In the Light of What We Know: A Novel

by Zia Haider Rahman

  There are churches in the eastern tradition where they say a version of the Nicene Creed that differs from the one that you hear in an English-speaking Anglican or Roman Catholic church. They do not say We believe. They do not even say I believe. Rather, they say I trust. I’ve heard that the use of the word believe in the English creed only reflects a failure to find an effective translation. At any rate, I cannot talk of believing. I cannot say that I believe in the god whose name shall not be uttered or whose prophet died on the cross or whose archangel commanded an illiterate man to read. I cannot even say that I believe in the one true god. But in that Dubai night, on my knees, not for the first time and most likely not for the last, I wanted to put my trust in Him. The thing of greatest worth that we can give another is our trust. Abraham’s offering was not Isaac; it was trust.

  * * *

  At four on the following day, when we both should have been at Dubai airport checking in for a flight to London, I got an email from Emily. I’d been sitting at the computer half expecting this—half expecting nothing and not expecting her to show but nevertheless hoping she would.

  I’ll be there tomorrow afternoon.

  Nothing more, no mention of when in the afternoon, no acknowledgment even to say that she had tried to figure out a precise time but that she couldn’t confirm, no acknowledgment that it might matter to me practically—should I book tickets on the six o’clock flight to London? Will she be there in time for check-in?—no mention of when her flight would depart from Kabul, let alone arrive.

  I stared at the message. Could there really be such lack of regard? For she had not even asked the obvious questions: which hotel I was staying in or where to meet me. Had she just assumed that I’d let her know where I was staying, or had she not given it any thought? It is a truism—is it not?—that you can say much about a person’s attitude to you by the questions he or she asks you. And yet she had asked me that important question, one of the most important we can ever ask: Will you marry me? That is a question and not a request, not like saying to someone at a dinner party: Could you pass the salt? What if they only said yes and did nothing but continue their meal and conversation with their neighbor on the other side? Will you marry me? is a question because the answer is a statement about the answerer’s own vision of the future, of the future the answerer wants, something the questioner cannot divine.

  And then when tomorrow morning came, I bought an airline ticket. I had told myself and I had implied to her that I’d head back east if she didn’t show that day—Good God! I’d specified the day before that—and here I was reneging on the deal I made with myself, for the ticket I bought was for a flight to London. But what if she’d had cold feet? Or would have cold feet in the next few hours? Were there not signs that her feet were cooling?—if I may take the feet image a step further.

  At three in the afternoon, just two hours before my flight, at the last moment an email could have reached me, I found a message from her.

  I’ll leave for London tomorrow, she wrote.

  And I wondered, as I often did, how else the note might have been written: I’m leaving for London tomorrow.

  I used to fantasize about a conversation we never had in which she said: Darling, I’m overstretched and this is what my work diary looks like, and these are the uncertainties I have to factor in. Would you mind if we kept our plans tentative? I’ll let you know as soon as I know I can’t make it. The dream I imagined would fill me with love. In the daydream, I felt wanted, cared about, I felt thought of. Once I met Marcy for lunch in London—this was before I started seeing Emily. Marcy was visiting on business. She had brought Josie with her, who was four at the time, and in fact I had arranged a babysitter so that Marcy could go to her meetings. I arrived with a present for Josie, a toy giraffe, giraffes being something of an obsession of hers. When she took the toy, this child of four said, with her soft brown eyes looking straight into mine and in a voice containing a tiny element of surprise that almost broke my heart, You thinked of me. The daydream I used to have was one in which I felt thought of by Emily. Life is short, as the old saw goes, and there is so little time on this earth, none of it, not one minute, ever to be recovered, the years of the locust restored not here if anywhere, lost time never to be found, time so dear that the respect for another’s time must be the very beginning of respect, so that if a lover can’t give you that first respect, then … well. And even though she failed to show, I caught a flight to London. Perhaps, now that I think about it, I had already coupled my indignity to the indignity of the Afghanis. Though what the hell does that really mean?

  * * *

  I arrived in the evening and had accepted Penelope’s invitation to stay with her. From there, I called Emily’s father. Penelope had informed him of the engagement, and I half expected an invitation to lunch or drinks, but when none came I asked him if we could meet. The man suggested lunch with him the next day. Because that day would be a Saturday, I expected his wife, the other Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern, to be present, not so much because most people aren’t at work on weekends, but because Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern, Robin’s second wife, had no occupation to speak of, so one would have thought she’d arrange her week so that she could spend time with her husband on the weekend. Is it a stretch to imagine that that’s what people in happy marriages do? But when I arrived the lady was out, taking Joseph for a haircut, explained Robin, as he led me down the stairs into the kitchen on the lower ground floor. Joseph was their dog. Until then I had never met Robin without Emily there, too. The dog’s haircut appointment must have been scheduled in advance, I thought. Or not.

