by Sara Alexi
“Hey, listen. Juliet?”
“Yeah, yes, I’m OK.” She blows her nose.
“Listen, you have had a hell of a ride. You divorced the Marvellous Mick, and not before time, but before you had a chance to adjust to single life, you moved to Greece. Now I’m not saying there is anything wrong with that, but you were very displaced when you met Aaman. New to the country, new to the village, new to being single, and with no immediate support. If he was kind to you, he is bound to have become a bigger person in your life than, say, if you had met him back here with your boys just a car ride away, when you still went to your yoga group twice a week and coffee with half of them on the other days, and when you still had weekly meetings at the ex-Greek teacher and so on. You get the picture?”
“Yes, I get it. But he has experienced fire and loss, he understands. I haven’t met anyone else who seems to understand the way he does. He allows me to feel. He gives me time and space and the safety to feel what I have never dared face.”
“I can hear you and I love him for it. But if he has gone then he has gone, and there’s nothing you can do about that.”
“Just like my dad.”
“Sorry?”
“Gone just like my dad and then I found out years later he loved me, but it was too late because he was dead.” Juliet begins to cry again, but half of her watches and is amazed at being a forty-eight-year-old woman crying for a dad who died twenty-seven years previously.
“Your dad did not want to lose you, and it sounds as if Aaman had no choice either. Neither of them wanted to abandon you. Aaman going is about Aaman, not about you.”
Juliet stops crying and wipes her nose. Her brow unknotted, she makes an effort to inhale and exhale steadily. Michelle’s words filter through her.
“You know what? You’re right. He didn’t want to leave. It wasn’t his choice. I have been thinking about my loss all this time, but what about Aaman? He had so much more to lose.”
At Omonia Square, Aaman’s first job is selling wind-up rabbits that hop half-heartedly with flashing red eyes. The owner of the mechanical rabbits has assured Aaman it is a good job and kindly subbed his food for the first day, “Whilst you get going,” he says. There are three other people selling the same wind-up rabbits on the corner he is stationed on. The toys are cheaply made and they are meant to ask five euros, “Accept four if you have to”, out of which they can keep one euro for themselves for the first two they sell in a day, two euros from the rest. He must work whilst the sun is up. He sleeps in the square, under a tree, with a stray dog he names Lucky.
After a week, Aaman sees that the odds are stacked against him. He spends all he makes on the cheapest food he can find. Some days he doesn’t sell a rabbit and he goes hungry. He also still owes the rabbits’ owner the sub for his food on the first day. He now sees the trap that it was, ensuring his return day after day or the alternative consequences of owing such a person money. He works two more days, without food, to get free of his debt, the last day spent not so much trying to sell as observing his surroundings.
Omonia Square is a congested roundabout with openings to the underground strategically placed, the central island large and open with trees and benches. The area is busy with predominantly foreigners, illegals. At the hub of the island are mostly Georgians, Turks, and Armenians. They stand in knots, looking casual in stance and alert in their eyes. Occasionally one will break away and take long, bouncing, running strides to the Pakistanis or Indians who stand at the traffic lights, at the entrances to the roundabout, offering to wash windscreens, sponge in hand, buckets at their feet, hopeful for tips. The Armenians collect up these tips from the pockets of the Indians, tip a bottle of water in their bucket, tell them to work harder, then return to their group in the square’s centre jangling their pockets like returning warriors.
Someone kicks one of Aaman’s rabbits. Thin white trainers, one with no laces, the woman stands there, her body contorted in impossible angles to stay vertical. Involuntarily bending from the waist, her knees begin to give. Her face vacant, eyes rolling. She looks like she will fall at any moment, but each time a force within her returns her to vertical and the collapse begins again. Her head just keeps nodding and, somehow, her balance remains. Aaman rescues his rabbit and shifts down the street a couple of yards, avoiding other vendors and areas of sick and dog dirt.
