Return to the Little Coffee Shop of Kabul

by Deborah Rodriguez

  “Your words come from the mouth of a strong man, my son,” Rashif said quietly, one arm firmly sheltering the sleeping Najama.

  Ahmet raised his head at the sound of Rashif’s voice, as if surprised to find all eyes in the room upon him. “And no more talk,” he added, looking at his mother. “Just doing. My wife has said to me that helping one girl is like helping a hundred. So maybe together we can help a hundred, which will be like helping a thousand. And if we can help a thousand? Well, as my mother’s friend Rumi would say, the garden of the world has no limits, except in your mind.”

  Ahmet relaxed back on the pillow, his face a mixture of pride and determination. Halajan could barely control herself from jumping up and grabbing his cheeks, just as she had done when he was a little boy. Instead she remained seated, basking in the echoes of her son’s words, which had suddenly filled the room with a distinct warmth, and with the melodious tune from a drum and organ only she could hear.

  37

  “Scones!” Sky nearly trampled over a family pushing a double stroller in his haste to reach the vendor sitting right inside the fair’s entrance gate. It had been all the young man talked about during the entire trek over on the ferry. “You guys will love them, I swear. Am I right, Joe?” Joe just nodded. The truth was, he hadn’t set foot on the fairgrounds in a little over seventy years, and last time he had been there, the sight of a scone would have been rare indeed.

  “Have a bite,” Sky urged Sunny, butter and jam dripping down his chin.

  Sunny put up her hand. “I’m good. Looks way too much like the biscuits and gravy I grew up—and out—on,” she said, patting her thighs.

  “Well, you don’t know what you’re missing. Hey, look! Krusty Pups. C’mon!” Sky grabbed Kat’s hand and loped toward the crowded red and white clapboard stand. Layla turned to Sunny, eyebrows raised.

  “Corn dogs,” Sunny explained, spying the giant cutout on the roof. “It’s like a hot dog, but dipped in batter.” Layla still looked confused. “Just go try it.” She waved the girl off toward the others. “Make sure it’s beef!” Sunny turned to Joe, taking his arm in hers. “She’ll probably hate it.” Together they made their way to a bench, where they sat to wait.

  On the edge of the midway, a train of metal cars rattled and chugged up to the first peak of the old wooden roller coaster, then came whipping down and around its twisty curves with a symphony of screaming kids giddy with fear. Joe could remember the first time he rode that roller coaster, promising himself that no matter what he would not cry in front of his older brother. He had kept his eyes clamped shut as they flew high above the fairgrounds at breakneck speed, but once they had stopped, all he wanted to do was ride it again. And again. Which they did, until George dragged him off to try out the giant Ferris wheel, the Octopus, and the Fly-O-Plane, all equally thrilling to a ten-year-old boy. Why was it that kids these days seemed to need to feel so much more of a sense of danger in order to have fun? he thought, watching from a distance as the cars of the new coaster zoomed upside down and sideways and back again as if desperately trying to shake their cargo out from inside.

  “You okay, Joe?” Sunny asked, making him realize that the sigh he thought was only in his head had escaped out loud.

  “I’m fine. Just thinking.”

  “Nice idea, bringing us here today. We could all use a break.”

  “I know.”

  “Though me, I’m not one much for the cows and pigs, or the quilts and jams and pickles you find at these things. But it’s nice for Layla and those guys.”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “We had a fair back home, in Arkansas. There were beauty pageants, for girls and women, even women older than me, if you can imagine that. They had the same guys who judged the livestock judging the pageants. Seriously.”

  “Hmmm.”

  “I won once, you know. Tubbiest Toddler.”

  “That’s nice.”

  “That was a joke, Joe. You aren’t even listening to me. Are you sure you’re all right?”

  Just then Sky, Kat, and Layla joined up with them, their hands full of food—elephant ears, turkey legs, caramel apples—it seemed as though the only thing they weren’t sampling was the deep-fried butter that filled the air with a sickening aroma. Whoever invented that cockamamie concoction should be tied to the last car of the roller coaster and forced to eat the stuff until they begged for mercy, in Joe’s opinion. “Shall we go look around?” he asked, struggling to rise from the bench. The younger ones ran ahead, while Sunny stuck by his side as they wound their way through the growing crowd, making a left around the attraction where people were actually paying money to be dropped from a twenty-story tower like the stuffed mouse on the end of a rubber band that was Sangiovese’s favorite cat toy.

