You know Harry?

You know Harry, Sagar and the others?  Of course his actual name might not be Harry but it’s what they call him.  I did too.  Anyway, they were the ones I knew before I knew that I knew them.  It was only after we met, actually, that they were able to explain and I was able to understand that we’d known each other already for a couple of years.

I don’t know, maybe such circumstances are common in Rajasthan, and it’s not a bad thing to discover at a first meeting.  It’s kind of an unexpected head start.  Anyway, it happened in the small desert town of Phalodi where tourists rarely tread.

If I think of the beginning it’s likely a bit tragic, you see, because it is so too often for me that at the beginning comes tea.  Well, I exaggerate.  The tea came in the middle of the start, and the start of the start was more the hired white Ambassador stopping.  It was not due to mechanical fault but rather an idea that brought the vehicle to a halt: the desire to stop somewhere random, away from the tourist towns, to see if we couldn’t find the real, unadulterated Rajasthan.  Phalodi was a fair choice.

Now, I know there’s more to the town than that singular dusty road leading up from the highway, with the usual assortment of desert homes, small shops and light bustle.   But I didn’t know it then so it seemed the only way to proceed.  And not too far along that road, on the left side, was a primary school gate.  It was as we were passing, and my Australian friend Lachlan was there then, that the school kids started calling out to us, making a bit of a fuss.  They were excited to see foreigners and I don’t remember what words they used, but it likely included ‘One pen, one pen?’, the phrase that seemed ubiquitous in Rajasthan.

Of course one of the teachers, Madan, came to the gate to see what the students were getting excited about and I can say now that his curiosity was likely not less than theirs, though he didn’t show it.  He did however ask where we were from and told us to wait, at the gate, while he consulted with the headmaster.  He wished to invite us into the staff room cum headmaster’s office for tea.

Approval came forthwith and we sat in the staff room cum headmaster’s office with the headmaster behind his desk and several teachers finding places to stand or sit about the room.  Well I don’t recall exactly but the conversation must’ve mentioned cricket and there may have been a song or two, while we waited for tea.  Madan struggled with his English but through simple words and understanding communication found its way.

It’s a simple thing, tea, and although it took a while to arrive it came in cups with saucers in much the usual way.  It was only when the drinking commenced that the trouble started.

Well, we couldn’t have anticipated the slurping.  The first one or two loud, unashamed slurps might’ve been overlooked as unfortunate: in Australia slurping tea is not the thing to do.  But when it progressed into a kind of random chorus of slurps from all corners of the room a smile started to work its way onto my face.  I wondered if those slurps could be heard back at the white Ambassador down the street.

I sat there looking down, thinking of Lachlan.  ‘Please don’t slurp, please don’t slurp!’ I was thinking, knowing that if he did I would no longer be able to contain my laughter at the strangeness of things.  Besides, I wanted to compose myself enough to take a loud, unashamed slurp of my own that would set him off instead.

‘Don’t look at him! Don’t look at him!’ I told myself; but sure enough, when I felt composed and strong I made the mistake of giving him a small glance and he was ahead of me, as it were, just then taking the boldest, most unrepentant slurp of his tea.  It sent me into fits of uncontrollable laughter, and it spread to Lachlan too.  And there was nothing to say, you know, when the slurping for them was a way of complimenting the tea, when they asked why we were laughing.  I think we made something up about the white Ambassador but it was embarrassing.

Well Madan, as it were, didn’t quite write us off as mad.  Instead, he introduced us to his class and I saw they used slates to write on, with chalk.  And he took us to his home, a little further up the street, where he showed some nice pictures of traditional Rajasthani puppets and introduced us to his family.  And that was that: we were soon on our way towards Jodhpur as planned.

He’d walked with us back to the highway though, and we’d stopped for a second, farewell tea at a stall there.  Strangely that tea too was remarkable.  It had various spices in it and stood out as the finest cup of tea we found in the whole three months of that Indian adventure.

Months later I wrote to him and I couldn’t help but mention the tastiest tea in India.  Indeed I asked for the recipe; I was missing chai by then.

