Saying Goodbye

At 2 pm I glanced down the hall to the room they call the new big, in which I taught the teenagers of an evening. The language centre in Donetsk, eastern Ukraine, was always growing, with a plan to convert the cellar into classrooms. The continual renovation made the term: new big. The room was decorated, with serviettes waiting to be cake-smeared and lollies for unwrapping. It was my last day.

Thinking of my camera, two blocks away at home, I slipped into hat and coat. All eyes were upon me as I exited the cloak room. I wasn’t supposed to know about the party. “I’ll be back for my lesson at 6 pm,” I said casually. Mouths dropped – I would miss my party – Marina realised first, of course, that I was joking.

But it was Lena who donated her weekend to my first days in Donetsk almost a year earlier. In the cupboard of the Soviet apartment they’d chosen for me she’d left a jar of homemade plum jam with fruit from her mother’s village garden. She pointed it out when we arrived on the first evening but didn’t say she’d made it – by the smile in her eye I understood. It’s a nice thing to have done for a total stranger. Meanwhile the institute had stocked the fridge with groceries and the receptionist Tanya had the jug boiled as I walked in the door.

I remember Lena at the airport – she had a 1960s hairdo and behind-the-iron-curtain clothes – feminine, becoming and quite different to western styles. I remember as we’d driven past the White House, the seat of city government, how Peter the driver said, “That’s where the thieves live.”

At lunch on the following afternoon, in a café by the Karlmeus, when I asked what Lena’s ex-husband did, she replied, embarrassed, in her suave, winter-coat-thick accent, “We don’t ask what people do in Ukraine.” It was my first lesson. “There are many Ukrainians,” she said, “who have money but are technically unemployed.”

She’s a mother of two but can never remember their ages. She started to explain how it was, life in and after the Soviet Union. “People should only create and not destroy,” she said, “This is our history.” She was worried about her children’s futures in an uncertain, capitalist Ukraine.

Lena was most insistent I phoned Australia to tell my family I was alright. She almost came all the way from her house to drag me to the institute to do that, in the first days. “You are always so calm about everything!” she said, with frustration. But it’s easy to be calm there.

Marina, meanwhile, was quiet until I discovered her sense of humour. We took to criticizing each other, for fun, as a sport. She used to say the most horrible things at meetings, about me, in front of the Director. And I loved it. Nor did she mind when I suggested she must’ve grown up in a circus and probably had circus elephants still living on her apartment’s veranda.

One day she came to work in a cardigan that fashionably featured a single button, where there might normally be two or three. I pulled her aside and said, straight-faced, “Don’t worry. I know teachers’ salaries aren’t much. I will ask the other teachers to donate a few kopeks and we’ll buy you a couple of extra buttons.” She was outraged! I was laughing.

She coined my nickname: the difficult Australian. When we returned from summer holidays Lena said to Marina that I’d missed her. “Yeah,” Marina replied, “Like a headache.” It was the cue to start up again.

Yet sometimes we’d sneak away to eat flatbread-rolled kebab-like zapykankas in the park or deluxe hot dogs, Donetsk-style. Such hours were precious.

Classes would end late evening but if I found energy it was a simple matter to phone Svetlana. “Shall I stop by?” I’d ask. “Sure,” she said, most often, “and why not bring a bottle of red?” We used to talk into the wee hours, and dance and sing. It’s a good thing Ukrainian neighbours don’t bother about noise.

Svetlana explained how living in Ukraine meant always having to consider how to earn money, with seemingly endless problems – a state of affairs Bangladeshis can perhaps relate to. “But in Ukraine,” she said, “people are still nice to each other. Nobody cares if their neighbour is having a nice life.” And I saw that.

Once I was buying a bottle of wine at a kiosk by the marshrutka taxi stand, and the woman behind the counter asked in Russian, “Sweet or dry?” I asked for dry and the woman looked me up and down before saying, “Is it for a girl?” On the way to Svetlana’s there was only one response: “Da”. “You’ll need a nice bottle then,” she said, before scouring her selection to find the best. She checked the chocolate situation too.

On the weekends Svetlana and I would sometimes find a café to watch the afternoon pass, by tradition first meeting at our regular place: beside the left shoe of the Lenin statue in Lenin Square.

When it comes to Val – well, her kitchen is where I learnt much of what I came to know about Ukraine. She made sure I was well familiar with the cuisine.

It was through her I picked up additional classes with the three-year-old Senya. His mother wanted him to be bilingual. His classes were not stressful or rigid. The instruction was, “just play in English.” And we did. Senya was obsessed with Spiderman.

At the end he had tears in his eyes. “When are you leaving?” he asked. “After eight days,” I said, accurately.

“No,” he replied firmly, “After three days!” He had the concept of bargaining but lost the concept of numbers at crucial moments. He hoped to lengthen my stay.

I mention Senya because he discovered a new term I came to embrace. From confusing English pronouns with his country, he once told Val he lived in “Mykraine.” And that’s the thing of it – it became Mykraine.

