WHAT DREAMS MAY COME

Demet Divaroren

The night swelled with noise. Taxi doors slammed shut; the pavements echoed with the chatter of high heels and slurred laughter. Life spilled onto the streets as if swept by a strong, undulating current.

Rajib sipped tea as people hurried in and out of Sydney’s Central Station, his hands curled around the glass to thaw the chill creeping through the chappals on his feet. It was too black, this tea, too bitter on his tongue. He closed his eyes and for one moment he tasted home as the bitterness dissolved into cinnamon. Until the day before his departure, his mother had brewed her tears like a pot of chai, letting them simmer until she packed the last of his clothes and her tears poured into the suitcase that now lay at his feet. Study hard, she’d said, her forehead rough like the freshly ploughed fields of the village. Be careful. And Rajib promised to shorten the distance with telephone calls to Doctor Hakim’s office.

The night’s cold crawled up his legs. The big clock near the station entrance pointed its fingers at three and Rajib swallowed the panic with a mouthful of tea. A woman watched him from the opposite table, the gloves on her hands not reaching her fingertips. A woollen blanket covered her legs, and he wondered how much of her life was stored in the brown box in her lap. He took in the city from his limited view outside Station Cafe. He was no stranger to big cities, having lived in a student hostel in Delhi when he received a scholarship, but he’d never seen one with such ample space. He observed the tall buildings, the cars that hummed and tooted, the Western people at the table next door, on the footpath, and still there was room to walk without being elbowed or hit by a bicycle.

‘You finish, my friend?’ said a man clutching a wet cloth, water dripping down his fleshy fingers.

Rajib shook his head at the short man, whose moustache was messy, had lost its shape, and he wondered if men in this country did not bother to trim. He pretended to sip from the empty glass, not wanting to pay for another – this was his third already. The bitter tea was expensive, and he had to be careful with the money he had left, enough for two months’ rent, tuition and expenses. The cost of travel had lightened his savings and only last month he had transferred a weighty sum to Sandeep’s Australian bank account so his friend could keep the house Rajib was soon to call home. Sandeep’s housemate disappeared suddenly without paying his share of the rent, and it was agreed that Rajib would cover the shortfall. Rajib pulled out the email from Sandeep and read it again. Station Cafe. This was the place, the cafe that never closed. He hoped Sandeep was okay and no trouble had delayed him.

*

Ali wiped garlic sauce off the plastic table next to the young man, scattering chip crumbs to the floor. He smiled thinking of his sparrows and how their small beaks would peck at the crumbs the minute he turned his back. How nice it would be if just once the ungrateful birds would eat from his hand before they flew away. But they regarded him with caution from the trees, the nearby tables, until he left. Tsk. Better this way. Feed them with hands and they’ll spoil like his two boys, who would eat the fingers that held the crumbs if they could. He often wondered where he went wrong, if his sons would have been more human if he had raised them in the clean air of his köy in Turkey rather than this polluted city.

He closed his eyelids for a few seconds. It’d been years of night shifts and his eyes still burned for sleep. Like the Indian boy on the next table whose heavy eyes kept watching the clock. It was his third glass of tea in one hour, and nothing else had passed his mouth. He had the wear and tear of travel, his black hair puffy, without the gel young people use to make it stick down. Time wasters, all of them, he thought. Instead of filling their hands with work, they keep busy turning their hair into snot. As if a cow had licked it, they would say back home.

Ali saw the boy shiver, raise the glass to his mouth then quickly put it down. Tsk. Who was this boy trying to fool with his bad acting? Age is yet to blur my eyes, he thought. Sipping from an empty glass. Peh! The boy lifted his suitcase onto a chair. It looked more like a trunk; the kind Ali’s wife filled with örgü and other bits ready for their daughter to take to her new home when she married. His wife sat up most nights with a needle and thread, sewing flowers on cloths, frills on edges to decorate their daughter’s future home. Even when time changed the shape of her fingers, she still held the needle and thread, and Ali often found her basket on the coffee table when he came home after the sun rose.

They had aged separately, Ali and his wife. She’d gotten smaller in the hours he was feeding the city, her bones shrinking; and he’d gotten bigger, his waist expanding. Sometimes when the smell of meat and oil did not make her cringe she’d touch him, slap his bulging stomach. It’s like a davul, she’d say, and laugh as her hands made the tak-ka-tak sound of the drum. He didn’t have enough of his wife; her softness had hardened in the nights without him. And what for? To clean someone else’s tables for thirty years to pay for half a house.

‘Morning,’ said Ali, stopping at a corner table to talk to the woman he’d named Anna. He picked up the greasy foil she’d squeezed into a ball. ‘Very nice, ha? Yes, yes, kebab very nice.’

