I missed my nani. She was so silly and conspiratorial. Whenever we did anything naughty, she’d exclaim, “Astaghfirullah,” and try to contain her giggles. Then she left us when I wasn’t even in the country. On my last visit, I had said goodbye, see you later, and then she was dead. Same with my nana abba, who also passed away between my visits home. Nana Abba’s migration story, by the way, made mine look like a walk in the park. When he was a young man, a border had materialized beneath his feet, one so narrow that he could stand with a leg on either side. Fairly nonchalantly, he’d decided to hop over to the side across from that on which his parents and siblings stood, and he had said to them, with full conviction, “I’ll see you very soon.” How was he to know that that faint line would solidify into a steel wall, that they’d never let him return, even for a short visit? My nani went back once, though. She told me that although thirty years had passed, the children now old men and women, she’d still recognized every single person.
“Not by their faces,” she’d said, “but by their voices.”
I lay under the covers this way, thinking of my departed grandparents and feeling utterly alone, when I heard a knock and then the door opening. I peeked out of my duvet cave. It was the cleaner lady.
“Pavlova,” I sniffled, forgetting the word we used for hello.
“Come. Time to learn.”
“No thank you,” I said, offering her a pitiful smile.
When she saw my face, she let out a sweet little “oh” of concern that made me start outright sobbing.
“I want to check my email,” I wailed.
This made her chuckle gently. She sat beside me on the bed and gingerly put her hand against my cheek—her skin was like crepe paper, wrinkled and nearly transparent. Her touch made me cry all the harder.
“I miss my cat,” I said.
“Where is she now?”
“He. He’s with my friend … well, my ex-boyfriend, Adam.”
“It’s okay,” she said and stroked my hair.
“I’m fine,” I said, an instinctive response to what I interpreted as pity, but she kept on stroking.
“It’s okay,” she said again, and I looked into her eyes. In them, I saw not pity, but understanding. I saw empathy. I surrendered, burying my head in her lap. She kept stroking my hair, saying, “It’s okay; it’s okay,” until slowly, I felt calmer. I lifted my head and looked up at her.
“Sorry. I’ve been having bad dreams, you see. That’s why I feel a little … fragile.”
Her eyes widened. “Bad dreams?”
“Yes. And I keep hearing his voice. My Storyteller’s. I don’t like his voice.”
She was quiet for a moment.
“What’s his name?”
“Peter.”
“Oh … Peter.”
I looked up at her, “Yeah.”
“Peter is a little …” She paused and scrunched up her face as if eating something sour. “Be careful, dear.”
“Careful?”
“Don’t take his pain,” she said.
“Whose pain? Peter’s? Do you know him?”
“Just blow it out.”
“What do you mean?”
“Like this,” she said and breathed in deeply, breathing out with a sigh.
She moved her hands slowly up and down in time with her breath and gestured for me to breathe along with her. So I did. I breathed in and then out with a sigh. She encouraged me to loosen my body, to shake my arms and shoulders to physically let go of this Storyteller’s baggage. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t actually understand anything Peter said and that the issue was probably homesickness, isolation, and impatience, but our communication was limited, and the breathing exercises were making me feel better.
“Do you know Peter?” I asked again.
“Don’t worry, dear.” She placed her hand on my cheek again. “It’s okay. You’re a big girl now.”
“Okay.” I laughed.
I wiped away my tears and sat up. She put her arms around me, and I leaned into her. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d received an embrace like that, cocooned in another person without feeling the need to make the gesture reciprocal. Then, she waited until I slowly got up and washed my face, and we walked together to the Process Centre, where I returned to my booth.
By the next morning, the old lady had returned to her ritual of not making eye contact, but nonetheless, we would both smile warmly at the floor when she came in.
The infusion of love she had given me that night made the rest of my stay more bearable. Every time I got bored or fed up, I would sit for a few moments and take deep breaths. I would say to myself, “You’re a big girl now,” and I would feel better.
·
On day seven, my period started. I approached Shiba.
“Hallo.”
“Hi, Anisa.”
“I started my period, and I don’t have any supplies.”
“Hmm. Ask me in German.”
“I still can’t speak it. You know that.”
“Just … make it up.”
“Okay. Uh, ich habe meine tage, hast du eine binde für mich?”
“Yup, we do. I’ll get you a pack now. You need to be in your booth in five minutes by the way.”
“Was that right?”
She responded with her characteristic glint and walked off. I returned to my booth and put the headphones on. As Peter’s words streamed into my ears, I realized I could understand everything he said. He was talking, basically, about himself, going over every day of his life in minute detail. Every day that he remembered, that is. He had reached his thirties by the time I understood that I was understanding.
“So where was I?” Peter said. “Oh yes, springtime. March. I was still working in the architecture firm then. Nothing significant happened that month, not that I can remember. Oh, on the sixteenth, it was my brother Leon’s birthday. If I was thirty, he must have just turned … let’s see … twenty-eight. Leon always wanted to be an engineer. When we were children, we constructed buildings from toy blocks. I was more interested in the design side and he …”
He continued in this way, and by the end of his story I knew all about his brother Leon. Then, nearly an hour later, he tried to recover the thread of his narrative, “Oh, where was I? Yes, March, oh, Easter of course. That Easter, we probably celebrated with my aunt …”
In the break, I rushed to find Shiba. It was pouring outside so we spoke in my room. A relentless rain slapped against the sides of the building as I told her what had happened.
“I can understand!”
“I know. Congratulations.”
“Like, literally every word.”
“It’s amazing, isn’t it?”
“How?”
Shiba’s eyes shone. “Almost like osmosis. Almost like a miracle. It just … works.”
“My god. This is just unbelievable. Shiba, you should be shouting about this from the rooftops.”
“One day, we will,” Shiba said. “But right now, it doesn’t feel like the world is ready. But seriously, Anisa. What we’re doing here, it’s revolutionary.”