One of the most fun experiences about returning back to a foreign country is the moment you start talking to the taxi drivers after exiting the airport. After a familiar US context for a month, a familiar Bangladeshi context, you then realize, is a unique thing to also be familiar with. Which place are you going to? How much will you pay? Bangla comes out. You know the place, what the price should be. You open a paint-chipped car door and sit in the small interior, maybe missing the inside paneling, maybe with a small single light bulb dangling in the middle. You grin, because at that time, like a whoosh, you're back.
The apartment I just moved to sits on the roof of a 7 story apartment building. No lift (and by 'lift' I mean elevator) but yes daily exercise. The floor is concrete; it's harder to clean than the tile from the last place I lived, maybe because of the few places it's chipping. No worries, the apartment owner says it will be fixed, along with the broken bathroom lock, but then again, it's probably more likely that we forget to pester him about it again. Three sky blue blue painted rooms open into a small common space large enough to keep your shoes. There's a kitchen, a quaint one, but the concrete counter is only just big enough to fit the burner, so I tend to chop vegetables on the 5 inch wide rim of the sink, which is an area of the floor in the corner. The water from the sink in the bathroom flows down a tube and opens up onto the floor, an informal drainage setup that I've certainly witnessed before but never lived with. The shower water flows out with it through a small hole at the base of the wall, and soapy water runs through a funny little canal just outside that crosses through the entry way leading to the front door. Instead of heading to the stairwell by hopping over the canal (you could call it a three inch wide moat), you could make a left and walk along it, just past the bathroom hole, and climb a 1.5 foot wide stairway to the rooftop of the apartment next door to us. On top of that roof top (which itself is above the portion of the roof on which our apartment is built) is another even slimmer stairway up to the top of the square concrete water tank that supplies the building. There is an incredible view from there. Although there really isn't space to dry laundry, I've been using the roof of the adjacent building with a nice wide open roof top that is tangent to ours and only slightly higher. While up there hopping rooftops, you'll see that the roof of our apartment is tin, mostly rusty. Avoid touching it when the sun is out, it gets very, very hot. Inside the apartment there is a thin wooden sheet in most rooms that rests just under the tin, so that space fortunately traps heat. When the power goes out, taking the fans with it, it can get a bit sweaty, but not as nearly as bad as it would be during the summer. Rainy season has been bringing rain just about every day, and especially when it rains at night, it cools down so much that the other day I used, for the first time this year, our heavy blanket in addition to my usual bed sheet. Tiktikees (geckos) the size of small lizards occasionally are spotted on our sky blue concrete walls. If you go up close to them, they'll scurry away back to their roof space or behind my bamboo shelves. Don't leave food out because the ants will crowd in, but fortunately they cause no other harm, and of course the tiktikees do need something to eat; their usual mosquito fare is happily absent in this place, maybe because we are up so high, able to peer out over the blocky grey Mohammadpur rooftop horizon line. The ants are one thing if they get in your food, but the rat I saw the other day would be even more unwelcome. I'm not sure where he lives, but my guess is that he spends most of his time away since our apartment is small and I've only seen him once. As you leave the apartment, don't bolt the metal door shut because we wouldn't be able to open it from the inside, just leave it ajar. You can lock the next metal door you come to (the one just after you step over our thin bathroom water moat) which you'll go through to get to the stairwell. When you slide the bolt open, don't worry about how much noise it causes, everyone is used to those metal doors doing that. Go ahead and close the lock on the door's bolt in the stairwell that's behind you as you leave, we can still get to it with a key to get out, we just have to reach around through the broken window that's right next to it. The next door you'll come to is down 7 flights of stairs, don't trip when you're going down the ones on the second floor, they are each noticeably less high than the others. Close the door leading onto the road behind you; it will lock, but don't worry because you should be able to get back in if you need to by reaching through the small hole for the doorbell and stretching your arm as far as it can possibly go all the way to the handle on the inside. You'll want to come back. I know, I know... we wanted to search for another option when we first moved in too, but I guarantee it will grow on you. It's been 3 weeks, and now I'd have to say it's the coolest and most distinctive place I've ever lived.
