by Sara Alexi
“Nothing.” He rinses her hair soap free, reaches the towel, wipes his eyes in passing and wraps it around her head. Juliet stands and looks at him enquiringly. She can see his eyes are rimmed red. She steps towards him, puts her hand up toward his face. Aaman swallows, anticipates. She strokes some shampoo bubbles from his hair and shows it to him. Aaman decides it is time to tell her.
“I must start to think about returning to Pakistan.”
Juliet gulps some air and tears well in her eyes. She says nothing. Aaman waits. She looks into his eyes. There are gold flecks in the brown. His pupils dilate as she stares. Juliet responds by putting a hand on his arm as if he were leaving immediately. Aaman puts his hand on top of hers. She can see a tear form, rising from his left tear duct, welling, swelling, spilling and rolling down his smooth skin, hanging on the edge of his jaw. She cannot bear to see it fall.
It falls. It is too much. Her gulp turns to a gasp, which turns to a sob. Aaman pulls her to him like she is a child. Juliet reaches for him. They fall together, his arms encompassing her, her head on his shoulder. She cries, silent and deep. He strokes her hair to comfort himself. He resists touching the wet, tangled mass with his lips. His shirt is soaked, sticking to his chest. His heart pounds, Juliet’s sobs fall to its rhythm, unity. They cling to it.
Aaman turns his body, still holding Juliet in the pain-filled harmony. He walks her to the sofa and sits with her. Replacing their loss for words is an agreed silence. Juliet grows still. Aaman begins to breathe more steadily. Slowly, choreographed like a ballet, a flower uncurling, they begin to pull themselves a little straighter; Juliet takes her head from his right shoulder. Aaman lets his left arm drop from around her shoulders, his hand now resting on hers on her lap. Juliet sits up fully and Aaman lets his other arm fall from her shoulders behind her, sliding it through the gap now between them onto her knee. Their hands seek to intertwine.
Juliet sits unsupported, her face wet, eyelashes clustered together. Finally, she steadies her voice. “Of course.”
Aaman’s tears still flow, well upon well, chasing each other down still wet paths. No noise, just tears.
“I am sorry,” Aaman says. “For so many things but do not know where to start." Juliet nods her head.
“I’m not.” Juliet’s voice is small but sure. “To leave, you have to have been here, and I’m not sorry that you have been here.” Aaman’s lip quivers. He sucks in some air. He seems so young, so vulnerable. She puts her arms around him, his head on her shoulder and he weeps. Juliet kisses his hair, brown and soft. Strokes his back, his hair, his head. She makes a sucking, tutting noise to soothe him. She rocks him ever so gently.
Aaman stills. He pulls from her, slowly. They sit side by side.
“When?”
“Soon. I do not know.”
Of all the things Juliet would like to say, what she actually says is the very last.
“I will help.”
In a clean shirt and with his trousers ironed, Juliet accompanies Aaman to the embassy. She had the foresight to take the direct number of the man she had spoken to previously, and they have arranged an appointment. They arrive at the gates. Hundreds of Pakistanis sit and stand in the road, papers held tightly, hopefully.
Juliet phones to announce her arrival and they wait. The Pakistanis around them beg from Juliet and chat to Aaman. Juliet feels the gulf between them widen a fraction. She releases her grip a little and her heart tears a fraction more.
The guard comes out of the building and walks to the gate. All the waiting Pakistanis thrust their arms through the fence and shake their papers at him. They shout their reasons for consideration, why they are different, how long they have waited. Aaman answering in his mother tongue. Shown through the gates, he enters into the building. Some of the waiting men look at him like he is a traitor to his race.
Juliet does the talking. She charms and flirts with the official. He responds fully, and a blue card is arranged on the spot, a permit to work. Legal. Aaman is happy. Juliet reads his body language and knows he is about to stand. She touches the outside of his legs lightly, an unnoticeable gesture by anyone watching. Aaman understands and complies, settling himself back into his seat.
