Letter to George Clooney

by Debra Adelaide

  I was waiting for the woman in front who only had two jars of instant coffee (I was also holding a bulky kilo packet of coffee beans) and thinking simultaneously, instant coffee and why didn’t she go to the express lane? when I realised that all these celebrities were people I had never heard of, literally never, and I pride myself on taking more than a passing interest in popular culture. And the urge to write to you was so strong that, having manoeuvred my way this far along the checkout, I was tempted to toss the load right there and walk out and go straight to my desk. I’ve done that before, at the checkout. Once when it was torturously slow and the clock seemed to be leaping toward three-thirty and I only had five minutes to get through. To race out the door and make the few blocks downtown to pick up my child who would be finishing up school any second, while the man two places in front’s card had a problem and the woman directly behind him had a pyramid of bags containing, I could see with growing horror, one capsicum here, two zucchini there, a handful of baby spinach leaves, three bananas, a pineapple, a cos lettuce, a parsnip, a single lime for goodness sake (why bother?). And I could see all the weighing and scanning and swiping ahead of me and the argument over the fact that the pineapples were on special or the operator asking were these Braeburns or Fuji apples and then, the ultimate horror, me noticing the operator wearing one of those large cheerful-coloured badges that make one simply wilt: I Am In Training To Serve You Better.

  I lost it, George, that time. I’m afraid I simply dumped the lot and pushed through and raced out and along the street and if I doubted my haste and impatience then the sight of Essa’s six-year-old face brightening like a pansy when I arrived at the school gate with my chest rasping was worth it. I have told her many times she will never be alone and I’m keeping my word if it kills me.

  There was no urgency this time. My letter to you could wait. I had a good half-hour until the first of my clients arrived, and my office was only across the road and up a bit, conveniently situated in the community centre, which is next to the library. Presuming my next client would arrive. Many of them are still nervous. They think that anyone in authority is potentially going to steal their children and gouge their eyes out. Imagine! A million miles away from Farchana or Geneina. Why would they think that? And I am not even an authority.

  Still, I fiddled in the checkout queue, impatient, restless. I am never equipped for these excursions. You would think I’d have learned by now. After all, I’ve done the shopping plenty of times. I estimate I’ve gone to the supermarket at least twice a week for the last three years. But I still haven’t learned to bring enough bags, take a trolley, bring a book for when there’s a slow queue. Other people have no problems: they read the magazines, they make calls, they play games on their phones or check their Facebook pages. I just stand there, thinking. Wasting my time. Why are the celebrities always in bikinis? Is it always summer and are people always at the beach in celebrity land?

  And there you were. Sporting a beard now, I see. Of course I’ve seen your face on magazines before, and everywhere else – the TV, the movies. Only last month I saw your new film at the local cinema. Yes, we get the latest releases here, even though it’s a small building with retro posters and unreconstructed choc-tops (I’ve learned about choc-tops now, and pavlova, and thongs, just as I learned about Bondi Beach and Vegemite before I arrived) and your face was on a poster out the front. The first time I saw your face on a magazine – and it is hard to believe that this is so – I didn’t realise it was you.

  My clients need not be so suspicious. It is true that until the airport in Cairo most of us had never met, but they should have had no reason to distrust me. I had seen those eyes sliding away before, especially from the men. The look that says they know what has been done. Perhaps it is the fact that Essa is somewhat lighter and finer boned. The narrowness of her nose. Perhaps it is that I am alone with her, while they are mostly mothers with three, five children, some with aunts and sisters, even if they have no husbands. This was a family program, and I slipped in with my command of English and my simple good luck. If luck is the word for it, considering my only friend had disappeared and my daughter would always be without grandparents, aunts, anyone but me. Perhaps it is that word always gets around, even in a refugee camp of over ten thousand people. Perhaps it is just that the story is always the same story. I should remember that, for it is the truth and has been for many years.

