by H. M. Naqvi
Old Man Khan scrutinized the Duck with fierce blue eyes. We all did. I thought I saw the Duck mouth “salami.” That would have been that. Raising her hand to her head like a native, however, she managed salam, adding, “I’m honored to meet you, Mr. Khan.”
The gesture had a salutary effect on Old Man Khan because the lines that marred his sandpaper brow vanished, and he beckoned to her with an open hand. “Come,” he said, patting the bed. “Sit down.” The Duck did as she was told. “I am very grateful to you for what you have done for my son.”
“You don’t need to thank me, Mr. Khan—”
“Your eyes tell me you are a good person. That is what matters. It doesn’t matter if a person is Eastern or Western, black or white, from New York or from New Jersey. In my experiences, each human needs the same things: food, water, shelter, loving. Will you agree with me, Dora beti?”
“Yes, Mr. Khan … You know, my father would agree with you.” Pausing to think about what she was going to say next, she added, “When you’re better, I’d like you to meet him.”
As Old Man Khan mulled a response, I imagined the epic tête-à-tête: Pathan and Anglo-Saxon, Muslim and Episcopalian, immigrant and son of the soil, making small talk at a mutually agreed upon forum, perhaps a quiet corner booth at the Oak Room. It would be the first time in nearly a decade Old Man Khan would traverse the Hudson and probably the first time he would dine at a Zagat-rated establishment. The situation would require feats of diplomacy. Old Man Khan would sample the braised swordfish with couscous because he only took halal, and the Drake might deferentially forgo his evening Glenfiddich. Then they would discuss the relationship of their progeny together, knowing in the backs of their minds that the future was a fait accompli.
Placing his hand on the Duck crown, Old Man Khan turned to Jimbo. “Jamshed beta,” he said, “it’s tea time. We must offer our guest a cup of tea. And biscuits. We must find biscuits!”
At any other time, I would have volunteered for a biscuit run, but at that juncture, I couldn’t stay to avail of the famous Pathan hospitality. I remembered I was on the run. In seventy-two hours, life as I knew it would come to an unceremonious end. It was time to leave.
After asking Old Man Khan for permission, which was reluctantly granted, I offered a round of ’byes and bows from a distance. The Duck kissed the air. Amo frowned. Jimbo offered to walk me out. “I’ll pray for you, Khan Sahab,” I said before heading out.
“I am alive because of your prayers, Shehzad beta.” And as always, he said, “You must give my salam to your mother.”
As we cut through the attendant hordes in the waiting room to the visitors’ desk, I realized I had lost my fear of hospitals. Things sometimes worked out. Before parting, I asked Jimbo if he had a place to stay. “You know you’re always welcome to crash with me, yaar.”
Mauling me sentimentally, Jimbo said, “You’re a good man, Charlie Brown. Thanks for lookin’ out for the family and everythin’.” When I told him he didn’t need to thank me, Jimbo mauled me again and said, “A real civilized soonker.”
“What’s going to happen to our friend, yaar?”
“That governor guy’s lookin’ into it, dude.”
“What? Wow! Why didn’t you tell me before?”
“Just keep your fingers crossed,” he said, demonstrating, “and thumbs, like this.”
“Well,” I sighed, “at least he’ll be okay.”
“What’s wrong, dude?”
“I’m okay. I’m fine. It’s just that back there they told me, I’ve got to leave the country.”
“Whatchu talkin ’bout, Willis?”
“My visa. It expires in three days.” Jimbo slapped his forehead loudly. “Everything hinges on me getting this job—”
Grabbing me by the lapels with uncharacteristic alacrity, Jimbo said, “Do what you gotta do!” Then, unzipping his track jacket, he exhibited pink welts on his rounded shoulders. It was a jarring display. Tracing the tumid outline of a lash just above the shoulder blade, it occurred to me that if Jimbo had been beaten, AC would have been left for dead. He wasn’t easy. “You survive, dude. Like my old man. We’re survivors.”
