The Sound of Language (4 page)

Raihana came home with a somber Layla and told Kabir that she had been assigned a
praktik.
Raihana was nervous about his reaction. She knew Layla wasn't pleased about her decision and knew that Kabir wouldn't be pleased either.

“So you'll join Layla's cleaning army?” he joked as soon as they came home.

Layla sighed deeply and Raihana bit her upper lip nervously.

“What happened? You didn't get the supermarket job?” he asked.

When neither woman said anything, Kabir became impatient. “Is one of you going to say something or are you both going to stand there like statues?”

The words tumbled out of Raihana and with each word she could see the growing disapproval on Kabir's face.

“No,” he said, shaking his head after she was finished, and then looked at Layla. “Didn't you tell her that she should say no?”

“She wants to do it,” Layla said.

“Work alone for some Danish man?” Kabir demanded. “You've both gone mad.”

“But I'll learn Danish more easily,” Raihana protested. She didn't want to upset Layla and Kabir. She lived in their home and she knew they cared for her.

Raihana wondered if the
praktik
was worth going against Layla and Kabir for. She had said yes and she still thought it was a good idea, but she was also nervous.

She didn't speak Danish, she only knew a little about beekeeping, and she was shunning a job at the supermarket with her friends. But the appeal of working with bees was strong, partly because it reminded her of the smell of honey from her uncle's house and partly because Christina had suggested it. She didn't want to disappoint Christina and she didn't want to admit that she had exaggerated about her experience with her uncle's bees. She had worked only a little with the bees, a very long time ago, and most of it was a faint memory, except for the smell of honey.

Raihana kept trying to convince Kabir and Layla the entire evening. Layla kept sighing and Kabir kept saying no. If only Layla were on her side, Raihana thought, then she could help convince Kabir.

“Why do you want to work there?” Layla asked Raihana. They were alone in the living room, watching a Hindi movie Kabir had brought back from Hamburg. “Tell me the truth.”

“I remember the smell of honey,” Raihana told her. “The sweet and rich smell of it. Just thinking about it reminds me of Afghanistan.”

“But we're not in Afghanistan,” Layla said sadly. “Nothing is going to bring that time back, Raihana.”

“I know but let me try the job for a week. If I'm uncomfortable there you can talk to your supervisor and see if they have room for one more at the supermarket. Okay?” Raihana pleaded.

“But why? It might be hard work with the bees; have you thought about that?” Layla asked.

Raihana smiled. “I'm not afraid of hard work. I want to do this. Let me do this.”

“Okay,” Layla said, finally giving in. “Okay. I'll talk to Kabir. But be careful. Old or young, you can't trust these white men.”

Gunnar couldn't believe Ole's wife's audacity. Hiring someone for him?

They said they had just come to visit, the liars. They had brought cake along to soften him, Gunnar knew. The chocolate cake looked good, but Gunnar didn't want to bother with getting plates, knives, and forks. And he hoped that Christina would make coffee to go with the cake because he just couldn't muster the energy to do it.

“It's not set in stone, Gunnar,” Christina said as Gunnar all but vibrated with anger when she told him about Raihana and how she could help him. “Gunnar, don't you want to help this woman? She's young and — ”

“I'm not having some Muslim woman running around my house,” Gunnar erupted. “These people are in Denmark to suck our money and I — ”

“You don't even have to pay her,” Christina said. “And Gunnar, don't talk nonsense. They're here to survive. Her husband was killed by the Taliban. It wasn't a picnic for her back there. And she has worked with bees before. It will be good for you to have someone around the house to maybe clean up a little and help with the bees — or do you not care if all the colonies die?”

“I can take care of my colonies,” Gunnar said.

“Really?” Ole asked. “How? Have you prepared frames yet? Have you done anything, man?”

“I can take care of my bees,” he said again.

“She can help you,” Christina said. “And it will be a good way for her to learn some Danish.”

“You want me to hire a woman who speaks no Danish? What does she speak?” Gunnar asked.

“Dari,” Christina said. “And maybe a little English. She learned it in the refugee camp in Pakistan.”

“And how will we communicate? I don't speak English and I don't know anything about Dari,” Gunnar said. “This is a dumb idea, Christina.”

“You can show her what to do,” Christina said, “And she will do it. She doesn't speak much Danish, but she isn't stupid, Gunnar.”

“I don't want her here,” he declared finally. “This is my house and I don't want her here.”

“Fine,” Christina said. “Then I'll call Julie and tell her how you spend your day and suggest that she come and stay with you for a while.”

Gunnar's eyes widened. Julie was worse than Anna when it came to nagging. Far away in London, she didn't interfere in his life, but if she came here she would sort the house out, she would make him go on walks, eat, stop drinking whiskey, and he would be unable to say no because she could persuade him to do anything, just like Anna could.

