Ramadan Ramsey

by Louis Edwards

  Draining as much worry from her voice as she could, she said, “Are you coming back?”

  Ramadan didn’t know, either. Even though he could see she wanted him to say yes, all he could do was shrug. She sighed with understanding, and he turned and gave the agent his boarding pass.

  As he walked through the portal toward the plane, he heard Miss Bea’s mantra humming in his head, and he wondered if she had kept saying it to reassure him as he continued moving forward, alone. It’s so easy . . . It’s so easy . . . It’s so easy . . .

  Cozying into his seat on the plane, he smiled about how easy it was indeed, and how important it was not to look back. That’s what had made his escape possible: sneaking out of the house, jumping off the porch over the steps, jogging to the corner to meet Miss Bea. He hadn’t looked back then, only a couple of hours ago, and he wouldn’t look back now. Don’t think about them. Think about you. Don’t think about then. Think about now. No—think next.

  In this moment, he found his own command easy to follow. He had a window seat, and the morning sunlight was kissing his face “Good morning!” with the sort of old-soul affection that had always brought him the greatest comfort. His instinct was to press into its warmth as if it were the soft, cushy body of a caring old woman. His eyes closed, he leaned his head sideways, and his forehead banged against the windowpane. He relaxed there, his body slumping against the frame of the plane.

  The head bump wasn’t that hard, but it knocked something out of him, the last bit of get-up-and-go. He could no longer maintain the suspension of his fatigue, which seemed equal to the sum of a whole life’s worth of depletions, and he collapsed into a peaceful sleep. It was as if he had been punched unconscious, delivered a necessary blow, a concussion of convalescence.

  An Abeyance

  Taking Flight

  Have you ever been to Rome? Have you ever set out for Paris? Ever jetted off to any foreign land, to fulfill a dream or escape a nightmare—or like Ramadan, thrillingly, to do both at once?

  If so, then you have an idea what taking flight incites in him. How a continental shift can promote a constitutional one. You know the change that being set in motion can, well, set in motion. You know how motion can precipitate emotion. Moving is moving. You may not have devised—who has?—a method for calculating the degree to which kinetics stimulates the intellect, physics modifies psychology, but you know all too well that the distance between where you disembark and where you land is only crudely measurable in miles or kilometers, and more accurately mapped in feelings and revelations.

  And if you haven’t been anywhere, well—what the hell are you waiting for? A hurricane? A war? A literal shot in the arm? A cure for the plague that is fear? An invitation?

  Birth is your invite! Breath, your passport! Bravery, your visa!

  In a way, the notion of birth, earthly or otherwise, is precisely the point. Home is a womb. It nurtures. But imagine never pushing forth into the world, your growth inhibited by habitat, the comfy confines of your mother’s accommodating girth. Wouldn’t persistent satiation feed a need? Wouldn’t nourishment, without growth, nurture a longing? Create, in effect, an appetite for hunger? Thus, your stasis, replete with life’s essential nutrients, would equal starvation. Feast would become famine. With the usual dire consequences. To remain fetal would be fatal.

  Oh, to be Ramadan, who, parallel to this pause, is plunging headfirst (with a tender spot on his forehead from that bump against the airplane window to prove it) into another world. Him today, you tomorrow—why not? What’s a bruise on the noggin, or any other part of the body, when the trade-off is a balm for the soul? You pack for the trip, of course—clothes, toiletries, a snack or two—but really, your only carry-on is you. Though you may be toting a suitcase or haversack, you leave behind your real baggage—your life—like old, dead skin. Travel is an exfoliation. What emerges, as you move forward, buffed to the surface—by merely going there—is a shiny new you!

  You become the you you are in Barcelona. Your Amsterdam you. The you you’re meant to be . . . in Berlin. The you of São Paulo. Who are you in Tokyo? What’s your heart rate in Brussels? Will anyone recognize you in Dakar? Will you even recognize yourself? There’s only one way to find out . . .

  In short, you are reborn. There—it’s been said. This is about rebirth. What is “rebirth” anyway but seeing visions, hearing strange voices, breathing different air, walking a new path—arriving at a new place in life?

  Well, to arrive . . . one must first depart!

