City of Spies

by Sorayya Khan

  “Excuse me?” Anne Simon said.

  Sadiq had spoken, even if his turned back made what he’d said inaudible to me. And while Anne Simon could not have understood him, she gauged it important enough to respond.

  The bottom of Sadiq’s kurta remained crumpled, as it had been when he’d risen from under the jacaranda tree. He pulled back his shoulders and made himself as tall as he could.

  “Pardon me?” Anne Simon cocked her head as if the movement might magically translate his Urdu.

  While the two still faced each other, Sadiq reached across, his left hand reaching for her left side, his body turning slightly and providing me with a momentary view. Sadiq touched the fold of Mikail’s baby blanket hanging below Anne Simon’s elbow. His gesture wasn’t threatening; if the two of them had known each other, it could even have been construed as kind, but because they didn’t know each other, his bold gesture was confusing. Inexplicably, Sadiq’s hand moved upward and grazed Mikail’s face, and when it lingered, Anne Simon gasped and pulled away. She took a single decisive step backward, but a far smaller one than I would have expected. Mikail whimpered and she patted the baby without looking down or taking another step.

  A moment later, Sadiq again thrust something in front of Anne Simon, and as he did so, it fell from his hand. The baby’s blanket caught it; Anne Simon jiggled Mikail, and the piece of paper seesawed to the ground. The streetlamp cast light on it, and I watched Anne Simon’s face register what she saw. One by one, her features were affected as if a mask were taking shape—her forehead, ears, nose, mouth, chin, each sculpted anew.

  Sadiq’s back was toward me again, and his fists were clenched. Anne Simon brought Mikail to her shoulder and rubbed tiny circles on his back. She peered intently at Sadiq, but it was impossible to know what she was thinking.

  The scratch in Sadiq’s throat made me think he was about to speak again. Instead, the sound that escaped his lips transformed into a sob. It seemed to catch him by surprise, and he spun away from Anne Simon and into full view. My reflex was to try and escape, but I had nowhere to go, and my back hit the iron fence hard behind me, bruising me in a crisscross pattern that would last for days.

  The disturbance caused the chowkidars to shout and run toward Anne Simon. In what amounted to a lightning flash of activity, she bent to the ground without breaking her hold on Mikail, picked up whatever Sadiq had dropped, and slipped it into his kurta pocket without touching him.

  I was certain she whispered something, but between the chowkidars’ ruckus and the sudden commotion, I could not make sense of what she said.

  Sadiq reached for her, but she was already gone.

  My bicycle clattered to the sidewalk as I ran across the street. I was too slow for the chowkidars, who were already standing next to him and gripping him by his elbows when I reached him.

  “What are you doing?” I demanded of the chowkidars in perfectly accented Urdu.

  It occurred to me that no Pakistani would have missed the fact that I looked like a foreigner, despite my shalwar kameez. Still, had I not been short of breath, out alone in the middle of the night with my chaddar dragging on the ground, they might not have paid me much attention.

  “What are you doing?” they asked me.

  “I’m with him,” I replied, as if stating the obvious.

  Suddenly we were interrupted by the deep and authoritative voice of an American marine in front of the safe house, asking Anne Simon if she was all right, then Mr. Simon, who was swiftly on the scene, shouting at her, “What are you doing?” It was ironic that the same question was being thrown around at everyone without any answers. I quickly turned away, praying I wouldn’t be recognized. The chowkidars had released Sadiq, but they continued to hover near him with their hands on their rifles.

  “He’s not well,” I told them.

  “Then he shouldn’t be out on the streets,” they replied, adding sternly, “And neither should you. How old are you? Where are your parents?”

  I touched the hem of the kurta my grandfather had bought Sadiq the day before. It was already worn and stained, but I was thankful it didn’t smell of smoke. I couldn’t bear to imagine that the chowkidars would suspect Sadiq of being involved in the embassy fire.

  “Where do you live?” the chowkidar asked, and I pointed in the direction of my fallen bicycle, hoping to suggest I’d come from around the corner.

