Belief is Divine

Issue 12

     When he became old and of little use, Baba Schwartz liked to sit in a worn chair under a scrawny apel-kul tree in front of his ramshackle house in Chittagong and tell seemingly fantastic stories of his life abroad. His audience consisted of others who had been lucky enough to live so long. Skinny Jake, the retired barber Reza Mohammad, the bread-faced one and several other old men would wander over one by one in the afternoon when the sun was beginning to grow weary of thrashing the packed and dusty earth with blazing heat.
 
     They perched on crates and empty five gallon plastic buckets. Although the gatherings were not specifically for the purpose of Baba’s story-telling, it was the unspoken reason they assembled. Some looked up to Baba due to his travels and worldly experience, and would anticipate him telling a story when they came together.
     Baba would make sure that he was perched the highest of all in his chair, which he would take back inside with him at dinner. He liked the others to look up at him just a bit when he told his stories. Baba slipped off a sandal and tucked one bare foot under his leg and waited until everyone was done with their gossip of ornery wives and wayward sons before he would speak.
 
 
     The story Baba liked to tell the most, but told the least, was the tale of how the Americans deported him to the wrong country. Baba hoarded this story like gold, even more than the one about the time he saw his favorite actor, Abdur Razzak, in New York City.
      Baba Schwartz only told the story of his failed deportation after repeated requests by the group. And when he did tell it, Baba savored each word under his tongue as if it were a cool, smooth ruby. Skinny Jake was usually the one that wanted to hear the story. He’d start asking Baba as soon as he shuffled over in the afternoon. Baba would usually not tell it immediately. He would make them wait a day, or two.
     Baba was a showman. He would shape buildings with his hands and raise his eyes skyward to share the immensity of New York City. He would furrow his brow and hunch his shoulders to indicate danger. When he finally did concede to tell the story, Baba held back until he calculated he had enough time to tell the entire tale and finish it precisely as his daughter called him to dinner. This brought all his skills to play. He’d concentrate on conveying the right tone and pace, and remember which details he embellished during the last telling so he could decide whether to expand on them, or drop them altogether. Space and time were accounted for.
 
 
     “In the airplanes, the toilets have water that is a pleasing color of blue,” Baba might say. He dropped that tidbit for two tellings after Dutt made a comment about hearing something on BBC Radio about blue chunks of ice raining down from the sky and piercing rooftops. Baba ignored Dutt’s comments, but the damage was done. Baba didn’t care for unsolicited commentary.          
     As the story developed Baba also had to determine at what pace the cooking of dinner had progressed. First he had to decide what his daughter was making; usually by smelling the floating aroma, unless he had bothered to gather pre-story intelligence by seeing what ingredients she had prepared. Then he had to calculate how long it would take for her to cook. For instance, her Twin Fish Curry: Baba had about twenty minutes to finish his story when the fragrance of soal and rupchanda chutki began to waft outside.
     Mutton Tahari, which she usually served only when her surly shipbreaker husband with the permanent limp was home, gave Baba a little more time to draw out the story before his daughter stepped outside in bare feet and impatiently called for him in her unnaturally raspy voice. When the door finally creaked open, Baba would intone his last line, like a guru, which was always the same. He looked down upon his audience, said he needed to build his strength with some of his daughter’s wonderful dinner, stood up, recited his guru line, and dragged his chair through the dirt into the house, making a grand exit while his daughter held the door and rolled her eyes. The group never laughed out loud at her antics so as not to unduly embarrass Baba Schwartz.
     Only the retired barber Reza Mohammad wondered just for what activity it was that an old man with no responsibilities other than remaining alive felt he needed to build strength.
 