  Once there—wherever you’ve had the daring to roam—your senses will awaken to the wonders of your new world. You will see something new. Hear something new. Taste and smell something new. Oh, you are really feeling yourself right now. You realize that you believe in this new you. (Yes, this little suspension of the suspension of disbelief, this abeyance, is also about belief.) This new you, you discover, is real. How can this not be? For here you are saying “Spasibo” in St. Petersburg. That wasn’t Marcello Mastroianni who just said “Buongiorno” in Venice, it was you! For it not to be you but to be, say, Salma Hayek, she would have to have acquired the familiar silhouette, the profile and posture, inherited from your mother, the one you see reflected, out of the corner of your eye, in a hotel lobby mirror in Mexico City, mouthing, in an admittedly ear-splitting accent, “Donde esta el desanuyo?”

  Yes, you will find yourself speaking in tongues!

  The far-off place to which you’ve submitted—the ground zero of your rebirth—becomes your redeemer, the deliverer of the new you. As a new you, as this new you, this new believer, you may find yourself a disciple of your destination. And, as happens with many a convert, you will become quite evangelistic. Oh yes, you will become a proselytizer for Prague, a missionary for Mumbai. Your passion for the land to which you’ve traveled, which has made you you, made you anew, may consume you entirely. If it does—and the machinations of faith predict it will—you will make a movement out of movement.

  You will find yourself wondering, “Might my zealotry for the world save the world?” Well, yes, quite frankly, it might.

  But, oh, you say, I can’t afford to go to Sydney! I have no way of getting to Timbuktu!

  Ramadan—you protest—is blessed! He can go wherever he likes. Istanbul? No problem . . . He had a Mama Joon!

  Well—what if the truth is that Mama Joon is but a figment of the imagination? Okay, it’s a big what-if, but what if? What if someone told you she was just dreamed up for the purposes of Ramadan’s daring escape? What if she isn’t real at all! Of course, you wouldn’t believe that (and why should you—she’s so real that even though she’s gone we think she’s still here). But it could be true. She might be just a fantasy, a falsity, so necessary to the existence and survival of Ramadan that she simply appeared in a flash, as spontaneously as a captured culprit’s lie. But okay, settle down, there’ll be none of that pouting—all right, all right, she’s real. But still . . . if you’re really honest with yourself, you’ll admit that you can imagine a scenario in which she is not. Ah!—as Ramadan would say.

  Imagine. Imagination. Imagine/Imagination. Which came first, the verb or the noun? It’s a chicken-egg kind of thing. Does time fuse the action and the act? Does travel blur the doing and what’s done? Who cares! The point is: Should you need a Mama Joon, there she is. At least you can imagine that she is. Or—and here’s the zinger—maybe your imagination is your Mama Joon. The ticket to your ticket. The imagination. That’s where all fantastic beings come from anyway. Beings. Not just persons or creatures, but existences. All great ways of being owe to imaginative flourishes. Yes, let’s speak the cliché and in this context, in this Ramadanian moment, make it anew. All great modes of living spring from this: flights of fancy!

  And if your imagination fails you, then you can always just let a chosen child—the blessed boy—show you how it’s done! Now boarding . . . Air Ramadan!

  Miss Bea was right: It’s so easy.

  As easy as tappi
ng a few hotlinks on a smartphone. It’s so easy.

  As easy as rising from your chair and heading out the door. It’s so easy.

  As easy as turning a page . . .

  Part III

  Istanbul

  11

  Eating Chicken in Turkey

  Ramadan was the first passenger off the plane. Back in Atlanta, on his connecting flight, a sympathetic attendant had relocated him to a vacant front-row seat.

  “Plenty of room up here,” Debbie had said. His ears were so ready to try to decipher a foreign language that he heard the nuances of her drawl. Plenny-a-room appear. Buckling him in, she winked and said, “Plus this way oggin keep an eye on ya.”

  As he exited the plane now with his suitcase and backpack, he waved goodbye. Debbie’s outstretched arm and wiggling fingers stiffened into an arrow, and she looked like a directional signpost. But then her unsuspecting Georgia charm humanized her in a way no customer-service seminar could have. “I’m sure your daddy’s right out there waitin’ on ya, sweetheart.” You can’t train “sweetheart.”

