Eighty Days to Elsewhere

by kc dyer

  Then he gives a mirthless little laugh, and releases me. “You can,” he says. “But it’s not going to change anything.”

  “Yes it will,” I snap back, glancing up the aisle. Through the glass door at the end of the car, I can see a woman holding one of those little flags used for corralling tourists. She’s standing in the aisle, blocking my view, instructing her tour group.

  I stand, uncertain for a second, then slump back into my seat.

  “She saw two brown people, one of them wearing a hijab, sitting with a white woman,” Dom says quietly. “And that frightened her. If you chase her down and shout at her, it will cement her views that we are a threat.”

  “But we are not a freaking threat,” I say, still furious. “That’s just racist and ignorant.”

  Dom gives another dry chuckle. “Well, you’re not a threat. At least, if she met you alone on the street at home, you wouldn’t be. But sitting with us? You clearly don’t understand what kind of a threat we represent. So you’re the ignorant one, in her mind.”

  “How do you even know her mind?” I hiss at him. “She’s an American. Our nation is made up of people of every color and religion. It was founded on freedom of religion, for Christ’s sake.”

  Sumaya turns her shocked face away from the window. “Don’t swear, Romy. It is very bad to swear. It is blasphemy.”

  I take a deep breath and then squeeze her hand. “I’m not a practicing Christian, sweetie,” I say. “It’s not blasphemy if you’re not practicing.”

  She shrugs. The train has entered the city limits, and the trees around us are suddenly sprouting high-rises. “I am not Christian either, but I wouldn’t say it. It is disrespectful.” She pulls her hand away from mine, and cranes her neck to get a shot of a high-rise towering above the tracks.

  When I glance back at Dom, the expression of wariness is gone from his face, but he looks tired.

  “Look,” he says. “If this is a fight you want, good. But you need to know it’s not only here on the train. I think it’s more obvious to you right now, maybe because you’re not at home. Or because you’re with us. But this is nothing new, okay? It’s an everyday thing. You learn to choose your battles.”

  “I get that. But, I feel there’s got to be something I can do. Not saying anything to that woman feels like acceptance. Like the way she thinks is okay.”

  He shrugs and gestures out the window. “Let’s focus on what we’re here to do. We can talk about this later, if you want, but now? We’re here in Hong Kong. Let’s find Sumaya’s auntie. That’s our priority.”

  My chance to make a point with the tourists is rendered moot, when at that moment, the train stops and the entire tour group vanishes out the door. Seconds later, we are moving again, and I take a deep breath and try to push the American woman’s behavior out of my mind. The train hurtles into the heart of the city now, buildings and colors flashing past. We fly by what looks like a giant casino, with English and Cantonese characters running ticker tape style along the roofline. I catch sight of letters spelling both “Rom” and “Dom” mixed in with the Cantonese characters, which makes me laugh out loud, relieving a little of the earlier tension. I’ve never seen my name in lights before. I mean, what are the chances? But by the time I grab Dominic’s arm to point it out to him, we are long past, and sweeping into the final station.

  The announcement overhead reminds us to collect up all our belongings, and we start doing just that. Inside the tunnel, the train slows and briefly plunges into darkness, and it’s a moment before the lights flicker on. Sumaya drops her head to rummage in the small bag Dominic picked up for her in Kolkata. As the brakes give a final squeal, she pulls out the heavily creased letter she’s carried all this way and waves it at me joyfully.

  “We’re almost there!” she says. “And when we find her, Auntie Nkruna can fix your hair!”

  “Tall order,” mutters Dom, as he reaches up to pull our bags down from the rack.

  Tucking my offending tresses behind my ears, I poke him in the ribs, scoop up my suitcase, and follow an excited Sumaya onto the train platform.

  chapter forty-five

  IMAGE: Hong Kong City

  IG: Romy_K [Hong Kong, April 16]

  #VerticalCity #LookUp

  6005

  Having been most of the way around the world, I’m starting to feel like there must be few surprises left, but Hong Kong is astonishing. This city is entirely—vertical. I mean, obviously I’m completely comfortable in a big city. It makes me feel like home. So you’d think I could close my eyes a little to the heat—or imagine that it’s the middle of July—and this would feel like New York, right?

