Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  Ali approaches us as I kneel down to help Michael into his shoes, pulling the Velcro straps closed. “Brother, introduce me to your son,” he says.

  “This is Michael, my eldest son. Andrew is the baby.”

  “Michael, like the arc angel.” Ali squeezes my son’s shoulder in greeting. “That makes you Abu Michael,” he says to me. The Arab custom of referring to a man as father of his eldest son feels contrived with my son’s American sounding name.

  Another man, perhaps an Egyptian, approaches us, his new leather jacket pulled tight around his barrel-shaped belly. “Glad to see you bring your son.”

  “The child is lucky enough to still have a father,” Ali’s retort is surprisingly bitter.

  “We all lose our fathers,” the man says in return. “Mine is gone too,” he says as if picking up on an earlier conversation.

  “But you lost yours to old age. We have lost ours to the infidels,” Ali shoots back indignantly.

  “You don’t need to call them infidels,” the man says, “they were Israelis. You Palestinians need to learn to stop stirring the pot. When you kick a giant, he’ll always kick you back.” He turns to me, “Was your father also killed by the Israelis?”

  “No,” I say quietly, “the Americans.”

  “How? You are Afghan?”

  “No, Pakistani. My father was killed in a drone attack near the Afghan border.”

  “I’m sorry,” he says, his Arabic accent caressing the r’s. “Very unfortunate. For me, I love this country, she has given us much opportunity.”

  “And in return, you have become stingy with your fellow Arabs.”

  I am uneasy at Ali’s rudeness.

  “Ali,” he says as if reprimanding a child, “be a man, take care of yourself. Once you have a family you’ll see the world is more than just politics and Islam.”

  “And maybe you’ll see that America is the enemy, but she is blinding you with money and profit.”

  The Egyptian releases a string of words in Arabic which I understand only in tone. Ali responds in kind, animating his words by rubbing his fingers together to indicate money. Perhaps Ali asked the man for money in the past.

  The older man places his left hand on my shoulder, shakes my hand with his right. “I have argued enough with this young man on other days. I only want to say you are welcome, and of course your son is most welcome.” He turns to Michael, “You’re very handsome with your fair skin. Do you take after your mother? Where is she from?”

  Michael, pleased to be included in the adult conversation, rushes with his response. “She’s American,” he says smiling.

  Ali turns away.

  “Very good, young man,” the Egyptian smiles, almost gloating. “You see Americans are modern tolerant people.” He pats Michael on the head and leaves.

  “Salaam aleikum habibi,” Ali greets me affectionately through the phone.

  “Hi, Ali,” I respond, intentionally avoiding the basic Arabic that I know well.

  “My cousin is planning to get married next week. They’re spending a fortune on the wedding hall, they’re planning to have two live bands, one to play Arabic music, one to play rock ‘n roll. Can you imagine! What do they need rock ‘n roll for, can’t we even get married in our own tradition, without bowing down to Western style?”

  “Ali,” I cut him off, before he can launch into a full-blown tirade about the evils of cultural hegemony. “What about your friend? I’m calling about your text,” I hold myself to American-style directness on the phone.

  “Yes,” he says, “my friend. We need a photo of you, a passport-style photo. But listen, you cannot go to just any passport photographer. We have our own photographer. He’s in Glendale, a Syrian guy. You just go and tell him your name is Ibrahim. He’ll take your photo and keep it there, and then my friend’s contact will go and pick it up. You don’t take it with you.”

  “Wait, who is your friend? What does he do? You said in your text you have a friend who could help me.”

  “He’s the uncle of a man who comes to the mosque.”

  I remember the man in the wingtips.

  “The uncle can help with passports, visas, these things.”

  In Pakistan I always knew somebody who could forge certificates from colleges, technical schools, universities. These were the currency many of my impatient or poorly connected classmates used to apply for jobs abroad, the credentials they gave to labor agents. My father disapproved of the forgeries, not on principle, but because he had seen misfortune or even disaster follow everyone he knew of who used them; the job would be lost, the man would be injured, his wife would miscarry while he was abroad. In one case, we even heard of a young man who was stabbed and killed in a London pub after he went abroad with fake certificates about his education. But Ali’s connection is not trading in shortcuts to jobs.

  “What for?” I ask. “I already have a passport, two in fact, if you count the expired Pakistani one.”

  “He helps the organization move people around.”

  I don’t know which organization. I am afraid to ask.

  “Blacklists can cause problems sometimes.”

  “But Ali, I don’t need to travel anywhere.”

  “I knew of a man who planned an action on a bus in Israel. He sent his ID and his father’s dagger with another man who actually carried the explosives onto the bus. The neighbors identified the dagger on the dead man to the intelligence people. Those fuckers left the planner’s family alone, because they thought he was already dead. But actually he fled to Morocco.”

  “So?”

  “So when the investigation died down, he called his wife and children to him in Morocco where they were reunited and lived together.”

  I am silent trying to understand how this story relates to me.

  “We both need to make a point to this country,” Ali speaks as if he were explaining something to a child. “You have a wife and children. I don’t.”

  “I’m not ready for this. I’m still thinking about what I need to do. I don’t need a passport.”

