by Sara Alexi
“Tell me.”
But he does not talk of Juliet’s life.
“The birth is a time that neither I nor Saabira wish to remember. She cried for so many days and I held her and tried to feed her until she eventually began to curl up with me tighter as if I could take it all away. But I knew I was the bringer of the sorrow. I had brought her the baby and so curling up next to me would not take away the pain. I knew in time we would become closer and closer and then what if another baby came. I would bring her more sorrow.
“I was so proud to have Saabira as my wife and so proud of making her happy I had forgotten everything. I was happy. But I knew if I allowed her to keep curling up to me I would want to show her that love I feel for her and by indulging my love for her I could cause her the greatest pain she has ever known all over again. So I began to make a distance between me and Saabira. It was very hard, harder than carrying jugs of water, harder than racing my brother to load wood, harder than trying to make Saabira happy when we were first married.”
Juliet puts her hand on top of Aaman’s hand that rests on the table.
“I was hurting too and to curl into Saabira would not have taken the pain away, but Saabira is my joy and being together could have made the pain less and the joy more ... over time.
“Today I realised that my decision to not be close, in order to protect Saabira, had made us more like brother and sister, which in itself hurt, so agreeing to this journey was a way for me to be away from the pain of the past, the pain of the present and the pain I could cause in the future if I continued to love Saabira. I realised I have run away.”
Knowing his conclusion has come about by hearing the turmoil of her own life, Juliet breaks eye contact and retracts her hand. She turns her head to the side and scowls. Her instincts tell her to get up and leave, but she is struck by the irony in this choice of possible action. An irresistible urge forces her to laugh out loud.
Aaman looks offended.
“No, Aaman, I am not laughing at you. I understand what you said. I am laughing at myself. At my instinct to run away.”
“Running away is not to be laughed at. It is to stop the hurt when we feel we have run out of choices.”
“Yes, I suppose it is. So now you have realised you have run away, what difference will it make?”
“I must stop fearing.”
There is a celebratory gunshot over the hill. The cat’s friend jumps over the wall and wanders into the open house and eats from the bowl of cat food, crunching noisily, staying alert, cautious and protective.
“Yeah, right, easy to say.” Juliet looks at the cat inside but takes no action.
“Easy to do because what I have now is worse than what I fear. Now I have no Saabira, no children, no family, no home, and no future if I stay here. If I take the risks, maybe I can win Saabira back, maybe we can have children, my family will be very happy to see me and, it is small, but we do have a home. It is better.”
Juliet feels uncomfortable by this statement. She has nowhere to go back. No family home, no village, no partner. She ran away from a wide open space of nothingness. She could not return as the welcomed hero. She slumps in her chair.
“I’m hungry again. You?”
“Always,” Aaman says.
“Come on, let’s see what we can find.”
Rummaging in the cupboards, Juliet finds some bits and pieces from the previous week. There is also a slice of spinach pie from the bakery, with a bite taken out of it, a piece of Brie, and an open tin of baked beans in the fridge. She is not a great housekeeper. There are some tubs of spices that have been left through the house sale that are not all at their sell-by date. Juliet finds the tubs that are three years old or more amusing, but Aaman cannot see why throwing these tubs away makes her giggle, nor can she explain it.
Juliet is in charge, but it is quickly apparent that cooking is not one of her skills and so Aaman takes over. He selects what he can from the vegetable rack. Juliet offers to wash and chop. Aaman begins with oil and spices in a large pan, and the house fills with incredible smells. He washes his pots and pans as he cooks, using the same ones again, even though Juliet points out she has more than one of most things.
By the time he is clapping and rotating chapattis, Juliet sits watching with fascination.
“May I ask something?”
“Sure,” Juliet says.
“Do you make money now you have no husband or does he still support you?”
“I make my own, always have ever since the boys started school.”
“How can you when you are so far from your home country?”
He stacks another chapatti.
“On the Internet. I translate documents from Greek to English. In fact, I have just been offered some more work by the British Council in Athens, so I’m going to be really busy soon.”
Aaman is silent.
“What was that you said about your boyhood dream to be a programmer?”
“I think it is every boyhood dream in Pakistan. Everyone thinks it will be easy money with no labour. For me, I think I would really like that it is logical. Also, I like languages.”
“Yes, your English has improved unbelievably. I thought you only had a few words of English when we first met, but you are nearly fluent.”
“I have been listening to you and learning. Saabira has a degree in English and she was very patient with me. I never had the chance of college but I think I am a quick learner.”
Juliet reels at her presumption. The thought of Saabira having a degree doesn’t fit with the image she had created in her head. She seemed to be an unreal person from a developing-world country. Not a person like her, like her boys, with a degree.
“You went to school though?”
“I finished school when my brother died. We had the idea that he was going to help our family make the money so I could go to school to become a programmer. But really I don’t think there was enough money.”
“Oh. Does anybody manage to become a programmer in Pakistan?”
“Yes. They would have to come from a family who could afford education.”
“Ah.”
