I don’t know about all of you but 2019 has been a bit rough so far. Not terrible, just rough – like driving a car on a bumpy road. Except the car is on fire, and you’re on fire, and the road is on fire. I’ve often found that when something bad happens, it magnetically attracts other mini-disasters together in clusters.
Take last weekend, which was a never-ending revolving door of gut-punches that culminated in my coming back home – emotionally and physically exhausted – to find the young, one-eyed man hired to help around the house waiting at the gate with a packed bag.
I know the look, even with one eye, because I’ve had this happen a few times before. The look is the expressional equivalent of saying “We have to talk.” Everything is going seemingly well until one morning, you wake up to find the helper standing outside your door telling you that they’ve got another job and have to go within the hour. Or worse, they just leave silently in the night with no explanation whatsoever, leaving a wake of unanswered questions and broken promises. Sometimes people leave because of genuine extenuating circumstances, like death or health issues, but most of the time it’s because they just don’t want to be there anymore. And when that happens, you can’t help but take it a little personally – because it really does feel like you’re getting dumped!
“Is it me?” you ask. “Is it something I’ve done?”
“No!” he assures you, “It’s not you, it’s me. Life is just so complicated right now, and I just… just…”
“I can change,” you might promise, even though it’s not your fault. “things can get better. If you-”
“It’s not that. It’s just…”
“Just what?” But all he does is stare at the embroidered flowers on the carpet. “Just say it!”
“I don’t want to be here anymore.”
(Inaudible gasp) “Y-you’ve found someone else, haven’t you?”
“NO!”
“Yes,” you sob silently, and turn towards the window – so as to be dramatically backlit.
“How did you know?”
“How could I not?” The tears start coming. “Fine then. Have it your way.”
“Wait-”
“I’ve waited enough! If you want to go then *sniff* just…go..”
“This isn’t how I wanted things to end,” he says. Echoing footsteps. A heavy door shuts with a thud.
Camera pans to a close-up of single tear falling down your cheek, radiating an aura of bitter resilience in the face of emotional trauma.
This was not how my recent conversation went.
Irfan was a 24-year-old relative of Yameen, a driver at my parents’ house, and had been asked to work at my place on a temporary basis after it was burgled a few months ago. “Always good to have an extra pair of hands on site,” I was told. It didn’t make enormous amounts of sense to me, because of the one working eye, yes, but also because he looked like a strong gust of wind could carry him off. Neither of these two are bad things in of themselves, but they don’t combine to instill confidence in his ability to stop a thief.
'Faithful unto death' - by Edward John Poynter
I tried to find out more about him over our time together but he seemed to prefer to remain silent. Silent to the point where simple declarative statements like “The milk is in the fridge” make him visibly uncomfortable. It was his first job ever and since he didn’t know how to cook, I mainly asked him to keep an eye on the place (so to speak) when I was out of the house. For the most part, I left him to it, occasionally hearing him booming on his mobile phone in the garden – which confirmed to me that his reticence was not a full time gig. We settled into a routine, and then he went back to his home for a two-week holiday and came back a different person: sleepy, sullen, feverish. I arranged for him to have tests done, etc. but It turned out he wasn’t ill so much as just mythically lazy, something Yameen retroactively blames on his secret love of hashish (why he never felt the need to share this info about Irfan is as yet unconfirmed).
Which brings me to him standing in front of my gate.
“Are you going somewhere?” I asked. He nodded. I waited for more info but nothing.
“You’re going…home?” Another nod. It was like talking to Nell.
“So you want to leave the house?” I asked, more for clarity than anything else because I wasn’t sure what was happening. He looked at me and without saying anything else went back inside the gate. Yameen looked about as baffled as me, and it was only after I sent him to find out what was going on that I found out Irfan just didn’t want to work in the city and wanted his pay to leave, but was too embarrassed to talk to me about it directly.
And so for the next fifteen minutes we went through this bizarre divorce negotiation, with him too embarrassed to speak to me and I too confused as to what was happening and Yameen running between us like a lawyer. I had to explain to him (via proxy) that it was his right to leave, and that I would give him his wages. Eventually, somehow, it was I who was coaxing him through the breakup – encouraging him to spread his wings and fly.
It ended as it began, with a handshake as I looked him in the eyes to say a final goodbye. Well, eye.
