YD6-67(TRT) Farewell Jakarta and a flip to Dhaka split the region topography
BOOK SYNOPSIS: Step into this journey of becoming, where the cosmos whispers its secrets, and identity blooms like dawn. This story is an unfolding suite of chapters clarifying my book, The Code: Horizon of Infinity—a philosophical memoir exploring how the universe sculpted our minds. Through Aetheria, the lens of consciousness, aware of her need for a body to reveal herself and exercise her wishes, the narrative leads to her birth and the name she will claim: Sunshine.
Chapter Synopsis: Through the hush of departure gates and clouds, landing—first into Singapore’s stillness, then Dhaka’s fevered breath. November 1990: elections stir outside, eyes interrogate inside. A passport flips. A king remembered. Heat rises. Between lost bags and found maps, the city unfolds in fragments. The expedition begins—among rivers that won't stay where they're told.
YD6-67(TRT) Farewell Jakarta and a flip to Dhaka split the region topography
Downtown Jakarta. A taxi pulls up along the throbbing boulevard. We slip to our seats. “Airport, please,” Michel says. The driver responds, with the glittery towers slipping behind us, midst a trickle of traffic. The city in a gradual blurs to shacky stores herding the suburbs, straddling the seam along a concrete dividing curb of highway traffic. Lanes slip off, quieter, toward terminal dawn afar. The driver drops us off. With our strapped bags, step into the gleam -- check-in counters shining, to pause by the bright cladded Thai ground hostess smiling a welcome for our tickets. With a doll of sophisticated hands, she returns our boarding pass, sending us onward.
My mood shifts -- elation thinning to a hint of anxiety, approaching the gray uniform and stern gaze. Hands slip our passport under the controller's gaze. With a silent gasp, I slip through the interstice of the barrier glazed maze to relax in the international zone. Michel leads, a hint in his stride. With his hand luggage, and topographic equipment bag, a part of his demeanor for the past six weeks. The walkway gleams out of sight, the end approaching, with Thai figures in uniforms and smiling us through the boarding gate.
Michel's steps across the asphalt with a relaxed gait, climbing the stairs -- welcomed by the greeting air crew, up the spiral staircase. At the bar counter, a relay air hostess usher us toward our seats. Seated, with a top floor view -- the terminal rotates, shrinking, vanishing in the flat fragmented blocks. relents to a city’s dark sprawl to green, then the fancy of a bird’s-eye spills afar upcoming blue.
A hostess stirs me from the hush -- bright uniform, hands dancing toward miniature bottles. After Michel, I nod, ‘Yes.’ A miniature bottle of red wine, coming to rest on my table tray, paper napkin, and plastic cup. She drifts off. I pour. Sip. Thoughtless waiting.
The air inside the cabin announces, a man’s voice --“Singapore.” I feel the float of my seat, sparing me from the pricking needle-helmet traumatizing my brain. We land, Taxi. Approach the terminal, to a halt. Passengers trail the asphalt, vanish in the terminal, another trail emanates from the terminal, to rotate, shrinking, drifting to a toy size vanish as we lift off. The dark mottled ground, gives way to invasive greens, sprawling, dragging behind, back on course, exert patience, for a stopover in Bangkok.
My NEC UltraLite’s clamshell upright -- liquid crystal flickers like fly-paws across the dark screen. My manic -- for keeping records, tracking of the timeline -- Thursday November 8, 1990. Before words flicker on screen as we progress through the skies. After a while, I fold the screen down. Gaze out the porthole, wondering where we could be. The silver wing tip angles over the coastline -- blue ocean giving way to sandbanks. A voice through the cabin, hard to catch English. But I feel in my seat. The float. The descent engaged. Unaware, names lurk -- will emerge from blue glare. Rivers braids toward the sea, spreading through delta.
Steadfast shores slip behind, gliding the Bay of Bengal, reaching inland blue glazed streams comb the rising dark ground to disappear. As the rugged, sprawling terrain, creeping toward the underbelly. Touchdown. The wings airfoil brakes deploy -- shuddering. Before the draft, relieves my body, sink in the cease of my seat, to taxi. Approaching the glazing to a concrete, faded colonnade terminal, to halt.
Michel and I alighted from the aircraft’s gaping door -- to a lineup before box-folded army vehicles. We step down the trundling stairs. Soldiers in pressed khaki, insignias catching light, rifles cradled ceremonial props, hedge the path. In Indian file, we cross the tarmac. By the terminal’s plate-glass doors, into the interior. The arriving passengers herd forward past a dangling sign, “VIP — Government officials.” A tempting prank -- but the atmosphere is too stern. In the hall, we queue with the thick crowd. I tamed my imagination, i too, relinquish -- to the dressed statue of a passport controller, encased within the maze of plate-glass cubicles a crystal barrier to the country’s interior.
In a chain reaction, I step up. Hand over my passport. The man in uniform scans my face, flips through the pages -- his stern gaze unmoved. Through his vigilance, my mind wanders -- skeptical of the sentinels nearby, armband reading “Airport Police.”
