Laal Baaq Friends

The Laal Baaq Fort is an island of serenity in a turbulent sea of rickhsaws, smoke, vendors and bustling humanity of old Dhaka. Traveling alone as I am wont to do in a strange place, a young couple invited me to join them under the shade of a tree lined wall. Hesitant at first, I sat down, and did the first thing an Iranian does when meeting strangers, I offered my pistachios.

What followed was a Bengali conversation that took the better part of an hour. I proceeded to do a thing I have been dreaming of doing for a long time. I explained two verses of my favorite poem by Rumi, while speaking Bengali, in a Mughal fort, in the middle of Dhaka. I talked about the reed, how it moaned of separation. The basha that was once a bash in a maat with all bhai and bon, that he was cut away, and now sang the sad ghan for man and mehru alike.

Raju and Taslima, two beautiful young human beings, students like me, in love, “Dua koro,” said Raju with a sheepish grin, pointing to a kindly Taslima, rolling her eyes in a deep blue hijab. She wrote the first few lines from Tagore’s Shonar Tori in my notebook, and gave me light blue glittering pen.

I walked on after the kind of farewell you hand people you have known for a long time. A group of little school girls, dressed in bright pink shalwar kameez, ran up to me, laughing, pointing, shouting “kamon achen?!”. “Bhalo!”, I replied as their faces lit up in astonishment as I threw in an “As’salamu alaykum” for good measure. They ran off, laughing hysterically, radiating waves of happiness, riding on the gentle breeze.

And then there was Mohsen, the young poet who wanted so badly to publish his work, but was too busy with school and kaaj and everything else to find the time. For close to another hour, we sat and talked, my mind feeling itself slowly but surely into a language no one had ever spoken to me five days ago. He turned to his best work, with tremendous pride, and again, I left his presence like I would an old friend.