Midnight and the Meaning of Love

  Even under the dim lamplight, embedded between, beside, and below her kanji handwriting, her drawings lit up, stood out, and somehow seemed to breathe life. On one page in the back of her book, I saw the kanji for my name, Mayonaka. I knew it because she had drawn it for me on a napkin at a Jamaican restaurant on our first date up in Harlem. I smiled to myself. It was a curious thing how a man born in the shadow of a bomb, with a heart hardened by history and circumstance, could bring forth such a sweet young daughter, Akemi.

  I hooked the duffel bag up and threw it back up against the wall. I lay back down and eased myself into a sleep.

  Chapter 3

  THE ELEPHANT

  The orange sun saw me first, so bright it burned through the paper-thin curtains and cast colors onto the cream-colored walls. Warm like a sauna, it woke me at 5:00 a.m. boasting that it had cheated me out of my Fajr prayer, which normally had my head pressed to the ground before dawn, especially on this first full day of the Ramadan fast. I took it as both a sign and a reminder that to win on this side of the world, I had to move faster, rise up earlier like their sun, think quicker, and adjust.

  I slid my room door open with ease. I glanced down the hall. There was no one out there. I grabbed my towel, washcloth, T-shirt, boxers, and bathroom bag, a black leather case filled with everything I needed.

  I walked all the way down to the only men’s room servicing the first floor. Inside there were five showers, and five urinals and three toilets. Instead of the urinals being on the wall and positioned at waist height, their urinals were on the floor! Seemed like the Japanese felt closer to the floor, so they designed the urinals for shorter, smaller men. I took aim.

  After showering and dressing, I returned to my room and spread out my second towel onto the floor to serve as a prayer cloth. In the Asian heat I made my prayer.

  At 6:15 a.m. in Tokyo, I continued my studies. I cracked open my book on Japanese culture. Even by selecting just a few passages or pages, I believed I might stumble on something useful. The author of Peculiar People: The Japanese Way, even before beginning his book, provided a list: “Ten Things I Am Sure You Don’t Know about the Japanese.” I liked nonfiction writers who could get to the point in a reasonable amount of time, so I decided to concentrate on the list:

  1. The Japanese believe that they are superior to all other people in the world. For two thousand years, they did not even allow any foreigners to enter Japan, and they made it illegal for Japanese citizens to leave Japan and go anywhere else in the world. It doesn’t matter who you are, European or African. It does not matter if you are also Asian as well, Korean, Chinese, Thai, Vietnamese, or even Indian. The only thing that matters to them is whether or not you are Japanese. Every non-Japanese is believed to be less or below them and is described as “foreign,” or gaijin, which in Japanese means “outside people.”

  2. The Japanese have the most complicated writing and language system in the world. They use three different forms of writing, hiragana, katakana, and kanji. Years ago there were up to ten thousand kanji that students and citizens of Japan had to learn and perfect. Today the average Japanese student must master hiragana, katakana, and three thousand additional kanji letters. Students beginning from a young age spend ten to twelve hours a day in school and afterschool and night school programs in their highly exhausting and competitive educational system. The Japanese use the fact that most foreigners consider their language impossible to master as evidence that the Japanese are superior.

  3. The Japanese are very hard on one another. They do not believe in being or doing minimum or less than the most. They believe every Japanese citizen should strive to be excellent and work for the first-place position every day and all the time. Every Japanese should be ichiban, meaning “number one.”

  4. The Japanese are obsessed with all Japanese people being the same and doing the same things. They believe that this is how harmony is maintained in a society. Therefore when you enter a Japanese business or school or government office, all the employees and students are normally dressed exactly the same way. The workers and students look down on anyone who dares to break the “harmony,” or the “sameness.” A person who dares to be different can suffer a lifetime of ridicule and isolation and loss. This practice is known as kata, or the Japanese way, and the Japanese have learned a precise uniform way of doing each and every task, including living life.

  5. The Japanese do not know how to express themselves honestly. They repress their feelings intentionally because historically, the punishment they received for self-expression or for doing anything that was not approved or prescribed by authorities was severe and often cost them and their family members their lives. Even though today the Japanese no longer live under an emperor or any type of oppressive government or authority, they still believe in speaking less, expressing less, appearing satisfied even when they are depressed and unhappy. They are suspicious of all foreigners and anyone who does the opposite, such as talk too much, grab too much attention, or burden other people with their problems.

  6. The Japanese of today can only tolerate foreigners as long as you are a tourist on a short stay. They will be pleasant and polite and accommodating to this group because they will also earn money from this group through tourism and other business ventures. However, if foreigners try to remain in Japan beyond a short stay, they will experience a great and solid social and cultural isolation, and they will eventually feel the full power of the Japanese law. Japanese immigration policy is one of the most unwelcoming, exclusionary immigration policies in the world.

  7. It is the responsibility of every Japanese to “save face.” This means that the Japanese must work overtime to look good and be good and be successful in every way down to the most minor details. They must be successful in conversation, business, education, family, and friendship. To be embarrassed is to be shamed. To be shamed is to “lose face.” To be embarrassed would be to not fit the Japanese formula, the Japanese way in all things. Each Japanese person will apply the formula to every other and pass judgment severely on anyone bringing embarrassment or shame onto their name, their family, their friends, or their business.

