Home Boy

by H. M. Naqvi

In adhering to the strict etiquette of an interview in the financial services industry, I asked about the future of the company as a privately held concern, the nature of the Director’s job, about the responsibilities of an analyst, and the “career ladder.” Each question was answered thoughtfully and succinctly. Unlike my VP, the disarmingly unprepossessing Director didn’t particularly care to listen to the sound of his own voice. I did. It had a slightly high register, like a yodeler’s speaking voice, but resonated with a dulcet and decidedly American sincerity. “I apologize we were running late,” he was saying. “Thank you for coming by.” Pressing his card into my palm, he added, “We’ll be in touch.”

  We shook hands and were all smiles when we parted, but as I left the room, the Director called after me: “Oh, and Shayzad?” Stopping dead in my tracks, I turned around, shoving my hands into my pockets as if I had been summoned by a teacher who had discovered I had not completed the final question on the term exam. “Are those cowboy boots?”

  “Um, yes … they are.”

  The Director nodded ambiguously.

  On the way out, I returned the tie to its rightful owner, the doorman-entrepreneur, but could not return the suit because I had to get back to Amo ASAP. The suit would have to be returned soon because when I checked my savings account balance in the ATM outside, I had the princely sum of seventeen dollars and twenty-four cents, which I could not extract from the machine because the amount was not a multiple of twenty. By all measures, I had slipped below the poverty line. I used the three neatly folded dollars in my pocket to purchase a lottery ticket and a token for the train to Jersey.

  It was a trying, tiring journey across the river. Sleeplessness had finally caught up with me and knocked me out for the duration of the commute. I dreamed that I found myself in the same dewy meadow as before, only to discover that the outskirts were bordered by barbed wire and guard towers that appeared to be miniature replicas of the Tower of Babel. And the sinister logic of the nightmare suggested that we were being fattened for the kill. I galloped like Silver to alert Jimbo and AC, but thick fog had swept the countryside, obscuring the well-trodden path back to our grazing patch. Of course, it was too late. Next thing, I found myself skinned and quartered alongside my pals, dangling from a butcher’s hook.

  I woke with a start, realizing I had missed my stop. Murphy’s law was in full effect. Stumbling back, I could only see neon outlines of the local topography in the streetlights. Somnambulating to the hospital, I somehow had the presence of mind to tell the night guard that my wallet was upstairs with my father, who was on his deathbed. I must have looked suitably derelict, because he waved me through even though it was after visiting hours.

  Miffed with my sudden and unexplained absence, Amo coolly registered my presence with a shrug and moue. I wanted to tell her what had happened, but there were more pressing issues to address: although the emergency coronary artery bypass graft had been a success, Old Man Khan had been transferred to the ICU because he had not responded well to the anesthesia. Amo paced the waiting room, cradling her elbows and counting her steps, but at some juncture disappeared. In the meantime, I propped myself up, watching the doors open and close, waiting for Amo to return, then nodded off yet again.

  14.

  On the occasion of my nineteenth birthday, I found myself on that same scarred green bench in the northwest corner of Washington Square, among the malcontents and junkies, feeling sorry for myself, and though it seemed to me that after a year, I was back at square one, ground zero, the year had not been eventless. As my roommate Big Jack often said, I had worked my tail off, securing dean’s list for two semesters straight. I became financially self-sufficient by securing a six-bucks-an-hour, twenty-hour-a-week-job checking out books at the august Elmer Holmes Bobst Library. I lost my virginity during a brief, desultory dorm-room liaison with a preacher’s daughter who wore a wicked pair of cowboy boots. I questioned God after signing up for Philosophy 101, described in the course catalog as “a survey of major themes and figures in the development of epistemology and metaphysics,” and after listening to the weekly sermons delivered at on-campus Friday prayer by a bunch of crazy Saudis with pubic beards. (I wasn’t that big on God in the first place because He had taken my father away.) After a year of a diet of eschatological crappola, I had a shot of Campari at an otherwise unremarkable dorm party because of Campari’s association with Kelly LeBrock, and because I wanted to spite the Saudis. It was a seminal shot.

