THE BUS CONDUCTOR FROM PATAN
Satis Shroff
December 01, 2006
Basanta Sakya was a small, lean, swarthy, bespectacled Newar. He had a moustache, a slightly bent back and his voice was normally clear and loud like that of a primary-school teacher. And there he lay huddled in his bed. He shat in his pants, and hadn’t even noticed it, because he’d been drunk the entire week. I went with Herr Heinz, a German social worker, who had a beard and a face like Jesus, stared at him, shook his head and said, ‘You have to wash yourself and clean the room.’
The small room was littered with food: toast bread, basmati rice, papadam, spices and worn and dirty clothes all over: On the floor was a great pool of something indefinable: probably a combination of urine, vomit and food rest. It smelt terribly because the window was closed.
Basanta, the Newar, squinted his eyes and looked at the bearded German and said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it this evening“.
You have to do it right now’.
Okay, I’ll do it this evening. I’m too tired now. I vill sleep, okay? I vant to got to Patan immediately, ja. You please make the arrangements, yes.’
I cannot make the arrangements. You must have a paper from the embassy or a birth-certificate from your uncle in Kathmandu.’
I vant to sleep, yes,’ he said irritated and turned his back to the social-worker. And that was it.
The news of Mr. Sakya’s long awaited letter from Nepal finally arrived. The burly German postman had left him a slip stating that he had an ‘Einschreiben’ and he was obliged to pick up his registered mail at the Hauptpostamt (GPO) personally. Was it the letter with his birth-certificate? Whatever it was, Mr. Sakya was excited and came to his social worker and told him that he’d be going to the general post office to collect his letter. He didn’t set off though.
He was in a talkative mood and said, ‘You know, my father was a school head-master and now he’s retired. We have a big paddy-fields in Patan. My cousin brother wants me to return to home and look after the paddy-fields and farm. You know, I have a wife and a son and daughter. When my son is 18 years old my cousin-brother, who works in Switzerland, wants to look after him so that he can study. I am the only black sheep in the family, okay? I love my wife and my children, okay. I came to Germany and the people who brought me (Schlepper), the tow-men, took away my passport, you know. So I am without passport and the German authorities are making a lot of problems for me, okay?’
After this explanation, one just had to say ‘okay’.
The social worker asked him, ‘Do you have money to pay for the passport at your embassy? How much does a passport cost?
Mr. Sakya,’ Somebody told me it costs 400DM, okay .
Mr. Heinz called the Royal Nepalese Embassy and was told that it would cost the asylum-seeker only 10 DM.
Is it an emergency-passport?’ Mr. Sakya asked.
No, it won’t be a passport. Just a document concerning your identity, I think. The truth is, I haven’t seen such a document from the Nepalese Embassy as yet.’
A day later, Mr. Sakya emerged at the office and showed the birth certificate and the social worker sent him to the Social Department, where he received a Gutschein (coupon) for the train journey to Bonn. Mr. Sakya was to leave Freiburg on the following Monday night with the intention of turning up there early in the morning, since most embassies were open only from 9 till 12 am.
On Wednesday the social workers went to Mr. Sakya’s room and knocked on his door. After a second try he was received by a drunk Mr. Sakya. He gazed at the social workers with an empty, glassy eyes and said, ‘I did not go to Bonn, okay.’ Scattered on the floor were scores of empty beer cans. Mr. Heinz, who was known for his German thoroughness and sense of what the Germans call ‘Ordnung’, counted them -- forty in all.
Is that how you spend your money? I’m finished with you. I will tell the authorities at the Social Department and the police that they should take care of you, and that you are not interested in co-operating with us.’
I will go next time, okay?’ said Mr. Sakya who was not only intoxicated but also weary of answering questions. Questions from the social worker Mr. Heinz, questions from the social-office and the police. He was getting sick of it all, so he burst out in a fit of rage and helplessness, ‘I wanttogoto Patan immediately, okay?’.
The social worker was infuriated, developed red ears and but replied in a controlled but loud voice, ‘Mr. Sakya, please don’t use the word ‘immediately’. Do you know what ‘immediately’ means? It means ‘sofort’, ‘right now’, ‘at the very moment’. You had a chance to go to Bonn to get your passport from the embassy, but instead of that you got drunk. Look at the state you’re in.’
Mr. Sakya just wanted to have the social workers out of his earshot and complied by being suddenly very nice, agreeable and quipped, ‘Okay, I’ll go tomorrow to Bonn. But you please leave me alone. I vant to sleep.’ And with that he shook his head from left to right at least half a dozen times in that typical Asiatic way.
