Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  I shake my head. No. My stomach turns at this small act of renunciation, this denial of my identity. I push my food away. “Good luck with your teaching.” I say to close the conversation. I push my seat back and shut my eyes against his opinions.

  On the screen of my mind I see an endless series of images. The helicopter’s view of cars on the freeway, the aluminum trays in Ali’s kitchen, Michael explaining the lions in the movie, Ali bowing down in the mosque, my mother throwing stones at the sky. I am not one of those radicals. My reasons are my own. My father was killed. And before that our family was nearly decimated in the Partition of India, and before that the Hindus treated Muslims as worse than the Untouchables. And still the West fights wars in our lands as if they were entitled to our resources—the oil, the water, the territory—then they leave our people in poverty. Only the very smartest, the very richest leave to join the West…as I did. Stop thinking, I tell myself. Do not recriminate yourself for obeying your mother, for trying to protect your wife and sons, for following your fate. None of this would have been possible if I had not come to America, if I had not met Kathryn. Perhaps this was all part of my fate, which only now I recognize.

  Chapter 9

  Dubai, United Arab Emirates.

  One month after the bombing

  * * *

  The Afghan baker reaches into the shimmering heat of the clay tandoor with his long metal tongs, skillfully flicking his wrist to slide the bread from the side of the oven onto the sheaf of newspaper I have set upon the counter. I leave my coins in payment, hear him murmur, “Al-hamda’allah,” and I step out into the humid heat of the sidewalk. From the shop next door, I purchase a portion of chicken karai, which a skinny Pakistani man ladles into a plastic bag. I walk across the street—clogged with the ubiquitous green and yellow Toyota taxis that ferry people up and down the whizzing freeways of Dubai—and enter a run-down three-story building.

  I have spent the last month here—just one of a hundred Pakistani laborers and taxi drivers—ducking under the lines of laundry strung across the halls, listening to the constant drone of televisions, hearing the grunts of men relieving their sexual desires with no access to women. The landlord had offered me a room to share; three cots, a window air conditioning unit, and a bathroom. I paid him in cash for all three spaces, and politely declined his offer to find me two other Pakistanis to share the rent.

  I pour my meat and gravy into a plastic bowl, sit down on the floor and set it out on the corner of the newspaper next to my bread. I give thanks before tearing off a piece of bread which I use to scoop up a mouthful of gravy.

  Although I may be free to come and go, although I could choose to eat in the five-star hotels along Sheikh Zayed Road, I have established a kind of self-imprisonment. I go out only once a day to purchase food, which I eat at noon and at sunset. I sleep. I wake and perform a set of simple calisthenics to maintain my strength, and I wait for the days to pass. My implicit guilt paralyzes me. No longer can I claim any innocence, the authorities would crucify me if I tried to return. So I cultivate a flicker of pride. I made something happen, I stabbed the giant, exploited America’s weakness.

  I spend long hours looking at the image in my passport, obliterating the memories of the man who walked into Yerevan Travel to have his image recorded, conjuring up an alternate history, set in Vancouver, connected to a man named Srabjeet. I memorize all the details of the passport, develop stories to explain the few stamps on the stiff pages. I will my hair and beard to grow faster.

  At night I see the cockroaches come out from their hiding places, scurrying across the patches of light that penetrate from the hallway. I wrap my arms around myself, trying to simulate the warmth of another’s body. Only in these moments, when I have paid for the day in discipline and isolation, do I open up the corner of my mind that holds my wife and children. I allow myself to review their faces, the shapes of their bodies, the sounds of their voices. I pray for them, remembering them only in happiness, in laughter, in wonder, and in sleep. I remind them, and myself, and my father, that I have arranged for their care, I am doing what we all need, I will protect them—and eventually I will reunite with them.

