Desicritics Author: Andrew Morris

Bangladesh Diary: The Mechanics of Arranged Marriages

Andrew Morris — Sun, 15 Apr 2007 13:29:14 EDT

Dear reader, here's this week's questionnaire.

Delete as appropriate: are you
a) happily married
b) happily divorced
c) happily single
d) unhappily any of the above
e) on the lookout
f) on the rebound
g) unsure
h) none of the above?

Whatever your current position, what we back home all no doubt share, whatever generation we belong to, is the unquestioning conviction that our choice of life partner was/is purely our own to make, regardless of whether it all ends in fairy tale happilyeverafterness or in tears. So how would you feel if your parents had simply informed you one fine morning that you were to marry someone they had chosen for you?

Let's take a typical example of what happens here. A father, let's call him Miah, sets out in search of a wife for his son. He visits Riazul, an old friend, whose daughter has a similar social and educational level. Together they more or less seal the deal, pending agreement from the couple themselves. Miah's son has a good education, grooming and prospects, so let's disregard for now the fact that his teeth are terrible and he is losing his hair. Riazul's daughter will just have to live with that...

The simplest difference between attitudes to marriage in our two cultures is that we expect to fall in love first and then get married (if at all). The idea of someone choosing for us is pretty inconceivable - surely no one else could possibly know what we wanted. We are simply too jealous of our rights. But here, you are married off to someone and then fall in love. My friend R. patiently explains what is of course obvious to her. "Perhaps the difference is really this - that you are choosing someone for yourself, whereas we are choosing someone for our family." An interesting insight, but at the same time some hurdle. How many of our partners would have passed this stringent family test?

Ever since Plato we have grown up with the clear notion that there is one person out there who is ideal for us - a soul-mate who will make us happy in every way. Every film, advert, and a thousand pop songs encourage this chimera, from our earliest teenage years on. You're the one that I want. And this seems the only way to us. But of course friends here only have to point to the divorce rate in the West as easy proof that all is not always well in the shining land of Love Marriages either.

What's more, I respect and admire the marriages I have seen here - in the majority of cases this whole system seems simply to work. It's just a bit difficult to imagine selling this idea back home...

For a start there's the way our happy couple are introduced to each other here, in a living room at home, under the watchful eye of their entire families. Not much of an icebreaker as situations go - although these days the more daring may ask for at least an evening alone, or perhaps with a discreet chaperone. Either way they have to decide more or less on the basis of this one encounter whether to accept each other for ever.

The questions that might spring to our Western minds don't really apply here. For example, how to know after a single awkward evening whether she will sing tunelessly and gratingly every morning for the next forty years? Whether he will drop his socks on the floor or snore in bed? It's a longer-term investment here - the questions revolve more around security, finance and children - can this person care for us and be solid enough to offer companionship for the rest of our days? But still, it must be quite a tough call to look at this stranger across the table and realise that this is it. A hubby's not for Christmas, he's for life...

On top of this lack of choice, there's the extra burden of perfection placed on the woman. Consider the idea (still common in poor rural areas) of a whole delegation of the bridegroom-to-be's family turning up at the potential bride's house, to be entertained with a lavish meal. The hapless girl is then invited into the room to stand in front of this examining committee. The length of her hair, the way she speaks, the pallor of her complexion, and even the way she walks -all these are fair game for these exacting judges. Somehow I can't imagine my own dear wife, or any other woman I know for that matter, submitting to this sort of inspection, like a prize pumpkin at a country fair...

However, young people's own voices are being heard more these days in Bangladesh - a son or daughter who is very unhappy at the prospect before them can at least make their feelings known. Things are moving quickly in the middle classes and in the cities, and people are even beginning to set more store by Bollywood notions of romance, with love marriages on the increase. And the whole commercialism of February 14th is now taking off in a big way, with Hallmark swinging into action with cutesy cards and balloons every year.

It certainly wasn't always this way: all my female colleagues - mostly the same age as me - tell me they simply had to defer to their fathers' greater judgement. And then, over the years, began the process of sinking slowly into a love comfy as bedroom slippers, and as familiar, solid and undemanding as the furniture in your living room.

But all things change. A look back at the curtain-twitching Britain of the 50s is enough to suggest that attitudes to divorce, single parenthood, sexuality and sex have all changed hugely in these few decades. Will the same revolution happen here after centuries of custom? Will these venerable traditions also disappear, in years to come, under a deluge of Valentine's hearts and love songs? And should this be celebrated or lamented?

Eyes Wide Open and Sleepless in Dhaka

Andrew Morris — Wed, 11 Apr 2007 00:06:44 EDT

insomnia noun habitual sleeplessness; inability to sleep.
DERIVATIVES insomniac noun & adjective
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from Latin, from insomnis 'sleepless,' from in- (expressing negation) + somnus 'sleep.'

So my dictionary informs me. What, did people never have this problem before the 17th century? It's certainly a part of the 21st. And there are times in your correspondent's life where he would win a gold medal at an Insomniacs' Convention.

A typical night goes like this: I fall into bed at about midnight, dog tired. I am already asleep mid-fall, and immediately the darkness swims around me like a silent sea. Bliss for a while. But then it happens. Suddenly, like a bolt of lightning, wakefulness jars me and my eyes are wide open, staring into the glaucous night, taking in the velvety silence of another dead day. A gnawing feeling begins to eat away at me, aided by the usual melancholy clues. It's dark as hell - not even a sliver of light yet.

There may be the silken sound of the azan - in which case I know I'm lucky and have lasted a few hours down in those depths. But as often as not, there is not even that consolation. The minaret is silent, the muezzin sleeps: you're all alone, my friend. My hand fumbles familiarly past obstinate folds of mosquito netting and reaches for the illumination button on my alarm clock. Please God, not again. But the bright numbers have no mercy. Time waits for no man, but it hangs around quite a bit for me. It is still only 2.00 am, and another day in the insomniac's calendar has begun. Only 22 more hours therefore until I sleep. And this state of affairs will last for days, sometimes weeks. Then one fine day, out of the blue (the black?), the curtain lifts, the forgotten sleep patterns I used to know and love take over once again, and I revert to my typical middle-aged habits, the peaceable afternoon snooze, the gentle lulling of easy slumber, and the pure joy of actually being jolted out of sleep by the sound of an alarm clock, as silvery morning light seeps into the room.

