Things Are Good Now

by Djamila Ibrahim

  Last week, when Aisha told him of her decision to return to Eritrea, he thought it would pass. After all, Aisha was always on the brink of going back. Every time things got tough, she’d argue she preferred the hardship of her homeland to the daily little humiliations she suffered in Canada.

  “Four years in this country, Adam. Four years, I’ve been trying,” she’d say, four fingers unfolding from under dry knuckles for emphasis. “I’ve cleaned bloody filth off hospital sheets, washed floors, windows,” she’d list. “Taken orders from racist fools. And nothing in my hands. Nothing.”

  Adam would try to appease her with the tale of his own difficult debut as a new immigrant from Ethiopia eighteen years ago, but she’d dismiss him with a groan.

  This time, she had a different reason.

  “Ethiopia has invaded Eritrea again,” she said without looking at him, her voice cold and taut, as though she’d always known this turn of events was inevitable.

  “Well, that’s a matter of perspective,” he wanted to say, but he knew this would have led to the same ardent and usually fruitless arguments border disputes elicit the world over.

  When he was a kid, he used to think there was a secret meaning to the fact that the old Ethiopian map resembled Africa’s map but upside down. A secret he hoped to one day elucidate. And even now, whenever he looks at Ethiopia’s new map, drawn after Eritrea’s separation, it always jars him a little that he doesn’t instantly recognize it, that it no longer reflects his childhood’s fantasy.

  His eyes followed Aisha as her hips, shaped like elongated parentheses, strode past him from her small kitchen to her equally small living room. Like all the times he’d gone without smoking for days only to be lulled back into the habit by the slightest whiff of cigarette smoke in the air, the waft of her perfume, a mysterious blend of sandalwood and citrus, invaded his mind with desire. He wished he could erase both their histories.

  She placed bowls of the sega wet he’d brought and the lentil sauce she’d made beside the tray of injera on the coffee table and sat across from him, a bottle of Heineken in her hands, her face in the shadow of a big lush tropical plant she’d found limp and dry in her building’s garbage collection room.

  “I’m going back,” she said.

  “What? Why?”

  “I’m going to fight, what else?” she said, her voice ringing with the clarity of a revolutionary mind, her plum-coloured thick lips quivering a little.

  He held her stare for a moment. Aisha’s short afro looked thinner and tamer than in her picture from the field. A few greys coiled around her ears.

  Usually, on Saturday nights, they’d meet up for dinner and drinks at Habesha Restaurant which, on weekends after 11 p.m., turned into a nightclub of sorts. The owner would dim the lights and remove some of the tables in the centre of the room to make space for a dance floor. Aisha and Adam would sometimes catch some of the Eritrean patrons staring at them as they danced or hear them make sideways remarks in Tigrigna that Aisha would translate for him.

  Some days, if Aisha had had a few drinks, she’d lash out: “You were sitting on your asses fattening your guts and wallets here while I was on the field fighting for your rights. How dare you judge me?”

  Adam’s conservative upper-middle-class upbringing didn’t prepare him for vociferous public altercations. His was a childhood steeped in intellectual pursuit, and the vague concepts of honour and manhood he’d been taught always gave precedence to reason. But in those instances where alcohol got the best of him, these teachings would quickly make room for something else. When Aisha started fights, he’d feel invigorated, given a chance to prove his valour as a man. He would stand a little to the side, or stay still in his chair without looking directly at anybody, but displaying just enough physical presence to show his readiness to defend her if needed.

  “Aye, yene jegna,” he’d say to her later as they stumbled their way home, touched by the ardour of her feelings for him and proud to be in a relationship with such a bold, unflinching woman. Even though he’d never admit it to anybody, Aisha’s indomitable spirit excited him. It aroused in him a desire to make her fierceness his. Sometimes, he even envied her history.

  Adam wondered whether Aisha’s decision to go back and fight stemmed from an unarticulated wish to reunite with her ex-husband, and to reignite what they’d had in the field.

