Because my life is surprising sometimes, Saturday night saw me flying to Dhaka, floods or no.

The tangent is, I e-mailed Maud a couple of weeks ago and told her I was going to Dakar, and she e-mailed back, That is so cool you’re going to Africa, and I was all, eyes darting, thinking, Where did I go wrong, where did I go wrong. Ah, geography.

Sunday morning at the Sonargaon Hotel was a breakfast spread that included a giant bowl of thick local yoghurt with honey on the side for drizzling purposes, littler bowls of dates and pistachios and almonds for the picking, and a selection of curries to start the day.



Off and driving, we stopped in a market, the low tin ceiling held up by bamboo poles, all around us baskets resting on jute sacks and wood stacks, piled high with dark red chillies and deep yellow tamarind and happy potatoes and loops of water lily stems; gorgeous mounds of dhal in yellow and orange; garlic white and onions golden; all sorts of greens in all shades of greens; chickens in black and white and brown under pyramid netting; an affable barber in a small mirrored room with four dirty chairs. Every here and there a bare lightbulb glowed.

In Lalbag—the old town—with its narrow, dusty streets and crumbly façades on either side, I was as much a sight to them as they were to me. When I stopped at a guava cart and turned around, I found that I’d gathered an audience behind me.



At the Lalbag Fort, where Mughal emperors once upon a time lived it up, a pink tomb and shiny blue hammam tiles hundreds of years old, and young couples talking under shaded arches. At the Parliament building, a nutty concrete 1960s construction with big triangles cut out the sides, Pritham with the thick black spectacle frames and a neat blue tie. “I like to make new friends,” he said earnestly. “Especially with girls.” He bought me a white jasmine gazara from a street vendor. At the Armenian Church, the milky-eyed caretaker uncle searched for the keys to the padlocked gate, throwing his hands in the air. Inside, painters worked on bamboo ladders while a ceiling fan turned lazily. At the door, a butter-colored dog slept in the shade on worn bluegrey planks.

On the way to dinner one evening, Zahid said, “We’re actually a bit early, so let’s stop by my place for a cup of tea.” Apparently “a cup of tea” is Bangla for a trolley of treats, including pudding and pudding cake. Before we left, his mother kissed her hands and patted me on the back.

A group of boys pushed a battered blue car out of the flood waters, the tallest one all big eyes and wide, cheeky grin.



One afternoon, a fortune teller and his green fortune-telling parrots predicted I’d get married in the next five years for five minutes. What? Um, maybe something lost in the translation. In the sun another day, I walked to the Chittagong train tracks, the rails stretching out into the overwhelming brownness. Brown people balanced brown baskets on their heads. Brown kids played by the side, their exposed bellies round and brown.

At a train crossing, Zahid and I got out of the car and walked up to the stop bar. First there was nothing, only the unremitting Dhaka traffic—trishaws and mini-taxis and bicycle carts and people everywhere—come to an unnatural quiet halt. And then, over on the left, from the dark, an aureole of light, and then the train rushing past, rails clacking madly loud, wind in our faces. And somehow it was like we were not just motionless but also stuck in time somehow, and the train was the only thing moving, the only thing that mattered. Like we were figurines watching life—real, living life—in scenes lit up through open windows whipping by. On top of the train, a group of skinny boys sat, propped up on arms pushed back.