My 'Brother' Akheel

When I was a little boy, Iraq meant -The Land of the Scud Missiles. Thanks to Pronoy Roy's - The World This Week the incessant visuals of the flying Scuds never left a child's mind. In our campus the big guys would play the "Americans" while the puny little ones would be the "Iraqis". The winter evenings were spent with the Americans chasing the Iraqis all around the children's park. The skirmishes often ended with an Iraqi returning home in a torn woolen sweater. On rare occasions an American would receive an embarrassing black eye in the hands of a worked up opponent. The underdogs would hail him as "Saddam". At sundown we would declare ceasefire and trudge back to study lessons and homeworks. Those were the evenings when juvenile ignorance allowed us to play an innocent charade of a gruesome war. Then the years flew by and I forgot all about the children's park-wars, even as America's obsession for Iraq continued.

Sixteen years later, on the smoldering Texan summer I was walking up to my apartment in the Mexican neighborhood; Almost leading myself to believe that I was Gary Cooper from The High Noon, when I heard someone conversing in what sounded like animated Arabic. Now an Arab in a Mexican town would be like Lawrence, in Arabia, I said to myself. A character so out of place, and yet not. As I approached the iron stairs to my apartment there stood a hairy source of that Arab dialect (the 'hairy' part I knew since he wore an unbuttoned grey shirt). A man with a crow's nest of a head and an overgrown mustache. Akheel was yelling at his friend who was inside his apartment and was yelling back with equal zeal. As our eyes met he flashed an armory of stained teeth. Yes, that was how I first met Akheel. The guy was all you could get wrong in a country paranoid with men of Middle-Eastern decent.You could not tell what he did for a job (except that he volunteered at times to fix my friend's car); It was impossible to tell how he landed in the middle of Texas. It must have been a Colombian boat if you ask me. I had no idea what he was doing in a University town either other than to ogle at girls in pink shorts. He definitely showed no scholarly inclinations, failing consistently to construct a single legal sentence in English. There was "Illegal" written all over this guy. And just to remove any modicum of doubt, he chewed a cheap cigar. This one was Saddam, Gaddafi and Castro pressed in one, right in Bush's backyard.

Akheel was friends with everyone. He chatted all day with  Ronnie the big Afro-American who stayed upstairs. He was friends with Pedro and Pepe the Spanish maintenance guys, the mailman, the burly Bill who owned a pit-bull  and of course the numerous college going girls who passed our property on their way to the University gym. But the worst of his traits was that he called me "Brother". The more I tried to disassociate myself from the creature he interfered with my life. If I was studying in my single room apartment with the door open, he would walk in with that obnoxious cheap cigar (half wet with his slime) dangling from his mouth. He would insist that I let him in as a guest to the University gym. As a student I was allowed to bring a 'visitor'. He knew my gym-timing and would wait by the stairs everyday leaving me with no choice. Once in the gym as I walked in with this rogue in toe I could feel a hundred suspiscous eyes on us. I would try my best to lose him. In the training room while lifting weights I would spot him through the mirror. There he'd be wallowing aimlessly on the indoor synthetic track as the college team sprinted by trying their best not to bump into him. Akheel of course was oblivious of it all for his eyes only cared for the rows of slender legs on the assembly of treadmills. No sooner than I had warmed up for some serious workout that I would feel a prodding on my shoulder. "Let's go Brrother!" came the irritating dictum. Those extra 'r's he put in 'brother' succeeded everytime in pushing my patience to the edge. They had warned me about culture shock at the American Center in Kolkata. An integral part of that education was the famous American syndrome of "rolling the 'r's" (not to be confused with 'arse'). Who would have imagined that I would experience that phenomenon through my Arab brrrother Akheel. Anyway, man learns to survive against many odds and so did I with him as my neighbor.

And then one day we struck a common chord.

I must also tell you that Akheel drove a white mini-van that was in no better shape than the owner. Actually I did not even know if he owned it. When asked he replied that it belonged to one of his 'brothers'. Knowing by now the broad scope of that word I strongly suspected the van to be a stolen one. One evening while I was standing by the front porch sipping coffee Akheel's van wobbled across the street and stopped right in front of our apartment. Out came he with a broad smile and two large carps in either hand. Now life as a graduate student in the US had not exactly been how the advertisements back home portrayed. You could buy a few things from your on-campus earnings; But fresh fish wasn't one of them. Firstly, because you did not have a decent shop near Arlington that sold fresh fish; And secondly, if you did the price was exorbitant anyway. Thus the fish-eater in me was in the process of dying a painful death when his eyes fell upon the smiling Arab holding out his prized catch. He dangled them in front of me as the setting sun glistened on the silvery scales. "Good fish brother; Fresh fish" he said with his typical mischievous demeanour. That evening he told me how he takes his van every Thursday to a nearby stream, where he sits and fishes for hours. He made me believe it was just a fun jaunt with more dividends than effort. By now I had got the sweet taste of the forbidden fruit. So we struck a deal. I was to accompany him on his next fishing trip and we'd split the loot at the day's end. Little did I know that I was shaking hands with the serpent. Thus began our brotherly partnership.

