Original Prin

by Randy Boyagoda

  He should be not afraid.

  He hadn’t come here just to lecture orphans and keep his job. He sat up a little straighter in the backseat of the frigid, loud, leathery airport sedan.

  “So, how would you rate the current security conditions situation in Dragomans?” he asked.

  “Wow, you sound like you work for CNN!” the driver said.

  “Thanks. I’m actually just a professor,” Prin said.

  “Not just! Not just! And please, I’m not saying this only because the hourly rate for driving this car is so poor, I need the tips to feed my family. But really, in this country we hold professors in such high regard! Like ex-presidents, right? Why do you think they sent me to pick you up? But to answer your question, sir Professor sir, just look up, on the tops of the buildings in front of us,” the driver said.

  “I see, oh, I see. I see men with guns. And they are, they are …”

  “Ours! Dragomans security forces. None of these sheikh-­brigades and mullah-militias you have to deal with in the other countries. The crazies and funny business that they talk about on, hey!, CNN. Up there are just brave, well-trained boys. All are clean-shaved every morning. Their commander did his training in Florida. Top notch. Those boys up there? You want to know the most important thing about them? They know my car. They know I’m carrying a VIP. So if anyone comes near us—and no one will come near us, trust me—they will take care of it. They will protect. Because if people like you, sir Professor sir, and Bill Clinton, can’t come to Dragomans, Dragomans will never be the dream of tomorrow, today,” the driver said.

  “Thank you, that’s very well put,” Prin said.

  “Sir Professor sir, please, I’m just a simple driver! I’m quoting our new president,” the driver said.

  “Oh, I see. So, how much longer?” Prin asked.

  “You sound like kids in American movie shows! Listen, we are close. And trust me. I do this all the time. We are totally safe. You are totally safe. I have a wife and kids. You think my wife would let me do this if it wasn’t safe?” the driver said.

  “So, how many children do you have?” Prin asked.

  “Five boys!” the driver said.

  “That’s great. I have four girls,” Prin said.

  “Four daughters … hey, that’s okay too! You say Canada, I say Allah, it doesn’t matter. Children are gifts from God, all over the world. I have two daughters as well!” the driver said.

  “Wonderful,” Prin said.

  “I also have mints and gum up here. My girls need this when they are feeling car sick. So does my wife, when she’s pregnant. You want mints?” the driver asked.

  “I’m fine, really,” Prin said.

  He just wanted to get to his hotel. He just wanted to get to his hotel and let Molly know he was safe and to do what was good and right and needed and then go home to his family and to his job, all of it safely in place. And him too, God’s good man. Also, he desperately wanted some mints.

  27

  Eventually they reached the complex of government buildings where Prin was to spend the next three days. After passing through a steel gate set in massive cinder-block walls topped with metal spikes, long black gun barrels lolling in between many of them, they drove over a deep-ridged road into a zigzag of security checkpoints, each hemmed in by V-shaped concrete barriers. The barriers were wrapped in images of the President releasing doves and of clasped hands and happy children and women in full hijabs playing soccer while chatting on iPhones.

  “We welcome you, Professor, and apologize for these precautions, but we cannot take any chances,” said a guard.

  “Of course,” Prin said.

  “Much hotter than … Canada, yes?” the guard asked.

  “Yes, much hotter,” Prin said.

  “Very good! Justin Trudeau! Drake! Their songs inspire the world! My name is Rafik. If you need anything while you are our guest, remember only one thing: I am here. Also: I am here to protect you. Understood? Now, please wait beside your driver,” the guard said.

  Prin stepped to the side and Rafik barked at two younger men with significantly less yellow braiding on their uniforms. The two men approached the sedan holding long metal poles affixed with mirrors.

  “Those are actually selfie sticks!” the driver said.

  He winked dramatically. They’d made it safely. He kept his promise. He had a wife and all those sons, and also the daughters. This guy had daughters. Didn’t he hear about the tips?

  Prin stepped away from the driver, not wanting all the undulating and smiling and nodding and winking to look like conspiring. His eyebrows hurt from all the squinting he’d been doing in Dragomans daylight. His collar was damp and he could feel beads of sweat running down his cheeks. Much hotter than Canada! Also, his teeth absolutely ached. He must have been clenching his jaw for hours, all the hours since he’d arrived and left the easy foreignness of the terminal—it could have been a luxury-goods mall in Minnesota—for this hard, bright, strange place.

  One of the young guards motioned for them to return to their vehicle and so they drove on through the complex, passing identical squat brown buildings set apart by wide, paved roads, stumpy date palms, and elaborate, browning flower gardens. The driver stopped in front of Government of Dragomans Building #4, as the sign read in Arabic, English, and French. It had a giant QR code pasted on one side, and invitations to Like Us on Facebook. There was also a lot of small print in Cyrillic.

  The driver wished Prin well, took one of his hands, and pressed into it a whole lot of mints. Then he held out his other open, empty hand. Assuming this was a cultural thing, Prin grabbed it and the two of them sat there, smiling at each other and holding hands as the mints crumbled between them. Eventually Wende came out of the building and gave Prin fifty dollars to give the driver, who praised God and Canada and left.

