Temporary People
Page 1
PRAISE FOR TEMPORARY PEOPLE
“Guest workers of the United Arab Emirates embody multiple worlds and identities and long for home in a fantastical debut work of fiction, winner of the inaugural Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing.… The author’s crisp, imaginative prose packs a punch, and his whimsical depiction of characters who oscillate between two lands on either side of the Arabian Sea unspools the kind of immigrant narratives that are rarely told. An enchanting, unparalleled anthem of displacement and repatriation.”
—KIRKUS REVIEWS, STARRED REVIEW
“Inventive, vigorously empathetic, and brimming with a sparkling, mordant humor, Deepak Unnikrishnan has written a book of Ovidian metamorphoses for our precarious time. These absurdist fables, fluent in the language of exile, immigration, and bureaucracy, will remind you of the raw pleasure of storytelling and the unsettling nearness of the future.”
—ALEXANDRA KLEEMAN, AUTHOR OF YOU TOO CAN HAVE A BODY LIKE MINE
“Inaugural winner of the Restless Books Prize for New Immigrant Writing, this debut novel employs its own brand of magical realism to propel readers into an understanding and appreciation of the experience of foreign workers in the Arab Gulf States (and beyond). Through a series of almost thirty loosely linked sections, grouped into three parts, we are thrust into a narrative alternating between visceral realism and fantastic satire.... The alternation between satirical fantasy, depicting such things as intelligent cockroaches and evil elevators, and poignant realism, with regards to necessarily illicit sexuality, forms a contrast that gives rise to a broad critique of the plight of those known euphemistically as ‘guest workers.’ verdict: This first novel challenges readers with a singular inventiveness expressed through a lyrical use of language and a laser-like focus that is at once charming and terrifying. Highly recommended.”
—HENRY BANKHEAD, LIBRARY JOURNAL, STARRED REVIEW
“Unnikrishnan’s debut novel shines a light on a little known world with compassion and keen insight. The Temporary People are invisible people—but Unnikrishnan brings them to us with compassion, intelligence, and heart. This is why novels matter.”
—SUSAN HANS O’CONNOR, PENGUIN BOOKSHOP (SEWICKLEY, PA)
“Deepak Unnikrishnan uses linguistic pyrotechnics to tell the story of forced transience in the Arabian Peninsula, where citizenship can never be earned no matter the commitment of blood, sweat, years of life, or brains. The accoutrements of migration—languages, body parts, passports, losses, wounds, communities of strangers—are packed and carried along with ordinary luggage, blurring the real and the unreal with exquisite skill. Unnikrishnan sets before us a feast of absurdity that captures the cruel realities around the borders we cross either by choice or by force. In doing so he has found what most writers miss: the sweet spot between simmering rage at a set of circumstances, and the circumstances themselves.”
—RU FREEMAN, AUTHOR OF ON SAL MAL LANE
“Unafraid to experiment with literary form, Unnikrishnan writes stories that examine the experience of immigration, emigration, identity and exile in the Gulf and India from a uniquely South Asian perspective. Born in Kerala, he was brought to Abu Dhabi as an infant and lived here until 2001, when he moved to study in the US.... His surreal and hallucinatory style, which also defines his other short stories such as ‘Water’ and ‘How “Sharjah” Mohan Took the Men,’ have drawn comparisons with the magical realism of Salman Rushdie and the satirical humor of George Saunders, but as the title of ‘Gulf Return suggests,’ Unnikrishnan’s work reflects on issues that are simultaneously global and specific to the experience of NRI’s, long-term non-resident Indians, not just in the UAE but throughout the wider Gulf.... In Unnikrishnan’s fiction, as in his life, the experience of migration is one that is both heightened and illusionary, and the sense of ‘home’ he illuminates—so very different from the mythic, Homeric model—can never really be returned to or relied upon to offer any sense of consolation. As such his work represents a literary response to the issues discussed in Neha Vohra’s sociological study Impossible Citizens: Dubai’s Indian Diaspora, while belonging to a new but growing genre of Khaleeji literature, including Saud Alsanousi’s The Bamboo Stalk and Mia Alvar’s In the Country, that Unnikrishnan hopes will provide a more nuanced picture of migrant life in the Gulf.”
