Bangladesh

… and the way the light fell heavier and heavier as I moved away from Calcutta towards the border until I reached Bangaon in a brooding evening when there was no sky and the darkness that was there for a month, even in the whitest sunlight, all the way to the wet hills of Meghalaya. And the way everything felt different from India and the split fragments of wood underfoot in the bazaar in Khulna, and the calendar crooked on the peeling blue wall of the Hindu trader’s shop with the picture of Krishna and the tea that tasted fresher and cleaner than in India and everyone staring at me.

And the chai-wallah with almond eyes and the softened cheekbones of another part of the world who wouldn’t let me pay, and the darkness. And the spectre outlines of the Chinese fishing nets sagging over the sodden rice fields, and the smudged chimneys of the brick kilns with a tin star-and-crescent on the top of each one. And boats, and boats, and boats.

And the rotting collapsing hotel in Mongla, and the sound from the mosques there - twenty, fifty, a hundred muezzins howling like a pack of wolves, and the way the air buzzed for a moment as the last “la il aha il allaaaaaaaaaaaaaah” faded, then settled slowly back down like an emptied breath. And the way there was so much less noise on the roads than in India because most of the vehicles were cycle-rickshaws so crossing the street was like walking through the ghosts of traffic. And muglai paranthas, golden on the outside and full of fluffy egg, and yellow biriyani before I caught the ship from Khulna. And the smell of old rope, and diesel and grease, and oil-stained wood, and how good the even beat of a boat’s engine felt through the boards, and the black planking and the white water and the pale sky. And the tall man, rising from his ablutions smiling at my terrible Bangla and squeezing the water from his iron-grey beard and saying in the richest, smoothest English, “It is a surprise to see a foreigner here. My name is Kabir…” and the letter in blue ink in an envelope of rough paper with a Bangladesh postmark that still comes twice a year…

And dinner at Mamun’s house with rice and brains with spinach and little river fish, and his mother and sister giggling, and catching the Rocket before dawn and the bouncing planks across the squat barges and the decks greased with dew and the tall youth with the white turban and the proud face and his white robes falling loose over the line of his body. And the river, swelling with the morning and the fields of water hyacinth and the sky opening to an aching hollow and the canoe, rolling over the bow waves, and the line of women in black walking straight-backed on the green bank, and the clamour at the stops, and the men, stripped to the waist with their lunghis twisted up short, bringing the bundles of coconut husks on board and the light shot through with dust. And the one brief ivory glimpse of a river dolphin curving out of the blank water, and the farmer with the bad teeth paddling alongside and smiling at me and stretching out a wiry arm to pass me a banana that tasted unlike any I had eaten before. And the young woman on the boat with the red and orange dress and the sad eyes who was so beautiful that it made my feet curl up inside my shoes, and the way she spoke to no one and leant against the rusting bulwark with the long light against the smoothness of her face. And the old man who kissed his hand after he had shaken mine, and the sun falling over the pale river and the boats like up-turned pickaxes, and in the morning there being no sky and no river and only the black-oiled fishing boats adrift in the empty blue-whiteness.

And the smell of the chickens they brought on board at Hattia Island, bundled in wicker baskets, and the ship moving out over the yellow sea lost under a white sky, and sounding like a farmyard. And the blood-smell of the rust, and the rumble of the engine and feeling I had slipped out of time somehow, and still feeling the darkness, though I had to squint in the light. And the boy who gave me a torch because he had to give me something, and the man who paid for my ride across the river sitting on the rough sacks.

And the long, level countryside, and the wrecked trucks at the bottom of the embankment on the road to Dhaka, and coming in towards the city, and the darkness, and the darkness, and the black factories and the air like milk, and the sun turning red and sharp-cut long before it reached the skyline so it was a smooth hole punched through the murk and it was the colour of the mark on a Hindu lady’s forehead. And darker and darker and into the growling subsidence of the city and how somehow Dhaka wasn’t hell after all, and the fallen red brick walls in the old city, and the narrow gulley of Hindu Street under a tangle of wires and the man making bangles from white sea shells and the crooked road beside the river buried under straw from the fruit crates and the river full of the black outlines of boats skewed at all angles, and good grilled chicken and salad on Topkhana Road. And the train, tilting on the shining tracks as it slipped out of the city in the rain and the jugghi slums beside the track, close enough to lean through the bars and touch, and the water dripping from the crooked tin sheets.

And north and north into the tea gardens and the grey mist and it being cold at night, and never quite understanding the darkness or the strangeness. The bus rattling out of Sylhet in the wet mist past the smoking chimneys in the empty fields running out to lost yellow, to the border. And crossing out of Bangladesh, walking up into India in the wet gloom, leaving the darkness behind me, leaving the flat, dark, warm-hearted land, fallen a little out of time, under a vast white sky…

© Tim Hannigan 2008