Tag: Fiction

মার্কিন Burger

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My recent trip to Bangladesh was perhaps the most impactful of my life. I landed in a 2020 Dhaka which was nothing and everything like the Dhaka of my childhood.

Childhood trips had involved a one- or two- night stay in a mosquito/roach-frequented hotel, followed by a very bumpy bus or car ride 6-10 hours south to our hometown. My dad wasn’t really the kind of guy to spend on a western-style hotel or an overpriced ride to rural Bangladesh.

This trip, in my thirties, equipped with an incorrigible nature and a smartphone, I would do things I directed myself. My parents followed their typical routine and headed south, failing to convince me to do the same. I stayed back in Dhaka for a week, solo.

Solo. Female. American born. This raised so many eyebrows around me that I wondered if I had spinach in my teeth. Sure, women now do everything in Dhaka. Rich women. White women. Chalak* Bangladeshi women. Just not American born Bangladeshi women with roots in Noakhali who can’t read, write, or properly speak Bangla.

I cannot begin to describe Dhaka adequately in one post, so I won’t. Yet.

I will only say that I figured out how to get around. The answer for me was mostly Uber, and my start and stop point was the American Burger pictured above. You must take into account that almost no one I knew thought it possible that *I* would be taking Ubers around town by myself. Most of the drivers don’t seem to know how to use their phones, exactly. I imagine many cannot read. But the ones in my neighborhood all knew where the American Burger was, thank God.

I started to feel like what an American Burger must feel like. A little foreign but not completely foreign, palatable in conversation, conditionally portable, honestly pleasant overall. See American Burger walk. See American Burger run. See American Burger try to cross one of Dhaka’s highways on foot without being turned into burger meat.

So began my brief journey in Bangladesh.

*Smart/fast, and sometimes not the good kind.

Harar, Ethiopia

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02-2017

The bus station in Harar is a swirling mass of silver fish – dizzying to the alien finding herself in an ocean. Cars, bajaj, donkeys, and buses do not stop, even as people mount and dismount them. I am assisted into my minibus – front seat to accommodate my foreign-ness. This bus will take me back to the airport after a week spent in the city.

Harar is dust and petrol in winter. The dust obscures the region’s rich history. Harar was once a great trading post of intellectualism. Now it is just under construction. For what, I do not know.

There is diversity here. Some Muslims drink, some Christians are strict in dress. There are hijab-ed women in shin- and knee-length skirts. Tight pants. Abayas. Burqas. Mostly colorful, plenty of prints. These people are not cosmopolitan enough to care about what you are wearing.

This place is too much like Bangladesh for me to look away. The yelling goat sounds like a crying baby. The women carrying sundry on their heads sway to keep balance that American suburban yoga soccer moms could never have. The men hold hands. The crazy ch’at street addicts are like the goats – just witted enough to get out of the way of oncoming traffic. Construction is concrete, bamboo, and iron rods. The seatbelts don’t work – on purpose. The people are thin from built-in exercise and a moderate diet. The animals could be treated better.

The military and police are haughty. I’m unsure of their motivations – why they stop people, and why I saw them escorting a group of 20- or so people- some handcuffed.

The drivers treat their buses, trucks, and vans like race cars on the highway mountain switchbacks, oncoming traffic doing the same. Weaving, speeding – it’s a terrible combination and I shudder at the kinds of accidents that occur.

The driver’s assistant just tried to raise the price on me, mid-drive. My suddenly stony face (this is a skill) deterred further pestering. I do not like having to use this face. Like I said – this place is too much like Bangladesh. I wander around both places amazed, in love, with a hard RBF.