Perhaps familiarity comes not only in the form of a familiar language or a familiar location, but with familiar people. Those moments are the ones that make you smile the most. I was walking back from school today and caught sight of a familiar face walking the other way. Although I didn't immediately recognize him, he stopped, smiled, and said that he got new bananas today and asked if I wanted some. I usually buy from him on the way back from school because he carries the variety I like (one of the two main smaller varieties, not the sweet one that gets brown quick, the other one). He may have been going to visit a friend or go to pray, but we walked back with me to his small cart-stall 50 feet ahead. He knew just which batch I wanted, the batch of 8 hanging right in the front. I carried them, dangling from a small rope loop, along with my net bag of eggplant and red spinach that I had just bought. In my other hand was my trusty blue nalgene that I carry everywhere, having just been filled to the brim with water from school (the water at home has lots of residue in it, better suited for something else like washing dishes and clothes). It wasn't quite rush hour yet, so it was fortunately still possible for me to find space on the compact mini bus that seats only 12 on two benches facing each other. It's the most frequently run transportation from Farmgate back to Mohammadpur. An empty one pulled up to the place they usually stop at next to the Farmgate fruit market. I wasn't feeling pushy, so I let the eager riders dart their way in for a seat as I said hi to a kid that I recognized from before. Despite his young age, maybe about 11?, he's a fare collector for the mini busses. They ride along standing on the step at the back, one arm gripped around a metal bar supporting the roof while clutching the fares, the other hand pounding the metal roof to let the driver know when to let people off or collecting the red 10 taka notes from passengers as they decide to reach into their pant pocketed wallets. As I waited for people to shove their way in, it was the boy actually who came up to me first to ask how I was doing. I was happy to see his grungy toothy face again. The tempo (as it's called) filled up with its 12 passengers, but no worries, I still got on by standing on the metal stair at the back, arm dutifully clutching the bar supporting the roof (especially as we'd go over the speed bumps in front of the parliament building) and eyes peering ahead over the top of the yellow weathered tempo roof. As we waited in traffic, a bus-full of people stared at me with smiles; it was quite a site to see a foreigner, let alone one who was riding the tempo from the fare collector step. After I hopped off in Mohammadpur and started walking up Noor Jahan Road to the apartment. I heard a greeting to my right from someone standing in a refrigerator shop doorway. He had a bright smile on his face as he came up to me to shake my hand. I wasn't wearing the same look of recognition that he was. "Don't you remember?" he said in Bangla. After I shook my head he took his cell phone out. I chuckled as I realized he was searching for a picture that he had taken on his phone of me and him. Sure enough, there we both were. My hair was much longer and I was wearing a shirt that I haven't worn in a long time (it's probably actually back in my room in the US). Nicholas and I had bought our fridge from him nearly 2 years ago when we were first moving in before I had started my time at St. Joseph's. I guess his memory was sharper than mine, or at least my face is more recognizable being foreign, or perhaps he had occasionally refreshed his memory by glancing at his picture of us from time to time as he would show it to his friends. Before I headed home, I stopped at a road-side cart selling fuchka, thin hollow golf ball shaped chips with chickpea paste stuffed in and sprinkled with a variety of deliciousness, including chili, cilantro, egg shavings (I think that's what those things are), and a tart tamarind sauce. After hiking up to the apartment, my shoulders shrugged to see that we were out of rice. I had planned to cook while listening to an NPR/TED Talks Podcast from my computer iTunes as I had the past 3 days. Such captivating interviews and talks! The perfect background as I go about my chopping, washing, sizzling, and stirring. I'm sure the modest kitchen hasn't seen such a heady addition before, but there's no better way to unwind as the daylight fades away and the warm glow from the single incandescent light bulb takes over. You can glimpse out the window across the Mohammadpur rooftops, listen to the evening calls to prayer, and study the patterns of the paths the ants walk in on the sky blue kitchen wall as you feast on rice with fried eggplant and cooked spinach with potato, all the while pondering TEDs cognitive inputs about where creativity comes from or the future of cities or Eric Whitacre's digital choir or recent Harvard psychological studies. Yes, that's what I'll do. After I go back down to Noor Jahan Road to get rice. We need yogurt for tomorrow morning too anyway. Then I'll try to make it an early night; tomorrow I'd like to wake up early again with the first call to prayer to do yoga on the water tank rooftop and to gaze across the city as the sun rises.