As the social workers stepped out of his room, Herr Heinz said, ‘At least he hasn’t pissed on the floor like the last time.’
Do you think that he’s scared of going to Bonn?’
Yes, I’m sure he’s scared about the questions he might be asked. After all, as a refugee or an asylum-seeker you have to bring up arguments against the government if you want to be recognised as a political refugee abroad. Mr. Sakya had just a de facto refugee status in Germany.
One morning I opened the office-windows and peered out from the social office. Mrs. Ramadani, the nice old Kosovo-Albanian woman who had been appointed to clean Mr. Sakya’s room, and to see to it that he was tidy, leaned out and said, ‘Basanta has gone. He’s not in his room.’
Thank God, I thought. But I had second thoughts, because he could have gone anywhere but to Bonn. He could be lying on a side-street of Freiburg and be stretching out his hand and begging for alms, like he’d done in his drunken state many times. There was no way to find out. He’d promised to turn up two days later at our office..
Mr. Sakya did turn up on the said day. He had a broad grin on his face and said in his unmistakable manner, ’Immediately I wanttogoto Patan. I have the passport now.’
He produced a small passport in which was written: VALID ONLY FOR RETURN JOURNEY TO NEPAL.
It was a nice feeling for Mr. Sakya to be the proud possessor of a passport after all those years without papers. All decent people had passports. He’d been fed up of showing his temporary Duldungspapiere. Now he looked forward to going to his Heimat, and to his wife and children and his sick father.
I asked him, ’How long did it take you to get the passport in Bonn?’
Mr. Sakya replied, ‘I went to the embassy, which was at Bad Godesberg, at 8:30am and I received my passport from the Nepali officer at 4:30pm. He shook his head from left to right and then back a couple of times as he said, ‘I told them: Immediately I want-to-go-to Patan. I am a Newar and my father is seriously ill and have to give him fire as the eldest son.’ So I got the passport. But I was very hungry. I’d eaten the sandwiches I’d taken with me during the long wait. I was very hungry again. If I had left the embassy I wouldn’t have received my passport.’
Mr. Sakya we are very proud of you that you went to Bonn and came back with the passport’ I told him.
And Mr. Heinz added, ‘Now keep clean and don’t get drunk’.
Do I have to go to Caritas?’ he asked.
No, the Raphaelswerk doesn’t send the refugees home now. They only send Bosnian refugees to the USA and Canada.’
Who is then responsible for me?’
Don’t worry, we’ll send you home. We are responsible for you, but we have to clear some questions with the police and Caritas here, because we don’t have the necessary forms etcetera.’
The truth was, Raphaelswerk hadn’t informed us earlier that they wouldn’t be doing the job of repatriating refugees from the rest of the world, and we had no expertise and no forms that had to be filled up. In short, we were ill-informed and suddenly, had a new additional bureaucratic job. It would take a few weeks before the German bureaucratic maschinery got organised and working. Till then we were sure that Mr. Sakya would come up at least three times a day with: ‘Immediately I wanttogoto Patan!’
Earlier, the police would have driven the man almost crazy with threats of putting him on a plane and sending him home. Now our man from Patan wanted to go home on his own and we weren’t able to do it. What was even more important was the fact that he had braced himself and gone through a lot of red-tape and put a great deal of mileage behind him (to Bonn and back) in acquiring his Nepali passport, and I feared a relapse into alcohol abuse, if the flight-arrangement with the International Organisation of Migration didn’t finalise soon...
We got the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and GARP (government assisted repatriation programme) forms finally, filled them up and sent them the next day, which meant that Mr. Sakya would be seeing his wife and children after an absence of eight years. We talked about raksi and how it is made in Patan.
Mr. Sakya: ‘We have raksi in our neighbourhood. You know we have a caste system in Hinduism. We belong to a high-caste, okay. I come from an educated family, okay. We have a lot of land and we are engaged in government service and agriculture. Sometimes I go to the raksiwallahs, okay. They belong to the lower caste and I take a canister with me and for ten rupees I get two bottles of raksi, okay.
He shakes his head and says, ‘Raksi is good and tasty and I never get vomiting even if I drink it on an empty stomach. But we also have jadh (rice-beer), which is expensive now.
Here in Germany whiskey and schnaps are very bad’ he says, makes a bitter face and shakes his head.
I have always problem with it and have to throw it up every time.’ I could imagine it.
