Outside People and Other Stories Read online

  And what manner of place is this? she asked herself in his embrace. Was she returning home in the arms of a brother? Or was she stepping into uncharted waters with the baggage of a denizen? Was she the canyon at the foot of his precipice, the slackened grip on all that he held sacred? Did he approve of her beau corps, of the way he could address her with open hands, not words, and leave himself protected? Would he approve of her slight reluctance as he unfastened her summer dress? Why did she now hesitate to reveal herself, feeling a naked shoulder blade, an outer thigh, an arched sole were all too much to bare?

  She sat up and brushed out the knots in her hair with her fingers, distracting herself from another craving, concealing her self-consciousness. She saw his flight attendant’s uniform hanging by the door like the empty shell of someone lost to the constant crossing over of time zones, land, and sea.

  “Let’s get out of here,” she said anxiously.

  “Is something wrong?”

  “I need some air … and I could use a cigarette.”

  “Of course … tu fumes trop.”

  Was this a judgment or a question? She wasn’t sure, and decided not to tell him she had quit, officially. “This used to be a smoker’s city. Maybe if I lived somewhere else, I’d smoke less. Or maybe I’d smoke just as much, but try to hide it.” And maybe if I lived somewhere else you wouldn’t be lying here with me, she wanted to say but didn’t.

  “Peut-être,” he smiled vaguely.

  As they sipped their coffee in one of those all-day breakfast places, he asked her where she would like to go if she could travel—a stock question she presumed he reserved for the countless mornings spent in hotel lounges with those countless other women of the air. The waitress appeared with his breakfast order, saving her from having to manufacture an equally stock response.

  While the waitress made room for an oversized plate, she noted that a part of the order was smothered in bacon bits—the pre-packaged kind that was standard Canadian fare but would no doubt elude the unsuspecting traveller. This time she didn’t hesitate, unable to let the observation pass without due comment, wondering if his gratitude was real or fake as he rejected the plate of food before him, wondering if, and for whose benefit, he was laying on the belaboured explanation about halal a little thick.

  In an effort to ignore the waitress’s mounting displeasure, she turned her attention elsewhere, surprised to see how much the crowds outside had grown since the early morning. They flowed out of the plaza and onto the streets, large groups standing not too far from the same wall of glass that had captured the placard’s reflection.

  “Charter of Shame,” she said in a half-whisper.

  “Pardon?” he asked distractedly.

  “Rien,” she answered, drawn into the sea of faces that mirrored the message on many of the placards—LA DIVERSITÉ EST UNE RICHESSE. With their constant ebb and flow, however, she saw other kinds of messages: ÉTAT LAÏC, INDIVIDUS LIBRES. QUÉBEC JE ME SOUVIENS.

  He asked what she was looking at so intently.

  “A stormy Sunday.”

  “Should I be worried? About my flight?” He swivelled himself around to see what she was seeing, then took her hand and stroked it softly.

  “No rings,” he observed.

  She, too, was being tested. Was she a sister or an impostor? Why wasn’t she married?

  She pulled her hand away: “No rings. No ties. No worries, right?”

  He took out his phone and showed her a picture of himself seated at a festive table laden with several large tajines, an array of flatbreads and platters of fruit, his arm around a beautiful young woman, both of them grinning.

  “Should I be worried?” she stopped herself from blurting out unintentionally.

  “Last Eid. Me and my youngest sister,” he smiled. “We’re very close.”

  “Ah,” she sighed. “She’s lovely.”

  “She doesn’t veil herself—comme tu peux voir. One of my older sisters wears hijab, but the modest kind, like the ones that seem more common here. Maybe that’s why they all tease my uncle’s wife for spending a fortune on the designer headscarves she sees the actresses wearing in those Egyptian films.”

  “Tell me more.”

  “There are many in Morocco who dislike the niqab. It’s Wahabi, they say.”

  She looked at him quizzically

  “A Saudi custom,” he clarified. “An import. Some go so far as to support the French in their ban, and others say that even focusing on these issues is a waste of time, or worse: a kind of subterfuge—just another attack on Islam by the West.”

