“Aleikum es salaam,” they mumble and return to their efforts. They are trying to reach the steering column from the top of the engine, reaching past a maze of parts in the process.
“You’ll have an easier time of it if you raise the car and reach from the bottom,” I offer.
They look at me with disdain, but I can see the older man hesitates to apply any pressure to his tool. “You worked on Mercedes before?” he asks me gruffly.
“A lot,” I lie. “From below, you can easily recalibrate the direction of the steering column if it’s pulling.” I glance at the tires, “If you’ve already determined that the car isn’t pulling to one side because the wheels aren’t aligned.”
The younger man suddenly looks up at the older man. “We didn’t check the wheel alignment.”
“Bain chod!” the older man spits out at the younger one, “I told you to do that first!” Deliberately, he pulls his hands out of the engine and wipes them on a filthy rag. “What’s your name?”
“Ismail Khan,” I reach out my clean hand to shake his dirty hand. He hesitates, my gesture too formal, a touch too Western perhaps. “And your name?” I ask to bridge the physical distance.
“Azim.” He offers no family name. “Get the blocks out,” he tells the younger man. “He is Zakir,” he says pointing.
I help Zakir get the blocks in place. Azim puts the car in neutral and we push it up the little ramps to the blocks. Azim lays on his back on a wheeled platform and slides under the car. He lets out an expression of satisfaction and then barks out orders for tools. Zakir scurries to hand Azim each one in order. In a few minutes Azim reappears, a grin on his face, dominant over Zakir, even in this subservient position.
“The boss man will be back this afternoon to drop off another car. He’ll be pleased when he checks on this one.”
“How many cars does he have?”
“Maybe a dozen, he keeps buying, sometimes he sells. Whenever he feels like one brings him bad luck, or if someone gets shot in the back seat, he changes it.”
Zakir flashes a nervous look at Azim, startled at the older man’s revelation.
I don’t respond. What is it to me who the boss man is? Who am I to judge, to jump to conclusions about what happens in the backs of his cars?
With a groan, Azim lifts himself to standing. “Do you know why the engines sometimes sing in idle?”
I pause for a moment, wondering if perhaps he is hinting at some kind of car metaphysics. Then he makes a high-pitched humming noise. I smile. “Of course,” I tell him, “of course I know what makes that sound.”
With my first earnings from the shop carefully folded into the pocket of my kurta, I step again into the music store. I scan the shelves for Hamyouk Hussain, half expecting he will appear and greet me with a familiar smile. I choose a disc which seems to be his first, so I can hear his early memories, understand the progression of his expression. I will allow myself this small pleasure, I rationalize, promising to save the rest of the salary for my future house in Morocco. I shudder at the years I would have to work at this rate to save enough to reunite with my wife and children in Morocco. But life changes, I remind myself. I will not always be a personal mechanic for a rich man of dubious reputation.
Chapter 15
* * *
Azim and Zakir are beaming. They have brought me roasted goat and briyani, daal, pickle, even kaju barfi—the dense cashew sweets that remind me of the color of Kathryn’s skin. Since I moved my few possessions into the tiny living space at the back of the shop, they have been relieved of the nightly security detail they used to perform. They can’t understand why I am not married, why I am not trying to find a wife, but they don’t really care, since my solitary lifestyle allows them to return to their wives and children each night—even enjoying the full Eid holiday for the first time in years.
I eat the cold remains of their holiday feast. I tried my best to ignore the festival atmosphere, the gathering of goats everywhere in the city, the rivers of blood that ran in the gutters as families slaughtered the animals for the required sacrifice. I contrived elaborate justifications for why I couldn’t leave the shop—thieves, rivals, mafia, djinns. I would protect against all of these. I could not have left the shop, could not have gone out to reflect on the story of Eid, the relief of Ibrahim who, centuries ago, was spared the agony of sacrificing his own son on an altar by the divine appearance of a goat who could be slaughtered in the boy’s stead. How could I contemplate the good fortune, the faith, the fearlessness of a man ready to kill his own son when my own sons are living, but beyond my grasp? In Morocco, I will observe the holiday again, I will allow Michael to hold the knife himself, I will place my hand over his as he slices the goat’s neck, as we somberly give thanks for the look of fearful resignation in the goat’s eye and repeat an ancient ritual. But until then, I need not spill more blood.