  The chipped mirror above the bathroom sink shows me the time has come. My beard is long enough, covering my face. Eventually it will grow longer, occasionally touching my chest, and I will look as if I have always been a Sikh. I clench my teeth around the end of a length of cloth, start pulling it around the back of my head, and over my brow. The cloth is clean, but soft with wear. I didn’t want a brand new turban, so after purchasing six yards of cotton at the shop next to the tailor, I made an exchange. In the middle of the night, I moved silently in the hallway scanning the laundry. In the saltwater humidity of the Gulf, the clothes take two, sometimes three days to dry. On the floor above mine, I found what I needed, the single length of cloth, almost six yards long—slightly faded in strips where it had been exposed to the sun. The owner had looped it over the line four times so it would not touch the floor. I took the cloth, and replaced it with the new length. Now, with a single bare bulb above me, I attempt to coil another man’s turban around my head. I draw on long-ignored memories of Jagdeep, the Sikh guard who oversaw our farm. I wrap and then unravel the cloth several times before I am satisfied with the look. “Srabjeet Singh. I am Srabjeet Singh,” I tell the mirror. “I am returning to Pakistan for a cousin’s wedding.”

  I leave the bathroom, carrying the few toiletries I have purchased here, packing them into my bag. I have no goodbyes to make. I simply walk out the door and lock it behind me. I pass the building manager’s room and slide the key underneath the door.

  At the airport check in, the attendant asks my destination. My voice cracks on the word Karachi, as if my vocal chords had become rusty without use. The men in line behind me, all of them laborers, drag along their parcels; cardboard boxes, cheap plastic cargo bags, all taped and labeled with their names. They are bundling goods they have bought here with the little surplus from their salaries, bringing them to frustrated wives and fatherless children to compensate for their long absences in the Gulf. I share their sense of apprehension, excitement, but for other reasons.

  They jostle each other in line, displaying the Asian dislike for queuing. But when they reach the front, they stand obediently, like emasculated sheep, until the attendant behind the counter calls them. This is why they are poor, not one of them acts like a real man. They have followed the promises of a labor agent to this desert city, like rats following a piper, but not one of them could have done what I have done. This is what I learned in America, how to take action. America, I think, what a mixed bag of seeds you sow.

  Srabjeet Singh carries himself proudly, but I try to imagine this man, myself, as invisible. I want to draw no more attention to myself than this flock of sheep-like men.

  Once again, I brace myself, prepare my stories for the authorities who may seize me. And once again I find myself safely strapped in to a seat. The local airline, famed for its beautiful air hostesses, staffs the flight to Karachi with well-groomed men who will not face harassment from the repressed laborers. Years ago I took a flight to Pakistan with my own beautiful woman, my white American woman. I had tried to protect her from the lustful stares of the other passengers. I glared at several men, daring them to dishonor me again with their eyes. They always looked away in shame.

  When the plane loses altitude I see the southern coast of Pakistan come into view. The great sprawl of Karachi spreads out—a cancer of humans, concrete, steel upon the earth. I must have some old friends from university who have returned to elite jobs in the financial and construction industries. But I cannot call on them. I am not even here, I remind myself, and my old friends do not know Srabjeet Singh. In this city of more than twenty million, not a single person awaits me, no family will embrace me, no employer will help me settle in to a new life. But somewhere in this labyrinth, I will find the man who can provide me with yet another passport. I can hear Ali’s voi
ce in my head repeating his address.

  I disembark, passing through the throngs of women, children, and old people who have come to receive the laborers.

  In the taxi, I ask the driver to take me to a hotel, something simple and not too expensive. I have succeeded, I have returned to my homeland, I have accomplished my family’s revenge, I am undiscovered and unharmed. But none of this is sweet. I only want sleep. I close my eyes and let the driver deliver me.

  I shiver beneath the covers. The fever seized me just hours after I checked in to the hotel. I unwrap the turban and fold it to cover my neck and chest. When I was a child and fell ill with a fever, my mother would sit by my bed, sing me songs, pray, urge me to sip hot milk with honey and turmeric. I wish to call her to me now. I have done what she asked, but now I am suffering alone, with no one to sit at my bedside. A shapeless anger rises in my chest.

  In the morning, I walk down to the hotel lobby—nothing more than a little closet by the entrance—and ask the attendant to send someone to fetch medicine for me from a pharmacy.