She said nothing, just sat there like she did every night with the ripped box on her knees. He did not understand why she held onto it like it was worth something. It was empty! Peh! Rubbish, he thought. Yet she sat with the box and ate her order of half a kebab with no onion and extra chilli. These were the only words Ali heard from her mouth. He’d named her Anna the morning she moved into the station a year ago; her lips were thin like the Italian neighbour who used to give his kids chocolate eggs at her Easter. Anna was staring at the Indian boy whose hands shook as he opened his suitcase. Tsk. Freezing and still he is sitting there with an empty glass. Who knows what dreams he brought with him. Ali walked back into the cafe, shaking his head. Welcome to Australia, he sang to himself. Where dreams die.

*

Rajib wore the jumper over his shirt but the chill settled in his bones. The clock ticked closer to daylight, its hand nearing four. Perhaps Sandeep got the time wrong. Perhaps he understood that the flight was landing at one p.m. instead of a.m. and was sleeping at the home he referred to as ‘the flat’. It is small, he’d said, but much better than our ratty student hostel in Delhi. He’d even converted a small patch of earth in the backyard into a vegetable garden. You should see, Raj! There’s lemongrass, coriander, chillies, ginger. You will not be without herbs! he’d written in his last email. A good thing if you know how to grind and mix them, Rajib thought. He could almost smell the burnt chillies when he and Sandeep had craved Nariyal chutney bad enough to make it one night. The smoke had made them splutter and cough and caused a crowd of laughing students to gather at their doorstep. Rajib traded cooking for accounting books from that night and saved his cravings for university break. Mother’s kitchen was four hours away by bus when the traffic was not heavy.

‘How hot was she, mate?’ said a boy, speaking into his mobile phone. He swayed past, bumping Rajib’s table, his hair the colour of the sun when it sets. ‘I know, mate, I know.’ The last word stretched in his mouth and Rajib repeated it, extending the vowel. The boy took his time with words, and Rajib was eager to replace his clipped English with this new version. He could almost hear Doctor Hakim’s voice, rough like the stone walls of the small clinic. ‘Learn it well and English is your passport,’ he’d say on days when Rajib cleaned the clinic after school in exchange for schoolbooks. The boy disappeared from sight on the main road, where a police car stopped to unload a man who struggled with the weight of alcohol.

Best to call Sandeep and get shelter from the chill of this new country. Rajib looked around for a payphone, avoiding the eyes of the woman with the box. He did not want to go too far in case Sandeep arrived. Best to ask, he thought, carrying his suitcase into the small cafe. The warmth embraced him as he approached the man with the moustache who was sipping tea at a corner table.

*

Look at him with one collar sticking out like a çoban. All he needs is sheep and a stick, thought Ali. Must want another cup of tea.

‘Yes, my friend?’

‘I am looking for telephone,’ said the Indian boy, his hand curled tightly around the handle of the suitcase. ‘Where I find one, please?’

‘What you look for?’

‘Phone. Telephone.’ The boy placed his thumb and pinkie finger against his ear.

‘Ha, telefon,’ said Ali, picking at the cheese börek on his plate. ‘You walk very far, inside station, up ecs-lator. You ask there.’

The boy looked outside, two lines crossing his forehead. Ali’s oldest son had a face that creased quickly too, except his lines cut deeper into his skin. Each year the worry marked his face as another job slipped out of his incompetent hands, making him look older. But it is not real, this maturity. To Ali, it is not manhood if it lacks a spine. It is not hard work if hands remain smooth and jobless.

‘What is ecs-lator?’ said the boy, lines deepening.

‘Peh! It no matter.’ Maybe Indians don’t have this in their country, thought Ali. Too hard to explain to this boy whose words were too thick to understand.

The boy nodded as his hand reached into his pocket and drew out a piece of paper. ‘Where I find telephone, please?’ he asked again, analysing the note and biting his bottom lip.

Ali leaned closer.

The boy placed the suitcase gently on the floor. ‘This is mobile telephone number, no?’

‘Yes.’

‘This is enough for a phone call, no?’ The boy held a scrunched-up five-dollar note in his shaking hand.

Ali wondered what made him tremble like a little boy. He sighed, pushed his chair back, and beckoned him with a chunky hand. ‘Come.’ He led the boy to the corner of the shop. ‘Here, telefon,’ he said, picking up the receiver. ‘But only for one minute! Mobile very expensive.’

*

Rajib watched the kind man dial Sandeep’s number. A bit of pastry was stuck to the index finger that pushed the grey buttons. The man shook his head, put the phone down. Dialled once more.

‘Tsk. This right number?’

Rajib nodded as anxiety crept up his spine.

‘It is not connected.’

‘No … no. I have talked many times with him on this telephone.’

The man shook his head, led him back to the table. ‘Here, sit, my friend.’

The man walked to the counter, and Rajib’s legs buckled beneath him. Was this not the number he had dialled from the payphone that connected him to Sandeep’s voice rich with plans in ‘big Australia’?

The man returned with two cups of tea. ‘My name Ali.’ He sat down in a way that made his big stomach rest on his knees.

