A Time Outside This Time

by Amitava Kumar

  There was a succession of beeps on Farooq’s phone while he was getting changed. My headache had grown worse. When Farooq came into the room, he checked his phone and said “Oh.” Then he said, “Professor, do you mind waiting five minutes? I need to Skype with my father.”

  I said I didn’t mind at all, and could wait in the car. But Farooq said I could keep sitting on the sofa. Maybe, he added with a smile, I would get the chance to say hello to his wife and son.

  Farooq’s father appeared on the computer screen. He was holding a phone on which he was able to see us. There was a yard behind him, and some hens. Hanging from a nail on the wall, under a sheet of polythene, was an air force uniform with Farooq’s name on it. When the phone moved, I could see hills in the distance. It became difficult to see much else in the background because in response to his father’s shouts other men crowded around him. These were Farooq’s brothers. They were working men, peasants, and all of them appeared happy to be talking to Farooq. I was introduced as a professor who had been helpful, and then Farooq mentioned that I was a writer who was going to tell his story to the world. I was greeted and offered praise and thanks by the father and the oldest brother. There was a touch of formal courtesy mixed with plainness in our exchange.

  Farooq inquired about his wife and child.

  They were not at home. In fact, it became clear that this Skype conversation could take place only in their absence. Farooq’s father had wanted to talk to his son because he had a complaint.

  Farooq’s boy couldn’t eat the meals that were prepared at home. He wanted American food. The father and the brothers were laughing. They had paid eight hundred rupees for a meal brought from a McDonald’s in the city. But Julie hadn’t liked this. They also paid five hundred rupees for each meal from Olive Green restaurant in another town. This hadn’t been satisfactory either. A family doctor, a friend, had been summoned more than once to examine Julie, but she had demanded to be taken to the hospital. Now the men weren’t laughing anymore. The father said that a trip to the hospital could cost twenty to thirty thousand rupees. There is nothing like health insurance for us. Farooq said that they should have Julie call him when she returned. He wanted to hang up and began to say goodbye to everyone. The father held up his hand. He said, “You don’t go to a hospital for a headache!”

  Halfway across the world, Julie had a headache too. I felt sympathy for her. I wondered where she had gone. I put the question to Farooq and he guessed that she had gone to the American embassy in Islamabad. I wouldn’t find this out till a few months later but he had guessed correctly. The person who told me this was Julie herself. Most of what she said went against everything that Farooq had told me earlier.

  * * *

  —

  CAN I SHARE here with you what Vaani has told me about the research on lying? In a study beginning in the mid-1990s, a social psychologist named Bella DePaulo and fellow researchers at the University of Virginia asked seventy-seven students and seventy people from the community outside the university to keep a record for a week of the lies they told. This anonymous record of lies was classified into categories: self-serving, out of kindness to another, et cetera. The students were telling an average of 2 lies each day, while community members told 1 lie per day. The most prolific liars among the students told an average of 6.6 lies a day, while the average among community members was a bit lower. DePaulo noted that a more recent study of the lies told by one thousand adults in the United States found that people told an average of 1.65 lies every day. A significant detail in those findings is that 60 percent of the respondents reported not telling any lies at all, while the top 5 percent of the liars were responsible for nearly half of the lies. In late 2017, DePaulo authored a comment piece analyzing Donald Trump’s lies. The Washington Post’s Fact Checker feature had been tracking every false and misleading claim made by Trump: in his first three years in office, Trump has made 16,241 false or misleading claims. DePaulo noted that with 6 daily lies on an average, Trump’s record on falsehood was higher than the average in the study she had done at the University of Virginia. (In June 2019 an article on the CNN website said that Trump “is lying more every day than a majority of Americans wash their hands.” This ratio, I felt, must have changed with the adoption of hygienic practices during the coronavirus pandemic. The Post’s Fact Checker has a new category for the coronavirus. And it notes that although much has changed in our world because of the pandemic, “one thing has remained constant—the president’s prolific twisting of the truth.”) DePaulo also suggested that Trump’s average was likely to be higher because the Post’s database only had access to the public record. Also, the following observation: starting in early October 2017 the Post’s tracking showed that the rate of Trump’s lies had been accelerating and, as DePaulo put it, he was “outpacing even the biggest liars in our research.”

