We Meant Well

We Meant Well A NovelErum Shazia Hasan ContentsDedication123456789101112131415161718192021222324252627Thank youAbout the AuthorCopyright DedicationFor Safwan 1“I have no idea how long I’ll be gone,” I say, stuffing clothes into a suitcase. Steven yawns. He pulls his silk eye mask from the bedside drawer. He fumbles for the remote, pressing buttons. Spa-like music swells; noise from my frantic packing muted under sounds of raindrops, sitar, and birdsong. This is part of Steven’s self-care ritual. To erase. “I’m only going because it’s an emergency, I’m worried about leaving Chloe,” I babble. “Don’t. She can stay with your mother and I can take over on the weekends. Besides,” he says, “she’s used to your departures.” I look at the man wearing the eye mask. He looks content in that artificial darkness of his, in simulated sounds of forests that don’t exist. A smile rests on his lips, though it shouldn’t.“Someone’s gotta go save the poor, so go. Don’t worry, our kid will be just fine,” he says. Is it sarcasm? Sincerity? With his eyes masked, his voice sedated, I can’t tell. Whatever it is, I hate every part of that lie. 2There’s a rap on the windshield. It’s a couple of children. They raise their T-shirts, show me their ribs. They want something. Food, money, anything. I look straight ahead, my sunglasses on. We’re not allowed to give money to beggars. And I can’t look them in the eyes while ignoring their pleas. I’d have to be a sociopath to do that. Instead, I continue my conversation with Philippe, the driver, trying to evoke an intimacy between us that doesn’t quite exist. These are children—like my Chloe—begging, showing their underfed bellies; I should be more appalled by this, but I’m not. If you see enough of anything, it becomes ignorable. Even hungry children.I once used to hold scrawny children like these. I used to nuzzle their hair under my chin, feel their small palms slide in my underarms for warmth. The 4x4 laces up the dusty broken road. It’s beautiful here. The sun sears through the window. I hear the staccato yells, the buoyant laughs of the market adjacent to the road. I smell the sea over the sweet scent of rotting garbage. Bougainvillea spills over every broken wall. There are bodies all around us, walking alongside, hips brushing my car door, people crisscrossing in front of our vehicle. Loud conversation, misshapen words from mouths of chipped teeth. It’s familiar—all these strangers holding us in. I’ve stopped feeling most things, but this feels good. A woman carries twins in her arms and balances a ten-liter plastic container on her head. I wonder which she picked up first. Did someone else place the container on her head? These are miracles of the poor. How they carry so much and don’t break. How they walk in kilometers, while we walk in steps. They have a strength my body can never know. The strength of birthing nine children in a hut or plowing fields by hand. Even their breasts are more potent than mine, producing milk on cue, babies latching as they should. No pumps or lactation consultants here. Seventy-two hours ago, my phone rang in the middle of the night. It was Burton telling me to fly out as soon as possible. Tickets had been reserved; I needed to confirm. I tried to focus on what he was saying, but was half-asleep, nervous that my daughter would wake up. I tried to sound professional, my mouth dry, annoyed that he hadn’t taken the time difference into account when calling. But then I heard his words and sat upright in bed: Marc is in the worst kind of trouble. The fallout could be dire, for all of us. So, I have to be here, one last time, to clean up his mess. Even though I’d secretly been planning my extrication from this job, from this place, from its people.On sterile days back home, I miss this country’s noise. I miss how free I am here despite the mosquitos and violence. I even sound different here. An accent takes birth on my tongue. It’s inadvertent; languorous s’s, long o’s emerge. I long for them in a bizarre homesickness that spreads while I’m buttering toast or driving my daughter to Montessori in Los Angeles. A homesickness that doesn’t make sense. Why yearn for war and hardship when you have the Hollywood Hills—the holy gifts of the first world?Besides, here can never be home. These people, they’re familiar but I don’t really know them. I’m driven among them. I have polite conversations. What am I really doing here? For years, I was convinced I was saving lives.Philippe and I have a polite relationship. I see him a few times a year when I visit to check up on things. He drives me places; I ask about his family. I crack a few jokes to appear relatable. It’s forced, but he smiles. I can’t help it; the words teem, wanting attachment, even a temporary one. But Philippe will disappear, from my mind and vicinity, as soon as I step out of this Land Cruiser, like all the others. Despite this, Philippe, in his crisp blue-collared shirt, with his shiny forehead, is the one I trust with my life. If hoodlums show up, tapping their guns on the windshield, he’ll intervene, standing tall between his countrymen and me, the foreigner. Perhaps even giving up his own life. The locals, they know a first-worlder when they see one. They see me. Sunglasses on, in the tinted vehicle with my charity’s fancy blue logo painted on the door, ignoring emaciated children. They walk by without ever hurting me. That guy sauntering with the rooster, holding it by the neck, he peers through my car window, then walks away. That old man, sitting in the dirt, dusty laminated pictures of 1980s porn stars dangling from the ribs of the umbrella he holds over his head, barely looks up, as though I’m a landmark, a building he’s