Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“I put them by the gate.”

“Aaman, we need to talk.”

“Yes ma’am, Juliet?”

“You are here to do a job. It isn’t that you are not doing this job, it’s just… well… I expect that I have to tell you when to do things. Don’t get me wrong. It is not bad that you do them before I ask it. I mean, things need to be done and I cannot stand over you every minute of the day, otherwise I may as well do it myself. But I think it is better if I tell you first then you can do it. Someone has to oversee what is happening, else we won’t know where we are. It is better that I tell you. So I know what you are doing, when you are doing it. Do you understand?”

“Yes.” Aaman waits. Juliet says no more. “No. Ma’am, Juliet, I don’t understand. Are the bags in the wrong place?”

“This is my home!”

“Yes. Your home?” Aaman eyes dart here and there searching for understanding.

“I know what I want!” Her voice becomes louder. Aaman takes a step back. “Ι can make my own choices.” The cat comes to her legs and pushes his head against her for attention. She doesn’t pay him any attention.

“Yes.” Aaman begins to rock, ever so slightly backwards and forwards. His head is nodding side to side a familiar Pakistani movement. He is drowning.

“Have you any idea what it is like for me to have you come here and do this?” She is now shouting.

“To do this? What ‘this’? Clear the garden?” With tears ready to spill, Aaman leaps on the chance to get an explanation and the words come overlapping the end of her sentence and they sound loud and strong and aggressive.

“Exactly! You haven’t a clue, or maybe you have and it is a game.” Tears flow down her cheeks.

Aaman remembers tears flowing down Saabira’s cheeks. He could not forget. She was so strong for so long and then, days after she lay still, she began to weep and she didn’t stop for days. He held her for hours, his mother held her, even his grandmother sat and patted her hand. But no-one could bring back what had gone. His grandmother said he was lucky not to lose Saabira too and that he must be thankful for his blessings. Aaman was thankful. He was so, so grateful that he had Saabira.

“No, no game, it’s very serious.” Aaman sees her react, and realises he must expand on what he is saying.

“How you feel, it is no game, it is very serious. You are not happy, this is serious.” Aaman can see another wave of emotion taking hold of Juliet. Almost imperceptibly her head moves back, her chest rises like a wave until she comes crashing down in tears, all self-consciousness lost.

“Stop it, just stop it,” between breaths and tears. Her hands brought up, splayed, tense, creating a wall between them.

“Stopping is not the problem, but please tell me what it is that you wish me to be stopping. I am trying to be a good worker but I can see I have not pleased you. Please tell me how I can do better.”

Juliet has made half a step backwards and with the distance she grows calm.

“Forget it.” Juliet wipes her face on her arm, turns to go back indoors.

“Sorry, but no. I need to be stopping.”

Juliet’s eyes are shining, pupils dilated, her arm muscles sprung tight as her fists clench. Aaman’s darting eyes rest on her burns. She turns her body to hide the scarred arm from him. Aaman looks back to her face, her eyes staring, indignation.

“What?” It is more of a hiss then a word.

Aaman wavers. Saabira shouted at him. She needed to shout. She shouted blame, she shouted unfairness, she shouted for release. He needed to be strong, allow her to shout, to hear what she said but most importantly, he found, was to let her know that he heard her.

“I said no, I cannot be forgetting it. You are not happy. It is my fault. I cannot forget. Tell me what I must be stopping.”

Juliet turns as if she wishes to go inside, away from him, away from this emotional scene. She wipes her eyes again. She begins to step away. Aaman sees his opportunity for several days work leaving with her, and he is also drawn to her distress, to Saabira.

He steps to the side and reaches out and touches the arm she tries to hide. He calms himself.

“Tell me. Much in life is pain. I wish to be no pain for you, only good work. I need this work. Tell me so I can have work and you can have a good worker.”

The touch of his fingers on her thinned skin draws her attention. She looks at his hand on her skin, brown against blue white, and he responds by carefully taking it away.

He waits.

She sighs, she is settling, in her calmness she seems more controlled. Aaman can see that this is all very tiring for her. She sits on the doorstep. Aaman looks around him and pulls forward a large empty paint tin and sits down, quietly, respectfully. Knees together, neatly. Like he did when he was a child. Juliet alters the way she is speaks to him.

“Yesterday I didn’t like what you did. You overstepped the mark.” She uses small hand gestures to demonstrate over stepping a mark.

“What does it mean, ‘overstep the mark’?”

“It means to do more than you should.”

Aaman’s brows furrow. It makes no sense to him. He is here to do as much as he can. Being a worker is not enough. He wants to be an exceptional help to her. He is planning to seek out jobs before being asked, and to do them with speed and care. Aaman wants to become so useful that he will have a job for a long time. He wants to be indispensable.

“Look, when I went to chase the cat out yesterday, you picked it up and put it out and closed the door. My door. Not your door, my door. It is not your place to put the cat out in my house and close my door.”

Aaman lifts his brow. He can feel his eyes widen in surprise.

“It wasn’t helpfully?”

“If it had been just that event. But you gave me such a look when I was going to do some of the cupboards in the kitchen that I felt I should not be in my own kitchen, that I was a nuisance in my own home.”

Aaman searches for words, but Juliet has not finished.

“And what was all that with the clothes? If you don’t mind me saying, you are in no position to be quite so proud. The first job you get mixing concrete, and you’ll be glad of any shoes going. Just look at the shoes of someone who has mixed concrete for a day and you’ll see they are hanging together by a thread, or the soles have fallen off, trousers disintegrate in the dust where it has splashed. You wear clothes you expect to throw away when you work as a concrete mixer! I have seen it, here in the village. I offered you something for nothing, and you didn’t even have the manners or the sense to just take it and say thank you.”

Aaman looks down and begins to pick paint off his upturned seat. His surety and calm are disturbed, which gives her momentum.

“And I didn’t ask you to clean the fireplace out, although I was quite pleased when I saw it was done, but I definitely did not ask you to clean my bathroom. That is my bathroom, I keep personal things in there and I would like to think that some places in my own house are just for me. I felt your actions were comments about my life. I don’t know why or how, but I just sensed it. I almost felt you were saying I was sitting down all day when I could be cleaning my house. To be honest, I have had enough of being judged and being told what to do in my life, someone taking over, playing the boss. So although you probably didn’t mean anything by all these things, it just felt too much.” She begins crying again, no noise, just long streaks of shine down to her chin. In the space between words the sun dries them to white lines.

Aaman understands part of what she is saying. He doesn’t need to understand all the words to grasp the meaning, to understand the feelings. He has seen many women who were suppressed in Pakistan; they all had the same look. A look somewhere between no hope and the need to be heard. He had much sympathy for them. When he was told he would be marrying Saabira, he made up his mind that he was not going to be the sort of husband who has a sad wife. He kept his promise in all respects, but sometimes life takes its own route. He could not save Saabira from the sadness that made him sad too.