by Tahmima Anam
Too quickly the sleep shift is over and it’s time to get back to the site. Pahari kid is about to get his first kick in the head, but he doesn’t know it, he just pulls on his uniform like he’s the sheikh himself. I have to throw water on Malek’s face to wake him up. He curses me and jumps down. The floor vibrates. Next shift is already waiting outside – it’s dark, and starting to cool down, the lucky bastards.
The bus drops us at the canteen. Hameed sits at the end of the table so people can bring him the letters. He’s the only one who can read. We pay him a few dirhams to tell us the news from home. He reads me letters from my darkie wife, she says, ‘Take care don’t forget to eat and does it get cold do you have a shawl?’ The others are always laughing – ‘She’s going to tell you how to wipe the shit from your ass,’ they say. I laugh with them. Stupid girl. I don’t write back.
Hameed says sometimes he changes the letters, because there’s only so much a man can take. Last week he read that Chottu’s mother had died. Poor bastard’s only been here a month, still cries every time he has to stand out in the baking hot, carrying bricks on his head. So Hameed told him his mother was well, much better, in fact, since he started sending money for her asthma medicine. Later, when Chottu gets hard like the rest of us, Hameed will tell him the truth. And by then he won’t even stop to take a breath.
The canteen manager is Filipino, so stingy we get a piece of bread, dal and a few vegetables, and even that they cut from our pay. Eid comes he gives us meat, but only bones and fat. One thing my uncle said was true – as much Coke as we want, straight out of a spout.
‘Tareque Bhai,’ Hameed says, ‘your sister has given birth to a healthy baby boy.’
‘Mashallah,’ Tareque Bhai says. Tareque has been here the longest and he has gone the religious way. Two ways a man can go here, in the direction of God or the direction of believing there is nothing up there but a sun that will kill you whether you pray five times or not.
We wash our hands and head to the site. They’ve turned the lights on, the buildings are winking. We come to the Mall of Dubai, which Tareque Bhai remembers was only a few years ago a pile of rubble, and Pahari kid says, ‘Why don’t we walk through here?’ And we all look at him like he was born yesterday. Even dumber than I thought.
‘You can’t go in there,’ I say.
‘Why, is there a law?’
‘Doesn’t have to be a law.’
‘I’m going in,’ he says, loose, like it’s the easiest thing in the world. ‘Anyone coming with me?’
I think Hameed’s going – those book-learning types always stick together – but it’s Malek that breaks off and joins him and I’m cursing myself for not grabbing him before it’s too late, telling him, don’t even smell that, it’ll kill you.
The rest of us make tracks, shaking our heads. This month, Hameed and me are in the hole. Two buildings going up side by side. We call them ‘Bride and Groom’. Bride is almost finished, Groom still in foundations. ‘Fifty-fifty,’ they tell us, fifty storeys for Bride, fifty for Groom. Who knows what they’ll name it once it’s finished? Burj-al-Arab-al-Sheikh-al-Maktoum-al-kiss-my-ass. Shit, if I said that aloud I would be finished. I giggle to myself and Hameed swings his arm around my shoulder, laughing with me even though he hasn’t heard the joke.
Bride and Groom make me think of darkie wife. She was the skinniest, ugliest girl I ever saw. I took one look at her and I swear a few tears came to my eyes. To this girl I was going to be tied for life? ‘Just do it,’ my mother said, ‘you won’t even see her for years. Who knows what will happen between now and then? But give us a grandchild, something to keep us company while you’re gone.’
I did my duty. Girl started to cry and I even felt a little sorry for her, though I was also thinking, two times I’ve done it and both times the girl has burst into tears – something wrong with me or what? Next day I took her to the cinema, but even Shah Rukh Khan couldn’t wipe the sad from her face.
We climb down and the bright lights make the hole turn blue-grey. The diggers are awake and we start to haul the dirt around, everything dry and sucked of life.
