Raquel Welch by Lady Eshi

Raquel Welch

It is a sunny day in March 2000, in Zagreb Croatia and I am 19 years old. I am dressed in a gray business suit, stiletto’s and my hair is short and blond. I have put on my bright red lipstick.

The purse I am carrying is cutting into my shoulder as I am stepping off of the city transit bus, heavy from the documentation I need for my affair.  I find myself several blocks away from the United States Embassy. I am rushing for the meeting with the male ambassador who will decide, based on this interview, whether I get to go to college to United States on an F1 student visa or whether I remain at home lost and resigned to my abusive family circumstances. I have a plan of what to say. This is what I have in mind: “Sir, I want to learn. I want to better myself and to return here as soon as possible so I can help my dear family in this post-war economy. I want to use my acquired knowledge to bring 'good' back home and I hope to learn to speak English much better.”

It could not be further from the truth. I keep telling myself that I cannot say the real truth to the ambassador because he will know I am a determined runner who is likely to do her best to stay there and to be yet another dreaded immigrant with all the risks of falling on the support system of his homeland. I put my chin up, breathe in deeply and I swallow.

As I am stepping towards the door of the embassy two uniformed guards with automatic weapons halt me and ask for papers to prove my business in there. It’s standard procedure.

I provide it, smile, and they let me through. The waiting room of the embassy is in dim light, the blinds are drawn to keep the heat out and I take a seat next to a woman who did not bother to put on a bra . The place is literally packed with the visual scum of Croatian society looking to get out of there and seek asylum in USA, most likely having only one thing in mind: getting rich when they get there and sending the cash to their families. I stand out. I focus my attention on the American teller lady who is calling numbers and passing clipboards to the first-time appointment seekers. She looks thin and her hair is unbelievably healthy. She looks like a decent woman, and isn’t wearing any makeup.  Her shirt is buttoned to her neck. Graceful as she is, she picks just the right papers for each person -- with a ballet-like hand motion. My dad would approve of her. She looks virginal.

I look at her and I envy her because I remember dad’s reaction to when he saw me wearing red lipstick for the first time: “Who do you think you are? Raquel Welch!?” I tighten my lips, turn my feet slightly inwards, take a firmer grasp of my bag and feel my shoulders rise up a little.

“Sir, I want to learn. I want to better myself and to return here as soon as possible so I can help my dear family in this post-war economy. I want to use my acquired knowledge to bring 'good' back home and I hope to learn to speak English much better.”  - I repeat it in my head. It doesn't help and I am starting to feel my self confidence fall apart. I am only 19. I know I am only 19. I have very little to back up my confidence and my appearance. It’s a facade. I start hearing dad’s words again: “Your place is to read Hansel and Gretel because that’s your level of intelligence, and your destiny is to become nobody, just like your mother!” Then I remember his warning that he made a wager with my brother just the other day after I submitted my application to the embassy: 50 bucks that if I get to go to USA I will come back home crying to mommy within four months. What am I doing here? I am a loser. I crumble further.

As I am on a verge of crying, my thought shifts to Aymad and I drift away into my love story that began through hand-written letters six months ago.  Aymad is a guy from Pakistan whom I’ve met through a friend who is already in college classes with him in the USA. He is a romantic and a great jokester. He tells the best stories from his exotic childhood in Pakistan.  He doesn't have to; he chooses to. He never compares me to anyone and he never asks what I look like. He just keeps writing to me that he has heard a lot about me and that he cannot wait to meet me in person.  He praises women, his sisters and his mother, and talks about giving his life for theirs if need be. I  relax with my thoughts of possibly having a chance to meet Aymad in a few months.  Knowing such a nice man for a change makes me feel safe.

I am then yanked out of the musings in my head by a male voice calling a name through the speakers . Irena Man-dick. My last name is Mandich and he misreads it the American way: Man Dick. The scum in the waiting room look at me as I get up to do my walk of shame towards the ambassador's office and I am escorted hearing ridicule and laughter at how my name is pronounced in English.

I knock at the door twice and attempt to come in. It’s locked. From within I hear a voice: “... to the window!” I see the ambassador standing at a glass pane with a hole cut into it next to the door. It makes sense. I am not important. I don’t get to come in. He takes one look at me and I feel myself sweating through my suit. He looks down at my case papers and asks me: “What is your business in the United States of America?”

“Sir, I want to learn, I want to better myself and return to Croatia as soon as possible so I can help my dear family in this post-war economy. I want to use my acquired knowledge to bring 'good' back home and I hope to learn to speak English much better.”

