Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  After some hours, the train pulls in to Shahdara station and passengers depart and arrive in the shuffle to and from the branch lines that reach out to the east and west. We do not speak over the activity. As the train slowly pulls away again to the north a chai wallah makes his way down the aisle. He stops to dispense sweet milky tea into little paper cups from a spigot in the stainless steel drum he carries slung against his torso. My mother pulls two coins from her purse and presses them into my hand, just as she did when I was a child. I hail the chai wallah and hold up two fingers.

  “For the lady,” he passes me a cup, respectfully looking at me rather than her. “And for you, sir.” He hands me the second, his arm motions displaying an efficiency born of years of repeated effort. He will likely move up and down these aisles, slowly wearing down the car’s wooden floors until he is too old to carry the drum, or until he can pass it onto a younger relative who will provide him a small daily commission for the privilege of the profession.

  I can see my mother’s shoulders relax with the habit of the tea. She begins to talk of the family businesses; the lack of rain and how Riaz worries about the cost of diesel for our tractors, Majid’s dealings with both Chinese and Korean manufacturers for our family’s trading business. She falls into these conversations as though I had never been away. She asks me my opinion on small questions about the price of commodities, and the trustworthiness of certain of our neighbors in comparison to others. She never refers to my wife or my children, she does not ask about my life in America. And I follow her lead, answering her questions, acting as if her topics fill my life like they do hers.

  After we stop in Gurjanwala the railway porters serve dinner; little steel trays with naan bread, a portion of daal, and sterilized water in a flimsy plastic bag. We eat quickly. Our trays are empty when the porters return to collect them, and then lay out the stiff white sheets and pillows on the berths. By Wazirabad station, most of the passengers have settled into their berths, their shoes stowed under their luggage to deter petty thieves. I help my mother onto the top berth and settle into the middle berth, listening to the congested breathing of the young man from Karachi beneath me.

  The rhythm of the train, the syncopated clatter of wheels against rails, the creaking of the car couplings transports me not only toward my brothers and their angry grief, but back to my traditions, away from the adoptive life, the hybrid culture I have carved out of the larger outside world.

  I can imagine how this story plays out. I have seen enough Lollywood films, I have seen our clan-based culture projected onto makeshift screens of white sheets strung across fields in our village. The family will not rest until they achieve justice, fortified by the crowd of villagers who gather around the offended hero. But in these simulations of our tradition, the antagonist always has a face, a recognizably malevolent expression, usually with a scar around his eye or across his cheek. The antagonist in my reality does not bleed, does not scowl or speak, he did not look my father in the eye before pulling a trigger, before thrusting a knife. My father must have appeared as nothing more than a small circle seen from above, a shadow of electrons moving across a distant screen in some military operations room.

  I wake just as we arrive in Rawalpindi, the sun breaking over the horizon. I can see men on the sidewalk with prayer rugs tucked under their arms answering the first call of the day. I remember my father’s comments about such men, ‘In heaven, Allah will reward their discipline for sure. But here on earth, I enjoy the reward of a bit of extra sleep.’

  My mother is awake already, her grey hair combed, her headscarf gracefully draped over her head. She looks down at the cell phone in her hand, typing out a text message. “Your brothers will meet us with a driver in Peshawar,” she reports from the phone. “I have let them know the train is behind schedule. Pakistani Railways saves petrol by running the trains slower,” she clucks her tongue with disgust. “Your brothers will have one of Shoukart’s relatives drive us to their village in the Khyber Agency. And I checked in with Jagdeep, he will keep watch on the rest of the servants and workers.” I haven’t thought about Jagdeep in years. Our Singh we used to call him. My father had trusted him since they were in school together. Jagdeep wore his turban proudly, upholding the Sikh reputation for honesty and hard work with unfailing sincerity.

  “The body,” I ask, “where is he buried?”

  “I suppose next to Shoukart and his family. With only one day to get the body in the ground, we aren’t able to choose.” She tucks the phone into her purse. “But I need to know where it is. I don’t know when I’ll be able to make this journey again.” She closes her eyes and pulls her lips shut tight. I can see she wants to cry.

  I stand there, next to her upper berth, her grown child, and rest my head on her knee. She places her hand on my head and we both weep silently.

  After the tedious final leg of the train journey to Peshawar I am relieved to step out onto the platform. My brothers are waiting with the Pashtun driver who stands pulling at his beard. We greet each other with handshakes and hands on shoulders. The driver takes our bags and says he is sorry for our loss.

  “How was the train ride?” Majid asks.

  “We’re here aren’t we?” my mother responds.

  “Well, be prepared for the rest of the way.” Majid smiles ruefully. “The roads aren’t like Lahore, and the car’s nothing like my Mercedes.”

  I squeeze into the middle of the backseat—even as an adult, I still have the status of the youngest.