  He wanted to believe the lie he and Miss Bea invented: his father, a Mr. John Ramsey, would be meeting him at the gate. Yesterday’s version of the same lie he’d been telling himself for years. Or was that the day before yesterday? He had no idea what day or time it was. When he pulled out his cell phone, its blank face reminded him it had been off since Atlanta. Pausing to power it on, he stepped aside and leaned against the wall, as other passengers rushed by.

  The phone hummed to life, displaying 3:58, Tuesday, August 14 above the photo of him and Mama Joon. And when you get to Istanbul, I’ll be there with you. He liked knowing that with one tap he could hold her in his hand. Pressing ahead, he merged into the stream of people hurrying off the plane. He almost tripped over the rolling luggage of the man in front of him, and a woman bumped into his back. “Okay?” she asked, playfully hitting his backpack.

  “Okay,” he said, congratulating himself on speaking his first, and mercifully universal, word in Turkish.

  Entering the airport terminal, he wondered what it would be like if his father really was out there about to welcome him with the passion of a man who had been waiting for this moment his whole life. Indeed, his vigilance for the one who was not there alerted him to someone who was, an officious-looking steward, scrutinizing the exiting passengers. The man’s eyes angled down, searching, it seemed, for someone with the generic height of a child. A certain “Unaccompanied Minor,” perhaps? Yes—specifically, him. When a passenger pointing to the Departures/Arrivals monitors asked the man for assistance, Ramadan ducked behind a couple of French-speaking travelers and slipped by undetected.

  “C’est bon, n’est-ce pas?”

  Recognizing the phrase, he almost blurted out, in celebration of his maneuver, “Oui, c’est si bon!”

  A safe distance from the gate, he darted behind a floor-to-ceiling stainless-steel pillar marked with a “Welcome to Istanbul” sign. Poking his head around the edge of the post, he saw the steward, back at his station now, pick up a microphone; his lips moved in sync with the words booming throughout the terminal: Passenger Ramadan Ramsey . . . please report to Gate Number Two Zero. Passenger Ramadan Ramsey . . . Gate Number Two Zero . . .

  Ramadan gasped when he heard his name broadcast, echoing for everyone to hear. He hid behind the column again, clinging to it for cover and fortification. Was he on the verge of being discovered already, deported before even being admitted?

  After a moment’s grace of PA silence, he decided to hazard another glance, and he saw the steward busy at his work, studying the computer screen and fingering his keyboard, determined to find this missing Ramadan Ramsey—him.

  But then the man looked up from his monitor, and Ramadan watched relief register on his face. Following the man’s line of vision, he saw a father and son at the far end of the gate’s seating area. The father was kneeling to tie the youngster’s shoelaces, and he and the steward exchanged tentative greetings. There was enough distance between them to blur ambiguity into confirmation, and the steward gave the man a thumbs-up.

  Initially comforted, Ramadan sighed. Then the father, having jerked the boy’s shoelaces into two smart bows, reached up and tousled his son’s hair, and Ramadan felt a pang of regret at benefiting from their intimacy. As they walked away holding hands, his remorse darkened into self-pity. In the last vestige of his tantrums, he brushed his suitcase against the post hiding him from the steward but not from himself. His left shoulder, pressed to the column, bore most of his weight, and he noticed, much to his surprise, it no longer hurt. Still, he reached up and rubbed it, massaging the phantom ache, as if to soothe a deeper wound, one that might never really heal.

  He closed his eyes for a few seconds and, relieved of the burden of sight, his head tilted up. When he opened his eyes, he was looking at a sign: PASAPORT KONTROL. No English translation necessary, though one appeared below. And hadn’t he heard something on the plane about needing a twenty-dollar visa as well? He pulled out his passport and stared at the back cover, which, blank and navy-blue dull, hardly projected the power to grant him passage out his front door, much less through the gates of a foreign metropolis. But then he flipped it over and his confidence swelled when he saw the golden PASSPORT at the top, UNITED STATES OF AMERICA at the bottom, and the intimidating seal of an elaborately winged bald eagle in the middle. The Magician card jutted out, and he opened the booklet to its lemon-colored flash. Opposite that, his own little portrait smiled at him, and he felt dually validated: his passport documented his existence, his realness; the Magician, his dreams. Without either, he could not have made it here. But he was here. He was!

