Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  But my wheels are turning. I didn’t get to talk to the people in the desert, and I have a chance to remedy that now. Operation Hashtag Refugee is underway.

  * * *

  —

  According to the itinerary I drew up way back in Suez, the Wahash Mahat is due to dock in Mumbai sometime in the early hours of April 12th, though the repairs back in Yemen will likely delay that date. Mindful of my late-night conversation with Ganesh, the following morning I head down to the ship’s sick bay and ask for a face mask. He’s right. I don’t want to be the jerk who passes on a virus to these people, who have already suffered so much.

  Still, for my sins, as soon as I walk through the door, the nurse practitioner sits me down and quizzes me about my entire health record. When I finally leave an hour later, I have a pocketful of condoms, two sample Ativan—which I can apparently stick under my tongue in case of anxiety—and a skin-tone face mask in no-one’s skin tone ever.

  The way things are going, I’m going to need refills on the Ativan long before I ever crack the package of even one of the condoms.

  More-than-adequately equipped, I head back to my observation spot on an unused set of iron steps, above where the refugees have settled, to get a feel for the lay of the land. I’m tucked into a little nook, out of the wind, but with part of a large metal winch poking me in the back. Still, I don’t think they can see me up here, so I can get on with my note-taking without fear of offending any of my subjects. It’s worth a bruise between the shoulder blades, no question.

  I’m relieved to see that most of the people have managed to make themselves a bit more comfortable than they must have been on the leaking Njeri. Clotheslines are strung about, adorned with brightly colored fabrics, drying in the wind. I do a quick count, and come up with forty-six people—twenty-eight men, twelve women, and six kids. Not counting babies, because I’m pretty sure at least two of the women have infants swaddled under their colorful robes.

  About half the men wear turbans, and almost all the women are in headscarves, so it seems pretty clear the majority of the group are Muslim. My best friend all the way through public school was Maryam Khan, and she wore a hijab. Maryam was Punjabi, though, so I’m not sure if the same rules apply. I make a note to hit Google as soon as I can get a clear signal on the ship’s Wi-Fi, and check.

  I lost touch with Maryam after high school, mostly because she moved to Lahore for university. That girl taught me some bitchin’—kutti’n, according to Maryam—swear words in Urdu over the years, I have to say. Sadly, all I had to offer in return were the mean names that Tommy called the lesbian couple who dropped into the bookshop occasionally for tea and a book of erotica, so I definitely got the better end of the deal. I’m also reminded how much I miss her.

  After watching the group for half an hour after breakfast, one girl stands out to me almost immediately. She looks to be maybe twelve or thirteen, and is tall but skinny as a beanpole. She wears a headscarf about half the time, over hair so immaculately braided I feel immediately ashamed of my own windblown locks. Curiously, twice, I watch her walk over to chat with different members of the crew.

  Both of whom are Anglo white guys.

  I pocket my notebook and scramble down the ladder. At the bottom, I remember my face mask and hastily don it before approaching the part of the deck cordoned off for the Somali passengers.

  One of the crew members—I think his name is Terry—is standing nearby, taking a smoke break. His eyes widen at the sight of me, and he hastily steps behind a large yellow bollard.

  I unhook the mask. “I’m not sick,” I say hastily. “Just trying to be a—uh—good world citizen.” I make an exaggerated gesture with my thumb, which immediately makes me feel like I’m a hitchhiking mime.

  Behind me, a voice says, “You needn’t worry about us. We were all inoculated at the camp in Yemen.”

  I turn to see the young girl I’d been watching has come to stand against the cordon. Her arms are crossed and her high, perfect forehead is creased in a frown.

  “I know you,” she says accusingly. “You’re the woman who’s been spying on us from the upper deck, yeah?”

  “I—I’m—not spying,” I say weakly. “Just—uh—observing.”

  “Huh. So, a western woman sits in her throne on high, looking down on us without speaking, and you say that’s not spying?”

  So, yeah, I’m rendered completely speechless by this kid in under a minute.

  I take a deep breath and try to gather the tatters of my resources.

