“……I born here, in Seattle and I did my school and graduation here. Since my childhood, I have seen my father sailing in the lake for no reason… one day he took me with him and that day I felt that I have a relation with this deep blue water… I bought one house by the bank and other is a boat house.. I have several sailing boats, kayak, normal boats… I love spending time by kayaking, pretending to catch fish.. Haha.. okay wait, once I got a big tuna…living on a boat house is really amazing. After all the pain I take in my office or anywhere, a mug of coffee and a deeeep breath from the edge of my roof, watching the water, it releases all my tiredness…. I sailed most of the part of Washington…… Life is awesome…” says Nathan Clement, a business executive from Seattle. He lives in East Lake.
There are hundreds of houseboats in Washington, most of them are East Lake, South Lake and some are in Freemont. House boats are often expensive and here most of the houseboats are belong to the elite groups of the society. They are beautifully decorated with all possible essentials of daily necessities and enriched in architectural structure. It’s like a small piece of heaven in the heart of earth.
Here is the story of Anwar Mia, a person from the other corner of the world, Bangladesh. Its really hard to find this country in the world map and like this, the story of our people remains hidden or maybe unspoken.
“…. I used to be a farmer and worked in my Malik’s( landowner) land. About four years ago, I lost my home due to river erosion… I lost my wife and my daughter…. Malik refused to give to work, Govt. refused to give me house, neighbor refused to give me and my only son some shelter. Then, I come along with some fishermen and joined that group with my son… I made some money by catching fish and after one year I learned to make a boat with wood… now, I have my own small boat, I live there with my son… the only regret of mine is that, I cannot send my son to school, as we don’t have home, we move places to places. In spite of all these things, we are happy now…. I find serenity in the flow of water, I find rhythm in the movement of water… SHANTI (peace)…”
When I asked what you have in your houseboats he replied “some fishing equipment like net, fishing rod, tackle etc” “what else? Like for living?” “Baba, you don’t need anything to live, all you need is to live” replied Anwar Mia.
Different situation, different ambiance, different story…. But about the same thing “finding peace in water”. For some, living in a boat house is luxury and for some its necessity. Some choose it, some are chosen by fate. Two different eyes of seeing the same thing but the point is to find happiness. Everyone has different views or opinion over some same issue. If we all look for peace then why there is chaos in the world?
This story was produced in the 2015 SUSI program.