“Now here is the main thing.” The man listens to her intently.
“I want to visit your country, and when I get there I want to stay for a while. Learn a little about your culture, your country, so I need to rent a house, take on servants, that sort of thing.” Juliet wonders if she had overdone it, but the man is still listening. “So I would like Aaman to go over first and arrange this all for me. He knows my tastes, I trust him with my petty cash, and he could have everything ready when I get there.”
“How can I help you, madam, in this endeavour?”
“I would like to go next month. Well, you can see the problem. How can Aaman arrange everything by next month if he cannot leave the country legally? It will take him months and risk much hardship if he goes by the ‘back door’ across land.”
“Ahh, you would like a passport for him to return so he can fly.”
“Exactly.” Juliet hears Aaman’s heart beat beside her. Or is it her own?
“Madam, this would not be a problem. Passports to go back are easy. They just take a little time and a little money.” He smiles. The thought of money pleases him.
Aaman opens his mouth to speak but Juliet silences him with a raised finger, playing the Colonial Employer.
“Aaman, would you get me some water please? I saw a water fountain outside in the hall.”
Aaman takes his leave, pulling faces behind the official’s back. Juliet ignores him. He returns with a paper cup.
“So I will do that then and it will arrive by post in two weeks?” She puts an official-looking envelope in her bag.
“Exactly, Madam, precisely no trouble at all.” The official beams at her.
“You have been so kind, I thank you.” Juliet holds out her hand and he shakes it smartly, bowing a little as he does so. Juliet takes Aaman by the elbow, which makes her stifle a giggle, and they both leave the embassy.
The men waiting in the street all rise as they leave the building and they rush to thrust papers at the guard. He unlocks the gate, and Juliet and Aaman push through the clamour.
“Are you really coming to Pakistan?” Aaman asks.
“No.” Juliet looks at him, eyebrow raised. He understands.
“What will you do for the passport to arrive by post in two weeks?”
“Have a passport picture of you sent to the embassy.”
“And the money?”
“Well that bit is between me and him.”
“Don’t, Juliet. Give me my pride.”
“How can I not do this for you? If you go by yourself, you have left me. I would always feel abandoned. However, if I make it happen, if I pave the way, then you have not left me, I have sent you, sent you home, where you belong. Besides, you want to go home, and I want for you what you want for you. If going home is your greatest happiness, please allow me to give that to you.”
“Do you want this water?” Aaman is still holding the paper cup.
“No.”
Aaman drinks it. Juliet takes the cup and puts it in a bin they pass.
The two final websites go well and Juliet ‘officially’ translates the references into English.
They are both strangely surprised when the postman parps his horn and Juliet is asked to sign for Aaman’s passport. They had held off buying the plane ticket as neither of them really believed it would ever arrive.
They search online for plane tickets and agree to split the airfare between them. Aaman’s need to do this is as great as Juliet’s.
Juliet suggests that Aaman does not travel with his money in cash. She suggests that when he arrives home, he open a bank account with a little of the money and she can send the rest over by bank transfer. This thinking is new to Aaman. He comes from a cash culture. In his village, they swap and lend and barter. In the towns, th
ey use money. The idea of money existing without it really existing is alien to him. That it can travel from one country to another without anything physical actually moving seems unreal. He researches it online before he agrees.
Aaman researches some software houses in Pakistan. He finds over three hundred and fifty in Lahore alone. Juliet suggests they send off emails to all of them in batches. Juliet scripts a letter as if she is the head of a bespoke software house where Aaman works, saying that she is sorry to lose him and could they offer him a job on his arrival in Pakistan.
“That is dishonest.”
“No, it is not.”
“Juliet, you know it is.”
“No, it’s not. A company is ‘an association or collection of individual real persons.’” She traces her finger along Wikipedia as she reads it out. “And a bespoke software house is ‘A company who specially develops software for some specific organisation or other users.’ So you and I are a collection of two individuals and I have found the work for you to develop for specific organisations or other users, have I not?”