About a month later I came home to a letter, from Phalodi.  The envelope was large and oddly fattened at the bottom.  Inside was a plastic bag with a greyish, brownish powder in it.  Madan didn’t only send the recipe, but a sample of the spices used in the tastiest tea in India!

To be honest I felt slightly uneasy about getting a strange powdery substance through the post.  I can only be grateful that the sniffer dogs at Sydney Airport would not appear to be trained to detect Rajasthani tea spices in the midst of mail bags.  Anyway, there was nothing to do but boil the milk and try it out.  And I read the letter, thinking his written English was surprisingly good.

It was two years before I reached India again, and in that time Madan and I had exchanged several letters.  From that small first encounter it had become essential to revisit Phalodi.  With a train and bus from Delhi I arrived once more in the small desert town.  Madan didn’t know what day I’d come exactly, because neither did I.  So I wandered up the street wondering if I could recognise his house again.  It was just as well to ask: Phalodi is a small enough town for that.

Whoever it was led me through new alleyways until I was sure I was hopelessly lost and would never find Madan, when eventually we stopped at a small telephone shop.  It was Madan’s family’s business and he was there.

It was just a few days, the second visit; but of course he introduced me to Harry and Sagar and the others.  We rode motorbikes through the surrounding desert countryside visiting various picturesque village temples of older and newer construction.  There were parties, a staged drama featuring the school students, Harry climbed a tree and Sagar was apologising for only being able to take part of the time I was there as leave from his job.  I wondered why he’d think to do that for a complete stranger.

Madan had started losing his hair by then; but the more interesting development was in his spoken English.  It was dramatically improved and I was able to explain about the cultural difference in the tea slurping.  ‘How did you do that?’  I asked, about his English.

‘If you really wish to learn something,’ he said, ‘the best way is to teach it.’ 

He’d become the school’s English teacher.  And he took me back there one day, where I gave the very first English class of my own, only it was cheating since the lesson I taught, his class had learnt the day before.  They knew all the answers to the foreigner’s questions and they gained confidence from that.

It was strange, meanwhile, how much Harry, Sagar and the others seemed to know about me.  Madan must have said a lot, I thought.  It wasn’t long before I left that it made sense, when they thought to explain, a little sheepishly, that every time I’d sent a letter they’d all sat together to read it, discuss it, definitely in Hindi, and gradually draft the English reply!   

‘That’s why Madan’s written script was so good,’ I thought.  Each Phalodi letter might’ve been signed with his name but it was a team effort.  I’d been writing to all of them and through those letters, it wasn’t only Madan I’d come to know, but the entirety of one little social circle in a small desert town.  It was really rather good that the white Ambassador had stopped there, at the start.

India elsewhere? 

              Bangladesh?

                               Iran?







This article also published in Star Magazine, here: You Know Harry?

In Search of the Zoobr

November Afternoon in Kamenjuki, Belarus

I have indeed, praise be to God, attained my desire in this world, which was to travel through the Earth, and I have attained this honour.

                                                                                                            - Ibn Battuta.

…and in the modern world, where lengthy journeys to previously unheard of lands are no longer possible, we lesser travellers have to make do.

In the 4.30 p.m. November twilight, the surface of the Mukhavets, a little river in western Belarus, had become a varnished brown strip of reflection.  Birch, twisted willow and spongy rotting leaves were imaged upon its surface.  I wonder: do you think the great explorers of ages past found a quiet place to partake of contemplation, before their setting out?

Of Europe’s largest mammal I knew little and being in the city of Brest there seemed nothing for it, but to find out.  To the north, I’d read, was the wilderness which straddled the Polish border and in it, in small numbers, was what the locals called the zoobr. 

Ibn Battuta’s first journey in 1325 lasted twenty-one years.  Marco Polo travelled with his father and his uncle for twenty-four years from 1271 and the Muslim Hui navigator Zheng He, from Yunnan, accomplished his seven voyages within twenty-eight years from 1405.  It might be that I had just a day in hand to find the zoobr, but there’d need to be, surely, an expedition.