  But there is a further point to consider. Wrote DePaulo: “The flood of deceit isn’t the most surprising finding about Trump.” DePaulo and fellow researchers found out that Trump told 6.6 times more self-serving lies than kind ones, a higher ratio than that of the average participant in the study. The “most stunning way” in which Trump differed from participants in the original study was in the cruelty of his lies: “an astonishing fifty percent of Trump’s lies were ‘hurtful or disparaging.’ ”

  Trump’s lies have had an effect on the general population: fewer than 40 percent of Americans believe he is telling the truth. DePaulo writes that many studies on the detection of deception show that human beings have a tendency to believe that they are being told the truth. This “truth bias” works even when, in psychological studies, participants are explicitly warned that only half of what they are being told is true. DePaulo’s assertion is that “by telling so many lies, and so many that are mean-spirited, Trump is violating some of the most fundamental norms of human social interaction and human decency.” Which, given my truth bias, I readily believe.

  * * *

  —

  IN THE CAR once during my commute, I heard on NPR that a scientific paper had just been published that began with a startling first line: “Most published research findings are false.” The authors allowed that the most extreme opinions likely overstate the problems in the scientific literature, but they also cited empirical evidence showing that most published research is neither reproducible nor replicable. I heard the commentary but didn’t bring it up with Vaani. I knew she would be impatient, and a bit defensive: Is the research question matched by the design of the experiment? Are you providing adequate information for duplication? I imagined her asking those questions before slipping into more arcane territory about data sets and code sharing.

  I bring the matter up because, unlike among scientists, among writers there is an openness about admitting bias, but that might well be my own particular bias. We wave it like a flag. “Look, I am guilty! I’m biased but at least I’m honest about it! I hold aloft my diseased heart!” That is what I’m trying to do here with my entangled story about Farooq. How to explain his behavior—or mine?

  I don’t set much store by experiments. Of course, I value science over superstition, but I don’t think a psychological theory can exhaust or even explain an individual’s complicated psyche. Still, I remember saying to Vaani that I was puzzled by one aspect of Khalid Farooq’s behavior. He was always pleasant, I said, and smiled even when asked uncomfortable questions.

  Vaani said, “Here’s the science on lying. A liar attempts to censor facial expressions more than hand or foot movement. Do you know why? This is because it is generally assumed that people usually pay more attention to facial expressions than to any other part of the body.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “You need to know that the human face is equipped to lie the most, but it also leaks the most information.”

  What Vaani was saying made sense, but what I wanted to know was how I was going t
o recognize and trust the information that Farooq’s face was leaking.

  Vaani said, “Psychologists who have spent decades studying facial expressions describe twenty kinds of smiles in order to distinguish felt smiles from fake smiles.”

  Twenty kinds of smiles! That was interesting but not useful. I had tried other strategies too. I would ask Farooq for details. His descriptions of the detention center in Elizabeth, New Jersey, and then later of the prison in upstate New York, were precise. The color of his clothes, the plastic footwear he was given, the nonhalal food on offer at both places. I also found convincing his stories of travel to the Afpak region with the American forces. His memory was astounding. During my interviews I would cross-check him regarding a date or even a tiny fact I had noted earlier and I found that he was always consistent. All of this came from my training as a journalist. Which means that, much as I love my wife and her theories, instead of scrutinizing Farooq’s smile, I began to cross-check his statements in more rigorous ways.

  Farooq had told me that before he came to the United States, he had been a pilot in the Pakistan Air Force. He had trained at Sargodha air base and then at the academy in Risalpur. I asked him when he was at Risalpur and he replied that he was there from 1996 to 1999. I sent this information to a journalist in Karachi who had earlier worked for the BBC. He checked the records at Risalpur from those years. Farooq’s name was not among the trainees. So, he hadn’t been a pilot. An employee at a lower rank, perhaps. That explained why he didn’t have better English.

