Shahidul News – Page 147 – Musings by Shahidul Alam

Despatch II. The Road to Dhaka:

There were serious gaps in dispatch I which need to be filled in. Such as Sabeen, like an apple savvy Ma Kali hovering over me to make sure that I called Evelien immediately to call off Dar Es Salaam. Skype on the hotel wifi was a bit of a joke, but Evelien?s voice did echo through the ether. Tongue out, sabre ready, Sabeen was poised to strike and I wasted no time in sending of a plaintive plea to Evelien to forgive me my sins. Her response was immediate. ?We would rather you live?. The death tolls were knolling! Any attempt by Nalaka and I to move towards the issues we had sneaked out of the meeting room to discuss were totally swept aside by the hordes of people gathering round. ?The hotel lobby had become a control centre. Doctors, travel agents, airline desks, World Press were all being hotwired. Transatlantic messages flowed in interspersed with local flavour. Manori came over with her own private collection of angiogram videos. Suvendu wanted scans of my report for his dad in the US. Mowli, my niece called from London, Rahnuma was on chat. Chulie came in with a long face and a detailed survey of cardiologists in Colombo. Nalaka and I did manage to get a few words across, but Manju was there with her FK problems. While budget lines were being fixed and participants finalized for 2007, I signed the FK papers. It felt more like signing a last will.

The Palm Strip lounge in Colombo had little to do with palms. Stuck in a corner next to the self service canteen, it was an easy lounge to miss. Having made my way back all the way from the gate, past all the other lounges, I settled into Palm Strip hoping against hope for a wifi connection. I was lucky to find a power outlet. There was one terminal with Internet but a six year old girl and her mum had set up residence around it, and it was only my ?gate is closing? timing that allowed me contact with the keyboard. I sent off my fond farewells in time to rush back to the gate.

The woman in the Dubai counter stopped to take stock of my passport. She was slow anyway, but a six layer passport with no empty pages was not something she dealt with everyday and time seemed to stand still in the Dubai Emirates counter. My Dhaka-Dubai-London-Biarritz-London-Dubai-Colombo-Dubai route was perhaps not the most straightforward one, but all I wanted was to change the remaining Dubai-Dar Es Salaam-Dubai-Colombo-Dubai-Dhaka segment to Dubai-Dhaka. That seemed simple enough. A small conference gathered around my ticket and my passport. A break of sequence was apparently mortal sin in the airline industry, but there was a way, apparently. If I were to buy a new Dubai-Dhaka ticket, retaining the existing ones and use them later, exactly in their original sequence, then apparently I could avoid losing money on them altogether. Reorganising meetings around that altered schedule to utilize such air travel calisthenics might have proved difficult, but they were only trying to help. Through security, past the Ferraris on sale to counter twenty I went, only to be told that I was totally in the wrong place. It was Skywards at gate 8 that I wanted. The attendants at the lucky Chinese numbered gate were helpful too. All I had to do was to go back to where I came from where the commercial desk would issue me a new ticket. By now the security people were getting suspicious of this bearded guy who had gone backwards and forwards through their gate four times in one hour. They didn?t realize our future destiny was also entwined. The commercial desk rebooked the flight, but surprise surprise, I had to go back to the original counter to get the ticket issued! The woman with time on her hands was dealing with passengers at her own pace, and spotting the first class counter empty, I chass?d across to the woman there. She smiled and with a sidelong glance at my wad of passports, quietly went through the pile of stapled tickets. ?Why have you done all this?? she asked. As I went through the entire history, she sighed and took me back to the commercial counter. But this encounter was different. She managed to cancel the Dubai-Dar Es Salaam flight, and issued me a Dubai-Dhaka ticket, without revoking the sectors in between. While the new tickets were being issued, she asked me where I was from. Zareen Ahmed had two kids and lived with her family in Sharjah. Her parents lived in Gulshan in Dhaka. I now had a friend in Dubai airport. I did have to go back to her counter, but in the end, armed with my new ticket, I was ready to face my security friends for yet another trip past the metal detector.

Despatch III to follow.

