Dhaka Dowry

Something about my own baby girl’s 35^th birthday has made me remember an episode that she didn’t understand back when I was 35.

It’s another true tale from our time in Dhaka, Bangladesh, in 1996 when my daughter Sadie was seven years old.

Sadie was often as tall as grown-up Bengali women. I have trouble accepting this visual memory nowadays, but it’s true. I am a tall woman even here in the west, but my daughter was literally as big as many of the adult women I dealt with daily in Dhaka.

Clearly, Bengalis are a naturally small people whose growth had been further stunted in the 90s by their malnutrition, particularly among mothers and babies. I remember reading, in fact, that Bangladesh was one of the very few places on earth in which the average human size was actively decreasing during the 1990s. Childhood and maternal poverty were real and significant. One interesting detail in their culture was that men generally ate first, then boys, then moms than little girls…..so females went hungry most often.

Bottom line – Sadie was big enough that she could hand down her pretty childhood dresses to teenaged girls who wanted to use them for their own wedding dresses. We got used to this reality.

Meanwhile we lived in a very public and social venue. Our home in Dhaka was a lovely four-bedroom apartment that we usually shared with at least one adult female visitor from the west. The city was terribly crowded so we offered western sanctuary for several Fulbright scholars as well as woman colleagues with our family of four. But we were never separated from our Bengali community either because of Mrs. Muktah. I had hired her as just about the only woman available who was willing to do the job of cook/cleaning lady in our house. It is necessary to explain here, that the cook is traditionally the head of all household staff in South Asia – like the butler in all those Agatha Christie novels. Thus, putting a woman in the roll of cook was a radical shift from the social norm. It was too prestigious. Mind you, I did it on purpose – I had been warned not to leave male staff home alone with young children, especially not little girls. I would not risk any trouble there, and I only wanted one staff member. We never had any pedophile type problems in Dhaka at all by the way. But, I came to town knowing that I would hire only a woman cook/baby sitter. Mrs Muktah fit the bill perfectly.

Now, of course, she had a husband and child of her own, her son was similar in age to our kids.  I thought that was cool. She explained that she had a much older son from her first marriage who was back home with her mother in “the village”. Mrs Muktah’s first marriage had been arranged for her before she even had her first period. She had “married for love” to her present husband and somehow this was considered extremely shameful. I was never to tell anyone. They had their own son, and she wanted all three of them to live in our one room down on the ground floor. Her husband was a gardener at the ‘American Club’ which was conveniently walking distance away, and to which we were allowed to be members because of the hardship post that was Dhaka. So I said yes of course (commuting has never appealed to me); but then I had to clear this with our landlord. He thought he didn’t approve of so many people. But then he met the lovely family, they moved in and we all lived happily ever after. We even hired a snake charmer once to do his mystical dance in our unused parking space. Magic.

Predictably, Mrs Muktah had to hire her own young girl helper, who stayed with them in the one room ground floor servants quarters as well but who spent all day up in our apartment helping out. So, we were not lonely.

Bangladesh is about the size of Wisconsin and had a population of 124 million souls at that time, so it was crowded. People were used to being piled up together. The young professional women who stayed with us were regularly and sincerely asked if they didn’t feel lonely having their own room – alone. “aren’t you scared at night?” The social contract for women did not include “a room of one’s own”. People considered it more human and comfortable to have four or five to a room.

Our landlord lived alone on the first floor. He was a retired sea captain who had fought loyally against West Pakistan in the 1970 Bengali war of independence from Pakistan (on the other side of India, but also a Muslim country and it had been the colonial overlords of East Pakistan from 1947 to 1970). The countries’ names say a lot as “the Islamic Republic of Pakistan” had been the power over “the People’s Republic of Bangladesh” back when it was still East Pakistan. Our landlord – The Captain – had heard the news of the Language Revolution (precipitated by the University of Dhaka’s poetic love of Bengali in 1971). He was at sea at the time on a big war ship and had changed his ship’s flag from Pakistani to Bengali. He had risked execution because this could have been an act of treason. Instead, he became a freedom fighter who was quick to tell about his success story. He was happily divorced at the time we knew him and living off the rent he made from his top three floors. I liked the Captain a lot, but he was ready to die: observing Ramadan against doctor’s orders in the hope of taking the good karma to heaven with him.

The Captain’s apartment building didn’t have a gate or a lock on the main door so beggars used to show up at our front door up on the fourth floor. I always had bananas (often a bit over ripe for my taste) and a few coins for them. I even sometimes had hand me down clothes from my fast growing children to give to these girls. They were usually girls.

This particular day a young girl who was just a bit smaller than Sadie knocked at our door. She was begging to collect money for her dowry because her family couldn’t feed her anymore. She explained how she had to pay for a husband so that no bad man would get her. She was about 12 or 13. We had a lovely chat with her because her English was excellent. I didn’t have a gun to give her at the time but the scheme I had long had to give every 11 year old girl in Bangladesh a  a small fire arm and to teach her how to use it against ‘bad men’ solidified in my mind.  I didn’t have a gun handy though, so I went to get a dress to give her that was slightly too small for Sadie. I left the two of them chatting happily while I picked a particularly lovely long, flower child type dress.

When I came back our Bengali friend was explaining how she was going to wear the dress as her wedding dress once she got her dowry collected, but I said that I would not give cash for a dowry because I didn’t approve. Bangladesh at that time had a toxic mix of Muslim and Hindu culture. Girls had to pay a dowry to get married; but the man could divorce them easily any time he wanted to and send them home to mama. Then her family of birth would often not accept her because she was “tainted”. I still see red when I think of this ‘tradition” – and I spent a lot of time in 1996 railing against women abuse to anyone who would listen. A Bengali novelist at the time, argued rightfully that wives were like prostitutes but that prostitutes at least got paid. The Muslims powers that be in that ‘people’s republic’ brought a fatwa against this woman but she was right. Around that time I got the idea to start a school for this age of girl and teach them self-help – and self-defense – skills….but it never happened.

This day Sadie and I collected some food for our little friend to bring home to her family and then we gave her the new dress. I may have even given her a bit of cash too. We both really liked her, she was sharp as a whip and funny too.

The punch line for me – and it was a punch in the gut frankly – came as I patted her pretty little head to say good-bye: This girl, who was collecting a dowry to get married and start her own family, still had her own baby soft spot – the fontanelle – pumping away. Her own skull had never developed properly, presumable due to malnutrition. I almost fainted in shock, but I didn’t tell Sadie and we kept it all light and lovely as we said our farewells.

God Rest that girl’s soul – I’m sure she is dead by now. I hope she didn’t leave any orphans.