  The man looks at me, I recognize him as a Punjabi. “You are very sick?” he asks disdainfully, “have you vomited?” I can imagine his thoughts, his fear of catching my illness, his disgust at the thought of sending a worker to clean up after a sick man.

  “No. Not very sick. I am only asking for fever reducer.” I reach into my pocket for an additional bill, “and please, also ask the tea shop next door to send up hot milk.”

  “Fever reducer and hot milk,” he looks out the door.

  “With turmeric and sugar.”

  He walks to the door, sets his hand on the frame and shouts out onto the street. Only the street noise—cars and rickshaws, horns and hawkers—seems to answer him. But soon a teenage boy, a dark-skinned Bengali runs up and listens to the man’s instructions. He pockets one of the bills I gave the man and quickly disappears.

  “I will bring it to your room when the boy returns,” he says to me. His voice seems to soften and he pulls on his beard. “We Sikhs need to take care of each other.”

  Without responding, I return to my room. I lie down on the bed, cover my face with my hands and weep. I hear my own sobbing, like the sounds of a child. The unfairness of my suffering pains me more than the fever. How long must I endure this isolation before I can return to my family? I cannot see my mother in Lahore—the Pakistani authorities would be observing her. I cannot reach out to Kathryn and the boys as the U.S. authorities would be monitoring all her communications.

  I hear a knock at the door. I drag myself to answer it only after the third set of knocks. The man offers me a small paper bag and a glass of hot milk.

  “No turmeric,” he says. “And they charged me a deposit on the glass.” He stands in the doorway, waiting. “The boy expects his tip.”

  I reach into my pocket and pull out another bill, not bothering to even look at it. I realize after handing it to the man that I have given him far too much.

  “Sardarji,” he says, “I will come to check if you need anything later.”

  I return to the bed, open the paper bag and pull out the plastic bottle. Without a spoon, I just drink the sweet syrup directly from the bottle. I sip the milk, relieved it is sweetened. I pick up the paper bag to drop it on the floor, noticing it has been fashioned out of an old newspaper. Out of date newspapers contain a world of goods in Pakistan; street snacks, little bits of hardware, ladies bangles all come wrapped in these words and pictures. In America the system collects old newspapers, ships them to a factory where they are destroyed, purged of their previous identity, bleached and repulped into new paper before Americans would dream of using it to make a paper bag. In Pakistan, the paper retains its identity. A photo of the Pakistani president is bisected by a fold in the paper, the words of the article below it, cut off mid-column at the seam of the bag.

  I lay back pulling the bed sheet and turban over my chest again. I open the bag, pulling apart the glued seam so I can hold the page open. Across the top of the page the bottom of a headline remains: “…Pakistani National Responsible for U.S. Bombing.” I scan the page for my name, find it buried in the third paragraph. I look up to ensure that the door is locked, the blinds on the window are closed. Did the boy know who I was when he brought me this bag? Was it some kind of a sign, a warning?

  I read the sentences one at a time. “U.S. officials have concluded the car bombing executed in the American city of Los Angeles, on a key expressway, was planned and carried out by a U.S. citizen and a Palestinian. The explosion killed three drivers in nearby cars and caused damage to the flyover. The incident has caused the U.S. government to pressure Pakistan to share more intelligence related to Pakistani nationals around the world, and so-called Muslim extremists.

  “In a report, the Department of Homeland Security has concluded that Ali Muhammed Nassan of Israeli-occupied Palestine, and Rashid Hamid Siddique, originally from Lahore, worked as an isolated terrorist cell, using a homemade crude bomb typical of Al-Qaeda. The report concludes that both men were killed in the bombing.

  “An Al-Qaeda spokesman in Kabul has not claimed responsibility for the attack, but issued a statement reminding the U.S. that the practice of bombing, invading, and occupying Muslim lands, especially along the Pak-Afghan border will continue to face resistance.

  “The father of Rashid Siddique…”

  I run my finger along the bottom of the page. The scissors of some laborer, probably some illiterate woman doing piece work in the slums of Orangi has cut off this news about my father. Even here, he is taken from me. For weeks I have intentionally avoided the news, assiduously turned my head from the reaction of the newscasters, the speculation, the investigation. But I cannot escape the story, my story. Five deaths. Three victims and two bombers. I am dead to America.

