Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  He looks at me, blinks and looks out the window himself. What does he see out there? Does a woman ever meet him there? Do children gather round his legs begging for his affection?

  “Why did you marry?” he asks gently.

  “For love,” I answer.

  “Why did you go to America?” he pronounces the name of this giant country in three crisp syllables, as if truncating her appeal, belittling her importance.

  “For love,” I answer truthfully.

  “And why,” he pauses, “did you inflict a wound upon her, your new country?”

  “For love,” I nearly choke, unable to protect my heart from the sting of his question.

  “And why did you return to Pakistan?”

  “For love.” A great rushing of heat presses against my ribs from a strangled internal source.

  “Brother, I can see you suffer.” He lifts his hands to my temples. The Sheik’s slightest touch crumbling the dam I have erected against the truth. “You are like a boat bandied about on an ocean, tossed between the love of a woman and the love of your parents. Remember, Allah requires that we submit to no man—or woman—submit yourself to Allah, and you will see the straight path clearly…I understand more than you may think.” He lowers his voice as if to speak in confidence, “I have been in the West, I know the temptation of their faithless women, the ways they seek to entrap us. I have strayed off the path, and found a hell in that place, in the arms of a woman. Al-hamda’allah, I had an experience that returned me to my faith.”

  I remember the nightclub in Dubai, the way Kathryn softened to me on the dance floor, the way she came to the hotel room, even before I understood her nationality. Perhaps the Sheikh knew a woman like this. But he did not know this woman. “She is the mother of my sons,” I say, not so much to him, but to myself, marveling at the time and distance I have crossed in my life with her.

  “Yes, well we can help you build a new life, with a more suitable woman. You can again live the life of a good Muslim.”

  “What I need,” I say with a quiet ferocity, “is a new passport.”

  “Have no illusions, Rashid, you will not be able to return to her. All men need a woman, and eventually when you realize you must find another, you’ll not make the same mistake of looking outside your community.”

  “Fuck you,” I say in English and stand to leave.

  My host recoils for a moment in shock, then laughs. “You’ve spent too much time in America. Sit down. Let us talk about your passport. You’ll be a proper Pakistani again.”

  Chapter 11

  * * *

  I hear the azzan, even before the sun rises. A dream still hangs in my head, so clearly I felt them around me, Kathryn and the boys. They slept with me in Pakistan, in my father’s house in Lahore. But I knew I could not leave that dream bed, that outside the door men were waiting for me. Interpol, ISI, Al Qaeda—I didn’t know who, but they all wanted me and I knew none would let me rest.

  Awake, I can feel the tropical, humid heat of the day already seeping in through the window, but a chill lingers around me. I ache to feel warmth, skin, softness next to me. After a long absence, my morning erection has returned. I observe this as some kind of affirmation of life, a shift from the process of flight. But I cannot think of satisfying this need. I step into the bathroom. I give a wry smile to the man in the mirror, “Srabjeet, I think I’ll say goodbye to you today.” I wash my face with cold water, slap my cheeks, and tug at my beard. My erection retreats, ignored.

  I step into my clothes, though today I do not tie the turban around my head. I step into a no-man’s land of namelessness. I will float in this place between passports, between identities and lives. I step out of the room, today a different room, a different hotel, a different neighborhood, and I follow the few men on the street with prayer rugs rolled under their arms. A little masjid, tucked behind a faded brick building, already accepts a handful of old men, still clearing their eyes of sleep. I leave my shoes with the others; cracked sandals, dusty flip flops, a pair of Punjabi juttis already worn and soft.

  In the dawning light, I can see the colors of tinsel garlands hanging from the ceiling. The breeze sends them fluttering. I raise my hands, bow at the waist, feel the old men on both sides of me. They move in unison with a certain grace, though with none of the Sheik’s Islamist precision. As I recite the prayers, I attempt to let them fill me, to push out all other thoughts. Let me focus on this ritual, let me perhaps wrest from it a measure of peace. With each line, though, some piece of my past remains attached.

  Oh Allah, is greater. Glory be to you the most high. I remember a man in London who insisted that I join him for the first prayer, urging me to spend my mornings with God, not with a hangover from the disco. Was he Kuwaiti or Qatari? I only remember the way his Arabic words settled in the back of his throat, in the authentic accent the Pakistani scholars attempt to imitate.

  O Show us the straight way, the way of those whom you have blessed, who have not deserved your anger, nor gone astray. I remember my Babu, my father’s father, had held me in his strong arms and said Beta, whatever path you follow, try to do right, take care of your brothers around you, for most others in the world will try to do wrong.

  Oh Allah, forgive me and have mercy on me. Touching my forehead and then my nose into the floor I remember the smell of the mosque in Dubai, the carpet still new, the wall paint still fresh. Curiously, in the Gulf, in that place closer to the birthplace of Islam, on the same bit of land as Mecca and the Kabba, I spent the least time in the mosque, preferring the dance floor with almost religious regularity. I disdained the small Pakistani men working for my company who lost their dicks in the billows of their clothes, while I pressed through my jeans against the willing hips of women from a dozen different countries. I touch my head and nose again to the floor, I remember the sound of my mother’s voice over the phone telling me she had selected a few girls from good families that I could meet when I returned for Eid holidays. How had I managed to refuse her wishes, drunk on my own youthful confidence? Should I have allowed her to choose my wife then? Should I have refused her later decision that I would be the one to act for the family?

