgrounds see the world so much the same?  I knew him.

He invited me to dinner but said we’d have to wait for his business partner Nazmul to arrive because they’d planned to hold a business meeting first. 

Nazmul was a young guy dressed in impeccable neatness from hair part to polished shoes.  Surprisingly he said I could sit in on the business meeting; I think he didn’t wish to leave me waiting alone.  So the three of us went to his room and found space between the bed and the chair that belonged to the little desk.  The room had no window; but it also had no hole in the wall. 

I thought it would be boring; but as they started conversing in Bengali I discovered a smile:  how absurd it was to be at a meeting between a Bangladeshi prawn seller and a chicken farmer.  The unfathomable Bengali language wanted to make me laugh!  I felt so privileged and fortunate and I had not overcome those feelings when he said quite suddenly their meeting was done.  ‘Are you sure you’re done?’ I laughed.  The meeting had lasted less than five minutes.

Dinner was biryani something at the hotel across the street.  I tried to pay the bill but there was no way he’d let me.  ‘I’ll get my own back,’ I thought happily.

***

I wanted to talk to him all night but I thought he would think badly if I talked too much, that I would disturb them. So we decided instead to visit the Sundarbans together and I would meet them at Mongla port the following afternoon. Afterwards I imagined I should have gone with them in the morning but mistakenly I thought they would mind it, as if I was a loafer.  I told them I had other business meetings, thinking I should go to Foila for money. 

***

I’d wanted so much he should come with us to the Sundarbans but it could hardly be expected he’d be able to just drop his business.  I asked a few too many times but lastly decided to press further would be rude.  But he agreed to meet us in the afternoon. I hope he hadn’t felt obliged.

A clod of earth was Khulna Town, earth connecting, the earth that brings a new place to stand.

find the elements
                          air
                     fire
             water
      earth
ether


This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: A Place to Stand

Perceiving Paradise

Ferry in Bagerhat Somewhere

‘Paradise’ is an overused word. Often it embraces ‘tropical’ and refers to some speck of land fringed by idyllic beaches suitable for postcards. But on Earth there is no paradise.

It’s strange when a sentence alters your way of seeing. It doesn’t happen often, but occasionally a string of words, perhaps uttered unthinkingly by a random person, can cause a small and initially unimagined shift in the psyche. Sometimes a few words are all it takes to set a life-marker, dividing the past and future, stealthily adding texture to the latter. I’m thinking of something that happened years ago on my first trip to Bangladesh in the winter of 1995-6. I’m thinking of three simple words.

It was probably the longest day of the journey, the three month jaunt through northern India and Bangladesh with my school friend Lachlan. It was the longest day because it was more than just one day: the ship journey from Chittagong to Barisal, the continuation by bus to Khulna with no break.

At the start, time was measured in the tick-tock waves and metronome rock of the ship; sunset and sunrise traced overhead by easy seabird circles. Communication was the salt breeze and progress the dull engine. A journey by ship is like no other.

The ship was jammed with people and goods: there was a litter of noise and smells, a chaos of boxes and bags. There were families, elderly and young, beggars, workers, pan-chewers, porters and touts. Our advantage: we’d managed to book a cabin. With our overloaded backpacks we’d moved through the crowd like salmon struggle upstream.

People were helpful. They made what little space they could. People stared: they were many and their gaze intense. Bangladesh was new to us; we were new to them. People jumped from wharf to vessel; they climbed the ship’s exterior with inexplicable urgency. They called ‘hello’ and asked where we were from, en masse.

Think of it: in most of this country every grain of earth is a water-gift, painstakingly carried by thousands of kilometres of rivers, from the high Himalayan hills, from exotic places like Devprayag, Xigazê and Haridwar, through the thickly-populated Uttar Pradesh plains or the Assamese valleys, to be deposited, grain by grain, to become Bangladesh. There could be no better way to experience this, the land of water, than a journey by ship.

We’d found Javed on his way home to Sandwip and chatted about his passion, cricket. A few hours later smaller boats came. There was jostling on the main deck; people pushed towards the gate. Javed was amongst it. People pushed out and down some metal stairs lowered over the side and ending just above the water where the smaller wooden boats were. Javed followed. He waved as he disappeared, headed for the Sandwip shore.

Currents meander, in the air, in the water; choppy liquid circles are dug out of the sea by the engines, to disappear and reappear. A ship journey frees the imagination. Exactly what choppy thought-circles populated that journey to Barisal years ago I can’t say, but there was a theme: it was in what people said. On that first trip, many people said, ‘you must help me get a visa to Australia.’ ‘I’m so sorry for our country,’ they said. ‘I wish I had your skin,’ they said.

It was confronting and awkward. We explained Australian visas were a difficult proposition; when we asked why they were apologising for their country, and they replied because it was poor, we could say honestly it was perhaps poor in money, but rich in people, culture and nature. I had no idea in those days how much that was true. As for the skin, we tried to convey its impracticality, prone to sunburn and skin cancer; but of course it’s not what they meant.

