Journeys Beyond the Front Door

Chapter I: Into The Void

And thus it had begun. We were in Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh and turning home at this point was no longer an option. After a good fifteen hours of sky voyage, we sauntered through the open doors of the arrival area at the Hazrat Shahjalal International Airport to be greeted by customs who took our details via a crude pad and pen and queried us as to our reason for being in the country. I can only assume that it would have been rather evident that we were not a part of some slave labour sweat shop racket by our imperial military back packs and death metal shirts. After a tedious half an hour of quizzical question, flustered phone calls and vigorous writings on an assortment of dictation pads, it was deemed acceptable that we had indeed arrived to this godforsaken land of poverty for a traditional wedding.

From the militant corner desk of the questionable Customs, we passed through the border to the baggage collection area . . . but not before an excursion to the nearest bathrooms for some light relief was made. Being male, the hole in the floor that greeted me only played into the game of skill and chance, but alas, for my female compadre, such ease and novelty would not be the case. The baggage area itself consisted of a vast open space with four conveyer belt lines jutting out of glassed walls facing towards the final security point and a Lost and Found counter towards the far end. The sea of foreign bags and miscellaneous cardboard boxes spilling out and surrounding this unmanned counter spoke volumes.

Whilst leaning against our eagerly awaiting trolley, passing in and out of sleep-deprived consciousness, we were immediately exposed to the way of things and how our upbringing of implied courtesy and order was certainly not compatible with such situations we had now found ourselves amidst. The locals barged with elbows out and encompassed every possible level of personal space to surge to the front of the conveyer belt to watch the procession of luggage go by in anticipation. We were immediately shuffled to the side, where we could now view the luggage handlers through the glass as they unloaded the assortment of goods. And by unloaded, I clearly mean thrown with indifferent nonchalance. Large wrapped parcels, television screens, suitcases, baby strollers . . . they all preceded each other along side what was undoubtedly the black market supply ship, emptying themselves into the grappling hands of their eagerly awaiting owners. From our vantage it became somewhat of an evident relief that there were no valuables stowed away in our checked bags as electronic devices and the blessed smuggled alcohol were safety stashed in my pillow come backpack.

We stood in anxiety-ridden somber silence as we watched anything that was not obviously glass heaved onto the conveyer in a manner resembling shuffling watermelons through the air with a pitch fork. Two and a half hours later and in the death rattle of sanity, our miserable proletariat back-packs arrived and meandered their way through the plastic drapes and down the conveyer to greet us. It was only at this point that we realized that the friend of a friend that was due to greet us on our arrival had most probably well and truly left.

I know I would have.

So alas, we moved through the arrival lounge and with a stroke of luck found that the hotel that we had picked at random for the singular night that we were forced to be in the capital did indeed have a cubicle at the airport. Upon entering with all the meet-and-greet charm of a pair of delusional and lost foreigners out of their depth, we were assured by the two cigar smoking, middle-aged men in cheap suits seated behind the desk that we had two choices of getting to our hotel destination: One being a military police, machine gun-armed escort and the other being a generic taxi. The escort had only just left to take some other clearly insane people to their destination and if we were willing to wait . . . it would take an hour or so. Bangi time.

With rising panic as I glanced at the newspaper headlines of political unrest in the form of riots, bombings and civilian blood shed, I opted to try calling our local contact, who naturally – and in accordance with Murphy’s law - was nowhere to be found, whilst Sarah lass, my she-beast travelling companion, who had never before left our sleepy home town, sat on the provided couch to read the aforementioned local newspaper. In a moment of clarity, I enquired about purchasing SIM cards for our obsolete brick phones and found that the store I was seeking was back yonder on the previous side of the security checkpoints beside the customs desks – the very same ungodly and desolate landscape we had found ourselves within hours earlier.

