NONFICTION
When Memory Becomes Prayer
*Names have been changed in this essay
Body and mind unite in the moment as I am fully engaged in the task before me. It takes every piece of me to navigate the complexities of this city. My brain is on high alert, scanning for every potential hazard in my path. I eye the cracked sidewalk. Broken by a gnarled tree root, it rises to gash my sandaled toe. I cast a hurried glance toward the man sitting by the mosque repeatedly crying “Allah” in hopes of a taka note or two. I dodge the car honking at my rear and the bicycle rickshaw skimming my thigh.
I fight with the scarf I wear across my chest whenever I leave our flat. It slips off my shoulder, threatening to leave me exposed. My hand. It hurts. I wince as the cumbersome bag digs its red path deeper into my palm. I enter the flat, as feeling slowly seeps back into numb fingers, and I feel the heat I didn’t even notice before.
It’s early April—the start of summer in South Asia. Late spring storms have tiptoed upon us all week, one by one catching us by surprise. The sky appears a searing shade of blue all day, and we don’t fathom the storms upon us until the windows rattle in their frames. We’ll run to the veranda just in time to see storm clouds gather and watch the wind bend coconut palms low. Later, we’ll read newspaper stories about these Nor’westers that caught everyone off guard—including several who didn’t survive them. Though the rains are startling in their fury, they bring with them the gift of a cool breeze, making it bearable inside with a fan; it hasn’t yet reached the threshold of Hades-levels of heat that descends on the city by May.
I peel off the scarf caught between my shoulder bag and sweaty chest and laugh when I notice it is completely soaked. It’s our second summer in Bangladesh, but the recent months of bearable weather made me forget the sticky tropical heat that descends on Dhaka like a fog and lasts for months. I’d lost sight of how amazed I could be at my ability to do what I never would have done in the United States.
These are the trivial choices we make daily. Other Westerners love to joke about them when we meet: how people back home are flabbergasted at the “sacrifices” we make living here. “You don’t have air conditioning at home? Oh, I could never do that,” they’d say. “You spent how long in a taxi?” they’d gasp when we told of the traffic that trapped us in a car for hours to cover a distance that should have taken twenty minutes.
We, too, couldn’t fathom living this way before, but it feels natural now. It’s just life here. Sure, hovering over squatty potties when the stomach bug arrives or eating with your hand can feel like big accomplishments. I secretly sometimes pride myself on the domestic work of hanging clothes to dry on the veranda and ironing every wrinkled piece of cloth before it can be worn again.
These minor discomforts aside, there are many aspects about life 8,000 miles from all that is familiar that truly are difficult. But those burdens feel too heavy to bear, so I return to the heat and the way my body feels depleted after a simple walk to the market.
If I focus there, I don’t have to think about the real issues—how I found my way through culture shock and anxiety that felt so deep I was sure I would drown in its waves. Nor can I linger too long on the aching loneliness that seems like my only companion. How can I feel this utterly alone in a city so cramped that the kids press their faces against windows in the building next door, with only glass restraining them from reaching our living room? So I return to little inconveniences like mosquito nets and air so polluted you get headaches all winter. It’s easier to think of the physical challenges as something we can muster the strength to overcome than to dwell on the emotional and mental drains on a strength I simply don’t have.
***
I shuffle through the dresses hanging in my closet, trying to find something with sleeves long enough to handle the chill in the air today. My fingers stop on the thin fabric of one of my salwars, and I caress the orange and brown paisley print. I miss wearing South Asian clothing. When we first moved back to the states, I didn’t have room in my small basement apartment closet to hang them.
Though I had to stash them away in a drawer, I wore them more often then. I felt naked in shorts and tank tops after years of covering more of my skin. They never felt restrictive when I wore them in Bangladesh. Putting on the 3-piece dress of long, baggy pants, a tunic, and a scarf allowed me to shift into a South Asian identity, enabling me to fit in. When I put them on here, the vibrant colors and styles that are strange to Western eyes make me stand out, so I’ve stopped wearing them much. But in the bigger home we just bought, I hang them so they appear to be an option just like the rest of my clothes. I want to at least see them every day.
I long to wrap the scarf around my shoulders, but I am new to this church and people don’t know my whole story. I already stand out enough as it is, the fresh face in a crowd of life-long members in the small congregation. I want to build community, to be known there, but it is best to leave my previous cross-cultural life on the shelf for now. It doesn’t go away when I don’t wear it on the outside. It is always there under the surface, my connection to another home that remains a two-day plane ride away. I put on the less comfortable Western dress, hiding pieces of me for today.
