An American Brat

by Bapsi Sidhwa

  “Open your bags,” the customs inspector said, intent on his duty. He sounded hostile.

  Feroza fumbled with the lock again. She unbuckled the leather straps, pressed open the snaps, and lifted the lid. She opened the other suitcase.

  The contents had been neatly packed by Zareen, and Feroza drew courage from the well-ordered stacks of clothes, the neat parcels containing her shoes, the little plastic pouches holding her toiletries.

  Like a shark attacking in calm waters, the customs inspector with the discomfiting accent plunged his hands into one suitcase after the other and rummaged callously among the contents. Odd bits of clothing spilled over the sides: a slippery stack of nylon underwear, a cardigan.

  The man held up one of the parcels: “What’s this?”

  “Shoes.”

  He dug out copper wall plaques, heavy onyx bookends and ashtrays, the books and magazines Manek had asked for, a sanitary pad. He felt it as if searching for something concealed in it.

  He brutally caricatured Feroza’s shocked expression.

  Feroza shut her mouth and looked steadily at the inspector — but hers was the steadfast gaze of a mesmerized kitten.

  The man fished out and examined small vests, a brassiere.

  Feroza became hatefully conscious of the tears sliding down her burning cheeks.

  “What’s the matter, officer? Can I help you?”

  It was Manek. He was accompanied by another immigration officer.

  “Who’re you?”

  “He’s my uncle,” Feroza said, gasping on an intake of air that was like a shuddering sigh. Faint with relief to have Manek with her, she gave his arm a squeeze and clung to it.

  How was Feroza to know that Manek had been paged, his name announced over the loudspeakers in the reception lobby, interrogated? She sensed, though, that she had unwittingly incriminated him with her naive answers to the questions fired at her, and she was petrified.

  “He’s your uncle?” Feroza’s cross-examiner looked incredulous. He turned to the officer with Manek, a moist-skinned, oval-faced man with a scanty thatch of damp blond hair. The interrogators could be brothers. “Does he look like her uncle?”

  The officer with Manek twisted his glistening lips in a fastidious grimace: “No.”

  “I’m her uncle, officer,” Manek asserted. He appeared composed, reliable, trustworthy.

  Feroza was amazed. She could never have expected the Manek she knew to project these sterling qualities. And, at the same time, she was unutterably glad to have this confidence-inspiring new manifestation of her uncle at her side.

  “No, you’re not. You’re too young to be her uncle. You’re her fiancé. How old are you?”

  “I’m twenty-two, officer.” There he was again: meek, composed, worthy.

  “What’s the status of your visa?”

  “I’m a student, sir. At M.I.T. I’m studying chemical engineering. I have an F-1 visa.”

  From his manner of speaking, Feroza guessed that he had been separately questioned. She was appalled at the official perfidy, and at herself for not having sensed it earlier.

  “This woman just told me you work at two different jobs. The F-1 visa does not permit you to work. You have broken the law. You will have to face charges … You’ll be deported.”

  “I work in the university cafeteria and at other odd jobs there, officer. She’s just arrived, she doesn’t know. I receive enough money from home for my tuition and living expenses. I can show you my bank drafts and statements to prove it. I can get a letter from my university. I work only for them. I’m permitted that.”

  The officer was skeptical. He turned to Feroza and, at the sight of her, at once reverted to his aspect of demon prosecutor.

  “You are not eligible to enter the United States. You and your ‘uncle’ have concealed the truth. You’re both lying. Isn’t this man your fiancé? Aren’t you here to marry him?”

  Bewildered and scared, Feroza could not fathom what it was about her that got this pale man with his soft-boiled eyes so riled. She stared at him with her mesmerized kitten’s eyes and shook her head.

  “She’s lying.” The officer shifted his righteous, watery blue stare to his colleague, seeking confirmation.

  His colleague nodded grimly.

  “Aren’t you engaged to him? Come on … you’ve come to the United States to marry your fiancé! You both plan to live here illegally. We know how to get at the truth. Stop lying!”

  “I’m her uncle, officer. I cannot marry my niece.”

  “Are you kidding? We know y’all marry your cousins.”

  “Yes, officer; but not our nieces.”

