ABBA’S BEHRAM

Two weeks into the fever, lacking the insurance to cope with the healthcare system, he told himself that the last remaining pack of Crocin he brought from home would do the trick.

It had to.

He never felt cold during the Septembers at home. On this 27th’s late evening though, Behram went to bed shivering.

That was the night he was supposed to go out to a club with his ‘new American friends.’ He told himself he’d fight through the sickness. Dancing would surely help.

He wanted to go to a place where he could move to the few ‘American’ songs he knew. The four by U2 that his Abba sang with Ammi, when Behram was a child. It made Abba feel bold.

Even though Behram never found the songs relatable, he liked how soft they felt.

Anyone white was American to Abba.

Abba had asked him to obtain an MBA; not from the localities just outside Lucknow’s metropolis where they lived, but from an “actual place of promise.”

Abba refused to let Behram enter a premises visible from their 1-bedroom, rusty flat. Behram was destined to fly, Abba kept thinking to himself. With bare provisions, procured by getting Behram’s sister married to the son of Abba’s childhood teacher-friend, he sent Behram to suburban Chicago. That university barely rejected anyone.

It was also one of the few public institutions that didn’t provide any insurance to international students.

“Finally, you’ll be a foreigner! A big, western man who’ll earn in dollars,” Abba said, when Behram left. “Just don’t be reckless like them.”

When Behram was fifteen, Abba had ordered him to be a devout Muslim wherever he went. Behram had not objected.

“They may like us here,” Abba told him. “But you always need something to guide you.”

Abba repeated it, as Behram left.

*

The only people Behram met at university were a group of white frat-boys.

They were still undergraduate students, but could pass off as uncles at any family gathering in India.

The two brothers of the group were Jack and Andrew.

“You look like a cabbie,” Jack told Behram. “Not too bad in this economy.”

To Behram, this was just American humour, reminiscent of the early 2000s Hollywood comedies he secretly watched on the only uncensored channel of Abba’s TV. Brown guys were comedic relief, even when they didn’t do anything.

Behram laughed, and Andrew laughed even harder.

All of them wore compressing black t-shirts, with different 90s rock bands on them.

Behram was comfortable in his untucked red-and-black plaid shirt, and loose torn denims. That was how those comedies dressed their brown characters, anyway.

Maybe these guys were choking from their t-shirts, Behram thought. And that’s why they spoke like that. In pain.

Every time Jack inhaled his cigarette, the exhale of the smoke floated over Behram’s head. Some of the ash fell on Behram’s nose, but he just chuckled at their jokes.

“Keep quiet even if they trouble you,” Abba’s words echoed in Behram’s mind. “Adjust. Learn to. I don’t have the money to call you back. I’m no Ambani.”

*

As he’d walk to class through the roads, Behram would get on a call with his Abba-Ammi. On the few inches of his smartphone, from a Chinese company that fired Abba eight years ago, Abba-Ammi would be frozen with glee. Ammi would be in a white kurti, and Abba in his navy denim jacket. Neither would speak for five minutes, and Behram would silently beam back at them. That was Behram’s American routine.

“Eating well?” Ammi would ask. Abba would be hunched back, and breathing heavy enough for Behram to hear it despite the occasional “go back!” echoes from white pedestrians.

Behram would nod his head at the screen, scratching his beard. Ammi would smile.

The pedestrians would dart past Behram anytime he reached for the zipper of his puffer jacket. Everyone’s always in a hurry here, Behram would think.

Never did any of them miss their beats. The discipline impressed Behram.

No one would be in any rush five miles on either side from him. As was the precautionary distance advised by the local police to be taken in case of a terror-attack.

Once the call would end, Behram would tighten the muffler around his neck. He could finally shiver, and not worry about the wrinkles it’d cause on Ammi’s forehead.

He’d try and shout back at the white pedestrians. Before his voice could climb up his dry throat, he’d go breathless, forehead burning, and stand there for five minutes, trying to catch it back.

*

It was close to four. His eyes had shrunk, and he barely recognised his own bedframe. He thought of dialing 9-1-1, but he wasn’t able to grip his phone. It lay next to his neck, underneath the pillow where a polaroid-picture was kept.

He tried falling back asleep, but his body wouldn’t stop shaking.

The room grew colder.

*

That night, Behram was admiring a picture of himself and the frat-boys before sleeping. It remained between his now pale fingers.

The boys had mixed vodka in his bottle an hour before. They told him that’s just how tap water tasted, when Behram winced.

Important to be hydrated when sick, they had said, and shoved a litre down his throat. They ran away, laughing, as Behram coughed.

Behram was left to lay there, heaving, investigating how the five of them even collectively achieved no hair underneath their chins. While he’d dedicate a daily half-hour after his morning prayer to groom the dense, white inheritance of his Abba.

Devarya (he/him) is a writer from India. His poems appear in Defenestration Magazine, Poems India, and elsewhere.