Mr. Sakya had often mentioned that his cousin brother and other relatives were in Switzerland, England and elsewhere and he went on to say that he would work again as a bus-conductor from Kathmandu to Patan. He would also look after the family fields. And when in Kathmandu, he would ask his other cousin brother, who worked at the government finance secretariat, and who spoke and wrote excellent English, to write a letter to his social worker in Freiburg-Germany.
That would be nice’, said Herr Heinz. A letter from Nepal, from our old friend Mr. Sakya.
After a few days, Mr. Sakya came to the office with what looked like a small magazine. He showed it to us with a grave face and said, ‘My daughter has died. On the front page of the magazine was the photograph of a young girl.
We expressed our condolence at the sad demise of his daughter.
She was in the 10th class and next year she would have done her School Leaving Certificate examinations. She was 17 years old and very intelligent. She had my face, my nose.’
I asked him, ‘ What did she die of? Malaria or Dengue? Typhus? Or was it jaundice? ‘
Encephalitis’ he replied curtly.
He fidgeted with his magazine. Mr. Sakya was hard up again and said that he’d received a letter from his sister stating that he should immediately give them a call.
He turned to Hr. Heinz and asked him if he could use the social office telephone for a call to Kathmandu. But Herr Heinz said that he had instructions from his administrative section not to let asylum-seekers to use the office telephone. As an alternative solution he asked him to lend or give him some money for the phone call.
No, Mr. Sakya I cannot give you money.
Mr. Sakya said, ‘If I had only known that I would need money for a telephone call, I wouldn’t have gone downtown to the Asian shop to buy some dal, rice and dried fish. You know, the Asian shop doesn’t accept the coupons (Gutschein) that we get from the Social and Youth Department, because it is difficult to get money for the coupons from the bureaucrats.
As the day of his departure drew nearer, Mr. Sakya became jollier and he went shopping with money for the bags from the social-office, and returned with a big one with wheels and a metal handle. He came to the office the day we were doing a brisk business by selling the many toys, puzzles, fairy-tales books, quiz-cards, batman in miniature and scores of other similar things that kids treasure. He was given the choice of selecting a few pair of shoes for his family, which was large by German standards.
You know Sir, I have two children and I haven’t seen them and my wife since 1989. My youngest daughter was in her mother’s womb, when I came to Europe via Singapore. From there I went to Moscow and after a 12 hour transit I flew to Frankfurt. That was in 1989.’
I wasted a lot of time, Sir, and I took to alcohol. Alcohol is very bad. It destroys you.’
I told him that it was good that he saw it that way.
Uschi Sonntag, a bespectacled red-headed social-worker, had given him an atlas and he scrutinised it and said, ‘I am sure it’ll be useful for my children. I can show them where I’ve been in Europe.
Giesela Lehmann, who could easily pass off as an Indio-woman due to her sun-tanned features, came up with a chocolate-box full of colourful plastic and wooden ear-rings which she’d bought at a Turkish bazaar during her holidays in Istanbul. She said to Mr. Sakya, ‘You can take some for your children and wife.’
Mr. Sakya peered at the box, and then at Giesela twice, and said nothing for a while. Then he said politely, ‘Thank you Madame, but in Nepal we have our tradition. My mother wears a necklace which is 18 carat gold and a pair of ear rings which is 22 carat gold. Our women don’t wear such wooden and plastic ornaments, Madame. I hope you will not be angry with me.’
He gazed up through his spectacles and said, ‘You see, Madame, I come from a rich family. We are all well-to-do and my brother works for His Majesty’s Government, and my father is a retired head-master of a well-known school and I have done my SLC. We are an educated family.
It almost sounded as though Mr. Sakya didn’t want any small presents, and it was strange that in his hour of need in Germany he had to rely on social handouts. Even the clothes on his back and in his cupboard were handouts. Clothes worn by some German family till they’d gone out of fashion, passed on till they’d landed in the foreigner’s camp and distributed to the refugees. Living in Germany, or for that matter anywhere in the world, away from one’s motherland was one thing, but returning home after having stayed abroad for almost a decade was quite another. When you returned home, you just had to have the right set of decent shoes and outfit, so that you looked like you’d gone abroad and had earned money and widened your horizon. Mr. Sakya who had been going around all these years in Freiburg as a figure who evoked sympathy as a hapless person, who walked in a subservient manner with his hands behind his back or with a hand that held his other elbow, was now bracing himself for a change. He regretted that he had done nothing in the past in Germany. And he was rising to the occasion.