—NICK LEECH, THE NATIONAL (UAE)
“Deepak writes brilliant stories with a fresh, passionate energy. Every page feels as if it must have been written, as if the author had no choice. He writes about exile, immigration, deportation, security checks, rage, patience, about the homelessness of living in a foreign land, about historical events so strange that, under his hand, the events become tales, and he writes tales so precisely that they read like history. Important work. Work of the future. This man will not be stopped.”
—DEB OLIN UNFERTH, AUTHOR OF REVOLUTION
“From the strange Kafkaesque scenarios to the wholly original language, this book is amazing on so many different levels. Unlike anything I’ve ever read, Temporary People is a powerful work of short stories about foreign nationals who populate the new economy in the United Arab Emirates. With inventive language and darkly satirical plot lines, Unnikrishnan provides an important view of the relentless nature of a global economy and its brutal consequences for human lives. Prepare to be wowed by the immensely talented new voice.”
—HILARY GUSTAFSON, LITERATI BOOKSTORE (ANN ARBOR, MI)
“Absolutely preposterous! As a debut, author Unnikrishnan shares stories of laborers, brought to the United Arab Emirates to do menial and everyday jobs. These people have no rights, no fallback if they have problems or health issues in that land. The laborers in Temporary People are sewn back together when they fall, are abandoned in the desert if they become inconvenient, and are even grown from seeds. As a collection of short stories, this is fantastical, imaginative, funny, and, even more so, scary, powerful, and ferocious.”
—BECKY MILNER, VINTAGE BOOKS (VANCOUVER, WA)
“There is much to admire in Unnikrishnan’s fanciful and fervent debut, a collection of stories about the lives of guest workers in the United Arab Emirates…. Unnikrishnan explores the depredations, sorrows, and longings of these foreign laborers, who are often treated as disposable, with a dark whimsy. . . . Interspersed throughout are briefer pieces, from one paragraph to several pages in length, concise meditations that offer up the book’s best expressions of what it means to be an outsider in a land far from home.”
—PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
“Unnikrishnan tells [his] stories in experimental prose that moves from vignettes that read like mythical texts to transcribed interviews. The most compelling writing renders the characters’ plights in the abstraction of magical realism.… A careful, patient reader will love Unnikrishnan’s inventive and caring connected tales.”
—FRANK TEMPONE, BOOKLIST
“Please, if you care for my opinion, read this writing of Deepak Unnikrishnan and support him. He is a magnificent fellow with an intricate and beautiful mind; this work he does now, already wonderful, is but the smallest part of what he will do in time.”
—JESSE BALL, AUTHOR OF SILENCE ONCE BEGUN
“This is a fascinating, difficult, and chaotic read, but I couldn’t put it down. Its linked stories, myths, or allegories examine the condition of the guest-worker subclass (but they are a silent majority) in the Gulf states, where nary an Arab worker is to be found. It gets an A+ for language play and for illuminating a sore point of social injustice that any visitor to the United Arab Emirates would have seen, if not understood.”
—DARWIN ELLIS, BOOKS ON THE COMMON (RIDGEFIELD, CT)
First published in Australia in 2019 by
UWA Publishing
Crawley, Western Australia 6009
www.uwap.uwa.edu.au
UWAP is an imprint of
UWA Publishing, a division of The University of Western Australia
This book is copyright. Apart from any fair dealing for the purpose of private study, research, criticism or review, as permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part may be reproduced by any process without written permission. Enquiries should be made to the publisher.
Copyright © 2017 Deepak Unnikrishnan
“Gulf Return” and “Water” have appeared in Guernica, “Exodus” has appeared in Drunken Boat, and “Sarama” has appeared in Breaking the Bow: Speculative Fiction Inspired by the Ramayana (Zubaan Books: New Delhi, 2012)
First edition published in the USA by Restless Books in 2017
ISBN: 978-1-76080-073-4 (epub)
978-1-76080-074-1 (ePDF)
Cover design by Upside Creative
Prof. (Ted) Chesler, the book’s been written. Return for a day. In your basement office in Robison Hall, smoke and tell me stories. My teacher, my much-missed friend, thank you.
