America for Beginners

by Leah Franqui

Satya took the money, stunned.

  “Close your mouth, idiot. Going to catch flies. And remember, guides are always . . . ?”

  “Experts!”

  “Excellent. See you on Friday to meet madam. Come in ironed shirt and with permanent wide smile. Good breath. Buy toothbrush, pastes, and gum. Go!”

  Satya bowed his way out of Ronnie’s office. Ronnie watched him go, frowning. It wasn’t that he didn’t think the boy would do well. Many of his guides had taken Indian tourists all over the country with far less time to prepare or willingness to learn than Satya had displayed. People believed what they were told. As long as his guides spoke with some authority and a manufactured command of English, it was fine. Ronnie was quite careful to pair tour guides with tourists whose experience traveling and understanding of English were at least two levels below that of the guide. Most mistakes, therefore, could be blamed on others, and most navigational errors could be packaged as surprises. Many an Indian came home showing friends and relatives this famous rest stop or that significant mountain named by the guide after a local star or an Indian deity. He wasn’t sure about the widow—her English was very good—but since she had never traveled before he was confident that Satya would be able to take command.

  No, it wasn’t his guiding abilities that worried Ronnie about Satya. It was the look of abject terror that had struck the boy when Ronnie had mentioned Rebecca. Ronnie couldn’t remember ever being scared of women. Aroused, yes. Scared? No. Rebecca, as pretty a girl as she was, didn’t disconcert or interest him. She was an employee like any other. Satya, however, seemed to view women as an alien species. Would he last two weeks traveling with two such creatures? He would have to.

  13

  Despite Ronnie’s commands, Satya did not spend the time before his trip in a state of total preparation. Instead, he spent his two precious days off searching for Ravi. It was a frustrating and futile enterprise, but he did it, because he didn’t know what else to do. The letter from Ravi’s mother had haunted Satya, and he reread it often. Why hadn’t Ravi contacted his mother? Had something happened to him? Satya conjured up visions of kidnapping, or worse. But who would kidnap him? Ravi was worth nothing to a kidnapper; neither of them was. Satya knew he should write to her, tell her the truth, but what could he say? She would hate him as much as Ravi must have, and right now, she was someone who knew him from his other life who thought well of him. He clung to that, false as it was.

  The boys had never been apart for this long in their lives, not since they had met. Whenever they hadn’t been together in Sylhet, spending the days with their families, or when Ravi spent the long nights of Ramadan feasting with his community, at least Satya had been aware of Ravi, known what he was doing, could picture his friend’s life in his own mind.

  The main problem with trying to find Ravi was that he had no idea where to start. It wasn’t as if he didn’t know the city, at least on paper. He had been spending his days examining maps and guidebooks of New York and other American cities. He knew where to take those seeking cheesecake or “authentic” pizza or those who were Sex and the City aficionados (though he’d never seen the show). He even knew how many stories there were in the Empire State Building. He knew about George Washington and Lafayette, strange names he’d swallowed like milk, and he could tell you which bridge or tunnel to take to New Jersey. He knew which musicals were good for kids and which hot dog vendors were halal.

  Yes, Satya could show New York to others but he didn’t know where to find anything or anyone for himself. And Ravi had simply disappeared, leaving no trace of himself behind for Satya to track.

  Worse still, Satya had no resources with which to find his friend. Ronnie was helping Satya with his legal residency, fabricating a family connection and securing him a work visa, but Ravi had nothing like that, a fact that Satya knew to be his own fault. They had both secured tourist visas to reach the States but those had run out. There was no official way for Ravi to be found if he didn’t want Satya to locate him. Satya couldn’t go to the authorities, not that he would have trusted them anyway. He couldn’t hire a detective, not that he would have had the money. He couldn’t ask Ravi’s relatives because that would reveal too much. He couldn’t infiltrate the Muslim community, because there were so many Muslims from so many different countries, and how did he even know if Ravi, apathetic about religion at best, would reach out to other Muslims?