  “Not yet.” Ali pauses for effect. “But you don’t know what is written for you. And when you do understand, you won’t want to be waiting for this detail.”

  I absorb his words. He seems to know more than I do. What could be the harm in taking a photo? “What will it cost?”

  “If you wanted to buy a passport this good, from a good country like Canada, the black market could charge you maybe six, eight thousand dollars. But this is my friend, he’s interested in your situation, he’ll provide it to you, no cost.”

  Labor agents in Pakistan also promised people fabulous opportunities for no charge up front. But I knew laborers in Dubai who had not seen their families for three years because they were paying off their labor agents for ostensibly free visas rather than buying tickets home. I switch the phone to my other ear.

  “Then what’s my obligation? What’s his interest?”

  “His interest is the same as yours. He believes that this bitch of a country can’t go around the world killing our people without any consequence.”

  I bristle at his words. “I don’t know. Not now.”

  “The Syrian is at Yerevan Travel in Glendale.”

  I laugh. “Yerevan, the capital of Armenia? The Syrian’s geography isn’t very good.”

  “No one notices him in the Armenian community, you know the Armenians run everything in Glendale. Anyway, the shop is on San Fernando three blocks west of Brand Boulevard.”

  “I’m going to sleep, Ali. I don’t want to talk about this.”

  “Damam, fine.” His tone softens, and his voice fills with warmth. “Whatever is written will happen. Sleep well, my brother.”

  I walk in the store telling myself I will buy milk and bread and coffee, and maybe call Kathryn to see what else she needs. I don’t get more than a few steps down the center aisle before I stop, close my eyes, and breathe deeply of the smells of dried thyme, walnut, and pomegranate. By blocking out
the view of all the looping Armenian script on the labels, my olfactory memory tells me I am at the Lebanese grocery in my old neighborhood in Dubai. A long ago habit compels me to look for small bitter green olives and hard salty haloumi cheese for frying with tomatoes and onions, and then go next door—as if I was still in Dubai—to the Afghan baker where I will leave my coins on his counter and hold out my newspaper to receive the hot flat circle of bread he will retrieve from the intense heat of his clay tandoor.

  I must look strange in my paralysis of memory. The Armenian butcher behind the counter asks me if I need help. I shake my head and the force of my current reality causes me to stumble. I reach out for the shelf to steady myself, stare at a jar of pistachios packed in honey.

  I will buy my things and go home. This is just a side trip into Glendale, I just wanted some imported foods, I tell myself. I make my way around the store, quickly placing items in my red plastic basket. I buy Palestinian olive oil, imaging that the Armenians must be sympathetic to the Palestinians in their struggle for their own state. I pay for everything with cash, rather than my bank card—no need to leave a record that I was here, I tell myself.

  In the parking lot, I will myself to walk to my car. I am going home, I assert in my mind. But my feet will not obey, they carry me into the storefront three doors down. A small bell clangs as the door of Yerevan Travel closes behind me. It is written.

  I lay in bed with my sons. I murmur lines from the Koran about a father’s love. I hope that on some level these lines will lodge in their memories, that should they suffer in the future, these verses will remind them of the intensity of my love.

  I can hear Kathryn in the other room, finishing with the dishes, packing the children’s things for the next day. I will not think about the way we argued on another night about revenge, about the things I could only say to her with alcohol again in my system. She is a strong woman, responsible. If only she were Pakistani, she would understand my situation. But if she were Pakistani, we might not be here, I might not be the one chosen by my family as most qualified to assuage our grief. But it was written that I should marry her. It was written that I should suffer this way.

  Chapter 4

  * * *

  And the days pass by quickly. Almost too quickly. Ali becomes a fixture in my life, a secret relationship, a hidden flirtation with death. I feel as if I am having an affair, taking Ali’s phone calls when I am out of the house, sending him texts when Kathryn is out of the room. My father told me when I was a teenager that Islam allows a man to take up to four wives, but only if he treats them all exactly fairly. He cannot favor one over the other, either with love or with property. And of course, my father would say, with a twinkle in his eye, it is impossible not to favor one woman over another.

  So I have established a kind of tally in my head, an accounting system to record my expenditures of love. Every phone call with Ali I follow with a phone call to Kathryn, a conversation about our plans with the ACLU, which I now realize will be fruitless.

  From the rig floor I can see a cargo ship in the distance, on its way to the port. The sky is still overcast, the usual morning gloominess of the Pacific has not yet burned off. The ferry will arrive in a half an hour to bring us back to shore. I call Kathryn at her office, explain that there was a problem, I won’t be home for another day or so.

  “All right,” she says. I can hear the resigned disappointment in her voice. “When you come back, can you look at the sink disposal? The motor has stopped working again.”

  “Of course.”

  I hang up and wait for the ferry, checking my watch. Within three hours I should be at Ali’s place. He has directed me to drive to the train station, take the Metro line north and then transfer to a bus line that will take me to within a few blocks of his neighborhood. I am eager to be there, haven’t felt this kind of anticipation since I was a teenager arranging for a clandestine meeting with a girl.

