by H. M. Naqvi
Grayness filtered through the blinds when I woke. I tried my damnedest to go back to sleep but kept getting roused by the onset of a childhood nightmare featuring creepy crawlies slithering over me—caterpillars, roaches, bugs with forty eyes. When I finally shook them off, I began imagining the Shaman pulling himself out of bed to the call of the alarm, scratching his ass, shuffling to the bathroom, dreamily reading Liar’s Poker before shaving and showering and heading out to pursue the American Dream, cigarette cartons tucked under his arm. It was weird being in his lair, inhaling his funky smells, privy, in a way, to his humdrum, routine state of mind.
The exercise of conjuring the Shaman was cut short by Jimbo who ambled in, announcing, “I wanna Mongolian mustache, dude, like ’em upside-down crescents, but my hair, it don’t grow that way. Wonder what’d happen if I rubbed Rogaine under my nose—”
“Have you slept, yaar?”
“Negative.”
“You need to sleep. You’re not making any sense.”
Leaning against the doorframe, Jimbo said, “Yeah, okay but I just wanna know one thing, Chuck, just one thing, then I’m crashin.”
“What’s that?”
“Last time I remember, I was chillin’ like a villain. I had me a girl, couple a hot gigs, stuff in the pipeline that was going to bring da house down. Sho ’nuff, there was plenty of stuff that was wack—me and my old man for one but we ain’t jelled since the sixth grade, so I ain’t countin’ that, and yeah, I detoxed only to retox—but that ain’t what I’m talkin’ about. I’m talkin’ about how I woke up one day, and I ain’t in Kansas no more. I’m in crap city. All of a sudden I got to be up to snuff on ovaries, an’ the old man’s comin’ down on me like a ton a brick, an’ now I’m, like, in Connecticut. I lived all my life in this country an’ I’ve never been to friggin’ Connecticut.” Pausing to take a breath, he asked, “What’s with that, dude?”
Getting out of bed, I grabbed Jimbo by the arm and sat him down. Taking off his hand-stitched moccasins, I replied, “It’s not so bad, yaar. It’s quiet here. There’s no traffic, no sirens. And this is a really comfortable mattress. I think it’s got lumbar support. You’ll sleep like a baby.” Rearranging the sheets, I put him to bed, whispering, “Don’t let the bed bugs bite.” Turning on his side, Jimbo spooned the down pillow and began snoring instantaneously. It was as if he had been somnambulating.
In the bathroom next door, I found myself studying my unshaven face in the toothpaste-stained mirror while urinating, noting that my bruise had acquired the hue and texture of an unripe eggplant. I searched the shelves and cabinets in vain for a razor before resigning myself to Ewok chic. Shedding my clothes, I parted the curtain and, for some reason, picked up the coil of hair on the drain and carefully deposited it on the glass shelf inside the cabinet. I showered quickly under the anemic spray, and afterward, dabbed the Shaman’s deodorant under my pits, but in the interest of hygiene, decided against using his electric toothbrush. Besides, I thought, I’ll be home soon enough. Before heading out, I flipped the toilet seat and ritualistically replaced the coil of hair on the drain. It seemed like the right, responsible thing to do.
Downstairs I found AC was watching porn in his underwear and boots as if tuned in to breaking news. A can of Milwaukee’s Best was balanced artfully on his soft boozer’s gut while he had an arm around a family pack of Ranch-flavored Doritos. When I walked in, he inquired, “Have you, ah, seen such a large orifice?”
Transfixed and repulsed at the same time, I replied, “Um, no, can’t say I have.”
“It actually recalls the time I had sex on the fire escape with this really big girl.”
Plopping down next to him, I asked, “What is this?” Putting a damp arm around my shoulder, he said, “A selection from the Shaman collection: Dirty Debutantes. It’s conceptually novel in the century-old history of celluloid pornography: real women having real sex. Mark my words: this will spawn a revolution spanning the media, if it hasn’t already. Why would anybody watch women with silicone tatties faking orgasms when you’ve got the real deal?”
The camera panned out as the subject, a meaty redhead with tiny pointed breasts, yelped when a piglike man with thick glasses mounted her from behind. “How about we check the news, yaar?”
