What They Do
At first they cannot work. In the early days and first weeks all they can do is keep their heads above the surface of this new reality of Los Angeles. Once they take the first easy breath, eat the thick meal that reminds them of home, find their minds bored, the men slap palms to thighbones and announce.
We must work.
We have not come all this way to sit in the sun.
And like that the men and women of the migration determine to belong and a job will help make it so.
The ones who did it all—carpentry, construction, tailors, cabdrivers, repairmen—before, do it all here. When they show their faces at the jobs that require no faces, the bosses and supervisors take one look at their rocky knuckles and thick wrists, the brawn of their forearms or the skill in their fingers, and nod. They may ask a few questions, wonder if it is a Mexican, an Egyptian, a Pakistani or a Greek that stands before them, but they don’t ask. When they cannot decide, the foremen look back at the worn fingertips and diligent eyes and nod yes, and just like that the ones who did it all before do it all here, and the machinery of the city takes them in.
The ones who did something in the bazaar, whose little shops traded wholesale in antiques, jewels, spices, rugs or brass, arrive in Los Angeles, Glendale, or Santa Monica to open the very same stores they had closed just last month, last year, in Tehran, Shiraz and Tabriz. In the corner of these new old shops a samovar is always hot, and the voice of a woman dying for love floats out of an old cassette player that never turns off. The rug and spice stores smell so much like home that customers stand around for hours and forget what they had come for in the first place. They trade in whatever they can get—appliances, furniture, kitchenware, fabric—and turn no customer away, glad as they are, these ageless, placeless merchants, to wake up in the morning and have a trade to make.
For those who did one thing, they come to find that here they can do little or, at first, nothing at all. They had given years of study and thought to the structures of bridges, the formation of law, the mechanics of the heart’s valves, and yet here their steady knowledge is not enough. Of those who did one thing, many come to Los Angeles only to realize they must learn to do it all. They take positions behind trucks, in grocery stores, at dry cleaners and gas pumps and say nothing about their fine and useless skills, so great their shame and eventual defeat. One man, an engineer from Mashhad, worked at a mechanic shop on Wilshire for six months and complained to his wife that of all the annoyances in his new life, the engine grease that stayed underneath his fingernails was the most insulting. She may or may not have comforted him, and the next day he woke with even less enthusiasm for this new world. Another man, it is said, dressed the part of a lung surgeon and went to the hospital every morning, where he emptied bedpans and trash bins and then committed a meticulous suicide.
For those who did bad things, the worst things or nothing at all in the face of the Shah’s desperate repressions, work was irrelevant. They saw their names on the death lists and simply escaped with no plan other than that. Some try their hand at this or that, real estate, banking, restaurants, but most sit back, smoke their cigarettes and look out over Los Angeles from balconies up high. A few forget themselves, grow successful in various businesses, work day and night for an income that keeps coming, that keeps the nightmares of before back. They pay their taxes, apply for citizenship, go to jury duty and take their happy families for long walks on the clean beaches in Malibu or Santa Monica, where if some acquaintance from the old country and old life recognized them and called out—Captain! Lieutenant! Sergeant!—they would not answer, they would not even turn their heads.
At first the women do as most of them did before. If they stayed at home with the children, they do the same here and live the lives of mothers and wives, keep kitchens clean and warm and noses dry. If money starts to run short, some of the women offer to work, only to hear the deafening protests of their husbands and fathers and brothers.
Bravely they retort.
Why not? The Amreekaye women do it. So can we.
With their little English they find themselves at grocery stores, preschools, the perfume counters of JCPenney or Macy’s, where they smile and spritz and wonder, What is so bad about this life? I have a little money every month, strangers are nice to me, I meet Americans. It is better than sitting at home. If they have considerable English, they take jobs as loan officers, bank tellers and teachers. Some even go to university and come out as architects, nurses and professors, and with each paycheck in the bank everything they have known before changes. Each time they buy a new pair of shoes with their own money or take a compliment from their boss, the world shifts a degree or two in orientation and shade and they can barely believe how big their life has become.
Until they take the weekly phone calls from back home, the women in America forget that things can change for the worse as well. They listen to their mothers and sisters and best friends, the chorus of old loved voices now beset by hysteria.
You know what they are shouting now?
Roosari ya tusari!
A head scarf or a blow to the head! They are shouting this to our faces when we walk to school. We have to sit in the back of the bus! Do you know this! Can you believe it? Even the cinema it is split, men on one side, women on the other …
The voices on the phone go on appalled, reined in only by pauses of disbelief that are broken to ask again and again.
Can you believe it?
Can you?
The women in America hold on to their phones and shake their heads but say nothing. When the conversations end with their ancient farewells of God be with you and My soul will die for you, the women in America return to lives where the days are long and exhausting and mix all the new chores of work and traffic and customers with the old chores of cooking and children and tea, and they keep at it, diligent, and remind themselves, We did not come here to sit in the sun.