“You speak English just fine”, he responds. “Go back and take a seat. Have a nice day.”

I return to the crowd in the waiting room and a few of them giggle. I sit in the corner and stare at the same teller lady again. I am stupid. I am dumb. I probably appeared to this ambassador as a mail-order bride wearing this whoreish lipstick. Who the fuck do I think I am?  Raquel Welch?

"Irena?," I hear the teller lady say through the glass.  I walk up and she hands me my passport opened to the visas page. “Congratulations sweetie.  Welcome to the United States!”

The first thing I do is write a letter in the park near by the Embassy to Aymad . My hand is shaking as I pencil my most beautiful handwriting, that which I use when I write letters to him. “See you in a few months!!!” I finish. I seal it with a kiss and I drop it off at the post office right away.

Until my departure it is all a mindless wait, spent tolerating the cries of my mother who has no other option but to let me go. Several more letters from Aymad arrive and I am even more confident that he is to be my best friend and protector who will never hurt me as my brother and my dad do. He is an honorable young man.  He cares enough to write nice things to me for months.  He encourages me and he tells me the great things about myself that he has learned from the letters I have sent to him.

It is August 17th and my flight is scheduled for August 22nd.  I will be in Houston on the 23rd, and from there I will fly to Lake Charles where the university is. I am opening another letter from Aymad, titled “Have a safe trip, princess!” As I am reading it, I am building up with joy.  Nothing is to stop my life from finally unfolding the way I always dreamed of -- and what better than to have a friend with whom to celebrate? And then I come to the second part of the letter. “I am so sorry to also tell you that as I am writing this I am on my way to Houston because my brother tragically died in a motorcycle accident three days ago and by the time you get this I will already be in Pakistan to be with my mother as she grieves the loss of her eldest son: Fawad. Dear Irena, I am not sure if I will come back to the USA and when, please promise me you will do well in school, you are a smart cookie!” He also included a picture of his brother. I am not sure why.

My heart breaks for him and I decide to do well in school. I decide to keep writing letters for as long as it takes.

I am in college now. There is a computer lab. So far everyone likes me -- even though I am not Raquel Welch and my reading level is that at Hansel and Gretel.

Last night when I am at Aymad’s classmate’s house, she shows me a video of a birthday party.  In the video, the camera zooms on a guy who is looking down at a notebook….someone calls his name and I hear “Aymad!” he looks up at the camera, at me, and this is the first time I see him. He is beautiful. he looks like a prince with shiny healthy longish hair and his smile is as big and healthy as a string of whitest pearls...and his eyes….his eyes are like two lumps of charcoal and behind them is the universe itself.

I am about to write an email to Aymad .  I say to him I have tender feelings for him and that I don’t expect that he has them for me at all -- because I am not Raquel Welch and because I am kind of stupid. Aymad responds immediately.  He must have been by his computer.  He says he will be back to the USA in four months time. I nearly fall out of my chair.

The longest four months in my life. Our  correspondence entirely shifts to sessions of daydreaming of how we will meet, what we will do and what the air around us will feel like. Aymad says to me:  “It will be an oddly fresh Louisiana Sunday night. Full moon. The wolves outside will be howling and the wind will carry the smell of roses and wild flowers all over the place. You will wait for me in a lovely garden on top of a big rock, with your hair flowing in the wind and I will come from the shadows of the old oak trees and call your name.”

It is unanimously and with a lot of laughter decided that it will be just like that.

It’s the evening  Aymad is coming back. I shower, wash my hair and put on a pretty dress. The evening is stuffy. There is no fresh breeze but there is a full moon and the smell of flowers. There is no park nearby with a big rock, but my room is a great sanctuary for two destined souls to meet. I wait and I get a phone call. His flight is delayed. I am not sad because I know he will get here.  What’s a few more hours? I am not Raquel Welch. I wipe my lipstick off and I feel insecure in my dress. I change into a pair of pants and a light sweater. I am stupid, I am dumb. I take a glance over the photographs above my bed with pictures that dad sent to me: pictures of my plane departing from the airport in Zagreb. Down the runway, off the ground, up in the air. I am not there anymore and Aymad is to be here soon. I fall asleep on my stomach.  I am completely burned out from anticipation.

It is 2 AM when the door of my room creaks open and I hear his beautiful voice for the first time: “Irena?” I wake and jump up.  He looks at me and he smiles and he gives me the longest, warmest hug I'd ever received until then.  "You are beautiful," he says. And I am sort of glad for a moment that I am not Raquel Welch.

The next day he makes love to me and then -- without any warning or explanation never speaks to me again.