Published by Open Books
Copyright © 2018 by Anne Marie Ruff
Opening quote by Alexander Solzhenitsyn from The Gulag Archipelago, licensed under CC via https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Solzhenitsyn
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
Author portrait by Nancy Hauck
ISBN-13: 978-1948598019
For my parents
Table of Contents
Prelude
Part One: The Book of Before
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Two: The Book of Kathryn
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Part Three: The Book of Rashid
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Part Four: The Book of After
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Acknowledgements
“If only there were evil people somewhere insidiously committing evil deeds and it were necessary only to separate them from the rest of us and destroy them. But the line dividing good and evil cuts through the heart of every human being. And who is willing to destroy a piece of his own heart?”
— Alexander Solzhenitsyn
Novelist, Nobel laureate (1918-2008)
Prelude
Los Angeles, California.
The day of the bombing
* * *
“So you don’t know where he is?” the man asks, with some urgency.
“What do you mean?” Kathryn answers into the phone, soap bubbles dripping off her hand into the kitchen sink. “You scheduled his offshore job. He told me he’d be gone for a week or so.”
“You better call him, and find out where he’s at,” the man abruptly hangs up.
Kathryn dries her hands and calls her husband’s phone number. She had just spoken to him yesterday. Without ringing, the phone immediately transfers to her husband’s voicemail. “Hello, this is Rashid Siddique, please leave me a message.”
She does not.
Irritated, she dials again. These oil platforms too far offshore for good phone reception always frustrate her. As her husband’s voice again tells her to leave a message, she hears a knock at the door. He must be home already. “Did you forget your keys?” she shouts through the door. She smoothes an errant blonde hair, smells her wrists, clicks her tongue at her unperfumed skin.
She opens the door wide, only to find a man dressed in a suit, his expression humorless.
“Hello?” She closes the door back down to a few inches.
“Excuse me, ma’am,” he checks the number on the outside of the door. “I’m looking for Mrs. Siddique.”
“I am Mrs. Siddique.”
He scans her face. “Yes. Mrs. Siddique, I’d like to ask you a few questions.” He flashes her a badge. “Agent Roberts, FBI.”
“Why are you here?” she closes the door a little more.
“Rashid Siddique is your husband?”
“You seem to know that already.”
“Where is he right now?”
“Working.”
When she fails to elaborate, he raises his hand, opening his fingers to reveal a ring, a yellow band of gold resting on his palm. She can just make out an inscription on the inside of the ring.
“I think you recognize this ring, Mrs. Siddique?”
The blood drains from her face. “Where did you get that?”
“At the site of the freeway bombing,” he says.
“The freeway bombing?”
“I think you’d better let me come in.”
Part One
The Book of Before
Chapter 1
Dubai, United Arab Emirates.
Eight years before the bombing
* * *
“Zombie…zombie…zo..om..be..ee..ee,” the lead singer belted out into the nightclub.
In the middle of the crowded dance floor a man locked eyes with a woman, her arms raised above her head, as they shouted out the refrain in unison; their voices drowned out by the band’s percussion. Her blonde hair stood out to him, but their differing skin colors were unremarkable amidst the polyglot mix of revelers around them. “What are your plans?” he spoke directly into her ear. She smiled and shook her head.
As the band closed the last song of their set, Latvian cocktail waitresses hustled to settle all the open tabs. The lights came up and the still pulsating mass of bodies on the dance floor let out a collective groan of disappointment. The man repeated his question. “What are your plans?”
She paused, smiled flirtatiously and replied. “Same as yours.” Perhaps the vodka fuelled her boldness.
He smiled, the answer easier than he expected. “What’s your name?”
“Kathryn. Yours?”
“Rashid.”
“Robert?” she asked. Could he possibly have a name as common as her father’s?
“Rashid” he said, emphasizing the first syllable.
“Rashid,” she confirmed. “Arab?”
“No. Pakistani. Punjabi. We’re from Lahore. You’re…” he picked up her hand, provocatively brushed his fingers across her palm, “British?” For a split second he imagined how his father would react to a British girl, a descendent of the people who had caused the bloody partition of Pakistan from India.
She smiled, shook her head. “You’ll figure it out,” she laughed, allowed him to keep her hand in his as he led her out of the nightclub. Rashid nodded at the bouncers, burly Ethiopians who preserved the dividing line between the rigid local Muslim world outside and the permissive international bubble within.
Rashid stood behind her in the crowded elevator so he could press against her back even as he protectively stared down another man who tried to look at her. In the hotel lobby he held out his mobile phone. “Trade me,” he said. With a curious expression, she offered her phone. He slid his phone into her back pocket. “Wait here. Only answer my phone if you see your number.” And he walked to the hotel reception desk.