Pentagon Announces New PR Chief

Press Release: For Immediate Release
Dateline: 19th June 2006
5:00 PM Pentagon
President George W Bush in an unprecedented and open discussion with
journalists, announced the appointment of Rahnuma Ahmed as the new PR
chief for the Pentagon.
“Given her marvelous track record and her ability to manufacture stories
out of thin air, we feel Prof. Ahmed will be the perfect vehicle for the
‘information’ we need to convey to the world, where the US is
misunderstood. With her wonderful ability to bring to life stories that
would be untenable in most media and public scrutiny, she has
demonstrated her ability to win the ‘hearts and minds’ of the part of
the world that still does not recognize our values.”
Secretary of State Dr. Condoleezza Rice cooed over the new appointment.
“This is the best thing that has happened at the Pentagon for a long
time” she said, adding “With Ahmed on the team, we would never have lost
Vietnam.” Later Senator Russ Feingold was on CSPAN confirming the
appointment.
Source: CIA

Countering propaganda: Dubai despatch

Dear Friends,

Contrary to the aggressive propaganda campaign by Rahnuma Ahmed, I would
like to state that I am alive and well and in no signs of being
imminently embalmed, buried or cremated. The greatest difficulty I
currently face is to resist the excellent profiteroles in Dubai Lounge.
The trip has not been uneventful. Having used up Nalaka’s monthly pay by
phoning the UK and sampling all the variations of ‘your custom is
valuable to us… all operators are busy now…and other endearments, I
was informed that taking the Dhaka flight instead of the Dar Es Salaam
flight from Dubai, would involve all my intermediary tickets becoming
void. Being the kind considerate individual that he was, the UK person,
suggested that I try convincing the airport staff that they should
understand my plight. The implication was that short of feigning death,
there was no real chance that I would be allowed to deviate from the
holy emirates scriptures. Rahnuma’s campaign was kicking in however, and
distraught calls from Mowli in London, and chat messages from Rahnuma in
Dhaka punctuated our attempts at international aerial understanding.
Having been told in previous days how our gender balance was necessary
for the empowerment of the gentle sex, I came across the combined
husbandry of the entire female team in the meeting. Chulie and Brishti
joined in for good measure. I was not to walk, blink or whisper (they
did permit breathing) for the rest of eternity. And if I was ever in
doubt of the outcome of the slightest deviation of this generous and
permissive freedom that I had been offered, then my life would certainly
not have been worth living.
Packing provided the first taste of the excitement to come. Sabeen and
Chulie in their Biarritz berets and bandanas, Indian waistcoats, Nepali
hats, and “Edit Naked” T shirts. Chuli twirled in her waistcoat, saying
“I’m too fat”. Suvendu called at regular intervals to add sound effect,
and Sabeen picked up my repaired suitcase, to ensure there would be no
hitch in this perfectly planned repatriation. The Dhanmondi jailers
awaited in glee. Supreeta had brought in my medicine, and Mazhar had
waited in the corridor to ensure that I didn’t slip past without it, but
the medical records and the medicine had been packed away in our
excitement.
The drama continued at Colombo airport. As predicted, the initial head
shaking (which can mean no or yes or impossible depending upon the needs
of the moment), the rolling of the eyes, the gathering of the clan and
the excited chatter as we all waited for the outcome of this monumentous
decision, eventually led to me being asked to join another queue. This
was obviously the queue for multiple offenders and special scrutiny
awaited all in the line. Consequently the advantage of my first ever
arrival at an airport within the stipulated time, rapidly disappeared
and the ‘final call’ at the gate approached ever more rapidly.
Eventually I was given a booking, and my luggage boarded with the
explicit instructions that I sort things out in Dubai.
Dubai airport 08:15 17th June 2006
Part II to follow:

Demagogues at Airports

He looked worried as most passengers would do, waiting for luggage that should have arrived. It had been a while since EK005 from Dubai had landed at Heathrow terminal 3. Belt 2 was almost empty. They announced that one lot of bags was yet to arrive. There was hope yet.

Nawaz Sharif at Heathrow

Now that we were the only two passengers left, we made eye contact. With a faint nod he registered my recognition, as celebrities often do. He asked me in Urdu, where I was from. Dhaka, I muttered, and we shook hands. He found no need to introduce himself as Mian Muhammad Nawaz Sharif, the former prime minister of Pakistan. I resisted the temptation to ask him about his property in London, or the proposed tryst with Benazir.

