Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  “Here is where we must act.”

  “We?”

  “Yes. You and me. Together we can act. I am ready to martyr myself, to accept my fate. You still want to live for that woman and those children. But you have many things I need.”

  I do not speak, my lips drawn tightly against my words.

  “You have hazardous materials clearance, a blaster’s permit, a commercial driving license. You understand tools and careful planning. And,” he pauses, “you’re American.”

  “I’m Pakistani,” I retort.

  “Yes, habibi. I mean you have an American passport.”

  He rises to the stove bringing the kettle to refill our teacups. I hate tea brewed from a used teabag. I use extra sugar to mask the weak bitterness.

  “Los Angeles is known for her freeways,” Ali says sitting down again. “Imagine if we could stop the traffic on the freeways. Think about bombs on the 405, the 110, the 10, the 101, the 5. With just five bombs, detonated at the same time, we could bring the city to a standstill. In Bangladesh, our people detonated two dozen bombs within a few hours.”

  I remember the news of these attacks, attributed to Al Qaeda. I had talked to my father on the phone that day. He thought it just as likely they were planted by Pakistani elements still bitter over the way Bengalis had massacred Urdu speakers when East Pakistan declared its independence from West Pakistan in 1973. The desire for revenge may go dormant in a man’s heart, my father had said, but it never dies.

  I look at Ali and then around the room. “Are there others who are planning with you?”

  He shakes his head.

  “Then the freeways are too complicated. You need too much coordination.” I’m relieved at the improbability of his idea. “You might as well target an airplane.” I am careful not to say we. I am not involved yet, I tell myself. I am only having a theoretical conversation with this young man.

  “Impossible. Some of our people are still fascinated with plane bombings—of course they were so successful in the Twin Tower attacks. But the security is too complicated now.” He turns again to the computer, pulling up a spreadsheet, also in Arabic. “Here’s the list of targets and the impact over the last twenty years. Discos, hotels, office buildings, airplanes, cars, trains, subways, buildings. Really, habibi, no one has tried a freeway.”

  “Why not target a government building, try to reach some of the people responsible for what’s happening in our countries?”

  “Tell me, brother,” Ali asks with mock gentleness, “did the drone that killed your father think to target only those people responsible for attacks against America?”

  I look down at my hands, see again the flies alighting from burned flesh and singed hair. “What about the factory that produces the drones?”

  Ali raises an eyebrow. “Perhaps.” He turns back to his computer, types predator drone manufacturer.

  The search engine returns images of huge low buildings southeast of Los Angeles, surrounded by wide open space.

  “Too isolated,” I quickly assess, “you wouldn’t get past the front gate. But why the freeways? What message do you send by bombing a freeway?”

  “Brother, do you really mean to be so blind? The freeways are about oil. Without oil, America shuts down. And without control of the Islamic lands, the oil supply shuts down.”

  Oil; the dross of ancient dinosaurs, the object of my offshore efforts, the treasure that fuels the military occupations of the western economies. I can’t refute his logic. I sip my tea, my stomach growls. “But you could only be on one freeway at a time.”

  “Two.”

  I look at Ali. His eyes look right through me. He does not flinch. I feel trapped, as if fate had triangulated me into this location. My adoptive country, my mother, and my friend—all preventing me from making my own decisions.

  He turns again to the computer. “On the 405 flyover from the 10. You get two freeways with one location.”

  Only one bomber. I look down at my hands around the teacup, feel as though I have cheated my fate for another minute. Though I see in the reflection of the overhead light on the surface of my tea, the explosion Ali imagines. Even if the charges were placed to direct the force down, any flames or fumes would always travel up. “Not from above. You’d have to be on the 10 under the flyover. You probably wouldn’t actually be able to damage the flyover. But you could stop traffic.” I look at the computer screen. “And the highway patrol and emergency vehicles would probably respond on both freeways.”

  Ali thumps the table energetically. “Yes. Excellent! This is why I want you here. You understand technical things, logistics.”

