Beneath the Same Heaven

by Anne Marie Ruff

  The man opens up a ledger book with a thick cardboard cover. He looks over a list of names written in careful Urdu script. He finds the name of the Lahore agent and nods his head. “And who will receive the funds?”

  I pass him the piece of paper where I have written in English Kathryn’s name and the address at the San Diego Sentinel. He peers at the paper, adjusting his glasses, then scratches the edge of his bushy black mustache. “Amrika?” he asks. “So where do you want…” he pauses, reading the paper again, “Kat-he-rin Cay-pun and San Deego to collect the funds?”

  “No, I want my agent in Los Angeles to take the transfers he receives from Lahore and mail them to this name at this address.”

  The man scowls. “But there is no way to guarantee the money will arrive to these people. The recipients will have to go in person.”

  I take the paper back and write down the name of the agent in Los Angeles. “I know you can’t guarantee it,” I hand the paper to him again, “I trust the agent there, he only needs to put the cash in an envelope with this address and send it.”

  The man sticks out his lower lip and shakes his head in disapproval. “Not possible.”

  “Saheb,” I resort to extra politeness, “I appreciate your concern. I only need you to convey this address to my agent in Los Angeles. He has already delivered the funds twice to different locations. He understands the transfer, this is just a change of address.”

  He looks up the name of the Los Angeles agent in his book, turns through several pages before pointing a finger at a name written in Urdu, next to the words New York, written in English. “I don’t know of your agent, in Amrika, I only have contact in New York.” He looks up and then closes his book. “I can’t do it, can’t be sure.”

  “I can give you the agent’s telephone number, you can call him.”

  The man crosses his arms across his plump belly. “No. How will I know who he is? You’ll need to find another hawala.”

  I had not anticipated any kind of refusal. With a sinking feeling I realize I have connected myself with Kathryn, he could easily alert the authorities about my request. I quickly reach out for the paper I showed him and conceal it within my pocket. “Can you tell me again the name of the recipient?”

  He shakes his head gravely. “I cannot remember the names of any of my transfers, never.”

  I stand up to leave, ask him if he can refer me to another agent.

  He describes a DVD shop about a mile away. “But remember,” he warns me, “do not trust the postal system to deliver cash. A man you can trust, even a family, a clan, you can trust. But an organization, a government or a business, never, always you will find them corrupt.”

  At the back of the DVD store, I face no resistance. The hawala agent, a young man who swaggers with a contrived sophistication in his tiny office, composes a telephone text message, his fingers flying over the tiny plastic keys, and sends it to a Los Angeles number. Within ten minutes he receives a reply that satisfies him about the feasibility of changing my standing transfer instructions. Kathryn will now receive the payments through the mail at the San Diego Sentinel.

  The sound of a film-y love song seeps through the grey-colored wall from the front of the store. A young man croons a dozen variations of why? Why did she allow him to fall in love with her? Why did she not resist her parents’ wishes that she marry another? Why does she still look at him from beneath the red of her wedding veil? Why does he still love her? Why wasn’t he born into the right family to have been a suitable boy? The theme of the suffering that arranged marriage brings to the dream of romantic marriage burns like an eternal flame in South Asia, flickering in almost every film, every song, every tale we learned in school. Somehow, I knew this story did not apply to me. I was not destined to suffer with a woman not of my choosing. I would not be so passive, allowing my parents to choose my wife.

  The agent picks up a different mobile phone and makes a call to Lahore. He speaks quickly a few simple words and a string of numbers, before putting the phone in his pocket. “No problem,” he says with an oily smile. “Come back in two days, I will have your money for you.”

  I nod in appreciation and leave the little office. I will have enough to see me through a couple more weeks. Rows of DVDs and CDs are crammed on the shelves. Cheaply reproduced images of musicians and actors stare out at me. I cannot bear the syrupy images of the love stories, the weddings.