The language connected: they enjoyed when I invented words, in the way that happens in any living language, what you can’t get in books. There was the Soviet washing machine I had, plastic, semi-manual, the size of a television set. You had to load the water by bucket before plugging it in. Lena chuckled when I called it the “electric bucket.” And in the park after rain, when I pointed to a small flow into a drain and called it a waterfall, and was rebuked because it wasn’t a waterfall, well, the English teachers took amusement when I said it was at least “waterfallish.”

With grammar: they knew the rules and I knew the answers. Team work: they could explain the former, which native speakers are not taught; while I helped apply the rules correctly.

The decoration and food in the new big: I’m not sure I wanted it. It represented such an enormous loss, about to come. On the other hand, as an Australian had once described my moving there as “throwing myself into a transcontinental abyss”, well it hadn’t been at all bad.  Surely I could do it again?

I’d been dreading that there might be cake restrictions, as there were on Teacher’s Day when each teacher had a single slice ration. I remembered those cucumber and parsley sandwiches with the bread cut so thinly they must’ve split grains of wheat in the process. The institute liked to save. But these things did not recur.

Instead both Lena and Marina gave speeches so full of praise I was convinced they were talking about somebody else; and Marina, in describing me, didn’t use a single bad Russian word.

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This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: Saying Goodbye

Ukrainian Bethlehem

O little town of Bethlehem how still we see Thee lie,

Above Thy deep and dreamless sleep, the silent stars go by.

                                                - a familiar Christmas carol.

All the driver had to do was open the doors. Enter five thousand grandmothers, Russian-speaking and locally called babushkas, with their babushka trolleys, boxes and bags and grandchildren – three to a seat with barely room to exhale. The last Saturday evening bus to Pochayiv was vacuum packed.

It would have been alright except my foot got jammed in the rear door every time it opened to take on board yet another babushka, just when one might have guessed the bus was full. The foot-jamming and the likelihood of the bus tipping over each time we negotiated a bend to the left were of concern. All of the weightier individuals, it seemed, had chosen to sit on that side and the bus was about as level as a seesaw with nobody on it. I’d rather not say which side I sat on.

I kept trying to picture the map in my mind, hoping to see unfaltering bends to the right. Looking at the map in actuality was unfeasible on account of needing some arm movement, impossible in that space.

The countryside was unusually hilly and it was just as it was getting dark that my foot got jammed for the last time. When the doors opened there began a babushka flood of great proportions – with babushka trolleys, boxes and bags and grandchildren – spilling out of the bus onto the road shoulder. I guess we’d arrived.

It is said the Holy Dormition Pochayiv Lavra, the second largest monastery in Ukraine, was founded by several runaway monks during the thirteenth century Mongol invasion. Legend says Theotokos, which is the Greek title meaning God-bearer that refers to Mary, mother of God, appeared to the monks in a column of fire, that she left her footprint in the rock she stood upon which has since been revered for its curative powers. Pochayiv itself is a small West Ukrainian town of 8,000 people.

Noble lady Anna Hojska is said to have donated her lands to the monastery in the sixteenth century, from when the current buildings date. She also gave a sacred icon of Theotokos which is believed to work miracles, and cured her brother’s blindness.

But I was slightly disoriented from the bus ride – where was the monastery?

In true medieval fashion, it was a matter of tilting my head upwards – you know, to see the church in all its glory. Perched on a hill in the twilight like a fantastic city of gold, the monastery looked its best. 

The last colours were draining from the sky as I followed a line of lamps along the pathway to the western gate. Behind me a sea of babushkas overburdened with their goods and offspring’s offspring followed like the tide of an ancient sea coming in. They like to sleep over at the monastery hotel to attend the 5:30 a.m. Sunday mass.

Sense would have led me directly to the hotel since I too needed a place to sleep, but the atmosphere of the place beckoned: the mosaics, the huge bell tower, the worshippers coming and going, with women wearing headscarves as they do upon entering a church or monastery in the Orthodox tradition, the gardens and rows of crops on the lower hillside, the black-robed long-bearded monks sitting under trees chatting to attractive, younger headscarf wearing women, the golden domes, the smell of incense, the light of the candles and most of all the twilight. I was drawn not to the hotel but, ultimately, to an empty bench beside the bishop’s house where there was time to imbibe the whole mesmerising scene.

A little too much time… Ten o’clock passed and I forced myself towards the hotel. People sat there in the long hallway with all their belongings on babushka trolleys, waiting for a bed to be found. Some were taking shelter on the floor of the hallway.

The smallest and possibly oldest babushka, covered in black, was the one to see, one of the pilgrims seemed to say. “Follow her,” I was sure she must’ve said, in Russian.

I did tail the smallest babushka for a while, up the hallway and back again, in one room, pausing at the doorway of another. I followed her, about two feet behind and I heard her saying to others, over and over, ‘Nyet, nyet, nyet!’ She was trying to sound authoritative and final but in her face was kindness and I knew she took no pleasure from the shortage of beds. I guessed if I’d really pressed the issue she would’ve eventually found somewhere for me.

