An Infidel in Paradise

by S. J. Laidlaw

  “Emma,” I say, thumping my chest again.

  Still watching me, the boy directs a curt comment to his sister. She looks at me anxiously but stops moving.

  “Esfandyar,” he says, thumping his own chest. He points at his sister. “Mehri.”

  I feel like he’s handed me a gift, and I get misty-eyed until it occurs to me I hadn’t imagined our encounter past this point. I don’t know what to do next. What am I doing here? It’s not as if we’re kindred spirits just because I am a friendless loser and they survive on other people’s garbage.

  But I can’t leave.

  Slowly, so as not to startle them, I walk over to the garbage dump. I’m gratified to see they don’t scuttle away at my approach. Leaning into the trash, I dig out an empty pop bottle. I carry it to their plastic bag and pop it in. I look at them out of the corner of my eye to see if they’ll stop me, but they’re both still staring at me, transfixed.

  “Don’t worry,” I tell them, even though I know they can’t understand. “You’re not going to suddenly have a bunch of foreigners competing with you for the best trash.” I lean in again and dig out a couple more bottles.

  Esfandyar says something to me, which might be “Go away” but could just as easily be “Rock on,” so I just smile at him and keep digging. He says something else, which I ignore, but when he grabs my wrist, I have to stop and look at him. He takes the plastic bottle I’m holding and throws it back on the pile. He says something and dramatically shakes his head. Then he picks up a glass bottle and nods.

  I grin. I think I may have just failed trash picking 101, but he’s taking the time to teach me, so he hasn’t totally given up. Mehri has gone back to work at the top of the pile, and with my newfound expertise, Esfandyar and I continue picking away at the bottom. Ten minutes later, their bag is full. I hold the bike steady while Esfandyar ties the bag on the back. Then he holds the bike as Mehri climbs on the handlebars.

  “Shukria,” says Mehri before they ride off. I know this is the word for thanks. I also know I should be thanking them, because at this moment, the knot that has twisted my stomach since I arrived in this country feels like it’s starting to unravel.

  CHAPTER 27

  My heart is thumping as I approach the theater. I haven’t caught a single glance of Mustapha since The Kiss. I’m actually very impressed with his disappearing act. I was never so invisible when I was trying. I wonder if he’s even still here. Maybe he transferred to an all-boys school, somewhere high in the Himalayas where the only eligible females are yaks and mountain goats.

  I’ve rehearsed what I’m going to say to him a hundred times. I really wish Angie were around to run through it with me, though. There’s no one left I can talk to. Leela and Tahira are still being especially nice, but they’d write me off as a skank if I told them what I’d done. Kissing is a much bigger deal here, like having sex would be back home.

  But maybe I can just put this whole episode behind me. When I see Mustapha, I’m going to be totally cool and nonchalant, like I kiss boys in bathrooms all the time. I take a deep breath before I push open the theater doors, and there he is. I don’t mean “there he is down at the front with the class where he’s supposed to be.” I mean “there he is lurking in the gloom at the back of the theater, inches from my face.”

  “Oh crap,” I say.

  Okay, that wasn’t exactly the opening line I’d rehearsed.

  “It’s lovely to see you too, Emma.”

  “What are you doing here?” I squeak.

  Still not the nonchalant attitude I was going for.

  “I take theater class at this time. You might recall we rehearsed a play together.”

  Obviously, he’s practiced this whole first meeting with a little more success than me, but it’s not too late to recover.

  “You kissed me,” I blurt.

  Okay, that’s it. Kill me. Kill me now.

  “Yes,” he says. “Sorry about that.”

  Sorry? Does he mean “sorry, you really suck at kissing”? Or “sorry, my lips fell on you by accident, I thought you were someone else, like my girlfriend”? What the heck does sorry mean?

  “Listen,” he says, sounding totally relaxed and reasonable. “Can we just forget the whole thing? I’d still like to be friends.”

