1991
She shut her eyes tight and thought of the old boarding school she finally left. She wasn’t really missing that dark abyss, but she did miss some of the people there, like her old friend Sarah, Shapna, one of the school servants, and Mrs. Lisa Gomez her English teacher.
Shapna used to do all the cleaning in the school. She cleaned the disgusting broken-down bathrooms and always got underpaid. She loved Adeela because of her sincere personality and being the great listener that she was, Adeela loved hearing Shapna’s interesting stories of her village, her 3 little daughters, and her drunken crazy husband. Shapna had this ability of transforming her sad terrible stories into humorous little moments. Adeela wondered where she got all that spirit from.
Adeela missed her best friend Sarah. She was the only girl she trusted sharing her obscure feelings with, laugh with, and be herself with. They’ve seen each other’s lives slowly change for the past 4 years. Sarah recently lost touch with her after she told Adeela the big news of her parents finding a man for her.
“Aren’t you scared?” Adeela questioned her one day before leaving.
“I have no choice, Adeela. Amma says he will take care of me in Denmark. He has lived there for 17 years. Amma says 35 is a responsible age for a man.” She gulped. In a way Sarah was only trying to convince herself.
She was the youngest of her 6 siblings but the 3rd to get married because the 3 others were sons. They hugged each other tightly before parting. After she had left, Adeela felt a small part of her become empty. The time was crucial for change but she did not know if that change was for the better or worse. Her best friend’s life had turned upside down after marriage, and now, it was her turn, though not for marriage. Adeela Islam, formerly called roll number 16, who was now 16-years-old, was on the verge of having her life turned upside down.
****
Going two years back, Mrs. Gomez was one of the few teachers in her boarding school that actually wanted her students to excel. She was the only teacher that liked calling her students by their names rather than numbers. She never hit anybody, even if they were disrespectful. She substituted that with other useful lessons. She didn’t believe in violence of any kind because she felt that she would turn into a hypocrite for thinking and acting the same way East Pakistani invaders did with her country. She was a pure humanitarian.
On her last year of that school, an evening after class, Mrs. Gomez asked Adeela to stay for some correction in an essay she wrote a couple days back. Adeela , who was 14 then, felt a bit nervous and confused because she knew she worked very hard on that paper. There couldn’t have been possibly anything that crazy on the essay to make her stay after class, and that too, in Mrs. Gomez’s class. But who knew how valuable this afternoon would be for her days that were coming.
“So Adeela, I assigned the class to do a short essay about what they would do if they had won 50,000,000taka.”
“Yes, maam.” She was nervous seeing her own paper in front of the teacher.
“It seems that your short essay turned into a 3 page paper,” she scanned through the 3 papers again, “about starting a new free boy-girl public school out in the suburbs?”
Before Adeela apologized for the lengthy red-marked paper, Mrs. Gomez stopped her, “We will talk about your grammar errors later. I am just curious about one thing. I have graded sixty papers, and only a few dealt with charity, but yours is the only one talking about having an institution outside of the city, where we most need it. I think that is not only generous but brilliant, Adeela.”
She blushed and received the compliment. “I am happy you wrote 3 pages. It helps you develop your English vocabulary.” Then she continued with a less happy voice, “I have another question actually. You also mentioned something about wanting to go to America with that money. For education I am guessing?”
Mrs. Gomez never really liked the people who immigrated to America, who succeeded with good education and occupation, and later, never came back to their home land, leaving it corrupt and deteriorated. She would have disliked mother, Adeela thought. She told Mrs. Gomez why she really wanted to go there. It was because her mother and stepfather were the ones to send her money for this boarding school and get her this far in life, needless to say that they were the only family she had who were actually helping her.
“Were you not able to go with your parents?”
“No. Mom got the visa fast, but they said it would take me a bit longer.”
“Whose they?”
“My mom and step-father. They said they sent me an application a long time ago, but I never got it. I just want to see my mother. It’s been too long.” The professor just said “hmm” and her thoughts drifted away.
Mrs. Gomez knew why she always preferred staying at the hostel over the holidays now. She grasped that the young teenager hadn’t seen her parents for several years, and by looking at her big eyes which held the world’s sorrow, she knew how badly she wanted to go there.
Lisa Gomez had siblings living in the USA for a very long time, but it was her own choice to remain in Dhaka to take care of her old parents. The rest of her brothers and sisters hardly had time to even contact their own mother and father because they were way too focused on making their own success stories.
After a few days passed by, Lisa was having tea with her husband one afternoon. She asked him something
out of the blues.
“Don’t you have a really close friend that works for the Embassy in the USA?”
Her husband was an extremely outgoing man of simplicity. He was a very well-known engineer in Dhaka, but his arrogance never took over his sincere personality.
Lisa told him about Adeela’s extraordinary merit in school being overlooked by teachers and her wish of going to America just to see her mother’s face.
“That poor child,” pitied the husband, who hated the idea of child abuse and educating students through torture. “But I don’t understand one thing Lisa. Family-based immigration appears to be less complex than applying for a F1 student visa, that too from Bangladesh. Thousands try each month, you know how it is. Did her parent’s not file a petition and send a consulate from the embassy here in Dhaka?”
“Why would they ever think of doing that,” Lisa let out a sigh and put down her cup of tea, “Her mother and step-father don’t want her to come to America. They lied to her about sending ‘papers’ which somehow never ends up making it to Bangladesh every damn time she runs up to the mail man to check for the past few years.” The situation seemed so obvious to her the afternoon she knew about Adeela’s decreasing amounts of sent cash, her upcoming college-less year, her asking for help of searching for cheaper girls’ hostels. Her most gifted student tried hiding so much behind her eyes, but bits and pieces of her shattering life would reveal day after day in the hour-long class she had with her.
Lisa looked up to her husband with pain in her eyes, “If Aisha was alive, she would have been Adeela’s age. She would have been exactly like her, I just have this sense, that she would have been this way.” Her husband held her as Lisa buried her head into her husband’s shoulder with teary eyes. They were one of the most caring couples in the world, but in most cases it seems that the nicest people end up suffering the most. Aisha was their daughter that died of leukemia when she was 8 years old.
“Adeela has nothing but darkness in her path if she doesn’t get help from the right people. She’s a girl with high ambitions. And 14, you know that is a very vulnerable age, especially for a girl, in Bangladesh. I think we should help her.”
That was Lisa’s final decision of her plan. She was going to send her to America no matter how complicated it would get. She felt it her duty to help her.
Mrs. Gomez provided her with all the immigration applications, helped her out with interview preparations, sponsorship, etc. There wasn’t a single bit of detail she let go of.
“What if I don’t get the visa Mrs. Gomez?” Adeela asked one evening at her teacher’s house with a tensed look on her face. “Then I guess plan B is getting you ready for a good college here with scholarship money,” she smiled, “but have faith Adeela. If you really want something, and you’re really trying by heart, then nothing can come in the way to stop you. What’s meant to be will always be.”
***
Those were the last words that she remembered before opening her eyes, and loosening her grip. Her heart beat got slower, and at once, the weight of 16 years released from inside of her. Her mind was fresh again, and all she could do now was gape through the white floating balls of cotton in thin air through the window.
“Would you like anything to drink maam?” Asked the tall pretty flight attendant, who was wearing a neatly folded saree, with her hair pulled up tightly in a bun.
“Do you have mango juice?” Adeela asked nervously with a smile.
Though she was anxious, the feeling of exhilaration took over her mind. Adeela Islam was going to America.
