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Get Published on Female First
You said to wait. So I did, but that waiting was torturous and hard. Holding hands and stolen kisses were all I had to remember, and how I remembered. Now as I look back I believe I must have worn out those memories. As I recall them they are faded and scratched just like the old movie reels we used to watch at the Saturday pictures. All those westerns and the beauty of the silent movies. How people would dance in black-and-white splendour, a chaste kiss here and a coy smile there. That’s how I see my early life, as a silent movie. Perhaps that is odd, my memories having no sound, but it was so noisy and there were so many colours. It’s as if I edited and left sound and colour on the cutting room floor, as they were too distracting. I just wanted to remember you.
Before we came here we lived there. Should I mention the poverty? No, I think we both recall the hunt for food and seeing the children with stomachs swollen from malnutrition. I always found that odd; why do their stomachs swell when they have nothing to eat? It’s like a parody of a well fed happy child, only the tears and fragile thin limbs betray the reality. Of course we were once them; we held each other from childhood, you protecting me and me trying not to cry. To be hungry hurts. Except I’ve edited that out of my memory; no pain and no smells. The stink of the river as it ran through the slum would hit the back of your throat at the worst areas, near the factories. Factories! That’s a laugh; they were death traps converted from homes holding too many people, all hungry and with nowhere else to go.
Still, we smiled. We even laughed and were happy in that run down rat-infested orphanage. Although, looking back, I think we may have just not known anything else. It’s not that we got used to it or grew into the situation, just that we knew nothing else. I remember my 16th, you already 18 and working in one of the factories. The orphanage offered me a job tutoring some children and I accepted. I thought we’d remain there forever. “No,” you said and then you gave me a ring; such a little thing; twisted gold and a sparkling stone. I loved it and said yes. We went to the photographers in the city, me sitting next to you on a chair; hand on my knee to show the world I was yours. You, smiling and confident, arm around my shoulders and relaxed. The flash was bright and there it was for all to see. We were engaged. I began planning immediately, how long it would take to save up and where we would live? I wanted to be out of Calcutta and to go back to Kashmir, but then you said, wait.
I told you and you snatched a kiss. We burned so bright for that moment I’m sure our love rivalled the Sun.
You pulled away and said you were leaving.
“Where?” I asked.
“Africa,” you answered. “The East coast, Tanganyika.”
“Why?”
“Because.” You gestured around us, at the slum; the shanty buildings and hungry children, and then you told me a story, a fairy tale, and I listened.
“I want to live somewhere we can have a family, a big family.” You blushed and I answered you with one of my own. “So I’m going away to work, to earn money. Once I have a home, some land, I’ll send you for you. Will you wait? I may not be able to write but will you wait?”
“Yes, of course,” I said and held you, trying to show you that when we are apart I am less and that I only feel whole in your arms. “When do you leave?”
“Tomorrow.” You showed me your ticket. “I saved and have bought the ticket without a loan.” You sounded so proud.
“I will stay at the orphanage. I will teach and I will wait,” I promised you.
That night we held each other and talked. We stole kisses in the moonlight, enough to get me through what I hoped to be only a year, two at most. Next morning, as the sun turned the world red and orange, you left. “I love you,” were your parting words.
The first year was hard, the second worse. In the third you sent me a letter explaining you had an apprenticeship with a printing firm. I was joyous and yet still I waited. Children came and went, the orphanage changed, becoming a little better and eventually worse. Finally, almost five years after you left, the telegram arrived. That simple piece of paper brought the whole place to a standstill; no one had ever seen a telegram before. I showed them but wouldn’t read it, not until I was alone, just in case. My fears ran through my head like a pack of rabid dogs, snapping at my calm and invading my senses until I finally escaped to my room. Then, then I looked at that small rectangular piece of paper with your words on it, but one stood out, “come.” It said that we had land and that the ticket was waiting.
I packed immediately and left. I walked away from it all and came to join you. From that moment we were together and our kisses were no longer stolen but ours by right. Now I look back on our beginning with fondness, but I remember our life. These memories are in technicolour with sound and smells. Together we became whole.