Ordinary Obsessions

by Tom Corbett

  Azita shook her head. Her ennui on this fine, sunny day had not been brought on by the events from a dozen or so years ago. In fact, her nightmares from those days were less frequent, often being replaced by the more traditional angst-ridden nocturnal journeys common to those in academia. In the most frequent, she would be looking for the room where her final exam would be administered. As she wandered the halls, much like her trek through the byways of the unknown village of earlier dreams, she realized she had never attended a single class all semester. In fact, she had never bought any of the texts. Frantically, she wondered if there was time to study. But that was hopeless. She would have to tell her father she had failed, let him down. But which one, her biological father Pamir who was now long deceased, or her adoptive father Christopher? There was no way to choose between them. Perhaps she could hide this awful truth from both?

  No, her present listlessness had nothing to do with any academic failure. It emerged from her breakfast with Benjamin, her fiancé, that had ended perhaps twenty-minutes earlier. It was three years, a bit more, since they had become engaged. They had pledged to one another as Azita was finishing her undergraduate studies. But now all this time had passed. They remained in a limbo. It had started as an improbable promise, a Jew and a Muslim slowly falling in love, or what she had presumed might be love. They met when a gang of youthful British nativists found this Muslim girl despoiling their pure heritage merely by walking down the street. A mindless terrorist attack had struck London the day before. Benjamin Kaplan, or Benji as he preferred, saved Azita by getting himself knocked out with one blow and feigning death until the miscreants fled in fear that they had just committed a homicide.

  After this awkward start, Azita and Ben bonded with glacial slowness. Conversations turned to interest, which in turn led to affection and finally to them becoming lovers. Azita had been reluctant. This surely was not proper for a good Muslim girl, and with a Jewish boy no less. But she felt a comfort, even affection, for this young man. They would someday get married. That was a certainty, not only to her but to all those who knew them. So, there could hardly be any sin in discovering each other at a deeper, physical level. But now three years had passed since they announced their commitment to one another. Nothing had happened, no real commitment had followed. She knew the issue. It was clear: his parents liked her, perhaps loved her in a way, but they could not see beyond her Islamic background. They must be under incredible pressure from their community. And Benji could not break with them. He never said as much but now she was accepting this reality. The pull of culture, in this case, was stronger than the bonds of affection.

  Nothing different was said at their breakfast. And that was the problem. Somewhere, deep inside, she knew things were the same, and they were not the same. When she looked into his eyes, she saw anguish. He was caught betwixt obsessions: his culture and his heart. She could see a hopelessness in his face. There was no need for words, for explanations, for excuses. As they parted, he asked if anything were wrong. “Of course not,” she had responded. He looked at her but said nothing. He knew what she might say and that was a place he did not want to go.

  She felt tears drift down her cheeks and she pulled her scarf more fully over her head in the traditional Muslim manner. Her thoughts drifted back to the beginning. His parents, Abe and Rebecca, had been formal but cordial. Who was this girl? What did she mean to their son? Now, in hindsight, she could fill in the story. Don’t force their son to push her away. That might backfire, bring them closer together. No, play a waiting game. Be polite but distant. Drop subtle hints, mere suggestions but with undeniable purpose. Never be direct. Their boy was bright enough. He would arrive at the correct decision on his own. This relationship was doomed from the start. You cannot join the diametrically opposed together. Particles that repel one another merely follow immutable physical laws. That was God’s law and nature’s way.

  However, opposites did attract in this case. Their connection lasted and deepened, or so it seemed. After Azita and Ben committed to one another, she kept asking when he would tell his parents. The response was always soon, tomorrow, next week, when the time was right. His parents were not open-minded like hers. They were old fashioned. And there was the matter of personal loss. One of his Israeli relatives had died in some Palestinian raid, another in one of the several border conflicts between Israel and her neighbors. Islam was the enemy in an eternal struggle for the ancestral home going back centuries. Now, just last month, a cousin had been seriously wounded in one of those chronic uprisings near the Gaza strip. She seemed like a nice girl, but she was, at the end of the day, a Muslim. He had to take things slowly, he would know when the time was right. Just give him time, he would know when.

  She pushed and pushed some more, but the futility became clear. She had given herself to him, the full measure of her womanhood. There was no turning back now. One day, she arrived at his home. Rebecca was cold, hardly said a word. Abe had made some excuse to be gone. Nothing was said, Ben looked as if he were experiencing a mortal pain. Azita looked for the first excuse to leave. He had told them, and it did not go well. Still, Ben assured her it was only a matter of time. But time, in this instance, solved nothing. Frostiness slowly turned into the bitterness of an endless cold war.

  At breakfast, the topic remained the 900-pound gorilla in the room. It was like a periodic back pain, even when the nerves were not throbbing you simply waited for the inevitable agony to strike. She saw the pain and confusion on his face. He was such an adorable young man, but weak. He would never stand up to his parents, his people, his culture. Some norms simply ran too deep, they were preconscious. They were like pernicious toxins that surrounded and destroyed good tissue wherever found. She hardly touched her food, making some excuse to get away as soon as possible.

