Pakistani in Dhaka: The Reception I Actually Got

Before I went to Dhaka, people warned me. Friends in Pakistan told me to be careful, that Bangladeshis would not welcome a Pakistani, that the history between the two countries would follow me everywhere I went. I had read the same warnings online. So I arrived in Dhaka with a knot in my stomach, half expecting cold shoulders and closed doors. What I actually got was something completely different, and it is one of the reasons I love travelling: the truth on the ground is almost never the story you were told before you arrived.

What I got in Dhaka was warmth. Not politeness, not tolerance, but real, generous, open-armed warmth, from strangers, from shopkeepers, from families who invited me into their homes. I was treated not as a representative of a country with a difficult history, but as a guest, a traveller, and a fellow Muslim from a neighbouring land. This is the story of the reception I actually got, and it is a story I think Pakistanis need to hear.

The First Hours: Strangers Who Became Friends

My first morning in Dhaka, I stopped at a tea stall near my hotel and ordered a cup of cha. The man behind the counter asked where I was from, and when I said Pakistan, his face lit up. He called over two of his friends, and within minutes I was sitting on a plastic stool with three strangers, drinking tea, talking about cricket, and answering questions about Lahore, about Pakistani food, and about whether it is true that we eat mangoes every day in summer. The tea was on the house. I tried to pay, and the owner waved my money away like I had insulted him.

That pattern repeated itself all day. A rickshaw driver refused extra fare when he found out I was Pakistani. A shopkeeper gave me a discount and told me to come back for dinner. A young man on the street asked for a selfie and then walked me to the market I was looking for, refusing to leave until he was sure I had found it. I kept waiting for the cold reception I had been warned about, and it never came.

I am not saying every single person in Dhaka feels this way, because no city of twenty million people speaks with one voice. But the ordinary people I met, the ones who had no reason to be kind to a stranger except kindness itself, were kind. And that kindness was not shallow. It was the deep hospitality that South Asia is famous for, offered to a guest who had crossed a border to come and see their country.

Cricket: The Language We Both Speak

If you want to understand the relationship between Pakistanis and Bangladeshis, watch them talk about cricket. It is the one language both countries speak fluently, and in Dhaka it opened every door for me. People asked me about Babar Azam, about Shaheen Afridi, about the old matches they remembered, and about the matches they hoped would come. Old men remembered the days when Pakistani and Bangladeshi players shared a team, and young people debated the current squads with the same passion I hear in Lahore.

Cricket is not just a sport in South Asia. It is a shared memory, a shared culture, and a shared vocabulary. When I sat with Bangladeshi cricket fans, we were not two nationalities talking across a divide. We were two groups of fans talking about the same game, the same players, and the same heartbreaks. I watched a match with a group of young men in a tea stall, and by the end of it, they were calling me bhai, brother, and meaning it.

Curiosity, Not Hostility

What I noticed most in Dhaka was curiosity. People wanted to know about Pakistan, not to argue about it, but to understand it. They asked me what Lahore looks like, what the food is like, whether the mountains in the north are as beautiful as they have heard, and whether Pakistanis really do love biryani as much as Bangladeshis love their own version. They asked about my travels, about my village, and about why I had come to Bangladesh.

And I was curious too. I asked them about Dhaka, about their lives, about their food, and about the things they love about their country. Those conversations, two-way and honest, are the real point of travel. I did not go to Dhaka to teach anyone anything. I went to learn, and the people of Dhaka were generous teachers.

There were moments when the history came up, of course. An older man asked me, gently, what I knew about 1971, and we talked about it honestly and without anger. He told me his family had suffered, and I listened, because listening is the least a guest can do. We did not agree on everything, and we did not need to. We parted as friends, and he invited me to come back and stay with his family next time. That is what people-to-people contact looks like, and it is more powerful than any speech or any headline.

What I Tell Pakistanis Now

When Pakistanis ask me about Dhaka now, I tell them the truth: go. Go with an open mind, go with respect, and go ready to listen. You will be welcomed. You will be fed. You will be asked a hundred questions about cricket and mangoes and Lahore, and you will be invited into homes by people you met an hour ago. That is the Bangladesh I found, and it is the Bangladesh I want other Pakistanis to find too.

I also tell them this: leave your politics at home. Do not go to Dhaka to argue about history. Go to meet people, to eat their food, to see their country, and to learn. The history matters, and we should all know it, but it is not a reason to stay away. If anything, it is a reason to go, because the only way to move past a difficult history is to meet the people on the other side of it and discover that they are, like you, just people trying to live a good life.

Dhaka surprised me, and it humbled me. I arrived expecting a cold reception and I left with friends, with invitations to return, and with a new understanding of what connects Pakistan and Bangladesh. The border between us is real, but the warmth I found in Dhaka is real too, and it is stronger than any border. I will go back, and I hope you will go too.