  “Don’t you think you’re a little too old to be toting machine guns and living in caves and trenches again?” he said. The bluntness of his words surprised him, but he hated the thought that Aisha and Yosef fitted into each other’s lives in a way she and he never could.

  “I can still help my country. Here, I’m nothing,” Aisha said. A hint of sorrow seeped through her voice.

  “That’s not true. Here you don’t risk your life. You have people who care about you … ” Elbows on his knees, his lanky body bent forward, he scratched the label off the Heineken bottle, hoping to find a revelation beneath it. He was never one to express his feelings or speak his mind freely. This frustrated him. “You already gave twelve years of your life to your country. What did it give you in exchange, huh?” he continued. He washed down the nebulous mix of anger and despair with beer.

  When he looked across the coffee table again, Aisha’s hazel eyes burnt a hole in the space where his anger was. This always caught him by surprise, the way her eyes could turn into little copper bullets without a moment’s notice.

  “I’m sorry, Aisha, I didn’t mean to say … It’s just that … ” He gulped down his drink.

  They talked about African politics, of course: a coup here, a tribal war there, the questionable involvement of this or that Western government, the kinship of a bloody history and an antidote to the austere alienness of the world outside their doorsteps. But they made sure to stay clear of the politics involving their two countries. Whenever something happened in one or the other nation, they would support each other’s frustration with, “Well, that’s Africa for you.” And if it was good news, they’d say, “Let’s wait and see. I’m sure someone will manage to fuck that up.” But the new reality couldn’t be brushed off as easily. Adam realized then how much simpler it had been to deal with the idea of their countries’ war in past tense. “The past is the past,” he’d imagined himself saying to her as soon as he’d mustered the courage to ask her to move in with him. Now, even if she wasn’t going back … He felt as if he were standing in the middle of a rickety wooden bridge, watching the ropes unravel from both sides.

  “I’m tired of cleaning washrooms all day long. Eating, sleeping, a never-ending succession of empty days,” she said.

  He looked at her in silence.

  “I’m a fighter, a soldier, Adam. War, privation, that was hard, but if I stay here I’ll go crazy,” she said and sighed.

  He knew her last words held some truth he’d avoided. He had seen the anger she hid behind a veil of cigarette smoke, the rootlessness in her eyes masked by a frozen stare, the ugly head of depression quickly drowned in hard liquor and petty fights. Having spent most of her life fighting a blood-and-flesh enemy, Aisha was at a loss when confronted with the daily wars of a mundane life.

  “There is so much you can do for your people right here, Aisha. Here is an idea: If real engagement is what you’re seeking, why don’t you volunteer at the Catholic Immigration Centre?” he said, holding her gaze. “The government provides refugees with financial and logistical assistance, but the psychological impact of violence these people bring with them — who is better placed to provide that kind of support than you?”

  She looked at him blankly, as though she had already gone.

  He walks to the glass wall across from his cubicle and stretches his arms, bending his body sideways to free the knots of sedentary life stuck in his lower back. With his hands in his pockets, he watches rush hour traffic below. People in dark suits scurry in and out of the slice of Bank Street vi
sible from his vantage point. He remembers how excited he was when he first got hired at the passport office. After five years working as a janitor cleaning movie theatres and community centres, and five more as a parking lot attendant, he’d finally graduated from university and secured his first permanent job. “A federal government position. You are moving up in the world, my friend,” people had said, patting his shoulder. Sure, running around the office locating misplaced files and archiving others was not what his English literature degree had promised, but everybody seemed to agree it was just a matter of time before he’d climb up the ladder.

  “You are set for life, brother,” his old cleaning buddies had said. “Job security, pension, paid vacations … ” They counted until they ran out of fingers, pride on their breaths, envy in their eyes.

  Now, eight years and three promotions later, he spends his days stooped over a never-ending pile of army-green files, processing passport application forms: examining birth certificates, matching photos to IDs, evaluating eligibility, carrying out reference checks, and answering queries from applicants.