This had occurred before, once at terminal 4 when General Ershad, the former president of Bangladesh had arrived. No fanfare, no waiting crowds, people walking by. I wondered how it felt. They both had absolute power when they ruled, and had used it with abandon. I remembered our resistance in the streets, the police brutality, the teargas. Noor Hossain and Milon’s death. Despite all the rhetoric about their closeness to the people, fending for themselves at the airport terminal was probably as near as they ever got to seeing what it was like on the other side.

7th June 2006

Biarritz

Monsoon Rains

Bonna sang beautifully last night at the launch of the new UNESCO office. ?megher pore megh jomeche?. A haunting song by Tagore. The lilt in her voice and its delicate quiver, like the changing light in the wet leaves in the rain. The monsoons are here. It is my birthday today, and my treat to myself was to tear myself away from my laptop and take a walk in the rain in the morning, camera in hand. I came across this working mother carrying her child, delivering food to wealthy homes. The land she walked on would fetch well over three million dollars an acre in current market prices. About the cost of the diamonds in Prince Moosa?s shoes.

working mother in rain ? Shahidul Alam/Drik

It is also Nasreen?s chollisha (forty days after death, significant to Muslims). Rahnuma and the others have joined her family at the family graveyard at Ghazipur. The sky is still crying.

And then there is happy news. The National Geographic just informed us that Omi (Saiful Huq, my research assistant at Drik and a Pathshala alumni) is one of the four awardees of their All Roads Project. Sucheta Das, who works closely with Drik India won an honourable mention. Omi will be feted in Hollywood and the National Geographic Office in Washington DC. They are both over the moon, as indeed I am, having nominated them. It was Pathshala alumni Neo Ntsoma last year. Pressure is on for the hat-trick. Unless they arrest me for nepotism.

Here is an introduction to the photographers:

Saiful Huq

Saiful Huq is a thinking photographer. While his power of visualisation has never been in doubt, it is the reason that he photographs that is more compelling. The trappings of conventional photojournalism lay heavy on all of us. The play of light, the use of lines, the geometry of the image are all seductive. But Huq takes us beyond the dynamics of image construction. It is his concerns as an individual that his photographs give us an insight to. The urge to show the helpless victim, the tearjerker image that looms large on billboards, are often the first choice of photojournalists trying to make their mark. That a young photographer has been able to resist those easy options says a lot about Huq.

? Saiful Huq

His is a reflective stance, not a judgemental one. And in showing the plight of victims of meaningless violence, he chooses not to show them as victims, but as people who find themselves in a strange unfamiliar land. One they have never had to deal with before. It is the humanity of his images rather than the power of their construction that is central to his images. The visual strength is a bonus.

Sucheta Das

It is not often that a woman in a majority world country gets a job in a wire agency. It is even more rare to find a woman who gives it up to take the risk of going freelance. Shortly after winning an award at World Press Photo, when she was riding high, this young woman decided to give up the glamour and the pay, to return to her native Kolkata and try to find her own way to work. No guarantees, no press pass. Just she and her camera. It was a brave decision to take, but I believe the right one. If success can be predicted, then talent, guts, and sensitivity make up the right mix for a photographer to evolve into more than being a chronicler of moments of passing interest.

Sucheta works with an intimacy and an intensity that gets her close to her subjects, but keeps her from getting sentimental. She photographs people when they are most vulnerable, in situations they least want to be known for, but has developed a trust that not only allows her access, but a shared ownership of images that speak of their dignity despite their situation. It is a rare gift, especially in one so young.

