What Are Your In-laws Like?

There are a few questions that one gets asked in Bangladesh until you could answer them in fluent Bangla coming out of anesthesia from a brain surgery for memory loss. I know these questions as well as I know my own name.

Right up along with what your name is (which they already know) and where your country is and what your father’s name is and brother’s and mother’s and sister’s and what the main food in America is and why you don’t wear jewelry and what your job is and how much money you make is the perpetual question of whether or not you have a man in your life, husband or otherwise. And if you’re not married, when will you get married? And would you marry a Bengali man? And why are you not married anyway? And why don’t you wear jewelry?

It is hard to quantify, but I guess that this question arises an average of four times a day on holidays and doubles on school days. It makes little difference whether one is talking to an old acquaintance or a new. They still ask, and there seems to be an element of untrustworthiness in our answers, for it will come up again.

For the first several years that I came to Bangladesh, I laughed and said I was too young to think about such things. Then I grew older,and it got a bit more personal. When you are 23 in a culture where teenagers are expected to marry, it does no good to claim youth.

The last year I was here, several “uncles” in the village made it quite plain that they did not want to see me again unless I brought them an “in-law”. I said I would do my best, and fortunately Charles came along.

I don’t think I was completely bitter about it, but I did tell a friend before coming over here to visit again, that if nothing else, I wanted to come back just to exorcise that old demon. I wanted to (just once) be able to reply, “Why, yes, in fact I do have a husband, and… here… he… is!” Then there would be No More Questions.

So, it was with great glee, of course, that I produced Charles upon returning to this village. “…meet my husband.” Trumpets, horns, etc.

…and they are like “…Oh… hi.”

Whereupon Charles gravely offers his hand, and they look him up and down and say, thoughtfully, “Your husband…”

No one acts surprised. They are pleased, of course, and they universally approve of him but… they are not very surprised. Apparently while it was very odd that I wasn’t married before, it is only me doing my job being married now.

A moment of silence while we sit down for tea, and everyone gathers their lungis and perches on a table top near by to examine us… and then…

What are your in-laws like? Do you like them? Do they like you? How many brothers and sisters does he have? Where does Charles come in the family? Do you live with them? You mean you have your own house? What does your husband do for a job? How much money does he make? Is your father in law very old? How far is your husband’s house from your father’s house? Do you go visit your father’s house? How did you meet? Where is your ring? Why. Don’t. You. Wear. Jewelry! Yes, we know it isn’t your culture to wear jewelry, yes, yes! But you are married now, and it your culture to wear a ring, isn’t it? Isn’t it??

I usually produce Charles’s family picture at this point (now relegated to my favorites folder) and explain the relationships, my own family being old news. Then they want to know if my sister-in-law is nice and if we get along. In Bengali households where sons marry and bring their wives home to live, the newest wife is the household slave. She is expected to do all the housework while the mother and daughters sit about enjoying life. Since birth order really matters, the oldest son’s wife is in a position of some power and has the upper hand over the newer sister in laws. It is quite common for either her or the mother-in-law to pick on the new daughter-in-law. I praise all my in-laws appropriately and explain that both my mother-in-law and sister-in-law have been quite kind to me so far.

Then I have to deflect a derogatory observation on my wedding dress.

“Why aren’t you wearing clothes?” They want to know.

This makes my Mennonite bridal attire sound much more interesting than it actually was. They simply are asking why I was not covered in glittery material of a very bright shade, make-up, and, above all, jewelry.

“Ah,” they say and repeat everything to each other that I had said, processing. Then… “Where’s our mishti sweets?” (See previous post.)

Charles has been a delightful side-kick, tramping about the village with me Finding People. He gets a bang out of all my random friends and sits patiently through long question-and-answer sessions that are too repetitious to bear interpreting and eats and drinks everything offered to him and often takes seconds. This endears him to his hosts. He has, however, stopped smelling the food that gets handed to him. I objected.

This backfired. The team house mom convinced Charles that the honey mustard was caramel sauce for the sticky buns, and he says that this trick wouldn’t have worked on him if I hadn’t put a stop to the food sniffing.

Aside from condiments, Charles is more observant than I am. I am not naturally curious about my environment. Observing people and culture is my forte, but Charles likes to go inspect every object and machine and shop. He pokes at things and examines them, trying to figure its purpose out and how it works. He tries everything.

I am too stiff, too conscious of dignity, waiting on my hosts to tell me where to go and what to do, trying to act like the average Bengali guest. I know too how well how carefully everything about foreigners is observed and know the comments that any eccentric behavior draws from bystanders. I despise looking silly.

Charles is, however, an entirely free spirit; he pops into wood working shops and joins the crowd around fish sellers. He plops down on beds and proffered chairs as expected, and then as soon as I get busy in conversation (from which he is usually excluded), up he jumps. I turn to look for him, and he is gone… around the house, poking leaves into the cooking fire, hunting down flocks of chickens, trying locked doors on closed shops.

“Where is he?” I say, and we all turn this way and that looking for him. A child usually runs up at that moment, shouting out that the jamay (husband) is in the kitchen or down the street.

Upon arriving at a friend’s house in the middle of meeting all the household, he found the duckling basket and promptly helped himself to a duckling.

“It is okay,” my friend said,”This is a very free house.”

This remark was after we had sat down for tea and were helping our husbands get acquainted. We are great friends, and both of us are newly married. In the middle of this important moment, Charles had jumped up, gone into the next room, and, reacquiring his duckling, returned to our tea.

“A free house,” I repeated to myself. That was exactly the kind of environment for a Charles.

After tea, we went out to inspect a new calf and eat tamarinds. Only, the tamarinds were still on the tree and very high up. Without ceremony, Charles began to climb the tamarind tree while I prayed that no branches would break. Every tree is precious here, and a broken branch would have been an awkward mistake.

We had stopped to see an auntie of my friend’s when the prayer call began. Charles has been fascinated by mosques and the prayer rituals from the very first.

“Where is the mosque?” said Charles.”I want to see that guy do the prayer call.”

Inspecting religious things in the Islamic world is always a tad edgy. We are never sure where the line is, and usually our hosts don’t seem quite sure either. Our friends said we would go and that it wasn’t a problem for us to see the mosque, but, nevertheless, we continued to stand about.

After a minute, an auntie said, “Where did he go?”

We looked around, but Charles had disappeared. He had wanted to see the prayer call, and so he went and saw the prayer call.

I giggle nervously and hope for the best.

The jomot that the two of us attended the other day. A jomot is a meal held in honor of a dead person to gain them points in the after life, usually scheduled sometime in the year after their death. The richer you are the bigger the crowd you serve. This one fed about 3,000 people.

Some fish that we inspected today, fresh from the pushkoni (pond).

The old mosque and ruins we explored yesterday. It is either about fifty years old or five hundred years old, depending who you talk to, and is guarded by an invisible snake and perhaps a tiger, though these details are a bit hazy.

Out by the river.

Visiting a friend of mine, named Minara, who is dying from cirrhosis of the liver. Her stomach is swollen like a late pregnancy from a malfunctioning spleen. She has four small children. Her nine year old daughter was cooking us lunch in the second picture. They are extremely poor. Prayers for her and her family and the team as they try to help would be appreciated.