I pick up a basket. I wonder if Malek and Pahari have made it out of the mall without getting their eyes pulled out, and just as I’m imagining what it must have looked like, two guys in their blue jumpsuits staring at those diamond-necked swans of Dubai, I feel a jab in my side, and there’s Malek, laughing so hard I can see the gap where he lost a tooth last year after biting down on a piece of candy he bought from the Filipino. ‘Worth it,’ he’d said, ‘I never tasted anything so good.’ Now he’s telling me about the mall, the cold air that made your sweat dry to salt, and the high ceilings, and the women, the women, didn’t cover their legs, no, or even their breasts. ‘Breasts, man, like you wouldn’t believe.’ He slaps me hard on the back, shaking up my basket so I can taste the dirt. ‘Go to work,’ I say, but he’s too busy talking, and now some of the other boys, Hameed and even Tareque Bhai, have joined in, and I can see them all thinking it could be them next, them in the ice-cream cold of the mall, gaping and staring and taking a little slice of heaven back to the hole to chew over.
Worst of all, Pahari kid got hauled up to the top of Bride and nothing happened. Absolutely nothing. He swung like a monkey and laughed his way through the shift. Turns out those tribals like floating on top of buildings, hitched up so the whole world is spread below them.
For the next two weeks, every day, Malek and Pahari pass through the Mall of Dubai on their way to the site. They take their jumpsuits in a plastic bag and go in wearing trousers and T-shirts. One day Malek comes over to my bunk with a pair of sunglasses draped over his eyes. ‘Look,’ he says, ‘I’m James Bond now.’
I keep my head down. I have debts to pay, I can’t take the chance.
Once, only once, I am tempted. They are going to the cinema – not the cheap, rundown place by the camp, I’m talking a brand-new theatre, air con, seats like pillows. Pahari knows this guy at the ticket stall, been wooing him since day one, going up and talking about home, saying yaar this and my friend that. And finally the guy gave it up, late show on Monday nights usually empty, come in with the cleaning crew and sit at the back. Four people, max. Don’t get me fired or I’ll tell the cops everything, even about the girl.
Pahari has a girlfriend. Not even a darkie or a chink, a proper fair-faced blondie, a shopgirl who sells perfume. He leans over the counter and she smiles like she’s seen a film star. We huddle close to Pahari, trying to catch a whisper of that girl’s smell.
While we’re heaving bags of sand to Groom, Pahari and Malek start arguing about what to see. Malek says it has to be the new Dhoom. But our boy wants to see an English film. ‘What you’re going to do with an English film, you little shit?’ But Pahari’s not thinking about himself, he’s thinking of his girl, moving his hand in the dark, cupping her knee, fingering the edge of her skirt, and what’s going to make her open up, a movie with mummy-daddy and fake kissing and chasing around trees, or real humpty-dumpty, tongues and blonde hair and New York City?
Pahari has a point, but I’m just hauling the sand, keeping my head low. Wife has sent another letter. April and the waters are going up, up. Last week my brother, who works at a weaving mill, came home with a bad leg. Needs an operation. Can I send money? I shove the letter under my mattress.
Send money, send money. All anyone ever wants. I have to ask for an advance, so I crawl to foreman. He’s got a toothpick hanging from the side of his mouth, and he twirls it around and around. ‘You Bangladeshis,’ he says, ‘can’t hold on to your money, na. Look at this.’ He points to a big black book, lines of names. ‘Everyone borrowing, nobody saving. You’re going to drown, all of you.’
He opens his mouth, toothpick falls out, frayed and shining with spit. Should I pick it up? I stare at my feet.
‘How much you want?’
I don’t know why, but I don’t say anything for a long time. Pahari and Malek are going to the movies tonight. He’s go
ing to lean back on that chair and swing his arm over his girl. He’s going to sip Coke through a straw and the music will breeze through him, free and liquid.
Then I say, ‘I have been loyal, sir.’
Foreman leans back. Chair squeaks like a dying mouse.
‘Sure, you never stole.’
‘Yes, sir. I always do what you say.’
