Neejay neejay

It's Victory Day. Thirty five years ago today, Bangladesh became. To commemorate, I am going to the Liberation War Museum. Last week, the military was deployed here. 4 out of 10 cabinet members resigned in protest. The traffic blockades and hartals are apparently at an end, but the January 21 elections remain in doubt. And I have less of a clue what Bangladeshi politics are about, a month later. Each time I understand one little piece, it leads to 3 more pieces that confuse me even more. Reading the papers, listening to my BNP relatives, the apoplectic NRBs (non-resident Bangladeshis), and everyone in between. None of it helps.

I'll tell you what does help and what also breaks my heart. My daily conversations with the maids and the drivers of Bangladesh. Setara is 40 but looks at least a decade older. She had long jet black hair, a forthright manner, and pain, seemingly in every part of her body. She came to Dhaka when she was still in single digits. Beaten every day for 5 years as a maid in the house of a rich family, she finally fled and on her way back home to her village, found love at the ripe young age of 12. Her first period coincided with her first pregnancy. Both husband and child were lost within months. Stricken, she returned to Dhaka on a train with only the clothes on her back and a few sticks of sugar cane to eat along the way. All this, yet she ends with love.

"You know how when you're hungry, you want some rice," she tells me.
I say sure.
"Well, before that, there is love. It comes even before your hunger."
I nod, thinking of all the love I've been graced with.
"Isn't it true?" she asks again.
"Akdom," I say. Absolutely.

Tuhin is a driver. Ask him any address in Dhaka, and he'll know where it is. He has a gruff schoolmaster sort of way about him and stands stiffly when I'm in his presence. It's expensive to live in Dhaka. Tuhin's flat with utilities costs a majority of his wages. Then there's the English medium schooling that kids can't do without these days. No matter that Tuhin never learned English, but his older son must. And the younger one? That one is only three, and naughty, so Tuhin is going to put him into a madrasa. In the old days, one would always save one child for God. This went for Christian families as well (no surprise, since it's all the same religion). These days, if one still wants to save a child for God, one might save someone else's child. Perhaps a poor villager, someone less fortunate, someone who might not have any schooling otherwise, madrasa or not.

I imagine Tuhin's younger son. Perhaps he has Tuhin's unruly curly hair. Perhaps he climbs everything in sight. Perhaps he wants to do everything on his own. Perhaps he's the way I was when I was 3. Family legend has it that my first word was "neejay" which in Bangla basically means "I'll do it on my own." Except at age 3, in addition to my Arabic suras, I was learning Bangla, English, and Igbo, and my own curly haired father had every ambition that I would grow up to advance the field of knowledge, to have a hand in my own destiny.

There is so much to write about. So much to photograph. So much to think about. After I crawl under my moshari each night, I lie very still and the words slowly blink out of my mind. It's because I'm writing poetry again and words were never the basis of my poetry. I think about the feelings I'm trying to capture, Setara's compressed grief, Tuhin's resignation, my powerlessness.

I am intensely glad I'm alone in Dhaka. I have become someone else here, someone perhaps few of my friends would recognise. Or perhaps I have become my child self again. The one who watched everything, the one who was apart. I know it won't seem like it from my photos, but I decline invitations daily, nightly. I stay home, say I'm writing, even if I'm not. I spend hours by myself and I love it. And when I'm with others, I spend much of my time listening. I don't want anyone to interrupt this solitude. Especially not the Americans. Mr. Bowie, I too, am afraid of the Americans. I didn't know there were so many here. Every night I meet another one and I feel increasingly withdrawn.

Last night, someone asked me if I were going to the marine party. I imagined some sea theme, mermaids, water. No, it was actually the Marines. You know, the US Marines. Um, no, thank you. I'm told everyone has the same initial reaction, but really, there's no reason to be afraid. There's only like 5 Marines in Bangladesh. Everyone else is an NGO-er. And it's too bad the Peace Corp pulled out of Bangladesh (after multiple death threats last year) because they were yet another dimension of Americana in the wide white world. Still. Ok, how about the Aussie Porn Party? Or the Hamptons-in-Dhaka party? I would have never guessed these subcultures existed in Dhaka. I knew about the divorce-happy uber-rich Bangladeshi crowd (I've met more divorcees, both male and female, in Dhaka than ever before). I knew about the political scandals, the affairs, the incessant gossiping. But the rest of it is news to me. And none of it, in my present state of mind, is very interesting news.

So I'm home again, listening to music on my little portable speakers, writing, and hoping Setara will come in for a chat bearing a carafe of sweet lime juice.

World power means nothing. Only the unsayable, jeweled inner life matters. Rumi.

My Bangladesh Albums on Flickr so far:
Dhaka, November 2006
The Alo Gala (couture by Tootli & mirror smash by Sayeef Uncle)
The SAARC Ball (couture by Aneela Haque & concert by Habib)
My first Casa Loca Party (thrown by intl man of biz, Abby)
Dhaka, December 2006