  I waited for ten minutes but, as I suspected, the client, Mrs Abeche, did not appear. I went to the door of my office and looked up and down the street, wrapping my coat closer for warmth. I will never get used to the cold in this place, though the wind was especially sharp today. Mrs Abeche is very busy these days. She has four children, all at school now, and she and her mother intend selling pickled chillies and chutneys, and every time I feel a little down I think of her, not a word of English until recently, and how I even had to reassure her that the stove would work without her placing lit kindling in the oven. Mrs Abeche has now bought several new saucepans and boxes of jars. She would like me to write some flyers so her oldest boy can take them around to all the stores.

  After a cup of tea I thought about returning to the supermarket and getting some chilli powder and turmeric, some peanuts and green beans, and then I decided not. There would not be any point because Essa would refuse to eat a curry and it was Friday in any case. She would remember that I had promised her pizza. When would that novelty fade?

  Let me tell you about my supermarket, though I’m not telling you anything you don’t know. Or am I? Sometimes I wonder about this. You strike me as the sort of man who would do his own grocery shopping, at least some of the time, and know how to find his way from frozen fish (not that you would buy any) to kitchen utensils or personal care products. But perhaps I am ill informed. Prone to make assumptions. Near your home at Los Angeles, or more likely the one on Lake Como, there would be a supermarket, the equivalent of our town’s IGA, with its preprepared gourmet food section and its organic vegetable display and the carefully placed Asian cuisine shelves, integrated within the sauces and the pickled and preserved goods, but still segregated, when you think about it – tinned coconut milk, laksa paste, prawn crackers and palm sugar and wasabi sauce all stacked next to each other. There would be the Turkish food, the Middle Eastern section. Perhaps the nostalgic English section with its HobNobs and pork crackling. Even in our small IGA there is a Mexican section. And nearly an entire aisle of Italian food. You might have noticed there is never a section for African cuisine. It may be that the very idea is some form of joke, a kind of culinary oxymoron, amongst grocery retailers. Perhaps I should ask the manager here, Brett. We’re on quite good terms now.

  Sometimes in the supermarket I buy nothing much. It is enough to roam with my string bag (old habits, George) and gaze at the labels. I might pick up an avocado and press to test its ripeness, or sniff the base of a pineapple to gauge the level of its sweetness, but really I am just pretending and sometimes I return home with only a loaf of bread and the milk. The first time, I could buy nothing. I was unprepared for the abundance. You might laugh at this (I’ve heard about your Thanksgiving dinner deep fried turkeys, your mounds of lobsters and the amazing towering fruit displays at your parties). But believe me, it was abundant. I walked into the premises on Pioneer Street and smelled the fresh baked goods in Bread and Cakes that is situated as you go in. Which is really very illogical, for this is followed by the fruit and vegetable section, and if you take the route imposed by the supermarket designers, you end up loading your tinned beans and tomato paste and bottles of mineral water on top of your strawberries and hamburger buns. That is very stupid. So wasteful. I should ask Brett about this too.

  The first day, I closed my eyes and breathed in the smells, but I couldn’t keep walking around pretending I would be buying. Soap powder, cloves (or maybe star anise?) and the distinct smell of overripe rockmelon. Coffee and dog food, that dry roasty smell despite the packaging. I could smell all
this although the air conditioning seemed intended to suck all life out of the air. The cold smell of the meat display, just a whiff of fat. And the bread. Doughnuts. Ciabatta. Helga’s Traditional White Sliced. You do detect these things even though for years your nostrils may have been filled with nothing but dust. I felt very stupid and no doubt I looked it to the other shoppers and the checkout staff, who that day, I recall, were both In Training To Serve Me Better, for they stared at me as I very slowly edged my way through all eight aisles, turning my head this way and that, gazing at the variety, the extent, the abundance, which so overwhelmed me I could buy nothing. I could only look, then leave.

