Yet Another Story of Immigrants in Love

Uncle came back from Berlin in the winter of '06, ready to be married again. This time for real. He was Mother's only sibling who had lost all his hair prematurely and the only one who wasn't lucky enough to find love on his own, or so we thought. His round face broke into a smile whenever reminded of this.

“Well, it's not true,” he would say, “You remember the Malaysian, don't you?”

She had no name. She was always “The Malaysian”, “The Malaysian Parasite” or “The Malay Leech.” She used to insist that my uncle always take her shopping (“This in a city where a toothbrush alone cost God knows how much!” my mother cried.)The woman became, in time, an epitome of how we should not behave.

Uncle, whenever he used to come home, never brought any of us individual gifts. He brought us low-priced chocolates. He said he brought us chocolates because he knew we'd start fighting with one another if, say, I was given a watch and my immediate older one a digital camera. We knew the real reason was he couldn't afford it.
But this time around he could afford all sorts of things. He just had landed a government job. He was now a “helper” to some railway mechanic. He said he was sweating all day and that the Germans didn't give him enough break time. Their toilets were clean, though, he'd add.

His flight was supposed to land around twelve so Mother and I and our extended family boarded a rented Toyota micro-bus, and started off for the airport at eleven-thirty sharp. We were excited. We were singing along to the sloppy “hits” from the radio. We had the windows rolled-down and the wind was blowing full on our face. Mother had brought along a flask full of tea and a dozen of those plastic one-time-use-only cups. (“Remember how long we had to wait for him to clear customs last time?”)

The micro-bus entered the airport and parked itself in an isolated alley. We tumbled out and smelled the air. The best thing to do when you're waiting for someone at the airport has to be screwing around with those gigantic trolleys, at least when you were my age. The trolleys were huge and the metal: cool and shiny. You could take it up the concrete roadway leading to the second floor and ride it down, the wind ninja-chopping you.

***

We could make out a tall imposing figure coming our way, pushing a trolley.  But we realized, as he neared, that there was something wrong with him; he looked different.
 “Where the hell did you get hair?” Mother cried.

Here he was hair on his head. Shiny black hair, neatly combed. A tuft of it, silky and a little curly, turning in the wind over his forehead.

“You all were right, the Malaysian was a witch. She put some spell on me, the last time we met after finalizing the divorce, and here I am, with hair. Isn't it marvelous?”

It was cold and he was tired. We got inside, not wasting time, the driver ready to hit the gas.

Two months of fun awaited us. We were going to go to gaming arcades, movies, amusement parks. We were going to go hunting for a woman, the woman — only to find that although he had divorced the Malaysian, my uncle was very much in love with her, that he had fallen in love with her while on shopping sprees, that no, the Malaysian wasn't aware of it, and that he was incapable of trying a real marriage because the fake one he had gone through was experience enough.

In the car, I sat behind him and saw the tag dangling down from his hair and over the nape of his neck.