  She wore a buttoned-up shirt and flowing, off-white pants that looked like a dress until she moved her legs. It was kind of weird, like a magic show, how she moved, and it looked like a dress and then like pants, pants, then dress, and also kind of like the necks of swans and Easter lilies. Prin was jet-lagged.

  She gave him a firm nod.

  “We’re being watched right now. We’re not married, and we’re obviously not family, so no skin-to-skin contact between us, however innocent,” she said.

  “That’s thoughtful of you to let me know, but there’s no need, really. Nice to see you and nice to be here. And who’s watching us?” Prin asked.

  “We’re an atheist white woman and a Catholic brown man in a Muslim-majority Middle-Eastern country, Prin. Everyone is watching us,” Wende said.

  And that’s a good thing, he thought, for all of us. He didn’t like how smiling and secretive she came across, right away. She certainly didn’t smile or sound secretive in UFU meetings, or in VaultTok, or in his living room with his wife and children. So why now? Because she finally could? And could what, exactly?

  He wanted to get this over with, right now. Did she really sit in 34C on her flight to Dragomans, or was that information meant to remind him of something? What did she want, really? Who? Not Whom, but really, him? Or was this all in his limp noodle brain? Probably, if he confronted her—Wende, are you trying to break up my marriage?—she’d laugh (and laugh) and show him a picture of her giant Wall Street boyfriend. Of the two of them laid out on a private beach on an island no one had heard of, one of his great white hands basking on one of her legs.

  This was business. She needed to do whatever was necessary to make sure he’d come to Dragomans and give his lecture and keep the money coming. And she knew Prin well enough to know that being strung along (and along) could actually be a kind of perfect state of holy fudge for him: just enough to worry about feeling guilty, and not enough to be found guilty, and either way, exactly enough to keep doing whatever it was he was doing. She had done him the greatest
mercy, sleeping with another man while they were dating back in graduate school. Otherwise, they might have been sort-of-engaged for all eternity. This was all in his head, 34C.

  He followed her into the front hall of the building, which was dark and freezing. Four security guards, each wearing an automatic weapon across his chest, stood positioned in the four far corners of the hall in front of giant air conditioning vents that rippled big banner portraits of the President with the doves and children and soccer moms of Dragomans. There was an empty information desk in the middle of the hall.

  “So, there’s been a schedule change,” Wende said.

  “Which is?” Prin asked.

  “Good news, actually. It turns out the Minister and some of his staff want to attend your lecture, alongside the students,” Wende said.

  “Why?” Prin asked.

  “I don’t know. But what the Minister wants, the Minister gets. So, to accommodate his schedule, the talk has been moved from tomorrow morning to this evening—”

  “What time is it right now?” Prin asked.

  “Exactly. You need to get some sleep and freshen up so you’re ready to give the talk. Because if the Minister’s going to be there, and your lecture goes well, this could be really good for us. We need to get you into bed,” Wende said.

  She curled her lips.

  He held his breath.

  He held his phone.

  He wanted it to buzz with a call from HOME. No he didn’t. This was all and only a game. This was all and only business.

  “Where’s my room, Wende? I want to call my wife and kids, then take a shower, then take a nap, and then get ready to give my lecture. So stop smiling like there’s something going on here and tell me where I’m supposed to be and please arrange for someone to get me when it’s time to give the lecture,” Prin said.

  “RAE!”

  The Chinese real estate agent popped up from the information desk in the middle of the hall and came over. She took Prin and his bags away.

  28

  He slept lightly, his mind racing and popping and bubbling. When he woke it was as if crepe paper were covering his brain and someone was crinkling it very slowly. Chatting with Molly and the girls had gone badly—the Dragomans Wi-Fi was spotty, and they were on their way to a Milwaukee pool (one of the few that the boys hadn’t been banned from yet), and also someone had smeared sunscreen on the phone so his family looked like pixelated mayonnaise.

  In the hour before he was to give the lecture, Prin showered, listened to the loud, late afternoon call to prayer blaring out of loudspeakers riveted to all the buildings around them, tried and failed to reach Molly and the girls a few more times, and finally scanned his lecture notes while watching Dragomans TV on a set that had no functioning volume whether by accident or design.

  Muted, the channels offered ramrod-spined newsreaders, a documentary about a date farmer, a motorcycle race in Doha, and a cartoon about a young Arabic prince and his wise, portly teacher who took an incredibly long camel ride together through the desert before eventually reaching a metallic city. Prin might have fallen asleep watching the cartoon and dreamt that long camel ride into the future, because when the hotel phone rang like a giggling fire alarm the cartoon had the same young prince smashing his way through an evil liquor store with his wise teacher looking pleased (but also, maybe, winking).

  “Prin, are you ready?” Rae asked.

  “I am. Will you come get me?” Prin asked.

  “I can’t. Wende needs me to reserve seats for the Minister and his delegation. We’ve sent someone,” she said.

  There was a knock at the door. Prin was escorted to the lecture hall by a tiny, confident woman in ankle-revealing blue jeans, black blazer, and bright turquoise hijab who informed him she’d studied Executive Business Communications at the Resonance School of Homeopathy in Carson City, Nevada. Also, she could not shake his hand.

