I am back in the States after a three and one-half month tour of Bangladesh. Living in Bangladesh really puts things in perspective, and, once I've gotten over this incredible jet lag, I plan to review some of my experiences and make some notes here. For now, though, everything is turkey and American football and (what I'm most thankful for) air-conditioning.
I'm not sure what I'll be doing, though I have received one offer for some work. I'll try to get back to writing my brilliant analysis of issues that I don't really understand, so look forward to that. In the meantime, hang in there and give thanks if you live somewhere where you can speak out about politics without fear of being murdered and you can brush your teeth with water from the tap.
Yesterday, as I was leaving the cyber cafe, I heard the familiar sounds of a political demonstration approaching. I waited until the crowd of about 50 had passed to walk to the house. The demonstrators are not upset with me - they probably don't even know I'm here. But, I didn't know what they were upset about, and I didn't want to provide any opporunity targets for them. I know this sounds paranoid, but these are the instructions I received from the security officers here. And believe me, they're not paranoid.
When I got to the house, I was greeted by a group of policemen. Policemen here come in a couple of varieties. First, there are the city cops. These are men with blue or tan uniforms, ammo belts, and old military rifles. They mostly beat rickshaw pullers so far as I can tell. Then there is RAB - the Rapid Action Battalion. This is a recent creation of the Bangladesh National Party (currently in power) and consists of younger men with black SWAT looking uniforms and shiny new pistol-grip AK-47's. Reading the Bangladeshi paper one will quickly learn that there are daily deaths due to "crossfire" involving RAB officers. Some of the local children explained to me that "crossfire" means the officer says "run" then shoots you. I obviously cannot confirm this, but it seems to be a pretty well accepted fact by everyone I've talked to. The men I saw were all blue uniformed city cops.
I assumed that the large police presence on the street was due to the political demonstration. When I went in for lunch, though, I learned that there had been another bombing by the radical fundamentalist group JMB. Actually, there were several bombings yesterday in Bangladesh - one targeting a BNP man in Jessore, and a series of 6 bombs detonated in Chuadanga. The three separate incidents appear to be unrelated.
The violence here is pretty pervasive, but no one seems to take it very seriously. The daily papers almost always have a short report about a small scale bombing or assassination here or there, but only the most sensational explosions or largest caches make the front page. Outside of Bangladesh, I assume no one really knows that anything is happening at all.
So far, there have been serious bombings about every two weeks or so since I've been here. Only one - the August 17th series of 500 bombs - was considered important enough to warrant scrutiny by our organization. Even then, the word was "oh, it was just some firecrackers; no big deal. Besides, we have no evidence that they were targeting Americans."
This morning I turned on BBC World News to find out what else is going on in the world and saw that a car bomb killed some people in Pakistan. The bomb, it seems, was detonated in an area frequnted by foreigners. Sometimes I worry about what it's going to take for my organization to take seriously the threat of terrorist violence here. So far foreigners have not been targets of attack here, but then again there are not very many of us. Most of the people we meet have never even met someone from the West. And, let's be honest, these groups may not be directly targeting Westerers, but they're not exactly neutral on the issue.
The rest of the afternoon went by relatively uneventfully. We did a little exploring, but the only thing interesting we found was a rickshaw with a cute little mural of Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein praying together. Charming.
This morning I got up and headed out to run some errands. First on my list was the post office. People in Bangladesh do not understand the concepts of personal space, privacy, or queue. So, standing at the post office window, one is usually surrounded by a group of men pushing up against one and looking through all of one's things - being a foreigner amplifies all of this by a power of 10. Today I had to mail a stool sample, so the joke was on them.
I handed my cylandrical package to the ancient fellow behind the window who inspected the stange writing on the outside, then shook the package next to his ear. As often as people here are mailing or otherwise transporting bombs these days, it seemed like a natural thing to do. He then asked me to unscrew the lid and show him the contents, which I did. I told him, upon request, that the jars inside were full of "medical." He looked puzzled and said, "oshud?" (medicine) to which I thought it best to agree. The old man started to open one of the jars which caused me to mutter, "oh, I wouldn't do that..." I had this awful vision of the man sampling the "medicine" to make sure it isn't contraband of some sort. Luckily, he changed his mind about halfway through opening the jar and put it back in the package. It was explained to me that I need to repackage my stool and sew the cylinder up in some fabric before he will agree to send it - brown paper will not do.
I left the post office with a group of men following about 4 inches behind me, such that when I stopped to open the door, they proceded to run into my back. When I got out of the post office, I heard a young man calling, "hello! hello!" and I made the mistake of turning around. I suddenly found myself in the street with a young man of about 22 standing 2 inches away from my face asking "what is your country?" I told him America, but that my wife and I are here to teach English. 60-70% of Bangladeshis think that we are spies (would that life were so interesting), 20% know that we are just teachers, and 10% don't really care one way or the other, but only know that we should give them some money. This young man probably hasn't decided what he thinks we really do, but he's pretty sure that we can help him get a visa for [insert name of country] (in this case, Ireland, though in the past it's been England, Australia, and, of course, the U.S.).
This young man, in true Bangladeshi style, immediately asked for my phone number and address so that we could be best friends. I explained that I will not give him any information (bio data, they call it) because I do not know him. To this, he simply smiled and assured me that he is a nice man who only wants to be best friends. This is a frustrating scenario, if a regular one, but not as difficult as when the cab driver refuses to stop until you give him your mobile number and address because you are "best friends" now.
My new friend was kind enough to walk me to the pharmacy where I needed to buy some couph syrup. There I gathered a new crowd of men who looked through my pocket notebook, tried to carry my box of stool for me, and, for the most part, stood inches away staring at me. My transaction completed, I explained to my friend that I was very busy and had to go. That I could not go with him to run his errands, that I would not give him my phone number, and that I would not give him my address. He was disappointed, but I have no doubt that I will see him again.
pt. 1
All acts of terrorism dating back to at least the 1980's were perpetrated by a secret cabal of U.S.-Israeli-British "sabotage organizations" in order to "make muslims look bad" and are part of a large scale "war on Islam" that really makes the author angry and it should me, too.
Things I've done in the past week:
1.) Been pulled in front of a moving train by a reckless rickshaw puller.
2.) Looked like I just stepped out of a coal mine after travelling to Dhaka.
3.) Seen a rickshaw featuring a mural glorifying Osama bin Laden.
4.) Watched a chicken eat out of an open sewer.
5.) Seen a man standing up to his knees in an open sewer.
6.) Been sick.
7.) Listened to The Stooges and The Who in my room.
8.) Wished I had more music.
9.) Sweated.
10.) Thought about what I took for granted back home.
"...it means this War was never political at all, the politics was all theatre, all just to keep the people distracted...by a conspiracy between human beings and techniques, by something that needed the energy-burst of war, crying "money be damned, the very life of [insert name of Nation] is at stake," but meaning, most likely, dawn is nearly here, I need my night’s blood, my funding, funding, aah more, more. The real crises were crises of allocation and priority, not among firms - it was only staged to look that way - but among the different Technologies, Plastics, Electronics, Aircraft, and their needs which are understood only by the ruling elite..."
Thomas Pynchon, Gravity's Rainbow