  The waitress reappeared. “Bacon-free, as you order,” she said peevishly in English, in spite of the fact that he had only spoken to her in French, a language he clearly possessed with native fluency. She waited for his reaction, secretly hoping he wouldn’t let the waitress get away with it. She knew how it felt to make every effort to speak French in a place that insisted on it, only to be answered back in English. She had always chalked it up to her accent, her grammar, her slowness in another language. Now she wasn’t so sure.

  He seemed too tired to notice or care. He barely glanced at the plate before pushing it toward the middle of the table: “Eat with me.”

  “I’m not hungry.”

  “You’ll be hungry when you start eating.”

  She yielded.

  “Next time I’ll be here for two days,” he said.

  “Next time?”

  “We could meet at your place? Oui?”

  “Then you should know where to find me,” she said, surprised by the turn their morning had taken. She wrote down her address on a paper napkin and then found herself writing her name in Urdu, the mother tongue she had only recently recovered from oblivion, like a child learning the alphabet for the first time. He scrutinized her Urdu script in affectionate amusement. To him it must have looked like misspelled Arabic.

  “Alors, c’est possible de me retrouver … aussi,” he said, describing his hometown just north of Marrakesh.

  When she mentioned it was time to go, he insisted on walking out with her. A concentrated shock of light hit their eyes as soon as they left the building. The light turned out to be part of a camera man’s recording equipment. It was directed at a young woman wearing a pair of jeans, a pink hijab, and a long-sleeved T-shirt with the printed words KEEP CALM AND WEAR HIJAB, a slogan that matched the self-assuredness with which she was speaking to the reporter. Something about the scene reminded her of a photograph of her mother when she was younger. She was standing on a beach in shalwar kameez, her long brown hair blowing freely in the coastal winds whipped up by the Arabian Sea. It was the kind of photo that children look at askance, seeing a version of a parent’s younger self they barely recognize. But now she vividly recalled her mother’s expression, so wide-eyed and confident, and utterly unfazed by the blazing sunlight refracted against a crowded Karachi shoreline. Not just an image of things she barely recognized, but of a person she longed to know.

  “Why did you feel it was important to participate in today’s demonstration?” she heard the reporter ask.

  She moved in closer, eager to hear the young woman’s response.

  “I was born here,” she replied. “And yet I’m being told that because of what I wear on my head, I’m a threat to this society. But isn’t this my society too? Am I a threat to myself?”

  “But the proposed Charter of Values is directed at all religious symbols, not just your own,” the reporter persisted.

  “That is why we’re here as a multi-faith march, in solidarity with those from other religions, including our Christian brothers and sisters.”

  “Yet many in the Muslim community say this proposal only came about because the first one, the Reasonable Accommodation bill directed specifically at Muslims, was rejected. What do you think about this?”

  “Well, the fact o
f the matter is that both then and now we marched in solidarity with people of all faiths and beliefs, from the religious and secular communities.”

  “How do you think this bill will affect you personally, in your everyday life?”

  “I’m already affected because I’m worried about my future. I want to study Public Administration, but now I feel this will not be a good choice for me, since this bill will make it impossible for me to work in the government or the public sector. My career and job prospects will be compromised. My degree will be worthless…”

  “All the streets are closed,” he shouted over to her from the corner where he had stationed himself, scrutinizing the police blockades. She nodded, trying to catch the rest of the interview, but the reporter had quickly moved onto someone else, the young woman and her pink hijab having melded seamlessly back into the crowd.

  “We can walk another block to the Métro, if you wish,” he said.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll get back home the way I came.”

  “Through this?”

  “I’ll manage. You just have a safe flight tonight,” she said, kissing him on the cheek.

  “A safe flight, yes. A safe flight,” he repeated the phrase like a chant she had set in motion, just as he had read the surah on her pendant, resurrecting it in ways that made it pulsate against her skin.

  He kissed her hand, and she looked at the people spilling out into the streets in and around the Quartier des Spectacles.

