Book Description

Before I came to this foreign soil, I took all my love and affection out of the heart and put all of these into archive of my dreams. (‘Relative in a Foreign Land’) Taken together, this generous collection of stories offers English readers an unprecedented glimpse into the lives of Bangladeshi migrant workers oscillating Singapore and the mother country, home seen through the lens of a twenty-first century Bangladeshi Muslim male lens. That lens deftly and shifts between Singapore and Bangladesh, past and present as co-workers, hitherto little known, recount their often heartbreakingly sad stories. One gets the impression that the narrator for the main part is the same in each story, a soft-hearted administrative worker in the marine sector, his dark skin on more than one occasion leading to him being mistaken for a Singaporean of Tamil descent, not recognised by his own Bangladeshi countrymen. The narrator is ultimately the catalyst or repository for the stories of the varied quotidian workers he encounters. While not topographically explicit, the stories catch for us up close something of the poetry of conversations between migrant workers, often revealing complicated: stories of a worker missing his father’s funeral far away, a mother’s sorrow even when her migrant son for whatever reason tries to lie on speakerphone, unfairnesses, such as being sent home without warning after one infraction. Singapore is the backdrop, the city and focus of many delusory dreams of fortune, loss and homesickness. The stories are elliptically, poetically recounted. A profound tragic beauty flowers out of the migrant quotidian as the speaker encounters a variety of multicultural voices, the sad, thorny lives contended with that lie behind the hard work done by migrants. Stories like ‘Love of Farhan’ take us to and leave us in discombobulating, unexpected places, raising more questions than answers. As with these story endings, there is no easy solution to the dauntingly complicated problems revealed. Striking in these stories is the deft economy, and perhaps what is not said. At times I was reminded of Mikhail Lermontov. I was often struck by quotable arrestingly memorable lines, [religion] “really has an awesome power to make a stranger a relative and a relative a stranger.” “he smiled like a robot. It was nothing like a smile.” “Everyone was bought with money; everyone gave in to money and wealth”. “Woman’s love makes us happy, but family’s love gives us satisfaction.” “I was sweating like a cold water bottle” “the smile was dominated by the helpless tone of his face”. In a kind of epiphany Bangladeshi migrant workers arriving in Singapore recognise how Bangladeshi brides must feel homesick, wives feel insecure. Through these stories, we in Singapore might begin to constructively appreciate not only the sacrifices of the men who come to work here but also their wives and family left without husbands and fathers for long periods at home. So there is a message in these stories, but also an evocative beauty in which we encounter a world of Jacobin cuckoos, beparis adams, betel nuts (whether Bengali or Burmese) and traditional leaf cigarettes. Here are also bittersweet poignant moments of migrant life, such as hearing the first cry of your first-born son back in a Bangladesh hospital over a handphone (45), or the joy at finding at last a rare Bangladeshi provision shop only to find shortly after the kind owner is ill, has passed away. Is it wise to be ‘pennywise’ for years in Singapore, as one story suggests, or send all your money home for family? “We expatriates are like cows with milk” as one worker reflects – but what happens when the milk runs out? Workers are often pressured into coming by family, community – even back home are those sacrifices properly appreciated, remembered? The book’s moral seems to be for us to show empathise, demonstrate sympathy for all in this world in a world of pain. Figures of ridicule turn out to be objects of sympathy. It seems almost everyone is nursing a to be told sad story. “Every man has a river inside” Migrant workers it seems are surviving on happy memories of home, and family. in ’Sabri’ a dead young Singaporean co-worker lives through the fond memories and prayers of his co-workers from many parts of the world. In ‘Room Leader’ dormitory life is evoked, a key, telling part of migrant experience. This story is also a call to perhaps to listen to the wisdom of the young me in this rapidly evolving world. Workers cry over a discarded cigarette, a ruined fish dish, but really, they are crying over something else. Only good humour, understanding and empathy bring some consolation for real. Again, and again, narrators, co-workers fail to fathom the depth of others’ trials. But maybe we could all try a little better. By reading these stories you enter tragic-comic lives you perhaps never realised before, and yet perhaps uncannily similar in some ways to your own.