Tarubala Bibi, 30, poisoned by drinking arsenic-contaminated water, lies on bed at Chhayghari Pitala village in Baharampur block in Murshidabad, 265 km north of the eastern Indian city of Kolkata May 18, 2005 ? Sucheta Das

posted: Dhaka 2nd June 2006

Boundaries

Chobi Mela IV

She packed her load of firewood onto the crowded train in Pangsha. The morning sun peered through the lazy winter haze. The vendors called ?chai garam, boildeem? and the train slowly chugged out of the station, people still clambering on board, or finishing last minute transactions. Some saying farewell. The scene had probably not been very different a hundred years ago. Maybe then, they carried pan in place of firewood, or some other commodity that people at the other end needed. She would come back the same day, bringing back what was needed here. Only today she was a smuggler. The artificial and somewhat random lines drawn by a British lawyer had made her an outlaw. She was crossing boundaries. There were other boundaries to cross. The job a woman was allowed to do, the class signs on the coaches that she could not read but was constantly made aware of. The changing light and the smells as sheet (winter) went into boshonto (spring). The Ashar clouds that the photographers waited for, which seemed to wait until the light was right.
Rickshaw wallas find circuitous routes to take passengers across the VIP road. Their tenuous existence made more difficult by the fact that permits are difficult to get, and the bribes now higher. Hip hop music in trendy discos in Gulshan and Banani with unwritten but clearly defined dress codes make space for the yuppie elite of Dhaka. The Baul Mela in Kushtia draws a somewhat different crowd. Ecstasy and Ganja breaks down some barriers while music creates the bonding. Lalon talks of other boundaries, of body and soul, the bird and the cage.
Photography creates its own compartments. The photojournalist, the fine artist, the well paid celebrity, the bohemian dreamer, the purist, the pragmatist, the classical, the hypermodern, the uncropped image, the setup shot, the Gettys and the Driks. The majority world. The South. The North. The West. The developing world. Red filters, green filters, high pass filters, layers, masks, feathered edges. No photoshop, yes photoshop. Canonites, Nikonites, Leicaphytes, digital, analogue.
The digital divide. The haves, the have nots. Vegetarians, vegans, carnivores. Heterosexuals, metrosexuals, transsexuals, homosexuals. The straight, the kinky. The visionaries, the mercenaries, the crude the erudite, the pensive the flamboyant. Oil, gas, bombs, immigration officials. WTO, subsidies, sperm banks, kings, tyrants, presidents, prime ministers, revolutionaries, terrorists, anarchists, activists, pacifists, the weak, the meek, the strong, the bully. The good the evil. The hawks the doves. The evolutionists, the creationists. The crusaders the Jihadis. The raised fist, the clasped palms. The defiant, the oppressive, the green, the red. The virgin.
Whether cattle are well fed, or children go hungry, whether bombs are valid for defence, or tools of aggression, boundaries ? seen and unseen ? define our modes of conduct, our freedoms, our values, our very ability to recognise the presence of the boundaries that bind us.
Festival Website

So Jamila could be Happy

Khala (auntie) was happy to see me. It was on impulse that I had gone to see her that day. I hadn’t seen her for a while and simply wanted to know how she was. She greeted me with her usual impish smile, but the smile had more to do with the fact that she had found a photographer in the house. Quickly she bundled me to the next room where a woman was holding a new born baby. Jamila had just been born, and Khala had found a photographer who could record this important moment.
Happy's Funeral in Ghazipur

The mother was quiet, and after a few photographs, I left mother and daughter in peace. This was a child the mother knew she couldn’t afford to keep. It was back in the drawing room of that old Dhanmondi house that I saw Nasreen. She had come in through the garden, one of the few in Dhanmondi that the developers had not yet buried in concrete. We’d known each other for a long time, and along with her sister Shireen, had attended many rallies organised by Nari Pokkho, the womens group that they belonged to. On many a protest, I had become an honorary woman and a proud member of the group.

Her wild curly hair bouncing as she spoke, we talked of the work we were doing together on HIV/AIDS. Positive Lives, an exhibition I had worked on as a curator and a photographer, was a show Action Aid had been touring country wide. They had organised educational programmes and gotten local celebrities to draw the crowds in. It had been a hugely successful tour. We talked of the work they were doing with the acid survivors. Rattling off ideas at great speed, for me to pursue, she dashed back to the office. Breezing out as she had breezed in. It was later that I learned that Nasreen and her husband Choton, had adopted Jamila. From then on, it was Jamila who took centre stage in Nasreen’s life. But that was the last I saw Nasreen alive.

