Midnight and the Meaning of Love (7 page)

* * *

I walked into the first travel agency I came up on, Liberty Travel. It was a place plastered with pictures, posters, and postcards featuring discounted getaways around the world.

“Your destination, please?” the receptionist asked.

“Kyoto, Japan,” I responded without any real mental picture of the country. I was good at geography, though, and could easily point out the small island on a world map. I was familiar with the country’s shape and size, and even the ocean that surrounded it, but that was all.

“Please have a seat and our Japan agent will be with you in a moment.”

“When would you like to travel?” the Japan expert asked.

“Right away,” I answered.

She looked up from her terminal with a twisted smile. “Like this afternoon or tomorrow?” she said with sarcastic disbelief.

“How much is the ticket?” I asked, to keep it business.

“Are you in the military?” she asked me oddly.

“No.”

“Can I see your passport?” she asked, like an officer of the law. But I didn’t have my Sudanese passport on me. I didn’t realize that I needed to present it to the travel agent. It was in Brooklyn locked in Umma’s chest with papers that Umma would say if lost would make each member of our family invisible.

“You need your passport. This is a big trip, aside from the fact that by ordering the ticket at the last minute, you lose all of the discounts that you could have benefited from if you had come in two weeks to one month prior to your departure date. No one just hops on a plane to a country that’s seven thousand miles away without being prepared.
If you don’t have a passport, you need to go and get one. The passport office is next door to Rockefeller Center. It’s open till six p.m. today. You are an American citizen, right?” she asked. Her question jarred me. I had recently gotten my American citizenship papers, but I am 100 percent Sudanese. On second thought, I would have to get an American passport now that my citizenship was official.

“How long does it take to get the passport?” I asked her.

“Six weeks,” she said grimly. I sat frozen in my chair but was rapidly defrosting as the heat began to rise up from my feet, climbing and spreading into my chest.

“Well, you don’t need the passport to buy the ticket from me. We ask for it because your airline ticket must show the exact same name that appears on the passport. But you will need the passport to travel outside of the United States.

“If you purchase an airline ticket from me right now, you can take the ticket plus an express fee over to the passport office and receive your passport in three days’ time. But the plane ticket is gonna be expensive,” she warned.

I eased back in my seat.
That’s more like it,
I thought to myself. I was relieved that the conversation looped back around to cash being able to make shit move. That’s what I was accustomed to.

“Let’s do it,” I told her and gave her my exact name as it appeared on my American citizenship papers.

“Date of departure?” she asked again.

“Friday, in three days when I’ll have my passport,” I answered.

“I recommend that you fly the following day, on Saturday, just in case anything goes wrong. Give yourself twenty-four hours to fix it. Once I issue this ticket, you will not be able to change your departure date or time,” she said. “But you can change your return date and time for a fee.”

I didn’t know it then, but her recommendation would change my life.

I thought about it quickly. I had a basketball game coming up this Friday night with the black team of the Hustlers League. I had been working hard all spring for our team to win the league and for me to get that big money prize that would put me and Umma in a more secure financial space with our business, Umma Designs.

I thought about it further. Every minute and every day that I
delayed, or that passed me by, put too much distance between me and my wife and too much opportunity for anyone who was trying to …

“Okay then, I’ll leave on Saturday, May tenth, and return on the following Saturday, May seventeenth. One week, please!”

“Are you sure? It’s two hundred dollars if you change the return date. One week in Japan is not a long time,” she cautioned.

“One week,” I confirmed.

“Would you like to fly American Airlines or Japan Airlines?”

“JAL,” I answered.

Soon she was asking, “How would you like to pay for your ticket? Mastercard, Visa, or American Express?”

“Cash!” I answered. Suddenly I saw how important it was to have a credit card. Up until now Umma and I had done good business without one for seven years living in the United States. Now the agent accepted cash for my airline ticket, and for a rail pass that she recommended for the Shinkansen bullet train. She said the rail pass would allow me to pay one fare but use the bullet train all week for rapid travel back and forth between Tokyo and Kyoto.

She insisted, however, that I needed to give her my credit card for her to secure my hotel reservation. She assured me that these were peak travel months for Japan and I would be looking for trouble without “booking accommodations.” The fact was, I didn’t have one to give her and neither did Umma.

After one hour in the travel agency, I had my tickets in my hand and my head filled with lessons learned. I became real clear that even though I had traveled internationally before, I had been a child back then. All my arrangements had been made by my father. I had never had the challenge of considering the details. Now I had to listen carefully and absorb each piece of info completely. I had to watch more closely, read documents more carefully, and make decisions with confidence although I might not be 100 percent certain.

The travel agent had been pushy and sarcastic. She proved that even if you don’t know a person or even like them one bit, you can still learn something from them to assist you in life. She booked a hostel for me and took the time to teach me the difference between a hotel and a hostel. “A hostel,” she said, “can be found in almost every country in the world. It’s like a hotel but it’s not. It’s housing reserved for traveling students. It’s like a dormitory where you will
stay alongside other students from all over. It’s not nearly as luxurious as any three- or four-star hotel. It doesn’t offer the same facility or services, but there will be a bed, in either a private room or with a roommate. The cheapest hostels give you a bed in a large room where there are several beds and other students staying there as well. If you were planning a longer stay, I could make sure that you got into a hostel that has a shared kitchen with a full stove and refrigerator and even a shared living room area. The best thing about a hostel, though, is that because it’s reserved for students, it’s cheap. There are some as low as five dollars for a night.” I looked at her skeptically. She added, “But there might not be a television. Can you live without a television?”

I booked a private room in a hostel called Shinjuku Uchi, located in a part of Tokyo called Shinjuku. I could pay in cash once I arrived there, and all I needed to check in was my passport and any student identification card. It was twenty dollars per night and down the street from the Shinjuku station, where the agent told me there was a train going anywhere in the country.

