Tourist Information

Tony Osgood

My dearest wife and child,

I am well and looking forward to you joining me soon in England.

The word soon is like an unwelcome uncle appearing for a weekend wedding and staying for a year until the first child is born. I suppose one should honour soon, even if it hangs about and impersonates forever.

Soon cannot come soon enough.

As you know, for I have previously gifted you entertaining examples, here one is spoilt for choice when selecting from the local lexicon the particular outmoded ‘antwacky’ idiom one wishes to pass a lonely evening chewing. Having swallowed in disbelief so many gobstopper idioms, I can assure you the tastiest is a piece of cake, and whilst crying over spilt milk is easier said than done, in this, my seventeenth letter home, I had settled on beginning with yet another, how does this letter find you? given I knew you’d shout together, ‘With the aid of the postal service!’ But when it came to it, the thought of you ruined my intention, and I began by sketching a pencil drawing of my heart, though dearest does not come close. My Aliah, I dreamed you were beside me, only to wake to cold pillows and a ghost

Nevertheless, notwithstanding, howbeit, I am keeping my chin up and hope to make you both smile with the latest instalment of my guide to England. I have become quite the ethnographer. Like explorers of old, ignorance is bliss, and I am content to believe I am reporting from an entirely ruined land unspoilt by culture that hubris permits me to claim for myself. Thus I colonise the hours of my loneliness, take possession of unfamiliar lands for myself.

A precis. Having discovered the edge of the world and by the sea secured rented accommodation in Thorpeness – a town primarily white and black in colour, first and foremost cold – having found trifling work, I opened a bank account, which in England confers upon one admissibility if not into polite society, then the contumelious community

– Jaah, my son, look up contumelious then write me three examples –

and, further, permission to remain. All of which make one a real person rather than a common or garden immigrant. I have become a licensed refugee, a probationary human. (This charter may be revoked at any time should someone object to the cut of my jib or, as I discovered, break an obscure cultural convention.) Thus exhausted from learning the niceties, having hopped my way through circuitous geometries of hoops, your Professor of English set aside his work in a care home and thought on his long weekend off work to take a leisure trip inland to see the sights of the country that made us homeless.

What is the antonym of pilgrimage? Whatever it is, that is what I undertook. And so I abandoned my seaside flat – soon to be your beachhead, too – for a few days away. You see, I am, as they say here, finding my feet.

– and for a little while not feel the pressing sea, to be not queasy when searching the horizon. Give me a city thousands of miles from such unfathomable bodies of water –

– Jaah, for English homework, research how to convert a fathom into metric, for many common phrases here come from juicy naval piracy, are shanty-strange, and mathematics is a matter of learning the poems of numbers –

I wrote of soon. Might next year qualify as soon? A further season without the both of you seems unbearable. In part because of my current predicament.

– do not be alarmed –

When you arrive next year, you may see me walking, but I promise, I have been comatose without your laughter, able only to crawl. I chew, rather than eat, and my dearest, Aliah, I miss your evening scent and touches. I am a puppet lacking strings. When you travel, pack my joy, fetch my flesh, bring my mind and your kissing sutures. Carry in your luggage the stars of home, and a jar of good clean air.

When Jaah was still a baby – you remember? – you took him to visit that fearsome and endlessly bosomy aunt, she who was reputed to have bitten an informer. When you returned after four days, I told you I had been buried in sand all that time, that Afghanistan had ceased to be, that I had become one of the tribes of the shrouded dead, unmoving, barely breathing, not eating, yearning only for your spring-warmth to raise me to life. I’d worn your headscarf so I might smell you. Now, imagine how distended and empty my soul must be having been without you half a year. My love, I am shriven

– Jaah, stop reading this over your mother’s shoulder –

from the lack of your lips, and with only dreams to keep me company I am aching for you.

– Jaah, you may recommence reading, you beautiful boy –

So I dared an expedition in order to occupy a few more days before you come, to fill my letters with stories, else risk becoming an aubergine stew of a man, one who is soggy and not to your taste. I discovered what is said to be an attractive and untypical English country town unspoiled by time, huddled by river near what passes in England for mountains. (Let’s call them little hills.) I took up a notebook, bought a pith helmet, wore a camera about my neck, went for a stroll, hired porters, took supplies, hung an umbrella from my arm. Unfortunately, matters got a little out of hand.

– do not fret, I am safe. Do not curse, for soon I mean to make you smile

– Jaah, son, look away –

as only a husband might dare attempt –

You may scold me when you arrive. Save up condemnations as you do our pennies. When Jaah is sleeping, you can wound me with your castigations. I will humbly seek to make things right, over and over, until we blend, and your golden skin becomes alloyed to mine, and my trembling body is yours, and our souls mingle, and we drink joy and tears until dawn, when Jaah will come running into our room on his fat legs to demand food and cuddles, then wonder whether we too heard such night-rumpuses that we could barely sleep.

