by H. M. Naqvi
“What’s wrong, Baba?” Amo cried. “What d’you need?”
Old Man Khan attempted to articulate the thought again, and again the thought came out mangled, but when I picked the tube from his mouth, he gasped, “Beta.” At first I thought he had mistaken me for Jimbo, but even in his condition that was not plausible. Crushing his fingers into a fist, he cried, “My son … they took my son …”
And suddenly it all made harrowing sense: it was not the tea or the news that had caused the seizure but the phone call. At seven in the morning the day before, Old Man Khan had learned that his son had been jailed. As the machine continued to beep like an electronic countdown, I told Amo to call the doctor.
“But Jamshed Lala’s here—”
“Just do it.”
As Amo grudgingly sidled away, I leaned into Old Man Khan and said, “Khan Sahab! Jamshed is okay. Your son is fine … I’ve spoken to him … he’s actually on his way over right now.” It was the truth, or very close to the truth, though I was not sure whether or not Old Man Khan heard or understood. The exertion had strained him. Shutting his angry blue eyes, he had lapsed back into a stupor.
It was unnerving to see the grand old man reduced to an animal state, half-conscious and half-naked: the spotted green hospital gown had come undone at the back, and the baby blue blanket that had shrouded his body from the waist down had risen to his knees to reveal surprisingly small, bunioned feet. I could not help but marvel at them. They had hauled him from the rocky Pathan heartland to the port city of Jersey City, from boyhood to manhood, from ruffian to family man. It was too early for the journey to end.
Tucking the ends of the blanket under his heels, I raised my hands and bowed my head and mumbled a prayer that began, “Allah Mian, please help Khan Sahab get back on his feet. His family needs him.” While I was at it, I added, “You took my father away too soon. Don’t take Khan Sahab yet.” Before I could complete the plaint, God dispatched a doctor. A red-headed lady with an attractive mole on the crease of her mouth charged in with a stethoscope, asking if I’d mind waiting outside.
I found Amo rocking against the wall in the corridor, studying the ceiling like an amateur stargazer connecting cosmic dots on an overcast night. When she saw me, she began talking. “Thought Baba’s diet was flavonoid poor, or he wasn’t watching his HDL—you know, variables you can like, manage—but it wasn’t just that. To think that Baba coulda been home, gardening, or soaking up the sun—he likes to do that after breakfast—or cookin’ up a storm, if … if … statistically, this totally doesn’t make any sense. You could like run a regression analysis on the different variables but the correlation between random events would be kinda meaningless …”
Although I did not have an appreciation for the actuarial sciences, I understood what Amo was getting at, but before I could get in a word edgewise, the doctor emerged. “Different people respond differently to anesthesia. Your father hasn’t responded well. He needs rest. I suggest you wait—what’s the time now?—at least two hours before seeing him.” Slipping her hands into the pockets of her scrubs, she rhetorically said, “Okay?” as she turned to leave.
“Actually,” I began, “I need to talk to you, doctor.” Pausing, she glanced at her dangling locket watch, then uttered a noncommittal un-huh? “There are some issues that you may want to consider. You see, I’m pretty sure Mr. Khan’s seizure was triggered by the news that his son had been imprisoned, except now he’s free, but Mr. Khan doesn’t know—”
“Wait a minute. You aren’t the son?” I shook my head. “Where is his son?” When I replied that he was in the waiting room, she pinched the bridge of her nose, stating, “Only family’s allowed back here.” I offered to take her to the correct family member. As she followed us to the waiting room, the doctor half-jokingly asked, “He’s not an ax murderer, right?”
“No,” Amo blurted exasperatedly. “He was in for like, terrorism!”
Stopping dead in her tracks, the doctor said, “Beg your pardon?”
“It was a mistake,” I interjected, frowning at Amo. “That’s why he was released.”
“So he’s not a terrorist?”
“You can judge for yourself.”
It took us a while to spot the prodigal son. The waiting room was bustling like a vegetable market in the morning. Entire clans were lodged in or around the orange seats. Three generations of a family of Cambodian descent congregated along walls in the far corner as if they had laid claim to the land. A diminutive Greek grandmother beat her chest as her burly sons argued throatily among themselves, and a brood of four adorably well-behaved, well-dressed black children sat in a row according to age or size beside a lady in gold-sequined headgear. Mercifully, Mullet Man had not returned, but the elderly Puerto Rican pair continued their solemn vigil.