  It was also unclear how he had been arrested in Hartford in the first place. Why were his papers not in order? How could he have been arrested for not having a visa if he had been legally admitted into this country as a student? Using the letterhead of an Indian newspaper, I wrote to the office of the judge in Hartford who had handled his asylum case. The office confirmed that Farooq’s case had been decided by the honorable judge, but they were not at liberty to answer any further question.

  I decided to go one step further.

  It cost me twenty dollars on the Internet to purchase access to a data resource where I could locate Julie’s phone number and email address. I was taking a risk. It wouldn’t be wrong to assume that Farooq would find out about this. I sent a polite note to Julie with a link to the article that had appeared on the morning of Farooq’s graduation. I had presented her husband’s story, I wrote to Julie, and would welcome the chance to hear her story, which was possibly different from Farooq’s. The response I received from her was a bit deranged. She threatened to contact a lawyer because I had defamed her, and that too, she said, in an article that had national security implications.

  As politely as I could, I pointed out that I had used pseudonyms and had changed some identifying information. I included a request in my note. Would she please meet with me at the Dunkin’ Donuts near her house at any time convenient to her? I just wanted a few minutes of her time.

  * * *

  —

  THE FACE THAT Julie presented to me at Dunkin’ Donuts was the same one I had encountered in our brief meeting at the gas station many months ago. She was wearing dark glasses and it seemed she didn’t even want to look at me. I gestured to the chair opposite me and asked what she would like to drink.

  Julie shook her head and asked, “What did you need to know from me?”

  I said, “Why don’t you sit down for a second?”

  She placed herself at the edge of the steel chair.

  I felt she wasn’t going to give me much time. I said, “Were you going out with a Saudi man when you were with Khalid? That is what he told me.”

  She said, “You are asking a personal question. I’m not here to answer personal questions.”

  This stumped me. I pretended to look at my notes. Like a defense lawyer who ignores the prosecutor’s objection and plows on with his line of inquiry, I then asked my next question.

  “Why did you go to Pakistan?”

  “Khalid bought me a ticket to Pakistan,” Julie said, her face acquiring color, “so that he could carry on an affair behind my back with his classmate Frida Rodriguez.”

  I remembered Frida from the graduation celebration. Farooq had spoken to her in low tones and picked fruit from her plate. I had thought they were friends.

  “How was your experience in Pakistan?”

  “My daughter was born prematurely there,” she said. “It was very stressful. I had to ask the American embassy for help to get me back to the U.S.”

  Julie shifted impatiently in her chair.

  I said, “How did you first become friends with Khalid?”

  She looked out of the glass wall of Dunkin’ Donuts at the passing traffic.

  “I was brought up by my father. My mother died when I was little. My father was a truck driver. He drove long distances and he died on the road, near Memphis, from a heart attack. I was working at Subway at that time with Khalid. He was a good friend then.”

  There was so much to ask. I had written many questions in my notebook. I was looking at my notes when Julie spoke again. She addressed me as if I were a boy who had thrown a tantrum.

  “What do you really want from me?”

  Her question was a justified one and yet what struck me more was her open hostility. I couldn’t see her eyes behind her shades. Her face radiated a kind of hatred that I couldn’t remember having experienced recently.

  “I had written that piece you read about Khalid. You disliked it, with good reason. It was really only a recounting of the story your husband had told me. I was interested in talking to you so that I could get your side of the story.”

  “I have told you my side. Can I leave now?”

  “Oh, sure,” I said quickly. “I didn’t mean to keep you. But, before you go, one last question. How did you find out about Khalid’s affair?”

  Julie was standing now. She said, “My friend told me about an app. I read all the messages he sent out from his phone. I read what he wrote to you too.”

  She turned and left without saying goodbye.

  * * *

  —

  YOU HAVE ALLOWED me to share the research on lies; let me now put down a brief note about writers. At Farooq’s graduation, the writer Anne Fadiman had delivered the following line as a part of her speech:

  There’s a wonderful phrase from the Talmud: “We do not see the world as it is. We see the world as we are.” Actually, I’m not sure it’s really from the Talmud, since it’s also been attributed to Immanuel Kant and Shirley MacLaine. But whoever said it, it’s true.