  And as per AC’s directive, I had lost myself in the city many, many times, and on occasion, I’d even trolled the famous New York nightlife (armed with a fake state ID, furnished by AC, that claimed I was born in ’74 and christened Papadopoulos). The only time I met with success on my forays was the night I unknowingly wandered into an Aztec-themed gay bar in Alphabet City and a handsome man offered to buy me a Greyhound. It would have been impolite to decline. As we made small talk, he asked if I had been here before, and I had replied yeah, all the time, “but there sure are a lot of men here tonight.” My generous, gregarious patron would turn out to be my first homosexual friend, one Lawrence né Larry. Laughing, he asked, “You don’t get out much, do you?”

  At a certain juncture in New York, after you have discovered that the city’s like a grid, and that the best goddamn falafel joint in the city is Mamum’s in the West Village, and after you have forged relationships with the local newspaper vendor and the good folks at the twenty-four-hour Duane Reade, you get this feeling that the inner life of the city still eludes. You feel that you’re missing out, that at any given moment, day or night, there’s an epic party taking place to which you have not been invited. On the night of my nineteenth birthday I felt this way. Since there was nobody around—Big Jack had gone to Bangs, TX, for the Columbus Day weekend, and AC had sworn off revelry in preparation for the heroic defense of his much-delayed dissertation proposal—I treated myself to a dinner at the legendary Les Halles brasserie—yes, table for one, please—and thought I would treat myself to a drink at a chichi downtown venue. But after taking one look at me, the bouncer asked me to try my luck somewhere else. Lucklessly, I retired to Washington Square.

  As I sat twiddling my thumbs (steadfastly refusing offers to purchase “sweet ganja” and trying my damnedest not to listen to a high-pitched evangelical standing on a soapbox, preaching the End of Days), a motley horde of musicians began converging around the fountain in twos and threes, in wigs, in dresses, topcoats, and Unionist uniforms, and one guy, wearing a homemade percussion kit, was fixed on stilts. It was the strangest thing. Some appeared to hail from the back streets of New Orleans; others could have been from the front lines of the Great Suburban Rebellion. A few had arguably escaped from a traveling circus. They greeted one another like lost tribesmen, swigged booze from flasks and Gatorade bottles, and noisily tuned their instruments—tubas, bugles, trombones, and honkers, as well as xylophones and recorders. At the appointed time, at the beck of some secret call, the percussionists began beating a consensual dum, da-da dum. Then all of a sudden there was a musical explosion. Washington Square regulars rarely bat an eyelid. That night they did. It was like midnight mass. It was like band camp on crystal meth. Later I’d learn that the event constituted the closing night ceremony of some annual horn festival spanning the coast.

  They played jazz riffs and Afro jazz, klezmer music, gypsy music, show tunes, marching band tunes, “When the Saints Go Marching In,” “Sinnerman,” and a crazed rendition of “Take Five.” They glide-stepped, high-stepped, boogied. At one point, a nymphet in a gold cheerleader’s uniform jumped into the fray, twirling a flag like a bo or a kendo warrior. Then a clarinet player started break-dancing. Onlookers joined in. It became a free-for-all. Drawn, I followed, clapping along, qawwali-style, then dancing, like Rumpelstiltskin, yelling Yahoo! and Wah wah wah! and Bohaut khoob!

  That’s when one of the tuba players, ostensibly a Samoan Rastafarian, pulled me aside. “You from the homeland, dude?” he yelled over the noise.<
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  “What?” I yelled back, wondering what homeland would that be? Samoa? Jamaica?

  “You from the Pac Land?”

  “Pakistan?” I yelled.

  “Knew it,” he said grabbing me. “You a Pac-Man.”

  “I’m Shehzad, but they call me Chuck,” I said, shaking his free hand.

  “Yeah well, I’m Jimbo, a.k.a. Jamshed, ’cept tonight I’m Jumbolaya. Know what I mean?”

  I had no idea, but I nodded like I knew who was who and what was what. I knew this much: at that moment, I was attending the best party in the city.

  Later I would realize that the best parties in the city took place in the great outdoors, in parks, on sidewalks and boardwalks; and that there’s a party on the street every day. Later I would realize that I was already part of the inner life of the city. That’s how things worked here. You had epiphanies and that led to other epiphanies.

  “Here, dude,” Jimbo said, proffering a triangle and stick.

  “What do I do?” I asked like an idiot.

  “Beat it like a mofo.”

