“Oh, how I miss that first-time high,” Nicky says.
They laugh and continue smoking in silence. Yasmin leans her head against the couch, relishing their nascent friendship.
Jason makes Yasmin feel that she’s the centre of his world. He waits for her at the end of her shift at the shelter, calls her a few times a day just to say he misses her. She admires his intrepid activism. The way he shares his outrage at the state of humanity makes her feel that she too can be part of something important; that she is capable not only of taking control of her own life but also of transcending her limitations to become part of the world around her. In a way, he reminds her of Laura: he’s knowledgeable, supportive, and not domineering.
Yasmin found it so easy to talk to Jason that she didn’t hold anything back. When she told him about her imminent divorce, she discerned a hint of titillation, a secret smile only made visible by the slight lift of the slanted outer edges of his eyes. She told him she left her husband the day he found the birth control pills she’d been secretly taking as one would take medication for a serious heart condition. She started taking the pills when he insinuated, a year earlier, that he could easily find himself another wife.
“You fucking murderer! You killed my baby and all this time, all this time you’ve been depriving me of another chance to have a child. You degenerate, spoiled bitch!” Ali had yelled, waving the pill dispenser in front of her. The contents of the makeup case where she’d been hiding the pills were spilled on the bathroom floor. “Disgracing yourself with that drunken whore. And that … that … ” He’d broken off — as if it would have been too disgusting and beneath him to voice what he thought of Laura — before he emptied the contraceptive pill dispenser in the toilet.
Yasmin told Jason how Ali’s bellowing, the venom in his voice, had reminded her of the day she came home late once when she was a teenager and found her dad on the couch, in their living room, his bandaged leg resting high on a pillow. He had slipped and sprained his ankle at the Quickie where he worked when he ran on the wet floor he’d just mopped to catch teenagers who’d shoplifted from the store. Her father had screamed at her: “Where have you been? Whoring?” He’d writhed about and cursed in such a way that made Yasmin wonder if he were struck by a sudden mortal blight.
“Immigrant men of a certain age face a particular kind of problem,” Jason told her with the serious face of a concerned academic. He had taken her hand in his while she related her story. “Many are brought up to be the sole breadwinners and decision-makers for their families. When they come here, oftentimes, they are stripped of their status, social and professional. So these kinds of incidents add to that sense of humiliation and loss of control. And men rarely reach out for help, so we hear a lot of cases of depression, alcoholism, and violent behaviour.”
Yasmin didn’t appreciate having her life presented to her as a social study case. She wanted to negate Jason’s assertions, show disdain for his I’m-in-the-business-of-saving-immigrants-from-themselves attitude. She wanted to tell him her father and Ali were not mere statistical data he could compile and manipulate to impress her. Instead, she withdrew her hand and vowed not to see him again.
But when she met Ali a month later to discuss the details of the divorce, she couldn’t help but think about Jason’s words. Her eyes stopped on the dark spot on her husband’s forehead: the mark of daily prayers he’d fervently taken up in the last year. Ali had traded his weekend baseball hats for a Muslim skullcap and his weekly tennis matches for visits to the local mosque: “To atone for your sin and mine,” he’d told her with a resigned voice. Facing the fact of the abortion had precipitated the collapse of the elusive American dream he’d been chasing in the last twenty years he’d lived in North America. She saw a disillusioned, ageing man who, despite his education and financial success, was grappling now with the same concerns as her parents: trying to salvage something of the past, to find, in the faith of his upbringing, something that would absolve him of his sins and give his life a new meaning.
Yasmin folds up Laura’s sofa-bed where she’s been sleeping for the past two months and follows Laura and Nicky out of the apartment.
“So, excited to finally go to Outside Lands?” Nicky says. “I can’t believe you haven’t been to one yet. That husband of yours must’ve been keeping you in a dungeon or somethin’.”
“Ha ha. Ali was just, you know, always busy.” Yasmin’s voice trails off.