Aaman brings food to the table. Juliet gets knives and forks, and Aaman puts them to one side. Juliet follows Aaman’s lead and eats using the chapatti. She is amazed at the quality of the food given her bare cupboards. They eat with no talking and, for Juliet, no thinking.
Aaman dwells on what the Western world has to offer, jobs through the computer, enough money to buy houses in countries you are not born in, translating languages to make a living. The world is so big. He so wants, he wants ... he wants to stop thinking like Mahmout. Wanting brings him misery.
After the meal he wanders to the pomegranate trees and feels the fruit. Although they have grown they are still nowhere near ripe yet.
Chapter 10
They sit for a long time over their late lunch. The village Easter celebration noises show no signs of abating, the music continues at a loud volume, and the children gain their second wind. The sky begins to darken; there are one or two single fireworks. The still air is pierced with a series of festive gunfire shots. Someone over the hill puts on a firework display, and the whizzing and cracking is heard over the sound of the bouzouki.
Aaman and Juliet move onto the patio. The cat sits on Aaman’s knee. The cat’s friend circles Juliet’s chair. She pshhhes at it, but it flops onto its side and licks its paws to clean over its ears.
Aaman’s face is blank, and Juliet assumes he is now the one who is not thinking. He settles onto the hard-backed chair as if it is made of duck down, his limbs slack, his legs crossed, the upper dangling parallel to the lower indicating his leanness, his lack of size. Juliet’s mind is rolling through the events of the day, the things that have been said, the thoughts she has had.
“You know you said earlier that my life had shown you that you were running away? What did you mean? I mean, what in my life were you talking about? Exactly?”
In t
he interlude before Aaman answers, she raises a postponing finger and slips inside to reappear with a bottle of wine and two glasses. She clamps the bottle between knees and pulls, producing a satisfactory pop. She pours; it can breathe while they drink.
“There you go.” She clinks her glass against the one on the table.
“No, thank you.” Aaman looks at her trying to express something without words. Juliet’s realisation comes suddenly and makes her feel foolish.
“Oh, of course. Would you rather I didn’t?”
Aaman grins at her and wags a finger. She grins back and drinks.
“So come on, what did you mean?”
“Tell me more of your life, after you left home.”
Juliet is happy to allow Aaman’s direction.
“I moved out and went to college and promptly started an affair with my tutor, who was old enough to be my father.” Juliet lets out a short, humourless laugh. “Which lasted until he decided my flatmate was more attractive than me, and I dropped out of college, became a loner, pulling pints in the Irish club until I met another lost soul, Mick. But there you go again! He was Irish, my dad was Irish. Mick was older than me, had no job, no home, he was wandering. Michelle tried to warn me, but after what my friend at college had done to me, I no longer believed in friendship. So I married Mick thinking we could, the two of us, escape the world in our bubble. Which we did until the reality of Thomas and Terrance happened. My beautiful boys.”
Juliet gets up and reaches through the front door to the table just inside. She returns to her seat with a picture of her boys. The boys are in school uniform, about eight years old. Smiling and proud, she looks at Aaman to see his reaction. He appears clearly distressed.
“You have left them. Why?” There is an edge to his voice.
“Oh, no! They are not this age now. No, they are grown up. One is doing an MA and will follow that with a Ph.D., and the other’s got his degree and has immediately landed a job at a bank. He’s even been promoted already. They do a lot of in-house training so he’s happy. He has a girlfriend and I think they may get married, but they haven’t said anything yet.”
“They are lucky to have so much education.”
“Yes, it is harder now, there are fees. But Terrance, that’s this one,” she points, “has two small jobs and both me and his dad are helping him through.”
The phone rings.
“Excuse me.” Juliet takes the photograph in with her as she goes.
“Hello?”
“Hi Juliet, how’s it going. Did your house boy show up?”
“Hi Michelle. I am a bit busy at the moment.”
“Oh, OK.”
Juliet clicks the phone off.
“Sorry about that, Aaman.”
“Why did you do that?”
“What?” Juliet looks around her for what it is she is meant to have done.
“Not talk to your friend Michelle who helped you all those years?”
“Well, I, em, I didn’t really want to.” Juliet’s cheeks have warmed and she rubs her arm through her long-sleeved t-shirt.
“Why?” Aaman asks slowly.
“There is no why. I just didn’t want to.” She cannot meet his gaze.
“You asked me earlier what I saw in your life.”
“Yes, and?”
“And I ask you why you do not want to talk to Michelle.”
“Would you like coffee or tea, seeing as you’re not drinking?” Her tone is breezy and impersonal.
“No, Juliet, I do not want tea or coffee, or wine or anything else.”
Juliet stands and then sits again.
“I want to run,” she says.
“Yes, I can see that.”
“OK, I don’t want to talk to Michelle because she asks ‘what am I doing’ all the time. She wants to know what is going on in my life.”
“Isn’t that what friends do?”
“Yes, but that is my point. I didn’t ask her to be my friend.”
“Have you asked her to stop being your friend?”
“What? No, of course not, you don’t ask people to stop being friends!”
“What would it be like if she no longer was your friend?”