It is funny, though I am unable to laugh, that when I was Jaah’s age, twelve months seemed endlessly crammed with unmeasurable moments each stuffed with a thousand changes. This half year has taught me time might just as easily stall and become sticky as fly and be impossible to grasp. Time is fickle. Time steals moments from people we love, then curses us with their unused abandoned minutes. Each day of the four years since Gulraiz was murdered – how is it I cannot imagine my brother as anything other than alive? – and in each minute of the six months away from you – I still turn to ask you questions, and my heart sinks when coming home to find no beautiful boy – these have taught me I am most myself when with those who love me, know me. Without you I am waiting to exist. Sending me ahead once made sense, now nothing does. Gulraiz’s ghost over-peppers my meals and wakes me at night to drink tea and share high thoughts. He says heaven has a comfortable waiting room, he cis not bored, and he will loiter between worlds until we can knock on the door to the garden together, maybe in one hundred years; I told him I could not enter heaven without you or Jaah or his unborn children, and my brother says so be it, he does not mind waiting.

Such strange thoughts must be the consequence of incarceration, for though you say I wooed you with honey-words, I am the most practical of men, not prone to such flights of fancy, and I suppose grief obliges the living to perform autopsies. Hardship falls from the sky readily as rain. Such are my maudlin thoughts.

And so it is that by degrees, I arrive at the reason I am writing to you now, and why, to use the vernacular here, I have a little cooling-off time on my hands. The cell light will be turned off shortly, so I must rush.

– Jaah, comfort your mother on my behalf –

Let me assure you the police cells in England are very different from those in Kabul. I am safe and comfortable. The desk sergeant – the police officer responsible for allocating the finest of the accommodation to the most deserving – goes as far as to permit me a pencil and paper. He says he’ll post this letter on his way home, and all because he once served in our land, and knows our district well. We share a common grief at what the Taliban have done to our orchards and statues and women and culture and future. What have they done with our laughter? ’What was the point?’ the desk sergeant asks. All kinds for commiserations are shared over cups of awful tea. We speak of food and war. And even if I must return the pencil to him, ‘just in case,’ I think to stab myself repeatedly in the throat with a 5B, I am grateful.

I showed him pictures of you both and in return was shown a photograph of his daughter. He agrees with me that you are mother to the most beautiful boy in the world, and Jaah is the son of the most beautiful woman he has ever seen, and that it would be a crime to stop at the single child, no matter how perfect that single child may be. Further, the desk sergeant promises that he will charge you with a criminal complaint if you did not forgive me for spending a night in his cells, which he says might as well be The Ritz. He says you are to think of my current arrangements as an unregistered bed and breakfast. He says I was suffering from culture shock. That is not a crime, rather a misdemeanour. Anyone not shocked by the country needs his head examining, he says. He wishes me to reassure you that not every place in England is cold as his town. Some places are more welcoming than others.

To my adventure. My inland caper had proven itself quiet. Uneventful. After a day wandering about a grand country house, where no guide was willing to pronounce the name of the source of the family’s wealth despite my prompts, and indeed were most unpleasant when I to American tourists I sermonised explicitly concerning slavery and the foibles of imperialism – even white people are not encouraged to mention such matters – I arrived later than usual at the pub where I was lodging, and driven by hunger and thirst threw caution to the wind, and ordered from the dour landlord, along with a drink called Imperial Stout, my just dessert.

– Jaah, how about a short essay concerning humour and the many meanings of the word stout –

The landlord remained glum, as he had all weekend. It was not my mirth than made him pour a glass with more froth than liquid. I thought to make him amenable to liking me, so I ordered food that was typical of the hinterland, and uniformly bland.

‘Cottage pie is all gone.’

‘Unexpectedly called away?’ I wondered.

‘And the apple crumble’s off,’ he said.

‘Where to?’ I asked.

Two witticisms. Not one smile.

‘A pint, then.’

You know I prefer to see the bright side – it’s why you love me, that and my devilish good looks, and the way I am able to nuzzle

– Jaah, go out to play, son –

your softness with my hardness, and the manner in which you utter sighs when I do that figure of eight movement, so hurry to me, love, so I can spend time doing more calculations, multiplication tables, endless equations. The list of my desires is too long for this single letter. Anyway, the landlord extinguished my bright side as if he were a warden in the Blitz.

‘Didn’t think you lot drank,’ the landlord said.