“Yeah, and you felt too guilty to go out without him. Blah blah. Anyway, I’m just teasing ya. You’re really easy to get, you know that?” Nicky says, laughing.
With a detachment that surprises her, Yasmin imagines Ali with a devout wife. A decent, God-fearing woman. Someone who’d understand him better than she ever could. One not prone to depression and less inclined to moral dilly-dallying. A woman who’d make herself bend when necessary so that her husband might feel tall. Someone capable of embracing motherhood and tradition. A woman who’d gather in her house and in her heart a long line of extended family. Someone who’d be there for the ill and the bereaved in her community. A woman like her own mother.
“Today you’re gonna see why SF is the birthplace of hippie,” Laura says as they take their seats in her car.
“Sex, drugs, and rock ’n’ roll, huh?” Yasmin asks.
“Nah,” Laura says. “Love, my friend, love. And music, freedom, and, hopefully, some sun.” The silver-coated clouds cover the sky like one big sheet of cotton wool.
“By the way, my boss has agreed to meet with you,” Laura continues. “You’re a good cook and a clean freak. I’m sure he’ll hire you. I think some of the guys in the kitchen are illegals.” Laura’s hands leave the steering wheel for a second to put illegals in quotation marks. “Whatcha say, huh? I think you’d look pretty sexy in a kitchen uniform,” she says, slapping Yasmin’s back and laughing in a way that always uplifts Yasmin’s mood.
“I’m liking the volunteering thing,” Yasmin says. “It’s cathartic. But working under the table sounds sketchy. Ali has agreed to let me keep my credit card until the divorce is finalized, so for now, I’m going to enjoy SF a little then return home.”
“Naah, you’re staying right here with us. We’ll find a way,” Laura says, leaning in and encircling Yasmin’s frail shoulders with a strong grip.
For a second, Yasmin sees a certain kind of anguish in Laura’s eyes — something like a melancholy borne out of a futile yearning. The intensity of the expression frightens Yasmin a little. She wonders if things would have been different if she were like Laura, but her imagination can’t stretch far enough to fathom such a possibility. She always wanted to be financially independent, of course, but never envisaged she, or any other woman, for that matter, could lead a fulfilled, happy life without a man by her side. She didn’t care much for the sanctity of marriage but she believed in the complementarity of man and woman the way she believed in the interdependence of night and day, sky and earth.
“That’s binary bullshit,” Laura had said once. Yasmin wasn’t sure what that meant so she’d left it alone. But what she knows, what her friendship with Laura and Nicky has taught her is that there is more than one way of being a woman and of finding happiness.
“Besides, Ottawa is too cold and I bet it’s boring,” Laura says.
“I’m going to Vancouver,” Yasmin says.
“Same difference.”
After the initial outburst of criticism and tears, her parents had quickly geared themselves into damage control mode.
“Can you find a way to stay there?” they’d asked. Then, “Go to your sister’s. I know someone. We’ll figure something out.”
Yasmin had imagined her mother mentally sifting through the list of divorcees and widowers she knew, but there was no point dissuading the old woman from trying to find another husband for her. Yasmin knew the worst was behind her, and that was good enough for now.
After driving around Golden Gate Park for a while in search of a free parking space, Laura settles for a spot on Sunset Boulevard, ten blocks away from their destination. They have left the grit of the Mission District behind. Here, the lawns and hedges in front of the multi-coloured houses are trimmed and the wide median strips are lined with Monterey cypress trees.
“There has to be a way. Maybe Jason can marry you,” Nicky says as they turn onto Lincoln Way. “What’s going on with you two anyway?”
