Amriika

by M G Vassanji

  Utter humiliation for the man. And the woman? They went back in silence (to Aziz’s place, where they’d put up and borrowed the car); and all the way he smarted from the barbs of blame in her looks, blushed from the guilt and the shame in himself.

  The question of sex hung between them, unresolved. But it also gave her an escape hatch out of the relationship; she remained uncommitted. More and more he desired commitment, but could not get it.

  Finally, he decided he would sweep her away. He would take the initiative, and the risk that came with it. It was on a weekend when both his roommates were out of town, so she agreed to come visit him, by herself, which she had never done before. He felt confident; there was already a close relationship between them, wasn’t there?

  Perhaps she guessed the intent. They’d had a wonderful Italian dinner that evening. No running around this time, he had requested, no movie, no concert afterwards. Just strolling about, talking about this and that, themselves, their families, arms brushing against each other’s, both fully conscious of the moment. Once or twice she threw a look at him and smiled. Oh yes, she knew the intent. That night, with a violin concerto playing in the background, they made the beds, hers a sleeping bag on the floor, as she wanted it. They turned off the lights and got into their beds. And then immediately he got into action, fully aroused, one hand lowered down, playing tenderly with her hair, her hands, which did not fight his but stroked it, such nice shapely hands she had (still had, he’d watched them as she gave him the tea) — and then her neck and chest, and then her breasts, how soft and small they felt, he squeezed and rubbed harder and harder against the aroused nipples until she protested. Come down, she finally said, in a tremulous voice. That was it, he thought, he’d crossed the Rubicon. He lay on her, full of passion, foreplay, kisses. But she said no to lifting that nightie, go on just like that, up and down and — Oh, fool, Ramji, as he told himself many times later — he had done just that, pleasured her with their clothes fully on. At the end she fell asleep and he felt used.

  Was it her Indianness, the tribal sameness of her, that kept him from going all the way somehow, that created a fear that he should not violate her? If she were not so familiar, from the same background, would he have gone further, just taken her? One did not talk of date rape in those days. What did she think she was doing, an Indian girl in that situation? … Or did she feel she knew him well enough? Or had he got it wrong all over again!

  The next morning she was irritable, as if the previous night had all been his doing, somehow he had taken advantage of her. They had coffee in silence.

  “Let’s talk about it,” he said.

  “What?”

  “About us — last night. Did I do wrong? What —”

  “I don’t want to talk about it.”

  “Why?”

  “I don’t want to discuss everything in my life with you.”

  She refused to eat, pored over the Sunday paper, telephoned friends in several cities, telling him she would pay for the calls; acted as if it was all over between them. Good, he thought, I’ll bear the pain for a few days and finally be free.

  They parted on an uncertain note about their relationship. But the following week she called as before, as if nothing had happened: Rostropovich is conducting Scheherazade, I’ve bought tickets. And he said bravely, Aw — I wish you’d called earlier — I’ve agreed to go to Toronto then.…Oh, I’ll ask someone at the office, she replied. And to himself, he said, Well done, Ramji, hold your head high, stand steadfast. But he felt lousy.

  A couple of days later she called again: I hope you’re still coming to my midsummer party. Of course, he said, feeling elated, his resolve to keep his distance from her already wilting. It was to be the Fourth of July weekend, two weeks away. It was at that party that he met Nabil, who impressed him as rather a smooth-talking guy with all the right European affectations to impress the women. But the following week Jamila called and told him, “He is the one for me, Ramji, what I’ve been waiting for.…” Ramji could never recall her words exactly. He had hurt so.

  3

  The next morning at the Henawis’ house, the kitchen was swarming with children itching to burst loose and go outside as soon as they’d had their breakfasts. As Ramji sauntered in, he saw that Jamila and Zuli, apparently having just attended to the kids, had paused at the counter for a breather. Jamila was explaining something to an overly attentive Zuli — Is a friendship in the making, after all? The subject of the lecture seemed to be the kitchen itself, the new jewel in Jamila’s crown — it had been recently, and expensively, renovated. The eating parlour, where the kids had gathered at the table under a skylight, was a new extension and overlooked the backyard lawn through glass sliding doors. The two large and robust plants, a feature of the area, had been somewhat crowded out today, shoved against the walls, and the upright piano, moved here recently when the kids lost interest in it, cried out against its location and current mistreatment. A well-used baseball glove rested casually upon it.

  “Dad,” Rahim said to his father, “guess how many kinds of cereals they have — twelve!”

  “Amazing!” said Ramji approvingly. “And I bet they have the juice of every known fruit?” He looked at Jamila ruefully: “We’ll have our hands full keeping up with the Henawis when we return home …”

  “None of your smart comments now,” she warned with a friendly grin. “You don’t have to live with a Salma in town setting all the standards.”

  Her eye rested fleetingly on Zuli watching them.

  “Okay kids,” she announced with a clap of her hands, “I see you’re finished, you may leave now … take it easy. And Aisha,” she caught the eye of her eldest, “you are in charge — and remember who the guests are.”