“Do you think sociocultural factors inform the, ah, groans women emit during intercourse? You would think the grunt is primal and instinctive, but anecdotal evidence suggests that women from different nations don’t groan in the same way. For instance, French women do oohs, Iranis auwnh. Latins go aiey. Or to take a Marxist, or technically a post-Marxist perspective, I’d, ah, wager that British aristocracy—wives of earls, barons, and dukes—groan differently from their cockney compatriots.” “Maybe there’ll be something about Musharraf’s speech.” “What about women from our part of the world?” he persisted. “Do they go hai?”
“Don’t you want to know what’s happening?” “No. Actually, I don’t,” AC replied. “I’m sick of the news, chum. I’ll be happy if I never watch CNN again.” Switching the TV off, he rearranged his crotch. “Nobody knows what’s going on, but everybody’s busy parceling myths and prejudice as analysis and reportage. Suddenly everybody’s become an expert on different varieties of turbans in the world.” AC paused to sip his beer and then began talking to himself. “All I want to know is why I can’t get off on garden-variety porn these days. Nothing less than lactating women and midgets with strap-ons works.”
We considered the issue silently for some time while listening to the sound of crickets outside and taking in the hearty smell of fertilizer wafting through the open bay windows. Across the street, the browning leaves of poplar trees fluttered in the breeze. Sitting there, I had the sensation of sitting amiably in a glass house. Then without warning, AC produced the yellow vial again, unscrewed it, and dabbed a glob of balm on my bruise. “There,” he officiously pronounced, “it’s improving.”
“Thanks, AC.”
“You’re most welcome, Chuck. Actually, I’ve been playing doctor all evening. I administered some bromazepam not too long ago. It should knock our friend out for a few hours.”
“Why did you do that?”
“Jimbo wasn’t doing so well. In point of fact, he was going apeshit. I sat him down during his more lucid spells, and there were a couple, counseling him on the Duck situation.”
“And?”
“He listened, made strange noises, but mark my words, chum: whatever happens, he’ll be okay. He’s a champ … I’m the big fat pussy … That’s why I fight.”
As I considered said dichotomy—champ versus big fat pussy—AC asked me if I wanted something to eat. I did. I was famished. Offering to make pasta, some vodka penne, he waddled to the kitchen, cigarette in mouth, and went about doctoring some bottled tomato sauce that he found in the pantry. Pots clanged, water boiled, oil hissed, boxes were torn open.
The household sounds, quotidian activities, were comforting. The Shaman was probably not privy to them. I imagined him returning home, kicking off his shoes, and turning on Jeopardy before calling for takeout, Chinese or Dominoes. In the interim, he might kick back, listening to The Best of the Eighties: Hartman’s “I Can Dream About You,” Dream Academy’s “Life in a Northern Town.” After dinner he might head into the city in his 500 SEL, sunroof open, music blaring. At the rooftop bar of the Peninsula Hotel, he might position himself on a barstool and hit on women, employing the worn conceit of an Arab sheikh. When it would work, he would check into a room and make love, never appreciating that the dynamic of a one-night stand does not lend itself to feeling. But there was always Dirty Debutantes.
“Is it about ready?” I yelled.
“Just about,” AC yelled back.
With time to kill, I switched on the TV to a local news channel and caught a story pertaining to a compatriot: “Twenty-four-year-old Ansar Mahmood, a Pakistan-born permanent resident, asked a passerby to photograph him against the Hudson. A guard at a nearby post called the police because
the shot included a water treatment plant. Although the FBI found that Mahmood had no terrorist objectives, an investigation revealed he had assisted some friends who had overstayed their visas, making him guilty of harboring illegal immigrants …”
Just then I noticed AC standing by the stairs in a checkered apron, wiping a dripping plate with a washcloth, staring at the TV.
“… Mahmood is being held today at the Federal Detention Facility in Batavia. He is fighting deportation. He was, quite simply, in the wrong place at the wrong time—”
“Turn it off!” AC yelled. “Turn it off, chum! I told you I’m sick of the fucking news!” I immediately switched the TV off. Returning to the kitchen, AC asked, “What’s your status?”