The river spread its arms around the small green island which might not normally have stood out but it was once the centre of Brest, a bustling trade town dating from around 1000 C.E.  The city’s oldest church is still there, with the rest of the town having been moved in 1838 to allow for the construction of a fort.

It is a place of reverence for Belarusians.  The fort is where two Soviet regiments stood their ground when the Nazis attacked in 1941.  They faced five hundred canons, six hundred bombs and lasted a month before the fort was lost, at the start of an occupation that would claim one in four Belarusian lives.

At the island’s centre an eternal flame burns, surrounded by hundreds of Soviet graves watched over by a massive stone head sculpture called ‘Valour.’  In the south of the island bullet holes in the red brick buildings can still be seen.  It’s in the east of Europe that the scale of sacrifice and devastation that marked the Second World War is most acutely felt. 

Zheng He was well-prepared.  It is said he had over three hundred ships and a crew of almost 30,000.  By contrast, the following day, in search of the zoobr, I would follow the example of Ibn Battuta, who left his Moroccan home, alone.  Do you think the great explorers of ages past went to bed early on the night before their departures?

'Valour', Brest, Belarus

A model Soviet city, Brest had wide, clean boulevards with older painted stone cottages and towering unsightly blocks.  It was in one of the latter I was staying, a monumental hotel of sparse décor.  I found some simple, canteen fare for dinner.

On the morning of the grand expedition the preparations were tiring and endless, or at least they would have been, perhaps, had it been several hundred years earlier.  In the twenty-first century I could not match the magnitude of Marco Polo’s preparations, no doubt, when he set off for China.  But I did pack my things and check out of the hotel, before walking to the bus station wholly unaided.

And just as Marco Polo once met the various tribes of Central Asia so I met a taxi tout who sought a hefty fee for a private voyage to the forest.  Zheng He might have had his fleet but Ibn Battuta went largely under his own steam and that was what I wanted to do.  Yet, the taxi driver could help me.  I was having trouble making the bus ticket seller on the other side of the glass window from understanding my intended destination, the village by the forest called Kamenjuki.  I was able to seize the taxi driver’s enthusiasm for my plan.  He pronounced it for me.  Do you think the great explorers overcame various difficulties with the help of locals?  I’d say they did.

But then, looking at my ticket, I noticed that it said Kamyanyets, in Cyrillic.  It was the second dilemma of the expedition: to hope I was not going somewhere entirely different.  Yet, there was nobody to fill in the gaps on the maps for Zheng He, surely, on his way to Bengal’s Sonargaon.  So I took the bus.

An hour on my imaginarily blistered and sore feet later I burst from the vehicle, spent and flailing: or I would have been, had I rather travelled on foot and by camel.  Indeed it was Kamyanyets but fortunately Kamenjuki was a short bus ride further, about eighteen kilometres.  I could almost smell the zoobr from there, Marco Polo’s China.

A good explorer half-hour later I’d arrived in the village of Kamenjuki.  Ibn Battuta once sought assistance in the mountains of Kamaru, from the followers of Shah Jalal, in order to find him in Sylhet.  I asked a girl from the bus where the forest was and she vitally pointed up the road.  After a huge, ten minute trek to the edge of the forest, my expedition started in earnest.

It was icy and cold.  I had to negotiate a snowy bridge over a frozen stream, but I persevered, adjusting my scarf on the way.  If the cold got in, I knew, all might be lost.

I entered the forest, Belavezhskaja Puscha: 1300 square kilometres of primeval, virgin forest, the last such stand in Europe.  Pine and birch, the canopy closed around me. I relied on my natural instincts to hold my direction, watching the sun, feeling the wind, noting the way moss grew on the tree trunks. And following the road.

Suddenly something stirred ahead.  Could it be the ferocious, mysterious zoobrs I had set out for?  I clutched my camera and trod carefully.  The pine needles were damp and quietened my stride.  But no, it was only a family of wild boar. 

It would be another good ten minutes of arduous hiking before the first zoobr set eyes on me.  In fact it was a small herd led by a large male.  He was enormous, easily as big as ten miniature horses, with horns like the devil himself, a rugged woolly brown coat, legs as thick as saplings, and huge flaring nostrils. 