The apartment I just moved to sits on the roof of a 7 story apartment building. No lift (and by 'lift' I mean elevator) but yes daily exercise. The floor is concrete; it's harder to clean than the tile from the last place I lived, maybe because of the few places it's chipping. No worries, the apartment owner says it will be fixed, along with the broken bathroom lock, but then again, it's probably more likely that we forget to pester him about it again. Three sky blue blue painted rooms open into a small common space large enough to keep your shoes. There's a kitchen, a quaint one, but the concrete counter is only just big enough to fit the burner, so I tend to chop vegetables on the 5 inch wide rim of the sink, which is an area of the floor in the corner. The water from the sink in the bathroom flows down a tube and opens up onto the floor, an informal drainage setup that I've certainly witnessed before but never lived with. The shower water flows out with it through a small hole at the base of the wall, and soapy water runs through a funny little canal just outside that crosses through the entry way leading to the front door. Instead of heading to the stairwell by hopping over the canal (you could call it a three inch wide moat), you could make a left and walk along it, just past the bathroom hole, and climb a 1.5 foot wide stairway to the rooftop of the apartment next door to us. On top of that roof top (which itself is above the portion of the roof on which our apartment is built) is another even slimmer stairway up to the top of the square concrete water tank that supplies the building. There is an incredible view from there. Although there really isn't space to dry laundry, I've been using the roof of the adjacent building with a nice wide open roof top that is tangent to ours and only slightly higher. While up there hopping rooftops, you'll see that the roof of our apartment is tin, mostly rusty. Avoid touching it when the sun is out, it gets very, very hot. Inside the apartment there is a thin wooden sheet in most rooms that rests just under the tin, so that space fortunately traps heat. When the power goes out, taking the fans with it, it can get a bit sweaty, but not as nearly as bad as it would be during the summer. Rainy season has been bringing rain just about every day, and especially when it rains at night, it cools down so much that the other day I used, for the first time this year, our heavy blanket in addition to my usual bed sheet. Tiktikees (geckos) the size of small lizards occasionally are spotted on our sky blue concrete walls. If you go up close to them, they'll scurry away back to their roof space or behind my bamboo shelves. Don't leave food out because the ants will crowd in, but fortunately they cause no other harm, and of course the tiktikees do need something to eat; their usual mosquito fare is happily absent in this place, maybe because we are up so high, able to peer out over the blocky grey Mohammadpur rooftop horizon line. The ants are one thing if they get in your food, but the rat I saw the other day would be even more unwelcome. I'm not sure where he lives, but my guess is that he spends most of his time away since our apartment is small and I've only seen him once. As you leave the apartment, don't bolt the metal door shut because we wouldn't be able to open it from the inside, just leave it ajar. You can lock the next metal door you come to (the one just after you step over our thin bathroom water moat) which you'll go through to get to the stairwell. When you slide the bolt open, don't worry about how much noise it causes, everyone is used to those metal doors doing that. Go ahead and close the lock on the door's bolt in the stairwell that's behind you as you leave, we can still get to it with a key to get out, we just have to reach around through the broken window that's right next to it. The next door you'll come to is down 7 flights of stairs, don't trip when you're going down the ones on the second floor, they are each noticeably less high than the others. Close the door leading onto the road behind you; it will lock, but don't worry because you should be able to get back in if you need to by reaching through the small hole for the doorbell and stretching your arm as far as it can possibly go all the way to the handle on the inside. You'll want to come back. I know, I know... we wanted to search for another option when we first moved in too, but I guarantee it will grow on you. It's been 3 weeks, and now I'd have to say it's the coolest and most distinctive place I've ever lived.
