Dua · Voyages
Sylhet, Dhaka, Negombo, Kuala LumpurAre You Going for the First Time?
January
The first time immigration stopped me, I was going for Umrah. The fifth of January, 2026, at Osmani International Airport, and I was travelling alone.
That was the problem. Someone going alone does not read as a pilgrim to an immigration officer. It reads as someone who intends to stay and work and never come back. So they stopped me and started asking.
I told them I was from cadet college.
That was it. That was the whole conversation. Their faces changed in a second and it was oh, you're from cadet college, why didn't you tell us before, go, go, go. I went. And I came back, as usual.
The first of September
I had known about this flight for a month and I had been tense for most of it.
The route was Sylhet to Dhaka, Dhaka to Colombo, sixteen hours sitting in Sri Lanka, then Colombo to Kuala Lumpur, landing on the second. Transit. First time out of the country properly. Everybody knows that combination invites questions.
I told an uncle about it. He knew some people at the airport, and he told me to show whatever I had and do my best. That was the whole strategy.
The one thing in my favour was my brother-in-law, travelling with me on an American passport.
Dhaka
There is a counter before the check-in counter. I did not know that. They check your documents before you are even allowed to queue to check in.
Are you going for the first time, or are you on vacation. First time. Then everything gets looked at. Who is with you. How is he related to you. Show that.
Then check-in, then the immigration queue, which was long.
Then an officer walked down the line, saw the American passport in my brother-in-law's hand, and pulled us both out of it. He walked us to a counter at the front where nobody was standing at all.
Same questions. Vacation or first time. First time. Where did you study.
Cadet college.
He stopped. Then he went over to his seniors and I heard him say it, sir, he is from cadet college but he is going on transit, Malaysia student visa. And the senior said check everything and let him pass.
And that was when it was over. I stood there and understood that I had actually left.
So I called everyone. Messaged everyone. Told them all I was leaving Bangladesh for Malaysia.
Colombo
Three hours later we landed, and Sri Lanka had its own questions.
They asked me for my ID, my student ID, and I could not show it. What I had was the receipt from my university, so I handed that over.
The officer looked at it and said anyone can generate this.
What I thought, standing there, was that if a person genuinely wanted to travel on fake documents, that person could generate the card too. I did not say it.
They went through everything slowly. The hotel booking. All of it. Then the lady officer took me into another room where a senior officer was sitting, holding my brother-in-law's passport and my papers. Which university. Which course. How many years.
Then the two of them started talking to each other in their own language, and I sat there understanding nothing.
Then they let me through.
The hotel was cosy. Better than I expected.
We went to see the sunset at Negombo beach, and afterwards to Browns Beach, and looked around. On the way back we stopped at a restaurant and had dinner. Then back to the hotel, then out again on my own to a cafe, where I sat by myself for a while.
Then a bit of sleep, awake too early, and at the airport four hours before the flight, which was as boring as it sounds. The Wi-Fi did not work properly. I was hungry. At one point I felt like I was going to throw up.
Sri Lanka is good, though. Here is the closest I can get to describing it. It is basically Bangladesh, but with better mannered people.
The setting is the same. It looks like home. But there was no dust and no rubbish on the roadside. The drivers were courteous. They could speak English, or at least express themselves in it. They stayed in their lanes. If somebody was crossing the road they would stop from a long way off. And no load shedding.
Kuala Lumpur
We landed, got on a train, and went to EMGS. I did all the official work there. I sent my brother-in-law into the immigration line and he cleared it, I collected the bags, and we went to the room in Kota Damansara.
The building is Cova Suites, directly across the road from my university. One minute on foot. And it is quiet.
For the next three days the two of us went around Kuala Lumpur. The Twin Towers. The botanical gardens. Museums. We covered a lot of ground and I learned the basic things while somebody was still with me who knew how any of it worked.
He left on the sixth.
The tenth
Today is the tenth. University starts on the fourteenth.
Since the sixth I have been on my own here.
Dua 006 · End of entry