There was an amorous couple in the mix, oblivious to the activity surrounding them: the man, a block of flesh sprouting dreadlocks, stood over his partner, massaging her shoulders like he was playing a grand piano. Amo pointed them out. The doctor did a double-take as we made our way across. “Mr. Kahn?” she asked.
Disengaging from the Duck, Jimbo asked, “How’s my dad, doc?”
The doc officiously repeated the prognosis, reiterating that he should wait two hours before visiting with his father. “But you must see your father.”
Jimbo considered the entreaty before replying. “Our relationship’s kinda funky,” Jimbo said. “You don’t think I’ll trip him out?”
“You’ll make him very happy,” she replied, smiling sternly before turning to leave.
“My old man’s tough’s a nut, huh, doc?”
“He’s a survivor.”
The four of us stood around because there was one chair between us. Then Jimbo and I managed to secure another, and the Duck and Amo tentatively settled down next to each other like children told to make conversation. We had an hour and forty-two minutes to kill before the Great Khan Reconciliation. In the interim, I decided to make another brunch run.
Jimbo’s stomach had been rumbling like distant thunder all morning. I felt for him; he had been on the famous carb-only Metropolitan Detention Center Diet for days. Before heading out, we took orders from the ladies—another scrambled egg on croissant and cup of minestrone for Amo, a Granny Smith and a small bottle of mineral water for the Duck—and I mentioned the Kung Pao Fried Chicken with Cheese Fries to Jimbo. “Sounds tight, dude,” he said, cradling his belly like a pet hippo left with negligent neighbors for the weekend.
“Beats prison gruel.”
“Fo shizzle, ma nizzle.”
“Hey,” I began as we marched into the afternoon, “what happened back there?”
“Dude, I’m here. Don’t wanna go back in the hole. Know what I’m sayin’?”
“Okay, fine, but at least tell me how you got out?”
“The Drake, dude,” he replied, teetering on his toes. “The Drake came through.”
I should have guessed. I had met him once because I happened to be over at the Duck’s after a crazy night of merrymaking to retrieve my wallet (which, after a hard target search, was excavated with the use of a broom). Striding in with his latest acquisition tucked under his arm—it might have been a minor Whistler—the Duck’s dad (whom Jimbo naturally christened the Drake) observed me with absinthe eyes and academic curiosity. Although nobody really knew what he did for a living—one had heard in passing his association with fund-raising, philanthropy—he cut the figure of that rare breed of man known as the gentleman adventurer: he wore a double-breasted raincoat and a rabbit-hair Trilby that he removed to reveal a full head of white hair.
“You must be the Pakistani,” he had said by way of introduction. “I’ve been to the Kaalash Valley. Remarkable place, remarkable people. Descendants of the armies of Alexander. Pakistan’s fascinating, fascinating. I can tell you stories. I’ve trekked to the foothills of K2, which, Dora, is the second tallest mountain peak in the world. I’ve traded vodka with the Chinese border guards at th
e Khunjerab Pass, played polo with the Mir of Nagar … Did you know Bob vacations there?” I didn’t know if he meant Bob Hope or Bob DeNiro, and although impressed with his knowledge of my homeland, I got the sense that had I been a Masai tribesman in full warrior regalia, he would have related the history of my people to me.
Later I was told that the Drake had called me a fine young man but, mistaking me for the boyfriend, added that I seemed “somewhat tender” for his daughter. When he finally caught up with Jimbo one night at the Oak Bar, he reportedly found him to be “not entirely oafish,” inadequately exotic, and definitely not his daughter’s type. And when the Duck tried to enlist him in the Free Jimbo Effort, he did not readily oblige. “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men?” he allegedly asked. Not the sort to take no for an answer, Dora called her godfather, Drake’s college roommate who, luckily for Jimbo, was the serving state governor. It was a matter of time before Jimbo’s case would receive due scrutiny.