***

Doubtless down in the archives of my mind there is something stimulating this. Various websites suggest a whole variety of causes. I try them on for size, but leave them all in the changing room: none of them seems to fit. Wikipedia, for example, offers up the following: "It is often caused by fear, stress, anxiety, medications, herbs, caffeine, depression or sometimes for no apparent reason." I think I'll settle for the latter: I'm not stressed, fearful or anxious. Or at least I don't think I am. The only stress in my life is usually someone blasting their horn behind me as we drive to work. Don't do herbs. Not too much coffee either. Not depressed - actually I'm quite a jolly chap, a little sunbeam most of the time. But it goes on. "An overactive mind or physical pain may also be causes." Aha, now we are getting somewhere: I plead guilty to an overactive mind, but am not sure what to do about it. With fundraising, music and writing there's a lot happening at the moment, all of it exciting. Perhaps the only cure lies in a lobotomy.

The entry concludes "Finding the underlying cause of insomnia is usually necessary to cure it." Oh thanks guys, that's easy then. Anyone know a good therapist? Someone who'll tell me it's all because of an incident with a pineapple when I was thirteen and a half?

But is insomnia entirely a bad thing? In some ways, no. It is, for example, only 4.29 am as I write this, so there's certainly more you can pack into a day if you leave out the sleep part. Besides, it's a good time for writing, this graveyard slot where nothing moves except the breeze through the treetops, and there are no sounds apart from the occasional whistles of chowkidars and the chirruping of early birds.

It doesn't seem to have much of a knock-on effect on my life either. Once I spoke to a doctor about it and she fired off a volley of questions. Work performance affected? Mood swings? Did I do things like walk into doors? No, no and no. She packed me off and told me not to worry. She also reassured me that you can bank hours in which you are deprived of sleep, and reclaim them later. It's a nice thought: if she's right there's going to be a whole week in October in which I don't wake up at all.

But there can be odd instances too when you suddenly realise you need to do something about it. For example, during my Bangla lesson this week where I actually fell asleep during one of my own sentences. In my defence, it was a particularly complex grammatical structure I was trying to manipulate. Still, I hope I caused no offence to my lovely teacher. Or the other day when I took a nap, woke up to see the alarm said 7.00 and went downstairs in a panic, thinking I'd miss the minibus to work. I ate my breakfast, went upstairs for a shave, and then realised it was in fact evening. No, please don't send in the men in white coats - it was an isolated incident, I promise.

A weird enough one, however, to convince me to look again at ways of getting round the problem. Back to the internet. One site offers 41 simple tips, ranging from the screamingly obvious to the downright barmy. Yes, I could try having a massage, drinking warm milk. I could even, at a push, give up coffee. But none of this explains why I sleep like a dead man during other times of the year, despite sipping large cups of purest Italian caffeine.

Another suggestion is "take a warm bath," but I guess first I'd have to buy a bath, so that's out. It goes on: "Wiggle your toes"; "Visualise something boring". Well, wiggling your toes is pretty boring so that's two birds with one stone, but I wiggle away in vain. Alternatively "visualise something peaceful". I try, honestly I try. I think of Japanese raked gardens, of meditation, of serenely smiling statues of the Buddha. But, like a petulant puppy, my mind has scented the open space and scampered off already, disappearing into the distance before I can run after it and put it on a leash. "Smoke yourself to sleep". Sorry? I don't smoke anyway, and I certainly wouldn't want to smoke myself even if I did. "Yawning; counting sheep; facing south not north". All tried and found useless. And then, the final helpful piece of advice reads simply: "Don't think".

If only, my dear readers, if only...

The sole advice I can really offer myself is not to worry about it. Like all things, it comes and goes. It passes. All I can ask is that if you see me falling asleep at a café, on a rickshaw or even at my desk (hope my boss doesn't read this), you have some mercy and do not disturb. You may even want to fish out a blanket and tuck me in the way my mother used to do when I was four: the reassuring hand on my shoulder, the soft voice in the shadowy darkness, the lilting lullaby.

OK, it's now 4.49. Time for bed I think, while it's still crow-black out there. Another try, and with any luck this time I'll wake to see the amber sun hovering, a lozenge of early golden light shimmering on the floor under the window, and the promise of a new day.

On Big and Small Things: Bangladesh From A Continent Away

Andrew Morris — Sat, 6 Jan 2007 10:53:38 EST

Whatever else you can say about Bangladesh, it's a country in which it is impossible not to feel, to reflect or react. To live in Bangladesh is to slowly come to understand the landscape of the self: there you discover your own map and your own borders: the things which delight, horrify, enlighten and move you. Nothing is hidden from view, nothing is sanitised. It's a place which offers up to you the best and the worst that you can be.

All of human life is there on every street. You have no choice but to dive into it, confront it, and realise how connected your story is to each person who comes your way. There is nowhere to hide. Bangladesh forces you into conclusions about what you believe in, who you are, and who you want to be. It is a mirror for the entire human condition, and mirrors neither lie, nor accept lies from you. Once you've looked in this mirror, you can't pretend any longer not to have seen what's there.

Bangladesh can't be switched off, even sitting 5,000 miles away. Oddly enough, I don't even want to switch it off. Living there gives me urgency and purpose, and besides, it makes me write.

Now that I am home on leave, by contrast, I think I've got blogger's block. Truth be told, my life here is just too familiar to give me much to write about. Here a bland and not unpleasant routine dominates my life. I eat a worthy breakfast, I keep moderately fit in the gym. I push and pull rather listlessly at weights, I row on a static machine, while images flicker silently on the plasma screens up on the walls. I'm not really sure why I go there.

