Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

“You think I haven’t thought this over and over, the different route I could have run to get to the big men faster, stopped him going in a second time, gone in with him and then maybe it would have been me not him. I have played this game many times in my life to bring him to safety, but he is still dead.”

“I can imagine,” Juliet’s voice grows soft. “What I was trying to say was, well, when you were little, you would have thought in one way and as you get older things change. What I was meaning is has what you would do changed over time?”

Aaman leans forward.

“Obviously I realised as I got bigger, I could have done different things. When I learnt, once, about using something very long as a lever to lift a thing to make it light, this would be my dream to return and do this. This would work, even for a small boy. But if I could go back, I would do everything I could, everything.” Tears are on the edge of spilling, one escapes and runs down his face and drips from his chin.

“Exactly, Aaman, you would do everything you could do and you were the same person then, so you would have done everything you could have done then. But we do everything we do with the knowledge we have. I guess that is my point, and this is something my Greek teacher once said to me. We can only do everything we could do with the knowledge we have at the time.”

Aaman considers this.

“What more can anybody do than that?” Juliet continues.

Aaman looks at her.

“After he died, I got a job in a carpet factory. I felt I had to make the money that Giaan was no longer making. It was very long hours for little pay, so I would work seven days a week. It took a long time to walk there and back.”

“And you were how old?”

“I was nine years old when I got the job. I wanted to be a computer programmer. That was my dream. That is every Punjabi boy’s dream. But life makes the decisions. I stayed working there until I was eighteen and then I got a job in a shoe factory. It was official so I got much better pay.” Aaman’s mood seems to lighten a little at the thought.

“It was OK. I forgot my dream of being a programmer. I realised that you cannot escape what will happen. I was twenty one when my mother arranged marriage for me.”

“Did you have a girlfriend? Were you in love with someone else at the time?”

“Oh no, no, no! But to be a husband is a big responsibility. Very serious. She was a distant cousin of my mother’s, and everyone was agreed that it was a good match, not least because she was smaller than me.” Aaman adds a dry laugh.

“She was so scared on our wedding night. So instead of undressing, I sat on the bed and asked her to talk. I tried to be kind and considerate in what I said, and she tried to be brave. We talked until the morning. I have seen married women who are unhappy and afraid. I wanted Saabira to be happy like my mother.

“We talked for many months and held hands and kissed a little. Nothing was changing, and I felt like I was a small rat again and I needed to be a big rat. So one day I got cross and I shouted at her and she came to me to say sorry and she kissed me and there was much passion and the passion stayed. So for a long while I felt good. I had achieved a happy wife and then she became pregnant and all my family were overjoyed. For a while I was not the boy who left his brother in the fire. I was Aaman, with Saabira his wife.

“She was so happy to be with child. She would hold her sari under her belly and say, ‘Do I look more beautiful if you can see the bump more?’ And then she would giggle and fall on me and we would be close. Towards the end, she looked pale, but she was so happy, nothing could make her lie down. I would beg her for the sake of the child to take rest, but she said there would be no rest when the baby came so she would take no rest now.

“I was feeding the bullocks when she cried out. It was one of those noises that you know needs action, like the cry of my brother. I dropped the pail and ran so fast. She had collapsed on the floor and there was water everywhere. I put her on the bed as my grandmother came. She told me to tell my mother and that she would stay with Saabira.

“My mother came and the ladies who helped for birthing. They closed the door on me. Saabira was screaming. I felt that I had done this to her. Without me, she would not be screaming. She screamed on and off for hours. My father and grandfather went to the farthest fields to work but I could not leave the closed door.

“It was my mother who opened the door, looking away and leading me to Saabira. She was so pale and her hair all plastered to her face and she saw me and smiled.

“Who is it, Aaman? Who is our child?” I turned to the women and their faces were long. Ma handed me this bundle, but all I could do was stare at Ma. She looked so beautiful, but her face was wet with tears and eyes so sad. She shook her head from side to side and looked at Saabira, who now realised something was wrong.

“Shouldn’t he cry? Why does he not cry? Aaman, why does he not cry?” She tried to get up so I hastened to her side and stroked her face with one hand. In my other arm, wrapped in a cloth, I had our lifeless baby. She pushed my hand away and moved the cloth from the baby’s face and then went quiet. I saw a part of her die. It squeezed all the air from my lungs. She lay down to sleep and stayed not moving and not eating for several days.”

Little sobbing squeaks come from Aaman’s throat as he suppresses his anguish. His elbows rest on the table. He holds his own fist, tightly pressing it against his mouth to silence any sound, every muscle tight.

Juliet’s chair scrapes against the patio as she pulls it nearer Aaman. She encircles his shoulders with one arm, stroking his hair with the other. She was happy to hold him. After a while, he twitches his shoulders, and Juliet retreats, allowing him his dignity. Aaman pulls himself up, leans away in his chair and wraps his arms around his body.

A child shrieks in play in the next yard. The cat jumps back over the wall and onto Aaman’s knee. He unlocks his barrier and strokes him.

“Not only had I lost a child, but I had seen a part of my wife die. I was the little rat again, but this time it was my son who died and my wife who must mourn.”

Aaman clears his throat and passes the cat to Juliet to draw his chair nearer the table and test the weight of the coffee pot. It is empty.

“So when she came up with the idea of a harvester machine for the village and we were short of the money to buy it, it was the least I could do to come to the West to make what was needed.”

Aaman clearly feels safer talking about the practical necessity of his life. His voice is stronger, clearer.

“Ahh, so that’s why you are here. How long do you think it will take you?” Aaman is obviously in much pain, so Juliet supports his change of tack.

“Saabira thought it would take two years but I am here now and I know that it will take much longer.” He shook his head.

Juliet has no idea what a harvester would cost, but they are big machines so she guesses in the thousands. She sees Aaman is on a futile mission.

“Something I have come to realise…”

Juliet perks up at the sound of hope in Aaman’s voice.

“Since I began this journey, I have had much silence. Silence from the necessity to be quiet or discovered, silence from lack of anyone to talk to, silence for lack of anything good to say, and in my silence I have thought a lot. It is like all my thoughts are coming together today. I thought my uneasiness of being here and my behaviour to my wife was about the sad things that have happened. But I am beginning to think something different. I must thank you, Juliet, because my thoughts began to become something different when you told me your sad life and through seeing you, if I might be so bold, I saw me.”