  When I looked in the direction of the safe house, I saw men loading suitcases and trunks through emergency doors onto the buses. Children I rode to school with every day, boys and girls whose voices were familiar but whose names I suddenly couldn’t remember, began boarding. Sadiq remained perfectly still next to me as I got my first good look at the vehicles. Although the arched roofs of the vehicles signified they were American, they had been painted the blue of Islamabad’s university buses. The familiar lemon-yellow of my school bus with the school name printed on the side had vanished. Then it dawned on me. The buses had been painted blue in order to pass as local buses and conceal the American departure. I marveled at the foresight and wondered who was responsible for the brilliant idea.

  I tore my gaze from the flurry of activity to focus on Sadiq, who was standing next to me, motionless as a tree.

  “Come,” I urged him, desperate to leave before I was recognized by Lizzy, Anne Simon, Mr. Simon, or anyone else.

  The drivers put the buses in gear and released the brakes.

  “Let’s go,” I pleaded with Sadiq. “We have to hurry!” I cried.

  But he refused to move.

  I had difficulty catching my breath and broke out in a cold sweat just as my ears began to buzz and further panic set in. I didn’t know what role Sadiq had played in the embassy events, but I feared that he’d be found any second and arrested for conspiring to kill Americans. Since Sadiq wouldn’t obey me, it was useless to issue commands. The bus engines revved, and I was running out of time. In a moment, they would drive right past us. What else could I say that would persuade him to leave 87th Street with me? A few lines of a Tot Batot poem I’d once heard Sadiq recite flitted through my mind, but in the end, with a bus starting to roll toward the intersection, I pinned all my hope on the truth.

  “That was Anne Simon,” I said, and I hadn’t yet finished speaking her name, when my words had the desired effect. Sadiq moved. Emboldened, I continued, “That was Anne Simon, who is the mother of my best friend, Leezy.” He pivoted to face the Margalla Hills, all but buried by night. “That was Anne Simon, who is the mother of my best friend, Leezy, and one November night last year she drove the white Buick.” Together, we took small steps to my fallen bicycle, and in the eternity it took to get there, the blue buses lined up at the intersection, ready for the journey to the airport. I picked up my bicycle. After a slight hesitation in which I considered that it was inappropriate for me to touch him in such a familiar way, I took Sadiq’s good hand and wrapped it around a handlebar. A few steps later, as I was preparing to add to my sentence, Sadiq interrupted my thoughts.

  He spoke, “That was Anne Simon, who is the mother of my best friend, Leezy, and one November night last year she drove her white Buick into Hanif and killed him.”

  In my surprise, I let go of the bicycle, but Sadiq already had a solid grip on it, and it did not crash to the ground. His sentence was as long and complicated as some of those in our Urdu lessons, but it was not profound, and it did not say anything either of us didn’t already know. In fact, his added clause was the one I’d been about to utter. Yet, buried in what could have been an Urdu lesson was more truth than we’d ever had the courage to reveal to each other, and I didn’t want it to end.

  I clutched the handlebar again, and with the bicycle lodged like a child between us, we started home. Soon, I took a chance. I slowly repeated his sentence but concluded with an additional clause, “That was Anne Simon, who is the mother of my best friend, Leezy, and one November night last year she drove her white Buick into Hanif and killed him, and as a result you recei
ved 50,000 rupees from Anne Simon in a legal settlement, which you hid in a briefcase in my grandfather’s house.” There. I’d laid bare an unspoken secret between us, and as unsurprising as it was, at least it had been spoken.

  I heard a shout coming from the last bus leaving the intersection. I imagined a reckless boy perched on luggage at the back of the bus, his head hanging from the window. I pictured Lizzy and her family in the front squeezed together on seats that had always been ours.

  When the spitball hit my hair, I prayed Sadiq had been spared. I pictured the boys arguing, Two! One! Two! One! Two! in a vigorous point dispute no one attempted to halt. Then the pale blue buses disappeared, and we walked home through the night, the spitball dribbling ever so slowly down my long and tangled hair.