I lift my chin a little and he knows what I’m talking about, the little cover-ups, taking a few bags of cement off the truck, losing a little cash. The boss, the sheikh with three wives, always wearing a prayer cap and telling us to call him Master Al-Haj because he goes to Saudi every year and kisses the Prophet’s grave – he wouldn’t miss a few things here and there. A sack of rivets, a few pots of paint were nothing to him.
So you’re telling me what, na, that I should be grateful? Fresh toothpick in his mouth. Now I’m thinking about Megna, her crazy thick river of hair, how she smelled so good and told me I should be a proud man. Nothing to be proud of, I always said.
‘Yes, sir,’ I find myself saying. ‘Loyalty like that, it doesn’t come easy.’
‘And I suppose you want something for your trouble?’ He’s getting up, he’s coming towards me, he’s going to give me something, a little money and a slap on the shoulder, friendly like. You have to ask for it, I think. All you have to do is ask. Foreman’s close now, he takes my chin in his hand, lifts me up so we’re eye to eye, and for a minute I see him staring at my lips and I think he’s going to kiss me. He opens his mouth. And then he spits, toothpick flying out of his mouth, right there on my face.
‘You stinking bitch, fuck off. You blackmailing me?’ He makes a fist, sends it to my cheek. I fall, cursing Megna, her hair and her stupid wisdom. I try to make myself small. He kicks me. I feel his shoe in my stomach. I double up, he kicks me again. My face explodes. A tooth comes loose. I taste blood.
‘Who pulled you out of the shithole you call a country?’
‘You.’
‘Louder!’
‘You!’
‘Who gave you a job when you came crawling?’
‘You.’
‘Say it.’
‘You!’
And then I make the begging sounds, tell him about my brother, about his leg, how they make him sit in those clay pits for eighteen, twenty hours a day, feeding silk into the loom, the cold grabbing his thighs. ‘Please, foreman,’ I say, ‘forgive me.’
‘Piece of shit. Get out.’
Pahari and Malek come back from the cinema with smiles so big I can see their back teeth. I show off my broken face.
‘What happened to you?’ Malek asks.
‘Foreman. What you get for thinking big thoughts.’
‘You?’
‘Ya, me. Surprise.’
Pahari’s looking at my face, my swollen eye.
‘Uglier than ever,’ I say, trying to laugh.
He’s shaking his head. ‘That’s not right. They can’t do that.’
‘They can do whatever the fuck they like. It’s their country.’
‘We’ll go to the police. He can’t just beat you.’
He makes me cheerful with his baby talk. ‘It’s nothing,’ I say. ‘Sit. Tell me about the cinema.’ I pat the bunk. ‘Come, Malek.’ But he’s pacing the tiny corridor between our beds.
‘Bastard, bastard,’ he mutters.
I turn to Pahari. ‘So what did you see?’
‘English film,’ he says, raising his eyebrows. ‘Lots of shooting.’
‘Your girl enjoyed?’
He lies back on the bunk, raises his hands to his face. ‘Shit, man.’
I could almost remember that feeling, the first time I tasted a woman’s mouth. ‘Be careful,’ was all I could say. ‘They put you under a spell and then you’re finished.’
‘So what you’ll do about your brother?’ Malek is squeezing himself onto my bunk.
‘Brother will have to wait.’
‘Let me give you the money.’
‘What do you have?’
‘I have, I have.’
‘No, brother. I won’t eat your rice.’ I can’t help it, my tongue keeps going to the missing tooth, the gap made of jelly. Malek tries to press me but I can’t take his money.
‘Oh, I almost forgot, brother. We brought you a gift.’ Pahari takes a packet of candy out of his pocket. I chew with my good side.
‘Sleep now,’ I say to them both. ‘It will last longer if you dream about it.’
Next day, foreman comes to the camp. ‘I have a job,’ he says.
Bride is almost finished, she just needs her windows cleaned. Sheikh Abdullah Bin-Richistan is coming to cut a ribbon and everything has to be perfect. ‘We’re running out of time and job needs to be done in a hurry.’ ‘I’ll go,’ Pahari says, even though it’s higher, much higher, than he’s ever been, but he wants to take his girl out, proper restaurant this time, with people smiling and asking if he wants ice in his Coke and bringing plates to the table.
