My friend Andrew Morris, originally from Wales now living in Dhaka — a teacher, writer with a keen eye and a fast pen, and a musician with a mean mouth on the soprano sax — has launched a campaign to raise funds for a new shelter for survivors of trafficking, rape, domestic slavery, and exploitation. The shelter will include dormitories, school and training facilities, garden and play area, and an auditorium and multi-purpose hall.
I would like you to visit the campaign's website and donate what you can. There's a PayPal link, but you don't have to sign up with PayPal. You can use a credit card. The campaign's made a great start, and while the target is ambitious, I'm confident they will carry it through.
When Andrew introduced me to the campaign, I'd already been reading his articles describing his visits to the present shelter. I asked if I could come along one day.
On the first Friday in May, a day when the heat passed the 100 degree mark, four of us set out from the Daily Star office towards Agargaon just a couple of miles to the north. Three of us — Hana Shams Ahmed on one side, Andrew on the other, me in the middle — squeezed in the back of a green natural gas driven three-wheeler. The fourth, Zahedul Khan, rode his own motorcycle. He followed us at first, then we lost him in Dhaka's traffic snarls. Hana is an editor at Star Weekend Magazine, Zahed works there as a photographer, and Andrew is a regular contributor.
Our destination was the shelter of the Bangladesh National Women Lawyers Association (BNWLA). Hana and Zahed came along to prepare an article about kids at the shelter. Star Weekend Magazine has done a terrific job hammering away at the slavery-like conditions faced by domestic workers in Bangladesh.
It was the story of one abused child worker that brought me together with this crew. Last fall when I first arrived here, the magazine carried a story about two children found lying on the ground next door to an apartment building in Dhanmondi. Moni, fifteen years old, was dead. Ten-year old Madhabi survived, her bones broken. They had been servants in the building next door. When Madhabi was in the hospital, her employer managed to grab her back. The child was persuaded that she had 'fallen' from the sixth floor roof. Over a four-foot high railing, mind you. The BNWLA rescued her and she recovered in their shelter before returning to her family. The murder case about her co-worker is still pending. Hana told us that not a single employer has ever been convicted of the murder of a domestic worker. Nearly every month there is news of at least one such murder.
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Thursday the 7th of June, it rained 109 mm in Dhaka. Leaving a literary event at the Sheraton I sought a ride home with a friend. Since the entrance was flooded, we agreed to cross over to the other side where his car would pick us up.
We took off our shoes and I led the way, stepping into the murky water. But I miscalculated the depth and tumbled in, getting wet up to my waist. I skinned my knee but managed to keep my shoes dry. Retreating, we chose the prudent course, walking along the footpath towards the intersection. We crossed there, stepping in knee-deep water in front of buses and cars forced to slow down.
The traffic barely crawled. Making it only to Karwan Bazaar by 11:30 p.m., it became clear it would be faster to walk to my home in Nakhalpara. On the way, I spied stalled buses and cars being pushed by boys and men. Near Bijoy Shoroni, the footpath was again flooded. I stepped gingerly into the water, remembering that not so long ago there were uncovered manholes in the vicinity. I would read later that at least three people fell into manholes that night. When I went to bed, past midnight, I was thankful that my apartment was above water. Thousands of others, with water above their floors, are of course not so lucky.
The monsoons have only begun. What will the rest of the season be like for the hapless citizens of Dhaka?
Yet another Bond movie has come out, this time a remake of Casino Royale. Ian Fleming is long dead, but his creation, the debonair James Bond, Agent 007, keeps popping up in a new face. Bond's grip on the male psyche is tenacious. And why not? He zips to exotic locales and outwits vicious enemies while fingering cool gadgets and bedding impossibly hot women.
But Bangladeshi teenagers are not entirely deprived of heroes with cachet like Bond. In cheap newsprint, for a fraction of the price of a ticket at Basundhara where they screen Casino Royale, Bangla readers can enter the world of our very own super spy. In flesh and blood a pukka Bangali, he scales mountains, harpoons criminals undersea, and brings to justice crime lords from Hong Kong to New York.
He is of course Masud Rana, Agent MR-9.
For forty years he has appeared in novels written by Qazi Anwar Husain and published by his Sheba Prokashoni. The crowds swarming the Sheba stall at the Ekushey Book Fair confirm that Masud Rana still has a loyal following.
Each Rana paperback opens with these lines: "An untameable daredevil spy of Bangladesh Counter Intelligence. On secret missions he travels the globe. Varied is his life. Mysterious and strange are his movements. His heart, a beautiful mix of gentle and tough. Single. He attracts, but refuses to get snared. Wherever he encounters injustice, oppression, and wrong, he fights back. Every step he takes is shadowed by danger, fear, and the risk of death. Come, let us acquaint ourselves with this daring, always hip young man. In a flash, he will lift us out of the monotony of a mundane life to an awesome world of our dreams. You are invited. Thank you."
With the books selling at 32-62 Takas, undoubtedly among the cheapest fiction titles in Bangladesh, Sheba is still churning them out. Their 2007 catalogue lists 372 Rana titles. You can buy used copies at 10-15 Takas at footpath booksellers from Paltan to Nilkhet.
The morning I flew into Dhaka after a 10-hour flight from London, rain drenched me as I dragged my bags outside the airport gates. Within hours, the rain would burst into a three-day storm, with wind howling through tree branches and sheets of water that I thought would never end. Though it would shut me in for my first days here, I must confess: I had long missed this kind of rain.
