“I wasn’t allowed inside. You have to have a ticket to get inside.”
With Alam there to protect my luggage, I went to look for a phone to call home and tell my parents I was safe. Immediately I gathered an audience. A white child in Bangladesh making a phone call was far from a common sight.
“I stand out like a light bulb!” I said to my mother, after reassuring her I was safe.
For the first time in my life I experienced how it felt to be part of a very small minority. Alam told me that since his arrival two weeks earlier he had seen only six white people. Almost all of them would have been diplomats or businesspeople whose children are sent to schools abroad. When the children return to be with their parents, they are taken away by private cars to their homes and are never seen out on the city streets.
Alam told me to wait with my bags while he went to negotiate a price for a couple of rickshaws to carry us to his relatives’ home. There must have been fifty rickshaws in front of the airport. They were painted in bright carnival colours and designs, as if each were trying to outdo the others in an attempt to get the customers’ attention.
Eventually a price was set and Alam waved me over. When the drivers realized I was a foreigner, they became quite agitated. They had given Alam the local price instead of the tourist one, but they had no choice but to take us. The bags were loaded in one rickshaw, and Alam and I climbed aboard the other. And off we went through the streets of Dhaka.
Rickshaws were everywhere. I felt sorry for the drivers, having to carry such a heavy load. It took a great effort just to get them rolling. The drivers weaved their way barefoot through narrow streets that were in desperate need of repair. Sweat glistened on their faces, which they wiped off with the bandannas tied around their necks.
Despite the blistering sun, I couldn’t help but lose myself in the sights all around me. Children played with a beach ball along the roadside. Cows and dogs and rats roamed freely, sniffing the garbage that littered the streets. The poverty was overwhelming. I saw children sweeping and picking up garbage, others selling food or begging.
Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh, with a population of four million people. I knew that the city, like many major cities in Southeast Asia, faced problems of poverty, overpopulation and lack of living space. Over the years, Bangladesh’s rural economy had been devastated by a series of droughts, tropical storms and floods. Tens of thousands of people had left for the cities in search of a better life. But the cities could barely cope with the influx.
We passed many women doing laundry on the street in front of their homes. They had two tubs, one with soapy water, the other with clear. Using the pavement as a washing board, they pounded the clothes. We passed a man with a loudspeaker shouting in Bengali about a transit strike. And all around us were signs—most in Bengali, but a few in English—advertising clothes, movies and countless brands of cigarettes.
Gradually, the poorer areas gave way to well-tended gardens and apartment buildings similar to those you would see in any North American city. Several of Alam’s relatives lived together in one such apartment.
We arrived at the building to find the power out. Up four flights of stairs we trudged, dragging my bags. Partway there I stopped and looked out a window. Rows of low-rise buildings stretched to the horizon. The occasional plane landed at the airport not far away. There was very little green space. What trees and grass I could see were often on the roofs of the buildings. And dotting the hillsides around the city were the shanties, the homes of the poor.
Alam knocked loudly on the door and called out a few words in Bengali. The door was thrown open, and in he went to excited chatter and a great round of hugs.
“And this is Craig, my friend from Canada.”
They looked at me. I think that they were expecting someone older.
“Hello,” I said.
No one moved. I tried again. “Salam alaykum,” I said. Alam’s uncle smiled warmly and welcomed me into the house. Soon I was being embraced by relative after relative, from the oldest to the youngest. “Salam alaykum, salam alaykum . . . .” Within minutes I was practically one of the family.
We sat down as Alam talked on, telling what I took to be stories of his recent travels. I was hot and sticky still. Overhead, a ceiling fan hung motionless.
Alam’s aunt appeared with tall glasses of water. She passed one to me. Some parting words of my mother echoed in my head: Don’t ever drink local water without treating it with chlorine. I retrieved some from my luggage and dutifully administered two drops into the glass. I forced myself to wait the fifteen minutes for the chlorine to do its job, then I downed the water with great relief.
Not long after, the ceiling fan came to life. The television flashed on and music from a Hindi movie filled the room. Two children reappeared and dropped themselves down in front of the TV. The plot was very simple: Man falls in love with woman, woman doesn’t like man (but likes to sing, a lot), another man saves woman’s life, two men fight for her hand (woman still singing), handsome man wins, two live happily ever after (now singing together).
Eventually Alam turned to me and announced above the racket, “We have to go through your luggage. We have to decide what goes back to Canada.”
We found a place to inspect it all, and Alam dumped the contents of the first bag on the floor. He was impressed by the clothes I brought. “Perfect for the climate.” He was pleased to find in another everything he had asked me to bring for him, including track pants, books on photography and Nutri-Grain bars, one of which he opened and started to chew.
Alam was less impressed when he came across my medical kit. He stared in disbelief at the contents. There were elastic bandages in case of sprains, syringes and blood-testing equipment, and drugs for worms and for at least a dozen different ailments. There were eyedrops, painkillers, a toothache remedy, tweezers, tape, scissors, gauze, swabs, rubbing alcohol . . . the list went on and on.
“You’re a walking medicine cabinet, for goodness’ sakes!” He picked up several bottles and read the labels, then turned to me and smiled. “Your mother packed this, didn’t she?”
“She meant well.” I smiled. “It’s not that heavy.”
Alam and I boxed up more than half the contents of the bags. We would be travelling light, with the bare necessities.
Soon it was time for dinner. I was looking forward to the meal, my first cooked in an Asian home. Alam even more so, especially when his aunt pointed out that she had cooked his favourite foods. We moved into the dining room and the dishes started to appear. First came steaming bowls of curried rice. Then something called chokputi, made from chickpeas, potatoes and eggs. There was pancake-flat bread, roti, followed by dhal, a mixture of different lentils in a sauce. It looked delicious. “And not too spicy,” Alam’s aunt said to him, who passed it on to me in English.
We all sat down. All the men, that is. I asked Alam whether the women would be joining us, but he shook his head and quickly turned the conversation back to the food.
After we had finished, the women settled in our places and had their meal from what we had left. I had to take a deep breath to stop myself from making a comment. I realized the custom was part of the Bangladeshi culture, yet it seemed very unfair.
That night I lay awake, thinking about what I had done, wondering if I had made the right decision to travel halfway around the world. I looked over at Alam asleep on the couch. The day before, when we had decided what items to send back to Canada, I placed my journal in the “send home” pile. I got up, searched through the pile, and removed it. I flipped through the pages and saw the perfect blue lines still untouched by a pen. No matter how difficult the trip would become at times, I know I would always want to remember it. I opened the journal and wrote, “Day One.”
Well, I arrived at 8:26 their time. After getting my bags and going through customs, I finally left to be met by Alam. There were coconut and banana trees! It was winter! We took a rickshaw rider from