The Language of Secrets

by Ausma Zehanat Khan

  Khattak parked in the driveway and rang the doorbell.

  The heavy bronze door was opened by a woman in her thirties wearing a loosely bound headscarf. Her face was bare of makeup, except for smudges of eyeliner that had leaked over the edges of her lower lids, darkening the circles beneath her tired eyes. She ignored the identification he presented, both her arms full of bulging file folders. When Khattak offered to take them from her, she seemed surprised at the attention.

  “I’m Alia,” she said. “My father-in-law is in the study.”

  So this was Alia Dar, Mohsin Dar’s wife—Mohsin Dar’s widow now. As he followed her through the house, he took note of the fact that she was wearing slacks and a baggy tunic, instead of shalwar kameez, traditional Pakistani clothing. Her headscarf was worn casually, the way a woman of the subcontinent would wear it, with the long tail of her dark braid escaping from the bottom.

  Khattak felt the automatic respect for a hijab-wearing woman that most men of his background and generation did, moderated by the analytical training of a police officer. A headscarf didn’t make him stop thinking, or evaluating or wondering. It was simply something he was comfortable with, just as he was comfortable with its absence. His wife had not worn one, except at the mosque and religious gatherings, and he had always respected her choice.

  A wry smile twisted Khattak’s mouth. As with his sisters, his views on the matter had not been consulted, nor had there been any expectation that they would be, a lesson he had learned from his mild-mannered father. He wondered if the same had been true of Mohsin Dar.

  He knew Andy Dar was an outspoken advocate of assimilation. A vociferous critic of practices he considered outmoded, Dar had sundered his ties with the city’s Muslim communities years ago, reinventing himself in ever more disturbing incarnations, most recently that of broadcast journalist, a go-to source for scathing commentary on Islam.

  Alia Dar knocked on the French doors that led the way into Andy Dar’s study. The knock was hesitant, deferential, at odds with the expression on her face, a fleeting glimpse of her true feelings for her father-in-law, who waved them in.

  Alia motioned Khattak to a chair, setting the heavy stack of folders down. Khattak waited. Dar was on the phone, giving Khattak time to study the photographs that cluttered the walls, a comprehensive list of dignitaries on personal terms with Dar. There was no photo of Nathan Clare, the writer and public intellectual, Khattak’s closest friend.

  The politics of Clare and Dar had never been aligned, even when Dar had been a welcome spokesperson in Toronto’s Muslim communities. There was still a touch of charlatanism that hung about the man, along with the sense of relentless self-promotion. Perhaps reading Khattak’s reluctance to engage with Andy Dar, Clare had kept his distance from Dar, a choice extenuated by time.

  Andy Dar ended his call. The handshake he offered Khattak was brusque to the point of offense, and characteristic of his manner. He faced Khattak with a smirk, ignoring rank and every other indication of Esa Khattak’s success.

  “Well? What have you got for me, Khattak?” He noticed his daughter-in-law, sorting through the folders on his desk, moving between the desk and a set of black filing cabinets. “What are you still doing here? Go and bring us some tea. Unless Khattak wants coffee.”

  Khattak looked at Andy Dar steadily. However unpleasant Dar’s attitude toward Khattak, his manner of speaking to his daughter-in-law was much more offensive.

  He declined the offer of tea with a circumspect glance at Alia.

  “I expect Mrs. Dar would like to stay and hear about her husband.”

  Andy Dar ignored him. Flipping through his letters, he spoke with the modified British accent prevalent among his generation of well-educated South Asians.

  “What is it you have to report to me?”

  “I wanted to let you know that I’ve taken over the investigation. I’ll be doing everything in my power to bring the person who killed your son to justice.”

  Dar let out a short, sharp bark. “What power do you have? None at all. What you’re best known for is incompetence and inaction. You are letting yourself be used, Khattak. I warned you that this would happen. A Muslim inspector, to head up a faltu unit, and you fell for it.” His voice became a sneer. “You wanted it, I’m sure. A little plume in your cap, a sign of acceptance that even white skin doesn’t buy you. A chance to pass, to play at being angrez. Were it not for the fact of your rather difficult Pashtun name.”

