Nowhere to go
As the dim light filters in from the wooden floorboards above my head, I struggle to make out the words I’ve written down on the moth-eaten papers. Well I suppose it didn’t matter if the spellings were all correct, it was the meaning, the intent that must be clear. Unfortunately, my intent was blurry too. Before all the blame can be put on me, it must be considered that I have been lurking in this ‘basement’ for over 3 months. My sanity has probably suffered. The swirling shadow who I’ve christened with the name of ‘George’ agrees somewhat. He is always making sarcastic comments from the various dark corners of this crawlspace, his looming presence traveling all throughout. But the company, no matter how off-putting, is appreciated.
Oftentimes I recount the beginning of this terrible ordeal, when my life was relatively normal. I had been fired from my job as the head office boy in Daily News for falling asleep in one of the offices after drinking. Five long years of work ended without even a notice. It wasn’t like I hadn’t tried to find a better job at first, but my mediocre grades in college and a useless degree in engineering proved to be absolutely worthless in the job market. I had no connections, no money for bribes, and no outstanding talent. The thought of going back home and being a burden to my already struggling parents weighed heavily on my heart and in desperation, I had agreed to work in Daily News as an office boy, temporarily, to get me started. It helped me pay rent for a one-room apartment (under my name but I shared it with Ahmed, my friend from college), and two meals a day. I couldn’t have asked for more. I wanted to, but I couldn’t.
After I was let go of, a janitor hooked me up with a night shift security guard job as a favor. In the evenings I freelanced as an editor for online blogs. I even wrote a few articles about fitness and fashion, sitting on the floor in my undies, eating my third instant ramen meal. Ahmed, my roommate, and I stayed out of each other’s way, his day shifts as a laborer keeping him busy till evening. On our rare day off, we’d buy a beer and watch a movie. He had a habit of squabbling about the movie selection. If I picked horror, he wanted action. If I picked action, he wanted romance. Now what kind of a man watches romance? But no, he just had to get into it with me and waste an hour. We always ended up going with my original choice. Sometimes I wondered if he just wanted to have a chat, but didn’t know what to talk about, and the only way he could do so was by quarrelling. I didn’t mind. Not like I had anyone to talk to, and he, well, couldn’t. Working with a fake name and forged documentation was already pushing the boundaries, if he accidentally let something slip; it could have disastrous consequences for him.
Ahmed worked hard for his family. When we graduated, I assumed he would go on to work for some grand MNC or something. But within a year the government passed new bills to push the immigrants out of the country. Now Ahmed was no immigrant, his grandfather had been in this country ever since he could talk. But with the formalities of the new guidelines and the lack of necessary documentation, he and his family were in danger of being sent to camps at the border; we knew next to nothing about those, except that people, who were sent for detainment, were never heard from again. When Ahmed couldn’t get a job, he ended up forging his documentation to be allowed to work. He had changed his name to Chris. After years of hard work, he had successfully managed to send his whole family to the neighboring country, all he needed was enough cash to go to them and build a new life there. Last I heard, his sister already had a job over there, and they were eagerly waiting for him to join them. We never really talked about all these things, it tended to put a damper on the guy’s mood. ‘Right now is the most important, we’ll focus on that’ was his mantra.
I still remember the Sunday he chose to stay home from work. He was a daily wage worker but even so, other than the national holidays, I had never seen him take a day off. I went out to buy some beers while he stayed and cooked us some fried rice. When I came back, he had already set up my laptop and cushions.
“Yo!” I greeted him.
He smiled at me as I took off my shoes and made a beeline for my spot.
“Dude, wash your hands at least.” He pleaded. I rolled my eyes but got up anyway. Cleanliness was very important to him, and I always obeyed. Can’t scorn a good habit.
When I returned, he was sitting with his back leaning against the wall. He looked to be deep in thought.
“Sup’?” I disturbed his deep reverie, it’s no good getting lost in your mind, especially if you want to have a good time.
He opened his eyes and looked at me in a way that made me deeply uncomfortable. He seemed profoundly sad. I stopped in my tracks and frowned. His whole demeanor was strange today, now that I noticed, but I sat down next to him nevertheless.
“Out with it, what’s up with you?” I asked him, a bit annoyed that he had to have me ask.
He laughed at my irritated tone, he always enjoyed arguing with me but it was usually about the movie. I prepared to best him in this argument too.
“Listen to me Aman, and this is important.” He sat up straighter as he talked, “I want to tell you where I keep my money.”
I was taken aback. This…wasn’t what I was expecting. I wanted him to not say anything, there was no need to tell me such things, not like I wanted to know either. Sensing that I was about to speak, he cut me off.
“You’ve helped me a lot, without you, I couldn’t have given my family a good life. Now listen, I keep my money in my pillow. If anything happens to me in the future, send it to my family. Times are unpredictable, and I trust you. Do not speak of this now. I’ve said what I needed to say, and I will not hear anything from you.”
I kept my mouth firmly shut. It’s not that I didn’t want to reassure him, but I didn’t exactly know how to. There was silence as we both looked at the blank screen of my old laptop.
“Fine, whatever you say. Let’s watch Godfather.”
“Damn, I wanted something animated.”
Ahmed went to work the next day like he usually did, but this time, he didn’t come back. When a week passed, I went to his usual place, which was a small shed at the roadside crowded by a bunch of laborers, waiting for the truck to come to take them to the construction site, and asked around, hoping to locate him. With the bits and pieces the other workers told me, I knew that he had been sent away. The day before our movie party, all of them had been screened and five workers were found to have false documents. They were carted off to a ‘government office’ to ‘renew their papers’, and hadn’t been seen since. That day I went home and took out the money he had mentioned and wired it to his family.
Now it must be understood that I don’t have a lot of anger in my heart. I go where the tides take me, and besides; keeping your cool is the most important step in self-preservation. Anyway, that day I shattered a few cups, a plate, and punched a hole in the wall. I still had gone to work every night, despite the lack of sleep and the guilt of not being able to protect him gnawing at my heart. I had fruitlessly watched the news, read the papers, for any mention of him, or any other people sent to the camp, but there was nothing. The full-page ads of the Prime Minister’s face smiling through the papers and billboards angered me even more. Boasts about declining poverty and good GDP were the only things in the papers and I was now struggling to believe any of it was remotely true. The graphs and charts were just lines and colors. Even I could draw those.
A month after the ordeal, I got a request to write a funny story for an independent teen magazine ‘The Glamour’. They didn’t offer too much money, but I wanted to write; it had been forever since I actually wrote a story. So I did. It might’ve been the culmination of all my feelings that had given me the foolish courage to do it. I made up a nonsensical story about a racist politician who accidentally shoots his own foot because it looked too Muslim. At the time I didn’t actually realize the uproar it would cause, after all, the only people who had even heard of the ‘The Glamour’ magazine were teenagers and divorced cougars. I sent the story to be published and started preparing to move out of the apartment. Without Ahmed, I could not afford to have both food and shelter. I only needed to sleep during the day, so a back alley or sometimes a motel would have to do. A few weeks after the story was published I was, for all intents and purposes, homeless. Imagine my surprise when one day I see my face on the small TV of a store, labeling me as a national enemy. It was then I realized that my life was essentially, over. Under the cover of the night and face obscured by my beard, I made my way to a place I never thought I’d seek out.
