How do you feel about Catfish?

A Christian man in the park. “The Missionaries,” he complained, “simply tell me to be happy with what I have in life. I’m not impressed. I want my children to have a good education, to travel once in a while. And you, you must return to our country, you must come and work here. In Bangladesh, you can do anything. How do you feel about Catfish? My brother raises catfish, best in the country, straight to export. You put your thoughts together about catfish, and business, and you give me a call, ok? Also, it would make us all extremely happy if you came over for dinner. Meet my family, see our place. Puna? Puna is beautiful, students from everywhere, I studied English literature there. I’ve forgotten all my Marathi, haven't been there in eighteen years. No I’m not going back and why would I? Bangladesh is my home, even though here, I’m a bit of a second and a half class citizen…amar gramer bari? Borishal, such a beautiful place, I can’t even begin to describe it. Just no jobs, no jobs in Borishal, and plenty of rain." ~ Prodip Roy

Irane Gonotontro Mukti Pak

Pictures from the rally of Bangladeshis in Dhaka in solidarity with Iranian democracy activists: http://unheardvoice.net/blog/2009/06/24/iran-mukti/

Inside the Shongshod

Today I was sitting in Jatiyo Shongshod watching a debate about the budget. BNP had boycotted the session, because they only had 30 seats out of 300 anyway, and did not approve of a single word of the proposal from the outset. So things were more peaceful than usual.I could not follow most of the discussion, because it was in Bangla. But I did catch one line, from the agriculture minister tagged onto the end of his speech, from Nathanial Hawthorne:


“Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you”


I sat there, looking at the foreign minister, dressed in her gray sari across the room, surrounded by Awami stalwarts in their penguin uniforms. My thoughts drifted to a fantasy, of stopping her in the hall, of telling her to tell to the PM not to recognize the results of the Iranian election, to stand against the violence and barbarism that the government is inflicting on our people. Our government has barred its teeth against us, the people it was charged to represent. Our soldiers have fired on us, they have aimed their guns and honor at the people they had sworn to protect. And now images of Neda, her desperate family trying in vain to save her life, are stuck in my mind forever.

I am determined to play whatever part I can here in Dhaka. It is so important for people here to know and show support for students who are being persecuted in Iran. Demonstrations in Western capitals will never have the impact that a show of support will here. I hope I can get through to people in Bangladesh that fighting American imperialism is no excuse for the kind of barbarism the government has unleashed on us. I hope I can communicate to my fellow students here that we are all in this together, that nothing, nothing can justify the killing of students, the raiding of their dorms. Tehran is Tienanmen, it is Gaza, it is so much more than a disputed election. The government is now creating the future sites for a thousand Shohid Minars. Their fight and yours has always been the same. See that, and speak out, now, while it still matters. Stand with my people, and let the world know we are not alone.

If you are in Bangladesh, read, sign, and forward this statement: http://www.petitiononline.com/deshiran/petition.html

1979 - 2009

I must now come to excruciating terms with the fact that I am not, indeed, in Iran at one of the most important junctions of her history. No amount of blog reading or facebook posting will replace this fact. Where were you in '79, I ask the generation of my parents. Where were you in '09, others will ask me. I was in Bangladesh, close, but no cigar. And as the guilt and tears and hopelessness subside, I must wake up and remember why I have come here. I'll soldier on and accept, once again, what I cannot change and fight to change those things I refuse to accept.

The sabzi is more Persian on the other side...

I count seven Iranian films in this one picture. Iranian films, ones I have never heard of, are available everywhere in Bangladesh. This past winter in Iran, I searched in vain to find Iranian art films by Kiarostami, Makhmalbaaf and others in Tehran's movie stores. I found a great deal that was pirated and Hollywood, and an increasing number of Hindi movies. But it was impossible, literally impossible to find our Iranian films anywhere in Tehran. I bought a copy of "Secret Ballot", an Iranian comedie about our ridiculous elections and burgeoning democracy, and Matir Moina (The Clay Bird), a film about the social fissures that gave birth to modern Bangladesh.


I never, not in my wildest dreams, imagined that the first time I would vote in an Iranian election, I would be doing it in Dhaka. The Iranian community here is small, tight knit and eccentric to the last. One gentlemen had been here for the last 35 years, sneering at the place, railing against its every nook and cranny, but somehow so in love that he learned Urdu, Sanskrit, Hindi, and (as he claimed and I refused to believe) became the first Iranian to learn to read Bengali, which he again claimed no Bengali could write without making numerous spelling mistakes at every go.


Then there was the tea magnate who had lived here for fifty years, and the petro-man and the one who imported carpets and handicrafts to Bangladesh. We all sat around eating watermelons and imported kharboozeh, arguing intensely over whether khiaar was Arabic for cucumber, or whether it was really related to ikhtiyaar and hence never originally the name of a fruit. We then proceeded to find every last word (there are about 17,000) in common between Bengali and Persian, scratching our heads over why z's became j's and s's became sh's and finally, revealing that Mumtaz Mahal was actually an Iranian from Yazd.