by Nafisa Haji
My eyes widened. I—I remembered that name.
The interrogator said, “What’s that he said? He gave you a name?”
“Yes,” I said reluctantly.
“Sharif Muhammad?”
“Yes.”
“Ask him who he is. Ask him how he’s connected.”
“He says it’s his uncle. Who took care of him when his mother died.”
The interrogator worked hard to bite back another outburst. With an angry exhale of breath, he let Fuzzy go on talking.
“Go and ask him,” Fuzzy said. “Find him. Sharif Muhammad Chacha will help me. He has always taken care of me. When others were unkind. He will come again to save me, I know,” Fuzzy said.
Finally, Fuzzy got to the point in his story that we were interested in, telling us that when he was done with school, he’d gone to work. In a series of jobs. Finally, through someone he knew, he’d been hired as the gatekeeper for the raided house.
“I was the one who opened the gate when people came. I was the one who shut the gate when people left.”
“What people?”
“I don’t know.”
We were at the end of the line of Fuzzy’s thinking. After that, he just went back to the beginning again. “When I was little, my mother died . . .”
When he caught up to the present the second time, the interrogator shot out more questions, a little more gently than before. He tried to come back to that name a couple of times. Sharif Muhammad. But all Fuzzy ever said was that he was his uncle. Not his real uncle. But an uncle who took care of him.
I broke the rules once more, asking Fuzzy a question that didn’t come from the interrogator.
Pissed, the interrogating agent barked at me, “What’d you ask him?”
“I asked him how his mother died.”
“Don’t go encouraging him! Who gives a shit about his damned mother?” After a pause, almost in spite of himself, the interrogator asked, “What’d he say?”
In a whisper softer than Fuzzy’s, I said, “He said she was hit by a car.”
I did what I was supposed to for the rest of that interrogation. But I wasn’t there anymore. It couldn’t be, I kept telling myself. They say the world is small. But Karachi is a city of 14 million people. It just couldn’t be related. To Sadiq. To my brown eyes and the story behind them.
Eventually, they gave up on Fuzzy. But they didn’t let him go. They sent him to Guantánamo Bay. Leaving me, in the midst of all the other crap I carried around, wondering about coincidence, which I used to believe was just another word for Providence—God’s plan for the universe.
Two days later, my boss—my former boss—called again.
“What the hell are you playing at, Jo?”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
“Don’t bullshit me. The Department’s got your application for clearance. They cross-checked you and realized you were one of ours. They’re furious!”
“Oh. That.”
“Look, Jo, I know you’ve been unhappy. But that’s no reason to turn your whole life upside down.”
“I don’t see that this is any of your business. I’ve been thinking about this for a long time. And I applied for the other position months ago.”
“Well, I’m not gonna let you do this, Jo. Losing your nerve is one thing. But you can’t flip over and out like this.”
“I’m not flipping out. I’m straightening myself up. And I’m not losing my nerve. I just got it back.”
“Look, I know this whole thing has been messy, that some of your assignments have been a little—unconventional. Too much John Wayne, and not enough Jimmy Stewart. It’s what the times called for and there’s talk of some of that changing. Maybe. For the better. In the meantime, you can’t go off and start working for the other side!”
“The other side?”
“Hell, yes! That’s exactly what you’re doing, Jo.”
“I don’t see it that way.”
“Oh yeah? Well, good luck paying the rent!”
This time, when he hung up, I could tell he wanted to slam the phone down. Too bad you can’t do that with a cell phone.
He was right about the last thing he’d said. I looked around at my apartment, and thought about the salary the lawyer had quoted, a fraction of what I’d made on contract. No benefits, either. And another six months or more before I was cleared, again, for security. From a different angle. They’d drag their heels this time. Standard Stalling Procedure. It felt good to think about all of this, to calculate my own redemption.
When the phone rang again, it was my new boss calling.
“Hi, Jo. Just calling to catch up. All the paperwork’s in,” she said. Her name was Cheryl. She was a lawyer.