I told him he could start living now in his hometown Patan. He’d been given a necktie for his return trip to Kathmandu by a kind woman from the German Red Cross, but he didn’t know how to tie a knot. So I put it on my neck and tied a neat knot learned from my public-school days in Darjeeling, loosened it a bit and handed it to him. All he had to do was slip his head in. He was going to Nepal as a person who had seen the world. Well Europe at least, despite the Residenzpflicht, which prevented him in his mobility, for he was obliged not to go anywhere beyond the boundary of Freiburg town. But on the other hand, Mr. Sakya had not worked, and was incapable of working due to his alcoholic escapades. He’d lost one job after the other. And to compensate it, he had drunk one bottle of wine after the other. He drank also canned-beer and threw the empty tins around in his room. When he felt miserable he would wail, ‘Oh, my Amai (Mama)’ or ‘Buba (Papa)’ with a lot of Newari words thrown in. But somehow, you just couldn’t help liking him. He sang a Newari song ‘Rajamati kumati’ at the top of his voice when he was high on alkohol. And for Germans who’d visited Nepal he sang ‘Resam piriri,’ a song that you still frequently hear along the Himalayan trails. Despite his SLC, his English was awful when the conversation was long, but he could articulate himself well with his telegraphic sentences.
He called the friendly but resolute Mrs. Ramadani ‘Mama’ because she reminded him of his mother. I’d been looking for Mr. Sakya one day and dropped in at Mrs. Ramadani’s apartment. She shook her head and confided to me, ‘The Nepali man calls me Mama. I’m only three years older than him. He’s crazy. Er ist verrückt.’
Finally the day of his departure arrived and Mr. Sakya was rather nervous but he had managed to pack his three bags, wore his striped shirt, conservative necktie and spectacles.
Here is my train-ticket,’ he said and produced a document which was only a coupon for the train-ticket.
Herr Heinz looked at his watch. Ten minutes to go. He was alarmed and told him, ‘Mr. Sakya, you have only the Gutschein in your hand. It’s not the ticket. It’s a coupon. We have to go immediately to the station and get the ticket.
Since it was an ICE (Inter City Express) he was obliged to pay 16DM as an extra charge. I helped him out and Mr. Sakya had his ticket. It was the Altona Express to Hamburg and he’d have to get off at Frankfurt. We’d made arrangements so that he would be picked up by the Bahnhofsmission at Frankfurt railway station and helped into the airport-train.
I requested a German passenger to take a photograph of us three and in a few minutes the sleek, white train pulled up, the doors slid open, a few passengers alighted and we helped Mr. Sakya to get his luggage inside. He mumbled something about sending us a card from Kathmandu before the doors closed, and the train pulled out noiselessly. Herr Heinz and I looked at each other and he said, ‘Das war es. That was it. The fellow’s made it’.
On the whole it had been a successful repatriation, and Mr. Sakya hadn’t shed any tears and was really looking forward to seeing his wife and children in Patan. If all farewells were so easy, it would be a wonderful job. I thought about eight-year old Gzim and his family, who had been picked up by the German police at 5am, and deported to Pristina in Kosovo-Albania. I could hear Gzim and his sister shocked and crying in disbelief and shame, as though they’d been criminals. They hadn’t been given a chance to say goodbye to anyone. And they had to fly to a destination which had been once their country, but was bombed, destroyed, hostile with ethnic and communal malice, no jobs and no social assistance. And more repatriations were to follow soon. Bosnian and Kosovo-Albanian muslims were denied asylum in Germany before the war in Yugoslavia.
During, and after the war, hundreds of Kosovo-Albanians were again granted asylum in Germany and other Nato countries.
What other have said about the author: Since 1974 I have been living on and off in Nepal, writing articles and publishing books about Nepa, this beautiful Himalayan country. Even before I knew Satis Shroff personally (later) I was deeply impressed by his articles, which helped me very much to deepen my knowledge about Nepal. Satis Shroff is one of the very few Nepalese writers being able to compare ecology, development and modernisation in the ‘Third’ and ‘First’ World. He is doing this with great enthusiasm, competence and intelligence, showing his great concern for the development of his own country. (Ludmilla Tüting, journalist and publisher, Berlin).
Due to his very pleasant personality and in-depth experience in both South Asian, as well as Western workstyles and living, Satis Shroff brings with him a cultural sensitivity that is refined. His writings have always reflected the positive attributes of optimism, tolerance, and a need to explain and to describe without looking down on either his subject or his reader. (Kanak Mani Dixit, Himal Southasia, Kathmandu)
Satis Shroff writes with intelligence, wit and grace. (Bruce Dobler, Senior Fulbright Professor in Creative Writing, University of Pittsburgh).
