The men waited.
‘Here we have many restrictions but few rules, there it’s the opposite. There are few restrictions but many rules.’
The men exchanged glances. It was a poor beginning. Before he could start again someone asked, ‘Are there plenty of jobs available?’
‘Well,’ Daanish cleared his throat. ‘Actually, since the Gulf War there’s been a bit of a recession.’
The room was silent and the silence grew. Someone shook his head, ‘That war was a crime.’
Everyone nodded and a general moroseness took over. His chacha said, ‘What did those poor Iraqis ever do to them? I tell you, oil is a curse. Look at Iran. Look at Libya.’
Another nodded, ‘And look at the Saudis. Look how low they stoop.’
Daanish’s phoopa scowled, ‘Are you insulting the holy land?’
‘No,’ he replied, ‘I’m insulting the beggars who live in it.’
The phoopa declared, ‘They are our brothers.’
‘They are closer brothers of the Iraqis they let the Americans bomb.’
‘Urdu speaker,’ he retorted.
Someone began to recount how he took a different route to work every day for fear of being kidnapped. ‘The situation has gotten so bad,’ he said emphatically.
‘But there have been fewer kidnappings since the army operation,’ Daanish’s phoopa insisted.
‘There’s going to be a civil war!’ announced another unknown.
‘There’s going to be nothing besides more rumor and your hysteria!’
Daanish’s chacha again began serving sweets.
Daanish looked around in despair. He must quickly tell the men of his other, better life. He’d have to reconstruct it the way he’d tried to reconstruct this one for an exotica-starved Becky. He’d failed her; he was probably going to fail his uncles too.
While he wondered what to say, the dispute continued. For some reason, a man was thumping his chest and booming, ‘I am a thinker.’
‘Ask those that built this country!’ his opponent snapped. ‘We are the ones who really toil for Pakistan!’
‘Please, please,’ Daanish’s chacha sighed. ‘Think of my brother.’
A taut silence again descended. More Pepsi was served. More eyes turned desperately to the ceiling fan. Not a thread of an air current blew past them. The room began to smell of feet, armpits, fermenting sugar.
Then, again, ‘Someone needs to topple this government.’
‘In our country,’ said an elderly man thus far silent, ‘Prime Ministers do nothing but play musical chairs.’
‘Han, han. As soon as the people stop cheering, another one sits down!’
There was laughter, and jokes as to which one of the two still circulating had the bigger bottom.
The old man tugged his long white beard and declared, ‘Definitely he does, but she has two. Three if you count her husband’s favorite horse!’
Applause. The air lightened. Perhaps the pressure was off Daanish now. But no, when the laughter subsided, his chacha hooked him. ‘It doesn’t happen there, does it? There, the President always completes his term.’
There was a general chorus of, ‘There, of course!’
Daanish breathed deeply. He must contribute positively this time. ‘Another great thing is that there, people stand in lines.’
‘There, of course!’
He was getting in the spirit: ‘The bijly seldom goes.’
All eyes gazed beckoningly at the stubborn ceiling fan. ‘There, of course!’
Daanish shut his eyes. ‘The air is clean and crisp. In the winter, the snow gives gently under your boots, in autumn the colors are like the softest firelight, and in spring …’
He was back in the sunken garden. He could smell the dew as he lay on the grass. Pollen dusted the air. He wasn’t even sure what he said next, just that everyone agreed, and that another presence had crept beside him. It had eyes like his, a plump midriff, and legs strong and lean. It listened, transfixed, as Daanish confessed to missing his walks in the cedar forest. So it went with him, laughing in a wonderful, grizzly way, happy to be out in the world instead of locked in the inward, tail-biting frenzy of the mourners. It said, ‘My son, you will be a better mold of me.’
And then the room fell silent. Slowly, the men began reading again. Daanish realized he was scrunched in his chacha’s embrace and that his face was wet.