     Truthfully, the old men savored the story of how Baba Schwartz was deported to the wrong country. They enjoyed most of his stories, but that was the favorite.
     The basics were always the same, but details came and went - were modified from one telling to the next, or excluded for a while to emerge again in a few months. Sometimes the color of the house where Baba lived in Queens, New York was yellow, other times gray. During the post-mortem, after Baba Schwartz disappeared inside for dinner, but before the other old men returned home for their own meals, Skinny Jake usually interpreted the changes and discrepancies for the group:
     “Baba Schwartz lived in several houses in New York over the years. He was probably remembering a different one today.”
     “Perhaps the house in question was painted at some time and the color was thus altered,” Dutt might venture. Others nodded at the possibility.
     “What of the food place where Baba described eating lunch when the unnaturally large and hairy jack-booted thugs handcuffed him and whisked him away?” the bread-faced one would say. “He normally claims it was on Broadway Avenue. Today it was on another street entirely.”
      Skinny Jake had spent some time in New York City before he was also unceremoniously deported some years ago – to the correct country, but would never tell his own story for unknown reasons. Some thought it was because Jake wasn’t allowed to stay in America long before he was deported; in direct contrast to Baba Schwartz’ thirty-four years. Others speculated, although not in his presence, that it was because Skinny Jake had committed some unsavory crime for which he was imprisoned, then expelled. The retired barber Reza Mohammad, who usually didn’t say much, thought that Skinny Jake simply didn’t have any good stories to tell, unlike Baba Schwartz with his seemingly vast store.
     Skinny Jake, who always deflected attempts to discredit Baba’s memory or veracity, addressed this divergence from the norm in this days telling:
     “I know of the restaurant in question.” he said. “The street on which Baba placed it today is called Church Street, which runs parallel to the famous Broadway and is one block to the west.”
     “Which is the correct street, since you also claim to know this place?” said the retired barber Reza Mohammad, who had never traveled any further than Dhaka, and took exception to Skinny Jake’s self-appointed role of Baba’s personal story apologist. Reza Mohammad secretly felt that he should be the one sitting in the highest chair, regaling the group with stories of his own travels, only he had no travels to talk about. Reza Mohammad had been, though a competent enough barber, a not very loquacious one. Consequently, he had most of the time snipped hair silently while his customers prattled on to him and each other about matters of which he had little concern.
     A large part of Reza Mohammad’s silence was because he had spent much of his time at his shop wondering what his wife was doing, and with whom. Until he retired, Reza Mohammad had actually suspected Baba Schwartz of visiting his house while Reza was trapped in his shop cutting hair. He would often think that he smelled the sweat of another man – specifically Baba Schwartz – in his house when he returned home in the evening. Whenever he mentioned this, sometimes rather forcefully – for him, to his wife, she would dismiss his speculation out of hand. His wife would laugh, saying she despised the old man with his constant stories of America.
     “I’ve heard he only shuts up for one thing besides sleep,” she would say with a smile.
     “And what is that?” Reza Mohammad would ask, fearing the answer and how she would know such a thing.
     “Eating,” she would say, and return to cooking his dinner.
 
     “As I said, I believe the correct location of the restaurant in question is on Church Street, at the intersection of Worth Street,” Skinny Jake would say with geographical precision, having been a bicycle delivery boy, even though he was not a boy at the time, employed by a take-out Chinese Restaurant during his tenure in the city. Reza Mohammad would say nothing, but remained unconvinced.
 
     After the story is dissected and discussed, the old men abandon their seats and make their way back to their own houses for dinner. Today, however, Reza Mohammad doesn’t want to go home to his wife just yet. So when he senses the conversation dwindling to a point that dispersal of the remaining group is inevitable he revives a subject that has been rehashed enough that no one else has any interest in discussing but they will anyway because they know why the retired barber doesn’t want to go home yet, so they indulge him for a few extra minutes, even though they find him to be generally dour for their collective taste.
     “Now, I don’t understand why he is called Baba Schwartz,” says Reza Mohammad, pronouncing it sworts, “when that is not his true name.”
 
    The truth was that when Baba returned years ago – of his own free will after not having been properly deported - he spoke so much about his former employer in New York City, a garment merchant called Mr. Schwartz, that someone – a half-cripple consumptive who went away to get well and never returned, and whose name no one can remember -- began calling him Baba Schwartz and the name stuck.
     “Mr. Schwartz is preparing the necessary paperwork.” Baba would say soon after he returned and was still almost not so old a man. “The American Embassy will soon notify me of the issuance of a visa in my name and I will return to Manhattan in the employ of Mr. Schwartz once again.”
     “Maybe he will adopt you and you can return to America as his son,” the cripple said.
     To the surprise of everyone, except Baba - since he had after all been deported, albeit to the wrong country, wrong continent even – the visa had come through and he was allowed to return legally to America, where he remained for at least another fifteen years in the apparent employ of the infamous Mr. Schwartz as a warehouseman. Baba retired when the aging Mr. Schwartz sold his business, and then returned home for good, having sent money to his wife, then daughter, over the years. And now with too much time on his hands with which to bring his sweat smell into Reza Mohammad’s home, thought the retired barber.
 
