bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1985) — Summer 1985 // Été 1985, pp. 6–7
“Driver, That Man Assaulting your Windscreen is the Canadian High Commissioner”
To disarm critics, I often allow that I enjoy living in Gulshan (Dhaka’s diplomatic oasis) because it is so close to Bangladesh, I can visit anytime.
I visited recently. On April 18, I visited an eye camp at Magura, 125 miles from Dhaka. I left the airport at 8:00 a.m. on Biman (“The more you fly Biman, the more you know Bangladesh”) flight 461 to Jessore. I thought it auspicious that in the departure lounge, the Civil Aviation Minister and the Managing Director of Biman, waiting to fly elsewhere, wished me bon voyage. I thought it appropriate that I replied that I was confident, as I was in such good hands.
Their send off was not auspicious. My reply was not appropriate.
The flight, by Fokker F-27, took 25 minutes. From Jessore, we drove an hour and a half back toward Dhaka to reach Magura. We were riding in one of those minivans which trap all available hot air and fail to circulate it. One of those minivans with shock absorbers designed for motorcycles, with horns designed for the deaf and apparently pointed inward, with seats made for midgets and seat cushions covered with grungy, skin-adhering black plastic, designed apparently to introduce buttocks to metal underframes from the first instant.
But we could bear an hour and a half, three hours in all, even though it was 103 degrees.
The eye camp was impressive. One hundred and twenty-eight cataracted eyeballs were cut open (three before my swooning eyes) to have their opaque lenses removed, all in one day, the second day of the week-long camp. (The rest of the week is spent preparing for and then recovering from the surgery.) On the seventh day, the camp is a scene of joy — sight, albeit initially murky, is returning to the blind. I was impressed by the efficiency of the operation, by the obvious dedication of the staff and the local community volunteers and by the productive working relations established with local upazila and union officials who had made available the primary school teachers’ training centre in which the camp was held, organized local volunteers and covered the cost of feeding the patients for the week. I was also impressed by the fact that for this upazila, according to its senior officer, the expenditure involved in holding the eye camp could not have been afforded in previous years; it was only possible now that, through General Ershad’s decentralization program, the government in Dhaka was providing larger annual grants to upazila councils.
“I turned ghostly pale . . .”
I was not impressed by the sense of timing of the press photographers there to record my historic visit – they began to take pictures about the same moment I turned ghostly pale, broke into a clammy sweat and stumbled as quickly as possible from the operating theatre where I had learned close-up rather more than I ever wanted to know about eye surgery.
The visit leads me to recommend that one looking for a good charity could do much worse than, say, Operation Eyesight Universal or the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind. These organizations perform miracles of pure unambiguous benefit to the blind, their families and their communities.
After the obligatory “light” lunch (warm Pepsi; 32 pounds of rice; eight curried triathlon-star chickens; four pounds of swimming lamb bones; a small pond of dal; one pound of “sweets”,, well named) and the similarly obligatory “discussion” (eight eagerly silent local officials gathered around a High Commissioner with a rapidly exhausted supply of questions about eye camps and observations about eyes or other subjects at hand, none of which seems to elicit a hint of recognition or a shred of response) – after these ritualistic components of any field trip, we set out for Jessore, driving for one and a half hours, away from Dhaka.
The direct Jessore-Cannes and Jessore- San Francisco flights had apparently departed uneventfully and the next on the TV monitor, in fact the only flight listed on the monitor, was to Dhaka, flight 466, “On Time”. We said our farewells and passed through security to the departure lounge. We were soon rushed through to the VIP “Enclosure”, a small dark curtained chamber at the end of the lounge, abutting the washrooms. After a half hour, we were advised that the flight was “delayed”, the plane we were to fly had been held on the tarmac in Dhaka “by storms”. After an hour and a half, the reason changed to “mechanical difficulty” “, but as this explanation was being offered the plane suddenly landed. Now the plane would “take off shortly”. Spirits revived. Another half hour in the enclosure … then a new “mechanical difficulty”. But they’re trying “to rent a Flying Club plane to bring spare parts”
We should have ignored this gambit and set out for Dhaka “. Fifteen enclosed minutes later it is ’nonoperational”. Finally, at six o’clock, after three hours waiting, the truth is conceded The flight is now officially “cancelled” Biman will try again tomorrow morning. The dejected crowd spills out into suburban Jessore. Some will opt for a night at the Metropolitan’, Jessore’s finest E-light (as they say there) hotel. Warned, we will not. We climb into the microwave-van and drive back toward Magura, the eye camp and then, an estimated six hours away, Dhaka. We’ll be home by midnight — “no problem” (as they also say here, though I’ve never known why).
The first three hours go well enough. The vehicle gives its victims an intimate introduction to the contours, all of the contours, of the surface of the road and the driver, anxious to please, ensures that this introduction is achieved as quickly and forcefully as possible, but the sunset is spectacular, the temperature is falling mercifully and we seem to be making good time.
“Spare part putting on”
Then there is a flat. “No problem; spare will be putting on”. Then the spare is flat. “No problem; spare fixing will be”. I’d never planned to become familiar with that particular bit of roadside, but I didn’t mind. The activities of dusk were relaxing and instructive to witness. Rickshaws being pulled slowly home. Labourers emptying the fields. A big broad skyfull of stars. And every so often, a thundering overloaded truck or bus or two bearing down fast to remove the bricks from all of us.