  Having no logical way to search, Satya woke at dawn and set out walking, hoping for inspiration. He sought out delis and cafés, spice shops and garages, anywhere that he saw Bangladeshi faces or heard Bengali. He walked around Brooklyn for hours, shuddering at the September winds, which felt cold to him. He made it all the way to Coney Island, where he recognized the amusement park from a movie he had seen. Sitting on a bench, he watched the ocean sweep toward the shore. He wished he could swim, and for one mad moment he wondered if Ravi had drowned himself. That would have been stupid, he thought. Ravi wasn’t sad; he was.

  The worst thing about looking for Ravi was that as he walked, he couldn’t help but think about what Ravi would be saying, thinking, how he would react to the world around him. Would he, as Satya did, love the spray of the sea on his face? Would he want to try the chicken and rice at this stall or that one? Would he have thought the blonde was prettier than the redhead on the train, would he have wondered about the color of their underwear like Satya did?

  As he walked, Satya realized Ronnie had been right, he did need something more to wear. He wondered if it would get much colder than it was. He trudged back to the train station and warmed himself on the long ride to Manhattan by rubbing his hands together, which he soon realized was useless. He got off at Canal Street, for once grateful for the press of people around him who made the streets warmer with their claustrophobic presence. Walking up Broadway, he stepped into a large store where everything was bright and cheap and looked decent enough. He found shirts in a warm soft flannel, on special for seven dollars each, and he bought four in various plaids, along with two sweatshirts and a wool cloth jacket. The labels informed him that the shirts were made in Bangladesh, which made him smile. He put one of the shirts on before he left the store, not caring that the tags were hanging off him, and felt an instant comfort enfold him.

  Back on the street, carrying his other purchases carefully, Satya became aware that he was hungry, as the popcorn he had hurriedly stuffed in his mouth in Coney Island was proving unsubstantial as a meal. Looking around for something cheap, Satya spotted a cart that looked familiar. At first he ignored the thought, reminding himself that all carts look familiar after any amount of time in New York. But something caught his eye about the cartoon donut dancing on the outside of the silver box. Was it? Yes!

  When they had moved to New York, he and Ravi had stopped there and eaten egg sandwiches with a turkey bacon that the owner, also from Bangladesh, had assured them was halal. Satya had laughed at Ravi for this, for enjoying all the other things prohibited by Islam with gusto but maintaining the dietary restrictions to the letter. That was the kind of person Ravi was; he possessed his own sense of the world, he made his own rules. It was something he’d learned from Satya, who was always the braver one, the one who hit the boys first before they could call him a Paki bastard.

  Satya quickly walked over to the cart and stood in line.

  “Sir, may I speak to you? I think you know my friend.”

  Satya was so sure it was him, but the man looked at him blankly.

  “I know no friends. We closed now. Closed for the day.”

  Satya’s protests fell on deaf ears as the man started sliding down the metal shutters of the cart. He knew it was him! Why didn’t the man recognize him? He had to get a message to Ravi.

  “Please, tell him I’m sorry! Tell him it’s Satya, tell him please. Tell him his mother wrote to me! She doesn’t know where he is, he must write to her, tell her he’s safe! Tell him I can give him a job, please, tell him, you have to—”

  Sat
ya screamed in Bengali, pounding on the cart as it closed. His shopping bag fell on the ground, his shirts mingling with the dirt and debris of the city as he kicked one of the cart’s wheels in frustration and pain.

  “Is there a problem here?”

  Satya looked up and realized people were staring, including a policeman. His heart jumped to his throat.

  “There’s a lot more carts out there, buddy. Try one of them, okay?”

  Satya nodded as the people around him laughed obediently at the policeman’s joke. His features became frozen in a pained grimace, the way they would when he was confronted by the police in his own country. He carefully picked up his bag of clothing and walked away, his heart pumping wildly. He thought the officer would watch him as he went, to make sure he didn’t abuse any more carts on his way, but looking behind himself he realized that everyone had already lost interest. And the cart was gone.

  At home that night, Satya carefully washed his new shirts and sweatshirts in the bathtub of his apartment. In Bangladesh whenever he would wash something the dyes would gently run off the material, like a puff of colored smoke in the water. But these things held fast, their colors staying put on the material. Satya watched in vain for something to happen, for these to feel familiar in some way, for the colors to dull and for the shirts to look like something that would remind him of home. His grandmother would have loved these things, with their brightness refusing to change. It would have cheered her, and she would have declared them to be survivors, just like herself.

