Blog | Jakob Berr Photography

I attached a file. It is an article I wrote about what we experienced this Thursday. We want to publish it along with our pictures and thus hope to help the affected people. If it is somehow possible for us we want to make an exhibition, too.

Regarding my previous post: Many people asked me what I answered when asked about my religion. As most of you know, I’m not a model Catholic. Nevertheless, the values Jesus tried to communicate mean a lot to me, even though I have my own interpretation of them at times. I think he was one of the great of his time, as well as Gandhi or the Dalai Lama. In general I don’t like the idea of categorizing inner believes into religions, which are then often only exploited as political means of power. In a word, I’m a freethinker who doesn’t relate to any confession, who has his own idea about “the one up there.” However, it would be offensive to openly say this here. People would understand I’m an atheist and there’s nothing worse in their world view. So to make things easy, I just told them I was Christian (which I actually am to some extent) and the people here reacted very tolerantly. I never faced a single negative response.

Yesterday was Moharram. It is the most important festival of the Shiites in memory of Imam Hussein who was according to the Shiites’ belief the legitimate 3rd Imam (whereas the Sunnis acknowledge Mohammed’s brother-in-law as the 3rd Imam). Hussein was murdered by his enemies during a fight about a fountain and the believers celebrate the anniversary of his death in a procession that goes over more than ten kilometers from the center of Old Dhaka all the way to Dhanmondi. They are dressed up gorgeously and carry colorful flags and floral ornaments. Some whip themselves with chains lined with blades until their backs are drenched in blood. At the end of the procession the flowers and ornaments are thrown into a lake in which then everybody washes themselves.

I went there with Sarah, Silvia, Kabir, Khakuli and Rubel, three of the Pathshala students, to photograph. It was an intense experience. Even though I didn’t witness the whipping, I was impressed by the emotional intensity of the celebration. The people were either totally in trance so that they wouldn’t even notice you, or in total ecstasy so that they would almost run you over. From babies who just made their first steps to Methuselah who was about to make his last steps, people of every age were out and about. With our white skin we stood out like anything and people gathered around us in hordes, calling us “bondhu” (friend) or “bhai” (brother). They shook our hands, asked us about our origins, names and religion and urged us to take their pictures. Especially the children were keen on the click; some of them followed us all through the day and threw themselves in front of the lens every time we wanted to photograph something. After some time we were really fed up and we had to either shoo them away or distract them with tricks to be able to take our shots. One of us actually worked while the others pretended to take pictures of the children.

After all the stress we were quite worn out and took off to have a coconut in the shadow. That’s a local specialty: Young, untimely coconuts, bursting full with milk, chopped open with a machete and drank with a straw. Tastes deliciously, refreshes better than anything else and is good against diarrhea…

So now we are in Bangladesh. It’s really impressive. I’m still a little bit jet lagged, but still: This comes next to stimulus overflow. That’s not meant to sound negative now, in the opposite. There is new, unknown and different things to discover around every corner. And the best is the people. Never in my life I’ve seen so many lovable and friendly people in one place (after all 130 million on 144,000 square kilometers).

Last night I went next door to get a pizza and while I was waiting, two Bangladeshis called me to their table, offered me their french fries, ordered a drink for me and wanted to know everything about me. And when I was about to leave after half an hour, they were almost sad, gave me their business cards and let me promise to visit them. And that’s not an single case here. I’ll have to buy an extra suitcase for all the business cards…

I need to wrap it up now, we have to go shopping. We couldn’t do it yesterday since there was Hartal, a politically motivated general strike organized by the opposition to demoralize the government. For a few hundred Taka (60 Taka is $1) they hire some poor devils who then roam around and demolish all open stores. Since people here are insured either unsufficient or not at all, they have no choice but closing up their shops although it does more harm then good to them. But the next post will be more detailed, and once we got accustomed, there’s much more to report anyway…