On our first afternoon in Sylhet, we scouted a holy place known as Chashnipeer Majar. It’s a small domed structure atop a hillock that looms above a crowded neighborhood, surrounded below by concrete walls, small shops, blank-faced houses fronting the street, and sinuous alleys. A long staircase led us to the shrine, which was overarched by five or six scraggly trees, one with dead limbs where monkeys perched, shaking the branches like mad sailors in a ship’s rigging. The hillsides around the shrine were covered with ragged brush, trash, and the graves of Sylhetian ancestors. It wasn’t a
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