  Conditioned by years of planning jobs, working with engineers, developing backups against failure, troubleshooting malfunctions, I can’t but help review the parameters of the situation in my mind as if my manager had assigned it to me. I remember the types of bombs outlined in the study guide for the blaster’s permit. I see the volume of the car, the overhead clearance beneath the flyover. I estimate velocity, trajectory, force.

  “What kind of explosives do you use in your work?” Ali asks.

  “They’re not right. They only work under high-pressure conditions.”

  He presses me with his questions about radioactive materials, shrapnel, how to obtain C4 plastic explosives. And I continue to answer, the value of my professional knowledge starting to dawn on me.

  “What do you know about detonators?” Ali asks me.

  “A lot. At least about the detonators I use on my jobs.” My stomach growls again. “I need to eat something, Ali. Do you have anything here, or should we go out?”

  “Forgive me, Rashid! I’ve lost my manners since you came to my house.” He hurries around the tiny kitchen, retrieving a large pot from the refrigerator, igniting the gas burner with a cigarette lighter. “The woman who owns this house made me a big pot of chicken and rice this week. Sometimes she cooks for me. She told me she won’t be able to face my mother in heaven if she doesn’t feed me here on earth.”

  The smell of the food reminds me of so many Arabic restaurants in Dubai. The pot appears filled with the huge quantity that Arabic women instinctively prepare, ever ready for the arrival of unexpected guests. But no other food appears. No waiter or mother or sister arrives with olives and platters of fresh vegetables, no bowls of hummus with olive oil, no tabbouleh, or fatoosh salad sprinkled with bright sour sumac powder. Ali’s unadorned food marks him as an orphan, an Arabic man without a female relation.

  “Ali, where is your mother?”

  “Al-hamda’allah,” he says looking heavenward, “at least my eldest brother is there with her and my sisters in Palestine so she’s not alone. He says everything is fine, I shouldn’t worry about her.” He stirs the pot on the stove. “But my sisters tell me she’s not the same since my father was killed. She’s not going out to call on family or neighbors. She only takes bread and tea and prays.” Ali scoops a big portion of rice onto a plate, reaches back into the pot and pulls out a chicken leg, the meat still on the bone. “She’s been praying that I should succeed in taking revenge.” He brings the plate to the table and places it in front of me. “And her prayers are working.” He places a hand on my shoulder. “Abu Omar has brought me to you.”

  The sun is just rising when I step out of Ali’s house and walk over the cracked concrete driveway on the way to the bus stop. Despite my body’s exhaustion, my mind buzzes with the ideas Ali has planted. He offered a way, a way to serve my mother without completely sacrificing my wife and children. Is this my fate being revealed? Or is this the madness of a young radical? Do I need only have faith in the process? Or am I abdicating reason?

  I wait for the bus across the street from where I arrived last night. I transfer to the train and finally arrive at my car. Following habit, I take the entrance to the 405 north, merging into the stream of cars moving surprisingly quickly as the morning rush hour approaches. Kathryn will be surprised when I arrive home in the morning. Even when jobs run past o
ur expected schedule, I don’t usually return until after noon, because of the ferry schedule. I turn on my blinker, check my rearview mirror to change lanes to transfer to the 5 north. Directly behind me a Ford SUV moves dangerously close to my back bumper, piloted by a huge white man in a baseball cap tapping away at his mobile phone. I feel a surge of adrenaline and swerve into the lane on the other side, narrowly avoiding his front bumper. I swear and honk my horn. He passes, glancing disinterestedly at my compact car. His bumper stickers urge me to Buy American! and to Support Our Troops.