A cyclone had hit the southern coast and the news was grim. More than a thousand fishermen were lost at sea, and bloated bodies began to float towards the coast. The official death toll hovered near a hundred before the news about the storm largely disappeared from the media. I remember a time when such storms would inspire a storm of human activity, as people mobilized for rescue and relief. What happened to that sort of response. Has the country simply become weary of disasters? Are people just focused on their own lives?
Two cities, separated by 21 hours of driving and stops in Atlanta and Cincinnati. What comes to your mind when you think of New Orleans? Perhaps jazz and jambalaya. What could you remember of Detroit? Cars and the rhythms of Motown, maybe? Two majority black, chocolate cities. One's a place tourists used to flock to, the other one where tourists go by accident.
One city displays fresh, raw wounds. The other the scars of slow bloodletting. Though neither is ready to accept death, a pall hangs over both.
On a hazy, humid Saturday afternoon in Detroit, I was lunching with my friend Karen who works as a librarian in a city school. This summer she attended the American Library Association's conference in New Orleans. The librarians held it there as an act of solidarity.
On my road trip I had stopped in New Orleans just a week earlier. So we compared notes. Karen didn't make it beyond downtown and the French Quarter, while I had a full tour from old friend Kalamu ya Salaam: the 7th, 8th, and 9th wards, St Bernard Parish, New Orleans East and Uptown. And I took time to visit a corner of the Quarter and walk around Audubon Park.
To Karen I described the neighborhoods where I saw streets and blocks of abandoned houses. On some blocks, I saw a handful of people rebuilding while the rest of the houses were standing vacant.
Karen and I nodded in a moment of recognition. We both know blocks like this — in the east side of Detroit. The mind tries to relate what the eyes see to what memory remembers. And when I was in New Orleans, it immediately reminded me of Detroit. The destruction was more raw and fresh, more widespread and just one year old, but in time, the city could look like parts of Detroit.
New Orleans collapsed under the blow of hurricane Katrina. Detroit's death agonies were slower and framed by two major disasters: the 1967 riots and the collapse of the auto industry in the early 80s. In between came white flight, disinvestment by corporate money, organized neglect after the city had elected its first black administration in the early 70s.
The great North American road trip is officially over. I started in San Francisco on August 1 and finished in Cincinnati on September 7: thirty-eight days and 7132 miles, passing through some 20 American states and one Canadian province. Someone back in Oakland, listening to me describe my planned stops, had said, oh you're doing a W with a flair. And indeed, though it's a W in the hand of a child, quite zigzaggy, it was a W with a looped flair at the end. Here's photos from the climb up to the northernmost point and the flair.
On a hazy, drizzly Sunday morning, August 27, I crossed the Ambassador Bridge from Detroit into Canada. The Canadian border official asked me why I was so far from California. I said I was traveling across the continent, visiting friends and family, working on a novel. He wanted to know where I had stopped last and where I was headed after Canada. I told him, Detroit, then down to Rochester in New York state. "And all these people support what you're doing?" I assured him they did. He returned me my papers and wished me a safe trip. I was relieved. In present times, relaxed border crossings are no certainty, especially folks like us burdened with names like mine.
I've crossed the continent. I went down to the Gulfcoast and drove through the South, into the Midwest, into Canada, and then across the Adirondacks to New England. Right now, I'm resting in Natick, Mass. I've been working on a post about my visit to New Orleans, but until it's done, here are some more photos.
Interstate 10 from Houston to New Orleans passed through 20 miles of the Henderson swamp. A year ago, this highway was the evacuation route from the Gulfcoast for those headed towards Texas.
Here's photos from the trip, driving from Green River, Utah through Oklahoma south towards Texas. I went above 10,000 feet in Colorado down to the flat flat lands of eastern Colorado and Kansas.
Just east of Green River, Utah, I passed by these majestic cliffs that looked like heavily-fortified castles.
As I drove south through Oklahoma City, I saw the billboard again. On a stark black background, the message in white letters said "I love you" in English, Spanish, and Chinese. It was signed "God."
Last month when I'd also been passing through here during a family reunion, I'd seen the same billboard. And another one that said, "One nation under me." It too was signed "God."
Now Oklahoma is squarely in the middle of America's Bible Belt. When I lived in Tulsa in 1972, I remember you couldn't walk far without running into a church. One I remember had orange flames of hell painted outside, no doubt warning you what lay in store if you strayed or was some sort of heathen.
Why does God need billboards in such a place?
And did he go to Clear Channel or CBS or whoever owns the billboards, turn in an application, a design of his own choice, and submit a rental fee? Did he have to show a bank account or a credit card? Was he asked for his SSN? Did he pay month to month or for eternity?
While he was filling out the forms, did he pause to consider alternative means of getting his message across, such as skywriting? But that would have required him to hire pilots and rent airplanes, and again, there would be pesky forms to fill out. He'd probably need clearance from Homeland Security.
Would it not have been simpler for God to simply shape some cumulus clouds into letters and words? And if he'd done that, wouldn't people have marveled at it and found it more believable?
I kept seeing the signs. On Overland Avenue in L.A. near where I stopped to visit my sister and nephew, as I walked each morning towards Venice Boulevard to get my morning coffee, I passed three small houses with signs. Psychic. Readings by Maria. Palm readings. Tarot cards. During earlier visits, I'd passed by those houses many times, but this time a part of me wondered, "Should I enter one of these houses — just for the lark of it?
I'm a hardcore skeptic, finding it hard to believe that lines in your hands or a random pick of cards from a deck can tell anything about your life.
The skeptic in me prevailed. I kept walking.
In Boulder I would make a different choice.