A comrade is like-minded, trained in a similar skill, going for the same goal, loyal to the same rules. She is an asset to the mission.
A woman whom a man loves is most likely untrained. She is moving with her heart as her leader. She is liable to step directly into a minefield—or even to help the opposition by coincidence or by mistake.
A woman who is a man’s friend is loyal but not only to one person and not necessarily because she is trained to be loyal or even working toward the same goal. A friend’s multiple loyalties could end up sinking the mission and getting everyone including herself hurt or captured or killed.
On the other hand, a comrade places the mission in the first position. She places the mission before her heart and before her personal needs and wants. She is more loyal to the mission than to any one person or thing. She will even cut her own throat before placing her comrade at risk—or before making foolish mistakes consciously or subconsciously. A comrade would never destroy the team’s chances of achieving the mission goal.
I understood now that a woman who is a friend, like Josna, or a woman who is a man’s true love, like my wife Akemi, is untrained and unskilled in this way and without understanding. Neither a friend nor a love could ever be considered my comrade. Yet a female who is well trained and sharply skilled, who is loyal and thorough could be considered all three: my comrade, my friend, and my love.
* * *
Akemi sat with her luggage while wearing my sunglasses as I walked over to the information counter at the station on the pier in Osaka, where the ships docked. The station was stuffed and buzzing with passengers. Like everyplace I had gone in Japan, it was extremely clean, well lit, and tightly organized. It was a full-scale operation, not a matter of pressing some notes into the palm of a captain of a tiny or midsized boat or yacht even. There were customs forms to be completed and embarkment papers. As I glanced the length of the station, I could see the entrance to the security checkpoint that all passengers had to pass through to board the ships. A random boarding call announcement made first in Japanese, then in Korean, Chinese, and then in English caught my attention late. Hurrying, I picked up the customer checklist printed in four different languages. Number 6 on the checklist read, “Ticket buyers under the age of 20 must have their tickets purchased by an adult, parent, or guardian. Guardian/adult must present his or her passport or a valid form of identification.” I paused in disbelief and then read it over again. My jaw tightened and my thoughts raced through my options. Me, Akemi, Chiasa—we’re all teenagers. Even Josna, still in Hokkaido, was only eighteen.
Akemi was watching me through the crowds of people rushing through. She seemed to sense that there was some holdup. I picked up a checklist card for her printed in Japanese. I approached the ticket counter to double-check. I already knew that the Japanese were tight with their rules and laws, but for me traveling from America and throughout Japan, I had zero problems purchasing absolutely anything that I could afford: plane tickets, train tickets, hostel and hotel rooms. The Americans and the Japanese made moves once money changed hands, no matter whose hands it came from.
“One ticket to Busan, South Korea,” I said to the attendant on the English-only line.
“Passport please,” she said immediately. As I presented it and she slid her hand beneath the curved glass to accept it, she asked, “First class, private room, double, single, or group economy?” Before I even answered, she said, “Oh, sorry, you’ll need someone twenty or over to purchase your ticket, sir.”
I reached in and pulled back my passport. “What time does the ship leave?” I asked.
“It leaves from here at two forty-five p.m.,” she answered.
“And what time does the next one leave?” I asked.
“There’s one Busan, Korea, trip a day at two forty-five in the afternoon every day. Can I help you with anything else?” she asked, seeming anxious to serve the next person on line.
“Yes, do you have a price list for the tickets?” I asked her.
“It’s on the other side of the information card in your hand,” she said with a polite half smile.
“Thank you, but uh, why can’t I buy a ticket for myself?” I pushed. “I’m a traveling foreign student. My parents are not here traveling with me.”
“Pan Star Line is a Korean-owned shipping line. I’d love to sell you a ticket, but these are the rules handed down from the Korean side.” She pressed her lips together tightly. “Some students bring a signed and notarized letter of permission from their parents. That can work. We can accept that,” she said, offering what was a useless alternative for me and especially for Akemi. “Good luck, sir. Next,” she called out.
I stepped to the side, thinking, Stupid rule! I couldn’t purchase the ticket myself, but they would allow me to travel on my own if a parent or guardian or adult purchased it for me. Also, I now knew that either the Japanese or the Koreans considered the legal age for adulthood to be twenty, not eighteen like the Americans. I checked my watch. The only ship of the day cruising to Busan, Korea, was leaving shortly. Or we could taxi back to Osaka International Airport and book a flight leaving today without a problem. I wanted to close my eyes and think deeply for a minute. I needed to confer with myself, or my father, or with the supreme option, Allah. But I couldn’t, so I relied on my own instincts. My gut told me the sea route was the right choice. The airline looked and sounded like the easier and faster option, but shit that’s too easy, too open, too available is sometimes the deadliest. Taking one more full glance at the busy station, I saw tens and hundreds of Japanese, many Koreans and Chinese, some Scandinavians and other Europeans, and zero Africans or obviously Muslim persons. I knew that I could approach some adult to buy the tickets on my behalf. Yet I didn’t trust asking anyone Japanese. I had no way to gauge how they would react, or which one of them would grow suspicious of the Nakamura name on my wife’s passport—or worse, be familiar with her because they saw her picture in the newspaper for her many art achievements.
