Syed Ohidur Rahman
“I am Syed and I am 16 years old. I come from Bangladesh and I have been living in Portugal for about 3 years. My father moved here earlier than us and I came later with my mum and my younger brother.”
Syed studies at the Professional School of Odemira, in the Technology course. When we first met he was in the 9th grade, in a class with both foreign and Portuguese students.
“I like to imagine my future. I like to worry about what comes next. I like to plan and organize things.”
It was his first class in Portugal. Syed didn't speak the language and didn't know what to expect.
“In Bangladesh, at school I used to have a lot of friends, now I have about two or three good friends. It’s not because it’s harder to make friends but it’s because initially you are not able to interact.”
He was a shy, calm, and very attentive boy. It took several months for us to get to know him a little bit better. He responded with few words and didn't interact with his classmates.
“You were speaking in English and that was good, for me it was like I was in another dimension. When I first arrived in Portugal it was very difficult. At the time I didn’t speak Portuguese so I didn’t know what to do. It was too much information, too many subjects at school, too many activities. You just know you can’t make it. I use to shut my mouth and just observe everything.”
Now Syed is a very different boy. Communicative and cheerful, he likes to express what he thinks, the fast-paced movement within his mind.
“Now I am dealing much better with it all, I am doing good. I speak a little bit of Portuguese so it’s easier to get into conversation. If you don’t know the language people can speak badly about you and you can’t even defend yourself. “
In the first session of the BOWING project with the 9th grade that Syed was in, we talked about the lines on the palms of the hands and how those lines could form letters.
“You were doing some deep things, asking us to go inside of our minds.”
Syed participated in both shows: BOWING (2021) and BOWING BACK (2022), where he danced for the first time and had a solo moment in the ‘Forest of Incomprehension’, on a table, where he taught a phrase in Bengali to the audience: "I walked all the way from Bangladesh."
“You know that I was so… so... shy! I didn’t take my mask for a long time, everyone did it besides me. It was funny because I was the only one and it wasn’t because I was scared of Covid but I was too used to covering my face. Then, in the show, Matilde took my mask away and I had no option, I had to keep going. Teaching bangla was very good. It was a challenge. I had all that people just looking at me, concentrated in what I was saying, in what I was teaching them, eyes on me the whole time.”
Syed practiced this moment many times with Matilde; they met in Portas de Transval and rehearsed in the ‘Lidl’ parking lot. Syed focused on practicing not only the words but above all on how to teach them to the audience.
“I was in Bowing rehearsals every week, when you are on a serious schedule for two months and that period is finished, you feel sad. I was thinking ‘I hope this happens again soon…’ I felt quite miserable, it was a feeling of emptiness that I experienced.”
In the second performance, BOWING BACK, Syed was the guide for the audience inside the ‘New SEF’. It was a role of great responsibility where he communicated continuously with the people.
“It was hard for me to keep shouting my name and call people to join me. I had to learn how to keep that energy in my voice. At some point, because I was not dancing on this show or participating in any other scene I wondered “What I am doing? Why do they keep me here?”. But I wanted to be there, I just knew I had a good experience during the first year, so this year I knew it would be good too. Being a guide was a really good idea that Madalena had. In the end of the show I was crying, like everyone was, but I didn’t want to show it. I cried of happiness and also from the feeling of emptiness because I knew it was the end again.”
For Syed, a memorable moment of the project was during a session with the 9th grade where we presented various portraits – in photography, video, word, and dance. One of these portraits was the Botis Seva portrait video from the ‘52 Portraits’ series, a project by the choreographer Jonathan Burrows, composed by Matteo Fargion and video artist Hugo Glendinning, where various choreographers interpret their danced portrait.
There was a man dancing on a table, like he was trying to be something else, he was writing maybe… He was sitting down in a dark room. For me that was very important and very meaningful. It changed my mind. At that moment I understood that art makes you think deeper, it has many layers. There are always a lot of layers. There is never just one way to think, there are a lot of ways. Things can be a lot more than what they seem at first.”