The transition from Kuwait to Oman was seamless, save for the small, anomalous amount of time spent in Dhaka in a whirlwind of meeting relatives for the first time. An emotional, and cultural metamorphosis of sorts: finding out the word Khala meant aunty but not aunty in the sense I was used to, which was every grown lady that we came across—but an aunt by blood, sisters of my mother, who had children my age. Cousins I couldn’t yet comprehend but befriended immediately upon meeting. It was decidedly a bit much for my younger self to take in, still just in primary school, daughter to migrant parents, and I had never had a taste of extended family. I was familiar with airports, and with the promise of a new country in the gulf, it was a relief to board the plane to Muscat, aside from the newfound sense of grief at having to leave behind the new people I had found. Uncles and aunties sounded less pleasant than Khala and Khalu, Kaku and Kakima, Nana and Nanu, due to that brief interlude. The very idea of an identity that is made up of who you are, where you come from, what you call your own, still an unknown concept.
We landed at 3 in the morning in yet another foreign country with a stack of luggages that had my father’s name scribbled on them in permanent black marker. The five of us were an amalgamation of anxious energy, exhaustion, and curiosity. Our feet weighed heavier than the baggage we carried. The air itself was saturated with newness and nerves. Don’t roll the windows down, the driver had said, the air is hot. It was the month of May. The house we were assigned when my father was posted was not in Qurum, the suburb where the other Bangladeshi diplomats lived, but in the heart of Ruwi. When we arrived, we discovered that the large apartment had only one occupant. The lack of people inhabiting the space was apparent in the state of it; the dusty furniture, stained and musty carpets, congealed oil stains in the kitchen and beds without bedding in threadbare rooms. None of it matched the fantasy a child conjured up the entire flight there, and doused were the dreams of rooms worthy of girls in films. My teary eyed mother, still engulfed in the heartache of having bid goodbye to her loved ones, was horrified at the sight of our new home, crestfallen now for a completely different reason.
Kuwait saw us in a large apartment complex, cushioned by other Bangladeshi families on every floor, a source of comfort for my parents having moved out of their native land for the first time. Muscat, however, threw them for a loop. Our next door neighbours were a Tamil couple, the flat beneath ours was occupied by a Sudanese lady, and the one next to it, a Lebanese family with 7 sons. It’s funny, the perspective time allows. Having a teenage daughter, my mother fretted over the testosterone fueled raucousness we’d often hear coming from downstairs, all of which changed with one accident. My brother had cut his forehead open on glass in the middle of the afternoon and one of the Lebanese boys, Ahmed, drove us to the hospital, stayed by my mother the entire time, and helped aid things along when nurses didn’t speak English. And as the months went by, all of our neighbours who made up the brilliant cultural hodgepodge in the two story building, would become regular house guests, and vice versa, come Eids, Diwali and Christmas. Initial unease was buried and forgotten. We didn’t communicate in one particular language, but instead, it was a patchwork of different words we had picked up in Hindi, Arabic, and English. More was conveyed in the saran wrapped dishes we would show up to each other’s apartments with than in mere words.
The lady whose apartment was now ours had been there a little over five years. A single woman living by herself overseas, no husband or children to account for—something quite unheard of at the time, which made my mother regard her with equal parts trepidation and envy. It was after she had moved back to Bangladesh to transition before her next posting that things kicked into gear. In a matter of weeks, admission tests had been passed swiftly and we were enrolled into school, mid-semester no less. We had gotten the hang of the area, found a Bangladeshi family living two doors down, and a general store at the corner of the street that we frequented almost regularly. And once schooling was handled and a daily routine had been established, we got to work on fixing our new home for the next half decade. Dull brown carpeting that was once a vibrant red was ripped up and replaced with a cool grey, the furniture beaten and vacuumed violently to rid it of every speck of dust. New bedsheets, new mattresses, the constant string of purchases and refurnishings kept us occupied amidst long distance phone calls made every week. Short but loud conversations, every member of the family getting a chance to exchange shouts on the telephone rather than a proper chat. All had settled and we were home.
People had a way of finding each other, a nose for other Bangladeshis that was remarkable. The word of a new family had passed around and soon came the onslaught of invites and offers of assistance. Not one meal had been cooked at home in that first week, and every family that invited us decided to pick us up and show us around, consider our home yours, they said at every gathering. Hometowns, backgrounds, all differences somehow set aside, the community threaded through with strings of red and green. Migrant workers were everywhere, it was no longer a novelty to find a fellow Bengali out of social settings. The bigger grocery store that we frequented once a week had a Bangladeshi doorman, who came up to us the first time we went shopping there, days after our move. It was in the dairy aisle that he introduced himself once he heard us speak, and in a matter of minutes we knew his village, his town, about his family, and even received an invitation to his humble abode whenever we pleased. Car cleaners, shop keepers, retail workers, were almost always South Asian. Bangladeshis, Pakistanis, Indians, Sri Lankans, working side by side at nearly every establishment, regardless of position, even though the natives were hardly seen manning the grunt work that South Asians were assigned. We referred to them all as uncles and aunties.
