Hitching Rickshaws and
Learning Bengali
by Mark Abelson
Today I'm thinking back to when I'd just left Thailand, to my
first days in Bangladesh, way before I'd taken an Indian prison
train to the floating graveyards in Varanasi, before I became sick
at the Untouchable village, before I picked through seashells in
the sands of the Jordan Valley and before I took pictures of
orange fur-clad, ecstasy-popping girls at the Vienna Love Parade.
I was sweaty and tired. I'd stayed up all night at the airport in
Bangkok, waiting at 11 p.m. for a 6 a.m. flight to Dhaka.
Customs was quick and I was out of the airport in just a few
minutes. I wandered to a highway rotary and asked in broken
Bengali for directions to Old Town. I shook hands with the curious
and offered smiles to the shy, then wedged myself into a black
diesel fume-coughing tin can. From the window of this bus was
where I first saw the beggar. A few days later, from the tattered
foam seat of a rickshaw I saw him again. He was a muscular man
with skin as black as olives and patience like a stone. He lay
face down in the sidewalk of the busiest section of Dhaka, a city
of 14 million people, the densest population in the world outside
of Hong Kong. A filthy white bandage sheathed his left foot, a
green rag covered his head, a brown tin alms bowl lay flung beyond
his stiff outstretched fingers. The heat from a billion directions
made him greasy with sweat. It came east from Burma, west from
India, south from the Sundarbans and the Bay of Bengal, and in
every direction from the thousands of passers-by. This is what I
saw, trapped in smoggy traffic under the roof of an egg-shaped
mını-cab: old women hobbled, young boys leaped, girls in black
burqa shuffled while children and old men crouched in the shade of
an overpass. The beggar was dead, or seemed dead. Playing dead.
Dead, warmed, and melting into vapor, his molecules mixing with
the creeping smog that hovered like scheming hands clutching a
pillow over the face of the exhausted city. The hundreds of
thousands of us stepped nimbly over and around him. No one had a
single taka to throw in this starving man's bowl.
No country on earth is prouder of more tragic origins. It took the
blood of 2 million murdered intellectuals to flush out Pakistan.
Tanks were aimed at the universities in Dhaka and Hindu minorities
were dragged out of their homes and shot. Today the country
survives through seasons of famine and flooding. Every
neighborhood is a slum. Every village is sick with arsenic,
jaundice, or hunger.
But it is also a very beautiful place to go on holiday.
~~~
Rommel was the one who
answered when I banged at his door. Through my father and his
friends, I had received an invitation to meet a family in Dhaka.
Their address and telephone number were written in faded blue ink
on a tattered envelope that I clutched in my sweaty hand. I
mistook him for his father, someone much older, and he laughed
when I tried to call him sir.
"Come in! Have a Coke. You want to have some samosas?" I nodded.
"Cook! Make some samosas! Get chai!" Turning back to me he asked
"So, do you want to live here?"
That was my introduction to the Hussein family. They wanted to put
me up in one of the air-conditioned rooms, pay for everything,
introduce me to their hundred relatives, and treat me, as much as
they could, like family, though I was a stranger to them.
Himel, the youngest of the three brothers, was fond of telling me
that you could get anything in Bangladesh if you had money. His
father was head of the police department for a neighboring
province and his mother managed the family's real estate
investments and a beauty salon. They were absurdly wealthy by
Bangladeshi standards and could keep more servants in their home
than you and I would ever dream of employing. Still, I had to
disagree with him. There were many things you couldn't get in
Bangladesh. Even with my 30 pounds of clothes and possessions, I
had things they had never seen before.
Yusuf, the 13-year-old servant, marveled at my minidisc player and
toyed with the buttons until he'd erased half my music. The first
time he saw me taking off contact lenses, he panicked and went to
Kala, Auntie, screaming, "Why does he have an extra set of eyes!"
Robin was the oldest son, a heavyset 24 year old with an savant's
facility for foreign language. Frustrated by the pace of his
English class, he'd snatched an English dictionary and memorized
it in 45 days. He used such complex and archaic vocabulary that
conversations left me more confused than I would admit. He was
half a semester away from getting his degree in Queer Studies and
promised me, "Yes, we're going to be having some really wonderful,
bombastic colluquys!"