Another man breaks rank from the centre and goes to another windscreen cleaner. He pockets the money before he returns to his colleagues. The nodding lady sees him, her eyes gain some focus, her impossible gait propelling her towards him on the central isle, cars stopping, horns blaring, windows being rolled down, shouts, hand gestures. She reaches the man in the centre and scrabbles in her pockets. The man watches her struggle until finally she brings out some money. She passes the money over and he hands her something small from a bag around his waist, under his shirt. He grins as she leaves, a car narrowly missing her as she staggers back from the island and all but falls down the steps into the underground.
Aaman stays squatting by his rabbits until they are collected from him, his day done, the last repayment made, money left for him. The windscreen washers have their buckets and sponges taken away by the men in the middle. Aaman crosses the road to surreptitiously join them. It is a large area with sculptures and different levels and trees. Aaman finds a nook behind a tree not far from the group of men and waits.
The night has fallen and the men still talk and only break to hand small somethings from their waist bags to people who don’t stay near them for longer than is necessary. Two of the men with waist bags also have bucket and sponges lying idle by their feet, ready for out of work Indians the next day. One has a basket of rabbits with mad red eyes.
The girl is halfway across the road when Aaman sees her again. She staggers and falls against a car that screeches to a stop. She gives the driver an obscene hand signal and continues to her destination, a motorbike narrowly missing her. She lumbers toward the group, madly feeling through her pockets, digging deep, toppling but never falling. Aaman sees potential trouble and readies himself. He moves closer behind another tree.
The girl asks for something, and the man holds his hand out for money. She begins her own body search again, each ploughing of her pockets sending her off balance, she sidesteps to regain. She has on a long cotton coat with large pockets; it is stained in many places and has a rip across the back. Her eyes are rolling and her mouth stays open. Her hair is plastered to her head down one side, on the other it is frizzy. Last pocket, she is frantic, she bends low to reach the bottom, her balance goes, she stumbles into the men. They stagger in turn and shout. Aaman, like a small rat, runs between them and makes away with a bucket and sponge; they don’t even notice.
He runs for a few blocks and then finds a corner, at the back of a building, between some pipes and a wall, behind a bin where he sits on his haunches. Bucket in hand, sponge under his t-shirt, he lets himself drift in and out of sleep till morning, grateful that it isn’t cold.
The next morning, Aaman picks a corner with no Armenians in sight and totes for work for a few hours. He cleans two windscreens but only one driver pays. Twenty cents. He buys a bread ring and moves on.
He is stopped at the next corner where he totes for business by a Russian. The Russian wants to know the name of his boss. Aaman says he has no boss and the Russian find this amusing and laughs as he brings an elbow up under Aaman’s jaw. Tongue bitten, eyes roll. Balance lost. Elbows take the weight of his fall. He sees feet move. Weight rebalanced. A swinging foot. A sharp pain, he curls up for protection.
“Now you have a boss.” The Russian grabs him by an arm and drags him away from the road under a flyover. Aaman remains curled. The Russian sits down on a rock. Aaman can smell cigarette smoke. He waits. He falls asleep. Awakes to residual pain. Opens his eyes and uncurls. The Russian is still there, now with a friend. Aaman slowly sits up. His tongue is throbbing.
“Ah, my worker awakes!” The Russian and
his friend laugh. The friend gets up and walks away across the road, saying something in his mother tongue.
Aaman glances at the Russian. He sees his chance being lost by the action of this man. He feels an unfamiliar emotion. He realises it is anger. He puts his hands on the floor to stand, his fingers curling around a rock.
“And where do you think you are going?” The Russian finds his role amusing. “Sit down!”
But Aaman does not sit and the Russian stands to take action, feeling his own anger at Aaman’s defiance. He lunges at Aaman to push him back down. Aaman ducks and sidesteps. He swings his arm towards the Russian’s head, his fingers clenched around the rock. It makes a grating thud as it makes contact. The Russian’s eyes open wide and an expletive passes his lips. He stands tall and turns on Aaman.
Aaman is terrified. The Russian is much taller than him. He knows he is going to swing for him. His legs are straddled for a sure base and his eyes are menacing. Aaman doesn’t have time to think. His foot has come up between the straddled legs and the man folds, a sweet acid expulsion of air passes his lips as his head lowers to his knees. Aaman brings the rock down on his head with a solid crunch and the man falls to the floor.