  If you are a foreigner and you are speaking to a Japanese, for example in English, even if the Japanese person does not speak English, he will not admit that he does not understand you. To admit this would be to say that he does not know something. Even a simple matter like this will cause him to lose face. Therefore, a Japanese may choose not to speak to a foreigner at all and ignore him instead, rather than experience embarrassment. They are more comfortable knowing that you cannot speak Japanese and that this is the real problem!

  Saving face is so important to the Japanese that a Japanese person would consider committing suicide as a reasonable option to cover up, prevent, or atone for a loss of status and loss of approval from his coworkers, peers, and neighbors. The Japanese historically have even had a procedure for how suicide should be carried out properly, so as not to disturb or burden anyone else any further with their miserable life or even their death.

  8. If a foreigner is successful in doing business with the Japanese, no matter how long the business alliance lasts, the Japanese will never accept that foreigner as “one of us.” You may take part in all business functions and business affairs, but you will never be welcomed to marry into their families, to attend their weddings, memorial services, or rituals. For a Japanese person to invite “outsiders” to such events would be considered a disruption of the “harmony” and the Japanese way. Today the Japanese are so suspicious of foreigners that they have even become suspicious of full-blooded Japanese citizens who have traveled to other countries and resided there for long periods of time. They look at them as Japanese who have compromised their Japanese-ness. Japanese persons who marry outsiders or foreigners run a high risk of losing their family, friends, and respect. They become victims of izamae, a collective and powerful disapproval that leads to a solid ignoring of this person’s existence.


  9. Despite being a small island, Japan has dominated, invaded, usurped, and degraded all its larger neighbors, including the overpopulated and massive mother of Asia, China. The Japanese had never lost a war until World War II, when they were conquered by the Americans. Even after being conquered, bombed, and occupied, the Japanese worked so hard and so harmoniously with such precision and perfection that they rebuilt their country and brought their economy back to life and dominance in a short period of time. They are the third-largest economy in the world today, and Tokyo is the third-most-expensive city for people to live in, in the entire world.

  10. The Japanese do not believe in God. (Their roots are in Confucianism, Buddhism, and Shintoism.) Today there is no Japanese religion, despite the effort of many groups and organizations, including Christian missionaries, to influence their nation. The Japanese believe in themselves, their relatives and ancestors. They believe in “harmony,” perfect manners at all costs and even during a crisis. They believe in discipline and controlled organization, peace and law and order. They believe in money and hard work, but even when presented with the opportunity for great profit, they will not sacrifice or exchange “the Japanese way of life.” They believe that the Japanese method or process is the smartest and only method. If they lose business with outsiders who are unwilling to do it their way, they believe that they are smart enough to earn the business that was lost by some other means, while maintaining their superiority and exclusivity.

  The list was mind-blowing to me. At first it made me suspicious about the author, and the author’s intentions. Next I felt forced to reread the list and separate each numbered item and pause and think about it and compare it to my few experiences with Akemi’s Japanese family in America. Then I had to circle the words that I didn’t understand on the list and look them up.

  On my second read, I picked out the things on the list that were similar to what I know about my own people, the Sudanese. There were a few cultural similarities, but there were definitely more differences. I had never thought of Akemi as an atheist. For a Muslim man to marry an atheist is harom (forbidden). She never felt like a nonbeliever to me. A woman with no God or faith or belief would feel cold and empty, I guessed. She would have no standards or boundaries, I figured.

  On further thought, it was impossible for me to look at my wife in relation to this list. It was also not possible for me to lump her in some big category, like “the Japanese.” I could only look at my wife based on what I learned of her by watching and observing and interacting and feeling. I didn’t know if this list was all true. But I knew that the list felt cold and empty. My wife felt warm and full of life and love and pure sweetness and talent, like my Umma.

  In my and Akemi’s marriage contract, I had gifted her a beautiful blue-bound and hardcover Holy Quran translated from Arabic to her Japanese language. I had it here in my duffel. I never got the chance to present it to her properly, which I’d intended to do right after her big art show at MOMA. I looked forward to her reading it slowly and learning it, side by side with me as a help to her. I wanted her to embrace it because her soul had embraced Islam knowingly and not just because I told her to.

  Another thought occurred to me. The list did match my idea of Naoko Nakamura, my wife’s father. At least it matched the profile that was slowly forming in my mind. I became certain that this was the reason Sensei gave these two books to me. As I reflected, Sensei had said that my wife was under tremendous pressure here in Japan. This list certainly helped me to understand why, and what kind of isolation she might still be facing. It also created a deep curiosity in me. If these listed items had any truth, why would a girl like Akemi, raised in this way, leap over the carefully drawn bold boundaries of her culture and into my arms, heart, and life?

  * * *

  At 8:25 a.m. I was lying on my back on my bed with the book opened and pressed on my face, thinking. When I pulled the book off, I checked the time and jumped up to make the morning call to Iwa Ikeda, like I had promised to do.