Kala, the mother who made me call her Auntie, was a radiantly
happy woman full of love for God and for her family. Her
generosity humbled me and there was nothing I could do to fall
from her favor, though my host brothers tried hard to arrange it.
Of all things Bangladeshi which Rommel thought I should learn,
profanity was first priority. Carefully he led me through strings
of syllables that summed a vile lexicon of trash. Usually I had no
idea.
Chut ma-re nar pula?
"No, chut ma-re NIR pula."
Chut ma-re nir pula.
"Good! Now say it to Kala. She won't mind! It's good."
Chut ma-re nir pula.
I've never seen anyone's mouth drop so quickly, anyone's eyes turn
so fast to ice.
"Great!" Rommel shouted. "Now say the other one."
Kan kir pula?
"NAAAAAA!" Kala screamed, and looked at Rommel as if to ask: How
could you teach him these things? I had only an inkling of an idea
of what I'd said to her, something like "Whore's son, I sleep with
your sister!" But not so nice.
It took only a few days to master Bangladeshi profanity. Once I
was proficient, I started getting phone calls from Rommel's friend
Bepul.
Hello?
"Bastaaaaard!"
Bastard? Come on over here, you mother. I kick your scrawny ass! (Shala?
Materchote! Sisdem koydeh demo!)
It was hard not to feel like I belonged here. I saw horrible
things in Dhaka, but these were countered with introductions to
people who turned my perspective upside down. I saw a man with
sores and scars like melting icicles on his face. "Someone threw
acid at him," Robin explained in a hushed voice. I saw uniformed
police tackle a man in a train station and beat him half-conscious
with bamboo staffs. Standing at a bus stop in Mymensingh, I tried
hard not to trip over the feet of hundreds of families asleep on
the black tar sidewalk: men, women, and their children together
under tattered blankets with nothing else to their names. There
were children here who could never grow to their full height
because they would never have enough to eat. The children were
pests who might resort to any ploy for money or candy. In the
daytime I'd push them out of the way and curse them out as they
fixed their eyes on the lump my wallet made in my pocket. At night
they lay sandwiched between their mothers and fathers, asleep on
hard pavement. I thought, “That kid is only 10. He begs and makes
a nuisance of himself to get whatever he can, but he's still only
10. What can I give to help them? 2 taka, enough money to buy a
cup of chai or a roll of bread, enough to help a human being fool
himself into thinking his sunken stomach is full. Or I give 10
taka, a healthy man's hour's wage, or even 100 taka, and I keep
one person from death for the next week. When I leave, they'll
start to starve again. To be in this place is to stare at an abyss
of despair and stalled hopes. I give money and it's like throwing
pennies into a black hole of poverty.”
There was a need in Bangladesh that I hadn't seen anywhere before.
NEED, with all capital letters. It was a disorganized place
without a hope of recovery or salvation and there was nothing I
could do to stop it.
But these were fantastic people, also. Most of them, even in
Dhaka, had never seen a foreigner before, and I attracted more
attention than I ever wanted.
Conversations stopped when I walked into cafes. Shoeshine and
newspaper boys stood gaping, or sometimes rushed to me and
cautiously brushed their fingers against my skin, lighter than
they'd seen before. One of my favorite memories from Dhaka is
being introduced to the Hussein grandmother. She was over 90 years
old in a country where the average lifespan ends near 50. She'd
seen the British occupation, Independence, secession from India,
and a war with Pakistan that left her city decimated. But she'd
never seen dread-locks or face piercing. I tip-toed over when she
beckoned me to her bed and asked me to bend down. She ran her
shaking, papery fingers over the coarse knots in my hair and
laughed and laughed.
Rommel and his friends wanted to get me out of Dhaka and into the
countryside. I couldn't blame them. Dhaka is a really fascinating
place where art and education thrive in spite of crushing poverty,
but the streets are more congested than anywhere in the world.
Public fist fights are common; it is not safe or practical to
leave home after dark; and a brown cloud of pollution hangs from
above the rooftops down to the gutters. It blocks the sun and
makes breathing impossible. Anyone with enough money not to work
would stay indoors.