  “Oooh, can we go in there?” Sunny pointed to a series of low buildings where old-fashioned carnival barkers with microphone headsets were wooing the crowd with miracle cures for modern woes. She pulled Joe through the double glass doors.

  Inside it was brighter than the daylight they’d come from, and jammed with people with money to burn. They might as well burn it, Joe thought, as he eyed the pans that promised perfect pancakes, the glue guaranteed to hold up a car, the lipstick that would turn the perfect shade once it touched your lips. What a bunch of hooey.

  Up and down the carpeted aisles they went, Sunny’s eyes as round as pennies at each new useless device that came into view. “Hold out your arms,” a guy in a black cowboy hat commanded as they passed a booth lined with boxes of vacuum cleaners. “No, really. You’ll be amazed,” he persisted. Joe tried to keep walking, eyes straight ahead. But with Sunny’s arm hooked around his own, he had no choice than to stop. “Two hands, lady. You won’t be sorry.” Sunny groaned a little as he placed a blue bowling ball on top of her open palms. He continued with his spiel as a crowd began to form. “That’s right, folks. The one and only piece of cleaning equipment you’ll ever need. Guaranteed for a lifetime. No strings attached. Step right up and take a look.” Sunny’s arms began to throb. She was about to suggest to Joe that he step back out of the way when the ball flew upward out of her hands and onto the nozzle of a purring machine.

  “Did you see that, Joe? He sucked it right out of my hands!” Sunny said with awe.

  “Must not have been that heavy,” Joe snorted, dragging her away by the arm.

  “Come on, Joe. Don’t you just love this stuff?” They passed a guy selling knives that could cut through a penny, whose fingers, Joe noticed, were covered in Band-Aids.

  “Hello, pretty bird!” Sunny yelled at a mechanical parrot on a perch across the aisle.

  “Hello, pretty bird!” it yelled back.

  “Just what we need,” she whispered loudly in Joe’s ear. “God forbid I’d have to listen to everything you say twice.”

  Joe forced a little laugh, his wandering mind keeping his thoughts elsewhere.

  Sunny stopped in the middle of the aisle as the crowd continued to flow around them. “Are you sure you’re all right, Joe? I’ve never seen you so quiet.”

  “Of course I’m all right.” He patted her arm. “Why wouldn’t I be? Look over there!” He nodded toward a booth where a thick-waisted man had just poured a whole can of soda onto the tiled floor. As if he were a magician on a stage, he whipped out a mop from behind his back and sopped the entire puddle up in one pass, then held the mop head over his own head to demonstrate its dripless powers. His final trick was to wring it out over a glass. “Ready to drink all over again!” he bellowed as he licked his lips.

  “Gross,” Sunny said, turning her attention to a ropeless jump–rope—simply two weighted handles you held as you jumped—that would supposedly melt off unwanted pounds. “Now there’s something for you, Joe.” She pointed at a small desk chair. Take The Work Out Of Your Workout, the sign read. She urged Joe to sit, which he gladly did. But suddenly the little round seat beneath him began to swivel, pivoting around like a gyrating top, faster and faster, forcing his hips
into a frenzied belly dance.

  “Get me outta this thing!” he yelled.

  She turned the switch to off and helped him up. “What, you don’t want six-pack abs, Joe?” she laughed.

  “Six-pack my ass. The only thing that piece of crap did was make my behind hot.”

  Next Sunny was drawn to a small crowd that was building around a buxom woman in a black negligee, who was curling up on a full-sized bed. They watched as the woman snuggled in next to a pillow shaped like half a torso connected to a single arm, which she gently cradled around the back of her shoulders, leaving its stuffed and stitched hand resting on her hip. “The Boyfriend Pillow!” barked a man with a mic. “Feel safe and warm in his embrace!”

  “I think I might need one of those, Joe,” Sunny sighed.

  “Like they say,” Joe said as he lured her away with the tug of an arm, “there is a sucker born every minute.”

  “What, you’re not going to tell me that in Italian?”

