In the middle and the end of it all
If I occupy this room during the afternoon, as I do today in my stomach rumblings and fatigue, I fling back the mosquito net surrounding my bed—it obscures the small relief from the overhead fan, and mosquitoes have mostly retired til dark. I scratch violently at the bites peppering the backs of my thighs. Last night I mistakenly trapped one insect in my cocoon, and it feasted on me throughout the night. This is my penance for being relatively unsweet-blooded, compared with my friends, and I think about how some things meant to protect us wind up trapping us instead.
It is on this bed, the one that fills with tiny red ants every time I kill a bug and neglect to discard it, that I lay and read Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi’s female scholars find themselves caught in a culture that they love to varying degrees, and they find solace and tenuous freedom in the books they peruse together. Though their Tehran is (probably) hotter than Bangladesh, and though they are doomed to their fate much longer than I am mine, I nonetheless identify with the scenes Nafisi creates. In Bangladesh, my friends and I are imprisoned by the liberties we enjoy back home. Even if there existed some sort of entertainment in this tiny, crammed town, we cannot leave the building without constant stares, and the occasional “HI. HI” or “Whot is yhor nam? WHOT is yhor nam?” We are nowhere just ourselves, but always Spectacles, or Foreignors, or White Women—Americans and Vistiors and Rich. So this is how we survive the long evenings here: passing around books, delving, discussing.
Beyond the attention from Bengladeshis, I sense censure. One old woman, too poor even for the small shirt most females wear beneath their saris, demanded to know why I didn’t too wear a sari, as I clearly had enough money to buy one. One of the translators wanted to understand the extent of restrictions imposed on me by my parents, and, embarrassed, I fumbled a reply, not knowing if he would fully understand the implications of confessing that I have no restrictions beyond what I choose for myself. If, after a long day of sweat and dust, I brave a tank top in this room I share with Katherine, I risk having the cook burst in to tell announce dinner in Bangla. In my ignorance, I don’t know how he would react to my naked limbs sprawled out over the faded sheet. Except when donning the shortest of skirts, I have not thought much about how my skin might be “interpreted” since I survived eighth grade and my teachers’ rants about bare midriff. Things I normally take pride in—my independence, spiritual individualism, and confident sexuality—I now confusedly downplay in a strange game of willful misunderstanding. But now I also see myself as narcissistic and greedy, coming home from days in dirt floored bamboo huts to food, shelter, and petty fantasies about exposing my legs in cutoff jeans. I miss home, its lavish privacy even in public spaces. Here, for me, privacy exists only in the form of a locked door, and so I must choose between disguise and isolation.
The power goes off, again, with no hint at the impending length of its absence. I realize that the swaying blades of that dingy fan have worked as hard to keep me sane as the poetic nonfiction that allows me to escape this room. I lie in bed, sweating, and stare at the ceiling. It occurs to me for the hundredth time that this cave/oven of a room represents great comfort to the women I have interviewed over the past two weeks. This place I sometimes long to escape would offer them more than they currently hope to imagine. It is in this half-way place that I can easily write down my observations, but cannot bring myself write about the women themselves. I came here to listen to their stories, but I still know so little that to retell these accounts would feel like an appropriation. Here I am, trapped: in the memories of finer things; in the skin that confers such privilege; in a greater but still so insignificant knowledge of the world; in the days that creep by with too little activity; in my awareness that such frustration is extravagant luxury.
It is on this bed, the one that fills with tiny red ants every time I kill a bug and neglect to discard it, that I lay and read Reading Lolita in Tehran. Nafisi’s female scholars find themselves caught in a culture that they love to varying degrees, and they find solace and tenuous freedom in the books they peruse together. Though their Tehran is (probably) hotter than Bangladesh, and though they are doomed to their fate much longer than I am mine, I nonetheless identify with the scenes Nafisi creates. In Bangladesh, my friends and I are imprisoned by the liberties we enjoy back home. Even if there existed some sort of entertainment in this tiny, crammed town, we cannot leave the building without constant stares, and the occasional “HI. HI” or “Whot is yhor nam? WHOT is yhor nam?” We are nowhere just ourselves, but always Spectacles, or Foreignors, or White Women—Americans and Vistiors and Rich. So this is how we survive the long evenings here: passing around books, delving, discussing.
Beyond the attention from Bengladeshis, I sense censure. One old woman, too poor even for the small shirt most females wear beneath their saris, demanded to know why I didn’t too wear a sari, as I clearly had enough money to buy one. One of the translators wanted to understand the extent of restrictions imposed on me by my parents, and, embarrassed, I fumbled a reply, not knowing if he would fully understand the implications of confessing that I have no restrictions beyond what I choose for myself. If, after a long day of sweat and dust, I brave a tank top in this room I share with Katherine, I risk having the cook burst in to tell announce dinner in Bangla. In my ignorance, I don’t know how he would react to my naked limbs sprawled out over the faded sheet. Except when donning the shortest of skirts, I have not thought much about how my skin might be “interpreted” since I survived eighth grade and my teachers’ rants about bare midriff. Things I normally take pride in—my independence, spiritual individualism, and confident sexuality—I now confusedly downplay in a strange game of willful misunderstanding. But now I also see myself as narcissistic and greedy, coming home from days in dirt floored bamboo huts to food, shelter, and petty fantasies about exposing my legs in cutoff jeans. I miss home, its lavish privacy even in public spaces. Here, for me, privacy exists only in the form of a locked door, and so I must choose between disguise and isolation.
The power goes off, again, with no hint at the impending length of its absence. I realize that the swaying blades of that dingy fan have worked as hard to keep me sane as the poetic nonfiction that allows me to escape this room. I lie in bed, sweating, and stare at the ceiling. It occurs to me for the hundredth time that this cave/oven of a room represents great comfort to the women I have interviewed over the past two weeks. This place I sometimes long to escape would offer them more than they currently hope to imagine. It is in this half-way place that I can easily write down my observations, but cannot bring myself write about the women themselves. I came here to listen to their stories, but I still know so little that to retell these accounts would feel like an appropriation. Here I am, trapped: in the memories of finer things; in the skin that confers such privilege; in a greater but still so insignificant knowledge of the world; in the days that creep by with too little activity; in my awareness that such frustration is extravagant luxury.
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