As it goes in Japan, there were no bums or beggars to whom I could slide a 10,000 yen note in exchange for purchasing our tickets. Matter of fact, everyone was so neatly dressed, quiet, and professional in appearance that I could not detect a single needy person of low status who might cooperate.
I handed the information card to Akemi. She read it following behind me as I pushed her luggage out of the station and into the trunk of a cab. I needed to think it through first. I didn’t want to highlight my wife or myself. I had almost twenty-four hours left to solve this ticket-buying problem and to board tomorrow’s ship, and I refused to lose. As for now, I would hide my diamond Akemi in a place where I believed Nakamura would not look or would never be able to locate in time.
In the back seat of the cab her eyes questioned me. The driver’s eyes were beaming in reverse through his rearview mirror.
“Hotel?” she asked in English.
“Hai!” I agreed while pulling out my English-to-Japanese word and phrase dictionary. “A very small and quiet hotel around here by the sea,” I wanted to say.
“small”–chisai
“quiet hotel”–s hizukana hoteru
“here,”–koko
“sea,”–kaiyou
I said.
Akemi laughed and said, “Hai!” She began speaking in Japanese to the driver. They spoke for so long, I got vexed, not knowing what he was asking my wife or saying to her. Looking through the windows and onto the streets instead, I checked out the businesses as the taxi weaved in and out of a series of side streets.
It didn’t take me long to figure out that Akemi was directing the driver as she searched each block for a suitable place for us to be discreet. “Akemi does not speak English but she is not stupid,” Josna had told me firmly in Hokkaido. “In fact she’s quite a genius.” Josna added.
The area was a tourist haven of all types of eateries and cafés and shops and, of course, bookstores. Everything was labeled in kanji without translation. They had whateve
r a foreigner could afford, but it was written in the Japanese language so that you would never forget where you are and who’s running it. Certain establishments made their presence known by flying their national flags. How else would I have been able to locate the Islamic presence, unless I saw the majestic flag of Saudi Arabia, a rich emerald green cloth with the curve and precision of the black-inked Arabic letters and the sword accentuating it? I made a note of the block I was on. I couldn’t read the kanji street signs, but I would use the all-karaoke building on the left and the Toyota dealer on my right as my landmarks.
“Tomare!” Akemi said softly but with enthusiasm. The driver pressed the brakes. Both the door and the trunk opened automatically.
It was impossible not to be shocked at the weird side street spot my sweet wife selected. When I hauled in her last piece of luggage, no attendant had appeared to assist us. The lobby was vacant aside from some velvet throwback couches and a long wooden table. I looked for the bell. There was none. Akemi began walking around. When she reached the opposite side of the room, she waved me over. “Mayonaka isoide!” she said.
I joined her in front of a set of vending machines. We looked in. Behind the glass were the room keys. They were each attached to a number and a knob and there was also a set of buttons and a slot to feed the machine cash bills and coins. Akemi pressed a kanji-labeled button and the keys spun from our view. Now there were postcard-sized photos of what I believe were their hotel rooms. Each room had its own strangeness and its own theme. I couldn’t read the kanji explanations and options. Akemi stood at my side reading them and reacting and pointing. One room was filled with stuffed animals that looked like aliens, one room had everything Mickey Mouse, one room was Japanese traditional with no bed but a thin mat and a hard-looking pillow. There were twenty-four rooms pictured in total. Ten of them were marked sold or in use. Akemi faced me and said in English, “Mayonaka choose.” I smiled naturally. I knew I had taught her the English word choose, and I knew the Japanese translation, erabete.
“Akemi choose,” I joked.
“Okay! Akemi choose,” she said playfully. Then she pressed a rectangular glass button beneath the picture of a room with sheer black linen curtains, an American-style mattress with black sheets, a black desk, a black chair, and a bamboo floor. The pictures disappeared and the keys to the room Akemi had selected appeared lit up by a thin, rectangular, neon-green light.
“Five thousand yen,” Akemi announced. I pulled out my money stack. At the same time she went into her pocketbook and pulled out her Epi leather wallet.
“Put it back,” I told her. I was sure she understood my tone if not my words, though instead of putting her wallet back, she pulled out 30,000 yen, which when converted to American dollars was less than $300. She flicked it between her fingers as though to show me, “That’s all the money I got.” Then she pushed it back into the space in her wallet and pulled out her bank card. She bent it in half to let me know she couldn’t use it anymore.
“Don’t worry about it,” I said calmly as I searched my mind for the right words in her language. She pulled out her student ID and flashed it just to show me. Then she took out her Pratt College student ID from New York, where she had taken the art courses as her prize for winning an art competition. She held her face close to the Pace ID card and tried to duplicate her smile in the photo when she was a bit younger and not in so much trouble, before she had married me.
I fed the machine five 1,000 yen notes. The room keys dropped down, and a ticket was spit out with the room number and time printed on it. Impressed, I grabbed the ticket and the keys.
