Kiran Desai - The Inheritance of Loss

" Biju beta, " he wrote, "you have been fortunate enough to get there, please do something for the others…"

Then he applied a homemade mucilage of flour and water to glue down the sides of the airmail forms, sent them finning their way over the Atlantic, a whole shoal of letters…

They would never know how many of them went astray in all the rickety connections made along the way, between the temperamental postman in the pouring rain, the temperamental van across the landslides on the way to Siliguri, the lightning and thunder, the befogged airport, the journey from Calcutta all the way to the post office on 125th street in Harlem that was barricaded like an Israeli army outpost in Gaza. The mailman abandoned the letters atop the boxes of legal residents, and sometimes the letters fell, were trampled, and tracked back outdoors.

But enough came through that Biju felt he might drown.

"Very bright boy, family very poor, please look after him, he already has a visa, will be arriving… Please find a job for Poresh. In fact, even his brother is ready to go. Help them. Sanjeeb Thorn Karma Ponchu, and remember Budhoo, watchman at Mon Ami, his son…"

"I know, man, I know how you feel," Saeed said.

Saeed Saeed’s mother was dispensing his phone number and address freely to half of Stone Town. They arrived at the airport with one dollar in their pocket and his phone number, seeking admittance to an apartment that was bursting with men already, every scrap rented out: Rashid Ahmed Jaffer Abdullah Hassan Musa Lutfi Ali and a whole lot of others sharing beds in shifts.

"More tribes, more tribes. I wake up, go to the window, and there – MORE TRIBES. Every time I look – ANOTHER TRIBE. Everybody saying, ‘Oh, no visas anymore, they are getting very strict, it so hard,’ and in the meantime everybody who apply, EVERYBODY is getting a visa. Why they do this to me? That American Embassy in Dar – WHY??!! Nobody would give that Dooli a visa. Nobody. One look and you would say OK, something wrong here – but they give it to him! "

Saeed cooked cow peas and kingfish from the Price Chopper to cheer himself up, and plantains in sugar and coconut milk. This goo mixture smelling of hope so ripe he slathered on French bread and offered to the others.

The sweetest fruit in all of Stone Town grew in the graveyard, and the finest bananas grew from the grandfather’s grave of that same wayward Dooli whom the American Embassy in Dar es Salaam had so severely misjudged as to give him a visa – so Saeed was telling them when he glanced out of the window -

And in a second he was under the counter.

" Oh myeeee God! " Whispering. "Tribes, man, it’s the tribes. Please God. Tell them I don’t work here. How they get this address! My mother! I told her, ‘No more!’ Please! Omar, Go! Go! Go tell them to leave. "

Outside the bakery stood a group of men, looking weary as if they’d been traveling several lifetimes, scratching their heads and staring at the Queen of Tarts.

"Why do you help?" asked Omar. "I stopped helping and now they all know I won’t help and nobody comes to me."

"This is not the time to give a lecture."

Omar went out. "Who? Saaeed? No, no. What name? Soyad? No, no one of that name. Just me, Kavafya, and Biju."

"But he work here. His mother tell us."

"No. No. You all get moving. Nobody here who you want to see and if you make trouble WE get into trouble so now I ask you nicely, GO."

"Very good," said Saeed, "thank you. They have gone?"

"No."

"What are they doing?"

"They are still standing and looking," said Biju feeling brave and excited by someone else’s misfortune. He was almost hopping.

The men were shaking their heads unwilling to believe what they’d heard.

Biju went out and came back in. "They say they will try your home address now." He felt a measure of pride in delivering this vital news. Realized he missed playing this sort of role that was common in India. One’s involvement in other peoples’ lives gave one numerous small opportunities for importance.

"They will come back. I know them. They will try many more times, or one will stay and the others will go. Close the door, close the window…"

"We can’t close the shop. Too hot, can’t close the window."

"Close it!"

"No. What if Mr. Bocher visit us?" He was the owner who dropped by at odd moments hoping to surprise them doing something against the rules.

"No sweati, bossi," Saeed would tell him. "We do everything you tell us just like you tell us…"

But now…

"It’s my life we’re talking about, man, not little hot here and little hot there, boss or no boss…"

They closed the window and the door, and from the floor he telephoned his apartment. "Hey Ahmed, don’t answer the phone, man, that Dooli and all them boys have come from the airport! Lock up, stay down, don’t stand, and don’t go near the window."

"Hah! Why they give them a visa? How they buy the ticket!" They could hear the voice at the other end. Then it vanished into Swahili in a potent dungform, a rich, steaming animal evacuation.

The phone rang in the bakery.

"Don’t answer," he said to Biju who was reaching for it.

When the answering machine came on, it went off.

"The tribes! They always scared of the answering machine!"

It rang again and then again. Tring tring tring tring. Answering machine. Phone down.

Again: tring tring.

"Saeed, you have to talk to them." Biju’s heart was suddenly pulsing with the anguish of the ringing. It could be the boss, it could be India on the line, his father his father -

Dead? Dying? Diseased?

Kavafya picked it up and a voice projected into the room raw and insistent with panic. "Emergency! Emergency! We are coming from airport. Emergency! Emergency! Saaeed S-aa-eed? "

He put it down and unplugged it.

Saeed: "Those boys, let them in, they will never leave. They are desperate. Desperate. Once you let them in, once you hear their story, you can’t say no, you know their aunty, you know their cousin, you have to help the whole family, and once they begin, they will take everything. You can’t say this is my food, like Americans, and only I will eat it. Ask Thea" – she was the latest pooky pooky interest in the bakery – "where she live with three friends, everyone go shopping separately, separately they cook their dinner, together they eat their separate food. The fridge they divide up, and into their own place – their own place! – they put what is left in a separate box. One of the roommates, she put her name on the box so it say who it belong to! " His finger went up in uncharacteristic sternness. "In Zanzibar what one person have he have to share with everyone, that is good, that is the right way -

" But then everyone have nothing, man! That is why I leave Zanzibar. "

Silence.

Biju’s sympathy for Saeed leaked into sympathy for himself, then Saeed’s shame into his own shame that he would never help all those people praying for his help, waiting daily, hourly, for his response. He, too, had arrived at the airport with a few dollar bills bought on the Kath-mandu black market in his pocket and an address for his father’s friend, Nandu, who lived with twenty-two taxi drivers in Queens. Nandu had also not answered the phone and had tried to hide when Biju arrived on his doorstep, and then when he thought Biju had left, had opened the door and to his distress found Biju still standing there two hours later.