The only person I knew in the village wasn’t there when I arrived. No problem, neighbours were expecting me and I had a key for the padlock. The air inside a little musty as I entered; he’d been away some weeks.
While unpacking my small bag, an old man entered. Salaam Alleikum, he said, adding his name. It was the name of the bari, the group of houses built around a single courtyard that formed part of the sprawling village. Wa Alleikum Asallam, I replied. You are from Scotland, he said. Not a question, my arrival was anticipated. Yes, from Scotland I agreed, remembering to pronounce it as he did, Escotland. Words beginning with "s" often taking an initial vowel in Bengali.
He squatted easily on the mud floor while I grunted my body into an ungainly approximation of his resting state and he continued to ask about my family and place in the world.
You were born in Escotland?
No, New Zealand.
New Jeelan?
Yes. New Jeelan.
So your father was born in New Jeelan?
No, Australia.
But your mother was born...
… in England.
Your wife?
France.
Your son?
He was born here. In Bangladesh.
Ah.
Winter was lingering when I’d left Edinburgh, two days earlier. The first tentative signs of warmth were beginning in Bangladesh so there was a 25⁰C temperature difference to cope with. You know this, I told my body throughout that first restless night in the village, trying to sleep on the thin mattress. A decade of your life has been spent here and by morning my body had caught up with its future past.
Morning. Day two. I was set. My task could begin. Until that night.
Again the old man entered through the low door. His greeting this time was formulaic rather than warm and before my reply was done, he was speaking.
This is not good.
My task, research planned over three or four visits with each taking two or three months, ended in those four words. Three, really, since Bengali only needs এটা ভালো না and his tone only reinforced the finality. My research was impossible without the goodwill of those around me and that centred on their trust of the man whose hut I was now living in. He was my patron, it was his relationship with the bari elder that had secured my opportunity. Trust was all.
এটা ভালো না. This is not good.
I said nothing. Then he simply repeated my family’s birth-places exactly as I had related them. Remembering isn’t difficult for an oral society. Standing before me, looking sombre, reciting my familial rootlessness.
All this one person born here, marrying there, son born in a third place, daughter in another, I have talked it over with my family. We agree. This cannot be good.
হ্যাঁ. Yes.
Nothing else I could say and nothing at all I could do.
We have agreed. When your first visit here is over, you must return to your family and bring them back here to live with us in this village. We can find room, there will be a place for you.
I said I would suggest it. The decision would be theirs as much as mine. Agreement was reached and no mention made of visas and permits, passports and legalities. So I proceeded.
Almost three decades ago.
The past is said to be another country. My going between a European city and a village situated over time in three countries (British India, East Pakistan, Bangladesh) now seems to be part of another person’s memory. Like reading a novel from an earlier age, smiling at Trollop’s turning aside from his story for another "gentle reader" address. Stories, and those who told them, were the subject of my research into cohering societal roles in a Bangladeshi village where stories were not written or even recited but sung, at special events or the weekly market. They might only last an hour but could go all night.
Another country, another time. I am a hundred the old man said. "A hundred" was generally synonymous with very old and he was, in fact, not a hundred at all. He was a hundred and two. No birth records kept in the late nineteenth century but no mistake either, various cross-referencing such as what (age-related) class he was in when a particular war started or cyclone struck made his age certain. Married at 12, his bride then 10 and both of them alive when I first stayed in their bari. No place in the record books for a ninety-year marriage. In another setting, that would surely be worth a celebration.
In any setting, the generosity of an extended family in saying we can find room, there will be a place for you deserves celebration. One hundred and ninety four countries in the world, Scotland in line to be the 195th, I’ve barely been to a tenth of them but not found such a welcome again.
Welcome number one-nine-five, wave our Saltires and will our celebrations be so inclusive?
Unless this is merely fiction and not some memory taken across the seven seas and thirteen rivers to settle here. Perhaps it’s better to call it a story, to face such generosity would be more challenge than celebratory.
Call it a story, then. But if the Guinness Book of Records want to update their records for marriage longevity, they only need to call me.