Choton and I were fellow journalists, and whenever an important statement needed to go to press, it was Choton I would turn to. From Press Club to Motijheel to Topkhana, we would do the night time beat. He knew every editor in town and which desk to leave the press release on. Sometimes it was in search of Choton, that I would call up Nasreen. We would talk of work, but invariably the conversation veered to Jamila, never accidentally.

When I heard of the accident, I hadn’t been too concerned. A leg injury inside the parking space didn’t sound too critical. But soon I sensed something was seriously wrong. All day long people gathered at the hospital. Ministers, celebrities, acid victims, friends, ordinary people. It was through their faces that I learnt how Nasreen had touched people’s lives. It was in their tears that I found how much love she had given. Some whispered in disbelief, some wailed out loud. Choton, Shireen and Zafrulla were distraught. Khala had not yet been told. Naila was like a rock. It was she who had to break the news. She knew Nasreen the fighter, was not going to win this one. Torn up inside, Naila kept calm. As I watched inside ICU 1, I could see our fighter losing the one fight she had never prepared herself for.

Reading her obituary in the Guardian today, I remembered that it was in the same ICU where we had kept vigil when Rashed Khan Menon had been shot. I had photographed another fighter Jahanara Imam, who had been waiting outside with us. Years later, Rashed Bhai had recovered, but I had written Jahanara Khala?s obituary in the Guardian. Police brutality and cancer had taken their toll. That day I had sat with Rahnuma next to where Khala had waited and quietly held hands. It rained, as it had done when my father died and for all the deaths I could remember.

Back in Dhanmondi, Friends had arrived from far away lands. People had come from the villages. We all stood in disbelief. As I walked out of that room heavy with sadness, I heard peels of laughter from the garden. Jamila, not sure of why her mother was not there, or why there were so many people, was playing with her friends.

Her mother was called ‘Happy’ by her friends. At her funeral in Ghazipur, Happy’s friends sang songs of remembrance. They spoke of her courage and her ability to love. They spoke of her tenacity. I thought of Jamila and remembered how Happy had changed the lives of so many others, and felt it was through Jamila’s laughter that Happy should be remembered.

Shahidul Alam

1^st May 2006. Dhaka

Obituary in Guardian UK

Where Sandals Still Fear to Tread

Dear Mr. Kees,

Thank you for taking the time and the trouble to respond to my mail. Mine was a principled stand, and frankly not one I had expected the ambassador to respond to directly. I was pleasantly surprised that you did. In a similar case in 2002 (I have enclosed my description), where the dress code had not been specified, my national dress which I always wear, was not found respectable enough for an ambassador’s residence.
In that case the deputy ambassador had written to say that an exception could have been made in my case. I do not want to be an exception. If my national dress is not acceptable in a formal event in my own nation as a general rule, then I do not want to be part of it.
You correctly describe a ‘lounge suit’ as being internationally recognized as a ‘dark suit and a tie’. Indeed that is how I too interpreted it, and that was the reason for my objection. I find many Bangladeshi men proudly adhering to the same dress code you describe. Unsuitable though it might be for a Bangladeshi climate, I have no objections to the dress itself. It is the brown saheb’s aspirations for whiteness (luckily Europe is no longer exclusively white) that I find somewhat pathetic.
It is not for me to be judgmental about their aspirations. But I am free to make my own choices of attire. I am proud to be a Bangladeshi and proud to wear its national dress. This is what I wore when I met Queen Beatrix in Amsterdam, and what I wore when I met your current prime minister and the two previous ones. It is also what I wore when I sat next to the princess at dinner. I suspect I would have been warmer in a suit and a tie in each of those occasions, but my choice of attire was a conscious one.
I find it disconcerting that the same dress code is unacceptable in my own country barring ambassadorial pardon. However, I thank you again for inviting me, and though I regretfully decline, I would welcome the opportunity to invite you and Mrs. Vonhoff to ours. You would be free to wear a lounge suit should you want to.
Warmest regards to you both,
Shahidul Alam
My experience at French Ambassador’s residence

Boishakh for Poonam

She wakes up at five o?clock, washes utensils, cleans clothes, sweeps the floor and then gets ready for school. At school she has very few people to talk to and is often found sitting in a corner or being made fun of. If she is lucky, on some days her mother will come to pick her up. Otherwise she will have to crawl on her knees, as the wheelchair given to her by the government is broken.

