Sara Alexi - The Illegal Gardener

Juliet suggests that Aaman does not travel with his money in cash. She suggests that when he arrives home, he open a bank account with a little of the money and she can send the rest over by bank transfer. This thinking is new to Aaman. He comes from a cash culture. In his village, they swap and lend and barter. In the towns, they use money. The idea of money existing without it really existing is alien to him. That it can travel from one country to another without anything physical actually moving seems unreal. He researches it online before he agrees.

Aaman researches some software houses in Pakistan. He finds over three hundred and fifty in Lahore alone. Juliet suggests they send off emails to all of them in batches. Juliet scripts a letter as if she is the head of a bespoke software house where Aaman works, saying that she is sorry to lose him and could they offer him a job on his arrival in Pakistan.

“That is dishonest.”

“No, it is not.”

“Juliet, you know it is.”

“No, it’s not. A company is ‘an association or collection of individual real persons.’” She traces her finger along Wikipedia as she reads it out. “And a bespoke software house is ‘A company who specially develops software for some specific organisation or other users.’ So you and I are a collection of two individuals and I have found the work for you to develop for specific organisations or other users, have I not?”

“Surely we would need to pay taxes here for that to be strictly true.”

“Until a very short time ago, you were an illegal immigrant. Now you do not want to write these letters because you haven’t paid your taxes?”

Aaman raises his hands, palms upwards, and shrugs. She types.

“Besides, they only need these letters of introduction to convince them to try you out. Once you start working for them, your work will speak for you, these emails will be forgotten.”

She is shocked when she gets two hundred and ninety-eight replies. She passes them on to Aaman to deal with. They all want to ask questions and some want to meet him.

Eventually they run out of things that need doing and the storm of action leaves only the devastation of the parting date.

Aaman looks smart, and worried. Juliet looks casual and fragile. Aaman takes her hand as they walk out of the main door of the house. He escorts her to the car and opens the door for her. As he crosses to the passenger side, the kittens get under his feet. He picks them up one by one along with the mother cat and says his farewells. The father has not been seen for a while. Just before Aaman gets into the car, he puts a finger up for Juliet to wait, and he runs into the back garden. The vines are doing well and grapes hang in huge clusters, purple, brushed in white. The pomegranates are enormous, and Juliet slips out of the car, plucks one, and on returning to the car, slips it into Aaman’s bag as a surprise for him when he unpacks in Pakistan. Aaman has walked past the grapes; they are not what he wants. Juliet bought and Aaman planted another climbing plant because the man said it grew fast. He noticed the day before that the first flower had opened.

He climbs back in the car and presents the flower to Juliet, who gasps as she takes it. A circle of white petals laid over with a thousand purple tentacles, banded in purple and white, deeper hues towards the centre, topped with the deepest purple and ridiculously tall stigma.

“Oh, my goodness, that is so beautiful. Is it from our pergola? What is it?”

“A passion flower.” Aaman blushes.

Juliet leans towards him. Aaman backs away just a little. Juliet plants a delicate kiss on his cheek, and pokes the flower behind the driver’s mirror.

“Right then, we had best be off.” The quiver in her voice belies her.

So familiar. Aaman watches. The lane turns into the road which turns into the village. He is glad she is driving slowly. They pass the kiosk. There! Down the side street is Mahmout.

“Please stop the car a minute, Juliet.”

Juliet draws in, presuming he wants something from the kiosk. She follows him through the driver’s mirror.

Aaman walks with stiffness; a pulsing begins in his abdomen. Mahmout sits there drinking coffee with the old men.

“Mahmout!”

Mahmout sees him and stands as if to run, but sits down again grinning.

“My friend! How are you?”

“How did you think I would be?”

“I do not understand you.”

“I saw you behind the tree. A man is dead because of that raid. Why, Mahmout?”

“He was nearly dead anyway.”

Aaman is so shocked he loses his words. He stares for a second.

“Why, Mahmout?”

“It is a dog-eat-dog world, my friend, and I happened to see where the big Nigerian man was keeping his money.” He grins smugly. “And, I believed we would get more work with everyone else gone!”

“You mean you would get more work with everyone gone. So you went to the police?”

“Oh, no. Not exactly, it was not like that at all. I overheard some police saying that they would like to clear up the streets a little, so I just walked past and suggested they check out Costas’ barn.”

“Exactly. You went to the police!”

“No, not exactly at all! Well, yes, but you would have done the same in my position. It is a tough life!”

The old man on whose doorstep Mahmout is sitting and whose coffee he is drinking at twenty cents a cup looks blank. Aaman tells him in pigeon Greek that Mahmout has ratted on his brothers. The man looks disgusted. Mahmout’s Greek is clearly not good enough to understand what Aaman has said as he continues to grin. Aaman turns back to Mahmout.

“Mahmout, I am not sure whether you are a big rat who has acted small or a small rat who has acted big. That is not my problem. I know that as long you are a rat someone will be chasing you with a big stick.”

Mahmout stands up and looks around him, to see if Aaman has come with friends with sticks. When he sees there is no one, he grins. Aaman leaves life to take its own revenge. Mahmout shouts after him.

“You would do the same had you been smart enough to see where they kept their money.” He raises his coffee cup as if to say cheers and then bends his legs to sit down, but the disgusted old man has taken his stool away and has quietly closed his door on him. As Aaman walks away, the last he sees of Mahmout, he is sitting on a nonexistent chair and falls on his back like a cockroach in the gutter, hot sweet sticky coffee over his chest and face.

“Everything OK?” Juliet asks, aware he did not go to the kiosk.

“Yes, just tying up loose ends. Questions I may ask myself later if I do not answer them now.”

Juliet does not want to understand. She wants to be numb. They travel to the airport in mostly a sober mood, with occasional pushes into joviality. Juliet takes Aaman’s hand on two occasions. Aaman takes hers on three. On each occasion, it is brief.

The sight of the airport’s control tower signals to them their arrival. Juliet parks the car in the short-term car park and walks across to the departures entrance. They find his check-in counter; the queue is short.

“Aaman, I have a confession.” Juliet is smiling, her sadness hidden.

Aaman is not sure he wants a confession. Juliet continues.

“I needed a new laptop anyway.” Juliet smiles. Aaman frowns and then smiles. He points to his suitcase that is disappearing through a black plastic curtain. Juliet nods. Aaman hugs her. The woman behind the desk asks them to step to one side.

There is a maze of rope dividers in front of passport control.

“You go through there. They will check your passport, and then follow the signs for the gate number.” Juliet points to the gate number on his ticket. “Before you are allowed into the waiting room for the gate they will ask you to take off your jacket, belt, and remove the coins from your pocket onto a tray that is X-rayed. You then go through a metal detector, you know, for guns and so on. If it bleeps, they will scan you by hand and maybe pat you down and then you redress and go through to your gate and wait. They will tell you when to board. I imagine once you are on the plane, they will speak Urdu. So, have you got everything, do you understand everything? Oh, and here are some sweets to suck because as the pressure in the plane changes, your ears feel funny, and sucking helps.”