So it was that on a Thursday evening in the summer of 2007 I came home running after attending the day's lecture. I changed into a pair of shorts a casual t-shirt and put on my tennis shoes and hopped into the rear of the dilapidated van, all set to experience the greatest fishing experience of my life. The van gurgled loudly as Akheel revved its engine. Perhaps a case of a silencer gone bad. I thought. As we journeyed I found other components of the vehicle that had reached what in machine lingo is known as EOL (End of Life). It huffed and puffed and spewed carbon-rich smoke as Akheel egged it to maintain the speed on the highway. A couple of vehicles gave a mocking honk as they whizzed by. Akheel greeted them with flashing teeth and a middle finger while I hid my head in embarrassment. The Iraqi sure was learning to give back the surprise punch. While we drove Akheel spoke of his parents, his wife, his children and the rest  of his family. He kept rambling about life in Iraq, at times raising his voice in frustration. I felt that bitter pang of having to live far away from family. But then I did not know what sort of a compulsion drove him from his homeland to the USA. Who knew, perhaps it was a crime he comitted there that if caught might have costed him his limbs, or perhaps his manhood too! I assured myself that there was nothing I could do to empathize with his predicament. I concentrate on my fishing.

Inside the van was expectedly a mess. There were disassembled fishing rods (mostly dysfunctional from their looks) bundled under the seat. A small plastic container lay on the seat. Inside it was a polythene packet filled with a doughy substance. It looked like a mixture of flour, raisins, strips of dates, and what looked like fine grains of wheat. All Akheel would tell me about it was that, "Good fish like this food". I didn't know if he meant that fish in general liked this good food or it was a particularly good breed of fish that liked this food. To me it looked like a medley of all the unused grocery in his house.

By now we had reached a point where the highway led to a bridge that went over a tiny stream. Just before the bridge Akheel steered the van off the road towards the right and parked it at a vacant spot. This was no parking spot as far as I could tell. He had claimed that land by virtue of regular usage. He got off the vehicle and looked around probably for the cops. I felt like a thief's accomplice as I did my share of the perusal. We then gathered the packet of fish food, the several twigs with lines wound around them, and a couple of disassembled fishing rods. From that spot to the stream was a steep grassy slope. The wind was blowing down the slope and along the stream. I could tell that the wind always blew this way for the grass blades lay somnolent like a dog's fur constantly caressed by its master. And that made the slope slippery. Akheel being the veteran positioned his body sideways and galloped down the slope. For me it was just a fast and furious slide. My tennis shoes slipped the moment they set foot on the grass and did not stop until I landed by the muddy bank. I quickly got up and brushed my embarrassment. Luckily I wasn't carrying the fishing lines or I might have been the first catch of the day.

We sat on the grass while Akheel setup his primitive contraption. He pushed one of the branches that we were carrying half way into the ground. A little more than a couple of feet stood above the soil. Then he tied one end of the fishing line around the branch knotting it several times to ensure it did not break loose under duress. At the other end of the line was a dead weight and a rusted fishing hook which he covered with a lump of the doughy substance. Then with a mighty heave he threw the line so that it landed in the middle of the stream. In minutes he had sprayed out five or six such lines tied to as many branches dug to the ground. Having laid out his usual traps he assembled one of his fishing rods. Then he ambled along the bank of the stream to finally settle near a rock. Having swung the rod to drop the bait in the water he sat with his knees bent near his chest quietly waiting. His instructions to me were simple, "Brother dont pull when fish pull, Let him eat. Only pull when he pullll". So I waited with my eyes on the lines. Every now and then a line became taut, I looked at Akheel. He would raise a hand asking me to wait. This one must have been a seasoned killer, I told myself. The lines rose and fell like guitar strings and like a novice my eyes kept focusing from one to the other till my forehead hurt. The prey kept nibbling as their fate danced to the tune of those strings. And then suddenly, one of the lines went taut and rose all the way to the middle of the stream. Before I could stand on my shimmying legs Akheel was onto the line like a leopard. A struggle between man and fish ensued, during which the line snaked over the water making a hissing sound. He pulled like an expert. As the fish neared the surface of the muddy bank he turned and ran up the slope with the line. I saw what that did. If he had gone closer to the water to catch the fish he would be playing to the prey's advantage. The bank was devoid of grass and muddy and hence slippery. The fish could easily have slithered out of grip and a single mistake in leaving the line might have ended in a futile attempt. Instead he ran uphill, dragging the fish out of the water and away from the slippery bank and on to the grass. The grass blade took away the slime and made it impossible for the fish to escape. It also made for easier gripping. We had got our first catch.

