A Time Outside This Time

by Amitava Kumar

  Vaani, on the other hand, wasn’t fretting over any of this. No agonizing over the obscure place we occupied in history. After hearing my complaints, she once even asked whether it wasn’t enough that we were able to survive during a pandemic. In our own town, where we had voted strongly for a Black congressman in 2016, a peaceful protest was announced. Everyone was to wear masks and try to stay distant. There were instructions to bring posters saying Black Lives Matter. I liked that a protest was taking place but immediately offered to stay back home and take care of Piya. Without complaint, Vaani left. When she returned in the evening, she said that there were so many young people, all of them marching and singing and dancing, she had stopped outside a pizzeria and bought four large pizzas to give to the kids. I was glad.

  Her serenity had been challenged over the last few days. Alison, a researcher she had become close to at Radcliffe, was sick and close to dying. Or that is what it felt like, Alison’s husband said, for at least two days. It was unclear whether she became infected in Massachusetts, in which case Vaani would also have been exposed, or back at her home in Jackson Heights, Queens, where she developed the symptoms. Alison had been spending the year at Harvard on the same fellowship as Vaani. Alison’s husband, a radio journalist at WNYC, did a moving report on his wife’s illness, their self-quarantine, their hopes and fears. Sitting in our kitchen, safe from the ravages of the world, at least for the moment, we listened to the report.

  David said that while he was recording his story, his four-year-old son was asleep on the couch. David recounted their conversation (Dad, is Mom dying? Will you also get sick? Will I die?) and Vaani sobbed next to me. We had heard frightened questions from Piya, and perhaps Vaani was thinking of our daughter, who, at that moment, was in the bedroom watching a kids’ show on TV. There wasn’t a day, or some recent days it seemed, not a single hour, when Vaani wasn’t thinking of Alison and her family.

  I liked David’s honesty—and Alison’s tired voice as she answered her husband’s questions on the phone even though he was in the next room—and also his modesty. At one point, David said that he was aware how lucky he and Alison were—they had a secure income, a home, food, and they also had each other. He said he knew a young Latino man whom he had interviewed in Astoria just the previous week. His name was Ángel and, sick with COVID-19, he was living in his pickup truck. Ángel didn’t want to infect his young family, who were living in the small room that they shared. David revealed that he had been calling Ángel for the past few days but no one answered the phone.

  * * *

  —

  DAVID AND ALISON were lucky. We were luckier still. In a world made so unlucky by our lying and incompetent leaders, we were so lucky. The world was reeling from the pandemic, but Kashmir had been in the longest lockdown, since August the previous year. It was a strange thing for me to remember this during the pandemic. At first there had been no news from the valley. A friend here in the math department has aged parents living in Srinagar: for weeks, he couldn’t reach them. A man traveling to Delhi was given a phone number to call. A stranger’s phone number. He was to call that number and simply say: “Tell Yusuf that Amma-Abbu are fine. Do not worry.” Yusuf is a small man, dark for a Kashmiri, always smartly dressed and dignified in his speech. When I ran into him last year at the cheese shop, I could see that he had half-moons of worry under his eyes. The only news Yusuf had received from Srinagar was what he found in The New York Times: more troops brought in; complete lockdown; no communication, no Internet or phone service. In a world flooded with information, the death of information. He heard that there was a little movement allowed during curfew to get essentials like milk or medicines. Then came a trickle of news. About arrests in the middle of the night, men being flown away to prisons in other parts of India. Love was also in lockdown: as during earlier crises, in the classifieds section of the newspaper Greater Kashmir, the pages were covered with all the wedding cancellations. All the notices beginning with the same set of words: “Due to the prevailing situation in the valley…”

  But is there singing in the dark times? Yes, one day in the news I came across this report of love during the time of curfew:

  A young Kashmiri man from Shopian traveled more than fifty miles with a friend to a village to catch a glimpse of the girl he was in love with. This was during the lockdown. The two youths had cooked up a story. In the girl’s village, they asked for Majid sahib, a fruit dealer, an imaginary name. A local man named Kaysir accosted the boys after seeing them return to the same lane three times within the hour. Who were these strangers in his village, he wanted to know, especially when movement was restricted? The boys gave up their secret. Kaysir knew the family of the girl, and he adopted the boys’ ruse and decided to help. Kaysir knocked on the door of the house in which the girl’s family lived. Her father opened the door. Kaysir said that the youth were from out of town and looking for a Majid sahib, a fruit dealer. The check he had given them had bounced. The father confirmed that there was no one of that name in the village. Perhaps he felt bad for the boys because he then offered them tea. The boys politely said no. At that moment, one floor above them, a window opened and a girl looked out with surprise on her face. The two youths left with Kaysir.

  On the deserted village road, Kaysir asked the boy, “Saw the girl?”

  The boy said, “I saw the crescent of Eid.”