“Surely we would need to pay taxes here for that to be strictly true.”
“Until a very short time ago, you were an illegal immigrant. Now you do not want to write these letters because you haven’t paid your taxes?”
Aaman raises his hands, palms upwards, and shrugs. She types.
“Besides, they only need these letters of introduction to convince them to try you out. Once you start working for them, your work will speak for you, these emails will be forgotten.”
She is shocked when she gets two hundred and ninety-eight replies. She passes them on to Aaman to deal with. They all want to ask questions and some want to meet him.
Eventually they run out of things that need doing and the storm of action leaves only the devastation of the parting date.
Aaman looks smart, and worried. Juliet looks casual and fragile. Aaman takes her hand as they walk out of the main door of the house. He escorts her to the car and opens the door for her. As he crosses to the passenger side, the kittens get under his feet. He picks them up one by one along with the mother cat and says his farewells. The father has not been seen for a while. Just before Aaman gets into the car, he puts a finger up for Juliet to wait, and he runs into the back garden. The vines are doing well and grapes hang in huge clusters, purple, brushed in white. The pomegranates are enormous, and Juliet slips out of the car, plucks one, and on returning to the car, slips it into Aaman’s bag as a surprise for him when he unpacks in Pakistan. Aaman has walked past the grapes; they are not what he wants. Juliet bought and Aaman planted another climbing plant because the man said it grew fast. He noticed the day before that the first flower had opened.
He climbs back in the car and presents the flower to Juliet, who gasps as she takes it. A circle of white petals laid over with a thousand purple tentacles, banded in purple and white, deeper hues towards the centre, topped with the deepest purple and ridiculously tall stigma.
“Oh, my goodness, that is so beautiful. Is it from our pergola? What is it?”
“A passion flower.” Aaman blushes.
Juliet leans towards him. Aaman backs away just a little. Juliet plants a delicate kiss on his cheek, and pokes the flower behind the driver’s mirror.
“Right then, we had best be off.” The quiver in her voice belies her.
So familiar. Aaman watches. The lane turns into the road which turns into the village. He is glad she is driving slowly. They pass the kiosk. There! Down the side street is Mahmout.
“Please stop the car a minute, Juliet.”
Juliet draws in, presuming he wants something from the kiosk. She follows him through the driver’s mirror.
Aaman walks with stiffness; a pulsing begins in his abdomen. Mahmout sits there drinking coffee with the old men.
“Mahmout!”
Mahmout sees him and stands as if to run, but sits down again grinning.
“My friend! How are you?”
“How did you think I would be?”
“I do not understand you.”
“I saw you behind the tree. A man is dead because of that raid. Why, Mahmout?”
“He was nearly dead anyway.”
Aaman is so shocked he loses his words. He stares for a second.
“Why, Mahmout?”
“It is a dog-eat-dog world, my friend, and I happened to see where the big Nigerian man was keeping his money.” He grins smugly. “And, I believed we would get more work with everyone else gone!”
“You mean you would get more work with everyone gone. So you went to the police?”
“Oh, no. Not exactly, it was not like that at all. I overheard some police saying that they would like to clear up the streets a little, so I just walked past and suggested they check out Costas’ barn.”
“Exactly. You went to the police!”
“No, not exactly at all! Well, yes, but you would have done the same in my position. It is a tough life!”
The old man on whose doorstep Mahmout is sitting and whose coffee he is drinking at twenty cents a cup looks blank. Aaman tells him in pigeon Greek that Mahmout has ratted on his brothers. The man looks disgusted. Mahmout’s Greek is clearly not good enough to understand what Aaman has said as he continues to grin. Aaman turns back to Mahmout.
“Mahmout, I am not sure whether you are a big rat who has acted small or a small rat who has acted big. That is not my problem. I know that as long you are a rat someone will be chasing you with a big stick.”
Mahmout stands up and looks around him, to see if Aaman has come with friends with sticks. When he sees there is no one, he grins. Aaman leaves life to take its own revenge. Mahmout shouts after him.