On the way home, the streets of Clifton don't shock - they don't cry out for response, as do the streets of Dhaka. We live here on a comfortable island, in which our material needs are provided for, and we are insulated from the sorrow of the world, apart from in the media.

I turn on the TV and am confronted with pictures of Saddam's execution. I turn it off in disgust, I feel angry, ashamed of this country, of this so-called western civilisation to which I belong. I switch off the TV and turn to the radio, hoping to hear a more intelligent analysis. There's a feature on an up-and-coming American senator who is a Muslim, and has chosen to swear his oath on the Qu'ran. In an interview in the States, he is being challenged on air: "Why should we believe you when you say you're not our enemy?" Another senior politician is heard saying, with spectacular irrelevance, to a gathered audience, "Ladies and Gentlemen, you will NEVER find me swearing on the Quran," which he pronounces "Ku-ray-an". The audience roars. The next report speaks of how Tony Blair was in the running for a humanitarian post at the UN after he retires. Someone once said that the day Kissinger won the Nobel Peace Prize represented the death of satire. Or was it irony? Either way it is a death which we are compelled to rewitness each day on the news: death by a thousand cuts.

To cheer myself up, I sit in my favourite chair each day and read books which make me angry and melancholic about the world. I am re-reading Pilger, and his words resonate more than those of any living writer. I feel despair about Palestine, Iraq, dogs which kill children, people who kill people, threats against Iran, so-called democracy in Bangladesh. I think of Madhabi sailing through the air towards the threat of death, and receive news from Bangladesh of another domestic worker killed because she hadn't put enough sugar in her employer's tea. My head fills with tired and stale grief.

This doesn't seem like the me I know. It may not be the me you know. We all have phases. I'll snap out of it. Or maybe I'll just snap. It could be that this is simply the after-effect of a hectic year in Bangladesh full of work and government and responsibility and traffic and photography and music and writing. It may be that I'm just recharging. I've turned into a battery, and I've got close to empty. I try to lift the mood: to shake it off and look on the bright side, to let time take its course and to realise that all moods pass.

And what saves me is this: in those moments when the curtain of cloud parts, I come back again and again to this realisation: I may be a global pessimist but I'm also a local optimist.

I believe in the god of small things. I believe that in the face of the destruction wrought upon us by our criminal leaders and corporate bosses, it is possible to reach out and make human connections. To build tiny bridges of love and truth across great gulfs. I believe in the favours people do for others, the small neighbourly things they do to help friends and strangers alike and keep the world spinning, without which we would descend into hell. It may not be much, but it's all I have to keep me from burying my face in my hands.

Thinking of these small goodnesses brings us back to Bangladesh, my home for 90% of the year. A country of personal tragedies, of self-seeking leaders, corrupt politicians and rapacious businessmen, true, but a place which can be glorious and stimulating as well as maddening and disarming. It's also the place where I have come across more spontaneous acts of kindness and gratuitous acts of hospitality from utter strangers than in any other country on earth. Each one of these acts has proved to me that there is hope. Local hope, in the face of global hopelessness. It's the hope of small bridges.

To Buy Or Not To Buy?

Andrew Morris — Mon, 1 Jan 2007 07:42:53 EST

Happy New Year to all Desicritics readers! It's been great to become part of this online community this year, to hear from you, read your comments, and get to know some of you.

Here are a few cheery thoughts on consumerism and inequality to start off the new year. I sat on the plane bound for Singapore last week, idly flicking through the Duty Free magazine, with its fantasy world bathed in golden light. Here were perfumes whose names and bottle designs alone have consumed the energies of the brightest and best Madison Avenue has to offer. So what was available? Would you prefer Kenzo Amour, whose blurb read: "the bottle itself...is a stylised expression of an abstract bird. It is a symbol of love, the sensuous curves of a woman and the desire to travel"? Or for the rugged male, perhaps Boss Selection, which declared, "It's about striking a note, leaving a mark: distinctive and always present." Bollocks. I would have thought it's about making a profit. But then what would I know? Such perfect examples of consumerism creating a gap which we never knew existed, until we were instructed to notice it, and then of course to fill it.

But wait, there's more. Beyond the standard fare of alcohol, jewellery, watches, wallets and bags, you could buy even more vital daily necessities. There was, for example, a thermometer by Georg Jensen, the famous Danish designer: an elegant but functional piece. Just what you'd need up your butt, I reckon. Reading on, there were ergonomically-designed thermos jugs in beige and olive green ($150) perfect for the coffee-drinking executive whose life had hitherto been blighted by the lack of an ergonomically-designed thermos, and a complete set of essential wine-opening accessories ($209) with which to impress your friends at a dinner party. Unless of course, they also had one, in which case back to scouring the magazine next time you fly...

Best of all though was the item described as Georg Jensen Spin (I jest not): a 'two-armed box" (yours for a mere $67) whose picture revealed it was a matt silver container large enough to hold precisely one key and a cufflink. But never mind such limitations: we were reassured it represented an infinity symbol, which "perfectly counters the stress and intensity of life today". Perhaps I should have bought one for my rickshaw driver.

But the pi�ce de résistance was at Singapore airport itself. There among the green ferns, the subtly lit boutiques, the Japanese garden with its little bridge, the tinkly music, my eyes travelled up the escalator to the sign above the lounge. At the end of a list containing such tempting enticements as "Massage" and "Fully-equipped gym", was a new product: "Oxygen" (complete with a cool, understated "O" logo), at a mere "$15-$23." When they start selling you oxygen surely something has gone a bit awry?

Perhaps the cheaper air is imported from Dhaka and the top-end stuff from Geneva. Either way, a quick calculation suggests that it would take your average Bangladeshi slum dweller approximately a month to earn enough money to buy this amount of air.

Go figure.