  Aisha, long-faced and sloe-eyed, acknowledged her mission with a significant nod at her mother and followed the rest of the kids out to the backyard, and the adults then sat down to a breakfast of scones and croissants, with butter and preserves, and home-roasted coffee, which later they went out to finish on the backyard patio.

  Nabil was at work today and so there were only the three of them. He would be in and out all week, Jamila told her guests; they should feel free to do what they wanted, outings with the kids and so on; the evenings, of course, the adults should plan to do things together. Salma was available if they needed her during the day. She would bring the other four kids over in the afternoon.

  The morning was bright and clear, though the ground was wet in patches, in the shade, it having rained the previous night. A neighbour, a stout middle-aged woman, waved vigorously, walked to her car, drove away. “She’s a lawyer,” Jamila said. “And further up the road we have an Indian couple, both doctors — you’ll get a chance to meet them.” She and Nabil had moved into their ranch-style house five years ago. It had been owned before, for thirty years, by a German doctor and was well maintained but small. The attic had now been converted to her two girls’ bedrooms and the back of the house had been extended.

  “I do so envy you this house — you must have time, too, for the garden, it looks so well tended,” said Zuli.

  “Oh, we’ve contracted out the lawn and plant care,” Jamila said casually.

  “Better still,” Zuli said. “We’ve just lost our young maple, the azaleas froze from lack of winter care and the climbing rose died …”

  They watched the four kids playing outside, and discussed schools, activities, and expenses, and the individual quirks of their children, always careful not to get too carried away talking about their own. Their kids, they agreed, were still the main focus of their lives, but would not be so for long. What seemed remarkable, watching them, was how much their kids belonged, in a way in which none of them ever could, here or anywhere else, despite their ardent protestations when the occasion demanded that they were fully American.

  “How lucky they are,” Zuli said, at length. “They have the world ready-made for them. We came with nothing, more or less … had to make it on our o
wn.”

  “Yes, but we had a greater sense of adventure,” Jamila said spiritedly, “which they won’t have. They won’t have to fight, they won’t have a lot of choice. In a sense I feel sorry for them, poor kids!”

  “Well, in some ways the sky’s the limit for them, I suppose,” Ramji said. “But we did arrive somewhere — and we haven’t done badly at all.” The last comment was aimed at his wife. He was a little piqued, first at her narration of their garden’s recent woes, and then at that tone of regret that could reveal so much to an alert Jamila.

  Ramji got up to go, to meet Sona, who had called earlier, and Zuli had said she would look after the kids. Jamila had offered to take her for lunch and fabulous shopping later, reminding her that there was no sales tax in Pennsylvania.

  “They do go back a long way, don’t they,” Jamila murmured at his back, “him and Sona …”

  “Yes. That’s one past relationship that doesn’t bother me at all —” They exchanged a look, and Zuli backed away a bit. “I mean, the first thing they want to do when they’re both in town is to sit down together and have a long chat, bring each other up to date, I suppose. It’s enviable, really.”

  “It is.”

  They sat quietly for a while. Both took time to exchange words with the kids. And then Jamila asked, softly, with a twinkle in her eyes: “And his other past relationships? How do they bother you?”

  “You tell me,” Zuli said. When Jamila didn’t respond, Zuli went further: “What exactly was there between you two? May I ask? Or isn’t anyone ever going to tell me?” She had spoken with feeling, but the expression in her eyes was hidden by a sudden glare of the sun that made her first squint, then look away.

  “Nothing,” Jamila lied. “There was exactly nothing between us. There was just this group of friends, most of whom are here this week, and we were part of that. There were a few rumours, but that was that. Hasn’t he told you that?”

  “Yes. But maybe he felt something for you — some sort of look would come over his face whenever your name came up. Anyway, it was all a long time ago.”

  “And, as I told you, there was nothing. Listen, when I met my Prince Charming from Egypt, that was it. I had no doubts.”

  Zuli seemed to brood on that and Jamila thought, Perhaps I’ve said the wrong thing.…I’m sounding happier and chirpier than I actually feel, and she’s wondering where she went wrong. So she told Zuli about her recent problems with Nabil, to say, Look, my dear, life ain’t exactly a bowl of cherries for me either, but I’m still in there.

  “Anyway,” Jamila said at length, “don’t you think this reunion is going to be special, that our lives may not be the same afterwards? I felt it even as I sent the e-mail to Ramji telling you all to please come — you knew I did that?” It was before she had called and spoken to both Zuli and Ramji.

  “No,” Zuli said, “but never mind, that doesn’t matter. What did you mean, our lives may not be the same afterwards?”

  “I’m not sure … but the last time we were all together the kids were still young and we were so preoccupied with them, so this time around feels like a watershed of sorts, don’t you think?”

  Zuli got up thoughtfully. “I don’t know — maybe … perhaps. But shouldn’t we be going? I do want to check out the stores.”

  They packed their four kids into the back of Jamila’s car.