Following him, I asked, “What do you mean?”
“Your visa status?”
“Oh! Um. I’m not sure. I’m not an illegal alien, if that’s what you mean. I was on an H-1B visa, the work visa but … but now … I actually don’t know.”
I recalled that the good folks at the Immigration and Naturalization Service allowed some time between jobs—in the ballpark of sixty or ninety days—but I had already been out of a job for over two months. Consequently, there was a distinct possibility that I was what was known as out of status. Standing there, I was hit with the quick violence of a one-two combination: not only was I in possible legal limbo—or worse, in criminal violation of some INS code—but because of me, my friends might be in jeopardy.
“Well, shit, chum,” AC declared. “It’s about time you check.”
“Hey,” I said, “I’m sorry about last night.”
“No,” AC replied, noisily scratching his Adam’s apple, “I’m sorry.”
We silently swallowed the penne down with Coke.
7.
We decided to leave when Jimbo woke, but when we checked in on him three, four hours later, he was lying on his side like a beached whale, snoring and wheezing, it would seem, peacefully. Then we parted ways, as if we’d made a tacit agreement to stay out of each other’s hair for some time, an arrangement that allowed me to leisurely sip Goldschläger from a teacup while listening to “We Don’t Have to Take Our Clothes Off (To Have a Good Time)” and other classics of the epoch. In the meantime, AC rummaged upstairs, downstairs, outside, quietly, diligently, single-mindedly keeping discarded receipts, muffled phone calls, and other research concerning the ongoing Shaman Project to himself. Out of idle curiosity, I had quietly been to the basement myself to find stacked cartons of cigarettes. It would seem that the Shaman had single-handedly cornered the exotic cigarette market in Connecticut. After some time, I turned the TV on, and ten minutes into whatever I was watching—an episode of a reality show in which characters are voluntarily abandoned on a tropical island—I switched the channel to the presidential address, either a repeat telecast or a live event. I had the urge to flip, tune out, but before I could, the president had already begun,
Mr. Speaker, Mr. President Pro Tempore, members of Congress, and fellow Americans: In the normal course of events, Presidents come to this chamber to report on the state of the Union. Tonight, no such report is needed. It has already been delivered by the American people. We have seen it in the courage of passengers, who rushed terrorists to save others on the ground, passengers like an exceptional man named Todd Beamer. And would you please help me to welcome his wife, Lisa Beamer, here tonight. We have seen the state of our Union in the endurance of rescuers, working past exhaustion. We have seen the unfurling of flags, the lighting of candles, the giving of blood, the saying of prayers in English, Hebrew, and Arabic. We have seen the decency of a loving and giving people who have made the grief of strangers their own. My fellow citizens, for the last nine days, the entire world has seen for itself the state of our Union and it is strong. Tonight we are a country awakened to danger and called to defend freedom. Our grief has turned to anger, and anger to resolution. Whether we bring our enemies to justice, or bring justice to our enemies, justice will be done.
The applause that followed was loud and sustained, like white noise, like rain. Stirred by the words, I too had the urge to applaud; Thank God for the Union!, I thought, and that justice will be done! My sense of grief, however, had not quite turned to anger, and anger had certainly not turned to the stuff of resolution.
After my father died, I learned that when tragedy strikes, you can either open up or shut down. My mother opened up and was not herself for some time. I shut down, and it worked for me. I shut down again on the day of September the eleventh.
Every New Yorker has a 9/11 story, and every New Yorker has a need to repeat it, to pathologically revisit the tragedy, until the tragedy becomes but a story. Mine goes like this. The morning had been bright and clear, but I had been dull and running late for an interview. I am not a morning person, and I had nicked myself shaving and the blood would not coagulate, possibly because I had treated the cut with tiny squares of double-ply toilet paper and an application of Corona, a home remedy pioneered by none other than AC. I would have taken the subway because attempting to hail a cab on Columbus at half past eight in the morning is like trying to get a reservation at that sushi joint in Tribeca at half past eight in the evening, but I happened upon a vacant gypsy cab, who agreed to take me when I flashed a crisp twenty. As I headed down the Avenue of the Americas, scanning my résumé, recalling the subtle mechanics of discounted cash flow analysis and the terms for the two plain-vanilla financings that had defined my career as a banker, I thought I heard something on the radio about a plane hitting Rockefeller Center. Many outrageous stories would circulate that day. Fiction would collide against fact. Preachers would pound the pulpit, promulgating acts of God. When I asked the driver to turn up the volume, he hollered “That’ll be extra,” so I let it go. I had more urgent issues to contend with.