  We ate in the kitchen at a small round table by the window, where, I imagined, the two of them had their meals, in silence, with little to discuss other than Joseph, adored by the new and childless Mrs. Hampton-Wyvern. We sat at an angle to each other, facing the window onto the well of light outside. The house was like many of the houses in Kensington, the ones I had worked on with Bill and Dave, a five-story stucco building, stairs with half landings. At the back was a private communal garden, shared with the great and the good, the right sort of people. Robin’s house looked like it hadn’t seen a makeover since the 1970s or ’80s. There was Formica in the kitchen and melamine worktops, and the paintwork on the banisters had the encrusted history of one eggshell finish on top of another, every few years, without the care to sand down first, so that the detail of the molding had disappeared under the thickening paint, brushed from memory. I don’t think Robin and his wife entertained people here much; even when I went with Emily, we might all have an aperitif at the house, but we’d saunter over to one of the many fine restaurants in the neighborhood for a meal afterward. Robin wasn’t short of a few bob, as Dave would have said, so that one was left with the impression that the house had never enjoyed a share of whatever love might have moved within it. Perhaps there was not enough to spare.

  I pushed myself across a plate bearing two sausages in dire need of medical attention and where, divided by an expanse of porcelain, lay helpless pieces of carrot and potato boiled out of their brains. Conversation hadn’t yet caught on, but there were diversions in the room to hold the eye. I thought of the summer with Dave and Bill, and I remembered the accoutrements of the English public school that I came across in those houses, the class photographs of children away at boarding school. Here, too, in the kitchen, there were some photographs of Emily and James, and, looking at the pictures on the wall, I thought of how Emily always found a way to mention someone’s schooling.

  As you know, I said to Robin, I went to a rather ordinary state school, but I’ve been thinking about these public schools. Could you explain to me how you think they differ? There was mischief in my question. I wanted to see if and how he might temper his answer in deference to my state schooling. Of course, I would not have the counterfactual to compare with—I’d never know what he might have said to someone who had in fact gone to a public school—but there might nonetheless be clues.

  Ro
bin popped some more food into his mouth, which gave him a moment to consider his response.

  When his answer came, it was evident that he’d misunderstood me, but the misunderstanding itself was so telling I refrained from stepping in to correct him. What I had meant was the distinction between state schools and English public schools. But what Robin had understood by my question was how public schools differed among themselves.

  My father told me a story once, said Robin, and I don’t know if it’s true but it’s rather amusing. After the war, there sprang up a number of new public schools to cater to a growing middle class, and rather quickly these schools turned out very able students who went on to Oxbridge. At that time, the headmasters of the old public schools formed a headmasters’ association in order, it would seem, to formulate a response to the new competition. They met, the story has it, in one of the better clubs in London—

  Where they eat well?

  Precisely.

  And everyone’s a seal pup?

  I beg your pardon?

  Clubbable?

  Indeed.

  In the course of their conversation, continued Robin, the question arose as to what the public schools were for. What did their schools prepare their pupils for? The headmasters of Eton, Westminster, Winchester, and other schools were there, as was the headmaster of Ampleforth, a Benedictine monk, since Ampleforth is run by an abbey and is, as you know, unusual for being Roman Catholic.

  Surely it’s not unusual for Ampleforth to be Roman Catholic? I asked.

  Quite, said Robin, glossing over my second foolish witticism before continuing with the anecdote.

  The headmaster of Winchester stated that he prepared his boys for lives of scholarship; the headmaster of Eton said he prepared his pupils for government; the headmaster of Westminster said he prepared them for the armed forces; and when it came his turn, the headmaster of Ampleforth said he prepared his boys for death.

  I smiled appropriately and wondered if a state school head teacher would ever admit to preparing his or her students for disappointment.

  I don’t suppose you have any idea why I asked to see you?

  Robin never responded quickly, always deliberately, as if the sentences were formed first, in the manner of trial lawyers of an older generation, so that to begin with I did not notice a new edge in his voice.

  I might but I wouldn’t presume, he answered.

  I suppose Penelope has told you that Emily and I are now engaged.

  She has.

  Something in Robin’s tone troubled me. Then I had that kind of flash of insight that comes suddenly and must be the product of a brain processing information received from the eyes and ears but without conscious register.

  Robin, should I have asked you for your daughter’s hand in marriage?

  Robin did not hesitate.

  Well, as a matter of fact, I rather think so. I know that might sound rather old-fashioned these days, but there it is.

  Should I now?

  The horse has bolted, don’t you think?

  Even if I didn’t feel I had done anything wrong, I apologized to Robin. It is a habit, isn’t it? To apologize in the face of someone’s grievance, in order to assuage him perhaps or merely to smooth over relations but not with any genuine remorse. It may be that those are the only apologies that work.

  * * *

  May I ask you a question? I asked him.

  Please do.

  What kind of man did you imagine Emily would marry?

  Again, there was mischief in the question. How much would class or, for that matter, race be part of the kind of man he had imagined for his daughter?

  Robin again seemed to consider his response.