  Another image catches me. A man, seen from behind, walks down a dusty village street, an elongated stringed instrument resting on his shoulder. The starkness of the image, the sense of longing, the presence of the instrument as his only companion, speak to me. Without thinking, I purchase the disc and leave the store, only to realize I have no way to listen to the recording. I walk back toward my shabby hostel room and read of the musician, Hamyouk Hussain. The liner notes explain he had grown up in a family of rubab players, on a Kabul street full of musicians. But his music had to wait. “Music requires an atmosphere of quiet,” the notes quote him, “and that quiet disappeared with the war.” So the family moved to Pakistan, he reunited with his instrument in Peshawar, playing with musicians both local and exiled from Afghanistan. Even before I hear the music, I feel an affinity for it, for the rebirth of his love on a foreign soil, for a successful transplanting of life. Such miracles are possible.

  Chapter 13

  * * *

  I step out of the taxi, retreat into the shadows of a doorway, mindful that no one see me. I wear a crocheted skullcap over my closely cropped hair, I am now Ismail Khan, according to the nebulously procured passport in my pocket. I look around to see who might be observing me. I know that Sheikh Omar has arranged the meeting with my mother, an opportunity I hesitantly trust, but I wonder if anyone has followed my mother. Bubbles waft across the street from a man hawking cheap plastic toys and bubble guns. I wonder for a moment, perhaps the toy wallah really serves the intelligence service, perhaps he observes the comings and goings at this hotel. Perhaps when he leaves the cart of balloons and plastic cricket bats he reports to men in khaki uniforms, feeding them details about the appearance of men who come in cars to this place, men who walk cautiously through the door, men like me. The small iridescent orbs fall on my face, painlessly bursting into a bit of soapy residue. The toy wallah looks up. If he is an informant, I want to know his face.

  Then I lift my shoulders and walk into the hotel. I do not check in with the front desk, I do not take the lift, opting for the stairs. I walk the five flights and step quietly down the hall. Before I can raise my hand to knock, the door to room 505 opens and Sheikh Omar’s Pathan pulls me into the room. He steps past me to look both ways down the hall before closing the door and sliding the lock into place.

  “Is she here?” I ask, disoriented. I hadn’t expected to see him.

  The Pathan just nods and points. I step into the room and see my mother sitting on the edge of the bed, her head erect, her shoulders square. Something tells me to turn and leave, to run from this woman who has directed my life out of my control. But my weakness wills me to run to her, to crawl into her lap so she will comfort me, so she will stroke me and sing to me as I remember from my childhood. She looks up at me, her eyes clear, her face proud. She nods at me, raises her hand, waiting for me to bow down and touch her feet, seeking her blessing. How many times have I respected her in this way? How many times have her fingers grazed my hair, reassuring me of her approval? I begin to reach down, but the inhale catches in my lungs, the man I have become pulls me back up and I can only stand before her, Ismail Khan, a stranger.

  Almost imperceptibly, she flinches. She watches me as I sit down in a chair, not touching her, not speaking.

  “Al-hamda’allah,” she says. “You have accomplished our revenge.” She doesn’t know that I would have chosen not to, that I only acted to protect Kathryn and the boys from Abu Omar’s network. Her head is still, but I hear the rings around her now frail fingers rattle as she trembles. “Do you need anything?” she
asks as if she were asking me if I wanted another roti, or a bit of lemon pickle.

  I practically growl at the absurdity of her question. What don’t I need? I need a home, I need my wife, my children. I need safety and protection, privacy to rebuild a life. I need comfort and love. I need to forget. And I need to remember.

  She looks at me, her chunni falls to her shoulder revealing her hair now thinned, with only a few streaks of grey amidst a ghostly white. “Do not think this is easy for us either. I will not tell you how the government men came and questioned us, the ways they laid their hands on your brothers, trying to extract information. The Americans pull the strings of their puppets in our government, and the government men come to yank our strings.” She clasps her hands together, as she used to do when one of the laborers would challenge her, or when a man would come from the market and explain to her that a quantity of our rice harvest had somehow disappeared. “But we have called on our relations, we’ve made contact with your mamaji’s cousin by marriage. He has influence with the security services. Now we are protected, but of course, many had to be included in the bakshish we provided in return.”