‘Our lot come in all shapes, shades, and sizes,’ I said not very brightly.

‘Where exactly are you from?’

‘Thorpeness.’

Silence.

‘A cucumber doogh can hide a great measure of home-brewed wine,’ I confessed, toasting him, then grimacing. ‘This drink is warm!’

The hubbub of the crowded bar was eiderdowned by my accent and my skin.

‘Bottoms up?’ I asked, raising my glass once more. For as you know, another of my attributes you admire is stoicism.

A customer coughed, elbowed me, pointed out a sign.

Off colour-jokes are deemed offensive, read a polite notice pinned to a fake Tudor beam. I knew it to be a courteous sign because printed above the information in bold capitals were the words POLITE NOTICE. Otherwise, I might not have known.

Reassured, I asked, ‘Tell me, my good man, is there such a thing as an offensive notice?’

The customer with the elbow suggested I had learned my English from an Ealing comedy, so I replied that he had probably learned, as did I, the graceful art of sardonic English wit whilst completing his master’s thesis

– Jaah, look up the term southpaw –

and that Oxford tended to hang about one’s vocabulary, did he not find?

He did not find.

I saw behind him another sign.

Gentleman, no bare chests. Women may dress as they please.

Once I had my eye in, there were hundreds of such ordinances. One couldn’t move for prohibitions. My notebook became full.

May contain nuts.

‘Surely too easy a target,’ I murmured, staring at the customers.

Ask about food intolerances.

‘Are carbohydrates homophobic?’ I asked the landlord.

– Jaah. Lead balloon –

No food after eight.

‘Years of age?’

No dogs.

And yet, the bar featured three spaniels, two bulldogs, a whippet and a – I have no idea, but hairless, small as a rat – and locals were having food delivered to their tables at nine in the evening. I cannot speak for the mental wellbeing of the patrons, and it would be wrong for me to speculate, and one does not wish to perpetuate abusive tropes relating to the vernacular cross-over between edible kernels

– Jaah, not colonels –

and inappropriate euphemisms for mental health.

‘I admire such signage,’ I said, neutrally.

No credit given.

I returned the landlord’s questioning stare until he sneezed. This is a parish where DNA ancestry tests are as unwelcome as mention of food banks. It is not the sort of place to sing The Internationale. So, retiring in silence to my beige room, I stood at the sealed window and counted twice no stars. The night sky here is uniformly dull. The towels in the accommodation are stiff with disregard and the heating is rationed. The pictures on the wall are cut from discarded library books. The wi-fi signal cuts out come News at Ten

– the news here might make one believe no land but Britain exists –

so that one is obliged to read leaflets highlighting local attractions that are unlikely to ever be visited. You don’t want to ask about the pillowcases. It is unwise to be profligate with the toilet roll that you must store in your room. At the end of the landing, you must share with other guests a bathroom that features a temperamental toilet. There is an engaged sign on the door that you would be wise to not overlook. The unheated toilet has a timed dim light. Be prepared to shit in darkness.

Now wash your hands.

Should you visit town, you would do well to give the appearance of taking seriously each notices.

Residents Only.

No parking.

God protect us from No ball-games.

And please Respect our neighbours when you leave.

The town welcomes Careful drivers.

There is to be No cycling on pavements.

Had I lived in England before I learned its language, I doubt I could ever have become a translator after the university was closed. Do you remember how once I asked an Army Captain, quoting Anne Stevenson, ‘Without nostalgia, who could love England?’ and how he had no more heard of the poet than irony.

‘Stiff upper lip?’

‘Fuck off, towel-head.’

As punishment he sent me on patrol with the least competent company to the most dangerous of neighbourhoods. All the soldiers blamed me. They said they were sending me to Coventry. Which is, it transpires, a real place.

Tourist guides to the little town where I was arrested are likely to inform you that the gradual conversion of pastoral field to manicured park to unlettered English market town is much admired hereabouts. Let me assure you the place stinks of duckweed. It is what you wake to. It is what you walk through. What you eat, what you smell on your clothes when rising from freshly-painted park benches.

In memory of John, who loved to chat.

Also Only two schoolchildren at one time. Clearly any more than three schoolchildren will destroy democratic society.

CCTV in operation, made me think of hospitals.

There is a mediaeval bridge and a river so clear it evokes a memory of spring water in the mountains above Kabul. There I watch England from the bridge.

You might usefully Beware deep water.

No tents.

No BBQs.

No refugee camps here.

There is a sombre granite war memorial nearby with names listed in gold.

No climbing.

Clean up after your dog.

You can hear, if you care to listen, crows caw over purring Range Rovers waiting to park in Waitrose.

Take your litter home.