     The origin of Baba’s nick-name is discussed and dispatched with rapidity since the story is well known, and everyone is now hungry and ready for a nap, even Reza Mohammad. He is still wondering how Baba Schwartz can get two streets confused, but will save that question for the next telling of the story in a few weeks or so. He might even break into the story to bring attention to the discrepancy if he were feeling particularly brave. On the other hand it would result in Skinny Jake having another opportunity to display his supposed knowledge of the geography of the distant New York City, which Reza Mohammad acknowledges he will never see, since he has no children to emigrate and help him get a visa, even one that would allow him to visit for six short months.
 
     Baba Schwartz’ story of how he was deported to the wrong country follows these general lines, allowing for shifts and variations that creep into each telling.
     “I first arrived in America as a young man. Since there were no real prospects for employment here for me, other than ship breaking, which will maim or kill you without warning, as you all know. I had a wife, and a daughter on the way that I had to provide for. I took a position on a freighter carrying garments to various ports throughout the world. Since it was my first time, it was a horrible trip for me, an unworldly worm. I hated the ship and most of the crew. When we would arrive in a port in most countries I would be kept on board instead of being allowed to disembark, because I had never been out of this country before and they were worried that I would never return to the ship. There was another wiper from Chittagong, named Shafique, who was on his third voyage, and was trusted a little more. We had become close working in the stifling man-killing engine room. He was planning to get off the ship in New York and not return. He had a job lined up and told me to come along. When we docked in Brooklyn he got off with the rest of the crew that was allowed to disembark, and I remained on board as usual. That night Shafique came back and told me to pack my things. We walked down the gangplank and to a car driven by one of his friends, and I was in America. I am not sure you achieve it that easily today, but it was still simple back then.
     Shafique’s friend took us to a house in Queens. There were many of us in the house and we all looked out for each other. That is how it was done back then. You would get established and then help someone else get a leg up. I did the same thing years later when I was settled.”
     I’ll bet you raised some legs up Reza Mohammad would think to himself at this point. The legs of another man’s wife.
     “I shared a room with three others. Shafique helped me get a job washing dishes at a restaurant. The owners, cooks and waiters were Italian. The other kitchen workers were Mexican. They all managed to communicate in a variety of languages that became some common kitchen language. I washed the dishes and didn’t try to talk to anyone for a while. I listened though. They fed us before work, usually pasta, which I wasn’t used to but learned to enjoy. I also started to become familiar with the different people I worked with. I had my first taste of liquor in that kitchen, but didn’t care for it and never tried again. The restaurant was only open for dinner so I had the days to myself. Shafique worked in a restaurant that was open for lunch and most of the others worked in construction so I was usually alone in the house unless it was raining and the construction workers couldn’t work. I took to strolling in the area during the day, slowly expanding my travels as I became familiar with that part of Queens. I enjoyed looking at the cars and large houses and wide clean streets.
     I learned many of the street names so I would know how to get back to the house. One night the Mexican delivery boy did not show up for work. One of the waiters had seen me walking the neighborhood and told the owner that I knew the area well enough to do the deliveries that night. I didn’t really know my way around that well but I was happy to get out of the kitchen, so I took the address and the food containers and got on the delivery bicycle. I finished that delivery and a few others that night and there were no complaints from customers, so I was the new delivery boy. When the Mexican delivery boy returned to work the next day he was told he could wash dishes if he still wanted to work there. For a while, when I would return from a delivery he would glare at me and the other Mexicans would laugh at him good naturedly.
     I was making good money in tips and was learning more English by then, so I was happy. I sent money home. The only thing I regret is that I was never able to bring my wife and daughter over. By the time I came back for good my daughter was an adult and my wife was old.”
     So you pursued the wives of other men would be Reza Mohammad’s silent reply.
     “The only bad time was in the winter when the skin on my hands would crack and bleed. After a few months the Mexican dishwasher stopped looking at me at all and stopped talking back to his friends when they laughed at him. He was also suspected of stealing liquor from the bar. One night I came back from a delivery and walked into the warm kitchen.  The cooks started telling the dishwasher that he should be happy now because he warm and I was riding a bicycle around in the snow. Before I knew what was happening the dishwasher picked up a steak knife from a dirty plate and stabbed me.”
     Reza Mohammad thought how he knew how the dishwasher felt as Baba Schwartz clutched his arm and made a face of intense pain, reenacting the stabbing for the old men on the buckets. He has taken something from both of us.
     “He missed my chest and got me in the arm. I had my heavy coat on and it saved me from real damage. The other Mexicans got the knife from him and held him down. The two owners rushed into the kitchen and argued while I clutched my arm and dripped blood on the tile. Most of the staff was illegal and while one owner wanted to call the police, the other one didn’t want to expose the restaurant to police and possibly immigration authorities. The sympathetic owner took me to the hospital and paid for my medical care. I don’t know what he told the hospital about me, but the police or immigration never came to the restaurant. The Mexican dishwasher never came back either.”
     Baba Schwartz would usually raise his arm at this point to display the now faint scar.