But there were all the babushkas and babushka trolleys and boxes and bags and grandchildren. The idea of taking a bed from an old woman was not very appealing; and it was like a sauna inside in any case. Better to be outside – how long could a Ukrainian night possibly last? It was warm and delightfully summery.

So I left the smallest babushka and gave up on my one-dollar-dormitory-bed-food-included dream. I returned instead to the viewing bench beside the Bishop’s house.

With practicalities left in the hotel hallway my mind wandered as stars appeared, the buildings floodlight and fine. I couldn’t help but think the whole experience was slightly Joseph coming to Bethlehem to be counted in the census. The bus that evening was surely the equivalent of a small grey donkey and like Joseph I had been effectively turned away by the innkeeper. Admittedly there weren’t any barns to sleep in, there were no nasty Roman soldiers about and most importantly, I did not have with me the responsibility of a heavily pregnant mother of God.

Yet in thy dark streets shineth, the everlasting light,

The hopes and fears of all the years are met in Thee tonight.

Tired and hungry: these took turns as the hours passed. It was the pull of the latter that took me out through the eastern gate and down into the little dark town. I splurged on a four dollar three course meal in a café that was empty apart from a couple of old Ukrainian men polishing off a bottle of vodka. Outside local kids loitered and it seemed as though they hoped to find some alcohol of their own.

As I wandered back up through the narrow streets, dogs howling, towards the golden domes of the monastery, the image was once more medieval, of a troubled, evil little town versus a peaceful quiet church.

Perhaps as punishment for my random thoughts when I reached it the gate was closed. There remained a gap underneath through which I could have scrambled but it seemed a bit undignified. As I considered what to do a car drove up to the gate, a black Mercedes. It was perhaps the Bishop himself. All it took then was a word or two in English to the gateman who had appeared to let the Mercedes pass, and I was in.

Hours passed. I could tell that from the bell at the top of the bell tower that periodically rang. I must’ve dosed a bit but mostly I continued to absorb the atmosphere and admire the stars – through the night until the dawn.

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This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Ukrainian Bethlehem

The Modern Jajabor

The road chooses the jajabor; the jajabor chooses not the road.

A meeting of jajabors while on the road is a surprisingly uncommon event.  Many days may pass without hint of another, and in settled periods the absence of even evidence leads one to wonder if others at all exist.  Yet there are the travel websites, with postings like ‘I left home three years ago on a three-month trip.  I’m never going back.’  The jajabor’s footprints may be light but they step, nonetheless.

When one jajabor does meet another, in my experience it’s a happy event, a meeting without formality and no more constraint to it than the hopping about of a sparrow on a windowsill.  There’s calmness in not needing to explain or greatly elaborate; to without effort pursue simple talk of adventure, with travel tales consumed as readily as rice.  Jajabors don’t ask the questions settled people do.  They don’t need to.

Of course it’s jajabors of the modern variety of which I write, the ones who use passports and planes; but I should explain first about using the Bangla word, jajabor, which is something similar to the English word, nomad.  It came about by accident.

In Dhaka people speak of the Bedey.  I’m not sure if it’s the Bedey who visit Hatiya Island, but in the winter months the nomads come, setting up their n-shaped tents in thatch and plastic sheeting on any patch of empty land. 

I’ve heard the Hatiyalas say the ones who live on boats can drink brackish, delta water; that they barely set foot on land.  I’m not sure how much is true.  Like nomads or semi-nomads in many countries they have a reputation for trickery and fortune telling.  It may well be undeserved.  Still, as in other parts of the country, when the nomads visit Hatiya they camp wherever they find ground and are for the most part left undisturbed.

Yet it wasn’t the presence of the traditional nomads in Hatiya that led me to learn the word surprisingly early.  I don’t suppose ‘jajabor’ is usually considered basic Bangla.  It was because of the Assamese singer Bhupen Hazarika, who sings that famous Bangla tune Ami Ek Jajabor, I am a nomad.  Unlike in the lyrics I didn’t reach the Mississippi, but I did like the idea of the song.

Learning about his thoughts is a way to understand our own.

Modern jajabors face shared problems and chief among them is explaining to non-travellers about travel.  People ask, why travel or why travel there?  The reasons are many and to account for them properly would require a conversation of some length.  It’s not always called for, especially as the result is likely to be disappointing.  Non-travellers usually have other priorities and a differing world view.  They don’t understand.

For example, one jajabor I know, an Italian Mexican-born one currently ‘pausing’ in Bulgaria, said that when asked why he lives in Bulgaria he just says the girls are pretty.  The Bulgarians are content with that and it circumvents the need to elaborate.  A more sophisticated reason might be that since he was young he was fascinated with Eastern Europe and one thing led to another.