Music from behind Golden Gate Park’s giant trees fuses with the enthusiasm of concertgoers swelling around them. Yasmin knows sleeping with Jason would mean sealing shut any possibility of going back to her old life with Ali, and that should be motivation enough, but she knows she can’t get involved with someone to get out of a tight situation again. This only really dawned on her the day she left Ali. Before calling Laura for help — Ali had gone to work by then — she’d sat in her living room for an hour mulling over what had happened. She had, through depression and beyond, never forgotten to take her pills: it was the only concrete thing she had ever done for herself. For everything else, she’d always counted on someone else to save her. She remembers how, back in Mogadishu, before the civil war forced her family to flee, she and Hodan would practise new dance moves watching bootleg tapes of Paula Abdul and Janet Jackson until their parents came home or the scratched-up tape got caught in the VHS player. They’d then spend the rest of their day dreaming up ways to run away to America to become superstars like their idols. There was an unspoken understanding that Hodan would make that dream come true for both of them. Isn’t that what older sisters were supposed to do? Their dreams were boundless back then.
“Jason is nice, but it’s too early,” Yasmin says. “The divorce is not even finalized. And I need to learn to take care of myself on my own.”
“So?” Nicky says. “Stop pining away. He could be your perfect rebound fling. He’s so hot. I’d totally do him.”
“See? Girl, you need to stay right here where poetry and debauchery rule,” Laura says and starts to run up ahead. She stops a block away, then turns back and runs toward her friends, her arms wide open, the wind blowing the sleeves of her white tracksuit jacket. She lifts Yasmin off the ground, carries her up the hill for a second then puts her back down.
“Come on, lazy bum, work those legs. You’re twenty-five, not fifty,” she says and runs ahead again.
Yasmin runs after Laura for a block then stops for a moment to catch her breath and unwrap the scarf her mother gave her. She looks up toward the gate’s entrance and waves the scarf at Laura. The turquoise, pink, and yellow of the cloth swim in the air like the lavish life hidden under her parents’ piece of the Red Sea. It’s Ali’s and her Red Sea too. She knows this will never change. But as she contemplates the possibility of a new life free of the constraints of her parents’ — and Ali’s — world, she can’t help feeling anxious that she might forget this. That she might drift so far away from her roots that she’ll lose sight of all that is also beautiful and true about her upbringing: the complicated but genuine love of family, the tenderness and laughter, the safety of community, the poetry embedded in her mother tongue. Could she salvage these things and still achieve the freedom and autonomy she’s always wanted? And will she really fit in in this other world? Or will she be subjected to a different set of constraints?
She remembers something Laura had told her about W. E. B. Du Bois’s book The Souls of Black Folk and the concept of double consciousness. And how this concept is sometimes applied to immigrants’ experience of feeling permanently in exile, stuck on the threshold between the cultures of their origin and those of their new home. Yasmin stands there lost in thought, trying to remember more about this conversation, to find an answer to her dilemma in it, until she notices that Laura is still waving at her. It dawns on her then that even in exile, we sometimes stumble upon a path, a new way forward. And we find strength and friendship in the most unlikely of travel companions.
As she presents her ticket to the attendant at the gate, she sees Jason standing a few feet away. She turns to Nicky, who responds with a wink. Yasmin looks at Jason again. She takes in his secretive smile. The intense way he looks at her causes her heart to skip a beat. She feels a new kind of excitement grow in her, an unburdened, daring energy. She doesn’t care about Jason’s intentions or what it all means anymore. She will follow him home tonight.
She turns around and locks arms with Nicky.
“Thanks, these shoes are not made for hiking,” Nicky says.
Yasmin looks at Nicky’s five-inch pumps and smiles. For now, she’s just glad her own shoes are comfortable enough she can lend a hand to a friend.
things are good now
The first time my sister, Alem, talked about her time in prison, it was 1981, about two weeks after she came to Toronto via Sudan, where she’d spent a year at a refugee camp. We were in my old apartment in North York.
“We were up to thirty women in a small cell,” she said, staring out the curtainless window.
The lazy afternoon sun spread its blue-grey hue on her light-brown complexion, blurring the contours of her angular face. I wanted to hug her or hold her hands, but I stayed put. She had flinched when I’d tried earlier, something about having spent too much time in the proximity of death, so I just sat there rubbing the stubble on my chin and remembering the general euphoria following the 1974 coup against Emperor Haile Selassie. And how, a few years later, millions of Ethiopians watched the new government, the Derg, swiftly dismantle the last of their dreams and hopes in breathless horror, as if they were collectively suffering from a collapsed lung.
