Ali came looking for you. Did you see him?
We parted ways immediately.
Shapes, wavering like wisps of smoke, watch as soldiers toss their bodies into trucks.
In a flash I am whisked away on the wind to where the land ends. I see sand and open water. Towering behind me are enormous mountains carrying heavy loads of snow on their heads. Becky stands next to me and gazes out over the ocean.
Your husband is at sea, she says.
Where is he going?
I don’t know, but it looks as if he’s headed to where the sun sets in the world of the living.
Help me. Please take me there.
When I plead with her, Becky gives me the same cold, expressionless look that she had when I first saw her in front of the bonfire.
Everyone suffers, she says. But they have to fix their own problems. That’s true for Emily and true for you, too. Now let me ask you this: why can’t I be with him?
Who?
My husband in the world beyond.
Let’s go look for him.
I can’t find him. He left long ago, on a ship. I spent my wedding night with a wooden effigy. The village elders all remember his name. They say he was a brave warrior who hunted lions.
We gaze out at an endless sea that is so blue it is nearly black.
*
I opened my eyes slowly, very slowly, as if peeling off strips of wet paper that had been gluing my eyelids shut. The world around me changed, and I was back in my body. Lady Emily was still asleep. I got up and pulled back the curtain: it was already after dark. I thought again about the scenes of war and Usman’s death that I had seen so clearly. I remembered how Ali had not appeared even once, and I pictured the beach to which Becky had taken me. I was certain that Ali was still alive somewhere. When I was a child in North Korea, the adults taught me that if I truly wanted something with all of my heart, then I shouldn’t tell anyone or it would never happen, it would only slip further out of my reach. I made up my mind that I would not tell anyone how certain I was that Usman was dead and Ali alive. I decided to hide it from Grandfather Abdul as well.
Eleven
Xiang came to Tongking several days after the Lunar New Year, looking for me. I was with a client. Vinh, who’d finished with her client first and was resting outside in the waiting room, poked her head through the doorway and waited for me to look up. I looked at her questioningly, and she gestured behind her with her thumb. I assumed she meant someone was waiting to see me.
I wrapped a hot towel around the client’s feet and went out into the waiting room. I didn’t recognize the woman there at first. She wore a short skirt, boots that came all the way up to her knees and a loose jumper that left her shoulders bare. Her hair was long, straight and parted down the middle like a stereotype of an East Asian girl. She sat with her legs crossed, but stood up halfway when she saw me, raising her butt off the chair awkwardly.
“How’ve you been?” she asked.
I could not for the life of me place her smile.
“I’m sorry … Do I know you?”
I tilted my head to one side as I looked at her, and she answered in a small voice: “I’m Xiang.”
For a moment I thought: Who’s Xiang? Then I clapped my hand over my mouth. She looked so much older that she was almost unrecognizable. Her once-pale face had turned dark, and the once-taut skin around her eyes was sagging, but what made it even harder to tell that it was Xiang was her caked-on makeup. I clasped her hand in surprise. At that instant, a rush of regret, like a kind of guilt, came over me.
“I meant to look for you,” I said. “But other things kept getting in the way. I’m so sorry …”
“I only need a minute of your time. Are you busy?”
“No, I have time.”
I took her across the street to a café. When she rested her hands on the table, I saw that her nail polish was chipped, and that the seams in her jumper were coming undone. She kept glancing at the counter and then at the entrance, as if she was nervous about something.
“Lou told me where to find you,” she said.
“Have you been in that same place this whole time?”
“I moved around a bit … Situation’s the same.”
What she meant by “the same”, of course, was that she was still working in brothels. As she and I had been through so much together, there was no need to beat around the bush.
“Have you considered finding a different line of work?” I asked.
“What’s it matter now?” Xiang said. “Anyway, I’m doing fine.” But then she pressed both hands against the table suddenly, leaned forward and blurted out the words she’d been trying to keep inside: “Loan me some money! I’m really in a jam, and you’re the only one I could think of.”
I didn’t want to tell her that I’d already paid off my smuggling debt, or ask how much she still owed. The only reason I’d managed to free myself was because Uncle Lou had been willing to vouch for me, but for all I knew she might still have been in the snakeheads’ clutches.
“How much do you need?” I asked.
“Two hundred pounds. Or even just a hundred.”
“I don’t have any cash on me, but I’ll get it for you.”
Xiang waited in the café while I went back to the salon and asked Uncle Tan for a hundred-pound advance on my wages. She gulped down two glasses of water in quick succession. When I handed her the five twenty-pound notes, she grabbed the cash and got up immediately.
“Look at the time,” she said. “I swear I’ll pay you back next week.”
She went outside, waved goodbye and then ran in the direction of the Underground. I stood on the sidewalk and stared after her. She never once looked back.
Something wasn’t sitting right with me, so when my shift at the salon ended I called Uncle Lou. He didn’t have long to talk, because they were getting ready for the dinner rush. When I told him that Xiang had come to see me and asked how she’d been living, he apologized right away.
“She begged and pleaded, saying she wanted to see you, so I had no choice but to give her the address. That girl isn’t going to make it. I’m pretty sure she’s on drugs. She can’t go back to China either. It’s really sad. Anyway, I’ll pay back what she borrowed from you.”