A Tale Of Three Christmases

Andrew Morris — Thu, 21 Dec 2006 00:05:50 EST

Close your eyes for a moment and conjure up the most traditional Christmas scene you can imagine. Perhaps you see tall huddled houses, each with its rich icing of snow. Flickering lamps in windows providing a hearty glow. A picturesque old town square, with rosy-cheeked children, bundled into in winter clothes, hurling snowballs. Bespectacled old men and women tottering by, benevolent smiles on their lips. Skaters whizzing past and falling with gales of laughter to the ground. A perfectly-formed snowman, complete with carrot nose and eyes of coal. And above all a sky of indigo, with polished stars.

If these scenes correspond to your actual experience, count yourself lucky. I grew up, like all the children around me in Wales, with these scenes imprinted on my mind, but it never really occurred to me as a young boy to ask why I never saw anything like this in my own town. Sure, we got snow on rare occasions, but usually the salty sea air saw to that before we could build up much of an armoury of snowballs. The round missiles I pelted towards my brother's head would more often than not break up in mid-flight and flutter harmlessly to the ground. Meanwhile, our feeble attempts at snowmen often melted in a single weak-sunned afternoon. No, the place portrayed in the Christmas cards was another country.

It was only when I arrived in Prague as a teacher many years later that I suddenly realised what had happened. Our entire range of images, in fact the entire iconography of Christmas, had been lifted wholesale from central Europe, while no-one was looking. Here at last were those very scenes I had gazed at throughout my childhood. To wander around this exquisite old city in December was to step into a magic Christmas card, to be transported to the neverland promised in all those colourful tableaux.

Christmas starts early in the Czech Republic. On St. Barbara's Day (December 4th), a cherry tree is taken inside the kitchen and put into water. The branch then bursts into bloom during the Christmas season. This is considered good luck, and if the girl tending it is of age and not married and the branch blooms exactly on Christmas Eve, she will find a good man and marry him within a year. I'm not sure if my girlfriend at the time (who is now, I am happy to say, my wife) found a cherry tree. If she did, it must have been a slow-bloomer: she got me anyway, lucky girl, but not till many years later.

But the big day for children in that part of the world is the feast day of Sv. Mikulas (St. Nicholas/Santa Claus) on December 6th. On that day, Sv. Mikulas walks around in his long red robe, accompanied by an angel holding a large book and a quill pen, followed close behind by a devil rattling large chains. Sv. Mikulas asks the children if they have been good during the whole year. The angel writes down their answers in the book. A good child has to sing a song or recite something for Sv. Mikulas. A naughty child is told they could be put into the devil's sack and taken to hell. (Ah, the ruses we dream up to keep unruly kids under control...).

If you've been good you can expect candy, nuts, fruit and small gifts in your shoes. If, on the other hand, you've been a pain, expect potatoes, rocks, or lumps of coal. The tradition is that most children get at least one rock, as no child is perfect. Obviously they never met me.

So the moral is: if you're good you have to walk round with fruit, nuts and candy in your shoes, whereas if you're bad you get a potato or a rock to throw at someone? I know which option I'd have chosen as a boy.

In the run-up to Christmas Day in Prague, the city comes alive. Winter markets where you can sip mulled wine by candlelight, stamping your feet to fight off the cold, and eat sandwiches slathered with lard and raw onions. (I can tell you're tempted.) You open your presents on Christmas Eve, and then head for an atmospheric Midnight Mass.

At lunchtime on Christmas Day, the traditional meal is carp and potato salad. Back then, we bought ours from a market, but in most families the carp is kept fresh in the bath in the days up to the meal, which must make taking a bath a slippery experience. I don't think the potato salad is kept there too, but I may be wrong.

And all the while, the snow falls softly to the ground on all the cobbled streets around, banking up against the church doors, muffling the footsteps of the passers-by hurrying through the silent, dreamy city.

Quite a contrast, then, from the Christmases I looked forward to so much as a boy. The excitement always began when we were allowed to write letters to Santa Claus, asking for presents. I found one of mine the other day, asking in 6-year-old handwriting marginally more legible than mine is today, for a sundry assortment of toys, but ending with the coda: "PS. Lots of sweets." Depressing to see that in almost forty years I've changed so little in my culinary tastes. We would receive an Advent Calendar on December 1st with one little chocolate hidden behind each of the 31 miniature doors. The idea was to open one door per day and reward yourself with the treat tucked away inside. I think my record was to reach December 6th.

I can't remember quite when I stopped believing in Santa Claus (was I 33? 34?), but back then the arrival of this jolly figure at parties, complete with his sack of presents, was always a joy. If we were really lucky, there might even be a trip to London to one of the famous toyshops such as Hamleys, where you could go into Santa's Grotto and tell him about all the presents you wanted, sitting on his knee. Yes, I know what you're thinking, but in those days it was allowed.

Around the same time, the TV programmes would take on a more festive feel. You could hear the sound of carols in the shops and the warm tones of the Salvation Army brass band in the market place. Being Welsh, we were also inspired to be musical ourselves of course. I remember one particularly fine year when, having newly discovered the clarinet, I teamed up with two other boys on trumpets and we went round the neighbourhood playing carols. We thought we were quite excellent, and yet our diabolical parping probably drove at least one resident insane. I blame the winter air which rendered our instruments out of tune. These days we'd probably be sued on account of the emotional distress caused by our merrymaking.

Christmas cards would be pouring in by now: there was the family ritual of sending cards to all our relatives - sitting around writing out envelopes from my mother's well-thumbed old address book, and of course the tradition of decorating the stairs with tinsel and setting up Christmas tree with fragile coloured baubles. As the big day approached, we'd leave out a mince pie and a nip of whisky for Santa, then begin the impossible task of getting to sleep. The slightest creak on the stairs of my parents heading for bed - towards midnight - would be met by the bundle of energy that was your correspondent aged eight shouting "Is he here yet?"

May I take now this public opportunity to apologise to my dear parents for terrorising them in this way?

And then of course Christmas Day itself. Tearing open the wrapping on weird and wonderful presents. Particular favourite memories for me all these years later remain a spectacularly useless game in which robots boxed each other's heads off, and a ruler shaped like a big foot, but all these were eclipsed by my first golden saxophone a few years later, which must have delighted the entire street.