  After an hour or so, Peshawar’s brick buildings give way to the Afghan refugees’ makeshift villages. The mud, plywood, and metal constructions rise up from the side of the road like dusty extensions of the earth itself. At a non-descript fork in the road, the driver points to a sign, slightly bigger than a man, amidst the jumble of border-style commerce, Entering Khyber Agency, Keep Left. Just next to it, practically on top of a halal butcher’s stand with three dangling goat shanks another sign warns, No Foreigners May Enter Beyond This Point. We haven’t discussed this yet. I have tucked my American passport in a hidden pocket in my bag; opting to carry my Pakistani passport with me, even though it has expired. A Pashtun with a weathered face and pie-shaped woolen hat doesn’t bother to raise the rifle slung over his shoulder. He peers into the backseat through the open window.

  The driver speaks in Pashto. Although I understand only some of his words, his intent is clear. “They are Lahoris, but their man was killed by a drone this week in Dargalabad. They came for mourning.” I wait for the driver to turn around and request our identification.

  But the Pashtun briefly touches his hand to his heart in a gesture of sympathy. “Then in grief they are my brothers.” He steps back to let us pass. “American bastards,” he says loud enough for all of us to hear. Although he raises his fist in solidarity with us, I can’t help but feel his words condemning me.

  The narrow, potholed road and the din of the car engine prevent us from discussing anything on the way to Dargalabad. We pass through treeless terrain before climbing up the mountain and down into the valley through a series of switchbacks. I feel as though I am not actually present, just observing. I grew up only a day’s journey from here, but I’ve never seen this world. My stomach turns with each rotation of the steering wheel. I am in my own country, but in a foreign land. I am a foreigner approaching the village of a man who was like my brother, the place where my father was killed, but this is not my place. I feel lightheaded. I close my eyes and my body seems to disappear. The breath moving in and out of my lungs is only the flimsy tether of fate pulling me along to a place I cannot resist.

  The car stops. A disorderly flow of humanity and livestock pass in front of us. “This is the main road in Dargalabad,” the driver says. “We are near.” We slowly advance into the moving mass. At the intersection a traffic sign commands travelers, Yield in English, Urdu, and Pashto. A vandal has amended the sign, writing in a defiant English script, NEVER.

  The driver navigat
es past small blocky buildings, houses surrounded by high walls, and the occasional tree. Abruptly he pulls up at an unmarked wall, indistinct from any of the others we have passed. An old man opens the wooden door in the wall, quickly moving to embrace my brothers and me. I assume he is Shoukart’s grandfather. He beats his chest and speaks in a torrent of Pashto sprinkled with Urdu. He offers his condolences, welcomes us to his home as family, as honored guests. “Your father’s death,” he cries, “pains me even more than my grandson’s death, he was our guest.”

  I stand mute, uncertain how to react. My brothers seem to understand this ritual better. They touch their hearts in gratitude for his hospitality, they reciprocate condolences for his loss. Riaz places a calm hand on the old man’s shoulder and suggests we go inside. The old man steps aside and looks to the ground as my mother passes inside, “Um Riaz, mother of Riaz,” he says respectfully, “Please be in your own home here.”

  I follow as we pass through the walled courtyard, a carefully tended apricot tree spreads its delicate branches in a small circle of shade where several chickens scratch in the still moist ground where the tree has been watered. At the threshold of the home’s inner rooms, we step out of our shoes. I place the black sandals I had borrowed from my brother’s closet in Lahore next to two other similar, but worn, pairs. Outside the door, the earth has been beaten smooth. Inside, the floor is covered in thick felt carpets. A small, deep red carpet, covered in a tribal design of orderly guls, marks the center of the room. A young girl steps silently from behind a curtain which divides the room, and sets down a large brass tray with tea and bread.

  Instinctively the men sit down in a circle. Several of Shoukart’s male relatives gather around his grandfather. My mother ducks inside the curtain and I hear the voices of the women consoling her, welcoming her. She returns and sits next to me as the young girl pours tea for all of us, hot liquid steaming up from the spout stained by years of use.

  After several minutes of formalities over the tea, the distribution of bread and apricot preserves, we finally turn to the matter at hand.

  “I had just gone down the road,” the old man says, his voice reedy with age, “I wanted to replace the string of electric festival lights we had in the courtyard, because they weren’t working properly. I went on my bicycle, it should’ve only taken a short time.” He took a sip of his tea. “Your father was with my grandson. We’d recently come back from the mosque, the marriage contract signed, the mullah had given his blessing. We had everything ready for the celebration. The girl’s relatives were here with us, the food was all ready.” He pauses, looks at the teacup resting on his palm. “I didn’t hear the drone. We never hear the drones.”

  “Have there been drones before?” I ask. Perhaps I should not have interrupted.

  “Of course,” he looks up at me. “The young men with good eyes and lenses see them a lot, at least once a week. Like hawks, so high I cannot see them. Sometimes they just go back to the Afghan side. Sometimes…”

  We all look down at our teacups.

  “The Americans think that anyone with a turban or a beard is Taliban,” one of the younger men practically spits out his words. “So even if we come together for a wedding party in a courtyard, we are a gathering of the Taliban.”

  “There are no Taliban in our village,” the old man speaks again. “But if today they came asking for fighters, I would join them before I even finish this tea. As sure as your father is in the ground, I am now an enemy of America.”

