The Paper Shepherd

by Olivia Landis

  “This is your great-grandfather, William Alfred. He was an officer in the Ninety-third Argyle Highlander’s Regiment of the Royal Army during World War One. Unfortunately, Major Alfred did not have nearly as honorable a history as his unit. While the Ninety-third was fighting in the Middle East, he fell in love with a local girl and deserted. Or so the romantic version of family legend goes.” If Genine were to give an honest account of the scurrilous man she remembered from her youth, she would have guessed these events occurred in reversed order and that the desertion had been from simple, unromantic cowardice. “He married the girl and changed his name to Al Saud to hide from the Army so he would not be found and hanged for desertion. Soon after the war ended, his wife, this one here,” she said, pointing out a yellowed picture of a beautiful dark haired women looking uncomfortable in Victorian style clothing. “Had a son. That was my father, your grandfather, Hiram Al Saud. Hiram grew up in Jordan and took up his father’s business exporting rugs and furniture. When he was in his twenties, he met my mother, Genine McInnis, who traveled to Jordan with her father, a widowed Presbyterian Missionary.” Tiar and Max leaned closer to the album looking at the faded sepia photograph of a woman in a white dress and ridiculous floppy hat looking very proper. They were both astonished. “When they decided to have kids,” Genine continued. “They changed their name back to Alfred.”

  “So, I’m not Arabic?” Tiar asked.

  “Well, you’re an eighth. Your father and uncle and I are all a quarter.”

  “And the rest is English?” Max asked.

  “Well, my mother was Scottish. William Alfred was fighting in a Scottish unit and grew up in Sterling. But, of course, Alfred is an English name. So, what he was and thus Tiar is really depends on how far back you want to look.”

  “So, if you’re three quarters British, and Mom was a mix of British and French settlers from Quebec,” Tiar reasoned out loud. “I’m actually more British than French. I’m way more British then Jordanian.”

  “Yes, dear,” Genine assured her. “Any other questions?”

  “And none of us are Islamic?”

  “Well, I guess your great-grandmother probably was before she got married. What she really believed after that is anyone’s guess.”

  “But, if Papa is only one quarter Arabic,” Tiar asked. “And I was born in the States, why did my parents give me an Arabic first name?”

  “Tiar was my grandfather’s nick name for my grandmother who died a few months before you were born. You were named after her,” Genine answered, disappointed no one had told the girl this before. “Your father absolutely worshipped her. Your mother wanted to name you some stupid French name. It was some ridiculous four part thing. Your parents fought about it for months. Let me see if I can remember.” Tiar’s aunt cocked her head to one side and squinted with concentration. “Philippe?” she asked no one in particular. “San Philippe Argento Alfred?”

  “Argeneau?” Max offered.

  “That’s it!” She agreed. “San Philippe Argeneau… something San Philippe Argeneau Alfred. Imagine walking around with that name.” Tiar furrowed her brow.

  “If we weren’t Muslim, why didn’t papa want me to be baptized?” she asked. Genine laughed and gave her a side ways glance.

  “What are you talking about? I was at your baptism. At First Presbyterian Church of Buffalo. See?” She turned to the back of the album. A much younger version of Tiar’s father and mother stood on the church steps. Her father, wearing a brown polyester suit with ridiculously large lapels, was holding a tiny bundle in his arms Tiar guessed must be her. Max shot Tiar a bewildered glance. They were all silent for a moment.

  “We’re not Catholic?” Tiar asked.

  “My goodness, no!” Genine protested. “What would give you that idea?”

  “I go to Catholic school,” Tiar answered meekly.

  “Of course, you do,” Genine answered. “It’s the only private school where you live. Surely you don’t think they would send you to public school.” Aunt Genine spoke as if Tiar should instinctively be repulsed by Catholicism and public school. She told the family history as if it was all obvious. But to Tiar, nothing was obvious or instinctive.

  “Is it all clear to you now?” Genine asked.