“I'm not scared of Julie; go ahead and call her,” Gunnar said stubbornly.

Christina pulled her Palm Pilot from her purse and started to look for Julie's home number.

She had dialed the country code when Gunnar told her to stop.

“This… this… is blackmail,” he protested, half stuttering.

“Yes, it is,” Christina admitted. “But you won't get off your high horse, so what do you want me to do?”

“I just lost my wife,” Gunnar said. “Don't you feel any pity for me? Is your heart made of stone?”

“Oh please, can the melodrama,” Christina, said waving her hand at him.

“Ole, talk to your wife, tell her that this is wrong,” Gunnar said.

Ole shook his head. He was staying out of this.

“But I don't know these Muslim people. They seem … what if she brings a bomb inside the house? What if she blows up my house like all those suicide bombers in Israel?” he demanded.

“Then we won't have to worry about you anymore,” Ole said and ran a hand over his bald head.

“Come on, Gunnar, she's a good girl,” Christina said. “She's in her early twenties and she has already been through horror. She seemed happy when she talked about those bees.”

“You need to stop getting involved in the lives of your students,” Gunnar said. “Remember that man from Iran?”

“I'm not getting involved; I'm just finding her a job I think she will like,” she said defensively.

“You're getting
me
involved,” Gunnar said in frustration.

“But she hardly speaks Danish and you speak no Dari. Just talk to her about the bees and you both will be fine,” Christina said. “I am going to make some coffee.” As she walked past her husband, she cleared her throat.

Ole watched his wife leave the living room.

“She's already involved with this Afghan girl,” Ole said. “She tries, you know, to keep her distance from the students, but there's this one student she gets attached to and wants to help.”

“I know,” Gunnar said. “I think about that student of Christina's from Iran and my problems don't seem too bad. Anna died in a hospital bed; no one tortured her or me. But living after her is torture.”

“I can believe that.”

“I can't help anyone,” Gunnar said. “Not some Afghan girl, not even myself.”

“Why don't you try it for a week or so? It will make Christina happy and it may not work out anyway,” Ole suggested.

Gunnar looked out into the backyard. His and Anna's colonies were there, still hibernating, but not for long. Spring was nearly here. The bees would die or swarm, he thought.

“For one week only,” he said to Ole, who nodded.

“If it doesn't work, you handle Christina and no calling Julie,” Gunnar said and started to clean his pipe.

“Deal,” Ole promised.

“And if I am going to do this I want roulade, with chocolate cream,” he said loudly.

“I will get you one tomorrow,” Christina called out from the kitchen and Gunnar could hear her humming as she finished making coffee.

FOUR
ENTRY FROM ANNA'S DIARY
A Year of Keeping Bees

20 APRIL 1980

I love to check on the bees. See how they're doing; make sure a rat hasn't found its way in. It's like checking on your children after they've gone to bed.

In April we do some very quiet checking. It's the look around in the cold, huddled inside a warm jacket kind of checking. We don't open the colonies or peek in, though we desperately want to. We just walk around the colonies and wish the bees luck and hope they have gotten through the long and cold winter, safe and sound.

S
ince she started working at the language school, Christina had made a sincere effort at maintaining some distance from her students. She had been instructed to do this in her training. There was no point in getting close, beyond the boundaries of teaching Danish. She couldn't help anyone, not the way some of the students in her class needed help. She was not a psychiatrist. She was not a priest. She was just a teacher and her job was to teach these students Danish so they could get on with the business of living and working in Denmark.

But it wasn't easy. Christina was not prepared for how many of the students worked their way into her heart and into her life.

It began with Maher and his wife, Ester, a couple from Iran. They had joined the language school the same day Christina started teaching and for some reason she had felt a connection with Maher. He was her age, in his early thirties then, a clean-shaven quiet man who didn't seem to be picking up the language as fast as his wife and classmates. When Christina told the class about her five years as a teacher in Mozambique, he had perked up, and spoke to Christina about his stay in the African country in halting Danish.

Maher and Ester lived in a small apartment in Skive. They both spoke fairly good English as they were students in Iran before they came to Denmark. Maher had been studying to be an engineer and Ester had been working toward a degree in mathematics. They both wanted to continue their education and they had to learn Danish to do that in Denmark.

It was during the first summer vacation when her relationship with them changed and she became friends with them. Right before the summer holidays, Maher complained to Christina that he and Ester now had two months with nowhere to go and nothing to do.

When Christina invited them to her home to help with Ole's bees and the garden, they had jumped at the idea. Every morning Maher and Ester arrived on their bicycles, armed with a lunch box and sunscreen. Over the course of the summer they learned a lot about beekeeping and by the end of August had become amateur beekeepers themselves, starting an apiary with four colonies Ole gave them. But as they grew closer, Christina and Ole found themselves dragged into Maher and Ester's past.