  Feroza was crying again. Her whole body shook with her sobs and the effort to contain them: to restrict the ugly scene to their small circle and not advertise her misery and humiliation.

  Meanwhile the customs inspector was holding up a lacy pink nylon nightie he had fished out of the bag. It looked obscene pinched between his spatulate fingers.

  “Ah-ha!” Feroza’s interrogator sounded triumphant. “The wedding negligee!”

  Both immigration officers leered at the nightgown Zareen had packed at the last minute as if it was an incriminating weapon discovered at the scene of a crime.

  “It’s no use, your lying. Here’s the evidence!”

  The inspector repeatedly stabbed a soggy-looking, tapered finger at the offending garment.

  Feroza, who had only heard of seeing “red,” felt a crimson rush of blood blur her vision. Her tears, scorched by her rage, dried up. In a swift, feline gesture, she snatched her mother’s nightgown from the Hispanic’s stubby, desecrating fingers and said, “To hell with you and your damn country. I’ll go back!”

  Feroza flung the soft pink apparel into the bag and began stashing her other belongings on the swollen mound of disheveled clothes.

  The inspector, who had displayed the nightdress and had it snatched from his hand, turned as if what was happening was no concern of his and drifted away.

  Feroza’s immigration officer had surprise stamped all over his soft, shiny face. By the looks of it, he might have exceeded his bounds.

  “Choop kar,” Manek hissed into Feroza’s ear, warning his niece to shut up.

  “Look, officer, I guarantee she’ll go back at the end of three months, or whenever her visa finishes.” Manek turned to the immigration officer who had accompanied him. “I can get a letter certifying she’s my niece. Here’s my visiting card. I promise to send you a copy of my passport and visa and a letter from the university stating I don’t work anywhere else. I will send you copies of the bank drafts from Pakistan.”

  The officer took the proffered card. Manek signed a form acknowledging that his statements had been correctly recorded. He was sternly advised to provide proof of his assertions as soon as possible.

  Feroza also signed a form. The officer who had treated her so vilely just a few moments back was now conciliatory. Shaken by the yellow blaze of fury emanating from the eyes Feroza had inherited from Khutlibai, and confounded by the fierce dignity imparted to her genes by Soonamai, he even stashed a few of her belongings into her turbulent suitcase.

  Once all the contents were back in, the officer brought the lid forward, marked it with chalk, and, after stamping Feroza’s passport, handed it back to her.

  Chapter 6

  As the taxi drove out of Kennedy Airport, speaking in Gujrati Manek said, “You’re the same old uloo. That was a damn silly way to behave. What if those chaps had packed us back to Lahore? You’re in America now: you have to learn to control your temper. There are no grannies or mummy-daddies here to bail you out!”

  What rubbish! Feroza thought. What had she ever done that might require her grandmothers or parents to bail her out of prison?

  Aloud she said, “He insulted my mother! I couldn’t stand the way that creep handled her nightgown.”

  “You’ll have to learn to stand a lot of things in this world.”

  “Look. You didn’t sta
nd up for your sister’s honor. So don’t shout at me for defending her izzat.”

  “I’m not shouting,” said Manek, managing with difficulty to keep his voice low and sound reasonable. “And you’d better forget this honor-shonor business. Nobody bothers about that here.”

  They remained silent in their respective places in the rear of the taxi. Feroza’s profile, silhouetted against the wintry night outside, was a study in aristocratic umbrage.

  “So, how’s everyone at home?” Manek asked, after a while.

  “Fine.”

  “Look, I’ve missed you all,” Manek said. “Talk to me properly.”

  Impulsively he sought Feroza’s hand in the dark and gripped it. It was icy cold and surprisingly soft, almost fragile.

  Manek did something else he had never done before — he put his arm, stiff and awkward, round her shoulders.

  “Are you feeling cold? Look, don’t worry,” he said with unaccustomed kindness, “it’s all right. Immigration gives everyone a hard time. You should hear some of the stories! But that’s behind us. We’re going to have a great time. You’ll love New York. I’ve planned it so we can spend a week here. Then we’ll get back to Cambridge. If I get the time, we’ll even go to Disneyland.”

