by H. M. Naqvi
She had arrived in a denim jacket, a white T-shirt, an ankle-length chiffon skirt, a sequined satchel, and trademark red Pumas. She had arrived sans hijab. Her straight, brown, shoulder-length hair cut across the forehead like a Japanese schoolgirl’s and wafted jasmine and cloves. When I politely inquired about the recent changes in her sartorial regime, she asked, “You mean the skirt?”
“Um, no,” I replied. I didn’t know if she was messing with me. “I meant—”
“Lemme guess, Shehzad. You mean the hijab?”
Folding my arms, I expected an exposition on identity, though I had always suspected that Amo had swapped teenage angst and Britney Spears posters for religion. Instead she said, “I’ve been, like, kinda overweight forever—guess I took after Begum—and for the longest time, I didn’t care, but then life got kinda rough in junior high—it was always like, ‘Hey, there’s marshmallow girl,’ whatever—and got rougher in high school.
“Then all of a sudden, guess it was beginning of senior year, I started to change—don’t know how, don’t know why, it just happened—and the same guys who were calling me names back in the seventh grade were hitting on me and everything. I was so disgusted by the whole thing that I was like, bring it, bring on the hijab. And it’s not like I’m not Muslim. I’ve been to Sunday school all my life, and I say my prayers and everything and am proud of who I am.”
“Wow. Well. That explains a lot. But it doesn’t really explain why you—”
“Took it off.”
“Yeah.”
“Your guess.”
“Well,” I stuttered, “I don’t really know, but I do know that you’re looking, um, quite beautiful. Very beautiful.”
Amo blushed and beamed as if my compliment were news or a revelation, then rather unexpectedly asked, “What do you want, Shehzad?” I was rendered speechless by the bold query.
“What … do you mean?”
Smiling, she added, “Like on the menu?”
“Oh,” I mumbled, “right.”
I was pretty sure she messing with me.
We ordered primo staples of Italian-American cuisine—penne vodka for me, and spaghetti, no meatballs, for her—and munched on olive-oil-dipped sourdough slices while we waited. When I asked after Old Man Khan, Amo told me that he was not convalescing as well as expected: not only had the procedure left him weak, but his blood pressure had been acting up again, posing a heightened risk of stroke. “Baba blanks out after dinner, which is like, really scary.” I said, “I can imagine,” but I couldn’t. “I pray every day,” Amo continued. “God has to listen to me. God will.”
She told me Jamshed Lala was with him. In fact, he hadn’t left his father’s side since my stay at Christ Hospital, and though he had planned to visit me after learning of my imminent departure, Amo had insisted on coming instead. “Baba needs him,” she said. “I asked him why you’re leaving, but he told me to ask you myself. So why’re you leaving?”
Avoiding her attentive eyes, I attempted a doughty smile, then toyed with the saltshaker and took a generous swig of tap water. It would have been nice to have had a glass of wine, perhaps a whole carafe, but I deferred to propriety, to Amo. “I don’t know, Amo,” I began. “It’s complicated.”
If I had had a couple of drinks in me I might have told her about the fear, the paranoia, the profound loneliness that had become routine features of life in the city, about my undistinguished career as a banker and a cabbie. If I had a couple of drinks in me, I just might have spilled my guts. But I didn’t. Dinner was served, a fine excuse to drop the subject. Besides, I was ravenous. I hadn’t eaten all day. I requested parmesan, the pepper mill, and more water, but dispatched the dish before the waiter returned.
Amo, on the other hand, took her time, chewing her food, wrapping strand after strand of spaghetti around her fork. “Well,” she said, looking into her plate, as if commenting on the consistency of the tomato paste, “I’ll miss you.” I felt my ears burn, my heart beat faster. It was perhaps the nicest thing anybody had said to me in ages.
“I’ll miss you too, Amo.”
“Is there like, any way I can convince you to stay?”
The query might have been whimsically sentimental, something friends say when friends leave, but I was pretty sure I heard the suggestion of marriage in the tenor, and for a few moments, while chewing the last piece of sourdough in the bread basket, I found myself considering the possibility, the conditions of possibility. I would have to be employed and prospering, and Amo would have to complete her studies before the subject could be officially broached. Then one day I would travel to Jersey City on the train, sweaty and anxious and dressed in my Sunday best, to ask Old Man Khan for his daughter’s hand. When I thought about it, his avid interest in me, in my professional trajectory, might have been the attention of a potential father-in-law. Assuming that he would bestow his blessings on us—you never knew with Old Man Khan—Ma would be called, and sweetmeats would be distributed all around.
