Of late, difficulties of the Nepali migrant workers working overseas have become concurrent issues in Nepali literature, especially in travel narratives and a few novels. Biyogi Budathoki’s travelogue Kiringmiring Sadakma Alapatra, Uma Subedi’s novel Toda and Bhisma Upreti’s essays Tehran Diary are some of the works comprising in the list. The latest addition to the list has come from the master essayist Yuvaraj Nayaghare, and the work Aamil, a collection of reflective essays. The work deals not just with one migrant to one particular destination; it tackles the entire process of migration, the paradoxes associated with it, the risk involved, the lies and intrigues that characterise the whole process, and finally, the absurdity underlying the outcome of emigration.

The title ‘Aamil’ is itself symbolic. This Arabian word is generically used for all foreign workers, and the fact suggests one loses one’s name and identity upon landing on the Sands and accepting to lay hand on any work that is thrust upon. Nayaghare’s essays compass a wide range of spatial outreach: from South Korea to Malaysia, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain, Israel and such other counties, which are coveted destinations for Nepali migrant workers, and features workers who gradually lose their true selves and become Aamils, devoid of any identity or honour. The essays make a forage across several thematic terrains, including the hassle of getting through, the pain of getting rejected after a lot of prying and poking, the pain of being sighted inside foreign territory, and the pain that follows upon returning home after an arduous engagement.

One can read eclectic issues inside the book, including the intrigue of the brokers, games of the thugs, a wife’s faithlessness when her husband’s abroad, a husband’s forlornness when his wife’s abroad, gradualism of manpower companies, tales of adultery in the spouse’s absence, issues of addiction, and finally, the impact of an earthquake on the business of foreign employment. By doing so, Nayaghare has presented an objective picture of the entire business landscape from multiple perspectives. Other literatures on the same subject are often plagued by sheer emotionalism, exaggerating the pathos of the workers and according villainy to the rest, including the manpower companies, employers and the brokers. But then, many times, the problems come from the workers’ ends or their families. In that case, a one-sided perspective is destined to doom readers for whom books are the final sources of their knowledge about countries abroad.

In his trademark story-like prose, Nayaghare picks situations and characters that directly appeal to the readers’ emotions. As for instance, in his tone-setter essay Hatkelako Akshar placed in the beginning of the collection, he features a woman doomed to leave her suckling kids at home and cross the desert, only to take up wearing a Burka and cover her life dark for the rest of her days in spite of aversion to religious and cultural conversion.

In his attempt to deconstruct the myths associated with the spurious charm of foreign employment, Nayaghare starts using his critical spectre right from the beginning. In his pathetically hilarious essay Philmaneko Phiri Phiri, he strips bare all false claims of ‘free visa—free ticket’ jingle, many times removed from reality. The essay forces the readers to think of the several infernal gates that have been invented to extort money from an aspirant, though the government policy still plays the trumpet of free ticket and free visa. The invented gates are so many that a person with meagre income cannot even imagine getting through and making it to the Arabian Sands.

One of the best parts of the collection is its engagement with the psychology of flying abroad. Flying has, besides its economic edge, become a psychological issue; it’s a pressure among families and peers. A man who cannot take a flight is often belittled as invalid, and to prove his might, one ventures into the infernal quicksand. There are a few who are not (un)lucky enough; all they do is forge cock-and-bull stories of visas coming any time now. The story continues like Waiting for Godot, always claiming that Godot might come tomorrow. Many die before taking the first-ever boarding pass to fly abroad, albeit for the lowest job.

A huge population of promising youth languishes in some unattended corner in the Sands, rendered invalid by accidents. Many lose their limbs in conveyer belts; others are knocked down on the roads by vehicles and a few fall from scaffoldings of emerging buildings. Chronic medical conditions including kidney failure and hypertensions have become rampant. There is no reimbursement, reinstatement or amnesty there. Many return empty-handed, and back home too all they have atop their heads are debentures of credit. The state that thrives on their remittance appears too busy to take stock of their situation. They fall upon the thorns of life; they bleed. These are some other imagery the collection unfolds.

There are multiple other unthought-of problems the essay collection takes up. In South Korea, many Mongolian-faced Nepalis are on target, mistaken for North Korean infiltrators. In the Middle East, a coffin of one often carries the corpse of another, whereas in Malaysia, many Nepalis lose their lives while crossing busy streets.    

Another largely neglected facet

of foreign employment, which Nayaghare has amply taken up is that of cultural hybridisation. He picks up cases where sons return home with foreign wives, who are from cultures remarkably removed from ours and so, they hardly assimilate into Nepali families and their way of life. The result: families disintegrate or crumble, or else, the sons permanently move abroad, leaving their ailing and aging parents at home.  

Together with these merits, Nayaghare has made some apparent slippages. He has nowhere delved into the perspectives of the employers who hire dishonest workers.

The problems of over-stay, underperformance, alcoholism and absconding are genuine issues; he has overlooked them. He has also failed to see the predicaments that compel the government to ship its promising manpower abroad. His objectivity, therefore, is a little lopsided.

Paudyal teaches at the Central Department of English, TU