Mohammad in America
    Gabriel Orgrease
Mohammad came to New York City from Pakistan via Montreal over twenty years ago. For the first ten years of his life in America he was an illegal alien and was not able to return home. When he first arrived he spoke no English, only Urdu.

Mohammad is a devout Muslim, very honest about money, but has a weakness for women. Early on he was living within the Borough of Queens with a fellow expatriate who had been in the States longer and who spoke English. Mohammed kept pestering the fellow about wanting to go out and find a woman. His friend took him over to a transvestite bar on the west side of Manhattan and left him off there. I've heard it is easier to learn a language when reclining. Mohammed learned English fairly quickly.

Mohammad owns a construction company that fixes up the outsides of masonry buildings. He, and all of the Pakistani nationals working in construction in New York, have subsisted below the radar of the Unions and the regulating government and in many cases in a black market fueled by the desire of the lower dregs of the real estate industry to get cheap labor. Mohammad can supply 100 men to a worksite and they will all work fourteen hours and be paid in cash. What exactly they will do at the worksite is another question, one that Mohammad does not answer because he drops them off at the site and then he goes off looking for women. Sometimes the workmen cut their fingers off with diamond bladed grinders used to cut out mortar joints. They get whisked off and nobody sees them again.

Pakkys, as they are called by the established whites, are a very proud people. They do not always understand that mixing mortar with leaves and sticks in it swept up from the sidewalk is not so good a thing to do. Yet, if you give them an opportunity and a challenge they will move mountains. They may look odd to the middle class residents of Manhattan when they are sitting over in a corner of a roof in a small huddle of chattering noises eating smelly rice and goat at noon, but they work hard to do the jobs that nobody else wants. They are very good at smiling. As with most immigrants they send major portions of their earnings home. In Pakistan they would be earning two cents per month.

In America they make less than minimum wage and yet they are the wealthy members of their extended families.

By the time Reagan came along with alien amnesty Mohammad had built himself up to be a millionaire. He owns several large buildings in Brooklyn. He is not clear why the Internal Revenue Service wants to talk to him; he has never declared an income. He cashes all of his receivables at a place in New Jersey. He owns a house in his village in Pakistan that is made all with marble. He owns orange groves. For a while he owned a polyester thread factory . . . but his brothers cheated him. When Mohammad goes back home to visit his mother three black Mercedes come from his village and he is escorted by machine gun toting body guards for the duration of his visit. Mohammed supports his mother and his sisters and his brothers and is a major contributor to the economy of his village. It is not unusual in Pakistan for such wealthy sons to be kidnapped and held for ransom. Mohammad is now an American citizen.

Mohammad for several years had a very beautiful and good natured mistress, a sweet dark girl from Guiana who was very smart in business. Patsy was a woman that could melt an iron bar with her tenderness. Mohammad was promised to another, a Pakistani woman selected by his parents. Mohammad was told that if he did not marry their selected bride that his father would disown him. Mohammad married the woman that spoke no English and looked like a mutilated dog. Patsy, after twelve years of cohabitation left him. Mohammad now has three daughters. He has a girlfriend from Russia, a petite blonde, and he drives a Lincoln Town Car.



Gabriel Orgrease was raised in the Appalachian mountains of New York State and now resides on the south shore of Long Island halfway between NYC and Montauk. His writing has appeared in the Building Stone Industry newsletter, American Caves, and other obscure and non-literary venues. He is currently working on a cult novel. A collector of UFO books he can be reached at orgrease@probedbyaliens.com


 
 
 
 

In Posse: Potentially, might be ...