“I know. My former employer just called to scream.”
“Oh? Yeah. Well, this is unusual. To come from your line of work into mine.”
“I know.”
“It’s gonna take a while, though, to get in the door.”
“I’m ready for that.”
“Good. And— that other matter you were asking about?”
I knew right away what she meant. This new boss of mine was a little paranoid about talking openly on the phone. She was convinced that the government was listening in. She was probably right.
“Yes?”
“I’m still making inquiries. But I’ve got nothing for you, yet.”
“Oh.”
“They’re being impossible, Jo. It’s like playing Go Fish. ‘Have you got a two? No, go fish,’ if you get what I mean. But I’ll keep my ears and eyes open. Keep talking to the other habeas lawyers, trying to see if anyone—uh—if—oh, what the hell!—if anyone’s heard of him. Or takes his case. I’ll let you know if I get any information.”
“Uh-huh.”
“There have been some releases. Your guy could be one of those. But they don’t give those names out, either.” If someone was listening in, I don’t think Cheryl was fooling anyone.
“Well, keep in touch. I’ll keep you posted. And I’m really looking forward to working with you, Jo.”
“Me, too.”
“Sooner, I hope, rather than later. It all depends, though. These are strange times we’re living in. Tragic times for anyone who gives a damn about the Constitution. Are you okay? For money? ’Cause this is going to be a long haul. It could be a year or more before I can use you. I could give you an advance.”
“I’m good for now. Thanks for everything, Cheryl.”
All the code stuff was to let me know that she hadn’t been able to trace Fuzzy. I hoped he was one of those sent home. He should never have been taken to begin with. One of the reasons I’d taken the job with this lawyer—had offered my services as a translator for her and any other of the habeas lawyers who’d been fighting tooth and nail, with no success so far, to get into Gitmo to meet with clients that the government said had no right to lawyers in the first place—had been Fuzzy. Not just him, of course. I wanted to go and try to help undo what I’d helped to do—because I was no longer willing to pretend that doing the right thing could involve doing anything wrong. Somehow, Fuzzy had become the face of the salvation I sought. I thought about it for a long time. Then I pulled out my laptop and did a search that I’d tried already, after my encounter with Fuzzy. As easy as it had been to find Sadiq in the white pages years before, Googling him now was proving to be fruitless. Well, there was another way to find him. A way that would take me back into his story—the one I’d run away from before my life had become so diverted off the path I’d planned to take—from another angle. Something I had to try, because Sadiq’s story had become weirdly entwined with mine. At least, that’s what I had to assume, based on what I knew about Fuzzy, which wasn’t much and which still could turn out to be a smaller coincidence than it seemed. Not the same person at all. Just someone with a similar story. Who’d been taken care of by another man named Sharif Muhammad, not the man who was Sadiq’s driver.
I went to my bookshelf and
pulled off my copy of Pilgrim’s Progress. Tucked into the back pages was a Christmas card from Todd Rogers. He still sent them. One for each of his children now—for Mom and Uncle Ron—always, with that same return address in L.A. where Mom had found him. Uncle Ron had met him a couple of times, over the years. Not Mom, though. I wasn’t planning to, either. My destination was the house across the street from his—a house my mom had described as yellow with white trim. I hoped she still lived there. Sadiq’s mother. Deena. The grandmother I’d never met.
Deena
See what the drop must pass in order to become a pearl,
The open mouths of a hundred crocodiles,
circling a trap with every wave.
Ghalib
I almost didn’t answer when the doorbell rang. I was making a grocery list. Halal turkey, croutons for stuffing, mushrooms, celery, marshmallows, yams, cranberries—a list of ingredients that no recipe I had learned at home ever called for. The first few Thanksgivings that we celebrated, when Sabah was young but old enough to want to celebrate with turkey, I had cooked it into a salan—pieces of turkey, not the whole thing at once—curried with spices I knew: red chili powder, garlic paste, ginger, saffron, cumin, and coriander. We had rice instead of stuffing and cachumber instead of salad. The meat of the turkey was tough and stringy and I could not understand why Americans would eat such an unappetizing bird. Later, when we began to have an “American-style” Thanksgiving, at Sabah’s insistence, I grew to like it—the blandness of the meal made a nice change and I found it easy to prepare, cleaner, without the mess and fumes of masala frying that our normal cooking required.