In the park, slender children untidy the warm levee. A pretty lad worries mowed grass that brogues his feet. Families slumber while unguarded children play.

No diving.

Ducks go about their lives unaware their existence will soon change once a council employee erects a sign prohibiting feeding.

No vagrants.

I watch a beagle fetch a tennis ball thrown into the river by a handsome girl. She is fast becoming a woman and seems as keen to cover her body as please the dog. The animal backs away on tan wet haunches having delivered its prize to her bare toes. It leaps backwards through treacle air, plunges into cold water, chasing the toy. This is the pulse of the liquid summer, this in, this out, this back, this forth.

Disabled toilet key upon request.

The dog swims out too far. Caught by the undertow, it yelps. The girl calls. The dog disappears in a beautiful ripple of sun. I reach for my camera. The girl begins to scream. A horrified crowd watch. As it passes beneath the bridge, the dog busies itself paddling below the surface, running to the sea, leaking bubbles as it drowns.

There is to be No fishing.

I raise my camera, hum, snap the crowd, the visit not wholly wasted. Years ago, watching Western journalists record the mundane death of villagers, count the limbs, ask family how they feel, I felt sickened by their joy at carnage. What has their war made me to mimic their voyeurism in their provinces?

Everyone points in silence at my oddness. Drivers turn on hazard lights. Cyclists dismount to watch. Old people shake their walking frames. A policewoman walks toward me speaking into her radio, staring at the stranger in the midst of middle England. I am the wrong shade in the wrong place doing the wrong thing.

No loitering.

The river stops moving.

There is not a cloud in the drone-free sky.

Not a single cluster bomb falls. No IEDs flower on roadsides.

A noiseless fury settles over the park.

In England, one might be arrested on suspicion of just about anything, especially if you are the incorrect shade of foreign, or smile at the concern shown by natives catching sight of a drowning dog. There are many CCTV cameras because the whole country is on suicide watch.

In time I hope to translate England for you more fully, but there are some experiences one must live to fully comprehend the enormity of the strangeness through which one paddles. Know, however, that I will cause you to smile at our good fortune at being together, and being, astoundingly, alive, even amidst eccentricity. Together we will be strangers in a strange land, but at least we’ll have each other for company, yes? Maybe, if she behaves, we can fetch your disreputable aunt, provided she walks around with a POLITE NOTICE on her coat warning she should under no circumstances be trusted not to bite anyone, especially if they are an informer.

It is nearly lights out, though the desk sergeant says he will give me ten more minutes, given I happen to be the only vagrant in his cells. I have two blankets. When the door is shut, I feel safe. There is a joyful lack of notices in the cell, except this: Press for assistance.

How beautifully inviting.

The desk sergeant says if I press it again, he will ignore me; he shouldn’t have responded in the first place simply to play cards and speak of families. Also, in England when the desk sergeant says you have been detained for your own protection it is likely he is factually correct.

You remember how the British preferred to rescue dogs from Afghanistan rather than the families of translators? The pictures of desperate people falling from the undercarriage of eloping cargo planes are not easy to forget.

I shall be sent on my way tomorrow, because here there is such a thing as a caution. Is this not wonderful, to receive a warning? I am thinking of course of Gulraiz – perhaps when the lights go out he will visit, and we can talk about how he was woken without such a warning by two men wearing boots stolen long ago from dead Russians. He will describe how he was not given time even to dress, let alone explain his innocence. The gunmen beat his face into a wall, his ghost will tell me all over again as I listen, and kiss his hand. He will sing to me of his murder, how his ears were bloody with morning birdsong and Kalashnikov accusations, and I will hold him. They took him for the translator; I know his story: it never grows old, it is fresh today as it has always been. My brother did not correct the soldiers. He answered to my name. He loved his brother. He wanted us to escape. Claiming my death for himself was his wedding gift. He allowed us the time to be married, to create Jaah, to seize a safer tomorrow.

I will never again leave you behind. I am haunted by want of you.

I am, and will always be, your loving pathfinder

Abbasi.

~o~

Tony Osgood’s first non-fiction book (2020), on autism, disability and support, has been published in English, Chinese, Czech and Turkish. His fiction and poetry have appeared in Litro, Extinction Rebellion, Literally Stories, All Existing, Mediterranean Poetry, Templeman Review, and Blue Nib. He lives in England and teaches across Europe.

Judge Brett says about Tourist Information “From first word to last I found myself totally enchanted by the narrator’s voice, which reminds me in some respects of Rushdie but is wholly original. Aside from that, and not unlike Rushdie in The Satanic Verses, it proffers invaluable insight into the experience of being “alien” still today in British society.”