  Later that night Jimbo and I would exchange stories, cigarettes, numbers. We would become the best of friends. He would invite me to Thanksgiving dinner in Jersey, where I would be introduced to his father and kid sister (and soon after, his new-found love). That’s how things worked in the city. You met somebody, then somebody introduced you to somebody else, and then they would become part of your story.

  When a swarm of flies entered my reverie, I woke, swinging my arms and swatting the air, before realizing that the peculiarly stubborn fly that had entered my ear was in fact a pudgy, probing finger. That’s strange, I thought in my soporific stupor, I’ve got a finger in my ear. Then somebody exclaimed, “Banzai!” Looming above me, blocking the tube light like a solar eclipse, stood a smiley behemoth, a Sasquatch in a track suit, offering his hand. “Jimbo?” I said, as if in a dream.

  “Dude,” he replied, lifting me up like a duffel bag and mashing my face against his fleshy chest. We hugged like a couple of ex-cons. Jimbo smelled like an ex-con. He must have come straight from the slammer. “I’m born again,” he announced, “like ’em Watergaters.”

  “I can’t believe it … it’s great to see you, yaar … how’d you know to come here?”

  “Myla told me, y’know, Myla and Eddie Davis from upstairs?”

  “You been inside yet?”

  “They ain’t lettin’ me in. They say he’s, like, under the influence—”

  “Anesthesia—”

  “Yeah, that’s it, that’s right. That’s the word. Besides, I don’t wanna give him another attack.”

  “Don’t say that, yaar.” I wasn’t sure if Jimbo was serious, but he was anxious. So was I, but I said, “He’s fine, he’ll be fine.”

  “My old man, he’s tough as nails,” he declared unconvincingly.

  Blinded by excitement and Jimbo’s bulk, I did not notice that there was somebody else in the background, craning for attention, like a familiar but distant relative at a family reunion. At first I thought I was still dreaming, but in my dreams Jimbo would be followed either by loping Munchkins on a good day or by the Wicked Witch of the West in the buck. Instead, he was followed by the Duck. I regarded her for a few moments, sheepishly, perhaps a little idiotically, because her appearance seemed more astonishing than a visit from the fanciful denizens of Oz. “Hiya, Chuck,” she said. It was a little weird—we had, after all, exchanged words and parted unceremoniously—but I figured that the best way to approach the situation was with a kiss. “Hiya, Dora,” I replied, planting a wet one on her cheek. “Have a seat.”

  Save a venerable Puerto Rican couple nestled ear to ear at one end of the room and a nurse-on-duty enthralled by a romance novel at the other, we had the place to ourselves. Rearranging the seating, we took a hard orange chair each, but when the Duck squirmed, Jimbo grabbed her by her love handles and valiantly plopped her down in his lap. Lassoing her arms around Jimbo’s neck, she asked, “Are you being frisky, Mr. Khan?” Jimbo nodded. “I be frisky, miss.”

  It was great to see them together. I felt warm and giddy like a night out at Tja!, and like on a night out at Tja!, we traded stories. From Jimbo’s monosyllabic responses, however, it seemed apparent that he was not particularly eager to relive his experience. I imagined he had had it rough. The good folks at the Metropolitan Detention Center must have treated him like the Incredible Hulk, even though he was more like his mild-mannered doppelgänger. When I inquired whether he had come across a certain Grizzly, he replied, “Dunno, but there was some dude who sounded like what’s-his-face—”

  “Mick Rooney?”

  “Yeah,” Jimbo replied with uncharacteristic vehemence, “Micky friggin Rooney.”But if Jimbo had not come across the eminently sensible and empathetic Grizzly, I wondered how he had been released. “I get my phone call,” Jimbo said, “so I call Dora—”

  “And,” Dora interjected, “he’s like, ‘Hiya hon, I’m in the joint. You think you can drop by for some conjugal lovin.’ I was totally flabbergasted. I was livid. Jimbo’s many things—a great DJ, a bad drunk—but he’s no terrorist. Everybody knows he’s like a teddy bear, a lamb—”

  “ ‘Baa Baa Black Sheep,’ baby.”