  I have missed my exit, so I continue on the 405 north, Ali’s words about freeways echoing in my head. As I approach the 10 freeway, the traffic slows to a crawl. I do not take the eastbound exit toward home, but inch my way along the flyover, to take the westbound exit. I follow the curving ramp until I am oriented 90 degrees away from my previous route. I drive under the 10, rolling down my window, allowing the sound and smell of thousands of impatient cars to enter. I stick my head out and look up. The traffic is moving slowly, but not slowly enough that I can get a very good look at the structure of the freeway above me. I stay in the right lane, following the curve of the exit ramp back down to the southbound 405, quickly exiting onto the eastbound 10, only to follow another exit ramp back to the northbound 405, where I had been a few minutes earlier. I repeat these maneuvers in the thickening traffic, wishing for the first time in my life, for our collective movements to slow. Of all the days I have sat on the 405, packed like a parking lot, I have never really seen the physical infrastructure, the traffic flowing, the number and spacing of the lanes, as I do now.

  On another approach from the 405 north to the 10 west, I pause at the bottom of the entrance ramp. I resist moving the car for a few seconds, until the lane ahead of me clears for about a hundred feet. The car behind me stops, honks. I sit taller in my seat, so I can see further behind me. Very quickly eight, ten, twelve cars line up behind me and start to honk. I can almost smell their irritation, I feel the same perverse delight I felt as a teenager when I would stand still in the doorway of my school, just ahead of a group of girls I wanted to tease, forcing them to notice me before they entered the school. This simple action, this absence of action, really, affords me an unexpected power, the thrill of exerting my will upon others. Eventually, I put my foot on the gas pedal, driving at a modest speed while I watch a line of cars overtake me for the space in the lane ahead of me. A few drivers take the time to roll down their windows, raise their middle fingers and tell me to fuck off. If only I could have enjoyed such a provocative response from my pretty classmates in their green and white school uniforms, chunnis tossed modestly across their shoulders.

  When I arrive home, the rooms are still, silent. Kathryn has left for her office. The remains of Michael’s breakfast are in a bowl in the sink, a few Cheerios litter the floor beneath Andrew’s high chair.

  I check all of the rooms to make sure I am truly alone. I take refuge in the bathroom. I feel better in the small room. When I was a child, my brothers used to make me enter empty rooms in our home before them. They expected me to clear the room of any djinns, the mischievous, sometimes malevolent spirits the bhai was always trying to appease. When I protested they would promise me crumbly ladoos or milk cake, or even a rich piece of cashew barfi.

  I pull back the shower curtain and swing my arms into the space in the corners, making sure to chase out any unseen visitors, closing the bathroom door behind them. I strip myself of the clothes I have been wearing for the last 24 hours and submit myself to a scalding shower. The hot water runs down my body in rivulets, pulling the black hair that covers my chest and my limbs flat against my skin. My dick begins to stiffen at the thought of the plan Ali outlined in the last grey hours of the night; my dreams of action riding along the flow of testosterone in my veins. But I resist the urge to handle myself. I scrub away the residue of Ali, the freeway, my illicit night away from my family before Kathryn might smell the strange perfume.

  I confront my image in the mirror. Naked, brown-skinned, dark-haired, circumcised, I can see that I am a Pakistani Muslim. But my haircut, my clean-shaven face, my well-fed frame mark me as an American. As a young man I never indulged in looking at myself in the mirror. Such immodesty would have seemed haraam. I knew I was handsome though, by the way girls would glance at me outside of my college. Kathryn told me on our wedding day, she thought I was the most handsome man she had ever seen. Last night Ali told me that I will have no difficulty crossing borders because I am so clean-cut and when I smile my teeth are so white.

  I smile at Michael sitting at the low circular table in front of a pile of brightly colored blocks. He has set them in neat rows and is now building a narrow tower. He looks up, sees me, and hesitates before running into my arms. Michael smells of laundry detergent and store-bought cookies. I look past his shoulder to the well-equipped classroom. Shelves full of books, bucket after bucket of neatly stacked toys, a brightly colored carpet where the children gather for story time. Already, the neatness of his handwriting stands out among the dozens of recent writing assignments taped to the wall.