The small room was littered with food: toast bread, basmati rice, papadam, spices and worn and dirty clothes all over: On the floor was a great pool of something indefinable: probably a combination of urine, vomit and food rest. It smelt terribly because the window was closed.
Basanta, the Newar, squinted his eyes and looked at the bearded German and said, ‘Okay, I’ll do it this evening“.
You have to do it right now’.
Okay, I’ll do it this evening. I’m too tired now. I vill sleep, okay? I vant to got to Patan immediately, ja. You please make the arrangements, yes.’
I cannot make the arrangements. You must have a paper from the embassy or a birth-certificate from your uncle in Kathmandu.’
I vant to sleep, yes,’ he said irritated and turned his back to the social-worker. And that was it.
The news of Mr. Sakya’s long awaited letter from Nepal finally arrived. The burly German postman had left him a slip stating that he had an ‘Einschreiben’ and he was obliged to pick up his registered mail at the Hauptpostamt (GPO) personally. Was it the letter with his birth-certificate? Whatever it was, Mr. Sakya was excited and came to his social worker and told him that he’d be going to the general post office to collect his letter. He didn’t set off though.
He was in a talkative mood and said, ‘You know, my father was a school head-master and now he’s retired. We have a big paddy-fields in Patan. My cousin brother wants me to return to home and look after the paddy-fields and farm. You know, I have a wife and a son and daughter. When my son is 18 years old my cousin-brother, who works in Switzerland, wants to look after him so that he can study. I am the only black sheep in the family, okay? I love my wife and my children, okay. I came to Germany and the people who brought me (Schlepper), the tow-men, took away my passport, you know. So I am without passport and the German authorities are making a lot of problems for me, okay?’
After this explanation, one just had to say ‘okay’.
The social worker asked him, ‘Do you have money to pay for the passport at your embassy? How much does a passport cost?
Mr. Sakya,’ Somebody told me it costs 400DM, okay .
Mr. Heinz called the Royal Nepalese Embassy and was told that it would cost the asylum-seeker only 10 DM.
Is it an emergency-passport?’ Mr. Sakya asked.
No, it won’t be a passport. Just a document concerning your identity, I think. The truth is, I haven’t seen such a document from the Nepalese Embassy as yet.’
A day later, Mr. Sakya emerged at the office and showed the birth certificate and the social worker sent him to the Social Department, where he received a Gutschein (coupon) for the train journey to Bonn. Mr. Sakya was to leave Freiburg on the following Monday night with the intention of turning up there early in the morning, since most embassies were open only from 9 till 12 am.
On Wednesday the social workers went to Mr. Sakya’s room and knocked on his door. After a second try he was received by a drunk Mr. Sakya. He gazed at the social workers with an empty, glassy eyes and said, ‘I did not go to Bonn, okay.’ Scattered on the floor were scores of empty beer cans. Mr. Heinz, who was known for his German thoroughness and sense of what the Germans call ‘Ordnung’, counted them -- forty in all.
Is that how you spend your money? I’m finished with you. I will tell the authorities at the Social Department and the police that they should take care of you, and that you are not interested in co-operating with us.’
I will go next time, okay?’ said Mr. Sakya who was not only intoxicated but also weary of answering questions. Questions from the social worker Mr. Heinz, questions from the social-office and the police. He was getting sick of it all, so he burst out in a fit of rage and helplessness, ‘I wanttogoto Patan immediately, okay?’.
The social worker was infuriated, developed red ears and but replied in a controlled but loud voice, ‘Mr. Sakya, please don’t use the word ‘immediately’. Do you know what ‘immediately’ means? It means ‘sofort’, ‘right now’, ‘at the very moment’. You had a chance to go to Bonn to get your passport from the embassy, but instead of that you got drunk. Look at the state you’re in.’
Mr. Sakya just wanted to have the social workers out of his earshot and complied by being suddenly very nice, agreeable and quipped, ‘Okay, I’ll go tomorrow to Bonn. But you please leave me alone. I vant to sleep.’ And with that he shook his head from left to right at least half a dozen times in that typical Asiatic way.
As the social workers stepped out of his room, Herr Heinz said, ‘At least he hasn’t pissed on the floor like the last time.’
Do you think that he’s scared of going to Bonn?’
