Confessions of an accidental writer

Of late, people who know me have started to ask me why I have start writing, all of a sudden.

They wanted to know what my motivation was, what my writing schedule looks like, what my sources of inspiration are, where I got my motivation from. Truth is, I don’t have an answer.

It just happened. One day, sitting in the rented room in Lisbon, I saw my Facebook wall, and I thought to myself, "Wouldn’t it be nice if I filled it with my thoughts and stories about my experiences in Lisbon?"

But like with everything meaningful, when I sit down to really think about my writing journey, it seems like it started long, long ago. And like with all journeys, my memories are full of serendipitous events and special people who have been travelling companions and wise guides.

Writing is an art; it doesn’t happen in a single day. For me, it took many decades, and along the way the kind words of many generous people.
It all started back in my school days. The name of my school in Geneva Camp was Non-Local Junior High School (NLJ). I remember one of our science teachers, Mohiuddin Sir. We didn’t have proper textbooks back then, so he used a clever technique: he gave lectures and made us take detailed, handwritten notes on the spot. He would usually make what he was saying interesting so that we would pay attention.

Then there was Aslam Sir, our Bangla teacher, who wrote very fast on the blackboard and challenged us to copy everything down within a strict time limit. Those daily writing habits built my writing skills and gave me a big confidence boost during my SSC exams.

Mohiuddin Sir also helped us fill out our SSC examination forms. I was one of the youngest kids in the group, so Sir played a little trick: he gave me a random date of birth on paper just so I would meet the age requirement for the exam. Ever since, that has been my official date of birth! So, thank you, Mohiuddin Sir, for giving me a birthdate at the very least. Before that, I didn’t have any date of birth, as nobody asked for it before the form fill-up for the SSC.

To this day, I don’t know my exact date of birth. My parents never recorded it, and nobody really cared about birthdays back then in Geneva Camp. Trust me, I am not from the prehistoric era—it was just how things were even as late as the nineteen eighties and nineties!

Years later, I saw a neighbor walking down our lane carrying a birthday cake.

“What’s the occasion?” I asked him.

“Oh, it’s my birthday! Don’t you know this?” he replied.

When with a puzzled look I replied ‘no’, he continued,

“Well, my father told me you were born just one day before me, so yours was yesterday!”

I was then curious to figure out my year of birth from him, but he didn’t seem too sure about that. He suggested a year and I kept it in my memory. But unfortunately, I am still confused because my mother always insists that I was born on a specific date of the lunar year during Muharram.

Anyway, does it matter? No! What matters in these cases is that a person should have a date of birth and thanks to Mohiuddin Sir and the SSC forms, I have one. That is all that matters.

Once on the first day of an exam, I was shocked to see a bearded older gentleman sitting next to me. He was a government employee taking the exam for a job promotion. Because I was appearing as a private student, many invigilators during the SSC exams questioned me “Why are you appearing as a private student in such a small age”? I couldn’t answer them—I simply didn’t know what to say.

But those handwriting skills taught by our teachers at NLJ School belied their concerns. It also won me immense praise during the exam days at Tejkuni Para High School or Tejgaon Model High School near Farmgate in Dhaka. On the days of the Bangla and English exams, the invigilator praised me in front of the whole class, saying, “Look at such a tiny boy, and look at his handwriting!” That remains a lifetime memory. (If you saw my handwriting today, though, you would think I was a great liar for telling you this story!) During the exam period, I remember trains passing by and the school building shaking but my handwriting remained steady!

Fast forward to October 2004: I started working at an NGO named Al-Falah. Before that, I was purely a daily-wage sewing machine mechanic in Geneva Camp for many years. A friend named Hasan helped me become a volunteer, and later he created space for both me and another friend, Khalid, to get regular jobs at the NGO. During my Al-Falah days, I was lucky to work closely with the famous author and Urdu poet Ahmed Ilias, learning by watching him carefully draft reports and communicate with English-speaking donors and visitors. He was also a great storyteller who wrote several books.

In our peer group, Hasan was a brilliant writer in both Bangla and English. Surprisingly, he was also one of the best among us at writing Urdu—he wrote Urdu poetry and became a regular contributor to the literary world. His English spelling was outstanding; he never misspelled a single word. He wrote for newspapers in Bangla and English and covered community challenges with ease. Once, he even wrote for three different papers on community challenges with three distinct themes, all in one single day! We later presented those papers at a seminar at Dhaka University organized by RMMRU, where we were regular participants. Since my Bangla handwriting was good, I copied out many official applications sent to various offices while working for Al-Falah.

Those were the days when I started meeting erudite people and attending literary gatherings and poetry evenings (I recently wrote about this experience in my piece “Urdu-wala in Dhaka, Wah! Wah! Wah! Wah!” published in Daily Prothom Alo English version).

