~ Kartis and Kalam ~
Chapter one
Chapter two
Chapter three
Chapter four
Hope and despair
Chapter five
Chapter six
~ Contact Kartis Shone ~
~ Kartis & Kalam, Chapter four ~
Chapter 4 - Hope and despair
Now came a time of waiting. This wait turned out to be so much longer than I could have imagined from the start. After leaving my old relationship I had tons of debts to pay off. Being sick for a long time had put me, besides other reasons, in this horrible financial situation, so I looked for all teachers' jobs I could find. I was lucky to get a full-time job as a music teacher, so my mind was occupied with school matters during daytime. The nights were horrible. After I moved to my new apartment I had no computer. The only way of talking to Richard was to write e-mails at the Internet café a few blocks away or to call him. But calling was not easy the first few weeks. Richard had to leave his apartment before he came to Sweden to be able to afford his ticket. So he had nowhere to stay. He was living at friends and relatives the first weeks. After a while he got his old job back and could also stay at D'von and Dave, two very good friends, until he had enough money to get another ticket to Sweden.
One day in September he called me and told me that he had found a cheap ticket. He asked if I wanted him to come. Of course I wanted him to come, but was it wise to spend all his savings on a ticket? Since I was paying off all my debt for another 6 months I knew that we wouldn't have much to live from. However, the date for his flight was set and I was again waiting. I was thinking that I didn't have to wait too long after all, and this time maybe he could stay a little longer than a month. We started discussing what the possibilities were for him to stay longer than just the three months that he was allowed to stay.
Richard searched the Internet to find all possible information about laws about residency in Sweden. He found that he had to apply from his home country and then wait for about 6 months up to a year or so before he got any answer from the Swedish immigration bureau, SIV. We certainly couldn't wait another year, and if he was to come visiting me now it would be even more painful to part once more. I talked to a friend of mine who has become more or less an expert of Swedish bureaucracy, since he is an immigrant from Bangladesh himself and his wife is from Spain. He told me that Richard could come here and after staying for a month or two we could apply for him staying. All information we got from SIV in Malmö or from the Internet told us that this was absolutely not possible. However we WANTED so much to meet as soon as possible again, and the day came when Richard sold his computer, quit his job a second time, and went for 5 hours with the bus to the Los Angeles Airport.
I was so thrilled to meet him again. At last! Even if it was only less than two months since he left it felt like an eternity. I was at home late in the evening when the telephone rang. It was Richard who called from the airport in LA. I was happy to hear his voice again and also that he made it there. But Richard just cried. I giggled a little and told him to calm down, we were soon to meet again. -No, he said, they won't let me on the plane! Of course I thought he was joking. But he cried and cried and repeated the same sentence over and over again. "They won't let me on the plane." Thousands of thoughts flew through my brain. This couldn't be true! He managed to explain that they couldn't accept him flying to Copenhagen with a one way ticket. No one had informed him about this matter even when he asked if there was anything he needed to know about this ticket. Both the travel agency and the flying company, KLM, bid him welcome to the travel - until he reached the very airport. There they said stop.
Since there were still a few hours until the plane was to leave, I told him to calm down and I was to fix the matter from Sweden. If they didn't want to let him on the plane I was to call Bill Clinton himself to make them let him go to Copenhagen. I spent all that night calling the Los Angeles Airport, KLM in LA, Amsterdam and Copenhagen. I tried all possible ways to send money (that I could borrow from a friend) for another ticket, explain the situation and talk them into letting him on the plane, but nothing worked. After 6 hours in the phone I gave up, called the phone booth were Richard was sitting in LA and cried just as much as him. He had to go back to Fresno again.
I have never felt worse in my entire life. The worst that could happen had happened. Now Richard had no job, no computer and no savings left what so ever. Now we had no clue whenever he could be able to come to Sweden. Now we knew that we really had to wait for a long time before we could meet again. And for how long were D'von and Dave willing to let him stay at their house? Hopeless despair!
After Richard came back to Fresno he tried to get all kinds of jobs to be able to save some money again. After several weeks he got a part time job at a fast food store. He was told that he could have more working hours than just the very few that he got from the start there. But as the weeks went by he started to get more and more frustrated about not having more work than only for paying his bus tickets and food for that day. He tried to look for other jobs as the time went by - without result.
We talked more and more in the phone after this fatal trip to LA. I got more and more unhappy with my job in school, and Richard was more and more frustrated over not having enough work to even think of a plane ticket to Sweden. We hoped that our prayers would be heard so we could be together when 1999 turned into 2000. I didn't have any money what so ever to buy any Christmas presents at all, so I really couldn't help him even a little with a ticket to Sweden. I spent the Christmas holiday with my parents. Calm and nice. And a week later I spent New Years Eve - the Millennium - with some friends of mine. Richard was at home in Fresno. Nine o'clock in the morning, the 1st of January 2000, I called Richard to say Happy New Year. I had stayed up all night to watch the celebrations of the millennium all over the world until it came to California. Nine o'clock in the morning in Sweden was 12 in the night in California. We cried and laughed. Richard still didn't have any money at all, and no job either.
We started to get really frustrated to not see any future in front of us. Both of us were almost ready to give up. Talking over the phone almost every day started to get most straining to my economy.
So one day in the middle of January Dave came home and told Richard that he didn't want him to stay there anymore. Richard was crushed. He had no money, no job, and nowhere to stay. But as they were talking he noticed that Dave was playing a game with him. He was kind of smiling as Richard cried and moaned and told him that he understood it had been a pain for them to have him living there. Dave told him to sit down and said that he got some extra payment from his job for working so much extra during Christmas and New Year. After talking with D'von they had decided to lend Richard the money for a ticket to Sweden. "We really want you to go to Cristin, and we also don't want to listen to you crying anymore, hehe", he said. The first thing Richard did was to call me when he found a round trip ticket to Copenhagen. He arrived at the Copenhagen airport in the 25th of January 2000.
~ Meny ~