4
Every Thirty Seconds
JANUARY 1991
When the war broke, television showed planes dropping missiles with absolute precision. At the same time, the print media disclosed that the Pentagon had rules for war coverage. In his journal, Daanish insisted these rules amounted to deleting the war entirely. Absolutely no gore was shown. There were no wounded soldiers on either side, no schools in flame, no detonated sewage systems, no Iraqi civilians – the American public would not see even one, dead, dying or alive. There were no war hospitals, no interviews with patients receiving any medication, no broken oil pipelines, no blown-up dams inundating thousands of square miles. None of that happened. The war was surgical and pure. There was no suffering. And Wayne continued deleting Daanish’s journal entries.
In the TV lounge of Daanish’s dorm, only a handful of students followed even the sterilized news. One day he looked inside it on his way to Fully Food. The lounge was dark and warm with plush pink sofas. Pizzas speckled the carpet. Coke stained it. There was a rustling as fingers probed paper bags for popcorn. The seventy-two-inch screen featured an aerial sortie. Ready–aim–fire.The projectile cruised in a velvety sky. It could have been fired from the starship Enterprise. Any minute now, the spacecraft would save the world from ugly green aliens.
A student, donning a T-shirt that said Food Not Bombs, yawned and said he’d had enough. He then emptied his popcorn down the shirt of the woman beside him. She laughed, hollering at the missile, ‘That’s what you get for oppressing your women, suckers.’
Days later, Daanish skipped all his classes, and skipped Fully Food.
Hunkering in a corner of the library, he started taking notes from a few small American publications that defied the Pentagon’s gag order. One disclosed the use of weapons employed during the Vietnam War but since declared illegal by the UN and the US. It quoted a CIA agent saying the fuel-air explosives, used to clear out dense jungles in Vietnam, made no sense in the flat desert of the Middle East, and yet the bombs were being used on frontline Iraqi troops. About napalm, a US Marine officer admitted it had been used, just as in Vietnam, against both troops and civilians. So were cluster bombs. Another lamented that on television, one general called the air strikes ‘a party’.
Daanish noted all this in his journal, growing increasingly motivated. Here were a few courageous reporters. Surely it would be interesting to compare these reports with others?
He moved on to the popular press, struck by its sloppiness, its glaring inconsistencies. One magazine wrote that Iraq’s military was invincible but then bragged that the government could and would contain it. Another said officials persevered to avoid Iraqi civilian casualties, then quoted a general saying the number of civilians killed did not interest him. It was as if the reports were censored but not proofread.
* * *
Hours later, Daanish stepped outside. Walking aimlessly through the college grounds, he gradually made his way downtown, his neck sinking deep into the collar of his jacket. The wind had picked up during the afternoon. The darkness, at barely five o’clock, had set like cooling lacquer. He passed cafés piled with students and checked his pockets – not even two dollars left from his last paycheck, and the next would be cut. Stopping at a window, he looked inside. A woman carried a glossy black mug of steaming hot chocolate Daanish could almost smell. He pulled away.
The streets were still aglow with Christmas lights. Wreaths and colored balls hung from eaves. Ferns brightened almost every shop window. From one store blew the soft refrain of children singing carols. Ahead of him, beneath an
orange street light, a group of friends met and exchanged tales of New Year’s parties. Becky hadn’t needed him to be her ethnic escort this time.
He passed a few shops with war stickers. One touted a cruise missile and read: This One’s For You, Saddam. Another showed a warhead detonating. It said: Say Hello to Allah.
Around him the air was cold and gay, verging on euphoric. He wanted something hot. He walked back to the café. He’d spend his last dollar after all.
But at the doorway, a heavyset man blocked his entrance. ‘We’re closing,’ he said. Daanish cast a quick look inside. No one seemed in a hurry to leave. Walking back down the street, he glanced around. The friends who’d met under the street light were entering the café.
In the following days, other Muslim students began relating similar incidents. One said someone had scribbled Go home, Towelhead on his door. He’d never worn a towel on his head, or a turban either. Graffiti was painted across the brick wall of a warehouse: Save America, Kill an Arab. A mosque was attacked, as was a Lebanese restaurant. And in the media, in place of war coverage, articles condemning Islam gained prominence. All the while, bombs dropped on Iraq every thirty seconds.