Kathryn walked past a security guard to sit on an ornately upholstered couch in the middle of the lobby. In her alcohol haze she watched the regular crowd spill out of the elevator and into the humid, still balmy air on the sidewalk. She did not recognize any as colleagues from her job at the American Chamber of Commerce.
Rashid negotiated with the South African hotel receptionist, exchanged cash for a room. Key in
hand, Rashid walked past Kathryn, willing himself not to look at her, and went back up in the elevator.
After a few minutes, Rashid’s phone vibrated in Kathryn’s back pocket. She recognized the incoming number as her own and answered.
“Wait five minutes,” Rashid said. “Then take the elevator up to the 7th floor and then take the stairs down to the 5th. I’m in room 505.”
Kathryn followed his instructions, small acts of discretion in deference to the local sensibilities.
He could hear her footsteps. He stood behind the door and held it open for her. She came to him and he smiled. He loved Western women, how easily they submitted. How easily he had learned to act like a Western man in the nightclubs.
She smiled back as he leaned down to kiss her. Pressing into each other, just inside the door, she ran her fingers through his thick black hair, touched the exotically dark skin of his neck. He reached for the backs of her thighs to pick her up. Firm, strong, not like the soft flesh of educated Pakistani girls. She wrapped herself around his waist, allowing him to carry her to the bed. His ease and confidence surprised her, so unlike the deferential South Indian tea porters at her office. As he peeled his damp shirt up over his head, adrenaline surged through her system, her heart raced.
“Wait…this is not what I usually do,” she said, her forehead wrinkling with anxiety. “I mean, not so fast.”
“Don’t worry.” He sat back on his calves, bringing his hands to his lap. Maybe she was different from the British nurses who always drank too much in the clubs. “We don’t have to.” Maybe he would just talk with her. Maybe she would cry about her homesickness, the way Chechen prostitutes did. “I like you, but I won’t force you.” He closed his eyes, breathed deliberately, recalibrated, finding himself already seated as if for prayers.
She liked his sudden sincerity, how he dropped his dance floor swagger. She looked up at the ceiling and noticed the arrow pointing toward Mecca, the helpful hotel instruction directing guests to pray in the correct direction.
“Mafi mushkala,” he said in Arabic, no problem.
She smiled. “Yeah, mafi mushkala.” Slowly, she raised her legs, rewrapping them around his torso and pulled him toward her. “I’m not worried. I want to be here,” she whispered into his ear.
He took his time taking off her clothes. She reached into his pocket and found a condom there, nodded her approval.
She reached out to turn on the light next to the bed. “I want to see you.” What had her friend said about Arabic men? Something about how easily they could lead two lives if they had two wives? Was the same true for Pakistani men? She ran her fingers through the dark hair on his chest. “You have a wife back home?”
He shook his head, raised up his torso, enjoyed the movement of her breasts as he thrust. “Just my family, parents, brothers, sisters.” She wasn’t like the British or the Chechen women. He locked eyes with her again. She didn’t look away, didn’t pretend she wasn’t doing this. He slowed his movements, wanted to please her. She pulled his hips against her, directed their pace with a determined intensity.
A whimper of pleasure escaped from her throat. She took a few deep breaths. “Pakistani,” she said.
Somehow her voice softened all the hard sounds of the word. And he moved, driving quickly to climax. He collapsed with fatigue against her.
“American,” he whispered in her ear. “You’re American, yes?”
She smiled. “Yes.”
The smoke curled around Rashid’s face as he passed Kathryn the water pipe hose. She listened for the sound of the bubbles as she inhaled the sweet tobacco smoke. Rashid sipped sweet tea with fresh mint leaves from a small handleless tea cup.
“So tell me about your sisters, about their marriages,” she spoke through her billowing exhale.
The waiter approached their table on the hotel patio, used small metal tongs to replace the coals on the sheesha and refilled their teacups.
“Not much to tell,” he shrugged his shoulders. “Normal type arranged Pakistani marriages. They went to good families we’ve known for a long time.”
“Did they want to go?”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, didn’t they want to choose their husbands for themselves? How can you make a marriage work with a total stranger?” She set the hose down on the table, the tobacco seemed to slow the world and the tea seemed to speed up her heart.
Rashid shrugged his shoulders. “We’re raised to expect arranged marriages. It’s not strange. People grow to love each other all the time.”
“So, are your sisters in love with their husbands?” Kathryn brought the hose again to her lips, took a long aggressive draw.