  In another second she was pulled into the crowd, brushing up against a tall woman with wiry dreadlocks poking out of a Rastafarian hat. The woman held up a placard with the words ONE LOVE, ONE HEART scrolled onto it in green, black, and yellow. A group of older men and women in front of her carried a banner saying, MY RIGHT, MY LIFE, MY CHOICE, and two teenage girls waved a makeshift placard that read: HOODIES AND HIJABS 4 SOCIAL JUSTICE. She heard the woman with the Rastafarian hat make some comment to her friend about the glorious sunshine as she peeled off her cardigan and tied it round her waist.

  “My Right!” people chanted in unison, while making their way down rue Ste-Catherine, the city’s main commercial street that ran from east to west.

  She threw a glance back over an array of bobbing heads and placards but he was long out of view.

  “…My Life!” the chanting continued.

  She gave up on the idea of going back home the way she came, releasing herself to the current.

  “My Choice!” she joined in, certain they would meet again, on solid ground. Out in the open.

  CHICKEN CATCHERS

  In memory of the ten migrant workers who lost their lives on February 6, 2012, near Stratford, Ontario, in one of the worst road accidents in Ontario’s history. And for the three men who survived.

  “THE VAN LEAVING!” Hector bellowed from the doorway of the bunkhouse that housed him and twelve other men.

  Reggie gently prodded the man lying on the cot next to his. “Amaru, wake up!” Amaru grunted and weakly pulled the steel-grey blanket over his ears.

  “Ándale, amigo!” Hector held the door open with one gloved hand, fumbling to pull on the second glove with his teeth. Reggie wanted to caution Hector not to bite down on the same gloves he wore while handling the chickens, certain they were contaminated. Then he thought better of it. Hector saw himself as a mentor to the other men. In all fairness, he helped Reggie buy gloves when it was abundantly clear that no one would be supplying him protective gear for their work on the poultry farms. The gloves had eaten into the little money he had set aside for a winter coat, but Hector assured him an affordable coat could be found when the time came. The gloves, on the other hand, were indispensable.

  “You must find a pair thin enough to grab a chicken by the neck, and thick enough to save your own neck!” Hector laughed, pleased with his joke, more so because he had made it in English, which he spent the evenings teaching himself on one of those language-learning programs.

  Grab one chicken by the neck? Reggie had balked. That hardly seemed worth the price of the gloves!

  “No, no no!” Hector chided. “No solamente un pollo por mano, hermanito! Cuatro pollos por mano!”

  Reggie looked perplexed, so Hector translated: “One chicken, one hand—no good! Lose job. Hasta luego! Four chickens, one hand. Eight chickens, two hands. First you catch, then you hold.” Hector splayed out his fingers in demonstration: “Hold neck between fingers. Like this. Five fingers, four necks. Comprendes?”

  Reggie still couldn’t hold more than three chickens in one hand, but he was faster at catching them than anyone else. By day’s end he managed to round up as many chickens as the other men.

  “Vámanos!” Hector urged again.

  Reggie caught a glimpse of the white van that transported them to the poultry barns, its headlights illuminating a “Danger: Keep Out” sign on a massive shed containing the farm’s overstock of pesticides.

  “Amaru!” Reggie placed his hand on the sleeping man’s hunched shoulders and felt him shivering under the blankets.

  “Hector! Amaru’s sick!”

  “Si!” Hector countered. “Sick on tequila, maybe!”

  “He’s sick, I tell you!”

  “Why he is your problem?” Hector was growing increasingly impatient. Their wages would be deducted if the driver was delayed.

  Reggie hesitated. Then he heard Amaru mutter something under his breath. He leaned in, resisting the temptation to run his hands through Amaru’s generous crop of black, glossy hair. “You say something, man?”

  “Hector … right,” an enfeebled voice responded. “Not your problem. Go!”

  Reggie smarted at the dismissal. He was about to shout back to Hector to wait up for him when Amaru fell into a coughing spasm that came from somewhere deep within his lungs.

  “He’s in bad shape. Someone’s got to stay,” Reggie determined, taking his blanket from his bed and throwing it over Amaru.

  As the door swung shut, Reggie could have sworn he heard Hector curse him with the kind of taunts that people hurled at him back home. Like the vitriolic sports commentary broadcast in the aftermath of any defeat suffered by the West Indies cricket team—an unforgiveable sin in the eyes of his countrymen—Reggie had heard every possible brand of derisive speculation about “his type.”