  “Was I happy there?” Tiar asked, staring at the album.

  “Where, sweetheart?”

  “In Jordan, with Mama and Papa,” Tiar said innocently. “Was I happy there?” Genine didn’t know how to answer.

  “I only visited once while you lived there, Tiar, right after you moved. As I recall you liked to spend most of your day in the kitchen with the house keeper. She used to play records for you and teach you to dance. What happened after I left in 1983, I don’t know.” Tiar stared at the yellowing pages. Aunt Genine, meanwhile, looked at her watch, hoping to change the subject.

  “Max,” she announced. “It’s eight o’clock now in the states if you want to call home. Tiar, why don’t you go upstairs and rest. You can take that album with you upstairs and look at it. I’ll call you when dinner is ready.”

  Max followed their host into the kitchen and Tiar closed the book, holding it to her chest. After waiting a few minutes to collect her thoughts, she climbed the stairs to her bedroom. She was sitting on the bed reviewing the photographs her father had sent his sister of he and his three small children in the finger lakes of New York when Max walked into the room and sat next to her.

  “Mom says hi,” he announced quietly.

  “Hum,” Tiar answered. He turned a page and watched as Tiar grew from a four-year-old with pig tails sitting on a swing to a young girl of six standing in front of sunny, sandy landmarks half a world away. She had the same irrepressible smile in any setting. Max kept turning pages. With each year, the photos became more and more sparse, the intervals between pictures longer. The settings ceased to be fun family outings and became more and more staged. Tiar and her two brothers sitting with their grandfather on an expensive looking couch in a darkened room. Tiar sitting at a desk pretending to read while her mother sat near by instructing her. There was also a steady progress from joy to solemnity. Finally, there was one photo of Tiar in front of a birthday cake with nine candles, a look of quiet terror on her face.

  “It doesn’t make any sense, does it?” Max asked finally.

  “No. For the first time in my life, everything makes sense,” Tiar said seriously. “Except one thing.” Max diverted his attention from the album to Tiar.

  “What’s that?”

  “Why did they have to send me away?” Max sighed. Learning so much about her family from a stranger after being separated from them for half a decade must have been confusing. He wanted to comfort her. He placed his hand hesitantly on her back, like someone testing to see if an iron is hot before picking it up. When she didn’t pull away, he rubbed her back gently.

  “I wish I could tell you, Little Bird,” he said sympathetically. “Maybe your brothers will be able to tell you more.” She didn’t say anything or turn to look at him for a long while.

  “It’s all been a lie,” she said finally. “My great-grandfather lied about who he was, and now I assumed some stranger’s identity and got confirmed under an assumed name—in the wrong church. I mean, am I protestant?” Max shook his head, his eye brows knitted together in a look of pity. He was still convinced that Tiar was baptized at St. Teresa’s in February of 1978 but did not want to reopen that debate. He also knew that according to church doctrine, it was fine for Tiar to be baptized Presbyterian and receive confirmation as a Catholic. Max surmised correctly that this was irrelevant to Tiar’s emotions at the moment.

  “You are what your heart tells you you are,” he said quietly. “You are what you believe God made you.” Tiar looked out the window at the gray English clouds. These same clouds had rained on her family for thousands of years, but she felt no connection to them.

  “I may not know my past or my religion, or even my own name,” she said seriously. “But I know ex
actly who I am.” She turned to look at Max who was staring back at her attentively, hanging on her every word.

  “Who is that?” he asked seriously.

  “I’m Maxwell Franklin’s best friend.” She said this with such finality and importance, her words hung in the air with a definite weight. But then she cracked up and punched Max on the arm.

  “You nerd,” she screamed. “You should see the look on your face.” A small smile spread across Max’s lips to hide his embarrassment.