I made the list, but I didn’t plan to go grocery-shopping until night, after opening my fast. Going shopping for food in Ramzan, during roza, is not a good idea. The cart quickly fills with all kinds of unnecessary treats, which end up going mostly uneaten. Ramzan makes your eyes grow and your stomach shrink. I sighed. Ramzan and turkey. Culinary culture clash. I wondered if fruit chaat would be okay to serve. How about cranberries in the chaat? Mmm. I was feeling my roza and hoped the resulting menu wouldn’t be too strange for Sabah’s latest boyfriend. The last one had been adventurous, even eating the achaar I had served when she’d brought him home to meet us last Christmas, picking up the pieces of unripe mango, richly marinated in spices, with his fingers, gnawing his way through the sour flesh and olive-green skin of the fruit. The one before, not so much. He’d turned red and coughed with the first bite of chicken khorma. But then, I had stopped accommodating the delicate taste buds of these guests long ago.
Umar had said, “As if it isn’t bad enough that we have to meet a different man every season. We have to suffer through spiceless food, too?”
It was a joke between us. That first bite the poor boy took. How long would he wait before reaching for the water? Umar and I made bets.
“Two bites for this one.”
“No, this one looks like he has some balls. Five bites at least,” we would whisper to each other in the kitchen, while Sabah did the usual tour of the house, sneaking up to her old room to smooch.
Later, when dinner was served and the boy reached for his water, Sabah would say, in the same way I used to, “No. Water will only make it worse. Have it with yogurt instead,” making me laugh. It’s always a little strange to hear your child voice the old lessons you have taught them.
In Sabah’s case, I think that is the only thing she ever learned from me. The things I have put up with for that daughter of ours—from birth to breast-feeding to boyfriends and beyond! Every moment of it has been a joy. But I hope that this one sticks, I thought to myself. My lap is aching for a grandchild.
The doorbell! Yes—it rang, and I almost didn’t answer it. Who would be so rude as to come unannounced? Only a salesperson or a Jehovah’s Witness, I was sure. Back home, unannounced visits were the only kind ever paid. Though that changed for me. No one ever came to visit in the last years I spent in Pakistan. Here, in the very beginning, I used to answer the door always. I even invited many of those Witness people in. But it became a nuisance. Anyone who is so very sure of themselves and their beliefs runs the risk of being a nuisance. I admit, I admired the tenacity of those people, who must know that everyone groans when they see them through the peephole and yet go on anyway—pushing doorbells, knocking away—knowing that the only people who will welcome the sight of them will be those desperately lonely enough to be even more of a nuisance than themselves.
Then I thought, it might be a package. Amazon.com has given new clout to doorbells.
There was a young woman standing there. No package in her hand. No uniform or clipboard for me to sign. No pamphlets, either. But there was something about her that made me relax the air of dismissal I had quickly cultivated in light of the absence of these things. She was not here to sell me anything. She was here to receive.
She told me she was Angela’s daughter, hesitantly, with a question mark, as if she doubted I would remember who Angela was.
“Angela’s daughter?! Oh! Come in, come in,” I said. Angela. I knew there was something familiar about her.
She told me her name. Jo. And then said nothing more, expecting me to fill the space of her silence.
I obliged, pretending not to notice the monosyllables of her replies—that is, when she replied with words at all. She was staring at me and looking around the room, making me feel very uncomfortable. “How is your mother? She’s well? She was such a nice girl. So sweet. Did you come to visit your grandfather? Across the street? No? You’ve come to see me? How nice!”
