Bangladesh Diary: A Weekend Away (Part One)

I am feeling particularly adventurous today. Up with the dawn and off to the bus station. It's a national holiday on Sunday, giving us a long weekend, and I have decided to revisit Rajshahi, where we first lived. The air is fresh this early morning, and I am carrying my weekend things in a small bag. Surely this, at last, is proof of my integration. Only outsiders carry big bags, I have decided. Once, in Africa, a passing nomad looked at the sizeable briefcase I carried to class and asked if I was going away for a month. But not any more, oh no.

I arrive at the ticket office in good time to catch the little feeder bus out to the station on the outskirts. There are lots of people there. They all have small bags. The shuttle bus comes along and I hop nimbly on. Good grief, I am pleased with myself - here I am leaping on and off local buses in the sunrise, with my small bag. If only you folks reading this could all see me.

It is only when I reach the bus station itself that the clerk looks at my ticket and informs me calmly that I have hopped on the wrong shuttle bus and am on the opposite side of town from where I ought to be.

Never fear, there are still forty-five minutes to go, still time to counteract this, ahem, minor setback. I jump into a taxi and ask the driver how long it would take to get to the other station. 'Forty-five minutes. On a good day'. For once I am actually urging the driver to drive faster. He, in turn, needs no further encouragement, and so we hare across town, through impossible gaps, collecting a few scrapes to prove our valour, like notches on a weapon. But he is true to his word, and I arrive at the Green Line office with three minutes to spare. It takes a while for my heart to stop knocking - well after the bus has eased its way on to the open road.

A round man sits down next to me and stretches out a hand. "As we are travelling together, should we not get to know each other?" Suddenly years of painstakingly avoiding travel talk crumble under this simple and benevolent logic, and we chat for a while. The bus eats up the miles, and I settle down among the lime green curtains and wine-coloured velour seats. The call to prayer rings out from the speakers, and floats oddly among the chords of the song in my headphones. To either side, a brilliant green carpet of paddy. Lone farmers thigh-deep in the water: a woman, motionless, holding a cow. We pass a young couple on a motorbike, her arm sinuously round his waist. Cyclists wobble along the village paths, luminous in the silver early mist.

Now and again a bustling township: a melee of rickshaws, watermelon sellers, shouts and the blasts of the horn as the bus battles through. A man lifts a huge and battered tin pot on to his head and begins to walk, spitting a powerful jet of red betel juice onto the ground. Snack wallahs selling samosas and cucumbers shout up to the bus, taking advantage of our momentary stasis. But then we ease beyond them and plunge back into the palm-crowded countryside. Sudden glimpses of purple flowers in a field - the villages blurry in the distance. Above us the skies brighten and expand. I am, for a moment, indescribably content.

Life out here is slower - there are more people sitting, taking things in. But this apparent rural idyll masks a harsh life, under the pitiless sun. A more conservative and devout life too - here there are far more veils and more beards to be seen

The hours pass, and eventually, lulled by sleep, we roll into Rajshahi. It's a laid-back, green and elegant provincial town, dotted with old British buildings. There are hardly any cars and the Padma (known elsewhere as the Ganges) flows by, broad and lazy as the Mississippi.

Getting down from the bus there is no need to head straight for the hotel. I make first for P's house - he was the guard at the college where we worked - bearing gifts of milky sweets. Sitting in his tiny slum, I am fussed over and smiled at, once they have got over their surprise that I am no longer the chubby-cheeked person they knew. "Are you ill?" P. asks with genuine concern. Here of course you are only considered well if your belly bulges. Slim people are worrisome - like ravenous ghosts.

I look around this small room in which three grown people (their 10-year-old daughter I once knew has blossomed into a 16-year old young woman) spend their entire lives. There is evidence all round of the careful systems of managing life in a confined space. Up above there are cooking pots. Bedclothes for the one double bed shared between three (no parental intimacy here) are folded neatly in the dresser. Dog-eared books are stacked up on the table which serves for food, study and storage. For decoration there are a hundred bright little trinkets, and photos, torn from a magazine, of Aysharawya, the beautiful film-star queen of Bollywood. A faded poster of Tower Bridge nestles incongruously next to a gaudy portrayal of Mecca's main square. An old-fashioned square clock on the wall has stopped at 10.30, although we are now early in the afternoon.

P. has not worked in the last few years, and so sits at home, feeling sorry for himself. His long-suffering wife claps her eyes heavenwards when he says to me he will come to Dhaka to see me and find work. "Him? He'll never go anywhere, just you see." By contrast, their daughter has just sat her exams and has a rosier outlook. Maybe she will break free from this corrugated-iron confinement.

Later that day I go to the hotel and catch up on some sleep. I am struck, there on the outskirts, by the absence of something, but I can't work it out at first. Then I realise, there is no sound of hammering. This little corner of Bangladesh, at least, is not a building site, and so I am able to fall into a pleasant late afternoon sleep. Time passes and the sun moves through the room,. It casts angular slabs of light, and, slowly bathing my face, wakes me up.

Into the shower and then to see S - a colleague back when we worked here. She is a large, imposing woman with a bold laugh. Since the birth of her daughter she is now even larger, and walks through these dusty streets like a galleon in full sail, her voice ringing out. I admire her - she takes no crap from anyone - no mean feat for a Bangladeshi woman. However, even she is now facing the daunting challenge of the role laid down for daughters-in-law. But that's for another blog...

We stroll for a while, talking of family and friends, and of life in Bangladesh, and then return to her house. The walls are pale green and scuffed, the furniture set back hard against the walls, as often here, at formal right angles. Her mother comes in bearing a tray of sweets, bananas and apples. Another impressive figure, her teeth stick out independently of each other at improbable angles, but her face is knowing and generous.

It is evening by now, and as we sit the power suddenly fails. I lean back and observe the fleeting shapes in the black room. There are rapid, practised movements and candles are soon mustered, so we remain where we are and talk in the flickering half-light. A gecko scuttles across the wall, feet splayed, past the calendar showing the poet Tagore, and is lost in the gloom.

S. suggests we go and sit on the flat roof instead, as without the fans it is now too hot down here in the dark. So up we go, pull two old metal chairs into place, and enjoy the cooler evening air. But the day is dying, and the darkness moves in on us like a sea. In the distance, frogs have started up their croaking chatter around the pond. S. sits talking, now just a silhouette in the slate-blue light. Then we are just two voices. The brittle stars wink overhead. Finally, there is silence.

I fall into bed that night and sleep untroubled by dreams. When I wake it is sunrise - a liquid orange glow seeping into the room. A new day, but, in the surprising way these things take you when you are on the road, a sudden feeling of overwhelming loneliness.

Continued in Part Two.