For Acchan & Amma, battle-scarred parents.
For Meenu & Raya, women I love, why I’ve remained alive.
For Milo the animal, because he was family.
For anyone who left, then remained in the Gulf for family’s sake, only to leave again.
For Gulf kids raised without mothers/fathers/countries/confidence.
For us, inventors of realms/identities, manglers of language(s).
And finally, for my city, for what it did to/for me.
CONTENTS
Book Limbs
Chabter One Gulf Return
Chabter Two Birds
Chabter Three Pravasis
Chabter Four Fone
Chabter Five Taxi Man
Chabter Six The Anniversary
Chabter Seven In Mussafah Grew People
Chabter Eight Le Musée
Chabter Nine Akbaar: Exodus
Book Tongue. Flesh.
Chabter One Mushtibushi
Chabter Two Glossary
Chabter Three Blattella Germanica
Chabter Four Pravasis?
Chabter Five Moonseepalty
Chabter Six Dingolfy
Chabter Seven Kloon
Chabter Eight Cunninlingus
Chabter Nine Nalinakshi
Book Veed
Chabter One Kada (Shop). Kadha (Story).
Kadakaran (Shopkeeper).
Chabter Two Water
Chabter Three Sarama
Chabter Four Veed
Chabter Five Dog
Chabter Six
Chabter Seven Blattella Germanica
Chabter Eight Ivday (Here). Avday (There).
Chabter Nine Baith
Chabter Ten Pravasis=
The Names
BOOK
LIMBS
There exists this city built by labor, mostly men, who disappear after their respective buildings are made. Once the last brick is laid, the glass spotless, the elevators functional, the plumbing operational, the laborers, every single one of them, begin to fade, before disappearing completely. Some believe the men become ghosts, haunting the facades they helped build. When visiting, take note. If you are outside, and there are buildings nearby, ghosts may already be falling, may even have landed on your person.
—NAME WITHHELD BY REQUEST
CHABTER ONE
GULF RETURN
IN A LABOR CAMP, somewhere in the Persian Gulf, a laborer swallowed his passport and turned into a passport. His roommate swallowed a suitcase and turned into a little suitcase. When the third roommate, privy and vital to the master plan, ran away the next morning with the new suitcase and passport, he made it past the guard on night duty, onto the morning bus to the airport, past the bored ticket agent at check-in, past security, past pat down and a rummage through his suitcase, past using the bathroom once, twice, thrice, to pee, to shit, to sit, past Duty Free, where he stared at chocolates and booze and magazines and currencies, past families eating fast food in track suits or designer wear, past men and women sleeping on the floor, past his past, past his present, past the gold in the souks, the cranes in the sky, petrol in the air, dreams in his head, past God and the devil, the smell of mess halls, past humidity and hot air, past it all, until he found an empty chair in the departures lounge, where he sat and held his future in his hands. It was then the little suitcase sprouted legs and ears, and the passport developed palms and long fingers as well as a nose and a mustache, and soon after the boarding call, at the very moment the stewardess checked his documents, the third laborer was asked to wait.
The stewardess needed time to figure out what protocol she should follow or what precedent there was for the man and his possessions. The man preferred not to wait and ran as fast as he could through the door to boarding, past passengers who had already gone through and formed a line inside the tube with the little windows, waiting like blood in a syringe, now followed at an animal’s pace by the little suitcase on legs, ridden like a horse by the passport with the long fingers, a sight that both fascinated and terrified and caused personnel, propelled by some odd sense of duty, to stand in the way of the trio and block their path, to protect the plane and its pilots and cabin crew from what they couldn’t define. It didn’t matter what they did, it wouldn’t have mattered what they did, because the man leading the charge, in an act of despair, opened his mouth wide to ask them all to get away get away, wide wide wider, until he swallowed the first person in his path, then the next, and the next, refusing to stop running, as the little suitcase did the same, opening and closing itself, running into people, sucking people in like a sinkhole, aided by the passport jockey, who assisted by stuffing in those who fought desperately to escape. It happened so quickly, the running, the swallowing, the stuffing, the madness, that when the three of them reached the aircraft doors, they seemed at first surprised rather than jubilant, then relieved as the pilots and cabin crew stared from the other end of the tube, where everyone, including the remaining passengers, had now run to watch them like cats watching dogs.
