The Land of Opportunity
Muhammad Akram Khosa should have read The Jungle by Upton Sinclair. Then he’d have known on Thursday that it could get even worse on Friday. But his English wasn’t good enough yet, nor was his knowledge of American literature. So he was learning the hard way just how unwelcoming America can be for foreigners, particularly of the Middle Eastern variety. It didn’t matter that he loved America, that he’d gotten his first pair of Levi’s when he was 9, his first pair of Converse when he was 14. That he’d seen nearly every movie with Tom Hanks in it. It didn’t matter that he had established a middle class lifestyle in Pakistan and spent years working as a mid-level manager at the country’s top sulfuric acid plant located in Lahore, once the Paris of the East, where his family also lived. Today in the land of opportunity, he could barely afford to provide his son and wife with enough hearty & fresh food. His boy was always hungry for nutrients McDonald’s Dollar Menu just couldn’t satisfy. America the beautiful was breaking him down. And this was making him angry.
He lost his last job at an underground subway magazine stand after he yelled at a regular customer, a commuter. That particular evening, a Tuesday, the American business man had decided to pick up and flip through three magazines. Akram fumed from behind the counter. There was a strict no-reading policy. This wasn’t a library or a waiting room at a doctor’s office. When he reached for the fourth, Akram snapped at him, “You read, you pay.”
“What? Where’s Ostrinki?” he barked with a sharp New Jersey.
“He’s not here. Just me,” Akram said.
“Well, I’ll see him tomorrow then.” He stepped away and waited for his train about 6 feet away from Akram. Bored and impatient he turned to scowl at him every few moments until his train barreled into the station.
Akram’s day off was Wednesday. The businessman would definitely see Ostrinki. And Akram wouldn’t be there to defend himself. And he did see Ostrinki. And Akram was fired on Thursday.
So on Thursday afternoon, Akram went to the branch of the New York Public Library nearest his home in Queens. He sat down at the computer. He knew how to google. The librarian had taught him how on his first visit. “That,” she said, “would be the key to everything he needed to know.” She also wrote down a list of words that he might need. He took the small, folded square of scrap paper out of his pocket and chose a few words: new, york, city, job, no, experience, and necessary.
After clicking around for a bit, he landed on one that gave him hope. It read, “part-time, immediate, earn $275 per week, no experience necessary.” It was to distribute flyers. He wasn’t exactly sure what flyers were. But he knew about distribution of product, distribution of responsibility in big business, distribution of wealth. He felt confident that he could do this.
So he dug a quarter out of his pocket and called the listing’s number from a pay phone outside. A man’s voice on the other end of the line told Akram to show up at Psychic Sylvia’s home office on the second floor of a building in midtown Manhattan at 7:30am tomorrow morning.
Akram was elated. He went straight home to prepare for Friday. When he arrived, he unbuttoned his brown shirt, threw his arms open and said to his wife and 12- year-old boy, “I have a better job now.” He then asked his wife to wash the shirt in the shared hallway bathroom of their studio apartment. His son was given the responsibility of wiping off subway grime from his briefcase. Akram then removed his pants and folded them with very neat, tight creases over a metal hanger. Comfortable in his undershirt and briefs, he fell asleep early.
The next morning at 7:28 a.m. Akram walked up one flight of stairs near the street corner of Madison and 28th Street. He entered a room draped with red, pink and purple velour. It hung over the chairs. It hung over a lamp. It hung from curtain rods. It was everywhere. An electric fountain bubbled loudly in the corner. But Sylvia, the psychic, and Jack, her husband, looked a bit more normal, Akram assessed. Jack wore jeans and Sylvia wore a flowery, long skirt.
The first thing Jack did after the obligatory hello was to walk in a tight circle around Akram, size him up. Jack saw an Arabic man in his forties with some dandruff. But he was tall and therefore noticeable, eye-catching. He was also pretty clean cut, well dressed in brown office attire. Akram wouldn’t offend passersby. Sylvia stared at Akram from the doorway. She was probably reading his spirit. That, he assumed, was her strong suit.
August 30th, 2009 at 6:06 am
finally got to read the whole story, I didn’t realize I had to click on the story as I’m not familiar with blogs. I thought it was really short, now it makes more sense. Is Akram a man you’ve come across ? Have you spoken to him ? Have you had a psychic reading ? No more questions, I enjoyed the story very much. It was easy to visualize New York and Akram, and I liked that you had compassion for him.
There was an old tv program years ago it started with an announcer saying \ There are a million stories in New York…. this is just one of them.\