  “You’re a stud, sweetheart.” Jimbo nodded in agreement. “Anyway,” the Duck continued, “first I thought I’d get to Brooklyn, but then I’m like, What am I going to do? so I call the one person I turn to when things seriously go wrong—”

  Before she could say more, the Duck abruptly slid off Jimbo’s lap, as if suffering pins and needles, and before I could ask her to continue, I realized that Amo had materialized before us. She must have escaped the recesses of the cardiology ward for air, or company. In the furrows across her brow, I could read that she was unimpressed by the belated appearance of her big brother and an unfamiliar, pot-bellied girl perched happily on his thighs. Digging her fists into her slender waist, she cried, “Where’ve you been, Jamshed Lala?”

  Jimbo stood up but did not dare approach her. She looked like she was going to spontaneously combust. “In the joint, sis,” Jimbo mumbled.

  The claim sounded preposterous, and Jimbo didn’t immediately elaborate. “Yeah, right!” Amo yelled, startling everybody: me, Jimbo, the Duck, the Puerto Rican couple in the corner. Before things could get of hand, however, I interjected. “Actually, Amo,” I started, “we were both in prison.”

  “Wait! What?”

  “We were arrested, over the weekend, on terrorism charges, or suspicion of terrorism, or something, I don’t know.” Turning to Jimbo, I asked, “Do you know what it was all about?” He wearily shook his head. “Anyway,” I added, “it’s a long story.”

  “Terrorism?”

  “You know AC, right? He’s still inside. You should be happy your brother’s out and here now.” Amo processed yesterday’s news with rapid blinks of the eye, and all of a sudden she cupped her mouth and bowed her head to hide her face. Then Jimbo jumped up and hugged her as if she were a bouquet of long-stemmed flowers.

  In the meantime, the Duck had been standing perfectly still, watching the Khan reconciliation with one hand on her nape and her head slightly tilted to one side. I suppose she would have remained that way had I not intervened. “Um, Amo?” I said. “Let me introduce you to the Duck, I mean, Dora … and Dora, this is Jimbo, I mean Jamshed’s sister, Amo.” It wasn’t one of my better introductions.

  “Aamna,” Amo corrected me.

  “Hiya, Amina,” said the Duck. “I’ve heard a lot about you. It’s so nice to finally meet in person.” Amo offered a gelid smile as a reply but, because she had been brought up well, managed a quiet, cordial, “You too.” And with exclamations, explanations, and introductions out of the way, Jimbo asked, “What’s the lowdown, sis?”

  We were informed that Old Man Khan was recovering from the anesthesia and, courtesy of the nurse-on-duty, could see family. “I came out to get Shehzad,” Amo said, “but I guess now we can all go in.”
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  “Don’t think that’s a great idea, sis.”

  “What d’you mean?”

  “Think about it for a second. The old man’s had a heart attack. He don’t need to see me. What if he, like, freaks out or somethin’?” I agreed. Trooping in together, Duck in tow, did not seem particularly prudent at the time. “Chuck, dude. You up for a reccy?”

  “Sure thing, yaar.”

  Squirting a dollop of hand sanitizer into my palms in preparation, I dutifully followed Amo past the examination room where we had lunched earlier and down a wide corridor patrolled by shuffling nurses to a room divided into four quadrants by floor-length vinyl curtains. It was humid inside and smelled of unwashed feet and Vicks rub and something like mercurochrome. Two of the four beds were occupied, and I could discern from the prone silhouette of the patient on my left that he was tall, bony, and friendless. I found myself muttering a prayer for him. That’s all one can really do.

  Amo parted the curtain on the right, and there lay Old Man Khan, like Christ on the cross, connected to tubes and drips and pulsing machines. A tube dangled from his lower lip so that his gaping toothless mouth drooped to one side while his dentures swam in a half-empty glass of fizzy water on the table wedged between the bed and the wall. Although his eyes were swollen and mostly shut, you could make out a horizon of white below each lid. Like a wounded buffalo on the Serengeti, he breathed heavily, only dimly aware of the vultures circling above.

  When I took the chair beside him where Amo must have spent the night, half awake and hunched over, Old Man Khan stirred: raising his stubbly chin by a few degrees, a gesture that seemed to be more a reflex than an acknowledgment of our presence, he extended the curled fingers of his right hand as if reluctantly displaying his calloused palm to a palmist. Taking his hand in mine, I uttered salam, and when he didn’t readily respond, I repeated the greeting in a louder voice. In response, Old Man Khan issued something between a growl and a groan, causing one of the machines to beep like the metronomic sound track to a horror flick.