I was on deck to see the water colour change, although if it was before or after Sandwip I could no longer say with certainty. There was a stark line; from the grey-green sea to the brown of the river. This wasn’t the mouth of the river I thought, but its very lips. The lips of the Padma, Jamuna and Meghna: the children of the Himalayas from Devprayag, Xigazê and Haridwar.

We’d brought snacks: bread, chips and bananas. Excepting the bananas, all was gone before the Bay took the sun. Lachlan found me on deck later. ‘There’s no chance you nibbled at one of the bananas is there, through its skin?’ he asked. ‘That didn’t happen, did it?’ We had rats! I suppose a ship is hardly self-respecting without at least one rat, but for me it meant a night without sleep.

By then there was the night sky to measure time, the stars near and far, long ago to more recent light emissions reaching the eye; the spectacle was sufficiently impressive for me to brave the winter chill. I was on deck when the ship arrived at Hatiya.

The Hatiya shore, not far off, was a wafery panther crouched and stock still against the barely perceptible motion of the river. From it, here and there, came the flickering glow of kerosene lamplight.

The metal stairs were lowered again: wooden boats filled quickly with people, sacks, bags, nets and crates. Labourers passed cane baskets directly over the side and into the boats. Their arms weren’t quite long enough, so the baskets would freefall slightly before the outstretched arms of the boatmen caught them. There was a small risk the Meghna might claim one. As my arms were slightly longer I crouched, arms under the railing, to help. It was easy work. The boatmen smiled gratefully as they took the baskets, beckoning to me, pointing ashore in a wordless invitation.

It was an auspicious offer, for in the coming years Hatiya would make itself my Bangladeshi village home; and that was the first time I saw it. With a wink and a nudge, time was saying something, revealing a flash of the future. But I didn’t understand.

Morning meant Barisal port and a thin grime of dirt that covered the body like a fungus. We were travelling too fast; we would have to bear it until Khulna. The bus ride seemed unending; it was exhausting and there was another passenger who wouldn’t stop talking. Khulna had seemed closer; the bus was of the type called a murir tin: factors that didn’t bring comfort. In those days there were several ferry crossings, for the journey like the hour marks on a clock.

There was a salesman with an uncountable number of small items pinned to his coat: pocket torches, pens, razors, hair clips... He stood in the aisle and opened his coat. To our astonishment his portable shop continued inside: padlocks, combs, toothbrushes… His wares were pinned in rows down each side. He was ingenious, but the concoction of surprise and exhaustion made us laugh. He said we should give baksheesh for his giving us laughter. We probably should have, to support his entrepreneurship. Instead I said laughter was free.

Somewhere around Bagerhat it happened. The bus stopped for a ferry. We were probably out finding something edible in one of the Ramadan-curtained stalls. The exact circumstances I can’t tell, and I don’t much remember how he looked or who he was, for we spoke but a few short minutes while Lachlan was busy elsewhere. ‘What do you think of Bangladesh?’ the stranger asked, and I told him, beautiful nature, friendly people: my usual and sincere response.

He replied, and these are the three words, the sentence, that struck. He said, ‘Bangladesh is paradise.’

The power of that sentence! How it stood apart from all the other sentences, how much it was unlike the others. How could it so bravely stand alone? More intriguing, what did its speaker see that I couldn’t, because for me, remember, exposure to the material poverty in which many Bangladeshis live was still shockingly new. How could two people from the same world see so differently?

The bus left; there was no chance to clarify. I told Lachlan the sentence and he was unimpressed. But that sentence stayed, the question of perception, values in life and what made contentment. That sentence crossed borders, hiding somewhere in my luggage. It came back in quiet moments and stared like the crowd on the ship: the questions it raised inevitably wandering away again unanswered, unanswerable.

The final ferry was outside Khulna town. As we waited a crowd gathered to observe, probably the largest we’d attracted anywhere. Maybe thirty people stood and stared, not threateningly but of curiosity, and, encouraged by their numbers, came closer, until a couple of them gently touched my arm. They wanted to know how it felt, white skin. ‘It’s the same as yours,’ a simple sentence I wanted to say, but I couldn’t find the words for them to understand.

I’d like to thank that gentleman for the paradise sentence; for its questions of perceptions. It might’ve been the most important thing that happened on the first trip but for what happened next. For in Khulna one of the questions it raised was unexpectedly reversed: how could two people from such different worlds see so much the same?



This article is also published by Star Magazine, here: Perceiving Paradise

This article is the final piece in a series of five about the first trip to Bangladesh.  The earlier parts are here:

Bangladesh Waiting (Part One)
Bangladesh, the Tourist Guide (Part Two)
The Village View (Part Three)
The Song of Chittagong (Part Four)

People getting off the Ship in Sandwip

Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh