Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  I take a step toward the ocean. I wish for the oblivion of the endless water. I take another step. I hear the waves washing over the rocks. I inhale, thinking I should have just sat in the car next to Ali. I shouldn’t be here living, breathing in this painful numbness. I lean into the air, imagining the descent to the rocks and waves below. I could end this feeling. What more does this life require of me?

  My foot slips. I feel the force of gravity pulling me down. Adrenaline surges through my body. But the earth stops me. The hardness of the ground will not let me fall. I am on my hands and knees, nearly prostrate before the glow of the day dimming in the west.

  I bring my hands to my face to weep. But no sounds come. My emotions have grown impotent.

  Chapter 10

  * * *

  I wake. The hotel room appears just as it did the day before. My legs ache from the previous day’s walking. With something approaching disappointment, I confirm I am still living. I am not yet meant to be freed of this body.

  There will be no point to further avoid the next obvious step. I must find the man whose address Ali made me memorize. I will come to know my next incarnation. I rise from the bed, watch myself go through the motions of washing and dressing myself, a stranger in the mirror. I pack my few things, check out at the front desk, resisting the proprietor’s attempt to make small talk, paying him an extra tip for caring for me during my fever.

  I hail a taxi. Inside, the driver only nods when I tell him the address. From the rearview mirror hangs a small embroidered banner. I puzzle through the letters of stylized calligraphy reserved for Koranic verses. Submit to no man. Submit only to Allah.

  I repeat the words in my head, thinking they should provide me some insight, remind me of some profound belief. But I hear only their hollow echo.

  After several minutes the taxi driver stops, turns to me. “Is this the place?”

  I look around, trying to makes sense of the row of narrow store-fronts, the faces of the men walking along the edges of the narrow lane. I repeat his question. “Is this the place?” I have no idea.

  “This is the place,” he confirms impatiently.

  I pay the fare, step out. Sewing machines whir in a tailor’s shop, small boys drone through memorized Koranic verses in a madrasa. I look for numbers on any of the doorways to indicate which one is the man’s location. I enter a halal butcher shop.

  The man behind the counter looks suspiciously at my turban. Flies land on the skinned goat carcass hanging from a hook behind him.

  I ask about the address. Without a word he points across the street to a small door, marked only by a crescent moon. I follow the butcher’s silent direction. When no one answers my knock, I turn the knob and proceed up a set of creaking wooden stairs ending in another closed door. I knock again.

  I don’t know what to expect. A residence? An office? A secret hiding place? Anxiously, I turn to go, but I have no other destination, no other purpose.

  “Who are you?” a deep baritone voice calls out in Urdu from two steps above me. I turn back to face a big Pathan man.

  “I am here to see Sheikh Omar.”

  The Pathan looks at me for a long time. I do not drop my eyes. I am fearless, not out of bravery, but because I no longer feel sentimental about my safety. Finally he steps aside, so I can pass through the doorway.

  Inside, the man motions for me to sit in one of two small rough-hewn chairs next to a brass tray on a stand. He walks through a side door into another room.

  I set my bag down on a pale green carpet, sit, and wait. The man returns, opening the door just enough that I can see his eye. “Do you have an appointment?”

  “No.”

  The door closes. In America, waiting rooms are always furnished with a stack of magazines; outdated news and women’s fashions to distract until a doctor or a dentist is ready. Here, I see only the leaves of a mango tree in a courtyard beyond a window.

  The door opens again and the man hands me a cup of hot tea, holding one for himself. “Sheikh Omar is not here.”

  “Should I come back at a different time?”

  “No. He may be here later, or he may send a message.” The man sips his tea. His lips curl back delicately and he very gracefully replaces the cup on the saucer with his massive hands.

  “Does he live here, or is this his office?”

  The man shakes his head only once. “Who are you?” he asks, still standing.

  “I am Srabjeet Dhillon. I have a friend who suggested I come here to see the Sheikh.”

  “What friend?”

  “I will discuss that with the Sheikh.”

