Damascus

Last night I was sitting on the balcony with Madame Raifeh, waiting to hear the sound of cannon fire. The explosion would mark the end of another lackadaisical day of Damascus fasting. Somewhere along the line, I had simply given up on daytime productivity. One day sort of melted into the next as I slept or read or procrastinated the minutes until iftaar. Iftaar, would mean Turkish coffee, and another round of Madame Raifeh's favorite, if slightly underwhelming, Ramadan talkshow. Mischeiviously, she often prods me to call in, feeding me elaborate back stories I should recite in the unlikely event my call goes through.

Raifeh has been living and renting out apartments to foreigners like me in Bab Touma since long before I was born. The years haven't been particularly kind to her. At about sixty, she walks with a visible hunch, the product of a difficult life in rural Sueda. Somehow, though, when she smiles through her sun baked wrinkles, fires up another cigarette, or helps her unimaginably old mother to bed, it becomes easier to picture a vibrant Raifeh's better days.

Last night, after the show, over another round of coffee, in a thick as soup Syrian dialect, Madame Raifeh decided to tell me a story.

"In Sueda, there were no cars, no electricity, no doctors." Drought, she said, had hit the mostly Christian and Druze village for nearly ten years to the dismay of her farmer father. Each day, her mother would walk about two hours to a river, collect enough drinking water for the family, and walk back. I tried to picture Madame Raifeh's mother, quietly sleeping on the sofa, with an urn full of water on her tired shoulders. Schools had just become a part of Suedan life, and a six year old Raifeh was eager to attend. She would, of course, have to bring along her younger sister, with whom she'd share the single pen her father had bought them. Raifeh and her sister would take turns using the pen to finish their assignments.

"And so one day, my sister told me she was sick and didn't want to come to school. This made me happy because I would have the pen all to myself. I was little, I couldn't understand what sickness was. I returned home and asked my sister if she wanted to finish her assignment. Again, she said no, that she was feeling sick, complaining about a pain in her stomach. Without giving it a second thought, I ran off and played with my friends. A few hours later, my sister had died from an infected appendix. Well of course she died, there was no doctor, no medicine or anything! I was bit happy after that, too. All I could understand in my six year old mind was that I would get all of my little sister's old things. That's so sad, right?"

Madame Raifeh said all this with a bubbly, storytelling kind of cheer. And so it was. I finished my coffee, bid Raifeh good night, and took another long walk through old Damascus.

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.