  He gathered his backpack and suitcase and set off, and moving through the airport, he began to feel more comfortable. Many of the people were dressed like him, in jeans and a T-shirt. But even those who weren’t—men here and there in long cream-colored robes, women with scarves draped over their heads—exuded a casual vacation idleness or a business-trip swagger. And for Ramadan, a boy who was anxious about his status as a low-level fugitive, the best thing about these strangers was the way they seemed to find him as unremarkable as he found them. Far from being conspicuous, he fit right in.

  Wanting to hold on to the feeling of being just another anonymous member of the crowd, he decided not to rush to the passport and visa lines. Instead, he spent a few minutes drifting, strolling by gates that looked familiar, shops that did not. This quick detour left him feeling both connected and disconnected, so he was about to turn around to go check in when he saw three teenage boys jostling one another as they went up an escalator. Swayed by their wily spirits, their youth and his, he decided to flow along a little longer. He hopped onto the escalator, which ascended to a colorfully lit mezzanine.

  Did he smell it first? Or was it the familiar orange-and-white logo of the fried-chicken chain restaurant at the upper landing that roused the full-on assault of his senses? POPEYES. Ramadan had known the sign’s meaning and its call since before he could actually read it. In New Orleans, where this famous fast food had originated, its signposts were as iconic as live oaks. Whenever he and Mama Joon had eaten at the Popeyes in Houston after the storm, they had almost felt like they were at home. “Ah!” he said, because seeing the sign felt like a sign.

  Hunger, not even a suggestion before, was now a command. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw the other boys dash off to a Sbarro for pizza, and he released the notion of companionship he had quietly harbored. In just this way, taste—say, the penchant for deep-fried poultry over cheesy bread—may have doomed countless would-be alliances. But a consensus of the fundamental urge had forged consequential unions as well. Alicia Ramsey and Mustafa Totah. That one potato chip, impetuously shared years ago in New Orleans, should lead to this! A boy in Istanbul, breathlessly overordering. Buying four pieces of chicken, instead of two. Spicy. Yes, please, a Coke, a large. Rushing off to a table in a quiet corner. Content to be alone with his thoughts
and feelings, mostly gratitude and quivers of pleasure. As he was nibbling the crusty edge of a wing, the pointy, gristly end nobody knew what to do with other than to pierce it with the cuspids, to savor and suck and marvel that it was there for you, he paused. The wing tip pinched between his tongue and upper front teeth, some tiny drop of ambrosia leaking from inside the bird’s defining feature and dissolving onto one of his more sensitive buds, he was overcome with carnivorous delight—and with something more. Who knew salt could taste so sweet! It was as if his humble, greasy origins—the potato chip transferring from his mother’s hand to his father’s mouth—had finally caught up with him. But he wasn’t feverous with understanding. What was this wetness he was wiping from the corners of his eyes? What were these sniffles? Too much spice? Had he inhaled some stray flecks of pepper while devouring the food? The real surprise seemed to be that though he had eaten only a drumstick and half of this wing—he would wrap up the breast and thigh and put them in his backpack for later—he was already satisfied. Mama Joon had taught him to appreciate a good meal. Everything depends on how hungry you are, Ramadan. Remember that. So he simply attributed the power of the moment to the supremacy of sustenance. As he dropped the remains of the wing into the paper serving tray and sighed, with what felt a little like fatigue, he was aware for the first time how realizing that you are no longer hungry, that you indeed are full, can be an emotional experience.

  * * *

  PURCHASING THE TWENTY-DOLLAR visa, which looked like an expensive postage stamp the security officer glued inside his passport, went smoothly, as did checking in at passport control. But as he was walking near the baggage claim carousels, he realized he had only his backpack. No suitcase! And he knew immediately where he’d left it. Popeyes. . . Feeling so at home, he’d forgotten he wasn’t. But his disappointment passed quickly—he hadn’t lost anything he couldn’t replace. He still had his identification, his credit card, some cash, and he could get more at an ATM if necessary. Besides, he wasn’t sure how long he’d be here anyway. Maybe losing his suitcase meant that he wasn’t supposed to stay more than a day. Just go outside. Find transportation into the city. See Istanbul. Look across the Bosphorus, to the east. Feel his father’s homeland up close, smell the winds of Syria, and let it all go. Then—maybe he would just turn around and go back.