  “Did you give them our land?” I say, knowing that government officials seize on the misfortune of others to enrich themselves.

  “No,” she shakes her head. “I refused to give them even an inch of our farms. Your brothers arranged for cash, to be delivered over time.” She pulls the chunni back over her head. “I will ask you again, do you need anything?”

  “I don’t need anything for myself. I only need Majid to be sure the funds are available for my sons. I’ve paid whatever I owed to you and my father, now I must pay the debt I owe my sons.”

  “You have my word.”

  I sit still, silent.

  “Beta,” my mother calls to the Pathan, “I need to be alone with my son.”

  The man looks at both of us before lowering his head and stepping outside the door. I half expect that she will cuff me on the ear as she did when she felt I had disrespected her as a child.

  “Despite our sufferings,” she begins, “I will be able to leave this life contented. I will be with my loved ones again in heaven, you’ve made this possible. I’m proud of you, you have maintained our culture, honored our traditions even though you left our lands. In the West they believe in their lawyers and judges, as if their tedious arguments in the courtroom could compensate a victim’s family for their loss. They act as if humans are robots, as if all of our actions could be explained with laws and in books.” She thumps her hand over her breast. “They don’t understand that we all carry the law around in our hearts, that the love and suffering we experience must be balanced by love and suffering. This is the natural order of things.”

  She stands and walks stiffly to me. “You killed. The Americans killed for hate but you killed for love.” She takes one of my hands in hers, turns my palm up and runs her fingers along the deep crease in the center of my hand. “You have your father’s hands. But not your father’s fate.”

  The warmth of her skin in my palms shoots through me like lightning. When was the last time someone I loved touched me? Hungrily, I grasp her hands in mine, I press her palms against my eyes, blocking out the light. I will myself to be strong, not to cry. Shame and hope, anger and relief, hubris and grief swirl into a knot—like the legendary knot only Sikander’s sword could detangle—until my insides are still, constricted with the enormity of what I have done.

  Carefully, gently, she retrieves one of her hands from my grip and places it atop my head. In this gesture she offers me whatever blessing she can bestow, whatever goodness she still contains, her legacy of strength and honor are now mine. I look at her feet, understand the paths they have walked, the journey that has brought her here to this secret meeting. I know this will be the last time I see her.

  Chapter 14

  * * *

  The lane appears as though lined by caves. Dark green awnings, grimy at the edges, flap lazily over a row of mechanics shops. Each one seems to belch black dust and exhaust. Piles of cast off car parts litter their perimeters, an advancing front of material encroaching on the thoroughfare, occasionally beaten back by a pulverizing truck wheel, or an irritated rickshaw driver. I search the shops, trying to discern the most successful one. As I stand at the end of the lane, beneath a maze of tattered power lines, slumping my shoulders so as not to draw attention to myself, a shiny black late-model Mercedes pull into one of the shops—luxury swallowed into darkness. Almost immediately, the car pulls out and drives back the way it came. Perhaps the car whisked the shop’s owner in to collect the day’s profits, perhaps the car came to demand tribute in return for protection from the underworld kings, perhaps the men in the backseat simply wanted repairs. Regardless, I find the Mercedes auspicious.

  Before I can hesitate, I walk across the street into the same shop, finding two men sitting atop broken engine blocks sipping tea out of chipped cups. Oblivious to me—a man without a car—they sit in silence.

  “Salaam aleikum,” I say gingerly, so as not to startle them. They look up, but do not respond. “I wondered if you need a mechanic. I see you work on high-end cars and I have a lot of experience with modern engines.”

