The Australia Stories - Short Story

Literary Review, Spring, 2001 by Todd James Pierce

The manuscript is unclear on many significant details. We merely know this, that Yasir's family immigrated from Turkey, that he lived in Sydney for ten years, that he was not married nor did he care to be. He simply enters as the large-shouldered deliveryman for Thompson's Nursery, a man who dropped in on Tuesdays, again on Fridays. My grandmother's own words tell it best:

   Twice a week, I wonder at his body, at the sheer beauty of it. He comes in
   through the side gate, wearing a nice long-sleeve shirt and pressed khaki
   pants. He has the most pleasant disposition of any man I've ever known. He
   sets my purchases by the verandah and sits with me for an hour or so,
   drinking tea and looking out over my garden. In Turkey, his family was
   employed as gardeners. `The roses are good this year,' he tells me.

      `I'm glad you think so.' I say.

      `Roses are very hard to grow here,' he explains.

      `That's what makes them so beautiful, all the hard work.'

      He considers this for a long while, sitting there with his tea saucer
   balanced in his palm. I have seen this expression many times, his mind in
   deep contemplation. I learn what I've learned before, that his wisdom is
   not like my own, that his family is from Turkey, mine from England. `That's
   the funny thing about the English,' he tells me. `They all want Australia
   to be England. Australia is not England. It is not Turkey. It is only
   Australia. It cannot be anything else.' (Manuscript, pages 21-22)

My grandmother, by this point, is broken-hearted. She will never migrate to England. Her husband has left her bed and, most nights, chooses to drink with his mates. Her children will soon leave home. It is under these conditions that this man enters, that he is offered tea, that he is scheduled to bring deliveries every Tuesday and Friday. My grandmother had planned, one can assume, to have a distant courtly relationship, with only hints of sublimated romance. What she got, however, was something else entirely.

Yasar Hasim met her on Tuesdays, on Fridays, sometimes on Mondays as well, often bringing cut flowers or a particularly nice seedling ready to bloom. They met in her backyard, at the nursery and once at the Royal Botanical Gardens, which overlooks the Harbour. "It is so strange," she wrote, "to see both the Bridge and Yasar in the same afternoon. It's a sacrilege, a sweet, undeserved blessing. I've lived too long in the confines of our `culture.' I've been a daughter, a wife, a mother. Rarely have I allowed myself such luxury, except of course for my garden. I've spent too little time thinking about myself and love. In these things I find true joy" (27).

My grandmother had not expected to find attraction so deeply knotted inside her. She had not known love could make you want a person so desperately. Each detail reveals her affection: "He has lovely large hands, thick fingered and dark" (19) and "his eyes, I must admit, are unfathomable, and though I understand our afternoons must eventually end, I cannot help but look into them. They make me feel stronger than I have ever felt before. With him, I sense there is a life inside of me, one I am slowly learning to live" (32).