  Our house glowed like a movie set. In what must have been a frantic search for us, every light was switched on. A neighbor’s chowkidar shouted for my father as soon as he recognized us, and my parents ran a block in their robes and slippers to meet us. My mother was much faster than my father and reached me first. She’d lost her composure and her cheeks were shiny with tears; it was such an unnatural sight that for a moment she didn’t look real.

  “Where have you been?” she screamed. Her four words contained more anger and relief in one sentence than I’d thought possible.

  My father, close at her heels, tried not to shout, but his voice cracked. “Thank God you’re all right.”

  Without much of a pause, he focused on Sadiq and bellowed so loudly that all the neighborhood chowkidars came running to witness the scene. My mother locked arms with me just as my father began his rampage. “How dare you take my daughter anywhere? Where the hell did you go? What were you thinking? Come with me, you goddamned idiot! Move!” When it became clear that Sadiq would not take a single step, my father resorted to the stupidest curse of all, ulloo ka patha! It meant little compared to all my father had already said, but it was said with the most venom, and it offended me the most. My mother and I had almost arrived at the top of our driveway, but I slipped out of her grip and bolted back to Sadiq’s side.

  Once again out of breath, but pretending a steadiness and calm, I addressed Sadiq. “That was Anne Simon . . .”

  “What the hell are you saying?” my father said, angrily cutting me off, but Sadiq took a step.

  “That was Anne Simon, she is the mother of my best friend, Leezy . . .”

  “What?”

  “. . . and one November night she drove the white Buick,” I continued, and Sadiq took another step.

  “Enough!” my father commanded, raising his hand.

  The three of us were crowded on the sidewalk while a host of neighborhood nighttime chowkidars watched our every move. It wasn’t the way I’d wanted my father to discover my proficiency in Urdu, if he’d noticed at all. My mother stood forlornly in the distance until my grandfather magically appeared. The man was deaf and unable to speak above a hoarse whisper, yet he assumed command. As if he’d been with me on the corner of 87th Street, he wrapped his long arm around Sadiq and whispered, “That was Anne Simon . . .” Within minutes, he’d maneuvered Sadiq to the house.

  After my father recovered, he directed his attention to me. “You were on Mrs. Simon’s street? With Sadiq! Have you gone mad?”

  I couldn’t think of anything to say, which gave us time to consider each other.

  My father’s expression softened. “We were worried to death. My darling, never, never do that to us again!”

  I wanted to collapse. “I’m so sorry,” I said, burying my face in my father’s chest. When he caressed my head, I swatted at his hand. “No!” I said, afraid he would touch the spit.

  An hour or two later, I lay on my parents’ bed, consumed by an exhaustion more exacting than any I’d experienced. The pounding in my head mimicked revving bus engines, and I couldn’t imagine ever taking another step with my aching feet. My mother sat next to me and tried to coax me to eat a pastry generously sprinkled with powdered sugar. My father’s fingers got caught in hair tangles as he ran his fingers through my washed hair and encouraged me to divulge the details of when Sadiq and I had gone missing. Neither of them had any success. The last thing I remembered was my mother suggesting I call Lehla, but when I heard her name I couldn’t picture my sister’s face.

  I felt like Sadiq. I didn’t want to move, much less speak, and before I knew it, I’d sunk into a deep sleep that would carry me into the afternoon.

  TWENTY-THREE

  Afternoon, Friday, 23 November 1979

  My sleep was shattered by a crash. Strangely, the noise even had a smell, wet like sharp iron, and a color, the dull gray of hurtling boulders. It spun my room at a dizzying speed that refused to slow, even as I hugged my knees to my chest.

  I used the furniture to help me steady myself, navigating from my bed to the door with the help of my night table, desk, and bookshelves. I pulled a sweatshirt over my head and opened my door just as the racket began all over again. From the corner of my eye, I saw a heavy silver object rip through my parents’ bedroom window screen, slam into the marble floor, and break apart. The lid of my mother’s pressure cooker hit the wall and the tiny weight knob bounced off the dresser and flew toward me. I stepped out of the way and cried, “Mama!”