  I am proud of the education, the opportunities he will enjoy here in America. In Lahore, even in the well-maintained neighborhood where my father dropped us for school, we passed clouds of flies and the occasional long tailed rat before we reached the towering wooden doors of the arched brick school.

  Michael dutifully puts away his blocks and retrieves his school-bag from the cubby bearing his name. We walk down the hall and Michael points out some of his artwork posted outside his classroom. The children had cut out circles in a rainbow of construction paper colors and arranged them on black paper, mimicking the style of Kandinsky. When I ask him about his day, he reports on his lunch and recess.

  “And when I was on the playground, I fell down when we were playing kickball.”

  “How come?”

  “Another kid stuck his foot out and tripped me.”

  “So what did you do about it?”

  “Nothing. I got up. There was no blood, but my pants got kind of dirty.”

  I worry about his American softness. How will he defend himself? How will he ever make his way in the world when his teachers tell him to worry about other peoples’ feelings before his own needs? Kathryn has made me promise not to encourage him to fight. Maybe I could teach him to fly kites the way I did—with crushed glass dust glued to the strings so we could sever the lines that controlled the flights of other boys’ paper kites.

  “Daddy, can I watch a video when we get home?”

  “What video?” I ask.

  “Maybe a movie, you know, the one with the lions?”

  I reach for his hand and nod.

  After we return home, as we sit together on the couch, Michael curled up against me, beautiful cartoon lions parade back and forth on the television screen before us. Michael has seen this movie a dozen times already, but sits mesmerized, occasionally commenting on the characters or their actions. The lion cub’s scheming uncle engineers a situation to kill the cub’s father in a stampede of wildebeests. When the uncle forces the cub out of the pride, Michael looks at me with concern.

  “Don’t worry, Daddy. The little lion is lost for a while, but he grows up and grows strong so he can go back and take over. He makes sure the bad lion that killed his father dies in the end.”

  “Why?”

  “Because the uncle is very bad, see what he did?” he points to the television. “A good lion can’t let the bad lion get away with killing his father.” Michael readjusts himself on the couch and doesn’t speak again. I sit next to my son, feeling the heat of his little body until the bad lion falls to a pack of hungry hyenas and the remaining good characters break into song.

  I think of the freeway and Ali and our plan. Michael understands already, I tell myself. He will understand what I am doing. I am trying to be a good lion.

  Something jars me awake. I look to my right and see the digital clock. In the green glow of 3:45a
m I can make out Kathryn’s profile, the outline of the children between us. Did I hear a noise? Did Michael kick me in his sleep? What woke me? I reach for my forehead, feel sweat above my brow. I remember my dream now, I heard an explosion, but I don’t know where it was, in the frontier village, on the freeway, in the oil well. I look at the clock again. 3:46am. Two hours and fourteen minutes until Kathryn’s alarm will go off. But how much time do I have after that? What will my fate allow? How many more times will I love Kathryn, hold the baby, talk with Michael? I can still pretend nothing will change.

  I step into the bathroom, splash water on my face, and take a drink of water. I hear the explosion again in my head, after the initial thunder of the detonation, I hear the heaving of metal, the twinkling of glass, the roaring of fire. The explosion was on the freeway. The dream must have been a sign, a foretelling of my fate. Somehow I need to prepare Kathryn without telling her anything. When the government comes to interrogate her, she must not know anything. But she must understand enough to wait for me, to bring the children when I have reached a safe place.

  I return to the bed, shift the children so I can lay next to Kathryn. The clock glows 3:52am. I ache with the six minutes I have been away from her. I stroke my wife’s forehead, the blonde border of her hair. I trace every contour of her face with my eyes: her eyebrows which animate her expression; her eyelashes—she has often remarked that our boys inherited long beautiful eyelashes while she possessed only short light-colored lashes; her creamy smooth cheeks; her lips, thin and pink, all the words of anger and frustration they have uttered over the years have evaporated, I think only of how she has kissed me with these lips, the way they move when she sings lullabies to the boys. I look until I can close my eyes and still see her image in my mind’s eye.