There would be visits from neighbours and family all day. One set of neighbours gave me a bar of soap (not the same one) every year for about ten years. Was this a hint? The soap was put in the same drawer as the strangely-coloured socks, unwearable ties and the other soaps. If I'd been Richard Branson, I'd have started a post-Christmas bazaar. But alas, I was destined to be a teacher, not a billionaire, and these goldmines lay gathering dust in my bedside drawer.

But amongst those mundane gifts, what gems there were too: the coloured football annuals, the magical adventure books, and let's not forget the sweets.

Then on with the best clothes, for the church service. The religious element never really meant much at that age. Perhaps I'd been scarred by the experience of having to play third shepherd as an infant. Standing there in my dressing gown with a makeshift headdress, terrified I'd forget my line. (I had to exclaim 'Lo!' at a key moment, imbuing it with lots of feeling). In the end, the service was for me more about trying (and failing) to create harmonies for all those familiar carols. I did hit a few notes previously uncharted by western musicologists, but otherwise it was not a great success.

In food terms, the highlight was the traditional late lunch of chicken or turkey with all the trimmings, ravenously wolfed down, except Brussels sprouts which I was and remain convinced are a culinary form of divine punishment. An evening full of our favourite comedy programmes on TV, and then the tremendous rush would begin to die down, with, back in those days, at least three days before you could race to the shops to spend your money, your record and book tokens. Today, half the shops are of course open the next day, if not on Christmas Day itself.

Which leads to my last Yuletide tale: probably the least commercial I've ever experienced. We were working years later in Eritrea, at a school in a remote valley four hours on foot from the nearest town. No jingles, adverts or cards in sight: although I suppose the camels pulled by nomads did bring to mind the three wise men. Undeterred, we managed to catch the choir of Kings College singing their carols on the radio, and our students helped us create a makeshift tree of acacia branches covered in coloured bits of cardboard box, carefully cut into seasonal shapes: stars and angels. A sad spectacle, but we were proud of it.

In the capital, Asmara, we might have eaten spicy chicken and drunk homemade beer, and attended a service at the Italian-built cathedral on the main avenue, but there in our valley we had to create our own festive spirit, in the glaring sunshine. For food, we had only goat and popcorn, washed down with strong freshly-brewed coffee and locally made wine. Not the most traditional meal I grant you, but one we relished nevertheless, having eaten only lentils virtually every other day of the year. A surprise package from home arrived at the last minute, and contained a whole bag of toffees. We solemnly ate one of these each per day, making them last a good 15 days this time. So in one sense at least I had progressed slightly in the long journey from my childhood into middle age.

As evening fell that festival day and the frogs began their twilight chorus round the lake, we wished each other a merry Christmas and vowed never to take the season for granted again. But at the same time, there in our darkening valley in the moonlight, far from the baubles and the jingles, we realised how simple an occasion it can be. A time to understand what really matters: taking part in celebration with people you love. It's an experience shared in a multitude of different ways by every culture the world over.

Bangladesh Diary: A Weekend Away (Part Two)

Andrew Morris — Sun, 17 Dec 2006 07:10:40 EST

Apologies. Didn't mean to leave you feeling sorry for me. What I should have added is that the sudden descent of sadness (as well as the surge of elation) on the road is always fleeting and evanescent. But then, you knew that all along.

I somehow manage to shake off the early gloom despite a melancholy breakfast of rubbery fried eggs, sweetened bread (not recommended) and rather bitter brown coffee. I've had better, but by the time I am out on the dusty road into town, rolling along in the morning breeze, my spirits are as high as crows again.

Today will be a day full of house visits (one which will see me return home exhausted at 10.30pm). Bangladesh is, after all, about people. The countryside can be stunning but there isn't a whole lot to look at in the towns - the architecture is pretty undistinguished, there is concrete everywhere and the roads are honking and congested. The true wealth of the country lies in its incredible welcomes, its friendliness, and its humanity. So if you don't want to get to know the people, you'd perhaps be better off in Bangkok. Or Basingstoke.

The rickshaw hits the old town of Rajshahi and we ply down narrow winding streets. The rollers on shop fronts clatter as they are raised to greet the morning. The heat is already cranking up now. In a dingy barber's shop a man patiently raises his arm while the barber shaves his armpit. A woman in a small shack at the roadside brews some tea for the men squatting around. There are loud voices and laughter.

My first port of call is J, who was our cook when we lived here. She lives in the Mission, with its tidy little church and its tended lawns. Being Christian, the people call out Namaskar, a greeting they share with Hindus and Buddhists as an alternative to Salaam aleikum. Another one of Bangladesh's minorities, the Santali people were blessed (cursed?) by the early arrival of missionaries, and have ever since been a tiny Christian community, a small island in this religious ocean, their high voices ringing out as they sing their Sunday hymns each week.

J, who is divorced, lives with her family in a small neat compound, four rooms surrounding a little yard. There are bales of hay, earthenware cooking pots, a flyblown fluorescent light. The sun is warm on my face and arms as we sit and talk. She is an outstanding cook, but at the moment is once again out of work as the Swiss natural resources expert she worked for has now moved on. She keeps an eye out for the next foreigners to move in - I promise to look out for her in Dhaka too. Will she mind moving away from this family hearth? "Not at all - first you have to earn, then you can enjoy your family..."

A duty call follows. When we lived here in the 90s, one of our team was H. An elderly, wiry man with penetrating eyes, he at first captivated us with his idiosyncratic way of speaking - cryptic pronouncements phrased in strange dated English. He would begin each new conversation with, "A thought occurs to me. May I express it?" and would signal his assent each time by gravely intoning "Exactly so." Despite auspicious beginnings, though, our relationship rolled gently downhill over the two years: differences of opinion about education, an inability on his part to accept the contributions of his younger colleagues, and an inability on our part to pass over these bright youngsters. No doubt in his eyes we were not deferential enough to his obvious seniority. And so we left on rather unsatisfactory terms. Nothing was ever said, but it was clear there were bruises on both sides.