  That’s not quite true. On my way out I spotted a small yellow toy duck, on a key chain. It was attached to some kids’ magazine at the checkout. Essa was still young enough then and she reached out for it and grabbed it and didn’t want to let it go, so I bought it, and threw away the magazine, and she clutched the duck tight to her chest. She still has it, attached to her schoolbag. The girl at the checkout made a point of looking into my empty string bag even though I would have thought it quite evident it was empty. Why then had I brought it, she was obviously thinking. I placed Essa down to open my new purse and pay for the duck toy – it was four dollars ninety-nine, I remember it exactly as I groped around for the final four cents until I realised they didn’t exist – and wondered myself. We had already been provided with the basics. I was really just testing myself. And why did I fail the test? I don’t know, George, I really don’t know. It wasn’t as simple as the idea that if I were to fill my string bag with sweet potatoes, cherry tomatoes and grapes, frozen chicken drumsticks and tubs of flavoured yoghurts and orange juice from a dizzying choice of pulp-free, unsweetened, organic or regular, I would be guilty for those back home who I knew were still starving. There is not the slightest scrap of logic in that, and I knew besides that I’d had my mouthful of dirt for long enough, so had Essa, and I had every right to stuff my bag until it bulged with the most expensive chevre in ash or the punnets of raspberries I had spotted, and the King Island triple cream to go with them. If food is earned, I’ve prepaid, for an entire lifetime. Still, I couldn’t even buy us a tin of baked beans or a couple of bananas.

  So no, it was not a moral dilemma. It was just so visually, sensually, overwhelming. I needed to put my toe in the water first. When I returned, I remember standing in front of the shelves of hair shampoos and conditioners with a smile stamped on my face. I examined a tub of pink shimmering Hair Repair Leave-In Treatment, with protein and silk extracts. It actually seemed possible. I would have believed it contained ground diamonds, liquid gold, anything. By the third or fourth visit I stopped only looking and started to buy. Back at our flat the bar fridge in those first few days held half a dozen eggs, the most of a litre of milk, a container of something called Flora which I took to be butter, a packet of sliced cheese and a soup pack of vegetables (three carrots, two sticks of celery, an onion, two potatoes, a sprig of parsley and a beef stock cube), while on the kitchen bench sat a plastic bowl of apples and oranges. The cupboard held a box of Weetbix, a packet of raw sugar, a jar of honey and another of peanut butter, tins of tomatoes and apricots. There was a sliced loaf on the bench. Sausages in the tiny freezer. It was more food than I could remember having in one place for a long time. I could make it last us forever.

  Essa at that stage was eating pretty much nothing but sweetened boiled rice, but I persuaded her with that white bread and honey. You know how children are – or perhaps you don’t – their food fads. There is a kid in Essa’s class who only eats peanut butter sandwiches. And as for Vegemite, I knew about this substance before I arrived because I did my homework, but you have probably never heard of it. You spread it over your toast. It is salty, curiously palatable. Essa took one sniff and practically vomited. Her friend Tabitha also rejects it, though I suspect that is more to do with her mother’s views on diet because the local children seem to like it very much, and amongst people there is an affection for the brand that I can’t quite pin down. I still keep a jar in the cupboard and have managed to persuade my compatriots, who understandably are given to overindulge in everything, that they only need to take a tiny scrape. The ones who want to integrate. Some of them of course have no such desire to become so local.

  Tabitha actually now eats a few other things, all of which her mother doubts for nutritional value. Tabitha and Essa have become friends, which is to say they sit together after school in front of the TV, and in these circumstances a shared bowl of something sweet or salty is the glue that keeps a friendship together. Occasionally they circle around each other’s rooms. Essa’s is full of dolls and plastic toys. The people here were very generous in that respect. She is rather disdainful of the dolls and Tabitha has gone home a few times with some spoils. Tabitha also eats potato chips, which I served one afternoon as a treat, and she will drink chocolate milk which I produced to celebrate the arrival of her new baby brother, just recently. I had told Tabitha’s mother she was welcome to stay after school, if that helped. Kylie agreed but made a point of frowning as she did so. I suspect it is the chips. There are views among some people regarding junk food and naturally I tend not to be so conscious of what children should or shouldn’t eat. I made a mental note to have a plate of celery and carrot sticks next time Kylie comes to fetch her daughter.