They were eating lunch one day when Christina and Ole found out about the horrors of Maher's life in Iran. It was a warm summer, and they all complained about the heat and how thirsty everyone was. Christina filled up Maher's water glass and he stared at the glass for a while before drinking the water thirstily.

“You
were
thirsty,” Christina said and Maher's eyes filled with tears when she added, “Want me to pour out another glass or should I just give you the jug?”

“They would tie us up in the heat,” he said quietly. “And leave water in front of us. We would be nearly dying of thirst, not having drunk or eaten for days, and we would watch the water evaporate.”

Ester looked away while Christina and Ole stared at Maher. He had never talked about his torture but Ester had alluded to it when she and Christina were alone. That afternoon while she and Christina washed up the dishes, Ester told her.

“He came back with sores all over his body, a thin rail of a man, his spirit beaten,” she said, tears rolling down her eyes. “And since then we … we haven't been together in the same way … you know what I mean?”

Christina hugged Ester and held her as she cried.

After they left, Christina insisted to Ole that they had to do something to help.

“You should talk to Maher,” she said. “Talking man-to-man can sometimes…”

“No,” Ole said firmly. “I can't talk to him.
You
can't talk to him. You think a little conversation is going to change anything? They need counseling, Christina, not us meddling.”

And ultimately Ole was right. Ester continued to tell Christina about the atrocities they had faced in Iran and Christina continued to feel helpless. It seemed to Christina that Ester believed Christina could help if she only told her more and more —as though she had to convince Christina that they were worth helping. But there was really nothing Christina could do aside from listening.

The job that she had been so passionate about started to become a nightmare as Christina found herself increasingly wrapped up in Ester and Maher's troubles. It was not until Maher and Ester moved to Copenhagen the next year that Christina realized the impact they had had on her life. She had become deeply depressed. She and Ole finally decided it would be best if she quit.

Now Christina wondered about the past life of all her students. There was the young boy from Sri Lanka, the thin dark woman from Somalia —almost everyone in her class had left their countries to save their lives. Christina worried about them.

But Sylvia Hoffmann didn't accept Christina's resignation. Christina was not the first teacher at the language school who had gotten dragged into a student's life and felt helpless.

“Teach them Danish. That is the best you can do. Don't try to fix their lives, you can't,” she said. “The best you can do is helping them get on their feet. Don't talk to them about their past; you can't help them put their past to rest. If they need help, they need to see a therapist.”

“But I want to help them,” Christina had pleaded.

“You can't,” Sylvia said. “Give it another six months. If you're still not happy here, then you can leave.”

It had seemed cold then, but now after almost fifteen years in the language school, it was advice that kept Christina sane. However, once in a while, she would meet a student who tugged at the heartstrings and she would find herself getting involved in his or her life.

Each time it happened, she would promise it was the last, and each time Ole would wait for it to happen again. He had stopped chastising her about getting involved with her students.

With Raihana it was different, Christina was sure. Raihana had told her nothing, burdened her with no details. Christina was just trying to help a young immigrant woman. This was the first time in her years at the language school that Christina had met a single woman from Afghanistan and she was impressed with how quickly Raihana was picking up Danish.

Christina thought she was ready to pass module 2 and go into module 3 and she had only been at the school for four months. Christina was convinced that working with Gunnar would teach Raihana more Danish than gossiping with other Afghans in Dari while cleaning a grocery store or office building. Granted, Gunnar wasn't the most talkative person she knew, but he and Raihana would have to converse with each other in Danish and that would be enough.

Christina took Raihana to meet her new employer on a bright spring day. Layla didn't come along with them and Raihana was nervous. Christina spoke Danish slowly and Raihana understood about a third of what she said; the rest went over her head. Christina had a black car that smelled of cigarettes on the inside and the ashtray was smudged with ash. Raihana knew Christina smoked, had seen her go in and out of the teachers’ smoking lounge downstairs.

“His name is Gunnar Sandberg,” Christina told Raihana again. She was repeating herself, which was a good thing, Raihana thought, because she understood just a little more each time.

“Gunnar Sandberg,” Raihana repeated.

“Nat,”
Christina said. “Gunnar Sandberg.”

Raihana thought she was saying it right but she never quite did. It was agonizing because she couldn't hear the difference. The words sounded the same to her.

“Hvor gammel han
, how old is he?” Raihana asked.

“Hmm … he took early retirement two years ago, so he is about sixty-four years old,” Christina said. “He lost his wife last year.”

“How did she dead?”

“How did she die?” Christina corrected automatically. “She had a stroke and died immediately. One day she was fine and the next she was gone. It was last fall; he is still mourning.”