“Every couple of days, they’d call someone’s name. They’d take you to an interrogation room, beat you to a pulp with fists, leather straps, anything. Or use you as a human ashtray,” she continued in a low voice.
I had heard about interrogation centres and firing squads at police stations around Addis Ababa, gunshots echoing in the night, prisoners scrubbing blood off dirty walls in the cold violet light of dawn; parents scrambling to pay for the bullets used to “weed out the enemies of the Revolution,” as the new regime called the executions, so they could retrieve their children’s remains for a proper burial lest the dead be thrown into an anonymous mass grave or left to rot in the streets.
I also knew about the hundreds of samizdat the underground resistance distributed at night, the kind that cost Alem two years of her life.
Our mother had sent me a letter with Alem. “I know my daughter, she’s holding back,” she wrote. “Please talk to her. She needs to let all that poison out.” Mother was right. I had heard Alem struggle with nightmares. She moaned and cried in her sleep. I had even heard her mumble her own name once or twice, but I didn’t let it penetrate my mind beyond superficially noting its strangeness. I had caught her many times staring at things, too, her body petrified mid-action in some mundane chore, her mind lost in a realm beyond my reach. I didn’t ask questions, too afraid of what I might learn. How could I, her brother, have asked what young cadres brimming with the insolence of a newly acquired ideology and power could have done to a seventeen-year-old girl in their custody? How could I have asked, when Alem’s bourgeois upbringing alone was loathsome enough to the Derg to justify any punishment, even death? So instead of forming questions, I tried to close the rift that her imprisonment had cleaved between us.
“You are safe now,” I said. “You have your whole life ahead of you.”
Alem turned to me with a perplexed look. She was twenty but her deep-set eyes had the gravitas of someone twice her age.
“They’re slaughtering children, for God’s sake, Benny,” she cried out. “The streets are littered with corpses.”
Only my immediate family and childhood friends back home called me Benny. To everyone else, I was Beniam or Ben. The sound of my nickname solidified her presence in the room.
&nbs
p; “You were only fifteen when I left, and nobody thought they’d go after women and children. Otherwise, I would have taken you with me,” I said. Thoughts of my own escape five years earlier flooded my mind: the walk across the border into Kenya, the interminable stretch of land, the blisters, and the fear of capture a dark and tenacious shadow companion.
She covered her face with her hands for a moment. “I know, Benny,” she said after a while, her crooked front teeth slightly visible under her thin lips, her voice gentle again, like a healing whiff of eucalyptus leaves.
I looked past her at the high-rise buildings across the street. My eyes followed earth-toned leaves to their final resting place at the foot of the majestic tree outside. “It’s called a maple tree,” my neighbour had told me when I came to Canada four years earlier in 1977. Toronto had felt like a strange new planet then: white faces everywhere I turned, rows of immaculate lawns leading up to identical brick houses. When I first saw the just-completed CN Tower, I couldn’t believe it was humanly possible to build such a monument. It was as though I’d found a ladder into the heavens. It made me feel that anything was possible in Canada.
“Drink your tea before it gets cold,” I said, taking a sip of mine. Cloves and cinnamon filled my nostrils, transporting me back to our childhood home, to the sky-blue walls of the small bedroom Alem and I shared when we were little, the cracks on its ceiling like an aerial view of the Nile. I wanted to tell her how, in the deep of the long and dark Canadian winter when the suspicious looks of landlords or the disdain in strangers’ eyes clogged my soul, I longed for the warmth of our home. And how even the memory of my strife with Father, the man who’d called me a coward for leaving the country to escape imprisonment, couldn’t dampen this longing. I wanted to reminisce about old times but I refrained — she didn’t care for nostalgia.
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