  “I’m here,” my mother replied from beyond the empty window frame and in the driveway. “Stay where you are!” she commanded.

  I could not see glasses crashing against the walls in the servants’ quarters or pots and pans flying in every direction or a patio chair being thrown against the wall. But at least I knew where the tremendous noise was coming from, and I wasn’t dizzy anymore.

  Eventually the racket was replaced by a heated argument in Punjabi. Because I’d never heard him yell, it was not immediately clear that one of the voices was Sadiq’s. At least two other men were involved, and I assumed they were our nighttime chowkidars until I glanced at my parents’ alarm clock and realized it was far too late in the day for them to still be at our house.

  There was a swell in the shouting, and I became petrified by my inability to identify the voices. I could imagine only one explanation for what had happened: the police had finally arrived at our house to arrest Sadiq for the crime he’d committed at the American Embassy. Someone kicked the aluminum garbage bin, and the crash hurt my ears.

  I saw Mushtaq, my father’s driver, sprint toward the servants’ quarters with a cricket bat in hand.

  “Allah, Allah!” someone shouted.

  Suddenly the habit of invoking God at every opportunity struck me as ridiculous. God had nothing to do with what was happening in my house at that very moment. Truth be told, Islamabad hadn’t been on His radar for days.

  I inched toward the broken window screen, frozen in a wave against the wall. As I peered out from behind my parents’ freshly laundered curtains, the familiar smell of detergent nauseated me. Both my parents were beyond the end of the driveway and in the servants’ quarters, standing at a slight remove from the men. My mother’s posture, ever straight, was alarmingly perfect in the face of such disarray. Three men surrounded Sadiq. One was Mushtaq with a cricket bat still in hand, and I recognized the two men with rifles slung across their backs as our nighttime guards, even though they were not in uniform. Given the unfolding scene, the absence of policemen failed to provide me with much relief.

  In the next moment, my father’s panicked voice rose above everyone else’s. He flailed his hands, lucky to miss my mother, and ordered the men to restrain Sadiq. Anger shrank his lips, drawing them away from his teeth and transforming him into a man I didn’t know.

  For the first time in my life, I doubted my father’s omnipotence.

  Mushtaq dropped the cricket bat, stepped behind Sadiq, and locked him in a hold in which his arms were useless at his sides. I half expected Sadiq to be lifted off the ground and hurled over the nearest wall. As if seeking permission for such a maneuver, Mushtaq looked over at my father, who punched the air in the direction of Sadiq
’s room. It was obvious Mushtaq didn’t require any help, but the chowkidars joined in, and the threesome escorted Sadiq to his room.

  I hopped through the broken window screen and onto the driveway.

  Whatever was left of the servants’ finely crafted chair was lying in pieces on the patio, along with dented cooking pots, a kettle missing its lid, and a carpet of broken glass. Every item in Sadiq’s miniature kitchen appeared to have been smashed to the ground. My father’s hands were back in his pockets, and my mother was shaking her head.

  “Sadiq!” I shouted, hurrying toward him.

  “Bibi?” he answered calmly, as if he’d been interrupted in the middle of a boring household task.

  “Stay away from him!” my mother erupted.

  “Obey your mother,” Sadiq agreed, continuing to be led to his room.

  “Shut up!” My father barked his reprimand at him.

  “You did all this?” I asked Sadiq, who couldn’t see me nudge one of my mother’s old cooking pots with my bare foot. I took a step toward him, and my father sprang to life, yanking me back and hurting my arm.

  “Don’t you dare!” he exploded.

  “Ow!” I cried.

  “Leave her alone!” My mother ran to my defense.

  “Didn’t your mother tell you to stay in the house?” he demanded.

  I screamed like everyone else. “He has a lot to be angry about, you know!”