Perhaps familiarity comes not only in the form of a familiar language or a familiar location, but with familiar people. Those moments are the ones that make you smile the most. I was walking back from school today and caught sight of a familiar face walking the other way. Although I didn't immediately recognize him, he stopped, smiled, and said that he got new bananas today and asked if I wanted some. I usually buy from him on the way back from school because he carries the variety I like (one of the two main smaller varieties, not the sweet one that gets brown quick, the other one). He may have been going to visit a friend or go to pray, but we walked back with me to his small cart-stall 50 feet ahead. He knew just which batch I wanted, the batch of 8 hanging right in the front. I carried them, dangling from a small rope loop, along with my net bag of eggplant and red spinach that I had just bought. In my other hand was my trusty blue nalgene that I carry everywhere, having just been filled to the brim with water from school (the water at home has lots of residue in it, better suited for something else like washing dishes and clothes). It wasn't quite rush hour yet, so it was fortunately still possible for me to find space on the compact mini bus that seats only 12 on two benches facing each other. It's the most frequently run transportation from Farmgate back to Mohammadpur. An empty one pulled up to the place they usually stop at next to the Farmgate fruit market. I wasn't feeling pushy, so I let the eager riders dart their way in for a seat as I said hi to a kid that I recognized from before. Despite his young age, maybe about 11?, he's a fare collector for the mini busses. They ride along standing on the step at the back, one arm gripped around a metal bar supporting the roof while clutching the fares, the other hand pounding the metal roof to let the driver know when to let people off or collecting the red 10 taka notes from passengers as they decide to reach into their pant pocketed wallets. As I waited for people to shove their way in, it was the boy actually who came up to me first to ask how I was doing. I was happy to see his grungy toothy face again. The tempo (as it's called) filled up with its 12 passengers, but no worries, I still got on by standing on the metal stair at the back, arm dutifully clutching the bar supporting the roof (especially as we'd go over the speed bumps in front of the parliament building) and eyes peering ahead over the top of the yellow weathered tempo roof. As we waited in traffic, a bus-full of people stared at me with smiles; it was quite a site to see a foreigner, let alone one who was riding the tempo from the fare collector step. After I hopped off in Mohammadpur and started walking up Noor Jahan Road to the apartment. I heard a greeting to my right from someone standing in a refrigerator shop doorway. He had a bright smile on his face as he came up to me to shake my hand. I wasn't wearing the same look of recognition that he was. "Don't you remember?" he said in Bangla. After I shook my head he took his cell phone out. I chuckled as I realized he was searching for a picture that he had taken on his phone of me and him. Sure enough, there we both were. My hair was much longer and I was wearing a shirt that I haven't worn in a long time (it's probably actually back in my room in the US). Nicholas and I had bought our fridge from him nearly 2 years ago when we were first moving in before I had started my time at St. Joseph's. I guess his memory was sharper than mine, or at least my face is more recognizable being foreign, or perhaps he had occasionally refreshed his memory by glancing at his picture of us from time to time as he would show it to his friends. Before I headed home, I stopped at a road-side cart selling fuchka, thin hollow golf ball shaped chips with chickpea paste stuffed in and sprinkled with a variety of deliciousness, including chili, cilantro, egg shavings (I think that's what those things are), and a tart tamarind sauce. After hiking up to the apartment, my shoulders shrugged to see that we were out of rice. I had planned to cook while listening to an NPR/TED Talks Podcast from my computer iTunes as I had the past 3 days. Such captivating interviews and talks! The perfect background as I go about my chopping, washing, sizzling, and stirring. I'm sure the modest kitchen hasn't seen such a heady addition before, but there's no better way to unwind as the daylight fades away and the warm glow from the single incandescent light bulb takes over. You can glimpse out the window across the Mohammadpur rooftops, listen to the evening calls to prayer, and study the patterns of the paths the ants walk in on the sky blue kitchen wall as you feast on rice with fried eggplant and cooked spinach with potato, all the while pondering TEDs cognitive inputs about where creativity comes from or the future of cities or Eric Whitacre's digital choir or recent Harvard psychological studies. Yes, that's what I'll do. After I go back down to Noor Jahan Road to get rice. We need yogurt for tomorrow morning too anyway. Then I'll try to make it an early night; tomorrow I'd like to wake up early again with the first call to prayer to do yoga on the water tank rooftop and to gaze across the city as the sun rises.