I am therefore very surprised to learn that this conservative, traditional man has now become the Principal of the most important college in Rajshahi. On an impulse, I decide to pay him a visit and try and leave on better terms than six years ago. Perhaps what I am seeking is closure? I pop my head round the door, and there he is, at his big desk with requisite gold box of tissues and plastic pen holder, surrounded by visiting dignitaries, and looking supremely at home. Like all important officials here, he has a newspaper open in front of him and a towel draped over the back of his chair. Khaleda Zia smiles benignly down from her picture high above, as she does from every office wall in the country. If H is at all displeased to see me, he hides it remarkably well. There is a momentary questioning flicker in his eyes, but then he leaps up to greet me.

In the animated conversation that follows I have just enough time to offer a quiet explanation for my visit, and then an apology that we left things in that way. I receive another one of his piercing stares, followed by the merest suggestion of an acknowledging smile, before his attention is distracted by a hundred papers in need of signing, and a dozen hovering people wanting a word. A few minutes later we sweep out into the campus, to show the visitors around. He guides my arm gently as we walk, the students parting deferentially in front of us and saluting him. On the way, I am impressed by the relaxed way in which he speaks to people, from staff to students, and the easy way in which they smile in his presence. This is not always the way with those in authority here, and I am once again forced to rethink my perceptions of this enigmatic man.

The campus itself is from the 1860s - the same decade as my house back in Clifton, in the heyday of Empire. Still elegant and spacious, it is grand from the outside, with wide lawns and delicately wrought wooden lattice work on the balconies. Inside, though, in the dimly-lit pale blue corridors there is more of a musty atmosphere, and rotting buff files teeter in dust-filled rooms. Clerks beaver away in the gloom. Some of them look like they too arrived in the 1860s and simply forgot to leave. Or perhaps I am merely seeing ghosts.

Soon it is time to go. I feel relieved that H has been quite gracious, and it seems we are back on good terms. He asks me to sign his visitors' book, so I wait my turn after the moustachioed and rather Pompous Man next to me. PM takes up his pen and begins to write a florid and lengthy message. Over his shoulder I glimpse the words 'utmost effort and sincerity', 'left an indelible stamp on me', 'an inestimable privilege', 'sagacious service to the nation'. Dickens clearly lives on in this small corner of Rajshahi. Then, for the benefit of everyone sitting around, he proceeds to read his message out, in a booming voice. He is obviously well pleased with his penmanship.

For my part I write a more personal message, about how pleased I am to rekindle this friendship, and how relieved I am to be able to leave with a peaceful mind. H reads it intently and then nods in grave silence, his eyes once more meeting and searching mine for a moment. There is a brief unspoken acknowledgement. Not to be outdone though, Pompous Man takes the book off H. and then boomingly proceeds to read out my message too. I am mortified, but not to worry, PM soon gets tired of my inferior scribbling, and skips the personal part at the end. Instead he decides to read out his own again. No one is listening any more, but his voice sails through the room, making the curtains billow and the terrified geckoes scurry.

More visits follow all day - for each one I buy sweets, and then am force-fed copiously as we sit and talk about old friends and old times, until it is at last nightfall, and I heave my body, like a ball and chain, back to my hotel. I can face no more food for a week at least.

The fun over, I am up once again with the sunrise, and off to the bus station for the hurtling journey back to what is now my home, across the diaphanous green countryside towards the beckoning capital.

A Weekend Away: Part One

Bangladesh Diary: A Weekend Away (Part One)

Andrew Morris — Mon, 11 Dec 2006 04:58:39 EST

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.

Bangladesh Diary: In This World

Andrew Morris — Tue, 5 Dec 2006 09:39:29 EST

I have spent the morning in one of many hundreds of slum areas dotted around Dhaka, in the company of my intense and socially committed friend, R, and two Swedish journalists. R. has connections with NGOs and charities who deal with street children, and he moves with ease and grace amongst these urban poor, who greet him as 'brother' and lightly touch his arm as they speak.

We are in the area of the main railway station at Komolapur. As we approach, there are trucks parked on either side of the road, their colourful painted bonnets thrown open to reveal steaming engines. There is the sound of hammer on metal, and a train's whistle in the distance. Alongside the trucks are the houses of some of the destitute street people of Bangladesh - tarpaulin, hessian sacks, stray plastic snapping in the breeze. The ground is covered in a patina of litter, dust and dirt. Our taxi's windscreen is smashed - and thus it is through this glittering spider's web that we look out on this sea of human misery.

But even here, among the destitution and grime, there is no self-pity, simply no time for despair. If there is one adjective to describe this people, it is resilient. Everyone I meet is resourceful and determined. They are also generous and dignified, and we are welcomed as guests with a humbling openness.

Most of the people are unemployed - though some work as rickshaw wallahs, earning less than �1 per day, and often having to give up most of that in rental charges to the rickshaw owners. Others break bricks, smashing away at the unforgiving stone, inhaling red dust. The lucky ones among the young boys are out working in garments factories, leaving the women and the girls to sit in the shade of narrow bamboo houses, washing the babies, or to lean in the doorways, closely watching this strange foreign delegation. The bolder ones call out 'Your country where?' They grin with delight in response to my greeting 'Salaam awaleikum'. Peace be with you.

The scrappy yard in which we first find ourselves is a jumble of old truck parts, dusty wrecked buses, cows idling away the afternoon. A calf nuzzles my knee and I reach down absent-mindedly to pat its head. What are you supposed to do with a calf? Beyond there is a green field of spinach plants, and over there, in the corner, a man crouches down to pee.

But the building which draws our attention above all others is a small corrugated iron shack. Decorated with torn colourful posters advertising mineral water and Sprite, this is the makeshift one-room school.