Poonam is, however, determined to study and is learning to stand up on crutches given to her by a non-governmental hospital. If her family can manage $100 for an artificial leg implant in New Delhi, then she may even stand up on her own some day.

Amit Bhargava, India

When Amit?s picture was first published in the print version of the New Internationalist, several people wanted to help. Some wanted to send money. But helping was not such an easy matter. Amit had taken the original photograph over five years ago and did not have a specific address. Dhaka was over a thousand miles away. Luckily my friend professor Yogendra Yadav mentioned that he was from a nearby village. That was the encouragement I needed, and I decided to try and find Poonam. I headed out from Delhi in search of Yogendra?s activist friend Comrade Dalit Singh. Picking up Comrade Singh and his friend en-route, we continued to the village where we thought she might be. Activist networks can be fairly efficient, and Comrade Singh had done his homework. Through a schoolmaster who knew someone, who knew someone else. we eventually found her.

Things had changed over the last five years. Poonam?s father had died, but her mother had taken on extra work to make sure Poonam continued her study. She was in class nine (lower 5th in the old JMB system). She loved Amit?s photograph, even though all I had with me was a tatty photocopy. And she wanted the implant. My broken Hindi was being stretched, but we made friends.

Leaving money for the family with Comrade Singh, I went to the nearest major hospital. It was one that Yogendra?s family had setup and his sister was a doctor there. Explaining Poonam?s story, I went back to Delhi to meet Yogendra. Our friend Harsh Sethi the editor of Seminar magazine was also there. Harsh was somewhat of an expert on polio, and explained what the options were. I thought we?d solved Poonam?s problems.

Much had happened in between, and I hadn?t checked up on Poonam until recently, when I found out that they had miscalculated, and the money I had given was not nearly enough. Too embarrassed to ask me for more they had decided to try and raise the rest of the money themselves. I realised how my city life had alienated me from rural culture. I had forgotten how difficult it was to ask for more.

Published in Southern Exposure in New Internationalist Magazine

Today is ?Pohela Boishakh? the first day of the Bangla year 1413. I went out today to photograph the boishakhi storm, and gathered my first hailstones.

This is the month when farmers will harvest their new grain. This is the month when Chakma women in the Chittagong Hill Tracts will throw water at the men they would like to marry. (http://www.drik.net/calendar93/apr.htm).

I hope it is a good year for Poonam.

Shahidul Alam

Dhaka. Pohela Boishakh 1413

Colliding with the State

Lisa Botos from the Time Magazine office in Hong Kong, had done most of the hard work. Permissions had been obtained and the protocol arrangements had been made. The shoot was on. Having gone through the security hoop at the prime minister?s secretariat, I had settled in at the waiting room along with my colleagues photographer Aminuzzaman from Drik and writer Alex Perry and William Green from Time. That was when the trouble started. Officials rushed to usher me out of my seat. I was wondering what other security alert I had triggered off. My faux pas was somewhat more embarrassing. I had been sitting on the prime minister?s chair.
I had only been allocated a few minutes for the cover shoot, which went well despite one of my lamps blowing on me, but luckily the prime minister had agreed to our suggestion that we follow her on her trip to Pabna. I scurried to change gear for the outdoor shoot. Emptying memory cards, handing over existing images to to take to the library, a quick visit to the loo, were all things that needed to get done, except that I was told ?hurry, she is on her way to the helicopter.? Dumping equipment into my camera bag, handing over my laptop to, I stuck my digital wallet into the pile and made a dash for it. The loo would have to wait. That was when a strong arm jutted out in the corridor. The security guard had prevented me from running into the prime minister! Alex calmly asked me if I had run into other heads of state before. ?Only once? I had said, as I had nearly bumped into Mahathir while running up the stairs at the Mandarin Oriental in Kuala Lumpur. But that was a long time ago.
It was a long and eventful day and one I must write about, but for the moment you?ll need to settle for the cover image of the current Time Magazine (10th April 2006 issue) and Alex?s writeup.