How to prove you were born four decades ago in Bangladesh

it's hard. and you need luck and persistence.

Last summer, I mailed off four perfect applications to the embassy of Bangladesh in Washington, D.C. I expected four passports to return with an NVR stamp - No Visa Required. This would allow my family and me to live in Bangladesh. A visa is good for only 30 days in Bangladesh and I wanted to be able to move about the country freely if we were going to live there for the kids’ school year. About a week after I mailed the applications, while walking through the hospital, I checked my phone and saw an email with a subject line: Your Application Status. I clicked the email and it read, “Your application for NVR is rejected.”

I thought of the embassy officer who wrote me that email. I wish I could reject you right now!

I had done everything right. No typos on four applications. I submitted all supporting documents including birth certificates, passport copies, and a marriage certificate. I took my family to the local bank to get a statement notarized saying after ten years together, Jillian and I were still married. But what they got me on was this: my birth certificate.

“The birth certificate you sent us is not one issued by a local council office,” read the email.

Back in the eighties, Bangladesh didn’t have official birth certificates. My mom pushed me out of her belly, alone in a busy hospital in Chittagong, Bangladesh. My father brought my mom staples of their diet to help her recover from childbirth: rice, fish, and chicken. Three days after childbirth, my parents and I were released from the hospital with a document written by the physician that clearly explains that my mom gave birth to a “living male baby,” though my name was never on the birth certificate.

Okay, fine. It’s not the best document that proves my mother birthed me, but I wouldn’t go through the hassle of trying to get an NVR if it wasn’t significantly helpful to me. I was stuck; how do I prove my mother gave birth to me? It’s not like I had a video of myself emerging from the womb. There was no way I was going to find a local council office to issue me a birth certificate.

I called my cousin Joy, who grew up in Bangladesh.

“These people are idiots,” he said.

Easy Joy, these are our precious countrymen!

“You could pay them off. Find some family to go to the government building in Dhaka to try to get a birth certificate.”

I didn’t think I could pull off convincing my family abroad to bribe some government official. It wasn’t impossible, but I thought there had to be a simpler way to do it.

I recalled once traveling with my friend Hussein when I was in my second year of med school. We were in Paris on New Year’s day, 2012, and he needed a visa to go back to Afghanistan. We stopped by the embassy, but the employee there said he didn’t have capability to process it. We were to leave the next day by train to Brussels. Hussein spent half an hour talking to this employee. He smiled at him, cracked jokes, and then tried to get the employee to relate to him. Feeling frustrated by the lack of processing, we left the building and he told the employee we’d be back. Outside the embassy, Hussein remarked to me “There’s no rules when it comes to this stuff. It’s just paying people to get what you need.” The second time we went back, he got his visa.

---

Later in the week, I emailed the Bangladeshi embassy and I picked up when I saw a number calling me with a two-zero-two area code.

“Salaamualaikum,” said the voice on the line. He spoke in rapid Bangla.

“Ammar Bangla bhalo na. English boltay paro?” I said.

“Yes.” He agreed to speak in English and told me that I needed proper documentation. I told him I had no other birth certificate. The only other document I had after speaking to my father was my mother’s passport. My name and date of birth were hand-written in her passport when she immigrated to America in 1990.

“Didn’t you need some other kind of documentation for me when you brought us over?” I had asked my dad.

“No, at the time, since you were under eighteen, all we needed was to list you on our passport.”

I found that hard to believe but my father also told me an embassy worker in Dhaka came over to our house to verify that I was real and that I belonged to my parents.

“I have a copy of my mother’s passport with my name on it. Would you accept that?” I asked the embassy worker. He delayed his answer.

“Yes.”

I couldn’t believe it. No donation to the embassy needed.

I re-sent the passports back and in the mail returned four crisp passports with the approved stamps. It signaled to me that the trip we had in our mind, an idea floated years ago between Jillian and me, could actually happen. As I held the passports in hand, it hit me - we’re all going to live in Bangladesh.

Me. At age three. Before moving to America.

My son. At age four. Before moving to Bangladesh.

My original birth certificate

---

Brief life update:

Jillian and I packed up our house and left it to renters on August 1. We flew to Sofia, Bulgaria and picked up our rental car and have been driving west through the Balkans. We are currently in Theth, Albania, among the Alps and animals.

When we were in residency, we worked at a hospital in rural Bangladesh in 2016 and afterwards, we talked about taking time off together. We spoke to Jillian’s sister who took a sabbatical with her family in Bogota, Colombia and she recommended doing it when the kids were little, before they became ingrained in their activities and friend circles, before they could declare their resistance. At the same time, when you have little kids, and they want to spend time with you, it’s a good time to see the world through their eyes.

When we thought about where we would want to go, we wanted the location to be meaningful. Bangladesh is not a destination in many people’s minds, especially with their recent government protests and the ouster of the prime minister. But we spoke to my cousin, who gave us his review, that while the interim government is being formed, it should be safe. We wanted our kids to develop their Bangladeshi identity. Though I left Bangladesh at age three, I didn’t return until I was twenty-nine and I always felt like something was missing - knowing where you come from is important.

The plan is to fly to Bangladesh late September and put our kids into an English-medium school. Wanting to avoid Dhaka traffic, we found an apartment a few minutes away from the kids’ school.

Our jobs were fortunately okay with our leave of absence. I assumed I would need to quit my job, but after I approached my bosses, they said they could work my absence into the schedule (Thank you Jim, Soma, and Gabe!).

I’m still nervous about what the next year may bring, but I’m keeping an open mind, trying to learn about myself, my family, and others. I’ll plan to keep writing narrative medicine and personal essays while I’m abroad. Thank you for your continued reading. If you’ve ever done anything like this, I’d love to hear about it. See you in the comments!