It was a fine sentiment, except that survival is a material exigency. Food and shelter are contingent on liquidity, but my cash was tied up in a lottery ticket and a two-thousand-dollar suit. Pawning the latter would free up the nominal cash flow for subsistence, but there were already creased stripes running down the spine of the jacket that would have to be ironed out with delicate, deliberate strokes. And I possessed neither iron nor ironing board. It would have been grand to return the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, then idle away the waning afternoon among the multitudes on Fifth, window-shopping, sampling colognes at Bergdorf, appraising fake-diamond-encrusted Rolexes from West African hawkers, touring FAO Schwartz like the man who refuses to grow up. Instead I found myself pounding the paan-stained streets of Jackson Heights, Queens, clad for a soirée at a Texan country club, Abdul Karim’s keys jangling in my pocket. I had some unfinished business and a half-baked if not entirely harebrained plan.
15.
The air was cool and smoky like November in Karachi and, as usual, wafting mutton biryani. The aroma reached the height of the el and extended across this side of Roosevelt Avenue. Little Pakistan was unusually tranquil, as if the natives, bracing for a hurricane, had left town in a hurry. Every other shop seemed shuttered, and the sidewalks were mostly abandoned by the aunty patrols, the layabouts huddled at corners pushing calling cards, the dark-eyed Bangladeshi busboys sucking beedis during bathroom breaks. Save a couple of Lincoln Continentals—one defiantly blaring dil bolay boom, boom—the main drag was also mostly deserted like an obscure landing strip.
Later I’d learn that in the sweeps following 9/11, many had fled across the border, to Canada, to Mexico, with not much more than the clothes on their backs. Many would leave for the homes they had left decades ago, never to return. There was, however, some activity on 37th Avenue: the ramshackle Palace—a hardcore porn theater that had been reborn as the neighborhood Bollywood venue—remained operational for the matinee, a “hair-raising” musical remake of Ghost. And the Sikh-owned liquor shop where we had been known to congregate for assorted nips and aperitifs was open for business, as was Kabab King next door.
Once upon a time, we would make a fortnightly pilgrimage to the legendary Kabab King for late brunch or early dinner, dragging with us insular denizens of Manhattoes that had included on occasion Ari, Lawrence né Larry, the Duck and her urban tribe. By the time we arrived, we would be famished, sometimes still hung over from the night before, and though the uninitiated were known to get the proverbial strangers-in-a-strange-land feeling, they would be welcomed by the mustachioed majordomo like lost relatives from the homeland and extended VIP treatment: the frayed floral-patterned curtains of the designated family area in the back would be parted, additional chairs would be arranged, dusted; the unctuous glass table tops would be cleared, wiped. Salad would arrive, soda would be served. Then came the feast of meat: bihari kabab, seekh kabab, chicken tikka, chicken boti.
According to a Times food critic, whose besmudged photocopied review could be found sandwiched between the table and glass, “The kabab rarely receives its due respect. Dismissed as simple, sneered at as primitive, the kabab sizzles through life unappreciated, just as cars and buses rumble into the unconscious sonic background of city life.” I had read it so many times that I could, for a time, recite it at will like doggerel committed to memory by rote during a young and impressionable age, and what irked me was not so much the misconceived analogy but the whimsical, vaguely Orientalist characterization of the kabab: “The kabab … is simple and primitive—as old as the day the first ancestral hominid stuck a piece of meat on a stick and held it over a fire.”
There was no doubt in our minds that the piece was penned by a white man, not an erudite Jeffrey Steingarten or an urbane Tony Bourdain but the Sam Huntington of food criticism. After all, the steak
is considered primitive in most parts of the world, thought to be cut by Neanderthals from the rumps of roving buffalo and slapped unceremoniously on the fire. Although Sam might have traced the antecedent of the kabab to the neighborhood of Paleolithic Age, its preparation is an evolved exercise that requires parboiling meat, mincing it, marinating it, spicing it, and finally grilling it over coals. The critic, however, managed to get the ambience of the place right:
We would be more stuffed than shocked afterward, sluggishly eyeing each other, the cabbies, and their families on the adjacent tables, and the gutted Styrofoam plates before us. Somebody would inevitably inquire about the dessert menu before being told that taking dessert at a kabab joint would not be advisable. Somebody else would inquire about the restroom and would be promptly and vigorously discouraged. Then we would pay at the counter before shaking hands all around, and return the way we came.