Nearer midtown the traffic thickened. At 50th there was gridlock. At such times, the city got to you. Everyday, straightforward things like getting from point A to point B became epic struggles, characterized by AC as “playing chess with the Devil.” After several moments of characteristic indecision, I jumped out outside St. Pat’s Cathedral, crossed over to the statue of Atlas in a loincloth, sprinted past the flower beds dividing the esplanade, and skirted the ice rink, noting in passing that the Rock remained unscathed. I breathlessly announced myself in the lobby. It was seven after nine. I was late. The managing director would be predictably livid. Cursing myself all the way up, I braced for the angry reception, for fireworks, except that there were no palpable signs of life on the fifty-sixth floor: no secretary, analyst, intern, or managing director. At first I thought my ears had popped because I could not hear the routine sounds of office bustle: ringing phones, gurgling coffee machines, photocopiers grinding out paper. It was eerie, odd, a bank holiday or Judgment Day. There was really nothing to do but wait. Glancing at the Hudson through the bay windows, hands professionally clasped, I mulled the future.
A wheezy sob finally broke the deathly silence. At first I tried to ignore it, but when the noise persisted in muffled bursts, I was compelled by curiosity to follow it to the end of the corridor. Peering around the corner, I found ten, fifteen people gathered before a window facing south. A fiftysomething lady was among them, holding her heart with one hand, cupping her mouth with the other. Handing her the folded toilet paper that I had kept in my pocket in case my scab came loose, I pressed through to the smudged glass. I stood there for a long time, dazed and a little dizzy. I would have remained there for longer had the building not been evacuated, and though I found myself on the street afterward, safe and sound, in brilliant sunshine, I remained in a daze for weeks.
At the Shaman’s, however, I began to sob unexpectedly and ridiculously. Closing my eyes, I repeated the Koranic mantra Ma would repeat after my father died—“Inna lillaihay wa inna illahay rajayune,” or, “We come from God and return to God”—as the presidential address continued in the background:
And on behalf of the American people, I thank
the world for its outpouring of support. America will never forget the sounds of our National Anthem playing at Buckingham Palace, on the streets of Paris, and at Berlins Brandenburg Gate. We will not forget South Korean children gathering to pray outside our embassy in Seoul, or the prayers of sympathy offered at a mosque in Cairo. We will not forget moments of silence and days of mourning in Australia and Africa and Latin America. Nor will we forget the citizens of 80 other nations who died with our own: dozens of Pakistanis; more than 130 Israelis; more than 250 citizens of India; men and women from El Salvador, Iran, Mexico and Japan; and hundreds of British citizens…
At that instant, I thought I heard AC’s metronomic breathing behind me, but when I turned around, there was nobody there. “Hello?” I called out. Getting up, I checked the kitchen, the pantry, stuck my head in the stairwell, and for good measure opened the front door to survey the porch, the lawn, the length of Elm Street. There wasn’t anybody outside and no cars on the road, but the lights were on in the neighboring houses, and you could see the blue flicker of TV screens reflected in the windowpanes. Returning inside, I found AC standing in the middle of the room, watching the address like a zombie.
I also want to speak tonight directly to Muslims throughout the world. We respect your faith. It’s practiced freely by many millions of Americans, and by millions more in countries that America counts as friends. Its teachings are good and peaceful, and those who commit evil in the name of Allah blaspheme the name of Allah. The terrorists are traitors to their own faith, trying, in effect, to hijack Islam itself. The enemy of America is not our many Muslim friends; it is not our many Arab friends. Our enemy is a radical network of terrorists, and every government that supports them.
“Islam’s not good and peaceful, chum,” AC protested. “It’s a violent, bastard religion, as violent as, say, Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, whatever. Man’s been killing and maiming in the name of God since the dawn of time.”