Yes, I’m sure he’s scared about the questions he might be asked. After all, as a refugee or an asylum-seeker you have to bring up arguments against the government if you want to be recognised as a political refugee abroad. Mr. Sakya had just a de facto refugee status in Germany.
One morning I opened the office-windows and peered out from the social office. Mrs. Ramadani, the nice old Kosovo-Albanian woman who had been appointed to clean Mr. Sakya’s room, and to see to it that he was tidy, leaned out and said, ‘Basanta has gone. He’s not in his room.’
Thank God, I thought. But I had second thoughts, because he could have gone anywhere but to Bonn. He could be lying on a side-street of Freiburg and be stretching out his hand and begging for alms, like he’d done in his drunken state many times. There was no way to find out. He’d promised to turn up two days later at our office..
Mr. Sakya did turn up on the said day. He had a broad grin on his face and said in his unmistakable manner, ’Immediately I wanttogoto Patan. I have the passport now.’
He produced a small passport in which was written: VALID ONLY FOR RETURN JOURNEY TO NEPAL.
It was a nice feeling for Mr. Sakya to be the proud possessor of a passport after all those years without papers. All decent people had passports. He’d been fed up of showing his temporary Duldungspapiere. Now he looked forward to going to his Heimat, and to his wife and children and his sick father.
I asked him, ’How long did it take you to get the passport in Bonn?’
Mr. Sakya replied, ‘I went to the embassy, which was at Bad Godesberg, at 8:30am and I received my passport from the Nepali officer at 4:30pm. He shook his head from left to right and then back a couple of times as he said, ‘I told them: Immediately I want-to-go-to Patan. I am a Newar and my father is seriously ill and have to give him fire as the eldest son.’ So I got the passport. But I was very hungry. I’d eaten the sandwiches I’d taken with me during the long wait. I was very hungry again. If I had left the embassy I wouldn’t have received my passport.’
Mr. Sakya we are very proud of you that you went to Bonn and came back with the passport’ I told him.
And Mr. Heinz added, ‘Now keep clean and don’t get drunk’.
Do I have to go to Caritas?’ he asked.
No, the Raphaelswerk doesn’t send the refugees home now. They only send Bosnian refugees to the USA and Canada.’
Who is then responsible for me?’
Don’t worry, we’ll send you home. We are responsible for you, but we have to clear some questions with the police and Caritas here, because we don’t have the necessary forms etcetera.’
The truth was, Raphaelswerk hadn’t informed us earlier that they wouldn’t be doing the job of repatriating refugees from the rest of the world, and we had no expertise and no forms that had to be filled up. In short, we were ill-informed and suddenly, had a new additional bureaucratic job. It would take a few weeks before the German bureaucratic maschinery got organised and working. Till then we were sure that Mr. Sakya would come up at least three times a day with: ‘Immediately I wanttogoto Patan!’
Earlier, the police would have driven the man almost crazy with threats of putting him on a plane and sending him home. Now our man from Patan wanted to go home on his own and we weren’t able to do it. What was even more important was the fact that he had braced himself and gone through a lot of red-tape and put a great deal of mileage behind him (to Bonn and back) in acquiring his Nepali passport, and I feared a relapse into alcohol abuse, if the flight-arrangement with the International Organisation of Migration didn’t finalise soon...
We got the IOM (International Organisation for Migration) and GARP (government assisted repatriation programme) forms finally, filled them up and sent them the next day, which meant that Mr. Sakya would be seeing his wife and children after an absence of eight years. We talked about raksi and how it is made in Patan.
Mr. Sakya: ‘We have raksi in our neighbourhood. You know we have a caste system in Hinduism. We belong to a high-caste, okay. I come from an educated family, okay. We have a lot of land and we are engaged in government service and agriculture. Sometimes I go to the raksiwallahs, okay. They belong to the lower caste and I take a canister with me and for ten rupees I get two bottles of raksi, okay.
He shakes his head and says, ‘Raksi is good and tasty and I never get vomiting even if I drink it on an empty stomach. But we also have jadh (rice-beer), which is expensive now.
Here in Germany whiskey and schnaps are very bad’ he says, makes a bitter face and shakes his head.
I have always problem with it and have to throw it up every time.’ I could imagine it.
Mr. Sakya had often mentioned that his cousin brother and other relatives were in Switzerland, England and elsewhere and he went on to say that he would work again as a bus-conductor from Kathmandu to Patan. He would also look after the family fields. And when in Kathmandu, he would ask his other cousin brother, who worked at the government finance secretariat, and who spoke and wrote excellent English, to write a letter to his social worker in Freiburg-Germany.