A car pulls in as I sop up the last of the gravy with the bread—a dark green Mercedes, C class, several years old—not the best of the boss’ collection. The window rolls down, chilled air spills out. “You are good with cars, yes?” the driver says.
I nod.
“Even the complicated parts, the meters and dials?”
“Usually.”
He cocks his head, indicates for me to sit next to him in the passenger seat. I hesitate. “Let’s go,” he says, “the boss told me to fetch you.”
“I’ll need to gather some tools.”
“Fine. Do it quickly.”
I fill a bucket, assembling tools for unknown problems. From the passenger seat I can see Azim and Zakir gaping at me, silently staring at the car as we speed down the lane. I close my eyes and listen to the sounds of the engine, the acceleration and deceleration, the driver’s hands on the steering wheel. The leather smells of my memories of sitting in my brother Majid’s car, showing off for girls in our village.
As we turn off the Karachi 1 Ring Road, the driver tells me to bend down, to tuck my head between my knees.
“What for?” I ask, bewildered.
“You either have to drop your head down, or I will have to pull over and tie up your hands and blindfold you.”
My heart races, I feel like I have been duped, like I am the goat, walking to my own slaughter, perhaps sparing someone else’s son. “Are you kidnapping me?” I choke out.
The driver laughs, genuinely. “No brother, it’s for your own protection. If the boss knows you know the way to his house, or if somebody else knows you know the way to his house, it could be dangerous for you.” He reaches out with his hand and pushes my shoulder down, “so it’s better if no one sees you on the way to his house.”
So I tuck my head between my knees, breathing in the smell of my clothes—sweat and salty metallic vapors. I hope he is sincere, I hope he is not leading me to some location where ISI goons will interrogate me and torture me before throwing me to the Americans. I remember my father warning me not to turn my back on a man who was not bound by ties of clan. I start to lift my head. As the car turns the driver roughly shoves my head back down. “Bain chod! I’m telling you, this is for your own good.”
The car slows. The driver briefly exchanges a few familiar words with someone, perhaps a guard. The driver explains I have been as good as blind the whole way here. We are moving again, then stop. I brace myself, waiting for rough hands on my shoulders, waiting for shoves and taunts. My mind races through the lies I will tell, the identities I will claim or deny, the justifications and alibis I will explain. But as the air conditioning sighs to a stop and stillness settles into the car, the driver laughs and slaps me on the shoulder. “Enough now. Get up, we’re here.”
I uncoil myself without releasing my tension. I step out into a carport attached to a big house. Beyond the car I can see a courtyard—covered in concrete and glazed tiles—a fountain spouting water into the air through a gold nozzle, a covered gazebo. The sun beats down, only four spindly palm trees to diffuse the heat. I don’t see another person, but hear t
he hum of giant air conditioning units.
The driver waves me around with his hand, points to a beautiful silver Mercedes. A door from the main house opens into the carport and a man steps delicately toward me. My mind tumbles and my muscles contract to flee as I recognize the well-trimmed beard—Sheikh Omar.
With a restrained smile, he offers me his hand in greeting. “So it is you.” He takes a step closer to me when I don’t reach for his hand. “I heard stories about this excellent mechanic, a man who seemed to work miracles on the kinds of cars that leave most of our mechanics scratching like village dogs. I wondered if it might be someone with more sophisticated training, perhaps someone who had been abroad.”
I force myself to accept Sheikh Omar’s hand.
“You need not be afraid of me, brother…Ismail,” he drops his head in deference to this contrived identity. “If you are as good as your reputation, I may have a much better situation to offer you.”
I wipe my hand off on my kurta. “What do you mean?”
