An announcement was made from the invisible loudspeaker: "Will all visa applicants line up at window number seven to collect a number for visa processing."
"What what, what did they say?" Biju, like half the room, didn’t understand, but he saw from the ones who did, who were running, pleased to be given a head start, what they should do. Stink and spit and scream and charge; they jumped toward the window, tried to splat themselves against it hard enough that they would just stick and not scrape off; young men mowing through, tossing aside toothless grannies, trampling babies underfoot. This was no place for manners and this is how the line was formed: wolf-faced single men first, men with families second, women on their own and Biju, and last, the decrepit. Biggest pusher, first place; how self-contented and smiling he was; he dusted himself off, presenting himself with the exquisite manners of a cat. I’m civilized, sir, ready for the U.S., I’m civilized, mam. Biju noticed that his eyes, so alive to the foreigners, looked back at his own countrymen and women, immediately glazed over, and went dead.
Some would be chosen, others refused, and there was no question of fair or not. What would make the decision? It was a whim; it was not liking your face, forty-five degrees centigrade outside and impatience with all Indians, therefore; or perhaps merely the fact that you were in line after a yes, so you were likely to be the no. He trembled to think of what might make these people unsympathetic.
Presumably, though, they would start off kind and relaxed, and then, faced with all the fools and
annoying people, with their lies and crazy stories, and their desire to stay barely concealed under fervent promises to return, they would respond with an indiscriminate machine-gun-fire of NO!NO!NO!NO!NO!
On the other hand, it occurred to those who now stood in the front, that at the beginning, fresh and alert, they might be more inclined to check their papers more carefully and find gaps in their arguments. . . . Or perversely start out by refusing, as if for practice.
There was no way to fathom the minds and hearts of these great Americans, and Biju watched the windows carefully, trying to uncover a pattern he might learn from. Some officers seemed more amiable than others, some scornful, some thorough, some were certain misfortune, turning everyone away empty-handed.
He would have to approach his fate soon enough. He stood there telling himself, Look unafraid as if you have nothing to hide. Be clear and firm when answering questions and look straight into the eyes of the officer to show you are honest. But when you are on the verge of hysteria, so full of anxiety and pent-up violence, you could only appear honest and calm by being dishonest. So, whether honest or dishonest, dishonestly honest-looking, he would have to stand before the bulletproof glass, still rehearsing answers to the questions he knew were coming up, questions to which he had to have perfectly made-up replies.
"How much money do you have?"
"Can you prove to us you won’t stay?"
Biju watched as the words were put forward to others with complete bluntness, with a fixed and unembarrassed eye—odd when asking such rude questions. Standing there, feeling the enormous measure of just how despised he was, he would have to reply in a smart yet humble manner. If he bumbled, tried too hard, seemed too cocky, became confused, if they didn’t get what they wanted quickly and easily, he would be out. In this room it was a fact accepted by all that Indians were willing to undergo any kind of humiliation to get into the States. You could heap rubbish on their heads and yet they would be begging to come crawling in. . . .
________
"And what is the purpose of your visit?"
"What should we say, what should we say?" they discussed in the line.
"We’ll say a
hubshi
broke into the shop and killed our sister-in-law and now we have to go to the funeral."
"Don’t say that." An engineering student who was already studying at the University of North Carolina, here for the renewal of his visa, knew this would not sound right.
But he was shouted down. He was unpopular.
"Why not?"
"You are going too far. It’s a stereotype. They’ll suspect."
But they insisted. It was a fact known to all mankind: "It’s black men who do all of this."
"Yes, yes," several others in the line agreed. "Yes, yes." Black people, living like monkeys in the trees, not like us, so civilized. . . .
They were, then, shocked to see the African-American lady behind the counter. (God, if the Americans accepted them, surely they would welcome Indians with open arms? Won’t they be happy to see us!) But. . . already some ahead were being turned away. Biju’s worry grew as he saw a woman begin to shriek and throw herself about in an epilepsy of grief.
"These people won’t let me go, my daughter has just had a baby, these people won’t let me go, I can’t even look at my own grandchild, these people. . . . I am ready to die . . . they won’t even let me see the face of my grandchild. . . ." And the security guards came rushing forward to drag her away down the sanitized corridor rinsed with germ killers.
________
The man with the
hubshi
story of murder—he was sent to the window of the
hubshi. Hubshi hubshi bandar bandar,
trying to do some quick thinking—oh no, normal Indian prejudice would not work here, distaste and rudeness—story falling to pieces in his head.
"Mexican, say Mexican," hissed someone else.
"Mexican?"
He arrived at the window, retreating under threat, to his best behavior. "Good morning, ma’am." (Better not make that
hubshi
angry,
yaar
—so much he wished to immigrate to the U.S. of A., he could even be polite to black people.) "Yes ma’am, something like this, Mexican-Texican, I don’t know exactly," he said to the woman who pinned him with a lepidopterist’s gaze. (Mexican-Texican??) "I don’t know, madam," squirming, "something or the other like this my brother was saying, but he is so upset, you know, don’t want to ask all the details."
"No, we cannot give you a visa."
"Why ma’am, please ma’am, I already have bought the ticket ma’am. . . ."
And those who waited for visas who had spacious homes, ease-filled lives, jeans, English, driver-driven cars waiting outside to convey them back to shady streets, and cooks missing their naps to wait late with lunch (something light—cheese macaroni. . .), all this time they had been trying to separate themselves from the vast shabby crowd. By their manner, dress, and accent, they tried to convey to the officials that they were a preselected, numerically restricted, perfect-for-foreign-travel group, skilled in the use of knife and fork, no loud burping, no getting up on the toilet seat to squat as many of the village women were doing at just this moment never having seen the sight of such a toilet before, pouring water from on high to clean their bottoms and flooding the floor with bits of soggy shit.