  Khattak considered this. The Urdu word faltu meant “worthless,” or “extra.” It was borrowed from Portuguese, brought by the Portuguese colonization of Goa, India. As was angrez, a word that meant “Englishman,” a loanword derived from “inglés.”

  Khattak marveled at the irony of Dar’s choice of language, an irony that Dar little suspected, cultures bleeding into each other, leaving graceful, irretrievable traces of themselves.

  “You’re not being fair, Baba.” Alia’s voice from the corner of the room was plain and unaccented. Like Khattak, she was Canadian-born. She brushed at the curls on her forehead, pulling her headscarf forward. “Mohsin knew Inspector Khattak. He would have been glad to know that someone he respected was working on his behalf.”

  “Did he mention me to you recently?”

  Both Khattak’s voice and glance at Alia were gentle. He considered the contrast between Andy Dar and his daughter-in-law, etched more sharply by Dar’s not-unexpected invective. There was much in Dar’s outburst to consider, not least its contradictions. It was Adnan Dar who had spent his life in pursuit of acceptance, and “Andy” Dar who had chosen the straightforward path of assimilation. Except that assimilation was never quite as straightforward as an immigrant expected or hoped for. The accent, the dark skin, the unfamiliar ways—the distinctive and oft-feared religious practices. Much of this, Andy Dar had discarded. What he could not discard was his sense of being uprooted from himself, in search of a new mooring place. No matter how loudly he disparaged his personal heritage, he wasn’t able to divorce himself from it—either in his own eyes, or in the eyes of others.

  Khattak with his difficult name and Alia with her headscarf were both more comfortable and familiar with themselves than Andy Dar could hope to be, shouting blindly into the void.

  Alia came away from the filing cabinet, leaning one hip against the desk.

  “You don’t visit the Nur mosque, I think. The mosque in old Unionville.”

  “I haven’t yet. Did Mohsin spend time there?”

  Alia appeared uneasy. She reached for the mail that Andy Dar had been shuffling in his hands, and set it upon the desk. Khattak sensed that as with everything else, responsibility for Dar’s mail would ultimately fall to her.

  “A lot of time. He met—new people there. He was always at the mosque.”

  “Wasting his time with idiots,” Andy Dar cut in. His voice was filled with outrage. And beneath the outrage, the pain that waited to encroach at his first quiet moment. “And one of those fanatics killed him. They took him to the woods and murdered him, God knows why.” He darted an angry glance at Khattak. “If you are not wholly incompetent yourself, perhaps you stand a chance of finding out what happened to my son.” He checked the time on his cell phone. “But I will make sure of it myself by asking for answers on my program.”

  And now Khattak felt the urgency of what Martine Killiam had shared with him, the need to curtail Dar before his behavior destroyed months of meticulous groundwork. The exigent need to find Dar another outlet for his pain, since Dar could not be thwarted, and had to be managed.

  “I wonder if there’s a way to make your intervention more effective.”

  The innocence of Esa’s suggestion masked a calculation.

  “I don’t see your broadcast as a onetime opportunity,” he continued. “Your program could play a critical role, if it’s handled with discretion.”

  Dar glared at Khattak, his arms crossed in front of him.

  “Suppose tonight you were to announce Mohsin�
��s death on your program without mentioning the manner of his death. You could suggest that those who knew Mohsin attend a memorial for your son at a local mosque. In fact, the Nur mosque would be best.” Khattak said this as if he had just thought of it. “That would give me the excuse I need to conduct interviews at the mosque, narrowing down the list of suspects, and speeding my way to an arrest. Once we made the arrest, you could announce it on your broadcast.”

  It was a ploy that depended on Andy Dar’s obsession with his ratings.

  “You should be up at Algonquin, investigating.” Dar was beginning to lose steam. “Not here, and not at the mosque.”