On average, it took Daanish twenty minutes to read each article. On average, the air raids killed twenty-five hundred Iraqis daily. Approximately thirty would lose their lives by the time he’d finished reading how much they hate us.
5
Khurram’s Counsel
JUNE 1992
The girl did not return. Not the next day, nor the following week. Daanish, pacing over the graying rug, was growing desperate for a way to fly out the wrought-iron grills of his bedroom window. He resolved to meet absolutely no more mourners.
Below, Khurram’s driver arrived with a pot of tea. Daanish called out to him.
The workers continued hauling and laying cement or else paused with the old man for tea.
‘Hey!’ Daanish called again, louder.
A young man balanced on top of the foundation wall a few feet lower than Daanish’s window, looked up. He nudged his chin questioningly. Daanish pointed to the driver. The man pointed too. Daanish nodded. ‘Call him.’
‘Did you talk to the President about my visa?’ asked the man.
‘What?’
‘The visa!’
‘Call him,’ Daanish again pointed to the driver.
The worker settled into a crouch. His toes curled around the unleveled edge of the wall. He began picking specks of dry mortar off his feet, preparing to sit under the window all day.
‘All right,’ Daanish hissed. ‘I’ll work on it. Now call him.’
The man hopped down, returning with the driver. The latter looked up, composed as always.
‘I’m going to give you a note for Khurram. Please wait,’ said Daanish.
The other man offered, ‘He’s deaf.’
‘What?’
The man muttered something and spat.
‘What do you mean he’s deaf?’ asked Daanish. ‘I’ve spoken to him before.’
‘You’ve talked in his right ear. Like this he’s deaf.’
‘Well,’ Daanish felt his temper rise. ‘Can you tell him, in his right ear, please, what I just said?’
‘When will I get the visa?’
‘Shit,’ growled Daanish. He stamped to his desk, not his desk – a small, blanched, wimpy thing Anu called a desk – and scribbled a note to Khurram: Can I borrow your car for the day? If you’re free, join me? I want to go to the beach. My mother would be less likely to object if I didn’t go alone, especially if you came to get me. Soon I hope, Daanish. He stuffed it in an envelope that he folded into a plane. He tossed this between the diamonds of the grill, down to the driver, who, happily, still waited. Unhappily, so did the other. It was he who caught the plane.
‘Have you talked into his right ear?’ Daanish asked dryly.
He nodded and passed the driver the paper. The driver walked to Khurram’s house.
‘And?’ said the man.
Daanish slammed the window shut.
He sat on his bed, waiting. Then he sprang up nervously, itching for something to do. At last he moved to the drawer with the cocoons. ‘I’ve decided to boil you, after all,’ he announced. ‘But only one. Which will it be?’ He stared at the trio of wooly pellets, picturing a thick white ribbon curled inside of each. While elbowing their way to shape, he was sure the creatures twitched their antennae, watching him.
Also in the closet was the lacquer box, with the photograph he’d not put in himself. Staring up at him was his young father, so young his hairline showed no sign of receding. His shoulders were bunched against the clouds. A maroon scarf lay stylishly over one shoulder. His jacket and trousers, though, were the same frayed ones he’d worn till his last winter. In the background rose a brown tower. The streets were swept, paved, orderly. His mouth was wide open in the hearty, leonine laugh Daanish heard in his dreams. A woman held his hand. Not his mother. She was spry, short-haired, boyish. Her brown skin was smooth and flushed, as if she’d been jogging. She too appeared cold and delighted.
What was the picture doing here?
What did Anu want, anyway?
He put the box away irritably.
An hour later, there was a loud knock. Daanish stumbled to unlock the door.
Khurram bustled inside. ‘Arre, you send message then go to sleep. It is nice for to see you again.’ He hugged him fervently.
Daanish hung limply in Khurram’s arms. He smiled. ‘Just give me five minutes.’
Once ready, he locked the door and led Khurram hurriedly out the kitchen, avoiding the relatives who called after him.