"I have been abroad before and I have always returned. You can see from my passport." England. Switzerland. America. Even New Zealand. Looking forward, when in New York, to the latest movie, to pizza, to Cal-ifornian wine, also Chilean—very good, you know, and reasonably priced. If you were lucky already you would be lucky again.
Biju approached his assigned window that framed a clean young man with glasses. White people looked clean because they were whiter; the darker you were, Biju thought, the dirtier you looked.
"Why are you going?"
"I would like to go as a tourist."
"How do we know you will come back?"
"My family, wife, and son are here. And my shop."
"What shop?"
"Camera shop." Could the man really believe this?
"Where are you going to stay?"
"With my friend in New York. Nandu is his name and here is his address if you would like to see."
"How long?"
"Two weeks, if that is suitable to you." (Oh, please, just a day, a day. That will be enough to serve my purpose. . . .)
"Do you have funds to cover your trip?"
He showed a fake bank statement procured by the cook from a corrupt state bank clerk in exchange for two bottles of Black Label.
"Pay at the window around the corner and you can collect your visa after five P.M."
How could this be?
A man he had spoken to, still in the line behind him, called out in a piercing tone:
"Were you successful, Biju? Biju, were you successful?
Biju?Biju!
"
In that passionate peacock cry, Biju felt this man was willing to die for him, but his desperation was for himself, of course.
"Yes, I was successful."
"You are the luckiest boy in the whole world," the man said.
________
The luckiest boy in the whole world. He walked through a park to luxuriate in the news alone. Raw sewage was being used to water a patch of grass that was lush and stinking, grinning brilliantly in the dusk. Out of the sewage Biju chased a line of pigs with black watermarks across their bellies, ran after them in jubilation. "Hup hup," he shouted. The crows that had been sitting on the pigs’
backs scrambled into indignant flight, having to start up backward. A jogger in a tracksuit stopped to stare, the chauffeur waiting for the jogger and brushing his teeth with a neem twig, meanwhile, also stopped and stared. Biju ran after a cow.
"Hup hup." He hopped over the ornamental plants and he jumped on the exercise bars, did pull-ups and push-ups.
________
The next day, he sent a telegram to his father, "the luckiest boy in the whole wide world," and when it arrived he knew his father would be the happiest father in the world. He didn’t know, of course, that Sai, too, would be overjoyed. That when he had visited Kalimpong for that doomed interview with the cruise ship, she had found her heart shaken by the realization that the cook had his own family and thought of them first. If his son were around, he would pay only the most cursory attention to her. She was just the alternative, the one to whom he gave his affection if he could not have Biju, the real thing.
"Yipeee," she had shouted when she heard of his visa. "Hip hip hooray."
________
In the Gandhi Café, a little after three years from the day he’d received his visa, the luckiest boy in the whole world skidded on some rotten spinach in Harish-Harry’s kitchen, streaked forward in a slime green track and fell with a loud popping sound. It was his knee. He couldn’t get up.
"Can you get a doctor?" he said to Harish-Harry after Saran and Jeev had helped him to his mattress between the vegetables.
"Doctor!! Do you know what is medical expense in this country?!"
"It happened here. Your responsibility."
"My responsibility!" Harish-Harry stood over Biju, enraged. "
You
slip in the kitchen. If you slip on the road, then who would you ask,
hm?
"
He had given this boy the wrong impression. He had been too kind and Biju had misunderstood those nights of holding his boss’s divided soul in his lap, gluing it together with Harish-Harry’s favorite axioms. "I take you in. I hire you with no papers, treat you like my own son and now this is how you repay me! Living here rent-free.
In India would they pay you? What right do you have? Is it my fault you don’t even clean the floor? YOU should have to pay ME for not cleaning, living like a pig. Am I telling YOU to live like a pig?"
"Biju’s throbbing knee made him brave, reduced him to animal directness.
He glared at Harish-Harry, the pretence was gone; in this moment of physical pain, his own feelings were strained clear.
"Without us living like pigs," said Biju, "what business would you have?
This is how you make your money, paying us nothing because you know we can’t do anything, making us work day and night because we are illegal. Why don’t you sponsor us for our green cards?"
Volcanic explosion.
"How can I sponsor you?! If I sponsor
you
I have to sponsor
Rishi,
and if I sponsor
Rishi,
then I have to sponsor
Saran,
and if
him
then
Jeev,
and then
Mr.
Lalkaka
will come and say, but I have been here for longest, I am the most distinguished, and I should be first in line. How can I make an exception? I have to go to the INS and say that no American citizen can do the job. I have to prove it. I have to prove I advertised it. They will look into my restaurant. They will study and ask questions. And the way they have it, it’s the owner who gets put in jail for hiring illegal staff. If you are not happy, then go right now. Go find someone to sponsor you. Know how easily I can replace you?
Know how lucky
you are!!!
You think there aren’t thousands of people in this city looking for a job? I can replace you like this," he snapped his fingers, "I’ll snap my fingers and in one second hundreds of people will appear.
Get out of my face!
"
But since Biju couldn’t walk, it was Harish-Harry who had to leave. He went back up and then he came back down, because his temper had changed in a flash—it was always like that with him, a thunder squall that moved on fast.
"Look," he said more kindly, "when have I treated you badly? I am not a bad man, am I? Why are you attacking me? As it is, I stick out my neck for you, Biju, tell me, how much more can you ask? These risky things I cannot do." He counted out fifty dollars from his wallet. "Here. Why not take some rest? You can help cutting the vegetables while lying down and if you are not better, go home. Doctors are very cheap and good in India. Get the best medical attention and later on you can always return."