  Immediately Feroza noticed the garlands of lights outlining the iron rhythm of the bridge they were racing along, the sumptuous red taillights of the cars ahead. Then she realized they had driven over other bridges, equally long.

  And then they were climbing into a futuristic spaghetti of curving and incredibly suspended roads, mile upon looping mile of wide highway that weaved in and out of the sky at all angles so that sometimes they descended to the level of the horizon of lights in the distance that Manek told her was Manhattan, and sometimes they appeared to be aiming at the sky. Feroza saw ships in an incredible river. How deep the river must be to hold the ships.

  Feroza couldn’t credit everything her eyes saw. And, as excitement gripped her, she laughed, a clear laugh with modulations that suddenly informed Manek, more than the bodily changes he had noticed, that Feroza had grown into a woman — a desirable and passionate woman — in the three years he’d been away, and he’d have to look out for her.

  He felt proud of his niece, happy and awkward.

  “Vekh! Vekh! Sher-di-batian!” Feroza said in exuberant Punjabi, mimicking excited yokels pointing out the bright city lights from bullock carts. It was an old joke they shared with their young friends and cousins, except she now used it to express her own excitement at the extravagant display.

  The sky and the air appeared to her to be lit up in a perennial glow that dispelled night and darkness and sleep, banished all things that did not participate in the happy, wakeful celebration of life.

  It was almost two in the morning by the time the taxi deposited Manek and Feroza at the YMCA on Broadway.

  Once they were in their room on the fifteenth floor, Manek, utterly exhausted, got into his pajamas and slipped into bed.

  Feroza pushed the heavier of the two suitcases against the wall. “I don’t need to open this till we get to Cambridge. It’s got lots of gifts and things for you, but you’ll have to wait.”

  Manek agreed: he had no wish to see its contents strewn about in the tiny room, or to repack the bulky suitcase. He knew what he’d asked for and the gifts could wait.

  Feroza unzipped a canvas carryall, removed a nightdress and her robe, and began rummaging through its contents.

  “Look, don’t be so pora-chora at this time of night,” he said, slipping into his old bullying tone. “Turn off the light and go to sleep. You can unpack in the morning.”

  Feroza fished out an intricately patterned fawn-and-blue cardigan and, saying, “Catch, it’s for you,” threw it to Manek.

  Manek sat up in bed and spread it out on his comforter. “Not bad,” he said.

  “Your sister got swollen eyes knitting the Fair Isle pattern for you, and all you can say is ‘Not bad’?”

  “Very nice,” Manek said, running his hand appreciatively over the soft wool; it had been a long time since anyone had bothered to pamper him.

  Feroza, who had expected him to make disparaging comments, checked a caustic remark and tried not to show how surprised she was by his uncharacteristic behavior. She switched off the light and discreetly changed into her nightdress.

  Just before getting into bed, Feroza slipped a gray-and-white snakeskin wallet under Manek’s pillow. “It’s from your mother,” she said, but Manek was already asleep.

  Outside their room, the night was full of unfamiliar smells and alien sounds that kept Feroza’s eyes wide awake and her breath tentative. She fell asleep to the shrill, eerie cry of the sirens that patrol New York, just when she was convinced she would never sleep at all.

  ~

  Manek slept late himself and permitted Feroza to sleep in her lumpy twin bed till noon. When he decided it was time she woke up, he sprang into an energetic bustle of noisy activity, accompanied by a stream of incessant chatter in Gujrati. Manek had not spoken Gujrati in so long. He relished each word and enjoyed the sound of his voice uttering the funny little phrases that have crept into the language since the Parsees adopted it almost fourteen hundred years ago, when they fled to India as religious refugees after the Arab invasion of Persia.

  “Come, come, boochimai, up, up!” He called Feroza boochimai, an archaic Gujrati word for “little girl” she hated. “If you spread yourself out all broad and flat like this, your arms and legs will become loose.” Imitating his mother’s dulcet tones when Khutlibai indulged her granddaughter, he trilled, “Should I tell Kalay Khan to bring my sweetie tea and toast in bed?” and bullied and bundled his niece into her printed robe.