I wonder what Zheng He thought when he reached Africa and saw his first giraffe.  He captured one and took it back to China where it was believed to be an example of the mythical creature called a qilin, evidence of heavenly blessing on the Emperor of the day.  I thought not to capture a zoobr, except on film.

Zheng He too was said to walk like a tiger.  He didn’t stray from violence when he was threatened.  Faced with a zoobr flaring its nostrils, there was nothing to do but flare my nostrils right back.  One shouldn’t let large wild animals sense one’s fear, or so it might be.  The leader of the beasts took four lumbering steps towards me, through the middle of a mud clearing.  We stood eye to eye now, and if he charged, what would have happened?

When Marco Polo crossed the Pamirs he came across a mountain sheep which ultimately took his name:  the Marco Polo sheep was described in 1271.  But the zoobr had its name, in Russian, and in English where it is called the European bison or wisent.

It could have crushed me without a second thought.  But I held my ground, given that I’ve never heard of anyone suffering death by zoobr and am rarely first at anything; and given that the danger was somewhat reduced by the well-constructed wire fence between us.  Well, there was no point randomly scouring the forest when a few zoobrs had been confined to a pen for easy observation.  Okay, so it wasn’t quite like the great explorers but in the twenty-first century, one has to make do.

The zoobr: legs as thick as saplings and huge flaring nostrils

Also in the small zoo were other examples of local wildlife: moose, deer, wolves, bears and wild horses.  The eyes of the Mona Lisa owl followed me as I passed.

The expedition successful, zoobr sighted, I returned late afternoon to the bus station, really more of a bus shed.  I pushed open the old green doors.  The interior was empty apart from three fellow zoobr-hunters sitting on a bench.  Not a pretty sight considering I had to be three hundred kilometres away in Minsk to find my pre-paid hotel bed.

One man asked where I was going.  "Brest," I replied, and then Minsk".  I wanted to see his reaction.  He didn't burst out laughing, that had to be good.  May be it was realistic.

We introduced ourselves.  It’s how I became 'Onjay' for the afternoon.  Still, they did better than me.  All I knew was that one of them had a name that started with G and the other two didn't.  G kept saying "and you have no wars in Australia?" After Brest fortress one could only say no.  Certainly nothing compared to Belarus.

G. and the Not-Gs., Kamenjuki, Belarus

One of the Not-Gs was swearing about the bus timetable, which was nearly a blank A4 sheet of paper.  "This is an extremely dire and frustrating circumstance in which we find ourselves," he was saying using four-letter Russian words.  "Yeah, but the zoobrs were cool," I replied, and they were.  Only 54 zoobrs existed after World War One; by 2002 there were 3200 of them.

Eventually the bus did come.  The four of us: Onjay, G and the Not-Gs, made it safely back to Brest; and me to Minsk.  I didn’t take back the riches that Marco Polo and Zheng He did, from their journeys, or even the spiritual fulfilment and new wisdom that Ibn Battuta must’ve found, but it had been a nice day.

And at the least I didn’t suffer Marco Polo’s fate.  Upon his return he found Venice at war with Genoa.  He was captured and narrated the tales of his journey to a fellow inmate, in jail.  But I have the luxury of writing this on a laptop, at home.

Zoobrs

Detail from Brest Fort monument

The Eternal Flame, Brest Fort

From Belarus it's not impossible to head south to Kyiv or to take a bus to Riga to meet a secretary to a scientist.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: In Search of the Zoobr

16 December

The Bangladeshi flag hangs in the living room, in what has become a December tradition.  It’s about Victory Day but nor does the red and green go astray in the Christmas season.  I’ve never thought to write about 1971.  I wasn’t here and there are people far more qualified to do it.  But strange as it may be on 16 December I feel gratitude for a victory that is not mine, for the independent Bangladesh I admire.  And it is of modern Bangladesh that I wish to write.

To do so I rely on what must be the sole advantage, and it isn’t much of one: being born elsewhere there are differences to observe and many aspects of Bangladesh would seem to have been shaped by the events of that fateful year.  Bangladesh was born in blood.  Australia was born with an Act of British Parliament.

