The Journey Back

Confessions

“Oh, I’m sorry. He’s gone since yesterday,” Sarah said to him on the porch of their home.

“Where did he go?”

“He said he had to check some of his grades and get a copy of his school records—requirements for employment, you know,” she said slowly, her tongue twisted in an effort to communicate.

Jamil mentioned where his school was. He was as of that moment nowhere in the island.

“Do you need something?” she asked politely.

“None at all,” he answered, shoving his hands inside the pocket of his faded jeans. “I was just bored at home. No one to talk too, you know what I mean.” She nodded sympathetically.

A voice called and a woman appeared in the living room behind them. She wore a very long dress and her veil fell close to her hands. She smiled at Raza who politely smiled back.

“That’s my mother. Everyone here call her Mina.”

Raza got accustomed already to calling anyone a lot older than him with ‘aunt’ and ‘uncle’, despite them not being his relatives. “You never address the elderly in their first names—there should be respect and attaching ‘aunt’, ‘uncle’ and the like will do,” his father told him before he left home. So Sarah’s mother was then Aunt Mina.

“You, come in,” Aunt Mina invited.

Uh. Ok,he thought.

They asked about his family and life in Singapore. He talked slowly so that they would understand him. Sarah, at some points translated for the both of them. She wasn’t really fluent but spoke understandably. They laughed when he told them about pranks he did when he was little, and even in high school. Sarah’s mother told him he was just a baby when his parents brought him to the island. Of course he couldn’t remember. They asked him what his sister, Rhea, looked like and he showed them a family picture he hid in his wallet. It wasn’t recent but that was all he brought. They said she was cute and looked a lot like their mother. Sarah’s mother disappeared in the kitchen and emerged with a tray of crackers and bottles of cold soft drinks complete with red straws.

Sarah’s father arrived from work—he captained one of the boats that came to and fro the island. He shook Raza’s hands and introduced himself. Obligatorily for Raza he was “Uncle Fahad”. The two ladies excused themselves to prepare lunch. It was more uncomfortable to talk with Uncle Fahad. He had that intimidating look in him. He wore sleeveless shirt that exposed broad shoulders, his hairline receded on his forehead and he had a slightly bushy beard. He talked in broken English and Raza caught things like he once worked as a driver for a rich family in Saudi Arabia. He worked hard so that he could send his siblings to college, he told Raza. He rummaged for something under the coffee table and showed Raza a photo album. He flicked through it and pointed to his photos taken when he was still working there. In one, he posed in front of a black Cadillac. One was taken beside a date palm with a huge house on the background.

Uncle Fahad asked him hospitably to stay for lunch which he reluctantly agreed to. When he seemed to run out of stories, or English, he excused himself for a breath of fresh air outside. Raza was left all alone in the living room, with only the subdued conversations of the two ladies in the kitchen. He buried himself deeper on the sofa and scanned the photo album. Something fell on his lap and he picked it up. It was a laminated flat object. He turned it over and was looking at an I.D. of a familiar-looking teenager. The name below the picture read: Jamil Zulfiqar 4th Year High School. His head immediately felt like a migraine hit him hard. His mind ran in circles, went here and there and found itself stopping on Sarah and Jam’s conversation when he was there the other day; then off to how at ease Jam was when talking to him; to how he felt at home in Raza’s grandparents’ house; to his reluctance in talking about his family; to what the lady ‘mistakenly’ said yesterday. He looked at the face on the I.D. and for the first time realized who it looked like.