One day, Ahmed Ilias, sent me to meet Afsan Chowdhury, who was looking for Bihari youngsters to work on a 1971 history project. He wanted to examine the Bihari experience during 1971 for his series of history books titled Bangladesh 1971. I went to see him, and he asked me directly if I could translate texts from Urdu to Bangla. Despite my miserable Urdu knowledge, I cunningly said “Yes”—simply because I desperately wanted the job! But I managed to complete some translations for him. I still remember translating a book written by an ex-Pakistani army officer, Siddiq Salik, titled “Humne Dhaka Ko Doobte Dekha”.

That work turned out to be a massive eye-opener. It taught me about perception versus reality, the war, and the reasons behind it, styles of writing. Ultimately, I learned that history isn’t about deciding what is “good” or “bad” according to societal norms, but about revealing the truth and checking facts before believing anything.

Around 2007, Sajjad Sharif Bhai from Prothom Alo and the poet Asad Chowdhury connected me with Dr. Annu Jalais who looked completely “undoctorly”. At the time, she was conducting research on the Bengali-Muslim diaspora with the famous partition historian Joya Chatterji and sociologist Claire Alexander, for the London School of Economics (LSE), and I became her research assistant.

I was completely puzzled when I met Annu for the first time in Mohammadpur. The first time she asked to meet me was a hot Ramadan day. Out stepped a six-foot-tall white lady wearing a saree and speaking fluent street Bangla! Can you imagine? I wasn’t entirely clear on her project at first, but I was keen to work with her and we got working with a bang, and I started fixing her appointments to meet people across different camps, not just across Dhaka but all across Bangladesh – to many places where even I had never been.

She once gave me an article she had written about Marichjhapi (a place in the West Bengal region of the Sundarbans, India) so that I could understand the nature of her work. I had never heard the name of the place before. It took me weeks of reading and re-reading to make sense of it, but I failed miserably to understand the complex text—and I gave up reading such dense academic papers for many years! During those days Annu pushed me join the British Council for English learning courses, she also bore half of the course fees. She was probably a bit annoyed at me telling her that her text was difficult as she always strove to write in simple language. Learning English in British council was fun and a real confidence booster. After that stint, I was able to read Annu’s anthropological texts a little more easily. She used to encourage me a lot and made me promise that I would one day write my autobiography.

Annu linked me to Therese Blanchet, an anthropologist who lived in Bangladesh for 40 years studying rural women. Her unique perspective on Bangladeshi society was another revelation for me. I worked with her for on two different topics one is on “Arsenic contamination” for Grameen Bank and other was on “child sexual abuse” for the national policy making initiative for UNICEF. Blanchet was from a Canadian French background and spoke Bangla.

She proudly told me things related to her Quebecois identity. Her office cook, Sudarsan Da, also introduced me to the world of Bengali gastronomy. Coming from a background where we mostly ate beef, his incredible fish and vegetable dishes completely won me over! And his “dal” wow! Yum. Later on, I introduced a fish-and-vegetable-eating habit in my family despite the many fights we had. Now my wife manages to cook Bengali dishes very well.

Simultaneously, I worked as a research assistant for Victoria Redclift from the LSE, during her PhD studies on the Biharis. I also worked for Misha Hussain, who worked as a consultant for the BBC and the World Bank. Misha taught me how to transcribe and translate audio recordings, which later on helped me immensely when I went on to work for Dalarna and Gothenburg Universities. Over the years, I worked with many international researchers from around the world. They always encouraged and supported me to reflect and write down my thoughts.

So, what is the point of telling you all these connections?

My actual writing journey started just a few months ago. I had gone to Lisbon to attend a congress, and I posted stories about my travel experiences on Facebook. Afsan Chowdhury read them, found them interesting, and asked me to send him an extended version so he could help me publish it. I wrote up a travelogue, liked how it turned out, and received a lot of praise from him. It was eventually published in the weekly Dhaka Courier. Annu also gave me her usual push of encouragement, while my Swedish colleagues Anna, Kerstin, and Malin have become my regular readers, frequently sending me positive feedback via messages.

Now, I am focusing more on writing down everything I have experienced over all these years—in a way, on my autobiography, even though in bits and pieces—with a little help in my writing process, especially grammar, from AI, which helps smoothen out the delivery.

A growing connection with news outlets have given me the space to get these pieces published, as they believe my raw and fresh perspectives will be enjoyed by their readers. That is the secret behind my writing and the reason why I am sharing these stories today. Should I continue? Do these stories resonate with you?

* Noor Islam Pappu is a researcher and National Coordinator for Dalarna University and the University of Gothenburg. He specializes in community-ethnography and personal narrative storytelling based on his lived experiences.