Next, the logistics would be hammered out. The event would take place at the banquet hall of a hotel on the periphery of the city, a Holiday Inn or even a Sheraton. It would be attended by Mini Auntie, the likes of Kojo, Ari, Lawrence né Larry, and prominent members of the community—the consul general of Pakistan, the editor in chief of the Urdu Times—and the not-so-prominent, like Ron the bartender, who would attend as a civilian because the festivities would be dry. There would be a consensus among the guests that Amo was the most beautiful bride they had seen in a generation. Dinner would be catered by Kabab King. Jimbo would deejay. And the limo would hopefully be organized by Abdul Karim.
Afterward we would rent a junior one-bedroom on the Upper East Side before applying for a mortgage on a more accommodating apartment, and in a decade or so, with both of us earning six figures, we might move to the suburbs, like the Shaman, Scarsdale perhaps, because of the schools. After producing progeny, we would live out the rest of our days with an SUV in the garage, assorted objets d’art in the drawing room, and a view of a manicured lawn.
At the end of the day, it was a vision I found I could not quite commit to. “Maybe you could visit me in Karachi,” I said. “You’ll like it there. It’s a lot like New York.” That was the truth.
Amo didn’t respond. Perhaps she had her mouth full; perhaps she didn’t agree. After polishing off the remaining spaghetti with quiet diligence, she dabbed her lips with a starched napkin, then politely refused dessert. And when I asked for the check, she dug into her satchel, offering to pay, but I reached across the table and held her hand. I didn’t let go till the waiter returned with the change, then persuaded her to accompany me on a stroll.
We sauntered side by side like an old couple, rubbing shoulders but not holding hands. Crossing Broadway and West End to Riverside, we could sense the river beyond the sliver of greenery. The soil was wet and fragrant beneath our feet. The sky was murky. I thought I glimpsed a yellowing crescent among the clouds, but when I pointed it out to Amo, there was nothing there. “It’s getting late,” she said.
“Guess we should head back,” I said. My flight was in less than four hours.
“Guess so.”
Turning around, we headed back to civilization. At the entrance of the 72nd Street stop, we said our goodbyes. I told Amo how wonderful it was to see her and that I’d keep in touch. “You promise?” she asked. I pecked her on her cheek and hugged her casually, but my heart sank as she turned her back and disappeared into the multitudes.
• • •
The apartment was bare, save my father’s suitcase and Amo’s gulab jamuns. While waiting for the taxi to JFK, I wrapped the dish with the Times like a cheap present. My glance fell on a section of the paper entitled A NATION CHALLENGED: PORTRAITS OF GRIEF, a regular feature those days.
It was the oddest obituary. Perhaps all obituaries are fundamentally odd. There was no mention of the ship jumping, gas pumping, porn watching, cigarette running—de mortuis nil nisi bonum—and there was no
mention of us. The story was simple, black-and-white: the man was a Muslim, not a terrorist.
After reading it over, I did what we do at times like these. I took off my boots, tucked in my shirt, and rolled up my sleeves. I washed my face, arms, and feet and parted my hair with wet fingers. I spread the rug from the suitcase that Ma had dispatched four years earlier, stood, heels together, arms folded over stomach, and, positioning myself generally east, toward Mecca, recited the call to prayer.
In the name of God, I began, the Beneficent and Merciful. God is great. I bear witness that nothing deserves to be worshipped but God. I bear witness that Muhammad is the Apostle of God. Come to prayer. Come to prayer. Come to success. Come to success. God is the Greatest. There is no God but God.
Raising my hands to my temple, I murmured, “Accept these prayers on behalf of Mohammed Shah.”
Then, when it was time to go, I left.
