by Jeet Thayil
This is how the future arrives, out of the bright blue sky. He knows this is the future but he cannot hope to understand it, not now, because something is about to yank him out of the moment and reduce him to a question of headgear. Across the street someone’s yelling at him. Where did the guy come from? He is not a hardhat. He is not working in construction or any conceivable Wall Street job. He is a hooded sweatshirt and painter’s jeans and he’s saying something unbelievable.
“You, motherfuck terrorist, take the rag off.”
Amrik’s reflexes take a moment to kick in. The guy is still far enough away and the street is full of people moving in a jerky headlong rush, not a stampede or a migratory wave but a race kicking against oblivion, a collective hyperjump made up of many smaller ones. These are New Yorkers running for their lives and what he wants is to run with them, but he goes the other way, south, away from the two men, there are two now, who are following him.
“Yo, Ali Baba, wait up!”
The sky is overcast but the sun is there too, or a simulacrum of the sun inside the thunderclouds that have landed on the street. A hawk of some sort flies across the avenue in a rough diagonal only a few inches above the crowd. The bird too is headed north. Somebody’s mail whips by, and more paper, stapled pages and newspapers blowing down the street. The air is full of grit and Amrik puts his handkerchief to his mouth and turns west on the zebra at the end of the block. He heads south then west again and when the two men start to run he does too.
When they were picked on at school his brother’s response was to say God-bless, if you say God-bless they will leave you alone. But his brother is a cut Sikh whose kesh is gelled to who knew how many points, a kid who gave up on the five Ks in college because his dream was bhangra. Amrik’s dream is all-American. He is Brooklyn-born and Brooklyn-bred, a New Yorker with a doomed love of the Red Sox, and none of it means a thing because today he is nothing more than an animated logo. He is a running turban.
Above him the great buildings of the business district appear stricken, block after block of dead air, the city under attack. Within that attack another is taking place and Amrik is the sole intended victim. He unwinds his new turban as he runs, a length of crisp black cotton as stylish as anything in a midtown store. He will take off his turban and stuff it in his satchel and he will tuck his long hair into his collar and run.
This is an American, a New Yorker, on the day the new century arrives. See him ducking into a subway station. The ticket booths are empty. On the platform people carry breakfast bagels and unread financial papers and dead cell phones. Some have just exited trains from Uptown, from Bronxville, White Plains and Riverside. He sees a tall blond man whose khaki shorts are wet with piss and the man makes no effort to hide the stain. A chain wrapped in blue plastic hangs from his fist.
The crack of the train comes scraping off the tiles.
When his pursuers jump the turnstiles their boots make a single whump on the sticky platform and such is the strangeness of the morning that no notice is taken of them or of the way they are walking through the crowd and scanning heads.
Amrik sinks into himself, becomes smaller, becomes absolutely still. He’s taken off his turban and his jacket and tie but there is nothing he can do about his beard and skin colour. He is the only person in the crowd who is not black or white but an unrepresented brown, provenance unknown, from some place off the census grid.
The air smells funny, thick with exhaust and rust and a metallic residue he can taste on his tongue. The doors ding open and he enters a car and goes to the far end where he leans against the connecting door. A woman in a blue jumpsuit and hardhat is watching him. She is big and dreadlocked, the colour of black coffee with a drop of condensed milk, and he’s the only one in the car, on the train, on the entire subway, whose colour is off the grid. The woman takes off her hardhat and hands it to him.
“Put it on,” she says.
He can see the two men on the platform and he can taste the metallic residue in the air. He notices the camera in his hand, the brand name inscribed in silver, the name rhyming with leaker or liker. He puts on the hardhat and waits for the doors to close.
“Philomena Debris,” the woman says. “What I do all day? I ride the rails. I ride and watch. That’s my name and job description. Philomena Debris, rider-watcher.”
The name on her overalls is De Brie.
“My advice? Keep your head down. Don’t look up, not now.”
He keeps his head down; he doesn’t look up.
*
Saturday morning. He and Sukh were on the 6, on the sex, his brother called it, up in the first car because that had been their ritual when they were kids, up in front in sight of the motorman. There were seats vacant but they were standing, his brother hunched like he was already downtown at the Basement Bhangra spinning Punjabi remixes in his white K-Swiss. Amrik asked him once, how d’you keep them so white? He said, every night, before I sleep? I pray my kicks to keep.
“I were you I’d cut my hair,” Sukh said. “Lose the turban, stop being stared at by the average white man.”
“Turban’s our pride,” said Amrik. “I take it off, they win.”
“Win? Shit,” and Sukh laughed, “you can’t win against a lynch mob.”
“I thought about it, get a haircut and a shave. But racists see race, they don’t see anything else.”
“At this point and the historical process, race is everything.”
“Why join them?”
“There’s a war in America and like it or not you part of it. You being too idyllistic.”
“You remember any Punjabi at all?” said Amrik.
“Bro, the pic, you want to or not? Gimme a peek? So I know what you’re saying to me?”
“What I should be asking, you remember any English?”
“The pic, the snap, the grainy, you know, image.”