  I slide the paper bag under my pillow and close my eyes. I hear the words of the story in my mind spoken in an ominous voice. I know the fever powers this distorted thinking. As a child my mother told me not to listen to those voices, which were, of course, the work of Sheitan, Satan. But I cannot resist the voice, which speaks of my weakness, my vain pride. Rather than acting like a man and accepting my own death to avenge my father, I have run like a coward. No one wants a coward. No self-respecting woman can love a coward. I try to recall something that I can use to crowd out the voices, a verse, a line of poetry, anything that I could repeat to myself. After the first few words, my memory fails in my delirium.

  Images come.

  …I see the van again. Ali opens the window to wish me Salaam. He has put car seats on the passenger side. Michael and Andrew are strapped inside, smiling, excited for something new. I try to run after the van as Ali drives away, but my legs move as though wading through mud…

  …Kathryn calls me to the table, she tells me she has made Pakistani food. I sip a glass of water, it smells of her perfume but tastes of saltwater. She sets the plate down before me, chunks of meat with hair and skin still attached. I turn to look at her, her smile opens into a gaping laugh roaring with the sound of an explosion…

  …My mother walks toward me through a field yellow with mustard blooms. She sings a song I remember from my childhood. I see a man behind her, but cannot make out his identity. When she comes before me, she does not stop, does not greet me. She passes right through me, like vapor. But the man behind her, his hair and skin bleached completely white, walks into me with such force that I fall to the ground. He laughs and I recognize the voice of my father. “Death comes to us all, yet we act surprised each time….”

  Out on the street I follow the smell of food, swirls of smoke from grilling meat. I have taken only milk in the last three days. The fever has left me depleted, empty. I salivate with anticipation as I barter with the shish kebab vendor. He speaks with a heavy Pashtun accent. From his frayed shirt I assume he is a refugee. We make the exchange and I bite into a bit of seared goat flesh.

  But I taste nothing, experience no pleasure. When I have eaten enough that my
stomach ceases to complain, the remaining food in my hands becomes a burden, further evidence of the death I have caused. I walk down the street looking for somewhere to relieve myself of this food. In the shadows of a small doorway a man, bent and distorted, crouches on a bit of plastic sheeting. I reach down until my hand comes within the range of his downturned eyes. He does not look up, draws his hands together to receive the offering. The ends of his arms appear like paws, deprived of their fingers by accident or disease. He seizes the meat, and begins to eat, one animal to another.

  I continue to walk, accomplishing block after block without purpose. The mass of people dizzies me. I walk out of the Sikh neighborhood where the taxi driver had first dropped me. I pass through an area of nouveau riche gated houses with guards peeking out from behind the walls. I pass a mosque where men at prayer sport the beards and austere posture of the Saudi Wahabis who have impressed them with new mosques and money for madrasas. I pass through a Chinese neighborhood, rows of trading houses boasting red signs with both Chinese and Urdu in faded gold at the front, the squalor of Chinese living rooms at the back. I see the towers of the financial district, the international style bred into clumsy second-rate forms that somehow only highlight our self-consciousness as the bastard child of India. I pass the Gol Masjid, its graceful breast-shaped dome shoved above a rigid masculine block, as if it had been severed from a woman’s body. I consider going to pray, thinking the familiar ritual may comfort me. But I am a Sikh now, have exiled myself from my community, the umma, even in my home country. I walk toward the ocean, a great expanse of unremarkable beach greets the water. Young men and women, some in scandalous unmarried pairs dodge pot-bellied policemen perched atop a straining motorcycle. I walk east toward the cliffs.

  I can hear my father’s voice telling me Karachi is one of the wonders of the world, a great city comparable to Cairo or Istanbul. I try to envision the city through his eyes. But as I climb the littered path to a lookout point, I can only despise Karachi for the cold selfish hospitality of its sweaty streets. At the lookout I can see out across the ocean, fishing boats and cargo ships, vessels of all manner, plying the waters.