So from Dhaka we took a bus to the city of Mymensingh, and from
Mymensingh we went to Guripur. From Guripur we negotiated a
rickshaw for 10 of us over roads that had been flooded the week
before, mud that cut into the thick of rice paddy country. It took
two hours to cover a 10-mile stretch of muck and we didn't arrive
until 1 a.m. The sea of rice paddies reflected a blue color in the
moonlight. The sky was struck with stars and the ground was
burning up with fireflies. I don't know if I'll ever see anything
that beautiful again.
It was 2 a.m. when we reached Rommel's friend's uncle, who lived
in a one room tin shack with this family. He was happy to wake up
and spend the rest of the night with us, drinking illegal bootleg
alcohol and singing Bengali folk songs.
**
"Bepul's uncle, the man you met," Rommel said the next day, "He's
killed four people."
Man, I don't believe you!
"No, it's true."
Liar.
"He killed 4 people. If you ask most of the men in this village,
if you take a survey, you'll hear maybe 6 out of 10 here have
killed someone."
You're joking. How did it happen?
"There isn't so much land here for farming. Sometimes, after the
floods, the waters recede and there's new land. Bepul's family
moved onto that land, but they had to fight for it. Some men came
here in the night to chase them out, and Bepul's uncle killed
them. This place is very dangerous. If you weren't with us, you
could not come here."
That's crazy. He didn't go to jail?
"This is the country. Life is cheap here."
But I couldn't believe it. I thought the place was wonderful, and
we'd already stayed much longer than we'd planned. In the village
center, a small cluster of chicken coop-like shacks where Rommel
and his friends could buy cigarettes, I drew a crowd of 60 people
who followed me to the ends of the town, half-fascinated and
half-intimidated by whatever I was. They waited outside while I
had tea with the governor, peeking into the windows, curious and
quiet.
We stopped at a port city on our way back to Dhaka. It was a place
to stretch our legs where Rommel had friends he wanted me to meet.
Near the shore, where rusting cargo ships returned from Australia,
India, and Africa, I stopped to look in the window of a souvenir
stand. The owner was a small man with a white skullcap and a thick
gray beard. The Koran says that a thousand angels hang from each
hair of a man's beard. The pious never shave, and following Indian
fashion most men keep at least a moustache. Bangladesh is like a
sea of moustaches.
He looked at me curiously and asked in halting English, "Where are
you from?"
America, I told him.
"What religion are you?" he asked.
Christian, I lied.
He stammered and tripped over his thoughts. I was expecting some
political tongue lashing over Afghanistan or Israel. I was already
starting to take a few steps back.
"Ee-sis was the greatest man!"
Sorry?
"Ee-sis! Our religion has the most respect for him! He was a great
man."
Ee-sis?...Jesus? Oh!-- In the few English words that he knew, this
man was trying to show his respect for my culture. He wanted me to
know that his people weren't narrow-minded and intolerant, that
his religion wasn't the gospel of terrorists, that I was always
welcome in his country. He was trying to reach me however he
could, and I didn't know how I could thank him. I was really
stunned. This man had nothing to share except his goodwill, and he
offered it to a stranger when I hadn't given him anything.
I didn't know what to say, except Thank you, for his hospitality
and for everything I could learn in his country.
There are more stories and people than I have time to describe,
and some things so horrible or bewildering that I can't do them
justice. Bangladeshis expected nothing from me, shared anything
they had, and fought me if I wanted to do as little for them as
buying a cup of tea.
Months later I keep asking myself: what does this account for? Why
did I have this experience and what can I do with it? Why did I
see these things, so I can brag to other travelers or make myself
sound exotic? Man, I hope not. I would love to rededicate my life
to rebuilding nations and working with the poor, but I'm human and
I'd love a 10 CD Pioneer stereo with surround sound and lots of
blinking lights for every room in my 9 million square-meter
apartment, too. Somewhere between the two I'll wind up settling—a
starter home with cats that pee on the Ikea furniture, a car I
like in a color I hate, and the career that emerged from the
shambles of my inability to decide a profession. But at least I
floated in the same, safe tax-bracket and lived in a decent house.
I didn't use my education and the gifts and resources of health
and prosperity to uplift the world, but at least I didn't live
each day in a fight to eat and never thought of survival as a
miracle. But I don't know which of these two is the bigger
disaster.
© Mark Abelson
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