  “Okay, yes, now that you describe it like that, I can see where it must have seemed offensive. But that is not at all my intention, I assure you.”

  I snap my mouth shut, to try to recover from sounding like I’ve stepped out of the nineteenth century, and then begin again.

  “What I mean is—I’m sorry. Can we start over?”

  I reach my hand across the cordon. “I’m Romy. I’m from New York City in America, and I’d love a chance to chat a bit with you, when you are free.”

  The girl takes my hand eagerly, all traces of her former hauteur banished by her giant white smile. “New York City?” she squeals. “That’s so sick!”

  And with that, I become immediate BFFs with one Sumaya Warsame, age fourteen and a half. In fairly short order, I learn that Sumaya’s excellent English has been learned largely through communicating with the members of her family who have emigrated abroad, and from watching YouTube. Her greatest regret is the loss of the smartphone, which had originally belonged to her father, into the water on the Njeri’s first day at sea.

  When I ask, however, which of the people present are her mother and father, her face shuts down. “They’re gone,” is all she’ll say. And from this?

  I know, through bitter experience, not to push further.

  chapter thirty-two

  IMAGE: Limes and Beets

  IG: Romy_K [Arabian Sea, April 11]

  #NoScurvyHere #InterpretingStandUp

  179

  The air gets steadily warmer as the ship steams across the Arabian Sea. My path doesn’t cross Dominic’s at all over the next several days. The Wahash Mahat turns out to have excellent satellite Wi-Fi, which allows me to get caught up on my ExLibris reports, after I have rewritten them with a sunnier tone. It also allows me to keep an eye on Dominic’s Insta page, where I can see he’s still busy posting his culinary creations. Since the arrival of the Somalis, he’s expanded his repertoire to include more main courses, but desserts are still his—well, I was going to say bread and butter, but you get my drift. Unfortunately, as a result, I hear about him at every meal, as the crew celebrates each new treat that comes their way. You’d think these people had never been fed properly before. Since I find this nothing but annoying, I deliberately take a shot of the cook’s store of limes—and beets, oddly enough—rather than feature anything that Dom’s had a hand in.

  Aside from eating, I have taken to filling the long hours by interviewing any of the Somali passengers who are interested in talking with me. When I ask Sumaya for her help, she nods eagerly.

  “I’m the interpreter,” she says. “That’s why they let me come along. No one else’s English is as good as mine.”

  She points to a child aged about six, who is currently dashing across the deck, shrieking with delight. “Uuli’s is close,” she admits. “But she’s too little for the job.”

  I start by interviewing Sumaya herself, careful to avoid any mention of her family. I ask open-ended questions, mostly so she can steer the discussion. As a tactic, it works pretty well. I learn, not unexpectedly, almost nothing about Sumaya’s own story, apart from the fact that her ultimate goal is to reach her only remaining family, who have settled in Hong Kong. However, she’s eager to share information about the other members of the group. When I ask about the human smugglers who put the group on the Njeri, she is dismissive. />
  “When we set off, we had a little inflatable Zodiac in tow,” she explained. “One of the tahriibintas—uh, the closest English word I know is smuggler—he said it was for emergencies. But the first night, soon as it got dark, they jumped in and zoom away.”

  I stare at her, uncomprehending. “They left you? In the middle of the ocean?”

  “Mm-hmm. Our group has a midwife, and old Shamso, who’s a healer, but no captain. Jula has been on a boat before, and Fatima was a fisherman’s wife before her husband died, so she knew how to make the motor run, at least until the wood rotted, and it fell into the sea.”

  Her voice trails away for a moment, but then she brightens. “So, we were happy to see the Wahash come chugging by. Shamso was sure you would carry on, but you stopped!”

  She can’t seem to help throwing her arms around me in a hug.

  I hug her back with all I’ve got, and it’s a long few minutes before I can pull it together enough to talk again.

  Not unexpectedly, the stories I hear from the Somalis who agree to speak are mostly horrific—tales of being torn from their homes by warfare or forced into camps by starvation. But peppered throughout these nightmares, I begin to hear little gems of hope, and even humor. This, I’m sure, is entirely due to Sumaya’s involvement. She’s quick to laugh and is good at remembering tiny incidents that bring my interviewees a little joy in the telling.