  Wrong.

  I’ve never seen any place like this. To begin with, the city itself is tucked into the most scenic location ever, squeezed between soaring mountains and the sea. The buildings go up forever, many with enclosed balconies jutting out at odd angles, like worn, wooden blocks, carelessly stacked. Every surface is strung with wires and jerry-rigged fans and today’s laundry. The noise and the lights and sirens are the same as any big city I’ve seen so far. But—Hong Kong is different. The energy of the place, even in this kind of heat, is something else. Most of the men engaged in street labor of any description are shirtless. And the scaffolding—even up the highest of skyscrapers—is made of bamboo.

  There was bamboo scaffolding in Mumbai too, but far fewer skyscrapers. Hong Kong carries a completely different vibe than Singapore too. What I saw of that city, admittedly mostly from the air, seemed tremendously modern, whereas Hong Kong, for all its tall buildings, radiates history.

  According to Sumaya’s letter, her auntie’s salon is in the Central District of Hong Kong. Half of the city sits on an island, separated by Victoria Harbour from Kowloon, which makes up the mainland side. Central District is on the island half, and we are able to take our train all the way through. We climb the stairs from the station into the heat and chaos of downtown at rush hour. Sumaya turns on her heel, spinning in a slow circle with her head tilted back.

  She doesn’t say a word, but slowly places her hands over her ears.

  Meanwhile, Dominic has collected a free tourist map from a stand near the station exit. It’s meant to show the local bus lines, but it also has most of the main streets labeled in English.

  “It doesn’t look far,” he says, tracing an admittedly convoluted route between the station and the address on Nkruna’s letter. “Like maybe half a mile?”

  “In which—direction?” asks Sumaya, doubtfully. She points across the street. “If it is that way, we have to go straight up the hill.”

  She looks back at me, round-eyed. “What do they keep in all these tall buildings?”

  “Businesses, I guess,” I say. Watching her reaction, I realize that this is likely the largest city she has ever seen. Most of her views of India came from inside a train, and seeing a city from the air, as we did Singapore, has much less impact than the full-frontal assault of mid-city Hong Kong. “And people live here too.”

  I reach across to give her a hug. “This is new to me too,” I whisper. “I live in a big city, but this one is very different.”

  Dom consults his phone. “The mountain ranges of Hong Kong are famous for hiking,” he reads aloud. “And while many see the city as a shopper’s paradise, Hong Kong is also a tropical island, dotted in steep climbs.”

  He looks up at us. “I think we go this way,” he says, shouldering his pack and pointing up the hill. “Get ready for one of those famous steep climbs.”

  “I seriously had no idea,” I mutter, scooping up my suitcase. We clamber up the stairs to an overpass, which crosses a freeway beneath us. The overpass is open to the air, but roofed, so it’s cooler than the street, with a breeze blowing across from the water. Strangely enough, the length of the entire walkway is lined in sheets of cardboard. Old boxes, broken down and tidily placed
inside the line of shade. And on the boxes? Women.

  Hundreds of them, just in this walkway alone.

  “Are they selling something, maybe?” I ask Dom, as we hurry past.

  Most of the women sit in small groups, all tidily dressed, and many with their shoes off and neatly placed to one side. I see a few packed lunches here and there, but no products to sell. Mostly animated chatting, to tell you the truth.

  “They look more like they are having a picnic,” mutters Dom.

  “This many?” I ask. “And why here? Why not in a park?”

  “No idea,” he says. “People sat on the streets all over Mumbai. How is this different?”

  “I don’t know,” I mutter. “It just is.”

  Sumaya, whose bag is admittedly lighter than either of ours, trots on ahead. The hot afternoon sun slants between the buildings, and sweat is pouring off me. After a few more blocks straight uphill, I raise my hand.

  “Can we . . .” is all I can manage, but Dominic, whose shirt is completely soaked and sticking to his back, stops at once.

