“Now you have a boss.” The Russian grabs him by an arm and drags him away from the road under a flyover. Aaman remains curled. The Russian sits down on a rock. Aaman can smell cigarette smoke. He waits. He falls asleep. Awakes to residual pain. Opens his eyes and uncurls. The Russian is still there, now with a friend. Aaman slowly sits up. His tongue is throbbing.
“Ah, my worker awakes!” The Russian and his friend laugh. The friend gets up and walks away across the road, saying something in his mother tongue.
Aaman glances at the Russian. He sees his chance being lost by the action of this man. He feels an unfamiliar emotion. He realises it is anger. He puts his hands on the floor to stand, his fingers curling around a rock.
“And where do you think you are going?” The Russian finds his role amusing. “Sit down!”
But Aaman does not sit and the Russian stands to take action, feeling his own anger at Aaman’s defiance. He lunges at Aaman to push him back down. Aaman ducks and sidesteps. He swings his arm towards the Russian’s head, his fingers clenched around the rock. It makes a grating thud as it makes contact. The Russian’s eyes open wide and an expletive passes his lips. He stands tall and turns on Aaman.
Aaman is terrified. The Russian is much taller than him. He knows he is going to swing for him. His legs are straddled for a sure base and his eyes are menacing. Aaman doesn’t have time to think. His foot has come up between the straddled legs and the man folds, a sweet acid expulsion of air passes his lips as his head lowers to his knees. Aaman brings the rock down on his head with a solid crunch and the man falls to the floor.
Aaman grabs his bucket and runs. He heads off the main road and finds a street with high-fenced houses. He is gasping for air but dare not stop running. He eventually staggers to a halt by an old house. The bushes outside the fence on the pavement are dense and covered with flowers. Aaman pushes his way past the canopy of foliage to disturb a cat curled by the trunk of the bush. Aaman takes its place and stays hidden in the bush until nightfall. His tongue throbs slightly less and the pain from the kick to his stomach has decreased, but his heart is still beating fast.
By the light of the moon he takes his bucket and runs through the suburban street until he can run no more. Dawn is breaking. He wonders if the grapevine on the street will have every Russian in Athens looking for him. He steals a yellow t-shirt from a washing line, swipes a baseball cap from a garage. He finds a corner to work on and stays twice as vigilant.
Aaman keeps moving to avoid the Russians, Georgians, Turks, even Greeks. Traffic lights here, street corners there, moving constantly, each step closer to her computer, her garden, her house, Juliet. Street by street, mile by mile, day by day, cents turn into euros. The euros are eaten away with the need for food. Water fifty cents a bottle. A Sisyphean task. Some days he takes no food to save money, some days there is no pay. He is nearly at the end of Athens. He takes his money and buys a ticket for as far as it will take him. He will walk the rest.
Chapter 16
The village outskirts feel so familiar. The woman sits in the shade by her aging petrol pumps. Girl and woman, she has sat there, now neatly dressed in black, knitting. A dog runs to him, black with a wide collar, reacquainting. Aaman pats its head, it runs on, free of its work with the sheep for a few hours. The bakery, closed, it is late, the pharmacy dark. The kiosk lit like a fun fair, promises and temptations. Aaman sits under the palm tree, stretches his legs and rubs his feet.
With his remaining cents he buys a box of matches. The road out behind the hill, the familiarity only brought by the repetition of walking. The fork in the road, nothing new, the road turning to track, the trees thickening and there, the track on the right. Aaman slows his pace, listening. Is there life? An owl. The track so familiar. The moon bright, cloudless. The clearing and the barn. Hope builds. He steps on something. A roof tile snaps under his weight. It is handmade, lichen-covered. He looks round. There are more. No roof means no business. Rounding the corner to the front, he half expects to see the dead man and Mahmout grinning behind a tree.
There is the pan. A fork stuck into the mud door frame. All is abandoned. Roof tiles littered, a deliberate act. The moon shines down through the beams, some tiles holding fast, polka dotting the floor. The shelves pulled from the walls, some on the ground, some falling away, some half out, a methodical destruction to render useless the illegal camp.
Aaman has no interest in the broken history. The bunk that was his is gone. Where it was pulled from the wall there is a hole, the mud bricks have crumbled, brown dust and straw. Aaman’s fingers feel the wall, around the hole, scanning to recognise what has gone and what remains. His internal map shifted by the missing pieces. He feels in his pocket, lights a match to see.
He finds a brick with carving on it he recognises. He lights another match. He traces the route, back four, down three. Yes! There! Spit-smoothed mud. Aaman looks around for a twig, a stone; he runs and grabs the fork. Scraping and twisting the fork into the dried earth, it crumbles with ease. The tip of something paper. He lights another match. He nips it with finger and thumb and pulls. The notes uncurl as they slide out. The first few leave some behind. Nipping and pulling, Aaman retrieves all his savings. A smile spreads across his face and he laughs out loud, muted and buffered by the dense grove of orange leaves. He lies back on the plank that was once his shelf, looks up to the star-filled sky and, with a smile on his lips, falls asleep.
Up at seven and all translation work finished by tea time, Juliet finds she is much more productive and happy. This morning, she has a new piece to work on, but there is no urgent deadline. But it is important to answer an email about the book someone wants translated. That is a big job, lucrative.
She turns over and stretches, the silkiness of quality, tight-woven cotton against her skin. The sheets twist round her smooth-shaved legs and the cat meows for his escape. Juliet sits up to untangle the cat. Its face comes out first, relaxed and unhurried. Eyes open wide, ears tense and turning, he can hear something. Juliet smooths his fur with a lingering hand.
“There, there, puss with no name. What’s wrong?”
The cat relaxes to only tense again. Juliet listens. A tapping, a metallic tapping? Juliet stops breathing to listen more intently. There it is again. Not the postman’s blast on his moped horn. A tapping. Juliet flings her legs off the bed into her jeans, pulls on a top as she runs for the keys, flings the front door open. Stops still. Aaman!
Does she run, does she hug him, how did he get back, why is he back, does he feel the same, is he staying?
“Aaman!” Juliet has no choice her legs are running.
She stops a foot from the gate. He put out his hand. Juliet is not sure if she is to take it or shake it. She reaches for it, their fingers touch as if to slide into a handshake, movements slow and slur, his fingers reach her palm, hers his. The touch light, thrilling. Juliet makes a tiny almost unnoticeable stroke with the middle finger, his thumbs curls around index finger, his little finger curling around hers, they slide their hands slowly apart only to rejoin, her ring finger and little finger interlocking with the soft flesh between his, her thumb stroking his wrist. He intakes a breath, their eyes locked. His fingers reach her wrist, feeling her pulse, sliding down across her palm, fingertips touching, exploring, uniting, intertwining, his circling her palm. She takes a breath, eyes still locked, he takes her hand, encompassing her thumb, helpless.
“Hello, Juliet.”
“Hello, Aaman.”
The hands have not separated. Fingers interlock, squeezing, releasing, holding, caressing, brushing, clutching, the tender, thin skin between fingers exploded, the edge of the nail smoothed, the speeding pulse felt, the life line exposed, the mound of the thumb kneaded. Neither noticing their actions, both absorbed, gazing in silence until the cat jumps on the gate between them and nuzzles for attention.