  Beneath his beard, the corner of his mouth turns up in a smile. He leaves the room abruptly.

  I wait. An hour passes and then another. I doze off. My back begins to ache from the sitting. I wander around the room, look out the window, but cannot see past the leaves of the mango tree. I turn back and notice a hole in the wall just above the door frame. I reach up and try to push my finger inside—feel a piece of smooth glass. I cannot be sure, but imagine the hole is some kind of eye, a lens, a window, something peering at me. I knock on the wall around the hole, hearing something solid, then a hollowness next to it. I follow the line of the door frame to the floor and then along the floor to another hole in the wall where a single cord emerges and connects to an electrical socket.

  I stand back, put my hand to my heart and address the eye. “I would like to see Sheikh Omar. His name was given to me by an Egyptian friend of Ali Nassan of Nablus.” I pause, unsure what to expect. Nothing happens. “Today I am Srabjeet Dhillon. I have not always carried this name.” I pause again, crafting my words carefully, unsure who might be hearing them. “I hope to carry a different name in the future.”

  After a long minute, I turn in the direction I figure is east, I try to line up toward Mecca before I raise my palms and kneel down in prayer. I know I have not washed my hands first as I should, I know I appear as a Sikh man, but I perform the ritual, recite the words with a familiarity, a sincerity only a Muslim could possess.

  Finished, I continue to sit on my legs and turn to look out at the leaves of the mango tree. As a child one of my cousins persuaded me that the mango tree on our lane hid a djinn. He tried to throw rocks at the djinn to force the spirit out. When I told my father, he explained that we must never throw rocks once the fruits had started to form. A bad djinn would never live, my father said, in the presence of such sweet fruits.

  The side door opens. The Pathan sets a bowl of gravy with meat and a piece of naan on the brass tray.

  “Once you have eaten, we will go.”

  “Go where?”

  “To the Sheikh.”

  He leaves. I eat quickly. As soon as I have swallowed the last bit of bread, the man returns, this time with a companion; a young man, Arab perhaps, though dressed in a simple Pakistani kurta pajama. Neither speak as they lead me through the side door into a long hallway and then down another set of stairs. At the bottom the back of a dingy white van has backed up to the doorway. The Pathan leads, the Arab pushes me on when I pause. I remember the goats before Eid, corralled into the slaughter house, incapable of turning around to save themselves. I find myself bundled into the back of this windowless van, sandwiched between these two men, sitting on a wooden bench.

  I wonder if I should feel afraid. “Where are we going?”

  The Pathan answers, “To the Sheikh.” He coughs in the darkness. “You don’t need to know where the Sheikh is.”

  The van lurches to a stop and I slide into the Pathan. Then the engine revs and we jump forward so I press against the Arab. I close my eyes as the van turns back and forth, seeming to drive in circles. The air in the van grows hot and stale, the men’s odor thick and pungent. I close my eyes, focus on my breath to prevent vomiting. And when I think that I will no longer be able to hold on, the van stops, the engine is cut, and the back door opens with a blinding flash. The men at my sides shield their eyes and nearly drag me out by my arms. As
my eyes adjust to the light I see we have pulled into a walled courtyard, completely enclosed by a steel fence. I follow the Pathan up another set of stairs and into a hallway which leads to a restroom.

  “Clean yourself before you meet him. It’s nearly time for prayers, do your ablutions.”

  I step into a simple restroom; new and clean, a Western-style toilet, a porcelain pedestal sink with a bar of soap, and a small green towel. I am glad for this moment. I wash my hands and face, my forearms up to the elbows as the man had instructed. I look at the image in the mirror, the image of a Sikh man with my face, and wonder who I will be in the future.

  I open the door. The men are gone, but I follow the sound of their voices into a large room. Immediately, a different man reaches for my arm, drawing me in, pressing his shoulder to mine, encircling me in a generous but awkward embrace.