It’s funny: I taught him the word ‘jajabor’ and he discovered its opposite, the term for people who prefer a life in one place.  He called them: ‘sedentarians.’

When it comes to explanations, I have similar troubles.  When Australians asked why I was moving to Ukraine some years ago, I said, ‘I’ve always wanted to live in a country that begins with a ‘U’.’  It started people listing: Uruguay, Uganda, Uzbekistan… it was so much easier, it didn’t take hours.

In Hatiya, when I used to visit almost annually from Sydney, the circumstances were even more difficult when a Hatiyala would ask, very occasionally, why.  My Bangla was still very basic and more than that, I simply did not know how to speak of the inspiration of travel.  I could not explain how much there is to learn from other cultures or properly clarify how much enjoyment I took from their company, that in even the basic elements of their daily lives, which they take for granted, I found new wisdom and, often, hope.  How could I say that I wanted to understand their life experiences and way of thinking in order to better comprehend mine?  What is universally human, what is cultural and what is the individual?  I would’ve liked to have explained such ponderings, but I had no ability.

So instead I simply pointed to the tents by the road and said, ‘Ami ek jajabor’.  The answer made Hatiyalas laugh.  It was a simple statement, but it made me start to wonder…

The last modern jajabor I met was probably that British-born one in Kolkata a few years ago.  His name was something plain like Ken or Mike and we met in the queue at the Bangladeshi Consulate while organising visas.  He also didn’t have a pen.  Besides that there was little about him to suggest he was a jajabor.  It was when we started talking that I could imagine it.

The jajabor consumes travel stories like rice.

The first sign was that his travel plans sounded complicated and evolving.  He was down from Korea, had been to Bangladesh, was in India on a detour due to a wedding invitation that had surfaced and wished to return to Bangladesh en route back to Korea.  He taught English, he said, which is not atypical for a jajabor.  I started to consider… maybe, yes maybe…

And the sedentarians wonder what the jajabor is searching for; and it makes the jajabor laugh.

Perhaps because I know Kolkata I did something unusual for a jajabor, I asked Ken or Mike if he wanted to go for a meal when our visa work was done.  I write unusual because jajabors rarely team up.  They follow their own journeys and despite having much in common, say goodbye as easily as hello.

So we chatted more, somewhere up on Park Street. I heard about his circles in the sand, his plan to see South America for at least a year before teaching again and then setting out for African wanderings.  He never wanted to return to the U.K .Naturally I spoke of Bangladesh and the pull of the Meghna River; and he said he had liked Bangladesh. 

Even in the distant sunset the jajabor can find himself

But what I remember most fondly about Ken, or Mike, is when I asked what he would do when all the travelling was done.  I wanted to see if his answer was the same as mine. 

‘I guess I’ll decide which country I like the best,’ he said, ‘and I’ll stay there.’

‘You’re lucky,’ he continued, ‘You’ve found yours.’

More recently I sat in a party in Dhaka, with shondesh and delicious home cooked savoury items on a plate and I confessed to a Bangladeshi who lives in Sydney that I’m actually a bit of a jajabor.  His eyes lit up at the idea and he said eagerly, ‘Well, I moved to Sydney so perhaps I’m a jajabor too?’  And maybe it’s true.  It can be that the scope of jajabor-minded public is far broader than I was used to thinking.  When I consider it, in many Bangladeshis there are certain signs: curiosity, adaptability, a sense of humour and love for going places, even if that means not further than visiting relatives in another district, as far as opportunity allows.

Yet this jajabor may have progressed to being an ex-jajabor.  His jajabor life may be done.  Or could it simply be that from around-the-world-and-back-again he found himself perfectly content within the most jajabor-minded majority culture of all?

In many Bangladeshis are signs: curiosity, adaptability, a love of going places...

Weighing up the options

Which road chooses you?

A. the mountain road, to Bolivia?

B. the camino del sur, to Argentina, Chile & Uruguay?

C. the delta road, to Bangladesh?

D. the spiritual road, to India?

E. none of the above.










This article is also published in the Star, here: The Modern Jajabor

Welcome to Vilnius

Photos: Ragnar Scheen

You can look, but while you might find seasons in the politics you won’t find politics in the seasons.

Autumn: the tracks appeared to trace a stream below, or several but as the train meandered along hillsides direction was difficult to contemplate.  The morning was reluctant and the wooded valleys were almost drained of colour.  In the yellow of the last leaves and the low grasses was a sense of farewell to the year; and while the white of the birch trunks had momentarily gained prominence and the first snow must’ve fallen by then, winter’s renovation remained awaited.  Primarily it was a landscape descending into brown, into the darkness of pine and wooden Belarusian villages.  It was the story of a border lost somewhere too in the season.

