Eid in Dhaka, a city I love

Ramadan is over, and Eid-ul-Fitr is here again. Among all holidays, I think this might be the best. It involves feasting in new clothes, which of course is to be relished. Even better, it caps a month that lands, for everyone who fasts, somewhere between rigorous ethical uprightness and sleepy, adda-rich quasi-vacation. With enough heartfelt morality – and tasty enough cuisine – I think Eid-ul-Fitr might rank among the best holiday of all.

It's a hyperbolic day in a hyperbolic city. In August, a couple weeks after this holiday ends, the Economist Intelligence Unit's annual Global Livability Index will come out again. This is a ranking of all the cities in the world by how comfortable (liveable) they are. In two of the last three years, the report has labelled Dhaka "the least liveable city in the world."

This is no politically motivated insult. Behind the claim lies in-depth measures of violence, healthcare, education, and more – crunched into a single list via rigorous statistical methods. (The study's methodology excludes active war zones, which explains why Baghdad and Damascus are not considered less liveable than Dhaka.) In many ways, the ranking is no revelation to people in Dhaka. It's not hard to see that multi-hour traffic jams and violent politics undercut one's quality of life.

But if the harsh critiques are true, they still gloss over the good things about Dhaka, too. The eve of Eid is a good time to remember what is so good about this city.

To begin, there's a silver lining to the dense chaos. Dhaka's lanes are urban to the core: hardly a scrap of anything green and growing. Men hawk steamed cakes in narrow lanes; mannered booksellers claim sidewalk space near the crowded parks. The dense city offers put people of all types in close proximity to each other every day. Many American cities suffer an opposite problem – they are coldly anonymous, every street a virtual highway, every person locked in a car. Dhaka, for all its problems, has a warm, Victorian-cum-postmodern street life.

The non-human life is as dense and rich. Take the hawks, for example. They are a fraction of the size of the city's crow population, but they have nested around the city (including near Shoheed Minar). When I lived near Ramna Park, I could look out my eighth-floor window each morning to see one flying at eye level. I used to pause and watch her turn slow loops over the traffic. She had that mix of muscularity and delicateness only a bird on the wing perfects. After satisfying herself surveying the city, she would flutter up to the ledge above my window, or dive into the bazaar to seize a mouse in her claws. Sometimes, she would return with other hawks. Amid the great chaos of this "unlivable" city, she and her family seemed to be thriving.

Even the non-living parts of Dhaka can be charming. In other cities, rain piddles down, chilling you to the bone. In some tropical places, it bursts suddenly out of an otherwise sunny sky. But Dhaka rain brings none of that confusion. Here, monsoons build from properly threatening banks of grey clouds, and the rain flows sideways in the humid breeze. Sometimes, the deluge's velocity increases suddenly mid-rainstorm to great crashing sheets of water that drown out Dhaka's usual traffic noises. They are decisive, strong, and exaggerated – reflecting, in a way, the positive traits of the city itself.

Of course, there are good parts of Dhaka whose existence is threatened by the painful overcrowding and swift growth. But amid the construction sites and traffic snarls, bits of an older time linger. Take, for instance, Boro Katra. This neglected architectural wonder dates to 1644, when Mughal emperor Shuja Shah ruled the city. It arches over an entire road in Old Dhaka, its original grand octagonal shape still visible. Above, windows reveal ordinary life – a dishrag hung on the window bars of one of the many rooms; a madrasa's banner on the rooftop. Half of the building was destroyed long ago, and archeological preservation is forestalled by governmental neglect. Nonetheless, the building is beautiful, a glimpse into history bold enough to burst through Dhaka's clutter.

New architecture isn't all bad, either. On October 1, 2012, when fundamentalists attacked the Buddhists of Ramu, the public response from Dhaka was immediate and heartening. Private donations and government assistance poured into the village. Ramu is a full day's travel from Dhaka, and most Bangladeshis do not share the Buddhist faith. Nonetheless, people in Dhaka helped these distant bihars. Within months, the families whose homes had been burned down had new ones. Within the year, new temples were complete. The government and private donors even preserved a temple unaffected by the arson, a rare remaining example of the old architectural style. It was the kind of helpfulness that Ramadan is supposed to cultivate – applied open-heartedly to people of another faith. As a Buddhist, I am grateful.

And I know that Ramadan is the source of that kind of helpful attitude, too. I've seen it with my own eyes. One evening last Ramadan I walked through Gulshan-2 Circle just at dusk, as iftar started. The street was nearly empty – the quiet of Ramadan like a balm on the soul of the city – but across the way I spotted two gentlemen. One was a disabled beggar, one of many who were trying to survive among the traffic. The man was in particularly bad shape: he had been lying on the sidewalk for days on end, too sick or disabled to stand upright or walk. Like so many other disabled people, he had been largely ignored. But that wasn't true on this evening. The other man was a security guard with a blue uniform and a beard. He was kneeling at the beggar's side, feeding him rice by hand – breaking the beggar's fast before he broke his own.

In this city of hyperbole, I think that was the best iftar ever.

Despite all the problems, I really like this "least livable city." Have a happy Eid, Dhaka.

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M. Sophia Newman, MPH, is a public health researcher specialising in mental health.