“Oh my goodness, the thought of Michelle not being around is unthinkable.” Juliet widens her eyes and raises her brow. “I mean, I don’t phone her and most of the time I don’t want to talk to her, but the thought of her never ringing again, I would feel so, so … oh my God, I would feel so alone.” Her body slumps boneless. “I am such a bitch.” Juliet cannot find a pleasant place to rest her eyes as they look inward. “She has stood by me all these years and persisted with a one-way friendship, which, as I have just found out, I would feel alone without. So why, oh why do I not want to talk to her? Unless I am a class A bitch!”
“Or?”
“Or? Well, she does remind me of all the horrors of my past. But we did have fun staying out all weekend, going into pubs when we were only fourteen. We did get bored on weeknights a bit, but generally she was great. I loved her.”
“Yes?”
“What do you mean, yes? As in yes I loved her? Well it’s true, I did.”
“And now?”
“I am not a kid any more. Things change.”
“Do things like that change? Have you stopped loving your dad?”
“No, never, but Michelle is not my dad.”
“She was with you when you went through a lot of pain.”
“Yes, she wasn’t around much when I went through the pain of college and I could have done with a friend then. You know I really thought I loved John. Dr John Brooks, that was his name. I thought it sounded so educated, above the sordidness of life. I saw him as my salvation. How wrong was I? I saw our relationship as a sign that I was an adult away from all the hurt of my childhood. I thought it was a new chapter in my life. But guess what? It was just more pain.
“Actually the pain was almost worse from losing my best friend of the time to losing him. Jenny.” Juliet pauses to drink some wine.
“We met in freshers week. That’s the first week of term when you are new. We got on so well. We went everywhere together, discovered life away from families together, explored our freedom together. I guess I loved her too really, until ...” She found no reason to finish her sentence and stopped to swig down the rest of her glass and poured some more.
“It just seems that everyone I love goes and bloody well hurts me.”
“And what have you found is the best way of getting away from that hurt?”
Juliet’s eyes dart left to right and then she nods her head and smiles sadly.
“I couldn’t get away from the pain of losing my dad. But I left home to get away from Mum. I left college to get away from both John and Jenny. And Mick? Let’s not forget Mick who has been hurting me for the last twenty-five years. I left him and, well I came to Greece. I have matured from a short-distance sprinter into a long-distance runner.”
“And Michelle?”
“Michelle? I have never run from Michelle.” Juliet can almost feel Aaman’s next question and begins to answer, leaving it unasked. “Why? Because she has never really hurt me. She could have. She could have been like Mick or Jenny or my mum, or dishonourable Dr John Brooks, but she isn’t and she hasn’t hurt me because ...” Juliet stops. It has hit her. She turns to Aaman, shifts her position and takes his hands. He smiles. “I have pushed her away. I have not allowed her close to avoid the pain just like you and Saabira.”
She lets go of his hands and throws her arms in the air, letting them fall onto her lap.
“I am such a bitch! Poor Michelle, year after year trying to be my friend and all the time I am pushing her away, not allowing her close. Twenty-something years we haven’t seen each other all because I was scared of the possible pain, not even the actual pain. That is so sad, and stupid.” She looks Aaman in the eye.
“I need to be like you, Aaman. I need to overcome the fear.”
There is a knock on the ga
te. It is a neighbour.
“Ella edo!” The neighbour clearly does not intend to step over the boundary and calls Juliet to her. Juliet jumps up and walks towards her, asking her in. Juliet returns holding a large plate brimming with meat and vegetables.
“She asked why I haven’t been to share their Easter food with them. Presuming I was busy, she brought the food to me. How kind is that?” She goes inside and returns with two forks. She pulls off the plastic wrap that covers the plate, puts it in on the table and pulls her chair close.
“It’s goat.” Juliet beckons him to join her and feels slightly smug for having remembered that he probably wouldn’t eat pork.
“So come on, Aaman, seeing as we are fighting fire tonight, what do we need to do next?”
“You are doing it.”
“What?”
“You are being brave, fighting your fear.”
“What? By coming to Greece, you mean?”
“No, by letting me in.”
“What? To do the garden?”
“No, not the garden, Juliet.” He laughs at her, and Juliet is aware that she doesn’t want to run. In fact, she wants to stay.
“What about you, Aaman? Will you return to be close to Saabira?” Juliet does not like the thought of him going.
“I do not know how I can. I have no money to return with and no money to buy the harvester. I would return in shame and I would have to try to get a job back at the shoe factory, if they have work.”
“Hang on. I think I have a plan.” Juliet scrambles to her feet, reverberating with excitement and nearly jumping on the spot. There are fireworks across the sky, but she doesn’t see them.
Aaman is not easily given hope and his countenance does not change.
“Listen.” Juliet cannot stand still. “I still need the gardening doing and ...” She turns to him so she can see his face.
Aaman’s face goes slack, as this will not provide the money he needs.
“No, listen. I need the gardening doing, and this work will be paid whoever does it so it might as well be you, but better than that I have a computer and you are an extraordinarily fast learner. I am sure there will be programming courses online. You can learn by yourself and when you return, I will write you a reference saying you have been here, writing programmes for me. Ha, you will have the pick of jobs. Brilliant!”