Though I would have liked to probe the matter further, Jimbo had started talking to himself on the way back: “They never lost their way an they were mad focused, stone cold, dude, rollin’ dirt balls like it’s nobody’s business, carryin’ foodstuffs on their pinheads, like leaves and biryani bits from the night before.” It took me a while to get what he was saying. “I’d watch ’em in the garden every morning, solderin’ on, hut hut hut hut. It’d wake me up. Old Man Khan would be like, ‘Look at ’em ants, beta. Look at ’em ants.’”
“Jimbo, yaar, I told you once, I’ll tell you again: Old Man Khan will be happy as hell to see you.”
The Kung Pao was still warm and gooey upon our return, and dispensing with formality, Jimbo wolfed down his share standing up. After the famous carb-only Metropolitan Detention Center, it must have been the first square meal he’d had for days. Amo and the Duck, on the other hand, lunched like picnickers, crossing their legs and spreading paper napkins across their laps. I could hear them whispering among themselves about the meal, but Jimbo seemed unperturbed and unrepentant, pleased with himself and the novelty of the dish. Afterward he wandered off toward the general vicinity of a broom closet and then disappeared. He returned not more than ten minutes later bearing a sorry-looking, hand-picked bouquet of dandelions. It was time.
Leaving the Duck behind, we headed to the room. When we entered, the machines beeped, the air-conditioning whirred, the neighboring patient wheezed, and Old Man Khan stared at us vacantly as if we were a trio of straggling Cambodian orphans. Then, raising his arms, he boomed, “Why are you all around standing like this?”
Amo leaped to embrace him, while Jimbo and I lingered by his feet because there was no way the two of us could negotiate the alley between the bed and wall without knocking over Amo, the drip, the breakfast table, and the empty vase on the breakfast table. In the meantime, I squeezed a transparent glob of clinical-strength hand sanitizer from the dispenser on the wall. Jimbo followed my lead, rubbing his fleshy palms together as if in prayer.
When beckoned, the prodigal son lumbered toward his father, presenting the dandelions like a repentant child. Old Man Khan pulled Jimbo to his chest and wept. I had never seen anything like it.
“I thought I had lost you, beta,” said Old Man Khan.
“Thought I’d lose you, Baba,” Jimbo said.
“Tell me what happened. Tell me everything, beta.”
Settling on the perimeter of the bed, Jimbo and I took turns relating the wild and woolly story of our incarceration, pausing intermittently to clarify facts (wait, the raccoon was AC?), opinions (d’you think they had already decided they were going to arrest somebody that night?), or to question the momentum of inevitability: what if AC had cooperated with the feds like a sane human being or Jimbo had not come charging down the stairs like the Light Brigade? What if we had left earlier? What if we hadn’t left the city at all? And although nobody said it, I am certain that the following question was in the back of everybody’s mind: what if 9/11 never happened?
According to AC, serious historical inquiry incorrectly considers the question what if to be the turf of Philip K. Dick or comic book titles like What If the Incredible Hulk Had the Brain of Bruce Banner? Although historians were not in the business of assigning probabilities to historical events, AC opined they should. “Look, chum,” he once expounded, “it’s not like anything can happen at any time. You have to consider the conditions of possibility. When a power forward goes up for an offensive board, for example, the probability of scoring a bucket increases. If you have a center in the paint, the odds increase further, and if it’s, say, 1993, the Eastern Conference Finals, twenty seconds left on the shot clock, Charles Smith with the rebound, the sound of the ball ricocheting against the hoop has, ah, historic resonance.”
The question in the back of my mind was closer to home: what if AC had been present, perched on the bed among us in his rattlesnake-skins and velvet jacket, waggling his lounge lizard mustache? By now he would have smoked a fatty in the men’s room, banged a nurse, played hide-and-go-seek with the kids in the waiting room, disposed of Mullet Man, and shared the murky and potent contents of his pewter hip flask with the lonely man in the adjacent bed. Moreover, he would have negotiated a private room for Old Man Khan, the penthouse or presidential suite, and filled it with tiger lilies, tulips, and gardenias because that’s the way he was—charming and roguish, thoughtful and unhinged, a man of incongruous and incommensurable qualities.