  “Tell Romy about the pig,” she says to Fatima, the fisherman’s wife, and soon the three of us are nearly weeping with laughter over the story of a pig destined for slaughter who jumped out of the boat slated to take him to his doom, and instead swam back to the shore and bolted into the safety of the scrubby Lag Badana-Bushbush National Park lands.

  Later, we speak with a woman called Hodan, one of the refugees with a tiny infant tucked into her dirac. Hodan’s baby, a wee boy called Mohammed, was born on the beach, the night before the group set sail in the Njeri. Sumaya relates the story of the birth—how all the women present had gathered round and protected Hodan from male eyes. The birth had not been a secret, and Hodan’s husband is present on the ship, but Sumaya has Hodan giggling over how the smugglers had not known of the baby’s arrival until after the Njeri had departed.

  “They asked many rials for each soul aboard,” Sumaya relays. “But once we are at sea, they can’t ask for more.”

  Sumaya grins and says something to Hodan, who smiles back. “I told her Mohammed is our little bargain,” she explains to me, and we laugh together as the ship’s engine hums along beneath us.

  Sometime between interviews, I mention to Sumaya that while I don’t have any aunties, I’ve lived with my uncles since I was thirteen. She doesn’t meet my eye or ask me any questions, but something in the shift of her shoulders tells me that she’s registered this information, and filed it away.

  That evening, I sit on deck after dinner, near the Somalis but—mindful of Sumaya’s spying remark—not close enough to impose on anyone’s space. Listening to all the stories has given me more than enough material for my ExLibris reports. Since I’m now completely up to date, I turn to my e-mail and find a cheery note from Tommy, who has discovered my Instagram account. He uses the word thrilling to describe some of my shots, and even wishes me luck on the rest of the journey.

  This touches me. Tommy has been in Merv’s life since before I was born, and he has invariably been kind to me. But the relationship between us has always been more volatile than with my mellow Uncle Merv. It can’t have been easy to find room in their lives for a devastated teenager. In the good-cop/bad-cop dynamic of middle-aged gay men saddled with a teen, Tommy has usually been the one to give the stern admonition.

  Which is to say I consider his e-mail to be positively effusive.

  Continuing the good news is a message from Teresa Cipher. She writes to say, without a word of complaint, that she has fully paid our balances, allowing us to use our credit cards once again.

  This is such good news, I feel compelled to find Dominic and let him know, but when I seek him out in the kitchen, he’s not there. Before I have to get up the nerve to ask where the crew quarters are, I spot him sitting on a deck chair watching Sumaya, who is telling jokes.

  I walk up in time to hear Dominic cracking up and see Sumaya take a deep theatrical bow.

  “That was fantastic!” he says, applauding enthusiastically. “I mean, apart from the dead dik-dik story. I—uh—think that could possibly be misconstrued if you’re doing the bit in English.”

  Sumaya whips out a crumpled coil ring pad and jots down a few notes in pencil. “Okay—good. That’s feedback I can use.”

  “What have I missed?” I say, and Dominic startles a little before turning around in his chair to look up at me.

  “Well, hello stranger,” he says, getting to his feet. “What you missed was an awesome set.” He turns back to Sumaya, holding up his watch. “You were right—dead on three minutes of material.”

  She notes that down, too, before looking back up at me.

  “More than anything, I want to be a stand-up comic when I grow up,” she says.

  In all our conversations, this is the first I’ve heard of it. I’m pretty sure my mouth gapes, so I fake a cough to cover it. “A—a what?”

  Sumaya throws back her shoulders. “Yeah, you heard right.”

  “How do you even know what a stand-up comic is?” I ask, forgetting who I’m talking to.

  She gives me a disgusted look. “The internet, how else? Duh!”

  So. It turns out that this kid, like most of the kids I know, has grown up watching YouTube. Only—you know—in Somalia.