The kids tumble in on our arrival and sit in huddled rows at the miniature wooden benches, and the bespectacled young teacher sternly puts them through their paces. They chant the Bangla alphabet; they count to ten in English. Their faces catch the sun - a study in light and shade. Their tiny voices form a ragged thin chorus, as of hungry birds. They lean forward - hanging onto every word. Soon after, they play games outside, Simon Says, Touch. It's not much in the way of formal schooling, but here is co-ordination, collaboration, language: luxuries they can't access so easily in the grim daily round of home survival. ides, between this young student and his charges there is a real connection - a sense of commitment which is all too absent in so many schools here. There is just the slightest chance these kids will follow these role models and escape the poverty of their parents. They will not easily let go of this chance.

Bes

Round the corner is another, even bigger slum. We walk over, taking in the occasional moment of lightness as we pass. A queue of people step daintily onto a punt, balancing precariously on the shimmering green water. A couple of girls dressed in brilliant red and white saris head for an end-of-exam celebration at their school, their make-up skilfully applied, their dark eyes catching and holding ours. Some hopeless romantic has written 'I love you' on the grimy windscreen of a dead bus.

But then we are back in the narrow lanes, the bamboo, corrugated and brick houses (in strict ascending order) themselves a sad little league table of poverty. The open sewers flow past. We move from house to house, greeted like visiting kings. Everywhere we stop there is a huddle: bright and curious eyes follow our every move. Faces appear at the window, children gather at the door. The children's faces are beautiful, but they are also knowing, old before their time.

There are babies everywhere. When I was a child I would follow instructions in drawing books to look carefully at a picture and find the ten hidden mice. You could do the same here - can you spot the twenty babies in this picture? Down there in the corner - over there on the table... Every time I move or bring my arms down from taking a picture my elbow bumps gently into some poor child's head.

Inside these houses attempts have been made, as everywhere in the world, to decorate. Coloured bedspreads, torn glossy pictures of film stars, clawing back a sense of home. Here too we meet committed young people who give up their time to teach the children, bringing glimmers of hope in the lifelong struggle to be heard. They give instruction on how to clean your teeth, how to put away whatever money your childhood labours may bring, what the letters of the alphabet look like. It is inspiring to see such unwillingness to give up.

But what other, harder, lessons lie ahead of these old-young kids?

Bangladesh Diary: Laughing Buddha

Andrew Morris — Thu, 30 Nov 2006 00:48:20 EST

His face is a little thinner than last time we met, and his brow a little more furrowed, but there is no mistaking the old Mitoyan. When I lived here eight years ago, I got to know him through my driver, who was a Buddhist, and so began my acquaintance with this jolly and radiant monk, whose eyes disappear into crescent moons when he laughs.

Getting to the temple involves another scuttling ride across town by baby taxi. I'm learning now to lean each way as we screech on three wheels at impossible angles. So this is how speedway must feel, I reason as we jolt along, other vehicles so close it would be possible, if you were truly insane, to reach out and touch them. It's early afternoon and the cars, trucks and rickshaws among which we dart gleam with bright daubs of sun.

I am training my eyes to look again, rather than just see, so that things which have long seemed normal come into focus once more. Here, for example, is a family of four balanced precariously on a motorbike, a miracle of physics, the wife sitting elegantly side-saddle, a shopping bag in one hand and a toddler in the other. Another tiny child straddles the engine, leaning back against his father, looking utterly at home in the turbulent rush.

We pass a man with five bird cages on a long pole. Flashes of turquoise and emerald catch my eye, and then are lost to view, obscured by a crowded double-decker bus, painted in green and red. Over there on the pavement is a man with a tiny drum, and two monkeys on a lead. He beats the drum and the sharp little monkeys dance, their black eyes flashing and curious. A string of political posters flutter on the walls, each party represented by a strangely banal symbol, so as to be recognisable to illiterate voters. The ones I catch sight of are a football, a ladder and a bucket. Underneath the pitiful shade of a dust-laden grey umbrella, a group of women breaks bricks, hammering endlessly, as the red powder rises into the hot air. As ever, the sky up above is punctuated by logos from another world: the tall neon-lit signs advertise Toshiba, Sony and Mitsubishi.

During my forty-minute journey, Mitoyan phones me four times to check my progress. Mobile phones are a godsend for Bangladeshis, for whom communication is everything, and a goldmine no doubt for the corporations who run them. It is as well to phone - forty minutes is a long time in Bangladesh - there may be delays, changes of plan, changes of mind. Anything could happen. Not for nothing is the word Inshallah the first and most important word you must learn here...

He meets me at the agreed spot and we take a rickshaw, an odd sight: a foreigner and a monk rolling serenely by. For once, I am the less-stared at of two people - the onlookers initially baffled and unable to decide who merits more of their attention - the bald orange monk or the blue-eyed hairy-armed foreigner. Final score, (to my amusement): Mitoyan wins hands down.

Once at the temple and school compound I sit in his room, enjoying a cup of weak coffee, and a bowl of delicious roshmallai - a sweet milky pudding, and we laugh at his smart watch and his trendy mobile, buried deep in the folds of his dark orange robe. I take a picture of him speaking into it and this delights him. Now I look like a film star.

I look around the room. There is a sink, some plastic flowers, a poster of a Yamaha motorbike. Over on the other side there is a case full of assorted crockery and, bizarrely, a tennis racquet. A shopping bag full of books bears the legend Lady Diana Department Store, and there, indeed, is a picture of the fairy-tale princess, looking wide-eyed and innocent in those early unknowing years. Above the bed there is a panoramic picture of a monastic convention in Taipei. Mitayan, grinning, challenges me to find him in the crowd. I look in panic at the eight hundred or so monks, all identically bald, all identically clad in saffron. But there, suddenly, he emerges from the crowd, his face serious for once as befits a gathering of such solemnity, and I am able to point him out with some relief.

There is something troubling Mitoyan today though, and soon it emerges that his sister has recently been killed in a car accident, her rickshaw smashed by a careering jeep, one more victim of the lethal roads. I am very gloomy these days, Andrew, and very thankful. He has lost 14 kilos in the last two months. His mother is old, and has no-one left to look after her, apart from a few distant relatives, and sits, bewildered, in her village, drowning in the grief of all mothers who live to see their children die.

