“Are you sure you want to do this?”, Jonathan asks with his usual non-flippant attitude. It’s 75 degrees and he is still dressed in his slim suit.
I am surrounded by a beehive of activity. There are 7 guys of different shapes and sizes in various modes of preparation. Shawn the ex seal is calm and watches his surroundings closely. The ex-cop, I believe his name is Jack, is beefy and red, looking around and struggling to get his boots on. The monk sits in the corner quietly, his eyes fixated on the wall ahead of him. He is mumbling something and nodding his head in a steady rhythm almost oblivious to his surroundings. I am sitting on a dark wooden bench drinking from a bottle of cool water. This might be the last time in a few days that I would be able to afford this luxury.
The clock on the wall is counting down to T-20 minutes.
“Yeah. I am ready.” I turned towards Jonathan who extended a hand. I start to shake it but realize he is not looking for a greeting. I instead hand him my passport, the ID, some basic cash, and the gold ring that I wear at times. I have no possessions besides a cream-colored khaki shirt, a brown pant, and shoes, big heavy shoes. He takes those and hands them over to the guy behind, turns towards me, and extends a hand on my shoulder.
“Keep your wits around you and make sure you survive. There are no safety nets so be careful. You’ll figure it out.”.
He turns around, points me to one of his guys, turns around, and walks away.
The van is speeding towards London east side. The scenery slowly changes from one of the affluent neighborhoods to one flanked with boarded windows. You stop seeing suits and instead start to see bare torsos, dark ones, skinny almost emancipated ones trolling down the neighborhood.
“Time to go brother”, the beefy guy next to the driver says as he turns towards me and opens the van door. He is Nate, David’s right-hand man. His point person for all things that run within the organization. He is 6 5", built like an oak and a man of few words. He and I have got along well during the physical tests. He seems to have a soft corner for me once the tests end and we bond over the mutual love of spicy biryani served in Lahore, a small hole in the wall restaurant serving the delicacy.
As he drops me off at the corner of the road, he waves at me. The van speeds away. I am expecting something more, instructions maybe?…But the van is long gone.
The first thing that hits you is the heat and the smell. The smell of poverty, the smell of failures, of heavy and stale sweat. It’s all-pervasive and there is no way to escape it. It’s mid-noon and I want to get away from the sun. I take a stock of my surroundings.
There is a bakery on the corner, the house across from it is broken and looks like it hasn’t been inhabited for a while. I settle down in the shade near the sidewall across from the bakery. The wall is filled with graffiti but it’s relatively quiet around. I sit there for a couple of hours until the sun decides to cool down a bit before I realize that I am hungry. I walk to the other end of the street and meet a guy who is hanging out there with nothing much to do…
“I am looking for some work. Do you know anywhere I can go?”.
He looks at me like I am crazy and just stands there. It takes me a while to figure it out. There is no work to be had around here. Most shops are barely open and there is nothing to sell.
There is a McDonald’s around the corner. It’s an old seedy joint but it’s filled with people even at 8.30 PM. I walk in and look around standing in a corner. I am hungry and for the first time, I find myself wondering how I would pay for it. The automatic action of pulling out the credit card is cut off this time.
I stand and watch the people as they eat mindlessly, big bites, little nibbles while leaving the rest. An oversized English woman orders a 3-piece fish sandwich and one more for the kid. She eats little nibbles from one and leaves the rest as is, wrapping it back in the paper and gets up to leave. As she takes her tray to the bin, I walk quickly intersecting her just in time.
“Let me help you, Ma’am”,
I am hoping to pass by as an employee helping a customer, but she looks up at me with disgust filled in her eyes. She knows — and, in that instant, I drop any pretense of dignity as I scoop up the two remaining sandwiches. I still refuse to eat the nibbled one. That pride will melt in the days coming when food gets harder to find, but for now, I still have my rules. I settle down outside on the curb and eat it in slow bites. It’s the best meal that I have eaten in the entire year.
The day is almost over. I find myself at a small corner on a by-lane. There is some cardboard in the bin and enough of a place to sleep but I am somehow terrified. It’s almost 1.30 AM when I wake up to a sudden sound. I see a man sitting next to me, uncomfortably close. He seems unaware of my presence or just doesn’t care.
There is a rubber tube tied to his left hand, while he is shooting up using the other. I have never seen a junkie in real life and watch in terror as he goes through the motions. In the darkness of the night, the street lamp shines on the syringe and I see the dirty brown liquid as it travels in his veins. He slumps and relaxes; every pore of his body gives in to the momentary calm. He will need to find enough money to do this again soon, but for now, he has settled down in his nirvana.
Meanwhile, I settle into mine watching the rats scurry by under the garbage can. It’s a vantage point that stays with me long after it is over. As Edward had mentioned, the well-to-do have a vertical vision. The not-so, have a horizontal perspective.
I never understood what he had meant until now. You would never understand it either until you live through it, a life looked at, horizontally, sleeping on the pavement, through the eyes of poverty, almost like an animal.
The world looks different — The feet as they come towards you induce terror, the rats and roaches scurrying around, the dust as it swirls, you see the world through a completely different set of angles, the angle of poverty as I call it.
I settle down, pray, and drift off to restless sleep.
One down. 11 more days to go.