Without a word, my passport crosses hands. The sentinel livens -- with a deep gaze, flinging me a farce. “Brussels?”
Mistaking for a question of birthplace, I toss back, “No! Antwerp.”
“Who’s the king of Belgians?” The question flips on me, I sense mounting to an interrogation -- spells ‘danger -- You guys aren’t after my place of birth?’
My childhood flickers -- De M’ma, Mother’s excitement. the roadside in Goma, a nascent town clawed from the bush. We stood, my siblings, in a crowd shouting, “Vive le roi ! -- Long live the king!” A black Cadillac, gliding past, top down. I blink, return, throw: “Baudouin.”
The sentinel, throws back, without a twitch: “And the prime minister?” I think, ‘How stupid?’ I crack back, “I don’t know — I’m no politician. I’m here to do a job and that’s it.” Unaware, out there the country is shimmering -- an election soldering in its embers. The officer’s eyes shift past me, trailing, “Ok.”
My anxiety drains -- if only at the thought that my Israeli passage was stamped on a loose page. The lucky dove of a Belgian passport. I’m released from custody, through the interstice, to the luggage carousel, finding myself behind Thai Airline’s Royal Executive class by a swing of the glass door. I’m stormed by a sweltering heat, with Michel blind by habit, drift ahead -- parting through a swarm of dark Asian men. My eyes swat beggars, porters, dark hands brush my bags, I tug back. A sign, ‘No! -- I’m able to carry my luggage.’
Feet lines up the driveway curb. A snow-white Toyota -- brand new -- pulls up. A door flinging open. The driver leans over the vacant passenger seat. Through the gapping door, a voice flush out -- “Afzal!” His demeanor underlines, ‘Entrusted’ But he says it all like a teenager: ‘Owner. Jump in, for a scenic drive, in my Toyota.’ His eyes, flickering -- ‘One passenger or two?’
Michel grasps -- a chauffeur sent by Phillips TRT -- sliding in. I follow, slipping to the rear seat. We glide from the terminal into a meager airport traffic, which swells, then billows into the swarming rhythm of a downtown thoroughfare. We turn off, sweep into a quiet service road, pulling up by the portal, just besides an unmistakable blue sign, “ANZ Grindlays Bank>”
We step out -- before me, a colonial commercial block. Punctuated, fenestrated, blatant industrial plastered facade. Ushered into the entrails, borrowing the elevator, to a mid-landing among five floors. Behind a pair of doors, strangers greet us, voluntary offering their names -- aware each will slip from my mind, until resonance reawaken from within the character.
Given space. Dawn. A rapid count -- my bags. “Il en manque un -- One’s missing,” I tell the Frenchman, Patrick Lefevere. His gaze lingers. I turn the doubt: ‘Which one misses the count?’ But, my mind finds no shape, no fabric, absent-minded I spill out: “Il y a un sticker de Bali -- It has a Bali sticker.”
Only to mention, “airport,” and his proficiency follows through -- thrust, to recuperate my lost luggage. They called it a day. We depart. A ride around the block -- highlighting the Toyota poised before a glittering skyscraper. A fleeting thought drops in: ‘What a spot to hunker. And why two snake dancers?’ We step toward the plate-glass entrance, the question slips behind -- the rural rite threaded to the glitters and gleams, to present before the eyes of corporate echelons.
I dig my head into a pair of pillows -- wake up sprawled diagonally across the double bed, my skeleton molded into the mattress. Dress, descend by the elevator. Breakfast in the coffee shop. Michel walks in. After emptying our coffee cups, he rises -- heads for the reception. Afzal picks us up. He drives us through shrieks and convulsive streets, Dhaka twisting around us in every direction -- until in a suburb. Afzal drops us off.
in the shade of the tiled eaves, Michel enters the yellow face-brick villa. Approaching the hallway front desk. From the shadows, a government secrete service agent, and telecommunication representatives. They usher us into an adjacent room, to the chest of drawers beneath the street front window, overlooking the white Toyota pulling into a parking bay a little further down.
Watching over Michel pull out a drawer wide, flipping through the stack of blueprints. He breaks the silence, his tone laced with contempt. “Je me suis battu avec ce gouvernement pour obtenir la permission du ministère de la Défense d'accéder aux archives -- I struggled with this government for permission from the Department of Defense to search the archives.” Michel says.
He finds a date -- 1928 -- raises a baffled glance, mutters: “ — Ils n'ont pas fait de relevé depuis ? — Il faudra s’en contenter ? -- They haven’t had a survey since — It will have to do?” Under a confused regard, he slips out the blueprint -- gliding atop the chest of drawers, unfolding the geologic map. scanning further for a revision date, to none.
We step out in an atmospheric, humidity blotting sunlight -- Aetheria, from the hint of mirage. . . to nothing.
