Article

by Jean Sack

When taking a straight and narrow road,
Looking Back on Old Dhaka

In Dacca in January 1977, most problems had simple solutions. When our Johns Hopkins host forgot we were coming and did not meet our exhausted family at the airport, we loaded our 6 large suitcases and two preschoolers into baby taxis for the short (and highly inflated) drive to the Cholera Research Lab. When our newly married Mali cum bearer was discovered beating up a woman (not his village wife) in his quarters, he was at first forgiven and later fired after stealing… Neighbors scolded me when I tried to finish planting our garden (memsabs didn’t do yard work!) so I worked early in the morning when they were still sleeping. When our children developed infected mosquito bites and looked like smallpox victims, we discovered that most houses (not our open-drained two-bedroom cement block that is now the Otobi store) selected by the same forgetful scientist whose calendar was marked “sack arrival” three days after we came) had screens, most beds had nets, and most rooms had mosquito coils. When our children discovered and played with quacking or cackling dinner in the narrow backyard, I learned to have the cook slaughter when we were on a walk. When the only playgroup in town had 23 children on the waiting list, we impatient mothers met and formed a preschool cooperative that opened up on the large veranda of our new road 66 house with the grassy front yard (that’s another story).

Perhaps my biggest problem was lack of freedom. Initially we didn’t have access to a car and four decades ago the hired drivers were even more dangerous in the low-density traffic than in 2004 glut of vehicles. I would never have considered nor could have afforded to hire one. We caught rides with kinder colleagues to the American Club or rode in rickshaws, of course.

Then one day, Dr. Sack (who had been riding a borrowed motorcycle to his IPH office) brought home a simple, right-hand drive, cream-colored VW bug. The next Sunday at Holy Cross College International Church (yes, the 150 DICC members met on the “normal” day of worship then), I received a lunch invitation from the Hills for Tuesday. I was so delighted to be able to “get out” and meet this American Baptist wife with four healthy children (and about 6 Beagle puppies) that I only got her handwritten map (no official maps of Dacca existed except in the blue Dacca Women’s Club paperback survival guide written 2 years earlier). David said that I was free to use our VW. Gloria Pitts offered to take Paul and Rebecca to play with her boys during that time. I was ready to go!

After dropping the kids off at the Seventh Day Adventist Clinic house that morning, I drove across the Gulshan-Mohakhali narrow bridge and gawked at the farmers planting new rice in the fields (where the BRAC buildings now rise), turned over the railroad tracks, took the turn by the airport (no huge entrance to cantonment then), and drove south to the more crowded Farmgate area and Indira Road. The handwritten map showed a right-hand turn (no dividers then except Krishna chura trees that were in full bloom) into a narrow, unmarked road and then another right on the next lane.

My goodness, this was a very narrow, winding road, heading north again! I was so grateful for the small VW’s width, which just fit the dirt path! A deep, dry ravine of about 14 feet depth dropped off to the right (probably a narrow but seasonally drained pond) and high, bricked walls cut off the view of large houses on my left. But after creeping along for 3 blocks of turns, the road ended at a locked, rusty gate! I had taken a wrong turn. But the lane was too narrow to turn the “bug” around. After many futile attempts to go forward, turn wheels, reverse, turn wheels… I got out of the car and looked back. It was so far and actually had some fairly sharp turns – could I possibly back it out all that way without careening off into the dry ditch below? I sucked in my panic and said a prayer.

Suddenly I realized that I was surrounded by at least a dozen staring young men. Where they came from, I have no idea. My Bangla was limited. I asked one if the gate ahead could be opened so I could turn around. I think “bondu” “cola” and “gora” probably sounded like friend, soft drink, and cow because many of these adolescents began to snicker. One said something like, “saab byray”. I knocked again at the gate with no response from any chowkidar inside. Obviously none of these laughing (I know that embarrassment causes some people to laugh) gawkers lived along this road but were amused by this tall blonde lady in a dilemma (probably I was the only excitement on this lane for a long time). No one offered a solution to this impasse.

I looked at them and remembered when our honeymoon bed mattress flipped off our Chevy in rural Washington State and a team of footballers in a following bus, stopped, lifted it out of the culvert and tied it on top for us… “So now,” I stated in my best teacherly voice and in kutcha Bangla, “we will lift up and turn the car.” (Akon amara uperay gari!) I leaned down and began to lift up the front fender… ah, ha, ha was the response until one student stepped forward. “Do you really think you can carry this car,” he asked in English? “Oh, not alone, “ I replied. But I then I smiled, lifted at the fender, turned and gestured at all of his college friends with a circular motion of my arm. (Pantomime and humor still helps when words fail in this country). He raised his hand to stop the snickering. Then he placed 6 of these slender boys on the front fender and another 6 on the back and they lifted, slowly, slowly walking my little German conveyance in a tight, small circle until she faced south again. I think they even chanted “Allah, Allah, Allah” as they rotated the car. Wonder of wonders!

When I offered to pay my young, English-speaking “foreman”, he shrugged and said, “oh no, Mrs., we will enjoy telling this story for many years.” I’m sure that he and his college friends had no idea that together they could lift and turn a car and free a foreign newcomer from a cul-de-sac. Now how I wish I could find these folks again, after 26 years, and ask if they could lift this polluted and crime-ridden city out of it’s dead-end! Although I didn’t have resolve enough to find the Hill’s house that same day, I have often thought that most problems in Bangladesh do have solutions, if we can all work together.