  Once he finally pried her out of there, Sunny was ready to explore the old Hobby Hall, where Joe remembered seeing woodcarvers and quilters competing for the prized blue ribbon many years ago. He told her to go on ahead, and take her time. They’d meet back out here.

  Left alone, he remained in front of the building, leaning against its aluminum siding. With his eyes closed against the afternoon sun, he could almost hear the sounds of another time: the rain falling on a tarpaper roof, the coughing, snoring, whispering, arguing, and lovemaking ricocheting in the dark through open spaces between walls and ceilings. Other memories—the taste of canned meat and the stench of overcrowded latrines—were as sharp on his tongue and the inside of his nose as if it were yesterday. And that feeling of being trapped like a bird in a cage, or a rat in a hole—that was something that had never quite left him. Suddenly he felt as though he couldn’t breathe.

  “Seriously, Joe, we can go home if you want.” He opened his eyes to find Sunny at his side.

  “No, no. I’m really fine,” he assured her, standing up tall. “Stop worrying so much.”

  “There you are!” Sky was trotting toward them with a burger in one hand and a Coke in the other, followed by Kat sipping a snow cone and Layla holding a sticky pink cloud of cotton candy as far away from herself as her arm could reach, as if it were a muddy shoe or a wriggling snake. “This place is awesome, right?” Sky offered his Coke to Joe.

  “Well it certainly looks like you three are enjoying yourselves.” Sunny pinched a swab from Layla’s sugary blob and popped it into her mouth. “Delish.”

  “How about we check out the Pig Palace?” Sky suggested.

  “I wanted to see the hypnotist.” Kat pouted, pointing to the sign on the building next to where they were standing.

  “Show’s not till three,” Sky said. “Let’s get in line for the Rainier Rush, okay? It’s only going to get longer later.” He cocked his head toward the towering tracks up on their right.

  Kat shook her head. “Not me. I don’t do roller coasters.”

  Sky turned to Layla, who shrugged her shoulders.

  “Why don’t you two go ahead?” Joe suggested, looping one arm through Sunny’s and the other through Kat’s. “I’m sure these two lovely ladies wouldn’t mind keeping me company while I rest for a bit.”

  Layla frowned. “I don’t know—”

  “C’mon,” Sky urged. “When are you ever going to get a chance to do something like this again, right? Man up, girl!”

  Layla giggled and handed her cotton candy to Sunny, and followed Sky through the crowd.

  “Sit.” Joe led the way to an empty bench. Sunny picked at the sweet pink nest and Kat sipped loudly through her straw as he allowed his eyes to take in the scene around them. “You know,” he paused to clear his throat, “I lived here once.”

  Sunny turned to him with a furrowed brow. “We all know you were born in Seattle, Joe. Are you sure you’re okay?”

  “No, I mean I lived here. Right here.” He swung his arm around the fairground.

  “What, did you hide out one night until the gates were closed or something?” Sunny laughed.

  “I’m being serious, kiddo. Our room was over there, under the grandstands. That’s where they built the barracks.”

  “What are you talking about? Was this a military base or something?”

  Joe shook his head. “Not a military base. It was more like a prison. A camp. Camp Harmony. Yet it beats me why they would call it that. Harmony my ass.”

  “You mean like a summer camp?” Kat asked.

  “No. An internment camp, during the war. Where they locked up all the Japanese people. Although most of us were about as American as they come.”

  Sunny choked a little on the pink fluff. “Are you kidding me, Joe?” she asked, catching her breath. “You were in an internment camp? Here? How old were you?”

  “I was just out of high school. We had a farm, over in the valley. After Pearl Harbor, it was decided that the Japanese were too much of a threat to the nation’s security, so President Roosevelt issued an order to evict us all from the West Coast. They threw up the entire encampment in less than two weeks, to hold us here until they could figure out what to do with us.”

  Joe could picture the day his parents had been told the family had one week to report to the camps. They had scrambled to get the house in order, storing their entire belongings, along with those of their friends and neighbors, in the old barn for safekeeping until their return. One suitcase per person was all they were allowed to bring.