With speed I thought miraculous, the driver returned by rickshaw with an inflated spare. I did not ask to inspect its tread. Once it was “putting on”, we were under way
The timing of our arrival at the first, short ferry at Daulatdia couldn’t have been better. The ferry was loaded and ready to go, with space left just enough for us. We crashed on – there is no other way – and congratulated ourselves on our good luck. The hour spent waiting for the spare would have had to be spent waiting for the ferry even if the tire hadn’t been flat going. The crossing was uneventful. We did not want our shoes shined. We did not want fruit juice from a pail, or ice cubes to chew, or watermelon or soup, or chandni-chawk (a tasty assortment of nuts, biscuit factory sweepings, bolts, bonebits, brown items and other chewables). We did not want our hair cut. We did not want to buy combs or hairpins or ballpoints. After our supply of change and small notes had been exhausted, we played hide and seek among the vehicles with the ferry’s licensed supplicants, marvelling at the dramatic improvement in the mobility and depth perception of the halt, lame and blind which is apparently induced by the nearness of expatriates. Then came the ritual of ferry docking. First, the ferry crashed into the dock (day or night, wind or calm, rain or shine, the ferries here crash into the docks). Then the vehicles crash about on board amongst themselves and there is much frenzy with many more people than required offering instructions. Then the vehicles crash, one by one, onto the ramp and up through the cut in the bank to the road. Then there is a spell of general chaos as the road-bound vehicles fight their way through the closed ranks of their ferry-bound cousins. And then we’re back on the road again. It’s 10:30 p.m. We left Dhaka fourteen and a half hours ago.
After a four or five mile stretch of washboard on which our determined driver passes each of the vehicles which had preceded us off the ferry, a total of nine (I counted) terrifying overtakings, we arrive at Aricha Ghat to take our chances on a ferry across the Jamuna. (The driver’s recklessness was in vain. The first ferry had been last on — last off. This one, we learned many hours later, was first on (us) – last off (us again). But how was he to know? It differs every time. It depends on the nature of the crash with the dock and on which ramp cable or winches happen to have been destroyed recently).
We are greeted by bad news. There are no ferries on this side. Two are expected “soon” la term I’ve learned to discredit here), but one will stay put for the night and the other will not leave until two in the morning. Further, what is normally a 30minute crossing these days takes more than an hour because the ferry has to find its way through a maze of recently emerged dry-season sandbars.
Watching Ferries Wait
The prospect of spending three hours in what is fast becoming the middle of the night watching two ferries wait to cross the Jamuna prods me to action. I ask for the officer-in-charge. He is “bathroom going” but ten minutes later he appears, a swarthy brute who describes himself as the superintendent. I enquire how many trucks are waiting to cross. One hundred and twenty-six. Why is the second ferry going to wait until 2:00 a.m.? What business of mine is it? At this point our driver explains that, despite the decrepit van in which we have arrived, I am the Canadian High Commissioner. Well, the second ferry is reserved for night coaches … but, well, the superintendent has to check. He walks off into the night.
The superintendent returns to announce that the ferry will depart immediately. An immediate three-quarters of an hour later, the ritualistic cacaphony subsides and we are on board. I spend the hour of the crossing trying in vain to sleep. At one in the morning we arrive on the eastern shore. We are last off. We come to a halt halfway up the bank. Nothing moves. After a few minutes, this site’s supplicants discover me and line up outside the window. I have no taka. They will not leave. Nothing moves. My patience is… strained. I descend from the van and weave my way through the crowd to investigate. At the top of the bank I find an impasse. A Dhaka-bound bus and a ferry-bound truck have physically disputed the width of a passage between parked trucks and neither is backing down. And of course all the ferry-bound vehicles have closed in behind their contender as have the Dhaka-bound behind theirs. Gridlock. Pure middle-of-the-night-starlit-stupid-pigheaded- Aricha gridlock. There follows a brief bout of admirable diplomatic initiative.
18 Hours Later
The Canadian High Commissioner offers the bus driver a voluble piece of his mind while attempting physically to push the bus backward while the Bangladesh Director of the Royal Commonwealth Society for the Blind, my travelling companion on whom it is dawning that I am getting agitated, explains hurriedly to the driver that the Canadian High Commissioner, that frenzied soul assaulting his windscreen, is agitated.
The bus reverses. The grid unlocks. We hit the now empty road (a 1:00 a.m. to 5 a.m. curfew is in effect), talk our curfew pass-less way past two groups of skeptical policemen, and reach home at two in the morning, 18 hours after leaving.
Spending 18 hours doing 45 minutes work is useful once in a while. It reminds me and, through this account, others who need to remember that getting things done around here, making things work, or getting things built, or running large complex aid programs or just getting home from an eye-camp visit on a very beaten track like the road from Jessore to Dhaka, ain’t easy.
You may wonder how (and worry that) find time to record these minor adventures in such detail. I wrote the first half of this letter at home by candlelight (power failure) waiting earlier this evening to be phoned by Burma Airways to be advised when they might imagine their flight to Rangoon might leave.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 3, No. 2 (1985) — Summer 1985 // Été 1985, pp. 6–7. Read the rest of this issue →