  He whistles without apparent effort, piercing through all ambient noise. Half a block ahead of us, Sumaya stops and looks around. When he waves at her, she trots back good-naturedly.

  “You need to stay with us,” he says quietly. “I know you’re excited, but this is too big a city. You—we all—could get lost so easily.”

  Sumaya shrugs. “Mumbai was bigger,” she says. “Also dirtier.”

  “Yeah, well, we weren’t running through the streets of Mumbai,” he counters. “At least, not after we found the train station.”

  Sumaya’s smile falls away, and suddenly her warm hand is clasping my own.

  She’s taken Dominic’s hand too. “I will pay you back,” she says fervently, looking between us. “Both of you. I would never be here without you.”

  Dominic swings his free arm around her in a slightly awkward squeeze. “That’s not true, and we all know it,” he says. “You, my girl, are what my mom calls pono aina. It means—uh—basically, a force of nature.”

  As he falls into step beside Sumaya again, I notice a red directional arrow on the wall over his head. Beside the arrow, a sign reads “Central Mid-levels Escalator, under repair. Detour to Stanley Street.”

  “What’s that?” I say as we carry on upwards, trudging past the sign.

  Dom pauses to stick his head behind the hoarding the sign is pinned to. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” he says, stepping back out. “They actually have an escalator running up the side of this hill.”

  Sumaya points to a tattered schematic stapled to the hoarding. “He’s right,” she says, pointing at a dotted line perpendicular to the streets. “On here it looks like it climbs almost to the top.”

  I groan and use the sodden sleeve of my t-shirt to wipe the sweat out of my eyes. “Our luck it’s broken.”

  A young man, staring at his phone as he strides past, glances back over his shoulder. “Only this segment is under renovation,” he says, not breaking stride. “Up there, past Stanley Street, it’s working again.”

  And sure enough, he is correct. Less than a block uphill, the hoarding ends, and after crossing a narrow laneway, we hop on.

  This section is more akin to one of those moving sidewalks in large supermarkets that allow you to ride down to the parking garage with your grocery cart. Personally, I’ve never had a car to park in one of those garages, but I admit to riding the thing a few times, just for the experience. As we glide upwards, the standard protocol soon makes itself clear. Those who choose to be carried upward—and I count myself among this number—do so by standing to the right. Those who are crazy enough to want to accelerate their climb, do so to the left.

  I have the luxury of standing to the right for all of ten seconds before Sumaya casts her imploring gaze on me.

  “All right,” I grumble and fall into line behind them, marching past the sensible people who know when to take advantage of technology.

  It’s still vastly superior to running strictly on Romy power, so I don’t complain too much.

  Soon, I don’t have the wind to complain, because the gently sloping moving sidewalk is replaced by increasingly steeper escalators as the incline of the hill increases. Later, I will discover that the entire system has twenty separate escalators and three elevated walkways. But in the moment, I aim my gaze down at Sumaya’s feet and follow her upwards.

  Over our heads, each segment is protected with a rain cover, and the steeper they get, the more stunning the view behind us grows. Hong Kong slowly spreads out below our feet, but also still towering above us. It’s astonishing.

  The walls we pass are alive with neon signs and billboards and even trees—fully leafed trees—whose root systems form a gnarled mass intertwined within the brick walls. I’ve lost count of the number of escalators we’ve scaled when Sumaya stops suddenly. I plow right into her, and the force of my momentum causes her to stumble forward. Dom, his reflexes in better shape than my own, scoops a hand under one of her arms, and we all step to the side at the top of this section.

  “You okay?” he says. I start to make a smart-ass retort, and then I see her face. Her lips have gone strangely pale, and her eyes are wide as saucers. I turn to see that she’s pointing at what looks like a standard storefront. The place is covered in chicken feet logos, and suddenly the air is full of the warm, familiar smell of roasting poultry.

  My stomach rumbles.

  “Do you need something to eat?” I ask, when Dom nudges me in the ribs. “Not that one, Romy. Next door.”