A few hours and a couple of catches later I was still sitting by the branches playing my mental metronome not having contributed in the least bit in this collaborative effort. It was almost time for sun down and a squadron of mosquitoes had become airborne. They droned over our heads and every now and then one of them launched a kamikaze on our flesh. Wearing a pair of shorts had not been a good choice, just like the decision to wear tennis shoes.  Akheel was his usual self lighting a half burnt cigar that filled the air with nauseating smoke. That smoke, along with hunger and the pressure to perform was having an irritable effect. As time passed I began to feel irritated by Akheel's presence. Perhaps I never thought a man from a desert country could beat a boy who grew with the Ganges flowing behind his backyard in a fishing contest. I must have forgotten about the Euphrates, the Tigris. And while I pondered sulkily about the ills in the man one of the lines began to move. This times there was no cadence of rise and fall. Instead it was a monstrous pull that snapped the branch. Had it not been for the Arab's reflex the game would have been already over. But Akheel's bear-like paws had grabbed the branch, and now he was holding the taut line.

The branch-and-line combo was a primitive equipment. Unlike a fishing rod it did not give the liberty to let the line loose to give the prey a lease of comfort and then wheel it back slowly. So Akheel walked all the way to the edge of the water to simulate a lesser tension on the line. After a while he would walk out of the mud. And each time he did he ensured a yard or more got reduced between man and prey. With the tension around and the mosquitoes above I decided to stand up and walk slowly move towards the mud. The tennis shoes were brown by now and the crevices of the sole filled with mud to make it precariously frictionless. We waited as the line drew closer. Then with a sudden splutter a tail rose above the water and then vanished. It was a big fat buffalo fish. It was now panicking as the line drew it towards the shallow end. Akheel whispered to me to be ready. Not knowing what that meant I bent me knees and spread my arms like a goal-keeper. I quickly tore a tuft of grass and rubbed them, for I strongly suspected that a hand-to-hand combat was around the corner.

Soon enough the huge head of the buffalo fish reared out of the water. Akheel reverting to his usual tactic started climbing up the slope. But this was a heavy one even for the Arab. So the piscine giant struggled in the mud throwing splinters of dirt that splattered my face and half-blinded my vision. In a moment of courage I lowered enough to grab its torso. But the slime on its body was too much and it slipped not before leaving my palm bleeding with a jab from its pectorals. The blood somehow made it easier to muster that extra courage and I dug my knees on the mud and almost fell over it. It was now fanning its lengthy dorsal fin that had been somnolent till now. It scratched the side of my face and I could instantly feel the warm gush of blood. Then it suddenly went quiet. Days later when I revisited that encounter I realized what a masterstroke that was. Seeing that the fish had gone still Akheel had left the line and ran down the slope to  help me pin it down. And I seeing Akheel running down must have become a tad complacent. In that millisecond of carelessness our adversary gave the jerk of its life. The jerk blinded me and I instinctively went to clear the mud from my eyes. Akheel was running downhill and in no position to trap the slippery buffalo. He only managed to trip over the line and clumsily fell on me. Entangled in a grotesque mixture of mud slime and grime we both stared cluelessly as our adversary escaped deep into the bed of the stream. It was an hour past sunset when we trudged back to the van.

That night I was the laughing stock among my roommates. Taking my defeat quite sportingly along with the raw scars on my palm and right cheek I was busying myself in the kitchen when the door bell rang. And sure enough there was the Arab, two carps in hand smiling as always. He had come to give my part of the deal. When I reminded him that I had just been a bystander even less useful than the deadweights he just smiled. And of course exhaled the obnoxious fumes from a half-wet cigar. That night we all sat in front of Akheel's apartment eating baked fish from his portable grill sipping cheap beer and taking long drags from his oversized hookah. I smiled as I thought what the folks at the American Center at Kolkata would think if they saw me now. In a few months I left school and I never met Akheel. I think he just kept living life in the true spirit of the Maverick.