In Bangladesh I see a belief in justice and more specifically, standing against injustice.  It’s to be found in many places: on the street when petty disputes draw in bystanders to actively partake in finding a solution, hopefully via discussion and considering the merits of each side of the argument; in the newspapers which skilfully represent the underdog, the hard done by, even when vested interests might not like it; in the courts who are rather good at pursuing their own motions and through such judicial activism demonstrate significant potential to contribute to improving society.  In Australia these things don’t happen or not to the same extent.

Australia is a developed country, wealthy in mineral resources, two and half times larger than India.  Bangladesh has few earthy resources and a small territory by comparison.

In Bangladesh there is independent thinking, from the rickshaw driver painstakingly putting his case to the policeman for some infringement to the government’s refusal to simply cave in to the whims of larger powers like India or America.  It’s refreshing because in Australia debate usually centres on how much to please America.  The recent vote on Palestine at the UN is a case in point.  Australia abstained which was considered by its government to be a strong symbol of independent views, which is sad because it was such a singular, minor thing, important symbolically but still just one vote that would not change the outcome, and it was compromise because most who voted for the ruling Labor Party in Australia would likely prefer a vote in favour of Palestine.  Australia is for America a very poor ally, as a yes-nodder inevitably is.  Meanwhile in Bangladesh the UN vote was a non-issue: there are longstanding principles.

Bangladesh will be 42 in March.  Australia turns 112 in January.

In Bangladesh there is dissent and no fear to challenge the powerful.  The negative is when it takes on the form of hartals and violence, but consider how important basic dissent is, to democracy.  Bangladeshis are not afraid to own their country and if only protests were peaceful and well-targeted they could not but be considered an asset; because the alternative is a conformist society where dissent is actively discouraged.  In Australia when Muslims protested against that movie, the Immigration Minister thought to threaten to review their immigration status if they were violent, if they were non-citizens.  In Australia after Indian students raised their voice against racial attacks on the streets the government amended citizenship laws to make it more difficult for students, post-studies, to stay.  There are many ways to control voices and it’s mostly only the new communities that still use them.

In Bangladesh like a phoenix from the ashes arose a vibrant academic and artistic community, to build upon the legacy of the martyred intellectuals.   Bangladeshis fought for and died for their language; and culture holds the place of dignity and celebration that it should.  In Australia meanwhile funding for the arts remains woeful compared to financial support for sport.  It’s reminiscent of Soviet policy that favoured sport and ballet, because spectacles of that nature are wholly apolitical and do not encourage a populace to think.  And if each Tiger was given over a million dollars, which is what was Australia spent on each Olympic gold medal, what do you imagine they could achieve?  But in the case of the Tigers it’s looking as though it’s not required.

Australia has a population of 2.2 crores.  In Bangladesh there are 16.

If we look to the cleverly drafted Constitution, there are protections there: human rights, freedom of expression.  It’s a people-centred document.  In Australia there is no protection for freedom of expression and little for human rights which are at best contained in ordinary legislation that can be and is changed by the government-of-the-day at whim.  It’s how the provisions of the Racial Discrimination Act were suspended in order to intervene in remote aboriginal communities.  The government told aboriginal people how to spend their income.  And the valid point that protection of human rights is not always achieved in Bangladesh does not lessen the wisdom of the Constitution; it makes it more remarkable since human rights as a national value become the starting point of discussion.  Australia debates meanwhile whether there is need for national values, whether formal protections are at all necessary and what such values could be.  Ultimately it’s a simple matter of valuing human liberty.

And then there was the tragedy at Tazreen Fashions, which shouldn’t have happened but did.  Even with such a horrible event with Australian eyes I see, am impressed by the outpouring of grief, concern and self-reflection.  Because as you may know, the Australian government operates camps in Papua New Guinea and Nauru for boat arriving asylum-seekers where inmates can expect to wait for years, where they currently live in tents, where there are suicide attempts and hunger strikes.  As you may know, the Australian government holds fifty plus human beings in indefinite detention because although refugees they have been determined by secret security assessment to be threats to the community.  Those inmates are not allowed to know the charge against them.  For the most part they are Sri Lankan Tamils who would seem unlikely threats to the Australian community, and they cannot defend themselves.  These are official policies that operate every day and can have no less cruelty to them than any potential act of negligence that led to the Tazreen fire but there is little outcry.