‘Many thanks,’ said Rajib, sipping from the small glass. ‘I am

Raj.’

Ali pointed to the piece of paper. ‘How you know this friend?’

Rajib thought of university nights lit up with dreams of Australia where one month’s wage in India was earned in a week for those with working hands. Where with enough practise, he could untangle English from his thick Indian accent and have a career bigger than a call-centre booth. ‘It is very, very easy, Raj!’ Sandeep had said, his face glowing with new ideas. ‘With a student visa, they will let us work twenty hours per week until university starts then full-time on term break!’ And hope took Rajib to his uncle’s doorstep where he was made to wipe his feet on the doormat before greeting his mother’s brother, fat with the riches of India, who sat with Rajib on a palang that was the size of his mother’s house. His uncle agreed to lend him the money for the first three months, plus a small sum for expenses, with the understanding that Rajib would pay him back each month with a ‘small interest for my kindness’. That is how his uncle had put it.

Rajib shook away his uncle’s kindness. ‘Sandeep is university friend.’

‘You trust?’ said Ali, reshaping his messy moustache with a finger.

‘He will come.’

‘You sit in cold for two hours, only thing come is drunks.’ He pointed to the counter where a girl’s laughter tipped her forward into the glass that displayed the food.

‘He will come, Uncle.’

‘Not uncle, I am Ali,’ he said, shaking his head.

‘No, no, apologies. In India this word means respect for you.’ Rajib took a sip of the warm tea that had lost its flavour.

Ali’s face wrinkled, and Rajib noticed how his eyes got smaller.

‘Ha, tamam. Yes, we have same thing in Turkish. We say Abi. But I not so old. You call me Ali.’ He leaned forward, like Doctor Hakim did when he was about to whisper a truth. ‘You friend, maybe he no good?’

‘No good? Like ill?’

‘Peh!’ Ali crossed his arms and leaned back. ‘Bad.’

‘No, no, Uncl– Ali, Sandeep very good. His telephone, maybe he hasn’t paid bill, isn’t it?’ Yes, that was it. Sandeep had run into more financial troubles.

Ali mumbled something in another language, then changed his words to English. ‘This country turn friend to stranger.’ Ali tapped the table, rattling Rajib’s fear. ‘You have this friend address?’

*

Ali would not have offered to take the boy to the address scribbled on the scrunched paper if it was too far from home. But it was close, only two suburbs away, and what harm was an extra ten minutes? It was nearing five a.m. and the weight of responsibility was as heavy as his fatigued eyes. This boy, Raj, sat in the front seat, suitcase in the back, looking for a friend who Ali believed was üç kağıtçı. Not right. Ali had been like this boy next to him now, that day thirty years ago when the aeroplane took him out of the village and put him in a city too slippery for his plastic shoes, too big for his dreams.

‘Why you come to Australia?’ said Ali, turning onto the freeway that connects to the western suburbs.

‘I am here to study and work, Uncle. Apologies, Ali –’

‘Is orayt – no need to say sorry. You will live with this friend?’

‘Yes, in a place he calls “the flat”. You have heard of this type of home?’

‘Yes, many years ago, when we first come here before we have house, we live in flat. Many, many people in the building. We live like in cage, one on top of each other.’

‘Was nice to have home, no?’

‘Tsk.’ Ali wondered where this Raj came from that his voice was so full of … what is the word … gladness? ‘It was all waste, the years there.’

‘Nothing is wasted where I come from.’

‘Where I come from, Türkiye, people is wasted.’ Hours disappear into years without a receipt, youth ages with hard work that bends your back. ‘This is why we come,’ said Ali, smiling. ‘This is why we come.’

*

Rajib took in the wide streets glowing with lights. It was big, this city, yet still there was order on the roads, no hurry to overtake, no tooting of the horns that was a mantra back home. No beggars on footpaths but big trees with trunks thick with age.

‘This is the street, my friend. What number we look for?’

‘It is 57,’ said Rajib, wondering why most of the lights were out on this street. ‘It is dark, no?’

‘Your friend pick cheap suburb. No worry. We find.’

The street’s darkness hid homes, and trees and bricks blurred with night. Rajib’s heart raced, thinking about seeing his friend again, starting a new life. ‘What does it look like this flat?’

The car slowed down and Ali made a small noise, like something was stuck in his throat.

‘Uncle?’

Rajib heard Ali release breath as he stopped the car.

‘You are okay, Uncle?’

‘Yes, yes. This house number 59,’ said Ali, pointing in front to a letterbox. ‘This house 55.’ He waved his hand behind the car.

‘Where is 57?’ Rajib could not understand why the man was looking down, shaking his head.

‘Here, my friend.’

Rajib followed the man’s finger to the empty land between the buildings. ‘This is a mistake, Uncle,’ he said, clutching his knees. ‘A mistake,’ he repeated over and over as emptiness filled his insides.