June 7th entry- Arrival in Dhaka

The first email...

The familiar stickiness seemed to engulf me as soon as we stepped off the plane and onto the passage connecting the plane to the terminal. We hadn't been out of the plane for even three whole minutes when my hair started to become frizzier and more unruly, and my clothes started to feel like a second (and uncomfortably thick) skin. I'd met a Canadian fellow while waiting for our 2-hour delayed flight in Heathrow Airport, and 3 American guys coming to Bangladesh on UN work. As I quickly became used to my surroundings, I wondered what the first impressions for these guys on our country would be. Of course I didn't have the presence of mind to get their contact information! That would have been an interesting experience, to show them around Dhaka and watch their experiences firsthand... Anyway, for the first time I stood on the "Foreign Passport" line- comparatively smaller, but moved just as slowly as the other lines. I don't know why they don't hire people who have better and faster typing skills... Good thing is that you can do anything or get anywhere in B'desh as long as you know people; I got out in a quarter of the expected time because of a gentleman I had befriended during the flight. He's a businessman, and gave me and the girl who sat next to me all his phone numbers, so we can tell our parents and visit him and his family. He went on about family and parents, and how Bengali parents live for their children, no matter what age, and how in general he has noticed that the girls tend to care more for the parents than the boys.... it was amusing. I thought about how nearly all Bengali parents say the same thing; and how they tend to hold on to their offspring for as long as they can, refusing to let go even when they get married.....

Stepping outside the airport, I felt like I was being undressed by hundreds of eyes... very uncomfortable, to say the least.... then again, you get used to it after a day. ;) But it was nothing compared to the extreme discomfort of jeans sticking to my skin.. I looked around, seeming to see my cousins, aunts, uncles, my grandmother, all waiting for me... In each and every stranger's face, I saw them waiting for me with expectant eyes, already breaking into dazzling smiles in anticipation. Of course I knew that they weren't there, and wouldn't be. I knew that the aunts and cousins I was looking for weren't there, I knew my grandmother has been gone these past 4 years, but I looked and saw the same familiar expectancy in all of these people's eyes. I saw them straining to look past others' shoulders, at loved ones they haven't seen in 3, 5 or even 10 years. It's a feeling that cannot be described. It simply is.... And so is my arrival at Banani, the house that holds all the treasure chests of childhood's imaginations, the love of my late grandmother, the innocence of being children. I was born in Dhaka, and basically was raised in this house. Sure we lived in Saudi Arabia, but spent an equal amount of time here, shuttling back and forth in my childhood; making me feel like this is indeed the only house I grew up in. My favorite place in the whole world is the veranda of this house; I seem to remember being a 6 year old, following in my brother's footsteps and sticking our heads through the railing bars, trying to pick the guavas from the tree that was just out of reach. I remember the millions of games we played on that balcony, eight or nine of us cousins and siblings, limbs running all over the place, creating the most strangest and most fun games out of nothingness. Walking into the house, I first stepped into the room on the left; the one that belonged to my Appi, my grandmother. Four years ago, I had stayed with her here, for almost 2 months she was my roommate. I looked at the bed; seeing something of her sitting on the bed, curled up on the chair, smiling at me as I walked in. I then walked to the balcony, and I saw her again in my mind; I saw her walking to the railing, standing there looking down, hoping her children are coming home..... they asked me later that night if I wanted to sleep in her room, but I couldn't. I walk around in the room several times a day; I stare at the shelves and wardrobes, at her "almirah" that forever contained the most precious and most amazing things our children's world had ever seen...... My little cousins go for walks in the evenings and collect little flowers; and I remember it was just yesterday that I did the same with Appi; as a little girl holding her hand and going for a "morning walk," collecting the most enchanting smelling flowers.....

One of my aunts live on the fringes of Dhaka city; even reaching her home is a unique experience. The busy "Airport Road" leads into the most congested and busy little road I have ever seen. It's hardly bigger than an alleyway, but there are countless shops on each side, and countless people of all ages and sizes thronged on all sides. Rickshaws, bicycles, people, cars, all jostling for road space. Piles of garbage lined up here and there, people trekking through them trying to make a living somehow... I saw this little boy, in a tattered moldy looking yellow shirt, a pair of torn shorts that are much too big for him, walking along the garbage piles, trailing a stick. I wondered then about circumstance; that he is where he is simply because he was born into it. I wondered what his future would be; probably working as an errand boy in some middle class or upper class household, good for being a more fortunate child's playmate, but held off at a very significant distance. Or perhaps he would become a driver, or perhaps a gatekeeper. Only good for responding to someone else's beckoning; not even allowed to sit on the couches in the houses he would work in. Such a future is not one that would be something any of us would dream of.....