Hunger
The first day of foul weather pulled the men apart.
They stayed away from the groups and the games and kept to themselves under deep and roiling skies. Saladin climbed to the top of a stack of containers to watch skies that had so far been open and blue turn gray and churned. He watched the sky until he grew tired and then watched the deck, where the captain paced at the door of their sleeping container, back and forth, hitting the cement with his crowbar at even intervals. For every two steps he tapped his crowbar tock, and the rhythm drew the men out from their moody distances. Saladin climbed down from his perch and stood beside his brother, who, for once in all the boat days, did not move away. The captain walked and spoke.
We are between sixteen and eighteen hours from our arrival, depending on the weather. You must be in the container at dusk. That is when we will close and seal the door in preparation for arrival, for your safety.
Tock. Tock.
Here you will wait. One night and a morning will pass before we dock. There are vents cut into the ceiling, but I suggest you keep still, do not argue or smoke too much. There will be enough air, but just enough.
Tock. Tock.
They will search the boat, container by container, and they have, in the past, opened them. They can be lazy too, on these islands especially. They don’t have the police of Rome or Nice or Lisbon. There should be no dogs … I have done this for your sake.
Tock. Tock.
The captain went on. He told them the story of the night they had yet to live, explained the search, the shipyards, their exit from a high door in the ceiling where a rope ladder hung. The men who understood all of the captain’s English kept drawn faces, and the men who understood less mimicked the dread.
Tock. Tock.
Alone or in pairs from the small door in the ceiling. But not until night, wait until at least late afternoon or night.
They watched the captain go, and Saladin felt a hand on his shoulder.
Ali did not seem scared. His posture was fallen like that of a man wh
o didn’t mind what happened to him, one way or another.
Saladin jaan, what do you think now? Should we keep going forward, keep on, right into our big metal coffin?
The men stayed outside the container until the rains came. They kept themselves busy with their second, fifth or twelfth cigarette as a brisk wind flapped at their collars, lifted and dropped their oily hair. To ease their nerves the Turkish brothers took turns holding themselves perfectly upright, perfectly upside down in long handstands off the railings, nothing but air between their backs and the far, whitecapped seas below. Saladin sat at a distance and tried to see a tomorrow for them all, a day in the sun, on land, in their next destination, but all he saw was a bruised sky that swirled above a gathering of tiny, nervous men. He closed his eyes and tried to avoid the one thought that plagued him, that came and went, came and went, circling his consciousness like carrion. Brother, have I come to kill you? Brother, have I come to kill us both?
Some men ate from nervousness and the seamen chided them.
I wouldn’t take that last bowl of rice, especially with the doors closed.
The men who made a practice of walking around the ship were forced by the weather to sit in the container and wait. Saladin found his brother in a corner, beside a middle-aged Afghani man who showed him pictures of his family, his life.
This is my daughter, and here with my wife. My mother. Noruz. And my other daughter. Can you believe that? I am a man with six sisters! A curse of women, I used to joke … Ay Khoda, I used to joke. And you? Your family? Where are your photos?
I have no photos.
Ah.
I left by accident. It was not planned.
The Afghani man nodded his head.
And now what? Where do you go now?
Ali smiled.
I am going to the same place you are going.
The Afghani ignored the dark meaning and continued on.
Ah. And your brother?
My brother … I do not know where my brother is going.
Ah.
Saladin pretended not to hear it, and soon the container began to reek of cigarettes and sweat and he left. He walked, oblivious to the rain and the rough seas, along the long hallways of the ship and searched for the entrance to the small, three-story building that rose up from the deck. He knew it was where the seamen and the captain slept, where they kept the better food and the instruments that navigated the boat. He walked from one landing to the next until he came to an open door, knocked on the doorframe and looked in. Old silk rugs hung on the walls in sheets, samovars of engraved brass and copper were thrown to corners and wooden crates were full with gold picture frames, watches and ugly antique jewelry. In the corner was a box of small, bejeweled eggs. The captain sat at a desk next to a window and let the rain pelt the maps and charts spread in front of him. He cradled a half-empty bottle of a burgundy liquid and called out to Saladin.
Come in, Khourdi! Come in!
Saladin sat on the edge of a bed bolted to the floor. The captain held out the bottle and then reconsidered and offered nothing. In a rough, clear Farsi he finished a sentence out loud that seemed to have started in his head.
… after so many years, her moods are my own. She has a bad day and I do too.
The ship tilted heavily and the captain raised the bottle.
Let me not pretend to do God’s work. I am Cato the boatman, no more, no less. I move those who must be moved, those who seek me out, pay me, and they agree to be locked up for a night, their own free will … I ask no questions, think nothing of the horrible things they might have done, or that have been done to them, or the desperation, if they are murderers or … or …
His head tipped lightly against his chin and his eyelids fell, and the contortions of his face eased until he looked like the glad captain from the whorehouse and then like a young man and finally, with a line of spit falling from his mouth, like a baby. Saladin felt himself nervous now, eager and ill at ease. He leaned into the sleeping man’s ear and listened to the shallow breath, smelled the rot of fermentation and cigarettes, and when he was sure the captain was asleep, quietly he confessed.
