When I was a foreign student in Malaysia in the early 2010s, I bonded over fried stingray with a Bengali cook whom I will call Mohammad. He had a cheerful smile and came from a small village near Cumilla, Bangladesh.
Mohammad had paid an agent to help him travel to Malaysia and secure a work visa. Small in stature, he had been very lucky to get a job as a cook rather than a construction worker. He flipped fish on a grill six days a week and waited tables at a Chinese-owned seafood stall in one of George Town's popular food courts.