  Reggie relaxed when he heard the driver rev up the van. As the wheels crunched down on the dirt road running through the Dumfrey family’s three-hundred acre farm, he vowed not to dwell on Hector and the other men, several of whom had arrived only a week ago, and whose names he didn’t even know.

  Seeing that Amaru had quieted down, Reggie stretched out on his cot, grateful for the chance to close his eyes. Within minutes he drifted off to sleep.

  A dog barking somewhere in the distance jolted Reggie awake, his heart skipping a beat in thinking he had missed the van and an entire day’s pay.

  “Él … es,” Reggie heard Amaru mumble.

  “Amaru?” Reggie whispered, not wanting to startle him.

  “Élesa….”

  A woman’s name aroused a pang of jealousy, but this didn’t stop Reggie from springing into action. He had purchased some over-the-counter medicines on one of their brief Sunday shopping trips—stuff that the pharmacist recommended to fight off what he called the local range of common afflictions. Assessing Amaru’s symptoms, Reggie rooted through a shoebox containing a packet of antihistamines, an ointment for muscle and joint pain relief, nasal spray, eye drops, Extra Strength Cold and Flu medication, and a bottle of aspirin.

  “Amaru, you must take some medicine,” Reggie touched the man’s shoulder softly. Amaru acknowledged Reggie through half closed eyes, managing to take a sip of water from the bottle long enough to wash down a pill. Expending all of his energy on this one small act, Amaru fell back onto his pillow and was lost to a bout of fitful sleep.

  Reggie sat vigil this tim
e, partly to watch for signs of further distress and partly to seize the opportunity to study, in unhindered admiration, his new-found patient. Amaru was not handsome in any way that Reggie was familiar with. As a Jamaican whose own family was as “mix-up as callaloo,” as his grandmother liked to say, Reggie thought he had seen every gradation of skin colour and every type of face created under the heavens. But Amaru was as foreign an ingredient as any he had encountered. It was a combination of things: Amaru’s brown skin held undertones of the deepest reds, like the earth below an Amazonian river or at the inner core of a setting sun. Amaru’s kind, intelligent eyes were as black as the heart of a dormant volcano. They sat below a wide forehead and above cheekbones that seemed unusually pronounced for a man, even in Reggie’s estimation. The overall effect was alluring, particularly when Amaru laughed and revealed deep-set creases that wizened his otherwise youthful face.

  “Élesa … espe … ra … me,” Amaru sputtered.

  Reggie leaned in closer just as Amaru shifted to his right side. The movement launched another coughing spasm and forced Amaru to lift himself onto his elbows. Opening his eyes a little more than he had the first time, he looked up at Reggie. “You stay? Why?”

  Reggie winced, feeling thwarted again. He reached for the water bottle and handed it to Amaru. “You can’t see you’re really sick, man. Shivering and shaking like the leaves out there.”

  “I no sick. I work,” Amaru feebly threw off the blankets and hauled himself into a seated position. Before Reggie had a chance to object, Amaru fell back into the cot.

  “Cha!” Reggie exclaimed, re-covering Amaru with the blankets. Seeing Amaru yield to his ministrations, Reggie furtively touched Amaru’s temple. It was burning up.

  Reggie thought he should try to assess the seriousness of Amaru’s condition, launching what he imagined to be a series of “doctorly” questions: How long have you had that cough: More than one week? Sí. More than two? Sí. More than a month? Sí. Have you had any other symptoms, like nausea, vomiting … bleeding? Sí and sí to the first and second, Amaru nodded, but no to the third. Reggie breathed a sigh of relief. Have you noticed any other symptoms over the past few months, like dizziness, chest pain, headaches, fatigue? Amaru nodded in the affirmative to most of the items on Reggie’s list, but indicated that he didn’t understand the word “fatigue.” Reggie tried to translate in the little Spanish he had picked up from a Dominican lover who had used Jamaica as a clandestine stopover on his migration north. “Muy can…” he struggled to recall the word, “cansado.”