ঢাকা,বাংলাদেশ

Bearded men peered through rusted metal bars, brown hands waved and pointed, and the few women in the crowd hid behind heavy fabric while I searched the crowds looking for someone I used to know. As I was remembering how it felt to arrive in Bangladesh nearly fifteen years ago, my thoughts were interrupted by the sight of a smiling and waving Belal. He signaled to meet him at the edge of the gate and then we loaded into his van and headed towards my friend’s home. Belal had been an amazing driver for these family-friends for fourteen years, and so he remembered my family and rattled on about how he missed us and how he loved my parents.

Chicken market in Gulshan 2 Circle

While we waited for the family to return from their school day, Belal made me Bangladeshi dudh chai and I carried the warm cup out to the verandah for a view of the city as dusk approached. I had only been out there for a minute when the voice of an Imam calling followers to prayer rose above the skyline. In the distance another voice joined from a minaret. Then another voice. And another. I remembered once having to freeze on stage – mid-sentence and dressed as Rudolph - during a school Christmas play because we were interrupted by the obnoxious timing of the call to prayer from a nearby Mosque. But, on this day, I stood there comforted by the sounds and crying quietly until the songs of the Imams were replaced with the loud noises of Dhaka.

The streets of Dhaka are commonly found in the red and green colors of their national flag.

With only two and a half days in Dhaka, I committed to briskly walking down every memory lane that I could fit into the sixty hours I was given. I attended the morning service at my old church with old and new friends, I visited my old school, the handicraft stores I loved, the coffee shop I needed coffee beans from, and went to my favorite restaurants with old classmates. We never had a car while we lived there, so my mother often made us walk or load three or four at a time on a rickshaw. In honor of this memory, I walked and took rickshaws everywhere as well. I retraced my route to school, through the markets we used to buy our groceries, and alongside the grass fields I used for soccer practice.

Fruit salesmen from the market near my old house that recognized me when I was walking through the market.

Although Dhaka felt in many ways like the same city that I had left seven years ago, something had also shifted in Bangladesh while we were gone. What was most noticeable was the increased security and, in some ways, further segregation between foreigners and Bangladeshis. When I asked people about what I had observed, many people living in Dhaka would mention the massacre at Holey Bakery as the likely reason for the change. There had always been some caution, especially as Christians living in Bangladesh, but due to the presence of security I felt an odd sense of anticipation of violence. We were patted down and searched before entering church, every restaurant had guards and often a metal detector, and the wall around the American Club had doubled in height and been fortified. For someone who did not live through the Holey Bakery attack or the string of murders that preceded, these symbols of increased security felt like ancient remnants to a fundamentalist Islamic Dhaka that I had never known.

Maybe because a few extremists don’t define a nation.

Outside the houses of staff within the LAMB hospital compound.

Following my time travel back to Dhaka, I spent two days at LAMB Hospital in northern Bangladesh. My mother had served on the board at LAMB hospital and my family visited frequently to escape the hustle of Dhaka. My memories of LAMB were always of climbing trees to collect star fruit and playing Kick-the-Can at nighttime with the children living on the compound. Since I couldn’t do those things anymore, the two days at LAMB hospital were spent learning about the hospital, connecting with friends that lived and worked there, and getting advice about living and working cross-culturally in Siliguri.

Lamb eating within the LAMB Hospital compound.

My return to Bangladesh just happened to coincide with Bishwa Ijtema; one of the largest Muslim pilgrimages in the world that meets along a river outside Dhaka. As I shared transportation with Muslims who had traveled far distances to attend these three days of prayer, I felt as if I was on a sacred pilgrimage of my own. As I walked to places of historical significance to me, I paused to give thanks in remembrance, grieve for people I had once known, examine the woman I had become, and I pray that my future would continue to be as happy as those years in Dhaka had been. I felt nothing but peace as I walked across the border between Bangladesh and India towards my home in Siliguri.