It was rather in the speed of the train, in the slowing, the pausing and the chugging along a little further that the border was at first suggested, as though there might be a schedule to the crossing.  Only when it seemed that the wood and the hillside might stretch beyond the autumn did other evidence appear.  It came in the unlikely form of low concrete posts, set among the trees in pairs, like statues of a long ago out-of-love couple meeting in the forest for old time’s sake, or perhaps to collect wood for the fire of their old age.  In each pair the nearer was painted red and green, for Belarus, while its mate was white with the feature of stripes in yellow, green and red: the stripes of Lithuania.  That old couple came near and withdrew: like the train the border held no steady course.

And it is possible to try to protect the blessings of the past from the uncertainties of the future.  And it is possible to try to safeguard the future from the ravages of the past.

In a pause in the forest the Belarusian guards boarded, to see that the passenger had all he papers they could wish for, including hotel receipts to account for every night in the country.  Beyond the post-couple the Lithuanians boarded, but for them the passport checking felt more as an afterthought, a ‘suppose we should know who is coming into the country.’  Perhaps their preference might more naturally have been to sleep longer, under the blanket away from autumn.

But a passport with a kangaroo on its cover was as the yellow leaves in the woods, it brought a slight energy with it, surprised as they were to see it.  Enquiries were made, assurances came that no visa was required.  Somebody official must’ve checked a nationality list.

The Vilnius station, not an hour from the border, sits upon a hill with the centre of the old town in the cobblestone capital in a small valley below.  There are about 500,000 people in Vilnius, 3 million in Lithuania.

I trailed the other passengers moving down into damp streets.  While for many, they must’ve been coming home; while for others, they must’ve been there a thousand times before: I was busy not knowing where I was going, taking in the charms of history as recorded in the buildings as I followed a random road.  Church spires multiplied as the valley city took over.

Too, I was busy contemplating the need for a scientist, how to, in a new place, locate a pathologist in a diagnostic centre.  It’s not that I’d befallen any illness, fortunately.  I required no tests and indeed it wasn’t just any pathologist that would do.  I needed one called Rita.

Lithuania has a long history.  They say its language is of the Baltic branch and related to Latvian, and that it’s the most conservative language in Europe, the one that’s evolved the least from the Sanskrit roots of the Indo-European language family.  They say there’s a village in Lithuania’s north called Indija, where local linguistic peculiarities have some commonality with languages still spoken in Pakistan’s Baltistan.

Once, at the end of the fourteenth century, the Grand Duchy of Lithuania was one of the largest countries in Europe, with territory stretching to the Black Sea.  And in 1991 the country made its mark on history again, as the first Soviet republic to declare independence, a move that cost the lives of 14 Lithuanians when the Soviet Army attacked the Vilnius TV Tower.  But the movement had history’s blessing.  The Soviet break-up started in Lithuania.

In a way it was that transition that paved the way for my need of a pathologist.  When the borders opened, a Norwegian friend of mine Ragnar was sent to the country on business.  As that business over the years developed so did his passion for Lithuania.  He took the country into his heart or maybe it captured him.  But beyond business he contributed in various ways, to promote modernity and development.  He’d taken an apartment in Vilnius and although he wasn’t arriving until the following day I was lucky, because a pathologist called Rita held for me the keys.

I kept in mind my general luck too in finding new addresses in unknown cities.  I kept my eyes on the works of art that were the buildings of the old town.  I took in the signs of each snaking alleyway just as the signs of autumn had taken in me.  There were Northern European style shops playing American background music.  I saw proper supermarkets with metal poles outside to tie your pet dog to.  There were large bookstores, music stores and cafés. 

Although I missed Ukraine already, where I’d been living that year; although I enjoyed Belarus, memories stirred.  It was as though in Vilnius I’d arrived back into a happy Northern European past.  All the same, should a chimney sweep have passed by on the street it wouldn’t have seemed altogether out of place.

There may have been queries with people on the street but I found the alleyway I needed.  Soon I was sitting opposite Rita-in-a-white-lab-coat and drinking a cup of coffee.  There was a book open on the desk between us with multicoloured microscope pictures on its pages.  I wondered how to diagnose my being there: I doubt there are multicoloured microscope pictures that can do that.  Perhaps it was simply the autumn that had taken me in that direction.  Rita picked up the phone and dialled Norway.

When she was able to, she whisked me across the city by car, to Ragnar’s apartment: open-plan, modern and with that wooden, pine-type smell that can easily remind one of Oslo.  It had a peaked wooden roof with no ceiling and on the table was a note, in Norwegian, to me.  ‘Welcome to Vilnius,’ it read, ‘Try the beer in the fridge.  Lithuanian beer is good.’  In retrospect I’d say it was probably the most modern accommodation I’d had for the best part of a year.

The apartment was an art gallery: a fish swimming from a rafter, wooden angels over there and of course, candles everywhere.  I surveyed the room and found again that smile that had been with me since I’d left Belarus, the re-finding of a different Northern European dimension to life.

Ragnar arrived from Oslo the next day.  It was the first time we’d met in five and a half years.  We spoke English, then Norwegian once again, and the hardest part was the ‘yes’, the rediscovering an automatic Norwegian ‘ja, ja, ja’ to replace the Russian ‘da, da, da’ I’d picked up in East Ukraine, although I was never skilled at Russian.