***
There’s nothing wrong with praying for every decision. It’s a practice of keeping the connection between us and the Divine open, of remembering that God is present and cares. There were days I used to pray for my broken computer (usually after I’d tried to fix it myself for hours and didn’t know where else to turn), for success on that test, or safety on that long drive. Some days I laugh at the naivete of a girl who thought God cared if she got a parking spot close to her dorm; then there are days I wish I could go back to that kind of simple trust.
Amid life in South Asia, my thoughts are far from asking God to ease my discomfort. It’s not because I don’t believe God cares or is incapable of meeting every need; it’s just that I know I am capable of being more inconvenienced than I imagined before and I can handle more distress than I ever let myself believe I deserved. I feel guilty asking for more.
I watch Akia chop vegetables for hours in the heat of the kitchen while she tells me about the rain that has flooded her tin and concrete house. I sit with her while she speaks casually about the fall that has kept her teenage son from working his job in construction and the uncle she visited in the hospital yesterday.
My Bangla language skills are meager, even after a year of study, but this kind and funny woman is the one person I understand almost fully. She started working in our flat the day we moved in, cooking and cleaning here, then returning home to do the same for her own family at night. It is culturally expected for foreigners to employ a house helper, but it was difficult to get used to someone else cooking our lunches and scrubbing our tile floors by hand. She is so patient with me when I don’t understand a word, rephrasing it, and using simple vocabulary she knows I comprehend. She teaches me the word for every item in the kitchen, every spice and food she cooks.
The first time my family visited her at home we were still an oddity, white faces amidst a sea of brown. Neighbors popped in throughout dinner to stare at us and marvel at our inability to understand simple things, like the difference between the various words for aunt depending on if you were referring to your mother’s sister, her brother’s wife, or the two aunts on your father’s side of the family.
By the second and third time we visited I knew enough to understand why her husband joined us for dinner but left shortly after without saying much unless he was asking us for money. When she talked about him, I often didn’t understand everything she said but could catch the words “bad man, “hit,” “drugs,” and “steal.”
We stayed for hours with crossed legs cramping, all crammed onto the bed that took up most of their single room: me, my husband and two kids, her seven-year-old daughter who spent her days in a madrasa nearby, and her son, fourteen and already a man in this society, who had left school to work in whatever day labor he could find and spent his nights staring at his smartphone or the television, checking out of life. She usually refused to sit with us, serving us dishes from her spot on the concrete floor next to the aluminum pans that held curries, rice, vegetables, and the only meat they would eat that week.
She sits in the kitchen with me and tells me all her woes but does it all with a smile as she wipes the sweat from her face with the back of her arm. She keeps on slicing ginger (adha, she tells me) across the razor-sharp curved blade (repeat it, ‘boti’) that has cut her fingers enough times to form calluses.
Sometimes the feelings of shame nearly choke me. Is this something like survivors’ guilt? We chose to come here to work for a non-profit and left abundance behind, but we still own an air conditioning unit that costs more than what she would make in ten months. Why was I born into a life of ease when she was born into an abusive family in a culture where her brilliant mind is not as valuable as marriage? Why her, God; why not me?
***
I stop with a sigh before I turn to go back up the stairs. I’m still not used to living in two stories, having what we own spread through so many rooms. I pause here on the landing between the dining room and the front entryway. I glance over at the dishes in the china cabinet that our friend Maliha bought for us, delicate white flowers on a vibrant blue background. In front of them sits the boti knife Akia used every day. Now it just sits on display, its sharp edge becoming dull without use. Lost in my thoughts, I am pulled into the blue hues of the painting at the foot of the stairs. I don’t always stop to notice it, but I’m always taken back into another world when I do.
It is easy to romanticize Bangladesh with over two years now removed between us and our lives there. It wasn’t easy; I haven’t forgotten that. Yet I ache for the tropical land more than I ever thought I would. This place we’d known before evaporated while we were away. It doesn’t always feel like home anymore.
I remember seeing the painting at a vendor’s table, knowing I had to have it. By then we knew we were leaving the bustling city, and I was feeling nostalgic. The painting embodied the paradox of our life there in a way words could never capture: the watercolor streaks of rain, the blurry lines of the bicycle rickshaw, the palms bending in the storm.