The little suitcase, the little passport, and the man caught their breath, inhaling and exhaling raggedly, as though nails filled the air, while in the distance, with the sound of a million horses, well-meaning men with guns and gas rushed the gate where the stewardess had screamed and then fainted. The trio realized it was now or never, abhi ya nahi, do or die, so they rushed into the empty plane, locked its door, and the little suitcase and the little passport found seats in First Class and put on their seat belts, while the man ran to the back of the plane and began swallowing everything in sight, starting with the two lavatories, the trolleys with the veg and non-veg options, the apple juice and the Bloody Mary mixes, the seats and the magazines, the tray tables and the blinking lights, the blankets and the overhead bins, the socks and the TV monitors, the cabin air, with its lingering halitosis and mint-candy smell, swallowing everything in sight, moving expertly from Economy to Business to First, swallowing even the little suitcase and the little passport, swallowing the carpets, the emergency exits, the airplane controls and smudged windows and the odor of pilots, slipping down the aircraft’s nose and continuing to swallow as he moved from the aircraft’s beak towards its base, swallowing wings, wheels, luggage, fuel, skin, presence, until the man was not recognizable anymore and had turned into an enormous jumbo, observed from the cordoned-off terminal by dumbstruck passengers and the men armed with guns and gas, whose leader wondered on his walkie-talkie what sort of protocol ought to be followed here, but he needn’t have bothered. The plane had begun taxiing down the runaway, past other waiting aircrafts, ignoring pleas from the control tower to desist, to wait a minute, to let’s talk this through, to whadabout the hostages, but the plane didn’t care, it went on its merry way, picking up speed, lifting its beak, tucking in its mighty wheels, returning its cargo.
CHABTER TWO
BIRDS
&
nbsp; ANNA VARGHESE WORKED IN Abu Dhabi. She taped people. Specifically, she taped construction workers who fell from incomplete buildings.
Anna, working the night shift, found these injured men, then put them back together with duct tape or some good glue, or if stitches were required, patched them up with a needle and horse hair, before sending them on their way. The work, rarely advertised, was nocturnal.
Anna belonged to a crew of ten, led by Khalid, a burly man from Nablus. Khalid’s team covered Hamdan Street, Electra, Salaam, and Khalifa. They used bicycles; they biked quickly.
Anna had been doing this for a long time, thirty years, and many of her peers had retired—replaced, according to Khalid, by a less dependable crew. Seniority counted, and so Khalid allowed her to pick her route.
Anna knew Hamdan as intimately as her body. In the seventies, when she first arrived, the buildings were smaller. Nevertheless, she would, could, and did glue plus tape scores of men a day, correcting and reattaching limbs, putting back organs or eyeballs— and sometimes, if the case was hopeless, praying until the man breathed his last. But deaths were rare. Few workers died at work sites; it was as though labor could not die there. As a lark, some veterans began calling building sites death-proof. At lunchtime, to prove their point, some of them hurled themselves off the top floor in full view of new arrivals. The jumps didn’t kill. But if the jumpers weren’t athletic and didn’t know how to fall, their bodies cracked, which meant the jumpers lay there until nighttime, waiting for the men and women who would bicycle past, looking for the fallen in order to fix, shape, and glue the damaged parts back into place, like perfect cake makers repiping smudged frosting.
When Anna interviewed for the position, Khalid asked if she possessed reasonable handyman skills. “No,” she admitted. No problem, he assured her, she could learn those skills on the job.