The next vending machine was selling everything a customer might need at a hotel, including condoms. On a business level I was hooked on the whole vending machine concept but I didn’t buy none of it. At a big-time overseas hotel like the Hilton or Hyatt everything this place was selling separately in its vending machine would’ve been provided for free. But I was glad we were here in this low-key weird place whose name I did not know. There was no registration card or anyone to check our passports or anything Nakamura could trace. I figured there was actually someone from this little hotel watching the two of us from somewhere. The Japanese were notorious for secrets, hideouts, trapdoors, and sneak attacks and the art of invisibility. But to whoever was watching, my wife and me, we were simply customers who had already fed the machine and paid the required fee. So they wouldn’t have any reason to interfere.
The craftsmanship on our second-floor door was outstanding. Made from heavy metal, each hotel room had a meter on it with a digital clock. Ours was counting down from five hours from the moment I inserted the key.
Once we were inside, the heavy door slammed closed so securely I was certain it was fool proof. There was a much smaller meter on the other side of the door as well. The Japanese had thought of it all and planned it out perfectly. I said to myself, Be careful, Mayonaka. Their culture has prepared them well for the “thought battles” of life.
We removed our shoes. I carried in her luggage. Akemi crawled over the mattress and curled up in the corner, her black hair spreading across the black sheets, her petite green leather jacket creeping up and revealing her belly button. Her borrowed Adidas sweats a bit too big, I could see the divide that led to her private places. I removed my backpack and stood it in a corner of the room. From my knapsack I pulled out the urn that contained Akemi’s mother’s ashes. I placed it on the desk as she watched me intently.
In the bathroom, I washed my hands and face, removing the soil from the flight and travel. When I stepped back into the room, Akemi was looking through her clothes that were professionally packed and wrapped—some tied with ribbons and others with thick string like each item was brand-new.
“I’ll be right back,” I told her before the heavy door clicked locked.
When I returned from a nearby convenience store, I placed eight bottles of spring water, one lemon, one cup of fresh-sqeezed orange juice, and two onigiri rice triangles on the desk. I left a new bar of soap, two toothbrushes, and toothpaste. From my backpack I pulled out Akemi’s body oil and a small shampoo. I sat everything beside the rice cooker and the tea set.
I picked up her passport and said, “Akemi, I’m going back out. Dinner at seven, Akemi and Mayonaka.” She opened the bathroom door slightly, one pretty eye watching me through the slight opening. “Hai,” she said softly. I eased out, looking quickly past her little lavender lace panties and bra laid out on the bed.
* * *
There were three hours remaining on this day of my Ramadan fast. I remembered in the Sudan my father and the men on our estate staying in the mosque throughout the entire Ramadan days, separated from their wives and children. I could feel now why men must separate themselves from their women at times to guard their faith and serve their Maker. Women are so quietly powerful that their presence can separate a man from his beliefs before he even realizes he has done harom, the forbidden.
The clock was winding down on our strange hotel room and on my chances of securing an adult broker to buy our Pan Star Line tickets. My mind had been shifting ideas back and forth. I was certain of one thing: there had to be someone out here in this international hub for boats, barges, cargo, and ships who was willing to earn ten or twenty or thirty thousand yen just for showing his identification and purchasing two one-way tickets to Busan.
Outside the spot where the Saudi Arabian flag flew high, I sensed that my idea was a long shot. Up close, I could now see clearly that it was a carpet store called Jeddah Carpets. This was not just any collection of carpets. They were from Saudi Arabia, which ranks among the top three carpet makers in the world. I’m sure business was bringing them bundles. My offer of what amounted to about two or three hundred dollars for the ticket-buying errand would be considered minimal or nothing at all. Determined not to defeat my plan with doubt, I went inside the place anyway.
“Asalaam alaikum, Ramadan Kareem.” I greeted the elderly Arab man in Arabic and reminded h
im of our mutual sacred holiday at the same time.
“Alaikum salaam, Allah hafiz. How can we accommodate you?” he asked. “Our samples have been displayed for your comfort,” he added before taking a breath.
“I’m not here to order your fine carpets. I saw your flag and thought you might have information about the closest masjid in this area.”
“Alhamdulillah! You are trying to locate a mosque in Osaka?” The man said and then smiled doubtfully. “It is easier to find a fish in the desert.” He laughed two short grunts. “But the mosque is in the heart, is it not?” he asked me. Suddenly, a younger Saudi man, about forty years old or so, came bursting through the back curtain.
“What is it?” he asked. “We are not hiring.”
“I’m not looking for work,” I stated. “I have a business of my own.”
“Well, then you are here for buying carpet?” He smiled and opened his hands, a gesture to welcome a potential customer.
“He is looking for a mosque,” the elder man said.
“What for?” the younger one asked.
“For today’s Maghrib prayer,” I responded, tolerating him.
“We are not fasting. My father has diabetes and I am traveling,” the younger one said.
“I’m also traveling.” I showed him his excuse, as we were both foreigners living comfortably, it seemed, and definitely not traveling through a hot desert on a camel’s back like men were in the old days of Muhammad, peace be upon him.
“So are you better than us?” he asked with his face reddening and tightening some.
“Salaam,” I said and turned to leave. It was a brief exchange, but I was clear from the vibe that I wasn’t gonna get anything moving from either of these two.