‘I want double overtime,’ he says. Foreman smiles and says, ‘All right,’ and then, because I see something in the boss’s eye, I raise my hand too, and before you know it, Malek is watching us drive off in a truck. Foreman takes us into Bride’s lobby, empty and shining, and I give myself a little smile, because I know I put this thing together with my own hands, me and Malek and the other boys, working through the devil’s breath of summer. Pahari is looking around, dreaming of when he’s going to own the whole place. They’ve taken off the elevator on the outside, but there’s another one at the back of the building, where all the cooks and cleaners and guards will come and go, and we’re going up, up, all the way. ‘Wear this,’ foreman says, handing us a pair of hard hats. Then he slides open a big door, and we are on the roof of the building, flat and open to the sky. I wonder if Pahari’s thinking it wasn’t such a good idea after all, but he’s not one to admit it. When I put my hand on his back he shrugs it away, moving with speed to where foreman is pointing, to a little balcony hanging over the edge of the building.
Clips and ropes fix us to the sides of the balcony. ‘I’m going to lower you all the way down,’ foreman says. ‘You do one floor at a time, slowly. Then you push the button, and you go up.’ He shows me how to work it. I see there isn’t anything holding us to the side of the building; we’re only attached at the top. It’s going to sway. I look over at Pahari again, wondering if I should cut out of the whole thing, but he’s grinning like it’s Eid. ‘Don’t worry,’ foreman says. And he winks.
On the way down Pahari hangs on the edge and makes a strange, low sound which I think is panic but then he turns around and says, ‘FLYING!’ The bastard is laughing, holding his arms out and shaking his shoulders around like he’s hero in a filmi dance sequence. The windows are like mirrors, we can see our reflections. He puts his arm around me and we are floating down, angels from heaven, Superman and God and people who don’t eat shit for a living.
Every window we clean, we go up one more flight. We’re shining up that Bride and she’s looking good. There’s a wind up here, the balcony moves a little, then a bit more as we move higher. Now we’re holding on with one hand and cleaning with another. We wash, I push the button, we go up. Wind gets stronger.
‘I’m going to marry her,’ Pahari tells me.
A man marrying for love. Too good for me, but nothing’s too good for Pahari. He wants everything.
‘Do it,’ I say. ‘Is she going to convert?’
‘I’m Christian, you idiot.’
All this time, and I didn’t even know. That was my problem. I thought everyone was the same, but it didn’t have to be that way. Even I didn’t have to be the same. I could be different. The wind dies down and we have a moment of quiet so I can think about all the ways I could be different. And then, before my dreaming starts making me big, wind picks up again. This time, it comes with sand. Minute later the air is thick with it, so thick I can only just make out Pahari on the other side, holding on with both arms. ‘It will pas
s,’ I shout, swallowing a mouthful of the desert. ‘Don’t worry. Hold on.’
We wait, turning our backs to the wind, becoming small, small as we can. I crawl to Pahari and I grab his jumpsuit, put my arm through his arm. We groan as the sand comes into our ears, into our clothes, the devil’s spit. The balcony lifts, higher on one side and then another. I pull the lever, but we can only go up, not down. Only one way, so I climb us up, slow as I can. Close to the top and suddenly it shudders to a stop, and I push and push but nothing happens. I crawl to the other side, see if I can make the ropes move. I can’t. I ask myself if this is the time to start praying, but no God was going to hear me now, not after all the curses I had sent in His direction. ‘It will pass, it will pass,’ I keep saying, but Pahari can’t hear me now, he’s on the other side, and the wind is too high, and before I know it, we’re going back and forth like a swing, and it’s everything I’ve got to keep my arm around the bars of the platform, and I do just like what I teach those boys when they first get here, just focus on a small piece of the building, not the tall of it falling away below me, just this little piece in front of me, and I will the moment to stand very still, and then I see Pahari, his arm has come loose, and the ropes that tie him to the machine are floating free, and the sound of him falling is swallowed by the hiss of the desert, that shape-shifting snake.