I told him it didn’t matter and asked whether or not there was anything he could do for her.
He sighed. “You have to have the will to live first. That’s the only way you can earn other people’s trust and get help.”
Naturally, Xiang did not come back the following week. I had no intention of collecting on the debt, but decided to use my next day off to try to track her down. I thought that if we opened up to each other, we could find some way to help her. That was my plan, but somehow I never found the time to follow through.
One night, I happened to miss the last Underground train while coming home from a friend’s birthday party with Luna. We boarded a night bus near Piccadilly Circus instead. Sitting in the back of the bus was a large group of drunken girls dressed in short skirts and wearing bright makeup and garish accessories. They chattered loudly; one was slumped in her seat, asleep. As I looked at them, I noticed an East Asian woman behind them gazing vacantly at the passing streetlights. She must have felt me staring at her, because she turned and looked at me. Our eyes locked. The expression on her face was so dark that I couldn’t look away. When she got off the bus on some quiet street, I kept looking intently out the window at her. She stood and stared back at me. I felt as if I was looking at Xiang. Ah, I thought, the ties that bind us were already formed long ago, in the heavens. Like a finely woven spider web that ensnares us all.
Ali had still not come home, and there was still no news; meanwhile, Hurriyah Suni had grown rapidly and was crawling everywhere, grabbing onto things to try to stand up, falling down and crying. I would leave her upstairs with Grandfather Abdul while I went to work, but it wasn’t easy for him to keep up with her. Some days I came home to find him and his great
-granddaughter conked out together on the bed. He finally asked his friends at the mosque for help finding a babysitter, and ended up hiring the daughter of a Pakistani family that ran a small corner shop selling cigarettes, bus tickets, accessories and other such items. The son went to school, while the daughter, Ayesha, helped out at the shop. Ayesha agreed to look after Hurriyah in the afternoons, when her mother took over for her at the store. Grandfather Abdul offered to pay for the babysitting, but I firmly refused. It was my child after all, and even if he was a blood relative, he was already doing so much just by taking care of her in the mornings.
I hadn’t been to Lady Emily’s house in nearly a month, as she was travelling frequently around that time. When I finally returned, Auntie Sarah greeted me at the door with a smile. I’d long been in the habit of guessing the mood of the rest of the house by the look on her face when I arrived, so the moment I saw her, I said: “I take it something good has happened.”
“An angel’s come down from Heaven,” she said, practically humming the words.
I gestured to show I didn’t understand, and she turned to lead the way.
“Let’s hurry upstairs. The madam has some bragging to do.”
We headed for the stairs, but I could already hear the breathless giggling of a child coming from the living room. Lady Emily was clapping her hands and shouting. We stood and watched for a moment as the two of them scampered around the room in a game of tag.
“Ah, Bari!” Lady Emily said when she noticed me. “Come in and meet Anthony.”
The boy was running toward me, so I scooped him up on reflex. His face crumpled into a startled frown. He reared out of my arms, reaching for Auntie Sarah, who stood next to me, so I passed him over to her. He was a handsome little boy with black hair, dark eyes and fine features.
“Take him into the kitchen and give him something to eat,” Lady Emily said.
Auntie Sarah took the child downstairs while Lady Emily and I had tea. She told me the baby belonged to her late husband and his Thai mistress. Her husband’s sister had been looking after him while the mother was in jail, awaiting trial for the murder. The sister-in-law had called her a while back and, after some hesitation, Lady Emily had gone to see the child herself. The moment she saw him, she knew she had to bring him home.
“My heart felt like it was caving in the first time I saw him.”
She already had one child – a grown daughter who’d married an Australian man –but said the moment she brought the boy home, the house seemed to come back to life, and that she even felt as if she was growing younger.
I looked around at the living room, its curtains open wide for a change. “The house feels different now,” I said with a nod. “That’s a good sign.”
“You know, it’s the strangest thing,” she said. “The hatred I used to feel toward Anthony’s mother is fading. The mere thought of her would fill me with indignation, and I held all Southeast Asian women in low regard.”
As I massaged her feet, I felt her body relax. Her good mood must have transmitted itself to me, because the anxiety and frustration that had been weighing me down for so long seemed to lift as well.
It was early summer, and Hurriyah Suni was a month away from her first birthday. Rain had been falling all day, making it dark inside the salon even though we were nowhere near closing time yet. I turned up the lights. The rainy weather outside seemed even darker and drearier. Uncle Tan suggested closing the salon early, and everyone seemed to agree that the weather called for it.
When Luna and I walked out of the salon, a woman who had been standing under the eaves of the building next door blocked our path. I recognized her immediately this time.
“Xiang!”
Xiang wore an oversized coat that looked like an army field jacket over her skirt. She must have been standing in the rain for some time, because her wet hair was stuck to her head.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” she said.
I grabbed her hand involuntarily. “Come home with us,” I said. “You’ll get sick if you stay out here.”
I pulled her under my umbrella with me. Luna kept glancing over at us as we walked. Xiang asked us to wait a moment in front of a small shop while she ran inside. Luna turned to me as if she’d been waiting for an opportunity.
