Saleem held her elbow as she took off her shoe. The heel had broken off. She looked as if she might burst into tears. With her shoe in her hand, she began to hobble down the street. Saleem let her arm go but quickly caught up with her when he saw how she struggled to walk. “I will help you,” he offered and quietly extended his hand. She looked at him with resignation and nodded.
“Here,” she said simply and led the way. They made a few turns down slate-colored alleys. She led him to a rusted sedan parked on a back lot. She took a key out of her purse, unlocked the door, and slid into the backseat.
“Sit,” she offered, pointing to the seat beside her. He followed, careful not to get too close. She was less standoffish now, but being alone in a car with her suddenly made Saleem uncomfortable.
“Your name?” she asked with mild interest.
“Saleem. And you?”
“Mimi.”
There was a period of silence. Mimi fidgeted and rubbed her ankle. She looked at Saleem, her brow furrowed.
“Why you come here?”
“Here?”
“Italy. Why you come to Italy?”
“I want to go to England. My family is in England.”
“Family?”
“Mother, sister, brother.”
Mimi stared out the car window. Drops of rain fell silently on the glass.
“Where is your family?” Saleem asked. Mimi rubbed her arms and shifted in the seat.
“No family,” she said abruptly.
“Oh.”
Her answer left Saleem with many more questions.
“When you come to Italy?”
“Two years,” she said. “Two years.”
“You want to stay?”
Her lips pulled together in an angry pout. “There is nothing here.”
“Where do you want to go?”
Mimi looked up as if no one had ever asked her that question. Something about the darkness made their conversation even more pleasantly anonymous than it already was.
“I do not know.” The rain started to come down heavier, pelting at the roof of the car with a tin, staccato rhythm. Lulled by the dark and the rain, Mimi began to tell Saleem her story in a fragmented English that did not do it justice.
Mimi came from a poor family in Albania. She’d been the third daughter, and two more followed after her. When she was fifteen, her parents arranged for her to be married to a man nearly twice her age. She protested but it made no difference. She lived with her husband for nearly three months, picking up the empty bottles and suffering the rage of his alcoholic fits. After three months, she returned to her parents, but they refused to take her in again. Mimi went to live with her aunt.
She fell in love with a local boy who asked her to move to Italy with him where they would marry and start a new life. He arranged for them to travel by speedboat from Albania to Italy’s coast. Mimi did not tell her aunt or anyone else about her decision to leave. When they got to Italy, they lived in a small apartment, and for a week or two,
Mimi believed she was beginning the gilded life he’d promised her. But before long, the boy began to complain that they needed money. He could not find work, he’d said, and told his fiancée that her beauty could earn enough to support them both. He promised it would not be for long and that things would not change between them.
Saleem did not interrupt.
The boy took all the money Mimi brought home. He spent her earnings on drugs and went out with friends while she worked. One day, he took her to an apartment and unceremoniously traded her to another man. She’d pleaded with him, reminding him of the promises he’d made and all that she’d done for him, but he turned his back and never returned. The new man wanted her to work. When she refused, he beat her and locked her in a room with two other girls until they had no choice but to submit. That was seven months ago. He was not the kind of man to chance running from, she’d learned from some other girls.
“I have nowhere to go. I have no papers. My family do not want me. And if I leave, he find me.”
Saleem had no words of comfort or encouragement. He was thankful the darkness hid the expression on his face. She was a used girl, the kind of shame people could not speak of in polite company in Kabul.
He had only one question, which Mimi answered without his having to ask.
“I do not know why I tell you. You say you need help. But you are boy. You are free. You do not need help.”
Her assumptions angered Saleem. He wanted to hate her. Part of him did. He hated her for telling him things so horrible that his own troubles paled. He hated her for making him feel sorry for someone other than himself. He hated her for making him feel all the more helpless—useless to himself and useless to others.
Saleem took another sidelong glance at her. It was not hard to imagine that a family would turn her away. A girl who left her husband
and then ran off with another boy, only to end up as a prostitute. In Afghanistan, she would have been put out of her misery long ago for the dishonor she had brought upon her family.