And of bravery and boldness I see abundance, not only in the history books but now, in all of the above aspects of Bangladesh and of course, you know it, in the very difficult struggle for daily life that too many Bangladeshis still face.  And they smile.

As a westerner on 16 December I remember Senator Edward Kennedy and George Harrison were not afraid to stand up and be counted.

I know and you know how easily this country’s challenges, shortcomings and failures can be spoken of; how many there are to choose from – free speech, it is there to a very significant degree – people can talk; journalists inform and with a degree of daring and bravery too.  But save that talk please for December 17, since Victory Day is for remembering the struggle and sacrifice that created this young nation where people live cheek by jowl in relative peace.  Victory Day is to recall that along with the many other things, good and bad, that modern Bangladesh is, it remains not less than a minor miracle.

People value the things they have to fight for.  Bangladesh was born in blood. 

There are more Bangladesh articles, mostly about culture and travel to choose from, or try something different like the end of the world in Rapa Nui or a visit to the Latvian National Academy of Science, but if you go there, mind the heavy doors on the way in.

This article also published in Star Magazine, here: 16 December






Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Write Crimes, Think Crimes

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.



Be free. See the village the city the land.





Bangladesh Dreaming: Article Index for articles about Bangladesh

Where the World is Most Definitely Flat

Iguazu Falls

Two days later and morning started too early, some time before eight we were walking through the national park gates on our way to Iguazu Falls. By some miracle the sun was shining, the perfect day for rain to end. The we was the European couple I’d ignored at the mission but met in San Ignacio regardless, due to my need for caffeine first thing a.m., a cup of coffee that thirty seconds missed the bus for me, while Giulia and Igor turned up ten minutes later at the stretch of footpath doubling as bus stop. They’d dared breakfast. Suddenly we had about an hour and a half to solve the world, an activity befitting the final leg of their round world journey from and to London.

‘No, it’s not genes,’ Igor was saying, ‘Tahitians are fat because France subsidises the price of baguettes. An English-style loaf costs ten times as much in Tahiti.’

‘It’s not just the baguettes,’ said Giulia.

‘Two points, there’s the paté too – goose liver, French, full of fat and subsidised.’

Igor had this curious habit of awarding points for what people said. Within minutes I’d raced ahead of Giulia, who’d only managed six to my ten, unless it was one of those games where the more points you earn the worse you’re doing. Not knowing the rules my game plan had no strategy.

‘How did you like Australia?’ I asked.

‘Ten points, it was brilliant,’ he said.

‘There are few truly jaw-dropping moments in this world,’ Giulia said, ‘but Uluru and the Great Barrier Reef both made my jaw drop.’

‘Another two points,’ Igor said, ‘The people are great. Australians can fix any problem calmly and professionally, like that problem with our plane ticket. The company where I work in London would fall apart without them.’

‘New Zealanders were more interested in money,’ she said.

‘Two points again. It’s because of the Americans who drop by New Zealand for two weeks and take helicopter rides to mountain tops. They’re too obese to walk and it makes New Zealand expensive for everyone.’

‘He hasn’t been the same since they bombed Belgrade,’ Giulia explained.

Giulia and Igor fit together like Christmas-in-July, unlikely but compatible, he dogmatic, she diplomatic, he emotional and she frank. Mid-thirties Giulia was fashionably casual in that Italian way while I was just sloppy. Her tightly curled hair was blond-African attractive and as tall as she was, Igor was taller, probably star basketball player for Serbia. That’s why when the bus finally arrived, ten points to the bus company, he hit his head on the roof while trying to sit, minus five. I’d graduated to awarding points of my own and it felt good.