After this tragic news, we sit in silence for a while, while the Buddha looks down from a picture on the wall. In fact, Mitoyan and I never actually say much anyway - but there is something calming and laid back about him which makes every encounter something to look forward to. He is one of those rare characters with whom it is enough just to sit, to take in the pearly late afternoon sky and to enjoy the quietness of true companionship.

Before returning home, there is a visit to the Abbot, an imposing man who speaks in accurate and careful singsong English. As we talk of how he needs a teacher in his neat monastery school in the Hill Tracts (what a wonderful job - any takers?) a couple of parents of children at the school come in and prostrate themselves in front of him. They are still there, now on their knees, when we leave five minutes later.

We return for a final cup of tea to Mitoyan's room. Perhaps is appropriate that the evening ends, as usual, with a power cut. He lights a candle on the table and I take in the flickering light, the dancing orange glow, and the last few moments of peace before heading out into the roaring traffic.

Bangladesh Diary: Happy Families

Andrew Morris — Mon, 27 Nov 2006 03:38:20 EST

It is one of those magical Dhaka scenes. We are trundling along in a rickshaw down small and crooked lanes. It is night, and light bulbs glow under each rickshaw - miniature moons suspended in the darkness. A warm breeze blows in our faces. All around the sights of night-time Dhaka back streets crowd in on us. The orange sparks from a welder's torch flare up in a mechanic's shop to our left as the workers crouch round a battered piece of old metal. On our right a group of old bearded men sit discussing life in a homeopath's waiting room, where the brown jars glow dully under the bright strip lighting and the pale yellow walls draw the visitors in, suggesting homeliness and calm.

There is the music of rickshaw bells - the traffic for once a long way away, hidden in the folds of darkness. We pass fabric shops where there are more assistants than customers and CD shops blaring out the latest techno Bhangra music. Women and men emerge from the shadows and slip by almost unnoticed. Occasionally one of them catches sight of this foreigner and a look of momentary surprise travels briefly across their face, before they too are lost to the past.

My friend N and I are talking - one of those long conversations in which we try to discover each other's culture. We have talked before about our different perspectives on arranged marriages, the rituals of death, the joys and perils of childhood. Tonight though we touch on two more of these topics which delight and which contain, for me, the whole point of all this travel and exploration, this journey towards experience.

He tells me how he goes home to visit his family in Rajshahi once a month. He is a college lecturer - a man of knowledge, as we like to say here, a man who commands respect. In fact it surprises me how often I myself am introduced or addressed as learned consultant. To me this conjures up an image of a medieval scholar, candle in hand, poring over a manuscript which threatens to turn to dust in my fingers.

But despite this great erudition, when N visits his mother at home everything changes. There he is no longer a 40-year old pillar of the educational community - he is merely a son. And that brings with it a whole new set of norms and rules. He tells me that if his mother instructs him to come home at 9pm, then he does so. And if he arrives home late he is, quite naturally, reprimanded. I am surprised by this - surely at his stage in life he no longer expects to be rebuked? Why doesn't he tell his mother not to interfere? Why not have a frank exchange of views, clear the air?

Oh no - the answer is simple. So simple it almost pains N to have to spell it out for me. This is impossible, because his mother has spoken. And she deserves better than this, she has earned this infallibility through the years of motherhood. As a consequence, it is surely obvious that she cannot be contradicted.

My mind floods with guilty memories of times when I, like everyone else I know, responded with irritation to my own parents' guidance, back in the days when I thought the world was mine to rule. We prize our freedom back home in the old country. No-one can tell us what to do - that's a lesson we learn in adolescence - and we repeat it so often... And how difficult it would be to return to the submission that is expected here: the automatic deference. We have come too far.

After a while the conversation moves on to another intriguing aspect of family life. It never ceases to amaze me here that 'family members' can travel across the country, turn up unannounced at a relative's home, and expect to be accommodated, fed and watered for up to a month. The thought of turning up for three weeks, suitcase in hand, at an aunt's or cousin's house back home simply doesn't compute. We're not talking about crisis situations here - we're talking about saying: I know, I think I'll call in on Uncle Bob - for a month or so. I can picture all too easily the surprised expression, the awkward moment in the doorway, the pained politeness and the resigned Well I suppose you'll be wanting a cup of tea?

None of that here - no in Bangladesh as a host you put aside all your plans, welcome this visitor from afar and then happily put them up/put up with them for as long as it takes. When I tell my colleagues here of how, back home, we need to arrange these things, we need to call ahead, they are astonished. Even for your family? Yes, I'm afraid so. In fact sometimes especially for your family... Visits for tea are one thing, and it goes without saying that longer visits from parents or siblings would be a matter of course, but that's as far as it goes.

I, in turn, am astonished at the generosity of heart shown here. No doubt people feel inconvenienced from time to time, on the arrival of Great Uncle Faisal. but that does not alter the situation. Family is family, and it's your duty to do the right thing by your guest. There is nothing more to say.

This may change over time of course, Friends and colleagues tell me of their fear, in the age of the mobile phone and surround-sound home entertainment, that the social fabric is being threatened as people carve out their own sense of space and individual life. But in the meantime, people count here, and it shows itself in so many ways.

At home I always prided myself on an ability to remember people's faces - even long after a chance meeting. I remember the waiter who served me in a restaurant once, or the taxi driver who picked me up at a crowded station years ago. Sadly however, this is a talent which goes completely unacknowledged here: because in this place everyone remembers you. People have a gift for noticing other people, and they store your face, seemingly forever, in their remarkable memories.

It is a true indicator of how important people are here to each other - and who knows, perhaps this talent for humanity, the respect for family and openness to receiving relatives are all different facets of the same diamond.

This jewel has, in many other countries, already become a museum piece. In a darkened room, crowds of open-mouthed onlookers surround the glass case, gazing in silence at the spot-lit gem, trying in vain to remember what it once represented.