We found a restaurant some floors below street level, in a ‘mind your head’ type of cellar.  They served sausages by the half-metre and beer in tall glasses, by the metre.  We walked around the castle and up the hill to the historic three white crosses that were destroyed in the Soviet era but were rebuilt when the politics turned.

And in the evening we walked to the end of the street to find a forest overlooking a river.  It was a landscape descending into brown, at that time of the year.

------------------------------------------------

“Look! From the glowing west, forceful and angry winds

Are eastward moving with ferocious, headlong haste,

And bringing biting frosts to our Lithuania dear.

My friends, let’s to the house and build a glowing blaze.”[1]

-         From the poem Metai, or The Seasons, by Kristijonas Donelaitis.  This epic poem from about 1765 is considered the first classical piece of fiction written in the Lithuanian language.  From the third part of the poem, ‘Autumn Boon’.

Stay Happily Baltic, with Latvia or Estonia!

Retire eastwards back to Belarus.

Or go for the tropics in Trinidad!

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Welcome to Vilnius

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[1] English translation of the poem is here: http://members.efn.org/~valdas/autumn.html

No Please, No Thank You

It was Gulshan, for dinner.  ‘Do you enjoy living in the East?’ the Australian woman said, her first words to me on that evening, with enough vitriol in her tone to strip rust from a pole.  Why the bitterness?  I was confused.  I rarely think of East and West: and if I did, East might mean Russia or China, not Bangladesh.  Bangladesh is a South Asian nation but mostly I think of it as: Bangladesh.  It requires no reference point.

My Bangladeshi friend Situ was there, thankfully, and in the short conversation that followed she made mention of how she cannot tell the difference between Bangladeshis, Indians and Pakistanis, which might be alright if she didn’t work with these communities in Sydney.  She challenged my saying that Bangladesh was not India and required Situ to attest the fact the two countries actually differ.  And when I suggested Bangladeshis might be flashier in style than at least their Paschimbangan counterparts, she indicated Situ and said ‘I don’t see any gold anywhere!’  She’d been in Bangladesh for less than twenty-four hours.  It was her first visit.

She spoke of her trip, maybe a week, to a village in Western Ukraine.  The scene was of poverty, despair and people who didn’t know how to fix the village water pump.  They had kitchens smaller than her Australian bathroom.  ‘The country’s been ruined!’ she declared, ‘It will never recover.’ Then she almost spat out the word ‘Russians!’  I might not mention such unfortunate inanities except that she was certain her pending visit to a village in Jessore would be identical.  ‘I already know what it’s going to be like.’ 

For an Australian, a visit to a Bangladeshi village is a significant opportunity to learn, not only of Bangladesh but of oneself.  It seemed a shame that such a great opportunity might be lost before it began.

Fortunately we didn’t have to stay.  As we left she was busily telling a young Bangladeshi girl, maybe six years old, ‘In English we say please and thank you!’  She wanted to force the girl to say ‘please’ before handing her a candy.  There was some irony in her instructing on manners and it made me wonder if I had ever been so culturally judgemental. 

The young girl didn’t know what to do.  I wanted to say, ‘Look, it’s there, her ‘please’ is in her expression.  It’s in her shyness which means respect.’  I wanted to say, ‘Leave her alone!’ or ‘How about you learn some Bangla?’  But there was no point.

Reality: if an English-speaker sits at a Norwegian dinner table they’re likely to be shocked.  ‘Pass the salt!’ they’ll say, a little too directly.  On the Norwegian street, passers by stare, while in Sydney it’s usual if you catch a stranger’s eye to look away or smile.  The difference was significant enough that when I first went to Oslo at age eighteen the street staring used to have me scanning my clothes to see if there was something odd.  T-shirt is back to front?

Yet within days I’d learnt that Norwegian phrase takk for maten, ‘thanks for the food,’ to be said after every meal.  I learnt takk for sist, which means ‘thanks for the last time we met,’ and can be said on re-meeting someone.  In Australia there are not similar customs or not in the same way.

Reality: if an English-speaker goes to Iran it’s the locals who might be shocked.  You can’t just say salaam to greet someone; it needs to be a slightly sung, full-hearted salaaaam! to matter.  There might need to be a kiss on each cheek.  Farsi has several phrases for ‘how are you?’  It might be insufficient to use only one; and there are three versions of ‘thank you’, often strung together and with a ‘very much’ thrown in. 

There were other unique systems: Iranians will seat the most important guest furthest from the door and all things should be offered three times and twice refused before being accepted on the third offer, which is the genuine one.  More informally I remember scenes of Iranians passing handfuls of sunflower seeds down the intercity bus, row by row, passenger by passenger, until it reached the foreign guests!  When it comes to the verbal ‘thank you’ alone, Iranians leave English-speakers for dust.