It would have been wonderful to revisit the old haunt, but I had not traveled to Jackson Heights for the proverbial kabab, shabab or sharab. Those prelapsarian times were far, far away. Skirting Kabab King, I turned the corner and walked three-quarters of the block to the somber brick walk-ups on the right-hand side of the street. I had decided to come clean with Abdul Karim.
When I rang the buzzer below the rusty copper-plated mailbox, sometimes left unlocked for the weekly exchange of keys, Abdul Karim answered the door, wrapped, as usual, in his royal blue bathrobe. In the background, I could hear the squeaks and whistles coming from a TV, the telltale sounds of Looney Tunes, and for a moment I imagined everything was fine, like before; but then I noticed that Abdul Karim had shaved his mustache—a dried dab of shaving cream still smudged his earlobe—and his eyes were cherry red and veiny, as if he had a nasty case of conjunctivitis.
“Dare you!” he cried, jabbing me with his finger as if intending to puncture my sternum. “Dare you show your face? Do you know how much suffering you are causing?”
Staring at him blankly, I apologized profusely—“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry”—for what, I wasn’t sure. I didn’t have to guess. “The FBI came into my house. They were waking up my six-year-old daughter, treating us criminally. They were asking, ‘What your relationship to the Shehzad boy? You are knowing he is terrorist?’”
Rendered speechless, I hung my head. I felt like bursting into tears.
“I was trusting in you,” Abdul Karim was saying. “I was taking you in, giving you work, but you betrayed me! You have betrayed us. You are the betrayer.” Nodding to myself, I agreed with the accusations. It was my fault. I should not have dragged the Family Karim into the stormy seas of my life. “We are decent people. We don’t want your types. You go do jihad some other place else!”
“I’m sorry,” I slurred, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” and would have continued to inanely spout apology upon apology but was interrupted by a voice ringing from inside: “Aray bhai, kaun hai?”
It was Mrs. Abdul Karim. A big-boned lady defined in part by a formidable greased, hip-length braid, she was at once an efficient homemaker and a demanding wife, determined on keeping up with the Joneses or, as it so happened, the Garcias. I had met her only once before, the very first time I had fetched the keys, and though she had been cordial and had served a cup of Kashmiri chai, I got the impression that she was not sold on me, perhaps because like her husband, I had come down in the world.
“You go now,” Abdul Karim instructed, jabbing me again. As I stumbled down the stairs, he said, “You see, you are upsetting Mrs. You go now. Go, go, go.”
“I’m sorry,” I said, repeating the words like a mantra as I retraced my steps to Kabab King. I needed sanctuary, a reprieve, a moment to collect my thoughts. Sidling in like a supplicant, I found a spot by the window and a discarded scrim of cracked naan to chew on. I toyed with a saltshaker. I folded paper napkins into origami hats. I reread the Times review. And I conversed with Abdul Karim in my head while fending off waiters with tight smiles and half-truths. Although I claimed that I would order a little later—I’m actually waiting for someone—I could not afford the entrees on the menu. In time, however, I ordered some water, which was splashed like a half-hearted favor into somebody else’s plastic cup on the table. The staff was worn down and on edge like Abdul Karim, like me, like everybody else. The majordomo was nowhere to be seen. Maybe he too had fled across the border. Maybe it was time I fled as well.
After spending the better part of an hour in deliberation with the saltshaker, I was virtually escorted out by the staff, but instead of returning to the city, as I might have once upon a time, I decided to return to Abdul Karim’s. I had to speak up, explain myself. I couldn’t simply up and leave. Returning to the scene of disaster, I determinedly rang the bell again, but this time Mrs. Abdul Karim attended the door. She stood in the doorway as if guarding her home and hearth from an intruder intent on thieving and pillaging. It was the pose Ma would strike when some stranger rapped on our door: a beggar, a cook-for-hire, somebody collecting for the neighborhood madrassa or on my father’s debts. Ma would hear each unexpected visitor out with her fists on her hips but would always have the last word. Nothing got past her.
“Get out!” Mrs. Abdul Karim suddenly yelled, waving a wooden stirring spoon in my face. “Duffa ho!”