  Ramji walked to the shopping plaza along a narrow road called The Winding Way, and it was just that, with tall trees on either side and small residential streets all leading away from it on the right. The corner houses he met were large, stone-built. He passed a parkland to his left, with a little wooden bridge in the middle, presumably to cross a stream, and further up on the same side there was a school, closed for the summer, then a seminary, also deserted. A solid, well-established neighbourhood, he thought. There was no one else out walking, though once a kid on a bicycle meandered past him. Cars drove by speedily, familiarly. Imported cars are all the rage here, he thought; Japanese and German. He became conscious of himself and wondered if he looked respectable; a strange face was likely to be stopped anytime. Who had told him about such a place, this very location, a long time ago? Where a black face was likely to be that of a house maid? … It had been Lucy-Anne Miller.

  Where was she — Lucy-Anne? He wondered whatever became of her.

  One day about five years ago, in the course of his work, inspecting publications submitted to the company for distribution, he came across the title Dissent to Nowhere; the author: Shawn M. Hennessy, from a college in Iowa. With a strange feeling of excitement, and an eerie sense of déjà vu, he flipped through the pages, avidly poring over the words written by his former roommate. All sorts of memories, recollections of arguments they’d had, demonstrations they’d attended, flooded into his head. But this book was a confession, repudiating the sixties’ student movements as the excesses of crazed, misguided, and spoilt middle-class youth. Shawn the fiery radical who would march for the rights of cleaning ladies and tenement dwellers, and all the poor of the world, now saying this! There he was, the new Shawn, full-length on the back cover: a stern long face, with close-cropped hair and a higher forehead than Ramji remembered, in jeans and jacket, feet spread apart, arms crossed in front: a new certainty, a commanding presence.

  How easy for these rich American kids to renege and say it was all misguided, a mistake. We’re home, repentant, and all’s forgiven. He had come to view the sixties as his period of rebirth, from ignorance and narrow-mindedness into enlightenment and an awareness of the world; what a bitter pill to see it repudiated thus. It was as if the priests themselves, who had been the most fanatical, had turned against the faith — giving it a bad name, so you couldn’t talk of Third World exploitation or the growing difference between rich and poor without looking utterly ridiculous.

  In 1979 he had joined Stan Allen in a partnership pledged to distribute publications aimed at keeping alive the radical spirit by which they had both been touched; and here they were now, promoting and selling academic books written to trash that spirit. Which was marginally better than their even more recent sales initiative, placing do-it-yourself, occult, and get-rich-quick titles in the bookstores, along with CD-ROMs and war videos. Welcome to the nineties.

  He couldn’t help but send a letter to Shawn, saying how he’d come across the book and asking what he’d been up to since they last saw each other. Back came a prompt but rather controlled cheery response: What a surprise, a letter from his former roommate! How time had flown! They were all older and wiser now! Shawn was divorced with two children, a boy and a girl aged twelve and fourteen. Kate Webber lived in Chicago and wrote for Harper’s; would Ramji mind if Shawn gave her his address, she was at work on a book about the sixties. They should stay in touch!

  And that was that. No phone call from Shawn, though Ramji had sent him his own phone number and an invitation to call.

  Sona was seated at a corner table of Le Coffee Break, a fashionable (by Jamila’s report) local hangout, with his New York Times in front of him, very much in the manner one would find him Sunday mornings at the Pewter Pot or the Blue Parrot in Cambridge. There was vanity in that egghead, some pretense, too, but he was a good, reputable scholar.

  Sona was shorter and better built than the gawking Ramji. He had never been chubby, but his face had grown fuller in recent years. He had started to bald, and there were white strands in his goatee, which went well with his reading glasses and crimson cardigan. He looks rather like a devil, Ramji thought, sitting down. Then another, fleeting thought went through his mind — Is he going crazy, with that single-mindedness of his?

  “You’re wondering if I’m crazy,” Sona said with a twinkle in his eyes.

  “The thought does cross the mind periodically,” Ramji said, trying to sound flippant, and pulled up a chair.

  They had been to high school together, had arrived on the same plane twenty-five years ago one rainy August evening in Boston. Besides Amy, his wife until re
cently, and perhaps more than her, Ramji was his one confidant in the matter that seemed to dominate his life above everything else. Every time they met or spoke over the telephone, Ramji would be brought up to date on discoveries, controversies, frustrations.

  Sona’s cause had to do with the history and beliefs of their people, who over the last few centuries had maintained intact a syncretistic belief, combining Islam and Hinduism. Recently, though, the community had chosen as a matter of policy to purify itself of so-called Hindu idolatry and move closer to a cleaner, mainstream Islam. Sona, as an influential professor, had — somewhat rhetorically — called the new trend a submission to Arabism and Arabic Islamic imperialism. He had gone one step further: For their faith to take root in this new country, the Shamsis must adopt the values and icons of America, and he suggested Emerson, Lincoln, and Martin Luther King as examples. Now, he said, e-mails were arriving full of hatred for him and he had even received threats.

  “Nonsense,” said Ramji. “Our people are benign — they don’t carry out such threats. For one thing, they are cowards.”

  “My grandfather was killed in a community feud,” Sona said, referring to a celebrated case of a hundred years before. His ancestor, an immigrant from India, had been stabbed to death by several assassins while returning from mosque early one morning, in a small coastal town in Tanzania.