  The hostel pay phone was on the first floor like me, but on the opposite side of the building in the corner. I walked down and over and made the call, hoping.

  Iwa’s phone rang three times before her voice mail kicked in. Immediately, I hung up. I took a deep breath. I sat there for a moment. Six minutes later, I picked the phone up once more, prepared to leave another message. After all, this was the only telephone number for my wife that I had.

  “Ikeda-san, ohayo gozaimasu. Boku-wa Mayonaka deska. I am calling to speak to Akemi. I was hoping to arrange a conversation with her. She left your number as her friend, and the person to contact. Thank you for your help. I’ll call back later today. If I don’t reach you, I’ll keep trying. Hopefully we won’t be disconnected at that time.”

  After I hung up, I just sat there. I was debating in my mind whether I should have left Iwa Ikeda my telephone number here at Shinjuku Uchi. I already knew that even if I were not in at the time that she might return my call, the front desk receptionist would take messages for me and place them in the tiny mailboxes up front reserved for paying guests. But maybe calling back to leave a number would backfire on me. I had already begun to distrust Iwa’s motives.

  I got up and walked back down the hall and over toward my room, regulating my anger. Anger was not the correct posture for Muslims fasting during the Ramadan holy holiday.

  When I slid my room door open, Chiasa was sitting on my bed with her shoes off and feet propped up. Her unpolished clean, clear toes were unblemished. She pressed them into my sheet. Situated below her feet on the floor were Akemi’s high heels. I saw that she had removed them from my desk where I kept them last night.

  “Nice shoes,” she said half smiling, noticing my eyes frozen on the floor.

  “What are you doing in my room?” I asked her before getting tight.

  “You called me,” she said casually, without even a grin.

  “No,” I said, treating her statement as a question even though it wasn’t.

  “You did.” She smiled and sat up straight. Now her feet were dangling above Akemi’s shoes. I could see Akemi’s diary lying beside her on my bed. She had also removed that from my desk.

  “Hand me that,” I told her, referring to Akemi’s diary. She handed it over.

  “I received a telepathic communication from you,” she said, with a straight no-nonsense look.

  I didn’t respond, just looked at her hard. My face must have triggered something. Suddenly she seemed insulted by it.

  “Honestly, if you say that you didn’t say my name once in your mind since you said good-bye to me at the airport—if you didn’t think about me at all or see me in your dreams—I’ll leave you right now and you’ll never see me again.” Her soft voice had no humor mixed in it. She spoke sweetly but with confidence. She was challenging me now and revealing that she had a slight mean streak running through her.

  “Did you?” she followed up, her gray eyes searching mine. “Did you think about Chiasa?” Her long lashes affected me.

  “I did, but—” I was gonna let her know it was not how she seemed to be thinking about it. But she interrupted me.

  “You see, you did. I knew it,” she said, turning as though she was talking to someone standing beside her. Then she threw her hands up in a gesture that normally meant “touchdown,” and fell backward, back onto my bed.

  “I received your message right here,” she said, with one index finger pointed at her head. “So I came.”

  “Chiasa,” I said, “I’m only out here for a few days and I have a lot to take care of before I leave. I don’t have the extra time to play games.”

  “This is business. Let me cut your time in half. Let me help you,” she pleaded with one hand on her hip. “I speak the language, you don’t. I know the train system, you don’t. I can connect you with anything that you need in Tokyo. And if you turn down my business offer, I’ll go tell my boss that I am back home from the States and start delivering pizzas. Honestly
speaking, I’d rather work for you. Japan is a no-tip country.” Her tone softened.

  “What?” I asked.

  “In Japan no one expects a tip for anything they do. If you take a taxi, or if a bellman carries your luggage, or if you receive a food delivery, no matter how hard a worker works, or how good a job someone does, we don’t require or accept one penny over the actual price. So whether I deliver two pizzas or twenty-two pizzas, it’s all the same. If I work for you, there’s no hourly rate. I name the price and you pay it. I’ll do whatever it takes to get the job you want done, completed.”

  She was wearing a Le Coq Sportif peach-colored sweat suit and orange Converses with orange laces. Her sweat jacket was off and lying across my bed. The honey-colored skin of her shoulders and arms glistened. She was wearing a thin, tight tee, yet her full breasts were not exposed, nor was her belly button, but her curves were killer. She shifted from lying down to lying sideways, her head was now resting in the palm of her left hand. She seemed eager for an answer, but at the same time, she was perched lightly like a bird that could take flight in a quarter of a second and disappear into the endless sky.

  No woman besides Umma or my wife had ever sat on my bed. Yet I had just met this girl yesterday and not even twenty-four hours ago, and she looked very comfortable. She was very helpful and unique and pretty, but I was here in Japan for only one reason and that reason definitely wasn’t gonna change. I took a deep breath and thought to myself, Here I go again … If I could remove whatever type of magnet I had in my body that drew these women to me and kept them coming continuously, I would be faced with less of a challenge. I would be able to focus.