That would be nice’, said Herr Heinz. A letter from Nepal, from our old friend Mr. Sakya.
After a few days, Mr. Sakya came to the office with what looked like a small magazine. He showed it to us with a grave face and said, ‘My daughter has died. On the front page of the magazine was the photograph of a young girl.
We expressed our condolence at the sad demise of his daughter.
She was in the 10th class and next year she would have done her School Leaving Certificate examinations. She was 17 years old and very intelligent. She had my face, my nose.’
I asked him, ‘ What did she die of? Malaria or Dengue? Typhus? Or was it jaundice? ‘
Encephalitis’ he replied curtly.
He fidgeted with his magazine. Mr. Sakya was hard up again and said that he’d received a letter from his sister stating that he should immediately give them a call.
He turned to Hr. Heinz and asked him if he could use the social office telephone for a call to Kathmandu. But Herr Heinz said that he had instructions from his administrative section not to let asylum-seekers to use the office telephone. As an alternative solution he asked him to lend or give him some money for the phone call.
No, Mr. Sakya I cannot give you money.
Mr. Sakya said, ‘If I had only known that I would need money for a telephone call, I wouldn’t have gone downtown to the Asian shop to buy some dal, rice and dried fish. You know, the Asian shop doesn’t accept the coupons (Gutschein) that we get from the Social and Youth Department, because it is difficult to get money for the coupons from the bureaucrats.
As the day of his departure drew nearer, Mr. Sakya became jollier and he went shopping with money for the bags from the social-office, and returned with a big one with wheels and a metal handle. He came to the office the day we were doing a brisk business by selling the many toys, puzzles, fairy-tales books, quiz-cards, batman in miniature and scores of other similar things that kids treasure. He was given the choice of selecting a few pair of shoes for his family, which was large by German standards.
You know Sir, I have two children and I haven’t seen them and my wife since 1989. My youngest daughter was in her mother’s womb, when I came to Europe via Singapore. From there I went to Moscow and after a 12 hour transit I flew to Frankfurt. That was in 1989.’
I wasted a lot of time, Sir, and I took to alcohol. Alcohol is very bad. It destroys you.’
I told him that it was good that he saw it that way.
Uschi Sonntag, a bespectacled red-headed social-worker, had given him an atlas and he scrutinised it and said, ‘I am sure it’ll be useful for my children. I can show them where I’ve been in Europe.
Giesela Lehmann, who could easily pass off as an Indio-woman due to her sun-tanned features, came up with a chocolate-box full of colourful plastic and wooden ear-rings which she’d bought at a Turkish bazaar during her holidays in Istanbul. She said to Mr. Sakya, ‘You can take some for your children and wife.’
Mr. Sakya peered at the box, and then at Giesela twice, and said nothing for a while. Then he said politely, ‘Thank you Madame, but in Nepal we have our tradition. My mother wears a necklace which is 18 carat gold and a pair of ear rings which is 22 carat gold. Our women don’t wear such wooden and plastic ornaments, Madame. I hope you will not be angry with me.’
He gazed up through his spectacles and said, ‘You see, Madame, I come from a rich family. We are all well-to-do and my brother works for His Majesty’s Government, and my father is a retired head-master of a well-known school and I have done my SLC. We are an educated family.
It almost sounded as though Mr. Sakya didn’t want any small presents, and it was strange that in his hour of need in Germany he had to rely on social handouts. Even the clothes on his back and in his cupboard were handouts. Clothes worn by some German family till they’d gone out of fashion, passed on till they’d landed in the foreigner’s camp and distributed to the refugees. Living in Germany, or for that matter anywhere in the world, away from one’s motherland was one thing, but returning home after having stayed abroad for almost a decade was quite another. When you returned home, you just had to have the right set of decent shoes and outfit, so that you looked like you’d gone abroad and had earned money and widened your horizon. Mr. Sakya who had been going around all these years in Freiburg as a figure who evoked sympathy as a hapless person, who walked in a subservient manner with his hands behind his back or with a hand that held his other elbow, was now bracing himself for a change. He regretted that he had done nothing in the past in Germany. And he was rising to the occasion.