We slip into the white Toyota -- Afzal veering out from the curb, threading Dhaka’s weaves -- until we’re dropped again by the blue brand sign of the Bank’s walls. We step through, into the entrails stepping, rise with the elevator onto the TRT Philips floor.
At staffs’ break, I walk around the corner to the hotel, return after a meal. Michel is bent over, curiosity gathered -- men lingering around a conference table as he studies the route for the topographic projects, his and mine. A few Women staff trickle past -- evening creeping in through peripheral industrial windows, drifting toward the double exit doors, toward leaving the building, at a logical guess: home. While in the background of the floor, vacated desks leave a pool of computer monitors.
I'm roaming amid TRT’s survey team -- Syed M. Afzaluddin, called “Afzal,” and the local project manager, circulating among the group of men. Michel straightens with the marketing man, within the chilled floor’s air-conditioned office. Afzal clicks one by one lights off. Hurries toward the stragglers.
I cringe at the thought, ‘What — Not again… — If I wait long enough, my objection will be heard.’ In loops, as the past few days--meetings, spicy gut burning, lunch at the private Country Club. Patrick Lefevre slipped in the middle of the circle for Afzal’s ears. Received mixed feelings — my thoughts could be true or could be an excuse. Patrick Lefevre voices intervenes, “Dinner at the Sonargaon.”
Agreement falls as silence. We drifts by the interleading doorway to the landing. A voice says, “After five, the elevator ceased functioning.” We descend gray terrazzo stairs to emerge on the ground floor. Cross the entrance hall -- I leave a glance at the joiner’s space. He hunches there, a plane at hand, planing a glazed wooden door -- laying on the floor.
We pass the wire mesh security door, into the fever of an evening city. In the quiet of the service road, Afzal opened his Toyota’s door. “Is there no one else coming . . .” An undertone hovers: ‘With me?’ His glance brushes disillusion, as I keep walking, drawn with the French men toward, a Jeep-chassis morphed, branded, “Daihatsu.’ We slip into the seats, shutting doors, pulling away. Past a man asleep in a rickshaw, into his wing-like folded arms.
We turn the corner, away from a billboard looming -- larger than the swarm it watches - ting-a-ling - rickshaw ring past lungis flared, skeletal legs treadling. Up the block, the Sonargaon rises from a pedestal of darkened shopfronts, shimmering, towering, scraping off the sky’s last color -- a walk, out of time’s small defiance. Pass the portal’s snake dancer -- into the rhythm of entry and exit, through the hotel’s exhale of glass and marble.
Driven into garage gloom, we park. Emerging from the underground -- a zephyr of air-conditioning greets us, chandeliers suspend above drifting voices. On course to (TRT,) Telephone Radio Television, for management’s farewell to Michel and me.
Patrick sighs. “Et maintenant -- And now?” he asks.
Reminiscent, Afzal says something -- about survey permissions, about the Ministry, about maps locked behind doors older than this century. I don’t answer, I’ll have to get it right -- surveying the terrain, connecting Bangladeshi outposts with the world.
Reminiscent of our Jakarta farewell -- a PR stunt, a gesture from the other management’s playbook. Michel and I gather around a bar. Patrick orders. Afzal clinks his glass, a bowl of red wine in hand, I follow the trend, drifting toward the dining table. Late at night, we scatter -- like autumn leaves by a swirling wind, the marketing man takes the tab.
Michel had handled the preparations, and in the morning, everything felt. . . normal. Somewhere between watching the Tarzan bush walk through undergrowth, and the long wilderness nights -- I hadn’t noticed my training was over. Loading goods brings back memories of my childhood debut -- leaving Goma on school breaks, on dirt roads trailing out of town. Meeting with the native tribes welcoming us, shouldering supplies, bushwhacking a path through pre-historic green -- into the jungle, where our parents set up our second playground.
When, by late morning -- Michel and I -- turn our back from the entrance to Philips offices, after lowering the tailgates of the Toyota and SUV, swinging the last bags in place. I circle my off-road SUV, without looking back. Each of us trails his team -- a quad of doors opening, slipping from the street, vanishing behind the eyes of onlookers, draped in drab. Little did I know -- from topographic expedition and a 1928 geological map -- I’d meet the challenges of rivers disloyal to their beds: avulsed and braided, migrating like the scars in dirt after a storm.
Before stepping inside the Nissan SR5 Patrol, I checked its tag: “Powered by Mercedes-Benz.” A reassuring heartbeat before the road. Sealed within 5 doors, I turn to the driver: “How long will it take to get to Khulna?”
Kashem -- bright-eyed, slender, a young telephone engineer from BT&TB, Bangladesh Telegraph & Telephone -- translated the other men’s blabber. “Three-hundred and fifty kilometers — Seven hours.” Outside, the jazzed of honking cars, scooter-whine, roaring diesel busses -- breached by the ghostly whistle of a traffic police officer, addressing a snarl crisscrossing the thoroughfare. We blend into the flow, stitching ourselves into the chaos.
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