Aaman grabs his bucket and runs. He heads off the main road and finds a street with high-fenced houses. He is gasping for air but dare not stop running. He eventually staggers to a halt by an old house. The bushes outside the fence on the pavement are dense and covered with flowers. Aaman pushes his way past the canopy of foliage to disturb a cat curled by the trunk of the bush. Aaman takes its place and stays hidden in the bush until nightfall. His tongue throbs slightly less and the pain from the kick to his stomach has decreased, but his heart is still beating fast.
By the light of the moon he takes his bucket and runs through the suburban street until he can run no more. Dawn is breaking. He wonders if the grapevine on the street will have every Russian in Athens looking for him. He steals a yellow t-shirt from a washing line, swipes a baseball cap from a garage. He finds a corner to work on and stays twice as vigilant.
Aaman keeps moving to avoid the Russians, Georgians, Turks, even Greeks. Traffic lights here, street corners there, moving constantly, each step closer to her computer, her garden, her house, Juliet. Street by street, mile by mile, day by day, cents turn into euros. The euros are eaten away with the need for food. Water fifty cents a bottle. A Sisyphean task. Some days he takes no food to save money, some days there is no pay. He is nearly at the end of Athens. He takes his money and buys a ticket for as far as it will take him. He will walk the rest.
Chapter 16
The village outskirts feel so familiar. The woman sits in the shade by her aging petrol pumps. Girl and woman, she has sat there, now neatly dressed in black, knitting. A dog runs to him, black with a wide collar, reacquainting. Aaman pats its head, it runs on, free of its work with the sheep for a few hours. The bakery, closed, it is late, the pharmacy dark. The kiosk lit like a fun fair, promises and temptations. Aaman sits under the palm tree, stretches his legs and rubs his feet.
With his remaining cents he buys a box of matches. The road out behind the hill, the familiarity only brought by the repetition of walking. The fork in the road, nothing new, the road turning to track, the trees thickening and there, the track on the right. Aaman slows his pace, listening. Is there life? An owl. The track so familiar. The moon bright, cloudless. The clearing and the barn. Hope builds. He steps on something. A roof tile snaps under his weight. It is handmade, lichen-covered. He looks round. There are more. No roof means no business. Rounding the corner to the front, he half expects to see the dead man and Mahmout grinning behind a tree.
There is the pan. A fork stuck into the mud door frame. All is abandoned. Roof tiles littered, a deliberate act. The moon shines down through the beams, some tiles holding fast, polka dotting the floor. The shelves pulled from the walls, some on the ground, some falling away, some half out, a methodical destruction to render useless the illegal camp.
Aaman has no interest in the broken history. The bunk that was his is gone. Where it was pulled from the wall there is a hole, the mud bricks have crumbled, brown dust and straw. Aaman’s fingers feel the wall, around the hole, scanning to recognise what has gone and what remains. His internal map shifted by the missing pieces. He feels in his pocket, lights a match to see.
He finds a brick with carving on it he recognises. He lights another match. He traces the route, back four, down three. Yes! There! Spit-smoothed mud. Aaman looks around for a twig, a stone; he runs and grabs the fork. Scraping and twisting the fork into the dried earth, it crumbles with ease. The tip of something paper. He lights another match. He nips it with finger and thumb and pulls. The notes uncurl as they slide out. The first few leave some behind. Nipping and pulling, Aaman retrieves all his savings. A smile spreads across his face and he laughs out loud, muted and buffered by the dense grove of orange leaves. He lies back on the plank that was once his shelf, looks up to the star-filled sky and, with a smile on his lips, falls asleep.
Up at seven and all translation work finished by tea time, Juliet finds she is much more productive and happy. This morning, she has a new piece to work on, but there is no urgent deadline. But it is important to answer an email about the book someone wants translated. That is a big job, lucrative.
She turns over and stretches, the silkiness of quality, tight-woven cotton against her skin. The sheets twist round her smooth-shaved legs and the cat meows for his escape. Juliet sits up to untangle the cat. Its face comes out first, relaxed and unhurried. Eyes open wide, ears tense and turning, he can hear something. Juliet smooths his fur with a lingering hand.