Amrik dug the Post out of his briefcase, already folded to the page. Sukh stayed with the picture for a while, two white guys pointing at a word in red capitals on the front of a garbage truck, the guys wearing reflective sunglasses with straps, like they were on a skiing holiday. On Sixth Avenue.
The caption said: ‘MAKE THAT DOUBLE FOR US. After more than three decades on the job, NYC sanitation men Phil Manzanera and Rick ‘Raucus’ Honeycutt (right) retire this week. After the catastrophic terror strikes of 9 /11 they spray-painted their city vehicle with the motto above: REVENGE!’
“You sure these are the guys?”
“No question, wearing the same clothes.”
“Same clothes when they’re chasing you all over the subway system?”
“Yeah.”
“Hoodies and Tims. White guys dressed like brothers. You in your Brooks Brothers and the towers collapsing.”
“Sums it up.”
“Amrik, their names are in the paper. You know we can find these guys and show them what the pagri stands for.”
“I thought about it, got to admit.”
“Bro, puttar.”
“Turn the page.”
Sukh turned to a double spread datelined Mesa, Arizona. He read the headline: Trial Dates Set in Alleged Bias Killing of Sikh Immigrant, and then the article quickly through to the end.
“Sukh, you get it?” said Amrik. “The bias killer shot him because he thought he was Muslim. It’s happening all over the country.”
“See what I’m saying? Lose the turban.”
“No.”
“What is it you’re trying to sell me here?”
“Come to Arizona. The guy who did it, the bias killer? He’s pleading not guilty due to insanity. I want to meet the family, show some solidarity at the trial.”
“You see my new Ks?”
“I see them.”
“You know what they are?”
“I know you’ll tell me.”
“Custom made. My K-Swiss with a upgrade on the classic style. All leather. See the one-piece rubber outsoles? Reinforced toe, five-stripe band, D-Ring
lacing system?”
“What did it cost you?”
“Always with the most unimportant question.”
“Okay, but what?”
“Senty dollars for the basic shoe. The customising? Off the grid. Check the laces and the gold eyelets. Not available online, not available anywhere. And the straight Lydiard-type bar lacing, see that?”
“Yeah.”
“Okay, but do you see the main thing?”
“Which one, there are so many.”
“Don’t belittle, bro, don’t be little. Check the sleeves on the laces.”
“The sleeves.”
“The metal tube at the end of the lace, holds it together.”
“Okay.”
“Yeah, gold plated.”
“I’m finding this hard to believe.”
“And the colour on the uppers, see how it’s a different white from the shield on the tongue there? See how the toe and heel are a different white from the stripes?”
“Yes.”
“Now look at that monogram there by the heel.”
“What’s it say? Sorry if I don’t examine your sneakers up close on the subway.”
“DJ Suki.”
“Right.”
“What I’m talking about. Customised. I’m not taking no three hundred dollar Ks to Mesa, Arizona, get my ass shot at by some alleged bias motherfucker.”
“That’s what I thought you’d say.”
“And Rik? You ask me you shouldn’t be going either. Who do we know in AZ?”
“Sukh, take a look at the picture of Balbir Singh, the gas station owner who got killed.”
“See that double beard and jumbo turban anybody be scared.”
“Funny.”
“I’m on in thirty minutes, regular gig two nights a week. I’m getting it to work. I’m being responsible, unlike my older brother.”
“I heard you.”
“For real.”
At City Hall the train’s antique brakes shuddered and the crowd thinned out and Sukh picked up his CD cases.
“I’m supposed to be the rebel in the family but look at you. Quit steady high-paying job, check, try for job with reclusive artist, check, and now? You’re taking off for Arizona just because you can.”
“Balbir had just been to the local church. He made a Nine Eleven donation and he was planting flowers at his gas station when the guy shot him. Five shots from a car.”
“Not now when my career’s in take-off position.”
“An hour earlier killer’s sitting at Applebee’s and laughing with the waitress. He tells her, I’m gonna go out and shoot me some towelheads.”
“Mesa, Arizona. What d’you expect? Tolerance and understanding?”
“Family man, Balbir. Who does he look like?”
“Who?”
“He could be anybody, could be Papa, or Jarnail Chacha in Amritsar. You see what I’m saying?”
“I see what you’re—”
“Listen, put an ad in the Voice for me. Here’s the copy.”
Sukh read from the notepaper his brother handed him, “‘Seeking pinstriped woman I met on September 11. I’m the turbanned guy. You gave me your Leica to hold.’ Yeah, okay, I can take care of it.”
He jumped off the train at Spring Street with the cases clutched to his chest and Amrik noted his brother’s unique running style. Sukh’s upper body and thighs did little work; like a cartoon character the movement was all in the feet, it was all in the K-Swiss. No one on the platform gave him a second glance, just another city kid going about his business. Amrik would have been stared at because he had stayed loyal to the five Ks. Not that it was a flaw in the faith. How could Sikhism’s founders have anticipated the ways in which their innovation would be viewed in the new world?
He found a seat and the compartment filled up again. The connecting door opened with a heavy crank and a man stepped in carrying a clutch of flags and baseball pennants.
He said, “Push in, push in, we’re all American here.”