  The sweetness from my tea dissolves in his vitriol. As I sit here and share his grief, his hospitality, and his love for my father, do I also share his hatred? I hate the drone, I hate the men who sat behind some screen and engineered my father’s death, I hate the generals and policy makers who treat foreign lives as trivial. But is that my America? Is that the America of my wife and children? Of me?

  He continues, “Have you thought how you will avenge his death? We also have many lives to avenge, but he was the head of your family. This kind of offense cannot remain unanswered.”

  My brothers turn to look at my mother. “Not only have we been deprived of our man, but since he died far from his home, we were deprived of the funeral,” she says, counting the offenses as she would tally up the mustard harvest. “All of our relations, all of the people who are close to our families and our farms have not had a chance to pay their respects.”

  “You are correct,” the old man shakes his head, “and masha’allah, God willed it, there should be hundreds of people who must come for a man like him.”

  “The problem, of course,” Riaz begins, “is that the killers are not here. We cannot satisfy our grief in Pakistan.”

  “Yes,” nods the old man. “If that were possible, I myself would seek revenge to uphold your family’s honor. I expect we’ll have to cross over the border and look for a target in Afghanistan. We have relations on the other side…”

  Majid looks briefly at me before interrupting the old man. “We do have a different advantage.” The old man raises an eyebrow, curious. “Rashid. He has an American passport, he has no difficulty entering America.”

  My brother is careful not to call me an American. The old man and my mother both nod. “Because of his work, he has experience with explosives, he has high level security clearance.”

  I start to correct him, to explain that my hazardous materials commercial driver’s license isn’t the kind of security clearance they imagine. But my mother joins my brothers in extolling my qualifications as an avenger. “My youngest son is also very clever, and can easily mingle with Westerners, he will not arouse suspicion.”

  I want to protest, I want to tell them there is no way we can fight the U.S. military. With a rush of adrenaline I want to leave the room, to run away from the future they are planning for me. I uncross my legs to stand but my mother sets a hand on my forearm. The strength of her grip compels me to recross my legs, to sit down, listen, obey.

  The young girl steps around the curtain with a large copper bowl of curry. She pauses to catch the eye of the old man. He nods at her, beckons her with his hand. “Let us eat. Decisions are always easier on a full stomach.”

  “Mummyji, I have a family, children,” I whisper to her. “This is not a simple matter in America.”

  She squeezes harder. “We all have children. It’s because we have children that we must not allow others to come into our lands and destroy our families.”

  The girl offers me a large oval shaped naan, then ladles a portion of curry into the center of the bread, leaving three hefty chunks of goat meat befitting my status as an honored guest.

  The old man breaks his bread and dips it into the curry, raising it to signal for us to eat before he will. “The women of my brother’s house make a beautiful curry. I wish I could host you in my own house, but it is rubble now.”

  “Uncle, you will take my youngest brother to see it?” Riaz asks.

  “And he needs to see where our father is buried,” Majid echoes.

  The old man nods somberly.

  The conversation pauses as we concentrate on our meal. A child cries in the other room. A woman tries to comfort him.

  “Virji,” I whisper to Riaz, “we need to talk about how we will seek revenge. This isn’t something I can do in America. I have obligations to my family.”

  My eldest brother wipes his mustache with the back of his hand. “Rashid, we all have obligations to the family,” he says sternly. “Majid and I stayed here and married the girls our parents chose for us. Our wives have cared for our parents. We’ve handled the farm and the trading business. Daddyji indulged you.” He looks to Majid for confirmation. “He gave you the opportunity to go abroad. He did not object when you chose an American woman. But you cannot avoid your responsibility now.”

  “I’m not avoiding my responsibility.” I say sullenly. I lower my voice so the others cannot hear. “I’ve always sent money home. I was the one who sponsored Daddyji to go to Hajj.” I cannot offer an
y defense about my wife. No matter how she has tried to understand and accept our culture, she will never be one of us. The food is warm in my belly, but my heart burns with the understanding that she is of their tribe, she was born in the same nationality as the cowards who killed my father. I clench my fists. The gold of my wedding ring presses into my flesh. I hide my hand in the pocket of my kurta, as if this could obscure my alliance by marriage with America.

  The old man and his relations sit back and rub their palms together, pressing any grease from the meal into their dry calloused hands.

  Riaz looks up to see that everyone will listen to his words. “Rashid, if you are truly our mother’s son, you will understand what you must do for the family.”

  This line, this taunt to action I have seen dozens of times in films. How much more serious it sounds coming from my brother’s mouth. Does my face redden with this challenge? Instead of the dramatic music which would heighten the moment in a film, I hear only the clink of teacups being washed behind the curtain. The men around the room sharpen their focus on me. They will all hold me to this moment, to know if I am a man, to look for proof that I deserve my family’s name. I choose to respond in the most honorable way I can. I say nothing.

  “We will go now?” the old man asks. We all push ourselves up to standing. I step into the courtyard. I feel the cool air dissipate some of the smoldering heat in my body. At the far end, near a small opening in the wall that leads to a gutter, flies have gathered around a puddle of blood. Our hosts must have slaughtered the goat for our meal earlier in the day, the cries of the animal were already silent before we arrived.

  My mother steps out over the threshold.