“Who is she?”
“An old friend from back home.”
“She looks homeless. Is this safe?”
“She’s been going through a rough time. I have to help her.”
Xiang had gone in to buy a pack of cigarettes. As soon as she came out, she ripped open the pack, lit one up and puffed away on it feverishly. When we got to our building, Luna went into her own flat without saying a word, and I knocked on the door to mine. The door swung open and Ayesha greeted me.
“I think Hurriyah can tell when her mum is coming home. She kept whining and refusing to go to bed.”
Hurriyah Suni was sitting on the floor surrounded by wooden blocks, but she crawled over to me quickly when I came in, already on the verge of tears. I picked her up and wished Ayesha a good night.
“What pretty eyes,” Xiang murmured.
“Did you eat dinner? I’ll make something for us.”
“I’m fine with ramen.”
“Really? That’s good. Actually, I was a little worried. It was raining too hard to get groceries.”
While I was heating up a bottle for Hurriyah, I turned to see Xiang putting a cigarette in her mouth.
“If you have to smoke, please go outside to do it,” I warned her.
She looked surprised, then put the cigarette back in the pack and sat on the sofa with her knees drawn up. I fed Hurriyah first and changed her diaper, then gently patted her on the back while singing old lullabies. She soon fell asleep. I put her to bed and came back into the living room to find Xiang sniffling and crying.
“What’s wrong?”
“Hearing those lullabies reminded me of when I was young.” She grabbed a tissue to blow her nose and wipe her eyes. “I’m sorry I haven’t paid you back.”
“It’s fine. Take your time …”
I asked her questions while we ate.
“Are the snakeheads still bothering you?”
“No. After about a year, they handed me over to a new house and cancelled my debt.”
“Why don’t you go to the police? If you get deported as an illegal alien, then at least you’ll get to go back home.”
“I don’t want to go home. I like it here.”
“Then find a new job. You could do foot massages like me. I’ll talk to my boss.”
Xiang chuckled. “It’s too late for that …” She wouldn’t look me in the eye. “Everywhere I go, it’s all the same.”
We slept beside each other for the first time in a long time. Before falling asleep, we lay in the dark and talked about everything she’d been through in London. She told me about the girls brought over from Asia, Russia and Eastern Europe to work in neighbourhoods like this one. About women whose families went through hell to find them and take them back home, only to watch as the women returned within half a year. About accepting money to sleep with just anyone, with people you didn’t love, trusting and relying on the man who pimps you out because you believe he’s your lover. About the kinds of things that take place in every city in every part of the world.
Right before we fell asleep, Xiang murmured something in the dark: “No matter how hard I try, I can’t seem to remember Zhou’s face anymore.”
“Zhou?”
“My husband … We left him behind in Dalian, remember?”
In a voice as sleep-addled as hers, I said: “That’s right. He didn’t make it onto the boat.”
We didn’t say anything more. I slipped into a deep sleep.
*
I see a barren land devoid of even a single tree. White-hot sunlight blazes down on sand – just the sight of it makes my throat parched and my chest heavy. Inside a square wire fence shaped like a chicken coop, someone kneels in a
fetal position with his head pressed to the ground. His hands are tied behind him. I cannot see his face, but I recognize those familiar shoulders right away: there’s no doubt it’s Ali.
Ali! I shout. What are you doing?
No sound. I can’t move toward him. He keeps shifting a tiny bit to the right and then to the left, as if he’s in pain, before kneeling straight again. I struggle to move, and call his name.
I stand in a dark corridor. On each side, small windows reveal tiny cells in which men are stripped naked and kneeling. I call out for my husband and they each turn to look at me, but their faces are hooded in darkness. Then I hear shouts.
Do not move! Do not speak! Do not get up! What’re you looking at? On your knees! You son of a bitch! You piece of shit!
I hear voices moaning and protesting.
So thirsty. It hurts. So hungry. Don’t hit me. You assholes. Mother! Wife! Save me!
I find Ali lying on his side on a dirt floor with his arms wrapped around his knees. I stand in front of the window and shout: “Honey, it’s me! It’s Bari! Please get up!”
Now I know he can hear me. He flinches and lifts his head.
I shout again, impatient: “Here! I’m right here!”
He staggers to his feet and lunges toward the window. “Bari! Bari!”
I study his face. His head is shaved and his beard has grown long, but his big, skittish eyes are the same. Tears spill down his cheeks. My body is whisked away on a rough breeze and carried back down the corridor into darkness.
*
“Ali!” I scream, and sit up in bed. The window that faces onto the courtyard glows a milky white. A turtle dove sings plaintively outside. Xiang is sleeping on her side. Oh, why did I have to see his face so clearly in my dream? I lay there stunned, unable to go back to sleep.
I lay like that all night, unable to do anything. Only when Hurriyah Suni woke up and started crying because she was hungry did I drag myself out of bed to fix her a bottle and some baby cereal. I couldn’t erase the image of Ali’s face suddenly appearing in the darkness. I set my daughter down on the floor to play by herself while I prepared breakfast for Xiang and me.
Princess Bari Page 18