  Peace be upon you and the mercy of Allah. I stand and bow again, my back parallel to the floor. My knees ache, my lower back creaks with the effort. How do these old men move so easily?

  Chapter 12

  * * *

  “You are back,” the Sheikh says with a hint of amusement. “The passport isn’t ready. Do you need money?”

  “No. I’ve come for another reason.”

  He points for me to sit in a chair across from his desk, he has received me in an office rather than the sitting room where he saw me before. He glances repeatedly at the screen of his laptop computer. “Yes, tell me quickly, I am monitoring something in Europe.”

  “I want to see my mother, my siblings. Can you send them a message and arrange for a safe place for us to meet?”

  “Here in Pakistan?”

  “Yes. My mother is old, she shouldn’t be traveling abroad.”

  Behind him on the wall hangs a giant photograph of Mecca, a sea of pilgrims swirling around the Kabba, the central axis of the Muslim world captured within a gold picture frame. “Can she come to Karachi? Do you have other relations here?”

  “Yes, I think she can come,” I perch uncomfortably on the hard plastic chair beneath me. “We have no family here.”

  He looks back at the screen, distracted. Next to him, the Koran sits open in a carved wooden bookholder, atop a shelf of scholarly Islamic books in English and Urdu. “I cannot address your request right now,” he says.

  I gather my thoughts to protest, to try to explain how he is in some way obligated to arrange this.

  “Just leave me their names and contact information. I will leave word for you with the same Pathan who brought you here.” He hands me a pen and a notebook opened to a clean page. I write down my mother’s name and address and numbers. The pen, I notice, bears
the name and logo of an upscale hotel in Dubai, one I knew for its flashy bar tucked discreetly on the third floor, away from the rich Emirati families who mingled in the lobby. I look up to ask him when I should expect an answer, but he dismisses me, holding up his hand to prevent me from speaking again.

  In a tiny cubicle in a cyber café sandwiched between a tailor and a shoe store, I type in Kathryn’s name. For months I have avoided this portal to global culture, have sought to disappear into the backwater eddies of people and tradition that swirl far away from the international current in this city. But I must confirm her address, want to be sure the payments I am sending are reaching her. I ignore the references to her in news articles with headlines about the bombing, the Pakistani terrorist, the Palestinian Pakistani Islamist cell. I type in the name of her international policy journal. I click through, but don’t find her name with the editorial staff.

  I want to reach through the screen to find her. I imagine our home in Los Angeles now empty. I tap the Sheikh’s pen between my fingers. She had told me the bar in that Dubai hotel was too Western, the night we went together the dance floor was packed with blonde Lufthansa air hostesses and awkward young British businessmen. That night she was not yet Kathryn Siddique, but Kathryn Capen. I type her maiden name.

  My screen offers a couple of links to articles about sports; tennis fashion, beach volleyball styles. I scroll down and recognize some of her articles from her days at the Chamber of Commerce. I click through to the tennis fashion, wondering who might share Kathryn’s name. Last week, a woman named Kathryn Capen wrote a brief about how tennis unitards and form fitting miniskirts are now being designed from high tech materials. I click through to the publication’s home page, the San Diego Sentinel, and then to the masthead. The name appears again with a photo of a woman in a short haircut with an artificial looking blonde stripe and bright red lipstick. After a few seconds I recognize this unfamiliar image as the face of my wife.

  My limbs tingle. I touch the screen and then my lips. Perhaps she feels she has gone underground also. Her costume is so American, just as mine is so Pakistani. Our lives have pivoted 180 degrees. When she came to Lahore with me, those many years ago, she so carefully mimicked my sisters in their chunnis and bangles, their juttis and hennaed hands, while I strutted next to her in my jeans and t-shirt, showed off my expensive tennis shoes and Swiss watch. Were we just pretending? Were we playing our parts like actors on a stage, shedding these contrived appearances when the effort proved too difficult, too dangerous? No. She must know this is only temporary. Like me, she will return to herself when we come together again. I write down the mailing address of the San Diego Sentinel with the pen from Dubai.

  I cross the street and step into a tea shop, taking a chair in the rear, my back to the rest of the world. The waiter, hardly older than a boy, comes and stands mutely next to my chair, waiting to be commanded.

  “Bring me chai and namkeen.”

  He retreats without a word.

  Why do we teach our children to be so passive in this country? I think of my own sons; Michael jumping and talking and laughing, Andrew happy in his baby play. Never will they have to work like this boy. American children go to school. American children must grow up before they are allowed to take a job. American children grow into American men, the kind of men who then go out into the world and kill the kind of men this Pakistani boy may become. No. Not my children.

  The waiter comes with my chai and salty cracker snacks. Not my children. I stir the tea. Me. I bring the cup to my lips. I became the kind of man who killed people. I sip the liquid. The Americans must know their actions are not without consequence. I pick up a little crunchy square of namkeen. We all know that if you harm someone, the revenge of their family will be visited upon you. The snack crumbles between my teeth. Why don’t the Americans ever learn that? I lick the salt from my fingers. How many bombs must explode in the buildings, on the buses, the trains of the West before they stop attacking us?