  “Salaam. Salaam aleikum.” He says in a gentle voice. “Let us pray first, then we will talk.” I recognize the man’s voice.

  I leave my shoes by the doorway next to the others, and he leads me to a prayer rug set out for me.

  We move through the salat, the prayer, in unison, dropping to our knees, touching our heads to the ground in submission, seeking Allah’s blessings, looking over our shoulders to the south and the north. Camaraderie, comfort, passes over me, and I believe for a moment that we are all brothers, as I felt that day in Shoukart’s relatives’ house, all connected in the beautiful tyranny of a common set of beliefs.

  I wait for my host to rise from his prayer rug. He motions for me to follow him into another room, lined with cushions bordering a fine Pakistani wool rug. Small tables are set with tea and dried fruits. Windows of lacy Islamic latticework look out onto a courtyard of a few palm trees. I sit down on a cushion, no one joins us.

  “I have been waiting for you,” he says in Urdu, lifting up the back of his neatly starched kurta to avoid wrinkling it as he sits back in the cushions.

  “You have?”

  “Yes. You have become quite a remarkable man since I met you in Dargalabad.” He runs his fingers over his neatly groomed beard that sits below his incongruously naked upper lip. “A man with admirable strength.”

  “They call you Sheikh Omar?”

  The corners of his eyes turn up in a smile, “Please, just call me brother.” He opens his arms. “And what would you like me to call you,” he pauses, “Rashid?”

  The sound of my name evokes a painful nostalgia. I wish to embrace him as if he were an old friend, as if we have some common history. I wish to flee, to pass through the geometric spaces in the windows like a spirit into the past.

  “Of course I remember your name. We have mutual friends who have helped you change it. But I’ve eagerly followed the news of your success.”

  When I do not speak, he pours us cups of tea.

  “We are living at a time of a great shift, we are poised to regain something important that we have lost. The umma is reminding the kafir all around the world that only Allah is all powerful. They cannot control the world with corporations and the greed of the few.” I have been so long without conversation that his articulate words flow through my mind like rain washing through a dry streambed. “They cannot continue to subjugate entire countries by force and through their great mountains of debt.” He sips his tea, and in this pause, I find myself longing for the sound of his delicate Urdu. “In Islam we know that it is wrong to charge rent for money. Those who have surpluses should not profit from those who want. This is usury. We are making great strides in Islamic finance, sharing with those-who-have-not the assets that we buy. We will develop the poor, through inclusion, not through exploitation.”

  “How?”

  “You know the sovereign wealth funds. Islamic states are increasingly controlling their own wealth. The days when America and Britain could control us, could extract our resources and keep us poor are ending. You and I, we have learned from their universities,” he smiles ironically at our common Western education, “and we are starting to beat them with their own knowledge.”

  He takes a few almonds from a bowl on the table, handling them thoughtfully. “Imagine, the Sheikhs of Abu Dhabi, the Sultan of Brunei. They own big chunks of Western banks. Eventually all of the arrogant financial institutions that think they run the world will have Islamic financing departments, and once their societies collapse under the weight of their own excess, Islamic countries will be their sources of capital.” He tosses an almond into his mouth and chews.

  “You think the return of the caliphate will come about through financial means?” I ask, incredulous.

  “Not exclusively. We have a multi-pronged approach.” He touches each of his fingers in turn. “We are building mosques and madrasas in South Asia, Southeast Asia, the Philippines. We have educational outreach in the U.S., especially in the prisons where the Americans keep their dark-skinned people. We have online news and media analysis in Arabic and Urdu, we offer scholarships so the faithful can make the Hajj.” He looks for a moment out the window and speaks again in a lowered voice, “and of course we offer training and tools for direct action.”

  “Direct action,” I repeat quietly.

  “Actions to attract the attention of many around the world, as you have done.” He holds up his palms, “Masha’allah, you have acted to establish the strength of our movement in a new territory.”

  The music of his voice fades. I respond flatly, “I acted only to avenge my father, to protect my wife and children, not for any movement.”