‘You think the rain might stop?’ I said to Igor, ‘five points.’ He looked at me suspiciously, assessing the appropriateness of my new point-awarder post, but after some contemplation seemed to accept my efforts, perhaps because he’d always awarded points and never actually earned any. Water leaked through the bus roof (no bingo this time) as the scenery rattled by, rolling red dirt hills, small wooden farmhouses, scrawny chickens and hints of jungle, towards Argentina’s end.

When we arrived in sleepy Puerto Iguazu we settled into a hostel carefully chosen via the random method and wandered to the tri-border where the Parana and Iguazu rivers met, over the one Paraguay, the other Brazil. Puerto Iguazu was relaxing, good for pretending you were on the Amazon verges as despite being a major tourist hub it had a frontier feel. Our discussion continued over dinner, pizza and beer. ‘It’s not that all Americans are bad,’ Igor said, ‘but remember that lady in Peru?’ He looked to Giulia for affirmation, ‘she was running around Lima looking for a First Boston bank. ‘I only bank with First Boston!’ she was yelling. She had no concept she was standing in sodding Peru!’

‘Did you make it to Bolivia?’ I asked hopefully.

‘We spent a couple of weeks there,’ Giulia said.

‘How was it?’ I held my breath.

‘We missed the worst of the strikes,’ she said, ‘but others had to knock on boarded-up restaurants to get dinner. They pretend to be closed, might be attacked if they openly break the strike, but inside they were open. They sneak you in.’ I liked the idea of knocking on boarded-up buildings for a meal, people who sneak you in, are open on the inside.

‘Bolivia has great desserts, people were really friendly,’ Igor said, spilling his beer in the process. I had to deduct six points.

Judging by Iguazu National Park, Argentines manage to keep major tourist attractions relative pristine, raw and refined: like a tango turn. There were a few ugly buildings but mostly it was tasteful and like the Three Sisters in the Blue Mountains west of Sydney it did well considering how many people go there. The falls sit right on the Brazil border, both sides have an airport and fancy hotels, so Americans can jet in for a day and say they’ve been to South America according to Igor.

Within metres of the entrance we (we meaning mostly me) stood captivated by a group of rat looking creatures on spindly legs in the bushes by the track. They were like smaller, jungle capybaras and I asked around. ‘I know the animals you mean,’ locals said, ‘but not their name.’ A great start to the day, animals sufficiently useless as to be virtually nameless.  I’ve always had a soft spot for useless animals.

Giulia preferred the butterflies in azure blues, oranges, purples, yellows and patterned whites. ‘It’s as if each butterfly has to submit an application on the extent of its uniqueness before being allowed permission to enter the park,’ Igor said.

‘I really prefer moths,’ I couldn’t help saying.

As for the falls themselves I was a sceptic, waterfalls are generally nice but I had doubts how much they could impress even if big. That all changed when we first saw them. ‘It’s another jaw dropping moment for me,’ Giulia said. There were hundreds of large falls including one directly beneath the platform where we stood, the smallest of which would be an important tourist site in most countries, but here just entrée to the colossal liquid horseshoe in the distance that blended jungle, spray and sky into the horizon hills of far Brazil. ‘That’s the Devil’s Throat, it’s two kilometres across,’ Giulia said, ‘let’s go there last.’

Water, water everywhere as the track wound its way right to the edge of several falls. Looking down, the world was simply spray rising hundreds of metres, raincoat country despite sunshine. There in a tree was our first wild toucan!

‘Everything’s Italian here,’ Giulia said referring to Argentina not the falls, ‘when Argentines hear I’m Italian they launch into it themselves, even speak Spanish with an Italian accent.’

‘Does that explain the zh sound?’ I said, ‘from what I’ve heard Argentines want to transform every consonant into zh.’

‘Two points and they probably can,’ Igor agreed.

We wound our way around the bottom, platforms perched close enough beside the falls that you could stick your arm under however many tonnes of water if you felt it worthwhile. Standing there meant being drenched in five seconds from spray. A squirrel sat on the railing further back, jumping and flit-flitting its bushy tail.

‘Argentina has style,’ Igor proclaimed in the direction of the squirrel, ‘in Buenos Aires I saw a bidet in a public toilet.’

‘You were impressed by that bidet weren’t you?’ said Giulia.