Epilogue
You take a flight from Karachi to Manchester to New York. Stretch your mouth at Immigration when you say, “Haya doin’?” This may expedite the process. They appreciate familiar idiom. Don’t get into a car with the man with sunglasses. Hail a yellow cab at the curb. You will cross miserable swaths of Queens: empty playgrounds bordered by barbed wire, boarded-up rowhouses, signs for MOT LS. You will glimpse broken, blurred images framed by graffiti and rubbish and cut by underpasses: a homeless man lurking, the contents of his life spilling from a shopping cart. This will jar your sensibilities. You will think: Is this it? America, land of the free, from sea to shining sea? Where are the skyscrapers? The long-legged blondes? Your cabbie drives as if he is late for an appointment and from time to time observes you through the rearview mirror. He is also Pakistani and knows what you are about: an off-the-boat student, a bacha. He will dispense unsolicited advice. Secure a Green Card. Stay away from long-legged blondes, unless you can’t secure Green Card. You suspect that he’s taking you for a ride, but you listen raptly. He tells you about the dhaba in Jackson Heights that serves the best plate of nihari this side of the Atlantic. You find comfort in his familiarity with the American Way of Life or, as he says, with livin in Umreeka. “Down the road,” he adds, “you will find out who you are.” The bumper-to-bumper traffic on the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway reminds you of Tariq Road at night. The cabbie turns up the radio: “1010 WINS: You give us 22 minutes, we’ll give you the world.” You repeat the curious phrase while attempting to compute how far you have traveled. Your mind drifts back to the memory of your mother’s last embrace, your clan waving from behind tinted-glass doors. Karachi’s energy, noise, hoards, billboards, and sandy aesthetic stir profound sentimentality. There you were yourself and you were alive. Now you feel lonely, you despair. Now you are tired and the airplane meal has given you dyspepsia and the novelty of the New World has already worn off. You massage your eyes, hide your face, look down at the yellow lines on the road blurring into one. Then the road inclines, and when you look up, you see spires and masts and growths of iron. You recognize the Empire State Building from the movies, the Citicorp Tower, the Chrysler Building, and when you glance south, you see the world-famous World Trade Center. The sky shimmers; three streaks of white jet smoke disappear above Midtown; a helicopter descends in slow motion over the Hudson. “IT’S 72 DEGREES AND SUNNY IN CENTRAL PARK, GOING UP TO A HIGH OF 77. IT’s GOING TO BE A BEAUTIFUL SEPTEMBER DAY!” You are elated. This is it, you think, America, land of the free, from sea to shining sea. You roll down your window. A warm breeze ruffles the hair that you’d combed in the airplane lavatory. You start humming, “Start spreading the news …” You realize you never knew all the words.
Acknowledgments
I would like to thank Sarwar Naqvi, the first writer I ever knew, for instilling in me a fondness for literature, and Asad Naqvi, for his behind-the-scenes backing from the start. I would especially like to thank the indomitable Zafar Iqbal for his mysterious, implicit, and explicit support of this project over the years.
I’m grateful to Afshan, Vineeta, Jason, and the handful of others who read the manuscript at various junctures, John Mac for allowing me to use his office in the summer of ’07, and Asad Hussain and Nadia for allowing me use of the cave at North Hoyne Street earlier in the year.
I would also like to mention playwright John Glavin, whose extraordinary intervention allowed me to complete my education once upon a time, Leslie for allowing me to continue it in the recent past, and my dear friend and guardian angel, Akhil, without whom I would, in many ways, find myself bereft.
Above all, I would like to thank the brilliant and evergreen Lee as well as the ever optimistic Gary Morris, without whom this project probably would have remained confined to a cocktail napkin.
About the Author
H. M. NAQVI is a graduate of Georgetown and the creative writing program at Boston University. He won the Phelam prize for poetry and represented Pakistan at the National Poetry Slam in Ann Arbor, Michigan. In recent years, he taught creative writing at B.U., and presently divides his time between Karachi and the U.S. East Coast.
Alfred A. Knopf and Harold Ober Associates: Excerpt from “Catch” from The Collected Poems of Langston Hughes by Langston Hughes, edited by Arnold Rampersad with David Roessel, Associate Editor, copyright © 1994 by the Estate of Langston Hughes.
The New York Times: “$25 and Under: Juicy Kebabs Tucked Away in a Queens Cabby Haunt” from The New York Times, Dining In/Dining Out Section, 3/13/2002 Issue, Page F10, copyright © 2002 The New York Times. All rights reserved.
Princeton University Press: Excerpt from “The Hour of Faithlessness” from The True Subject by Faiz Ahmed Faiz, copyright © 1987 by Princeton University Press.
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
Copyright © 2009 by H. M. Naqvi
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Shaye Areheart Books, an imprint of the Crown Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
www.crownpublishing.com
Shaye Areheart Books with colophon is a registered trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available upon request.
eISBN: 978-0-307-45991-6
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