  She felt better as soon as she was out in the street, away from his mooning expressions of concern infused with uncertainty. How could this continue? she wondered. But how could she break it off? She had committed herself to him. She called her adoptive father, Christopher, and left a message informing him where she was headed when he did not answer. She need not say more, he would immediately know she needed him. She would have preferred her adoptive mother, Doctor Amar Singh, but she was on duty at the hospital. Women were better when a heart was about to break. However, Christopher was on the Oxford faculty and was on campus today. When he did not respond immediately, she considered that he was unavailable. No problem. She would wait for a while, sitting in the sun, decompressing. Perhaps she would wander toward his office after her head had cleared. Now, though, she let her mind wander and thought about things that she had pushed aside during another phrenetic semester of medical studies.

  A grim smile crossed over her lips. She recalled the trip her family had made north out of Kabul, the first leg of their hegira away from the Taliban and, in her optimistic mind, eventually to Britain and medical school someday. She had sat next to her biological father. She worshipped Pamir and grasped at any opportunity to be alone with him, to tap into his humor and wisdom. The rest of the family was in another vehicle, driven by Majeeb, along with many of their household goods. Pamir had convinced the authorities to permit him to relocate near the fighting between the Taliban and the Northern Alliance, the tribes that had held out as they had against the Soviets during the 1980s. They acceded to her father’s wishes even though she had brought shame on the family by her thoughtlessness in a public square. She violated the new rulers by reading a poster when girls were not permitted to read. For that sin, she was beaten mercilessly by the morality police. She might have perished had her brother not rescued her.

  She shook her head, don’t go there she told herself. Next to her father, on that trip, she recalled saying that she would become a doctor like him no matter what. Yes, it was impossible. No girl in Afghanistan could do that then. Perhaps her mother could have been a university mathematics teacher in the old days but all that was forbidden now. Still, she insisted that
she would do it. No one would stop her. When he gently suggested she might think of other things someday, perhaps even of a boy, she would have none of it. He would suppress a smile as she pontificated about the evils and faults of the opposite sex without hesitation or reservation. They were all smelly, obnoxious, dirty and stupid and those were the best things she could think about them. He humored her in the moment, and she knew it, gently reminding her that he, himself, was one of those dastardly boys. But he wasn’t, of course. In her mind, he was a God.

  On this day, so many years later, she could see her innocence plainly. Still, she had not been wrong. Boys were clearly more pain than they were worth, but she better understood why a woman might put up with one of them. In her head, she concluded that it was a very good thing she never abandoned her passion to be a doctor to chase after one of those worthless creatures.

  She looked around. Christopher wasn’t in sight. Perhaps she should seek him out. No, they might miss each other in passing. For once, she was not pressed for time. She would wait a while longer. Her thoughts went back to that special day, in the early summer of 2001, to the medical and refugee camp that served as a command center for the Northern Alliance. That was where her family had settled and where her father had worked after they had finally escaped the clutches of the Taliban. Instead of repairing the broken bodies of the Taliban he now treated those fighting them, among the very Pashtun people he had grown up with as a boy. Now she could once again work with him as he treated patients and he could teach her his trade.

  Better still, there were two female doctors who renewed her hope about her own dream. She had known female physicians existed but never had met one before. She knew women could be doctors, could be anything. Women could heal as good as any man, even be as competent as her sainted father. But that knowledge was abstract, an exercise in logic. Seeing female physicians in the flesh made her belief substantive. It helped so much to see them every day, to work with them. Yes, her dream was not a fantasy. It was possible.

  Doctor Amar Singh was from India. She headed an international team that was part of a service organization based in England. In Azita’s young eyes, Amar had some things in common with her since India’s culture was a little like her own. Perhaps that was a stretch, but this woman had realized her dream of becoming a doctor despite reservations within her family. Azita knew Amar had faced challenges. And there was Kristen Crawford, universally known as Kay, the sister of this man for whom she now waited. Christopher had not been happy that his twin sister had defied him and joined a medical team in perhaps the most dangerous site he supported at that time. Funny, Amar thought, the brother and sister were so unalike one another in many respects but, she strongly suspected, loved each other fiercely even if each was reluctant to admit it.

  Azita smiled to herself in the spring sunlight as her thoughts continued to drift back to the Panjshir Valley. The timing of the arrival of Christopher Crawford to take his sister Kristen, or Kay, away that day could not have been worse. There had been fierce fighting. Kay, along with Azita’s father, were off tending to the wounded including several children from a nearby village that had been shelled. Amar could not be spared from the hospital. Somewhat frantic, Amar told her to greet this man and his assistant, Karen Fisher, who would arrive shortly by helicopter.

