SOON SALEEM’S NAILS BECAME RAGGED AND RIMMED WITH DIRT. He developed calluses on his palms and on the pads of his fingers. His face was salty with perspiration, but he felt good. He worked like a man. Like his father might have. The money wasn’t much, but he turned it over to his mother with pride.
Hakan didn’t ask Saleem about his wages. Hayal accepted the few bills that Madar-jan quietly tucked into her hand every week, but soon after she would spend it on food they shared with the Waziri family. They seemed happy to have children in the home and Madar-jan did what she could to look after the house. She swept the floors, washed dishes, and did laundry while Hayal tutored a silent but inquisitive Samira. She would tap her pencil and look to Hayal when she filled in the answers to the arithmetic problems.
They were comfortable in Intikal, but Saleem still worried.
“Madar-jan, it will be forever before we are able to save up enough money to get us to Greece. Maybe we can ask some family for money? Maybe we should call England?”
Madar-jan dried her hands on her apron and sighed.
“My son, I’ve been thinking the same thing. I’ll try to phone them, but I don’t think they have much to send. Last time I called, your uncle said they were barely able to pay for their daughter’s school supplies. Maybe things are better now. I don’t see what options we have.” Fereiba began to think out loud. “Maybe we shouldn’t go to London. Maybe we should start elsewhere.”
But there was nowhere else to go. The rest of the family had dispersed to India, Canada, and Australia. India offered little opportunity for a better life while Canada and Australia were simply unreachable without a visa.
Madar-jan leaned against the counter and stared at the ceiling tiles. Yesterday, she had started cleaning some of the neighbors’ houses, thanks to Hayal’s referrals, but it was not enough to keep Saleem home. She looked at her son.
“It’s very bad there, isn’t it? On the farm?”
He had started to tell her about the farm after his second day there, but the look on her face made him stop short. He smiled and shook his head. Her face relaxed. They would survive in this way, telling each other that things were better than they were.
CHAPTER 20
Saleem
MR. POLAT MADE SALEEM’S FOURTEEN-HOUR DAYS LONG AND hard. It was August and the height of tomato season. Work was plentiful, even on the ramshackle Polat farm, with its soil rockier than all the neighbors.
Saleem learned to tell the hour by the sun’s position overhead. From morning, he willed his shadow to grow longer and longer so that his workday would come to an end. He got a fifteen-minute break when Polat’s wife would bring out sandwiches. Every day, a thin sandwich with a glass of lukewarm water. As monotonous as it was, the food soothed his growling stomach, and the water put out the burning of his dry throat.
Mr. Polat and his wife had four children. The young boy who had watched Saleem in the front yard that first day was the middle child, Ahmet. Behind him were twin girls, around three years old. The oldest child was a girl, Ekin. Her name meant harvest in Turkish.
Ekin was around Saleem’s age, lanky like her father and with similarly drawn features. She was unattractive, even to a sheltered adolescent boy. Her skin was freckled and her hair a stringy mop of curls.
Ekin watched Saleem from a distance as she helped her mother hang laundry on the clothesline behind the farmhouse. By the end of August, she was free of her studies and lingered around the farm. Bored, she spent more time around Saleem and the Armenian woman. She especially liked to saunter about when Saleem cleaned out the barn.