  “The scene has been thoroughly documented.” Khattak allowed a note of genuine compassion to enter his voice. “Do you believe that Mohsin’s killer is still at Algonquin Park?” And when Dar didn’t speak, unwilling to make concessions, Khattak continued, “I would be grateful for your help with this, sir. Mohsin’s killer won’t be expecting us to work together. I’d like to prove him wrong, wouldn’t you?”

  “He was my son,” Dar said, rallying a little. “No one wants justice more than I do.”

  Khattak thought of the pain that haunted Alia’s eyes. He bowed his head and said, “I’m sure that’s true, sir.”

  Alia walked out of the room.

  “I will broadcast the news of the memorial on my program.” Dar frowned at the French doors Alia had closed behind her. “I’ll need time to sort out arrangements at the mosque.”

  That was exactly what Khattak had counted on.

  “And the announcement of the arrest will air first on my program, is that clear?”

  “Very clear. Thank you.”

  Khattak’s hand was on the door. His thoughts had followed Alia from the room.

  “One more thing, Khattak.”

  Khattak turned back to face him. It shocked him to see that Dar’s deep-set eyes were wet, though his voice was steady enough.

  “He was my only child, my boy. If your efforts to find his killer do not succeed, I will use my program to take you down.”

  * * *

  Alia Dar was waiting for him on the front steps, a heavy bag of salt in her arms. Khattak took it from her, scattering the salt on the steps, spreading several more handfuls over the driveway.

  He put the bag away inside the garage, the cold nipping at his bare face. Alia seemed oblivious to it. Her coat was unbuttoned, her hands free of gloves.

  “I’d like to speak with you about Mohsin.”

  Alia glanced at the windows to the den, where Andy Dar’s silhouette appeared.

  “We could take a walk,” she said. “Chorley Park’s not far from here. There are some nice trails. Unless you think it’s too cold?”

  “Don’t you feel the cold?”

  Alia Dar shrugged, her face blank.

  Khattak suppressed a pang of pity.

  “Get your gloves,” he said gently. “And button up your coat. Then I’ll walk with you.”

  * * *

  When she was dressed more sensibly for the weather, he let her lead the way to Chorley Park. The main pathway through the park had been shoveled, a bombast of white on either side of the cobbled walk. They trudged past sheltered butternut trees until Khattak called a halt at a small enclosure. A bench was set before a scenic outlook of shimmering trees that disappeared at the edge of the horizon against a crumbling erasure of sky.

  He took a seat at the opposite end of the bench from Alia.

  “You said Mohsin spoke of me.”

  What Khattak wanted to know was whether Mohsin had wanted to speak to a contact at CPS, a contact he trusted, particularly if Mohsin had felt himself constrained in the role of a police agent under surveillance.

  “He admired you. I know you haven’t spoken much recently, but Mohsin followed your career. He called it ‘a spectacular ascent.’” She raised her gloved hands to her mouth and blew on her fingers. “And he didn’t mean it as an insult, as Baba would have. He believed you would do some good. He said no one but you could take on such a role and succeed.”

  Khattak felt a stab of regret. He hadn’t spoken to Mohsin in years. He should have reached out, should have made Mohsin understand his decision, his choices. They had been friends in those promising years of youth, when everything seemed possible, destiny a series of choices, nothing set in stone, the years stretching ahead to a generous horizon.

  They had plumbed the shape of the future through the silhouette of their dreams. They had never been as far apart as either man had later believed.

  And then he realized.

  Publicly, Mohsin had shunned Esa for taking up the appointment to head CPS. Yet he’d told Alia that he applauded Khattak’s choice.

  “I wish he had come to see me at CPS.”

  “The mosque took up most of his time.”

  “What about his regular work?”

  “You know Mohsin. He was always a dabbler. A little bit of this, a little bit of that. Lately, he’d taken up work as a computer consultant. It was work he said he could do anywhere.”

  The dabbling had included skills that had made Mohsin Dar invaluable to INSET. He was a former army cadet with a firearms license and extensive military and martial arts training. He had acquired the possession and acquisition license in order to work as an armored car security guard. The leap to computers was something Khattak would need to discuss with Ciprian Coale. Unless Alia could give him access to Mohsin’s work space.