Saleem looked out the window. Out of the many, he watched one raindrop, followed it as it ran down the glass and disappeared into the night. He could not hate her. Despite her brusque tone and lurid exterior, she was just a girl. The best he could do was to say nothing.
“You do not have papers?” she asked.
“No.”
“Hm.”
Saleem toyed with his watch. He wondered if it was safe to be here with her, but it was raining harder now and he had no desire to seek other cover.
“Your watch . . . it is nice.”
Saleem stopped playing with the wristband and sat straight up in the seat. After a few moments, he heard his voice break the silence.
“This was my father’s watch.”
As he watched the hands count the seconds and minutes, Saleem told his story. He said it plainly and quickly. It was surprising how many days and years mattered not at all. His story, the heart of him, was really made up of only a handful of seconds or minutes. The rest was empty road, an expanse that only prolonged the travel from one point to another.
He told her about his father. He told her about leaving and Polat’s farm in Turkey. His voice softened when he talked about Madar-
jan
’s worries and Samira’s silence and Aziz’s broken heart. He talked about Attiki but left out Saboor and the stabbing, a moment he was still ill prepared to accept. He told her about Patras and Naeem’s mangled body.
“You are just a boy,” Mimi said finally. “Your family wait for you. You go to them.”
“But I can go to France?”
Mimi was thoughtful.
“Maybe I show you—but maybe is bad idea.”
“Tell me,” Saleem urged. Any idea could be a good idea.
“People go to France every day. Some people, they take a box and go to France. Easy work, only important police not catch you because take you to jail.”
“Only for taking a box? I can do this,” Saleem said hopefully.
“I do not know. I take you to man—he know. I ask him for you.”
He and Mimi made arrangements to meet again the following night. When the rain stopped, Mimi told him it was best if he left and found a place to sleep until morning. Saleem understood and walked into the night, grateful to have met Mimi, the girl-woman.
SALEEM SPENT THE DAY WANDERING THE STREETS OF ROME. HE
watched tourists, cameras dangling from their craned necks. With glossy pamphlets in hand, they had a characteristic rhythm to their walk—stop, focus, shoot. A few steps more, then again—stop, focus, shoot.
He made a mental map to track his path. Cars honked and the sounds of a city drowned his morose thoughts.
Saleem rounded a corner and an earth-colored building loomed ahead, a relic rising above a crowded street. The lopsided building opened to the sky and looked oddly familiar to a boy who’d been in the country for only a day. He walked toward it, a flood of memories returning as he gawked at the structure.
He could not have been more than seven or eight years old, huddled with his family in the back living room of his aunt’s home. They were one of a few to own a video player and one of his cousins had borrowed an old copy of a kung fu movie from a friend. What was it called? Something about a dragon. This was the setting of one of the
fight scenes, one that left Saleem chopping his fists into the air and flexing his spindly biceps for weeks.
He closed in on the Coliseum, his step quickened by nostalgia and curiosity. He followed the thick rope of people that circled the building. People were buying tickets to go inside. Saleem sat on a bench across the street. He could not afford to spend what he had on a ticket, nor could he bring himself to walk away. He could imagine those shirtless men, glistening sweat outlining their muscular forms—skillfully striking, ducking, and flying through the air.
Saleem thought of the truck drivers, the police officers, Saboor. His battles were nothing like those of the movie.
He wondered what Roksana was doing at that moment. Probably sitting in class, listening to the teacher with a skeptical ear. He went back to the day she’d taken him home. He pictured her leading him into the living room and talking over lunch. Her soft hand slipping his aunt’s address to him. The way her T-shirt narrowed at her waist.
His mind jumped to Mimi, a very different girl, if she could be called that. Her skin, her legs, her chest. It was more than he had ever before seen of a woman. A woman of innocence and shame. Beyond the smoky eye shadow settled into the creases, the smell of cigarette smoke on her clothes, and the tossed-about look on her face, Saleem could see a sweetness to her. He saw it in the way she pursed her lips or sat with her chin propped on her palm.