As I approached the security officials with my futile query, I was surprised to find that they somehow allowed me to move back through counter flow of the swelling crowd and past the crude x-ray machinery and oppressive, gender-segregated search curtains to the small and unassuming telecommunications stall where I acquired the two vital new SIM cards with the Monopoly money that was now our form of currency. Utilising many gracious blessings as to ensure our phones were probably set-up correctly in a presumably suitable and functional working order by the local phone merchants, I soon found myself meandering back through the lax security check-point unmolested and back to the dubious hotel depot. It was at this point that I saw in its entirety the front page of the local newspaper. Car bombs in the capital, buildings on fire, military police shooting civilians. The horrific list went on. Needless to say, we realized we had landed in a doozy of a situation and decided we should probably just opt for the gracious offer of armed military escort. The sooner the better.

While we waited for our transport we unloaded our bags from the cart into the relative safety of the caged glass office, we took our chance to survey our surrounding under the guise of smoking cigarettes. It had been near on a day since my last inhalation, and the heavy-duty nicotine patches that were somewhat comforting and enabled a relatively stress-free journey so far had now well and truly worn off. For we now found ourselves in the third world, amongst civil unrest whilst also being a true spectacle for the local population . . . for all intents and purposes, it felt as though a trusty cigarette was well and truly deserved to help contemplate the dire situation we now somehow found ourselves in.

We crossed various ludicrous check-points until we found an open air albeit behind a variety of steel fences, located in an oppressive court yard of sorts towards the front of the airport, where we were permitted to savour our nicotine. From this vantage point, we were able to finally survey our external surroundings. Squeezed behind the bulging fence line before us swarmed a mass of poverty-stricken locals, with decrepit arms hanging through the railings, staring, blank and wide-eyed, at the strange pale, creatures that had just emerged from the building and stood before them. Under the cacophony of beep-beep and industrialised traffic, a vague silence fell across the immediate area as our presence was acknowledged by the hoards of locals aggressively pressing through the bars. In all honesty, the heinous backdrop to our smoking expedition could quite fittingly have blended itself in with a dramatic premonition scene of some kind of third world zombie apocalypse movie, with the smoke trails of pollution and hopelessness bellowing out from behind the buildings in the far distance.

Intimidated, sleep-deprived, hungry and confused, we turned around to find that we had indeed more surveyors behind us on the upper levels, leaning over railings and talking amongst themselves, with piercing, inquisitive eyes that did not move from a steely, steady gazes. Whilst I may have been the only person wearing shorts and a baggy jumper, my companion, with her pale skin and bright, blonde hair was unquestionably an oddity in her own right. The novelty of being a zoo spectacle was already beginning to wear thin, so post chain-smoking as many heinous crushed cigarettes as we could muster, we retreated from our gated enclosure and moved back to our encapsulated hotel representatives to await the armed and armoured chariot that would deliver us away from the depravity of this airport.

After perusing through enough newspapers to gather the general gist of the city, it became quite apparent that there had been widespread riots throughout the country as a result of the pro-supporters of the opposition party, who were collectively unhappy with the recent decision to execute their dear leaders . . . or something inconvenient of that nature. It was whilst reading about the apparently dissatisfied populace milling around and burning down local businesses whilst engaging in rolling battles with the military and such that our transport to safety arrived. Being the only passengers, we eloped to the back row of seats and were strictly directed by our armed commander to draw the blacked curtains closed - enough to allow only a slit of vision to remain so that we could at least peruse our foreign surrounds as we passed but enclosed enough so that our strange, pale faces would be well hidden inside the beaten up economy van that would be our steed. Our driver and guard stayed at the front with machine gun in hand. Let’s face it . . . we were lost and alone from here on in.

The armed military drive was surprisingly uneventful as we meandered our way through the bustling backstreets of the city and bypassed the worst of the archaic traffic. We circled our way out of the city center and soon found ourselves moving through a semi-rural area of swamps and fields before turning past a military base and back into the densely-populated center towards the hotel . . . we made it. And without even a wiff of the unrest that we had previously been indulging ourselves on via the local Bengal media.