I told him he could start living now in his hometown Patan. He’d been given a necktie for his return trip to Kathmandu by a kind woman from the German Red Cross, but he didn’t know how to tie a knot. So I put it on my neck and tied a neat knot learned from my public-school days in Darjeeling, loosened it a bit and handed it to him. All he had to do was slip his head in. He was going to Nepal as a person who had seen the world. Well Europe at least, despite the Residenzpflicht, which prevented him in his mobility, for he was obliged not to go anywhere beyond the boundary of Freiburg town. But on the other hand, Mr. Sakya had not worked, and was incapable of working due to his alcoholic escapades. He’d lost one job after the other. And to compensate it, he had drunk one bottle of wine after the other. He drank also canned-beer and threw the empty tins around in his room. When he felt miserable he would wail, ‘Oh, my Amai (Mama)’ or ‘Buba (Papa)’ with a lot of Newari words thrown in. But somehow, you just couldn’t help liking him. He sang a Newari song ‘Rajamati kumati’ at the top of his voice when he was high on alkohol. And for Germans who’d visited Nepal he sang ‘Resam piriri,’ a song that you still frequently hear along the Himalayan trails. Despite his SLC, his English was awful when the conversation was long, but he could articulate himself well with his telegraphic sentences.
He called the friendly but resolute Mrs. Ramadani ‘Mama’ because she reminded him of his mother. I’d been looking for Mr. Sakya one day and dropped in at Mrs. Ramadani’s apartment. She shook her head and confided to me, ‘The Nepali man calls me Mama. I’m only three years older than him. He’s crazy. Er ist verrückt.’
Finally the day of his departure arrived and Mr. Sakya was rather nervous but he had managed to pack his three bags, wore his striped shirt, conservative necktie and spectacles.
Here is my train-ticket,’ he said and produced a document which was only a coupon for the train-ticket.
Herr Heinz looked at his watch. Ten minutes to go. He was alarmed and told him, ‘Mr. Sakya, you have only the Gutschein in your hand. It’s not the ticket. It’s a coupon. We have to go immediately to the station and get the ticket.
Since it was an ICE (Inter City Express) he was obliged to pay 16DM as an extra charge. I helped him out and Mr. Sakya had his ticket. It was the Altona Express to Hamburg and he’d have to get off at Frankfurt. We’d made arrangements so that he would be picked up by the Bahnhofsmission at Frankfurt railway station and helped into the airport-train.
I requested a German passenger to take a photograph of us three and in a few minutes the sleek, white train pulled up, the doors slid open, a few passengers alighted and we helped Mr. Sakya to get his luggage inside. He mumbled something about sending us a card from Kathmandu before the doors closed, and the train pulled out noiselessly. Herr Heinz and I looked at each other and he said, ‘Das war es. That was it. The fellow’s made it’.
On the whole it had been a successful repatriation, and Mr. Sakya hadn’t shed any tears and was really looking forward to seeing his wife and children in Patan. If all farewells were so easy, it would be a wonderful job. I thought about eight-year old Gzim and his family, who had been picked up by the German police at 5am, and deported to Pristina in Kosovo-Albania. I could hear Gzim and his sister shocked and crying in disbelief and shame, as though they’d been criminals. They hadn’t been given a chance to say goodbye to anyone. And they had to fly to a destination which had been once their country, but was bombed, destroyed, hostile with ethnic and communal malice, no jobs and no social assistance. And more repatriations were to follow soon. Bosnian and Kosovo-Albanian muslims were denied asylum in Germany before the war in Yugoslavia.
During, and after the war, hundreds of Kosovo-Albanians were again granted asylum in Germany and other Nato countries.
What other have said about the author: Since 1974 I have been living on and off in Nepal, writing articles and publishing books about Nepa, this beautiful Himalayan country. Even before I knew Satis Shroff personally (later) I was deeply impressed by his articles, which helped me very much to deepen my knowledge about Nepal. Satis Shroff is one of the very few Nepalese writers being able to compare ecology, development and modernisation in the ‘Third’ and ‘First’ World. He is doing this with great enthusiasm, competence and intelligence, showing his great concern for the development of his own country. (Ludmilla Tüting, journalist and publisher, Berlin).
Due to his very pleasant personality and in-depth experience in both South Asian, as well as Western workstyles and living, Satis Shroff brings with him a cultural sensitivity that is refined. His writings have always reflected the positive attributes of optimism, tolerance, and a need to explain and to describe without looking down on either his subject or his reader. (Kanak Mani Dixit, Himal Southasia, Kathmandu)
Satis Shroff writes with intelligence, wit and grace. (Bruce Dobler, Senior Fulbright Professor in Creative Writing, University of Pittsburgh).
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