Saleem had not known girls like these. Just thinking about them made him feel like more of a man, as little sense as that made.
NIGHT CAME AND SALEEM FOUND HIS WAY BACK TO THE DIMLY
lit street. He did not see Mimi. He saw other girls, girls of all hues, wearing short pants or ruffled skirts, masking their ennui with coquettish postures. He kept his distance.
He sat on the front steps of an abandoned building. His watch read nine o’clock. A few cars drove by, slowly. From where he sat, he
could see the streetlamp under which they’d met. He would wait, he decided.
Thirty minutes later, a car pulled up. The passenger-side door opened, and one pale leg after another, Mimi emerged. She closed the door behind her just as the car began to peel away. She adjusted her skirt and stepped back onto the sidewalk gingerly, her ankle still tender.
She wore a jade-colored top and white skirt that shimmered under the glow of the streetlamp. Saleem stood and walked toward her. She saw him approaching from afar but acted coolly.
“Mimi,” Saleem said nervously. He kept his hands in pockets, not knowing what else to do with them.
“You come back.”
By the way she said it, Saleem could tell she had not expected him to nor was she particularly thrilled that he had.
“Yes. Your foot. Is it okay?”
She nodded. Maybe she regretted telling him to return.
Saleem spoke quickly, before she could tell him to leave. “Can you take me to this man? The man who can send me to France?”
“It is bad idea. Sorry. Maybe is better you find your way.”
The hope she’d kindled in him last night had grown into a full blaze. She was hesitant. Saleem was not.
“Please, I need help. I must go England . . . for my family. For my mother, my sister, my brother.”
Mimi winced at the mention of family. She put a hand on her hip and took a quick glance behind her.
“I do not know what happen. These people sometimes in dangerous places. You have come to Italy alone. I think you go now and find your way, like everyone. You can. No one watch you or hold you here.”
“Mimi, please,” he beseeched.
“It is not good idea,” she said softly.
“I have nothing,” Saleem said simply. “I need this.”
He had more than she did, Mimi knew. She envied the chance
he could take—the chance she, as a caged bird, could never take. She relented, having given him ample warning. Whatever happened after this moment would not be on her conscience.
“I show you. But you not say my name.”
Saleem agreed readily. A ring. She hurriedly reached into her small handbag and pulled out a mobile phone. She spoke with someone briefly, her eyes roving the street as she talked. She sounded nervous, obedient.
“We go quickly.”
He followed her lead. She told him she would lead him to an apartment building and, from there, Saleem would have to approach the man and ask for assistance on a passage to France.
Finally,
Saleem thought,
I am getting somewhere.
His relief was short-lived.
They had walked but a few moments when a steel-gray car whipped around a corner and screeched to a stop in front of them, nearly hopping the curb. They jumped back and Mimi went toppling over, her foot already unsteady. Saleem reached out to help her, and she took his hand.
“You are customer,” she whispered quickly. Her voice trembled.
“What?”
But there was no time for her to clarify. A man in a black leather jacket stormed out of the car, slamming the driver’s-side door as he came out. He grabbed Mimi’s arm away from Saleem and asked her something in a language Saleem did not understand. Unsatisfied with her answer, he tightened his grip and tried to rattle the truth out of her. She pleaded with him.
“What are you doing with this girl?” the man snarled, turning his attention to Saleem. His dark, cold eyes narrowed. He stood a few inches taller than Saleem and was a good thirty pounds heavier. His unshaven face only intimidated Saleem more.
“I . . . I . . . I was talking,” Saleem stuttered, before remembering what Mimi had whispered to him.
“Talking for what?”
“I want to ask her . . . because I want to . . .” Saleem faltered.
“Do you want her?” he said casually.
“Y-y-yes,” Saleem said with as much conviction as he could muster. Mimi looked nervously from Saleem to the man.
“Good. Let me see money.”