Rushing, I dashed into the passport office to get the application and requirements. I was glad I shot by there. They were asking for all types of documentation. Now that I knew the deal, I wouldn’t give them any chances to delay my passport for any reason. I planned to return there in the morning and be the first person to get my joint processed.

Precise Translations was located downstairs in the same building as the passport agency. I stood outside their door gripping Akemi’s diary and debating with myself. Nine minutes later, I submitted the letter that Akemi wrote to me in Japanese for translation into English. This was a new translation company for me. The one I had used for everything else involving Akemi and me was on the third floor. I decided not to return to the same company because maybe they already had too much information on me and my young wife. Now, I wanted to believe that these translators remained neutral, minded their business, and just interpreted the words on the paper. What if they didn’t? What if the battle between me and my wife’s father thickened? I didn’t want to be using the translator and paying for translations that might later be used as evidence against me. I held out her diary but then decided against requesting a translation of it.
Although it might contain all the information I needed, it seemed too personal. I thought about Umma and how private she was about her journal and papers and pocketbook. The same respect I would give to Umma, I should give to my wife, I decided.

At my bank where Umma’s account was and the teller knew me from placing our deposits regularly, I deposited three thousand dollars of the cash I was holding into Umma’s bank account. I also purchased one thousand dollars’ worth of American Express Travelers Cheques for my use. The travel agent had recommended this also, and when I checked her reaction when I first tried to book a hotel room with cash, I knew that if I had a few Travelers Cheques, certain establishments would consider me more more legitimate than if I was moving around only with a pocket stuffed with dough.

At the Travelex Money Exchange, I stood on a short line checking out the long list of countries and the names of the money they used. The world was a lot bigger than the American dollar. There was the Sudanese dinar, the Chinese yuan, the German mark, the Indian rupee, the South African rand, the English pound, the Saudi Arabian riyal, and the Japanese yen. I pushed one thousand American dollars through the small curved slot at the bottom of the thick bulletproof glass. The teller turned it into Japanese yen. After being used to handling American green dollars, which were all the same color, shape, and size no matter the amounts, the Japanese yen looked like play money. There were pictures of Japanese men on each bill, some bills tan, some colored blue. The only similarity to American money was that it was all plastered with old men wearing weird hairstyles that I would never rock. They were looking real grim.

Back in Brooklyn, I bounced by and picked up Naja. We then escorted Umma to her job by 4:00 p.m. sharp.

“Where are we going now?” Naja asked, her big brown eyes exploring mine.

“You’ll see,” was all I offered.

Down on Fulton Street, right next to Albee Square Mall, I stopped at an outdoor photo booth. I needed to take two passportsized photos.

“I want to get in the picture with you,” Naja said. I pulled back the curtain, let her slide in first, then sat down beside her.

“It’s gonna take three shots real fast, so quick get ready,” I told her, and dropped in my coins. She was real excited. She pushed her little face up toward the glass that hid the camera. Then she pulled it back. The light flashed three times. I opened the curtain and then stood up. “That’s it,” I told her, letting her climb out.

“Well, where are the pictures?”

“Stand right there. They’ll drop down in a few seconds.”

“What are you doing now?” she asked.

“I gotta take some photos on my own.”

“Why?”

But instead of answering her, I closed the curtain and held her little hand as she stood on the opposite side. The camera snapped three more photos, of just me alone. I opened the curtain. Naja had the first set of pictures in her hand. She stood staring at them.

“Do you think I look pretty?” Naja asked.

“Of course,” I told her.

“For real? Or are you just saying that?” she questioned with a serious face.

“
No!
I’m just saying that,” I teased her.

“Your pictures look better. You look real cool,” Naja said to me.

“Don’t put your fingerprints on the pictures. Just hold them on the sides like this.”

“Why?” she asked, but then she held them the right way.

At the pizza store I brought Naja a slice and a salad.

“Do you think we’re weird because we don’t eat McDonald’s?” she asked, before biting down on an olive.

“No.”

“This girl in my class said that everybody normal eats McDonald’s. She said that Muslims eat McDonald’s too.”

“People can do whatever they want to,” I answered Naja carefully. “But in our family, we don’t worry about what everyone else thinks is normal. We do what we believe is best. So follow Umma, no matter what your friends say.”

“Okay.” She smiled, contented.

* * *

I phoned Mr. Ghazzali from downtown Brooklyn, but his son Mustapha Salim answered the phone. After extending my greetings, I told him, “I was calling to get your father’s permission to stop by your house tonight at ten. I need to hand him something.”

“No problem
Wed Ammi
,” he said, using a Sudanese term for
cousin
.

“I’ll relay your message, but come on by. I’m sure it’s okay with Father.”

* * *

Feeling decent about how my day was flowing and about accomplishing shit one by one, I headed to Chinatown to do a face-to-face with Cho, the owner of the Chinatown fish market where I worked on Fridays and Saturdays. He was the Chinaman who had reluctantly broken his regular pattern of doing things and given me a job a year ago. In almost fifty-two weekends, I had never missed a workday or even ever arrived late. Whenever he needed me to do overtime, I did it, no problem. So I planned to do the honorable thing and give him a
heads-up about my travel plans, which would cause me to miss three of Cho’s busiest workdays.

Naja’s little hand was moist in the warm spring air. I held on to it, though, not wanting her to get swept away as Chinatown got invaded by the NY after-work crowd looking for some fresh goods to prepare for dinner.

“You don’t have to hold my hand. I won’t get lost,” she said, as her little feet had to double-step to keep up with my swift pace.

“Oh yeah?” I said still holding on to her.