     “But my luck did not hold. Several months later when the weather was warm I visited Manhattan on my day off to see my old friend Shafique at the restaurant where he worked. That was the day immigration chose to raid that restaurant. When they came to the front I went out back with Shafique and the rest of the kitchen staff. I walked rapidly to a hot dog stand on the corner of Church and Duane Streets, but did not fool the large and hairy jack-booted thugs who swept down upon me, thinking I worked at Shafique’s restaurant, and took me away in a van with the others.
     Shafique was faster than me and was not caught. I was of course illegally in the U.S., so the matter of whether I was working at that particular restaurant or not was not important.
     The thing about being sent back is that no one tells you anything you need to know,” Baba Schwartz would say. “You are prodded along like an animal, but never told where you are going. So when I was put on an airplane in New York with many tall Africans and a few bloated Americans I didn’t ask why.”
     Once, during one telling, Reza Mohammad could no longer hold his piece. He must dispute something, anything.
     “It is called deportation,” he said loudly.
The old men looked at him.
     “They deported you. That’s what it is called.”
Baba Schwartz’s eyes narrowed, but he did not reply to the challenge.
     “They tell you nothing,” he reiterated after a moment. “I had never been on an airplane so I didn’t know what to expect. There was good food, a comfortable seat, and more space than I expected, so I went to sleep. When I woke up we were almost landing. When I got off the plane with the others and walked into the airport, the Africans at the immigration queue – after they found someone that I could speak with in English - told me I was in Dakar, Senegal and that I could not stay. I said I am from Dhaka, Bangladesh and some idiot must have sent me here by mistake. An angry man in uniform snatched me out of the queue and took me into an office.”
     “How stupid,” someone in the office barked out. “How can they confuse magnificent Dakar with some dirty slum in Bangladesh?
     Heads shook in solemn wonderment at such ignorance and they all stared at me as if I were an animal in a zoo.
     Once the angry man told my story around the room he and other Africans in uniform laughed a lot and gave me some bad food. Then they put me in another room. I stayed there for almost two days, only leaving to use their vile bathroom. Once the angry man came in the room and tried to get money from me. I only had a check that they gave me in New York that was equal to the amount of money I had in my pockets when I was arrested. It was not much because I never carried more than bus and subway fare. I gave him the check but he was not happy because he didn’t know what it was and wanted cash. He pushed me against the wall of the little room and said he would set me free in the streets of Dakar where his brothers would take care of me if I didn’t get him some money. I told him the check was the deed to a house in New York and he could have the house if he could make it there. I don’t think he believed me and asked where it was. I showed him the check said U.S. Government and if he took it to someone in the airport when he arrived in New York they would take him to the house and give him the keys.”
     “That was very clever, Baba,” someone said. The group nodded.
Baba agreed. “I did not want to be killed in Africa” he said in a happy relieved voice. “I had to think of something. The next day I was put on another plane, not for Dhaka as I had hoped, but back to New York. The angry man put me on the plane with my check in his pocket. I don’t know if he ever tried to go to New York to claim his house, but the address on the check was that of the immigration detention building on Varick Street in Manhattan, so he would be in for a surprise.”
     The group paused to chuckle at the thought of a supremely corrupt African attempting to claim an immigration jail as his new home.
      “On the plane I was able to eat some more good food and wash in the tiny bathroom, so I was not too upset about my second airplane ride. The women that worked on the plane serving food were nice to me even though they knew that I was being deported and had been sent to the wrong country. Plus, I was going back to America!
     The Americans in uniform at the airport did not laugh when they realized what had happened to me. They don’t like mistakes. So what occurred was they put me in a hotel room near the airport which I could not leave. Apparently I was now a special case, or the detention house on Varick Street was full to capacity, which was not unusual. I was able to wash and change into some clothes they brought me, and was fed three times a day. I was there from a Friday to a Monday. Several times I opened the door and peered into the hallway. There was always a guard in a chair down the hall. I think I was not the only one kept in that hotel by immigration. Once when I looked out of the door there was no guard, only an empty chair. I assumed he went to the bathroom or somewhere. I did not hesitate and did not step back into the room for anything. I walked quickly down the hall to the stairs and was in the parking lot in a minute. I began walking without looking back once. The hotel was near the airport, which was in Queens, so I did not know exactly where I was but I knew the general direction in which I had to go. After some time I came to a street I knew, which led to another street I knew, and eventually to the Italian Restaurant.”
     Reza Mohammad would choose this point to interrupt again. “If this Queens area is as vast as you have told us, how did you find our way back to this restaurant like some superman?”
     Baba Schwartz, ignoring the taunting tone of Reza’s question, would answer evenly.
     “I persevered and made it through luck combined with a general knowledge of the area. After they learned I was likely to be pursued by Immigration the owners did not want me at the restaurant. I did not want to return to the house where I lived because Immigration knew that address. Someone suggested I go to the Mexican’s house but the one that stabbed me still lived there even though he did not work at the restaurant any longer, so I did not want to go there and have him kill me in my sleep. One owner had a sister he didn’t like much. I went to live in the basement of her house nearby, which the owner of the restaurant also owned.”
 