I invited her to sit down and said, trying to hide how annoying I found it that she only nodded and hardly said anything at all, “Your mother was my good friend. I still remember her, every time I go to the library. Did you know that she worked there while she lived here? You did? She told you that? Yes, she was my friend. Will you have some tea? Yes? Your mother told you about my tea, huh? Let me put the water on. You sit. I’ll be right back.”
In the kitchen, I filled the kettle, wondering at the uneasiness of this unexpected visit. I had not invited her into the kitchen, something I normally would have done. Most of Angela’s time in this house had been spent here. But there was something about this girl, Jo. From the moment I opened the door, I felt under inspection—my words assessed and analyzed. I didn’t think it was conscious, the watchful, wary distance she maintained. But it was strange. She had knocked on my door, saying she came to visit me. Why? Who am I to her? I asked myself, lingering in the kitchen without realizing that I did. Boiling the water, simmering the tea, taking my time, leaving my guest unattended—something that was against the rules of etiquette I normally followed.
When I took the tea out to her, I didn’t tell her why I wasn’t having any with her when she asked. I said, “No, I’ve had mine already.” It would not have been proper to tell her that I was fasting, to make her feel strange about my abstinence. It would have lengthened the distance between us, I thought. Which was strangely long enough already.
I said, “You don’t look like your mother.” As soon as I did, I realized how odd this was, that she had looked familiar to me and did not look like her mother.
She took a sip of her tea and said, “No. I look more like your son.”
It was a good thing I was fasting, that I had no cup of tea in my hand. Else I would have dropped it, letting it clatter to the floor loudly, like a melodramatic character in an Indian movie.
After a long, long moment, a moment I spent remembering—Sabah, at eight, telling me that she’d seen Sadiq get into a car with Angela, something I had found curious at the time, because neither Angela nor Sadiq had ever told me of their friendship—I asked, “Does Sadiq know?”
“I went to see him a few years ago,” she said.
“He didn’t tell me.” That was a silly thing to say. As if he would have. As if I was someone he would have ever confided in, the son whose name made my heart ache, still, at the memory of leaving him behind. Our re
lationship is perfunctory at best—which is better than it once was.
The girl, Jo, said, “He was going away when I saw him. Do you know where he is?”
“Going away? Yes, he is always on his way here or there,” I said, “rarely staying in one place long enough to know where he is himself. But I spoke to him last month. He was here, in the States. In Boston. But on his way back to Pakistan in a hurry. His grandfather has had a stroke.”
“Oh.”
I tried not to stare, but couldn’t help myself. There was no doubting the truth of what she said. It was clear, in her eyes, in the line of her jaw and chin. “You’re looking for him? You want to see him again?”
She nodded.
“He—he welcomed you? When you went to see him before? He spoke to you?”
She nodded again. “Yes. He told me about his childhood. About his life with you—the house you lived in with him, the terrace and the fruit tree. And the story of the monkey and the crocodile.”
“Oh? He did? I thought those were things he had deliberately forgotten. I thought his memory of life began when we were separated.”
“He told me about that, too.” Her voice was soft, gently nudging. “Why were you separated from each other? What’s the story behind that?”
This was an unsettling question—one Sadiq himself had never bothered to ask, one that had undermined my faith for a time. I asked, “You want the short version or the long?”
The girl closed her eyes, which struck me as a strange thing to do. She tilted her head and then opened them again. “The long, please.”
“That will be very long. You have time?”
“As much as you’re willing to give me,” she said.
I tried to think of how to begin. And then seized on the most innocuous of the references she had made.
The monkey and the crocodile. My father used to tell me that story when I was very young. But the version he told me was different from the tale I told Sadiq. In my father’s story, the crocodile is put up to the betrayal of his friend, the monkey, by his greedy wife. She deceives him, feigning illness to get him to do what she wants—to bring back the monkey’s heart for her to eat so that she might become well. Same ending, though. When I was eight or nine years old, older than Sadiq was when he was taken from me, I told my father that I didn’t like his story.