  As they walked to the hall he asked how much further and also, for coffee, many times.

  “Thirty seconds away, professor. You really like coffee, huh?” she said.

  “Sorry, I’m just a little jet lagged. Also, these cups are really small,” he said.

  “I’ll note that, thanks. The Dragomans Civil Service is committed to continuous client-experience enhancement, so I’ll ping our procurement team to look into bigger cups. But don’t worry about jet lag, professor. When you feel the energy in the hall, you’re going to get all the extra jolt you need. We think this is going to be fantastic. The Minister just came up with the idea yesterday, and it’s awesome you accepted!” she said.

  “Sorry? Accepted what? I’m prepared to deliver a lecture to an undergraduate seminar on Kafka’s Metamorphosis and the metamorphosis of sea animals into defining features of modern Canadian literature,” Prin said.

  “For sure, that sounds really interesting! Hmm. I’m sure it’s all going to work out, hashtag Insha’Allah!” she said.

  There were a thousand people in the hall. Every civil servant working in the government complex occupied a faded blue seat, each of which was topped by crisp, white headrest towels. Prin knew from watching Jeopardy that there was a specific name for them. Whenever he told Molly that one of his articles had been rejected by a journal, he’d come home to dinner in front of the television. She and the girls would cheer him on to Final Jeopardy in their Jesus Lego living room.

  He was so, so loved.

  Not anti-Communist, not anti-Cossack. What was it?

  Waiting in the wings, Prin couldn’t tell if there were any students in the crowd, which mostly seemed to be women in various brown business suits and hijabs, and men in brown-on-brown double-breasted jackets. In the front row, alongside the Dragomans professors he’d been meeting over Skype, Prin could see Wende, and Rae, and also the short, shiny Chinese real estate developer who wanted to turn UFU into a retirement condominium. Rae had been profoundly vague about why she was here when Prin had questioned her on the way to his room. Stranger still, why was the developer here?

  Meanwhile, the Minister who’d also come to UFU that spring had been replaced by a much younger man, who from just off-stage was vehemently directing his staff to remove the podium and to stop fussing with his black mock-neck shirt. Eventually he ran out in wire-rim glasses and grey sneakers and jeans and the shirt, waving at everyone and thanking them silently and applauding, at which point the crowd began applauding. The words “DRAGOMANS 2.0” crested over massive, crashing waves on the wall behind him.

  “So. Friends. I’m not just speaking to you as your new Minister of Education and Strategic Realignment Initiatives. I’m also speaking to you as a fellow influencer and change-maker and thought leader. And IMO, we need to tell our country’s story in a different way. Amiright? And why? So we can get to 2.0. And then to 3G. And then eventually, but before anyone else in the Middle East, to 5G. As I said at TED Talk Albuquerque, we need to inspire each other, and ourselves, and the citizens we serve in our work here. We need to dream and work, and work, and dream a better future. We’re going to start by crushing some assumptions about what it means to work in the Dragomans Civil Service. Listen, that’s what I want to do, that’s why I left my amazing job in Silicon Valley. To be here with all of you, so thank you,” the Minister said.

  He nodded and the crowd clapped and he made a great show of making them stop clapping. When they did so right away, it seemed to disappoint him.

  “Oh, and one more thing …” the Minister said.

  Everyone waited. He waited, too.

  “One more thing …” he said.

  This time, his staff began whooping from the wings. The crowd eventually contributed further whooping.

  “Thanks! So. Friends. We’re not going to change our world by ourselves. We need to listen and learn from inspiring storytellers like our wonderful speaker today, who is inspired, and inspiring. Professor Prin from To
ronto is helping us launch a new motivational speaker series that my Ministry is sponsoring as part of Dragomans 2.0. We’re calling it … Drag Racer Talks!”

  By now the crowd knew to clap whenever this new young Minister stopped speaking. When their applause ended, the Minister beckoned Prin to join him on stage.

  “So. Friends. It’s time to hear from our storyteller. He will be speaking to us today about just one word—metamorphosis—and how all of us can transform ourselves and our nation. Many years ago, a passionate and innovative writer, Frank Kafka, absolutely crushed a story about metamorphosis. I remember reading it as a student and being truly inspired. And I want the same for all of you, and for our beloved nation. Dragomans was once a lowly caterpillar. Right now, IMO, it’s in a cocoon. In the future, what will it be? Inspired by Kafka and by Professor Prin, I want to believe we will all be drag racers, we will all be butterflies! Friends, I give you Metamorphosis, by Professor Prin!”

  The Minister grabbed him and gave him a hug. He didn’t let go. He pressed his mouth into Prin’s ear.

  “We’re doing a security sweep of the complex right now. We need to keep these people in this room for sixty minutes. There’s nothing to worry about, we’re pretty sure. We’re just confirming. This is normal around here. So, help us out, bro. Give a long talk that keeps them here and also inspires everybody. My staff will give you an all-clear signal. And we’re going to upgrade you to First Class for your flight home!” he said.

  “As-salamu alaykum. Ladies and gentlemen, who wants to be a butterfly?” Prin asked.