  Now I’m pissed. That was totally my line, almost word for word what I’d practiced back in my bedroom. It’s also a total lie. If I’d had the chance to say it, I wouldn’t have meant a word of it, but I so wanted to be the one to say it.

  “Whatever,” I say and push past him, walking as fast as dignity allows to the front of the theater.

  Ali and Faarooq come over to me immediately, and I prepare myself for another confrontation. I know Faarooq already hates me. I wonder if Mustapha’s told him about The Kiss.

  “We’re very sorry about Angie leaving,” says Faarooq sincerely, and he awkwardly pats my arm.

  Ali nods miserably, and I realize I’m not the only one who’s missing Angie.

  “That’s right. She’s a great girl. We’re all going to miss her,” says Mustapha, coming up behind me. I feel the hairs on the back of my neck rise.

  We don’t have time to discuss it further because the teacher calls the class to order and tells us that since a lot of students are missing and some groups will need to recast their skits, we have the rest of the week to practice. I’m not surprised to see it’s a different teacher than we had last week. The cherub must have been American. This guy looks like he’d rather be doing anything but teaching theater. He has a pile of papers in front of him that he’s clearly planning to grade while he pretends he’s giving us more time out of the goodness of his heart.

  “We may as well relax,” says Mustapha, walking over and plopping down on a chair in the front row.

  In my opinion, he’s way too relaxed already, but as Faarooq and Ali walk over and sit down on one side of him, leaving the seat on the other side for me, I’m faced with a dilemma. Whatever lingering doubt Mustapha might have that I’m totally freaked about The Kiss would be confirmed if I don’t sit next to him. I have to get through the next eighty minutes acting like I don’t want to crawl in a hole and die.

  I walk over and sit down.

  “So, what have you been up to?” he says.

  You mean, other than making out with you in the bathroom?

  “Not much,” I say.

  “What did you do yesterday?”

  I give him a look, and in spite of the dim lighting, I’m pleased to see him turn slightly crimson.

  “After school,” he adds hastily.

  “I picked through trash.”

  “Really?” He grins and shifts in his seat so he’s angled toward me. “Did you find anything interesting?”

  “A few glass bottles,” I say stiffly. “They’re worth more than the plastic ones.”

  “Worth more for what?” he asks.

  “Money.” I assume that’s right, though until this moment, I hadn’t really thought of that. Maybe they use the bottles for something.

  “You’re hard up for cash, are you? You should have said. I could spot you a few rupees.”

  He’s laughing now. I crack a small smile and seriously hate myself. To prevent myself from completely falling into some lust haze and climbing into his lap, I decide to tell him about the trash-picking children. I talk about the first time I saw them and how I’m trying to win their trust.

  “I wish there was some way I could help them,” I finish, and I realize for the first time how much that’s true.

  “You should talk to Aisha,” he says.

  I should talk to the ice princess about helping poor kids? It’s a jaw-droppingly stupid idea. I turn to him and roll my eyes.

  “I’m serious,” he says. “Her mother runs Dosti, a volunteer organization that helps the trash-picking kids. Dosti means –”

  “Friendship,” I finish for him.

  “Very good. You speak Urdu.” He sounds genuinely impressed, and I get a littl
e rush of pleasure, which is so lame, but I’m starting to think he’s like my kryptonite. I can’t not like him.

  “A few words,” I say truthfully. “So, what does her mother do exactly?”

  “I’m not sure, different things. But I know Aisha volunteers at a school for these kids two afternoons a week. You could go with her.”

  “I could also chew off my own arm, but I don’t think I’m going to do that just now. Thanks, anyway.”

  “You said you wanted to help.” He says it like a challenge, and I think it would actually show more willpower to resist him, but the fact is, I’m intrigued – and not just because I want to help these kids. It’s also the idea of Aisha doing something that isn’t evil. It’s like when Darth Vader turns out to be Luke Skywalker’s dad. It screws with the balance of the universe, but you have to see it for yourself.