I was forced to take the gun. I was my father’s son. He was told by the mullah to gather the guilty, arrange a trial … an execution, to show his loyalty. Eleven men. Kurds I knew. The mullah ordered the guns fired, and just like that the men were dead. Almost dead. When I shot again, I might have killed them. My brother shot three guardsmen. They fell. We escaped into the mountains, my brother and I.
He waited to see if the captain would wake.
My father is a coward. I was too.
With each word a bit of his old actions unbuckled inside until he felt neither badly nor right, but without blame. He leaned back and tried to speak loudly.
But I am not a coward tonight. I have always wanted, more than anything, to go to America. We are going to America. My brother, Ali, and I. We are brave to do it. Heroes.
The words sounded strange when he said them, like false declarations, and Saladin felt a tickle in his spine, at the back of his eyes. He approached the sleeping form and carefully took the bottle from the crook of the captain’s arm and drank from it until it was empty. The liquid stung his throat and chest, and when the sensations calmed, he tucked the bottle underneath one of many silk pillows and left.
The rain was a soft drizzle now and Saladin went to the railing to clear his head and steady his stomach. He was joined by the middle-aged Afghani man, who stood pensively beside as the ship tossed lightly beneath them. The man took long, deep breaths, and Saladin thought to imitate him, thought the man must know something about putting a mind at ease, but after two breaths he vomited out all he’d drunk. The man patted his shoulder.
You will be fine. We all will.
The Afghani man kept his hand on Saladin’s shoulder.
I have made this trip before. I have been to America. You will be treated well there. Work will be easy, you will save your money, a house will come, no one will bother you, and then it will be time to go home again. Inshallah.
Rain pelted their faces and the man squinted as they spoke.
Saladin had many questions. Why did he go back? Why was he here now? Where should they go when they first arrive? How much does a car cost?
You have been to America?
Yes.
Where?
California.
Saladin had nothing to say after that. The man’s body and voice and heartbeat was evidence enough that the journey might not end in death, that Saladin and Ali might survive.
And you are going back? Now?
Yes.
And there is work there, a life. Cars?
The man nodded and looked out over the ocean’s rough waters.
You and your brother will be okay. Go together, find a new life. And one day, God willing, you can go back home.
When the seamen made their call, Saladin found Ali cross-legged and eyes closed on his thin mattress.
Ali.
Yes, jaanam.
We are going to be fine.
We shall see, jaanam. We shall see.
The Afghan has been to California. He told me about it. He said life there was easy. There was work. Good places to live. Cars for everyone. We will be fine. And when the time comes, maybe we can even come home!
The doors were closed, and in the darkness the men could hear the banging that sealed them. Saladin felt a solid hand on his knee, familiar and forceful.
We shall see, Saladin jaan. We shall see.
Saladin took from the voice what he needed: a sound from home, the known language, the tone he had known his whole life. He sat shoulder to shoulder with his brother, closed his eyes and waited for the end of a night that would, in one manner or another, move them onward, move them out.
The storm did not reach them immediately. Most of the men fell asleep only to awake, a few hours later, in a world where there was no brother and no stranger and they moved in the hull as one. The jolts got
worse until they could get no worse, and each time Saladin thought it could get no worse, every heave was higher, every toss and slam more painful and unexpected. There was no up or down, and the flesh of one man crashed into the bones of another, and everything that was in the container mixed until there was just one scream and one bruised body and one worried heart among them all, and they moved across the angry waters as any flock or herd or school in motion moves, indistinguishable and en masse.
Saladin did not seek out his brother. He let other hands grip him, took other flesh into his hands and embraced as turbulence rocked the container so hard he could no longer recognize himself or call out to Ali uniquely, and the nameless force of death played with all the men as if they were a man.
After a time not made of seconds or minutes, each toss and slam was less, each terrible motion half the one before, and then half of that, until the ship rocked side to side like a paper boat in a light wind. In the stillness Saladin sat with his back leaned up against an unknown back and listened to the silence. He knew they were all glad for the darkness that hid them from one another, hid the shame they shared for the ways they had cried and begged and clutched at one another, for the ways in which they were weak. Saladin did not search for his brother and held to himself and cried for fresh air, for a river, for a woman, for all he had planned for himself before he died. He sat starving for life, for a taste of what he could have if the world made itself available to him for just one more day of sky, water and rocks. He sat in the rancid dark of men and bodies and thoughts of death and could not quiet his famished soul. The hunger was too great. He tried to busy himself with thoughts of tomorrow and America and the next cinema, but he was weak and came apart easily at the end and split down the middle, one half of him craving life and the other half tired for a sleep beyond sleep.
The Walking Page 11