But Anu caught up with them. ‘You haven’t read a word today,’ she protested. ‘And I haven’t seen you all morning. I was so worried. I didn’t know if I should disturb …’
‘Anu please. Khurram’s waiting.’
Khurram smiled without any apparent haste.
‘Why don’t you read too?’ Anu suggested.
Khurram opened his mouth but Daanish pushed him out the door. ‘He can’t.’ And then, pleading, ‘I’ve hardly left the house since coming back, Anu. Everyone needs to breathe.’
‘But where are you going?’ She frowned. ‘Why can’t you breathe in here?’
He left without answering.
They drove through neighborhoods like his own that had, till just a few decades ago, lurked under the sea. Sweeping boulevards had cropped up with designer boutiques, video shops and ice-cream parlors. He said, ‘Here too, all people want to do is shop and eat.’
‘What else is there?’ asked Khurram. More somberly, he added, ‘I was thinking about visiting many times but didn’t want to disturb. Salaamat told me about your father’s death.’ He pointed at the driver.
‘Oh, is that his name?’ In the rear-view mirror, Daanish caught a glimpse of the jutting cheekbones, and the elusive, opalescent eyes. ‘How does he know?’
‘Well, all the neighbors knowing. I’m so sorry. Your father must have been very young.’
‘At heart, yes,’ mumbled Daanish.
‘And you the only child.’ Khurram shook his head. ‘There’s being a lot of responsibility on your shoulders.’ He pinched Daanish’s shoulders as if to squeeze some of it off.
‘I suppose so.’
‘You must be very busy,’ Khurram persisted.
‘Actually, no. There’s not much for me to do. The legal end’s been taken care of by my uncles, the domestic routine’s in my mother’s hands and I’m really just a, just a … I don’t even know. Proof of a better life? Evidence that my father lives on? Anu gets hysterical every time I leave the house. She knows every new case of kidnapping, murder, robbery, you name it. I think keeping track of national tragedy helps her cope with her own.’ Words he’d been biting back forced their way out haphazardly now. ‘I haven’t talked this much since our flight together. My school friends are all in the States. I wish there were an internship or some other job I could do, but there isn�
��t, not in anything that interests me at least.’
‘Well,’ Khurram again thumped him. ‘You are having me.’ He continued trying to console him, all the way to the cove.
Once there Daanish thought: I have this.
He had wondered if he could stand being here without his father. Now he had the answer. His footsteps were light as he clambered swiftly over the needle-like rocks on the western shoulder of the inlet, too elated to notice any cuts. Salaamat too crossed the mound with graceful ease; Khurram alone complained.
Daanish threw his head back. Anu had refurbished his room and taken away his things but she could not touch this.
The gray, shirty sea spilled with a hiss up the slope of sand toward him. The water was too rough for swimming, he had to settle for simply walking. Washed ashore were the ocellate cowries, blue mussels and pen shells that greeted him every time he made this walk. He upturned many of the pen shells. All were empty or crushed.
‘The live ones are buried,’ Salaamat said. His locks flapped around his sharp jaw like birds around a spire of granite.
‘I’m not interested in the meat,’ answered Daanish. ‘I just like the shells. I used to collect them.’ He spoke in Salaamat’s left ear and anyway, the wind swept his words away.
The driver continued, ‘They attach themselves to underground stones with golden thread. In the old days, people wove cloth with the thread.’ It was the most he’d ever volunteered on his own. Just as unexpectedly, he wound his words back up, turned and walked calf-deep in the water, straight as a sheet of iron even when the current pulled. The dusky blue horizon cut him in two, just at the hips.
Daanish returned to combing the shore. There were some of the less common shells – sand bonnets, spiral babylons, a mitre just like the one around his neck. There was even a shattered tiger cowry. He’d had a perfect specimen of each in his collection. Anger toward Anu began to rise again.
Khurram caught up with him, panting, clutching a mobile phone. One toe bled. ‘I don’t know why we come here. We passed many nicer places on the way, with people and food stalls.’ He looked around him. ‘There’s nothing here.’
Trespassing Page 13