  “I’ll think about it,” I say, and for most of that evening, I do little else.

  CHAPTER 28

  I’m sitting in a car next to Aisha, and the world has not stopped spinning.

  Yet.

  I still haven’t figured her angle. When Mustapha brought us together yesterday to discuss me going with her to the trash-pickers’ school, she was almost pleasant. It’s obvious she’s taking me only because Mustapha asked her, but strangely that only makes her seem more human. She can’t say no to him either.

  So here we are in her car on the way to the trash-pickers’ neighborhood. Alone. Well, not quite alone. Her driver and a heavily armed bodyguard are sitting in the front seat, and I’m pretty sure neither of them would hesitate to shoot me if I do anything to upset her, like suggest she maybe shouldn’t have given me a gold-embroidered shalwar kameez to wear into a neighborhood where the dress is worth more than most people’s yearly income. Especially since she insisted I wear it so I don’t attract attention. Oh, no, I don’t stand out at all: blonde hair, blue eyes, and a million-rupee outfit.

  Maybe she’s trying to get me killed.

  “How long have you been volunteering?” I ask politely.

  “Since ninth grade. My mother started the organization with some friends about eight years ago. They work mainly with Afghan refugees, but some of the trash-picking kids are poor Christians as well.”

  The Christian thing doesn’t surprise me. We employ a lot of Christians at the embassy for the same reason. It’s hard for them to get work in other places.

  “There are two children who pick through trash near my house,” I say.

  “Yes, Mustapha told me.”

  “Do you think we might see them?”

  “Maybe. We can ask about them, if we don’t.”

  We’re on the outskirts of town. Though it’s a different area than the diplomatic enclave, it’s a strange coincidence that both foreigners and refugees live on the margins. I guess they’re as unwelcome as we are.

  “Do all of the children go to school?” I ask.

  “No, most don’t. And those who do only come for two hours at the end of their workday. It’s as much time as their families can spare them.”

  We leave the paved road and head down a heavily rutted dirt track. Single-room mud houses hem us in on both sides, and a rivulet of water meanders down the middle. We have to swerve several times to avoid hitting small children scooping the muddy, oil-smeared water into buckets. We jerk to a halt several times as suicidal goats and chickens dart in front of the car. A fine sprinkling of reddish dust coats everything, both living and not.

  We pull up outside a single-storey structure that is virtually identical to all the others, but through the open doorway, I notice there are kids inside, sitting on rusted metal chairs. The room is small, about the size of my bedroom, and dark, even though it’s still light outside. Aisha waits for the driver to come around and open her door. The bodyguard jumps out first and walks into the classroom, giving it a careful once-over.

  As soon as Aisha climbs out of the car, it’s like she’s a rock star. The kids inside the building spill out to greet her, and more kids materialize from nowhere, crowding her and grabbing her hands. The children are filthy, but she doesn’t seem to notice their matted hair and the grubby hands stroking her tunic as if it’s a magic cloak. She laughs good-naturedly and speaks to several individually. I wait for the telltale signs that she’s only pretending to be human, the curled lip and disdainful stare, but they don’t materialize. She might actually care about these kids. They obviously adore her.

  I get a lot of shy curious stares, but no one approaches me as we leave the guards outside and go into the makeshift classroom. Children keep piling in, squeezing two and three to a chair, and several settle themselves on the floor. We’re full to bursting, and what little light was filtering in through two small glassless windows is almost entirely blocked by the faces of the children who peer through them.

  Aisha gives a direction to one of the older boys and he disappears briefly, returning with a kerosene lantern that he loops over a hook on the wall. There’s a single small table at the front of the room. Aisha puts her water bottle on it, picks up a long thin stick, and taps it lightly in her hand as she speaks.

  She gives me a long introduction in Urdu, which inspires several giggles and makes me wonder what she’s saying. The only word I understand is my name. When she’s finished, the entire group stands up, and Aisha raises her stick like a baton and leads the class in a chorus of “Good afternoon, Miss Emma.”