“I think one is. The other one, maybe she isn’t as happy with her husband. He likes to talk too much for her.” Rashid reached out, ran his fingers across the coiled leather hose.
“So your parents made one good choice, one not so good choice. Doesn’t seem like good odds to me. I wouldn’t want to risk my parents’ choice,” Kathryn shuddered thinking about the kind of blonde haired, well-educated but boring man they would likely choose for their only daughter.
“Risk?” Rashid looked into the hotel lobby, watched local men dressed in crisp white dish dashas walk gracefully past the gilt and tile water fountain. “What is the divorce rate in America?”
Kathryn raised her teacup, let the decorative gold design rest against her lips. She sat silently for a minute thinking over the obvious statistic they both knew, half of all American marriages ended in divorce.
Rashid continued. “Who knows more about married life, you or your parents? Wouldn’t your parents only want the best for you? A husband from a good family, a good earner, a good family to help you raise your children?”
She pulled up the corners of her mouth in a coy smile. “How do you do that?”
“Do what?”
“Show me the world I think I knew, but upside down. Making me understand that maybe what I had thought was right and wrong isn’t so black and white.”
Again he shrugged his shoulders. “Everybody has their own culture.” He smiled the smile she loved, revealing white teeth, illuminating his whole face. “All the British people I knew in London always thought they were better than other cultures, especially Pakistani. But you’re different.”
“We’re all different. But we all live beneath the same heaven. My father always taught me that.”
“Wise man.” Rashid grinned, “Maybe you should let him arrange your marriage.”
Kathryn punched his arm teasingly. “And how about you? Is there an arranged marriage in your future?” She looked away to the swimming pool beyond the patio, trying to mask the seriousness of her question.
“No. For sure, no.”
“Why?” Kathryn looked back at Rashid, relieved.
“Because I’m different.”
“Yeah. Very different.”
Kathryn heard the day’s first namaz, the call to prayer. Saturday morning, before sunrise, she dimly registered in her sleep. After a year in the Gulf, the five daily calls to prayer broadcast from hundreds of mosques throughout the city had punctuated her days like the hourly calls of the shrill cuckoo clock her father purchased on his first diplomatic trip to Switzerland. The calls marked time, regularly reminding the faithful to turn their thoughts toward God. She felt Rashid disentangle himself from their now familiar embrace to rise from the bed. Whenever he returned from working offshore he would come to her apartment. Unlike any other woman he had known she filled the time between lovemaking with spirited questions, a generous understanding.
She heard him walk down the hall, assumed he would return in a few minutes from the bathroom. A half hour later she heard him again in the room. She opened one eye to see him remove his shirt and pants, tossing them on a chair.
“Where’ve you been?” she asked as he slid back into bed.
“To the mosque.”
“The mosque?” she said surprised. “You never go to th
e mosque.”
“My chachaji, my father’s younger brother, is ill. My father said we should all pray for him at the mosque.”
“But even before sunrise?”
“I’m happy to do it. I love my father the most. How can I ever refuse him anything he asks?”
“I thought you didn’t believe in all of the organized prayer.”
“I don’t, but sometimes it’s nice to be at the mosque. We all bow down shoulder to shoulder.” He caressed her from neck to elbow. “For a moment we’re allowed to stop everything else and do this thing we all know, this thing that makes us brothers. When I was studying in London, I used to go to the mosque whenever I felt homesick. I just liked to see all the men who reminded me of my father, to hear them speak Urdu when they rolled up their prayer rugs to leave the mosque.”
“Hmm.” She closed her eyes, wrapping her leg around his, “sounds kind of nice.”
They drifted back to sleep.
Rashid set dates and a pitcher of water on the table. The smell of lamb biryani and vegetable curry permeated Kathryn’s apartment. The late afternoon sun streamed through the windows. In scarcely a half hour, the sun would sink below the horizon and those observing Ramadan would break their first day of fasting.
He waited for her to come from the office, anxious that she might be irritable with hunger and thirst. He would never have dreamed to suggest that she fast with him. But she had simply told him she would join him in observing the Muslim holy month of Ramadan. At least this first year.
From the window he saw her step out of a taxi, her long skirt flowing elegantly against her leg in the breeze. Almost before she could close the car door, the taxi raced back into the flow of traffic. Within ten minutes the streets would be empty, everyone with a family would be home to eat together. The taxi drivers would gather like bachelors at the mosque, finding community in other men who had left their wives and children in Pakistan in hopes of a better salary in the Gulf.
She opened the door, inhaled deeply, smiled. He embraced her, kissing her on the lips.
“I thought there’s no sexual contact while you’re fasting,” she teased.
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