  Ali opens the door of his little run-down back house only as far as the chain lock will allow. He closes it and I hear the chain rattling. The little structure is a converted garage, the paint peeling to reveal tired grey wood, the weeds gone to seed in the cracks of the concrete foundation.

  I step inside when the door opens, and just as quickly he shuts it again. “Welcome,” he spreads his arms, “you are welcome. I’m making us some tea.”

  The place is nearly empty, as if he hadn’t actually moved in, but were camping for a few days.

  “Have a seat.”

  I sit at a little kitchen table on one of four mismatched chairs. Ali pushes aside a stack of Arabic language newspapers. “There is an imam in Iraq,” he points to a photo of a cleric in a neatly tied circular turban, “he is calling on the Cubans to demand that the Americans abandon Guantanamo Bay. He has even invited a Cuban delegation to come to Iraq to discuss it.”

  “The Cubans can never do it, they don’t have the political clout or the military might to back it up.”

  “Of course not,” he turns off the gas on the stove and takes the steaming kettle to the counter, “but he is highlighting for the world to see that America is not playing by the rules, that she will occupy and control whatever place she wants. And her purpose is usually evil.” He brings the teacups to the table. “Sugar?”

  I nod. “How long have you lived here in this place?” I don’t want Ali to launch into one of his lectures. I am here because Ali claimed to have some information about a time and location that he couldn’t discuss over the phone.

  “A couple of months,” he answers, “the place belongs to the cousin of a friend from the mosque. He’s not charging me rent, and I get free wireless internet from the main house.”

  He sits next to me and pulls a brand new looking laptop from the bottom of the stack of newspapers.

  “Nice computer,” I say, suspicious of how he came by it.

  “Yeah, this is also from my friend. He loaded software that allows you to use a proxy alias, so no one can track your movements on the internet. You know the U.S. government closely monitors who visits the jihadi websites. When there’s a lot of traffic, they raise the color of the threat level.”

  I raise a skeptical eyebrow.

  “The government loves it when Americans are afraid, let’s them kill more of us Muslims.”

  The screen comes to life without delay and helpfully displays the most commonly viewed pages. Amidst the Arabic language sites with green banners and Saudi flags, up pops a porn site with images of blonde women performing oral sex. I laugh, almost involuntarily.

  Ali is embarrassed. “American women are whores!” He tries to turn the computer screen away from me. “I was showing a friend how wrong this culture is. Can you imagine a Muslim man allowing his sister or daughter to dishonor him like this?” He clicks on another screen, obscuring the naked women behind it.

  “Not all American women are like that, Ali.” In Dubai, I remember my buddies and I joked that American women were not whores. They didn’t fuck for money, they fucked for fun. One of my Indian Punjabi friends always tried to pick up American or British girls in the discos. If he was unsuccessful, he would try for a white skinned prostitute—Latvian, or Bulgarian, or even a fair-skinned Chechen. Occasionally he would be short enough on cash to leave a club controlled by the Russian prostitution rings for one frequented by the less expensive Chinese prostitutes. Once I met Kathryn I no longer listened to the banter about the relative costs of sex by nationality.

  “I’m sure your wife is an exception,” Ali avoids my gaze, brings his teacup to his lips. “But insha’allah, I will know women in a pure state.”

  I turn to look at Ali. His brown untrimmed beard conceals a few pimples, his dingy button-down shirt smells of his sweat. His appearance is not one that would attract a woman. When I was a teenager, I knew boys like this, driven by their hormones to visit the brothels for relief from small dark Bengali women.

  “Ali, you’ve never had a woman?”

  Ali straightens his sho
ulders, but still will not look at me. “I am pure, Brother. Allah has other plans for me, and in heaven I will be rewarded for my discipline.”

  This gives me pause. I look around the grimy room and through the space between the outdated curtains to the neglected yard. Perhaps Ali does not see the ugliness of these things. Maybe in his mind he carries around the sumptuous gardens, the beautiful women, the endless delights of heaven. I will not try to convince him otherwise. Who am I to tell him the world is beautiful, women are generous, children are a miracle? I myself sometimes doubt these things, am engulfed with rage at the ignorance of those who are not like me. Ali enjoys the luxury of a singular purpose. Without a wife and children, without the rights and privileges of a citizen, or even status as a legal alien, without money or prospects, he is unfettered by the attachments that drive my own thinking in endless circles, forcing me to contrive justifications for my every action.

  Ali navigates through his proxy alias to an Arabic language website, drilling down to a list of bulleted items. Although I have read the Arabic script of the Urdu language since childhood, I do not understand the text before me.

  “Successes, brother. These are the dates and locations of all of the actions our people have taken around the world. Here are the events which show the infidels they are on the wrong path. We’re drawing attention to our message. So many countries want to be like America, following her like a herd of stupid sheep.” He clicks on a link to a curated map of the world. Small green dots appear over London, Milan, Nairobi, Kabul, Mumbai, Bali, Washington D.C., New York. Unlike the cluster of red dots marking the drone attacks in the frontier territories of Pakistan, these individual green points span the globe, reminding me of one of Michael’s coloring books, requiring him to connect the dots to create an image. Ali points on the screen to an area far from any dots. Southern California.