  6

  Two days later, Max and Tiar were half way through the tabs in Max’s guide book. They arrived at the British Museum early Tuesday morning and started on the first floor of the museum with the popular touristy artifacts. Max explained to Tiar how the Rosetta stone, which they were a mere foot away from, was important in archeologists’ ability to translate previously untranslatable ancient languages. He took her past the Greek, Roman, and Persian temples, past mummies, listing off which biblical figures would likely have seen each of these sites when they were new. He also poured over less popular exhibits like a kid in a candy store. As Tiar passed quickly through cases of three thousand year old jewelry making superficial assessments of whether or not she thought it was pretty, Max examined each item carefully. He peered through the cases with sublime relief, as though he had been plagued for years with uncertainty about the cloak buckles Vikings wore on their pillaging expeditions or the style of sandal straps of the Romans who walked the streets during Jesus’ life. Such joy appeared to be the inevitable result of systematically replacing ignorance with meticulously collected fact. It was a transcendent reward for a brain that rejected ambiguity and anachronism with pseudo-religious intensity.

  Sadly, the two left the museum on Wednesday evening knowing it may be many years before they would get to see it again. They hurried to Victoria Station to meet up with Tiar’s brothers. Tiar’s emotions on her way to the station were a mixture of giddy and terrified. She had not even spoken to her brothers since they were quite young and she had no idea what to expect from them. Max and Tiar stepped into the enormous train station and looked at the marquee to find the platform for the 6:30 train from Oxford. Finally, Max found it, platform 5. They rushed through the commuters toward the platform.

  Tiar could not believe the sight in front of her. Henry and Kevin, 7 and 8-years-old when she had last seen them, were now becoming young men. They looked at her, equally stunned. Tiar’s brothers, frequent visitors to London, lead them to a good vegetarian restaurant near the Bond Street tube station. Tiar and her brothers had much to catch up on. It was disconcerting to Tiar at first that they did so with slight British accents they had not had as children. A lot is different about them now, she reminded herself, remembering how they used to add a “d” to the end of her name and mispronounce it so it sounded like the word “turd” stretched into two syllables. They now overcompensated and left the ‘r’ off entirely, as though ending names with that letter was not polite in this society.

  Not knowing where to start their impossible discussion, the brothers discussed Tiar and Max’s recent travels and gave them pointers on what to do during their last two days in London. Finally, after appetizers, Henry, decided he could not stall any longer. He knew Tiar had been sent to England for a specific purpose—not to check on her brothers, but to play a part in a carefully orchestrated drama. She had been sent to London to receive a message from home that he had pledged to deliver.

  “Tiar,” Henry said hesitantly. “We have some news from home.” He shook his head, unable to continue. Kevin leaned over to her and whispered something in her ear.

  “How long?” she said, her eyes getting glassy.

  “Two years,” Henry chimed in. Max could tell by the sudden change in Tiar’s expression that someone was dead. He knew better than to ask who. He’d figure it out from context. Tiar just sat in disbelief.

  “How?” she finally asked.

  “Brain tumor,” Henry explained. “He hadn’t been acting quite right, even before he sent you away. The family all thought it was grief over Grandfather’s death. But, then he began isolating himself. He started having all sorts of paranoid thoughts, saying everything was unclean, that the sinners and adulterers were trying to take over his household. Mom got concerned but didn’t even know who to call. I mean, he hadn’t gone to church since he left the States and she didn’t even know of a Presbyterian minister in Oman to talk to about him. It turns out it had nothing to do with religion. He was just going crazy. He thought the local butcher was an alien carving up our neighbors to sell us as meat. He thought you had been replaced with an imposter, too. He was planning to kill you.” Tiar shook her head. All of the pain she had as a child, all the fear… it was all the product of a cancerous growth in her father’s head? She felt vindication, and yet immeasurable self pity.

  “About 2 years after you left, the family finally took him to a mental institution,” Kevin continued. “After he didn’t respond to any drugs, they did a scan of his brain and found out both sides were full of tumors. They were too mixed in with his own brain to try surgery. The doctors said radiation would likely just make his brain swell and kill him faster. That’s when mom sent us away. Uncle Henry apparently wouldn’t take us, so she sent us to boarding school here.”