  There was yet another health check the day after we arrived and the paediatrician did raise her eyebrows when I mentioned this staple of Essa’s diet. How long, she wanted to know, had she been eating only white rice, sweet and mushy at that. But I wouldn’t feel guilty. She ate a lemon chiffon pudding on the flight, I told her. And she loved the Coke. The bubbles made her gasp then burp then laugh. We were probably over the middle of the Indian Ocean at the time and the passengers were sleeping, the cabin darkened, but I laughed too because it was the first time Essa had laughed since we left the camp, when we lost Safiya.

  The paediatrician frowned. Actually she did a lot of communicating with her eyebrows, up and down, up and down, but there were many other parents with more than one child, whole families to process, while the interpreter the department had sent was struggling with an unexpected regional dialect. The community centre was so full that day the queue roped out the door and down the road into Pioneer Street, where the locals stood around outside the pub, the bakery, the IGA, the bank, their glances arrowing back and forth across the street. So she let us go. I had actually been breastfeeding Essa up to the time we reached Cairo, not that I told her this. The doctor in the clinic there had advised me to stop. You have no milk, he said, and the child will be too dependent. And there will be other food from now on, he assured me. You won’t have to worry about that. He was completely correct and by the time the long wait for the flight and then the long flight itself and the next long wait and the last flight were finally over and Essa and I too exhausted to move, she seemed to have forgotten about the breast anyway. We were installed in our row of flats in the block beside the railway line, and I have never worried about food since. Or rather I was worried, as you can see, so worried by the sheer abundance and choice that for a while I stuck to tinned beans or bread, though I believe I am over that now.

  It was a process line that day in Cairo too, though my impression of that may have been slightly skewed by the fact that the authorities had fitted out a former cheese factory for the refugee clinic. And I was beyond fatigue. Every time I closed my eyes I saw Safiya, open-mouthed, held back by two soldiers at the camp gate as I was pushed onto the transport out of there. We always thought we would leave together, but in the end, even though I had nothing, she had less.

  The cheese factory smelled musty, but at least there was no dust. Essa was clinging tightly to me by this stage. We were sent to a screened-off section with a laminex table and a doctor with a green stethoscope around his neck. Did I need an interpreter? Definitely not. Did I prefer to be assessed by one of the women doctors? No, I didn’t care. Did I require specialist con
sultation, such as a gynaecologist? You don’t want to go there, I thought, but instead I said no and suggested an orthopaedic surgeon might be more useful. Though my arms, I must admit, look reasonably straight now. Safiya did a good job. And I’ve fleshed out a little these last couple of years. If I’m not careful I’ll start resembling those jolly mammas, all rolling buttocks and tight cheeks. It is not only Essa who likes sweet things. I have developed a taste for three teaspoons of sugar in my tea. Cream biscuits, iced doughnuts. Kylie would be horrified if she knew. I have already heard her discussing how she made her own sugar-, salt-, gluten-, dairy-free rusks for Tabitha when she was a baby, and it remains to be seen what she will cut out of the next one’s infant diet. I cover my porridge with brown sugar, like a crust, having already cooked it with salt and milk. And then I add cream but sometimes I carve a chunk of butter – I buy butter now, I ditched the Flora, you would too – and melt that over the top. I eat it very slowly, licking my spoon clean between every mouthful. In Farchana, after Oxfam pulled out and the supplies all but vanished, people ate their porridge – more of a gruel, made from dusty millet – almost before it hit the tin plates. Once I saw the aid worker slip and lose his grip. The aluminium saucepan went flying and before the guards could aim their guns a swarm of children had fallen to the ground and licked up every drop.

  The supermarket in my previous place of residence consisted of wooden trestles spread with empty hessian sacks and bearing some bags of rice and tins of powdered milk, along with a pile of maize cobs. That would be on a good day. On a very good day there would also be dried dates and Maggi instant noodles. Chicken flavour. And once I spotted cartons and cartons of Chinese cigarettes, stacked high. No matches, however. But most days the supermarket, manned by a yawning boy who fanned the flies from his face with his G3, held rusty empty tins, which, if you peered into them, seemed to contain the remains of a white powder that could have been anything from detergent to cocaine, but was probably flour.