Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

Aaman is engrossed and does not hear her enter. She picks up the book she has been trying to read and settles in the battered leather armchair. She is grateful that the house has come with some contents. The previous owners saw no value in their inheritance. The furniture that remained had been left piled in one room. To Juliet it is treasure. She tucks her feet under her and settles to read. She is asleep within twenty minutes.

Aaman moves once to find a blanket and lays it over Juliet. After that, he becomes motionless, his mind in a programming course he has found on the Internet. He falls asleep just before dawn and awakes only a couple of hours later, feeling an urgency. Opening his eyes, he sees the computer, remembers the urgency and begins his studies again.

When Juliet surfaces, it is as if he has studied straight through the night. She smiles and stretches.

Aaman insists that he start work on the garden at eight and continues until four before resuming his studies on the laptop. Juliet relishes this sense of order, limiting the hours in which she can do her translation work. She knows she will be more productive within these confines.

Aaman seems to devour everything he finds online. He sits motionless for hours and then frantically taps away until the next period of reading. Juliet looks over his shoulder once or twice, but it means nothing to her, and she spends her time in the evenings painting the kitchen cupboard doors.

At eight o’clock, Juliet asks if he is hungry. Aaman immediately leaves the laptop and offers to search through the kitchen for things he can use. Juliet yields and produces a pen and paper, suggesting that Aaman give her a list of things she should buy for the week. Aaman begins the cooking whilst he dictates a list of everyday ingredients. The air becomes infused with heated spices and Juliet’s stomach is clawing.

Juliet looks forward to sitting with Aaman and lays the table on the patio. The evening is warm. Aaman brings the dishes out and sits. Once the table is laid, he slows his whole pace down, looks over the food, offers to serve Juliet, selects choice pieces for her and then himself and eats slowly. Juliet enjoys the reverence of the process. She asks how his learning is going and if he is finding suitable courses online. He says he is and asks what will be next for the garden. They discuss the best layout. Aaman likes the idea of making the garden a fruit orchard and agrees that vegetables at the end of the house will be a good place. The conversation meanders.

“What’s Pakistan like, your village?” She picks up a cherry tomato with her fingers.

“Pakistan is beautiful, but the most beautiful is the Punjab. I live in the Punjab.”

“I went to India, before I had the boys, before I met Mick, when I was at college. Anyway, I went to India. It was beautiful. Bombay was amazing, so full of people, life, noise, and bustle. I loved the cows everywhere, just wandering the streets.”

Aaman picks up the jug and fills Juliet’s water glass and then his own.

“I met a little girl who happily showed me her hand where there was a spot the size of a coin, leprosy. She seemed to be so pleased with this spot. It gave her the power to beg. All I could see was how she would be in a few years, still with a beautiful face but with only one useful arm. I looked it up when I got home, her fingers would shorten and deform as the body absorbs the cartilage.

“Anyway, in the bit of Bombay I was in, Colaba, the tourist area, I suppose, there was a hospital just down the road where they could treat leprosy and I knew the admission fee was a very small amount so I gave her the fee and pointed to the building.”

Juliet pauses to drink.

“She obviously understood me because she laughed when I gave her the money, but I saw her ten minutes later with her three friends and they all had ice creams. They obviously had a different view of life to me. Even though they had leprosy and no money, they seemed happy. They had each other, they were laughing and pushing each other, totally lost in the moment.”

She puts the glass down.

“I also went to the Taj Mahal. Have you been?”

Aaman shakes his head.

“The people were lovely on the train. Families all sitting together and strangers making friends and sharing their food. Everyone seemed really happy to be there and to be with each other even though they initially didn’t know each other. I had bought a ticket for a berth, but it was filled with people sitting on it. Eventually an old lady lay down on it and I had to sit up all night. She had her family and they all cuddled up around her, her grandchildren, I think, from their ages. She had her family and I had my berth ticket. She was a poor old Indian granny and I was a wealthy, lucky Western woman.”

Juliet feels that she can’t stop talking. Her life seems to need to escape from her, many images of the past need telling. High points need sharing, low points explaining. She is spilling over with the need to talk, her tongue needing flight.

“But I didn’t say anything to the old lady. It is just a matter of where you are born as to what your luck is. I mean, if I had had different parents that could have been me, that little old lady, with no money and lots of family love. It is just luck, there is no fairness.”

Aaman is finishing his meal.

“Can you understand when I talk quickly?”

“I know many of the words. Fairness I know.”

“Yes, and unfairness.”

They sit for a while. Juliet listens to the sounds of the evening, the village becoming quiet, shutters closing. Children called inside. Goat bells as the animals are brought in for the night. Aaman’s foot jiggles. Time has slipped by and he is clearly eager to return to his studies. Nevertheless, this is Juliet’s dream, this is the essence of what she has wanted. Being with someone else has allowed her to sit longer, enjoy it more.

Aaman’s foot twitches rhythmically. Every moment on the computer is precious, a chance, an opportunity he must take and use to his advantage. There are no such possibilities back at home. But time is passing. Each minute could be a minute learning something. But Juliet? Juliet, she is making all this happen for him. If she wishes to sit, then he will sit. He calms himself until Juliet stands to go inside.

Juliet continues with the kitchen cupboards, which becomes a bigger task as one of the cats rubs against one of the newly painted doors, leaving a trail of fur on the door and giving itself a very pleasant, muted sage green patch, which it objects to having washed off.

It is late. Juliet feels tired and wonders how far Aaman has to walk to get home.

“Do you need a lift home?”

Aaman is startled and tries to pull himself from the inside of the computer. His shoulders face her before his head, his eyes coming last.

“Oh, ah, no. I am sorry I am keeping you up. It is just such an opportunity.” He carefully puts the laptop on the sofa and stands to put his coat on.

“Is it far?”

“No.” He is ready to leave. Unsure of how to depart, he sticks his hand out. Juliet takes his hand and he shakes it. “Thank you, Juliet. Thank you for being my friend.”

She watches him get smaller and smaller down the lane.

The next day he arrives at eight o’clock, works through till four, studies till eight, cooks, eats, washes and dries the dishes, and studies again through till eleven in the evening. This becomes their routine for the days to come. Juliet declares Sunday is a day of rest. Aaman says that he thinks it is good if they rest from the garden, but would it be too much to ask if Sunday could be his main study day?

Juliet spends the next few Sundays going through the treasures left in what will be the guest room. She discovers five hats stacked one on top of the other and several pruning saws with the price tags still on them in drachmas. There are various goat bells, an ox’s yoke for ploughing. The brass bed seems to be complete, but with no mattress, and there are two wooden pails.