  “Veal-fattening pen,” he mumbles to his reflection, repeating Douglas Coupland’s words. “Mine comes with a view. I must be moving up in life indeed.”

  He watches his body suspended mid-air in the glass wall, melting in the reflection of office furniture and the world outside. He enjoys this fragmented, washed-out image of himself. It gives him access to another plane of existence, an alternate reality where he can draw his life’s path with intention and structure — something he finds impossible to fathom in front of a mirror’s glaring constraints. He imagines himself convincing Aisha to stay or at least to postpone her trip. The UN has started mediations already; maybe this new war will end quickly. He has enough for a down payment on a house. They could start a family.

  “Head in the clouds again, eh?” Mark says, peeking over the light green cubicle divider between his and Adam’s workstations. His pink button-down shirt accentuates his face’s usual ruddiness, turning his chubby, smooth cheeks a grapefruit red.

  “Um. Just rearranging the furniture in my imaginary palace. Did you say something?” Adam says, returning to his desk.

  “Pat and I are going for drinks. Do you wanna come?”

  Pat waves from two rows away. His thick, slick brown hair glistens under the light above his head, and taut muscles protrude from under his short-sleeved white dress shirt.

  “Everything about Pat says boisterous and vain,” Adam had said to Mark the first and only time Adam agreed to go to a nightclub with these two co-workers. Pat had volunteered to teach the two men how to pick up women. In the end, Adam and Mark had spent the night with their backs against the bar’s sticky counter, guzzling down one beer after another, the contrast between their physiques accentuating the banality of their looks while Pat prowled around the crowded room making out with one woman here, dancing to deafening beats with another there. “A cock in a hen pen,” Mark had said, his face red from alcohol and jealousy.

  Adam turns to examine the papers scattered on his desk and the stack of passport application files for a second.

  “No. Not tonight, guys. I have things to do,” he says and picks up his book and lunch box with quick, decisive gestures.

  “Let me guess. Aisha again, right?” Pat says. “You’re so whipped, man,” he adds, his lips stretching over perfectly aligned, white teeth.

  “Whatever you say, big guy. Anyway, have fun and don’t do anything I wouldn’t,” Adam says as he heads toward the exit.

  Before he met Aisha, he rarely turned down Friday nights at the pub. After work, he and a few of his co-workers would head to the Royal Oak or D’Arcy McGee’s for a chance to blow off some steam, huddled around burgers, fries, and a continuous flow of beer. For a chance to meet women too. Some days, the memory of the fetid concoction of cigarette butts, fried foods, and stale beer would even trigger a subtle urge in him, something resembling hope and the fulfillment of desires, as though a cure to his most unspoken ache would finally materialize from one of these pubs’ dark crevices. But these nights — he always realized this the next day — all ended the same way. He’d spend more money than he should, stagger home, wake up with a bad headache and foul breath, and, more often than not, alone.

  A cool early-fall breeze greets him as he steps out the office building’s revolving glass door. He wraps his black-and-grey-checkered wool scarf around his neck and walks toward the outdoor parking lot on Gilmour Street to his car. The business district has mostly emptied itself of the thousands of civil servants who roam the concrete, glass, and chrome landscape by day. Here and there, some tourists search for signs of open restaurants or hurry up and down Sparks Street in their thin jackets for a last-minute purchase of Canadian souvenirs. Adam loves fall: the sunburnt leaves reflecting the afternoon light, infusing the city with a tender shade of gold or flying about like confetti, defying life’s precariousness. But today it’s the naked trees that attract his attention, their branches like old arthritic fingers sprouting from calloused palms, prayerful. They echo his own desperate desire to delay the inevitable.