  He wondered what his grandmother would think of him now, of his life, of the way he had lost his only friend, and he paused in his washing, trying to hear her voice in his ears. She would probably just tell him to hang up the wash, so he did just that, carefully spreading out each piece of clothing so it would dry well. He missed the laundry lines of home that stretched from window to window and held his shirts as the sun dried them. Now he draped things over chairs and opened windows to try to stave off mildew, shivering as the evening air blew in. His grandmother would have worried about the cold, he knew.

  In the months after her death he had heard her every day, yelling at him for not brushing his teeth for long enough or wearing a dirty shirt or not offering to help an older woman if he saw one, not that she would have ever accepted help herself. But with time her voice had grown softer and less precise, and he hated it. It was like losing her all over again. No one cared about him enough to yell at him now. No one existed who would bother. If he didn’t go to work, Mr. Munshi might be irritated, but really, what was one tour guide more or less?

  He shut the window, choosing mildew over illness. His grandmother would not want him to be sick. He imagined her scolding him now for feeling sorry for himself, for thinking foolish and negative thoughts, for not making people care about him. He almost smiled. Only she would believe someone could be made to care. She had cared about everyone she knew so deeply the idea of apathy would never have occurred to her. It was because of this that the nature of her death, cancer that ate through her bones and left her weak and frail, had been such an injustice.

  She had urged him to see the best in people, to forgive them their evils and forgive himself. He didn’t blame himself, he’d told her, but he’d lied. He had been able to do nothing in the face of her needs. He could only watch as his healthy body grew and her sick frame faded away.

  Satya hoped Ravi would write to his mother. He thought about the day he had had and pretended that Ravi had been there with him. Then, barely stopping to think, he picked up a pen and paper and began to write. Dear Mrs. Hafiz . . .

  14

  Her laptop open and reflecting the weather of several American cities, including Washington, DC; Niagara Falls; New Orleans; Phoenix; Las Vegas; and Los Angeles, Rebecca surveyed her clothing, spread out on her bed in neat piles. Her mother had always made her pack this way, with categories and layers and constant cross-referencing between her choices and the weather reports, and now she couldn’t stop.

  Rebecca’s thoughts turned to the widow, a woman who wanted a tour of America by an Indian tour guide. Ronnie had explained that the widow thought Satya was Indian, although he was Bangladeshi, and there was no reason to correct her assumption unless she explicitly asked, and if that happened would Rebecca please phone him immediately and as soon as possible? Ronnie had a habit of being oddly redundant with his commands, but Rebecca had nodded, smiling. Rebecca honestly didn’t know the difference between Indian and Bangladeshi. She knew, of course, that they were different countries, and neighbors, but South Asian history wasn’t her strong suit.

  After she’d agreed to take the job, a bit of Wikipedia-ing had revealed that there was quite a history between the countries, whose back-and-forth border shifts and conflicts with Pakistan confused her. She realized she didn’t understand enough about the cultural differences between Indo-Pakistani ethnic groups vis-à-vis Bangladesh to really know why it would be a problem for their guide to be Bangladeshi and not Bengali. She hadn’t really known what Bengali was, to be honest, or that it applied to anything other than tigers.

  It embarrassed Rebecca that she knew so little, that so much of the world was a mystery to her and that she hadn’t bothered to find out more. She read the paper, or at least select articles from the New York Times digital edition. She read books. She clicked on Facebook links about Syria and Darfur, genocides and terrorist attacks, trying to understand what was happening in other places, thinking herself lucky for the safety and security of her own life. She thought she was keeping up with things. How had her world become so small? She loved New York, and more and more she had become seduced by the idea that nothing important happened anywhere else. Ten million Bangladeshi immigrants displaced in the 1970s seemed like it should have been more important to her. At the very least, she supposed it would have to be now.