Some of the things that come to mind when one thinks of the Gulf countries are concrete splitting heat, dry air and constant central air conditioning. Yet, there was greenery, and so much of it. Every street lined with palm trees, some within arm’s reach, ripe and unripe date palms hanging temptingly low. Long strips of green lawns alongside the asphalt, a distinct contrast to the dusty, intimidating mountains always in sight, either looming ahead or casting shadows on the roads. In a matter of months, it had all become familiar, our daily destinations mapped out. School, home, park, bakery, grocery store. Nearly every evening was spent on the small field separating the suburban streets from the main road down below. The heady, overwhelming aroma of perfumes worn by Arab women hung in the air, the chatter of Arabic, a rather different dialect than that in Kuwait carried by the wind. It was sharper, the Omani tongue, ‘ghayn’ replaced with ‘qaf’—the swahili influence apparent. My family and I left home for our twilight strolls that were almost always followed by a dinner of shawarma; always chicken straight off the rotisserie, the smell of it wafting through the air making it impossible to resist, falafel, and mountain dew. We’d have it right there on the dewy grass, playing audience to the cars zooming by at untethered speed under the little suns in the form of streetlights that lit up the roads. They glittered on the exteriors of the cars like a thousand stars as they flew by. And we’d talk about our day, with my toddler brother attempting somersaults on the grass. A rare novelty now to think back on.
School was a daunting business at first. Indian School, Darsait. It was the summer term of third grade, I was the only Bangladeshi, not simply in my class but in the entire school. It worked as a conversation starter, though the teachers were immediately apprehensive upon meeting me. But the wonderful thing about being young is that learning comes easy, and within months I was reading, writing and reciting fluently in Hindi. A feat that was acquired by following along the lessons I was given in class for Hindi Language and Literature. Language was just language, whether that was the Bangla I spoke at home, the English I spoke outside, or the Hindi and Arabic I spoke during lessons. And with the naivety that childhood allowed, I thought they all belonged to me, every language I spoke, every language that I learned. For the longest time it did not occur to me that there were rules set in place about claims to languages; legal and absolute. I could speak in their tongue but it would never be mine. But children don’t fixate on such things for too long, and I learned to accept things as they appeared.
Friends were made easily, over recess and arts and crafts classes. Scouts and Guides lessons were on Wednesdays, the last day of the week before the weekend. It entailed a different pinafore from our regular one, an extra bag, notebooks and sticky glue and colourful tape to attach our findings to our notebooks, and to label them. Fallen leaves, misshapen stones, and the odd cat droppings were discovered weekly with cries of joy and disgust. Sometimes the discovery was live tadpoles or dead butterflies, and the prize for the discovery was a stern telling off by the teacher for having touched them. I stood up every morning and sang along to the Indian national anthem until the fifth grade where I met a Greek girl who wouldn’t sing along. I followed her suit and stopped singing along too.
Library periods were on Mondays, the best days, smack dab in the middle of the week, right after recess. Nothing could make a third grader feel more like a grown up than owning a library card. The dignified walk to the librarian after picking out a book followed by thorough browsing in the forty minutes that the period lasted. The librarian left out books on the long tables as suggestions, mostly science and general knowledge texts with colourful images that kept most of us occupied. My first foray into literature was quite backwards as I started with the classics and then found my way to more age appropriate books. A yellow hardcover on the returned books bin, the cover of which had four girls in the midst of various activities, caught mid-laughter, in what looked like a meadow. Dancing, knitting, reading, and cloud gazing. It was this cover that caught my attention, don’t judge a book by its cover flying out the window. The novel was thick, with illustrations inside, the pages slightly yellowed by age. I took Meg, Jo, Beth and Amy home that day.
Anne of Green Gables followed, then Heidi, Robinson Crusoe, The Scarlet Letter for some reason; a streak of classics upended by the deep purple cover of The Famous Five. George hugging Timothy, her expression frozen in fear with the bright white of a flashlight lighting up her face. I had found an entryway to the world of Enid Blyton, and my exploration of the classics was on momentary pause. But combined with the acute attention span of a young reader and the swiftness with which the books were read through, one library period a week soon proved to be a source of agitation. Waiting a week for a new book was worse than the absence of my best friend Natalie at school. I turned to my parents to buy me new books, but their disgruntled reaction to my constant reading meant no more than a new book a month from the book section of Al Jadeed superstore. Across the main road and eight blocks away, the store stood with a new, glitzy car at the front of it every few weeks, a tempting lottery prize for high spending customers, the irony of open gambling in a Muslim country not yet apparent to me. We had our designated sections there, the five of us. My father, lost in the produce section, my mother memorising the aisles of home goods, my sister either knee deep in stationery products, struggling to make up her mind, or trying on clothes, most of which she wouldn’t buy. My brother of course, had to accompany my mother instead of spending hours at the toy section, and he would make sure the entire store heard of his displeasure. And I catalogued. The new books, the old ones, the ones I would purchase next time, the one most important to take home that instant. It eased the desperation only a little, the permanence of owning the beautifully bound pages. But the wait between each story was too long, so I did the only thing I could think of, and dabbled in borrowing without permission from the school library. One might refer to it as stealing. But it’s only stealing if you don’t return them, I thought, which sometimes, if I enjoyed the book enough, I did not. That’s how every Monday became a source of nervous energy and a palpitating heart, as I picked up more than my share of books in the library and stuck them into the front of my pinafore. An unassuming kleptomaniac in the making. It wasn’t until a year later, when the school conducted a thorough search of all classrooms and our school bags after a fourth grader was caught with an unsavoury magazine in his possession, that I decided to return what I could to the library and never attempt to “borrow” again. The panic of the search in addition to my inclination towards worst case scenarios scared my brief stint of thievery out of me. I attempted to bury the guilt of it later, by telling myself I was only stealing stories.