  “They brought us here on buses, and once inside, we weren’t allowed to leave. We were penned in by barbed wire, separated from the rest of the world like cattle with hoof-and-mouth disease, patrolled by armed guards in watchtowers.” Joe paused and took a deep breath before continuing. “Each family was assigned to one small room, with one tiny window, one electrical socket, a bare bulb hanging from the ceiling, and a wood-burning stove. Some were over in the parking lot or out in the middle of the old racetrack, and others were made to live in the stalls that had been used for the cows and pigs. We had no toilets or running water. You had to go to the communal showers to bathe—out under the Ferris wheel. And the mud! Everywhere there was mud.”

  “How could you stand it?” Kat asked, her eyes wide, her neglected snow cone melting into a puddle of slush. “That just sucks.”

  “Well, I’ll tell you.” Joe settled back into the bench. “It wasn’t easy. But we tried to make the best of it, and being the young man that I was, I took particular advantage of being surrounded by so many teenage girls. I’d never seen so many Japanese girls in one place ever! We had dances sometimes on the weekends, in the recreation hall. Glenn Miller, Jimmy Dorsey, The Andrews Sisters, we would swing to them all.” Joe smiled at the memory of those long-legged girls with their soapy smell, their silky hair, the touch of their soft hands against his own. “But honestly,” he continued, “the whole thing was so hard for us to understand. Being called enemy aliens? Most of us were born here, had never been to Japan, and couldn’t even speak Japanese. Were they locking up German Americans, or Italian Americans? No they were not.”

  “So how did you get out?” Sunny asked.

  “Well, after a couple of months we were transferred to a relocation camp in Idaho. I guess they figured the farther away from Japan they got us, the better. Then, in 1943, my brother and I got the option to either remain in the camp or join the army to go fight in Europe. There was a unit, the 442nd Regimental Combat Team, made up of all Americans with Japanese ancestry, and they were getting a reputation for being tough as nails. My father encouraged us to go, to get out of the camps any way we could. And we wanted to fight, because we knew our record on the battlefield would be proof of our honor and the loyalty Japanese Americans felt to our country. So we left our parents and our uncles and aunts and cousins behind, and joined the army.”

  “Ah. And then came Italy, and Sylvia, right?” Sunny placed a hand on Joe’s knee.

  “Ex
actly.”

  “Well now I understand why you stayed away for so long. How could you have ever wanted to come back, Joe?”

  “Of course Sylvia and I talked about moving back here, to the States, after the war. But we had both heard so many stories of men from my regiment who had returned with European brides, only to be treated at home with scorn and prejudice for being an interracial couple. A white man could return with an Asian war bride, but the other way around? That was asking for a lifetime of trouble. And yes, there was also this.” He nodded at the view before him. “My feelings for my old country, this country, had changed. I was proud of what I did in the war, and I know it was for the right causes. But the way my family was treated was something I felt I could never forget.”

  “So what finally made you change your mind?” Sunny asked.

  “After Sylvia was gone, the last thing I wanted to do was to leave Italy. No way no how, I thought. So many memories, it was as if she were part of the land I walked on day after day, part of the air I breathed. How could I ever leave her?” Joe shook his head. “But then my brother became ill. He needed me. So here I came.”

  “And you stayed.”

  “You know, at first it was very difficult. This wasn’t home for me anymore. There was nothing about it I liked. Nothing. But you know what its biggest problem was? It wasn’t Italy.” Joe paused and shifted his eyes in Sunny’s direction.

  “Oh, so now we’re talking about me?”

  “I’m just saying.” He shrugged. “You know, sometimes a place becomes more than just a place in our minds. We let it become who we are, instead of knowing that who we are stays with us wherever we go. And sometimes we also let a place become about who we love. It’s complicated. You know, my whole life with Sylvia was somewhere else. I had made no memories with her here. I missed her so much that it hurt, and I kept thinking that maybe it wouldn’t hurt so much if I stayed where we had been together, where I could be reminded of those memories every day, and never forget. Perhaps if I had gone back to Italy earlier, I would have had the chance to find out if that was true or not. But I couldn’t leave my brother. And then, without me even knowing, something changed inside of me. When my brother died, I didn’t really want to leave. I realized that I hadn’t forgotten one of those memories I had of my life with Sylvia, because they were all inside me, and would never leave no matter where I lived.