“So, wait,” Amo was saying, “if Ali’s still in, how’d you guys get out?” I told her I owed my freedom to a burly and sympathetic guy who was at once my interrogator and benefactor. “And you, Jamshed Lala?”
All eyes turned to Jimbo who cleared his throat, probed the corner of his eye for the possibility of dirt and then mumbled something about an old friend springing him. It was the kind of reply you might offer when interrogated about the missing cookies in the cookie jar. “Which friend?” Amo asked.
Attempting to signal to Amo that this line of questioning was unhealthy, I discreetly karate-chopped my throat, the universal signal for cut it out, but because she was angled away, she missed the gesture. “Which friend, Jamshed Lala?” she persisted.
Jamshed Lala did not immediately reply, probably because he was considering his limited options. He could have lied. I would have. The truth was so damned tiring. It might have made life easier for all of us. We could have amicably continued our lives without fear or reproach. Instead, he said, “Dora, sweety.”
“How’d she do that?”
“Dad’s pals with the governor or somethin’—”
Suddenly Old Man Khan growled, “Dora? Who is this Dora?”
Amo and I exchanged panicked glances. I checked the heart monitor.
“My friend, Dora,” said Jimbo.
Old Man Khan sat up and frowned as if he had just inhaled the rank fumes of mercurochrome. “Your friend Dora? That same girl! Where is she?”
“In the waiting room.”
“Waiting room?” Old Man Khan repeated. “Here?” Jimbo nodded. “What is she doing here?”
“She’s here ’cause we’re here.”
“I want to meet this friend. Call her. Bring her here!”
Immediately volunteering to fetch her, I scurried out of the room and down the corridor, inhaling and exhaling methodically like a marathon runner pacing himself for the interminable last leg. Just as I neared the waiting room, however, I heard somebody holler after me. At first I thought it was a member of the hospital staff reproaching me for not adhering to the hospital’s visitation guidelines, but it was Amo.
Tapping the rubber soles of her Pumas against the linoleum, she panted, “Hiya.” There was a flush of color in her cheeks recalling cotton-ball rouge on a doll. She looked different, like somebody else, probably because her headscarf had slid off her head. It was only then that I came to appreciate why some interpreted the Koranic injunction concerning adornments to include hair and head. “Hiya,” I repeated breathlessly.
“Oh … right … okay,” I stuttered. Amo smiled as if I had said something amusing; I smiled back; and then a moment passed during which we said nothing but maintained eye contact as if mesmerized by the fluorescent light reflected in each other’s pupils. It might have been nothing or it might have been the sort of moment that had passed between Begum and Old Man Khan one fateful night many years ago in a hospital in Karachi. He might have held her. She might have allowed herself to be held. Amo took a step closer. “I’m … I’m glad you’re here, Shehzad,” she said. “Y’know, every time you leave—to like go get lunch or wherever you went yesterday—I feel I’ll never see you again.”
We were close enough to kiss. We could have, we should have, but fate intervened in the shape of the Duck. I had seen her from the corner of my eye, pacing back and forth like Hager between the hills. “Hiya guys,” she said. “What’s going on?”
Recalling my urgent mission, I reported, “Khan Sahab’s summoned you.”
“Now?”
“Now,” I confirmed.
The Duck swallowed. Then she scratched the tip of her nose, licked her lips. In all the time I had known her, the Duck had never lost her decidedly queenly cool. At Christ Hospital, however, she seemed to be on the verge. Pulling her aside, I said, “You okay?” The Duck shook her head. “Okay, listen. This is what you do. When you walk in, right, raise your hand, preferably your right hand, to your head, bow slightly, and say salam.”
“Say it again,” she said mouthing the greeting.
“Salam, like sholom, but sharper,” I said, but then added, “or like salami, without the i.”
“Salami. Salam. Got it.”
Then the three of us walked back together like tourists at the Jersey City Museum, pausing outside the room to exchange sighs and skittish smiles (and the Duck tied her dirty blond hair into a neat bun, which she then pierced with an unused chopstick). When we entered, Jimbo took her by the hand like a proper gentleman and presented her to his father like his bride. “Baba Jan,” he said. “I’d like to introduce you to Dora.”
