Mr Khan* opened the door and we trooped upstairs to see the room. Once we were all in, he hit his head a few more times and found several ways of explaining that he wanted good, clean people and that he had been saving the room for us despite lots of interest. I couldn't read what the brothers were thinking. They asked if they could paint it, and he said yes. I asked if it had heating and checked the radiators. I asked if he had a TV license and he said he has Sky!? It wasn't worth trying to press the issue in what I am now considering might be intentionally broken English. He uses the word 'backside' out of context quite a lot. The room was bigger than I'd remembered, has a double bed and a single mattress on the floor, as well as a small sofa and a large wardrobe.
We went to see the bathroom, ok. And then the kitchen etc. All ok. Two men were at the table eating, other new tenants, he said. Seemed friendly enough. I asked if they would teach the brothers English. Everybody laughed cheerily. We asked about the fridge and washing machine etc. All ok. Even a BBQ in the back garden. Mr Khan asked if they smoke and said that if they did they could smoke outside the back door. I said that they didn't. He said that he did, a bit, so I said that I hoped he would smoke outside the back door. We laughed again.
I asked about a contract and he said he wasn't bothered with contracts. He said again how he could see they were good, clean people and that's all that mattered to him. I explained that they one is a plumber and one a plasterer and tiler, as well as being general handymen and that they would want to keep the place clean and up-together. He seemed delighted. He said he'd pay them to paint their room and that he'd pay them to paint the whole house if that went well. He said he is a builder and had so much work that he could keep them really busy, so busy that they would tell him they don't want any more work.
I consider myself a pretty good judge of people but I just couldn't decide what to make of him. He seemed really genuine but also a bit of a nutter. I said that we needed to trust him and that he seemed a good, clean man (years of being an honorary man in Albania have really paid off and I am quite good at leading these kind of negotiations) and that we wanted to go ahead and take the room. I said I would give him my address as a guarantee and that I hoped he was being honest and good and that he would look after the brothers for me. (Bloody hell, if you'd told me two days ago that I'd be referring to them as my family I'd have laughed. Or cried.) He said that of course he would. So I asked for the keys and he said he would get them cut and bring them round to my house and collect the money then. We agreed that the brothers would paint the room over the weekend and that the rent would start from Monday. He invited us to stay and have a cup of tea but I explained that we wanted to enjoy the sunshine while it lasted as the forecast from tomorrow is rain.
So we walked home with warmth on our faces and in our hearts, discussing how they seemed to have found not only a room but possible work as well. On the side and a bit dodgy all of it of course, but better than nothing and you have to start somewhere. (For anyone disapproving of this, I'm not sure what to say. Nor would I have, last week.)(And I'm keeping this anonymous so that presumably I won't get the secret police onto me, but if you disagree please say so and I'll write a post about how we dobbed him in and then they went home to Greece.)(And can I also remind you that this blog is 'semi-fictitious' anyway...) Surreal!
A couple of hours later Mr Khan rang and said he was coming round with the keys. He sat down in my living room and started to tell us about his life. How he had come to the UK with nothing, no papers, no money. How he is related to Imran Khan and that his family home in Pakistan has twenty-eight rooms and is made of marble. He has three houses, two in the city where we live and another in London. His wife, 'a black woman' and the kids live in the other house here, and he keeps a room in the house he's renting out for 'when we argue'. He said the Taliban had destroyed his country, that most of them are from Pakistan, and that his parents and two brothers and two sisters have been killed by bombs. I interrupted his flow to ask if he'd give me a receipt for the deposit and he said he'd sign whatever I wrote. We both knew it meant nothing but I went through the motions, hoping I wasn't kissing the money goodbye. We showed him the receipt for the paint the brothers had gone off with OH to buy, and he said he'd take thirty quid off the first month's rent for them to paint the room, and deduct the cost of the paint as well. They are to take the money round when they go to start painting. He said he had made a lot of effort to hoover the floor. When I eventually hustled him to the door he told me that he speaks nine languages and something that I didn't understand, 'I work three days like secret police.'
I don't know if we are being foolishly trusting or taking a calculated risk in desperate circumstances. I hope the key turns in the lock when they go round tomorrow, after the visit to the Orthodox Church that I scheduled for them.
*This may or may not be his real name. Right now I am still expecting to be pinched and to wake up.
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