     Baba Schwartz usually breezed through this portion of the story, giving a skeleton view of several years of his life. He would only say that sister was not as bad as the restaurant owner had told him. Baba eventually moved out of the basement and up into the house soon after he started working for Mr. Schwartz. Some were of the opinion – voiced only when Baba was out of earshot, that he had lived in some intimacy with the sister during this period but did not want to speak of it because his daughter was unaware.
     “Don’t forget his wife, when she was still alive. He wouldn’t want her to know,” someone would say.
 
     “After several weeks the owner’s sister made it plain that I was expected to pay rent – which I had assumed in any case – so I had to find a job. I had been performing odd jobs in the sister’s house, but it was not enough to earn my keep. I was scared to leave the house, but I ventured to Manhattan and through a friend I found the job with Mr. Schwartz.”
     “At some point after I became an entrusted worker and friend of Mr. Schwartz-“
     Reza Mohammad would snort at the point when Baba would utter the word ‘friend,’ without concerning himself with who heard him.
     “-he came to me and asked me in confidence if my immigration status was legalized, and I told him that I did in fact have some problems. He had an immigration lawyer look into my file and it showed little. There was a record of me being arrested but nothing further. No record of me being deported to Africa by mistake or returning from Dakar, being held in a hotel and escaping. I told the lawyer the whole story and he said they must have been embarrassed after I escaped and decided to take all the paperwork relating to my mistaken deportation and remove it from the file. The lawyer said he usually had to pay someone handsomely to make that particular mistake and laughed. I remember he laughed like a horse. He may have been only joking. It was difficult to tell the truth with the horse-laugh lawyer.”
     The old men knew the story was coming to a close when Baba Schwartz compared the lawyer’s laugh to that of a horse.
    
