“Do you see that? The red one with the teeth? That’s a dredger. An ingenious cutterhead dredger. It pulls stuff out of the river: mud, sand, gravel. It can crack large boulders like coconuts—with a single bite. It’s a super cutter, with a cutting head like a tiger’s. The head is made of steel—the hardest in the world, the best you can find in Bangladesh. Amazing.” The young man sitting next to me in the sampan is as excited as a child to explain his beautiful, technical, water-filled wonderland of Chittagong to a stranger. On the trip across the Karnaphuli River, he raves about everything that moves: oil tankers, ferries, dredgers, tugboats, ultra-modern cargo ships—and hopes I’m just as enthusiastic.
We’re sitting on a flat sampan, a traditional wooden boat, arranged in six rows one behind the other: workers, vegetable vendors, and elderly people. The crossing to the fishing port in the south of the city takes barely more than ten minutes. Sampans come in all sizes and designs here—old wooden boats with thick bottoms on a gently curved keel line and a strikingly upturned bow, the “Anni.” These days, such boats are rarely propelled by a hand oar, with a rower at the stern. We travel quickly and comfortably with an outboard motor. Ever since the Japanese began expanding the deep-water port in Matarbari, south of the city, with four coal-fired power plants and a liquefied natural gas terminal, and since Indians and Chinese have been financing transit transport projects and pipelines, the economy has been booming. This is the new colonial rule of the 21st century, supported by the Bangladeshi government, but one that severely threatens the fragile ecosystem and fish stocks. Yet, when there are no other jobs in this overpopulated slum, who would dare to argue against it?
Seated to my left is a man with a short white beard. He collects the fare from the men riding in the boat—10 taka from each, about 10 euro cents. One of the passengers always organizes the collection because the ferryman cannot leave his spot on the raised stern of the boat. Once everyone has paid, the money is passed up to him. The man with the white beard, having finished his volunteer duty, interrupts the young tech enthusiast. He, too, wants to chat with me. With some effort, using a few simple bits of English, a conversation gets underway. He wants to know where I was born, where I’m headed, and what I admire about Bangladesh. Then he smiles at me and says I’m a very friendly person, like a younger brother. Is he older than me? His face is deeply tanned, but he can’t be very old yet. He’s holding a basket between his knees—a farmer who wants to sell his goods at the market. “Since you’re my younger brother,” he says cheerfully, “you have to try my best fruit right away.” I pick out a tangerine and give him a few taka in exchange. He’s so happy about this that he immediately has to tell everyone sitting in front of and behind him. When I ask him if he might not actually be the younger of the two of us, he looks at me in astonishment, shakes his head, and denies it very firmly. “That can’t be. I’m almost fifty and a very old man. You can see that, can’t you?” He straightens up proudly. I don’t argue with him. To him, being older means: I’m wiser, I have more experience, and I know i

It’s always right. Now the young man with the dredger is butting in again. He says I’m—maybe older, at least much more experienced—because I come from far away, beyond India, from China or America. This causes the white-bearded man to shake his head even more vigorously and rant loudly about the Chinese and Americans. They wanted to buy everything—the whole country—but not his fruit. No American had ever bought anything from him. But I had. I couldn’t be an American.
When we finally arrive at the dock and get off the boat, the bearded man sits down on one of the stone benches. He sets his heavy basket of fruit in front of him and wants us to talk some more. The young tech enthusiast, who hasn’t taken his eyes off us, squats down next to us as well. The old man explains to everyone waiting here on the pier for a ferry: “This is my brother. My younger brother. He’s very funny, and he’s not an American.” The young man has to comment on that right away. “He’s not Chinese. Anyone can see that. But he could still be an American.”
Finally, I have to show my passport to settle the argument. “A German? What’s a German? Never heard of it. And how old are you?” The bearded man can’t believe it. “That can’t be right,” he says, “the passport’s fake.” Then he hesitates, thinks it over, and smiles mischievously: “If you’re really that old, then you can buy my fruit from me. Now. Right away. All of it.
Old men need fresh fruit.”