  * * *

  —

  I MULLED THE news about the boys from Shopian. The boys had filled my heart with cheer. With my renewed commitment to the idea of novel writing as an essential service, I sat down and quickly wrote a very short story:

  ESSENTIAL SERVICES

  Every day that week a line formed outside the liquor store by noon. Those in line stood six feet apart, checking their phones, or reading a book, or looking up at the trees. Twelve people were allowed at a time into the liquor store.

  A man and woman, wearing masks and gloves, arrived from different directions. The man, who might have been in his twenties and whose mask was blue colored, made a flourish with a gloved hand and let the woman take the place ahead of him. For a moment, he studied the back of the woman’s head. She had blond streaks in her hair.

  “You weren’t answering the phone last night,” the young woman said to him, turning. “Do you think it is easy for me to step out like this?”

  Her companion hadn’t stopped smiling under his mask ever since she arrived.

  He now said, “I’ve heard that the wait is longer in the line outside the CVS on South Hill Road. Your father must need his medicine. Let’s meet there tomorrow.”

  CHAPTER 8

  HAVE YOU SEEN THE SEA?

  So that is the world we are living in. We are scared of the future, we are angry at those in power who have disregarded the common good, and we are filled with guilt from the knowledge that there are so many in the world who have so little to protect them. That last thing—the feeling of complicitous guilt—has helped me reach a conclusion. Don’t trust anyone who claims they have clean hands. Yes, I mean that metaphorically. Mostly.

  It is unbearable to watch Trump assure himself and the members of the press corps that he has done a great job. It is no less tiresome to hear Modi bloviate about what can be achieved if we stand united—while he and his followers do everything to divide the country and profit from divisions. Not just the leaders. The dull bureaucrats cherry-picking data to assure people that everything is fine and that they are doing their job. All the kowtowing journalists in Delhi and Mumbai, the conspiracy theorists in the studios of Fox News in New York and Washington, D.C. The imbecilic political illiterates in MAGA hats and Modi masks in the two countries I know best. Each one of those political illiterates who believes that the weak or the vulnerable do not need access to fundamental rights, that science is mere hogwash, that staying at home during the coronavirus crisis is a ploy to steal the election from Trump, that enough
has already been done and even that was an unnecessary indulgence—such people are examples of what you must not allow yourself or your children or your students to ever resemble. Do not become lackeys of the state.

  That’s where one starts. The stance to adopt, like a batsman taking guard at the crease. But, beyond that, what? These crises unfolding so quickly in our world today, they demand a response. In each instance, we witness such a diminution of the human body—not diminution, annihilation—at the hands of power. It would appear logical that we put our bodies on the street in protest. Except that it is precisely a mass protest that the coronavirus has made inadvisable. I remember the protest in Delhi where the human rights lawyer had urged her audience “Keep a record. Don’t trust the state.” Well, that kind of agitation against unjust citizenship laws was one of the first victims of the pandemic. It was disbanded to prevent the spread of COVID-19 through crowding. And yet, and this was hopeful, despite the rules of social distancing, in Minneapolis and other cities of America, after the murder of George Floyd, huge protests rose up. People in long processions, all wearing masks. It is a powerful statement. A part of me belongs to that movement of people in large numbers. A minority turning into a majority. But there is always another part of me, I don’t know whether I should call it my younger or my older self, that wants to stay true only to an activism of the word. To believe primarily in recording words on the page. Against the brutal sentence of the law, a sentence filled with the truth of witness. God gave Noah the rainbow sign, No more water, the fire next time! This belief isn’t something new called forth by the events of recent days, it has been with me for a long time, certainly from the time I set to work on this project.

  * * *

  —

  NOW IT IS June 2020. I heard a protester with “Black Lives Matter” written on her T-shirt warn in a video posted on Twitter, “Target will reopen. The stores will reopen. That’s assured. What is not assured is our safety and real justice.” In India, a poet celebrated for his political verse was sent to the hospital after he fell unconscious in prison; he is eighty-one years old. Here, in upstate New York, during my hurried and far-between trips to the grocery store, I have been surprised to see some of our students. They are unable to return home because of the pandemic. I was away the whole semester on my sabbatical, but I suddenly find myself in the grocery store in the produce section standing across from someone who was in my Literature of 9/11 class two semesters ago. It is difficult to talk through the masks. The spray of mist on the lettuce and broccoli only makes me think of aerosolized virus. Time to leave. “Email me if I can be of any help.”

  The email that arrived, instead, was from the college president. It was addressed to the whole college community. One of our students was Tasered and shot by the police the previous night. He is a well-known figure on campus because he is a basketball player. Akwasi Jones. Akwasi is fighting for his life. The president’s note mentioned that Akwasi’s parents and sister have arrived and are with him.

  The president’s email doesn’t mention it, but the three officers involved in the shooting are all white. What happened was that Akwasi had locked himself out of his car and was trying to open the door on the passenger side with a wire hanger. A patrol car pulled up. Akwasi saw it and went on with his work. The cop who approached Akwasi already had his gun drawn.