     “And you know the rest. Mr. Schwartz was able to obtain a work visa through the lawyer. I first had to come back to Dhaka and wait to pick it up. I did so, and returned to New York to work legally for many years.”
     Of course it took money, which Mr. Schwartz paid the lawyer and in turn deducted a small amount from Baba’s pay over the next several years until the debt was paid.
     Within a minute, on cue, Baba Schwartz’s daughter called for him and with that, Baba Schwartz stood and recited in his guru voice his standard closing line: “Belief is divine,” and dragged his chair through the dirt into his house to eat dinner.
 
     The others sat on their buckets for a few minutes, satisfied with the telling of the story of the deportation of Baba Schwartz and chewing their lips as the sun lowered itself slowly below the sickly apel-kul tree. One by one they drifted onto the dusty lane toward home, the last being Reza Mohammad, who had tried to resurrect talk of a number the inconsistencies of Baba’s story. The others gently declined to participate and left Reza Mohammad feeling frustrated over the shenanigans and misrepresentations he felt were afoot in these telling of the stories. Reza eventually stood, stared at the house where Baba sat inside eating his daughter’s cooking, and trudged home to the clean floors and dismissive attitude of his wife.
     As it turned out Reza Mohammad was the only one who would feel satisfaction when the news came to his door in the form of a chattering neighbor woman saying that Baba Schwartz was discovered peacefully dead in his narrow bed that morning by his daughter, having apparently expired in his sleep. She said he was found, ever expressive, with his arms raised above his head as if he were preparing to dive into something.
     Perhaps, Reza Mohammad thought, the old man faced death by diving from the deck of a freighter into the murky waters of a distant harbor, or into the crystal clear water of a swimming pool surrounded by green grass behind a seaside mansion in America.
 
     Reza Mohammad rarely left the house until the funeral, moving quietly and watching his wife for signs of undue emotion. He scanned The Daily Sangbad, attempting to look for news of somewhere they could travel together. After the funeral he would suggest they take a holiday. But he never did. He didn’t know where to go for a holiday. New York was out of the question because of the visas he could not obtain, and he was not going to betray his ignorance by asking his wife’s opinion about where they could go and how to get there.
     If they ever did travel there would be one difference. Reza Mohammad would handle all arrangements properly, not in a haphazard fashion, and would not be deported, not even to the wrong country.
 
    And as much as Reza Mohammad silently gloated with the unctuousness of those who remain alive, his wife never mentioned Baba Schwartz again after they came home to the scrubbed and scent-free house after the funeral. She moved around the kitchen as efficiently as ever and even made it a point to take seriously some of the observances Mohammad Reza had about local events.
 
     The gatherings at Baba Schwartz’ discontinued. Occasionally several of the old men drifted absent-mindedly to their old gathering place, but without Baba Schwartz resting on his worn kitchen chair there was no real cohesion in the group and they soon stopped going.  
     For his part, Reza Mohammad spent his days observing his wife, waiting for the day her nerve would break and she would betray him, and herself, with the truth. A sob when her back was turned to him, or a stray tear in her eye while she stared distantly through the door. But catching her displaying some undue emotion was like trying to catch a langra mango at its peak, almost impossible.
     Reza Mohammad spent most of his time sitting at the table while she worked around the house. He was underfoot more often than not, but his wife paid him no mind. He sat silently reading and re-reading the same news articles until he could discuss them with authority, if he wished. It was as if he was not there most of the time for the lack of conversation in the house.
     Occasionally Reza Mohammad would imagine that he detected the man-sweat scent in the house and would stalk around looking for evidence of it. But that could not be what he smelled, Reza Mohammad told himself, because Baba Schwartz was dead and wouldn’t be returning to haunt him – no matter what some believed about the afterlife.
     Belief is indeed divine.
     Reza Mohammad would then smile to himself at that thought, without actually smiling.

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Edward Hagelstein has had short stories published in Loft Books, Urban Pigs Press, Roi Faineant Press, MidLvlMag and other places. He lives in Pooler, Georgia.

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