  The azzan interrupts my thoughts. I drink the rest of my tea quickly, without enjoyment. Too much thinking. Too much waiting—for the passport, the visit with my family, the chance to leave this country. I will rot with all this waiting.

  I leave my money with the boy and step out quickly. Passing through the door I nearly knock over a policeman on his way in. He reaches out, grabbing my arm to steady himself. He looks me directly in the eye, pausing for a moment as if he recognizes me. I pull away from his hand, dart out into the brightness of the street. I take my steps almost at a run. I think I hear him call out behind me but I don’t look back, turning into the next alley, then around a corner into a narrow lane which opens out onto another street.

  I duck into another tea shop and hear all the customers laugh. Confused, I think they are laughing at me. But all eyes are focused on a television screen, where actors shout their lines from a flimsy stage set and the broadcast station’s logo occupies the lower quarter of the screen. A teenaged boy approaches me, “Chai? Samosa? Biscuit?” he chirps energetically.

  “Uh…samosa.”

  He pulls out a chair for me to sit at a table already occupied by two other men, almost every other chair is taken. Then he turns on his heel toward the kitchen. On the screen, the low quality production continues. A woman and then a man run across the stage and duck behind a curtain, followed by a stout man wearing a policeman’s uniform two sizes too small. Two other actors, sitting on a sofa center stage, shout at the policeman. “Why have you run into our house?” they demand. He demands in return, “You saw that man and that woman? They are not married! I saw them holding hands in the park, making lewd expressions with their eyes, and they are not married!” One of the men on the sofa stands to confront the officer, “So what? She has done nothing wrong, you cannot arrest them for that.” The policeman shakes his head and grins, “No, I am just hoping she does it right!” He thrusts his hips forward suggestively and makes a move to search out the girl elsewhere on the stage, the audience erupts in laughter as the other actors restrain him.

  All around me in the tea shop people laugh. I glance at the door, but the real policeman has not followed me here.

  On the screen, the first man emerges from behind the curtain. “What kind of policeman are you? Such moral corruption! I should go get a mullah to teach you something.” The policeman shouts back, “No, the mullahs only offer us young boys,” stamping his foot in disgust. Again the audiences at the stage and in the shop roar. Then one of the actors breaks character and points out into the audience, “We have a bunch of mullahs here, they call themselves censors, but they watch the dancing girls very carefully!” Even the policeman on the stage can’t resist the spontaneous joke. I find myself laughing with him.

  The teenage boy returns with my samosa and tamarind chutney. “What is this program?” I ask him.

  “This?” He points at the screen. “It’s called Our Brother. We show it everyday. In fact, people come so much just to watch this that we changed the name of our shop to Our Brother Hotel.” He pronounces the last word in the local accent, throwing away the last syllable. Kathryn used to puzzle over the fact that restaurant did not exist in the Pakistani vocabulary, every establishment that served food became a hotel, regardless of whether or not it also offered rooms for travelers.

  I ask for a sweet lassi, yogurt drink, to go with my samosa, aching to capture the mirth around me. I glance at the door again, angle my body so other customers will obscure me from the sidewalk. The jokes continue, simultaneously appealing to the universal base aspects of our humanity, while critiquing the absurdities of our culture. I laugh. I laugh with the men around me. I laugh to myself. I laugh nearly non-stop until another dancing girl appears. I sip the lassi again, taste the sweetness, the treat I begged from my father every time he brought my brothers and me to the hotel on the main road beyond our lane. Sweet and sour, he used to muse, just like life. Better to have them together than separately.

  The program ends and the custom
ers begin to leave their chairs, empty teacups littering the tables. “When will the show be broadcast again?” I ask the young waiter.

  “Tomorrow, same time. These people can barely live without it.”

  The man sits at his desk, runs his hand along a dark computer monitor. “The machine is not working today,” he says. From the dust coating the screen, I suspect the machine has not been working for months. He straightens the implements of business: pencils and pens, a stapler, paperclips, an inkpad, an ancient adding machine with a roll of white paper, yellowed at the edges. “But the telephone is in perfect working order.” He proudly caresses the handset of a phone, its rotary dial protected by a plastic doily.

  “I have a standing transfer order that I set up through a hawala in Lahore,” I tell him, “and I need to change the location where it should be sent. And I also need to collect a sum here.”

  “So you are needing two transactions, yes?”

  I nod.

  “So first tell me from where the money is coming.”

  I give him the name of the hawala agent in Lahore. When I was in school, my father had called on the agent every month to transfer money to London. Like clockwork, I would visit the Pakistani grocer in Brighton two days later to collect the money from the back room. I knew some of my fellow students preferred to have their money transferred through their parents’ Western bank accounts, but my father always distrusted them. No one of us has met any of those bankers, he would say wagging his finger, it is much better to shake the hand of the man responsible for getting the money wherever it is going. If it doesn’t arrive it is not just a matter of his salary, but of his honor.