  There’s a way this might sound rather crass, but I think you’ll know what I mean when I say it. I’d rather thought Emily would do well to marry a Scottish laird sort of man. I think she needs someone to rein her in. She needs firmness.

  I reflected that I was as far from the Scottish laird as could be. But I felt revulsion, too. I thought of the Asian women I knew of in parts of London, the people of my parents’ acquaintance, housebound and subservient, and even if my mother was not such a woman, there was always the fact that my father controlled the credit cards and bank accounts.

  I had never sought to rein in Emily, and here it was being described as my failing. Of course, it was directed at me. What I had regarded as virtue was represented as weakness. To issue an ultimatum to Emily, as Penelope had once urged me to do, was, I explained then, an act of aggression, though I do not believe that now. An ultimatum, properly conceived and formulated, is not coercion, since, outside marriage, at any rate, no one has a right to another human being’s loving conduct: We have the right to issue an ultimatum just as we have the right not to abide by it. I consider Robin’s words now in another light. If he had meant positive actions to rein her in, then I was not the man. But I could at least have set out my terms, the conditions for love, and that would have been within my rights and within hers to accept or reject.

  * * *

  What do you think are the key ingredients to a successful marriage? I asked Robin.

  I’m hardly in a position to advise on that, he replied.

  Why?

  I’m divorced.

  And married again.

  It would be somewhat presumptuous, he said.

  Only if I hadn’t asked you. I once asked my professor at Oxford what made a good mathematician. She said she wasn’t sure she was in a position to answer. I told her that now that we’d got the English disclaimer of modesty out of the way, she could tell me what she actually thought. Good mathematicians, she believed, try not only to correct their mistakes but to understand why they made them. I asked her if she was also assuming that good mathematicians made mistakes. Everyone makes mistakes, she replied.

  Robin gave his answer.

  Trust and respect, he said.

  He would have been content to leave it there, but I wanted to hear more.

  Please go on.

  Look, I’ll tell you this, but on the understanding that it must not get back to Emily.

  He looked at me for confirmation.

  I don’t know what you’re going to say, I said.

  I don’t trust her one bit. I don’t trust my own daughter. She has a lot of her mother in her, you know.

  I did not say it to Robin but remembered that Penelope had said the opposite to me, that Emily had much of her father in her. And Penelope’s psychiatrist had said the same.

  She’s my daughter and of course I love her and all the rest of it, but there’s no beating about the bush: She is a thoroughly untrustworthy young woman.

  And respect. You said trust and respect.

  Yes, respect, he said, seemingly remembering the question I had first asked. Respect is vital.

  * * *

  After lunch I returned to Penelope’s house. Penelope had obviously been waiting: She wanted to know how it had gone with Robin. I said it had been pleasant and that I’d had lunch with him. She asked if Robin’s new wife had been there and I told her that Robin and I had had a nice chat alone, adding that it was good to get to know him a little better. I was unforthcoming, because if I’d learned anything from the good Dr. Villier it was not to become entangled in Penelope’s relationship with her ex-husband. When she saw that there wasn’t much more to get out of me, she moved the conversation on.

  I told some friends about the engagement, she said.

  Oh, really?

  I told Agatha and she was over the moon.

  Agatha was Emily’s godmother.

  I also told Aisha.

  How did she take it?

  What a funny way to put it!

  What?

  How did she take it?

  Well, how did she respond?

  Zafar, you’re no fool, are you? Not the least bit wet behind the ears, I’ll say. As a matter of fact, when I told her, her first words were to ask me how I felt about it.

  And
how do you feel about that?

  I’m overjoyed, of course. Absolutely delighted.

  I’m glad and thank you, but I meant how did you feel about Aisha asking you how you felt about Emily and me getting engaged? But now that I spell it out, it seems a bit of a mad question.

  Come now. Let’s not be coy. Aisha is a snob and that’s all there is to it. I told Emily’s grandmother the news. She was delighted. You’ve not met her, have you?

  No, I have not.

  I have to say that it does seem odd. Emily’s very close to her grandmother.

  There had been an adjustment in Penelope’s attitude toward me. It was the slightest thing, really, no marked change in her behavior, but I felt an openness that had not been there before. I liked the new feeling. It was unfamiliar, but I believe it was in its elements akin to the feeling of family. And perhaps because of that feeling, I shared with Penelope something that Emily had told me, which though Emily had not asked me to keep in confidence I had recognized then as something Emily would not want me to pass on.

  I told Penelope that I had once asked Emily why she would not introduce me to her grandmother. You speak of her often, I said to Emily, but we’ve never met and you see her frequently. Obviously, there’s no obligation to introduce me, but it’s hard to believe it’s just slipped your mind.

  What did Emily say? asked Penelope.

  She said something that unnerved me a little, if I’m honest.

  What did she say?

  She said that she was afraid her grandmother was a bit racist.

  Oh, for heaven’s sake! cried Penelope. We’re going to see her right away.

  Emily?

  No, her grandmother. Actually, Emily as well. She’ll be here this evening.