[Reader-list] Fortress of Solitude

[Naeem Mohaiemen]

This is a light-weight polemic against the security-state-ification of
all aspects of Dhaka life. It was meant to go into the issues in more
depth, but I was assured by the assistant editor of DS that any
further and he wouldn't be able to print it (an equally light op-ed on
Benazir: "Not the People's Princess" was held up for 3 months over one
mention of ISI/Army). So it ended up being a milque-toast piece for
the political purposes of getting published and starting the debate.

Even with the super mild nature of the piece, DS made following edits
(without informing me, but that's standard practice it seems):
1. "the smell of cat shit" (the interior is abandoned and taken over
by nature's foragers) became "the smell of cat excrement" and finally
the little-house-on-the-prairie "musty smell"
2. The last line "All in the name of security." became "All in the
name of what?"

DS having started self-censorship after 1/11/07 now has no path to
reinvent backbone. Local critics invert the venerable newspaper's
fifteen-year old famous slogan and call it "Journalism with fear and
favor"

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http://www.thedailystar.net/story.php?nid=29386

DAILY STAR
Friday, March 28, 2008 09:30 AM GMT+06:00 	

Fortress of solitude
Naeem Mohaiemen

THE man wakes in an unfamiliar city. It is hot, sweaty and only seven
in the morning. Curse this  heat, this infernal heat! Cycle bells,
footsteps and strange sounds seep in. The visitor's guides arrive, it
is time. He is blindfolded, and the two set out in a car. Soon they
are standing on a grand lawn. Wet dew seeps through his sneakers. The
guide, a Bengali architect, takes the blindfold off. Blinking into the
sunlight, the visitor stares at a castle of lines and stone, rising
out of a moat of crisscrossing canals. He stares for a long moment.
Slowly, quietly, he begins to cry.

The visitor is Nathaniel Kahn, and the building is the Shangshad
Bhaban -- centerpiece of Louis Kahn's National Capital Complex in
Dhaka. The intense preparation for this moment of communion is behind
the scenes. The story of the blindfold, put on by a local architect,
came out in a later interview: "I said, look I want to see this thing
the right way. I don't want to see it in an accidental way."

The viewer who comes to the film My Architect meets Louis Kahn through
his physical sculptures. The sunlight streaming through Kimbell Museum
roof, the grand geometry of Exeter's library, the unfinished designs
for a Holocaust memorial, the dewy mornings that surround Shangdhad
Bhaban -- all are rendered with a quiet, unblinking precision.

Kahn's mission was to instill the monumentality and mystery of the
classics into architecture, replacing the cold functionality of the
steel-and-glass era. In his structures, the materials were simple,
often limited to brick and concrete. In his quest for spirituality, he
would engage the raw material itself in the dialogue. The interplay of
light with material was the base element that could create a changing
building-- one that moved forward with time and vantage point.

"I knew that when I was in Dhaka the film was over." There in front of
the Shangshad Bhaban, Nathaniel discovers his father in the lines and
cavernous spaces. Even in the midst of brutal warfare in 1971, Louis
Kahn continued work on this project. "When the war was on, everybody
said stop working, because we don't know what's going to happen, we
don't know if there is going to be a government after this, and you're
not being paid." His response was: when there is peace again, they
will need this building.

When I first reviewed My Architect four years ago, I wrote: "Not only
is it home to Bangladesh's parliament, its central, vast green grounds
act as an oasis in the middle of a poorly planned, congested,
third-world mega-city." Speaking of its multiple uses, Nathaniel said:
"Everybody has a story about meeting a friend on the plaza, playing a
game on the lawn, being a child on the lawn, walking around the
Crescent Lake, exploring the area that the streets go past the
hostels."

But Nathaniel was extraordinarily lucky with the timing of his film. A
few years later and he would have filmed his finale in a lonely
fortress, empty of people, life or meaning. His last low angle shot
would take in a wire fence, past the legs of guards, sentries,
paramilitary and police. There would be no civilians in a single frame
(certainly not the exuberant "Dhaka morning walker's club" of the
film). Since 2006, the building has been dying, fatally surrounded by
fences. The cage of national security, the only framing device left
for Kahn.

Two weeks ago, a group of German architects came to visit Dhaka. Armed
with university letters, ministry permissions, VIP phone calls, they
were allowed access to the inside grounds. I called up one member and
asked if my friend could join them. She has never been inside, you
see.

"I don't think we can manage that, they have taken photocopies of
everyone's passport."

"But she's Bengali."

It seems the officials didn't care. My Bengali friend stayed behind.

Later, they met us for dinner. We who could only imagine the interior
had to depend on these visitors for a second-hand look. Wide-eyed
stories of soaring beauty. But also sadness at a crumbling interior,
absence of light, eerie stillness, sleeping cleaners, the musty smell.

It has come to this. The only way I can enter the Shangshad is to come
with foreign friends. The rest of you: go home, go home. Wanting to
take a morning walk, do adda with old friends, eat chinabadam, hold
hands with your partner, take in the fresh air, gaze into the open
space, the vision of stone, the beginning of life. Not now, not here.
Your city is dying, finally.

Architect Dorothee Riedle wrote to me in an email: "I started to
wonder what this security fuss is all about. What can be the reason
for sealing off the building for the last few years? Maybe I am too
foreign to understand? It is very hard to understand why a government
would want to keep people from enjoying their nationality around their
parliament building in this desperately needed green and open space.
It deprives the building and what it stands for of much of its
qualities. Writing all this I started to wonder how easy it would be
to get access to the German Reichstag. According to their web-page, it
is really easy. It is possible to take part in guided tours through
the house daily, to apply for a visitors seat for the hearings, etc."

In My Architect a young boy stares up at the Shangshad Bhaban, and is
reflected into the water. He expresses the sense of wonder we drink in
at journey's end. Someone, somewhere has choked the joy out of that
scene. In the name of what?


Naeem Mohaiemen (naeem.mohaiemen@ gmail.com) works on art & technology projects.