A little peep chirps repeatedly from his pocket. “I must take this call,” he explains. “We’ll talk more after you have a chance to work on my car.” And without another word, he steps back into the house.
The driver crosses his arms across his chest, looks at me more closely. “So you already know Sheikh Omar,” he marvels. “Then why would you live in that filthy shop, like a cockroach afraid of the light?”
I don’t answer, my legs threaten to give way. I lean against the car.
“Well, whatever your reasons, you shouldn’t disappoint the Sheikh. He’s always a man of his word, so if he can get you something better, he will.”
I look around, half expecting other men will appear and grab me. A fly passes in front of my face, an irritating intrusion, a reminder of rot and decay in the artifice of clean concrete. The driver continues, “Aren’t you going to look at the car? I hear the speedometer is broken.”
I retrieve my tools, careful not to turn my back to the driver, still not trusting this situation.
Inside the silver car I immediately ascertain the cause of the malfunctioning speedometer; a hole just the size of my little finger has punctured the dashboard casing, cracks splintering out from the center of impact like a spider’s web. I stick my little finger into the hole, seeing if I can feel the bullet still in the car. I feel nothing. So I pop the hood and look in the engine. I can just make out the hole where the bullet punctured from the interior through to the engine, but the rest of the trajectory seemed to pass amazingly through a series of small spaces in between essential parts of the engine. The bullet must be lodged in a road somewhere, an unnoticed artifact of some conflict within this car, just another grain of sand in the sediment of human suffering. I reach in, my fingers probing, and feel the prick of frayed wire. I reach further, feeling for the other end of the fray, the matching end, the pair that I could reunify. I turn on the ignition, the engine purrs, but the dashboard remains dark, the meters mute. My mind moves in the familiar ways; wondering if the problem is simply the electrical connection, or some error in the electronic circuitry, figuring out the angle I will need to see the wires, the way to jack up the front of the car.
I take my time, ensuring I do not scratch any part of the car or move anything that will cause me problems. The job is not difficult, as long as I reduce it to a series of the smallest possible tasks, completed in the appropriate order.
Just as I crimp the two wires together, I consider ripping them out by their roots. The Sheikh is not my employer. Whatever offer he might make will certainly suit his purposes more than mine. Who is he to me? Who am I to him? He is Sheikh Omar—a powerful man at the center of some nefarious web. I am Ismail Khan, a simple mechanic. He is the man that gave me my name. In some parallel universe of deception we are related, bound, like family, like father and son.
I restore all the parts, close the hood. After jacking up the rear wheels I turn on the ignition one more time, see the dashboard illuminate, carefully press the accelerator with my foot and see the speedometer register the speed of the travel the rear wheels imagine.
On a whim I press the button to turn on the stereo. The device resumes a melody where it had been arrested the last time someone turned off the stereo. A few notes reach me, amplified through the warm clarity of good speakers. I look around, surprised, disoriented. I know the fingers that pluck these strings, I know this melody as if it were a lullaby I heard as a child. I imagine Sheikh Omar—sitting in this car, just as I have sat on my cot—listening to the music of Hamyouk Hussain. The rubab has soothed us both.
The driver comes close, looks at me with a bemused smile. “You’re finished? The speedometer works?”
“Yes.”
The driver juts his chin and nods his head. “That’s good for you, the Sheikh will be pleased.”
As if summoned, the Sheikh appears again from the door. “So?” he asks, holding his hands crossed before him.
“The electrical connection had been severed,” I don’t mention the bullet, which must be obvious to him. “The speedometer’s working, though I can’t repair the dashboard casing here. Maybe I could fabricate something, but I’d suggest ordering a new piece from Mercedes directly.”
The stereo falls silent, pausing between tracks.
“Turn off the car,” the Sheikh says. He glances at the driver then back to me. “Let us talk inside.”
I follow him into the ostentatious chill of the house, imagining what he will offer me, sure in that moment of what I want from him.
Chapter 16
Peshawar, Pakistan.