Which wasn’t necessarily true. There were several nationalities and races and combinations thereof. This was New York. The guy barrelled down the aisle and stopped in front of an old couple with a Chinese newspaper spread on their laps. They were reading together, reading the same article and possibly the same sentence.
He said, “Be American, buy American.”
The woman looked up and inspected the man and his flags and went back to the newspaper.
A bearded guy in a camouflage jacket nodded at the flag-seller.
The flag guy said, “Fight the Taliban. Buy American, be American.”
The bearded guy said, “Buy the blood of Jesus Christ.”
“Say what?”
“The blood of the Saviour redeems me.”
A ripple of movement, people looking for possible routes of escape, and the flag guy planted himself in the aisle two seats from the bearded man and three from Amrik. He looked at Amrik in his black suit and black shirt and black shoes with side buckles and his eyes lingered on the black turban and he offered a tiny pin, stars and stripes waving in an invisible wind.
He said, “Be American.”
And the words shook Amrik out of his subway persona, the don’t make eye contact, don’t talk, don’t smile shield he wore like armour.
He said, “I am American.”
The bearded guy said to Amrik, “If thou has run with the footmen and they have wearied thee, how canst thou contend with the horses?”
The flag guy said, “Horse what?”
The guy with the beard said, “Old Testament.”
Amrik said, “He’s saying there’s no point engaging with fools.”
The guy with the beard said, “You think it didn’t have fools in the time of our Saviour?”
The guy with the flags said, “Fucking city, everybody’s got a mouth.”
But he went to the connecting doors and left the compartment.
Amrik thought, New York, where racism is an equal opportunity enterprise. It wasn’t the first time he’d been sniped at by a black man, but it was certainly the first time he’d been defended by someone white.
*
You blurt it to a nut on the subway, but you don’t articulate it otherwise. You are an American with a job on Wall Street and an apartment in Park Slope. People give you their money and you knead it like dough: you supersize it. You run in the park in a warm-up jacket with headphones strapped to your arm. You don’t take sugar in your coffee. You don’t eat white bread or potatoes. You don’t drink beer. You have a body mass index calculator on your computer and it tells you your weight, real and ideal, in relation to your height. You take your coffee black. In your office there is a leather couch and two leather armchairs and a framed lithograph of the Brooklyn Dodgers signed and numbered by the artist. You are an American: a New Yorker: a Brooklynite. Then the towers come down and you find yourself on a plane headed west. It is 2003, wartime in America. You have to be wearing a turban and sitting on a plane to Arizona via Texas to understand the meaning of this.
They made him take off his shoes and socks. He placed his black leather Cordovans in a tray and stepped through a metal detector. They made him do it three times. He retied the laces the first time and then he left them untied, slipped on the shoes, slipped them off. Random checks, but he was the only passenger who had to remove his footwear more than once, who had to unwind his headgear. It was embarrassing. Also, downright fucking humiliating.
On the second leg, a small jet from Houston to Mesa, he was the only passenger who was not white, who was brown, hairy, gym-fit, and it made him wonder, what happened to the melting pot, the salad bowl, the mosaic? Fly out of JFK and the United States was a foreign country. You found ancient race anxieties. You found extreme weather and isolation and brutal long-distance terrain. All the way on the short flight he was aware of the other passengers’ awareness. He was sitting in the front row and this too seemed to him a misfortune: he could feel them staring. He was happy his
brother had not come with him. If one Sikh could be the cause of so much dismay, the two brothers would have caused a stampede. Out of his briefcase he pulled a copy of Newton’s first book of poems, the cover a painted cross, chipped and blood-spattered. The title, Songs for the Tin-Eared, appeared above a banner that said POEMS, and he hoped it would occur to his fellow passengers that a man reading a book of poems in English would most likely not be planning to blow them out of the sky. He held the book high and buried his face in it, but the man beside him did not seem reassured. He seemed as nervous as when he’d first set eyes on his turbanned bearded seatmate. Soon Amrik put the book away and pulled out a copy of the Wall Street Journal.
He took a taxi from the airport to the hotel and kept it waiting while he had a shower and washed his hair and changed his clothes. He hung his suit in the closet and put on a short-sleeved white shirt and sandals and when he got back to the taxi the driver had a cigarette in his mouth and the radio tuned to death metal, a bottomed-out voice shouting GowBowBowBowBangBangGang into stop-start guitars. He killed his cigarette and flipped channels to a soft rock station. He was wearing plastic sunglasses turned the wrong way around and there were empty food containers on the dashboard and bits of debris on the front seat. From the upholstery a smell of antique smoke and dirty clothes. But the guy was helpful enough, he knew where the courthouse was, and he didn’t mind waiting.
“Thanks.”
“Hey, you’re welcome. Where you coming from, you don’t mind me asking?”
“New York.”
“The big bad city.”
“Not so bad any more.”
“How’s that?”
“The mayor did some housekeeping.”
“Rudy Giuliani. Did a good thing, right?”
He drove with one hand on the wheel, his eyes squinted against the glare and his shades perched on the back of his head, twitchy and dry, with a reedy country-western voice. “Depends who you’re talking to. I’m not complaining.”