‘It would never happen in Chile,’ he retorted, ‘all money, no class. They serve instant coffee in little packets and think that’s European.’

The forest was bird noises, rustling bushes and another troop of those unnamed rat creatures. We encountered fuzzy-faced cai monkeys, a troop of thirty or more, grooming each other, carrying babies through the canopy. The whole troop made this giant leap, one by one, across a canopy gap.

Middle Age seers thought the world flat, which would have been understandable had not the Greeks many centuries earlier known it round – knowledge discovered and discarded, returned to jungle, moss and strangler fig. It would have been understandable had they thought it while standing atop the Devil’s Throat. Two kilometres of planet seem to disappear suddenly downwards into mist-void and modern science might be tempted to vote for flatness here.

     From deep-green jungle chocolate channels emerge, rush and swirl to abyss and perhaps beyond, flow southeast to solidify into the Pampas like liquid chocolate cooling. The channels vine-twist like the weave and weft of events, places, moments and faces, tri-colour deep-green, brown and toasted orange sky. The patterns are absurd, chance meetings, confusion and laughter that humans alone could never create, the patterns of journey.

     That channel there, it’s when at twenty-three I found myself in an Iranian university lecture, barely-decipherable biology in Farsi, tomatoes and potatoes with black clad women partitioned in rows on the left. Where it meets that small stream, that must be the lecturer who somehow went to Adelaide, knew to discuss cricket before moving onto legumes.

     We walk on water, Giulia, Igor and I, like Central American Jesus Christ lizards, across aluminium bridges, island hopping one kilometre out to the Earth-yawn. The islands are stubborn, fixated with stasis, thinking they can avoid change and defy the river, but on the downside they constantly lose soil and have to grab every passing grain upside to maintain an unchanging illusion. It takes energy to stand still.

    

     ‘It’s relatively easy for westerners to let go and be free of their daily dramas,’ Giulia said, ‘but so few do. Fear holds them back, somehow they like their dramas; it gives comfort.’

     The channel beyond, that was the little village in Rajasthan where at twenty I was called into the school, taught an impromptu English class and drank tea with all the teachers in the headmaster’s office. They’d slurped so loudly in tea-appreciation and I’d tried to copy but burst out laughing at what in Australia was rude. We culture-shared the why and they laughed at my laughter.

     The water, thing of beauty and life-shapes, carries sticks, leaves, anything that comes to it, has a rhythmic flow that felt good watching. The water brought together, united in a vast liquid plain, was a gathering audience for the great horseshoe plummet.

     Maybe it’s the collusion and deception of sunshine and spray, together creating permanent rainbows far below which lure like sirens water to the edge. Maybe they conspire with the unseeable rocks at the bottom to hit and split water so violently the whole place roars in pain. I can’t hear Giulia speak so I just nod. But when the worst happens sustenance arrives in the most peculiar packages, that small Iranian girl travelling on the bus with her grandmother, who uninvited rechristened me Farid because she couldn’t say my name, and together we’d discovered and sang that Salam Ebdasam, Salam Farid song most of the way to Bandar Buhshehr. How did she know I’d been robbed and needed distraction? Just when all seems lost water regroups, altered and replenished – and sometimes by chance it’s you who drop unexpected into someone’s far away life with something to offer, an opportunity to be useful in some modest probably unknown way. Sometimes you’re the Ebdasam, the water that pushes in a broad sweep down valley away from crisis.

     The river disappears in the direction of Paraguay fed by challenge, knowledge and inspiration, stronger and more together, to some final destination the indignant islands will never see. Might it be the chaotic enchantment of Buenos Aires? Or the land of the delta?





Memories also filed under Estonia,  packaged in the Himalayas and risen from the dead in Cyprus.

A shorter version of this article is published in Star Magazine, here: Where the World is Flat

Note: This was first written in 2005 and redrafted in 2007.  It follows on from the post ‘The Mission’.  The names are changed and it’s not one hundred percent fact, but close to it.  It was when I was on my way to Bolivia for the first time to take up a teaching job.

The Deep South: Article Index for articles about Argentina, Chile or Uruguay