Raihana looked out of the car window. She had not understood how the man's wife died, only that she died in the
efterår
, the autumn. Last autumn Raihana had been grasping at a new life, preparing to come to Denmark. A year before that she had left Kabul. It had been cold then, she remembered feeling so cold. Aamir had insisted she leave without him, and he had promised that he would follow. As she drove away with neighbors who were also escaping, she had seen a man on the street. He was dead in the street, his eyes still open, the contents of his body spilling out of his skin, his white
kurta
red … he looked almost like Aamir, young, wearing that hideous beard the Taliban forced all Afghan men to wear.

That man's body was imprinted in her memory and every time she thought about Aamir, the eyes in her mind looked at the dead man on the street, wanting to see if he had been Aamir. Is that how he died? Was he tortured in a Taliban prison? Had he been in pain? The questions reeled through her and she struggled to get away from that bloody street in Kabul and back to Denmark, to Christina's cigarette-smelling car.

“Here we are,” Christina said as they pulled into a gravel driveway.

The house looked small and old. The garden was still lying dormant. But it was only the end of March and Raihana had been warned that in Denmark sometimes winter crept into a cold spring and then transformed into a cold autumn, completely skipping summer. Raihana was used to being cold, but she craved the sun and longed for the heat, the smell of sun-dried clothes and of being unbearably hot.

The door looked newer than the house. It was dark wood with a polished brass knocker on it. The house was painted white while the windows were dark brown and the roof was thatched, as was the norm with old farmhouses in Denmark.

There were flowerpots everywhere and perennials grew in them, defying the cold weather, and several rosebushes lined the front of the house.

A big sandbox lay in a corner of the front garden and a plastic shovel and bucket peeked out from the wet sand. A blue tricycle lay against the sandbox. He must have grandchildren, Raihana thought.

Christina knocked on the brass knocker and they waited a while before the door opened. Raihana didn't mind waiting as she had more time to digest everything she saw. On the other side of the house was a garage that was closed now. A dusty red car was parked outside the garage.

“You will work there,” Christina said, pointing to the garage. “Next to the garage they have a room where they keep honey.”

Raihana nodded even though she understood absolutely nothing Christina had said except work, there, and honey. So she deduced she would work in the garage to make honey. But Chacha Bashir's honeybees used to be outside; here they kept them inside the house. How did the bees get to the flowers then?

Next to the garage was a gate that led to the backyard. The garden had an erstwhile manicured feel about it. The winter had taken its toll on the garden and definitely needed some spring cleaning. The neighbor's garden looked better despite the dry lawn. There were no scattered leaves in the garden, the weeds had been dug out, and the soil had been freshly turned.

After Christina knocked for the fourth time the door finally opened. Raihana had started to feel uneasy and her uneasiness only grew when the door opened.

Her first glimpse of the man was not impressive. He was wearing a bedraggled shirt and pants. His hair, what was left of it, was white, and stood up in spikes. His face was gaunt and his clothes looked as if they had been made for a thicker man. He was thin and looked sickly. He smelled of whiskey and coffee and smoke.

Raihana was scared of him.

She didn't know what to expect from a Danish person's house but she had thought this one would smell like honey, like her Chacha Bashir's house had. But this house smelled of what the man smelled of and it was not pleasant.

Christina spoke in rapid Danish and all Raihana picked up was
beskidt
and
stinker.
Dirty and stinking.

The man grunted back in Danish and went inside.

Christina turned to Raihana apologetically. “He is depressed,” she said.

Raihana didn't understand.

“Han er trist,”
Christina tried again.

This time Raihana nodded.
Trist
meant sad. So the man was sad! Of course, he was in mourning. He had just lost his wife, what—a few months ago? What a luxury, she thought enviously, that he could mourn his loss like this when her husband had disappeared. She would have liked to give up on life and cry until she was empty of tears; instead she had to brave a refugee camp, a new country, and now a whole new language.

“Maybe we coming later,” Raihana said.

“Maybe we should come later,” Christina corrected her. “No, it is fine. He needs to get up and around and you need to start your
praktik.”

But Raihana wasn't sure now if she wanted to do her
praktik
here. This man seemed strange, his house stranger. What if something bad happened here? What if he was a bad man?

When the old Danish man came back he had washed his face and changed into a clean-looking but wrinkled blue shirt and a pair of jeans. His eyes were so hollow they looked like dark circles; like something out of a horror movie, Raihana thought. Like he had been tortured.

Still, when Christina had said he was sixty-four years old, she had expected an old man who walked with a stoop and seemed all but ready to die. Sixty-four was old in Afghanistan, but this man, despite being too thin and worn, looked as if he were in his early fifties.