  Akwasi was asked to spread his hands on his car, and the cop patted him down. When he was asked for identification, Akwasi explained to the officer that his wallet was inside the locked car. The officer wanted to handcuff him first. This led to an argument. All this happened on a residential street, but there was a video recorded on a phone by a woman watching from a second-floor window. (Was she the same person who had called the police?) Did Akwasi tell the cop that his apartment was only two blocks away and that his roommate would testify to his identity? Perhaps he did and the cop didn’t care. The cop wanted Akwasi to stop arguing, to submit, and the cop was also ready with the handcuffs.

  Did Akwasi resist arrest? It is possible that he objected to being handcuffed because he had committed no crime. The cop called for backup; he can be seen on the camera, his face swiveling to the side to speak into the radio on his chest. When the new cops arrived, they didn’t hesitate. In the video that has been circulating, you hear the woman holding the phone gasp. Because the phone shakes, the woman’s attention drawn by the scene instead of remaining focused on her screen, we cannot see what has happened. It is still light outside, the phone screen filled with the glow of the orange sky and dark green leaves close by. For another fleeting moment, the phone stays still on a blue curtain. Then we are back on the street.

  Akwasi has fallen down on his stomach and is convulsing, light wires connecting him to a yellow object held by one cop while another, his knee on the fallen body, wields a set of handcuffs. If you watch the video again, you might notice this time the soles of Akwasi’s shoes, black Air Jordans, black soles with white circles in them. That’s all that is visible of him. Mostly what you see are the uniformed shoulders, the white arm of a cop, and in the corner of the frame the wheel of Akwasi’s car. The woman holding the phone has seen something that the camera in her phone hasn’t, because she makes another sound like a gasp. A second later, the explosion of sound that is gunfire in quick succession.

  It has happened so many times, and yet it doesn’t fail to shock. The brutal repetitiveness of it. The indelible script in which the history of race is written in this country. You think of the marches, the sit-ins, the speeches, Jackie Robinson, MLK Day, Michelle Obama, the Black Panther, hell, all those stamps commemorating the Harlem Renaissance that you bought only the month before the pandemic hit—and then the police come and leave all that history—no, a living body that might still have breath in it—bleeding on the street.

  Of course, a protest rally was announced for the next day.

  A student in my class, Ishaan Prahi, sent this news to me. Ishaan is from Delhi. He and two others in my Immigrant Literature class from a few semesters ago were going to join the protest. A group on Facebook was handling the logistics. The email sent by the organizers stressed the need for safety and nonviolence. Not just because of the pandemic but also because of a statement made by the local sheriff, who has been aggressive in his defense of police tactics. The cop who shot Akwasi, it has come out, had a smiling photograph of himself on Facebook with the caption, which can be seen as premeditated intent to shoot first and ask questions later: “I’d rather be judged by 12 than carried by 6.” When asked about this, the sheriff said, “Look, we won’t be defined by political correctness. We cannot put our officers in danger. All lives matter.”

  After Ishaan and his classmates went to the rally, the march proceeding from a public park in the inner city named Sojourner Truth Park, past the police precinct and the post office to the city court office, where there is a large square, they found out that a right-wing group had organized a counterrally, and it was winding its own way through town, a large crowd made up of white men and women, most of them without masks and many holding burning torches.

  The counterprotest, by all accounts, was awful. It became clear very quickly to my students that it was unabashedly and brazenly a white power rally. I received an email from Ishaan, who was a part of a small group of protesters sending out tweets through the night: “This is what it must have been like to witness the KKK. Except that none of these people are wearing white hoods.” And, “No masks. This is the face of white supremacy.” The students started posting screenshots from the Facebook page of the group that had organized the counterprotest. They were filled with hate, these posts, showing Black people with monkey faces and representing them as looters and convicts. It turned out, and this information too was made available through screenshots, that people had reported the page to Facebook. There were more than thirty complaints from people in the community saying that this was spreading hate and dividing the communit
y. But the page had not been taken down.

  The next day I read online that the crowd wore MAGA hats and carried posters saying we support our police and blue lives. This sentiment was interspersed with other slogans like keep america great. There were two thousand people at the rally. The police surrounding the white supremacy crowd, some of them helmeted and on horses, appeared to my students more like a phalanx of protectors.

  The following day Ishaan and I talked on Zoom. He was in his messy dorm room while I sat in our kitchen with a virtual background of a starry sky behind me. After the protest, Ishaan; his girlfriend, Sarah, who is white; and her best friend, Jasmyn, half-Black, half-Asian, walked into an outdoor seating area outside a local bar. They were charged up and also a bit tired and wanted to relax. Beer seemed a good idea. Two men drinking at another table, both middle-aged and white, came up to the students. Ishaan told me that he thought at first the men were interested in the young women. But the first man just pointed his bottle at them and asked them if they had been out there at the march. The kids looked at each other and then at the men. The men weren’t aggressive or hostile, just a bit odd and unwelcome.

  Sarah said, “We were there, yes. Protesting.”