The passengers on the flight from Dubai to Dhaka were altogether different from those on the Atlanta-to-Dubai flight. On the 13-hour flight from the US, the mostly male passengers were heading to war-torn Iraq and Afghanistan to do all kinds of work that most of us don’t even know about. Think government contract workers,
special ops, state department folks—Graham Greene kinds of mystery men, doing mysterious things. It was comforting, I suppose, to think that if there were any terrorists on board, they would have been dispatched quickly by any number of manly-men passengers. One of the few women on board was a younger American working for the State Department in Kabul. A brave manly-woman herself.
The flight from Dubai to Dhaka was also mostly men, but Bangladeshi men working as foreign workers in Dubai headed home. Looking around, we wondered about the working conditions of the hundreds of thousands of foreign workers in oil-rich countries. What conditions at home sent them to work outside the country? I could have opened up shop, completing customs paperwork for those who could not read English or, apparently, Bengali, the Bangladeshi national language. The two gentlemen who enlisted me to complete their paperwork could barely sign their names—each man slowly printing the letters of their given name in large, block letters across the bottom of the form. Bangladeshi passports ask for the father’s and mother’s names, and at least 5 different areas where they were born. After spending a day driving through Bangladesh, I understand now how difficult it must be for many, if not most, Bangladeshi to pinpoint where they were born. The ground changes shape with each new monsoon season. Some ground even disappears forever.
As the airplane wheels touched down, passengers on the Dhaka flight began to stand and remove baggage from the overhead compartments, prompting flight attendants to scurry down the aisles, demanding that passengers sit down. As one passenger would comply and sit down, another would pop up somewhere else. It was like that whack-a-mole game we used to play at amusement parks. I guess it should have been an indication that this wasn’t a rule-following crowd when we boarded; they called for first class, and everybody rushed to the gate. Only we and a few others were apparently not flying first class. The two airports couldn’t be more different. Dubai—immense, glass, modern, clean, computerized, indoor waterfalls everywhere (why do desert cities get so fixated on waterfalls, think Las Vegas). Dhaka—small, tired, worn out, no air conditioning, ceiling fans, no computers in sight. All our visa and customs documentation in Dhaka was processed by hand, including recording 
our entry into the country in one of those large old journal books found in the basements of every US county court building, listing every land deed ever made before computers automated it all. As we watched triplicate papers completed and then handed from one official to the next to be stamped and signed yet again, it became apparent that nobody would ever know how many times we had entered Bangladesh. Who on earth would ever go through all the journals? More, they don’t care. What matters is that each piece of paper had the right signatures and stamps in all the right places. Oh yeah, and that we paid the money in US currency if possible. After retrieving our baggage (the true miracle of flying is when your baggage arrives with you), we found our driver, who negotiated his way safely through the streets of Dhaka to the guest house. The power was out at the guest house, nobody spoke English, and it was hotter than hell,
but our host served us a delicious meal of rice, Indian curried meat, and potatoes. Finally, with the power and air conditioner restored, we fell asleep exhausted and dreamt of crowded, sad places. The morning view of monsoon skies and the pigeon house from the guest house welcomed us out the bedroom window. The Guest House Bedroom – no top sheets, just blankets and mosquito netting.