  I also didn’t know the source of that quote—it was a part of my general confusion—but it made me think that I had not seen Khalid Farooq as he truly was. I hadn’t wanted to; I had only wanted to see him as a victim of the war on terror, a noncitizen expected to furnish proofs of belonging to this new nation by displaying complicity in the brutal acts of the state authorities, of being forced even through as innocuous or normal an act as giving a graduation speech to constantly assert I am and I had made that my only story. This was my bias. Just the other day, in the small but elegant library at the villa, I came across a mention of a book about a criminal and a writer and a line jumped out at me: “The writer is not the con man’s victim, he is his collaborator.” If Farooq was a liar, I had become his accomplice.

  I saw Khalid Farooq only once again after my meeting with Julie. I asked him whether he was cheating on his wife. He was honest and immediately said yes. And added, with that characteristic shy smile of his, “You can say that I’m dating Frida.” I didn’t want to judge him on this. The Americans had nabbed him on a technicality and then thrown him in jail as a terror suspect. It was certain that he had lied to me about some things, and I had now found out that he was also an adulterer, but that didn’t make him a terrorist. And nothing, nothing justified the wars that the Americans had waged in Afghani
stan and certainly in Iraq. That is what I would say to those who upbraided me for my biases. Now and again, the thought came to me that I should confront Farooq. I imagined the scene. He would be sitting on a chair across from me and I would ask him a question and then another. I would point out the inconsistencies. But then, if I did that, very little would separate me from the figure of the interrogator. Is that the idea of truth I carried in my heart? No, no, it isn’t.

  * * *

  —

  I DIDN’T HEAR anything from Julie. For a while I thought she might email me to ask if I was going to write her story too. I wrote to Frida on Facebook. I tried to get her to say something about Farooq. I wrote to her twice but she never replied. I heard from Farooq once, when his professor posted a picture of me on Facebook: in the photograph, I was standing outside a temple in Gaya, writing in my black notebook. Under the post, Farooq had written, “I miss you, Professor. I miss you and your notebook.” Some more months passed, and, to my great surprise, I received at my home a cashier’s check. Farooq had sent me the entire remaining amount. He now owed me nothing. In the accompanying note he said that I had rescued his family when they needed help and he was sorry that this issue of money and debt had come between us and strained our friendship. I didn’t send him a reply and I didn’t hear from him. Then, a year later, after I published an essay about my mother’s death, Farooq wrote to offer condolences. I asked him for his news and, after some prodding, he revealed that he was now divorced from Julie. He was single and bringing up his children in New York City. They were well. He was not young anymore but he had wide experience, he wrote, and he was thinking of entering graduate school to study international relations.

  * * *

  —

  IN MY BOOK Evidence of Suspicion, the book that had in a way brought Farooq and me together, I had written about a law professor at Seton Hall named Mark Denbeaux. Denbeaux had examined the U.S. government’s own declassified documents about its detainees at Guantánamo—the people that Donald Rumsfeld had called “the worst of the worst”—and had found that 55 percent of those detained had not committed any hostile acts against the United States. Only 8 percent were even considered al-Qaeda fighters. A full 86 percent of the detainees had been turned over to the United States by other parties, who had been offered large bounties for the capture of suspected enemies. All of this was depressing; but none of it was surprising. What moved me more in Denbeaux’s testimony was his report that one of his students at Seton Hall had asked him after reading his study, “Where are the bad guys?” The student asking this question pointed to the fact that the only charge against one detainee was that he had been a cook’s assistant for the Taliban forces in Narim, Afghanistan. This student had said to Denbeaux, “Okay. We have the assistant cook. Where is Mr. Big? Where is the cook?” Exactly. The point I am making here is that Farooq’s lies didn’t amount to much, and neither did my lies to him as a writer, lies that I have just confessed to. So, my question is the same as that of Denbeaux’s student: Where is Mr. Big? Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Denbeaux had declared: “Almost everything said by our highest officials about who was detained at Guantánamo and why they were detained was false.”