We Are Not in Pakistan

by Shauna Singh Baldwin

  Is it better for Uma to be with him or on her own? The answer to that question will drive her.

  He slips his kara from his wrist and holds it out.

  “A little gift,” he says. “It’s the steel bangle Sikhs wear to remind us of birth, death and rebirth. And karmic justice. You should have one.”

  She slips it onto her hand, twirls it on her wrist, then slides it up her forearm.

  “Rebirth?

  “Rebirth? Cool,” she says. “And that’s what you believe will happen? Like, to Ma?”

  “I’m sure of it,” he says. “She’s probably a baby yelling her lungs out at this very moment, driving her new mom and dad insane.”

  That’s uproarious. He’s laughing. And Uma is laughing. Now he’s doubled over, laughing. Can’t stop. He trades a glance with Uma and she starts up again. Her laughter circles and sidles around him, twining itself about his thrumming heart.

  People are staring — let them. He is accustomed to being their education, and if Uma plans to see him again, claims him after this weekend, she will need to become inured to stares.

  The train to LA is announced.

  “Hey,” she says, boxing his arm lightly. “Just so you know — I wouldn’t say nothing to a goddamn soul about your green-card wedding. That would be like saying Ma was a prostitute.”

  “No, no. Don’t put it that way,” he says, with a twinge of hurt for Rita but relief, all the same, for himself.

  On impulse, he holds out his arms. She comes into them. Her scent — so different from his own. Then the solidness of her arms closing around his waist.

  “Call me when you get to Detroit,” he says. “Then the distance between us won’t seem so much.”

  She nods. “You be careful, will ya? Let me know what the judge says. Don’t you get sent off someplace without me knowing.”

  He takes a place in line with her, hands her bag up once she’s climbed the steel steps. He watches till she’s seated inside. The train begins to move.

  Is that her bare arm waving? He can’t be sure.

  But her hug still tingles through him.

  Outside the station, the sheen of a rain-scaled night. Smudged silhouettes dart to and fro at the fringes of the street.

  The spot where his Toyota should be is empty. Could he have forgotten where he parked? He walks up and down the aisles, retraces his steps.

  Not a familiar tail light in sight.

  It’s gone. Stolen. His rusty old Toyota. Goddamn bastards, whoever they are this time.

  Let them have it.

  Karan is not going to report it. The police didn’t believe him after the fire. He’ll be like the Pakistani chap Nadir told him about. The one who was attacked, robbed and stabbed three times, but when the police came, he told them he had stabbed himself. That’s it, Karan robbed himself!

  Half an hour later, a security guard volunteers a simpler explanation: the Toyota was towed. Hauled away. “Either you didn’t make your car payments or you didn’t pay your parkin’ tickets.”

  Parking tickets.

  Meteors rush past in dyads — the receding tail lights of cars heading toward the mountains.

  Car-free, Karan follows on foot in what he hopes is the right direction.

  Acknowledgments

  These stories began in the creative spaces provided by the Banff Centre for the Arts, the Ragdale Foundation, and Redbird Studios. For their time, attention, and comments as they matured I thank Edna Alford, David Baldwin, Elaine Bergstrom, Brian Brett, Judy Bridges, Annie Chase, Stefan Honisch, Olena Jennings, Bisakha Sen, Ena M. Singh, Gurdip Singh, Alexander Yaroshevich, and Theresa Yaroshevich.

  “Naina” received a prize in Prairie Fire’s prose competition when it was published in 2000. It was translated for the Belles Étrangères anthology (Philippe Picquier, 2002) and anthologized in The Harper Collins Book of New Indian Fiction, edited by Khushwant Singh (Harper Collins India, 2004). “The View from the Mountain” was published in The Capilano Review (spring 2006) and reprinted in Asia Literary Review (fall 2006).

  Among many sources, I acknowledge and recommend Ablaze, by Piers Paul Reid; Chernobyl: The Forbidden Truth, by Alla Yaroshinskaya; Discovery Channel’s The Battle of Chernobyl; Soviet Women: Walking the Tightrope, by Francine Du Plessix Gray; Tangled Routes: Women, Work and Globalization on the Tomato Trail, by Deborah Barndt; and The Subcontinental, 1:3. Taras Schevchenko’s poems are quoted from translations by John Weir and Vera Rich.

  For expert advice, research assistance, and background interviews, I am grateful to Dino Aguilera, Ilena Burshteyn, Dr. Kimberley Chawla, the late attorney Earl Hagen, Mavis Hubbard, Indira and Jit Pasrich, the staff of Froedert Hospital in Milwaukee, and the many dedicated librarians of the Milwaukee Public Library.

  My editor Laurel Boone shared my vision for this book, and I thank her. Many thanks also to my agents: Bruce Westwood, Natasha Daneman, and Carolyn Forde.