  They look up at me suspiciously, skeptically, I assume because of my clean hands, the absence of grease on my clothes or body. The younger of the two says flatly, “You have to talk to the boss man. He owns this place, he just left.”

  “When will he be back?”

  The man shrugs his shoulders.

  “Tomorrow?”

  “Maybe.”

  “All right, I’ll come back tomorrow.”

  Before returning to the hotel where I have spent the last few days, I step into an internet shop. I direct the mouse—soiled, likely from the hands of an endless string of frustrated men searching for porn sites—to guide me to mechanics’ blogs and technical sites about late-model Mercedes. My mind seizes on the engineering drawings, delights in the outlines of the precise fittings, the indications of the electrical flows. Ever since I peered over my father’s shoulder at the technical specifications he held for one of our irrigation pumps, I have been unable to resist diagrams. I craved the ideal worlds they seemed to describe, the linear assemblies, the rational joining of form and function. These black and white, two-dimensional images hinted at orderly manufacturing plants, organized systems that seemed a world away from our farms—jumbles of humans and tools, animals and plants.

  The internet offers mechanics’ discussions seeking help to solve their problems with Mercedes. What causes the high-pitched hum when the engine is idling? How to reconnect the electrical system that powers the dashboard display? Troubleshooting. In Dubai, I often answered middle of the night calls from anxious engineers whose tools were stuck, or lost in the well. I could usually pinpoint the error, even over the phone. I had poured over the manuals for each tool, read the diagrams and descriptions a soon as they appeared from regional headquarters in three ring binders, before my colleagues could mar the white pages with their spilt tea and dirty hands.

  Soon, I understand how Mercedes electrical systems frequently cause glitches, how to hear whether the problem is in the cylinders or the timing belt, when it is easier to order a replacement part, or fine tune a fix on the spot.

  I pay for my internet time, surprised to realize three hours have passed. Not once did I think of Kathryn or the boys, or my mother, or the sound of Ali’s voice telling me he would wait another day. I feel a smooth lightness in my thinking. I can contemplate a purpose, an objective beyond my own survival.

  My cheap new CD player whirs to life and the headphones bring sound to my ears, muting the noise of the teashop. The first few notes, delicately plucked from the rubab transmit a haunting melody, a rhythm infused with nostalgia, with longing. I close my eyes, blocking out the people around me, their movements, the dull tans and grays of their clothes. This music, Persian-tinted, conjures colors in my mind’s eye; the emerald stone set in the
player’s gold ring, the delicate orange of a plate of apricots, bright red pomegranates set against a dusty landscape. I listen. The tabla joins the rubab and they seem to walk together, the rhythm sometimes rushed, sometimes tedious, but always companionable. I am transported, momentarily transformed. The waiter brings my tea and biscuits. I consume them in the tea shop, but I enjoy them in the company of the rubab player, believing we could be friends, stoking the little flame of a relationship with this music. The player spins the CD to the end of the last track and then comes to a stop with a little sigh, as if even the plastic shares my disappointment.

  I remove the headphones, allowing the chatter of the shop to reach me again. I look up in time to see the opening banner of My Brother parade across the television screen. I order another cup of tea, a flutter of pleasure rippling through my caffeinated heartbeat. I shift to a more comfortable position in my chair, incrementally accepting the habits of my new life. My life with Kathryn and the boys shifts an equal increment toward the realm of memory and myth.

  I return to the mechanics shop the next morning.

  “You stupid sister fucker,” the older man shouts, “I told you to hold the wrench still. A donkey has more sense. I should kick your fucking ass back to that stinking brothel your mother came from, I don’t care if you are the boss man’s son.”

  I hear the sound of flesh hitting flesh. I don’t know which of them has launched the blow. But the impact achieves a silence, one breath, and then another. “Now hold the wrench still,” the older man says in an even tone. And metal clangs against metal.

  I step into the darkness of the shop. “Salaam aleikum,” I call out to announce myself. The two men look up, their hands still in the bowels of the car engine. I step over to look at their work.