Visiting home

Even by this definition, however, it is not quite as simple as one may like, which is the excuse for this digression. For many of my generation born before Liberation, our birth certificates or passports indicate a city in what is now Pakistan. Clearly other than the letters in black and white spelling Karachi in my passport, I have no familial or emotional or historical ties to that city or region. However, as is wont to occur often in the life of a jajabor, the answer to the most basic question: "Where are you from?" often elicits, hopefully imperceptible to others, the slightest of hesitation as I answer "Bangladesh," questioning myself whether full disclosure requires further elaboration.

This also reminds me of a very dear Pakistani friend of mine, also born in Karachi, but whose father was born in Bihar before Partition, and whose mother was born in what was then East Pakistan. Of course, many more august figures, such as the current heads of government of both India and Pakistan, also share the same characteristics (though, surely, increasingly less so as the fractures of the subcontinent inevitably recede further into the past), i.e., the disjunction between what they may state as their home country and where they were born. I wonder if they ever feel a momentary sense of, for lack of a better word, "multi-statedness;" my guess is that the non-diasporics in our set, being rooted in a single state though it be other than that of their birth, are not susceptible to these flashes of ambiguity, though I think this would be a good sociological question.

Returning to the present theme, a fairly recent flight home to Dhaka (I must admit that the speed dial settings in my SIM card include the following designations: "Home -- San Diego," "Home -- Dhaka," and "Home -- Rome," though the schizophrenia entailed therein is surely better explored under a psycho-philosophical approach to "home" alluded to above) brought to immediate relief the two major societal distinctions, which requires a far subtler eye for the expatriate Bangladeshi to detect in the West; permeating the daily life in our country: class and wealth. Though on my trips home over the past quarter-century, I believe that I have found the weight of such distinctions to have diminished on the margin, the first impact unfailingly remains bald and pervasive.

The instant and in-your-face nature of these distinctions make it difficult to avoid noticing, and that time it began with my Biman flight from Fiumicino airport in Rome. Even in a pre-9-11 setting, the check-in area appeared quarantined; the non-Bangladeshi passport holders were segmented and seemingly better treated. A degree of confusion reigned: for example, most of us boarded the flight to Dhaka, only to learn after being airborne that we were first going to London. And that was just the beginning.

While we were waiting (quarantined) in the transit lounge in Heathrow, it became clear that many other passengers were joining our flight and that the seat assignments had in many cases been duplicated. Being a somewhat experienced traveler I managed to return to my original seat and fend off the pretender with a cold stare. My row mate, however, being a less experienced traveler, or perhaps just a milder fellow, was having a more difficult time, with the steward insisting he go to the rear. As it was quite clear that the steward was not extending equal treatment to him perhaps due to his colloquial Bengali, though usually a confirmed non-interventionist, I felt compelled to intervene, and successfully so given that the gentleman had clearly paid for his assigned seat.

During the flight from London to Dhaka, I learned a little bit about my neighbour. He was also from Dhaka but from the other side of the Buriganga. About eight years earlier he had made the cross-continental trek across Asia and into Europe, first to Germany, and then, finding it impossible to obtain employment there, to Italy. Over the previous six years, he had worked a number of menial jobs in Rome, obtained his papers, and had become a proud owner of a fruit stand in front of the entrance to the Vatican Museum. He was returning to his village for the wedding of his younger brother, and had dressed up in a suit and tie for his first return home.

Slightly before our landing he made, and to my arms-length, westernized ways, a rather suspicious request: could I possibly walk with him through customs. I, of course, began to mumble something about why it might not be possible given the different lines in immigration or the timing of the arrival of the luggage --but he had not asked me to carry anything and here was a man who felt that my education could be of help, so I agreed. When we went to the customs officer he looked at me quizzically as I stated that I had nothing to declare but was there, instead, to accompany my fellow passenger. He, it turned out, had saved and brought over sixty thousand dollars -- an amount that I had not heretofore seen in cash at one time -- for his family, but did not have the confidence to face the customs officer and make such a (lawful) declaration on account of his relative status in our society. While the particular bureaucratic moment passed uneventfully, declining the offer of the delicious fruits that the gentleman had carried so carefully with him for his elderly father was altogether a different matter.

Classism is surely a universal trait and a constitutive part of the human condition. In the various countries that I have lived and worked in across four continents, none could be termed a classless society. The question is, of course, one of degree of classism, and the relative disadvantages faced by the lower classes. Returning home to Dhaka, however, the level of inequality, perceptible to even the most casual observer, always appears to have been raised to the nth degree.

The difference between the upper and lower classes here no longer seems to be a quantitative matter, but rather, a qualitative separation, perhaps analogous to the distinctions explicitly, and now, often, implicitly made on account of race and skin colour in the West. Think of the last time you invited a candidate for a household service position to take a seat with you during the interview!

In thinking about the impact of inequality on a nation's development, I was reminded of a comparison related by one of my teachers a very long time ago, namely, Japan and Siam (present-day Thailand), and the exactly contemporaneous reforms they undertook (notably successful in terms of avoiding falling under the domination of Western colonialism) to modernize under the Meiji Emperor and King Chulalongkorn, respectively, in the last third of the 19th century. One commonality was to send Japanese and Siamese students to the West to learn modern science and technology.

The result: within one generation, Japan had transformed herself to an industrial power, while Siam remained a largely agrarian society (though, surely, even as today, a delightfully pleasant one). The difference according to my professor: the Japanese teams of students sent abroad were comprised of a cross-section from a more egalitarian citizenry that mastered the nitty-gritty of the mechanics of industrial production and readily implemented their learning upon their return, while the Siamese students, selected primarily from the noble classes, absorbed the art of managing the workers, and upon their return found implementation, absent the nuts-and-bolts knowledge of the workers, infeasible. Perhaps it is an apocryphal story, but, viz. the modern trajectory of other, generally more egalitarian Far Eastern nations such as South Korea and post-communist China -- it does seem to have a ring of truth to it.

Manzur Rahman is a professor in San Diego, California.