Reality: in Thailand there’s the system of wai-s.  A wai involves palms together and shows differing levels of respect, dependent upon where the fingertips are placed.  A wai above the head is for Buddha or the royal family.  Fingertips that are positioned under the nose are appropriate for elders, under the chin for friends and below the chin for children.  Mere words are not required.

Reality: Bangladeshis are mostly polite, especially in the village; and it might sound strange but I used to wonder how they managed it since there is a deficit of ‘please’ and ‘thank you’ to an English-speaker’s ears.  It’s because in terms of sophistication, Bengalis leave English-speakers for dust.

Think about all the gestures the foreigner must learn.  There’s the ‘sorry’ pat on the shoulder if you accidentally bump someone in a crowd.  There’s the ‘even sorrier’ arm stroking, often favoured with friends or creditors.  There’s the perhaps old-fashioned ‘very sorry,’ displayed by sticking the tongue out, tugging on ear lobes and doing squats; and I once saw the ‘extremely sorry’ of hitting one’s cheeks with one’s own shoes! 

There’s the sharing a cup of tea to end a dispute and the process of village mediations that must go back for thousands of years.  We can show respect by offering or taking things with both hands.  Splitting bills, as is common in the west, is out of the question and within many a Bangladeshi family the concept of sharing property like clothes or jewellery is taken for granted. 

Think about the degrees of ‘you’ that no longer exist in English.  In place of every aapni, imagine if you put a ‘please’: how much more prolific they would be than in an ordinary English sentence, because aapni is there in every verb.  Tumi and tui may also have politeness when they indicate closeness or caring.

Think about the greetings.  It took me time to properly understand how all the villagers saying assalamu alaikum or namaskar were not simply saying ‘hello’ or ‘good morning.’  Walaikum salam, I could happily respond, without having a clue as to the respect present within the exchange. 

Years ago, it was common after a handshake to put your hand to the heart; and there’s the hand-to-mouth-then-heart gesture if your foot accidentally touches someone, the gesture that makes the villagers laugh when I do it because I’ve added a little signature flick to the end of mine.  Beyond that, there are indescribable smaller gestures, a look in the eyes or a smile of delight: nobody seems to do these things the way Bengalis do.  And let’s not even get started on the jamai, the son-in-law!  These ways of expressing politeness, caring and consideration are harder to fake than the verbal version.

Unfortunately, telling that girl to say ‘please’ is not a neutral act.  It is a cultural imposition that sets the English-speaker’s way as the standard to live up to and be judged by.  Let’s not do that anymore.  This is the twenty-first century and we tried that last century. 

The girl can be polite in the very many local ways available and if she wants to attend English class or go to Australia later, let her learn the petty forms of politeness then: it’s easy to adjust to the Toyota model if you’ve been taught to drive the Mercedes.

It’s understandable the Australian woman didn’t know these things.  What’s sad and embarrassing for another Australian is that she couldn’t imagine she didn’t know.  Then again, she didn’t know the Cold War ended either.

In these heady days of a nationwide reaffirmation of what it means to be Bangladeshi, there’s this minor matter I’d like to throw into the pan: Bangladeshi manners.  I’m busy trying to reduce my use of dhonnobhad, the verbal thank you.  I want to drive the Mercedes!

It's not only about manners of course, but different ways of thinking, perhaps what a culture sounds like, or even perceptions of paradise. 



This article is also published in Star Magazine, here: No Please No Thank You














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Article Title: Classified

Karl Marx Avenue (Wikipedia Sourced Photo)

[Important: Do not read this article unless you are authorised to do so.  I repeat, do not read this article without proper authorisation.  If you are unauthorised, please exit the page now.]

“Always think of what is useful and not what is beautiful.  Beauty will come of its own accord.” – Nikolai Gogol.

They weren’t marked on rail timetables but the train would stop there.  There was no indication on bus routes apart from the name of a tiny village nearby or a kilometre marker.  There was no demarcation on publicly available maps and as for postal delivery letters and parcels had to be addressed with the name of a nearby city as a code.  I’m referring to the cities that didn’t exist, the cities where residents underwent security checks before moving in and were sworn to secrecy thereafter concerning their classified addresses.

What follows is advice for the traveller: what to do when facing that particular predicament of having nowhere to stay in a city that sort of didn’t exist.  Secrets can’t substitute, after all, for a watertight roof and a pillow.

During the summer I reached that “place”, the one that, well, I’m not entirely convinced I should name, but as it’s acknowledged and open these days I suppose it might be okay to write it just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Dnipropetrovsk].

Home to over a million people, that place was once a key centre for the nuclear, arms and space industries of the Soviet Union, the reason it was closed to foreigners until the 1990s.  It’s an attractive place, or non-place, set on the meandering bank of the majestic Dneiper River that roughly divides Ukraine into east and west.  It’s a location of slight undulation surrounded by rich agricultural land of the sort that led Ukraine to be referred to as the bread basket of the Soviet Union. 