However, the likes of Jo, George, Matilda and Nancy Drew had borne into me a new persisting pesterence—adventure. My neighbour turned friends; Wafa, Faiza, and Adil, we found ourselves nearly every day, hours past curfew, clambering up the small, yet daunting hill that was a jump away from the park we frequented, in search of clues to crimes our imaginations had convinced us had happened. A wayward shoe, forgotten and now home to bugs became the surefire sign of a missing person, broken glass shards were proof of violence. And we dug, and we climbed, ran into hedges and followed nowhere leading footsteps; and we reasoned with unfathomable assurance of fantastical things to suppress the mundane. The imagination is untethered when one is young; no idea too big, no suggestion too wild, no mystery too unsolvable. Cuts and injuries acquired during our self aggrandizing missions were badges of honour. Receiving a bicycle for my 10th birthday only gave way to strengthen my convictions, we had more freedom and many more adventures to partake in as we ran wild on the streets of Mumtaz Area.
“I want to do something splendid before I go into my castle–something heroic, or wonderful–that won’t be forgotten after I’m dead.” It was a line I had memorised, one that I repeated to anyone who would listen, and for a brief window of girlhood, it had become an active vocation to embody those words. And with the backdrop of a safe city, an environment which cultivated and encouraged freedom and autonomy, it became a possibility to replicate words on paper in real life. We were the carpenters of the shiny, mysterious pieces of a life that had just begun. And unbeknownst to me, my idea of self, an identity still murky and confusing, slowly began to take shape.
When you’re young, the first and most significant, almost tangible way you can feel the passage of time is through the passing of one grade to another in school. And it was in the midst of moving from the third grade to the sixth, that several years had gone by. A significant amount of inches had been added to my height; unmarred skin now tanned to a deep brown from unbarred sun exposure. And it was lined with a plethora of scribblings and scratches collected like stamps when playing rough and reckless in the school field, in the local park—flying off swings and rolling down moss covered hills. Even chicken pox. My brother was no longer a toddler, and my sister had come to face the age-old, hair-greying question of where to go for university. Mobile phones became a common accessory to most, and my mother had filled a drawer with top-up cards. Her homesickness grew exponentially the more she could contact her family. Weddings took place without her, children came into the world. She visited for a brief period, my father’s gift to her, which she received with utmost joy. It left my sister and I to fend for ourselves with Eid-ul-Adha fast approaching. Hard as we tried, we couldn’t replicate the magic of waking up on the morning of Eid to see the house redecorated and embellished. Although it was the first Eid without our mother, the neighbours and countless family friends, did all they could to make us feel otherwise. The kindness of strangers remained a common theme our entire stay there, as we would see in the years to come, and we tried to match the generosity in return. We would see our house become a refuge to many acquaintances we had picked up along the way, whose own homes were flooded and damaged when the most disastrous cyclone that has ever hit the Arabian sea paid us a destructive visit in 2007. As we rode around with yet another mercurial uncle in his deep blue jeep, while he dropped off candles and dry food to those in the Bengali community affected by Gonu, it became further testament to the sense of responsibility those away from home felt towards each other. You cannot live a nomadic life without other nomads.
The conditions of my father’s job dictated that we could stay no longer than five-six years in one place at a time, and yet the few short years in Oman felt like decades, a lifetime. It was home, and prior to Muscat, Kuwait was home.The notion of home remains inextricably intertwined with the idea of self. And while my identity on paper was decided immediately upon conception; the permanent residence on my passport read Narayanganj as the nationality read Bangladeshi—it was the immigration pages with the stamped visas that I identified most with, the concoction of languages I learned to express with; and the strangers turned friends, turned found-family I related to in my most formative years. Roots that were ripped up and replanted again, and again but the echoes of places that were once home, remained. Ingrained into my memory are the rocky beaches in Qurum, the lovely tall lamp posts in Muttrah souq—the corniche that provided just enough light to watch the towering ships, smelling strongly of fish staying afloat. From the eerie silence of the Nizwa fort despite its countless tourists, to the rowdy streets of Hamriyah, the capital of Bangladeshi immigrants—Muscat was a place so permanent and solid, in spite of its temporariness. The start of my very own bildungsroman on the grounds of such rich history and relevance to the stories my mother would tell us in bed: Of miracles and prophets, mercy and perseverance. All enclaved in the oppressive heat and the smell of salt in the air from the beaches at all corners.