  “Where did he do his work? At his father’s house?”

  “Mostly at home, sometimes at Nur.” She hesitated. “When the police came to tell me of Mohsin’s death, they searched the house and took away his computer.” She seemed to be weighing a dilemma—whether to trust Esa or not.

  “I’ll help you in any way I can,” he said.

  She reached into her pocket for a set of keys. After a moment, she gave them to Khattak.

  “I didn’t give the police the keys to Mohsin’s storage locker. I’m the only one who knows about it; it’s registered under my name.”

  Khattak felt a leap of excitement.

  Here was something he could use, something INSET might have missed.

  “Have you been to the locker?” he asked. “Do you know what Mohsin keeps there?”

  Alia shook her head. “It would have made him angry. And he already had reasons to be angry with me. He was pushing me away. He didn’t want me anywhere near Nur.”

  “Why was that?”

  “He said he was doing dawah, extending the invitation to Islam. He said that converts might be put off by my presence, because gender politics were hard to explain to newcomers.”

  “And what did you say to that?”

  She gave him a level glance.

  “I’m not stupid. The converts were women, and Mohsin was the big man on campus. His personality attracted a lot of people. I think it went to his head, the way he was able to dazzle the people at Nur. I didn’t want my husband spending time with other women. So I pressed him about going to Algonquin with him. He found his own way to stop me.”

  She crossed the path to the fir tree. Standing under its heavy branches, she braced herself against the trunk and shook it. Snow floated down onto her head and shoulders like dandruff. A pair of kinglets singing above her head faltered into silence.

  “I’m trying to feel something,” she said, before Khattak could ask. “It’s been a long time since I’ve felt anything.”

  He didn’t think she was referring just to Mohsin’s death. What had this somber, capable woman suspected her husband of? Why that margin of pain in her eyes?

  “How did he stop you from going to the camp?”

  There was a long silence before she answered him. Covered in snow, she let the branches of the fir support her weight, buoying her up against the currents of wind.

  “He said he would only take me if I began to wear the niqab.” Tears slid down her face, catching on the snowflakes. “I’m a fifth-grade schoolteacher, I can’t wear a veil a
cross my face. Of course, I said no.” She came to sit on the bench again, this time closer to Khattak. “He’d never tried to coerce me in matters of religion before. Yes, he talked wildly sometimes when he was younger. He said he would go for jihad in Chechnya or Afghanistan. But the imams at Jame Masjid always talked him out of these plans. This time, he told me I could quit my job because he was earning plenty of money. That was when I knew.”

  “I’m not sure I understand.”

  But her words were taking Khattak down a familiar road, through conversations with members of the mosque, through regrets and choices made, through countless lost opportunities. Times he should have spoken up, questions he should have asked, challenging others to an ethical reading of scripture in lieu of the tropes of dogma.

  It had seemed like a burden that someone else should carry, yet he realized it belonged to him, just as it belonged to each of his coreligionists, this personal quest for an ethical life—and it couldn’t be put down by choice, not without abandoning the field to the hardened and hidebound, whose rigid conservatism and eschewal of modernity contained within it the seeds of jihadist ideology. The one so dangerously close to the other, with the danger entirely unheeded.

  Whatever the RCMP’s picture of Mohsin was, it was dismally incomplete. They had been able to use him, but they had missed the depth of his commitment to the ummah. How that commitment had played itself out was something Khattak still needed to explore.

  “Mohsin was in over his head. He’d fallen for someone, but it wasn’t one of the women.”

  “Then who?”

  But he knew what Alia Dar was going to say before she said it.

  “He was under the spell of Hassan Ashkouri.”

  The man engaged to Khattak’s younger sister.

  8

  The locker was in a self-storage warehouse in North York, halfway between Mohsin’s home in the West End and the Nur mosque in the north. Its setting in an industrial park far from the highway indicated that Mohsin had had need of secrecy—whether the secrecy was designed for his RCMP handlers or for members of Ashkouri’s cell, Khattak couldn’t say. What was evident was that Mohsin Dar must have trusted his wife enough to let her know of the locker’s existence.