Two years after the bombing
* * *
I cannot find a tea shop in Peshawar that plays the broadcast of My Brother. The locals do not consume such bawdy humor in public. The austere desperation, palpable on the streets, does not foster the kind of anonymous camaraderie I experienced in Karachi. I find a few DVDs of past episodes, but I have seen them all, and watching them in isolation, the actors seem bleached, their double entendre hollow, the dancing girls garish. So Hamyouk Hussain’s rubab expands, fills the holes in my life, becomes my whole life.
The cars come to me often for repair. I watch the local news enough to recognize a pattern; stories of skirmishes and increasing U.S. security actions inevitably portend the arrival of an SUV or a Mercedes at my shop. Sometimes they come on the back of a flatbed lorry, or towed slowly by another car. Occasionally I will hear a story about spare parts, the salvageable guts of some car or another being transported over the Khyber pass on the back of a mule, or in a bullock cart. I never see the conflict that causes these mechanical injuries, the seemingly endless series of bullets from an automatic weapon that rip up the side of a car, the explosives that will shred an engine, leaving burnt and twisted metal in their wake. I have made my deal with Sheikh Omar. I will work on these cars, I will deliver my magic, not from a shop on a public lane, not in a place like the shop in Karachi, where at any moment the ISI or the police might approach, but from a place where I am protected, buffered. I did not want to be holed up again, no more cockroach-style existence. I want the more sophisticated shielding that the Sheikh could arrange.
So I am able to listen to my music in the open air of a tiny courtyard. Occasionally small birds come to visit the blooms of the potted plants I have acquired, sip the water from a little bowl I have placed outside. Three consecutive walls stand between me and the shop. On the other side of the courtyard wall, I spend my sleeping hours in a small, but well-lit room, and when I wake I wash myself from a bucket of water beneath the tap and watch the dirty suds disappear down a drain in the tiles. Beyond the second wall, another room houses a locked metal case with the tools that allow me to repair their cars. The tools I have assembled seem to suggest that I am part mechanic, part electrician, part programmer, and to their eyes, part magician. And beyond the third wall are their cars. They do not see me when they come in. I try to know as little as possible about them or the men who deliver th
eir cars. My assistant, a teenaged boy handles the initial formalities. Only when the drivers are gone do I come out to hear the report from the boy, to make my own diagnosis and plan for the vehicle’s rehabilitation.
In the evenings, like tonight, I enjoy the cooling air, I eat the meal that the boy fetches for me and I sit and talk. I imagine her with me. I imagine this courtyard is just a small cabana off the main courtyard in our Moroccan home. In these silent conversations, Kathryn and I talk about the boys, about how they have grown, about how much Michael is reading and how Andrew has mastered the tricycle. I can hear their laughs and shouts just over the wall, I hear the splashing of a fountain. And the jasmine flowers give up their perfume. And sometimes, like tonight, I sit with her until the sun sets and the moon rises and I lay back on the charpoy hearing her whisper in my ear, feeling her hair brush across my shoulder and I remember the curves of her body. I remember them so vividly, can almost feel them so accurately through my fingertips, that my sex responds. And when she opens her legs to straddle me, when I slide my own hand around me, entering her in my mind, my nerves are on a hair trigger. So this hand that coaxes inanimate objects into motion all day, needs only offer the briefest conjugal touch this evening to achieve the release, the desired and dreaded outcome. For as soon as I ejaculate, I see the walls that I allow to confine me. The distance—that seconds earlier had seemed malleable—telescopes out into an impossible expanse.
I wash myself and slide my feet into my chappals. I need some air, I need to see other people. I open the door out from my courtyard and follow a maze of narrow passageways through the compound. I can hear the sound of cooking pots and women with coarse voices scolding children to sleep. I hear the slosh of water in laundry tubs, the crack of bed sheets hung out to dry. The rambling path through the servants’ section of the compound eventually leads to a small alley where ragged cats hunt for rice or bits of gristly meat from the discarded rinsewater.
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