  And next door, of course, is a salon, called African Beauty Nails ’n Hair.

  Suddenly Sumaya’s small, perfect hand is in my sweaty one. “I can’t believe it,” she whispers. “I can’t believe we found it.”

  Dom beams at her, squeezes her other hand, and as a team we head inside.

  chapter forty-six

  IMAGE: Mid-levels Escalator

  IG: Romy_K [Hong Kong, April 16]

  #UphillTechnologyFTW #AfricanBeautyAbsent

  6271

  Nkruna isn’t there.

  At first glance, at least, I don’t see anyone who fits the description of Sumaya’s auntie. As we crowd into the doorway, all the heads in the place turn. It’s a small salon, with three chairs set up, each in front of a mirror. Two of the chairs are filled with customers, each with a stylist, and a young girl stands at the back with a broom, sweeping hair into a pile on the floor. The scent of hairspray lingers in the air.

  Sumaya looks like she’s forgotten how to speak, so I jump in.

  “We’re looking for Nkruna,” I say to the stylist working closest to the door. A diminutive Chinese woman with pale purple hair and a lower lip piercing, she’s giving her client an elaborate blowout. “Nkruna Warsame?”

  “Ismail,” whispers Sumaya. “Nkruna Ismail.”

  “She not here,” the woman says, flicking off her hairdryer to answer me. Her eyes turn to Dom, and she gives him a slow perusal from head to toe and then back again. Her eyes linger on where his sweat-soaked shirt clings to his torso.

  “You need a haircut?” she says, her voice suddenly breathy. “I give you the best haircut you ever have.”

  I quell a sudden urge to step between them.

  Dom clears his throat. “No—no haircut. We’re here to meet up with Nkruna.”

  “What?” says the second stylist. She looks like a slightly younger, less purple-haired version of the first. She’s wearing a vivid orange smock over her clothes. “Nkruna’s coming back?”

  “Wonderful!” says Purple Hair. “How long she stay?”

  “Wait till she sees how good my . . .”

  “Just a minute!” I bellow, cutting off Orange Smock in mid flow. “Coming back from where? Where is she?”

  Purple Hair begins an elaborate backcombing op
eration on her client. “Oh, she leave.”

  Sumaya staggers back, her face blank and shocked, like she’s been dealt a physical blow. Dom wraps an arm around her shoulders to steady her.

  “Leave?” he says. “What do you mean leave? Isn’t this her salon?”

  “Mine now,” says Purple Hair proudly. “She been gone, what—nearly two years, Fan?” she adds, turning to Orange Smock, who nods obligingly.

  “Two years?” Sumaya whispers. “That is not possible.”

  “Uh—well, two years in August. Her sister sponsored her. So, my sister and me, we buy the place, eh?” She points proudly at Fan in her orange smock. “We not African, but we keep name. Good reputation.”

  “Nkruna taught me to braid,” adds Fan, who is, in fact, busily braiding as she speaks. “She was the best.”

  “I thought you said you were the best,” says her customer, wincing a little.

  “I am. ’Cause I was taught by Nkruna.”

  Between the interaction among the stylists and now the clients, I’m having trouble following. “Wait a minute,” I say. “Her sister sponsored her to do what?”

  “To emigrate. That’s why she leave.”

  “To emigrate where?”

  The women look at each other and then chorus: “Canada.”

  “Canada?” My heart sinks. “Where in Canada? It’s a big country.”

  Fan shrugs. Her fingers have not stopped moving once over the course of the entire conversation. “Ahh—I forget name. City, but not big like Hong Kong.”

  “Oh, come on,” snaps Dom, his patience breaking. “We’ve come a very long way to find her. Someone must know.”

  “She cannot have gone to Canada,” Sumaya says, finally finding her voice. “She would have written to me. She would have told me.”

  Purple Hair pauses in her backcombing and peers at Sumaya’s face in the mirror. “Who you?” she asks, and then suddenly drops the comb into the lap of her startled patron. “Not Sumaya! Not little niece Sumaya?”