  It’s totally cute, and I wonder when she had time to teach them that. I say “Good afternoon” back, which sends them into paroxysms of laughter, for some reason. Then a girl around Mandy’s age comes forward, takes my hand, and leads me to one of the less broken chairs at the back of the room.

  “I can stand,” I say to Aisha, who’s writing words in chalk on a board at the front. “There aren’t enough chairs as it is.”

  “It’s not our culture,” she says firmly. “You’re a teacher, a guest, and older than them. You sit.”

  I sit down and attention turns, more or less, back to the board, though I’m clearly a distraction because many of the children cast furtive glances at me as Aisha organizes herself at the front.

  “I should have mentioned,” she says as an afterthought, “if I tell you to run, you must do it immediately. No questions. And if you hear a bang or gunshots, get down on the floor.”

  I look at the roomful of shyly curious children and give her a skeptical look.

  “We’re not in any danger from them,” she says. “But there are some who don’t like what we’re doing here. They don’t want us empowering these children. If they learn to read and do basic math, it will be harder for people to cheat them and their families. Not everyone is happy about that. And the ones who don’t object to what I’m doing would still want to kill you. One less infidel fast-tracks them to heaven.”

  “Thanks.”

  “It’s not what I believe. Necessarily. But a lot of people do.” She turns back to the board. She’s certainly bossy enough to be a teacher.

  She says something about Mehri and Esfandyar at the start of the lesson, and I’m grateful she hasn’t forgotten them. From the children’s excited reaction, I can tell they know who they are, and one of the window children is dispatched presumably to look for them.

  Aisha’s teaching style is straight out of a textbook on how not to teach, complete with the stick that she raps on the table if any child falls behind in the unison repetition of letters and sounds. I can’t figure out why one of them doesn’t snatch the stick out of her hand and crack her over the head with it. By the end of an hour, I’m sitting on my own hands so I don’t do it. When she walks to the back of the room and hands it to me, I wonder if she’s read my mind.

  “Math,” she says. “Your turn. They know their numbers to fifty and can do double-digit addition and single-digit subtraction. Begin where you like.”

  I take the stick and walk with it to the front of the room. Brandishing it above my head, I watch thirty or more sets of eyes grow h
uge before I toss the stick out the open doorway. There’s a heartbeat of silence as fear turns to confusion, and then a brave boy at the back snickers and the whole class erupts into laughter.

  “Get up,” I tell them.

  Of course, they don’t understand, so I have to mime what I want them to do, pretending to sit on an imaginary chair and suddenly leaping to my feet. This causes more hilarity, but none of them moves. I have to do it three times before someone at the back catches on. However, when I walk out of the classroom, they all follow without being asked. By this point, they don’t want to miss what I’m going to do next.

  Aisha’s guard begins to object, but Aisha holds up her hand to silence him. So it’s one crazy white girl, a breathtakingly beautiful Pakistani princess, an ever-growing number of mud-spattered children, several stray dogs, a bodyguard, and a driver who spend the next hour walking through the village adding and subtracting everything from chickens’ eggs to cooking pots.

  By the time Aisha and I are back in the car, there are so many villagers crowded around us we can only roll forward an inch at a time, much to the grumbling of her driver. Aisha and I are now both rock stars, and we keep waving until I think my hand’s going to drop off. We’re close to the end of the village when Mehri appears at my window, running alongside the car. I roll it down and put out my hand. Mehri takes it in both of hers, and we grin at each other like long-lost friends. Aisha tells the driver to stop.

  Mehri says something, which I don’t understand.

  Aisha translates. “She says she’ll come to your class next time. Her father has never allowed her to go to school before, but Esfandyar has convinced him.”

  “That’s wonderful,” I say and give her a big smile so she gets the spirit, if not the words.

  “Dost,” she says, touching her chest.

  “Friends,” I agree and touch my own.