Amman.The Indian Embassy. The guttural sounds rising from beneath the counter were from a wrestling match between two men driven to madness by the embassy staff.. Nobody particularly seemed to bother except a woman in a glitzy saree, who, with one hand on her hip, was trying to prize them apart with a plastic ruler, which broke in half.. In India, real fights rarely reached the ‘filmi dishum-dishum’ levels, but instead protagonists preferred to grapple down each other, the vanquisher being the one who got to sit on the belly of the van-squished . Presently one of them sat on the belly of the other and emerged victorious with a bit of yellow paper held high in the air. A coupon for a free flight home .
The queue may be uniquely brit, but we’ve taken it further and added dimensions to the ‘Q’, like it could start with four abreast and run back and fan out into a pyramid with a base bigger than the one at Giza, or wherever and was inversely proportional to the size of the hole at the counter and once you got your hand in , you had to be a Houdini to get it out and there were plenty of times you had pulled your hand out with something stuffed in it, to realize it was somebody else’s. The second was the token,elaborate punched coins to hastily made cardboard squares, which didn’t promise you anything other than a right to meander about and come back and join the ‘Q” when you got more bored than standing in the queue . When the tokens ran out, you had to come back the next day and stand in line for the token that gave you the right to join the real queue and that’s where fights broke out.
The token was not so sacrosanct that you couldn’t try your luck to get ahead. First you cased the line for somebody who looked malleable and sidled up to him, who would instantly emit angry signals and you had had to use your eyes and face to convey your urgency and if it the facial messaging got through, you slid your palm in between , then inched your shoulder in until your whole body was tightly wedged between two extremely uncomfortable men, but having got so far ,you were in no mood to acknowledge or show gratitude, but stood motionless like thief behind a cupboard. The maneuver worked, but sometimes the counter slammed shut just after you ,leaving the guy behind no option other than grapple you, the interloper, for what was rightfully his. Losing the fight was not bad as you didn’t deserve your gain , but what tore you apart was your wife,her observations about your manhood for giving up the prize and then for losing the fight.This was one such.
Fights were common and occurred often.By now, after more than a month of occupation, the people who thronged the Indian consulate at Amman were poor labourers who had jobs which fetched them money and food and had fled Kuwait when rumors of imminent attack by the fearsome Americans whittled down their resolve to stay and now were running scared. It was going to be world war three, ‘russia and china’ were friends of Iraq and therefore on his side and the final war of worlds was to take place on the sands of Arabia .kurushektra,They ran.
That epic battle took place two months from then,'Umm -al- marik',the promiised mother of all battles,where friends and enemies had joined together and turned around in operation overdo and soundly thrashed the mother, so much so the promised umm-al -marik had turned into Umm- al -fickered, the worst offender being Syria, , saddam’s brother- in -socialist arms reaching for the great pan arabian Islamic- socialist alternative to the sultanates, who had literally ficked him from behind.
Jordan was a thieves’ haven, and my money had almost run out by the time I reached Amman from Tebril . There was one single flight out everyday and I had a coupon for travel a week from that day. One person whom I had been in constant touch during the war was Darren in France and he was link to my home in India. Earlier, once when I called him from Kuwait,I had told him about the stash of cash and I suggested that I would take Ibrahem into confidence and retrieve the money, that he should somehow come to Kuwait and deposit the money in a swiss bank. He had immediately told me to keep away.
“Bastard , shithead ,crazy,fuck off”.. Being a dickhead, his vocabulary was very very limited….“there is always some body else watching and you’re dead meat….. Besides your mother’s been calling me and making my life hell , leave that fucking place now.”
He was a prick and would carry tales from home to me as if my parents and sisters were dying of broken heart. He had badgered me into leaving Kuwait and when I called him from Amman to send me some money , he laughed his huge laugh and mocked me in my native language ….
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“hhahahahahah…”Thoti’ poi kakkoosinnu thondra”( scavenger, go fetch your money from that shithouse.)” alluding to the money I had dumped in the septic tank. I had kicked his butt several times before with real vengeance , but the next one was going to be more than that.
The money arrived at the Indian embassy and the bastard had sent me such a measly sum that if I weren’t careful, it could be spent on a cup of coffee.
On the fifth day of my wait, while browsing a local English broadsheet, I saw an ad. “NOW HIRING.American defence contractor, must know English”, with an address and dates for an interview. I found a taxi and got there in time.It was the longest interview of my life, eight and a half hours of waiting and two minutes of interview.