Those streets that could be difficult to navigate on any usual day became surging rivers once the monsoon arrived. There was no choice but to keep walking despite the dirty water that rose above our knees. I will always remember my daughter’s face when the waters ripped one of her pink jelly shoes right off her foot and it drifted out of her grasp and beyond our sight. “I hate this place,” she cried through tear-stained lips when she arrived home barefoot.
Yet not a summer rain goes by that I don’t stand at the door and feel the breeze, longing for the way the Nor’westers startled me out of my complacency and made me gape at the magnificent power of creation. You’ll often find me standing out under the open sky, just to feel the sticky warmth streaming down my cheeks. I need to remember the way the monsoon soaked deep inside me and made an indelible path to places the Georgia rains just can’t reach.
***
The monsoon has come and gone, abandoning us to the heat of the Dhaka furnace. As the days heat up, I notice the tendency to push myself into situations that test my limits and remind me what I’m capable of. It’s a visceral way of remembering the hardships. I choose to walk in the searing heat through dusty streets instead of taking a rickshaw. I eat that local food with questionable cleanliness because I don’t want to miss out on the experience. I push myself to the edge of exhaustion. I want the reminders to soak into my skin, to leave a mark like the tattoo on my foot. I want to remember struggling. I want to remember overcoming.
After a year and a half of living in conditions most Americans applaud us for but we have just come to call home, we are getting ready to leave. Family obligations call us back to the land of excess. I am feeling more than a little nervous. I worry because I fear I will forget. When I return to the land of fast food and air conditioning, of two-car families and superstores, those conveniences will become normal again.
Worse, I am afraid my tendency toward spiritual amnesia will mean I forget the way these little obstacles have etched their way through my skin and onto my soul. They have chipped away at the illusions I had that my comfort matters to God.
***
“Why do you have this sitting out?” Maliha asks with a baffled expression furrowing her forehead. Now a few months after settling into the basement apartment, our friend from Bangladesh has come to visit us. She’d been one of our teachers at language school and then started tutoring us at home. She became a part of our little family, the Aunty our kids spent the night with and who took us to all her favorite spots in the city. She opened our eyes to the beauties hidden in the crowded streets of the most densely populated city on earth.
She pointed toward the hari, the aluminum pot that sat in the center of my stove. It was the same pot we used to brew cha in on our little gas burner in our Dhaka kitchen, the smell of milk tea a comforting afternoon presence in our days. I intended to use it here but found that it doesn’t work as well on our electric stove. “You have this modern kitchen,” she said, “and then this pot that belongs in a Bangladeshi village?”
Even though I don’t use it much anymore, I can’t put it away, hidden in some cabinet like the memories that are swiftly fading from my conscious mind. It reminds me of Akia, her gentle, calloused hands stirring the rice, laughing as she scoops a handful of shrimp between her teeth. I long to hear her calling bhabi (wife of my brother) from the other room, asking if I want to have some afternoon cha with her, though she knows the answer will always be yes.
“It reminds me,” I told my friend. “It keeps Bangladesh always on my mind when I see it.”
“Okay,” Maliha laughs skeptically. “But it’s a little strange.”
***
I place the cha pot gently back on the burner, lingering near the warmth for a moment. As I balance three teacups on a tray and head to the kitchen, I think of how we are longing for a break from the heavy pollution of the winter that leaves us aching daily. Everyone tells us that with the political unrest of the presidential election looming, we should leave the country for a couple of weeks. We are hoping to visit Malaysia for Christmas, but aren’t sure how we will afford it.
How can I ask God to provide money for a vacation when our friend only needs $1,000 to build a house in his village? The cost of a few flights for us is the equivalent of a home for him. We’ve given Azad loans before and gifts several times. He can’t seem to save any though since he is the sole provider for his parents, his little brother, and his wife’s family. He makes less than $100 a month driving a rickshaw, and we help as much as we can, but we know there are limits to what we can do culturally. We don’t want our help to hurt.
He looks at us one day, gesturing at our living room that is sparsely decorated, simple, and small by American standards. It is bigger than the slum home he can barely afford. He tells us through his tears about yet another family tragedy that has befallen him. “Why?” he wails. “Why has God blessed you, and yet these things are always happening to me?”
I can’t find words of comfort for him. I can only choke on my tears as I ask him if we can pray with him. I feel his body shake as he tries to hold in sobs while we lay our hands on his shoulders and ask God to be merciful to him. I want to scream that all this stuff we own isn’t a blessing. Maybe it is a curse after all. Maybe it keeps us numb to what matters.