  His eyes narrow for a moment. We are both silent, as I struggle to protect what little I have left, the memory of my intention. His beard is flecked with grey, though his close cropped hair is still black. We may be about the same age, but his skin retains a strange youthfulness, his teeth straight and white. His eyes roam over me, I can feel them on my turban, my shoulders, my feet on his carpet, and back to my face, as if observing secrets I may not know I am exposing.

  “That may be true. Fortunately it doesn’t matter. The media have already decided who you are and why you acted.” He smiles. “Sometimes we cannot see Allah’s designs in their great glory, but when we willingly submit, all will be made clear.”

  I reach for my tea, suppressing my anger.

  He shifts in his seat, tucking his feet under himself. “And let us look toward the future. How can I help you, my brother?”

  I swallow, understanding that I need this man, even if I dislike him. “I was told you’re able to assist with documentation. That you could help me establish a new identity here in Pakistan.”

  “I’m able to arrange for some helpful things.” He straightens his kurta over his knees. “But first tell me something about what you plan to do here. Where will you settle? How will you earn money? What are your skills?”

  “I’m from Lahore.”

  “I know that,” his tone condescending, “but of course you can’t go there.”

  “Maybe I’ll stay in Karachi, it’s a big city. Perhaps I’ll work as a mechanic, I have technical skills.”

  “Fine. You’ll be a new mujahir, a new refugee joining this city created by a previous generation of refugees from Partition.”

  “Your family came over with Partition?” I ask.

  “Hmm,” he affirms. “We lived in Delhi. Even though my grandfather was educated, even though he maintained a successful small business, his Hindu neighbors always treated him as less. A policeman beat him one day with a baton when he tried to drink from the same fountain as a Hindu. Imagine their stupidity, their worship of superstition, their ignorance leading them to see God as a zoo of animals rather than the one true God.” He draws his finger across his forehead. “But of course, my fate was written differently than my grandfather’s. I have this house here. Now I drink the finest filtered water.”

  “How?”

  “My grandfather was a good Muslim. When he arrived here he prayed at a mosque with others from Delhi. A man at the masjid recognized my grandfather, noticed his faith
fulness, his dutiful prayers. He asked my grandfather to assist him, working with Jinna’s administration, establishing the bureaucracy of our new country. My father served him, made connections. Everything was in flux, so he moved quickly in the bureaucracy, received a good posting in Islamabad when they moved the capital north. In time, my grandfather arranged a useful position for my father, useful enough to send me to London for my formal education.”

  “And you? You are also a government servant?”

  “No. International finance. I have served a number of the Western investment banks in their Islamic financing endeavors.” His eyes twinkle as he watches my eyebrows arch in confusion, disbelief. “We all help in our own ways. I have certain unique skills that are useful to the organization.”

  My head spins, I try to resist the force of his words, the gravity pulling me to a dark center I do not wish to see. I close my eyes, turn away. I look again out the window, see the courtyard beyond with a small reflecting pool, among palm trees planted in the cardinal directions. I try to imagine the courtyard is in Morocco, try to imagine that Kathryn and the boys will meet me here, will embrace me beneath these swaying palms, tears on our cheeks, full of sorrow and longing, but we will be together, she will understand my intentions, she will accept the sacrifices required of us.

  “I will be in Karachi only temporarily,” I say. “Only until I will be able to travel again. Likely I’ll head to North Africa.”

  “Yes, good,” the Sheikh nods his head. “You will be able to connect with others who will help you in Libya. Of course we also have friends in Egypt, but the American presence can be problematic.”

  “All I need is the passport,” I reply curtly. “I have made my jihad already, successfully—as you know,” I attempt to leverage my only advantage using words he will understand. “I need to be able to travel on a passport without notice.” I think of my father who sent me off to London proudly so many years ago, who told everyone around him in the airport, That is my son, he’s going to London to study at university. I turn to look at the Sheikh directly, “If the authorities should discover me, I would tell them a very different story than your interpretation.”