Somehow I stood my ground, and before she could whack me with the spoon and send me packing, I pleaded with her in Urdu to hear me out: “Aik minute,” I said, holding up a quivering finger, “mujhay bus aik minute ki mohlat deejiay. Phir main aap ko kabhi tang nahin karoon ga.” Mrs. Abdul Karim frowned as if she’d heard it all before, as if I were parroting the promises her husband had made about making a better life in the United States of America. Clasping my hands, I repeated, “Aik minute, bus aik minute.”
“Aik minute,”she groaned, hands on hips, spoon in hand. “Only aik minute.”
“Madam,” I began, “I’m truly, truly sorry for what has happened. I’m sorry for the pain I’ve caused your family. It’s completely my fault. I feel ashamed, horrible, guilty. I’ll do whatever it takes to make things right.”
“You will do nothing,” Mrs. Abdul Karim said. “You will get out.”
“Okay, but I just want you to know that your husband shouldn’t worry. I’m not a terrorist. I was wrongly accused, wrongly imprisoned—I spent days in jail—but they realized they made a mistake, they let me go … The cab must have been impounded, but I’ve been too afraid to make inquiries. I’m even afraid to call my mother.” Looking at my feet, I continued, “I mean, what am I supposed to tell her? ‘Everything’s changed, Ma, everything’s changed for the worse.’”
Mrs. Abdul Karim watched me with hawk eyes, processing my sorry spiel with the same severe frown, but then to my jaw-dropping astonishment, she rather abruptly proclaimed, “I will make one cup of tea.” Scanning the length of the street for signs, shadows, FBI agents, she ushered me inside with a quick, sure wave of the spoon. Perhaps she felt sorry for me or bound somehow by etiquette; either way, I felt touched and grateful, and I entered before the offer could be rescinded, almost tripping on the welcome mat. Abdul Karim was out. I was told to take a seat while chai was prepared. I did as I was told.
Cramped and cozy, the two-and-a-half-bed-one-bath always reminded me of our apartment in Karachi, although the aesthetic of the Abdul Karim household would not have cohered with Ma’s sensibility. The drapes, for instance, were a shade of magenta and trimmed with gold tassels. There was a framed calligraphic piece on the wall paired with an oil color that recalled that famous Frost poem. Notably missing was the mammoth color portrait of Altaf Bhai, the leader of the thuggish but fiercely secular Karachi political party. Over the course of the preceding few months, I had gleaned that Abdul Karim was an MQM man who had fled his beloved city and declared political asylum in the early nineties when the establishment flagrantly persecuted the constituents of the party. He could not have anticipated then being persecuted again.
Before taking a seat, I surveyed the collection of bl
own-glass figurines and hand-painted porcelain dolls on display in a solid sheesham cabinet, the centerpiece of the room: an angel befittingly strumming a harp, a leopard in repose on a rock, a gaunt couple ballroom-dancing, a life-size hummingbird in midstroke sucking nectar from an orchid, a barefooted child wearing a raccoon felt hat and sporting a musket on his shoulder. I nearly knocked over the vaguely African statue brushing my elbow, which on closer inspection turned out to be a replica of the famous dancing girl of Mohenjodaro.
When I sat down, I discovered that the raised footstool at my feet opened like a book to yield Abdul Karim’s royal blue slippers, a smoking pipe, a bag of tobacco, and a pair of reading glasses. I felt like Goldilocks, and like Goldilocks I peered into the smallest room, a storeroom of sorts that housed, among other items, a hamper and an ironing board. There must, I figured, be an iron somewhere.
As I manhandled Abdul Karim’s intimate possessions, I noticed that I was being observed by a very cute, bright-eyed, ponytailed six-year-old, now swinging by an arm from the doorframe, now bunching her pink corduroy frock. She wore matching pumps and the curious smirk of a painted porcelain figurine come to life.
“Hello, beautiful,” I said, beckoning to her with an open hand. “What’s your name?” When she refused to divulge it, I told her mine.
“Chuck,” she chuckled. “What kinda name is Chuck?”
“Well … I suppose, it’s American.”
“Are you American?”
“Um, no … I’m actually Pakistani.”
“Why d’ya have an American name when you’re Pakistani?”
I shrugged.
“Papa’s Pakistani.”
“What about you?”
“I’m Pakistani-American.”
“So what’s your name?”