I can’t pray the way I used to; I am not sure I want to anymore.
Most days all I can do is sit in the quiet and picture the faces of the people I love. Some look like me and are many miles away; some have brown skin and dark eyes and have become family, too.
I let their faces fill up my memory, their stories overflowing like water pouring out of an already full pitcher as I imagine them. Sometimes I grip a circle of wooden prayer beads tightly in my fist as I try to hold onto these images in my mind. I don’t need to recount their needs to the God who already knows each hair on their heads. I hold space for these people in my heart, and I hope that God hears the groans that are deeper than the words I can’t find.
Are these wordless rememberings even prayers? My earlier self would have answered no. If it didn’t fit a certain formula, and couldn’t be checked off a list of prayer concerns, then it didn’t fit the bill.
Sitting in the darkness watching a candle flicker, I know this is what prayer looks like for me right now. I have no words. I believe God receives it as an acceptable offering, this silence and willingness to wrestle in the dark with uncertainties.
***
My hands hover over the rose-colored prayer beads I often hold to focus my wandering mind while I try to find the words to pray. I made them recently at a prayer workshop at the new church I am attending after our move back to Georgia. I leave them on the dresser and instead pick up the smaller, wooden beads next to them. I haven’t held these in a while. I bought them at the local market where I bought my groceries in Dhaka. I loved that mingling of the sacred and secular in Bangladesh. You could buy bananas and some prayer beads, acquire bread and a prayer rug—all on the same aisle.
The untrained eye might assume the two sets of prayer beads were the same. They actually contained a different number of beads—one meant for Christian prayer and one a set of Muslim prayer beads. Though originating from different traditions, they serve the same purpose. I wrap the loop twice around my hands and fidget with the green tassel.
“It’s been too long,” I whisper in shame. I’ve been hanging onto the memories of our short-lived experience living in Bangladesh. I didn’t lose them as I dreaded I might, and yet they are frozen in time. Other than the few friends who are fortunate enough to have mobile phones and keep in touch with us on social media, we don’t know what life is like these days for the neighbors we lived so close to. I haven’t heard Akia’s laugh once in over two years, and I can’t recall its sound anymore. I wouldn’t know how to pray for her current situation if I tried.
I look down at the beads, the tiny tokens of a life that feels like a dream. Has it been so long since I prayed for her? Or is each time I tenderly stop to put my hand on the cha pot sitting on my stove and think of Akia really a silent prayer I send across the miles to her, to God? Our lives were entangled for a mere moment, but the impact ripples throughout who I am, who I am still becoming.
I pull the beads that feel like tiny pebbles between my fingertips. I don’t know what to ask for except that God would be gracious to her, provide for her, and give her peace. I see her in my mind, standing behind my daughter at the dressing table, lovingly taming her hair into a braid. She’s frozen like that for me in my memory, always beautiful with sad eyes.
Is she the same today? I hope there is more light in her eyes now. I send all the tenderness I possess into the space between us as if it might actually change something in her situation. Maybe it will. Maybe she will think of me and be comforted, just as I think of her, and gratitude for how she changed me washes over my heart.
When I imagine the rickshaw driver in my painting to be Azad and picture he and his family healthy and well in a new home in their village, am I asking God to provide this life for him? When I slip on the scarf Maliha bought me or sit on the bench I recovered with the material from the salwar she gave me, am I united with her in prayer?
There is no separating myself from the river Delta that etched itself on my soul. The smell of cha is a memory of home. The feel of the monsoon wind on my face is inscribed on my skin. The path to the bazaar is stored in my muscle memory and I could make that walk again today. I was so afraid of forgetting Bangladesh, but that isn’t a possibility. I could no more forget my own mother than I could this land that birthed the person I am now.
Dhonobad, Prabuji. Thank you, Lord, I whisper. I tuck the prayer beads away for now, but these prayers I carry with me. They never truly leave me; the Spirit whispers them anew each time a memory drifts through me.
Nicole lives in the tension between wanderlust and rootedness in Georgia, but has left parts of her heart in the Middle East and South Asia. She loves to write, study, and preach—looking for places where listening to God and learning from others lead to lives that love. Connect with her at nicoletwalters.com
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Photo Credit: “This is what we’re dealing with” by Francisco Anzola, CC BY 2.0, via Flickr.com.
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