  She wondered what Mrs. Sengupta thought about all this, if she had strong feelings about Bangladesh. She wondered if the guide, Satya, hated India, hated serving as a guide to Indian people. And what would they think of her? Would they take pity on her and tell her their versions of their countries’ histories, or just laugh at her American stupidity and arrogance? She wished she spoke another language or had ever lived abroad. She had traveled, yes, to Paris for a summer, to London to see plays, to Mexico for the beaches and the tequila, to Israel with Birthright, but those were vacations from her life. She had never lived in a place where no one spoke her language, never lived anywhere but the East Coast of the United States, in fact. She didn’t know much about India beyond what she ordered at restaurants and what she’d read in a few Salman Rushdie novels.

  The description of her duties that Ronnie had given her, which had seemed so clear in his office, now seemed vague. She reminded herself that the most important part of the job wasn’t about her, it was about this woman, making her happy, making sure she was enjoying herself. For two weeks, all she really had to do was focus on someone else.

  Opening up her suitcase, she started to pack in earnest. For the three days they would be in New York she would be staying with Mrs. Sengupta and Satya in a hotel, not in her own apartment as she had requested. She supposed that was to preserve Mrs. Sengupta’s modesty, or sense of security, but still, it was deeply annoying. She hated tourists in New York, and now she would be forced to be one of them. She sighed, thinking of the money, and continued packing.

  Once done, she looked at the itinerary for the umpteenth time. It was so strange, she thought, what people who came to this country seemed to think was important to see. Mrs. Sengupta had booked a very elaborate cross-country trip, with all the American greatest hits on the menu. In New York they would spend half of the first day taking the deluxe Circle Line, a tour boat that circled Manhattan. The second half of the day would be spent at the Statue of Liberty, with a climb up to the top that Rebecca couldn’t imagine their elderly widow would be eager to attempt. Day two included a tour of the 9/11 Memorial, an Indian lunch in Curry Hill, a
nd sojourns to the Empire State Building and Times Square. Day three started with a bus ride to Woodbury Common, a shopping outlet outside of New York that was recommended on every tour for foreigners Rebecca had found in her quick Google search of “tours for non-Americans of America.” There were no museums, no parks, nothing that held any interest for Rebecca, just sights filled with bright neon lights and too many people.

  Returning to her suitcase, Rebecca surveyed her work. Her travel wardrobe looked back at her, its sensible layers and pale colors reminding her of department stores her grandmother had taken her to as a child. That’s what she had been hired to be, the background color.

  As she zipped up her suitcase, Rebecca realized that her hand was shaking. She finished her zipping and stepped back, watching it move. She felt a sense of total disconnect. She could see it shaking. She could feel it. But she couldn’t make herself care. This ought to be important, she thought. Maybe she had simply lost control of her body, the same way she had lost control of her life. She wondered if this was a sign about her trip, and then reminded herself that she didn’t believe in signs. Perhaps this was a symptom of a serious illness and she would die with these strangers and her parents would have to come get her body and take it home.

  The image of their looking at her dead body in some nameless American town knocked her out of her trance, and she sat, suddenly, resting her shaking hand on the bedspread gently. She felt the shuddering of her hand run through her body and out of her left foot, and it was gone. What had it been? Something else to be afraid of.

  Rebecca shook off her self-loathing and fear with a shrug, twisting her neck and rotating her shoulders to try to ease the knots that had migrated to her upper back.

  She hoped Mr. Ghazi would be all right at the map store. All those years ago, after his ankle had healed, it was painfully obvious to her how little he needed her. She had waited each day for him to let her go, given that there was barely enough for him to do to maintain the tiny ill-frequented shop, let alone her. But as the months, then years, passed, and their association had deepened from her fetching him tea and dusting to her reorganizing the books and reframing maps, one day she looked up and saw that Mr. Ghazi had lightened in some strange way. Perhaps giving up his tasks in the name of keeping her busy had freed him. Either way, the change had suited him, she thought, and she hoped in her absence his life wouldn’t grow heavy again. He had been so thrilled that he had facilitated something she’d sought that Rebecca worried he was happy to see the back of her. Would anyone notice or care that she was gone? Perhaps her real fear in leaving New York was that once she did, she would cease to matter to anyone there.