  “Move your trotters, move your trotters,” Manek prompted Feroza, as, groggy with jet lag and numbed by his chatter, she permitted herself to be shepherded towards the women’s bathrooms.

  When he had booked into the YMCA the day before, Manek had discovered that the fifteenth floor was reserved for married couples. The receptionist had asked him if he was going to occupy the room with his wife. Thinking on his nimble feet, Manek quickly said, “Yes.”

  The twenty-second floor was for women only. The rest of the building appeared to have been taken over by weirdos and winos, of various shades and races, who hung out on all the levels.

  Armed with her toilet bag, Feroza tottered into the empty restroom and locked herself in a vacant cubicle. She heard a flush, but when she emerged she was alone. Feroza headed for one of the washbasins lined up against the wall and splashed her face with cold water. She removed her toiletries from the plastic bag and, leaning over the basin, began to brush her teeth.

  All at once Feroza felt uneasy, menaced, as if she were being observed by someone or something dangerous. She had rolled up the sleeves of her robe, and the fine hair on her arms stood up. Feroza had not heard any sounds to indicate that another person was using the facilities. Assuming her imagination was playing tricks in her new surroundings and to dispel her irrational fear, she raised her head and looked into the mirror.

  Feroza stood transfixed. A man’s bloodshot eyes, his dark reflection, was staring at her. The face in the mirror was unself-conscious, speculative, hideously examining her not as a woman but as a specimen of the female gender. Feroza whirled around, swallowing her toothpaste.

  The man’s face suddenly broke into a cunning, lewd, brown-toothed grin. “How ya doin’, baby? Ya wanna poke?”

  Gripping the toothbrush like a weapon, Feroza reflexively scanned the room, looking for a route of escape. Her eyes lit on a pair of dark, very long feet. The bony toes, resting in shoddy rubber thongs, protruded from a toilet cubicle. The hairy shins disappeared abruptly behind the partly open half-door, giving the legs an eerily disembodied quality.

  Hardly aware of what she was doing, Feroza snatched up her bag and tried to dodge past the threatening figure.

  The man moved to block her path. “Howja like it if I rub it up against ya?”
he said softly, his rank breath and strong body smell striking her like physical blows.

  Feroza swerved and, banging against one of the half-doors, dodged past him. His hand brushed her back, but it was as if he touched to frighten rather than stop her.

  Feroza took several wrong turns in the halls before she located their room. Completely out of breath, she hurtled in and gasped, “It was the men’s bathroom!”

  Manek was at the desk. Taken by surprise, he looked unsure. Then he said, speaking with quiet certainty, “I went to the men’s room after leaving you. It’s across the hall.”

  Once again Manek escorted Feroza to the door marked WOMEN. Feroza peered in cautiously. A short, middle-aged black woman was applying lipstick. Feroza’s toothpaste tube lay where she had abandoned it.

  Feroza quickly rinsed her mouth, brushed her hair, and applied Vaseline to her chapped lips. The woman, wiping her hands near the paper towel dispenser, smiled when Feroza looked at her and said, “How’re you, honey?”

  “Hi,” Feroza said and added: “There was a man in the washroom. Two men. Just a little while ago.”

  “You tell the management, honey. There sure are creeps hangin’ around. They talk mighty dirty, too. Now, you take care, honey.”

  Her drawling southern accent and syntax were hard to follow, but Feroza picked up enough words to understand the drift of what was said.

  And sure enough, Feroza soon discovered that when she passed close to the men hanging around in the building, it was more likely than not they would mutter something obscene, fill her ears with the kind of abusive talk the man in the restroom had frightened her with.

  Chapter 7

  After a leisurely hamburger lunch at McDonald’s, which left Feroza struck with wonder at the quick service and the quantities of fries, ketchup, and the ice in the Coke, Manek hauled Feroza off on a tour of New York. They rode the ferry to the Statue of Liberty and explored the iron innards of the stern figure presiding over the ocean. They gaped giddily from atop the Empire State Building midtown and the twin World Trade towers at the tip of the island. They strolled with the nannies and babies through the zoo at Central Park, marveling each time they lifted their incredulous eyes from the wild animals in their native habitats to the shimmering glass and steel embankments of the Manhattan skyline reflecting the sunlight.