“There, there, puss with no name. What’s wrong?”
The cat relaxes to only tense again. Juliet listens. A tapping, a metallic tapping? Juliet stops breathing to listen more intently. There it is again. Not the postman’s blast on his moped horn. A tapping. Juliet flings her legs off the bed into her jeans, pulls on a top as she runs for the keys, flings the front door open. Stops still. Aaman!
Does she run, does she hug him, how did he get back, why is he back, does he feel the same, is he staying?
“Aaman!” Juliet has no choice her legs are running.
She stops a foot from the gate. He put out his hand. Juliet is not sure if she is to take it or shake it. She reaches for it, their fingers touch as if to slide into a handshake, movements slow and slur, his fingers reach her palm, hers his. The touch light, thrilling. Juliet makes a tiny almost unnoticeable stroke with the middle finger, his thumbs curls around index finger, his little finger curling around hers, they slide their hands slowly apart only to rejoin, her ring finger and little finger interlocking with the soft flesh between his, her thumb stroking his wrist. He intakes a breath, their eyes locked. His fingers reach her wrist, feeling her pulse, sliding down across her palm, fingertips touching, exploring, uniting, intertwining, his circling her palm. She takes a breath, eyes still locked, he takes her hand, encompassing her thumb, helpless.
“Hello, Juliet.”
“Hello, Aaman.”
The hands have not separated. Fingers interlock, squeezing, releasing, holding, caressing, brushing, clutching, the tender, thin skin between fingers exploded, the edge of the nail smoothed, the speeding pulse felt, the life line exposed, the mound of the thumb kneaded. Neither noticing their actions, both absorbed, gazing in silence until the cat jumps on the gate between them and nuzzles for attention.
“Oh, sorry.” Juliet releases his hand, as the cat’s head butts her arm, to fumble with the gate key. She steps back to let him in. He enters over the threshold, puts his hand on Juliet’s shoulder, softly, tenderly. He couldn’t escape her eyes, transfixed, his hand trails the length of her scarred arm, smoothing, feeling, absorbing all the way down until he remains supporting the tips of her fingers.
Juliet, paralysed, her desire to hold him, melting at his touch, stands unmoving, smiling, mesmerised. He releases her fingers and breaks the spell, repl
aced by a calm that folds over them.
“Please come in, Aaman.” Her words are languid. She puts her hand on his shoulder and leads him to the house.
“Are you hungry?” His jumper feels dirty. She removes her hand to make a quick scan of his condition. His clothes are visibly dirty, and now she has noticed them, she becomes aware that he smells. They go into the kitchen. Juliet pulls out a wooden chair for him to sit on and begins to make him a sandwich.
“Actually, I wonder if you would like a bath? The water is hot and I think I can find something that might fit you.” She smiles at the memory of that last time she had offered him clothes.
“No, no, Juliet I am fine. I came to explain.”
“There is nothing to explain. I heard they had taken you. I tried to find you, I went to the Pakistani Embassy and several police stations but they seemed to have lost you. I presume they had deported you. I can’t believe you are here. What happened?” Juliet was expecting the excitement to fuddle her words, her thought, but instead there is profound tranquillity about her, as if she had the rest of her life to find out Aaman’s tale.
“You went to the embassy to find me?” His mouth is open, he processes the information. She is still looking at him, enquiring. “They let me go. I had twenty-four hours to become legal or leave the country.”
“Or what?”
“Or I will be an illegal immigrant all over again!” He is smiling as broadly as Juliet has ever seen. She laughs, the final tension relaxing.
“It is so good to have you back.” And before she can think, she hugs Aaman, they hold on a little longer, he breathes in, his nose in her hair, she feels the tension in his muscles. She pulls away, embarrassed by her feelings, unsure of their reciprocation.
“I insist you have a bath. If you have been in a detention centre, I imagine you will need one. I will be happy to wash your clothes. I can find you something to wear.” She opens a trunk by the bathroom and brings out a thick, fluffy, cream towel, which she hands to Aaman. He hesitates to take it, it is so clean. Juliet pushes it into his hands as she passes him to run the bath.