The “city” itself is a typical Soviet showpiece if slightly more polished than average: it has its Lenin Square watched over by a Lenin statue; the broad tree-lined, tram-lined Karl Marx Avenue is there, at several kilometres in length; and the Karl Marx traffic lanes are separated by a parkland strip where artisans set up easels to sell paintings and stalls for handicrafts, and there are benches for loitering and street food to enjoy.  In summer the Karl Marx strip has a fairground quality.  In another park is a collection of old Soviet tanks. 

That “city” is the third in Ukraine to have an underground metro and it might’ve been one of the privileges that closed cities enjoyed.  Residents of closed cities were given salary bonuses and better housing in Soviet times.  But by 2002 when I was there, it wasn’t the city’s former secrecy that was the problem as much as a lack of reasonably priced hotels.  It was a difficulty shared across Ukraine, where the break-up of the Soviet Union seemed to have been easier than the break-up of Intourist. 

In the Soviet Union foreigners were restricted to state-run “Intourist” package tours and in each city would be at least one, generally enormous, state-run Intourist Hotel to cater for them.  Those hotels were still running and remained grossly overpriced with the cheapest room for perhaps US $50 per night and with that "city" having been a closed city there might not even have been an Intourist Hotel there.  But even if there was, the room rate would have been approximately half a month’s salary for my Ukrainian teacher colleagues.  I stood on Karl Marx convinced that I shouldn’t pay so much either.  Rather, I contemplated what Ukrainians would do: they would not be staying at any former Intourist Hotel. They’re much too street savvy.

After a few moments the answer found me: Ukrainians would stay with friends.  Problem number two: I had no friend in that “city.”

After a few moments the answer found me: I did have a friend in Kyiv who I’d always thought was clever enough to devise a successful peace plan for Israel-Palestine if she sat down for a few minutes with a pencil and a notepad.  She’d certainly given an impressive speech once at the Toastmaster’s Club.  Perhaps it would be worthwhile calling her? 

I collected kopiyok and hryvnia coins from my wallet, knowing that public phones ate them rather rapidly and there’d need to be a good number in hand to push in at speed for extra credit.  I dialled the phone number and you know, when I think about that “city” I also start to wonder if I should name said “friend.”  Who’s to say she isn’t classified?  Although, as she does tend to use her own name, I suppose it might be okay to write it just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Stacia].

‘I’m in [insert city name here] and I have nowhere to stay,’ I said. 

‘Call me back in ten minutes,’ [insert friend name here] replied.

It was as a Soviet storyline, standing on the footpath waiting for ten minutes to pass.  I watched the comings and goings and without reason tried to look inconspicuous.  Ten minutes later with a new bunch of coins in hand I dialled again.  The answer, when it came, was all but Soviet-perfect! 

‘There’s a Daihatsu on its way,’ aforementioned friend said, ‘It’ll pull up where you are within five minutes.’  Needless to say I’d told her where on Karl Marx I was; needless to say that in Soviet times it wouldn’t have been a Daihatsu exactly. 

In the allotted time said Daihatsu did pull up at said curb in front of me.  ‘Hi, I’m Julia,’ said the driver, ‘You’ll be staying with us. Get in.’ 

The first stop was a stilt platform café on the river for light refreshment, and I’m told that the bridge across the Dneiper is 1.4 kilometres long.  I’m told that Julia’s mother is quite distressed that she won’t be able to talk to me: she only speaks Russian.

Thereafter we reached the family apartment, one of the Soviet many; and Julia’s parents, Sergei and Lidia have thought of everything: keys to the flat, access to the fridge, phone number, huge dinner, toothpaste available on the bathroom shelf and well, beer.  It was wonderful!  Lidia needn’t have worried about the communication: she fired off rapid Russian and although I couldn’t distinguish a single word, somehow the overall meaning seemed to get through; or at least, the gist.  It was just like my friend Jayanta’s mother used to do in Bangla in Kolkata.

Ukraine is said to have had eleven closed cities in Soviet days, and in modern Russia there remain forty-two, publicly acknowledged, even today.  Some are surrounded by barbed wire with watchtowers, with special security permits to be presented at checkpoints to enter.  Around one and a half million Russians still live in those “cities.”

Before leaving, Lidia kind-heartedly gave me a book, in Russian, duly inscribed on the inside cover in Russian Cyrillic lettering, as a memento of the short time we shared.  Although I can’t read it or the inscription, to me that little book is priceless.  Well, I’m not entirely convinced I should name the author, but I suppose as he is internationally renowned it might be okay to write his name just once.  Wait.  It might be better to put it in square brackets: [Gogol].

[Important: Do not circulate or discuss this article.   Forget what you have read.]

 

A Russian stamp featuring that author.
from Wikipedia

Also classified are the National Secrets of Kyiv to the west, a meeting with Mrs Val to the east, or a bit further still.... go swimming with Osama.  Because it's best to keep busy.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: Article Title [Classified]