November 10, 2000

The swoop of the falcon

“Theek ho?” I ask. “Bhalo, bhalo,” comes the response
from behind the scarf

JUST when the world is in convulsions on who would enter the White House, that solitary man in a long, Arab gown, trailing a herd of camels in flat Kuwaiti desert terrain which merges with Iraq at Om Qasr, looks like a metaphor of life’s continuity, rather like Tennyson’s ‘The Brook’. I had seen a similar sight five years ago and thereby hangs a tale. Let me reconstruct it.

June, 1994. The temperature outside is over 50 degrees centigrade. “If you place an egg on the road, it will cook in one minute,” my driver says. We are headed to do a story on UNIKOM, The United Nations Iraq-Kuwait Observer Mission. Suddenly, shimmering like a mirage in the distance, we see that ubiquitous Arab trailing his camels. “In that heat, over 50 degrees centigrade temperature?” I exclaim to myself.

It’s like something from X-Files. When every living space in Kuwait is air-conditioned, why would this weird Kuwaiti be in the scorching desert, as if participating in some weird ritual penance. I take courage in my hands and ask the driver to drive towards this strange apparition. Sliding down the air-conditioned car’s window, I was slapped by the hot wind — rather like a sauna in the reverse. “Excuse me, sir,” I scream. The man walks towards us, away from his camels. I try to communicate something first in English, then in Hindi (because some Arabs do understand a little Hindi). “Theek ho?” I ask. “Bhalo, bhalo,” comes the response from behind the scarf that is wrapped around his head and face like a bandit.

Devlin Bose, my cameraman leaps out of the car, quite oblivious to the searing temperature. “He is a Bengali!” Devlin exclaims, and hugs the man in one burst of linguistic and regional chauvinism. The man’s story is simple. Shafiq Mohammad came to Kuwait on a visa as a domestic help. The sheikh he worked for had a sizable flock of sheep and a 100 camels. Shafiq was promised 40 Kuwaiti dinars or Rs.7,000 per month if he agreed to look after the sheikh’s flock. “Anything for a livelihood,” said Shafiq and accepted the challenge.
There were other sheikhs looking for similar help. Shafiq had relatives in Dhaka who agreed to come. Before long there was a Bangladeshi community of hundreds around Subiyan, between Kuwait and the Iraqi border. Nothing could have been more Here were a group of Bangladeshis from one of the wettest districts in the world (most of their songs are about rains and rivers) eking out a livelihood in one of the driest.

But Shafiq’s story is not a story of timid acquiescence. It is a story of courage, fortitude and human ingenuity. As the population of Bangladeshis grew in the desert, more and more sheikhs were tempted to park their livestock in their care. Small barricades came up, around inexpensive and functional tents for the camel keepers from Bangladesh.

To cater to this community of about 1,000, Jameel, also from Dhaka, came up with the idea of plying a water tanker. A sheikh subsidised the enterprise. Another, Sheikh Hamid, built a large mosque in the desert, to give the growing Bangladeshi population a sense of permanence.

At short intervals little kiosks opened, selling Pepsi, Coca-Cola, biscuits, bread, canned food, vegetables. And now as I drive through the area in this balmy weather (from October to March the desert is a paradise, with clear skies) I find other, more luxurious, tents have come up.

The infrastructure created by the Bangladeshis for their survival has now acquired the potential for being the base of which the sheikhs can take advantage for desert camping. The concept of desert holidays triggers off thoughts of sport as well. Kuwaitis love breeding pigeons and, above all, falconry. The cost of an agile falcon could be anything between 3,000 to 10,000 Kuwaiti dinars (from Rs 3.6 lakh to 15 lakh).

The aspirations of people like Shafiq have soared. Finding falcons is a preoccupation now. Ingenuity comes into play. Shafiq has created a trap which he latches onto the wings of one his pigeons. This one is slower that the others. Sooner or later, maybe once in six months, a falcon will pass that way, swoop on the pigeon with the disguised trap and Shafiq will then be able to sell the trapped falcon to a sheikh. The last transaction of this kind took place six months ago.

God helps those who help themselves. The posting of the Bangladesh battalion with UNIKOM, 30 km away, has prompted a relationship which is of mutual benefit, culturally and materially. Shafiq’s story is, I believe, a possible theme for a sensitive movie.

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