“You would do the same had you been smart enough to see where they kept their money.” He raises his coffee cup as if to say cheers and then bends his legs to sit down, but the disgusted old man has taken his stool away and has quietly closed his door on him. As Aaman walks away, the last he sees of Mahmout, he is sitting on a nonexistent chair and falls on his back like a cockroach in the gutter, hot sweet sticky coffee over his chest and face.
“Everything OK?” Juliet asks, aware he did not go to the kiosk.
“Yes, just tying up loose ends. Questions I may ask myself later if I do not answer them now.”
Juliet does not want to understand. She wants to be numb. They travel to the airport in mostly a sober mood, with occasional pushes into joviality. Juliet takes Aaman’s hand on two occasions. Aaman takes hers on three. On each occasion, it is brief.
The sight of the airport’s control tower signals to them their arrival. Juliet parks the car in the short-term car park and walks across to the departures entrance. They find his check-in counter; the queue is short.
“Aaman, I have a confession.” Juliet is smiling, her sadness hidden.
Aaman is not sure he wants a confession. Juliet continues.
“I needed a new laptop anyway.” Juliet smiles. Aaman frowns and then smiles. He points to his suitcase that is disappearing through a black plastic curtain. Juliet nods. Aaman hugs her. The woman behind the desk asks them to step to one side.
There is a maze of rope dividers in front of passport control.
“You go through there. They will check your passport, and then follow the signs for the gate number.” Juliet points to the gate number on his ticket. “Before you are allowed into the waiting room for the gate they will ask you to take off your jacket, belt, and remove the coins from your pocket onto a tray that is X-rayed. You then go through a metal detector, you know, for guns and so on. If it bleeps, they will scan you by hand and maybe pat you down and then you redress and go through to your gate and wait. They will tell you when to board. I imagine once you are on the plane, they will speak Urdu. So, have you got everything, do you understand everything? Oh, and here are some sweets to suck because as the pressure in the plane changes, your ears feel funny, and sucking helps.”
Juliet remembers the time Terrance
went on a skiing holiday with the school. They were late and it was up to Juliet to usher him through the airport to meet up with his beckoning class. She had tucked some sweets in his pocket as he left.
Aaman’s concentration is distracted by everything. He is in a world he thought would always be denied him. He is glad to experience it, but he is not sure it is better than oxen for ploughing and jugs for carrying water. Just different, a different struggle, money in larger quantities, more people, less personal. He draws his attention back to Juliet. There are no words big enough to express all he wants to say.
He leans towards her; she has tears in her eyes. He places his closed mouth on hers. She is still; he does not move. Lips apron lips, trying to pass over all he feels. He pulls away even more slowly than he had advanced. Juliet struggles to keep herself composed. It is time.
Chapter 19
“Hi, Michelle. It’s me.”
“How are you doing? How is Aaman?”
“He’s gone.”
“Again?”
“No. This time he flew.”
“He flew? Flew where?”
“Pakistan.”
“Deported?”
“No, I helped buy the ticket.”
“Why? What do you mean? Has he gone for good? I can’t keep up!”
Juliet tells Michelle about Aaman’s quest to be able to help buy a harvesting machine for the village. “Once he had the money to do that, he had no reason to stay.”
Michelle is incredulous that a migrant worker could have managed to do this in such a short space of time, which leads the conversation onto his programming ability. She is suitably impressed.
“So are you staying in touch?”
“I don’t know, he said he would write, but his old life will take over and I think he will forget me.”
Juliet imagines his returns will be glorious. Arriving in Lahore where he had arranged to stay for a week before contacting his family. Together they had emailed so many businesses that he will need five or six day in town to see them all. He had said he would not leave Lahore and go home until he had a job. He said it would honour his brother, fulfil their dreams. He will arrive in his village employed. His family and friends will celebrate his return with a feast, and he will be swept along until she, Juliet, would be a distant memory.