  “What about mom?” Tiar asked. “Why didn’t she come back all that time?”

  “She wanted to,” Henry said.

  “She missed you so much, Tiar. She said everyday that she should have gone with you,” Kevin interrupted. “Before we found out Papa was sick, she nearly left him so many times. But dad said if she left she would have to leave us behind and she would never get to see us again. They fought constantly. It was a very difficult time for her.”

  “Then after we found out Papa was actually sick,” Henry continued. “She wouldn’t leave his side.”

  “So, why didn’t she come back after he died?” Tiar asked.

  “Tiar, she got remarried,” Henry explained, knowing the news would come as a shock to her. “She married one of grandfather’s business partners. It happened within weeks of Papa dying. I know it sounds shady, but it was all…” Henry hesitated.

  “She told us all the horrible details,” Kevin interrupted. “The last year, Papa didn’t even remember her name. And he was violent. Everyone said it was for the best for her to move on.”

  “Mama got married and no one told me,” Tiar said quietly to herself. “I mean, she didn’t even call.”

  “Well, you know how she and Uncle Henry never got along,” Henry said. “He apparently didn’t really want to talk very long anytime she called. He said that you were doing well in school and had made friends, and he thought you shouldn’t be disturbed.”

  “She could have called Aunt Josephine,” Tiar said, mostly to herself. “Even if she does hate me, I’m sure she would have checked up on me.” Tiar’s two brothers, too young to remember their aunt when they left New York and not knowing their father’s assertion that she hated Tiar, shared a confused shrug and went on.

  “I know it’s hard to accept, Tiar, but she did what she thought would be best for you,” Kevin concluded. Max, who was the silent witness to this conversation, doubted this. His own mother, he thought, would swim across the Atlantic to help Tiar. He suspected there was even more to this story Tiar’s brothers did not know but kept his silence, letting the benefit of the doubt they gave their mother be a gift of reassurance to their sister.

  Tiar was quiet for a while, trying to appreciate everything she just had learned. All of this time, she thought her family had been doing well without her, happy she was gone. Now it seemed, viewing her as the one that had been lucky enough to “escape,” they didn’t want to upset her new life. The story she and Max had made up for Father Neman—the danger, the drama, the death, seemed more accurate then she had imagined. She felt a sudden twinge of guilt that their words had somehow caused all the intervening events. No, your words did not kill Papa, she told herself, tryin
g to shake off the thought. They found the tumor before you ever spoke to Father Neman, before you even found the baptismal certificate.

  “Why me?” she finally asked. “I mean, why was I the one Papa got mad at first?”

  “We don’t know for sure,” Henry told her. “Probably no reason. I mean, he was legitimately crazy. But we think it had something to do with the house keeper, the one he fired when you were eight. Apparently, he told mom later it was because she was trying to turn you into a snake.” Max thought about how Tiar used to dance, before he stopped driving her to Jen’s parties. The puzzle pieces were all starting to fall together. Tiar shook her head.

  “Why don’t I remember any of this?”

  “We probably wouldn’t either,” Kevin assured her. “But, we were there longer, so we had more context to put it in. Plus, Mom reminded us of things that we otherwise would have forgotten ourselves. It all sounds obvious in retrospect but you have to remember—the first few years it was all happening inside Papa’s head and we didn’t find out until later.”

  Tiar had a difficult time thinking of her father as dead, mostly because she couldn’t even really remember what it meant for her father to be alive. In her seven years in New York without him, she had never missed him. She missed the man who used to throw her up in the air and catch her as a child, the man who used to push her on the swings and read her bedtime stories. That man had started to disappear before they even left New York. He started suffering intractable headaches and unexplainable screaming spells. This was how she had remembered her father for seven years. It was far less painful to be away from someone who was so unpleasant to be around. But now, faced with the fact that he had no control over his thoughts and behavior, she felt guilty having thought so poorly of her own father for so long.