  “I love Ali Wong and Maysoon Zayid,” Sumaya tells me, after rolling her eyes at my ignorance. “And of course, Bilal Zafar, though I think most of his jokes would land better if he was a woman.”

  I don’t tell her the only name she’s mentioned that I’ve heard before is Ali Wong, and instead, make a mental note to look up the other two.

  “Can you believe this?” I hiss at Dominic as Sumaya runs off to join a group of kids.

  Dominic shakes his head. “Oh, trust me, speaking as a male with a Samoan-born mother, I understand exactly how something like this will be appreciated by Sumaya’s family.”

  “As in, not at all?”

  He shrugs. “Exactly. But she’s young, and I feel like it’s a way for her to work through things. Plus?” he says. “She’s funny.”

  Since Sumaya has shut down her one-teenager entertainment committee for the evening, I start to walk away before I remember my original errand.

  “Oh—I nearly forgot. I got an e-mail from Teresa, telling me she paid off our cards. She didn’t even sound upset. So, I guess we’re solvent again.”

  He grins. “Yeah, she wrote me too. But thanks for letting me know.”

  “No problem,” I mutter, and turn away, feeling foolish. Of course she would write to him too.

  “G’night,” Dominic calls from somewhere behind me. I give him a wave without looking back. I realize my feelings are smarting from missing Sumaya’s performance, when she’d taken the time to show it to Dominic. It bites me that she has any time at all for him, with his self-serving attitude.

  Beneath my feet, a small shift in the engines causes the iron floors to rattle. The Wahash Mahat is due in to port sometime overnight, and when I pass Ganesh on my way to my cabin, he tells me I can expect to wake up in Mumbai. “Closest to home I’ve been in a year,” he says cheerfully. This drives all thoughts of Dominic out of my head.

  The very name of the city makes a shiver run up my spine. Mumbai. A place so exotic, it never even crossed my mind that one day I might get to see it for real. As I climb a set of outside stairs and work my way around to my cabin, I get a glimpse of the group of refugees on the deck below, settling down for their last night on the ship. Remembering Sumaya’s complaint, I don’t stop to gaze
down upon them, though I really want to. I want to know what they’re thinking—are they afraid? Excited? From what Sumaya has told me, I’m certain that none of them has any idea of what their future will hold.

  Not that I have a clue about my own future either.

  It’s a long time before the deep thrum of the ship’s engines manages to lull me into sleep.

  chapter thirty-three

  IMAGE: Gateway to India

  IG: Romy_K [Arabian Sea, April 14]

  #PassagetoIndia #Mumbai

  150

  Mumbai is the next checkpoint on Phileas Fogg’s itinerary, except when he visited, of course, it was known as Bombay. The ship must have anchored sometime before dawn, because I awake to the absence of sound and movement. The engines have stopped and the cabin floor is completely still for the first time since we boarded in the Red Sea. I spent my last night on the ocean stowing my freshly washed laundry in my suitcase, so after leaping out of bed and brushing my teeth, I hurry to take in the view.

  India first leapt into my imagination courtesy of A Fine Balance. Rohinton Mistry’s book had been recommended by Oprah, and so therefore was immediately on Tommy’s reading list. I found it on the coffee table and was instantly transported into the brilliant colors and tragic losses of twentieth-century India through the eyes of Dina and Maneck and the rest. I remember trying to wrap my mind around the caste system and peppering my uncles with questions about untouchables and Brahmins. My literary love affair with India led me on a high-speed dash through the works of Salman Rushdie, V. S. Naipaul, and Anita Rau Badami. Of all the places Fogg visited on his journey, it is India I am most eager to see.

  In spite of the weight of my suitcase, I climb the iron steps up to the deck two at a time, excited to take in the sights and sounds of this ancient country. I can’t wait to lay my eyes on the largest city in the second largest—by population, anyway—nation in the world. The romance of this historic place can’t be denied, but even the logical side of my brain is excited. The systems they must have in place to ensure that everyone gets to school and work on time—the train schedules alone have to be enough to leave New York in the dust. I burst out onto the deck, and race over to the railing, desperate to take it all in.