  When he first came to Canada, he had felt as if everyone was looking at him. Back then, he used to walk with a heightened sense of having taken up space that was not his to take. He was apologetic and eager, too eager, to please. Then, when he realized he could never hide the sin of intrusion his blackness betrayed, he decided to find other ways to blend in. He sat at bus stops every day after work or in parks and coffee shops and observed white people’s behaviour, taking notes of their mannerisms and imitating them in front of his washroom mirror at night. After a couple of years of struggling to conquer the English language, and because he’d always loved to read, he enrolled at Carleton University to study English literature. Two birds with one stone, he’d told himself, quoting from a thin book he found in a second-hand bookstore titled 1000 English Animal Idioms and Their Meanings. He would try to figure out the logic behind expressions like “drunk as a skunk” and “busy as a beaver,” then consult encyclopedias at the public library to find pictures of these strange animals. Almost two decades later, the language of his adopted country still sometimes feels like a rough, alien skin trapping his essence. But what scares him most is that the more he feels he’s conquered the English language and the more he fits the mould of the successful, well-integrated immigrant, the more removed he becomes from the tangible experiences of his past, his memories unable to coexist with his present. With each step he took toward assimilation, with each hurdle he overcame to be just like everyone else, he’d slowly shed layers of himself, losing ground on something he can’t put a finger on, becoming invisible to himself.

  The smell of fried food from a nearby restaurant makes his stomach growl. He dreads seeing Aisha tonight. As her departure date approaches, his excitement about spending time with her has been riddled with intensifying anxiety. He almost wishes her gone so he could be relieved of the stress. He thinks of going to Habesha Restaurant for some kitfo or tibs instead, then quickly changes his mind. He shudders at the idea of spending his evening with lonely Ethiopian men who only come to life in dreams of long-dead revolutions, their language calcified in violence and sorrow. Besides, going there will make him miss Aisha. Her loud laughter, the way she dances with her eyes closed, the way she loves and hates with passion.

  He has been having the same nightmare every night for the last two weeks. He is at the Meskel Square in Addis Ababa. At the centre of the square, Colonel Mengistu Haile Mariam stands onstage behind a cluster of microphones in front of a crowd of young people, cheering and clapping. The old Ethiopian dictator picks up a bottle full of a red substance — Adam knows it’s blood — from a nearby table, holds it above his head for the citizens to see, then bends down and smashes it against the stage. He does this again and again, an invisible hand providing him with new bottles. The entranced spectators cheer him on, getting louder with ea
ch broken bottle. Feeding on the public’s frenzy, the blood swells before it crashes on the enchanted congregation, drowning them. Adam sees his old girlfriend, Mebrat, floating in a bubble of clear water by his feet, untainted by the pool of blood around them. He veers to the side to avoid stepping on her corpse, struggling to keep his balance. Sensing his panic, Mebrat opens her dead eyes. Adam wakes up gasping for air and drenched in sweat, then spends hours trying to clear his mind of the painful images of Mengistu’s seventeen-year-long campaign of terror that took the life of his old girlfriend and so many of his childhood friends.

  Last night, an idea struck him. He felt a semblance of understanding of what the dream might mean. An odd, jumbled-up sensation of déjà vu overtook him. He gave up on trying to go back to sleep and instead reached for the small tin he’d kept on the topmost shelf of his closet for years. As he went through pictures of his family, his childhood friends, and of Mebrat and him, he unearthed an old guilt. Mebrat became involved in the underground resistance against Mengistu’s government to be closer to him, to impress him — she was only seventeen. Six months later, he had left her to her own devices when she refused to leave the organization and the country with him. He’d given up on her too easily. And now he might be giving up on Aisha the same way. But this new realization didn’t help him find a way to keep Aisha from leaving. It just made the pain of losing her stronger and any hope of winning her over evaporate.

  He unlocks his car door and drops his lunch box and book on the passenger seat. He stretches his arms behind his back and yawns before he puts his key into the ignition. He’s tired of trying to convince Aisha to stay, but the alternative is a dark, empty space he can’t allow himself to imagine yet. As he joins the traffic on Slater Street heading toward Aisha’s apartment, he knows he will try again and again until she leaves.

  Aisha curves her body around the door and leans into the apartment for a last glance at what has been her home for three years. She can sense Adam watching her, his back against the hallway wall.