  On one level, Azita was pleased. Amar, who headed the local medical team, had asked her to greet this man who funded much of the medical operations. It was an honor to be given such a responsibility. Then she panicked, suddenly viewing this task with great dread. What if this man really did drag his sister away, as they all had speculated that he might? That would spell disaster since she admired Kay desperately.

  Maybe he would also fire Amar who had encouraged Kay to leave her post in Pakistan and join the undermanned Afghanistan site. That was also unthinkable to her. Still, they were so near the fighting. This indeed was an extremely dangerous place, especially for women. This Christopher was right to be beside himself with worry for his sibling. Blaming Amar, if a bit silly, was not totally irrational. She could understand that, even sympathize. Still, she asked Allah to permit her new friends to stay. Listening to Amar and Kay talk, they had earlier chosen not to ask permission for Kay to move from Pakistan to this site but to do it and then see where the chips would fall.

  Now, the chips were about to fall. She had come to love those female doctors. Kay was strong and unflappable. Amar was gentler, more sensitive, but with an iron will underneath. More importantly, they were so good at what they did, much like her sainted father. They treated her like a much younger sister, adding to her education as she sopped up all the medical knowledge they could share. By the time she had heard the helicopter, she had worked herself into such a state of both anxiety and conviction. She would stand up to this ogre. He was not going to take these women away.

  She heard the helicopter land that day so many years ago but froze inside the medical office. Could she confront this symbol of authority? Then, Christopher Crawford appeared at the door. All her pent-up fears evaporated. She could tell, just by looking into his eyes, that he was not the ogre she had anticipated. He was much like her father in all the ways that counted. And now, he was her father, a substitute but so much more. Allah does work in mysterious ways.

  She came out of her reverie and looked up. Across the rectangle, she saw his familiar figure appear, quickly look around and then head in her direction. He did cut such a figure. She remembered so well what Kay shared with Amar in anticipation of her brother’s arrival at the medical site. “Don’t fall for his charms,” she had warned. “Women fall all over him and he just moves from one to the next.” Apparently, Kay’s warning had fallen on deaf ears and Amar quickly succumbed to his charms. The renowned playboy, surprisingly, did not move on. Chris and Amar were married just before they spirited Azita off to her new life in England. Maybe there was something to this love thing. Perhaps if she could find a man as kind and good as her new father, she would reconsider her dark assessment of the worth of the male species….

  “Hey kiddo,” Chris said and sat down next to her. “What’s up? I was just about to make another stunning academic breakthrough when you texted. My legions of fans are waiting for my next breathtaking discovery.”

  She smiled, he could always make her smile. “Well, they have been waiting all these years, another day won’t hurt.”

  He loved her wit, it was so much like his own. Did she get it from him or her biological father? He wished he had gotten to know Pamir at a deeper level. He knew, however, that this was not to be an afternoon of light banter. Searching her eyes, looking for clues as to why he had been summoned, one could notice a touch of bemusement in them but a wider pool of uncertainty. Where did this grown woman come from? She seemed like a bright, earnest little girl just the other day, he wondered to himself. That first day, so long ago in the Panjshir valley, she had struck him as little more than an impish, if precocious, child. Then, she had not lost all her childish baby fat and was fetching but not as beautiful as her older sister. It was her personality, large and prepossessing, that drew you in.

  Over these past dozen years, she had sprung into adulthood. Taller, with fine facial features and a now well-proportioned female body, Chris had long noticed that young men stared at her as she passed them in the streets. Her copper skin and long, dark brown hair had immediate effect, but it was the eyes that captivated one. They were large and doe-like. No matter how often he looked he could never decide on their color. There retained a chameleon quality driven by the nature of the light that struck them. Sometimes they were a light blue and other times a light green. At some distant time in the past, her ancestors had drifted down from the north to now possess such light-colored portals to her soul. And that was exactly what they were, openings to her magnificent heart and mind.

  “I suspect,” Chris said softly, “that you didn’t text me just to drop a few insults on my academic shortcomings, nonexistent as they are. By that I mea
n the faults are few, not…never mind.”

  “No,” Azita sighed, “I can do that anytime.” She paused, wondering why she was being such a little girl at this moment, running to her father rather than just dealing with this herself. But the hurt and doubt were real. “I am confused…lost.”

  “Well,” Chris uttered slowly. “since we are located in one of your favorite haunts on campus, I’m thinking your issue is more existential than geographical.”

  “No shit, Sherlock.” That came out harsh, she caught herself. She wasn’t angry at him. “Sorry, you really are such a bad influence on me.” She put her head on his shoulder and wept softly.

  Neither one spoke for a while. Chris really didn’t know what to say, emotions were not his strong suit. He swung his arm around her and rubbed the side of her head around her temple. Finally, she managed a short utterance. “All boys are awful. I figured that out as a young girl, how could I have forgotten?”