We had thusly arrived at our destination – still unaffected or molested - and were greeted with the level of hospitality that I imagine dignitaries and foreign diplomats would receive, as eager staff rushing out to greet the van and accept the luggage. This is something that my compadre and I were not accustomed to. Being perfectly capable of carrying our own bags, we resisted before helping these confused slave merchants carry our bags up the steps and into another world. A world devoid of the poverty that existed outside of the stone walls adorned with guards. A world where marbled floors and exotic tapestries greeted us as we made our way to our rooms, past a plethora of photos of past dignitaries that had been claimed to have indeed stayed at this regal hotel.

As we rode the elevator up to the fifth floor, we passed a variety of works in progress taking part throughout the bowels of the building, with its hallways, laden with missing roof tiles and wires hanging from the ceiling that were negotiated past on our way through on the foyer leading to our room. Bidding our overly friendly porter good day, we finally entered our abode with hopes of some rest. Seizing this moment as our first opportunity to sit down without the perceived danger of imminent death, our bags were thrown to the floor and our shit was indeed spread out into a chaotic mess on the floor space and a well-earned power nap took hold.

Post slightly re-humanisjng, we descended down to the lower floors to explore the hotel grounds with a refreshed set of eyes. As we strolled past the decorative tapestries and presumably antiquated pottered urns, we soon found ourselves moving through the rear of the hotel and out into the pool area, where a gazebo claiming restaurant status hugged the water line. We sat ourselves down at an empty table to eat a platter of alleged hamburgers and nachos, slyly cocking our heads to mischievously overhear the miscellaneous conversations and watch with curiosity the well-attired business men across the pool and through the glass of the gymnasium. It quickly became apparent that this truly was the place to be if you were doing business deals with the local sweat shops and exploiting the local populace over glasses of imported beer and wine.

Pulling ourselves away from our respite with the well filled stomachs we were adapted to in the West, we strolled the strange, foreign grounds and quickly tiring of such tedious activities, decided we must chain smoke outside with the option of having a ignorant wander around the bustling streets of Dhaka to examine the puzzling city that we had now found ourselves. We walked past the quizzical eye of the security guard with their pleasant broken English and stopped on the other side of the high, imposing walls of our fortress and straight into the midst of an over-populated street scene, with the rush hour traffic of the fading daylight and a symphony of hectic sounds and pungent smells.

Lighting our cigarettes, we stood with our backs against the wall so that we could quietly take in the scene before us as the locals began to notice our presence and stare, bug-eyed, at the obscene pale creatures puffing away in the ill-hoped for obscurity that was only known and expected in our homeland. Within a couple of puffs, we were presented with a relatively, or perhaps theoretically, elderly lady with missing and buckled teeth and raw, bleeding gums. While she engaged Sarah with a spattering of broken English and talk of family, I was able to survey our surroundings as hundreds of eyes suddenly descended upon us as a large semi-circle of inquisitive people swarmed the footpath and stood to watch the spectacle that was most certainly just us.

Mid-cigarette, the feeble and withering beggar hand had shown its face. As the desperate asking of monies had been exchanged, the half dozen armed guards stationed the main gate mere meters away walked into the fray and shunted the locals away from us with what may or may not have been replica antique pistols. After glancing at each other in telepathic exchange, Sarah and I agreed that our cigarettes were thusly deemed sufficient sustenance as we hastily bid the armed personnel good night and retreated back to the presumed safety of our room for the night.

Chapter II: Fleeing Through The Green Inferno

Awaking the next morning, we quickly repacked our bags with the assortment of crap that had expanded out across the floor on arrival and made our way back down to reception where the next heavily armed transport awaited us. We were on our way back to the airport to meet with our local contact, Mehraj, a human rights lawyer, who thankfully was able to make his way to meet us this morning. It seems that the scale of unrest of the previous day had rendered him unable to get anywhere close to the city centre but we were assured that today, in theory, should be no problem.

This time a business man accompanied